According to U.S. Justice Department data, in 2013, 21,135 citizens lived in Ferguson, Missouri. Sixty-seven percent of Ferguson’s citizens are African American. This DOJ report also revealed that in 2013, 32,975 arrest warrants were issued for nonviolent crimes and the majority of the warrants were given to African-American and/or poor people living in Ferguson for traffic violations. Therefore, the Ferguson Police Department’s arrest warrant tally actually exceeded the number of Ferguson residents. The DOJ said that Ferguson had a “constitutionally deficient court system.” Legal experts confirmed that this system of questionable traffic tickets and arrest warrants created a revenue stream for the town of Ferguson. These unethical actions conducted by the Ferguson Police Department have been revealed since the shooting death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, on Aug. 9, 2014, by Darien Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer.
It has been said that the shooting death of Michael Brown reignited the Black Lives Matter movement that began when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida. Neither Zimmerman nor Wilson was charged with murder.
The Black Lives Matter movement has stirred a call for justice in the community and the church. Rev. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Ph.D., assistant professor of Theological Field Education and New Testament at the Chicago Theological Seminary, an ordained minister, academic and mother, has answered that clarion call for justice. She participated in the Black Scholars National Gathering: Lessons from Black Lives event that was organized by the Rev. Pamela Lightsey, Ph.D., associate dean and clinical assistant faculty at the Boston School of Theology. Buckhanon Crowder shares her experience in Ferguson with the UrbanFaith podcast community. She emphasized that protesters are making it clear that “this is not your Mama’s civil rights movement.”
Straight Outta Compton grossed $60.2 million at the box office for its opening weekend and is now being seen as a possible Oscar contender. Deep inside I’m happy because I’m originally from Compton and the city is finally getting its due. At the same time one thought keeps flooding my mind: “How has the church handled the generation that has been shaped and influenced by this album?
When NWA first came out with their hit album, it defined the city and defined a generation. Straight Outta Compton changed the game. It talked of the street life in a way that was unheard of. The KRS-One sample from Gangsta Gangsta — “it’s not about a salary, it’s all about reality” — was the war cry of kids who were tired of not being heard. Black youth heard their frustrations as well as their joys voiced in the lyrics of Eazy-E and his cohorts.
Straight Outta Compton broadcast street culture not only to the rest of the nation but also to the world. It put hip-hop on the map but it also put the hood on the map. It made being gangsta and being a thug normal. What used to be seen as the underbelly of society was now being celebrated on the stage at award shows and even getting invited to the White House.
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With this newfound prominence, a whole generation began to see its own plight as something not to escape but to embrace. The hood was still a bad place, but it was something that was glamorized. It was something that could put food on the table. Thug culture and being gangster became part of the mainstream. At the same time, while all of this was going on, the church for the most part buried its head in the sand.
Now the children of gangster rappers are adults. This generation was not raised going to church. Even if they did go to church like me, they were also connected to the media and culture outside the church as well. The one thing that I have not seen is the church embracing this new generation and communicating the Gospel to them in a contextually relevant way.
This is a new generation. They don’t know all the hymns. They don’t know when to sit and when to stand. They don’t care about any titles a bishop or reverend may have. These kids were born during the crack era. Violence and drugs and explicit sexuality are normal for them.
The question is: Will they have a place in our houses of worship? Will we be able to speak their language? I’m not talking about faking an accent or using ridiculous slang as a forty-year-old. I’m talking about dealing with the issues that they have to deal with. In order to connect with this generation, we need to speak to the issues of sex, racism, drugs, and violence.
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Whereas before the hip-hop era and especially before NWA, there was a bit of shame and guilt over the things that were said and done by the younger generation caught up in the street life, now these things have become a badge of honor and a rite of passage. It’s not just those who live in the actual geographical place called Compton. There are those who have embraced a “Straight Outta Compton” mentality in just about every urban center in America.
Now that the movie is out, it would be good for the leaders of the church to reflect on its widespread popularity and what the implications are for the church. Part of it is sin, but there are other aspects of the music and the film that appeal to something unique in us as humans. Maybe then the generation shaped and influenced by Straight Outta Compton will be shaped and influenced by the Kingdom of God.
