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Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in America, and the massive number of African-American converts—in prisons, colleges, and inner cities—is a key factor. There are more than 2 million black Muslims in the United States, and if current trends prevail, that figure will continue to swell.

Carl Ellis is president of Project Joseph, a Chattanooga, Tennessee-based ministry that equips the church with seminars and educational resources for reaching Muslims. Ellis is coauthor, with Larry Poston, of The Changing Face of Islam in America (Christian Publications). He recently spoke with CT's Edward Gilbreath.

You've written that the growth of Islam among African Americans is more a reflection of the church's weakness than of Islam's strength. What do you mean?

Everybody has issues that they are seeking answers to. If the church does not address specifically the issues that people are concerned about, and another group comes along and addresses those issues, no matter how bizarre the answers are, you'll find people taking a strong look at that other group.

Christianity has done a good job addressing personal and spiritual matters, but for too long the church stopped dealing with the area of cultural and social issues. For example, things like Afrocentrism and pan-Africanism, which was basically a vision for missionary outreach to the African Diaspora, were originally Christian concepts. But the church withdrew from those ideas and left them out there, and then the secularists and the Islamic groups came along and redefined them according to their views. The African-American church forgot its own history; we withdrew from a position of social and theological leadership and adopted the theology of the dominant culture, which tended to have a Eurocentric slant.

What led to this retreat?

Between 1875 and 1900, there were three distinct traumas that, I think, radically altered the theological direction of the African-American church and paved the way for Islam's influence. First, there was the end of Reconstruction in the South, the rise of terrorism against blacks, and the reestablishment of white supremacy.

Second, there was the Industrial Revolution in the North and the influx of European immigration, which led to the rise of white-only trade unions. It was African Americans who had all the trade skills after slavery, but within one generation these people were completely locked out of the skilled labor force. And third, the strong African missions work of the black church was decimated when the colonial powers consolidated their hold on sub-Saharan Africa and began barring entry to new African-American missionaries and expelling those already there.

As a result of these traumas, the church became in grown. It began to deal with the new slavery that had emerged after the Civil War and withdrew from the larger social concerns.

Which opened the door for the Black Nationalist groups, and figures like Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.

Exactly. The Nation of Islam had "the Fruit of Islam." These Muslims were black belts and very concerned with empowerment. The images were manly and relevant to the black community. The interesting thing is that had it not been for the traumas of the nineteenth century, you might have seen a figure like Malcolm X rise from the church rather than from the Nation of Islam.

What, specifically, attracts young African-American men to Islam?

There's a lot of external discipline. These guys line up in military-like lines and do rounds of prayer. Many African-American men long for that structure and order. And there's a wise, sage type of image that you find in a lot of imams [male leaders]. Since 1970, one of the big issues that's really been a concern for African Americans is this whole quest for true manhood. And the success of Promise Keepers shows that it's an issue even in the white community. Islam may be seen as a way to redefine one's manhood.

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April 3 2000, Vol. 44, No. 4