A TEACHING PRIEST
Friday, December 10, 2010
By Larry Delano Coleman
“For a long time Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest and without law.”
2 Chronicles 15:3
Definitions
“Teaching” is almost a pejorative epithet, a bad word, these days. “Learning,” teaching’s objective correlate, is hardly better. Some claim America has been “dumbed down” deliberately. http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/author.htm
Although hundreds of billions of dollars are expended for education, annually, our students continually underperform on standardized tests relative to students in other industrialized nations. Educators, politicians, psychologists, sociologists search vainly for solutions, they claim. “Woe is me,” is the mea culpa, the universal lament.
Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, good judgement and wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental goals the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization).
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Education
Banal television programming, with and without “laugh tracks,” and “reality” shows preoccupy the bulk of Americans’ waking hours, along with video games which simulate mayhem, murder and virtual life. Bookstores die and newspapers wither on the vine.
While the current, apparent disinterest in “learning” and “teaching” is regrettable, it is hardly unexpected. In previous decades, deliberate lies, willful brainwashing and purposeful mis-education were the forebears of the current desuetude, and may have caused it, directly or indirectly.
We derive these conclusions from Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/liesmyteachertoldme.php ; The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Charlotte Iserbyt, http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/book.htm ; and The Mis-Education of the Negro by Dr. Carter G. Woodson http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/misedne.html .
Although the resources for, and modes of access to, information are greater than ever, the sheer weltering rate of such availability, itself, appears to have devalued the virtue of acquisition, itself. It’s akin to the tragic irony of starvation in a land of plenty.
Education as “political”
Education has always been political. It is the sacred fire. Persons demanding access to its inner sanctums were required to satisfy conditions. See, e.g.Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956)
The “dumbing down” of America is not new, it would appear. The provision of knowledge, rightly, is designed to assure the continued empowerment of its purveyors. That is both fair and logical, and consonant with historical witness. No nation knowingly “educates,” nourishes, nor promotes future disputants to its power. So it was in the days of King Herod, Matthew 2, and Herod the tetrarch, Matthew 14, as the biblical accounts of baby Jesus, and John the Baptist, readily attest. Indeed, so is it today, as the seminal work by Michelle Alexander amply attests respecting the mass incarceration of blacks, under the guise of a “war on drugs.” http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/the-mass-incarceration-of-black-men/
The key to it all is the efficacy of context. Whether theological, ideological, historical or political, “context” affords a framework of analysis and reference which facilitates one’s processing and storage of information, and which, in turn, leads to its profitable utilization in accordance with that one’s best interests.
A fish out of water, whether salt or fresh, is out of context. A polar bear outside the Arctic Circle is out of context, so also is a rabbit outside of its briar patch outside of context.
Otherwise stated, unless you know who you, what you are, and where you are, you have got a serious contextual problem. Nature normally supplies context, automatically. So, in the ordinary course, we don’t have to deal with “knowing” or “belonging.” Somehow, one tends to be born where one belongs. This geophysical fact generally applies to plant life as well as to animal life, and to minerals, exceptions to the contrary, notwithstanding.
Longitude and latitude relate to more than geophysical space, however. They also apply in historical, political, theological and ideological space, as well. Knowing “who, what, and where” you are, at any given time, affords true knowledge of context, and that “who, what, where” regime includes much more than a name, nationality, and street address.
Moreover, because everything living is always in motion, whether that motion is perceptible or not, one must continually assess and reassess one’s approximate context, in order to determine if one is rightfully “where” one “belongs” at any given time. This assessment is done by studying nature and books.
Nature is man’s primal teacher, and the source of all of man’s original understanding. Its lessons are literally inexhaustible. Books contain man’s coded observations of and interactions with nature, observational, experimental and accidental. These books record, cull, and collate the collective corpus of man’s cumulative knowledge, i.e., interactions and observations, over time. Teachers teach from derivatives of these books and from nature.
Pupils are taught “context” by teachers, both secular and non-secular. Secular teachers, “priests” belong to a given sect, and are paid to promulgate that sect’s cosmogony, e.g. world view and values, i.e., religion, in whole or in part. They teach you who you are, what you are, and to where you are in a given place and time. Non-secular teachers do the same thing, as secular teachers, relative to their governmental employer’s interests.
Value of “teaching priests”
“Teaching priests” dispense such vital knowledge as mathematics, science, reading, writing, history, literature. This knowledge is more ancient than any given sect’s creed, and is infinitely more valuable than the sect, itself. That is, its value transcends any given sect’s, and may be utilized in another sect, or in no sect at all.
Non-secular teachers, non-priests, may also belong to a “sect,” but they are paid to advance a government’s cosmogony, , e.g. world view and values, in whole or in part, even as they dispense more vital knowledge as mathematics, science, reading, writing, history, literature. This knowledge is more ancient than the government, and is infinitely more valuable than the government, itself.
“Education” is as old as man; their origins are coextensive. Man has always taught, and learned, and communicated. Wherever, whenever, and however man began, education necessarily began.
“Education” as we know it contemplates the transmission of information or knowledge from one to another. It also contemplates self-learning, whereby persons have taught themselves reading, writing, arithmetic, astronomy, navigation, plumbing, music, art, carpentry; any subset of a whole panoply of skills and disciplines.
Formal “education,” as distinguished from informal “education,” originated with the “teaching priests” who were part of the religious apparatus of the state, and, who indistinguishable from the state, so intrinsically interwoven were they.
“Education” originated in Africa, i.e., Ethiopia, as did the rest of humanity and civilization, itself. From inner Africa, it flowed up the Nile River into Egypt, and across the Red Sea into, Mesopotamia and Asia, then finally Europe. This process of acculturation and dissemination took thousands upon thousands of years.
The Bible and Historiography
The Bible gives an historical account of the dispersion of mankind, “after the flood” utilizing the sons of Noah: Japheth, Ham, and Shem, as progenitors. “Ham,” the prototypical black man, and his progeny, and their lands, are set forth in verses, Genesis 10:6-20:
6 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. 7 The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. 8 Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. [1] 9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and 12 Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. 13 Egypt fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, Casluhim (from whom [2] the Philistines came), and Caphtorim.
15 Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth, 16 and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, 17 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 18 the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. Afterward the clans of the Canaanites dispersed. 19 And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha. 20 These are the sons of Ham, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.
Ham’s descendants—those comprising Ethiopian, Egyptians, Canaanites (including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians and Syro-Phoenicians), Mesopotamians (including the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians)and Put or Punt (North Africans, lands west of Egypt)--are set out specially, because for centuries both secular and non-secular teachers, priests, and preachers have ignorantly, and/or, willfully, lied about Ham’s descendants’ contributions (or lack thereof) to world history and civilization. Now, that lie has exploded in the face of its celebrants, without mercy. The Bible exposes the lie readily even to the most casual reader. http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/nation02.htm
The Egyptians were black. This short sentence sears the consciences of centuries of lying Islamic, western European and American scholars and theologians who are alleged to have done everything from deface the noses of thousands of Egyptian artifacts to disguise their Negroid features, to defacing the nose of the Sphinx, akin to the Taliban of Afghanistan dynamiting the thousand year old Buddhas which were carved into mountainsides in the early 2000’s.
In the 1798 the nose of the Sphinx, was allegedly cannonaded by Napoleon. Purportedly, this was done in order to falsely portray the black purveyors of civilization as scions of “The Great White Race.” This canard now appears dubious, given that Napoleon carried “savants” with him, during his expedition into Egypt to measure, draw, preserve its treasures. A French soldier happened upon the Rosetta Stone, which was then being used as building material. Eventually this priceless treasure, now in the British Museum, came into the possession of the French scholar Jean-Francoise Champollion, who deciphered the Rosetta stone, in 1822, cracking the hieroglyphic code, by comparing and contrasting it with ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian demotic script. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone ; http://sacredsites.com/africa/egypt/sphinx.html
A Muslim writer claims the Sphinx’s nose was actually removed by a Muslim ruler in the 1300s to preclude the natives’ worship, adoration and invocation of its powers http://www.catchpenny.org/nose.html . http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101012190558AA1Sj5s https://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology.moderated/browse_thread/thread/7581158ce00127da/9280239ae477ba8f%239280239ae477ba8f?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=0&num=3&hl=fi
Many, but not all, Muslims and western Europeans taught the so-called “curse of Ham,” even as many brainwashed and lazy black teachers and preachers, glibly repeated this lie, never having bothered to investigate its premises’ truthfulness, to their shame.
Enter the Greeks
The Iliad, and the Odyssey, were the first books attributed to a European, the ancient Greek author, Homer. At the earliest, these books were written a mere 800 years before the birth of Christ. That places them almost 2500 years after the Great Pyramid at Giza was built, and more than 3500 years after the world’s first calendar was invented. The Greeks’ gods came from the Ethiopians, along with much of their knowledge, they admit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia http://getbeles.com/blog/?p=3 http://www.whenweruled.com/articles.php?lng=en&pg=2
Yet, today’s educational establishment, despite knowing better, continues to impute education and knowledge to the Greeks, and three men in particular, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, all of whom lived and died a mere 400 years within the birth of Christ. These misrepresentations were acculturated in order to sustain the lie and myth of so-called “white,” western European supremacy, and to justify the enslavement and centuries’ old expropriation of Africans to the Americas by western European “Christian” nations.
