Black clergy call for churches to foster healing in the aftermath of Charlottesville

Black clergy call for churches to foster healing in the aftermath of Charlottesville

(RNS) A coalition of African-American clergy is calling on churches to serve as sacred spaces for healing in the aftermath of violence in Charlottesville, Va., and as the nation grapples with racism and other bigotry.

“We urge churches across the country to create safe and sacred spaces for prayer, healing, dialogue and honest conversations about the history and reality of racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism and white supremacy in this nation,” the black clergy said in a Friday (Aug. 18) statement.

“Our youth and young adults especially need a place to process this assault on their being and the very soul of this nation.”

The group, which spearheaded the first-ever “African American Clergy Advocacy Day” on Capitol Hill a month ago, also denounced the hatred displayed recently in Charlottesville and the “subsequent inflammatory and detestable words of President Donald Trump supporting the hateful actions of the KKK, Nazis and white supremacist groups.”

The 10 initial signatories include leaders of the National African American Clergy Network, the Ecumenical Poverty Initiative and the National Council of Churches, as well as officials of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the United Church of Christ.

The black clergy called on Congress, denominational leaders, and particularly white evangelical church leaders to speak out against the “evil” of white supremacy.

They also took issue with President Trump’s assertion that “many sides” were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville.

Declaring, “No, Mr. President. There are not many sides,” the group questioned his contention that “fine people” were among both sides in the protests that turned violent and left three people dead.

“These ‘fine’ people intimidated churchgoers, attacked clergy and threw bottles from the tops of steps into the crowd of counter protesters — those who were standing against their hatred, bigotry and white supremacist values,”  the online statement said.

On July 18, members of the clergy group protested the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts affecting programs including food stamps and Meals on Wheels; 16 people were arrested. A week later they joined others in a protest of the Senate’s unsuccessful efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act; 31 people were arrested.

The Rev. Leslie Copeland-Tune who drafted the statement, said the group plans to return to Capitol Hill in September to urge members of Congress to be more outspoken against white supremacy. The clergy also plan to visit five states represented by Congress members who hold key roles in considering the proposed budget.

Rev. Al Sharpton’s thousand-minister march gains steam after Charlottesville

Rev. Al Sharpton’s thousand-minister march gains steam after Charlottesville

(RNS) — The Rev. Al Sharpton says his thousand-minister march is all the more urgent now than when he began planning it months ago.

The Pentecostal-turned-Baptist minister says the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va., has sparked more interest and a greater need for clergy of many faiths to speak up at the march set for Aug. 28, the 54th anniversary of the March on Washington.

The march will begin at the Washington memorial honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and end at Justice Department offices to protest increased hate crimes, discrimination and mass incarceration.

The 62-year-old president of the National Action Network, a predominantly black, Christian organization, talked with RNS about his plans. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How would you sum up your reaction to the events of Charlottesville over the weekend?

Charlottesville was a very startling and repulsive reminder to us of the issue of hate and the issue of racism and anti-Semitism that is still alive and practiced in the country. It seems now to have been revived and, in many ways, given moral equivalency with those that protested by the president of the United States. We need a president that’s clear that anti-Semitism and hatred and the kind of public display of bigotry that we saw is unacceptable.

How do faith leaders need to respond to President Trump’s series of comments about the violence in Charlottesville?

We had already called for 1,000 ministers of all faiths — Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim — to meet at King’s memorial and march to the Justice Department, saying we do not want to see the moral authority of Dr. King’s dream undermined no matter who the president. And we’ve had several hundred ministers already sign. After Charlottesville happened — and then the president’s reaction — it has intensified and we’re getting calls from all kinds of ministers from all faiths saying we must make a statement.

Our hope is that when you looked at those Nazis carrying torches talking about “You will not replace us,” we can contrast that with rabbis linking arms with Baptist ministers and Muslims marching in the spirit of Dr. King. They went to Robert E. Lee’s monument. We’re going to King’s monument and marching to the Justice Department. I heard growing up that the best way to expose a dirty glass is put a clean glass next to it. Faith leaders must stand up and show a dignified, nonviolent way.

Have your plans for the Ministers March for Justice changed in light of Charlottesville, whether in numbers or logistics or security?

