Robbing God: Should Harlem Churches Have Side Hustles Selling 'Church Tourism'?

While the rest of the world is focused on a small dust up at a certain megachurch in Atlanta, Slate, the journal of record for white people fascinated with black culture, just published a new expose on black church tourism in Harlem. Apparently 60 of the 338 black churches in Harlem are offering tours of their churches to foreign tourists with the help of the Harlem Chamber of Commerce. Slate reports: "As the summer tourist season draws to a close in New York, so too winds down the high period for one of the more peculiar attractions the city has to offer: Sunday church services in Harlem, which bring in thousands of foreign travelers each week." And it's not just nice tours of the buildings. Church tourism includes observing the service itself, receiving a "blessing" and a very special welcome from the pastor.

When I first read about Harlem church tourism, I was outraged -- outraged for all the wrong reasons. I grew up in a church where selling things in church was a sacrilege. I remember the response to other churches selling catfish and chicken dinners. It. Just. Wasn't. Done. Whenever this subject would come up, blatant selling of wares in the church house, there would be some vague reference to money changers in the temple. We know how that worked out! (P.S. I also went to a church were women couldn't stand in the pulpit, enter the pastor's study or walk inside the sanctuary wearing pants -- but let's stick to the money-changing in the temple stuff today.)

I was taught that the church should be able to survive on the tithes and offerings of its members and that God would provide. And just in case the congregation forgot their biblical obligation, every Sunday right before offering we were treated to a recitation of Malachi 3:7-10:

7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?

8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.

10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

I didn't know what all that meant as a child and fixated on "cursed with a curse!" The message was clear: Give God his 10 percent or an extra head would grow out of the side of your neck! The God of my childhood was a lot scarier. Everything is scarier in the King James Version.

But in the middle of my internal dialogue about how unseemly it was for people to offer tours of black churches in Harlem, I had a vision of all of the photos I have from my church tours of Europe. Me standing in the front of Notre-Dame, me sticking my head out side of one of the spires from the Sagrada Familia, and how could we forget the churches of all churches, the basilicas of Vatican City. Now I know how the folks in Europe must feel about us traipsing through their churches.

However, it's one thing to show off the historical significance of your edifice and an entirely different thing to turn praise and worship into entertainment. After all, the building isn't "church," it's the people in the church. Is that what these churches are selling in the form of Harlem church tourism? The people?