One authority states directly there are no original Greek manuscripts in mathematics:
“In actual fact, our direct knowledge of Greek mathematics is less reliable than that of the older Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics, because none of the original manuscripts are extant.” http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/history/greekorg/greekorg.html
Another scholar , Dr. Kwame Namtambu, writes:
“Furthermore, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) himself, writing in Metaphysics, not only refutes Dr. Lefkowitz's ahistorical and false assertions but also confesses in Greek Hellenic language that: "Thus the mathematical sciences first (proton) originated in Egypt." Egypt is "the cradle of mathematics-that is, the country of origin for Greek mathematics". So, according to Aristotle, "the mathematical arts had never before been formed, constituted or elaborated anywhere else originating in Egypt only" (Obenga, p. 47-48). Aristotle acknowledges the originality of the ancient Egyptians in his own words.
In addition, in Prologue to Prodlus's Commentaries on Euclid's Elements, a disciple of Aristotle named Eudemus, who lived in the forth century B.C., confirms: "we shall say, following the general tradition, that the Egyptians were the first to have invented Geometry, (that) Thales, the first Greek to have been in Egypt, brought this theory thereof to Greece" (Obenga, p. 48).
The fact of the matter is that the famous, well known Greeks (Europeans) whom we study and revere in school curricula today all studied at the feet of the ancient Egyptians–Afrikans in the Nile Valley, Kemet. For example, Plato studied at the Temple of Waset for 11 years; Aristotle was there for 11-13 years; Socrates 15 years Euclid stayed for 10-11 years; Pythegoras for 22 yeasrs; Hypocrates studies for 20 years; and the other Greeks who matriculated at Waset included Diodorus, Solon, Thales, Archimides, and Euripides. Indeed, the Greek, St. Clement of Alexanddria, once said that if you were to write a book of 1,000 pages, you would not be able to put down the names of all the Greeks who went to Kemet to be educated and even those who did not surreptitiously claim they went because it was prestigious. " Herodotus said it, Plato confirmed it and Aristotle never denied it".
The fact of the matter is that it took 40 years to graduate/matriculate from Waset; this then means that none of the Greeks graduated”. http://www.trinicenter.com/kwame/20010615c.htm
Muslim Complicity
To be fair to western European Christians, the Muslims, as early as the 8th century, had preceded them in the destruction of African civilization, as well as in the enslavement and expropriation of Africans to North Africa, Arabia, and Persia, even as they had formulated, promulgated, and practiced their own Islamic mythos of black inferiority for centuries. So the Muslims, like the Christians also had their besotted teaching priests, called “Imams.” http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/conscious-edutainment-videos-movies-tv/37862-destruction-black-civilization-dr-chancellor-williams.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/they-all-look-like-all-them/29471-al-jahiz-776-869-superiority-blacks-whites.html
In Malachi 2:1-9, God rebukes all “teaching priests” who fail to preach “true instruction” to his people. A similar pox is now on the educational houses of the United States, both secular and non-secular:
Rebukes the Priests
2:1 “And now, O priests, this command is for you. 2 If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. 3 Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, [1] and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it. [2] 4 So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the LORD of hosts. 5 My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. 6 True instruction [3] was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. 7 For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people [4] should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. 8 But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the LORD of hosts, 9 and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.”
Partiality versus Impartiality
Why “show impartiality” in one’s instruction? Aside from the fact it’s God’s command, there are other good and cogent reasons to be ‘impartial’, for those who may need stronger medicine. Partiality is, per se, unscientific. Good science depends upon impartial observation, experimentation, recordation, and demonstration.
Impartiality honors and blesses its purveyors forever; partiality dishonors and curses its purveyors forever. Impartiality is a boon to further discovery, and a stimulant to further inquiry. Partiality burdens further inquiry, and distorts or discourages further inquiry.
Why “show impartiality” in one’s instruction? That’s like asking “Why sell fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat?” That’s like asking, “Why respect another’s property, progeny, or person?” Obviously, the question, “why show impartiality,” is absurd . Equally absurd is educational partiality in instruction under the guise of being impartial in educational instruction.
But, as Machiavelli teaches, “a prince must appear to be pious, but must never be.” “http://www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/machiavelli.html
“Prince” means and applies to both secular and non-secular power, in the educational context.
So, “game on!” Or, more properly, the game resumes, wherein the partial pretend to be impartial, the knave pretends to be the righteous; and the ignorant pretend to be the knowledgeable. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” Wendell Phillips once said in 1852 before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society . He was an abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator. http://freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm
Especially is this true in educational context, where “true instruction” can so easily become false instruction, whether by omission or commission, resulting in “mis-education,” just like fresh milk, improperly preserved, can so easily spoil and curdle, imperiling the health of its consumer.
Who am I, to offer such stern historical asseverations, on “education,” someone may ask? I am a scribe, also known as a “teaching priest,” also known as a philosopher-king. To all who receive these greetings in the spirit of love, I present them in name of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ !
#30
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES
IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Monday, January 31, 2011
Practically all of us have them, or had them, at one time or another. We might even be “them” right now, ourselves.
But, what is the familial purpose, aunts and uncles—our mothers’ and fathers’ siblings; or, of their parents’ siblings? What is our familial purpose relative to our own nieces and nephews?
This question has intrigued me ever since I read the Old Testament book of ESTHER, and became acquainted with that book’s hero, Mordecai, Queen Esther’s uncle.
Mordecai is the archetypical uncle. He is wise. He is loving. He is pragmatic. He is courageous, and decisive. His orientation is family-first! Due to all of these virtues, and others, he successfully maneuvered his niece, Esther, into becoming the new Queen of Persia, consort of King Ahasuerus, King of Persia and Media, (known to the Greeks as “Xerxes” or “Artaxerxes”), who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia. He replaced former Queen Vashti for insolently refusing to appear before him during a banquet at Susa with his court and military generals. http://nlt.scripturetext.com/esther/1.htm
After Esther becomes Queen, through Mordecai’s help, she, in turn, saves herself, her uncle, and their Jewish people from genocide by interceding with the King, risking her own life thereby, saying, ”I will go to the king even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” http://bible.cc/esther/4-16.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Esther
Broadly speaking of course, aunts and uncles are family. In that sense, they are somewhat akin to surrogate parents, endued with the authority to instruct, reprove or discipline, and conversely obligated with the duty to protect, provide and encourage.
Love and laughter, hugs and kisses, and tall tales and short quips are what I mostly associate with my aunts and uncles. Whenever we gather, there’s generally joy, food and festivities, whether planned or not. There are also boisterous recollections, generally of the type you can’t refute, because you were too young to remember; like, “Boy, when you were little, we had to switch them little legs all the time! You remember that?” Of course not! Your dumb silence would only engender more, tearful laughter.
Aunts and uncles are also good at supplying connective tissues in family history. One of my uncles told me where and how my parents first met, something I did not know and would have never asked. One of my aunts once told me that her father, my grandfather, was so revered for his piety and moral rectitude that his white, Mississippi, farming neighbors would have him to come by and pray for them during their illnesses, although he was black. This was something else I could not have known, but fully appreciate.
Aunts and uncles are praiseworthy. Some have had to “take in” and raise nieces and nephews following those children’s parents’ simultaneous deaths, or other calamities, as Mordecai did with Esther. In other instances, “aunt” and “uncle” was an honorific given to deserving folks who were no actual kin, but who were part of one’s extended family. Aunts and uncles may also provide occasional gifts and presents: Christmas, graduations, weddings, birthdays, etc.
Mainly, though, aunts and uncles produce cousins. Cousins are our lifetime playmates, friends, fellow travelers, family. If aunts and uncles produced no more than this, their job will have been well done!
Whether as Mordecai in the Book of Esther or as “Aunty Emily” in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, or as “Uncle Tom” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, aunts and uncles have played, and continue to play vital and praiseworthy roles in popular culture, and in our daily lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Em http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/StoCabi.html
#30
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Monday, January 31, 2011
Practically all of us have them, or had them, at one time or another. We might even be “them” right now, ourselves.
But, what is the familial purpose, aunts and uncles—our mothers’ and fathers’ siblings; or, of their parents’ siblings? What is our familial purpose relative to our own nieces and nephews?
This question has intrigued me ever since I read the Old Testament book of ESTHER, and became acquainted with that book’s hero, Mordecai, Queen Esther’s uncle.
