198

the beginning.3^

Aside from topics specifically focused on Black history and culture, specific
questions of religion were addressed at about one-sixth of the Friday night meetings
during the Forum's early years. In a broad sense, of course, the discussions of
religion at the meetings were as much a matter of constructing cultural and ethnic
identity as were the discussions of the Black freedom movement, given the
importance of the Black church to the community, to the Forum youth, and, in fact,
to the Forum as an organization. Promoting faith was one of the Forum's stated
purposes: To stimulate the consciousness of the value of life which are not found
in material things alone ... to establish a contact with the Divine... [and] better
understand His laws and thus intelligently co-operate with Him to accomplish His
plan."33

However, in some contrast to the highly devotional wording of this
statement of purpose, the titles of religious presentations indicated that the Forum
youth were most interested in an activist view of religion, one that informed both
personal moral decisions and, most importantly, collective social action. While
matters of overall religious faith and Christian theology were addressed, religiously-
oriented meetings frequently emphasized individual moral questions such as
marriage and divorce, self-respect, and conscience. Those meetings that dealt with
theology or the institutional church often had decidedly political overtones: for
example, The Fruits of Living the Principles of Jesus Christ in Times Like These,"
The Light That Christmas Throws on the Problems of the Hour," The Church-An
Asset or a Liability". The Forum was committed to developing and promoting a
devout and activist ("militant," is the word Juanita Jackson Mitchell has used) social
Christianity, and the speakers' listings for the Friday meetings indicate that, to do
this, the Forum drew both on the activist traditions of the Black church and the
white churches. Its religiously-oriented speakers came from both traditions, and, in
the case of the white speakers, most often from the ranks of the Quakers. (The