Our security concerns have grown ’cause we always now have to be concerned about whether some people will try and do a counter thing — I’m talking about from the right. I get up every day facing death threats. That’s normal when you’re high-profile. So our security concerns increase although we’ve had no direct threats.

As I’ve talked to a lot of the ministers that have called and joined in now, a lot of them said that, yes, we always agreed with the idea of a march but I think we didn’t understand the urgency until we saw that footage on Saturday night. I think what that has done is brought back, into everyone’s living room, why we need to keep marching. This is much worse than we thought in terms of a spirit of hate and immorality.

How does this march compare to some of the previous ones you were involved in – including the march just before the Trump inauguration and the one on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington?

This one is for faith leaders. We’ve only asked for ministers. Now, others might come but it will be led by — and the program will be — rabbis, clergy members of the various parts of Christendom, Muslims and Hindus. Because we want to make a statement that hundreds of faith leaders came to Washington on the day of Dr. King’s dream. That is a big difference from us bringing tens of thousands of people —  we want to make a clear statement from the moral and the faith leaders of this country.

Don’t forget Dr. King’s organization was named the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was very specific that it was religious-based and National Action Network is that as well. We’ve not heard from the faith community in a very public, united way and that’s the difference this march is.

What does it say to you about where we are as a country, or about its people of faith, that ministers are going to gather this way?

It gives hope that there are people that are willing to stand up. We’ve gone through rough periods in our history before and faith leaders lead us through. What do we remember about the ’60s? We remember when Rabbi (Abraham Joshua) Heschel joined Dr. King in Selma. We remember how it was a rabbi that was the speaker right before Dr. King at the March on Washington. When we all started coming together and raised the high moral questions, it set the climate for change. And you will always have other things going on, but when people know that those whom they go to on their Sabbath to get guidance are standing up, it brings it to another dimension. And I think it is extremely important that we do this, particularly at this time.

What do you think clergy and other people of faith should be doing at this time beyond sermons and marches?

I think that they’ve got to get into the community. They’ve got to get into the schools. They’ve got to get into the local gatherings, the town halls, the planning board meetings. And we’ve got to beat back this spirit of hate. We’ve got to go and do the work. Faith without works is a dead thing, the Bible says. And I want to lay that challenge out at the march: We’ve got to come off our pulpits and out of our cathedrals and save the soul of this nation.

Copyright 2017 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

Is it time for the Church to respond to hip-hop’s dominance?

Is it time for the Church to respond to hip-hop’s dominance?

The Nielsen company is most widely known as the company that measures television ratings, but it also wields its considerable research apparatus in the realm of popular music. Recently, its annual mid-year report made headlines around the blogosphere after it revealed that for the first time, more people listened to the combined genres of R&B and hip-hop than any other musical form, dethroning rock’s position at the top.

This shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone who’s been paying much attention, because hip-hop music and culture has been steadily moving closer and closer toward the center of American culture for decades now. Nineties rap icons Dr. Dre and Jay-Z have become multimedia moguls with their own product lines and exclusive platforms, and the house band for NBC’s flagship late-night TV show is legendary Philly hip-hop band The Roots, whose leading men Amir “Questlove” Thompson and Tarik “Black Thought” Trotter helped produce the biggest smash hit Broadway recording in decades.

Reluctant to Adapt

Hip-hop has long been a mainstream form of musical expression.

And since evangelical churches are known for adopting trends and idolizing the notion of relevance, it seems telling that, outside of a few counter examples, very few churches are intentionally embracing hip-hop as a form of worship music.

There are a variety of reasons for this. Chief among them is a centering of whiteness and white cultural norms. Even for people who do not hold any active racial animus in their conscious thoughts (and who would therefore resist the term racist as a self-descriptor), there are still both conscious and subconscious ways that the tastes, priorities and experiences of people of color are marginalized or overlooked in favor of a “mainstream” aesthetic that is often white and middle class. Therefore, most white megachurches have worship bands that sound more like U2 than they do Lecrae, even though in 2017 people tend to listen more to the latter than the former.