Mordecai is the archetypical uncle. He is wise. He is loving. He is pragmatic. He is courageous, and decisive. His orientation is family-first! Due to all of these virtues, and others, he successfully maneuvered his niece, Esther, into becoming the new Queen of Persia, consort of King Ahasuerus, King of Persia and Media, (known to the Greeks as “Xerxes” or “Artaxerxes”), who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia. He replaced former Queen Vashti for insolently refusing to appear before him during a banquet at Susa with his court and military generals. http://nlt.scripturetext.com/esther/1.htm
After Esther becomes Queen, through Mordecai’s help, she, in turn, saves herself, her uncle, and their Jewish people from genocide by interceding with the King, risking her own life thereby, saying, ”I will go to the king even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” http://bible.cc/esther/4-16.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Esther
Broadly speaking of course, aunts and uncles are family. In that sense, they are somewhat akin to surrogate parents, endued with the authority to instruct, reprove or discipline, and conversely obligated with the duty to protect, provide and encourage.
Love and laughter, hugs and kisses, and tall tales and short quips are what I mostly associate with my aunts and uncles. Whenever we gather, there’s generally joy, food and festivities, whether planned or not. There are also boisterous recollections, generally of the type you can’t refute, because you were too young to remember; like, “Boy, when you were little, we had to switch them little legs all the time! You remember that?” Of course not! Your dumb silence would only engender more, tearful laughter.
Aunts and uncles are also good at supplying connective tissues in family history. One of my uncles told me where and how my parents first met, something I did not know and would have never asked. One of my aunts once told me that her father, my grandfather, was so revered for his piety and moral rectitude that his white, Mississippi, farming neighbors would have him to come by and pray for them during their illnesses, although he was black. This was something else I could not have known, but fully appreciate.
Aunts and uncles are praiseworthy. Some have had to “take in” and raise nieces and nephews following those children’s parents’ simultaneous deaths, or other calamities, as Mordecai did with Esther. In other instances, “aunt” and “uncle” was an honorific given to deserving folks who were no actual kin, but who were part of one’s extended family. Aunts and uncles may also provide occasional gifts and presents: Christmas, graduations, weddings, birthdays, etc.
Mainly, though, aunts and uncles produce cousins. Cousins are our lifetime playmates, friends, fellow travelers, family. If aunts and uncles produced no more than this, their job will have been well done!
Whether as Mordecai in the Book of Esther or as “Aunty Emily” in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, or as “Uncle Tom” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, aunts and uncles have played, and continue to play vital and praiseworthy roles in popular culture, and in our daily lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Em http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/StoCabi.html
#30
Friday, January 28, 2011
SAMUEL YETTE: PHILOSOPHER-KING
SAMUEL YETTE: PHILOSOPHER-KING
Friday, January 28, 2011
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
I was blessed to be a senior, sitting in a classroom in Alain Locke Hall, at Howard University’s, then brand-new, School of Communications in September 1972, when former Newsweek reporter, Samuel F. Yette, walked in the door to commence his inspiring career as a college professor.
Back then, I was also Editor-in-Chief of The Hilltop, the weekly student newspaper, founded by writer, Zora Neal Hurston, during her student days in the 1920s at Howard. Our new school’s Dean, Tony Brown, of PBS’s “Tony Brown’s Journal” had promised to vault our new school into the elite of journalism schools, so hiring Sam Yette, then the controversial author of The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America, seemed entirely consistent with that end.
Sam Yette was a great teacher, with a passion for learning. He was a stickler for punctuality and for preparation. Once weekly, we had a quiz, which he graded and recorded. In addition, we had reading assignments which required book reports on his desk. Reading the daily newspaper’s columnists, usually the Washington Post’s , was de rigueur, every day. Occasionally, they would visit us: William Raspberry, Bob Maynard, and the venerable Carl T. Rowan.
“Dr. Yette,” an honorific which our class bestowed upon him, as a token of our love, respect, and admiration, was “ole school” Tennessee, having graduated from Tennessee State University in Nashville. Hailing from Harriman, Tennessee, he fit the mold of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, also from Tennessee, the first African American President of Howard, who was born in Paris, Tennessee. He taught us to strive to be the best, because, as blacks, we would encounter racial prejudice and discrimination in the field of journalism, as well as in the field of law, to which I aspired. He said two things which I yet recall: 1. “You can’t con an honest man;” and, 2. “There’s always room at the top.”
What I remember most, though, about the class, and what has endured with me till this day, is our reading of Plato’s Republic . Customarily wary of all things “Greek,” I was initially suspicious of the assignment, deeming it to be insufficiently “relevant” to a black university like Howard. But, that book, based on ancient Egyptian ideals of governance, was, and continues to be, an enduring treasure. I have applied its teachings in a variety of contexts; to myself, of course, and to the National Bar Association’s Law and Religion section, which I founded, in 2005, along with others. The “Guardians,” of whom Plato wrote, is the name which I gave to that section’s elected board of directors, who select the executive officers. Therefore, applying ancient Egyptian ideals, as gleaned from Plato, who was educated in Egypt, himself, to the National Bar Association, the first and largest association of black lawyers and judges, is part of the legacy of the great, Samuel Yette.
He was the “philosopher-king,” idealized in the Republic, and, which I have tried to emulate as an attorney, and now as a writer and African Methodist Episcopal Church preacher. From his tree fell mighty fruit, these nurture, and yet fall.
#30
Friday, January 28, 2011
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
I was blessed to be a senior, sitting in a classroom in Alain Locke Hall, at Howard University’s, then brand-new, School of Communications in September 1972, when former Newsweek reporter, Samuel F. Yette, walked in the door to commence his inspiring career as a college professor.
Back then, I was also Editor-in-Chief of The Hilltop, the weekly student newspaper, founded by writer, Zora Neal Hurston, during her student days in the 1920s at Howard. Our new school’s Dean, Tony Brown, of PBS’s “Tony Brown’s Journal” had promised to vault our new school into the elite of journalism schools, so hiring Sam Yette, then the controversial author of The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America, seemed entirely consistent with that end.
Sam Yette was a great teacher, with a passion for learning. He was a stickler for punctuality and for preparation. Once weekly, we had a quiz, which he graded and recorded. In addition, we had reading assignments which required book reports on his desk. Reading the daily newspaper’s columnists, usually the Washington Post’s , was de rigueur, every day. Occasionally, they would visit us: William Raspberry, Bob Maynard, and the venerable Carl T. Rowan.
“Dr. Yette,” an honorific which our class bestowed upon him, as a token of our love, respect, and admiration, was “ole school” Tennessee, having graduated from Tennessee State University in Nashville. Hailing from Harriman, Tennessee, he fit the mold of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, also from Tennessee, the first African American President of Howard, who was born in Paris, Tennessee. He taught us to strive to be the best, because, as blacks, we would encounter racial prejudice and discrimination in the field of journalism, as well as in the field of law, to which I aspired. He said two things which I yet recall: 1. “You can’t con an honest man;” and, 2. “There’s always room at the top.”
What I remember most, though, about the class, and what has endured with me till this day, is our reading of Plato’s Republic . Customarily wary of all things “Greek,” I was initially suspicious of the assignment, deeming it to be insufficiently “relevant” to a black university like Howard. But, that book, based on ancient Egyptian ideals of governance, was, and continues to be, an enduring treasure. I have applied its teachings in a variety of contexts; to myself, of course, and to the National Bar Association’s Law and Religion section, which I founded, in 2005, along with others. The “Guardians,” of whom Plato wrote, is the name which I gave to that section’s elected board of directors, who select the executive officers. Therefore, applying ancient Egyptian ideals, as gleaned from Plato, who was educated in Egypt, himself, to the National Bar Association, the first and largest association of black lawyers and judges, is part of the legacy of the great, Samuel Yette.
He was the “philosopher-king,” idealized in the Republic, and, which I have tried to emulate as an attorney, and now as a writer and African Methodist Episcopal Church preacher. From his tree fell mighty fruit, these nurture, and yet fall.
#30
Monday, December 27, 2010
The greatest of these is love
The greatest of these is love
Thursday, December 23, 2010
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
This morning, I was strangely transfixed by this verse, even though I had read it many times, in the “hymn to love”:
1 Cor.13:13 --
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“The greatest of these is love.”
During the 1960’s, Muhammad Ali used to defiantly shout, “I am the greatest!” But, time has shown his bold claim to be mere pugilistic bombast. His inspiring and charming utterance has proven to be mere heterosexual hype from the ultimate symbol of militant, black manhood. Love is the greatest, was the greatest, and forever will be the greatest.
Let us try to understand why “love” is greater than faith or hope.
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
From this blessed scripture, we have the assurance that God not only loves, but God also gives! And what a gift! He gave His “only begotten son” to the whole world. Think of this! He spared Joseph, Israel’s son, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. He spared Abraham’s son, Isaac, by providing a ram in the bush. He even spared me and you! Yet, Jesus the Christ, was not spared. He was sacrificed. God’s “only begotten son,” was given unto the world by God to lave us in love. So, a corollary of love, and ineluctable consequence of love, is “giving.” One cannot love without giving. It is literally impossible. To love is to give.
John 15:13 (King James Version) says it all:
13Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Giving, sacrificing one’s life is the greatest gift anyone can give to another. It is the ultimate expression of one’s love.
