Every now and then, I invite friends who have sent me
serious, thought provoking, fair-minded pieces to allow
me to post their articles on my blog.
Here is one by Elisabeth Null.
FYI -- Lisa, I and a group of friends are working on a
panel discussion to be held at Kefa Cafe, Silver Spring
on this topic.
serious, thought provoking, fair-minded pieces to allow
me to post their articles on my blog.
Here is one by Elisabeth Null.
FYI -- Lisa, I and a group of friends are working on a
panel discussion to be held at Kefa Cafe, Silver Spring
on this topic.
Watch for the date! KMK
*
In the spirit of Obama's wish to have us think honestly
about race and to search for greater common understanding,
I offer these thoughts. Many of my own observation about
black church experience come out of the research and
collecting I did 20 years ago as part of
the Waterbury Ethnic Music Project.
Feedback welcome.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My Jewish partner Charlie has been reading the sermons
of Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, comparing him to
the peace activist Rev.William Sloane Coffin, for whom he
served as a chaplain's assistantat Yale. Charlie finds much
to admire in Wright's words and actions,whatever his shortcomings.
Wright has turned his church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of
Christ, into a leading exponent of "thesocial gospel" and
"black liberation theology." What this means,is that God's kingdom
is best reflected by struggling for justice, compassion,and human
betterment in this world whatever one does in preparation for the next.
The person who developed black liberation theology, basically an
American adaptation of "liberation theology," was James Cone
(http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile.html). Cone further
argued that black Americans, long cowed into submission by white owners
and enforcers of white supremacy, need to interpret theology for themselves
and take fuller control of their religious development.
While Wright's sermon was over the top, it is not quite as nutsy as
it sounds. Many people, including me, subscribe to the idea that our
government made an indirect pact, when combating anti-American forces
in Central America, to allow America's inner-cities to be flooded
with crack cocaine. This was chronicled by Gary Webb in the San Jose
Mercury News (1996), and I followed his three-part series of articles
with some interest. When I moved to DC in 1991, the black radio
stations frequently discussed the problem and its international
aspects . Sometimes this agenda was known as "the Plan."
I cannot imagine why Wright bought into the idea of aids as a
conspiracy against blacks, but if our government collaborated in
infecting blacks with syphilis, which it did in the Tuskegee
Experiment (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html) without
telling them, it is not too hard to imagine why even an educated man
might get conspiratorial about this.
I don't mind a bit that Wright damned America, this seems to fall
within the prophetic tradition so important in black (and Puritan!)
church history. As long as it is not taken in vain, it seems a
perfectly reasonable thing to say from time to time. One of my
favorite Nina Simone tunes is "Mississippi God Damn!" To roundly
condemn one's country while working hard to redeem it does not seem
to be an unpatriotic contradiction.
I do not mind Wright's assumption that Clinton cannot understand
certain things because she has not experienced them -- the
biographies I have read about her show that her approach to poverty
issues, even as a girl, was well-meaning but rather like a young Lady
Bountiful.
I do feel that in some sense we were partially responsible through
our dreadful foreign policy for what happened during 9/11 -- of
course we didn't deserve it, but NOT to examine more carefully how we
got into this situation was a xenophobic reaction on our part. Hate
is not an answer; it is a symptom.
Any anti-semitic or stereotypically anti-white comments in any of
Wright's sermons are inexcusable and not worthy of defense though, as
Obama says, it is important to explore what lies at the base of hatred.
I confess though, I often have a hard time sitting in many churches
because whenever the Sadducees and Pharisees are taken on in the New
Testament. I wonder if it is a veiled attack against the Jews. As for
Jews, I live comfortably with Charlie who believes Jews are A chosen
people, not The chosen people, but how do I feel among Jews when I
am thought of as a spiritually second-class citizen not even worthy
of "conversion?" Coercive conversion is a human rights violation but,
when I am not even included in the compact because I lack a genetic
pedigree, I also feel humiliated. I know how bitter Charlie's mother
felt at death not to have been educated, as a woman, in the meanings
and traditions of Jewish prayer and torah study. Exclusion hurts. It
is not the same as hatred, but there is sometimes implicit contempt
or condescension there too.
