Albert Cleage, founder and pastor of the Central Congregational Christian Church (1953), began preaching a series of sermons centered on the idea that Jesus was a black revolutionary messiah whose primary objective was to construct a black nation. Cleage in 1966 changed the name of the church from Central Congregational Christian Church to the Shrine of the Black Madonna. With this too, came the unveiling of a Black Christ painting in the church to drive home the message that “within the child born of a Black Madonna is a new Messiah only waiting to discover their inner divinity”. Church leaders and members feel an obligation to “transform the spiritual emptiness, economic powerlessness and social disorganization which has plagued the black community”.

The late Jaramogi A. Agyeman in 1992 (Albert Cleage) echoes this point in a written sermon entitled the “Pentocost Experience”, he states:

We are black. We are oppressed. You do not realize that this world in which you live is organized. It is not run on automatic.
We don’t have anything to do with running it.
The system is an enemy system. Our struggle for survival requires recognition of the fact that we are outside of the system and that we must build COUNTER-INSTITUTIONS of our own.-----