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BRIEF BLACK HISTORY
One might say that the double-consciousness dilemma or racial
fragmentation process of the Negro race began on Goree Island, where
African chiefs brought and housed captives from civil wars to be
sold to Europeans. This island, in particular, served as an entrance
and exit for Europeans to come and go from the mainland of West
Africa. It sat just two miles from the coast and became the
“doorway” for the selling and buying of human souls. Here, slaves
from various tribes, exited their homeland through what is known as
“the door of no return.” It is properly named. For when an
imprisoned African turned to see the doors close, they knew it
constituted the end of their African life past and present, and
began the long night of oppression by their new masters.
Many of our ancestors did not make it through the dark desolate
journey to the new world. For many, the bottom of the sea
represented victory, for others insurrection was the goal. But for
most, survival was most important and those who survived the journey
made it through some of the most dreadful circumstances ever
perpetrated against human beings. They showed persistence in the
face of an abyss of darkness! So Black people today must know that
their ancestry is a tenacious ancestry, a persevering ancestry, and
a strong ancestry. African-Americans must know that, yes, you will
agonize over your history, but you must also see that you can
rejoice over the strength your ancestors manifested in their
persevering power!
After long nights crossing the Atlantic toward the new land, the
days were no better for your ancestors. Now forced to cultivate the
land for their masters, your brothers and sisters of old, made
“cotton king” and the White man wealthy, yet there was no recompense
for their forced labor except scraps from the swine, the rape of
mothers and daughters, and the emasculation of fathers and sons. The
psychological implications from this kind of morbid dehumanization
are incomprehensible. Yet, it persisted for hundreds of years and
many Europeans began to claim the Negro was a “thing” barely above
the creature realm and without a past. They saw Black people as
savages, creatures incapable of logic and reasoning. This is the
Negro heritage, but thank God it didn’t stop there!
For in the midst of the evergreens or the miry clay, there could be
heard a sound that was harmonious and sweet. The moans and adoration
went high into the lofty blue. The laments and praises cried out to
the earth, sea and sky. Although forbidden by their masters to
worship privately, there was the “invisible institution” that came
into existence out of a people’s need to fellowship and praise God.
It is something innate in all human beings, the need to be one with
the Universe. This church in the woods was where your ancestors
would go to “steal away to Jesus.” They learned about the Christ
from their enslavers but they found the true God in their hearts,
causing them to naturally create this invisible ecclesia by any
means necessary! These African-American people, supposedly without a
history, preached, testified, sang, shouted, danced and made peace
with their present conditions and morality, while making plans for
their future, a day they yearned for when freedom and justice would
abide on earth. “If God freed the children of Abraham, God would one
day free his children from Africa!” This was their hope!
Throughout history many have fought and died for the cause of
freedom and truth. As William Cullen Bryant said, “Truth crushed to
earth will rise again!” Carlyle wrote once, “No lie can live
forever.” Theodore Parker said, “The moral arc of the universe is
long but it bends toward justice!” They are all right, as history
has proven them correct. Then somewhere around 1939, the European
sociologist, Melville Herskovits, created what is known as the “Myth
of the Negro Past.” Herskovits refuted the claim that Negroes did
not have a past, stating through scientific research, that Blacks
have a strong history that was not so easily eliminated by
assimilation through acculturation.5 He noted that African-Americans
maintained many cultural patterns from Africa. Likewise, other
sociologists, like E. Franklin Frazier, have added to this claim
stating that Negroes have ties to their African past, but most of
what is known today, in terms of the Black heritage, comes from your
Christian experience, your ancestors’ communion with the “invisible”
and “visible” institution known today as the Black Church.
And so if that is fact, and the African-American is connected to his
or her ancient culture and religion; if the majority of your
identity, your self-esteem, morality, your God consciousness is
formed by your relationship with Mother Africa and the Black Church,
then you must understand that the church plays a more than important
role in preserving the African-American past, present and future!
THE ROLE OF THE BLACK CHURCH
The Black Church is to be the mouthpiece of the past, present and
future. The Black Church is the prophetic voice that speaks truth to
power. What seems to be the problem today? Why is there a movement
among many Black churches where there are no relations with their
African past in praxis, style or worship? Why is it that the church
leaves it to many over zealous and often times media hungry
politicians to be the voices crying in the wilderness for change in
the present, which impacts the future? Why is it that “heaven
theology” or “by and by theology” permeates pulpits, which creates a
coma of complacency if preached exclusively, while talk of civic and
social action is given a cold shoulder?
