Black Megachurch Preachers Offer Unrealistic Approaches to Black Teenage Pregnancy

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. ~ Proverbs 22:6 

While it would be great to simply tell Black teenage girls to not engage in sexual intercourse and they do as they are told, this wishful thinking is only useful for penning fiction.  Although Black megachurch preachers offer some resources at their churches to help pregnant teenager girls and to educate teenage girls about avoiding of teenage pregnancy, the dominant message they hear on television and radio from megachurch preachers is that God is going to punish them for fornication.  You can preach all you want to about abstinence from the pulpit, but you must have a strong understanding of the postmodern world outside of the confines of the church to truly reach these teenage girls.  It’s fine to preach and teach about fornication, but that preaching and teaching must reflect a critical understanding of American popular culture, especially Black popular culture.

Black popular culture is so pervasive and unavoidable that Black preachers cannot simply shout condemnation from the pulpit without responsibly speaking about it and offering serious and practical ways for Black teenage girls to rise above the negative influences and dimensions of it. Black teenage girls are bombarded with sexual images on television.  When these young girls watch programming on Music Television (MTV), Black Entertainment Television (BET), and other cable stations, they see how sex and sexual images have become such normative dimensions of American culture and our national public discourse.  Black megachurch preachers can try to act like young teenage girls should simply resist sexual temptations by praying and focusing on God, but this is simply unrealistic when they are not comprehensively educated about the sexual images they view on television.

When one considers that many adults are being heavily influenced by the sex and sexual images that they see on television, this should signal to Black megachurch preachers that they need to engage in more thorough analyses of this reality and offer more comprehensive resources for these adults’ children.  If many adults are not able to handle the sex and sexual images they view on television, then it’s not difficult to understand that many teenage girls are going to be highly influenced by the sex and sexual images they see on television.  It would not hurt megachurch preachers that much to take out a little time from their preaching and teaching about prosperity to help parents to better teach and advise their children about how to deal with many of the vexing sexual images they witness on television.  These megachurch preachers have enough money to provide teenage girls with constant resources, assistance, and guidance with dealing with the sexual pressures that are commonplace in the postmodern epoch.

In no way should this piece be perceived as an unfair attack on megachurch preachers.  However, it should be viewed as a call to action for them.  The bible informs us that those who have much are required to do much.  This is the reason why this piece singles out megachurch preachers, although preachers at smaller churches should be doing all they can too to help teenage girls to avoid teenage pregnancy.

It is the hope of this article that you will begin to have serious discourses about this topic in your churches, communities, schools, homes, and etc.

Deuces,       

Tony