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The Black Church, Homegoing Services and Whitney Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston, 1963-2012 Matt Sayles/AP/File

On February 18, 2012, the family of Whitney Houston paid their final respects in an invite only, yet televised homegoing service at her home church, New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. Initial reports had said that only BET was covering the full service, but certainly shocking to me, the major cable news networks of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News covered the entire service from beginning to the recessional. This isn’t a post to eulogize the wonderful talent that is and was Whitney Houston, but rather a cultural commentary on what Whitney’s homegoing service, an experience she didn’t get to see, meant for the larger culture.

Particularly on CNN, between the hosts of Piers Morgan, Soledad O’Brien and Don Lemon, they were all tripping over their words trying to set the most politically correct tone possible when speaking about this as a “traditional Baptist service.” To which myself and others, I’m sure, couldn’t help but roll our collective eyes. Even Don Lemon gave a cringe worthy comment when walking the street trying to get interviews from well wishers and invited guests to the services when he said this would be a service with “jumping and shouting and fanning.” That is to say, the experience that is the institutional Black Church as we know it, shouldn’t and can’t be expressed in those three words.

The Black Church, as we know it historically and even in a contemporary setting is not monolithic; indeed it is really black churches. What the nation, and indeed the world saw today was but a glimpse of an ecclesiastical culture that is unique to the black American experience. From the order of service, to the music, to the ebb of flow of words uttered by chosen guests and even the sermon. The collective swaying of the choir, to the ecstatic utterances from Donnie McClurkin to the emotion displayed by Ray J as the casket of Whitney Houston was carried out of the door.

This is but a glimpse of how we worship, and the world for a brief four hours in time was able to see that.

That being said, I, personally, am of the opinion that if you are aware that you have a national audience, you need to speak to the national audience. I do think that one can employ rhetoric that speaks to the immediate and present persons and one that transmits through the TV and other mediums.

I’ll never forget when Albertina Walker, the Queen of Gospel music as she was called, died. I happened to be living in Chicago at the time and people were questioning me about what church was this that the funeral was to be held at. I knew the church just because of my proximity to it and that it was a church my mother used to go to when she was growing up. Not to mention, it was Albertina Walker’s church where she held her membership and it was an historic church that was institutional in Chicago as it was a home church to many of those who arrived during the Great Migration.

What was peculiar about it was that this was a public figure, nationally known, having a funeral at a smaller church. Now a public musical was held two days prior at Apostolic Church of God to accommodate the large crowds, but the homegoing services were held in a much smaller church.

I’ll never forget watching the online stream of the services where the pastor of the church, in the middle of his eulogy decided to address the critics. The pastor took the time to put people in their place, so to speak, surrounding the issue of why the services were held at his church and why he was chosen to speak and not a preacher with larger recognition.

I cringed in my seat.

The problem, as I saw it, with that type of rhetoric was that it was highly localized and frankly it did nothing but detract from celebrating the life of the deceased: Albertina Walker. The pastor of the church was relatively unknown at the time, and guess what? He’s still unknown. If he had simply preached a great eulogy, people would have been more inclined to remember him as the pastor who preached a wonderful eulogy about Albertina Walker. Unfortunately since he didn’t say much and what he did say did nothing to call to attention the reason they had gathered that day, no one outside of his circle knows who he is.

Pastor Marvin Winans preaching the eulogy of Whitney Houston entitled "Prioritize" from Matthew 6:25

Today, Marvin Winans, pastor of the Perfecting Church and part of the Winans family, a gospel singing group was charged with the task of delivering the eulogy for Whitney Houston.

To be frank, there wasn’t much positive I could say about his eulogy.

Now, I know there are varying schools of thought when it comes to preaching eulogies. Some question the necessity of using a scripture as a text to preach from, or the need for a theme or title to preach about. Some see a eulogy as merely a call to be saved by the members while others believe that rather than preach a text or a title, one ought to indeed eulogize the person who has died. Some believe if you know the person, you ought to most certainly talk about the person, and if you don’t, one should talk about Life and Death and what does that all really mean when a family loses one of their.

Amazingly, Marvin Winans didn’t do any of that.

Now, I’ve caught bits and pieces of Marvin preaching over the years and there’s one sermon of his I’ve heard in it’s entirety that’s on YouTube his famous “That’s It, and That’s All” sermon he preached a few years back. I think by the time I heard the aforementioned sermon, I knew my personal theology didn’t align with his. However, his theology aside, the sermon lacked a certain cohesiveness that I think was needed for such an occasion as this.

For me, Pastor Winans failed to give a good word over the life of Whitney Houston as he never mentioned her once in his discourse. Additionally, he didn’t say anything directly encouraging to the family and certainly not to the thousands of persons who had tuned in via television. I think when it comes to basic pastoral care that needs to be done in the pulpit, comfort in the time of sudden and unexpected grief is needed and it seemed that Pastor Winans was drawing from an empty well when it came to giving words of comfort to a family that has lost its daughter, sister, cousin, mother and even ex-lover.

Not only did Winans seem to falter with his basic tasks, it was just a poorly organized sermon. We went from Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount to a story about reading car manuals and why the Bible is our manual and by the time he meandered through controversial doctrines we ended up with him endorsing a prosperity theology. Let me be honest, by that moment, I had abandoned all hope for a decent sermon and I would have been shocked for him to make sense of it all.

The whole time, I kept waiting for him to turn to Cissy Houston and say something direct and personal to her about Whitney, and that moment never came.

What I heard was a’ many a well-turned phrase, some basic catchphrase theology, his Pentecostal and therefore theologically conservative theology conflated into a sermon that had little if any practical application. I couldn’t even give him the benefit of the doubt that he was really making a plea for persons to take this moment to get saved and get right with Christ which is sometimes par for the course when preachers have to preach the eulogies of persons who have died through violent means. I couldn’t say that because he gave no practical applications, and he use of ecclesiastical language meant that he was only talking to church people.

The sermon Marvin Winans preached was more fitting for a Sunday morning service than for a eulogy for someone so famous and iconic. Personally, I don’t care about an altar call, or really calling for persons to get saved, that’s not really what I look for in preaching, but rather something that raises, or at least broadens one’s consciousness culturally, socially, political etc. all while having a conversation with theology. If I wasn’t already self-identified as Christian, there was nothing Marvin said that really piqued my interest enough; there was nothing digestible that he said. It was if one were eating rice cake–no flavor, no taste, and little if any nutritional value, certainly nothing that could solely sustain you for any length of time.

Winans did nothing to raise or broaden the Houston family’s consciousness, let alone the nation’s consciousness, about Whitney Houston, nor God or Jesus for that matter. Using extremely churchy language did nothing to open the door and give someone with little or no church experience to want to come into the conversation and sit and listen for a while.

Alas, I know I’m being hyper-critical of Pastor Winans, but preaching what amounts to a national eulogy opens him up to the criticism. I am not suggesting that because of a national audience one ought to put on a show so that larger society doesn’t look at us as caricatures, but I honestly hope that people who are not a part of the black church tradition don’t think that Marvin Winans’ preaching is a middle-of-the-road and representative of the comprehensive black church experience–it is not. Rather, I believe Marvin preached out of his context.

Some say he didn’t let loose as he might have wanted to given another setting. I disagree. Well to an extent. Obviously Marvin is a whooper and he obviously didn’t do that, and I wish he had. I think if he had closed, it would have done wonders for how his sermon went over with many persons. Based on Facebook statuses and tweets, people were expecting that performative aspect that has become unique and synonymous with a black church experience.

Ironically, where I believe Marvin Winans failed, Tyler Perry excelled.

Tyler had the first word of encouragement and in recalling the life of Whitney. He related a text to her life, and the life of her preach the text. Granted it was short and simple, it still did the job.

Given the confines he had to work with, Matthew chapter six, verse 25, Winans had an opportunity to raise the level of consciousness beyond our earthly lives and to prioritize the things in life that matter. That is to say, we should leave a legacy, as Whitney did, through her talents. The talents that are given to us and those gifts that we pick up on our journey are not for our own self-aggrandizement but for the betterment of our own sisters and brothers whom we encounter daily. I would have suggested that we prioritize the people we have in our lives in addition to the things that we do in life. And I believe by the time you get to verse 33, it provides a proper close for a Christian context about seeking first the reigndom of God and everything else will fall into place.

Personally, I would have went back to Romans 8, as Tyler Perry did simply because I find great joy in understanding God as Love, an inseparable love indeed.

To that end, Whitney, we love you, we miss, take your rest and go on home.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

We miss you Whitney!

Comments 47 Comments
Categories Church and Society, Cultural Critique, Pop Culture, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, Religion, The Color Line, Theology of Preaching

Uppity Updates: Week of February 5, 2012

13 Feb

Every once in a while, the news cycle of the life and times of the goings-on of America produces a completely blog worthy week–and usually that’s the week or so I didn’t blog. For long, long time readers, you all know that last week was a wonderful week to be a blogger. From Roland Martin getting suspended by CNN, to Dr. Cornel West calling MSNBC darling Melissa Harris-Perry a “fake” and a “fraud” and a seemingly return of Sarah Palin at the God-awful CPAC convention this was certainly week to be in the blogging business.

Luckily, there are Uppity Updates.

Here’s my rundown of what happened last week.

1. Roland Martin Gets Suspended from CNN for his Tweets

When GLAAD, the pro-LGBT alliance group made the charge that Martin should be suspended from CNN for homophobic tweets he tweeted during the SuperBowl, I immediately rushed to see what exactly he had tweeted. Specifically, he tweeted,

If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl

and

Ain’t no real bruhs going to H&M to buy some damn David Beckham underwear! #superbowl

Roland Martin

Well, personally, I didn’t see either of those tweets at homophobic. Not unless the definition of homophobic has changed, I understood the working definition to be any rhetoric or action that specifically disparages those who identify as homosexual. I didn’t see Martin doing that with those tweets. What I did see was Martin being anti-masculinist.

The anti-masculinist sentiment was that Martin seemed to be challenging the manhood of any man who wanted to see the David Beckham commercial. Challenging one’s manhood doesn’t necessarily translate into alleging that one is gay. Let’s remember words like “sissy” and “punk” do just as much about challenging one’s masculinity as they do to identify one as being gay.