I spent one summer doing field work in black churches for my degree
in folklore at Penn and have to admit that after immersing myself in
the prayer meetings and praise services of black churches, mainline
Christian churches seemed tepid and uninteresting by comparison!
First of all, many of the black churches have great, all-engulfing
music.
Second, there is a lot of attention given to praising and thanking
God as opposed to just asking him for forgiveness or asking for the
things one desires.
Third, the sermons are central and are designed to be a sort of
ritual catharsis -- which is why they address things that are not
expressed elsewhere -- just like the blues. They are interactive.
People get up and testify -- deliver narratives with a positive
outcome about how they were lost, or down, or broken-hearted, or
desperate. The sense of collective understanding and acceptance is
overwhelming.
On one level these churches seem very much like white Christian
evangelical churches but differ in subtle ways -- most black
churches, as I have seen them, are more allegorical than
fundamentalist in a literal sense, and there is a typological or
metaphoric sensibility that allows the poetic and the mundane, the
spiritual and the worldly to come together and coexist. Another
lovely thing about the black churches, at least the more charismatic
ones, is an emphasis on healing that, at the very least, fortifies
people with a positive spirit for survival.
If you haven't been to a prayer meeting full of old dying people
swooping you into a shared embrace as they wheel about the room
praising God for one new day of breath in their body, you haven't
lived! That's how powerful the spirit engendered in black churches
can be.
The Congregational Church (The United Church of Christ these days),
is heir to the old puritanical churches. It has a special role in
black church history in that it was the spiritual home of many
abolitionists and a place where blacks and whites interacted before
the civil war. It had little presence in the South but did reach out
to establish black colleges such as Howard and Fisk Universities. As
such, it drew many black intellectuals and members of the black
middle class within urban areas. It has an inter-racial
denominational membership and there are white members in Obama's
congregation, but the United Church of Christ is also sufficiently
decentralized for black congregants to bring their own devotional
traditions (several of African origin) into worship. Swooning, big
hats, a frequent emphasis on white dress, charismatic traditions,
call-and-response gospel singing are just a few African-American
religious practices with strong analogues in Africa and elsewhere
within the black diaspora. Other churches within the United Church of
Christ, which was formed when the Congregational, German Evangelical
and Reformed Churches merged in 1957, also maintain their own ethnic
traditions if their individual congregations wish to do so. In many
churches, for instance, Christmas Eve is associated with sausage and
sauerkraut dinners or the singing of "Stille Nacht" in German.
The United Church of Christ's congregations were critical to the
civil rights movement and remain an important node of connection
between black and white communities within the denomination as a
whole. Black and white congregations often work together to continue
a shared heritage of social reform.
Obama must have found this church a natural link to his childhood in
Hawaii as the Punahou School (a prep school he attended on
scholarship), was founded by Congregational missionaries. Joining
Trinity would have allowed him to embrace black culture without
having to divest himself of the familiar.
Why don't blacks go to inter-racial churches more frequently? Until
recently, blacks were not welcome in "white churches" though
initially, during the First Great Awakening, they were contributing
partners in shaping American worship. Even during my childhood,
blacks at the New York Episcopalian church I attended were directed
to other congregations "where they'd feel more comfortable." This is
one reason why I left it after confirmation. Antebellum blacks were
not choosing racial separatism when forming their own congregations
but were responding to circumstances that forced them into their own
spiritual gatherings. Their own religious worship sustained them
through slavery and helped them create the great religious,
oratorical traditions and community-organizing skills instrumental to
the civil rights movement.
When blacks go to inter-racial churches, they generally must abide by
the devotional practices already established by those congregations--
this leaves little space for their own traditions. Sometimes this
forces a rupture: George Augustus Stallings, an African-American
priest in Washington DC, was excommunicated by the Catholic Church
after founding the Imani Temple to practice an Afrocentric version of
Catholicism. While his form of worship differed theologically in
time, the dispute started initially over incompatible styles of
ritual and worship.
Congregational Ministers, white and black, have spoken in defense of
Wright's ministry and its practice of the social gospel. One cannot
fault Obama, married to an African-American woman and raising two
African-American children, for finding an anchor in the church he
discovered and which discovered him as a community organizer. I'm
glad he rejected the racist and hateful language of his pastor; I
hope he did take issue with that pastor's biased ideas face-to-face;
but I completely understand why he did not reject either his church
or the flawed man who nevertheless provided him with so much
spiritual instruction.