Born in inner-city Detroit in 1956 at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, Jerald January was a firsthand witness to the complicated process of social change. From his boyhood in a violent urban neighborhood to his calling to be a minister, January recounts his experiences with issues such as gang violence, school integration, discrimination, class distinction, and racial prejudice.
Rev. January discusses his own journey of faith and finding his calling to serve God in the midst of these struggles. His inspirational life story will touch your heart and encourage you to reflect on your own ways of dealing with life’s difficult circumstances. A Messed-Up Ride or a Dressed-up Walk will help you think deeper about getting where you need to be at the time God has appointed for you.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (RNS) At Alfred Street Baptist Church, the pews start to fill more than half an hour before the service begins. White-uniformed ushers guide African-Americans of all ages to their seats. Some stand and wave their hands in the air as the large, robed choir begins to sing.
In September, after using a dozen wired overflow rooms, the church will start its fourth weekend service.
So many people attend, church leaders are now asking people to limit their attendance to one service.
“Pick your service,” said the Rev. Edward Y. Jackson, an assistant to the pastor, at the start of a recent service. “Come in, come early, get your parking space so we can all enjoy and worship God together.”
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that Christians are losing their share of the U.S. population, dropping to 71 percent in 2014, down from 78 percent in 2007, with young people leading the exodus. But historically black denominations have bucked that trend, holding on to a steady percent of members during that same period.
As significant, the share of millennial-generation African-Americans who affiliate with historically black churches is similar to that of older churchgoers.
There are numerous reasons why some black churches retain their members, but, most prominently, the church has played a historic role in black life that has fostered a continuing strong black Protestant identity. Members and visitors at Alfred Street say the church’s holistic ministry — the preaching, the singing and the community outreach — are what draw them in and keep them there.
“I think black churches have always been very pivotal in social movements and outreach,” said Kelli Slater, 20, a Howard University student from Mississippi who was visiting Alfred Street at the invitation of her older sister. “I think black churches do a whole lot more than religion.”
In late July, the church held its annual “Brother’s Keeper” outreach project, in which it gave 2,000 low-income children backpacks and winter coats and provided health screenings for their families. In December, some members marched from the church to a local courthouse in support of the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
The Rev. David Daniels III, a church history professor at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, said black churches are not universally successful in holding onto younger members, but in some places, mostly black megachurches are gaining adherents even as smaller, aging congregations have dwindling numbers in their pews.
“In some cities, there are some congregations, often with younger pastors, either millennials or Gen-Xers, who’ve been able to develop ministries that are able to attract in their cohort group,” said Daniels, a minister of the Church of God in Christ.
The Rev. Howard-John Wesley, 43, has been pastor since 2008 of Alfred Street, which is affiliated with the historically black Progressive National Baptist Convention and National Baptist Convention, USA. He introduced a monthly “Come As You Are” Wednesday night service for millennials as well as “Hour of Power” summer Sunday services. In the last seven years, he said, his church membership has grown from 2,300 to 7,100, and 80 percent of the new members have been in their mid-30s and low 40s. Total attendance on recent weekends has surpassed 3,000.
“We decided to be very concise with time,” said Wesley, who knows families need time for their kids’ sporting events and who watches a 60-minute clock placed strategically at the back of the sanctuary. “The No. 1 thing people ask when they’re invited to a church is ‘What time do you get out?’”
The Rev. Kip Banks, interim general secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, said societal issues such as police brutality as well as efforts to be relevant to millennials — from live-streamed services to marriage and mentoring ministries — continue to draw African-Americans to black churches.
“The church has always spoken to these issues and the church is addressing these issues,” he said. “The black church is the place that’s always affirmed African-American life.”
But Banks and others say black churches are not immune to some of the declines experienced by Christianity in general.
“There are some of our churches that are doing extraordinarily well in terms of captivating and being able to minister to young people,” said the Rev. Jerry Young, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA. “And then there are a number of our churches that also are suffering.”
