This past Sunday, Kanye West appeared in front of perhaps his biggest church audience yet: Lakewood Church of Houston, pastored by Joel Osteen. West wore a blazer and crew neck sweater — a more conservative outfit than his typical fashion-forward attire. Answering a series of questions that felt more suited for a midday Christian talk show, West revealed a tidbit that goes a long way toward explaining why Kanye is Kanye.
“We actually grew with a church,” West said. “It was a pastor named Johnnie Colemon.”
With those words, Kanye’s interest in political commentary and his current spiritual trajectory suddenly became clear. The Rev. Johnnie Colemon, an African American female pastor, grew Christ Universal Temple, a megachurch on the South Side of Chicago, with her famed “Abundance Campaign.”
While Colemon’s theology often gets lumped into the classic leagues of prosperity gospellers, it belongs more properly within New Thought. This is a theology, which grew out of the 19th century American metaphysical movement, that encourages material wealth as a sign of God’s blessings and a focus on positive thinking — the notion that one’s mental state can manifest into daily living. In 1974, Colemon founded the Universal Foundation for Better Living, branching away from the core of New Thought because of blatant racism.
If Kanye’s understanding of God and Jesus are understood through the lens of African American New Thought, I would argue that his egotism, ostentation and even the tangents into seeming megalomania — onstage with Osteen, Kanye declared himself “the greatest artist God ever created” — have a historical and theological context.
If Colemon’s brand of New Thought is truly the foundation of Kanye’s beliefs, it makes sense that he sees his fame and fortune as positive manifestations of God’s blessings in his life. It makes sense that he would associate himself with Osteen, a preacher of prosperity gospel. And it explains why he associates himself with President Donald Trump.
In Trump, Kanye may see a person who, with no previous political or military experience, spoke his presidency into existence, much the way West spoke his spiritual community — the Sunday Services — into being.
The danger with such a theology is that it ignores the malicious market forces that serve to encourage poverty, white supremacy, racism, Islamophobia and trenchant immigration policies at the Southern border. If this theology were true, we should tell the children who have been separated from families and placed in cages to simply think more positively about their situation in order to be reunited with their parents.
But no amount of positive thinking can save prosperity gospel’s uncritical devotion to Western capitalism, and therein lies the rub.
Up until now, most of the discussion around West, the Sunday Service choir and his most recent album, “Jesus Is King,” has been a flat discussion about generic Christian beliefs, told mostly through the gaze of white evangelicals. The way Kanye spouts his own theology and the way it gets reinterpreted in social media posts and through media reporting offer a Pollyanna Christianity.
Such a sanitized Christianity, to quote Cornel West, “is just like everything else in America: highly packaged, regulated, distributed, circulated and consumed.”
That Kanye is a black man from the South Side of Chicago, influenced by an African American woman who split from a predominantly white denomination to start her own, isn’t a trivial piece of information. Rather, it’s the fulcrum on which everything is balanced. Kanye should not be a racial prop for white evangelicals who ignore their own racial biases because he raps about Jesus. His complex story has an origin, and it isn’t the white evangelical church.
My hope is that the collective American conscience does not idolize Kanye’s self-professed conversion to the point of whitewashing his narrative. Although, at this point, such hope may already be an exercise in futility.
(The Rev. Joshua Lawrence Lazard is the C. Eric Lincoln Minister for Student Engagement at Duke Chapel at Duke University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)
I haven’t eaten with white folks in years and I’m getting a little concerned. I eat with black folks every day. They’re my family, so I have no other choice. If I didn’t eat with my husband and kids I think they’d get a little concerned about me.
But back in the day, I ate with a bunch of white folks on a regular basis. Once or twice a month, I’d be in some white person’s house, resting my brown feet under their dining room table (or coffee table, in some cases) and talking about racial issues in the American church. We were “eating” with white folks, and breaking more than bread.
Internationally acclaimed actress and bestselling author, Priscilla Shirer and health guru and serial entrepreneur Pinky Cole, owner of the acclaimed plant-based restaurant and food truck, Slutty Vegan, will headline the 2019 Selah Leadership Encounter for Women, which will be held November 21-23, 2019 at the fabulous new Omni Frisco Hotel in Texas. Selah, an ancient word meaning to pause or stop here before moving forward, will give leader women a rare opportunity to learn, grow and shape their destinies. Created by Vashti Murphy McKenzie, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the first woman elected to this position in the denomination’s 232-year history, Selah is the place for women to dream big, go home, and execute.
Named one of the top eleven conferences for women who want to level up in 2019 by Essence magazine, Selah Leadership Encounter for women is a place for leaders to reset, refresh, and recalibrate.
“Selah is not just a conference; it’s a community of leaders. It is a safe space for women to help each other rise, soar and shape their professional and personal trajectories. It’s a level up with thought leaders, trendsetters and cultural change-makers, who share their expertise, triumphs, and setbacks in an effort to inspire and teach,” said Bishop McKenzie.
