Inquiry is the root of all understanding. By questions, one learns cognitively.
One of my great frustrations with the black church, growing up, was its discouragement of questions, its apparent disdain of inquiry. One was expected to accept, verbatim and without questioning, one’s church’s doctrines, dogmas, articles of faith, rituals, teachings, and perspectives, even if unnatural or illogical.
This grated against my spirit of inquiry. I loved science, literature, history. I was full of questions. Questions represented a challenge to the elders of our church, who were of limited education and understanding, themselves. Rev. Christopher Columbus Butler, the pastor at my home church, St. Matthews C.M.E. (Christian Methodist Episcopal) in Meacham Park, Missouri called me “the philosopher”. That characterization discomfited me. Even though I was dubbed such in the presence of my mother, a mighty woman of God, I still felt tacitly demeaned.
Now, though, I accept that moniker and fully appreciate that pastor’s perspicacity.
When I was twelve, they placed me in the adult Sunday school class, which I enjoyed, the short time I was there. My incessant questions, however, got me removed from that adult class and remanded to the children’s Sunday school to teach catechism to younger children: lessons from approved, prescribed literature.
My request to teach a course in black history from Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER in 1967 to the youth of the church was rudely rejected publicly and from the pulpit, by Rev. Butler. He had said “Black is ugly. Stick your hand in a jar of axle grease. Pull it out and look at it. That’s ugly.” After that brazen rebuke, I stopped going to our church, or, to any church, regularly, between the ages 16 to 26. It appeared to me that black church leaders preferred ignorance to insight. On the other hand, I craved wisdom and understanding, even as I loved our unique African American culture. To me, they blended seamlessly together. During the ten-year hiatus, however, I would periodically pop in and out of various Christian venues to see “if they were ready for me yet”.
One church that was ready for me was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, (AME) although I did not, as yet, perceive it to be so. Also in 1967, I had attended a three hour lecture led by the renowned black historian, John Henrik Clarke. He taught about eight (8) of us, who had responded to a short article in The St. Louis Argus newspaper. We went on a life-changing five thousand year journey from ancient Nubia to 1967, in the basement of now-Bishop C. Garnett Henning’s, St. Paul A.M.E.; the Mother Church west of the Mississippi River, one unforgettable Saturday morning. The scales fell from our eyes. We saw ourselves in a new light.
I recall going to the School of Religion at Howard University, where I was a student, in 1969 or 1970, to audit a course on “Black Theology” being taught by Father Deramus. But, I quickly discovered that course, based on Charles Cone’s book, had less to do with “blackness”—my area of interest—than it did with “theology” and “religion” which I could do without, I thought, largely because exceptions notwithstanding, it was an “opiate of the masses” to quote Marx’s popular canard from that frothy era. Dr. Charles Cone, also an ordained AME preacher, shook up, temporarily traumatized, Protestant theology with his books.
Dr. Cone is best known for his ground-breaking works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970); he is also the author of the highly acclaimed God of the Oppressed (1975), and of Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare? (1991); all of which works have been translated into nine languages. His most recent publication is Risks of Faith (1999). I had breakfast with Dr. Cone, along with my wife, Lyla, in Maui, Hawaii in January 1999, where we also heard him preach, during a mid-year conference of the National Bar Association. We found him to be a warm and gracious man with sparkling eyes. Any dogmatic or chromatic theology, be it his or others', is mocked and circumscribed by the autonomic and immanent "nature" of God. This is true whether that theology is “black”, “white”, or otherwise; because, God is all in all!
Having been raised in church from infancy, though, there were certain values and preferences which I found to be inescapable. For me, these consisted of good preaching, strong prayers, and good gospel music. So, I loved the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, like him, who used the gospel to address our concrete, day-to-day living conditions. I loved the fervent prayers of righteous worshippers, and I loved old spirituals and gospel music anywhere, at any time.
Soon, I began to seek spiritual awakening in diverse fields. That is how I met Dr. Leon Wright, also at Howard, when I was in the law school around 1975. Here was a man who could appreciate my self-characterization as “a child in the wind.” He had studied in Burma among the Buddhists and had reached the depth only attained by 1 in 10,000 priests. I remember very little of what he said. I do recall his patient and engaged presence as I beat my spiritual wings attempting to fly.
While at Howard, I also reveled with our gospel choir, and lusted after the portentous and powerful prayers of Dr. Evans Crawford, the Dean of Rankin Chapel. Along the way, I met members of the Nation of Islam, particularly Minister Lonnie Shabazz, Ph. D. in mathematics, who was the leader of Temple No.4 in Washington, D.C. who impressed me with their self-confident discipline.
Always echoing in my spirit, however, was a sermon, I had heard on St. Louis radio, by a Reverend Ross, in 1968 which was laden with spirit, love and black historical power. My sister, Schleria, and I jumped into my car and drove downtown, when I was 17, all the while listening to the radio, in an attempt to find Ross’ church. We never found it. The message may well have been pre-recorded. The point is: I was moved by it. We were moved by it. And we, impulsively, moved toward it. Until I read David Walker’s1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States, that radio sermon was the most stirring treatment of black historical theology that I had ever heard or experienced. That sermon by Rev. Ross—if that was his name--became the template by which I measured all others.
During the summer of 1975, while at Howard Law School, I was a law clerk to Commissioner Benjamin L. Hooks, the first black commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. Dr. Hooks was both a former judge and a Baptist preacher, and became a latent role model to me. He had pastored two churches simultaneously in Memphis and Detroit, and later became the Executive Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He also owned, in whole or in part, two radio stations in Detroit and in Memphis.
Moving to Kansas City in 1976, the “Bicentennial Year,” from Washington, D.C., I visited St. James United Methodist Church where now-Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II was then pastor. It was, then, on Gregory Boulevard. I also visited Unity Southeast Temple, where Rev. Wentworth Jenkins was the pastor, and various other churches, especially Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, where the blessed and beloved Rev. Wallace S. Hartsfield, Sr. was then the pastor.
Rev. Hartfield, a graduate The Interdenominational School of Theology (ITC) in Atlanta, Georgia, helped me to sponsor the visit of Dr. Charles B. Copher, an Old Testament Scholar, and one of his former ITC professors, to Kansas City to discuss “Blacks in and of The Bible” during the early 1980’s when I was still publishing THE NILE REVIEW newsletter. That Sunday, Rev. Dr. Copher preached passionately at Rev. Hartfield’s church. But, this preeminently black, religious, scholar never mentioned anything about blacks in the Bible, as he’d done so well the day before at the Nile Company's free, public lecture, to my utter amazement!