Jesus came here expressly to live, to “give” his life, i.e. to “lay down his life for his friends” and to be resurrected, for you and for me, that we might be redeemed, spiritually irradiated unto eternity, like him. God, the father, refused to take away Jesus’ bitter cup at the Garden at Gethsemane, as Jesus, the man, had so fervently prayed. In the end, he, too, capitulated. “Not my will, but thy will be done,” Luke 22:42-44:
42Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
43And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
44And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Love can be agonizing, especially when it directly touches our flesh. It can involve “great drops of blood falling to the ground.”
Mark 12:30-31 (King James Version)--
30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Note that we are commanded by Jesus to love God, as though we had a choice! Do we?How can we not love God? Every breath we take is a praise song to God! Every step we make is a holy dance to God. Commanding us to love God is like commanding water to flow downstream or like commanding the wind to blow or like commanding the sun, moon, or stars to shine!
We can’t help but love Him! We neurologically, physiologically, lymphangiologically “hardwired” to love him, to love ourselves, to love others, and to love all creation, by God himself! We were born to love, born in love, born by love, and born through love. We live for love. We are animated by love, sustained by love. Indeed, life is love.
31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Again, the operative verb is love. Perhaps, this is the soul/sole duty of man, “to love.” Regrettably many people do not love themselves, which is a precondition to loving your neighbor “as yourself”--especially people with a legacy of prolonged oppression and deprivation, like African Americans.
Taking away another’s desire or power to love is degradation at its worst. It is downright dehumanizing. Love is our crown. Man without love is bestial, other than human, arguably subhuman, neaderthal.
Revelations 3:11 says --
“I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.”
Love is our crown. Just like Jesus’ holy crown was displaced for one of thorns, so will those not disposed to love seek to replace ours’.
Ephesians 5:29 teaches “After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church”—
Back in BIBLE days that may have been true, that no one ever “hated his own body.” But, no more! Many people not only hate their own bodies, but they hate others’ bodies for many specious, vacuous reasons. Thus, many people must first learn to love themselves and their own bodies, that they may love others, in turn.
John 13:34-35 (New International Version, ©2010) says-- 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
“You must love.” Indeed, you must be love! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtWENe3V7Ds What is more insubstantial than love? Yet, what is more fulfilling? What is commanded is “more love.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA5Sobdo8DE&NR=1&feature=fvwp
God is love.
1 John 4:8 : Whoever does not love does not know God , because God is love.
Martin Luther, the iconic priest and church reformer, who in 1517, launched the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses against Christian “indulgences” on the door of All Saints Cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, argues that “faith alone justifies us.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide Many subscribe to this view.
Justification by faith alone, “sole fide” (only faith) is the doctrinal basis of so-called Protestantism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#cite_note-0
However, with all due respect to Martin Luther, and to adherents to his arguments, I return to where we began, with love. 1 Cor.13:13 –
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“Faith” is definitely in the mix. It is one of the three components in the “hymn to love”, “faith” and “hope” being the other two components, along with “love,” of which “love” is the “greatest” of them all.
So, the doctrine of “Sole Fide” is refuted by the 1 Cor.13:13 on its face. That is because it is neither “sole,” nor the greatest. “Faith” is merely 1 among 3 components and even then, it is not the greatest of the three; that is love.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (King James Version)
8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Love is the “gift of God.” God made us to love, and sent Jesus to renew, restore, and revive our love, by and through his life-giving blood.
The hymn to love is set forth below, in full, for edification:
1 Corinthians 13 (New King James Version)
1 Corinthians 13
The Greatest Gift
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, [a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Amen.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
This morning, I was strangely transfixed by this verse, even though I had read it many times, in the “hymn to love”:
1 Cor.13:13 --
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“The greatest of these is love.”
During the 1960’s, Muhammad Ali used to defiantly shout, “I am the greatest!” But, time has shown his bold claim to be mere pugilistic bombast. His inspiring and charming utterance has proven to be mere heterosexual hype from the ultimate symbol of militant, black manhood. Love is the greatest, was the greatest, and forever will be the greatest.
Let us try to understand why “love” is greater than faith or hope.
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
From this blessed scripture, we have the assurance that God not only loves, but God also gives! And what a gift! He gave His “only begotten son” to the whole world. Think of this! He spared Joseph, Israel’s son, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. He spared Abraham’s son, Isaac, by providing a ram in the bush. He even spared me and you! Yet, Jesus the Christ, was not spared. He was sacrificed. God’s “only begotten son,” was given unto the world by God to lave us in love. So, a corollary of love, and ineluctable consequence of love, is “giving.” One cannot love without giving. It is literally impossible. To love is to give.
John 15:13 (King James Version) says it all:
13Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Giving, sacrificing one’s life is the greatest gift anyone can give to another. It is the ultimate expression of one’s love.
Jesus came here expressly to live, to “give” his life, i.e. to “lay down his life for his friends” and to be resurrected, for you and for me, that we might be redeemed, spiritually irradiated unto eternity, like him. God, the father, refused to take away Jesus’ bitter cup at the Garden at Gethsemane, as Jesus, the man, had so fervently prayed. In the end, he, too, capitulated. “Not my will, but thy will be done,” Luke 22:42-44:
42Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
43And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
44And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Love can be agonizing, especially when it directly touches our flesh. It can involve “great drops of blood falling to the ground.”
Mark 12:30-31 (King James Version)--
30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Note that we are commanded by Jesus to love God, as though we had a choice! Do we?How can we not love God? Every breath we take is a praise song to God! Every step we make is a holy dance to God. Commanding us to love God is like commanding water to flow downstream or like commanding the wind to blow or like commanding the sun, moon, or stars to shine!
We can’t help but love Him! We neurologically, physiologically, lymphangiologically “hardwired” to love him, to love ourselves, to love others, and to love all creation, by God himself! We were born to love, born in love, born by love, and born through love. We live for love. We are animated by love, sustained by love. Indeed, life is love.
31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Again, the operative verb is love. Perhaps, this is the soul/sole duty of man, “to love.” Regrettably many people do not love themselves, which is a precondition to loving your neighbor “as yourself”--especially people with a legacy of prolonged oppression and deprivation, like African Americans.
Taking away another’s desire or power to love is degradation at its worst. It is downright dehumanizing. Love is our crown. Man without love is bestial, other than human, arguably subhuman, neaderthal.
Revelations 3:11 says --
“I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.”
Love is our crown. Just like Jesus’ holy crown was displaced for one of thorns, so will those not disposed to love seek to replace ours’.
Ephesians 5:29 teaches “After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church”—
Back in BIBLE days that may have been true, that no one ever “hated his own body.” But, no more! Many people not only hate their own bodies, but they hate others’ bodies for many specious, vacuous reasons. Thus, many people must first learn to love themselves and their own bodies, that they may love others, in turn.
John 13:34-35 (New International Version, ©2010) says-- 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
“You must love.” Indeed, you must be love! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtWENe3V7Ds What is more insubstantial than love? Yet, what is more fulfilling? What is commanded is “more love.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA5Sobdo8DE&NR=1&feature=fvwp
God is love.
1 John 4:8 : Whoever does not love does not know God , because God is love.
Martin Luther, the iconic priest and church reformer, who in 1517, launched the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses against Christian “indulgences” on the door of All Saints Cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, argues that “faith alone justifies us.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide Many subscribe to this view.
Justification by faith alone, “sole fide” (only faith) is the doctrinal basis of so-called Protestantism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#cite_note-0
However, with all due respect to Martin Luther, and to adherents to his arguments, I return to where we began, with love. 1 Cor.13:13 –
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“Faith” is definitely in the mix. It is one of the three components in the “hymn to love”, “faith” and “hope” being the other two components, along with “love,” of which “love” is the “greatest” of them all.
So, the doctrine of “Sole Fide” is refuted by the 1 Cor.13:13 on its face. That is because it is neither “sole,” nor the greatest. “Faith” is merely 1 among 3 components and even then, it is not the greatest of the three; that is love.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (King James Version)
8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Love is the “gift of God.” God made us to love, and sent Jesus to renew, restore, and revive our love, by and through his life-giving blood.
The hymn to love is set forth below, in full, for edification:
1 Corinthians 13 (New King James Version)
1 Corinthians 13
The Greatest Gift
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, [a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Amen.
Friday, December 17, 2010
CHARGEABLE TO NO MAN/ANSWERABLE TO NO MAN
CHARGEABLE TO NO MAN/ANSWERABLE TO NO MAN
By Larry Delano Coleman
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 2 Cor. 11:9 (NIV)
In one respect, Bishop Richard Allen, a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, went beyond the Apostle Paul, whose fiscal support was supplied by the "brothers who came from Macedonia.”
Bishop Allen supported himself fiscally by working outside the church and in time came to be an essential financial resource to the church, itself. His church never paid him anything of substance. His sacrifice, doubtless, helped to assure the church’s vitality and longevity since 1787, when it was the Free African Society, and since 1816 when it was incorporated.
Bishop Allen, being chargeable to no man, was answerable to no man.