Like the rest of the U.S. population, some African-Americans are disaffiliating. The Pew survey found that 18 percent of African-Americans describe their religious affiliation as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” compared with 12 percent in 2007. The share of U.S. blacks who fit in the “nones” category rose at about the same rate as the general population, said Greg Smith, associate director of research at Pew.
Recently, NFL running back Arian Foster revealed he does not believe in God, telling ESPN “faith isn’t enough for me.”
And in his new book, “Between the World and Me,” author Ta-Nehisi Coates, a prominent black nonbeliever, writes to his son about how he has a markedly different perspective on the black church than his elders do.
“I thought of my own distance from an institution that has, so often, been the only support for our people,” he wrote. “I often wonder if in that distance I’ve missed something, some notions of cosmic hope, some wisdom beyond my mean physical perception of the world, something beyond the body, that I might have transmitted to you.”
But Richard Wair of Springdale, Md., the patriarch of a family that has attended Alfred Street for more than a century, remains hopeful that the next generation of African-Americans will continue the churchgoing tradition.
“As an older person, seeing young people coming in, I feel great, I feel encouraged,” said the 84-year-old deacon emeritus. “They have to take up where we left off.”
Copyright 2015 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me takes its title from a Richard Wright poem, but its more direct inspiration is James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time. Coates’ book is in the form of a message to his son, Samori—but his prose throughout is also inspired by Baldwin’s rhythms, and sometimes even by Baldwin’s turns of phrase. “…the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and distinct sadness well up in me. The answer to the question is the record of the believers themselves. The answer is American history.” The construction “those Americans who believe that they are white” comes from Baldwin; the Chuch cadence of that repeated “The answer” comes from Baldwin, the way that careful qualification becomes emphasis and exhoration is Baldwin. For Baldwin fans, to read Coates’ prose is to experience a delightful recognition; here is someone who loves the same person you do.
Coates takes a risk drawing such a strong comparison with America’s greatest essayist. In trying to capture Baldwin’s power, for example, he sometimes resorts to repetitive capitalized portentous abstractions —”the Dream” or “the Mecca.” The strain is visible and distracting; a reminder that Coates (like just about everyone else) isn’t as sure-footed as his model.
But Coates isn’t using Baldwin to demonstrate his own sure-footedness. Literary influence is often seen in the context of anxiety; Melville throwing his spear into the eye of Shakespeare, or Baldwin wrestling with Richard Wright. Coates, though, rejects that vision of adulthood via beating your parents. He recalls his grandmother telling him that his son would “one day try to ‘test me'”. He responds, “I would regard that day, should it comes, as the total failure of fatherhood because if all I had over you were my hands, then I really had nothing at all.” Fatherhood is about love, not testing—and that’s Coates’ relationship with Baldwin as well.
And not just with Baldwin.
Though The Fire Next Time may be the most obvious blueprint for Coates’ work, Between the World and Me is filled with other fathers and mothers. The schools he attended in Baltimore were “concerned with compliance”, not teaching, Coates says, but despite his dismal experience with public education, he developed a lifelong passion for learning. He listened to Malcolm X’s speeches over and over, “because Malcolm never lied, unlike the schools and their façade of morality…I loved him because he made it plain.” He played Ice Cube’s Death Certificate “almost every day.” He went to Howard where he hoped to find a coherent Black nationalism and instead was gifted with “a brawl of ancestors, a herd of dissenters, sometimes marching together but just as often marching away from each other.” And from his wife he learned, among other things, how to raise a child without the belt his father used. “Your mother,” he tells Samori, in a quietly heart-breaking passage, “had to teach me how to love you.”