Lisa
(Posted with the author's permission. Opinions and
comments are those of Lisa Null and may or may not
coincide with those of Kyi May Kaung)
about race and to search for greater common understanding,
I offer these thoughts. Many of my own observation about
black church experience come out of the research and
collecting I did 20 years ago as part of
the Waterbury Ethnic Music Project.
Feedback welcome.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My Jewish partner Charlie has been reading the sermons
of Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, comparing him to
the peace activist Rev.William Sloane Coffin, for whom he
served as a chaplain's assistantat Yale. Charlie finds much
to admire in Wright's words and actions,whatever his shortcomings.
Wright has turned his church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of
Christ, into a leading exponent of "thesocial gospel" and
"black liberation theology." What this means,is that God's kingdom
is best reflected by struggling for justice, compassion,and human
betterment in this world whatever one does in preparation for the next.
The person who developed black liberation theology, basically an
American adaptation of "liberation theology," was James Cone
(http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile.html). Cone further
argued that black Americans, long cowed into submission by white owners
and enforcers of white supremacy, need to interpret theology for themselves
and take fuller control of their religious development.
While Wright's sermon was over the top, it is not quite as nutsy as
it sounds. Many people, including me, subscribe to the idea that our
government made an indirect pact, when combating anti-American forces
in Central America, to allow America's inner-cities to be flooded
with crack cocaine. This was chronicled by Gary Webb in the San Jose
Mercury News (1996), and I followed his three-part series of articles
with some interest. When I moved to DC in 1991, the black radio
stations frequently discussed the problem and its international
aspects . Sometimes this agenda was known as "the Plan."
I cannot imagine why Wright bought into the idea of aids as a
conspiracy against blacks, but if our government collaborated in
infecting blacks with syphilis, which it did in the Tuskegee
Experiment (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html) without
telling them, it is not too hard to imagine why even an educated man
might get conspiratorial about this.
I don't mind a bit that Wright damned America, this seems to fall
within the prophetic tradition so important in black (and Puritan!)
church history. As long as it is not taken in vain, it seems a
perfectly reasonable thing to say from time to time. One of my
favorite Nina Simone tunes is "Mississippi God Damn!" To roundly
condemn one's country while working hard to redeem it does not seem
to be an unpatriotic contradiction.
I do not mind Wright's assumption that Clinton cannot understand
certain things because she has not experienced them -- the
biographies I have read about her show that her approach to poverty
issues, even as a girl, was well-meaning but rather like a young Lady
Bountiful.
I do feel that in some sense we were partially responsible through
our dreadful foreign policy for what happened during 9/11 -- of
course we didn't deserve it, but NOT to examine more carefully how we
got into this situation was a xenophobic reaction on our part. Hate
is not an answer; it is a symptom.
Any anti-semitic or stereotypically anti-white comments in any of
Wright's sermons are inexcusable and not worthy of defense though, as
Obama says, it is important to explore what lies at the base of hatred.
I confess though, I often have a hard time sitting in many churches
because whenever the Sadducees and Pharisees are taken on in the New
Testament. I wonder if it is a veiled attack against the Jews. As for
Jews, I live comfortably with Charlie who believes Jews are A chosen
people, not The chosen people, but how do I feel among Jews when I
am thought of as a spiritually second-class citizen not even worthy
of "conversion?" Coercive conversion is a human rights violation but,
when I am not even included in the compact because I lack a genetic
pedigree, I also feel humiliated. I know how bitter Charlie's mother
felt at death not to have been educated, as a woman, in the meanings
and traditions of Jewish prayer and torah study. Exclusion hurts. It
is not the same as hatred, but there is sometimes implicit contempt
or condescension there too.
I spent one summer doing field work in black churches for my degree
in folklore at Penn and have to admit that after immersing myself in
the prayer meetings and praise services of black churches, mainline
Christian churches seemed tepid and uninteresting by comparison!
First of all, many of the black churches have great, all-engulfing
music.
Second, there is a lot of attention given to praising and thanking
God as opposed to just asking him for forgiveness or asking for the
things one desires.
