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A Greater Awakening: 21st Century Letter to the Churches in the Usa

The Editor-in-Chief of SOJOURNERS Magazine, the Evangelical Jim Wallis has released a new book, The Great Awakening, written with hope to wake up American institutionalized Christians to be a part of the rebirth and renewal to heal, mend and transform “the biblical scandal of poverty around the globe and here at home, the crisis of environmental degradation and climate change that pose a threat to God’s creation, and to the multiple assaults on human life and dignity that shame our world.” [Page 12, Feb. 2008, SOJOURNERS]

Jim’s seeking revival, but this non-institutional Christian of The Beatitudes, is calling for a revolution and it begins with common sense and goes retro; back to the voices of wisdom that founded this nation.

“Soon after I had published the pamphlet “Common Sense” [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion… The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”-Tom Paine

Wallis proposes Seven Principals and Rules of Engagement for Christian political involvement in the world:

1. God hates injustice.

2. The kingdom of God is a new order.

3. The church is an alternative community

4. The kingdom of God transforms the world by addressing the specifics of injustice.

5. The church is the conscience of the state, holding it accountable for upholding justice and restraining its violence.

6. Take a global perspective.

7. Seek the common good.

All seven points are well and good and I wish Jim luck and pray he does indeed arouse the sleeping Christians for the western institutions have failed at its commission. Too many churches in the USA have become places to socialize and be entertained and to be patted on the back just for doing the minimum of what is required if one claims to be a Christian; and churches have become business’s that maintain the status quo and not so much about the social gospel.

The gospel-which means good news, that Jesus preached, was very political and a direct challenge to the politically powerful and the arrogant, self-satisfied, self-righteous teachers of the law.

Two thousand years ago the Cross had NO symbolic religious meaning and was not a piece of jewelry. When Jesus said: “Pick up your cross and follow me,” everyone back then understood he was issuing a POLITICAL statement, for the main roads in Jerusalem were lined with crucified agitators, rebels, dissidents and any others who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces.

In the latter days of Nero’s reign [54-68 A.S.] through the domination of Domitian [ 81-96] Christians were persecuted for following the nonviolent, loving and forgiving Jesus. That Jesus was first left behind when Augustine penned the Just War Theory.

Before Emperor Constantine brought Christianity into the mainstream, all the early Church Fathers taught that Christians should not serve in the army but instead willingly suffer rather than inflict harm on any other. St. Augustine was the first Church Father to consider the concept of a Just War and within 100 years after Constantine, the Empire required that all soldiers in the army must be baptized Christians and thus, the decline of Christianity began in earnest.

With the justification of war and violence supplied by Augustine’s Just War Theory, wrong became right. Nothing much has changed in two millennia, for in today’s Orwellian world politicians claim the way to peace is through war and that nuclear weapons provide protection. American money claims ‘In God we Trust’ but the truth is America’s faith is in an out of control Military Industrial Complex that seeks domination, power and control over any who would defy and challenge the American status quo. Eisenhower warned America not to bind our economy to the Industrial Military Complex and like most prophets, he was ignored.

In 313 AD, Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity and thus, those who had been considered rebels and outlaws began to enjoy political power and prestige. Jesus’ other name is The Prince of Peace, and with the marriage of church and state, his true teachings were reinterpreted. The justification of warfare and the use of state sponsored violence corrupted what Christ modeled and taught. Jesus was always on about WAKE UP! The Divine already indwells you and all others. Christ taught that to follow him requires that one must love ones enemies; one must forgive those who hate, curse and revile them, without even a thought of payback.

Christ lived a life that proved evil can be opposed without being mirrored, and that the cycle of a “tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye”, will never bring peace and justice. Before Emperor Constantine brought Christianity into the mainstream, all the early Church Fathers taught –and all Christians never served in the army but instead willingly suffered rather than inflict harm on any other.

The term Christianity was not coined until three decades after Christ walked the earth. Until the day of Paul, followers of Christ were called members of The Way; the way being what he taught!

Christ was never a Christian, but he was a social justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up [intifada in Arabic] for he challenged the job security of the Temple authorities by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God already LOVED them just as they were: sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Military Occupation.

What got Jesus crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces of his time, by teaching the subversive concept that Caesar only had power because God allowed it and that God preferred the humble sinner, the poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Occupation above the elite and arrogant!