In that regard, I think since Martin didn’t go out overboard with the tweet to say that any man who was hyped about the David Beckham ad was gay, I don’t think it’s fair to charge homophobia—for a few reasons. If what Martin said were to wholly be categorized as homophobia, I believe that it negates a nuanced conversation that marginalized communities, such as the LGBT community, need to have to see true change occur in this country. It’s as though GLAAD is a hammer, and therefore sees everything else as a nail, rather than a screw or some other tool.

More so for me, it negates a conversation that we haven’t really held in this country: one on masculinity, manhood and gender as separate entities from sexuality. While yes all of these can be and are intertwined, we must try and raise the level of conversation. In this instance, most persons didn’t hold the conversation about masculinity, which is what I particularly saw; everyone raced to have the homophobia discussion. While one shouldn’t supersede the other, we must not forsake an easier target for one that is more nebulous in the public sphere.

The only article I saw was by a Charles Blow entitled “Real Men And Pink Suits“ out of the New York Times that attempted to have this masculinist and manhood conversation. I think where Martin lost his witness was when he advocated violence. In a time and place where violence against gay youth in the form of bullying has led to youth suicides, Martin’s tweets had the finesse of a wild boar hunting for prey.

Martin shouldn’t have tweeted it, but I don’t think it was worthy of a suspension either.

2. Melissa Harris-Perry, Cornel West and the “Fraud” Alert

Perhaps Dr. Cornel West is the guy who sits and red flags your debit or credit card when it sees and out of town purchase simply because you decided to go on vacation randomly. Or perhaps, maybe Dr. Harris-Perry is a fraud.

Who knows?

What I do know is that yet again, West came under fire for a war of words from an interview with Diverse magazine (p. 14) concerning some of his fellow public intellectuals. Specifically, Rev. Al Sharpton and Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry. We all remember the rather public and vehement disagreement Al Sharpton and West had last year on MSNBC with Ed Schultz looking a bit befuddled. The two were having the classic activist versus academic debate. I remember watching a bit chagrined having respect for both gentlemen and saying to myself, so it was obvious, these two don’t talk often. That is to suggest, how could neither of them not be working with the other.

However, recently, I had a long discussion with a friend about the nature of the rhetoric of the likes of Cornel West. While I’m not the biggest fan of his “jazz improvisation” speeches, I think mostly what Cornel does is attempt to raise the consciousness of the masses. The likes of Dr. Harris-Perry and Al Sharpton do nothing more than broaden the conversation. And yes, I am specifically valuing these theories. To raise the consciousness requires a different rhetoric, and usually is missed on the majority of people, and West’s, at times, bombastic nature, doesn’t help.

We can all agree, calling your protegé a “fake” and a “fraud” doesn’t help your case at all.

But, if I understand West correctly, I can see why.

If Harris-Perry is your protegé and primarily, you have issue with their level of scholarship, and then they turn around, leave the institution you brought them to only to bad-mouth you the first chance you get, and then to fall in lockstep with the liberal establishment–then yes, to West, you are a fake. Granted, I’m highly speculating, but perhaps West knows that Harris-Perry sold out some of her core ideals for the sake of getting the MSNBC nod.

I have always understood, however, that the work that I am about requires this and that, not one or the other. A movement needs people who can work in the system and those outside of the system. However, tension constantly will arise. While West clearly stands outside of the larger system critiquing the system itself, the likes of Harris-Perry and Sharpton even to some extent, operate within the confines of that system. It’s hard for an intellectual ideologue such as West to critique the system when people such as Sharpton have to operate within the system.

To West’s point about the lack of critique that Sharpton and Harris-Perry give to the Obama administration, I have to agree with him without any reservation. I believe praise should be given when it is earned, and criticism should be given as well. The moment we fall lockstep into any system, we have compromised ourselves; we are indeed a carbon copy, living on the ends of strings pulled by another.

Or else, he’s saying none of her work is her own.

Whatever, the case, I do think it should be noted that Harris-Perry is the only sitting tenured professor with a news program and that does say something about public intellectualism entering the broader discussion.

3. President Obama, Birth Control and “Religious Freedom”

Since, I’m not Roman Catholic, I really don’t give a damn about contraceptives as it relates to religious beliefs. And since I believe public health care should be considered a right under the law, which means I was, am and will always be in favor of a public option, I’m sure you can figure where I come down on this topic.

I really don’t know what Obama’s political strategy was in waging this debate in favor of women’s health knowing he was probably going to have to compromise on the topic. I don’t know if it was a hat tip to pro-choice and other women’s groups going into the election cycle or was this a true political blunder. I think the White House can use it in a general election as far as saying Obama stood his ground but was blocked by the GOP operation, blah blah blah.

However, it gets spun, I think women overall lost the debate. Even those women who were against it in the first place.

I think if you want to offer a health service to the public, you need to play by public rules. But, let’s remember much of the hubbub was coming from a party where current and former presidential candidates created a hypothetical scene where a non-insured injured person would be turned away from a hospital’s emergency room. Catholic priests were alleging that their “religious freedom” was being trampled, and suddenly you started seeing black suits and white clergy collars appearing on all the news talk shows.

First things first.

Why are people taking sexual cues from a body of predominantly older white males who have taken a vow of chastity? Even if they are off having sex somewhere, doesn’t that even still nullify the previously nullified position in which to sit and critique. And let’s not mention, this is a seriously flawed body of men when it comes to the issue of sexual actions. The Catholic priest sexual abuse cases still are not over yet.

Secondly, I fail to recognise how is one’s religious freedom opposed when forcing to provide a service for the public. If the Catholic sponsored hospitals only hired Catholics, I could see how they could make the argument, but we all know that’s highly discriminatory and illegal in a public sector such as health care. Or even if Catholic hospitals only treated Catholic patients, I could buy this, but we all know how ludicrous it is. Out of all the debates I heard, none of them really made sense. The various priests I saw on the news programs spoke as thought they were a part of divine aristocracy in which the rest of us had better get on board.

I do think the deeper, and much more legalistic debate is truly whether or not what precedent does this set as to what rights does a government have about forcing a religious institution to provide a service or a good that given other avenues is free. To that end, I encourage you to check out another blogging source, Constitutional law really isn’t my strong suit.

Finally, and of the most importance to me, I thought it was quite curious that the country immediately jumped into the conversation about “religious freedom” as a means of protecting this concept, to which I immediately asked where was this level of conversation four years ago when Obama’s church and Jeremiah Wright entered the public sphere. No one argued religious freedom when the concepts of Black liberation theology were discussed and dissected. If you let the conservatives tell the story, including the likes of Rick Warren, just the basic tenets of liberation theology are heretical.

All in all, I think the White House could have handled it better, but still, the Catholic church was more of the loser in this case. Yet, again, the Catholic church came off as a old curmudgeon wielding the same power Constantine exerted over his dynasty. The fact that I live in a country that legislates policies on contraceptives while at the same time hollering about teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS rates and from an institution that comments on children born out of wedlock is mind boggling indeed.

4. Sarah Palin is Still Here.

This one will be short and sweet.

As to why they decided to trot out Sarah Palin from under whatever rock Fox News had her hidden is beyond me. Her digs were per usual at the President and full of venom filled one liners that would make a rattlesnake jealous. What bothered me, was the presence of this character called Peter Brimelow who was asked to speak on a panel entitled ““The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity is Weakening the American Identity.” This guy is considered a white nationalist by some accounts. Check out the clip below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtkA2yNuARg

And to think Herman Cain was on a stage with the likes of Peter Brimelow. Diversity indeed.

5. Chris Brown Come-back or Female Insensitivity

There was immediate backlash amongst those who felt that Chris Brown shouldn’t have been on stage at the Grammy’s last night nor should he have received any awards because it displays that domestic abuse is okay. I disagree. I have always disagreed with this line of reasoning. What I’ve noticed in the three years since the incident happened between him and Rihanna is that women, in generall (emphasis on in general) are going to take a hardline approach as it relates to how they interpret justice in matters such as this. Men, on the other hand, take a much more restorative approach toward justice.

I think, I comfortably fall in the latter part.

Part of the reason is that usually when I read these blog posts and status messages and tweets that are decidedly anti-Chris Brown, I don’t see them offering any type of logical ways for reconciliation, just retribution. Many are saying he needs to be in counseling. Okay, but for how long? What type of counseling? Does he need to be medicated? Hospitalized? Institutionalized, even? Some say, he shouldn’t be up on the Grammy’s performing. Okay, why not? For how long? What’s an appropriate punishment. Usually these are questions that are never answered in their discourse. If you’re ready to mete out punishment, that means that there will be a time when the punishment ends and then what does that mean for re-introduction back into society.

Moreover, what does that mean for Chris Brown doing what he does? The music industry isn’t one controlled by a board where you can be demoted or what not as a means of punishment. As far as I am concerned the Grammy nominating committee nominated who they thought was a good artist, not as a socio-political statement to say domestic abuse is alright. The Grammy nominating committee isn’t, or rather, shouldn’t be judging based on one’s moral and ethical character, but rather the musical talent and offering of an artist.

Obviously, we have the black female blogosphere to judge Chris Brown’s moral and ethical character; the Grammy nominating committee need not offer their two cents.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, The Color Line, Uncategorized

Mormonism vs. Universalism: A Post-Racial Evangelical Dilemma

13 Jan

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are pictured in this June 2011 file photo. (Jim Cole/AP Photo)

With the Iowa Caucuses a distant past and the New Hampshire primaries fading to black, all eyes are now focused on the South Carolina primaries for the Republican Party nominee. The Republican field has had its plethora of changes with candidates like Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum thrust onto center stage as of late, after being nearly absent in the media and debates late last year. With the likes of Herman Cain and Rep. Michelle Bachmann no longer in contention to occupy the White House, more attention has no been focused on front runner candidates of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and I guess we might as well add Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman.

Let’s be honest, Mitt Romney is probably going to get the nomination after all of this is said and done, but can he win South Carolina?

Northern candidates have historically had a tough time in the South Carolina primary due to old hold outs of Confederate tribalism and the like, but this go round, the religious right has to deal with a slightly different factor that contributes to this millieu: the presumptive nominee and current front runner is Mormon.

Well, to be totally politcally correct, Mitt Romney is a member of the Latter Day Saints church and is a believer in Mormonism.

How’s that?

Without going too deep, Mormonism is one of those religious beliefs that has sparked numerous side-eyes from the rest of the Protestant country. Not trying to be too sensational, but this a belief that practices polygamy and believes that there are a specific number of persons who are going to heaven–and believe that if Jesus comes back he’ll be coming back to Missouri. More germane to me, this is a belief that until the second half of the 20th century did not believe blacks were to be counted in the number of the saved.

