Color-Blind Love

Dear cutters-and-paste artists on CHOWK,

Edit, re-phrase, be original (except in religion), be good please.

One can never guess from the CHOWK front-page what devils lurk behind these interacts.

Masadi Sahib:

The Black Church Rejects Rev. Dr. King
By John Blake
CNN



(CNN) -- In a stinging passage from a "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. condemned white churches for rejecting his pleas for support.





"In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies," King wrote from jail during the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrations.



The contemporary white church has largely accepted King as a religious hero. Yet some observers say there is one religious community that continues to shun King -- the black church.



Forty years after his death, King remains a prophet without honor in the institution that nurtured him, black preachers and scholars say. King's "prophetic" model of ministry -- one that confronted political and economic institutions of power -- has been sidelined by the prosperity gospel.



Prosperity ministers preach that God rewards the faithful with wealth and spiritual power. Prosperity pastors such as Bishop T.D. Jakes have become the most popular preachers in the black church. They've also become brands. They've built megachurches and business empires with the prosperity message.



Black prophetic pastors rarely fill the pews like other pastors, though, because their message is so inflammatory, says Henry Wheeler, a church historian. Prophetic pastors like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, often enrage people because they proclaim God's judgment on nations, he says.



"It's dangerous to be prophetic," said Wheeler, who is also president of the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana.



"I don't know many prophetic preachers who are driving big cars and living very comfortably. You don't generally build huge churches by making folks uncomfortable on Sunday morning," he said.





The prosperity gospel started as a fringe doctrine in the black church. It was pioneered by "Rev. Ike," a prosperity televangelist with a pompadour who boasted during his heyday in the 1970s that "my garages runneth over."



Jonathan Walton, author of "Watch This! Televangelism and African American Religious Culture," says that although people may have chuckled at Ike's flamboyance, his theology exerts more influence in the modern black church than King's.



"King got the glory and the history books, but ... [Ike has] got the numbers," said Walton, who is also an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside.



Black prosperity preachers say their message is not based on greed, though, but self-help.

Bishop Paul Morton, senior pastor of Greater St. Stephens Full Gospel Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, says that teaching black people better money management is the "next dimension" of King's ministry.



"The Bible said that the poor we will always have with us," he said. "It's up to us to bring ourselves out of the curse of poverty."



Morton was the only black prosperity preacher contacted who agreed to talk about King's ministry. Many of the black church's most popular prosperity preachers -- the Rev. Creflo Dollar of Atlanta, Georgia; the Rev. Fred Price of Los Angeles, California; and Bishop Keith Butler of Detroit, Michigan -- all declined.



Jakes, the most popular prosperity preacher (he made the cover of Time magazine in 2001), declined to talk as well. He did, however, address his views on social justice in August on "Religion & Ethics," a PBS news program.



"I'm not against marching," Jakes said. "But in the '60s, the challenge of the black church was to march. And there are times now perhaps that we may need to march. But there's more facing us than social justice. There's personal responsibility, motivating and equipping people to live the best lives that they can."



The debate between self-help and political activism is nothing new in the black community. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois clashed over the issue at the beginning of the 20th century. Most black prophetic teachers teach self-help along with activism.

King was caught in the middle of this debate early in his ministry.

King became prominent after leading the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, but he was already gaining a name for himself in the National Baptist Convention, the largest black church organization in the nation.



King wanted to use the convention as an institutional base for the movement. But his tactics -- civil disobedience, publicly confronting segregationists -- were repudiated by convention leaders and the Rev. J.H. Jackson, the convention president, says Wheeler, the church historian.



"He thought that if blacks were good citizens, worked hard and did what was expected, our rights will come; we would prove out merit," Wheeler said.



In 1961, King tried to orchestrate the election of a leader to replace Jackson. He and a group of black ministers attempted to vote Jackson out of office at the convention's annual meeting. It was a disaster.



According to Taylor Branch's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years," ministers exchanged blows. One lost three teeth. Another was killed when his skull was fractured. Riot police were called out to separate the warring pastors.



Jackson kicked King out of the convention and held onto power. The pastors who aligned themselves with King formed their own group, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. The schism remains today.



Wheeler says the black church's rejection of King wasn't confined to its leadership. Most people in the pews didn't want to get involved. The movement was driven primarily by younger people.