Clement, Tertillian, Polycarp and every other early Church Father taught that violence was a contradiction of what Christ was all about. There have always been those Christians who spoke out against this corruption of scripture and they have been ignored, reviled, rejected, mocked, persecuted and maligned throughout time. There have always been Christians who have never abandoned the true teachings, such as the Quakers, Mennonites, some Catholics and Protestants who have been faithful witnesses to Christ by denouncing violence and caring for the poor. There have also always been Jews, Muslims, atheists, anarchists, secularists, rebels and revolutionaries have lived lives that embody the message of Christ; have in fact done what he actually said, which was most revolutionary.

Christ, you know it ain’t easy

You know how hard it can be

The way things are going

They’re gonna crucify me-John Lennon

The institutionalized Christians may crucify me for claiming that many who attend 21st century American churches have re-crucified and maligned Jesus, for they worship an institution and pages in the Bible. All institutions are man made and the Bible was not FAXED in from heaven, it was written down after centuries of the oral history being passed down. When ever stories are retold, they change, and we all know this if we ever played the childhood game of telephone. Scribes were imperfect human who made many mistakes as they recopied texts; many also added their own point of view and some even left out what they chose to.

The most decisive event in the history of Christendom occurred when Emperor Constantine accepted the Christian faith, for those who had once been persecuted were now protected by an earthly king. Both a patriarchal monarchical state and church were formed at the same time. Power struggles and debates were common among the early Christians. Individual churches determined which texts were read, and they all had their favorites. Constantine sought to unite his empire, and uniting the church was a savvy political move. He announced he would pay for fifty illuminated copies of scripture to be bound, and thus the biblical canon was established and sealed. There was fierce debate among the bishops about what should be included and what left out.

The proto-orthodox, who had now become the dominant voice, determined what was heretical for everyone. The proto-orthodox demanded much-loved scripture to be burned, usually because it did not fit their understanding of God. We know more today about how diverse Christianity had once been with the discovery of the Nag´ Hammâdi Library. [Refer to Part One is this series for more information]

I may get crucified for this, but I contend that there is a cult within The Body of Christ in the USA that worships the institution and pages in the Bible, and it is a cult of the dead. Just because the canon was sealed, does not mean that God stopped talking to his creation and we can all hear Him/She/? in the voice of our own conscience, as well as in the voices of open vessels such as poets, musicians, critics, dissidents and rebels throughout history.

Just because I no longer do church, I am still connected to the mystical Body of Christ and the most rigid of fundamentalists are my sisters and brothers. St. Paul, who never failed to express his freedom of speech, warned the followers of Christ, NOT to judge the unbeliever but to provoke the believer onto good works. My hope and prayer is to mend, heal and repair the flabby Body of Christ in the west by reconnecting it to its very roots in the land where Jesus walked and taught that it is the peacemakers who are the children of God; not those that starve, bomb, torture or occupy others.

The Christian EXODUS from the Holy land-which is in pieces; Bantustans, has rendered their numbers from 20% of the total to less than 1.3% since 1948, and it is NOT because of Islam, but because of a brutal, inhumane military occupation which denies them human rights and ignores international law aided and abetted by the American government and its citizens hard earned tax dollars.

Every individual Christian is but one cell in the cosmic Body of Christ. “So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” -Romans 12:4

“Its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part [of The Body] suffers, every part suffers with it.”-1 Corinthians 12:25-26

The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and all the prophets said, “You will recognize the believers in their having Mercy for one another, and in their Love for one another, and in their Kindness towards one another; like the body, when one member of it hurts, the entire body hurts.”

John Lennon penned The Wedding Ballad Of John & Yoko a few weeks after their 1969 marriage and then held a bed-in for peace to awaken the world via a media event to the abomination of the war in Vietnam. Using the global stage John said, “Yoko and I are quite willing to be the world’s clowns; if by doing it we do some good…And I’m saying peace…The struggle is in the mind. We must bury our own monsters and stop condemning people. We are all Christ and Hitler. We want Christ to win. We’re trying to make Christ’s message contemporary. What would he have done if he had advertisements, records, films, TV and newspapers! Christ made miracles to tell his message. Well, the miracle today is communications, so let’s use it.”

That battle rages on to make Christ contemporary and in this ongoing series I will be utilizing the World Wide Web.