FARM WORK
Born a slave, upon his conversion to Christianity, he along with his older brother, also a slave, worked harder than ever to show their master and to prove to their doubters that Christ did not spoil good workers. Christ made them better workers! They put their farm work before their church meetings; their crops before their confessions. Their diligent labors bore fruit. Not only did their example convert their master to Christianity, but he enabled them to purchase their freedom from him for $2000.
WOOD CUTTING
By cutting wood they purchased their freedom, and their lives. This useful skill was employed, whenever and wherever necessary to procure bread.
26 So Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them. 27 That day he made the Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly, to provide for the needs of the altar of the LORD at the place the LORD would choose. And that is what they are to this day.
Joshua 9:26-27.
BRICK-YARD WORK
He also worked in a brick-yard to purchase his freedom and feed himself. “I used often to pray sitting or standing or lying; and while my hands were employed to earn my bread, my heart was devoted to my dear Redeemer. Sometimes I would waken from my sleep preaching and praying.”
That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: 7“You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”Exodus 5:6-9
SALT-DELIVERIES
After the brick-yard, Bishop Allen began to supply salt from Delaware during the Continental War, making deliveries at regular stops and intervals, all the time preaching, praying and meditating. His salt delivery work pleased him greatly “in many happy seasons.”
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13
SELF-RELIANT PREACHER
After the Continental War, he traveled with numerous Methodist preachers of renown, preaching and teaching the gospel of Christ, and, as always, he relied on his own hands to feed and to clothe himself. He was also present at the first Methodist Episcopal general conference ever held in the United States in December 1784. Rev. Bishop Francis Asbury thereafter sent for Bishop Allen to travel with him down into the Carolinas slave states and other places, plainly telling Allen that he would have to sleep “in his carriage, but he would allow him his victuals and clothes.”
While Bishop Allen was a man of God, fully committed to John Wesley’s Methodism, his own background as a slave rebelled against the notion of sleeping in a carriage while being furnished only food and clothing as hire, something he could do for himself, had done for himself, and preferred doing for himself. His position was somewhat analogous to Isaiah 4:1--
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."
Allen would be a Methodist upon his own terms, as a free man, under his own vine and fig tree, not as a slave, destitute and dependent on another.
JUST SAY “NO” TO THE BISHOP
Bishop Allen told Bishop Francis Asbury “no” to his travel request in the South. Allen told Asbury “I told him if I was taken sick who was to support me? And that I thought my people ought to lay up something while they were able, to support themselves in times of sickness and old age.”
Who was Bishop Francis Asbury? The most powerful Methodist in America:
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. . . Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6,000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction, the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers. Among the men he ordained was Richard Allen in Philadelphia, the first black minister in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Asbury
FAITHFUL DILIGENCE IN PHILADELPHIA
Eventually, after traveling with others, Allen made his way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He states, “My labor was much blessed. I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people, and few of them attended public worship.”
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.Proverbs 10:4-5
Allen preached as early as 5:00 a.m., and as often as 4 or 5 times per day. He established prayer meetings and raised a society of 42 members in 1786, which included Rev. Absalom Jones, William White and Darius Jinnings. Absalom Jones and William White were pulled from their knees during prayer at St. Georges Episcopal Church by trustees, due to race discrimination. This led to a walk-out by the blacks, who in due course purchased land for construction of a church of their own, which became St. Thomas Episcopal Church, pursuant to majority vote by society members, which Rev. Absalom Jones ultimately headed, as priest.
6TH AND LOMBARD STREET BLACKSMITH SHOP
Meanwhile, Bishop Allen, an inveterate Methodist , had purchased land at 6th and Lombard Street for a church, which the society rejected in favor of the 5th street site occupied by St. Thomas. So, Bishop Allen purchased the property for his own account. He also purchased the frame of an old blacksmith shop, had it ferried to the 6th and Lombard St. site, and paid a team of carpenters to render it habitable and secure as a place of worship.
This converted blacksmith shop became Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which opened July 1794, with a sermon by Bishop Frances Asbury. This taproot of “African Methodism” was established despite the zealous, organized opposition from St. Georges Episcopal Church, including litigation. Bishop Allen served as pastor of Bethel as well as the first consecrated bishop of the AM.E. Church.
CHIEF AFRICAN METHODIST FINANCIER
More than pastor and bishop, though, Bishop Allen was also chief financier. He specifically refused to accept his $500 per year salary, accepting only $80 total for all his years of service, bequeathing any balance due him to the church. He bequeathed another $1400, when the Bethel was sold and bought back by the members. The bishop also loaned Bethel $4,000. His claims against Bethel once aggregated $11,700, and if that is not enough, “At the time that Robert Green sold it, Mr. Allen bought it in for the congregation at the sum of $10,500.”
SHOE AND BOOT SHOP
In addition to his others intereinterests Bishop Allen owned a boot and shoe store, from which he retired a couple years before he died leaving an estate of $30,000-$40,000 in 1831 dollars.
7Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel. 8So the closest relative said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself.” And he removed his sandal.
Ruth 4:7-8Yesterday’s sandals are today’s shoes. Bishop Allen was a man acquainted with redemption and exchange, so the scriptural reference applies. The shoe and boot shop joins farming, wood cutting, brick labor, and salt delivery as means by which he acquired his freedom and gained immortality as a religious founder, crusader and reformer among Africans and Methodists, world-wide.
THE GREAT ALLEN COMMISSION
Bishop Allen was chargeable to no man, and answerable to no man.
Would that certain born-again members of our great church, whether laity or episcopacy, or any in between, would not only celebrate Allen, but imitate Allen; would not just adulate Allen on Founder’s Day, but emulate Allen every day, in Jesus’ holy name! Amen.
Returning now to the Apostle Paul, for summation, we conclude:
7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? 8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”[b] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. 16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9:7-18
#30
By Larry Delano Coleman
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 2 Cor. 11:9 (NIV)
In one respect, Bishop Richard Allen, a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, went beyond the Apostle Paul, whose fiscal support was supplied by the "brothers who came from Macedonia.”
Bishop Allen supported himself fiscally by working outside the church and in time came to be an essential financial resource to the church, itself. His church never paid him anything of substance. His sacrifice, doubtless, helped to assure the church’s vitality and longevity since 1787, when it was the Free African Society, and since 1816 when it was incorporated.
Bishop Allen, being chargeable to no man, was answerable to no man.
FARM WORK
Born a slave, upon his conversion to Christianity, he along with his older brother, also a slave, worked harder than ever to show their master and to prove to their doubters that Christ did not spoil good workers. Christ made them better workers! They put their farm work before their church meetings; their crops before their confessions. Their diligent labors bore fruit. Not only did their example convert their master to Christianity, but he enabled them to purchase their freedom from him for $2000.
WOOD CUTTING
By cutting wood they purchased their freedom, and their lives. This useful skill was employed, whenever and wherever necessary to procure bread.
26 So Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them. 27 That day he made the Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly, to provide for the needs of the altar of the LORD at the place the LORD would choose. And that is what they are to this day.
Joshua 9:26-27.
BRICK-YARD WORK
He also worked in a brick-yard to purchase his freedom and feed himself. “I used often to pray sitting or standing or lying; and while my hands were employed to earn my bread, my heart was devoted to my dear Redeemer. Sometimes I would waken from my sleep preaching and praying.”
That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: 7“You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”Exodus 5:6-9
SALT-DELIVERIES
After the brick-yard, Bishop Allen began to supply salt from Delaware during the Continental War, making deliveries at regular stops and intervals, all the time preaching, praying and meditating. His salt delivery work pleased him greatly “in many happy seasons.”
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13
SELF-RELIANT PREACHER
After the Continental War, he traveled with numerous Methodist preachers of renown, preaching and teaching the gospel of Christ, and, as always, he relied on his own hands to feed and to clothe himself. He was also present at the first Methodist Episcopal general conference ever held in the United States in December 1784. Rev. Bishop Francis Asbury thereafter sent for Bishop Allen to travel with him down into the Carolinas slave states and other places, plainly telling Allen that he would have to sleep “in his carriage, but he would allow him his victuals and clothes.”
While Bishop Allen was a man of God, fully committed to John Wesley’s Methodism, his own background as a slave rebelled against the notion of sleeping in a carriage while being furnished only food and clothing as hire, something he could do for himself, had done for himself, and preferred doing for himself. His position was somewhat analogous to Isaiah 4:1--
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."
Allen would be a Methodist upon his own terms, as a free man, under his own vine and fig tree, not as a slave, destitute and dependent on another.
JUST SAY “NO” TO THE BISHOP
Bishop Allen told Bishop Francis Asbury “no” to his travel request in the South. Allen told Asbury “I told him if I was taken sick who was to support me? And that I thought my people ought to lay up something while they were able, to support themselves in times of sickness and old age.”
Who was Bishop Francis Asbury? The most powerful Methodist in America:
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. . . Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6,000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction, the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers. Among the men he ordained was Richard Allen in Philadelphia, the first black minister in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Asbury
FAITHFUL DILIGENCE IN PHILADELPHIA
Eventually, after traveling with others, Allen made his way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He states, “My labor was much blessed. I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people, and few of them attended public worship.”