Whatever the case is, oddly enough, the Church of Latter-Day Saints is uniquely American.

Joseph Smith’s vision to move he and his fellow believers to a place where they were free to practice their faith free from governmental religious persecution could only happen in a place called the United States. So much so that they launch out as emigrants and settle and even apply for statehood. Generations later, they’re still going strong. What more American story do you know of that speaks of rugged individualism, hardwork, self-determination, struggle and progress?

Well, I could think of several, but you get my point.

Nonetheless, what’s not to love about the story of how Mormonism came to be about? Oh, just discount the part that they don’t believe in the singular authoritative existence of the Holy Bible, but believe in also the Book of Mormon which corrects the inaccuracies that exist. And just forget the part where the cosmological agents of the universe spoke directly to Joseph Smith and he then recorded the Book of Mormon himself. So, yeah, if you forget all of that, what’s not to love about the story?

Enter Barack Obama.

In 2004 Obama was first receiving his rise to stardom as a U.S. senatorial candidate that he was interviewed by religion reporter Cathleen Falsani and she point-blank asked him “Who is Jesus to you?” and the first words out of Obama’s mouth were “Jesus is an historical figure for me.”

Prior to the question Falsani asks him, Obama says

I am a Christian. So, I have a deep faith. So I draw from the Christian faith. On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where obviously there are a lot of Eastern influences. I lived in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, between the ages of six and 10. My father was from Kenya, and although he was probably most accurately labeled an agnostic, his father was Muslim.

So, I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there’s an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived. And so, part of my project in life was probably to spend the first 40 years of my life figuring out what I did believe – I’m 42 now – and it’s not that I had it all completely worked out, but I’m spending a lot of time now trying to apply what I believe and trying to live up to those values.

Such a quote lands Obama relatively comfortable in the arena of universalist thought. Universalist thought, succinctly put, is the belief that there are many paths to some universal truths; that there is no one way to one truth. Now I’m not sure if Obama was aware of his personal beliefs in concert with politics on a national arena, but it makes perfect sense why Obama and his family would have ended up at Trinity United Church of Christ. The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a denomination with its official inception in 1957 birthed out of the Congregationalist Church that is considered the most liberal Protestant denomination in the country. The next step toward the left is outside of the realm of socially acceptable American and Protestant beliefs.

So what’s an evangelical Christian to do? How is this “born again” demographic supposed to vote in a general election? One choice is a non-Protestant dispensation of Christianity that holds orthodox and highly non-orthodox views relative to the Christian belief system. The other is a Christian universalist–where the person believes in Jesus (purposely leaving off Christ) as a great historical figure from which we can draw truths from and the figure acts as a bridge between God and humanity.

What I do think is very interesting is that Mitt Romney is a proud member of the LDS and it is without dispute. Four years ago, the news media was all up in arms debating Obama’s Christianity. So much so to the point that people were willing to calling him a Muslim (pronounced Moos-slim). No mainstream network has called in numerous talking heads to discuss the veracity of the Mormon faith as was the case with Black Liberation Theology. Four years ago, Obama was forced to give a speech about why he associated with Trinity and how his faith intertwined with his life, race and politics in general. Will Mitt Romney be forced to do the same?

Frankly, I don’t think so.

To be bold, there’s a double standard that is drawn along racial lines. Even with the frittering of the Tea Party as a possible force to be reckoned with in this 2012 political season, staunch social conservatives tend to also identify themselves as being evangelical Christians and a part of this “born again” demographic. For the state of South Carolina, the likes of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have a better chance in the coming days because of their recent employ of the “Southern strategy.” The use of fear tactics by Gingrich and Santorum to discuss blacks and food stamps is utterly deplorable.

But this is the same man who said Occupy protesters should got take a shower and get a job. And in turn, Rick Santorum began to discuss blacks as blah people.

White social conservatives, who have a higher chance of identifying as evangelicals have an easy choice in South Carolina. But in terms of getting a candidate who can run against Obama sucessfully, they’re probably going to be stuck between the Mormon and the Universalist.

What boggles my mind is that the likes of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann proudly go around touting that this country was founded on Christian values. Without running the gamut of Constitutional framers who had decidedly unorthodox Christian beliefs, I was under the impression that “freedom of religion” was one of the major cornerstones of this country. How pathetically hypocritical can one be to push a myopic and narrow view of Christianity while at the same time arguing for 1st and 2nd Amendment rights?

To be blunt, I think these evangelicals aren’t going to think twice and vote for the white guy.

Granted there’s 10 more months of political wrangling to be had and things change. What I think helped Obama win some of those swing states last time was that some whites in conservative regions of the country actually thought twice about the state of the economy and about universal health care when they walked into that voting booth. But unfortunately for Obama, his public image isn’t stellar, though his record may be for all intents and purposes.

What I will think will be interesting to watch is to see these two go head to head. Personally, I’m not convinced of Romney’s conservatism. I believe he’s a fiscal conservative beyond the shadow of a doubt. Even when he ran before he was advocating getting rid of the capital gains tax and that fits right in with concepts of fiscal conservatism. But a social conservative? Not by a long stretch. Somehow I think if Romney gets the nod, there will be a debate where it all comes tumbling down and Romney simply says “Mr. Obama, I’m sorry, you’re right. I can’t do this anymore,” and walks off the stage leaving a stunned GOP party.

Romney hasn’t made any brutal racial statements since he’s been in the spotlight and even questionable quotes concerning his firing practices have gotten totally misconstrued by his opponents. But Romney isn’t guilty of harping on old bigoted and racist sentiments as a means to further his brand nor his potential presidential politcies.

But none of these are reason enough to vote for Obama.

I think the social conservative base (i.e. Tea Party) is so utterly peeved at the mere existence of Obama, and his wife, living in the White House that people are willing to contrive anything for the sake of their political ideology. FoxNews cannot go one week, and probably not one day (sorry, I don’t watch it enough to make the latter claim) and not utter the name of Jeremiah Wright. Even still watching the news in the days leading up to the 2012 Iowa caucuses, social conservatives interviewed were invoking the name of Jeremiah Wright with acute ire.

Post-racial my foot.

Concepts of post-racial theory are rendered null in void if attributes that are deemed to be right and wrong, good and evil, sacred and profane can also be delineated by racial lines as well. Given Romney’s probably nomination, I think it’s safe to say these two candidates will probably run a clean race, but so much can’t be said for other parts of the country.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Cultural Critique, Politics, Religion, The Color Line

In Tim Tebow We Trust

12 Dec

December 11, 2011, Broncos defeat Bears 13-10 in overtime

Let me be upfront: I’m a Chicago native born and raised. I tried running away from it when I graduated high school. I didn’t want to be associated with those that ate polish sausages from Maxwell Street and I didn’t want to be engaged in the lifelong South Side versus West Side and Harold’s mild sauce versus Uncle Remus’ chicken. I didn’t like to be associated with “all y’all people still from Mississippi” type of people. Nevertheless, the more I was away from Chicago, the more I identified with Chicago.

I said all that to say, I’m having aught with God seeing as how da Bears got Tebowed on this past Sunday.

Now, I hope all of my usual readers have cleaned off the coffee and food stains from their keyboards and computer screens as yes, I’m more or less doing a sports post.

Yikes!

Yeah, I know. But, my usual readers probably know where I’m going with this one.

God and sports has always been an interesting combination to me. Even as someone who dabbled in sports here and there from early on, high school and one quick stint in baseball in college, the two never quite made sense to me. I remember saying a couple of small prayers to myself before I’d step into a batters box, one of which was God don’t let me get hit by a 70 mph fastball. I wasn’t so much praying that we win, but for God to help us do the best we, or I, can.

Based on that, me and Tim Tebow are praying just about the same thing.

So what’s the big hoopla about?

"Tebowing." Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow (15) bows his head on the sidelines after scoring a touchdown against the New York Jets in the fourth quarter of an NFL football game, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, in Denver. The Broncos won 17-13.(AP Photo/Barry Gutierrez)

Well, for one, I wasn’t visibly seen “uppitying” in the dugout the same way Tim is “tebowing” like Rodin’s the Thinker on the sidelines. Nor had I posed in a controversial pro-life commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. And come to think of it, I wasn’t starting off press conference with the tried and true “First giving honor to God who’s the head of my life….” speech. The difference is that in sports, particularly the most American of them all, football (so American that it’s international designation is American football), the intersection of God and sports is indeed a religion itself.

Football engages the most American of ideals from Friday night football games that unite rural and urban communities alike to college and professional teams. American ideals that attempt to mix rugged individualism with teamwork are all played out on the gridiron. Little children learn to watch mothers cater to fathers and other patriarchs when “the game is on” and gender roles get defined early; “good” wives and women learn how to just go with the flow or even get into the game with their significant other. We learn in life that there are always winners and always losers; it’s no wonder I could preach football if I had too. The countless sermon analogies I’ve heard in the pulpit with Jesus as a quarterback in the game of life are no shock.

Jesus as a quarterback; Tim Tebow, rookie quarterback.

No doubt, Denver area pastors will have a field day in their midweek Bible studies and even into next Sunday’s sermon, it still doesn’t get at the why behind all of this. Being on the losing side of the most recent victim of Tebow’s Broncos, I’m quite tempted to just dismiss this as a bunch of hooey and spinkster inkdum unremitted, but 7-1? Who argues with the odds of winning the last seven of eight games when Tebow started. He must be on to something, right?

Tim Tebow, meet Aaron Rodgers.

….or Drew Brees, or Joe Flacco.

You get my point.

Personally, I blame the world that its sports commentary. Sports commentators from local networks all the way to the major networks and ESPN, they get paid to make inflammatory comments, tweet incendiary tweets and just fan the flames in general. In a society that lives on the edge of evangelical thought at times, it didn’t take much to make the claim that “God, bless Tebow–and no one else” was a fair enough assertion.

New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni put it this way:

Tebow performs a sort of self-righteous bait-and-switch — you come for scrimmages and he subjects you to scriptures — and the displeasure with that is also writ colorfully on the Web, in Tebow-ridiculing Twitter feeds and Facebook pages, one devoted entirely to snapshots through time of Tebow in tears. An emotional man, he has traveled a weepy path to this point.