I’ve never ceased to be amazed by black preachers who hide or ignore the black history candle under a bushel basket, when given an opportunity to teach or preach! In the late1970’s, for another example, I recall mailing out over 170 packets of literature to every black church I could identify in Kansas City, offering free black history lectures, and black history book sales. I received one response, which canceled later. Maybe, it’s the people; or, maybe it’s their preacher, that rejects black history. It may well be both! It’s rather like the chicken and the egg dilemma! If they can preach Hebrew history, why not black history, I marveled?
During the 1980s, I came into contact with Prince Aciel Ben Israel of the African Hebrew Nation of Jerusalem. This group had migrated from Chicago with Ben Ammi, its spiritual leader and founder, to Didona, Israel, by way of Liberia, during the 1960’s. During this same time span, I also invited Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang, Chairman of the African Studies Program at Howard, to Kansas City to speak about his book, ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN IDENTITY. We accompanied this Gambia native to the Islamic Center of Kansas City for his lecture presentation, on his book. There, we all participated in Islamic worship services, including my three pre-adolescent sons: Andre, Imhotep and Kemet.
During the early to middle 1980’s, I had finished reading the BIBLE and the QURAN, along with other spiritual works. I had also opened correspondence with, among others, Dr. John S. Mbiti, author of African Religions and Philosophy, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, author of The Black Muslims In America, and The Black Church in the African-American Experience and with Og Mandino, author The Greatest Salesman in the World, all of whose books I had read and enjoyed.
During the same period, I had also taught a black history course through the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s “Communiversity” program entitled, “Black History the Sacred Secret.” In a further attempt to “heighten the consciousness” of Kansas City residents, I had also brought in such speakers as Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, of Rutgers University, who wrote THEY CAME BEFORE COLUMBUS, and who founded the JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS. I brought in Dr. Tony Martin, author of RACE FIRST, a former professor at Wellesley College, from Trinidad and Tobago. I also brought in John G. Jackson, John Henrik Clarke’s teacher, who wrote INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS and MAN, GOD AND CIVILIZATION, but who was an unabashed atheist. Yet and still, I was frustrated though by my lack of progress.
In 1985, my overflowing spiritual, and ecumenical rapture, resulted in the self-publication of “Exhalations from my Soul” in THE NILE REVIEW’S final issue, with a beautiful cover by my brother, Alvin Kennedy Coleman. I had begun publishing THE NILE REVIEW in 1981, the inaugural issue being “Garvey Lives”. It sold for $1.00 was distributed at a public gathering in Swope Park.
Ensuing issues had treated: “Back History: The Sacred Secret;” “Booker T. Washington: Our Great Redeemer;” “Black Power Revisited:” “The Strange Career of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois;” “Commander King: Nonviolent Conqueror;” “Throw Down Time: The Economics of Self-Determination;” “J.A. Rogers Rediscovered;” “Of Malcolm and Muhammad;” “Frederick Douglass, A Lion of A Man;” “The Haitians;” “Call of the Womb;” “The West and The Rest of Us;” “Of Nationalism and Capitalism;” [“Why Black Artists Should Not Perform in the Racist Apartheid of South Africa” by Leon Dixon]; “The Mis-Education of the Negro;” “Notes from the Motherland;” [The Ways Missionaries Did It: An Inside African Story” by Dr. T.Y. Mcharro]; “Black Man, Black Woman: Can the Breach Be Healed?” and, of course, “Exhalations from My Soul,” the textual vortex for future Quantum Inquiry Temple. This tiny newsletter circulated all over the world, and had been well-received by the late, great Dr. Cheik Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal among others.
That “Exhalations from my Soul” essay became my spiritual and theological bellwether. It still is years later. In 1993, I came to confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior on Palm Sunday, following a serious illness in 1992, while in St. Louis. While I convalesced at the hospital, I promised Jesus Christ that if he would give me back my life, that I would give it to him. He did, and I did. Having been hospitalized for twelve (12) days, I was blessed to recuperate, upon my release, at the home of my parents in Rock Hill, Missouri: Elvis Mitchell and Margie Dean Coleman, whom I overheard say: “We haven’t had a chance to take care of that baby in a long time.” That ironic statement caused me, a then 41-year old, self-employed lawyer, to laugh, inwardly; yet, I nevertheless reflexively assumed the fetal position in their bed, at the same time! Love is a great and true healer!
Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, Rev. Alvin L. Smith, Pastor, became my church home; though, truth be known, I had been mortally wounded, by Rev. Wallace Hartsfield, of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, in the spirit, the prior Sunday. Yet, with a little help from my friend, Elvis “Sonny” Gibson—who told me about Rev. Smith's black historical interest--I was able to stagger into and fall prostrate at the altar of Allen. He had preached “Looking for A Few Good Men,” a powerful sermon named after a then-popular movie. It fit me. But, what got me was the invitation that he read from 139th Psalms: “Oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me....” Each verse convicted me. I was trapped, cornered. I capitulated. Following a four years as a licentiate, when I attended courses prescribed by the Dean of our Board of Examiners, Rev. John J. Hunter, I was ordained in 1998, as an Itinerant Elder by the late Bishop Vernon R. Byrd in the Fifth Episcopal District, in the former Northwest Missouri Conference. I am still an ordained itinerant elder with supernumerary status in the A.M.E. church, just as I am also still a Missouri attorney (admitted 1977) with inactive status.
I have pastored three different churches in western Missouri: Brooks Chapel in Butler, Missouri; Grant Memorial and Ebenezer-Grant, which two later merged together, with my assistance, both in St. Joseph, Missouri. By far, my longest and most significant service was at Brooks Chapel in Butler. There, I organized the Amen Society, a benevolent corporation in 1999, which raised over $30,000, to commission the erection of a black soldier bronze statue on the town square to commemorate the first black troops to fight, and to valorously die, in the American Civil War: The First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, which fought on October 28-29, 1862, in a battle known as “The Skirmish at Island Mound” eight miles from Butler. That statue, by Joel Randall, of Edmund, Oklahoma, was dedicated in October 2008, amid fanfare, with funds we few had raised through faith and work.
