O, Mary don't you weep, don't you mourn,
O, Mary don't you weep, don't you mourn,
Pharaoh's army got drownded,
O, Mary, don't you weep.
But weep I did, when as a white boy caught up in the civil rights movement I had to grasp the horror that Martin Luther King Jr. was dead. I canceled my 14th birthday party and sent my birthday money to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which until then King had led.
It is easy to see -- and indeed to admire -- why Africans, snatched from their homeland, enchained in slavery and forced to become Christians, would take their newly imposed religion and turn it into a source of solace and strength. More, they made it a beacon of liberation -- one that shone for a century until the triumph of the movement for which MLK gave his life.
It is sadly ironic, then, that the same religion has become a weapon against an African-American president and any nonconforming or freethinking African-American citizen.
Last week, President Obama issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation. Right-wing critics, who never take a day off from their campaign of vilification, leaped on it for supposedly not mentioning God. Actually, it does.
What they are really upset about is that Obama doesn't use the occasion to turn the bully pulpit of the presidency into an altar and beseech God on our behalf to forgive the nation's sins -- a peculiarly Judeo-Christian concept. But Obama is right. The president of a pluralistic 21st century republic is not our preacher-in-chief. Those who want to invoke God on Thanksgiving can do so at the church or diningroom table of their choice. They can even start wishing each other a Merry Christmas. Who's stopping them?
Despite their lip service to liberty, what religious conservatives actually hanker after is the power to impose their religion on the nation as a whole. It is a fundamental (you should pardon the expression!) difference in worldview from that of the Founding Fathers. Rather than see America as a place where people can be free to choose any faith or no faith, religious conservatives seek to enshrine the very thing colonists rebelled against: established religion at the heart of the nation's polity.
Fortunately, despite the Dominionists' overweening ambitions, that has not happened -- yet. But there are plenty of church-based communities that try to impose their will on everyone in sight, out of the misguided notion that they have a monopoly on sacred truth. Regretably, taken as a whole the African-American church is one such community. Although there are certainly exceptions, by and large the African-American church, once the engine of progress for its people, has become a tool of oppression for any members of its community who are gay, nonbelievers or both. Even as the Armed Forces have come around to accept gay relationships, the black church remains adamantly opposed:
When asked whether there is any debate about homosexuality in this crowd [reports NPR's Barbara Bradley Haggerty], the Rev. Patrick Walker, pastor of New Macedonia Baptist Church in southeast D.C., turns to face his colleagues standing around the sanctuary. "Anyone here for same-sex marriage?" he yells. The two dozen ministers are silent for a beat -- and then break out in incredulous laughter. While surveys show African-Americans are the most liberal group on issues of social justice, they are the most conservative on gay rights.
Sociologist Shayne Lee, himself African American, notes the Balaam's Ass-ititude of African-American churches toward gay rights. It is, he writes,
a church culture that often requires biblical leaders to vigorously and rigorously uphold biblical injunctions against homosexuality, despite the inherent visceral conflicts such a position might present. It's no secret that a large majority of African-American Christians are theologically conservative. The Pew Research Center's national study of American religion lists African-Americans among the most religiously committed American ethnic groups.
This theological conservatism contributes to a disdain for science. One of the all-too-few prominent African-American scientists of our time, Neil deGrasse Tyson, sounds less like the leader of a vanguard than a stray soul:
[W]hen I look behind me, I don't see all that many [young minority scientists] coming after me. It would be one of the greatest tragedies in our society if that absence was only for want of support that could have completely transformed their life's trajectory.
The sad thing is that anyone who holds the Bible at arm's length can see that to take it literally is madness -- especially for African Americans. It is patently written by an ancient people in a particular time and place, with no notion that even while they are writing in Israel, there are whole other civilizations in China, India and Meso-America, to name a few. The Bible writers clearly have a crude and largely superstitious understanding of how the natural world works. But worst of all for African Americans, to take the Bible literally is to be forced to swallow its endorsement of slavery. Sure, it can be sugar-coated by transmutations of "slave" into "servant," but the underlying fact remains: if you take the Bible as your literal, word-for-word guide, you condone slavery.
Now, African American churches do not, of course, embrace slavery. Like everyone who claims to be a biblical literalist, they pick and choose. But it is truly disheartening to see black church leaders, who ought to know oppression when they see it, choosing to condemn their gay brothers and sisters.
Of course, none of this compares to the role of the church in Africa itself, where Catholic anti-condom propaganda has caused the needless deaths of countless souls from AIDS, and where bellicose anti-gay preachers have led relentless drives to enact the death penalty for homosexuality in Uganda and Nigeria.
It's enough to make you weep.
Follow Clay Farris Naff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/claynaff
Adam Clark: Christianity And Kwanzaa
Black church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
God In America: The Black Church | PBS
Why black church culture rejects homosexuality - CNN
The Black Church, Homophobia, and Pastor Eddie Long - The Daily ...
Black Churches' Attitudes Toward Gay Parishioners Is Discussed at ...
Myself and the rest of the ever-growing population of black atheists look forward to a day when churches in the USA are as empty as they are in Europe.
-- Clay
The psychology of homophobia in African Americans ( and all others) is that people want to see someone lower on the totem pole than themselves. Sad...but true. Some black people feel looked down upon so they NEED someone lower than themselves that THEY can look down on. Gay people fulfill this function. And these religious people know that giving frustrated people permission to be cruel bullies is a winning position for them Sad but true. These church goers enjoy being told there is someone lower than themselves that they can bully. It is the same psychology with all homophobia and sexism. The kick the cat syndrome.
Truer words...
I'd be willing to bet the farm that most so called Christians have no idea of what the Dominionist believe or have in store for them and the rest of this nation.
As a former missionary pastor, I still hold that discovery dear, but the main thing I would say is that congregations have removed themselves from the social conditions struggles of people in their immediate cities. They are not attempting to overcome the barriers of class and race and gender or educate people to live together peacefully and meaningfully in a changing environment. When I spoke to congregations about that struggle in far away places, people were very supportive. When I asked them to reflect on their own situation, they couldn't do it and my popularity plummeted. Maybe it's just because I'm too demanding. My bad. Maybe we just don't belong there. Any advice? Pray, find your core friends and start something that's different.
It's the word of God.
You either believe all of it or none of it?
What is the alternative? "Yes, the men who wrote the Bible were great prophets chosen by God, but they lied about this, this and this and they were wrong about this, this and that."
A la carte faith.
The Founders were typically religious, but chose not to entangle this with the power of the state. Before the Constitution, one could be required by law to belong to the dominant denomination, even in the colonies. Many who sailed to America were seeking religious freedom they lacked at home.
You know something is out of kilter when you currently see so many invocations of religion to justify attacks on the poor.
Reagan is to Repubs.
Repubs always spout off about Reagan being the King of no Taxes, yet that's as far from the truth as it can be.
Christians these days seem to be the most staunch conservative hipocrites in the name of Jesus while he was probably the most liberal person to ever walk the earth.
to behave more ethically than they might otherwise..
On the other hand, religion is divisive and provides impetus for
discrimination, cruelty, family breakup, and persecution toward those of
different religion. Religion is a medium for some people's hypocrisy. Even
murder and child neglect are sometimes ordered by the god.
What is faith? It is a personal conviction related to something beyond ourselves, yet integral to who we are. Americans are deeply interested in faith. Your critique doesn't go far enough and shoots from the hips.
How can people of faith express the demands that faith has for liberation of the oppressed, identify itself with the poor, lodge itself in the heart of the aspirations for justice, equality and freedom?