PicoBlog

As a kid growing up in the Deep South in the 80s and 90s, my social outlets were limited. I did not live in an area that had a subway system that could whisk me away to various parts of my hometown. There was no social media to engage with other young folks outside of my immediate community. I was not of driving age until the tail end of the 90s, and even when I did come of age there wasn’t an abundance of places for young Black kids in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to kick it.

My “social network” was made up of folks I met at school, in my neighborhood, at various summer camps and at church. I would say that going to church may have been the most significant social activity I engaged in throughout my upbringing as my family and I consistently attended the same church throughout my entire childhood, whereas schools and summer activities and my neighborhood changed from my childhood to adolescence/teen years.

Back then, going to church was not just relegated to Sunday service. I went to choir rehearsal as a member of the junior and young adult choirs. I went to Monday night bible study. I sporadically attended Wednesday night prayer meetings, and whatever church reunion or field trip or extracurricular activity was happening, I was usually in the building.

My brothers and I grew up in a house with a church-raised mother. At that time our father only went to church for the big annual events (Easter service) or for something consequential happening to us (baptism). Our mother ensured that we got up on Sundays, ate a sufficient breakfast, and headed to Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Missionary Baptist Church to “hear a word from da Lord.” We would sometimes begrudgingly drag our feet out the door, but fully understood that if we were living in Anna Ruth Rose’s house we were going to be in that house of worship no matter how many times we envied our dad sitting on the recliner watching the Sunday NFL games.

What was always kinda difficult for me about regular church attendance (+ extracurricular church activities) was that not all of my school or neighborhood friends were regular churchgoers or churchgoers at all. To that end, I felt like I was moving around with somewhat of a “church boy, goodie-two-shoes” label when in the company of homies that only showed up at somebody’s sanctuary for religious holidays. 

To be clear, I did not grow up in an obnoxiously über-religious household. We definitely had a healthy balance of worldly culture and church culture, but we spent a lot of time in and around the church in my formative years. And for me, growing up in the emergence of hip-hop culture and the mainstreaming of Black secular behavior, being a church kid often felt like the antithesis of cool.

I was six years old when the sitcom Amen debuted on NBC in 1986 but I can distinctly remember watching it from its first season. I remember it because even at a young age it was the first time I saw the culture of the Black church placed in the mainstream in a manner that humanized parishioners and church leaders.

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