Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn

A recent article informs us that black men are not fairing well in our society.  I was just recently in conversation with my mother dealing with a topic very similar to this.  She told me about how growing up during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era black folks of varied socio-economic status lived in the same communities.  She talked about how integration paved the way for middle class/affluent blacks to leave those close-knit black communities for greater opportunities.  This left behind a black under class in mostly urban centers.  What also happened in this black middle class exodus was a weakening of traditional black institutions that were autonomous from the dominant culture.  Anyways…this article gives much food for thought for those of us who are engaged in inner city work or ministry.

ht: Max (when are you going to start a blog man!)

From Exodus to Exile

From the Soul of Rod Garvin:

Do I have to assimilate to the ways of Babylon to fit into the gathering of the faithful? In much of the black church we have historical amnesia and forget from whence we have come, making us complicit with the larger American society’s desire to forget the past and ignore how it continues to impact the present. This brings us to a situation where our religious distinctions are more cosmetic (i.e. the color of the congregation and style of the music and preaching) than substantive (prophetic theology and counter-cultural liturgy). In the white church, I may have to be willing to foresake my ethnic identity and cultural sensibilities to become a part of that community. In the more multi-ethnic churches, which are making a serious attempt to “practice pentecost,” the theology may be caught up in the rapture and disconnected from the concrete socio-economic realities that give context to our salvation. I realize I am making very sweeping statements, but I just want to highlight the major stumbling blocks that make me a “homeless” seminarian at present.

More…

Gordon Parks…a true Renaissance man

 

 

(November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006)

I stand in amazement of the figures that have recently passed on from the scene (e.g. Coretta Scott King, et al).  I remember as a child hearing about Gordon Parks and his contribution to what I call the black prophetic canon.  He will be missed.  His voice and contribution to the arts and social change will be remembered for a long time.

Click here for more info.

John Hope Franklin

 

Yesterday me and the family went to hear Dr. John Hope Franklin talk about his recent autobiography, Mirror to America, at the Levine Museum of the New South here in Charlotte, NC.  It was a great experience hearing him share some of the formative stories of his life.  It was also amazing to hear him recount his thoughts on history, culture, and politics with such clarity (He is 90 years-old!).  As he was re-telling his personal history within the context of a greater historical narrative I found myself reflecting on how I will re-tell my stories to my children and their children.  How will I re-tell the stories?  What stories will I tell.  Of course during the lecture my youngest boy, Abraham, thought the session was over when he ended his talk by saying, “its about time?”  “I didn’t understand a word he was saying…what was he talking about dad?”  Which led me to talk about the significance of a life like Dr. Franklin.  I think I got the point across…for the kids were excited to shake hands with him during the book-signing.  I hope I don’t get so enslaved by the ethos of our culture that places very little value on the oral tradition, the legacies, the heritage….that ethos in our culture that simply wants us to move on to the next big thing.  I pray I have just an inkling of the story-telling capability of a Dr. Franklin as I age…so that I can tell the younger generation about the struggles of life and the goodness and faithfulness of God.  I hope I can be as faithful a griot to my kids as Dr. Franklin has been for many of us.

Racial Constantinianism and why Andre is post-Emergent (Part I)

My friend Andre Daley has blogged about why he is post-Emergent.  Here are his basic five points:

1. The conversation still looks to much like the old conversation, white, male and academic. The dominant culture still dominates.
2. The values behind the conversation aren’t readily expressed in actions. No generous orthopraxis to go with the generous orthodoxy. (see my previous post)
3. The lexicon of the white European theological framework which still dominates. There is very little inclusion of black theologians and the theological framework of people of color. People of color seem to be included in the conversation only if they are willing to use this language and framework. It seems we all need to read NT Wright in order to have any credibility.
4. Talk, talk and more talk. My experience is we love to talk about this stuff but other than retro worship stuff we don’t get around to acting on it. Even so talk about diversity has never come to the fore. I want to be the church and act like the church not just talk like the church.
5. Ultimately its about relationships and I have made some good ones which go beyond the whole emergent (non movement) thing. So I’ll go about the spiritual practice of reconciliation through relationships with my brothers and sisters and leave emergent tag to others.

