By Minister Dr. Zachery Williams
Theologian Gayraud Wilmore, in an interview included in the recently published book, Blow the Trumpet in Zion: Global Vision and Action for the 21st Century Black Church, argued that we live in an age where prophetic Christian voices are for the most part silent, whereas many current public religious figures are not using the Word to speak truth to power and challenge the status quo on a variety of issues affecting people of color and the poor: among these issues and realities include education, health care, unemployment/underemployment, corporate greed, HIV/AIDS, disingenuous religious posturing, and governmental neglect. Furthermore, severe cases of mental illness remain an ever-increasing problem among Black Americans and their families, attributable in large measure to unresolved issues, stemming from the violent and terror-filled past experiences of our ancestors and relatives.
Unfortunately, as we look to the next generation for hope, we are often met by young African Americans more consumed, than at any other time in our history, with stark cynicism, vehement rage, nihilism, and frustration. These our youth, have found more solace in self-centered music, gangs, lonely existences, and other escapist forms of reality as opposed to those institutions, such as the black church and colleges and universities, which have historically sustained our people and provided a strong sense of identity in an otherwise alien land; amongst fellow Americans, that despised our very existence. While we heap extensive criticism on the younger generation, and to an extent some criticism is well-placed, each of us must look squarely into the mirror and assume greater responsibility for our current collective condition as a community, particularly the disillusion of so many great young black minds.
I offer that many youth react so demonstratively in an attempt to seek out honest and real leaders to help them make sense of the times they are living in. Authenticity is a code of the streets, among the Hip Hop generation, and has historically been a characteristic of black leadership. However, lately, most black leaders have been reduced to mere media figure heads and celebrity icons. The young Hip Hop generation witnesses all this and has concluded that many of us are not “keepin it real.” If we speak the truth in love as Dr. King and Malcolm X both admonished us to do, we will gain more of the respect of young adults. Healing must take place but who will lead us in this critical work?
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's most important book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, still remains as neglected a clarion call for black communities as James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. This occurs at a time where the messages and lessons in these works and others are so sorely needed to offset the incredible challenges, mentioned above, facing black communities throughout America and around the world (remember recent events in Paris, France). Rampant poverty continues to afflict most urban cities and rural areas of Black America, the most notable of which remains New Orleans; although New Orleans is certainly not the sole representative. Our fellow brothers and sisters in our very own Akron continue to suffer amidst deplorable conditions of growing unemployment, underemployment, and hopelessness. One problem is that the "Black Church" and black leadership, generally speaking, have largely, with too few notable exceptions, maintained a politically conservative bent in regards to adopting and incorporating a relevant and practical liberation theology, including womanist theology and a critical black men's theology, into its local church ministry. Such a theology and practice as advocated by black religious intellectuals including James Cone and Emile Townes could help guide us in addressing these great ills afflicting so many in our communities. Akin to the "race-traitors" Historian Manning Marable exposes in his book, Great Wells of Democracy, far too many contemporary black preachers, pastors, and aspiring ministers have become more enamored with dollar signs, political payoffs for favors, and intoxicated with the lucrative, popular nature/status of being the next rising star in the "Mega-church" galaxy. While this trend has continued, the masses of black, brown, and poor have suffered incessantly. Nationally, many congregations continue to lack courageous leaders who love the people above the so-called benefits of this world, a world continuing to spiral out of control.
Without effective leadership, our world and its people, will continue to languish and deteriorate.The role of the Black preacher/pastor/religious intellectual has been a complex one throughout the history of Africana America. Yet, despite this complexity of identity and affiliation, there have remained those women and men who rose to the occasion when the times and people called for leadership. Here I summon the names of Jarena Lee, Bishop Vashti McKenzie, Benjamin E. Mays, Bishop Henry McNeil Turner, and countless others. Unfortunately, far too often, faith has been traded in for false witness and the prophetic message of liberation proclaimed by Old Testament prophets and Jesus himself has become a relic of nostalgia for many. Today, church services have become more representative of circus side shows, Sunday morning entertainment clubs, and movie theater performances instead of sites of agency, spiritual salvation, and holistic empowerment. Additionally, church goers seem more eager to flock to attend the problematic and androgynous Amos and Andy slap stick "gospel" plays rather than ministry meetings or NAACP gatherings at the church. Dr. King: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?I call for the young adult black women and men prophets of my generation, the Hip Hop Generation, along with our progressive elders, to stand up and bring Black/Africana theology back to the church. There has always been an uneasy tension between the study of African American History and Theology and the ministry of many local churches.
This gulf must be bridged and the younger generation is the generation equipped to implement and accomplish this important task. Young people cannot do this alone and they must work along with the elders of the community, seeking out the proper guidance and partnership coming from the generations on whose shoulders they stand. When we bring the liberation message of the Gospels, without dilution or sugarcoating, along with the divine wisdom from our cultural experience as chosen people of God, we will bring Jesus back into the Christian church like never before and therefore bring positive change to our communities. In this clarion call, I challenge the Hip Hop prophets to emerge and develop a relevant Hip Hop Liberation Theology. Your generation as well as every generation before you, on whose shoulders you stand, is calling out for you to become the leaders you were destined to be.Black Theologians, Pastors, Ministers, and Professors/Teachers, in our communities, must lead communities in summoning the courage to face the many ghosts in our religious, historical, and cultural closets. Once we recommit ourselves to working together to reclaim the black mind, bridge gender divides and instances of historic discrimination, come to grips with closet issues of sexuality, and close the generational gap, the "Black Church" will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix and assume its rightful place as the bastion of the multi-various Black America communities all across this nation.
