The Challenge of Joseph H. Jackson

Abstract This book explores the challenge of Joseph H. Jackson through a definitive academic biography. Jackson remains a person whose significance to twentieth-century Black Christianity and U.S. history more broadly has not yet been understood or appreciated. The biography chronicles Jackson’s rise to power as pastor of the largest Black church in the United States, the fifteen-thousand-member Olivet Baptist in Chicago, and as the longest-tenured president of the six-million-member National Baptist Convention (1953–1982), at one time the nation’s largest Black organization. It examines Jackson’s political alliances, describes his controversial views on race, catalogues his global ecumenical work, explains his fallout with the family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and connects his eloquence to the maintenance of power in a tradition that prizes sacred oratory. By making the life and legacy of Dr. Jackson available, this book produces new homiletical (i.e., preaching) knowledge of his theory and practice, recovers neglected civil rights–era church history, and explores how leadership and power is a double-edged sword in modern American religious life.