Most reviews, positive and negative, have focused on the heartbreak in Coates’ writing, and there’s good reason for that. Between the World and Me is a painful book. It starts with Samori crying in his room when he learns Michael Brown’s killer won’t be indicted; it closes with Coates talking to the mother of one of his Howard friends, Prince Jones, who was murdered by a policeman who was never held accountable. These aren’t isolated incidents, Coates’ book makes clear. They’re part of a pattern of terrorism and violence stretching back to slavery, through Jim Crow and redlining, and on up through the neglected, violent streets of Coates’ Baltimore childhood. Police brutality isn’t an accident, or a few bad men acting recklessly. Rather, police, Coates says, are “enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy.” In order to keep thinking of themselves as white, Americans who think of themselves as white kill black people. So it has been, and so, Coates suggests, it shall be, if not for always, then at least as far into the future as you can see from here.
Mainstream reviews at the Economist and The New York Times were quick to chastise Coates for his refusal to acknowledge How Much Better Things Have Gotten, and his lack of hope. And Coates certainly doesn’t have much hope that white people will give up pretending to be white, or that they’ll start treating black people as human beings.
Coates doesn’t offer absolution to white people for the crimes they’ve committed, or, more importantly, for the crimes they’re continuing to commit. But that doesn’t mean his is a hopeless book, or even, for all its hurt, a sad one. On the contrary, Between the World and Me is filled with love—for Coates’ son, first of all, but also, in its language and structure, for Baldwin, as a particular mentor, and as an iconic representative of black heritage and struggle.
“…black power births a kind of understanding that illuminates all the galaxies in their truest colors,” Coates writes. He’s not a Christian, and mentions many times throughout the book that (like Baldwin) he does not find the comfort in God that many black people have. But he finds comfort, and strength, in black people themselves. “Struggle for the memory of your ancestors,” he tells his son. “Struggle for wisdom… Struggle for your gradmother and grandfather, for your name.” The cadences are still Baldwin’s, because Baldwin is Coates’, just as Coates is Samori’s. “We have made something down here,” Coates says, and what he, and his son, and his teachers have made is struggle and love.
Between the World and Me isn’t just a letter, It’s a tradition and a community, a set of tools and voices which Coates found, and which he’s passing on. The book is a gift, and you’d have to be in the grip of a particularly bleak delusion to think that it’s given in despair, rather than in joy.
Another day, another crop of hashtags dedicated to the loss of a black life. Through these hashtags and subsequent news stories we were introduced to Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman from the Chicago area who was in Texas because she just accepted a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. On Friday, July 10, Bland was pulled over by police for not signaling properly during a lane change. Then, as expected nowadays, the tone of the story changed to Sandra being “combative.” It is alleged that Bland was hostile and violent toward the police officer that pulled her over–which curiously turned into two police officers having to subdue her. Video from an eyewitness shows Bland on the ground with two police officers on top of her. From what can be seen, there was no sign of struggle on Bland’s part, nothing that would suggest that she was being forceful with police as they’ve suggested. But what is heard is eerily similar to other incidents involving officers subduing people, particularly that of Eric Garner whose last words were, “I can’t breathe,” or the more recent incident of the police officer who slammed a young black girl to the ground at a pool party in McKinney, Texas. Some of the last words we hear Bland say are,
I can’t even feel my arm.
You just slammed my head to the ground, do you not even care about that?
All of this for a traffic signal, slammed me into the ground and everything.
Shortly after this, Bland was arrested and taken to jail for her alleged assault of the police officers. Bland remained in jail throughout the weekend until Monday morning when someone delivered her breakfast and then, two hours later, was found dead in her jail cell. Authorities are ruling this a suicide but Bland’s family and most people who know better roundly disagree with this ruling. Details surrounding Bland’s case are sketchy and everyone is looking for answers.
I want to say, “Since when do police require people to get out of their car for a routine traffic stop, especially one as routine as failing to properly signal,” but I remembered that in 2012, a white police officer made me get out of my car on I-75 and walk toward him while he stood by his car. He had me stand on the side of the highway while he questioned me about why I was driving so fast, why I had Florida tags, how long I’ve been at Emory, and a bunch of other questions I no longer remember. I’d never heard of someone having to get out of their car on the shoulder of a busy highway and I thought I was supposed to stay in my car and wait for the officer to come to me, but he waved me to get out of my car with an irritated look on his face. So what happened to Sandra Bland is real, not a figment of our imagination. And what most likely happened–an assault that ended her life, not her taking her own life–is real.