Developed for women looking for a holistic approach to next-level empowerment and training, this year’s line-up features speakers from the corporate, community and the congregation including movie director Deborah Riley Draper; leading business expert Becky A. Davis; national speaker, trainer and author, Dr. Micaela Herndon; church founder and senior pastor Dr. Cynthia Hale; and author and movie producer, Cheryl Polote-Williamson.
Along with workshops, the 2019 Selah Dallas Leadership Encounter for Women will also feature a rooftop welcome reception, Boss Brunch, private movie screening, vendors and more. Selah Leadership Encounter for Women attracts more than 400 women from around the country annually in Dallas and Atlanta including executive, c-suite and leader-women from diverse fields. Designed for leaders from diverse careers, Selah attendees are leaders in their companies, their civic and community organizations, their families and their churches.
Selah Leadership Encounter for Women is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization that brings in national experts to help women identify realistic solutions to handle the stress and strain of their busy lives. Selah teaches women how to develop action goals that address leadership styles, decision making and problem-solving. For more information or register visit vashtimckenzie.com.
My earliest act of resistance came when I was a teenager when I was taken to the local doctor. He had a waiting room for black patients in a dimly lit hallway that was separate from the well-lit, comfortable room where his white customers waited. I would refuse to sit in the space assigned to us. There was something in my soul that made me choose standing to sitting. It was a quiet protest, but I knew what I was doing.
I may have been inspired by my mother and several other teachers in her small school in Wheatley, Arkansas, who were fired after the school was integrated because the white people preferred white teachers. My mother and that courageous group of middle-aged African American colleagues, having finally found their voices, sued the district. To their surprise, they won the lawsuit.
Long before either my mother’s or my resistance, there was Ida B. Wells, the anti-lynching activist and fearless investigative journalist who is the subject of my latest book, written with Nibs Stroupe. In 1883, when Wells was still a public school teacher herself, she was thrown out of a Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad ladies car because she was not white, though she had the proper ticket for that car. She had the courage to sue the railroad. She won the lawsuit initially but lost on appeal.
The greatest gift that studying Wells has brought to my life is freedom from fear. The plague of the 21st century is fear. Of course, there are many of us who live each day as best we can as resisters to it, but the fear hill is steep, and many are slipping down it instead of scaling it.
From 2016 to 2018, I led Calling Their Names: Remembering Georgia’s Lynched, an initiative of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. We placed markers and created spaces for remembering the victims of lynchings in the state, while exploring the intersections of slavery, lynching, the prison industrial complex, the death penalty and 21st-century police extrajudicial killings — modern-day lynchings.
The initiative helps to address the issue of the moral injury that lynching brought to the nation and knocks at a door to healing that will not be opened until deep and true healing work is embraced.
“Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Witness for Our Time” by Catherine Meeks and Nibs Stroupe. Image courtesy of Church Pub Inc
Though our work was not nearly as dangerous as Wells’, we owe her a debt. She was a pioneer in several arenas, but her work against lynching angered the white population the most because she refused to allow the white narrative, which blamed lynching on the behavior of black people, especially the men, to stand as the truth.
She laid the responsibility of the indefensible act of lynching at the feet of the white perpetrators where it belonged. She observed that “in fact, for all kinds of offenses and, for no offenses — from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same.”
The kind of courage that Wells exhibited at age 16, when she took charge of caring for her siblings after her parents died, or when she fought the Chesapeake Railroad or when she returned to the South to engage in her liberation work even though she knew that there were white folks who would have killed her if given the chance is the kind of courage that must engage the powers, principalities and spiritual wickedness that the Holy Scripture speaks about in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,” Paul wrote, “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
I have pondered this passage for many years, and it is clearer than ever to me how those powers are manifesting themselves in the current moment. They are supporting our collective fear and distracting too many of us from doing the work of racial healing and liberation.
Careful reading of Wells helps to deconstruct the current fear-based systems that serve the powers, principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places that stand in the path that leads to Beloved Community. She helps us to know that they cannot have the last word unless we allow them to do so. She encourages us to heed the call and to search for the inner voice that keeps telling us that nothing but true liberation is good enough for God’s children.
Wells imagined that the world could be better than it was and believed that she had a right to live in that world. I believe that the world can be better than it is and that it was never God’s intention for us to make the world that we have.
Thus, the call from God is and always will be to create a world where all of God’s children, which includes every soul on the planet, can be who they were sent to the earth to become, without being held hostage by enslaving and dehumanizing supremacists’ notions that imprison the body and the soul of far too many.
The struggle against the darkness created by white supremacy and its child, white privilege, is one to be engaged by whites and blacks, as well as all other people of color.
The journey is long, and we are far from home now, but there is a light shining at the end of the tunnel. We can catch a glimpse of that light every time we choose to embrace courage rather than fear. This realization has been one of the best sources of hope and empowerment for me. It helps me to live in a brave space where the truth can be told. It helps me to tell the truth freely, and I am encouraged every day by my dear sister, Ida B. Wells.