Just prior to joining the A.M.E.’s, my friend and brother, Robert Earl Easley and I, used to study God’s word and to collaborate spiritually with a group of evolving brothers under the aegis of the “Temple of Faith,” a voluntary association, from the late 1980’s through the mid 1990’s. On one occasion, we brought in the late, great school teacher, Jake Patton Beason, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, author of WHY WE LOSE, who spoke at various venues including the legendary Epicurean Restaurant and Lounge, which was owned by Benny and Calvin Shelby, who were also members of the Temple of Faith.
Our greatest activity was “Ceremonies in Black Manhood”, an event for Black men only, which was hosted on the night of December 31, 1989, at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Wallace Hartfield, Sr., pastor. Ritualistically climaxing with the hundred or so black men present, and the few black women who would not be dissuaded, coming down the aisle and looking into a mirror in order to “behold the face of God,” this event harkened back to the “watch-night” services attending the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on December 31, 1862. Rev. Hartsfield befriended Robert and me, even though neither of us, then, attended his church. He saw through us, in love. Now, both Robert and I are ordained ministers in the gospel of Jesus Christ: he Baptist, with me Methodist.
In 1991, at the prompting and guidance of now- Past Master, Robert Earl Easley, practically all of the brothers in the Temple of Faith were “knocked down” and raised up Master Masons in Prudence Lodge #6, Kansas Jurisdiction, Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons. Shortly thereafter, The Temple of Faith disbanded.
In 1995, the 2019 prophesy was revealed to me, by the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I had just finished reading about “soteriology”, the study of the history of salvation, in Pope John Paul II’s CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, when the Spirit said, “Look at your notes.” This was on January 25, 1995. I flipped open one of my scriptural note pads, and saw Genesis 15:12-15 highlighted with the annotation “Prophesy for Afro-America” handwritten beside it. Reading that passage, I realized in an instant that the 400 years mentioned therein referred, allegorically, to the 400 year sojourn through enslavement of Africans in America from which they would be liberated in 2019, some 400 years after the Jamestown, Virginia, captivity in 1619. That 1619 date was ingrained in me, after I had read Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER at age 16. I have compiled and organized over 600 scriptural references supporting this thesis, and have published a summary of it in THE KANSAS CITY GLOBE newspaper in April-May 1995. I yet need to publish this prophecy-deliverance , and pray that God gives me strength and power to do so, when it is most expedient to do so, or that a publisher with puissance appears to relieve me of this “burden”, as Garvey says.
Now, the Lord has revealed a new thing, which transcends “race” and retribution.
In the early 2000’s I was the host of a radio program, entitled “A Little More Leaven” on KGGN-AM Christian Radio, which explored my evolving theological sentiments. I had also co-hosted a KPRS-FM radio show with poet/activist Lloyd Daniel, in the 1980's called “Point/Counterpoint,” a black consciousness version of “60-Minutes'” show. A few legal clients sought me out by reason of these efforts.
In 2005, the National Bar Association voted into existence a new section on “Law and Religion” which I had been working on since, at least 1998, when I served as the NBA’s first Chaplain during its Memphis, Tennessee convention. In Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2004, the Holy Spirit descended as scales fell away from the eyes of believers, and able allies/attorneys like Rev. Dr. Kwame Reed, Calvin Allen and Robert Bell rallied to the cause. During the 2005 convention in Orlando, Florida, we presented our petitions for establishment of a section, and I moved for its establishment, which motion was referred to the Executive Committee, the latter voting us into existence during its meeting in Los Angeles. I drafted the petitions for membership signatures, drafted and implemented the bylaws, presided over the opening seminars. I deflected an attempt to deform or destroy the section by Muslims and other self-righteous “mendicants” during the NBA convention in Detroit in 2006. I was voted in as a “Guardian” or board member, and have served as the original historian of the section, from 2006-2012. I also attended our section's first “Church and the Law” Conference in Columbia, Maryland, in May 2010, but sustained a hemiplegic stroke—left-sided---in July 2010, which precluded me attending August 2010's New Orleans convention; our May 2011 “Church and the Law” Conference in Atlanta, as well as our July/August 2011 convention in Baltimore, Maryland. I have also written articles for the section’s newsletter. The journey continues. God ain't through with me yet.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY HOME
Larry Delano Coleman
MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY HOME
12/28/13
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Inquiry is the root of all understanding. By questions, one learns cognitively.
One of my great frustrations with the black church, growing up, was its discouragement of questions, its apparent disdain of inquiry. One was expected to accept, verbatim and without questioning, one’s church’s doctrines, dogmas, articles of faith, rituals, teachings, and perspectives, even if unnatural or illogical.
This grated against my spirit of inquiry. I loved science, literature, history. I was full of questions. Questions represented a challenge to the elders of our church, who were of limited education and understanding, themselves. Rev. Christopher Columbus Butler, the pastor at my home church, St. Matthews C.M.E. (Christian Methodist Episcopal) in Meacham Park, Missouri called me “the philosopher”. That characterization discomfited me. Even though I was dubbed such in the presence of my mother, a mighty woman of God, I still felt tacitly demeaned.
Now, though, I accept that moniker and fully appreciate that pastor’s perspicacity.
When I was twelve, they placed me in the adult Sunday school class, which I enjoyed, the short time I was there. My incessant questions, however, got me removed from that adult class and remanded to the children’s Sunday school to teach catechism to younger children: lessons from approved, prescribed literature.
My request to teach a course in black history from Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER in 1967 to the youth of the church was rudely rejected publicly and from the pulpit, by Rev. Butler. He had said “Black is ugly. Stick your hand in a jar of axle grease. Pull it out and look at it. That’s ugly.” After that brazen rebuke, I stopped going to our church, or, to any church, regularly, between the ages 16 to 26. It appeared to me that black church leaders preferred ignorance to insight. On the other hand, I craved wisdom and understanding, even as I loved our unique African American culture. To me, they blended seamlessly together. During the ten-year hiatus, however, I would periodically pop in and out of various Christian venues to see “if they were ready for me yet”.
One church that was ready for me was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, (AME) although I did not, as yet, perceive it to be so. Also in 1967, I had attended a three hour lecture led by the renowned black historian, John Henrik Clarke. He taught about eight (8) of us, who had responded to a short article in The St. Louis Argus newspaper. We went on a life-changing five thousand year journey from ancient Nubia to 1967, in the basement of now-Bishop C. Garnett Henning’s, St. Paul A.M.E.; the Mother Church west of the Mississippi River, one unforgettable Saturday morning. The scales fell from our eyes. We saw ourselves in a new light.