But I also want to take a moment to point out something that, at this moment, will come as an inconvenient truth. It isn’t meant to distract from the issue at hand but is meant to be a reminder of what is possible–although not in this situation–and what is probable for some black women in regard to suicide.
As many disagree with Sandra’s death being ruled a suicide their rationale for doing so is dangerous. People have said that she would never commit suicide because she was happy, successful, a good person, a member of a Greek organization, on her way to a new job, etc. The problem with this is it paints an incomplete portrait of people who actually do commit suicide. (I am saying “actually do” to distinguish what happens to some black women and people who commit suicide, in general, from what happened to Sandra Bland in particular, she DID NOT commit suicide.) The profile of people who actually do commit suicide varies and it includes those who were seemingly happy, successful, and good people. Black women do commit suicide, we aren’t immune to taking our own life. Sometimes the life we live is burdensome, we wear the world on our shoulders and that burden and the world crush us to the point where taking our lives seems like a better idea than continuing with life. This was some woman’s truth who actually did take her life and this may be the truth of a woman contemplating suicide at this moment.
Furthermore, as black women and black men continue to watch black lives being taken with impunity and we suffer from the trauma of repeatedly watching these scenarios, I fear that it is more likely that we, as a community, will have to come to grips with mental health and wellness, some of which may cause depression, suicidal thoughts, attempted suicide, and committed suicide. I say all of this to say that we must be careful about how we talk about suicide and its victims. It is not just for non-black women, or unhappy black women, or unsuccessful black women. Suicide happens in our community though Sandra Bland did not commit suicide. We know that in Sandra’s situation, suicide is unlikely because of the details surrounding her last few days of life, including the newly released information that she attempted to post bail a few hours before her death.
Sandra Bland is yet another victim of a corrupt, cruel, and unjust system. Sandra Bland, like every victim before her, deserves our attention and best efforts to fight justice. But as we respond to the erroneous claims that Sandra committed suicide, we also have to measure the words about who commits suicide and why carefully. But as I stated earlier, this is not meant to distract from the very real situation at hand, the loss of another black life. So this leads us back to where we started.
Why is #SandraBland dead and why do we have to keep using social media to get our questions answered?
HOT SPRINGS, N.C. (RNS) As she prepared for her mission — scaling the 30-foot flagpole outside the South Carolina Statehouse to bring down the Confederate flag — Bree Newsome reread the biblical story of David and Goliath.
A youth organizer with Ignite NC, a nonprofit group challenging voting laws, Newsome appeared briefly to raucous cheers Saturday (July 11) on the main stage of the Wild Goose Festival after speaking to a smaller crowd at the four-day camp revival that celebrates spirituality, arts and justice.
The 30-year-old activist, a dedicated Christian, drew on the biblical story of the Hebrew shepherd boy who slays a giant with a sling and a stone.
“I don’t even feel like it was my human strength in that moment,” said Newsome. “I’m honestly just so humbled.”
On June 27, Newsome climbed the flagpole to remove the Confederate battle flag, a symbol that represents for many a war to uphold slavery and, later, a battle to oppose civil rights advances.
Her action came 10 days after the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, S.C., in which nine participants of a Bible study, including the pastor were killed.
She was charged with defacing a monument, a misdemeanor, according to a statement from the South Carolina Department of Public Safety, and could face a fine of up to $5,000 and up to three years in prison.
On Friday, the Confederate flag was lowered for good after state legislators signed a bill authorizing its removal.
For Newsome, it was a step too late.
“Why did people have to die for people to realize the state had been promoting hate with this symbol?” she asked.
Newsome grew up hearing her grandmother’s story of her black neighbor brutally beaten by Ku Klux Klan members because he was a doctor who treated a white woman. She told of ancestors who came through Charleston’s slave market and others who died in lynchings.