The above was Part Four in the Series: “We have it in our power to begin the world again”-Tom Paine

Part 1 in this series: “We have it in our power to begin the world again”-Tom Paine

http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=759&Itemid=184

Part 2 in this series: The Stages of the Soul and How Religiosity/Fundamentalism is holding up Evolution

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=775&Itemid=184

Part 3 in this series: Prophets, Doors, Walls: MLK, X, Lennon, Gaza and Thee

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=778&Itemid=184

Eileen Fleming,

Reporter and Editor WAWA:

http://www.wearewideawake.org/

Author “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”

Producer “30 Minutes With Vanunu”

Posted on May 21, 2010 by , Reply

Language Vs Freedom

The independence of our country has been achieved through different movement before and after 21st February but it is a significant fact that we are solely indebted to 21st February to accelerate the movement of freedom and consequent upon such critical composure, the 26th March has been emergent as a realm of the foundation stone of a nation’s birth. In the next when men and women were expediting the resistance against all sorts of evil doings like exploitation, corruption and injustice, the movement of 21st February was a milestone to flourish and to direct the way as to how our freedom and salvation from unbounded restless would be terminated from socioeconomic life of the people. The common people of this C. We think that we could not achieve our freedom if 21st February was not emergent in 1952. Due to the movement of this day, we have shown our agitation against the rulers of the then Pakistan. To speak the truth, the 21st February, as a symbol of blaze illumination is our rectitude for which our survival as Bengali nation has been reflected through out the whole world.

In order to keep prestige of language and freedom of the country irrespective of all classes of people of our country have bequeathed to create resistance against the conspiracy of our survival like the people of a free stste. They have intensified the movement by degrees and being polemical, the then rulers have trespassed them and ultimately they had shot them dead. This is such a movement where our heroes have laid down their lives for the cause of elevated deportment of our mother Language. In the whole world, such unprecedented movement has never been taken place. With due advantage of our mother Language, we need to be particular in carrying out responsibilities from our different positions and the state of being enthusiastic for constructive work for the nation. But as ill luck would have it, some of ours young university and college going students are sheer from their education and as a result, they are not being able to be dutiful for the country. They are busy with capricious and reprehensible work of the society. We cannot expect such harvest from them because their guardians are conscientiously spending money for them. But they are making quintessential crimes and stigmatizing them to a great extent. After the emergence of our country as a free state, we have been passing through great hardship of ideal expedient personnel to build effective workforce in our country. If we would like to serve our country, we need to pay homage to our national hero who have been dedicated for the cause of national prominence towards our mother language.

Like the bounded responsibilities, this year has carried out the day of language and freedom with due somber mood and prominence. We celebrate both the days’ day with honour according to the heritage of the country. As the day of our mother language is mixed with our Independence Day, it has been mixed with our blood. In different seasons, in the climate of our country, new dimensions of beautified nature are reflected which is treated as the symbol of progress and prosperity in question. In every stage of development, the mainstream criterion of realism of our mother language is transparent and unpremeditated to the realm of our belief and religion. There is no denying the fact that we have accepted such a trend of life, which is uniquely coherent and not related to the lively-beings of western culture. These are ultimately the vital points to save us from being stigmatized by others. Ours is a developing country and we are passing through a great perturbation against terrorism, bribing, perfidiousness and capitulation and the cause of policies of misleading the people. We want all the ends of such mischievous activity from the social life. We should memorize the great sacrifice of the martyrs who had saved our mother Language by dedicating their lives. Consequent upon this, we achieved the 21st February as an ‘International Mother Language Day’ in 1999. This is a great achievement in the world to show our best regards to our Bengali Language. It is a rare example in the history of mankind.

In fine, if we would like to preserve the prestige of Bengali nation, we need to pay great eulogy praise to the martyrs for the cause of our mother language and freedom. To speak the truth, ours some dedicated young men have come forward to protest against the decision and aggression of the then Pakistani rulers. In the face of strong opposition, the Pakistani soldiers had killed uncountable people for their self-callous gluttony and power to suppress this nation. The two incidences rare in the history of mankind. If we observe the history of the world, we will see that no nation has resurrected their blood for the cause of language movement. They had laid down their lives for the restoration of democracy and freedom of economics. Their activities are undoubtedly of heroic deeds. If we dedicate ourselves for the cause of equality and liberty of our country, their departed souls will be complacent and effulgence. In every year, we celebrate this day by showing homage to them and shower the flowers to the ‘memoirs in order to solemnize their great bestowal achievements contributed to the dignity of our mother Language. In this respect, a remarkable statement of Robert Frost is worth mentioning:

“ The wood is lovely dark and deep,

I have promises to keep

And I have miles to go before I sleep

And I have miles to go before I sleep’’