What Tebow has and is doing stands in stark contrast to what Tebow-nation has done: Tebow comes off as fake. Yes, I said it. The overposturing of “my Lord and savior Jesus Christs” when a microphone is stuck in his face mixed in with images of him going down into prayer mode on the sidelines for long stretches make it seem like he has a hook up that no one else has. That indeed, Tebow has the unique ability to treat God, as what Henry Emerson Fosdick once opined, like a “cosmic bellhop” being able summon wins out of the 4th quarter like nothing.

And it works.

Ask Chicago Bear fans yesterday.

I knew it was bad when I saw Facebook and Twitter feeds with life long Bears’ fans claiming South Dakota as their residency are threatening to defect to Green Bay rather than succumb to the awesomeness that was Tim Tebow.

Tebow seems like a good guy, he really does, but I think he’s being a naive scapegoat for a bigger movement. In a nation so divisive on the triumvirate of taboo subjects of race, religion and politics, Tebow’s public displays of religiosity seem to do nothing more than buttress the idea that religion, namely Christianity, doesn’t require much deep thought. Tebow’s endorsement of Jesus Christ is better suited for a Christian summer camp than for the NFL. In a politically charged atmosphere where GOP candidate Rick Perry makes a direct plea to evangelicals with an anti-gay and anti-non Christian message in a commercial, I can’t help but wonder where does Tebow fall in any of this–in a larger sense at least.

Oh yeah, he falls there.

What bothers about Tebow, truly, notwithstanding the cultish atmosphere of sports at times, is really more America’s inherent problem with how we view religions. From a larger narrative, Tebow is just a pawn once history gets written. My problem is how we, as a nation, religify just about anything that we come in contact with. Everything we extrapolate to a larger example of God and/or Jesus Christ (or both at the same time) or something about good versus evil. What makes Tebow’s personhood just annoying is that it’s the basic in-your-face type of proselytizing that rivals only Jehovah’s Witness’ on Saturday morning waking people up at 9:00 am dropping off Watch Tower magazine.

Those of us, like myself, are left asking, is this the face of Christianity?

This Jesus Christ fella who Tebow keeps calling on has been reduced to a verb called “tebowing” that’s nothing more than glorified genuflecting on a sideline. I guess since the planking phase is over and done with, we can expect to see people post pics of “tebowing.” Lowercase please and thank you. Tebow, the actual guy, the human quarterback, has now left himself to be perfect. We don’t expect any scandals, any random swear words, not even a speeding ticket zooming up I-25. In fact, we expect you to go find some lake in the foothills and walk on water just we’ll believe in your perfectness. Because when you fall, as most of us do, it’ll be yet another nail in the coffin of progressive Christians who are fighting an ideological war about the image of Christianity.

Many of us are battling the projection that “Christians [or church folk] are a buncha hypocrites” as a traditional attack for non-Christians to say about those of us who were born and raised in the church. For many people, the very mention of the name Jesus, let alone the full Jesus Christ, heaps a ton of expectations some reasonable and others not so much. In a country that practices freedom of religion, I’m not suggesting that he be stopped or banned from mentioning the J name in a presser, but actually, I am asking him to tone it down. In a country that doesn’t really know how to handle the embraces of differing religions all that well, we’re just asking for trouble.

As far as the football gods are concerned, I really think this is a no-brainer. Even Tebow has said God doesn’t care about football. And Icouldn’t agree more. But the Bible does say “In all thy ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct thine paths”; and what does it say about a God who isn’t concerned about the goings-on God’s creation. Further proof that members of religion are just empty-headed zealots who don’t really think?

Perhaps. I can be that for a moment in time.

At least, in the time being, if Rick Perry is still in the race, we can look forward to Tim Tebow making a cameo appearance…

…and we’re not the Indianapolis Colts.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Church and Society, Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Sports

The Good Reverend Doctor Herman “Feelgood” Cain: To Minister or Not to Minister?

8 Dec

I was perusing HuffPo late last week and came upon a question posed by commentator Martin Bashir posing what I thought was a thought-provoking and appropriate question: Should Herman Cain resign from his post as associate minister at his home church?

To be fair, Bashir was positing this thought prior to Cain’s “suspension” of his campaign and made the assumption that his quitting was going to be an admission of guilt on Cain’s part. Not only did Cain essentially quit, but Cain didn’t own up to anything–other than paying a random lady over the course of 13 years. His wife stood by his side no less, but just like that the Cain train derailed, or simply found a station at to stay parked–for the time being.

I’ve heard the murmuring amongs bloggers that Cain is the male, and black male equivalent of Sarah Palin. That is to suggest that we aren’t done hearing from him. Even I myself have wondered will he end up on someone’s ticket as a vice-presidential nominee. Nonetheless, as Cain moves out of significance from the mainstream media, I would like to broach the topic of his ministerial status at his church.

The allegations from Ginger White don’t immediately bother me, this is almost normal for random women to come out of the woodwork through the media vetting process these days, but its the fact that Cain is 1) a black Republican and 2) a licensed minister in a black church that probably has more liberal political leanings. What bothered me about Bashir’s commentary on this subject was that Bashir took a very direct approach and connected dots that I don’t believe were automatically connected.

What Bashir failed to understand was that Cain is an associate minister and according to reports, he’s only licensed, not ordained. It’s not like Cain is over some grand ministry or delievering sermons every other week. Bashir presents the story as though Cain is second-in-command to the senior pastor. However, I think Bashir made a typical knee-jerk reaction that I think most people would; we’re okay with hypocrisy in the pulpit, but we don’t want it from our church leaders

This presents a theological and moral connundrum.

On the one hand congregants exalt their leaders, often times blindly, to the point where the clergyperson can do no wrong. While all at the same time, you hear some clergy always acknowledging that they’re human just like everyone else and put on pants one leg a time like the rest of the pants wearing world. The theological connundrum is based on the biblical scriptures that obviously exalt the prophets and the priests and other ecclesiastical leaders over that of the rest of the people and that doesn’t jive with a clergy rhetoric that says “I’m human just like everyone else.”

The moral connundrum mixes in theological quandries as well. For a congregant, issues of forgiveness and moral repugnance are at play. Society tells us that cheating on one’s wife isn’t right and therefore we should shun it, while certain aspects of Christianity speak about forgiveness while also retributive justice which would say that said offender should be punished or sanctioned in some manner. Unfortunately, too many cases occur where neither forgiveness or justice is meted out and the offender continues on because people would rather sweep the situation under the rug rather than deal with the options on the table.

As with the cases of Eddie Long, Earl Paulk, Ted Haggard, the Catholic church priest abuse scandal, dozens of pastors who cheat on their wives with other women in the church–sex is obviously not enough to immediately get you forced out of your church. In the cases of Eddie Long, Earl Paulk, Ted Haggard and the Catholic priests, those were officially legal proceedings, but cheating on your wife with another woman is socially acceptable in many ecclesiastical settings. It may be frowned upon, but its not enough to break up a congregation or for a congregation to force one out of the pulpit.

Frankly, we have a sex problem here.

People aren’t so much moved by sexual scandal as they are by money scandals in many black churches. For instance, if Cain had been using the money from the church to pay off Ginger White, then perhaps, they would have excommunicated him, but I can pretty much guarantee that he’ll still keep his position as associate pastor. As it stands, there is no evidence to concretely say who’s telling the truth and this just exists as he-said, she-said problem. (Although, I say to Ginger White that in 13 years, you can’t produce any evidence that you had a sexual affair with the guy?)

To go a step further, I think much of this problem stems from theological patriarchy. We image God as a “he” 99% of the time, and the vast majority of pastors are indeed male and certainly in a theologically conservative association such as National Baptist Convention, USA and most church people believe that their pastors not only talk to an invisible being, but hear from it as well. Mash all of this together and throw in some esoteric concepts about right and wrong based on writings where the newest document is quickly approaching its second millenium in existence and you get people who believe the “manD of Gawdt” can do no wrong. Ingrained beliefs, even what I committed in the parenthetical comment, tell us that the onus of proof rests on the woman as the accuser and the man is presumed innocent until otherwise.

To ask whether Cain should step down or not is the wrong question and somewhat misses the larger issues at play. Asking him to step down is not a definitive stance against the alleged behavior nor a disavowal any forms of patriarchy nor taking a step to free the minds of those enslaved by oppressive theological concepts.

Personally, I doubt anything is going to happen at the church as it regards Cain’s status at least nothing that hasn’t already happened. In a black church arena that has consistantly walked the line between being politically liberal and theologically conservative, I think more and more people are no longer operating out of such a dichotomy. Asking Cain to step down or even ignoring it completely is still a status quo approach. Taking him to task on his comments that black are “brainwashed” to vote Democratic would do more good than to strip him of his ministerial title.

As this story, as the personhood of Cain cycles out of mainstream media to make way for Newt Gingrich, the GOP candidate du jour and we gear up for the Iowa caucuses merely days and a couple of weeks away, Cain will fade to the backdrop from which he came. This will be a non-issue and the potential victims in this case will never see justice in the eyes of the public, but just have the memories of the public humiliation.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Church and Society, Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, The Color Line

Herman Cain, the Magical Negro…and Other Topics on Ontological Blackness

2 Nov

Carlos Osorio/AP Photos

Let me just be up front and honest: I don’t like Herman Cain.

Granted I dislike his opponent Texas Governor Rick Perry even less, and Rep. Michelle Bachmann has devolved into a “Love Boat” joke, I just really don’t care for Herman Cain. His politics seems to hearken back to a Brady Bunch or even “Leave It to Beaver” era of this country–one that never truly existed–and people are eating it up. Maybe that’s what it is; I’m just mad people are actually buying what he’s shoveling.

But why not? He’s a magical Negro.

Yes, the phrase “magical Negro” is a bit of a tongue-and-cheek mash up and probably draws more questions that it answers, but if you will go with me, I would like to explore this magical Negro called Herman Cain.

Let’s be honest, since we’re not in a post-racial society despite what mainstream media continues to assert, more and more people are trying to wrap their minds around the now seeable possibility of having two men of color run for the office of the President of the United States. What is interesting to me, is that both of these men have had the core of their blackness challenged. For Barack Obama it was his mixed ancestral heritage, being raised by his white grandparents in part and for Herman Cain his affiliation with the Republican party and aligning himself with the likes of other GOP’ers who take such conservative stances when it comes to the disenfranchised of this country.