But white privilege doesn’t explain the reluctance that many Black churches and church leaders demonstrate in their interactions with hip-hop culture. While gospel music has undoubtedly been heavily influenced by hip-hop music and culture (through trailblazing artists like Kirk Franklin and Tye Tribbett), there are still plenty of Black congregations where the attitude communicated by both leaders and laity is that it’s not holy if it doesn’t have a choir or a Hammond B-3 organ. Though the cultural signifiers are different, there’s still a sense of cultural superiority and a reluctance to get outside of it.

Missing the Point

In my conversations with White pastors and worship leaders, there’s also an expressed sense of apprehension about engaging with hip-hop for fear of doing it wrong; those who do it poorly are rightly accused of disrespecting the artform, and those who do it too well open themselves to accusations of cultural appropriation. Often I hear from pastors who feel like it’s fine for a church to embrace hip-hop, but only if hip-hop is an authentic cultural value of their congregation. When I hear that, I feel like what they’re telling me is, “Sure, you should do hip-hop, because you’re Black and you grew up with it. But my church doesn’t have many Black people.”

This also misses the point somewhat, because what that Nielsen report tells us is that hip-hop music (and the culture surrounding it) is no longer just the domain of a minority subculture. It is a huge part of mainstream popular culture, and as it relates to contemporary music, it is the dominant culture. When Beyonce drops an album, it’s news. After 2016’s Lemonade, even middle-aged white comedians were conversant enough to make jokes about “Becky with the good hair.”

At this point, it seems like most churches end up in one of four quadrants. When it comes to hip-hop, they either:

  • Ignore it
  • Denounce it
  • Tentatively embrace it
  • Go all out in support of it

It’s been my experience that most churches take option No. 1, while some more reactionary churches end up in option No. 2 (mostly out of fear and ignorance). And the few churches I know of that take option No. 4 do so because they’re in multicultural urban contexts (like colleges, military bases or athlete fellowships) where hip-hop is lingua franca.

I think the best move is No. 3—a tentative embrace.

Alternatives and Solutions

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that every church needs to start incorporating trap beats, turntables and air horns into their worship services. It’s still important to maintain a sense of reverence and holiness.

However, what I think is true is that any pastor or church leader who is concerned about reaching people under 40 needs to have at least a basic grasp of certain aspects of hip-hop culture, and—more importantly—recognize that these artifacts are a major part of just how things are today. It could involve allowing the worship leader to experiment with using hip-hop beats as part of the instrumentation.

It might involve inviting local or regional (or, if you have the budget, national) hip-hop artists. It might be learning to incorporate certain hip-hop terms, slogans or mannerisms. (In one overwhelmingly white church, as a guest worship leader I led a call-and-response portion of a song where, instead of saying “amen,” the crowd was encouraged to chant “yes, yes, y’all.”)

Is this risky? Sure. Will there be times when it looks like God’s people are trying too hard to be cool? Probably. Will you make mistakes and offend people along the way? Almost certainly.

But the alternatives are also risky.

A lot of time what I hear from people in their protests of hip-hop is criticism of the rampant misogyny and consumerism, so they feel like their only option is to denounce it. But we also have a ton of consumerism and misogyny in the White House; that doesn’t mean we have to oppose the concept of the Executive Branch. The truth is, pastors should be able to help their people understand and reject the sinful elements in any culture, but you can only really do that well if you can also highlight the honorable elements. If pastors and other church leaders consistently fail in that process, they inadvertently deliver the message that they are out of touch and their judgment is not to be trusted.

And whether they fail consistently, or they just never even try in the first place, the net effect is the same—young people are driven away from the church. Spoiler alert: Jesus had something to say about people who cause others to stumble, and it’s not good.

So this opportunity represents a clear way forward in engaging generations to come with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let’s hope that God raises up a generation of leaders who are up to the challenge.

 

‘Greenleaf’ Returns Tuesday with All-New Episodes

‘Greenleaf’ Returns Tuesday with All-New Episodes

Finally! The wait is almost over.

Many of us were disappointed last spring when we discovered “Greenleaf” was not returning for three months. However, the OWN series’ two-night, mid-season premiere finally begins August 15 at 10 p.m. ET. “Greenleaf” was also renewed for season three, according to Variety and Deadline.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, we’d like to give you a brief recap on what you’ve been missing. (Caution: Spoilers ahead, for those of you who’d like to watch the previous episodes ahead of next week’s premiere.)