Third, the sermons are central and are designed to be a sort of
ritual catharsis -- which is why they address things that are not
expressed elsewhere -- just like the blues. They are interactive.
People get up and testify -- deliver narratives with a positive
outcome about how they were lost, or down, or broken-hearted, or
desperate. The sense of collective understanding and acceptance is
overwhelming.
On one level these churches seem very much like white Christian
evangelical churches but differ in subtle ways -- most black
churches, as I have seen them, are more allegorical than
fundamentalist in a literal sense, and there is a typological or
metaphoric sensibility that allows the poetic and the mundane, the
spiritual and the worldly to come together and coexist. Another
lovely thing about the black churches, at least the more charismatic
ones, is an emphasis on healing that, at the very least, fortifies
people with a positive spirit for survival.
If you haven't been to a prayer meeting full of old dying people
swooping you into a shared embrace as they wheel about the room
praising God for one new day of breath in their body, you haven't
lived! That's how powerful the spirit engendered in black churches
can be.
The Congregational Church (The United Church of Christ these days),
is heir to the old puritanical churches. It has a special role in
black church history in that it was the spiritual home of many
abolitionists and a place where blacks and whites interacted before
the civil war. It had little presence in the South but did reach out
to establish black colleges such as Howard and Fisk Universities. As
such, it drew many black intellectuals and members of the black
middle class within urban areas. It has an inter-racial
denominational membership and there are white members in Obama's
congregation, but the United Church of Christ is also sufficiently
decentralized for black congregants to bring their own devotional
traditions (several of African origin) into worship. Swooning, big
hats, a frequent emphasis on white dress, charismatic traditions,
call-and-response gospel singing are just a few African-American
religious practices with strong analogues in Africa and elsewhere
within the black diaspora. Other churches within the United Church of
Christ, which was formed when the Congregational, German Evangelical
and Reformed Churches merged in 1957, also maintain their own ethnic
traditions if their individual congregations wish to do so. In many
churches, for instance, Christmas Eve is associated with sausage and
sauerkraut dinners or the singing of "Stille Nacht" in German.
The United Church of Christ's congregations were critical to the
civil rights movement and remain an important node of connection
between black and white communities within the denomination as a
whole. Black and white congregations often work together to continue
a shared heritage of social reform.
Obama must have found this church a natural link to his childhood in
Hawaii as the Punahou School (a prep school he attended on
scholarship), was founded by Congregational missionaries. Joining
Trinity would have allowed him to embrace black culture without
having to divest himself of the familiar.
Why don't blacks go to inter-racial churches more frequently? Until
recently, blacks were not welcome in "white churches" though
initially, during the First Great Awakening, they were contributing
partners in shaping American worship. Even during my childhood,
blacks at the New York Episcopalian church I attended were directed
to other congregations "where they'd feel more comfortable." This is
one reason why I left it after confirmation. Antebellum blacks were
not choosing racial separatism when forming their own congregations
but were responding to circumstances that forced them into their own
spiritual gatherings. Their own religious worship sustained them
through slavery and helped them create the great religious,
oratorical traditions and community-organizing skills instrumental to
the civil rights movement.
When blacks go to inter-racial churches, they generally must abide by
the devotional practices already established by those congregations--
this leaves little space for their own traditions. Sometimes this
forces a rupture: George Augustus Stallings, an African-American
priest in Washington DC, was excommunicated by the Catholic Church
after founding the Imani Temple to practice an Afrocentric version of
Catholicism. While his form of worship differed theologically in
time, the dispute started initially over incompatible styles of
ritual and worship.
Congregational Ministers, white and black, have spoken in defense of
Wright's ministry and its practice of the social gospel. One cannot
fault Obama, married to an African-American woman and raising two
African-American children, for finding an anchor in the church he
discovered and which discovered him as a community organizer. I'm
glad he rejected the racist and hateful language of his pastor; I
hope he did take issue with that pastor's biased ideas face-to-face;
but I completely understand why he did not reject either his church
or the flawed man who nevertheless provided him with so much
spiritual instruction.
Lisa
(Posted with the author's permission. Opinions and
comments are those of Lisa Null and may or may not
coincide with those of Kyi May Kaung)