So how is Herman Cain able to ascend to the point he has now despite being black? I think very much the same way Obama did for the Democrats: there’s a level of “safeness” about both of these men. This country isn’t ready for a black man to be president (( wink wink )). By black man, one need only reference the 2004 nomination process for the Democrats and Al Sharpton didn’t make it past South Carolina. While Sharpton was able to parlay himself into a nationally syndicated radio talk show and now a full time slot on MSNBC, an elected official he is not!

It’s easy to call Herman Cain a sellout for his political position when it comes to his comments on the Occupy Wall Street movement by inferring persons need to simply go get a job. Even the most simple of political commentaries understands that with a 9.1% unemployment rate nationwide to suggest protesters need to just get a job wholly oversimplifies the problem. And that’s Cain’s political achilles heel to me: he oversimplifies relatively complex problems. While his 9-9-9 plan (( think 9 pizzas, 9 toppings for the low low price of $9.99 )) is easily repeatable, it’s a rather basic solution to a real complex problem. Even in the last debate, after I finally got the gist of it, Cain was left comparing apples and oranges, literally, to an audience and debaters who could see through it.

This is the problem that Cain faces when it comes to his blackness being challenged.

Most political commentators with any validity to their reputation (so this excludes most anyone who appears on Fox News) and across color lines will admit that the issue of race is not a simple one: it never has been and will probably never be. Cain’s haste to oversimplify things flies in the face of conventional wisdom in many of the black communities across this country. This is why Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia in 2008 following the initial fallout behind Jeremiah Wright was so poignant and resonated with many people. It was the first time in recent memory we heard a speech that tackled the issue of race head-on and didn’t use euphemisms to address it. Obama’s speech was the only speech on race I had heard in my lifetime coming from somone with the high level of political status as he, it at least did not dismiss race nor add to the apathy and disillusionment that often characterizes the lives of disenfranchised people.

A potential GOP nomination of Herman Cain could actually be a political jackpot for the GOP when it comes to issues of race. The GOP has been facing ever increasing flak from the black communities across this nation when it comes endearing blacks to their party. It’s a joke worthy only of the black blogosphere, Facebook and Twitter when GOP events are aired on national TV and we sit back and count the number of black faces we see in the crowd. Usually we never run out of fingers. With the recent chairperson of the GOP, Michael Steele, being black he was forced to deal with these questions directly, and the GOP as a party was able to point and say “Look, we’re not racist. Our chairperson is a black guy!”

But, as I noted above, that oversimplifies the issue of race.

What the GOP obviously fails to realize is that running a black conservative candidate against Obama runs the risk of political suicide.

Just ask Alan Keyes.

Granted the GOP in the state of Illinois had Barack Obama running unopposed for a U.S. Sentate seat for six whole weeks, but Alan Keyes, as the paragon of foot-in-the-mouth conservatism was the absolutely worst candidate to run against an Obama campaign. But Obama won 70% of the vote with over four million votes cast in a state that outside of the Chicago metropolitan area consistently voted Republican and in a state that has no qualms about electing a Republican governor when they feel like it.

70-percent.

For social conservatives to vote for a black man in a political office is the equivalent of the “oh, I have black friends” meme. It somehow tells them that they’re really not that conservative–or prejudiced, or bigoted, or racist–deep down. What makes this a falsehood one tells one’s self to sleep easy at night is the fact that voting for the likes of a Herman Cain don’t require much of a leap. Herman Cain’s rhetoric, for the most part is interchangeable with that of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry at this stage of the game. Nothing Cain stands for or has spoken about would look any different coming from a white GOP politician–no one would raise an eyebrow.

With the latest political bungle lain at the doorstep of Herman Cain surrounding this sexual misconduct from years ago, he seems like a Manchurian candidate of sorts to me. He seems out of his political element–like Sarah Palin. The folksy-ness comes off as aloof and unaware of the stakes of the game. While I don’t mind perceived flip-flopping on the issues when new information is available, Herman Cain’s doublespeak is pushing the appalling level. And his speaking in unknown tongues referring to not knowing the capital of “Uz-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” doesn’t show salt-of-the-earth values, but rather a frightening dearth of knowledge of foreign affairs.

Launching into a rendition of “He Looked Beyond My Faults” at the National Press Club earlier this week–as though he were singing a sermonic selection before he preached…

…doth not a presidential candidate make.

Honestly, I don’t like the guy, but as a fellow black man, it felt like Cain set us back the proverbial 400 years when I saw him launch into song. It came off as a minstrel production; that to placate to white conservative sensibilities he felt the need to sing a song. It hearkened back to a time when racist whites of the antebellum and Jim Crow era dismissed Negro work songs as songs sung because we were happy to be doing the back breaking labor. Certainly it roused images of blacks portrayed as mere entertainment and advertisement with black face, exaggerated lips and noses plastered on billboards, food labels and the like.

Notwithstanding Cain’s matriculation at Morehouse College or his parents insistence to not get involved with Civil Rights protests in Atlanta, to be unaware of the consequences of singing as he did disturbs me.

But so is this Magical Negro–the one Herman Cain.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 13 Comments
Categories Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, The Color Line

Jumping The Broom: Understanding Sex and Marriage as Religious and Cultural Oppression

19 Jul

Yesterday I read an article at TheFreshXpress from another blogger who goes by the name DCDistrictDiva (her award winning blog is “The Dithering of a District Diva“) on the topic of sex and marriage. The article was entitled “Twisted: Why God’s ‘No Marriage, No Sex’ Rule is for Protection and Pleasure, Not Punishment.” I began reading and I probably figured where the article was going, but I figured in all fairness to read it in it’s entirety before I passed judgment. By the second paragraph, however, she had begun quoting numerous scriptures to support her point. Anyone who knows me knows that I shy away from using Bible verses to support a point because of the general assertion from the quoter that by doing so, it effectively ends the conversation.

I plodded through the article reading numerous assertions about premarital sex supported by various scriptures hopping from the New Testament back to the Old Testament and then back to the New Testament. I trudged through notions about marriage and what it meant to have sex in the context of marriage and what it didn’t mean and doctrines of sin all asserting a particular theology. In short, I disagreed with just about every thing that the author had to say on the topic. I viewed the article as incorporating bad exegesis of the biblical documents to support a patriarchal and Victorian view of sex in marriage.

This doesn’t make the author a bad person, just makes her someone who I disagree with–vehemently I might add.

Blacks are still relatively conservative on the issue of sex in general and subsequently marriage. The idea of a couple, one man and one woman, meeting, then courting, then getting engaged, then married, then having sex–for the first time–still acts as the both preferred method of moving toward marriage, sex, then children and also acts as that archetypical view of what life is supposed to be; a fairytale storybook image if you will. I really don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that image, but to suggest that any deviation from that plan is immoral or in fact a sin poses a problem to my sensibilities in the year 2011.

Using the vantage point of my U.S. citizenship as a background and understanding the progression of the Abrahamic religious tradition as it diverged into Christianity, I would like to take a moment to try and debunk some of these contemporary myths that we have about marriage in the context of the black community.

One of my main issues with how we’re framing our marriage talk in this 21st century is our insistence on using the biblical text to support our beliefs. Personally, I want to know why do we primarily take our cue for understanding sex and marriage from a brother who lived and died nearly 2,000 years ago? Yes, I’m talking about Paul. Even in writing his treatise on sex and marriage in 1 Corinthians, Paul is speaking in first person (I, Paul) and even went through the process of taking God out of the process as if to say this is what I think, not a mandate from God. Not to mention Paul thought Jesus was coming back in his lifetime! I certainly think that such a perceived life trajectory would affect one’s lifestyle.

Honestly, would you abstain from sex if you thought Jesus was coming back in November?

The concept of sex in a 1st century world from which Paul was writing had no concept of STDs the way we do, there were no contraceptives that were in widespread use aside from the withdrawal method (pull out). Marriage was certainly seen through the eyes of patriarchy with the woman as property, everything she may have owned became the husbands and in fact her livelihood was directly connected to how her husband would treat her. Paul wrote his understanding of sex and marriage operating from the Septuagint (LXX) which included the Hebrew Bible and other historical and theological documents found in the Apocrypha. I’m not saying that what Paul had to say is just flat out wrong, but I am saying that what he had to say may not necessarily be appropriate to our own modern day settings.

What I found more problematic in DCDistrictDiva’s blog was how she understood the passages in Jeremiah that imaged the tribal god Yahweh as a husband and the tribal nation of Israel as a bride. This has been a troubling image for many scholars in the more recent years of the theological academy. As views shifted on feminist theology and how we view women in the Bible juxtaposed to how we view women in our culture (remember through the eyes of American citizenship), such an image of Yahweh (God) as a husband and Israel as the bride or wife is just seething with patriarchy and heteronormative ideals. To that end, such an image is troubling at the least. This isn’t an unfamiliar image, however. In other books of the Old Testament’s minor prophets, such as Ezekiel, we see this “married couple” operating as well.

DCDistrictDiva used a Jeremiah 2:23-24 passage to support her concept of marriage, but the passage images the woman as a) a sexual object b) a wild animal and c) as someone to have the husband’s will imposed on the woman. Aside from viewing God as a man and summarily a husband, there are passages where the husband/God is in fact abusive to the woman. The woman in another passage that DistrictDiva quotes views the woman as a prostitute in Jeremiah 3:2. For me, these passages have absolutely nothing to do with the institution of marriage, be they in the 7th century B.C.E. or the 21st century C.E. Contextually, those passages had to do with the nation of Israel and their dallying with other gods from other tribal nations and their assimilation into the culture of the their captives. [Seeing as how chronologically previous passages in the biblical timeline say that Yahweh "delivered them into captivity' {one helluva phrase right?} how does someone get mad when the oppressed assimilate into the culture of the oppressor--but that's another blog post.] This was not a Hebraic commentary on marriage. For that, one needs to go back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Again, these passages I think harp on the very, very traditional understanding of marriage.

And what do I mean by “traditional understanding of marriage”?

By traditional marriage, as understood by most U.S. residents, it is this very Victorian construct of familial life. The male is the father and husband and the head and the one wife and children are subservient. For the record, this is a departure from the thousands of years of Hebrew culture that many people want to conflate into the biblical understanding of marriage. With examples of Abraham marrying his half sister; the Jacob, Leah and Rachel love triangle; David who had a man killed just to marry the woman and certainly with Solomon and his many wives or Hosea marrying “a wife of whoredom” all as famous examples, somehow we theologize those examples. Many find some reason to say God didn’t support Solomon’s many wives thus it led to his downfall.