Mr. Kh. Atiar Rahman is an M.A in English. He has written a vast number of articles on society, friendship and love. He was born at Meherpur. He has a brilliant academic record. At present he is serving as a Counter Part officer of Financial Management Reform Programme under Ministry of Finance, Finance Division, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Posted on May 21, 2010 by , Reply

Texas Board of Education votes on final social studies curriculum tomorrow

Texas Board of Education votes on final social studies curriculum tomorrow
The Texas Board of Education is considering another raft of amendments to the state’s new history curriculum today before taking a final vote on the package tomorrow. The controversial new standards emphasize American exceptionalism, religion’s importance to the Founding Fathers, and the benefits of low taxes. Once they’re approved and promulgated, the standards will be taught to Texas’s 4.7 …

Read more on The Newsroom via Yahoo! News

Posted on May 21, 2010 by , Reply

Indian Constitution: the Supreme Law That Governs India

A constitution is the supreme law of a free country. It is the system by which a government of a country functions. Constitution of India was adopted in the in the constituent assembly on 26th November 1949. It is document that contains set of instructions and policies that a government in power of India must follow. Indian constitution came into force on 26th January 1950, the republic day of India, defining India as a republic union of states. Indian constitution also defines the fundamental rights, directive principles and fundamental duties of a citizen of India. Constitution of India declared India as a state to be sovereign, democratic republic but later in the amendment of constitution of 1976 the India was added to be a socialist and secular state.

The constitution of India is the longest written official book than any other of an independent country. Indian constitution is considered the best constitution that an independent country has in the world. It is a well drafted book that is a result of research of years. India is still a young independent country and hence the makes of India constitution have adopted several effective articles and laws from different constitutions of other countries. It has given a permeable that is just a complete crux about it. Preamble of India is again considered the best in the world. It contains 22 sections including 395 articles, 12 schedules and 83 amendments.

The committee that drafted the constitution of India was headed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and other six members as Jahwahar Lal Nehru, C. Rajagopalachari, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. All these members were great politicians and major scholars of India. Indian constitution is written in the hand writing of Dr. Ambedkar.

Indian constitution is the best official draft one must read to know how a democratic and independent republic nation works. It will provide a deep insight of the laws and principles that Indian government follows to run the union of India.

Sonal Arya is offering advice for quite some time. Having completed her Ph.d in Archaeology from The Jawaharlal Nehru University. She provide useful advice through her articles that have been found very useful. To find Indian constitution,famous in india, cities in india, temples in india, personalities in india visit http://www.famousinindia.com/

Posted on May 21, 2010 by , Reply

How can i get freedom of information concerning creditors ?

Concerning a syndicated UK company (now liquidated) that i was a member of.
Why won’t the liquidator specify what the creditors dealing were in the syndicated UK company ?
Is it legal for the liquidator to do this ?
How can i find out (through freedom of information) what these creditors dealings/sevices were… they have just appeared out of the woodwork from nowhere.

Posted on May 20, 2010 by , 2 comments

Individual Freedom vs. Government Control?

Individual Freedom vs. Government Control

Congress faces a critical question this week: Will U.S. health care be government-run, or will Americans be given the freedom to obtain their insurance plans and medical care from private firms? The next U.S. president will likely answer this question, but the resolution to the current debate about SCHIP — the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a state and federal government partnership for insuring poor children — that is roiling Washington, D.C., will preview the answer.

Although health care is a crucial issue for the electorate; traditionally, presidential candidates have avoided any but the blandest generalities. Health care is the third rail of politics. Its complexity, size, and multiple, committed stakeholders scare away most would-be saviors.

Yet, the underlying debate is simple: It is all about who will manage and control the health-care sector that comprises one-seventh of our economy. Will individual Americans have the freedom to make their own choices? Or, will we trust government bureaucrats, lawyers, and politicians to make those decisions for them? Our future health-care system will be shaped by how we answer these simple questions.

Let’s be clear: The SCHIP battle is not about whether to insure poor children. The debate is about how to insure them: Via the government or private insurers? This debate has not only pitted Democrats against Republicans but has also sundered the Republican coalition. Some Democrats wanted SCHIP expanded by $50 billion dollars so that even families earning about $81,000 a year who have eligible children were included. (The 2005 U.S. median household income was $46,000.) A resolution with the Republicans who hold minority leadership roles led to a compromise, costing only $35 billion, which allowed coverage for those earning up to $60,000.

