“NO ONE HAS TAUGHT WHITE PEOPLE in AMERICA MORE ABOUT DEATH THAN BLACK AMERICANS” (See BLOG for The Day)
There is a lot going on this week and it already got off to a bang over the week-end. Did you ever notice all the confusion over a little bitty thing like when do we really end the week and begin a new one? The first time I think I noticed this was way back in college years when I learned what TGIF meant.
This is just one important place the religious soul of America gets into the middle of the act. A great many Americans still observe the Sabbath that begins at sundown on Friday. The majority of Christians, not all, worship on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection of The Christ whom they follow. The country as a whole doesn’t know what to do with any of us religious folks because they are all about doing their shopping, their entertaining, and oh yes, their sports, on the week-end. But that’s another post for another day.
I’m trying to be short- and I’m trying to hit about three themes that’s on my mind as I started my week with just a single post. Here they are – THURSDAY, MAY 1, has been designated by our President as the National Day of Prayer. So I want to mark that occasion in our Nations busy calendar and talk about “Civil Religion” in America.
But we’re also face to face this week with another real and vital part of our country’s religious life – The Black Church in America. We’ve just got to speak out on this issue and I ask the patience of my friends who are not Americans (North Americans) while we do this. I ran across a post this morning on a black blog that boldly made this statement: “No one has taught white Americans more about Christian love than black Americans.” I didn’t have to think long at all to know that I agree with that statement. Because I had put up for my “blog of the day” (you really should check that any time you browse my blog because most of the time it’s a lot more interesting than my own latest post), an amazing essay on the theme of death itself in the black American culture and how it has affected all of us.
Sad to say, but I must in the name of unity say it, I don’t think a lot of us have really understood what the man Dr.Martin Luther King, epitomizes about the racial struggles that continue in this country of ours. Ironically, we are gearing up in Kentucky and the Nation for a gala celebration of the 200 anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth . If you still don’t get the significance of this “lining up of the stars” for the black American as one of their race is daily in the news in the office of the powerful Secretary of State while another is front runner to be our next President, well I would say you need to take time in your busy week to try to see things through the eyes of black Americans.
Remember which site your on here- with great respect and dignity that is due all our fellow human beings. Thank God for the age of the WWW and the miracle by which we can finally listen to others and know them as they would like to be known not as others for their own twisted agendas want to portray them.
NOTE: A site that does more justice to Dr.Jeremiah A.Wright,Jr.
May 11, 2008 at 2:58 pm
One thing that to me was obvious in this whole episode involving the media’s clash with Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. They missed the point completely. This is unforgiveable for Journalists who take money for being professionals.
One emphasis in Dr.Wright’s ministry, because he really does love his black community, that the continuing failure of this country to recognize and celebrate the role of Blacks in the history of the Nation, at this late date, is not to be tolerated any longer. The Black community has been patient far too long with their own country and he being a man of God is only bringing the message from on High that now is the time to once and for all face this openly and completely.
Here in Kentucky, where we’ve had a pitiful record of racism, we are finally making considerable progress. The State’s Department of Tourism for example, has published a lovely “Multicultural” Tourism Guide for 2008 that includes a number of Black Kentuckians who made major contributions to their State and their Nation throughout its history.
June 16, 2010 at 2:30 pm
2010 UPDATE:
Personally speaking, I have drunk deeply at the well of the Negro spiritual heritage. When seen through the eyes of Biblical faith, you wonder if they were able to see and live the Christian life far more than many of their white masters.
March 2, 2011 at 11:16 am
Remembering Peter Gomes 3/1/2011:
“Seeking Faith in the midst of ruin”
August 9, 2020 at 10:53 am
Reblogged this on E4unity : A Prophetic Advocate for Unity and Peace and commented:
From the archives. #Blacklivesmatter