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09-01-09, 08:12 AM
Mr. Umbrarchist,
Thank you for your reply. Correct me if I am wrong, but to the best of my understanding, we were addressing the question (see post #11 above): “what institution[s] produced Black leaders in America?” Your post above, however, has conveniently forgotten this issue choosing instead to pick up the “preachers are against African culture” discussion.
Suffice it to say that, one would be really hard pressed to find another incubator for African American leadership other than the church because neither the nightclub nor the hair scene can boast an environment where individuals are actively encouraged to reflect on the themes of freedom and improved quality of life (although with the advent of hip/hop this has changed in recent years).
The best argument to be made against this position has not been made by anyone in this thread. It really involves proving that the practices of the African American church are really the disguised practices of West Africa; and that, the slaves merely adapted their old traditions to fit in with Christian ones. Albert J. Raboteau made some good arguments in this regard in his book “Slave Religion.” But, this still makes the church a kind of conservator of African culture and hence, renders it valuable once again. Any way you slice it, homage must be paid to the Black Church.
In the absence of any formidable opposition to my easily proven claim that African Americans have really only had three enduring institutions in America: the nightclub, the beauty salon/barber shop, and the church, and that the church is responsible for a host of notable Black leaders such as Sojourner Truth, Denmark Vesey and Barack Obama, just to name a few, I will consider the matter closed.
Now, on to your new claims:
Thank you for your general reflections on the Pope and his Church but I find your comparison of the Black Church (by Black Church, I mean only to refer to Black Christian Churches in America) and the Catholic Church to be somewhat inappropriate. The ranking of the Black Church as “dumber” than the Catholic Church strangely makes this White Supremacist Religious institution the religious standard by which all others should be measured. It is exceedingly inductive to reason that the Catholic Church, stained with the blood of countless millions of Africans and Indians, rich as a result of conquests and imperialism, saturated with theological dogma that equates whiteness with purity and blackness with evil, and steeped in a liturgy that still pays homage to its cultural progenitor, the Roman Empire has anything in common with the Black Church besides a belief in Christ.
Yes, you could make the argument that Black Christianity is merely a white-washed Black-faced variation on White Christianity but that type of reasoning is as simplistic as saying that Hip/Hop is the same as Country Music because they both employ the English language; or that English, the lingua franca of British imperialism, is intrinsically evil and likely to make the speaker prone to acts of oppression.
Likewise, your article about Father Clemons is interesting but hardly representative of mainstream Black Christianity, which, by the way, happens to be overwhelmingly dominated by Protestants, mostly Baptists and Pentecostals. A Catholic Priest? His Catholic affiliation already makes him a rare and obscure figure in the African American community. Measuring the state of African American Christianity by observing this fool is like looking out of your window on a winter day and observing how the white people are dressed to determine whether or not it is cold outside. It does not make sense. Moreover, how do you know that Jeremiah Wright is not the norm for Black Church in America?
And why should we expect Father Clemons, a man steeped in the traditions of one of the oldest known White Supremacists institutions on the planet, the Catholic Church, to have any appreciation for the spiritual/political/cultural resistance of Black Christianity as manifested through Jeremiah Wright? Shouldn’t we expect them to clash? Father Clemons stands upon more than a thousand years of tradition, he must feel a great sense of rightness about his beliefs and practices and he is going to shun variation, especially if it can be dismissed as “Black Theology,” translated: political, tainted theology. Afrocentrism is his enemy. This is exactly the attitude that Mr. Black Lion is referring to. I get it! All I’m saying is that the voice of the Griot lives on through the Black Church and consequently an entirely different voice has emerged. It set the stage for Black leadership, Rhythm & Blues, hip/hop and spoken word poetry.
Thank you for reading,
Peace!
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