Selma, Lord, Selma

Four major democratic primaries are tonight, but I’m still reeling from this interview.

Why? Why did Civil Rights stalwart Rep. John Lewis feel the need to trivilize Bloody Sunday by comparing the historic march from Selma to his decision to withdraw his endorsement for the Hillary Clinton campaign?

I can accept that it was a very difficult decision to make, but to emphatically assert that marching in Selma was easier than switching his support to Barack Obama’s campaign suggests that he is so beholden to the interests of white political power brokers, that he is willing to trivialize his own persecution as recompense for thinking and acting independently.

I don’t want to believe that he has become so emotionally (and some would argue politically and economically) invested in the Clintons, that he is numb to the civil rights activism that gives him such political capital in contemporary US politics.

I don’t want to believe that Lewis is so disconnected from his own story that he would embarrass himself on national television by allowing an astonished young white journalist to remind him that he was physically beaten and bloodied in the cause for racial and human justice.

I don’t want to believe that his “love” for the Clintons is deeper than his “love” for black people and the black freedom struggle.

But the truth of the matter is that this interview suggests all of this and more.

In these comments, Lewis re-historicizes himself as an accidental activist who blindly “did what he was told” rather than one who resisted injustice with courage and intention. One whose motives may not have been as noble as I first thought.

A couple of Sundays ago, I preached a sermon from Exodus 17:1-7. In this passage, Moses has lead the Israelites out of Egypt, but now the people are in the wilderness dying of thirst. Moses, apparently unaware of their suffering goes to God and asks, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me?” Obviously, Moses had plenty to eat and drink. He isn’t complaining. But only gets worried when his neck is on the line.

John Lewis, apparently, was “unaware” of the degree to which his constituency was dissatisfied with their condition and his leadership. Like the Israelites, they “cried out” and he’s left dumbfounded, going to the Lawd/Clintons asking “What shall I do with these people?” Unlike Moses, though, since the Lawd ain’t in a position to save him, Lewis has to save himself. He chooses sides, but needs to let the Lawd know, that he didn’t want to do it and had to in order to save his life. They were going to kill me! (Sounds like Aaron, huh?)

In verse seven, the place where this event occurs is named Massah and Meribah because the people asked “Is the Lord with us or not?” Every commentary I read stated emphatically that the people should not have cried out and “tested” Moses/God. They needed to be patient. I argued in the sermon that we need to cry out and test God and the leaders who claim they are the ambassadors of God’s truth. The condition of the people was not Moses’ ultimate concern. They had to let him and God know their discontent in order for anything to be done about it. I said that we have a responsibility to “cry out” and that God can handle our cries.

Just like it’s possible that we’ve refashioned Moses as a liberator in the tradition, the text suggests that his motives may not be as pure as we’d like to think. The same can be said for many so-called civil rights leaders.

If I’m right, then John Lewis ain’t no different from Catcher Freeman.

VCF

 

Is Christianity “Black?”

John McWhorter seems to think so. In this article he defends fried chicken, dancing, Ebonics and Christianity as “authentically black.”

VCF

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Black Primer Revisited by John H. McWhorter

TheRoot.com
February, 28, 2008

Christianity is a bedrock of cultural blackness. There are, of course, Black Muslims, but not as many as Christians. Barack Obama was counseled by black ministers that if he was to have credibility in the community where he was organizing, he would have to join a church. Their counsel would seem to suggest that Christianity plays a central role in black culture. Were they “stereotyping” black culture? Christianity played a central role in the Civil Rights movement: that is, the black people with most influence over the community were Christian ministers.

In the program to the original Broadway production of the musical Hairspray, six of the eleven black cast members thanked God (not Allah) for their success. One the 24 white cast members, only one did that. This was another indication that Christian faith plays a central role in black culture – unless for some reason white actors have a commitment to suppressing evidence of their faith in their program bios, which obviously they do not.

Or: in the film of Waiting to Exhale, there is a quick exterior sequence of the protagonists leaving church on Sunday, despite that the movie is not about religion. Think about how much less likely that shot would be in the latest film with people like Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, or Katie Holmes. If they were seen leaving church – especially four characters together – then the movie would likely be about the church in some way. In Waiting to Exhale, that sequence was a nice touch of authenticity – in that Christianity is part of the warp and woof of the culture.

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Why Jesus Called a Wise Man a Fool (MLK Day 2008)

It’s the forty year anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and I just gave up on watching the MLK convocation on television. As soon as I saw U.S. presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee and Bishop Eddie Long sitting together on the front row, I had my fill.

The pomp and circumstance wreaked of the kind of hero worship that Ella Baker warned King himself about . A kind of “cult of personality” that attempts to compensate for the lack of a sufficiently organized mass-based campaign. Now that the cult can assemble around an assassinated MLK (resurrected by the nice, neo-conservative, non-threatening King we get every year in textbooks and television), opportunistic vultures can align themselves with his “personality” to gain momentum for efforts that defy the principles that got the man killed.

Sigh.

I can imagine King in heaven right now wondering if all his work was in vain.

I put this vid together some time ago for a friend. The footage is spliced from the documentary Citizen King and the audio is from King’s sermon “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool.” I chose many of the scenes because it frustrates me how local and national news outlets fail to show the violent response to civil rights marchers’ non-violent protests. They contribute to perpetuate the “Santa Clausification” of King and all freedom fighters from that era by presenting the struggle as if non-violent protests were passive and non-threatening.

‘Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool” was given two years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, in August 1967. In this sermon King seems more discouraged about black progress than ever before, reminding those gathered that:

“any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of (people) and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls—the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul—is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.”

The following clip is an excerpt from the climax of this sermon.

On this MLK holiday and despite the evidence that King’s legacy has been co-opted, manipulated, and exploited, may God give us the courage to plan, organize, and fight in the hope that we shall overcome some day.

VCF

 

Walk With Me

This spiritual has gone through many incarnations from the cotton fields of the South to Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist to MTV.

This version is my favorite right now:

Lizz Wright live in Basel, Switzerland November 2005 with Marvin Sewell-guitar, Ede Wright-guitar, Massimo Biolcati-bass, Rock Deadrick-drums.

 

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

Discussing his new book, the Harvard minister calls for modesty in religious debate and decries the domestication of the Christian God.

Interview by Lisa Miller

Newsweek Web Exclusive
Nov 10, 2007

In his new book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus the Rev. Peter Gomes pushes Christians to see beyond what he says is the “domesticated” view of the Christian Lord and embrace instead the gospel message of radical good and radical justice. Gomes decries the slogan “What would Jesus do?” as superficial and self-justifying, preferring instead “What would Jesus have me do?” “Unlike Dr. Phil, [Jesus] does not dispense free advice on television,” writes Gomes, “so it falls to us to try to figure out what we ought to do in our time, with our own skills and problems, based on what we think about Jesus.” The iconoclastic Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University and the minister of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. NEWSWEEK’s Lisa Miller spoke with him. Excerpts:

What do you think is wrong with the public conversation about religion today?
Rev. Peter Gomes: Well, most of it is conducted quite frankly at too high a decibel level, and it is not particularly well informed. It’s a lot of shouting and not very much substance, and it tends to give religion a very bad name.

What’s the solution?
I think the solution is a certain amount of modesty, which is a very old-fashioned word, in making claims that we don’t know very much about, and with respect to traditions that are not our own. I am unabashedly a Christian, but most people who talk about Christianity don’t know very much about what they’re talking about.

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