“The [B]lack community, maybe more than any other, is affectively linked to churches and their pastors to the degree that criticism of either (no matter how rational) is often viewed as nothing short of an attack on God…. Unfortunately, [B]lack ministers (be they emancipators or collaborators in oppression) are often protected from secular intellectual confrontation […]

Read more "The Problem With Black Preachers"

As the nation has watched cultural upheaval around the matters of race, politics and religion, it is clear that Western civilization is in the midst of a turning point. A turning away from some of the traditional modalities that went accepted for decades, even centuries, around beliefs, behaviors and practices. A speech on race shortly […]

Read more "The Black that Lives and Matters in Postmodernity"

In the post-Trump vacuum, Black pop-culture was on a roller-coaster of events. First was the profanity-laced voicemail left by Kirk Franklin to his son, the next week was self-proclaimed relationship guru Derrick Jaxn’s fall from grace after it was revealed that he cheated on his spouse. Perhaps less so, the stories of Quavo and Saweetie’s […]

Read more "For the Culture: the Futures of Black Preaching"

While watching Pastor Mike Todd stand soaking wet on a stage with falling water made to simulate rain, words escaped me as I found myself trying to make sense of what I was watching. Perhaps to the chagrin of some mainline homileticians (those who study preaching), my reflections on preaching, particularly preaching done by African […]

Read more "What’s the Matter with Black Preaching?"

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. The current Error of Trump closed like it began […]

Read more "At the Last Trump"

Overshadowed by the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol was the dual election of Democratic U.S. Senators from the state of Georgia. While the identities of Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff—a Black American and a Jewish American—have often stolen the headlines, the modest political beginnings of Warnock married with his public life as an ordained […]

Read more "Raphael Warnock and the Public Policy of Black Liberation Theology"

I was on a spring break trip with students at a remote monastery in New Mexico. No wifi. No cell service. Only receiving emails through the main office at the monastery, almost like a telegram delivery, we learned that the world was shutting down due to the novel coronavirus labeled COVID-19. I had almost slidden […]

Read more "the hindsight of 2020"

I grew up at Jeremiah Wright’s church. I took my first communion at Trinity United Church of Christ moments after he baptized me. Years later, I’m still verklempt at the reasons why Barack Obama feels the need to resurrect the racial ghost of the minister who married him and baptized his children. Most recently, Sen. […]

Read more "Jeremiah Wright is still right"

The collective political imagination of America is never more than four years. It’s doggedly tied to the presidential election cycle. As of the publishing of this, it’s only 16 days until the next presidential election. I’m not sure quite when the future-casting of American democracy got reduced to nothing more than four years, but here […]

Read more "Notes on an Exile from American Democracy"

I have theorized that the Trump 2020 campaign has done more to attract Black male voters than the Biden campaign has done and thus will receive a disproportionate amount of Black male voters compared to Black female voters. Black women voted for Trump at only 4%. The question that arises for me is it that […]

Read more "Why Black Men May Vote For Donald Trump"