I have been slow to respond to this because I wanted to give some thought on this particular issue.  When I went to the Emergent Theological Conversation with Miroslav Volf at Yale Divinity School last month I was not suprised by the dominance of white faces in the crowd.  This is pretty typical of these kinds of conversations, in my experience at least.  During the conference I was blessed to talk with a brother from Atlanta named Tony Bronsink.  Tony just recently attended a conference where Darrell Guder of Our Gospel and Culture Network was giving his thoughts on the emerging church.  In his recounting of Guder’s thoughts he mentioned that there is a danger in the emerging church in not  thoroughly discerning its sharing in the American experience.  This has been one of the valid criticisms, I believe, of the emerging church conversation.  That somehow we have moved on from modernity and have found (and still finding) a faithful way to follow Jesus in postmodernity.  I believe this to be a dangerous temptation.  The temptation being that we have faithfully (possibly completely) named our capitulation to the bad habits of modernity.  The emerging church, in many ways, has the resources to ‘name’ these bad habits.  But one bad habit has gone typically unscathed in the broader conversation: the racial Constantinianism of North American Christianity.

I believe this is at least one reason why Andre is post-Emergent.  Andre, like he says, sees that ”the dominant culture still dominates”.  Why call this racial Constantinianism?  Because I hope to get the attention of those in the conversation I believe have the resources to counter-act this bad habit before Emergent and the emerging church conversation create more conjeeled structures and communities that reflect the politics (eccelsial bodies) of Constantinian Christianity…albeit a more posh version of it.

I must confess.  I am part-way a member of the Hauerwasian mafia.  I am coming out of the closet.  My imagination has been captured by theologians Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder in how they have named American Christianity’s theo-sociopolitical captivity to what they describe as Constantinianism.  What these two theologians have taught us is that the church has been profoundly shaped in its theological and ecclesial habits by the sociopolitical order of the Western political order:

“The decline of the old, Constantinian synthesis between the church and the world means that we American Christians are at last free to be faithful in a way that makes being a Christian today an exciting adventure.”- p. 16 Hauerwas, Resident Aliens

Theologian Michael Cartwright expounds on Hauerwas’ project:

Hauerwas’s theological project also involves questioning the institutions, practices, dispositions, and habits that have been formed under the conditions of Christendom, which imaged the unity of church and world under the (official or unofficial) sponsorship of so-called Christian governments from Constantine to so-called Christian America.  The name of the first Christian emperior has come to be associated with the complex of institutional changes and alliances that led Christians in the West to see churches and nation-states to be aligned within a God-given order within which Christians would exercise leadership.  The vestiges of this ‘Constantinian synthesis,’ while obviously weakened and unstable, continue to tempt contemporary Christians to believe that they don’t have to take responsibility for the church’s own discourse and practices because the powers that be (whether the Emperor Constantine or the latest incumbent of the White House) are “Christian” and Christianity is on the side of Western “progress”.- p. 629, The Hauerwas Reader

Cartwright then quotes Hauerwas:

“Constantinianism is a hard habit to break.  It is particularly hard when it seems that we can do so much good by remaining ‘in power.’  It is hard to break because all our categories have been set by the church’s establishment as a necessary part of Western civilization”- Hauerwas, After Christendom

The synthesis that I see that goes largely unscathed in these kinds of conversations is the way much of the discourse named emergent, emerging church or missional is tied to a racial order that we have inherited from Christendom’s capitulation to the principality and power of ‘race’.  Or more specifically what I like to the call the dominance of the symbolic universe of whiteness.  It is racial Constantinianism.  A form of Constantinianism that created a racial order whereby whites were at the top and blacks at the bottom. 

We see vestiges of this racial Constantinianism when Christians engage in theological conversation and praxis that exclude non-white voices.  This exclusionary practice is difficult to name because of our captivity to individualism…the the reducing of racial Constantinianism to purely personal prejudice (”I don’t hate non-whites…or have ill-feelings toward them”).  Such thoughts reflect the politics of America.  More later…