I have heard many Negroes say, “There is no such thing as a Black
Church.” They say this with the intent of showing that God is no
respecter of persons, which is true, and humanity’s ultimate goal,
but not your present reality. Somehow there are four different blood
types found among all the races. Yes, we are one as a people all
over the world, but we are not one mentally. Specifically, when you
say there is no Black Church, you make a claim without acknowledging
your history! To say, “There is no Black Church” is to say, “There
are no Black people!” You see if Frazier is right, then your history
and heritage is tied to Africa, but more importantly tied to the
visible and invisible institution, the spirituals or folk songs, the
foot-stomping and prophetic preaching about social change, this is
where Black people find their identity with the past. This is a
major part of the story! And if you deny this you deny your very
existence! As James Weldon Johnson wrote, “We have come over a way
that with tears has been watered. We have come, treading our paths
through the blood of the slaughtered. Shadowed beneath thy hand, may
we forever stand true to our God, true to our native land!” Yes, our
history is rich and the Black Church sits at the center as the very
essence of our Blackness! It is our single garment made up of
threads that weaves our history into our destiny. The Black Church
is the place for hope, the place for healing and unity, the place to
find, not just God, but yourselves as well.
Again, regarding unity of all people on earth, I agree, there needs
to be unity among the races and religions. Your Sunday mornings are
still the most segregated hour in the country. But the problems that
face the Black race, the pervasive violence and bloodshed from
“Black on Black” crimes, the drugs, the lack of economic control,
the breakdown of the family, these must be solved by many, but
particularly by concerned African-Americans. There is a place for
others to assist in the struggle, in terms of legislature, protests,
money, etcetera, but change must come from within first. I believe
you are fooling yourselves if you expect someone to come in and
clean up your neighborhoods and schools. In fact, this is an asinine
and irresponsible attitude. Change manifests when the mind changes
its perspective. The Black Church must change the way it thinks and
operates. I charge you to be what you were—the voice and
administrator of spiritual and social rightness, in a world that
continues to neglect the disinherited of the land, the
African-American man and woman.
The Lord wants me to make it clear Black Church: if you don’t step
up to end suffering in Negro communities—step back. If you won’t
exist to turn the tide of racism, mis-education, and discrimination
against your children—cease to exist. Are you a church about the
business of God? Or are you just a social club— a thin veneer of
religiosity? Hear me clearly. I am not advocating Black Nationalism,
that’s not what I’m talking about. I never have and I never will!
Don’t misunderstand me. You cannot replace one tyranny for another
form of tyranny! I am advocating personal responsibility. I am
advocating compassion. I am advocating Agape love, a
self-sacrificial love, which is the supreme law of the universe that
was manifest in the life and death of Jesus.
The problem is that many of you have become so economically
successful, that success has separated you mentally and physically
from your struggling brothers and sisters. Your success has not gone
to your heart, but to your head. Many Blacks within the Negro Church
have become blinded by ambition and greed. You have become a part of
what philosophers Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin called,
“survival of the fittest,” I might call it survival of the slickest
mentalities. Biologically, Darwin is right, in terms of evolution of
species, but when Spencer tries to say that Darwin’s theory expands
toward how some are superior to others in life, then he is wrong!
Spencer’s idea is that there is human competition for survival,
where the “strongest survive” leading to the triumph of more
advanced individuals and cultures over their “inferior competitors.”
Acquisitions of shelter and abundant food, tools, and so forth, are
seen as signs of “fitness,” and power, while lack or shortage of
resources is regarded as natural inferiority.7 In other words, if
you are strong you survive and reproduce more strong people, but if
you are weak you die out or are consumed and controlled by the
prosperous. This wicked mindset, years before it was named, was used
to justify slavery, it sanctioned colonialism, and it continues to
promote the idea that one race, one culture, is superior to others.
More than that, this idea in action is also destroying your
environment. Your leaders do not understand the mutuality of human,
plant and animal. You are all tied in a single garment of destiny
with the earth, and what befalls the earth, what befalls Mother
Nature, shall befall humanity!
And so, survival of the fittest mentalities are killing Black people
and the Black Church. By consciously or unconsciously following this
model, you have not realized the “sameness” all Black people share
historically, which moves one to know that their history as a Black
person is tied to all other Black people’s history and survival! The
Black Church spends too much of its time justifying its existence
instead of maximizing its greatness! This plague moves the Black
Church from the “we are together reality,” toward the “us against
them mentality,” and walls of separation are built up instead of
torn down. The church then becomes self-preservation oriented and
denominational.
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