I recall going to the School of Religion at Howard University, where I was a student, in 1969 or 1970, to audit a course on “Black Theology” being taught by Father Deramus. But, I quickly discovered that course, based on Charles Cone’s book, had less to do with “blackness”—my area of interest—than it did with “theology” and “religion” which I could do without, I thought, largely because exceptions notwithstanding, it was an “opiate of the masses” to quote Marx’s popular canard from that frothy era. Dr. Charles Cone, also an ordained AME preacher, shook up, temporarily traumatized, Protestant theology with his books.
Dr. Cone is best known for his ground-breaking works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970); he is also the author of the highly acclaimed God of the Oppressed (1975), and of Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare? (1991); all of which works have been translated into nine languages. His most recent publication is Risks of Faith (1999). I had breakfast with Dr. Cone, along with my wife, Lyla, in Maui, Hawaii in January 1999, where we also heard him preach, during a mid-year conference of the National Bar Association. We found him to be a warm and gracious man with sparkling eyes. Any dogmatic or chromatic theology, be it his or others', is mocked and circumscribed by the autonomic and immanent "nature" of God. This is true whether that theology is “black”, “white”, or otherwise; because, God is all in all!
Having been raised in church from infancy, though, there were certain values and preferences which I found to be inescapable. For me, these consisted of good preaching, strong prayers, and good gospel music. So, I loved the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, like him, who used the gospel to address our concrete, day-to-day living conditions. I loved the fervent prayers of righteous worshippers, and I loved old spirituals and gospel music anywhere, at any time.
Soon, I began to seek spiritual awakening in diverse fields. That is how I met Dr. Leon Wright, also at Howard, when I was in the law school around 1975. Here was a man who could appreciate my self-characterization as “a child in the wind.” He had studied in Burma among the Buddhists and had reached the depth only attained by 1 in 10,000 priests. I remember very little of what he said. I do recall his patient and engaged presence as I beat my spiritual wings attempting to fly.
While at Howard, I also reveled with our gospel choir, and lusted after the portentous and powerful prayers of Dr. Evans Crawford, the Dean of Rankin Chapel. Along the way, I met members of the Nation of Islam, particularly Minister Lonnie Shabazz, Ph. D. in mathematics, who was the leader of Temple No.4 in Washington, D.C. who impressed me with their self-confident discipline.
Always echoing in my spirit, however, was a sermon, I had heard on St. Louis radio, by a Reverend Ross, in 1968 which was laden with spirit, love and black historical power. My sister, Schleria, and I jumped into my car and drove downtown, when I was 17, all the while listening to the radio, in an attempt to find Ross’ church. We never found it. The message may well have been pre-recorded. The point is: I was moved by it. We were moved by it. And we, impulsively, moved toward it. Until I read David Walker’s1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States, that radio sermon was the most stirring treatment of black historical theology that I had ever heard or experienced. That sermon by Rev. Ross—if that was his name--became the template by which I measured all others.
During the summer of 1975, while at Howard Law School, I was a law clerk to Commissioner Benjamin L. Hooks, the first black commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. Dr. Hooks was both a former judge and a Baptist preacher, and became a latent role model to me. He had pastored two churches simultaneously in Memphis and Detroit, and later became the Executive Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He also owned, in whole or in part, two radio stations in Detroit and in Memphis.
Moving to Kansas City in 1976, the “Bicentennial Year,” from Washington, D.C., I visited St. James United Methodist Church where now-Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II was then pastor. It was, then, on Gregory Boulevard. I also visited Unity Southeast Temple, where Rev. Wentworth Jenkins was the pastor, and various other churches, especially Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, where the blessed and beloved Rev. Wallace S. Hartsfield, Sr. was then the pastor.
Rev. Hartfield, a graduate The Interdenominational School of Theology (ITC) in Atlanta, Georgia, helped me to sponsor the visit of Dr. Charles B. Copher, an Old Testament Scholar, and one of his former ITC professors, to Kansas City to discuss “Blacks in and of The Bible” during the early 1980’s when I was still publishing THE NILE REVIEW newsletter. That Sunday, Rev. Dr. Copher preached passionately at Rev. Hartfield’s church. But, this preeminently black, religious, scholar never mentioned anything about blacks in the Bible, as he’d done so well the day before at the Nile Company's free, public lecture, to my utter amazement!
I’ve never ceased to be amazed by black preachers who hide or ignore the black history candle under a bushel basket, when given an opportunity to teach or preach! In the late1970’s, for another example, I recall mailing out over 170 packets of literature to every black church I could identify in Kansas City, offering free black history lectures, and black history book sales. I received one response, which canceled later. Maybe, it’s the people; or, maybe it’s their preacher, that rejects black history. It may well be both! It’s rather like the chicken and the egg dilemma! If they can preach Hebrew history, why not black history, I marveled?
During the 1980s, I came into contact with Prince Aciel Ben Israel of the African Hebrew Nation of Jerusalem. This group had migrated from Chicago with Ben Ammi, its spiritual leader and founder, to Didona, Israel, by way of Liberia, during the 1960’s. During this same time span, I also invited Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang, Chairman of the African Studies Program at Howard, to Kansas City to speak about his book, ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN IDENTITY. We accompanied this Gambia native to the Islamic Center of Kansas City for his lecture presentation, on his book. There, we all participated in Islamic worship services, including my three pre-adolescent sons: Andre, Imhotep and Kemet.
During the early to middle 1980’s, I had finished reading the BIBLE and the QURAN, along with other spiritual works. I had also opened correspondence with, among others, Dr. John S. Mbiti, author of African Religions and Philosophy, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, author of The Black Muslims In America, and The Black Church in the African-American Experience and with Og Mandino, author The Greatest Salesman in the World, all of whose books I had read and enjoyed.
During the same period, I had also taught a black history course through the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s “Communiversity” program entitled, “Black History the Sacred Secret.” In a further attempt to “heighten the consciousness” of Kansas City residents, I had also brought in such speakers as Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, of Rutgers University, who wrote THEY CAME BEFORE COLUMBUS, and who founded the JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS. I brought in Dr. Tony Martin, author of RACE FIRST, a former professor at Wellesley College, from Trinidad and Tobago. I also brought in John G. Jackson, John Henrik Clarke’s teacher, who wrote INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS and MAN, GOD AND CIVILIZATION, but who was an unabashed atheist. Yet and still, I was frustrated though by my lack of progress.