In Hebraic culture, I doubt people were running to the county courthouse to get legal documentation to say that they were married. At least according to the biblical writings, it wasn’t even the ceremony that declared one married but it was the arrangement and agreement of both families (negotiated by the patriarchs) and the act of sex that constituted a marriage. Even by the 1st century C.E., Jewish culture still for the most operated on that same idea even in the midst of Roman occupation. Fast forward to our African American context, African slaves and descendants of African slaves weren’t running to the county courthouse either to justify and satisfy wedding requirements. The tradition of “jumping the broom” was one way of signifying marriage and it added to the festive and cermonial atmosphere. Marriage in slave communities and even after the Civil War was about the merging of two families–not about a piece of paper.

Now, the process of going before a pastor is synonymous with going before God and the marriage license acts the official thing that makes one married. If God is omnipotent and omniscient as Christins like to profess, wouldn’t God have already ordained the marriage prior to showing up before a Justice of the Peace or an ordained pastor? Such an understanding seems to hold God subject to a legal document: God doesn’t ordain the union of one man and one woman until a county official signs it and places a seal on it.

Whatever the case may be, I think Christians have to acknowledge that marriage as we know it has changed over time.

Certainly in the black community.

Too often we like to use the fact that people aren’t getting married like they used to and those who do get married are succumbing to high divorce rates under the metanarrative titled so ominously “The Downfall of the Black Family.” Sociologists have traced roots back to the infamous Moynihan Report and even back to antebellum days in the United States. Whatever the case is, we have no problem talking about The Downfall of the Black Family which of course leads to The Downfall of the Black Community.

As if to say all is bad.

Yeah, I’ve written posts that we’ve reached critical mass in any number of social, political and economic matters and that we need to declare a state of emergency and that we need to be outraged–yes, that is true in many respects, but we can’t offer a simple fix to what I consider to be a complex problem. We’re not going to solve black family situations by young black couples suddenly marrying one another. Will it help? Well, maybe, but I certainly don’t think it would hurt the problem. The problem with DistrictDiva’s approach and what many others do when it comes to this topic is offer what seems to be a clear cut solution to a varied, multi-layered and highly complex issue that we’re facing.

First of all, not every black person in America is Christian. The argument she preposed suggests that everyone should follow said precepts about marriage and sex because it’s what the Bible says. Not to mention there are a fair number of black Muslims, Jews, Black Hebrew Israelites, Buddhists and other religions, faiths and non-faith persons who have had their own AHA! moment when it came to understanding spirituality and religion.

Secondly, not every black person is heterosexual. Her approach, as with many others in black religious culture, only operate in the “one male, one female” context. With the LGBT movement growing every day, seeing the passage of gay marriages in the state of NY, this is going to be an ever increasing issue that the black religious culture is going to have to contend with. While some gay blacks still voice concern over their unique issues–being gay and black (with gay black men and gay black women having differing concerns)–I still believe it’s just a matter of time before many of these concerns are going to be more and more laid at the feet of the old guard of the black religious community; no longer ignoring the issue.

Thirdly, not every person is going to get married. I really just think it’s ludicrous to accept that” sex feels so good, but you can only enjoy it if you’re married” idea. Usually when I ask what do we say to single persons on this issue, the other person somehow dodges the issue. Frankly because most people don’t want to imagine someone going their whole life without experiencing the joys the sex have to offer.

Fourthly, and finally, I think to make premarital sex so forbidden results in fetishizing it. When we tell hormone laden and perpetually horny adolescent teenagers to not have sex and that abstinence is your only option, not only do they want to do it all the more, when they do it and realize that God didn’t strike them down, we have a much bigger problem on hand than what shows up at the surface. The same for many adults. Time and time again, we do these so-called “sinful” acts and the punishment we were taught to expect never shows up. Sure people catch an STD here and there, or even get pregnant, but given the medicine for most STDs and given adoption and even dare-say abortion as relatively viable options for a pregnent woman, the concept of hellfire and brimstone somehow gets pushed to the back burner.

So as opposed to the black religious culture pushing sexual responsibility, they teach abstinence. Of course most public schools offer a sex education course because they’re aware of increasing STD numbers in younger and younger students and they’re aware of the pregnancy rate amongst teens and how school districts are increasingly having to accomodate pregnant teens and their children. They see the problem and are attempting to do something about it. The black churches see the problem, but because of what “the Bible says” we ignore it.

As I conclude, I’m not advocating that everyone go out and start a’whoring and galvanting naked throughout the countryside, but I am directly challenging what the biblical scriptures say about marriage throughout the years and I’m unapologetically defiant against the lens through which we like to understand sex and marriage. The patriarchal and heternomative lens does nothing more than allow us as blacks to oppress other segments of our own community–in the name of God.

Stay tuned for some more issues around “Jumping the Broom.”

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 15 Comments
Categories Church and Society, Cultural Critique, Pop Culture, Religion

How The West Was Won: Violence in the American Wild, Wild West

20 Jun

A little known factoid about me is that I like modern Westerns.

I don’t know what it is about them, but I do. Personally I blame the “Back to the Future” trilogy. That was a movie my parents had taped for me, only had part two and part three, but I watched them on repeat. The third installment took place in the first week of September the year 1888 in the fictional Hill County, California. It used all the stereotypes from the old Clint Eastwood movies with women wearing the frilly petticoats and dresses, the men all carrying six shooter pistols, fraught with saloons, blacksmiths, steam locomotives–something straight out of a Hollywood set.

I’ll admit, my intricate knowledge of the frontier is a bit slacking, that is to say that I’m not a scholar of this part of American history, however most Americans have become scholars in the Hollywood narrative of the American west. My love for westerns, I think came from my liking of the computer game “The Oregon Trail.” I remember the original game that my parents had on their Packard Bell 386 that you had to access the game from the C-prompt in DOS after you logged out of the Windows 3.1 version. I remember the oxen dying and morbidly living through the virtual death of family members you named as they died from cholera and dysentery along the side of the 2,000+ mile trail.

I grew older and movies like “Back to the Future III,” “Tombstone” and “Young Guns” and even the comical “Cherokee Kid” and”Wild, Wild, West” were movies that I liked–the modern Westerns. The remake of “3:10 to Yuma” was the movie that made me pause and think this out however. The remake of “3:10 to Yuma” was a reaction more toward railroad barons and the expansion of America than the typical cowboys and Indians concept we have of when we think of Westerns. Then I looked back at all of the Westerns that I had come to enjoy over my short years and I realized that for the most part Indians were non-existent in these movies.

Out of the movies that are a part of my modern Western viewing memory, only one short scene in “Back to the Future III” shows any aggression on behalf of tribal Indians. In the other movies, Indian portrayal is that of some pseudo-assimilated male who is shown as a skilled warrior who doesn’t have a speaking role. If an tribal woman is shown in the movie, she’s usually portrayed as some mystic or exotic beauty that transfixes the lead character and becomes some type of romantic interest for the movie.

Like I said, I’m not a historian, but somehow these staid plot lines seem like Hollywood machinations.

What bothers me about this is the gross romanticizing that gets done in this movies. It’s one thing to portray this fictional historical account about “how the West was won” with regards to American settlers on tribal territories and the reverse barbarianism of whites against Native Americans, but even the false depictions of everyday life have begun to irritate me.

Now I was the geek that watched the episodes of “1900 House” and “Frontier House” set in 1883 Montana on PBS (and yes, I remember seeing Oprah with no makeup when she and Gayle did a guest appearance on “Colonial House”), and trust me, the life was NOT glamorous. The people were dirty all the time, there was no indoor plumbing, life was hard even on a good day and sicknesses were a constant threat. So when I watch these movies and see these people in pristine clothing that looks tailor made (as it is a costume), no one exerting more energy than what it takes to saddle a horse and draw a pistol or a knife, I find myself rolling my eyes. To see these women, as portrayed in “Tombstone” living the grand life of ease and even wearing makeup–by golly, they had makeup out in Tombstone, Arizona that readily available? Color me surprised.

But, I’m not a historical expert on this.

It teeters into the realm of revisionist history. I think even the most conservative historians would have to admit that Hollywood has romanticized the view of the “wild, wild, West” to the point of pure fiction. What personally irritates me is this glorification of Americanity through violence. The West, as we know it, was “won” through violence. For as much hard work, endurance and perseverance settlers and homesteaders who emigrated west put into establishing towns and settlements, they were occupying previously inhabited land. I guess the glory of the slayings of tribal Indians doesn’t go over well in Hollywood.

No wonder we haven’t seen a modern Western movie about the Battle of Little Bighorn, huh? Portraying the might of the American military as losers just isn’t a story worth telling for Hollywood.

I had a friend in high school, the son the Polish immigrants to Chicago and a Poland native himself evidenced with a last name full of hard consonantal clusters say in our 12th grade AP U.S. History class that if it wasn’t for the settlers that we’d all be living in teepees. I think that’s when I stood up and knocked over my chair incredulous that he felt comfortable enough to say that out loud, let alone that this was a belief of his. And others in the class just seemed a bit indifferent to the statement. So if the son of Polish immigrants felt this way, one had bought into the American story so wholly as his own, what about the rest of us?

"Manifest Destiny"

Without question, history is written by the victors. In this case the victors are white, heterosexual males. The “cowboy” depiction is one of those Alpha-male images that Americans easily identify with. It’s a defined ruggedness that is equated with the epitome of maleness. From images of the Marlboro Man wearing the large Stetson to George W. Bush making covert cowboy references with regards to our foreign policy on terrorism and Osama bin Laden. Such images and rhetoric respectively conjure sensibilities that are familiar and uniquely American.

What I’m having issues with is that a) how we have seemingly revised the history of the American west post-Civil War until 1900 and b) how comfortable we are with “West being won” through means of terroristic violence.

The acts of terrorism on behalf of railroad barons, US military and the pop-up haphazard local law enforcement from local territories toward tribal Indians was merely one small step away from being categorized as a successful genocide. The calculated and wanton extermination of Indians is absolutely repulsive. I guess it’s not a hard stretch because of the infuse of theology into the equation. The historical concept of “manifest Destiny” is just as much of a theological mindset as it was a domestic policy concept. There was the belief that the American settlers had been ordained by God to inhabit the land.

This isn’t an unfamiliar biblical concept.

