Documentary highlights the tensions, isolation of being 'Black + Evangelical'
A Promise Keepers event highlighted in the Black + Evangelical documentary. (Courtesy photo)
A new documentary is shedding light on a group of people who are part of the evangelical Christian tradition in a way, said Wheaton College theology professor Vincent Bacote, “that’s not just White and being a Republican.”
Black evangelicals, said Bacote, are too often unseen—the “orphan in our home faith community.” Over the last decade and a half, he has sought to remedy that by turning the history of Black evangelicals into a 90-minute documentary, Black + Evangelical. The film, produced in conjunction with his evangelical college and Christianity Today, premiered at a February 21 screening on the school’s Chicago suburban campus.
Bacote, 59, said he hopes the documentary will answer a question he’s asked frequently since White evangelicals have become a force in conservative politics in the United States. “Did you know that the word ‘evangelical’ can mean something else than what you think it means if you read most of what’s in the media today?”