Invited to speak to the mostly white audience long after the festival schedule was set, Newsome joined a roster of speakers on the theme of “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” a nod to the nonviolent activism of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
This year’s gathering honored the festival’s “Fairy Godmother” Phyllis Tickle, the Christian author and editor diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Speakers included Ferguson Commission member Traci Blackmon, Moral Monday founder William Barber, and immigrant advocate Alexia Salvatierra.
“We were in the presence of history,” poet Merrill Farnsworth said of Newsome’s appearance. “I was really glad to catch a glimpse of the person who did this.”
The daughter of a Baptist minister and onetime president of Shaw University in Raleigh, Newsome said she felt a calling into a new civil rights campaign following the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, a killing she likened to the death of Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old boy mutilated in 1955 after allegedly flirting with a white woman.
After the police killing of Michael Brown in Missouri last year, Newsome helped to convene The Tribe, a grassroots collective dedicated to community building.
Her actions at the South Carolina Statehouse grew out of what she calls her “crisis of faith” following the Emanuel shootings.
“This is like 9/11 to me,” Newsome said. “I see people just going about their daily lives. I can’t do that. I can’t function.”
On one hand, she said, the victims’ families quick forgiveness of accused killer Dylann Roof was a “rare display of Christ-like behavior.”
On the other hand, she said, forgiving too easily has helped perpetuate racist systems.
Speaking to some 300 people who crowded into the festival’s Spirituality Tent, she said she preferred action.
“Jesus is one of the biggest agitators that ever lived,” she said. “The only time Jesus was in the temple was when he’s flipping stuff over and stirring things up.”
Activists from Charlotte, N.C., had already been planning to remove the flag and had taken photos of the pole in preparation when they asked Newsome to join. They talked about the symbolic power of having a black woman remove the flag.
“Hollywood’s created plenty of white heroes,” said activist James Ian Tyson, who appeared alongside Newsome Saturday and spoke of his role that day — kneeling on the ground so she could climb onto his back and over the four-foot fence surrounding the flagpole.
Newsome said it wasn’t an easy decision to climb the pole. She was afraid for her life and asked her sister, whom she described as a “prayer warrior,” to pray for her.
Her faith helped her overcome her fear. She recounted an argument with a police officer that ordered her down.
“You’re doing the wrong thing,” she said the officer told her.
At that moment, she said, she remembered her reading of David and Goliath.
And she kept repeating the 27th Psalm: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” as she descended the pole.
“If we really want to work for a peaceful society, we have to agitate,” she said. “Until the people in power have to deal with you, they won’t.”
Newsome recalled figures like Rosa Parks, whose acts of civil disobedience led to gains in racial equality. She said she hopes for a day when black people won’t have to face obstacles to voting, endure underfunded schools or fear losing their lives at the hands of police.
“This to me feels like the beginning,” she said.
Still, festival organizers provided an eight-person security detail to make sure no one tried to infiltrate the Hot Springs Resort grounds to harm the pair.
At an interview after her talk, festival producer Rosa Lee Harden introduced Newsome to Blackmon, a pastor helping people in Ferguson respond to the Brown shooting. The pair embraced quietly and Blackmon broke into tears as she thanked the young activist.
“You lit my fire,” Blackmon said.
“Y’all lit my fire in Ferguson,” Newsome said.
“God is a God of liberation,” she added. “I know that he heard my great-great-grandmother in South Carolina when she was praying for her children to be free, and we’re going to keep praying until we’re all free.”
Copyright 2015 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
he Black Lives Matter movement has stirred a call for justice in the community and the church. Rev. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Ph.D., assistant professor of Theological Field Education and New Testament at the Chicago Theological Seminary, an ordained minister, academic and mother, has answered that clarion call for justice. She participated in the Black Scholars National Gathering: Lessons from Black Lives event that was organized by the Rev. Pamela Lightsey, Ph.D., associate dean and clinical assistant faculty at the Boston School of Theology. Buckhanon Crowder shares her experience in Ferguson with the UrbanFaith podcast community. She emphasized that protesters are making it clear that “this is not your Mama’s civil rights movement.”