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.Proverbs 10:4-5
Allen preached as early as 5:00 a.m., and as often as 4 or 5 times per day. He established prayer meetings and raised a society of 42 members in 1786, which included Rev. Absalom Jones, William White and Darius Jinnings. Absalom Jones and William White were pulled from their knees during prayer at St. Georges Episcopal Church by trustees, due to race discrimination. This led to a walk-out by the blacks, who in due course purchased land for construction of a church of their own, which became St. Thomas Episcopal Church, pursuant to majority vote by society members, which Rev. Absalom Jones ultimately headed, as priest.
6TH AND LOMBARD STREET BLACKSMITH SHOP
Meanwhile, Bishop Allen, an inveterate Methodist , had purchased land at 6th and Lombard Street for a church, which the society rejected in favor of the 5th street site occupied by St. Thomas. So, Bishop Allen purchased the property for his own account. He also purchased the frame of an old blacksmith shop, had it ferried to the 6th and Lombard St. site, and paid a team of carpenters to render it habitable and secure as a place of worship.
This converted blacksmith shop became Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which opened July 1794, with a sermon by Bishop Frances Asbury. This taproot of “African Methodism” was established despite the zealous, organized opposition from St. Georges Episcopal Church, including litigation. Bishop Allen served as pastor of Bethel as well as the first consecrated bishop of the AM.E. Church.
CHIEF AFRICAN METHODIST FINANCIER
More than pastor and bishop, though, Bishop Allen was also chief financier. He specifically refused to accept his $500 per year salary, accepting only $80 total for all his years of service, bequeathing any balance due him to the church. He bequeathed another $1400, when the Bethel was sold and bought back by the members. The bishop also loaned Bethel $4,000. His claims against Bethel once aggregated $11,700, and if that is not enough, “At the time that Robert Green sold it, Mr. Allen bought it in for the congregation at the sum of $10,500.”
SHOE AND BOOT SHOP
In addition to his others intereinterests Bishop Allen owned a boot and shoe store, from which he retired a couple years before he died leaving an estate of $30,000-$40,000 in 1831 dollars.
7Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel. 8So the closest relative said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself.” And he removed his sandal.
Ruth 4:7-8Yesterday’s sandals are today’s shoes. Bishop Allen was a man acquainted with redemption and exchange, so the scriptural reference applies. The shoe and boot shop joins farming, wood cutting, brick labor, and salt delivery as means by which he acquired his freedom and gained immortality as a religious founder, crusader and reformer among Africans and Methodists, world-wide.
THE GREAT ALLEN COMMISSION
Bishop Allen was chargeable to no man, and answerable to no man.
Would that certain born-again members of our great church, whether laity or episcopacy, or any in between, would not only celebrate Allen, but imitate Allen; would not just adulate Allen on Founder’s Day, but emulate Allen every day, in Jesus’ holy name! Amen.
Returning now to the Apostle Paul, for summation, we conclude:
7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? 8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”[b] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. 16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9:7-18
#30
Of Chitlins and Church Folk
Of Chitlins and Church Folk
Friday, December 17, 2010
By LARRY DELANO COLEMAN
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16, Mark 8:38).
Neither am I ashamed of being an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Nor am I ashamed of “chitlins”—or, more formally, chitterlings, a/k/a, “wrinkles”—hog intestines, which have been thoroughly cleaned, thoroughly seasoned, and thoroughly cooked.
This soul food delicacy has its roots in our southern slave heritage, when our inventive women found a way to feed us from what white folks threw away. If it wasn’t “high on the hog,” they’d give it to us. And we’d take full advantage of it! http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/ChitlinsHistory.htm
Now, admittedly, there probably are some so-called Christians who shrink from boldly confessing Christ as Lord and Savior. There may be a few AME preachers who’d prefer keeping their affiliation quiet, i.e. “on the down low.” There certainly are a profusion of both so-called Christians and AME preachers who dislike and/or are downright disdainful of “chitlins.” Be that as it may.
This article is not for them. It is only for those who can receive it, the few, the faithful, the unfettered, i.e.—those who love Jesus, the AME church and chitlins.
Every Wednesday night, weather permitting, I engaged in Bible study at Gilbert Memorial A.M.E. Church, in Kansas City Missouri, Rev. Brenda Smith, pastor. Then, I had a stroke in July2010, which hospitalized me for nearly 3 months. Nevertheless, during my hospitalization and rehabilitation, Rev. Smith and her prayer warriors would call me on my cellphone and pray and read from the scriptures to me throughout the period of my convalescence.
Well, I was discharged home in October, still too weak to work, but able to matriculate, slowly, on a cane. Rev. Smith and her prayer band continued to call.
Finally, the holidays were upon us: first, Thanksgiving; now, Christmas.
The next time Wednesday rolled around, and Rev. Smith, et al. called to pray, I let them have it with both barrels. “Prayer is good, Reverend, “ I said. “It changes things. And I really do appreciate you all calling me so faithfully for Bible study. But, that’s all talk. And that’s all too many Christians want to do is talk! In 1 John 3, the Bible condemns folks who have the world’s goods, who see their brother has needs, and who don’t do nothing about it, but talk. That lady at your church that sells them dinners on Fridays, have her to call me. I want some chitlins. “
“Is that what you want, Reverend?” Rev. Smith asked me. “We can take care of that. We’ve been intending to come by and see you, anyway, since you came home. This gives us that opportunity!”
My heart jumped for joy! My loving wife, though almost perfect in other respects, doesn’t like chitlins at all. So, I had no chitlins coming from her. But, the Lord had made a way! I told everybody I knew about this: my siblings, my uncle, my friends. And, now, Dear Reader, I’m telling you! God is able to put chitlins on the table!
When the next Wednesday came back around, Rev. Brenda Smith and her Chief Steward, Donna Randolph, came over to our home for Bible study, and brought dinner with them. They brought chitlins, collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and meat loaf, all exquisitely prepared and presented. We feasted. We studied. We praised the Lord!
Nothing like chitlins and church folk, in Jesus’ holy name!
#30
Friday, December 17, 2010
By LARRY DELANO COLEMAN
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16, Mark 8:38).
Neither am I ashamed of being an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Nor am I ashamed of “chitlins”—or, more formally, chitterlings, a/k/a, “wrinkles”—hog intestines, which have been thoroughly cleaned, thoroughly seasoned, and thoroughly cooked.
This soul food delicacy has its roots in our southern slave heritage, when our inventive women found a way to feed us from what white folks threw away. If it wasn’t “high on the hog,” they’d give it to us. And we’d take full advantage of it! http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/ChitlinsHistory.htm
Now, admittedly, there probably are some so-called Christians who shrink from boldly confessing Christ as Lord and Savior. There may be a few AME preachers who’d prefer keeping their affiliation quiet, i.e. “on the down low.” There certainly are a profusion of both so-called Christians and AME preachers who dislike and/or are downright disdainful of “chitlins.” Be that as it may.
This article is not for them. It is only for those who can receive it, the few, the faithful, the unfettered, i.e.—those who love Jesus, the AME church and chitlins.
Every Wednesday night, weather permitting, I engaged in Bible study at Gilbert Memorial A.M.E. Church, in Kansas City Missouri, Rev. Brenda Smith, pastor. Then, I had a stroke in July2010, which hospitalized me for nearly 3 months. Nevertheless, during my hospitalization and rehabilitation, Rev. Smith and her prayer warriors would call me on my cellphone and pray and read from the scriptures to me throughout the period of my convalescence.
Well, I was discharged home in October, still too weak to work, but able to matriculate, slowly, on a cane. Rev. Smith and her prayer band continued to call.
Finally, the holidays were upon us: first, Thanksgiving; now, Christmas.
The next time Wednesday rolled around, and Rev. Smith, et al. called to pray, I let them have it with both barrels. “Prayer is good, Reverend, “ I said. “It changes things. And I really do appreciate you all calling me so faithfully for Bible study. But, that’s all talk. And that’s all too many Christians want to do is talk! In 1 John 3, the Bible condemns folks who have the world’s goods, who see their brother has needs, and who don’t do nothing about it, but talk. That lady at your church that sells them dinners on Fridays, have her to call me. I want some chitlins. “
“Is that what you want, Reverend?” Rev. Smith asked me. “We can take care of that. We’ve been intending to come by and see you, anyway, since you came home. This gives us that opportunity!”
My heart jumped for joy! My loving wife, though almost perfect in other respects, doesn’t like chitlins at all. So, I had no chitlins coming from her. But, the Lord had made a way! I told everybody I knew about this: my siblings, my uncle, my friends. And, now, Dear Reader, I’m telling you! God is able to put chitlins on the table!
When the next Wednesday came back around, Rev. Brenda Smith and her Chief Steward, Donna Randolph, came over to our home for Bible study, and brought dinner with them. They brought chitlins, collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and meat loaf, all exquisitely prepared and presented. We feasted. We studied. We praised the Lord!