The Israelites were sanctioned by God to inhabit the “land of the giants,” which was Canaan and they had God-specified orders to kill everyone and everything. I’m not making this up–go read the first eight chapters of the Book of Joshua. We so readily identify with the victors of the story that we rarely if ever see things from the side of the victims of the story. Honestly, can you imagine Canada saying that God told them to begin inhabiting the city of ~~Jericho~~ Detroit, just on the other side of the river ~~Jordan~~ Detroit and the U.S. would be okay with it?

I was spurred to write this story after seeing the following trailer.

I can only imagine what this plot will hold for us. No doubt the name of the town is going to have some apocalyptic end-of-the-world terror infused in it and I’d bet money that somehow the cowboys and Indians are going to unite powers in order to defeat the aliens–yet again, history isn’t being told. I guess when you throw aliens into the story line all bets are off on sticking to historical facts. To that end, I guess I can concede a bit. But I wonder will the film fall into the “us vs. them” dichotomy, but still reserving Americanity as superior and therefore “us” is better and will prevail. I mean, I can hardly see a Hollywood moving diverting from that path; why would we image “them” as better than “us”?

But if the movie goes that way, the aliens being superior–obviously when it comes to technology–then what does that say about cowboys versus Indians? Does it not admit that belligerent and hegemonic behavior is abhorrent? Essentially it does, but no doubt the underlying message will still be that America is the best. No doubt the cowboys of the movie will prevail based on their grit, their endurance, perseverance and their strong belief in American values (whatever those are) thus showing that the alien and Indian narrative are subordinate to theirs.

Is it wrong that the nomenclature of “alien” in the midst of our ongoing domestic immigration policies with ethnic Mexicans is a bit too ironic for me to not laugh at loud?

On another note, why are imaging manliness with a name that refers to men as a “boy”?

Just asking.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 9 Comments
Categories Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Uncategorized

The Death of Life

15 Jun

Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, 11, shot and killed in 1994 after having shot and killed a local neighborhood girl.

This following sermonette was brought about by a story I stumbled across on the web about a mother in Chicago receiving the high school diploma of her slain son. Her son was killed on the sidewalk after walking up to a group of three young men. No arrests have been made. I read the story and was disturbed by the rosy picture of the slain son. The story reports he wanted to go to college and how happy and jovial he was as a person, but somehow I felt it was only a half image. I’m not trying to pathologize young black men, but if a brother walks up to three people on a street, apparently there’s some familiarity–meaning he probably knew his killer.

The code of silence of the community keeps this violence happening.

We stand by and say nothing. We peer out of our windows and say nothing. We see injustice and we don’t bat an eye. Why? Because we may be the next dead body found in our homes or the street? We very well may be.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

******************************************************************************

“The Death of Life”
Ecclesiastes 2:16-17

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;
the days have already come when both have been forgotten.
Like the fool, the wise too must die!
So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.
All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

It has become commonplace in the context of our community too see t-shirts airbrushed and stamped with the view of the sky and a sunburst in the background and pictures of a young black male in various casual and posed shots. At the bottom is their name, a nickname in quotes and all too familiar two words “sunrise” and “sunset” with two anno domini years placed beneath it. It has become an all too familiar occurrence to log onto Facebook and run across a status update that refers to the death of a young person; to come across a memorial photo with a name and the phrase “gone to soon” and the ubiquitous “rest in peace” tag.

Death remains a mystery to all of us in the room, but it’s a final mystery. The reality and finite qualities of death always grab our attention, pulling us from life, tapping us on the shoulder and reminding us of its existence. However, it has become too common a moment when death does not gently tap us on the shoulder reminding us, but knocks us out with a heavy blow laying us flat on our backs. It is here and it is real.

Dealing with the death our young people is common in the inner city black community. We have gotten accustomed to Death as a part of Life. Yes, while all people succumb to that ultimate statistic—ten out of ten people die—we ought not recognize Death as the norm to Life. The death of Life ought not be normal in our community. When recognize the death of Life as normal, then life is seen as abnormal.

When Life becomes abnormal, it’s not unusual for our young black men to have kids at age sixteen and seventeen because they expect death by age 25. If we have moved to point in our collective and communal consciousness that the lives of young black men beyond the age of 25 is abnormal, it should come to no shock that the young black women of our community are promoting manhood by age five. Telling a five year old to “Be a man” and to “Man up” and not show any emotions is considered normal, because by age 13, they will be considered middle age in a community that accepts the death of Life as just the way it is.

If we have moved to a place in our black communities where complacency has set in like dry rot in an old house, permeating the essence of our conscience, then we have already lost the battle. If the death of the lives of our young black men is Life itself, we have conceded our consciousness over to the enemy at the gates.

One would think that we would tire of seeing “sunrise” and “sunset” dates differing no more than 25 years for our beloved Pookie. One would think that we would tire of seeing Facebook memorial pages dedicated to our black brothers, dead before 25…but we don’t. One would think that we would grow weary of hearing preachers eulogize slain brothers repeating the bankrupt and hollow phrase “heaven must have needed an angel”…but we don’t. The people who make airbrushed t-shirts with the computer generated images shouldn’t be making any money in our communities—there should be no need for such forms of memorializing.

It is a problem when Death defines the context of a community. No longer do we measure time by kindergarten promotions, baby dedications, weddings, eighth grade and high school graduations, senior proms, but we measure them by distances between shootings, deaths and funerals. When optimism moves to pessimism and pessimism moves to cynicism and cynicism moves to nihilism, we have experienced the death of Life. When a community experiences the death of Life, God becomes an afterthought.

The title of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Masoretic text is “Qoheleth” and has been translated as “The Speaker” or even “The Preacher.” Some even understand it as “The Voice.” From whatever point of view one understands it, I think the sentiments and emotions that are voiced in these two verses speak to where many of us in the black community see ourselves. This concept of nihilism, this belief in nothing beyond you yourself, is not a new concept; it is as old as the world is young.

However, the redemption of this nihilism is what is at issue. What a sad state of affairs to be living waiting on Death. A false bravado that “I ain’t afraid of nothing” including Death is a false hope in the known certainty of the unknown character of Death. Tempting Death with your lived experience does not a man make.

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered. Might as well make your mark on the world you say; all of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind you may reason. Well, I’m not here to preach Jesus and have you give your hand to the preacher and give your heart to God. I’m not here to tell you that if you get S-A-V-E-D you’ll be S-A-F-E from hell. My job is to not offer you Christ and then suddenly you’ll change your ways. My assignment is to offer you the chance of Life.

I want to offer a chance at a life that moves from nihilism and enters into a new wonder and consciousness of you and of God. Now if that consciousness comes through Jesus, then so be it. But if it doesn’t, I won’t lose any sleep over it. But I be damned—the name of Jesus— if I am okay with seeing any more violence begetting more violence that results in one more black man being killed.

We are not allowed to be okay with seeing teddy bear and candle memorials on street corners with rain faded posters and Mylar balloons listing in the

Angel Brown holds tight to the diploma awarded her son, Isaiah Carter, at Manley Career Academy High School's graduation Sunday. Carter was killed this past November. 6/12/11 (Heather Charles, Tribune photo)

afternoon sun. We do not have the privilege to be okay with seeing single black mothers accept high school diplomas on behalf of their murdered child cradling a posthumous award as the last accomplishment of the fruit of their womb. We do not have the authority to accept t-shirts and FB page memorials of our slain youth as normal ways of Life. We are not given divine permission to be okay with news stories and funeral sermons that act as if the deceased and their relatives and all friends present are removed from corporate responsibility for the death of the one laid out in the casket.

When will we as a community move from grief to action? We’ve become inured to the pain of death and unable to recognize and accept the joys of Life. In too many of our communities, our pessimism about our children making it is really shrouded nihilism. If we already don’t believe that our children are going to make it past 25, what’s the point of preparing them for a life past that age. If a post-25 year black male life is a foreign concept, one that is filled with vast blankness, it’s no wonder that we are okay with the death of Life as we see it.

This myopic inability to see Life outside of the context of death is supposed to be saved for those to succumb to natural causes. At the morgue the coroner and medical examiner have hundreds of reasons to choose for cause of death. One of the simplest is “natural causes.” But too often in our community, we see “death by gunshot wound” as a natural cause. Recognizing death through murder as a natural cause, and even going out like a man, we have ceded control of our own lives resulting in death having the final say over our Life.

But I stand here today and decree and declare in the name of the One who sent me that Death will not have the final say over Life as long as there is breath in my body. As you eat, live, breath, move and have your being about you; every moment and every second of every day you have another chance to live. Every moment, you have one more chance to say to hell with Death and say yes to Life. You are empowered to do things different; you are empowered to stay in school and be somebody. As a community we are empowered to say to hell with the statistics, to hell with nay-sayers and the haters, to hell with the system hell-bent on keeping us left behind, to hell with the people who choose Death over Life.

You shall live and NOT die!

If Paul can say “O death, where is thy sting; O grave where is your victory” I can say that this is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it—I CHOOSE LIFE. To hell with the killings, to hell with the murders, to hell with nihilism, to hell with pessimism and to hell Death. And no I’m not using “hell” as some colloquial cussin’ but hell as a eschatological and imaginative destination and hell as an existential reality. The things that cause Death in our community, we need to confront them, stand in its face say Get the hell out of our Life, you are no longer welcome here. I dare each and every one of you to make up in your mind to speak the Death of Death and proclaim the joys of Life.

If Death no longer has its sting then we can put a new song in our heart, receive the joy of the Lord—this joy that I have, the world didn’t give it and the Lord can’t take it away. If the grave no longer has it’s victory, then I can say “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is my strength.” If Death no longer has the final say, then I can say with an assured voice weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning light.

Comments 3 Comments
Categories Cultural Critique, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, Religion, The Color Line, Theology of Preaching

For Black Religious Intellectuals Who Considered Suicide When The Foolishness Was Too Much

8 Jun

Black America paid close attention last fall when New Birth Missionary Baptist Church pastor Bishop Eddie Long was accused of sexual impropriety and misconduct. Four young men were launching a civil case against Long for misconduct during their teenage years under the tutelage of Long as members of New Birth. Suddenly picture text messages surfaced that Long had allegedly sent to these young men, and sordid stories of Long financially supporting one of these young men, and then cutting them off began to surface. Long stood defiantly in his pulpit the next Sunday after the civil suit was filed and said that he was going to fight to the end; he compared himself to David fighting Goliath that he had “five rocks, and [hadn't] thrown one yet.”

