This past week, like most people in this country, I found myself revisiting the works of Aretha Franklin. The undisputed Queen of Soul passed after a lengthy illness of pancreatic cancer just this Thursday before last. I was at work when the news alert came across my phone. When I left my office, I got […]
Read more "Aretha Franklin, the Hammond B3 and Me"I don’t know Willie Moore, Jr. I’ve never met him. I have tangentially followed him over the years. I’ve seen his growth in the black popular Christian world mastering the tools of social media to provide a platform to spread his thoughts and views by embracing a millennial perspective. I’ll be honest, I haven’t always agreed […]
Read more "The Miseducation of Willie Moore, Jr."President Donald Trump, right, bows his head as Relentless Church Pastor John Gray, left, says a prayer during a meeting with inner city pastors in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) On Wednesday, August 1, President Donald Trump met with prominent black clergy at the […]
Read more "Don’t Sit, Stand"In a moment of unscripted ecstasy, during a recording for jazz and gospel artist Damien Sneed, Bishop Iona Locke illuminated that “under a dark canopy” many self-identifying Christians show up to places hiding what she calls the “introspect.” The introspect for Locke could easily be interpreted as what’s quintessentially known as church hurt. For the […]
Read more "Under a Dark Canopy: Dealing With #ChurchHurt"Thoughts from Hampton University Minister’s Conference 2018 This was my third year attending the famed Hampton University Minister’s Conference. My thoughts and reflections are still somewhat of a jumbled mass in my mind. What follows is my attempt to make sense of disorderedness in my brain in a coherent way that gives clarity to the […]
Read more "For Black Millennials Who Considered Leaving When the Church Was Too Much"First things first. Bishop Michael Curry is the 27th Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. That means he’s the top Episcopal bishop in all of the United States, along with other countries and territories in the Western Hemisphere. His only direct report is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the seat of the Anglican Church. […]
Read more "Bishop Michael Curry, an Explainer Essay"After watching the episode “The Woods” on the critically acclaimed FX network show Atlanta, I figured it was worth exploring some of the science fiction aspects that the show has consistently presented. This is the second of a three-part series about the show and Afro-futurism. As a combined series, Atlanta has acted as a larger […]
Read more "The Afro-Futurism of Atlanta – Pt. 2"After watching the episode “The Woods” on the critically acclaimed FX network show Atlanta, I figured it was worth exploring some of the science fiction aspects that the show has consistently presented. This is the first of a three part series about the show and Afro-futurism. From what I can tell, the series Atlanta belongs […]
Read more "The Afro-Futurism of Atlanta – Pt. 1"It was announced on April 16, 2018 that rapper Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In a society where awards seemingly get distributed like water bottles after a natural disaster, sometimes the gravity of these awarding bodies gets lost in the shuffle. This was not a Grammy nor a BET or MTV […]
Read more "When Black Culture Goes Mainstream"Some of my earliest memories, ever in life, weren’t just moments with grandmother before she died when I was six, nor me carrying a monkey at my dad’s company picnic, but they were knowing that along with Martin Luther King there were men named Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. I attended the New Concept Development […]
Read more "What if Black America Were Its Own Country? Wakanda, a Nation on a Hill"
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 