Nothing like chitlins and church folk, in Jesus’ holy name!
#30
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Divided House Becoming One
Divided House Becoming One
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, presciently paraphrased it, when, as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in 1858—Stephen A. Douglas being the pyrrhic victor-- he said, in reliance upon Matt. 12 :25, and Mark 3:25 http://bible.cc/mark/3-25.htm :
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. "
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
Similarly, the epic battle between “sinners” and “saints” in the black community, since slavery, which has so long, and needlessly divided it against itself, and sapped its united vigor, is dissolving: empowering the whole world through its dynamic fusion.
No single event or person is responsible for this cessation. Essentially it is a recognition that black people love, and are beholden to, all kinds of black music—the principal plane on which the battle was fought. They will not only listen to it, but will dance to it, and will buy it, regardless. This incremental recognition has accrued gradually, inexorably, even grudgingly. Its triumph is accented by the prevalence of eclectic musical genres and instrumentation in contemporary worship, as well as praise dancers in worship. Such was rare, if not unthinkable, prior to the 1990s, even though certain “holy dances” have always been an extemporaneous part of black worship, in many, though not all, churches going back to slavery days.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/614115/the_evolution_of_black_history_dance_pg2.html?cat=2
It was in the black church, and by extension, the black family, that this epic battle, between “right” and “wrong” and godliness and ungodliness, has held sway, since the days of Thomas A. Dorsey in the early 1900’s. Dorsey, a popular blues musician popularized blending the blues with spirituals to create “gospel music”. Stevie Wonder, for example, performed a concert at the National Baptist Convention in 1998 in Kansas City, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
This spiritual and cultural reunion is about more than music and dance, however. It is also about the veritable epigenetic “soul of black folk,” as expressed through religion, and, more broadly, through life itself. Taken to its ultimate expression, it is about the “soul of all folk,” since all humans on earth descended from Africans genetically and culturally. Acts 17:26 .
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus
Much of the thrust toward black self-assertion, expressed in some manner by every “leader” from Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, through Rev. Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan, has been against the outer constraints imposed upon the liberty of the freed slaves, since Emancipation in 1865, which cruelly circumscribed the full ambit of their constitutional and statutory rights, privileges, and immunities.
The internal thrust toward black self-assertion now underway is against the inner constraints, which have similarly circumscribed the spirit, creativity and initiative of the freed slaves since the failure of Reconstruction in 1877. Leaders of the freed slaves obligingly imposed equivalent inner constraints upon themselves in conformity with norms decreed by others, as they struggled “up from slavery” wrongly believing assimilation and dissimulation would save them from discrimination and stigmatization.
Thus, a middle wall of partition was erected among black Americans. On the left were the hopeful assimilationists and on the right were the traditional “indigenes,” i.e. those who were content with their own indigenous essence in all its dimensions. Ephesians 2:14 says: “For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us…” Everybody “wore the mask”, i.e. dissimulated, to quote poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who carefully observed black folks’ behavior,
and who then wrote in inimitable verse, “We Wear The Mask”:
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw8.html
Dissolving the middle wall of partition, which divides these two groups is the looming goal of “a divided house becoming one.” Cries arose from all our tortured souls—secular and non-secular—and the clay was vile beneath all our feet for many a mile. Flip sides of one coin we were and are.
Both the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Prince Hall Masons, the oldest institutions in black America are scions of European institutions, including their discipline and ritual and dogma. While these venerable institutions, along with their august founders—Richard Allen and Prince Hall, respectively—have stabilized and nourished black people over their two hundred years’ of existence, it is now time to push out into the deep. Luke 5:4 “And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
A new age has come. And certainly we, each of us, is blessed to see it. We join with late poet,Margaret Walker Alexander, of Jackson State University, who prophetically sung in the concluding stanza of her 1942 poem, “For My People:”
“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs by written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/354.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/walker-margaret.html
I had long sensed that something new and wonderful was evolving, as I watched and heard Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bland Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Rev. Al Green, and others, make music “naked and unashamed” Gen.2:25 of its church or blues overtones in the 1960’s and '70's. Other musicians rushed in feeling and sensing the same, like the Commodores, with “Jesus is Love.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPKBkW6a1s&feature=related
Little did I know that I was born to play a part in this rapprochement between the sacred and the secular, the churched and the “un-churched,” and gospel and “the blues,” the historical and the theological.
Just like Joseph, in the latter day, rescued and revived Israel nee Jacob and his sons from starvation and want, though they had sold him into slavery in Egypt; so, also shall this rapprochement be salvific for the children of Ethiopia, who have suffered, mightily, themselves since selling us into slavery. God has worked it out. What they intended for evil, he intended for good. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.” Gen. 50:20 (ESV)
Having personally fought for that “freedom” wrought by the civil rights movement, in education, public accommodations, housing, employment and voting, I have also studied deeply and read voraciously. I knew there was something fundamental going on in black culture, which had long been a bulwark of protestant conservatism. And, I came to know that something fundamental was going on in me. In 1992, I fell critically ill, being hospitalized for 12 days. Then and there, I promised the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that if he restored my life, I would give it to him. Well, he did and I did. I confessed Jesus Christ as head of my life at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, on Palm Sunday 1993. I was licensed to preach in 1994. Following four years of study, under our Board of Examiners, I was ordained as an Itinerant Elder in 1998, by the late Bishop Vernon Randolph Byrd, the 105th elected and consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This digression into my personal transformation makes the parallel point that change is endemic. I, too, became, as each of us must “become, all one thing." Until, and unless, one is reconciled to one’s self, all is lost. One is left two separate souls in one dogged body, to paraphrase DuBois.
Blues and spirituals and their adherents seek congress, a renewal of their connubial bond with each other, unfettered by others’ self-righteous opprobrium. It is the season and each is in season. When they get together, so will their respective constituencies—which heavily overlap, so much so, one cannot tell the “wheat from the tares!” Matt. 13:24-30
http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/mltares.htm
This disunion, this estrangement has severely weakened the black community, just like faulty timing disables an engine. Ministers who have recognized this injurious alienation and who have worked to overcome it, have included Rev. C.L. Franklin, the father of Aretha Franklin, and his good friend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At critical times during the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, would troll for, and obtain the support of, denizens of the diverse dives frequented by blacks, places which the traditional black church excoriates as “juke joints”. Jesus also patronized the “juke joints” of his day. And he, too, was criticized by the so-called righteous. Mark 2:15 “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.”
The scriptures, once again, are instructive:
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24 (NIV)
If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25 (NIV)
And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. Mark 3:26(NIV)
We—Africans in America—are descendants of the two tribes of Ethiopians of whom Homer sung in The Odyssey. We were also the tallest, fairest, most just of men of whom he sung in The Iliad, from whom the Greeks acquired their gods. Our unity will bring about Satan’s downfall.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jcpQqkHr328C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=iliad+ethiopians+land+of+the+gods&source=bl&ots=PVbONmQHtx&sig=7gi4qQGeKTVThH67ZvqifVdgASI&hl=en&ei=p57yTKfmIcWqlAeP4aX0DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=iliad%20ethiopians%20land%20of%20the%20gods&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=2wtYvc2ZLT0C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=ethiopia+land+of+the+gods+iliad&source=bl&ots=eU2IduiRN3&sig=eSsoFZGpWInoEvzbTLA7S4YGKKo&hl=en&ei=EqHyTJ9rxZuWB47SrIIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false http://tseday.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/ethiopia-birth-of-the-gods-by-diodorus/ http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_morality.html
Everything has a shadow. Neither can the two, the shadow and its object, be separated from each other, where there is light. As Smokey Robinson has said “It would be easier to take the wet from water, or the dry from sand.”
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/What-Love-Has-Joined-Together-lyrics-The-Temptations/5505A3B5B4C3948248256D2F002C6A9B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfqStzknhA&feature=related
The blues and spirituals are “what love has joined together” in our people. Those who resist this union have long “kicked against the pricks.” Acts 9:5. The music of black people, along with their elan, their “cool,” their mojo,has saturated the globe, as evidenced, in part, by the Michael Jackson phenomenon. This divine love, perfect union, this consummation has been hitherto thwarted by well-meant, though unnatural and often hypocritical, resistance from church folk. Somehow, they saw something ungodly in the celebration of physical love, passion between a man and a woman in song and especially in dance, notwithstanding the Old Testament book’s “Song of Solomon,” and the profligacy of David, “a man after God’s own heart.” Acts 13:22.
It was “sin”-- blues, jazz, etc. --they ominously intoned. “When, in truth, under their cosmogony, practically everything is excoriated as sin, outside church. Yet the holy scriptures condemn all, even the so-called saints! “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” http://bible.cc/romans/3-23.htm Rom. 3:23. This holier-than-thou dogma and creed have given rise to wide-spread hypocrisy, and scandalous apostacy of historic proportions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
Some of the principal proponents of this version of piety have been caught in homosexual and/or extramarital relations, over the centuries; including that abomination of degradation involving sexual abuse of little church children.
http://www.enotes.com/catholic-child-abuse-article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
Another Lincoln quote concludes the matter---
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm
#30
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, presciently paraphrased it, when, as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in 1858—Stephen A. Douglas being the pyrrhic victor-- he said, in reliance upon Matt. 12 :25, and Mark 3:25 http://bible.cc/mark/3-25.htm :
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. "
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
Similarly, the epic battle between “sinners” and “saints” in the black community, since slavery, which has so long, and needlessly divided it against itself, and sapped its united vigor, is dissolving: empowering the whole world through its dynamic fusion.