A fundamental problem with this compromise is that the same amount of coverage for children within SCHIP costs $1,000 more per child than under private insurance. A group of forward-thinking Republicans led by U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R., N.C.) and others has an entirely different idea of how to provide insurance: they want to cash out eligible people and enable them to use this money to buy health insurance from private insurers in a tax-protected way. Count the president in too. He has pledged to veto legislation that permits expansion of the present program.

None of the combatants’ are supported by an unblemished array of evidence. The Democrats support the expansion of SCHIP by lauding the universal coverage and substantially lower costs of single-payer, government-run systems, like the U.K.’s and Canada’s. Yes; but costs are controlled by rationing health care to the sick. More than 20,000 Brits would not have died from cancer in the U.S. Onerous waiting lists have caused illegal, for-profit health-service centers to proliferate in Canada. These rogue establishments are so well-accepted that the head of one became the president of the Canadian Medical Association. Nor do single-payer systems achieve equality of access or health status — the powerful, assertive, litigious, and connected go to the head of the line.

In the U.S., the government-controlled Medicaid program has achieved its low costs per person by stringent limits on provider prices. As many as 40 percent of doctors refuse to see Medicaid enrollees, leading to reduced health care quality. Physicians who accept Medicaid often shift their un-reimbursed costs to the privately insured. A system totally paid by the government would shut down this escape hatch, exacerbating the current shortage of primary care doctors.

But the group of Republicans who support private insurance acknowledge that they cannot laud health insurance as a model industry. The massive bureaucracies patients all-too-often encounter when they attempt to obtain the medical services they paid for are not merely frustrating, they sometimes kill. Free-market Republicans claim that the problem with the U.S. insurance firms arises from their lack of accountability. Agents, such as governments and employers, use our money to buy health plans. The agents’ incentives — simplicity and cost control — are not well aligned with our needs for responsiveness.

Senators Richard Burr (R., N.C.), Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and others want to refigure the tax code so that we could buy health insurance with tax-sheltered money, a right currently reserved solely for our employers. If we purchased our own health insurance with tax-protected funds, we could keep these arrogant behemoths in check, just as we do in the other sectors of the American economy. The Swiss universal-coverage, consumer-driven system requires people, not employers or governments, to buy health insurance. (The poor primarily receive funds to purchase insurance just like everybody else.) This consumer control enables the Swiss to enjoy an excellent quality of care without the social inequality of single-payer countries at costs that are a third lower than ours.

SCHIP is not merely a debate about yet another mystifying government program. It is all about free-market principles versus government mandates. Giving taxpayers the freedom to choose and buy their own health care would unleash powerful market forces that have been subdued by third-party bureaucracies for the last 60 years. In every area of our economy, market forces have transformed rare, costly products and services like cars and computers into common products and services. We can make health care cheaper, better, and more widely available, if Congress can muster the vision and courage to act.

Posted on May 20, 2010 by , 5 comments

Barney Fife and the Preamble to the Constitution


Classic Comedy bit where Don Knotts as Barney Fife demonstrates his masterful memorization of the Preamble the US Constitution

Posted on May 20, 2010 by , 25 comments

Latest Freedom Of Religion Auctions

Hey, check out these auctions:
[eba kw=”Freedom of Religion” num=”2″ ebcat=”all”]
Cool, arent they?

Posted on May 19, 2010 by , Reply

National Security – Training scene


Martin Lawrence as Earl Montgomery in National Security.

Posted on May 19, 2010 by , 25 comments

Obama Leaves Church

Normal 0

Obama leaves his Church

By Peter Menkin

06/18/08

Considered a man of faith, Barack Obama, the American running for nomination for President of the United States, has left his Church. For reasons of political controversy due to its pastor, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama left membership in Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), Chicago, Illinois after 20 years. (The church website proclaims: “We are a congregation which is unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian…”)

Trinity United Church of Christ occupies a tan brick building on West 95th Street across railroad tracks from a public housing project, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

The Senator said about leaving, “Too much press harassment, people couldn’t’ worship in peace.” That wasn’t his reason for leaving, but a complaint on the news media attention. The reason were politically controversial remarks by Trinity’s pastor, Reverend Wright.

Wright’s comments contradicted one of Obama’s campaign’s central messages — that the candidate can transcend past divisions such as those involving race.