He was preparing for a fight, and from all accounts his congregation was with him.

For almost two days, ~~black~~ Twitter was all abuzz with Eddie Long puns, lampooning his hairpieces and his trademark muscle shirts. People automatically considered him guilty to saying that we should “cover” him. I did a blog piece back then about the various categories persons seemed to fall in with regards to how they felt toward Long. The point was, however, that everyone had an opinion. But who didn’t? It was a story that was covered by CNN leading to news anchor Don Lemon admitting on air his previous sexual abuse as a child, and it, yet again, propelled the mysterious and labyrinthian institution that is the Black Church into America’s living room.

And that’s when things got murky.

The last time America had been treated to seeing a black preacher hailing from a megachurch battling a national image, it was Jeremiah Wright’s homiletical treatises that famously included “goddamn America” and other strategically spliced soundbytes from previous sermons. Not to mention Wright gave a full out press conference that mainstream media pounced on like a pack of rabid wolves after live prey. Nonetheless, America’s image of the black preacher, the black church as individual churches and as a institutional behemoth, and more importantly for the purposes of this article, the image of black megachurches, was all put on display and America gave a failing grade for all categories.

Not only did America give our formerly esteemed institutions a failing grade, so did we, in the black community.

In an odd admixture of Baby Boomers and Generation X’ers, in the black community, they have contributed to this post-Soul, post Hip-hop pluralistic concept of “spiritual, but not religious” section of the black community. These persons, reject “church” and “churchiness” in most forms. This 35 and younger crowd, predominantly, very much enjoys engaging in the postmodern and post-critical thought that our pluralistic society offers. This generation questions foundations, allows truth to be relative often times in the hope of searching out new truths.

I too, am a part of this culture.

This generation claims spirituality over religion in an attempt to seek the purity of the divine without the logical contradictions that organized religion offers. This generation holds dear to them the quote from Mahatma Gandhi that “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians” as a pinnacle of their belief in spirituality over religion. However, as this article attempts to argue, what boggles my mind is relatively traditional and often times inaccurate image that this generation has towards the Black Church and black churches.

I recently rediscovered Kelefah Sanneh’s article that originally was published in The New Yorker back in 2008 entitles “Project Trinity: The Perilous Mission of Obama’s Church.” Just from his telling of his experience at a Good Friday Seven Last Words service, he writes about it as a novel experience and as an outsider. While one is entitled to one’s opinion, as I offer mine, it seems as though Sanneh’s ignorance of the black church religious experience was sorely lacking. Contextualizing his background of being born in Birmingham, England (not Alabama) and being raised in New England, and being the son of mixed racial heritage, his view point certainly offers a unique spin on the topic.

A unique spin, however, does not make up for ignorance. While I certainly am appreciative of Sanneh for his literary offering, I think his piece though intellectual it is, is indicative of the multifaceted problem we face when it comes to the black religious community. There are commoners offering up an opinion based on misconceptions and willful ignorance and persons who know better and have exhibited higher levels of cognitive processing and still fall into the same trap of being willfully ignorant.

It doesn’t surprise me though. The image of the black preacher has been caricatured for an entire generation. This post-______ generation who does not have a cultural and collective memory of a tangible civil rights struggle, neither boasts of having an image of the Black Church nor the black preacher venerated. Sure those venerations were probably uncalled for in specific instances, but from Arsenio Hall’s image of Reverend Brown in “Coming to America”; Bernie Mac’s image of the preacher in “Friday”; James Brown in “The Blues Brothers” complete with the ubiquitous “church scene” to boot and even to the image of Rev. Rollo Goodlove in “Boondocks” there are more mainstream images of the black preacher as coon, buffoon, bamboozled, a black male Buck who’s a womanizer, a charlatan, a pimp and a myriad of other negative images. These images are what we think of black male stereotypes that we project onto our black male preachers.

There is a segment of those in the black community who have allowed their preconceived notions and perceptions of the Black Church and black churches to automatically dictate their response to anything having to do with black people and religious life in this country. Granted I have had the privilege of going to seminary and going to a seminary that allowed me to purposely intermingle with different denominations stemming from different religious reformations, most people are ignorant of other denominations and I dare say ignorant of their own! This ignorance has turned into arrogance with some when they speak vehemently about topics that they think they know something about and don’t.

Less than 24 hours prior to the publishing of this post, a YouTube profile posted a recent clip of Pastor Creflo Dollar alluding to Long’s settlement and members in a Sunday, June 5, 2011 worship service. The clip is below.

[the clip was removed drat!]

Aside from the YouTuber’s commentary in the pop-up bubbles on the screen, I stumbled upon a Twitter feed that completely and unapologetically castigated megachurches. Just in general. No qualifiers. She now has a public problem with all megachurches.

Just like that.

Now yes, Eddie Long and Creflo Dollar do not help the image of black preachers, black churches nor black megachurches, but I still have to ask, to what level of critical thinking are we using here to have this discussion? Let me first be transparent and say that when I posted that clip on my Facebook profile page that I publicly compared an imaginary demise of Creflo Dollar to the murder of Osama bin Laden; the ending of life is never pleasant, particularly in cases of murder, but I would not shed a tear over the riddance of their rhetoric. Granted on a spectrum bin Laden’s rhetoric was not just hateful and vengeful, but injurious to the body as well. However, Dollar’s rhetoric is injurious to the collective consciousness of black America’s psyche. As cooler heads prevail, I’m sure what I had to say wasn’t the most constructive, but my own bombastic rhetoric was only checked by one of nine separate commenters. Which let me know that out of persons willing to comment, only one felt strongly enough to disagree with what I had to say. Therefore, others shared in my, what was then, righteous indignation.

What I saw on social networking sites and what I observe and listen to when I tune into mainstream media when it comes to issues concerning the black religious community is a lack of depth and a willing ignorance of most topics. The perception of black churches falls neatly into the traditional church of one’s grandparent or a megachurch where the pastor is taking all the money from mindless bots who sit in the pews every week. Again, as with the caricatured image of the black preacher being prevalent, it’s no wonder that the image of the black church is shaped by what one sees on television.

If one turns on the Word Network, that channel that tends to carry more black preachers with predominantly black congregations, you’d see pastors, preachers and churches that present a somewhat monolithic image to the untrained eye. For the most part these are congregations that qualify as megachurches (scientifically designated as having more than 2,000 members on a role) and their worship style and doctrinal beliefs fall into the neo-Pentecostal tradition. These are mostly men. Many of whom are attractive men at that. Many of whom sport designer clothes from suits to lavish robes and some wear jewelry meant to appear expensive whether it is or not.

The average black religious viewer irrespective of income strata or educational accumulation wouldn’t be able to tell the doctrinal and worship difference between seeing Jamal-Harrison Bryant who is AME over that of Apostle R.D. Henton and his Holiness beliefs. They might see generational differences and other functional differences, but certainly not begin to parse the differences that certainly exist. The average viewer is merely listening to certain catchphrases and a rather basic and non-intellectual theology that requires a basic fourth-grade level of cognitive skills.

The sad thing is that now when we speak of the “black church” and make reference to a black preacher, we conjure up an image in our heads as though every black church is properly and appropriately situated in a megachurch setting. [Usually I take that moment in a conversation with my peers to point out that the average church in America is between 150-200 persons and this number includes Joel Olsteen's Lakewood Church and St. Matthew's AME Chapel in Nowheresville, Georgia with three persons on the role.] This meta-narrative of the this image is so dominant that most people don’t challenge it in the midst of conversation; it’s as though it’s a given.

I watched Obery Hendricks, author of The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted, attempt to discuss Black Liberation Theology and Rev. Timothy MacDonald, a local Atlanta pastor and friend of Jeremiah Wright both attempt and fail miserably at discussing the nuanced nature of the Black Church on “The O’Reilly Factor” back in 2008. Of course I understood what they were talking about, but the rest of America didn’t and apparently neither did a sizeable portion of the black community–both religious and non religious.

Simply put, we cannot afford to be ignorant of the things that directly affect our community.

Seeing as how blacks are a demographic in this country that associates themselves overwhelmingly with the Christian faith tradition, let’s do ourselves and our sisters and brothers a favor and actually take the time out to be aware of what we’re talking about. Just because a preacher is found in a YouTube clip spouting all types of foolishness that you do not understand, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are preaching. If we learned nothing else from the Jeremiah Wright situation, we should learn that we ought not jump to conclusions with soundbytes from preachers.

While I am an unashamed apologist for the institutional Black Church and the many other newer traditions that the institutional Black Church has birthed from the neo-Pentecostal tradition to other forms of emergent worship that have become subsumed under the idea of the Black Church, please believe am not an apologist for Dollar’s comments. Even in their entirety, such statements are homiletically irresponsibly and morally reprehensible as far as I’m concerned. If Jesus was quoted as saying that “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea,” then I don’t think I’m too far off in being repulsed by the emetic and wretched sentiments that Dollar was putting forth.

In an appeal to black intelligentsia (yes, the same one that I eulogized some weeks back), and certainly with an emphasis on a black intellectual religious community, I appeal to logic and an inner sense to hold one’s self intellectually accountable for the thoughts and rhetoric that we utter. When we publish tweets, write blogs, leave comments after an article, write a book and certainly when one speaks from the pulpit, you are influencing the consciousness of the listener! I cannot stress enough how imperative it is that we do a better job. Seriously, members of the black religious community feel that they have the trump card to any and all discussions and argument by saying “My preacher said…” as though that effectively should end any further discussion. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Although many feel that by uttering “The Bible says…” should seal the deal, neither statement does anything to foster intellectual thinking.

As members of a post-_________ (fill in the blank) generation that has owned the concept of being “spiritual, but not religious” that feels free to question any and all things and dare declare the death of God, how have we failed to question our own perceptions of religion and ask is it truly a fair perception. If we fail to be fair to others in the human struggle, are we not crippling ourselves? Being a self avowed Christian Universalist with humanist leanings, I do myself no good if I castigate my atheist brother and sister. Religious Christianity would say we’re ultimately connected through Christ, but I say we’re connected through our humanity. If we don’t expect better from ourselves, what good does it do to complain and expect better from others?

Sad to say, I’m somewhat regarding some clergy as lost causes when it comes to expecting better. Today Creflo Dollar joined that group.

Keep it uppity and truthfully radical, JLL

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Categories Church and Society, Cultural Critique, Pop Culture, Religion, The Color Line, Theology of Preaching

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