Fear was the primary reason, he says.



"We forget that people were getting killed, churches being burned," he said. "It was the common understanding that things were not going to change, that people were getting killed for nothing."



A new generation of prophetic ministers in the black church is now trying to do what King once attempted: gain a voice in the establishment.



Four years ago, a group of them formed the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Proctor was a scholar and college president who was active in the civil rights movement. The annual conference attempts to preserve the prophetic voice of black churches by bringing like-minded pastors together for support and advice.



A few prophetic pastors have even talked about taking another approach to raising their profile in the black church: television, says Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.



"Some of them have talked about the need to get on television and try to counter the televangelists, but I don't know of any social justice preacher who has a broad television audience," he said.



At least one young prophetic minister has found a prominent place in the public eye.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King preached, says that prosperity preaching is not just a distortion of Jesus' message but a betrayal of the black church's heritage. The black church was formed by slaves who saw Jesus' message as a tool for social justice.



"The prophetic voice of the black church is the very reason for its being," Warnock said. "The only reason that there's such a thing as the black church is because of the question of freedom, justice and equal access."



Walton, the University of California scholar, says contemporary black churchgoers have now embraced another mission: equal access to wealth. "It's the theological doctrine of American culture," he said.



King's voice may ring out in the history books, but it no longer rings out in the black pews. Walton says the battle between the prophetic and prosperity ministers in the black church is over for now.



The Rev. Ikes have won.






"Many Americans give lip service to entering the social justice arena and speaking out against the economic and politically powerful," Walton said, "but very few of us are willing to pay the price."



"We like to identify with Dr. King in theory, though we emulate Rev. Ike in practice."

Re: # 318

Masadi Sahib,

I understand disproportionality, etc. I'm pointing out that in reality, there is a growing of color population in the US and there is a significant population of working poor White Americans in the US. Neither population fits into your facile explanations; how do you account for them?

neembu writes "Seriously. Interact with tameez or I will not continue this conversation"

Quit this BS, you have nothing, what I wrote is factually documented, race and class in America is closely and thoroughly linked and the facts support what I say. There is not a single economist or sociologist other than the die hard right wingers (like Dinesh Dsouza) that will deny stratification based on race in the US. What I am saying is not that there isnt a single black rich man or group of middle class blacks, what I am writing about is the disproportionality of class based on race- which is a fact which shows any fool who knows how to read social data that race is a determining factor. Now don't waste my time- it is quite clear you don't have a clue about this issue...

Re: # 314

Masadi Sahib,

Seriously. Interact with tameez or I will not continue this conversation.

Are you saying that there are no affluent Af Ams, Asian Ams, Latino Ams, Native Ams in the US?

Yes or no?

"My mother-in-law put a curse on us and spat in my husband's face
I really think we are cursed now, because I am not Greek. How do I remove the curse?
By Cary Tennis

Apr. 07, 2008 | Dear Cary,

My mother-in-law put a curse on my husband and me -- I believe she couldn't get through to me and so she attacked him. She cursed that he would never make any money in his life, that he would lose his business, lose his wife, me, and the kids, and be completely destroyed. And to seal the curse, she spat in his face twice.

I'm a very superstitious person and I truly believe that she sealed this curse on him. The reason is that they are Greek and I am not. They want control over us, and I refuse to have anyone control me anymore. I've been with him for over 12 years, eight of which we've been married; we have three little kids together. I've done everything I could to make them happy and to basically accept me, and no matter what, they just don't. They would be fine in front of me and then talk behind my back to others. The entire family and friends have told me the things they've said, but yet, I put it aside. My little cousin died (12 years old), and they never came to the funeral, and they didn't even apologize -- instead they completely avoided me and had no respect.

Anyway, that was the beginning of my awakening, and I stopped doing all the things that I was previously doing for them, like their laundry, their housecleaning, ironing, etc., just everything. We had a huge blowout last year around the same time because I went to do my hair -- and they were like, Why should I highlight my hair? What, was I trying to be a model? Well, it started like that and became really huge, and now this.

Any help on how to remove this would be great.