The impediment to the African-American’s campaign is highlighted by Wright’s widely reported sermon remark: “God Damn America” (for its racism}, and blaming the September 11 terrorist attacks on US foreign policy. He has also blamed the U.S. government for the spread of the AIDS virus. Mostly, Wright is seen as anti-white and a racist.

On Bill Moyers Journal, Wright says we are unashamedly Black. His philosophy embodies, “Use the culture of which we are a part.” He preaches there is hope, that life has meaning, and that God is still in control. “We can change. We can do better.” Black Liberation theology is Wright’s UCC message. It is a UCC message he offers, since he is a UCC minister who studied under Martin Marty. Martin E. Marty, distinguished Lutheran Pastor, teacher, and writer who has been on the University of Chicago faculty since 1963.

Grounded in the history of the African-American, Black theology is powerful stuff. He is little sorry about his comments, but in Bill Moyer’s interview, Reverend Wright does appear sorry he made the comment “God damn America” in the Pulpit—if only for a few moments. But it wasn’t one remark, but a string of them that caused the significant distancing between the candidate’s spiritual advisor and candidate.

The press in the United States spends a lot of time and space talking about Senator Obama’s faith, his church, and how he is a Christian—the Senator says he is Christian himself, and that is also news. Religion in the campaign makes news, despite separation of Church and State. Time magazine says more voters see Senator Obama as a strongly religious person than they do every major presidential hopeful but Mitt Romney, the Republican former governor of Massachusetts. Romney’s Mormonism drew extensive news coverage.

U.S. Senator Obama was married in Trinity church. His children were baptized in the church, and also like the wedding, Reverend Wright performed the solemnizations. The Senator said on leaving the church, “Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized. We have many friends among the 8,000 members…” It is a church where he was moved many times. When Wright preached one Sunday about the sustaining power of hope in the face of poverty and despair, Obama says he found himself in tears.

He says in one speech:



“For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change… Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.”

It is the claim of Reverend Jeremiah Wright that Trinity is a church of Black theology. The Reverend Doctor John Cone, the Harvard Professor and African-American theologian interviewed on American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) by commentator Bill Moyers says on the PBS website:



“As we examine what contemporary theologians are saying, we find that they are silent about the enslaved condition of black people. Evidently they see no relationship between black slavery and the Christian gospel. Consequently there has been no sharp confrontation of the gospel with white racism. There is, then, a desperate need for a black theology, a

theology whose sole purpose is to apply the freeing power of the gospel to black people under white oppression.”

Cone says:



The Cross is the same as the lynching tree for the Black American in a Harvard Speech. The Christian Reverend Cone wants to start a conversation on this subject. He offers that lynching was terrorism that “worked to a certain degree.” This includes spectacle lynchings where 5,000 would gather to watch.
Religion is one place where you have an imagination that no one can control.” Black Churches are a place of the spirit… (even though you are living under the shadow of the lynching tree).” … There were 246 years of slavery, and 100 years of segregation and lynching.
America does not see itself as “not innocent,” according to Cone. “No human being is innocent.”

Reverend Cone is ordained in the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago. which is one of the city’s largest black churches and not far from Obama’s home in the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park.

Apparently the Democratic candidate for his party’s nomination is not turning his back on Black theology, per se, since Sunday, June 15, 2008 he spoke from the pulpit at that same mega-church in Chicago, which has 20,000 members and is also considered a Black American church.

It is the history of the African American church in the United States that it is a center of Black community life speaking to the needs of the church and larger community in social and political ways. But not in so partisan a manner as was recently ascribed to the theology and preaching of the Reverend Wright. So the perception became. But he still associates himself with the African American church in general.

Senator Obama spoke of the role of Black fathers and their responsibilities, perhaps more a campaign speech than sermon from a “religious” man whose campaign motto is “Change That Works for You.” After all, he is running for President of the United States—or its Democratic Party nomination more accurately. He gave his talk from the pulpit of the “20,000-member Apostolic Church of God…a short walk from the Obamas’ home. The church’s pastor, Byron Brazier, is an Obama supporter,” reports The New York Times.

It is from the Black Church that Senator Obama learned many things about hope. Can he really take himself out of the African-American church ethos, as he has known it? Perhaps the Reverend Wright thinks not, though he is not saying. His official press release remark on Senator Obama and his family’s leaving was, “…We are saddened by the news …”

END IT

(Appx. 1100 words)

Peter Menkin, an aspiring poet, lives in Mill Valley, CA USA (north of San Francisco).

Posted on May 19, 2010 by , Reply
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