In 1985, my overflowing spiritual, and ecumenical rapture, resulted in the self-publication of “Exhalations from my Soul” in THE NILE REVIEW’S final issue, with a beautiful cover by my brother, Alvin Kennedy Coleman. I had begun publishing THE NILE REVIEW in 1981, the inaugural issue being “Garvey Lives”. It sold for $1.00 was distributed at a public gathering in Swope Park.
Ensuing issues had treated: “Back History: The Sacred Secret;” “Booker T. Washington: Our Great Redeemer;” “Black Power Revisited:” “The Strange Career of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois;” “Commander King: Nonviolent Conqueror;” “Throw Down Time: The Economics of Self-Determination;” “J.A. Rogers Rediscovered;” “Of Malcolm and Muhammad;” “Frederick Douglass, A Lion of A Man;” “The Haitians;” “Call of the Womb;” “The West and The Rest of Us;” “Of Nationalism and Capitalism;” [“Why Black Artists Should Not Perform in the Racist Apartheid of South Africa” by Leon Dixon]; “The Mis-Education of the Negro;” “Notes from the Motherland;” [The Ways Missionaries Did It: An Inside African Story” by Dr. T.Y. Mcharro]; “Black Man, Black Woman: Can the Breach Be Healed?” and, of course, “Exhalations from My Soul,” the textual vortex for future Quantum Inquiry Temple. This tiny newsletter circulated all over the world, and had been well-received by the late, great Dr. Cheik Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal among others.
That “Exhalations from my Soul” essay became my spiritual and theological bellwether. It still is years later. In 1993, I came to confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior on Palm Sunday, following a serious illness in 1992, while in St. Louis. While I convalesced at the hospital, I promised Jesus Christ that if he would give me back my life, that I would give it to him. He did, and I did. Having been hospitalized for twelve (12) days, I was blessed to recuperate, upon my release, at the home of my parents in Rock Hill, Missouri: Elvis Mitchell and Margie Dean Coleman, whom I overheard say: “We haven’t had a chance to take care of that baby in a long time.” That ironic statement caused me, a then 41-year old, self-employed lawyer, to laugh, inwardly; yet, I nevertheless reflexively assumed the fetal position in their bed, at the same time! Love is a great and true healer!
Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, Rev. Alvin L. Smith, Pastor, became my church home; though, truth be known, I had been mortally wounded, by Rev. Wallace Hartsfield, of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, in the spirit, the prior Sunday. Yet, with a little help from my friend, Elvis “Sonny” Gibson—who told me about Rev. Smith's black historical interest--I was able to stagger into and fall prostrate at the altar of Allen. He had preached “Looking for A Few Good Men,” a powerful sermon named after a then-popular movie. It fit me. But, what got me was the invitation that he read from 139th Psalms: “Oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me....” Each verse convicted me. I was trapped, cornered. I capitulated. Following a four years as a licentiate, when I attended courses prescribed by the Dean of our Board of Examiners, Rev. John J. Hunter, I was ordained in 1998, as an Itinerant Elder by the late Bishop Vernon R. Byrd in the Fifth Episcopal District, in the former Northwest Missouri Conference. I am still an ordained itinerant elder with supernumerary status in the A.M.E. church, just as I am also still a Missouri attorney (admitted 1977) with inactive status.
I have pastored three different churches in western Missouri: Brooks Chapel in Butler, Missouri; Grant Memorial and Ebenezer-Grant, which two later merged together, with my assistance, both in St. Joseph, Missouri. By far, my longest and most significant service was at Brooks Chapel in Butler. There, I organized the Amen Society, a benevolent corporation in 1999, which raised over $30,000, to commission the erection of a black soldier bronze statue on the town square to commemorate the first black troops to fight, and to valorously die, in the American Civil War: The First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, which fought on October 28-29, 1862, in a battle known as “The Skirmish at Island Mound” eight miles from Butler. That statue, by Joel Randall, of Edmund, Oklahoma, was dedicated in October 2008, amid fanfare, with funds we few had raised through faith and work.
Just prior to joining the A.M.E.’s, my friend and brother, Robert Earl Easley and I, used to study God’s word and to collaborate spiritually with a group of evolving brothers under the aegis of the “Temple of Faith,” a voluntary association, from the late 1980’s through the mid 1990’s. On one occasion, we brought in the late, great school teacher, Jake Patton Beason, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, author of WHY WE LOSE, who spoke at various venues including the legendary Epicurean Restaurant and Lounge, which was owned by Benny and Calvin Shelby, who were also members of the Temple of Faith.
Our greatest activity was “Ceremonies in Black Manhood”, an event for Black men only, which was hosted on the night of December 31, 1989, at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Wallace Hartfield, Sr., pastor. Ritualistically climaxing with the hundred or so black men present, and the few black women who would not be dissuaded, coming down the aisle and looking into a mirror in order to “behold the face of God,” this event harkened back to the “watch-night” services attending the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on December 31, 1862. Rev. Hartsfield befriended Robert and me, even though neither of us, then, attended his church. He saw through us, in love. Now, both Robert and I are ordained ministers in the gospel of Jesus Christ: he Baptist, with me Methodist.
In 1991, at the prompting and guidance of now- Past Master, Robert Earl Easley, practically all of the brothers in the Temple of Faith were “knocked down” and raised up Master Masons in Prudence Lodge #6, Kansas Jurisdiction, Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons. Shortly thereafter, The Temple of Faith disbanded.
In 1995, the 2019 prophesy was revealed to me, by the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I had just finished reading about “soteriology”, the study of the history of salvation, in Pope John Paul II’s CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, when the Spirit said, “Look at your notes.” This was on January 25, 1995. I flipped open one of my scriptural note pads, and saw Genesis 15:12-15 highlighted with the annotation “Prophesy for Afro-America” handwritten beside it. Reading that passage, I realized in an instant that the 400 years mentioned therein referred, allegorically, to the 400 year sojourn through enslavement of Africans in America from which they would be liberated in 2019, some 400 years after the Jamestown, Virginia, captivity in 1619. That 1619 date was ingrained in me, after I had read Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER at age 16. I have compiled and organized over 600 scriptural references supporting this thesis, and have published a summary of it in THE KANSAS CITY GLOBE newspaper in April-May 1995. I yet need to publish this prophecy-deliverance , and pray that God gives me strength and power to do so, when it is most expedient to do so, or that a publisher with puissance appears to relieve me of this “burden”, as Garvey says.