Black Churches can only manifest this reality with the proper, prophetic leadership awakening and rising to the occasion. Civil Rights Activist and the guiding influence behind the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Ella Baker said strong people don't always need to be led but in cases where leadership is required, we must implement a model of group- centered leadership. Theologian J. Deotis Roberts similarly called for the development of a Prophethood of Black Believers, a stronger community model of black religious leadership. We must heed these our elders and the lessons of others and develop old/new ways of being unapologetically black and authentically Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.Will the real communities of men and women prophets please come forth? Will the sleeping Lazarus' and Esthers no longer lie sleeping dead! Lazarus and Esther come forth and help lead your people.
In terms of meditating on the idea of the Black Christian Church as representative of the centerpiece of the black community and thereby black community development, I find it a dangerous proposition for those who profess to follow the example of Jesus and have an African America identification to be silent at a time where true Christian voices need to rise and speak consistently against the evils of our day. Instead of figures who narrowly define morality, while condoning injustice and poverty, I argue that we need leaders as religious philosopher Cornel West has called for, “who love the people enough,” over and above themselves and the glory and limelight they can acquire. African America still wrestles with the Du Boisian “double consciousness” and has not fully come to terms with its collective identity and collective past-both positive and negative; although the search for that identity and knowledge/understanding of our history is so critical at this juncture in our sojourn in this homeland of America. In fact, I would argue that African Americans everywhere, and Africana peoples globally, are still in search of self-what psychologist Na’im Akbar calls community of self-self as a healthy and whole individual and self as a healthy and vibrant community. Can we afford to deny ourselves this important knowledge and birthright?
For many of the black working class and poor today, the Black Christian Church represents a bastion reserved for the middle and upper class of the community and an institution less and less engaged with meeting the needs of the least of these in our communities. A similar criticism can be levied against other institutions such as schools, colleges and universities and the intellectuals who inhabit those spaces. Here, we would do well to revisit the important lessons offered by the father of black history, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, eminent black sociologist Edward Franklin Frazier, and historian and cultural critic Harold Cruse. Woodson’s The Miseducation of the Negro and Frazier’s Black Bourgeousie stand as important works of social criticism of the black middle class, arguing against the dangers of adopting elitist mentalities and programs. Similarly, Cruse’s landmark Crisis of the Negro Intellectual examines the role of many black intellectuals in American society as being irrelevant and disconnected from the hopes and aspirations of the masses of the people. Although written in the 1930s and 1960s, these works reveal biting, yet, constructive criticisms that are as valid and valuable today. Black Intellectuals, including Black religious leaders and theologians, of which I represent all three, should be more than ivory and ebony tower thinkers and figures. We must connect with the people and really assume more of a public role. We must do deep soul searching as preacher and theologian Howard Thurman directed us to do. Change begins within each of us.
However, as we proceed to function as real public intellectuals, professors, ministers, theologians, and non-traditional teachers, the wisdom and example of philosopher and cultural critic Alain LeRoy Locke, Minister Malcolm X, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Ida B. Wells offer must needed direction for us. These leaders urge us to use the tools of self-criticism and models taken from African America History and Culture to guide the development of our leadership and teaching philosophies, organizations, and programs.
In this regard, I propose that we develop urban CommUniversities where anyone of any age can attend and enroll. The CommUniversity curriculum would use Pan African/Africana Studies, History, and other disciplines to engage the community and attempt to develop an educational institution that could serve as a vital nucleus of community change and development, supporting the work of prophetic churches and other religious institutions; one that is squarely situated in the community but partnering with nearby colleges and universities, as well as churches and local civic groups. Such an institution, I firmly believe, will connect the needs of the people to the resources and expertise of those trained in the study of Africana life and culture. Taking it a step further, we must then proceed to train community residents to become the professors, professionals, and leaders of their own communities and promote a much needed enhancement of collective self-esteem and community development. Designed as a more ambitious adult education program, the curriculum, overall set-up and functioning of the CommUniversity should model the set-up of the best colleges and universities in our region and nation. The difference in the two would be that the CommUniversity would specifically partner with institutions working to improve the African American community, such as churches, civic organizations, non-profits, businesses, health care facilities, and social service agencies. Its graduates and students would work to promote community change, development, and empowerment with the education they acquire.
When leaders and community residents can both begin with a critical internal examination of their role and extend that criticism outward, we can meet in the middle on “common ground” and follow through on platforms developed collectively. This remains our challenge today, to develop as historian John Hope Franklin advises “unity without uniformity” but keeping in mind the noble words of the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” We must focus our goal on becoming one diverse community again and function in dialogue with Diasporan communities all over the world, spanning throughout the African continent and Latin America to Europe, South America, Asia, and Central America.
Inspired by the words of Mahatma Gandhi and community activist Ron Daniels: We are the leaders we have been waiting for so let’s get to work!
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