No single event or person is responsible for this cessation. Essentially it is a recognition that black people love, and are beholden to, all kinds of black music—the principal plane on which the battle was fought. They will not only listen to it, but will dance to it, and will buy it, regardless. This incremental recognition has accrued gradually, inexorably, even grudgingly. Its triumph is accented by the prevalence of eclectic musical genres and instrumentation in contemporary worship, as well as praise dancers in worship. Such was rare, if not unthinkable, prior to the 1990s, even though certain “holy dances” have always been an extemporaneous part of black worship, in many, though not all, churches going back to slavery days.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/614115/the_evolution_of_black_history_dance_pg2.html?cat=2
It was in the black church, and by extension, the black family, that this epic battle, between “right” and “wrong” and godliness and ungodliness, has held sway, since the days of Thomas A. Dorsey in the early 1900’s. Dorsey, a popular blues musician popularized blending the blues with spirituals to create “gospel music”. Stevie Wonder, for example, performed a concert at the National Baptist Convention in 1998 in Kansas City, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
This spiritual and cultural reunion is about more than music and dance, however. It is also about the veritable epigenetic “soul of black folk,” as expressed through religion, and, more broadly, through life itself. Taken to its ultimate expression, it is about the “soul of all folk,” since all humans on earth descended from Africans genetically and culturally. Acts 17:26 .
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus
Much of the thrust toward black self-assertion, expressed in some manner by every “leader” from Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, through Rev. Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan, has been against the outer constraints imposed upon the liberty of the freed slaves, since Emancipation in 1865, which cruelly circumscribed the full ambit of their constitutional and statutory rights, privileges, and immunities.
The internal thrust toward black self-assertion now underway is against the inner constraints, which have similarly circumscribed the spirit, creativity and initiative of the freed slaves since the failure of Reconstruction in 1877. Leaders of the freed slaves obligingly imposed equivalent inner constraints upon themselves in conformity with norms decreed by others, as they struggled “up from slavery” wrongly believing assimilation and dissimulation would save them from discrimination and stigmatization.
Thus, a middle wall of partition was erected among black Americans. On the left were the hopeful assimilationists and on the right were the traditional “indigenes,” i.e. those who were content with their own indigenous essence in all its dimensions. Ephesians 2:14 says: “For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us…” Everybody “wore the mask”, i.e. dissimulated, to quote poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who carefully observed black folks’ behavior,
and who then wrote in inimitable verse, “We Wear The Mask”:
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw8.html
Dissolving the middle wall of partition, which divides these two groups is the looming goal of “a divided house becoming one.” Cries arose from all our tortured souls—secular and non-secular—and the clay was vile beneath all our feet for many a mile. Flip sides of one coin we were and are.
Both the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Prince Hall Masons, the oldest institutions in black America are scions of European institutions, including their discipline and ritual and dogma. While these venerable institutions, along with their august founders—Richard Allen and Prince Hall, respectively—have stabilized and nourished black people over their two hundred years’ of existence, it is now time to push out into the deep. Luke 5:4 “And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
A new age has come. And certainly we, each of us, is blessed to see it. We join with late poet,Margaret Walker Alexander, of Jackson State University, who prophetically sung in the concluding stanza of her 1942 poem, “For My People:”
“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs by written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/354.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/walker-margaret.html
I had long sensed that something new and wonderful was evolving, as I watched and heard Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bland Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Rev. Al Green, and others, make music “naked and unashamed” Gen.2:25 of its church or blues overtones in the 1960’s and '70's. Other musicians rushed in feeling and sensing the same, like the Commodores, with “Jesus is Love.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPKBkW6a1s&feature=related
Little did I know that I was born to play a part in this rapprochement between the sacred and the secular, the churched and the “un-churched,” and gospel and “the blues,” the historical and the theological.
Just like Joseph, in the latter day, rescued and revived Israel nee Jacob and his sons from starvation and want, though they had sold him into slavery in Egypt; so, also shall this rapprochement be salvific for the children of Ethiopia, who have suffered, mightily, themselves since selling us into slavery. God has worked it out. What they intended for evil, he intended for good. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.” Gen. 50:20 (ESV)
Having personally fought for that “freedom” wrought by the civil rights movement, in education, public accommodations, housing, employment and voting, I have also studied deeply and read voraciously. I knew there was something fundamental going on in black culture, which had long been a bulwark of protestant conservatism. And, I came to know that something fundamental was going on in me. In 1992, I fell critically ill, being hospitalized for 12 days. Then and there, I promised the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that if he restored my life, I would give it to him. Well, he did and I did. I confessed Jesus Christ as head of my life at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, on Palm Sunday 1993. I was licensed to preach in 1994. Following four years of study, under our Board of Examiners, I was ordained as an Itinerant Elder in 1998, by the late Bishop Vernon Randolph Byrd, the 105th elected and consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This digression into my personal transformation makes the parallel point that change is endemic. I, too, became, as each of us must “become, all one thing." Until, and unless, one is reconciled to one’s self, all is lost. One is left two separate souls in one dogged body, to paraphrase DuBois.
Blues and spirituals and their adherents seek congress, a renewal of their connubial bond with each other, unfettered by others’ self-righteous opprobrium. It is the season and each is in season. When they get together, so will their respective constituencies—which heavily overlap, so much so, one cannot tell the “wheat from the tares!” Matt. 13:24-30
http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/mltares.htm
This disunion, this estrangement has severely weakened the black community, just like faulty timing disables an engine. Ministers who have recognized this injurious alienation and who have worked to overcome it, have included Rev. C.L. Franklin, the father of Aretha Franklin, and his good friend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At critical times during the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, would troll for, and obtain the support of, denizens of the diverse dives frequented by blacks, places which the traditional black church excoriates as “juke joints”. Jesus also patronized the “juke joints” of his day. And he, too, was criticized by the so-called righteous. Mark 2:15 “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.”
The scriptures, once again, are instructive:
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24 (NIV)
If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25 (NIV)
And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. Mark 3:26(NIV)
We—Africans in America—are descendants of the two tribes of Ethiopians of whom Homer sung in The Odyssey. We were also the tallest, fairest, most just of men of whom he sung in The Iliad, from whom the Greeks acquired their gods. Our unity will bring about Satan’s downfall.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jcpQqkHr328C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=iliad+ethiopians+land+of+the+gods&source=bl&ots=PVbONmQHtx&sig=7gi4qQGeKTVThH67ZvqifVdgASI&hl=en&ei=p57yTKfmIcWqlAeP4aX0DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=iliad%20ethiopians%20land%20of%20the%20gods&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=2wtYvc2ZLT0C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=ethiopia+land+of+the+gods+iliad&source=bl&ots=eU2IduiRN3&sig=eSsoFZGpWInoEvzbTLA7S4YGKKo&hl=en&ei=EqHyTJ9rxZuWB47SrIIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false http://tseday.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/ethiopia-birth-of-the-gods-by-diodorus/ http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_morality.html
Everything has a shadow. Neither can the two, the shadow and its object, be separated from each other, where there is light. As Smokey Robinson has said “It would be easier to take the wet from water, or the dry from sand.”
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/What-Love-Has-Joined-Together-lyrics-The-Temptations/5505A3B5B4C3948248256D2F002C6A9B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfqStzknhA&feature=related
The blues and spirituals are “what love has joined together” in our people. Those who resist this union have long “kicked against the pricks.” Acts 9:5. The music of black people, along with their elan, their “cool,” their mojo,has saturated the globe, as evidenced, in part, by the Michael Jackson phenomenon. This divine love, perfect union, this consummation has been hitherto thwarted by well-meant, though unnatural and often hypocritical, resistance from church folk. Somehow, they saw something ungodly in the celebration of physical love, passion between a man and a woman in song and especially in dance, notwithstanding the Old Testament book’s “Song of Solomon,” and the profligacy of David, “a man after God’s own heart.” Acts 13:22.
It was “sin”-- blues, jazz, etc. --they ominously intoned. “When, in truth, under their cosmogony, practically everything is excoriated as sin, outside church. Yet the holy scriptures condemn all, even the so-called saints! “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” http://bible.cc/romans/3-23.htm Rom. 3:23. This holier-than-thou dogma and creed have given rise to wide-spread hypocrisy, and scandalous apostacy of historic proportions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
Some of the principal proponents of this version of piety have been caught in homosexual and/or extramarital relations, over the centuries; including that abomination of degradation involving sexual abuse of little church children.
http://www.enotes.com/catholic-child-abuse-article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
Another Lincoln quote concludes the matter---
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm
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