Cursed by Mother-in-Law

Dear Cursed,

I hope you will forgive me if I tell you I don't believe in curses in the literal way. But I believe trauma can be a kind of curse. It must have been very traumatic to see your mother-in-law spit in your husband's face! It must be very traumatic to have this family that does not accept you and that works against you and does not respect you. And if they feel that because they are Greek and you are not, that they are better than you, that must be terribly discouraging.

Trauma can of course be a kind of curse. It can weigh you down and paralyze you and confused you and fill you with fear and ultimately bring about the very thing that it has no "real," demonstrable power to bring about -- your failure, your misfortune!

People's words can be a curse. While one can take this to extremes, I think it is true that by speaking certain words habitually, or in a traumatizing way, we can send messages to ourselves and to others that in a sense bypass our conscious control and affect us profoundly without our consent. Someone may say to a child over and over, "You're no good. You'll never be any good," and they may as well have cursed that child. We can affect other adults with our words as well. And surely, an attack such as you describe can put a curse on an adult son, rendering him weakened, fearful, put-upon and unloved, rendering him bitter and unhappy. That bitterness and unhappiness, in turn, might bring about the very effects the curse intended. Also, because a son desires to prove his mother right, he may in some way now wish to fail, in order to please his mother, whom he no doubt loves in spite of her mistreatment.

Finally, if you believe the curse is real, then it is real, and it must be lifted somehow. You must find the correct ritual to lift it.

How can you break such a curse as that? Perhaps you have ritual methods that others in your family have used? If so, use them. If not, I don't know. Perhaps you can write a letter to your mother-in-law, informing her that the spell has been lifted by an agency of your own devising. Perhaps to unseal this curse and break its spell, you could perform some magic on your husband's face; perhaps you could dab it with warm water, or magical oils, until the mother's curse is gone; or perhaps he could go have a facial. Perhaps you and your husband could go sit in the enzyme baths up at Olema and be purified.

Rituals can have great power to heal, but it must be the right ritual. I encourage you to undertake some rituals to remove this curse. The choice of ritual must be yours, however, as I do not even know what region of the world you are in. Olema is in Northern California, and we're all crazy here. We'll believe anything. "

www.salon.com

GT writes "Sometimes I get a bit scared"

You should be very scared, mortally scared if you take Kulharee (Feroz Qutabshahi) as the standard (the "as well"). I fear for your children and pity you....

neembu writes "Your first premise, that race allocates class is faulty to begin with.."

I suggest that if you don't know about something or are ignorant, as you are in this case you should shut up. It took you two days to come up with this nonsense you wrote. When blacks are disproportionately high in the lower and disproportionaltely low in the higher classes, when their unemployment is double that of whites, when their incomes are half that of them, then RACE as a stratification factor definitely determines you life chances and hence your class. Gender discrimination works the same way, you cannot say that just because there are middle class women there is no gender discrimination in the US. Get an education...

Re: # 300

Your first premise, that race allocates class is faulty to begin with. How do you account for middle and upper class Af Ams, Latino Ams, Asian-Ams, etc.? In other words, as usual Masadi, you are making gross generalizations that cannot be factually supported.

GT: what scares you?

Kulharee,

This was a very nice read. Also, congratulations! You have brought up your kids well. I hope I am able to do as well. Sometimes I get a bit scared. Again, enjoyed reading.

Regards.

pow writes " tahmedi saab it is good as majamidar saab says. there will be less Baangladaishis around saab. its not all bad news saab "

You need to get your act straight. These peons of the West act all uppity with their own kind, only in the presence of the white man do they act like you, all kiss a$$ and worshipful and "jaan hazir hey" looks, kind of like the current PM when he met Negroponte. The way you are acting tells me that you are a coolie of the peons of the West and not the standard character traits that describe the peons of the West. Get your act straight or change your name....

peon sahib: i wonder if you have asked the bangladeshi hazraat their views on this question.

#306 majumdar sahib: i still think that we should not depend on the roll of the dice on such a sea change (which in this case is more than just a metaphor).

Re: # 305

tahmeedi saab it is good as majamidar saab says. there will be less Baangladaishis around saab. its not all bad news saab

Tahmed sahib,

Well you could end up with arid regions of Indo-Pak receiving lots more rain and becoming fertile regions like Indus Valley of old. You never know it may be a good thing.

Regards

PS: Will be waiting for a FP article from you on the same.