(Catherine Meeks is the retired Clara Carter Acree Distinguished Professor of Socio-Cultural Studies at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, and director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. This article is adapted from “Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Time,” co-written with Nibs Stroupe. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
Brelahn Wyatt, a second-year medical student, hugs Shetland, a half-golden retriever, half-Labrador retriever who also happens to be a lieutenant commander in the Navy and a clinical instructor in the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. (Julie Rovner/KHN)
The newest faculty member at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences has a great smile — and a wagging tail.
Shetland, not quite 2 years old, is half golden retriever, half Labrador retriever. As of this fall, he is also a lieutenant commander in the Navy and a clinical instructor in the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology at USUHS.
Among Shetland’s skills are “hugging” on command, picking up a fallen object as small as a cellphone and carrying around a small basket filled with candy for harried medical and graduate students who study at the military’s medical school campus in Bethesda, Md.
But Shetland’s job is to provide much more than smiles and a head to pat.
“He is here to teach, not just to lift people’s spirits and provide a little stress relief after exams,” said USUHS Dean Arthur Kellermann. He said students interacting with Shetland are learning “the value of animal-assisted therapy.”
The use of dogs trained to help their human partners has ballooned since studies in the 1980s and 1990s started to show how animals can benefit human health.
But helper dogs come in many varieties. Service dogs, like guide dogs for the blind, help people with disabilities live more independently. Therapy dogs can be household pets who visit people in hospitals, schools and nursing homes. And then there are highly trained working dogs, like the Belgian Malinois that recently helped run down Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Shetland is technically a “military facility dog,” trained to provide physical and mental assistance to patients as well as interact with a wide variety of people. His military commission does not entitle him to salutes from his human counterparts.
Although service dogs are commonly seen at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Shetland, a retriever mix, is a clinical instructor in the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology.
Although service dogs are commonly seen at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Shetland, a retriever mix, is a clinical instructor in the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology.(JULIE ROVNER/KHN)
“The ranks are a way of honoring the services [of the dogs] as well as strengthening the bond between the staff, patients and dogs here,” said Mary Constantino, deputy public affairs officer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
USUHS, which trains doctors, dentists, nurses and other health professionals for the military, is on the same campus in suburban Washington, D.C., as Walter Reed. Two of the seven Walter Reed facility dogs — Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Sully (the former service dog for President George H.W. Bush) and Marine Sgt. Dillon — attended Shetland’s formal commissioning ceremony in September as guests.
The Walter Reed dogs, on campus since 2007, earn commissions in the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines. They wear special vests designating their service and rank. The dogs visit and interact with patients in several medical units, as well as in physical and occupational therapy, and help boost morale for patients’ family members.
But Shetland’s role is very different, said retired Col. Lisa Moores, USUHS associate dean for assessment and professional development.
“Our students are going to work with therapy dogs in their careers, and they need to understand what [the dogs] can do and what they can’t do,” she said.
As in civilian life, the military has made significant use of animal-assisted therapy. “When you walk through pretty much any military treatment facility, you see therapy dogs walking around in clinics, in the hospitals, even in the ICUs,” said Moores. Dogs also play a key role in helping returning service members with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Students need to learn who “the right patient is for a dog, or some other therapy animal,” she said. “And by having Shetland here, we can incorporate that into the curriculum so it’s another tool the students know they have for their patients someday.”
The students, not surprisingly, are thrilled by their newest teacher.
Brelahn Wyatt, a second-year medical student, said the Walter Reed dogs used to visit the school’s 1,500 students and faculty fairly regularly, but “having Shetland here all the time is optimal.” And not just because of the hugs and candy.
Wyatt said the only thing she knew about service dogs before “is that you’re not supposed to pet them.” But Shetland acts as both a service dog and a therapy dog, so he can be petted.
That helps medical students see “there’s a difference. What does that difference look like in the health care setting?” said Wyatt.
Like his colleagues Sully and Dillon, Shetland was bred and trained by America’s VetDogs. The New York nonprofit provides dogs for “stress control” for active-duty military missions overseas, as well as service dogs for disabled veterans and civilian first responders. Many of the puppies are raised by a combination of prison inmates (during the week) and families (on the weekends), before returning to New York for formal service dog training. National Hockey League teams such as the Washington Capitals and New York Islanders also raise puppies for the organization.
Dogs can be particularly helpful in treating service members, said Valerie Cramer, manager of America’s VetDogs service dog program. “The military is thinking about resiliency. They’re thinking about well-being, about decompression in the combat zone.” Often people in pain won’t talk to another person but will open up in front of a dog. “It’s an opportunity to start a conversation as a behavioral health specialist,” she said.
While service dogs for individuals are trained to perform both physical tasks like picking up dropped items and emotional ones like waking a veteran having a nightmare, facility dogs like Shetland are special, Cramer said. “That dog has to work in all different environments with people who are under pressure. It can work for multiple handlers, it can go and visit people, can go visit hospital patients, can knock over bowling pins to entertain or spend time in bed with a child.”
The military rank for the dogs is no joke. They can be promoted ― as Dillon was from Army specialist to sergeant in 2018 ― or demoted for bad behavior.
Said Kellermann, “So far, Shetland has a perfect conduct record.”