Now, the Lord has revealed a new thing, which transcends “race” and retribution.
In the early 2000’s I was the host of a radio program, entitled “A Little More Leaven” on KGGN-AM Christian Radio, which explored my evolving theological sentiments. I had also co-hosted a KPRS-FM radio show with poet/activist Lloyd Daniel, in the 1980's called “Point/Counterpoint,” a black consciousness version of “60-Minutes'” show. A few legal clients sought me out by reason of these efforts.
In 2005, the National Bar Association voted into existence a new section on “Law and Religion” which I had been working on since, at least 1998, when I served as the NBA’s first Chaplain during its Memphis, Tennessee convention. In Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2004, the Holy Spirit descended as scales fell away from the eyes of believers, and able allies/attorneys like Rev. Dr. Kwame Reed, Calvin Allen and Robert Bell rallied to the cause. During the 2005 convention in Orlando, Florida, we presented our petitions for establishment of a section, and I moved for its establishment, which motion was referred to the Executive Committee, the latter voting us into existence during its meeting in Los Angeles. I drafted the petitions for membership signatures, drafted and implemented the bylaws, presided over the opening seminars. I deflected an attempt to deform or destroy the section by Muslims and other self-righteous “mendicants” during the NBA convention in Detroit in 2006. I was voted in as a “Guardian” or board member, and have served as the original historian of the section, from 2006-2012. I also attended our section's first “Church and the Law” Conference in Columbia, Maryland, in May 2010, but sustained a hemiplegic stroke—left-sided---in July 2010, which precluded me attending August 2010's New Orleans convention; our May 2011 “Church and the Law” Conference in Atlanta, as well as our July/August 2011 convention in Baltimore, Maryland. I have also written articles for the section’s newsletter. The journey continues. God ain't through with me yet.
Inquiry is the root of all understanding. By questions, one learns cognitively.
One of my great frustrations with the black church, growing up, was its discouragement of questions, its apparent disdain of inquiry. One was expected to accept, verbatim and without questioning, one’s church’s doctrines, dogmas, articles of faith, rituals, teachings, and perspectives, even if unnatural or illogical.
This grated against my spirit of inquiry. I loved science, literature, history. I was full of questions. Questions represented a challenge to the elders of our church, who were of limited education and understanding, themselves. Rev. Christopher Columbus Butler, the pastor at my home church, St. Matthews C.M.E. (Christian Methodist Episcopal) in Meacham Park, Missouri called me “the philosopher”. That characterization discomfited me. Even though I was dubbed such in the presence of my mother, a mighty woman of God, I still felt tacitly demeaned.
Now, though, I accept that moniker and fully appreciate that pastor’s perspicacity.
When I was twelve, they placed me in the adult Sunday school class, which I enjoyed, the short time I was there. My incessant questions, however, got me removed from that adult class and remanded to the children’s Sunday school to teach catechism to younger children: lessons from approved, prescribed literature.
My request to teach a course in black history from Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER in 1967 to the youth of the church was rudely rejected publicly and from the pulpit, by Rev. Butler. He had said “Black is ugly. Stick your hand in a jar of axle grease. Pull it out and look at it. That’s ugly.” After that brazen rebuke, I stopped going to our church, or, to any church, regularly, between the ages 16 to 26. It appeared to me that black church leaders preferred ignorance to insight. On the other hand, I craved wisdom and understanding, even as I loved our unique African American culture. To me, they blended seamlessly together. During the ten-year hiatus, however, I would periodically pop in and out of various Christian venues to see “if they were ready for me yet”.
One church that was ready for me was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, (AME) although I did not, as yet, perceive it to be so. Also in 1967, I had attended a three hour lecture led by the renowned black historian, John Henrik Clarke. He taught about eight (8) of us, who had responded to a short article in The St. Louis Argus newspaper. We went on a life-changing five thousand year journey from ancient Nubia to 1967, in the basement of now-Bishop C. Garnett Henning’s, St. Paul A.M.E.; the Mother Church west of the Mississippi River, one unforgettable Saturday morning. The scales fell from our eyes. We saw ourselves in a new light.
I recall going to the School of Religion at Howard University, where I was a student, in 1969 or 1970, to audit a course on “Black Theology” being taught by Father Deramus. But, I quickly discovered that course, based on Charles Cone’s book, had less to do with “blackness”—my area of interest—than it did with “theology” and “religion” which I could do without, I thought, largely because exceptions notwithstanding, it was an “opiate of the masses” to quote Marx’s popular canard from that frothy era. Dr. Charles Cone, also an ordained AME preacher, shook up, temporarily traumatized, Protestant theology with his books.
Dr. Cone is best known for his ground-breaking works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970); he is also the author of the highly acclaimed God of the Oppressed (1975), and of Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare? (1991); all of which works have been translated into nine languages. His most recent publication is Risks of Faith (1999). I had breakfast with Dr. Cone, along with my wife, Lyla, in Maui, Hawaii in January 1999, where we also heard him preach, during a mid-year conference of the National Bar Association. We found him to be a warm and gracious man with sparkling eyes. Any dogmatic or chromatic theology, be it his or others', is mocked and circumscribed by the autonomic and immanent "nature" of God. This is true whether that theology is “black”, “white”, or otherwise; because, God is all in all!
Having been raised in church from infancy, though, there were certain values and preferences which I found to be inescapable. For me, these consisted of good preaching, strong prayers, and good gospel music. So, I loved the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, like him, who used the gospel to address our concrete, day-to-day living conditions. I loved the fervent prayers of righteous worshippers, and I loved old spirituals and gospel music anywhere, at any time.
Soon, I began to seek spiritual awakening in diverse fields. That is how I met Dr. Leon Wright, also at Howard, when I was in the law school around 1975. Here was a man who could appreciate my self-characterization as “a child in the wind.” He had studied in Burma among the Buddhists and had reached the depth only attained by 1 in 10,000 priests. I remember very little of what he said. I do recall his patient and engaged presence as I beat my spiritual wings attempting to fly.
While at Howard, I also reveled with our gospel choir, and lusted after the portentous and powerful prayers of Dr. Evans Crawford, the Dean of Rankin Chapel. Along the way, I met members of the Nation of Islam, particularly Minister Lonnie Shabazz, Ph. D. in mathematics, who was the leader of Temple No.4 in Washington, D.C. who impressed me with their self-confident discipline.
Always echoing in my spirit, however, was a sermon, I had heard on St. Louis radio, by a Reverend Ross, in 1968 which was laden with spirit, love and black historical power. My sister, Schleria, and I jumped into my car and drove downtown, when I was 17, all the while listening to the radio, in an attempt to find Ross’ church. We never found it. The message may well have been pre-recorded. The point is: I was moved by it. We were moved by it. And we, impulsively, moved toward it. Until I read David Walker’s1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States, that radio sermon was the most stirring treatment of black historical theology that I had ever heard or experienced. That sermon by Rev. Ross—if that was his name--became the template by which I measured all others.
During the summer of 1975, while at Howard Law School, I was a law clerk to Commissioner Benjamin L. Hooks, the first black commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. Dr. Hooks was both a former judge and a Baptist preacher, and became a latent role model to me. He had pastored two churches simultaneously in Memphis and Detroit, and later became the Executive Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He also owned, in whole or in part, two radio stations in Detroit and in Memphis.
Moving to Kansas City in 1976, the “Bicentennial Year,” from Washington, D.C., I visited St. James United Methodist Church where now-Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II was then pastor. It was, then, on Gregory Boulevard. I also visited Unity Southeast Temple, where Rev. Wentworth Jenkins was the pastor, and various other churches, especially Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, where the blessed and beloved Rev. Wallace S. Hartsfield, Sr. was then the pastor.
Rev. Hartfield, a graduate The Interdenominational School of Theology (ITC) in Atlanta, Georgia, helped me to sponsor the visit of Dr. Charles B. Copher, an Old Testament Scholar, and one of his former ITC professors, to Kansas City to discuss “Blacks in and of The Bible” during the early 1980’s when I was still publishing THE NILE REVIEW newsletter. That Sunday, Rev. Dr. Copher preached passionately at Rev. Hartfield’s church. But, this preeminently black, religious, scholar never mentioned anything about blacks in the Bible, as he’d done so well the day before at the Nile Company's free, public lecture, to my utter amazement!
I’ve never ceased to be amazed by black preachers who hide or ignore the black history candle under a bushel basket, when given an opportunity to teach or preach! In the late1970’s, for another example, I recall mailing out over 170 packets of literature to every black church I could identify in Kansas City, offering free black history lectures, and black history book sales. I received one response, which canceled later. Maybe, it’s the people; or, maybe it’s their preacher, that rejects black history. It may well be both! It’s rather like the chicken and the egg dilemma! If they can preach Hebrew history, why not black history, I marveled?
During the 1980s, I came into contact with Prince Aciel Ben Israel of the African Hebrew Nation of Jerusalem. This group had migrated from Chicago with Ben Ammi, its spiritual leader and founder, to Didona, Israel, by way of Liberia, during the 1960’s. During this same time span, I also invited Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang, Chairman of the African Studies Program at Howard, to Kansas City to speak about his book, ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN IDENTITY. We accompanied this Gambia native to the Islamic Center of Kansas City for his lecture presentation, on his book. There, we all participated in Islamic worship services, including my three pre-adolescent sons: Andre, Imhotep and Kemet.
During the early to middle 1980’s, I had finished reading the BIBLE and the QURAN, along with other spiritual works. I had also opened correspondence with, among others, Dr. John S. Mbiti, author of African Religions and Philosophy, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, author of The Black Muslims In America, and The Black Church in the African-American Experience and with Og Mandino, author The Greatest Salesman in the World, all of whose books I had read and enjoyed.
During the same period, I had also taught a black history course through the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s “Communiversity” program entitled, “Black History the Sacred Secret.” In a further attempt to “heighten the consciousness” of Kansas City residents, I had also brought in such speakers as Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, of Rutgers University, who wrote THEY CAME BEFORE COLUMBUS, and who founded the JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS. I brought in Dr. Tony Martin, author of RACE FIRST, a former professor at Wellesley College, from Trinidad and Tobago. I also brought in John G. Jackson, John Henrik Clarke’s teacher, who wrote INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS and MAN, GOD AND CIVILIZATION, but who was an unabashed atheist. Yet and still, I was frustrated though by my lack of progress.
In 1985, my overflowing spiritual, and ecumenical rapture, resulted in the self-publication of “Exhalations from my Soul” in THE NILE REVIEW’S final issue, with a beautiful cover by my brother, Alvin Kennedy Coleman. I had begun publishing THE NILE REVIEW in 1981, the inaugural issue being “Garvey Lives”. It sold for $1.00 was distributed at a public gathering in Swope Park.
Ensuing issues had treated: “Back History: The Sacred Secret;” “Booker T. Washington: Our Great Redeemer;” “Black Power Revisited:” “The Strange Career of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois;” “Commander King: Nonviolent Conqueror;” “Throw Down Time: The Economics of Self-Determination;” “J.A. Rogers Rediscovered;” “Of Malcolm and Muhammad;” “Frederick Douglass, A Lion of A Man;” “The Haitians;” “Call of the Womb;” “The West and The Rest of Us;” “Of Nationalism and Capitalism;” [“Why Black Artists Should Not Perform in the Racist Apartheid of South Africa” by Leon Dixon]; “The Mis-Education of the Negro;” “Notes from the Motherland;” [The Ways Missionaries Did It: An Inside African Story” by Dr. T.Y. Mcharro]; “Black Man, Black Woman: Can the Breach Be Healed?” and, of course, “Exhalations from My Soul,” the textual vortex for future Quantum Inquiry Temple. This tiny newsletter circulated all over the world, and had been well-received by the late, great Dr. Cheik Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal among others.
That “Exhalations from my Soul” essay became my spiritual and theological bellwether. It still is years later. In 1993, I came to confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior on Palm Sunday, following a serious illness in 1992, while in St. Louis. While I convalesced at the hospital, I promised Jesus Christ that if he would give me back my life, that I would give it to him. He did, and I did. Having been hospitalized for twelve (12) days, I was blessed to recuperate, upon my release, at the home of my parents in Rock Hill, Missouri: Elvis Mitchell and Margie Dean Coleman, whom I overheard say: “We haven’t had a chance to take care of that baby in a long time.” That ironic statement caused me, a then 41-year old, self-employed lawyer, to laugh, inwardly; yet, I nevertheless reflexively assumed the fetal position in their bed, at the same time! Love is a great and true healer!
Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, Rev. Alvin L. Smith, Pastor, became my church home; though, truth be known, I had been mortally wounded, by Rev. Wallace Hartsfield, of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, in the spirit, the prior Sunday. Yet, with a little help from my friend, Elvis “Sonny” Gibson—who told me about Rev. Smith's black historical interest--I was able to stagger into and fall prostrate at the altar of Allen. He had preached “Looking for A Few Good Men,” a powerful sermon named after a then-popular movie. It fit me. But, what got me was the invitation that he read from 139th Psalms: “Oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me....” Each verse convicted me. I was trapped, cornered. I capitulated. Following a four years as a licentiate, when I attended courses prescribed by the Dean of our Board of Examiners, Rev. John J. Hunter, I was ordained in 1998, as an Itinerant Elder by the late Bishop Vernon R. Byrd in the Fifth Episcopal District, in the former Northwest Missouri Conference. I am still an ordained itinerant elder with supernumerary status in the A.M.E. church, just as I am also still a Missouri attorney (admitted 1977) with inactive status.
I have pastored three different churches in western Missouri: Brooks Chapel in Butler, Missouri; Grant Memorial and Ebenezer-Grant, which two later merged together, with my assistance, both in St. Joseph, Missouri. By far, my longest and most significant service was at Brooks Chapel in Butler. There, I organized the Amen Society, a benevolent corporation in 1999, which raised over $30,000, to commission the erection of a black soldier bronze statue on the town square to commemorate the first black troops to fight, and to valorously die, in the American Civil War: The First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, which fought on October 28-29, 1862, in a battle known as “The Skirmish at Island Mound” eight miles from Butler. That statue, by Joel Randall, of Edmund, Oklahoma, was dedicated in October 2008, amid fanfare, with funds we few had raised through faith and work.
Just prior to joining the A.M.E.’s, my friend and brother, Robert Earl Easley and I, used to study God’s word and to collaborate spiritually with a group of evolving brothers under the aegis of the “Temple of Faith,” a voluntary association, from the late 1980’s through the mid 1990’s. On one occasion, we brought in the late, great school teacher, Jake Patton Beason, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, author of WHY WE LOSE, who spoke at various venues including the legendary Epicurean Restaurant and Lounge, which was owned by Benny and Calvin Shelby, who were also members of the Temple of Faith.
Our greatest activity was “Ceremonies in Black Manhood”, an event for Black men only, which was hosted on the night of December 31, 1989, at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Wallace Hartfield, Sr., pastor. Ritualistically climaxing with the hundred or so black men present, and the few black women who would not be dissuaded, coming down the aisle and looking into a mirror in order to “behold the face of God,” this event harkened back to the “watch-night” services attending the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on December 31, 1862. Rev. Hartsfield befriended Robert and me, even though neither of us, then, attended his church. He saw through us, in love. Now, both Robert and I are ordained ministers in the gospel of Jesus Christ: he Baptist, with me Methodist.
In 1991, at the prompting and guidance of now- Past Master, Robert Earl Easley, practically all of the brothers in the Temple of Faith were “knocked down” and raised up Master Masons in Prudence Lodge #6, Kansas Jurisdiction, Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons. Shortly thereafter, The Temple of Faith disbanded.
In 1995, the 2019 prophesy was revealed to me, by the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I had just finished reading about “soteriology”, the study of the history of salvation, in Pope John Paul II’s CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, when the Spirit said, “Look at your notes.” This was on January 25, 1995. I flipped open one of my scriptural note pads, and saw Genesis 15:12-15 highlighted with the annotation “Prophesy for Afro-America” handwritten beside it. Reading that passage, I realized in an instant that the 400 years mentioned therein referred, allegorically, to the 400 year sojourn through enslavement of Africans in America from which they would be liberated in 2019, some 400 years after the Jamestown, Virginia, captivity in 1619. That 1619 date was ingrained in me, after I had read Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER at age 16. I have compiled and organized over 600 scriptural references supporting this thesis, and have published a summary of it in THE KANSAS CITY GLOBE newspaper in April-May 1995. I yet need to publish this prophecy-deliverance , and pray that God gives me strength and power to do so, when it is most expedient to do so, or that a publisher with puissance appears to relieve me of this “burden”, as Garvey says.
Now, the Lord has revealed a new thing, which transcends “race” and retribution.
In the early 2000’s I was the host of a radio program, entitled “A Little More Leaven” on KGGN-AM Christian Radio, which explored my evolving theological sentiments. I had also co-hosted a KPRS-FM radio show with poet/activist Lloyd Daniel, in the 1980's called “Point/Counterpoint,” a black consciousness version of “60-Minutes'” show. A few legal clients sought me out by reason of these efforts.
In 2005, the National Bar Association voted into existence a new section on “Law and Religion” which I had been working on since, at least 1998, when I served as the NBA’s first Chaplain during its Memphis, Tennessee convention. In Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2004, the Holy Spirit descended as scales fell away from the eyes of believers, and able allies/attorneys like Rev. Dr. Kwame Reed, Calvin Allen and Robert Bell rallied to the cause. During the 2005 convention in Orlando, Florida, we presented our petitions for establishment of a section, and I moved for its establishment, which motion was referred to the Executive Committee, the latter voting us into existence during its meeting in Los Angeles. I drafted the petitions for membership signatures, drafted and implemented the bylaws, presided over the opening seminars. I deflected an attempt to deform or destroy the section by Muslims and other self-righteous “mendicants” during the NBA convention in Detroit in 2006. I was voted in as a “Guardian” or board member, and have served as the original historian of the section, from 2006-2012. I also attended our section's first “Church and the Law” Conference in Columbia, Maryland, in May 2010, but sustained a hemiplegic stroke—left-sided---in July 2010, which precluded me attending August 2010's New Orleans convention; our May 2011 “Church and the Law” Conference in Atlanta, as well as our July/August 2011 convention in Baltimore, Maryland. I have also written articles for the section’s newsletter. The journey continues. God ain't through with me yet.