“Greenleaf” tells the story of an affluent Black family led by the bishop of the fictional Memphis mega church Calvary, but viewers soon learn that this Christian family is anything but perfect. Members of the Greenleaf family include Bishop Greenleaf, Lady Mae Greenleaf, their four children Grace, Charity, Faith (deceased), Jacob, and grandchildren.

So far, Season 1 and the first half of Season 2 have provided viewers with a front-row seat to the lies told by the Greenleaf clan and allies to cover up sexual and emotional abuse, infidelity, and corruption.

During Season 1, Grace finds her way back to her home and church in Memphis after avoiding both her family and the spiritual call to be a leader in the church for years. Viewers have witnessed Grace’s journey in serving as a catalyst for seeking justice on behalf of her sister Faith who was molested by their Uncle Mac and commits suicide as a result of the trauma. And, as the first season continues to unfold, viewers learn that there are, in fact, other girls who experience the same trauma at the hands of Uncle Mac.

The Greenleafs’ son Jacob and his wife Kerissa are working on their strained marriage after Jacob’s affair in Season 1. He also fights to be heard and becomes frustrated with being overlooked by his family.

To add fuel to the fire, Jacob makes the decision to leave Calvary to become an associate pastor at his family’s competition church Triumph, but he soon discovers the lead pastor, Basie Skanks, has a gambling problem and uses Triumph’s money to fund his habit.

Jacob hides the “church meetings” (aka poker games) from his wife but she is not completely clueless. Nonetheless, Jacob is not pleased with the way Basie handles his church affairs and does not want to be associated with the pastor. So, Jacob offers to pay off the debt of Triumph’s second location, in exchange for him becoming the senior pastor of the church, with no connection with Basie and the original Triumph location.

On the other hand, Charity, the Greenleaf’s third daughter, is working on her music career, gives birth to a beautiful baby boy, and her husband Kevin opened up about being attracted to men. Even after Kevin decides to go to counseling and work through his issues in order for their marriage to move forward, Charity files for divorce.

After Charity receives a call from her music producer to travel out of town and record music with a group, she asks her ex-husband to watch their son. However, once Kevin finds himself alone with the family’s attorney, Aaron, whom he finds attractive. By the way, Charity is also attracted to her music producer.

The Greenleaf family often tries to sweep issues under the rug but the fire continues to grow and we all want answers. Will Charity date her music producer? Will Kevin date Aaron? Will Grace find justice and finally have Uncle Mac put in jail? Will Jacob get Triumph 2?

“Greenleaf” does an excellent job at highlighting the challenges that face a pastor and his family, and sheds lights on issues in the black church such as homosexuality and mental illness.

And, although many of these issues are embellished a bit for the sake of television, it is important for Christians to realize that even ministry leaders are not exempt from trials and tribulations any more than their members. I suppose we’ll all have to stay tuned to see what’s in store for Calvary and the Greenleaf clan.

 

 

Author Shares Journey on Beating the Odds in ‘Moments of Surrender’

Author Shares Journey on Beating the Odds in ‘Moments of Surrender’

Moments of Surrender: Revealing the Missing Pieces is a realistic walk through the growing pains of surrendering your life to God. The book is written by Author, Life Empowerment Coach, and Speaker Charlene Bolden who uses her journey from being a child in the foster care system to being whole in Christ as an example for readers seeking peace.

With chapters such as “Fear Paralyzes Your Faith but Faith Paralyzes Your Fear” and  “Cross Your Red Sea,” readers will witness various aspects of the faith journey that are not usually discussed when giving your life to Christ. Historically, African Americans are forced to overcome statistics and stereotypes, especially as a foster child, and Charlene’s story is no different. Instead, the author chooses to look the foster care stigma in the face and deny its power over her.

“I wanted my book to serve as a resource and guide for people to unpack their own journey of surrender,” said Bolden.

Moments of Surrender tells the author’s story of her powerful act of defiance that led her to living a healthy life and answering a call to lead others to God by example. Charlene reveals parts of her journey in the featured segment below: