The Gospel as the Foundation for Racial Reconciliation

Dalton Jenkins

Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

0 ratings

· 32 views

Files

Notes

Transcript

Handout

Acts 17:26 NKJV

26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

Genesis 1:26–31 NKJV

26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Acts 6:1–5 NKJV

1 Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. 2 Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, “It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. 3 Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business; 4 but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 And the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch,

Underrepresented groups continuously cry against injustice and inequality throughout our societies. Sin is the cause of injustice and inequity. Beginning with my story, I will share how I learned about racial injustice and inequality in the USA. We will seek to lay out a pattern for racial reconciliation and justice based on our dependence on God's word. First, we will look at the issue by addressing the:

· A pattern of racial reconciliation in the Scriptures

· The Rise of the Inferiority Myth

· The Black Church and The Backdrop of the Black Experience

Then we will suggest some ways to address systematic injustice and racial reconciliation by:

· Addressing the Biblical Kingdom Agenda

· Prophetically declaring the Kingdom Impact in the Culture

· Incorporating Urban Apologetics in our theological discipline

· Practically addressing Structural Changes that are needed

No matter where we emigrate and what injustice we face, God has provided the right balance to deal with these issues. We are all made in the Imago Dei ("image of God"). We are recipients of reconciliation by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We, therefore, have the suitable characteristics to lead reconciliation.

Introduction

1. Who I am: Faith, Family, Friends, Finance

It is important for me to introduce myself. The foundation of who I am, is based on the fact that my faith informs everything that I do.

Let me present to you a perspective that has become my philosophy. This philosophy has helped me to grapple with the meaning of my life, resulting in the formulation of my four guiding principles: Faith, Family, Friends, Finance.

Viktor Frankl emphasized in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, "what matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." We often read of successful men/women who lose all they had attained in one moment of indiscretion or bad judgment. This is also true for organizations. Frankl says in the preface of his book that one should not aim at success, but success comes from without focusing on others. I believe as Frankl said, "everyone has his specific vocation and mission in life," fulfilling this vocation and mission are the culmination of life's meaning. Frankl listed three life experiences through which one can discover meaning.

1. The first set of experiences is by working or doing a deed.

2. The second experience that Frankl states are that by experiencing something or encountering someone and

3. The third is by one's attitude towards unavoidable suffering.

In other words, we can design and implement a very well-articulated plan, but it just sits on a computer drive someplace. What matters is how your worldview is affected when you are at the most tested point of your life. That moment of test

P.S.

Viktor E. Frankl was a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School until his death in 1997. He was the founder of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology) --the school of logotherapy. Born in 1905, Dr. Frankl received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna. During World War II he spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps.

2. History of the UB Church & Core Values

It is the teachings of the UB church that has helped me to form my theological belief. It is this theological belief foundation that has helped me to deal with all that I have experienced up to now.

A clear biblical foundation is necessary in order for a person to properly deal with all of life's experiences.

The church of the UB has a history of standing of biblical doctrines and are not afraid to defend her position with actions.

1821 General Conference

This was our first statement against slavery:

“That all slavery in every sense of the word be totally prohibited

and in no way tolerated in our community...But in no case shall a member

of our society be permitted to sell a slave.

----1821 General Conference

“That all slavery in every sense of the word be totally prohibited

and in no way tolerated in our community. Should some

be found therein, or others apply to be admitted as members,

who hold slaves, they can neither remain to be members or be

admitted as such, provided they do not personally manumit or

set free such slave, wherever the laws of the state shall permit

it, or submit the case to the quarterly conference, to be by them

specified what length of time such slave shall serve his master

or other person, until the amount given for him, or for raising

him, be compensated to his master. But in no case shall a member

of our society be permitted to sell a slave.

“Resolved, that if any member of this society shall publicly

transgress as aforesaid, such member shall likewise be publicly

reprimanded, and in case such member shall not humble, the

same shall be publicly excluded from the congregation.”

1837 General Conference

“That all slavery, in every sense of the word, be totally prohibited,

and in no way tolerated in our church. Should any be found

in our society who hold slaves, they cannot continue as members

without they do personally manumit or set free such slaves.”

Bishop William and Benjamin Hanby

William Hanby, bishop 1845-1849, was active in illegally

sheltering fugitive slaves as part of the Underground Railroad.

He argued, “We may be bound by a man-made law, but we are

more bound by a Lord-given conscience.”

His son Benjamin, also involved with the Underground

Railroad, wrote the song “Darling Nelly Gray,” which became

hugely popular and rallied sentiment across the North against

slavery. The song told of a slave from Kentucky whose beloved

was sold to a plantation in Georgia. It was based on the story

of an actual fugitive slave, Joseph Selby, who died in the Hanby

house. William raised money to try to free the woman, but was

unsuccessful.

1847: Otterbein University

Our first college, Otterbein University, opened in Westerville,

Ohio. From the start, it was open to both men and women,

and to people of all races. It became a stop on the Underground

Railroad.

1949 General Conference

The 1837 Discipline statement on Slavery endured until

1949, when it was replaced with the following:

¶125 Race Relations

1. Historic Position.

We rejoice in the historic position of the Church of the

United Brethren in Christ against human slavery. We thank God

that all slavery in every sense of the word was totally prohibited.

And now in the good providence of God, after this great evil has

ceased to exist, we wish to reaffirm our faith in the sacredness of

human personality in all men, regardless of race or color.

Believing, as we do, that of one blood God has made all nations

to dwell on all of the face of the earth, we lift up our voice

in protest and declare our active opposition to every influence

of evil, be it economic, social, moral or spiritual, which would

in any way debase, impair, or bring into bondage all that

1969 General Conference

This statement has not been changed, except to add some

Scripture verses in 1973.

¶141 Human Relations

The church respects human personality which is inherent in

every race, nation and creed. We believe in the Bible’s instruction

that there is no basis whatsoever for a belief in the superiority

or inferiority of any people. Therefore, the church protests

against any action or practice that produces discrimination

based upon racial, national, creedal, or social differences, since

God “made from one, every nation of men to live on the face

of the earth” (Acts 17:26).

Acts 17:26 NKJV

26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

The church acknowledges that mankind’s basic need is for

the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and is therefore committed to

the telling of the Good News of the gospel to all persons. But

the church also recognizes the commandment to love all men in

the name of Christ. Therefore, the church admonishes all members

to strive for a society characterized by unselfish compassion

and service to all. (Philippians 2:3; Matthew 25:31-41; Luke

6:31; 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; 1 Peter 3:8-12)

2001, Core Values

The Core Values are part of the international governing documents.

We Demonstrate Social Concern

We must not only seek the salvation of our fellow human

beings, but show genuine concern for their total well-being. We

recognize our responsibility to victims of poverty, prejudice,

injustice, and other forms of human suffering.

2008, Huntington University

HU launched the Harmony Initiative, the Harmony Leadership

Program, and related efforts to increase racial and ethnic

diversity on campus and help mold the city of Huntington into

“a community of civility and inclusion, where diversity is honored

and differences are respected.”

The fall 2019 enrollment of 1,393 students includes 161

students of ethnic minorities from the US, 15% of the student

population. In addition, there are 42 international students

representing 26 countries.

Immigration and UB Missions

Over the years, our mission work has continually intersected

with immigrants, refugees, and foreign students.

3. My journey into understanding race relations in the USA

How did a young Jamaican teen become impacted by the racial inequities in USA?

I immigrated to the USA for Jamaica WI at the age of 17. It was here that I saw racism in full demonstration.

My natural instinct was not to see racism in every situation. I wondered why I did not immediately react as most African American reacted.

I concluded that because of my Jamaican heritage my reactions were different.

We grew up understqanding the nature of slavery but was told we drove out the slave master and took charge of the country.

Jamaica has 7 national heroes.

https://jis.gov.jm/information/heroes/

Nanny was a leader of the Maroons at the beginning of the 18th century. She was known by both the Maroons and the British settlers as an outstanding military leader who became, in her lifetime and after, a symbol of unity and strength for her people during times of crisis.

She was particularly important to them in the fierce fight with the British, during the First Maroon War from 1720 to 1739. Although she has been immortalised in songs and legends, certain facts about Nanny (or “Granny Nanny”, as she was affectionately known) have also been documented.

Samuel Sharpe was the main instigator of the 1831 Slave Rebellion, which began on the Kensington Estate in St. James and which was largely instrumental in bringing about the abolition of slavery.

Because of his intelligence and leadership qualities, Sam Sharpe became a “daddy”, or leader of the native Baptists in Montego Bay. Religious meetings were the only permissible forms of organised activities for the slaves. Sam Sharpe was able to communicate his concern and encourage political thought, concerning events in England which affected the slaves and Jamaica.

Sam evolved a plan of passive resistance in 1831, by which the slaves would refuse to work on Christmas Day of 1831 and afterwards, unless their grievances concerning better treatment and the consideration of freedom, were accepted by the state owners and managers.

Those in leadership positions look like me.

We were told that education would open any door.

The designation of 3rd world status to Jamaica was learnt here in the USA.

The USA was a place of opportunity, a place where anyone could make it! However, the reality of inequality was quickly learnt.

There was a sense of being less than, that we were not equal.

Housing: Purchasing my first home

Job application and being hired

Commerce: being followed and watched around a store.

4. Race relations through the eyes of Christian Black Man

a. Grady & Pat

In my quest to understand the history and impact of race relations I turned to two persons I worked with.

They both migrated from the south to the north to escape segregation and seek a better life.

Their stories were what gave me an insight to the historic nature of race relations in the USA.

They experienced the separate water fountains, the separate schooling, separate church, separate restaurant, etc.

Here I was speaking with two individuals with direct connection to issues that are in public debate.

Definitions: Understanding various terminologies relating to race

1. Liberty

1: the quality or state of being free:

a: the power to do as one pleases

b: freedom from physical restraint

c: freedom from arbitrary or despotic (see DESPOT sense 1) control

d: the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges

e: the power of choice

Definition of liberty (Entry 1 of 2)

a: a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant : PRIVILEGE

b: permission especially to go freely within specified limits

was given the liberty of the house

3: an action going beyond normal limits: such as

a: a breach of etiquette or propriety : FAMILIARITY

2. Identity

a: the distinguishing character or personality of an individual : INDIVIDUALITY

b: the relation established by psychological identification

2: the condition of being the same with something described or asserted

a: sameness of essential or generic character in different instances

b: sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing : ONENESS

4: an equation that is satisfied for all values of the symbols

Definition of identity

3. Justice

Definition of justice

a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments

c: the administration of law

a fugitive from justice

especially : the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity

a: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair

questioned the justice of their decision

(1): the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action

(2): conformity to this principle or ideal : RIGHTEOUSNESS

4. Dignity

Definition of dignity

1: formal reserve or seriousness of manner, appearance, or language

2: the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed

a: high rank, office, or position

b: a legal title of nobility or honor

5. The pattern of racial reconciliation

Any attempt to racial reconciliation without understanding the context of God and his creation will fall short. Let us then begin at the beginning, we are all made in the image of God!

In the beginning, God created a man. Within the seed of that man rested all of the components, DNA, and characteristic trademarks of all people today. In the beginning, we were one. Scripture tells us in the book of Acts, “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). Thus, sharing a common origin in Adam, any form of division or oppression predicated on race is illegitimate, because we all emanate from the same source.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 57). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Acts 17:26 NKJV

26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

For example, some African-American Christians so amalgamate the tenets of black culture with their faith that they frequently fail to make the necessary distinction between the two when it comes to critiquing ourselves. Many times racial hindrances are blamed for blocking forward progress either academically or vocationally. While these hindrances should be acknowledged and addressed, we must also take responsibility for ourselves, in spite of obvious hindrances, to find a way to execute at the level that we should in order to overcome them. Conversely, Anglos will often leave the Bible when it is culturally convenient to do so in order to protect their traditions. This is seen most clearly in the sacred cow of interracial dating and marriage. When the issue comes up, the argument of culture comes up as well. Questions such as: What about the kids? and What will the relatives think? surface much quicker than questions of what the Bible says.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 58). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

1. Image of God: God is the father of all human beings

Imago Dei ("image of God")

("image of God"): A theological term, applied uniquely to humans, which denotes the symbolical relation between God and humanity. The term has its roots in Genesis 1:27, wherein "God created man in his own image. . ."

Genesis 1:27 NKJV

27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Imago Dei - Longer definition: The term imago Dei refers most fundamentally to two things: first, God's own self-actualization through humankind; and second, God's care for humankind.

The moral implications of the doctrine of imago Dei are apparent in the fact that if humans are to love God, then humans must love other humans, as each is an expression of God.

2. Addressing racial hindrances based on the scriptures

What we have in the Bible is that in the beginning God made man in his image. In Revelation we see the unity restored around the throne of God.

Clearly, racial reconciliation with God is futile.

There are plenty of examples of racial reconciliation in the Bible.

God used this image to tell Peter that he was to repeat the very same work among the Gentiles that was being done among the Jews (Acts 10:11–29).

Recognize that we are all made in the image of God

Peter and Cornelious - Acts 10:11-29

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 58). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Recognize Common Ground - John4:6

In Samaria, Jesus rested at Jacob’s well (John 4:6). A well offered water and shade, and it was a natural place for a hot, tired man to stop. But Jesus chose this particular well because both the Jews and Samaritans loved Jacob, who was the father of both groups. Jesus was looking for common ground so He stopped at Jacob’s well and built a bridge of communication by starting with what He and the Samaritan woman could agree on.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 61). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In the book of Revelation, John said, “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9, emphasis added).

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 62). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

a. God used this image to tell Peter that he was to repeat the very same work among the Gentiles that was being done among the Jews (Acts 10:11–29).

b. Recognize Common Ground In Samaria, Jesus rested at Jacob’s well (John 4:6).

Refuse to Allow Culture to Interfere with Truth

Our second principle is illustrated best through this next passage: “The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’” What she is saying, in my Tony Evans translation, is, “Jesus, y’all go to church over there. And we go to church over here. You worship that way. We worship this way. We are different. In fact, not only are we different—we were raised differently. My daddy taught me that this is how you do it because his daddy taught him that this is how you do it. In fact, my great-granddaddy taught my granddaddy who taught my daddy who taught me that this is how you do it. This is our history and our background and what we are used to doing.” Jesus responds to her excuses using rather direct language. He says, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22).

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 64). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

We need to get onto God’s agenda!

One reason we are not seeing an evangelistic message of oneness permeating our society and world is that the African-American community has its own agenda and the Anglo community has its own agenda as well.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 71). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

c. Refuse to Allow Culture to Interfere with Truth - (John 4:22).

d. Choosing of the 7 deacons: elevated and empowered the marginalized - Acts 6:1-7

There was a racial problem. The Apostle led a process that according to verse 5, everyone liked the idea.

They selected 7 men from the underrepresented group, elevated them to the table, gave them authority and responsibility.

They choose the best men that meet the spiritual qualification. See verse 3.

3. Man’s attempt at racial reconciliation

a. Slave trade

Hundreds of thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, aided the establishment and survival of colonies in the Americas and the New World. However, many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 African slaves ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portugese slave ship Sao Jao Bautista.

Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans.

some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million enslaved people were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone,

b. Constitution

But after the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery, counting each enslaved individual as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor” (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region’s businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations.

Between 1774 and 1804, all of the northern states abolished slavery, but the institution of slavery remained absolutely vital to the South.

Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the United States nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.

Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families; most slave owners encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.

Slave Rebellions

Rebellions among enslaved people did occur—notably ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822—but few were successful.

Abolitionist Movement

In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement.

From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by free Black people such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Free Black people and other antislavery northerners had begun helping enslaved people escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad, gained real momentum in the 1830s. Conductors like Harriet Tubman guided escapees on their journey North, and “stationmasters” included such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Secretary of State William H. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

Civil War

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil War began.

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State…in rebellion,…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

By freeing some 3 million enslaved people in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t officially end all slavery in America—that would happen with the passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War’s end in 1865—some 186,000 Black soldiers would join the Union Army, and about 38,000 lost their lives.

c. Amendment

The Legacy of Slavery

The 13th Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples’ status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.

Previously enslaved men and women received the rights of citizenship and the “equal protection” of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment and the right to vote in the 15th Amendment, but these provisions of Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for Black citizens to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive Black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping.

As a result of the Union victory in the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1865), nearly four million slaves were freed. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted African Americans citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) guaranteed their right to vote. Yet the Reconstruction period (1865–77) was one of disappointment and frustration for African Americans, for these new provisions of the Constitution were often ignored, particularly in the South.

The Declaration of Independence may have asserted that "all men are created equal," but laws clearly did not treat them that way.

Slavery was a legal institution in the United States until the Thirteenth Amendment abolished it in 1865.

Slavery is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution and, with the exception of the slave trade, was left to the states to deal with.

The Northern states ended slavery long before the Civil War, but this did not mean that free African Americans were equal in status to whites.

Laws either restricted or prevented them from voting, holding public office, serving on juries, and joining the militia.

The Dred Scott decision

In the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that slaves must remain slaves even though they reside in a free state. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney stated that African Americans were never meant to be included in the term citizen in the Constitution and, therefore, had no rights under the Constitution. Further, Taney declared that the Missouri Compromise, which was the basis for Scott's claim, was unconstitutional because it denied slave owners their property rights.

The Missouri Compromise

By 1820, Americans recognized that the country was heading in two directions on the question of slavery. When the Missouri Territory, which allowed slavery, applied for statehood in 1819, the free states objected; the number of slave and free states was equal at that time, and the admission of Missouri would tip the balance in the Senate in favor of the proponents of slavery.

The Missouri Compromise, which was worked out by Henry Clay, maintained the balance by admitting Maine as a free state. Further, all territories north of latitude 36°30′ north would be free. New states were admitted in pairs: Arkansas (1836) and Michigan (1837), Florida (1845) and Iowa (1846), Texas (1845) and Wisconsin (1848).

The Compromise of 1850

The territory that the United States acquired at the end of the Mexican War raised the issue of the extension of slavery again. After considerable debate, Congress approved a series of laws known collectively as the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California as a free state, ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and organized the New Mexico and Utah territories with no restrictions on slavery. The South won a fugitive slave law that made harboring an escaped slave a federal crime.

Segregation

Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era led to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which achieved the greatest political and social gains for Black Americans since Reconstruction.

The period of Washington’s leadership proved to be one of repeated setbacks for African Americans: more Blacks lost the right to vote, segregation became more deeply entrenched, and anti-Black violence increased. Between 1900 and 1914 there were more than 1,000 known lynchings. Anti-Black riots raged in both the South and the North, the most sensational taking place in Brownsville, Texas (1906); Atlanta (1906); and Springfield, Illinois (1908).

Meanwhile, African American leaders who opposed Washington’s approach began to emerge. The historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois criticized Washington’s accommodationist philosophy in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Others who questioned Washington’s methods included William Monroe Trotter, the militant editor of the Boston Guardian, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a journalist and a crusader against lynching. They insisted that African Americans should demand their full civil rights and that a liberal education was necessary for the development of Black leadership. A

In the face of such difficulties, a “new Negro” developed during the 1920s—the proud, creative product of the American city. The growth of racial pride among African Americans was greatly stimulated by the Black nationalist ideas of Marcus Garvey. Born in Jamaica, he had founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association there in 1914. He came to the United States in 1917 and established a branch of the association in the Harlem district of New York City. By 1919 the association had become the largest mass movement of African Americans in the country’s history, with a membership of several hundred thousand.

The first steps toward official segregation came in the form of “Black Codes.” These were laws passed throughout the South starting around 1865, that dictated most aspects of Black peoples’ lives, including where they could work and live. The codes also ensured Black people’s availability for cheap labor after slavery was abolished.

Segregation soon became official policy enforced by a series of Southern laws. Through so-called Jim Crow laws (named after a derogatory term for Blacks), legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, asylums, jails and residential homes. There were separate waiting rooms for whites people and Black people in professional offices and, in 1915, Oklahoma became the first state to even segregate public phone booths.

Colleges were segregated and separate Black institutions like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee were created to compensate. Virginia’s Hampton Institute was established in 1869 as a school for Black youth, but with white instructors teaching skills to relegate Black people in service positions to whites.

READ MORE: How the Black Codes Limited African American Progress After the Civil War

The Supreme Court and Segregation

In 1875 the outgoing Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a civil rights bill outlawing discrimination in schools, churches and public transportation. But the bill was barely enforced and was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883.

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. The ruling established the idea of “separate but equal.” The case involved a mixed-race man who was forced to sit in the Black-designated train car under Louisiana’s Separate Car Act.

Housing Segregation

As part of the segregation movement, some cities instituted zoning laws that prohibited Black families from moving into white-dominant blocks. In 1917, as part of Buchanan v. Warley, the Supreme Court found such zoning to be unconstitutional because it interfered with property rights of owners.

Using loopholes in that ruling in the 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover created a federal zoning committee to persuade local boards to pass rules preventing lower-income families from moving into middle-income neighborhoods, an effort that targeted Black families. Richmond, Virginia, decreed that people were barred from residency on any block where they could not legally marry the majority of residents. This invoked Virginia’s anti-mixed race marriage law and was not technically in violation with the Supreme Court decision.

Abstract

This chapter analyzes efforts to desegregate public schools and public housing in Yonkers, New York, since the 1950s. For both schools and housing, we examine the public stands of the people who took action to promote or forestall desegregation, their justifications for their actions, the effects of their actions on desegregative policies, and the long term consequences of these activities. We focus on New York State, both because the state government was a key actor and because the history of interactions between New York State and Yonkers shows how race affects federalism, the separation of powers, and the impact of democratic preferences -- and vice versa.

We find that, although the state government of New York was powerful, officially committed to racial desegregation, and active on its behalf off and on for more than two decades, it was unable to overcome the obstacles of local opposition, bureaucratic and electoral politics, and structural complexity in order to achieve meaningful desegregation in Yonkers. Racial hostility was neither unimportant nor all-important in explaining this process. Instead, it magnified conventional political obstacles to substantial change so that desegregation efforts failed in Yonkers until the federal court stepped in.

This analysis demonstrates that, even with the best intentions and a lot of power, over the long term political actors cannot or will not extensively desegregate public schools and public housing. If Americans are serious about implementing the principles of equal opportunity and racial integration, they must find other means to achieve them. Mandatory school desegregation and quasi-mandatory public housing desegregation are dinosaurs – appreciated by many, laughed at by some, but doomed in any case to extinction. We conclude with some suggestions for what those other means might entail.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/jlhochschild/publications/demise-dinosaur-analyzing-school-and-housing-desegregation-yonkers

Segregation During the Great Migration

During the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, six million African Americans left the South. Huge numbers moved northeast and reported discrimination and segregation similar to what they had experienced in the South.

As late as the 1940s, it was still possible to find “Whites Only” signs on businesses in the North. Segregated schools and neighborhoods existed, and even after World War II, Black activists reported hostile reactions when Black people attempted to move into white neighborhoods.

The Green Book: The Black Travelers’ Guide to Jim Crow America

📷

GALLERY

5 IMAGES

Segregation and the Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration’s efforts to build housing for people displaced during the Great Depression focused on homes for white families in white communities. Only a small portion of houses was built for Black families, and those were limited to segregated Black communities.

In some cities, previously integrated communities were torn down by the PWA and replaced by segregated projects. The reason given for the policy was that Black families would bring down property values.

Red-Lining

Starting in the 1930s, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation conspired to create maps with marked areas considered bad risks for mortgages in a practice known as “red-lining.” The areas marked in red as “hazardous” typically outlined Black neighborhoods. This kind of mapping concentrated poverty as (mostly Black) residents in red-lined neighborhoods had no access or only very expensive access to loans.

READ MORE: How a New Deal Housing Program Enforced Segregation

The practice did not begin to end until the 1970s. Then, in 2008, a system of “reverse red-lining,” which extended credit on unfair terms with subprime loans, created a higher rate of foreclosure in Black neighborhoods during the housing crisis.

Housing Segregation

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that a Black family had the right to move into their newly-purchased home in a quiet neighborhood in St. Louis, despite a covenant dating back to 1911 that precluded the use of the property in the area by “any person not of the Caucasian race.” In Shelley v. Kramer, attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), led by Thurgood Marshall, argued that allowing such white-only real estate covenants were not only morally wrong, but strategically misguided in a time when the country was trying to promote a unified, anti-Soviet agenda under President Harry Truman. Civil rights activists saw the landmark case as an example of how to start to undue trappings of of segregation at the federal level.

But while the Supreme Court ruled that white-only covenants were not enforceable, the real estate playing field was hardly leveled. The Housing Act of 1949 was proposed by Truman to solve a housing shortage caused by soldiers returned from World War II. The act subsidized housing for whites only, even stipulating that Black families could not purchase the houses even on resale. The program effectively resulted in the government funding white flight from cities.

One of the most notorious of the white-only communities created by the Housing Act was Levittown, New York, built in 1949 and followed by other Levittowns in different locations.

Segregation in Schools

Segregation of children in public schools was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education. The case was originally filed in Topeka, Kansas after seven-year-old Linda Brown was rejected from the all-white schools there.

A follow-up opinion handed decision-making to local courts, which allowed some districts to defy school desegregation. This led to a showdown in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed federal troops to ensure nine Black students entered high school after Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had called in the National Guard to block them.

When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, the civil rights movement began in earnest. Through the efforts of organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the resulting protests, the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, outlawing discrimination, though desegregation was a slow process, especially in schools.

READ MORE: How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education

Boston Busing Crisis

One of the worst incidents of anti-integration happened in 1974. Violence broke out in Boston when, in order to solve the city’s school segregation problems, courts mandated a busing system that carried Black students from predominantly Roxbury to South Boston schools, and vice versa.

The state had passed the Elimination of Racial Balance law in 1965, but it had been held up in court by Irish Catholic opposition. Police protected the Black students as several days of violence broke out between police and Southie residents. White crowds greeted the buses with insults, and further violence erupted between Southie residents and retaliating Roxbury crowds. State troopers were called in until the violence subsided after a few weeks.

Segregation in the 21st Century

Segregation persists in the 21st Century. Studies show that while the public overwhelmingly supports integrated schools, only a third of Americans want federal government intervention to enforce it.

The term “apartheid schools” describes still-existing, largely segregated schools, where whites make up 0 to 10 percent of the student body. The phenomenon reflects residential segregation in cities and communities across the country, which is not created by overtly racial laws, but by local ordinances that target minorities disproportionately.

Sources

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, published by Bodley Head.

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic.

Dismantling Desegregation by Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton by the New Press.

e. Affirmative Action

Affirmative action in the United States is a set of laws, policies, guidelines, and administrative practices "intended to end and correct the effects of a specific form of discrimination"[1] that include government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs. The programs tend to focus on access to education and employment, granting special consideration to historically excluded groups, specifically racial minorities or women.[1][2] The impetus toward affirmative action is redressing the disadvantages[3][4][5][6][7] associated with past and present discrimination.[8] Further impetus is a desire to ensure public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.[9]

Affirmative action policies were developed to address long histories of discrimination faced by minorities and women, which reports suggest produced corresponding unfair advantages for whites and males.[16][17] They first emerged from debates over non-discrimination policies in the 1940s and during the civil rights movement.[18] These debates led to federal executive orders requiring non-discrimination in the employment policies of some government agencies and contractors in the 1940s and onward, and to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited racial discrimination in firms with over 25 employees. The first federal policy of race-conscious affirmative action was the Revised Philadelphia Plan, implemented in 1969, which required certain government contractors to set "goals and timetables" for integrating and diversifying their workforce. Similar policies emerged through a mix of voluntary practices and federal and state policies in employment and education. Affirmative action as a practice was partially upheld by the Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), while the use of racial quotas for college admissions was concurrently ruled unconstitutional by the Court in Gratz v. Bollinger (2003).

f. Civil Rights

Affirmative action has its origins in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The movement brought a dramatic change to U.S. social life through protests, court decisions, and legislative action, culminating in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, popularly known as Title VII.

The relevant part of Title VII states: “Nothing contained in this [law] shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this [law] to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed … in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.”

President Lyndon Johnson endorsed this view in a speech before Howard University in 1965 in which he stated: “You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him to the starting line and say you are free to compete with all the others.”

That same year, Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, requiring firms under contract with the federal government not to discriminate, and to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”

It was left to the Nixon administration, ironically considered an administration not particularly friendly to civil rights interests, to pick up the issue and promote the first serious affirmative action plan that required government-determined, numerically specific percentages of minorities to be hired.

After the implementation of the Philadelphia Plan, legislation was passed at the federal, state, and municipal level implementing affirmative action plans using the Philadelphia Plan as a model. Today, almost all government affirmative action plans are offshoots of the Philadelphia Plan. Its mixture of numerical targets and requirements of “good faith” effort was a milestone in the history of affirmative action.

The Rise of the Inferiority Myth

Myths are traditions passed down over time in story form as a means of explaining or justifying events that are lacking in either scientific evidence or historical basis.

Myths often have strong religious tenets associated with them.

Myths are powerful because they are believed and therefore become the basis of our actions as individuals, as families, and as a society at large.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 89). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Creation of the Myth The American myth of the inferior nature of African people began when the European slave traders subjugated Africans and exported them to the New World without having any understanding of this previously unknown people. Dr. William Banks, author of The Black Church in the United States, describes how traders rationalized their actions through religious purposes: The Portuguese and Spanish were the first Europeans to deal in the black slave trade. Rationalizing that it was God’s will to bring black heathens into contact with Christianity, even if it meant a lifetime of enforced servitude, their ships carried slaves to labor in the Caribbean colonies as early as 1517. With

The myth of inferiority had to be valid in the minds of the slaves as well as in the minds of the white traders so they would accept it as natural. Thus, early in the exploration and development of the New World, the capture of slaves was done under the pretext of Christianizing the slaves. Because the “savages” needed “true religion” to replace their paganism, it seemed justifiable to bring them to the New World with its strong Puritan heritage. Never mind, of course, that this “noble end” would dismantle African families, orphan African children, often destroy the continuity of African culture, and frequently make African women the victims of rape.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 91). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

1. The Creation of the Myth

The Creation of the Myth

The American myth of the inferior nature of African people began when the European slave traders subjugated Africans and exported them to the New World without having any understanding of this previously unknown people.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 90). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Dr. William Banks, author of The Black Church in the United States, describes how traders rationalized their actions through religious purposes: The Portuguese and Spanish were the first Europeans to deal in the black slave trade. Rationalizing that it was God’s will to bring black heathens into contact with Christianity, even if it meant a lifetime of enforced servitude, their ships carried slaves to labor in the Caribbean colonies as early as 1517. With the approval of their governments and the Roman Catholic Church, the sellers of flesh maintained that “christianized” slaves were better off than free heathens.1 Because the slave trade was so extensive and because so many of its promulgators claimed to be Christians, this religious justification had to be promoted with as little resistance as possible. And the myth of inferiority had to be valid in the minds of the slaves as well as in the minds of the white traders so they would accept it as natural. Thus, early in the exploration and development of the New World, the capture of slaves was done under the pretext of Christianizing the slaves. Because the “savages” needed “true religion” to replace their paganism, it seemed justifiable to bring them to the New World with its strong Puritan heritage. Never mind, of course, that this “noble end” would dismantle African families, orphan African children, often destroy the continuity of African culture, and frequently make African women the victims of rape.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 90-91). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

2. The Curse of Ham

The Curse of Ham

Because Ham was the father of black people, and because his descendants were cursed to be slaves because of his sin against Noah, some Christians said, “Africans and their descendants are destined to be servants, and should accept their status as slaves in fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”4 Due to the curse of Ham theory, there now existed a myth of inferiority with apparent biblical roots. This

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 92). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Old Scofield Reference Bible,5 which had become the official version of American fundamentalism, endorsed the curse of Ham theory, I had little recourse other than

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 92). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Never mind, of course, that the Bible says that Canaan, Ham’s son, was cursed, not Ham himself. Thus, only one of Ham’s four sons, not all four, was cursed. How then could all black people everywhere be cursed? Never mind that the Bible places limitations on curses—only three or four generations at most (Exodus 20:5). Never mind that the curse on Canaan and his descendants—“Now therefore, you are cursed, and you shall never cease being slaves”—finds its most obvious fulfillment in the ongoing defeat and subjugation of Canaan by Israel (Joshua 9:23; 1 Kings 9:20–21). Never mind that the descendants of Ham’s other sons—Cush, Mizraim, and Put—have continued to this day as national peoples in Ethiopia (Cush), Egypt (Mizraim), and Libya (Put). In fact, founders of the first two great civilizations, Sumer (Mesopotamia) and Egypt, descended from Ham. And never mind that God says that curses based on disobedience only extend to three or four generations at most and are reversed when people repent and turn again to obedience (Exodus 20:5–6). This is certainly sufficient to negate the Christian endorsement of the American enslavement of black Christians. Myths, however, do not need facts; they simply need supporters. Because the myth of inferiority needed as much theological support as possible to make it stick, some Christians turned to the New Testament to corroborate the Old Testament verses on masters and slaves. These people quoted biblical passages on slaves submitting to their masters (e.g., Ephesians 6:5–8; Colossians 3:22) to contemporize the myth to the economic framework of the New World. The Puritans were attempting to turn America into the “city set on a hill,” the manifestation of the prophesied kingdom of God on earth. Slavery provided an economic base for implementing this theology, even among some of the theological and religious heroes of the colonial era. Some of the noted New England leaders who endorsed this perspective of slavery were George Whitefield, John Davenport, Evera Styles, and Jonathan Edwards.6 They attempted to teach the slaves to docilely accept their inferior status, for to do so was the will of God. To fail to do so was to rebel against God and risk eternal punishment.7 With this comprehensive “biblical” strategy, the myth of inferiority took theological wings. These Christians forgot that the apostle Paul told masters to treat converted slaves as equal brothers in Christ (Philemon 1:15–16). They forgot

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 93-94). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

3. The Impact of the Inferiority Myth

The Impact of the Inferiority Myth

The perpetuation of the inferiority myth is as much psychological as it is theological, because myths affect the way people think. The myth of inferiority became a part of the psyche of the slave and was often transmitted from one slave to another, developing what some have called a “plantation mentality.” Although this mentality was regularly resisted, it nevertheless left its mark. Historically, this was seen in the way many blacks held their heads down when talking to whites, perhaps wishing they were white themselves. The law threatened corporal punishment if a black man stared at a white woman. In fact, in 1955 Emmett Till was slain for allegedly whistling at a white woman. In 1989 sixteen-year-old Yusef Hawkins was slain by a mob of close to twenty white teenage boys for allegedly dating a white girl in Brooklyn. Not only did the myth affect the psyche of adults, but studies have shown that it set in early in children. The infamous 1947 “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children Study” done by Kenneth and Mamie Clark showed numbers of children different colors and shades of dolls and then asked them questions such as, “Which doll is the nice doll?” or “Which doll is the bad doll?” The results across the board were unanimously in favor of the light-skin or white dolls.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 95). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

4. The infamous 1947

The infamous 1947 “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children Study” done by Kenneth and Mamie Clark showed numbers of children different colors and shades of dolls and then asked them questions such as, “Which doll is the nice doll?” or “Which doll is the bad doll?” The results across the board were unanimously in favor of the light-skin or white dolls. As recently as April 2010, when Anderson Cooper did a follow-up “doll study” on CNN to see if there had been any significant improvements in our nation over the last sixty years with regard to racial perception, the results, once again, concluded that “white children had an overwhelming bias toward white, and black children also had a bias toward white.”8 When a person is told either directly or subliminally that the definition of “good,” “pretty,” or “smart” comes clothed in a certain color, or that he is a “boy,” even if he is the senior to the one making the designation, the psychological damage can be overpowering. Or consider what happens when black children are told they are “at risk” simply because of their skin color. Doesn’t this decrease their motivation to learn and validate some teachers’ belief that black children are unable to learn?9 The myth of inferiority hits its mark time and time again.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 95-96). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

From the days of slavery until the present, the inferiority myth has been passed down through the generations, leaving its devastating psychological thumbprint. A contemporary manifestation of the myth’s impact is visibly demonstrated in the heavily dependent posture of the black community on government-based social service programs. The independent black church during slavery hewed out a community, culture, religious institution, and antislavery resistant movement with limited support from the government or broader culture.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 96). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

5. The reinforced myth in the:

a. legal system

b. language

c. educational system

The first thing blacks were taught about our history in school is that we were descendants of slaves who arrived in America from the West Coast of Africa. In contrast, whites were the creators of Western civilization—in Greece, Rome, France, England, and America—thereby producing the first physician of antiquity, Hippocrates; the father of history, Herodotus; great philosophers, Socrates and Plato; and the great scientists, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 97-98). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 98). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Imhotep—a distinguished physician in Egyptian history who practiced medicine before Greece became a nation.

recognized Manatheo—who wrote the history of Egypt before Herodutus was born.

On the other hand, black children left history classes without educators or textbooks acknowledging the accomplishments in Africa at all, which include producing clocks and calendars, maps, gears, great architecture, engineering, medicine, and mathematics.

Africans were the first ones who named and mapped the stars, and were the first to teach students from Greece on African soil,

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 98). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

d. Churches

This illegitimate superiority has been reinforced not only through our legal system, language, and educational system but through our churches as well. The resultant psychological effects of the myth on African-Americans have been devastating.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 96-97). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Church Perpetuated the Myth The church became another major contributor to the expansion of the myth on both sides. Hiding behind a biblical interpretation based on cultural expediency rather than exegetical integrity, the white church endorsed society’s accepted status of Anglos being superior to African-Americans. The church endorsed the myth when it was silent to the immorality of parishioners who bred slaves for profit and pleasure. The church endorsed the myth when it forced blacks to sit in the rear of churches—

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 100). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Because many Christians presumed that paganism was inherently part of the African’s religion, they looked to the Bible, the sourcebook of the Christian religion, to authenticate the slave industry. Never mind that slavery based on kidnapping was clearly forbidden in Scripture, and punishable by death (Exodus 21:16). This set the stage for the infamous “curse of Ham” doctrine.3

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 92). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 96-97). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

6. Sociology Reinforced the Myth

Sociology Reinforced the Myth

The psychological devastation of the inferiority myth was further reinforced by social structures that served to undergird it. During the era of slavery, landowners granted greater privileges to house slaves who were of lighter skin color than field slaves. Even as late as the 1960s many laws restricted equal access to public accommodations, such as restaurants, restrooms, and methods of transportation, making the myth appear socially acceptable because it was culturally and even legally promoted and enforced.

Science Perpetuated the Myth If it was not bad enough that religion and theology were called upon to sanction the myth of black inferiority, science also lent its support to the myth when Charles Darwin published his history-altering book The Origin of Species, which set forth the theory of evolution.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 97). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

7. Education Perpetuated the Myth

Education Perpetuated the Myth

Rarely were our children taught about the great nations of North, East, and Central Africa, and if they were, they were never taught that all of Africa, including Egypt and Ethiopia, was initially occupied and dominated by blacks. Academia never broadcasted the name Imhotep—a distinguished physician in Egyptian history who practiced medicine before Greece became a nation. Academia never recognized Manatheo—who wrote the history of Egypt before Herodutus was born. Nor was anyone taught about Queen Ti—who once ruled Egypt and whose statues leave no doubt that she was black. Western education successfully perpetuated the myth of inferiority in our African-American children’s minds. White children left history classes knowing countries and names of white heroes and heroines. On the other hand, black children left history classes without educators or textbooks acknowledging the accomplishments in Africa at all, which include producing clocks and calendars, maps, gears, great architecture, engineering, medicine, and mathematics.

For example, Africans were the first ones who named and mapped the stars, and were the first to teach students from Greece on African soil, and much more.

In addition, African-American heroes were also neglected from Western education, including: Benjamin Banneker—an architect who designed the layout for Washington D.C., could predict solar eclipses ten years ahead of time, and carved a working, functioning watch out of wood noted to be the first clock wholly made in the United States and which kept perfect time even until after his death.

Frederick Douglass—a runaway slave who subsequently published his autobiography, founded and ran the North Star newspaper, and was heralded by President Abraham Lincoln as a statesman, an orator, and a key voice for freedom and equality not only for blacks but also for women’s rights.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 97-99). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Dr. Percy Lavon Julian—a scientist who substituted sterol from the oil of a soybean to create synthetic hydrocortisone, reducing the cost of purchase for the general public from hundreds of dollars to mere cents, was the first to mass-produce physostigmine—a treatment for glaucoma—and paved the way for the invention of the birth control pill. Matthew Alexander Henson—an able seaman from his early teen years, and the first man to place his foot on the North Pole.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 99). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Family Perpetuated the Myth

One of the most destructive social structures perpetuating the myth, however, was the family structure itself, the most basic of all human institutions. Innocent white children were fed the myth of the innate superiority of their own race and, conversely, the ipso facto inferiority of the black race. Think of the effect this had on children who were unlikely to question the ideas and ideals of those they admired and trusted most—namely, their parents.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 99). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Once such mythological representations were made, it was easy to justify laws to enforce the myth. Consider the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which ruled that black people were not U.S. citizens, but instead were property to be bought, sold, or killed at the whims of their masters. The Church Perpetuated the Myth The church became another major contributor to the expansion of the myth on both sides. Hiding behind a biblical interpretation based on cultural expediency rather than exegetical integrity, the white church endorsed society’s accepted status of Anglos being superior to African-Americans. The church endorsed the myth when it was silent to the immorality of parishioners who bred slaves for profit and pleasure. The church endorsed the myth when it forced blacks to sit in the rear of churches—if

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 100). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

8. The Family Perpetuated the Myth

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 99). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The myth made blacks, at times, wish they were white, and it produced a path of self-destruction and character ridicule within black culture. As a result, African-Americans began to view large noses as a sign of ugliness and natural black hair as unkempt.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 100). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

9. The Media Perpetuated the Myth

In 1915, the highest grossing film in the silent film era was The Birth of a Nation. This film unashamedly endorsed white supremacy, portraying the members of the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. Quoting then president Woodrow Wilson, the film opens with the lines, “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation … until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.” The Ku Klux Klan used the film in recruiting men to join them well into the 1970s. As recently as 1992, the U.S. Library of Congress chose to preserve the film in the National Film Registry, declaring it to be both historically and culturally significant. The rise of media influence in American culture spread the inferiority myth into every American home as well through the invention of the television. Blacks were good enough to make Americans laugh at all types of buffoonery. (Remember Amos and Andy?) This reinforced the general public’s conception of the ineptness of black people, even in the minds of blacks. Because such media representations did not spend much time depicting the strengths of black culture (except when black athletes and entertainers impressed us with their skill), society was not able to see the comprehensive contributions people of non-European descent had made to the greatness of America.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 101-102). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Lincoln and Mamiya, authors of The Black Church in the African-American Experience, are correct when they state: The prevailing American sentiment has traditionally held that the mainline white churches constitute the only relevant spiritual pulse in the nation, and that whatever is outside this narrow ambit is of little if any significance to the American religious profile. This conventional wisdom is widely reflected in seminary curricula and denominational policies to the end that misperception is compounded, and the religious experience of some 30 to 35 million African-Americans is clouded in consequences.11

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 103). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition

10. The Myth Remains

The black community as a whole rejected the inferiority myth and attempted to set the record straight by protesting the superiority myth as well. This process was carried out by using the same authoritative source that was a basis for establishing the inferiority myth in the first place: the Bible.

As the black theologian J. Deotis Roberts asserts, This explains why the illiterate black slave understood the Bible better than the learned white preacher or missionary who taught him. The Bible has a lot to say about justice, love, and mercy, about liberation from oppression, about deliverance from bondage, and about making life human.

The privileged need definitions, rationalizations, logical conviction, and language clarity to understand liberation, justice, and mercy. A black man reared in this society does not need a constitutional lawyer or a logic professor to explain “justice” or “injustice” to him. From early childhood the meanings of the words are apparent. Thus, when the Bible speaks of love, justice, and mercy, its message goes right to the soul of the black man.12

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 103-104). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

11. Debunking the Myth

It has been my desire over the past three decades of professional ministry as a black evangelical in America to be one of many evangelical thinkers who help to dispel the inferiority myth, which has impacted not only the racial groups of our country, but individuals as well. Each of us is held hostage to the perspectives of our racial group, thus limiting our personal development. Far too many African-Americans are hindered from reaching their individual potential because of the black group’s demand that they remain in solidarity to the group’s definitions and strategies for freedom, even though each individual may not agree with those same definitions or the strategies.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 105). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Rev. Walter McCray, author of The Black Presence in the Bible, wrote, The preponderance of contemporary evidence being gathered by archaeologists and ancient historians says that Africa (in Egypt’s Nile Valley) was the origination of humanity and civilization. It was from here that humanity, an indigenous “black” humanity, had its beginnings.

The preponderance of archaeological and historical facts say that the roots of all people are in Africa!—Egypt, Africa. Whether one holds to the traditional view of a Mesopotamian origination of humanity, or to the more substantiated view of the origination of humanity in Africa, one point of harmony is certain: indigenous humanity and the originators of the civilizations in each of these areas were black! They were black in Egyptian Africa and they were black in Asia’s lower Mesopotamia! Either way one cuts it, the originators of civilization were a black people.2

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 110). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Such evidence includes the discoveries in the Tanzanian Canyon of the Olduvai Gorge, which reveals that toolmaking began in Africa and then spread to Europe. It includes the discoveries in the Nile Valley that demonstrate that people of Negroid African descent manufactured pottery before pottery was made in the world’s oldest known city.

Archaeological evidence even suggests African sailors explored the New World prior to Columbus. This evidence includes an extensive number of portraits of Negroes on clay, gold, and stone unearthed in pre-Columbian strata in Central and South America. In fact, paintings by Negro people date prior to 3000 BC.

“Civilization started in the great river valleys of Africa and Asia, in the Fertile Crescent in the Near East and along the narrow ribbon of the Nile in Africa,” says historian Lerone Bennett. “In the Nile Valley that beginning was an African as well as an Asian achievement.

Blacks, or people who would be considered black today, were among the first people to use tools, paint pictures, plant seeds, and worship gods.”3 Bennett’s conclusion concurs with Moses’ assertion that Adam was created from soil in or near the land of Cush, who was Ham’s son and originator of the great Ethiopian civilization (Genesis 2:7, 13; 10:6, 8; Isaiah 18:1–2).

For African-Americans this knowledge is both a great strength and a great weakness. The obvious strength is the very real self-appreciation of the depth of our historical achievements and contributions.

Finally scholars, both black and white, are correcting the inaccuracies and deletions that have been taught by many people who have bypassed the truth, by either the sin of omission or commission. We now have the academic tools necessary to refute those who relegate blacks to an inferior status in history and who use erroneous theological, environmental, or cultural arguments to support their perspective that whites are superior to blacks.4 On the other hand, black people, particularly Christian blacks, must filter black achievement, history, and culture through the lens of Scripture in order to see it clearly. Greatness must be defined in terms of biblical criteria, not in terms of simple social theory. Black is only beautiful if it is biblical, just as white is only right when it agrees with the Holy Writ. For whites, this knowledge should cause them to reconsider their culturally laden perspective of blacks, which has hindered their full appreciation, understanding, and acceptance of their brothers and sisters of African descent.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 110-111). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Influential Blacks in the Bible The Sons of Ham

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 117). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Church Fathers

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 122). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Augustine, who was by far the most scholarly and influential of all the church fathers and is known as the Father of Theologians, was not only African, but was most probably also black.15 We know this because his mother, Monica, was a Berber, and Berbers were a group of dark-skinned people belonging to the vicinity of Carthage.16 Many refer to Augustine as the “father of orthodox theology.” The greater majority of his doctrinal opinions have stood the test of time and the scrutiny of many theologians throughout the annals of theological history.

Upon observing his life experience through the lens of his Confessions, one can easily see his strong view of the grace of God. The thought and contribution of Augustine became the theological foundation for the Protestant Reformation as well as contemporary Reformed Calvinistic theology.

Athanasius of Alexandria was known as the black dwarf because of his dark skin and short stature.17 As a young man he served as secretary to Alexander Bishop of Alexandria.

Upon the death of Alexander, it was made known to Athanasius that he had been chosen by Alexander to succeed him as bishop of Alexandria.

Athanasius was involved in the theological war against the heresy of Arius and the Arians, who taught that Jesus Christ was not truly God, but a lesser creature. It was because of this heresy that the Council of Nicea met in the year AD 325. Athanasius exhibited a cogitative understanding of theological issues that was far beyond his own time.18

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (c. 160–c. 225), who like Augustine lived in Carthage, was another of the great African church fathers. Tertullian received a good education in literature and rhetoric. He was converted to Christianity some time prior to AD 197.

Tertullian’s facility for rhetoric and argumentation impacted the religious environment of his day. Among Tertullian’s greatest contributions to Christian theology were his thoughts toward the foundation of the Trinitarian formula. In his Prescriptions Against the Heretics he argued that the heretics of his day had no right to refute the church and that Scriptures were the sole property of the church.19

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 122-123). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Walter Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 95.

Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1984), 173.

15. The Original African Heritage Study Bible (Nashville: The James Winston Publishing Company, 1993), 1831.

16. Keith Irvine, The Rise of the Colored Races (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1970), 19.

12. The Church Fathers

The Black Church

1. The Birth of the African-American Church

The Birth of the African-American Church

It is unfortunate that many people see the origin of the African-American church as little more than a branch that emerged from mainstream white Christianity. When one comes to understand and appreciate fully the circumstances that came together to give rise to this unique institution, it becomes clear that its makeup consisted of men and women of tremendous depth, intellect, wisdom, and pride, who were willing to submit all of these virtues to the work of a sovereign God.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 148). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The reality of slavery forced the slave to look for meaning. Slaves found themselves in a precarious position: They had no freedom, no meaning, no hope, and no help. Where then were they to turn to find these desperately needed facets of life? They looked to the only place available, which was within their history, their culture, and their religious heritage. There they saw the most significant aspect of their past life in Africa: God! In his book Black Belief, Henry Mitchell said, “It is probable that the African holistic view of God was such an important affirmation of black selfhood that its sense of ‘God all in me’ was among the most important resources for survival in the unprecedented dehumanization of American slavery.”1 They had to look to that God whom they celebrated in West Africa for His provision of meaning, hope, and freedom, to give them that same definition of existence in their new hostile environment. Immediately, the slaves had the one thing that could keep them keeping on despite the social reality of their plight—they had their God.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 148-149). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

2. Evangelization

White organizations, such as the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and movements such as the first Great Awakening, began evangelizing the slaves.2 What is critical to understand here is that this evangelization process occurred without addressing the slaves’ oppressed condition.

In 1667, for example, the Virginia legislature agreed that baptism did not alter the state of the slave. Such laws allowed blacks to be evangelized without those evangelizing them ever having to address their sociopolitical plight. With the influence of the first Great Awakening, Christianity was brought to the level of the common man. This made the African feel comfortable with the appeal of Christianity, especially since the slave was as common a man as you could find. Many of these revivals and crusade meetings were full of emotion, shouting, dancing, and other physical and verbal expressions. This reminded the slaves of their own worship experiences and helped to make the structure of American Christianity palatable to them.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 149). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

3. A Natural Integration of Their Beliefs

A Natural Integration of Their Beliefs

Slaves began integrating their African beliefs with the new Christian revelations. When they heard the message of the gospel, they heard more than just personal forgiveness of sin. They heard the voice of hope. The Christian message spoke of heaven where earthly trials would be no more and where they would find freedom from all the injustices they were experiencing.

They heard about a God who loved them and suffered for them so that they might experience eternal freedom. Given the cry for freedom and the magnitude of God’s suffering love, with which the slave could easily identify, the stage was set for finding that freedom in Christ. In Christianity the slaves also found a message of liberation from the oppressive historical condition of slavery. They latched onto the Christian message as their means for survival, self-authentication, and historical freedom. The integration of the eternal and the temporal was evidenced in the worship services of the slaves. They would dress up for their worship services and mimic some of their African rituals in this new Christian environment. They held secret worship meetings if the master did not officially allow them to gather together because he rejected the Christianization of the slave or he feared possible insurrection. At these secret meetings the slaves developed codes to communicate with each other. They communicated these codes in slave songs.3 This was a major means of communication in the African Traditional Religion. For example, one of the slaves would start singing, “Steal away, steal away to Jesus.” Translation: “When the sun goes down there will be a church meeting in the swamp, so steal away to the service.” Songs, then, were not just for personal pleasure. They were also a mechanism for community planning, again revealing the strong intellectual and organizational prowess of the slaves as well as their willingness to risk punishment in order to maintain their worship of the supreme God. Swamps and forests became the early sanctuaries for slave services. On the morning after a worship service, the slaves in the field would break out with a song, “I couldn’t hear nobody praying.” Translation: “The master did not hear our worship service going on.”

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 149-150). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

4. The Bible

The Bible

The Bible became the first book to which the slaves were exposed. They became acutely aware that the Bible was deeply concerned with the subject of freedom in history as well as in eternity. God had worked in the past with another group of people called the Israelites, who were, like the Africans, under bondage in a foreign land.

As the story unfolded, it became clear that God was not only concerned about their condition because of His love for them, but He also desired to release them from bondage so that they could worship Him freely. The slaves concluded that if God could save Israel from Egyptian oppression, He could certainly save black people in America. Thus the story of Israel’s deliverance was a story that was easy for the slaves to transpose to their own experience. It became clear that God was on the side of the slaves and against the oppression of their masters. Israel’s story became the black community’s “story.”4 The Black Preacher The fifth and final factor that led to the development of the black church was the rise of the black preacher, who would provide the link between Africa and America. We will look at this unique leader in the next chapter.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 150-151). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The problem was that a Christology that only leads to political, social, and economic reform is insufficient. Human liberation is part of a comprehensive kingdom agenda theology predicated on spiritual salvation.

This is why Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17) and why He told Nicodemus, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Human liberation is also predicated on a willingness to obey Christ as Master. Thus, the process of liberation must be willing to incorporate the principles of Christ if it would present Christ as the leader of the struggle. This is why Jesus said to His followers, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46).

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 154-155). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

5. The Communal Nature of the Black Church

The Communal Nature of the Black Church

The historical black church also reminded the slave of who he was in the sight of God, rather than man. One who was considered a “boy” on the plantation became Deacon Jones on Sunday. An elderly woman who was known as a “girl” during the week by her mistress became Mother Smith on Sunday. The church was crucial for maintaining God’s view of black dignity and significance under the hand of a good God. The black church viewed itself as more than just a loose gathering of individuals. It saw itself as a community in which everyone was related. This communal mind-set again owed its existence to the African worldview. In Africa, tribal life was family life, and family life was also religious life. E. Bolaji Idowu describes this interrelationship:

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 155). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

6. The Conservative Nature of the Black Church

The Conservative Nature of the Black Church

The black church was evangelical long before evangelical arose as an official term. According to The Evangelical Theological Dictionary, evangelicalism is the “movement in modern Christianity, transcending denominational and confessional boundaries, that emphasizes conformity to the basic tenets of the faith and a missionary outreach of compassion and urgency.”1 Theologically, evangelicalism stresses the sovereignty of God as the transcendent, personal, and infinite Being who created and rules over heaven and earth. Furthermore, evangelicals regard Scripture as the divinely inspired record of God’s revelation and the infallible, authoritative guide for faith and practice. In addition, the person and work of Christ as the perfect God-man who came to earth as God’s means of providing salvation is at the center of the evangelical Christian message. Given these generally accepted criteria, we cannot speak of evangelicalism and exclude the African-American church, which has always held to historic Protestant Christian doctrine. In fact, the black church was founded and then flourished in a conservative biblical tradition. This has been true without regard to denominational affiliation.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 185). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Theological Contradiction of the White Church

Liberal German rationalism began to infect white churches and their institutions early in the twentieth century. White fundamentalists fought back by establishing alternative religious institutions. These Bible colleges and seminaries sought to train a new generation of youth in conservative theology and prepare them to convert the culture back to God.5 As American universities and seminaries became more and more liberal, however, they simultaneously became more and more open racially. Liberal schools led the way in providing religious education to blacks. Conservative schools, on the other hand, were very slow to open their doors.6 In order to salve their consciences for maintaining the color line, Bible colleges developed separate but equal (most times unequal) evening training programs for blacks, called “Institutes.”

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 186-187). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Black Christians exposed to these conservative training centers and the ministries that they spawned (such as Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade for Christ, the Navigators, and Young Life) developed a social/theological tension. Although African-Americans were being exposed to a systematic approach to understanding the spiritual truths they had always believed, they were also faced with racial segregation, educational disparity, and theological contradictions. As C. Eric Lincoln points out, the existing white theology was a theology singularly lacking in its ability to conceive of humanity beyond the improbable boundaries of the white race … a theology which permitted and sometimes encouraged the sickness of racism and which has on occasion grossly distorted the faith through a calculated attempt to fit the whole of reality into the narrow confines of a doctrine of racial expediency and a deep-seated commitment to a racial manifest destiny.7 The same group of people who advocated “the unity of the body” from Ephesians 4:4–6 were also practicing racial disunity. The implicit message was: Let’s win their souls, but not value them as people. As the graduates of these institutions trekked to the ends of the earth to fulfill the Great Commission of Acts 1:8, they successfully overlooked the Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria in their own backyard. In fact, most mission societies would not even receive black graduates as candidates, whether they were qualified or not. White evangelical theologians understood well the theology of Ephesians 4, but functioned as though these instructions had been given by Immanuel Kant8 and not the apostle Paul through the agency of the Holy Spirit. It became increasingly apparent that while African-Americans could learn systematic formulas for understanding the Bible and theology in these institutions and seminaries, we could only find limited meaningful relationships and empowerment there. Integration came clothed in the isolation of being the lone “black,” often viewed as a representation of all black people while at the same time muffled in any real expression of personality or thought. We were allowed in the room, but not given a seat at the table. It also became evident to most Christian blacks that we were never going to be fully accepted in the broader white evangelical structure throughout the nation. We had been granted a ticket to access another world, but that ticket only opened the door to the stairwell leading to the balcony once again—a balcony ripe with the resultant effects of feeling patronized, marginalized, and stereotyped. Essentially, integration meant little more than assimilation. Unfortunately some black evangelicals thus made the mistake of viewing our own history, culture, and church experience through the lens of white theology. This was a disaster for many as a large number joined whites in assessing Christian blacks as being an “ignorant, uneducated, over-emotional group of people.” The result of the contradiction within the white church was a contradiction within many Christian blacks as well.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 187-188). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Backdrop of the Black Experience

Comprehending the intricacies behind the emergence and existence of the black revolution can be done only by recalling the backdrop of the black experience. This backdrop cannot be denied and should not be underestimated as to its place in the formation and development of not only the black revolution, but also a political agenda, black power, a theological school of thought, black theology, and an expositional approach to theology and ministry, black evangelicalism.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 189). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

7. The Theological Contradiction of the White Church

Hundreds of years since the first arrival of slaves to these shores, the myth of black inferiority is still very much with us. It is visibly seen in the rejection and continued disenfranchisement of blacks by many whites and the inability to get beyond the issue of color. Unfortunately, the problem is often as replete in the church as it is in the secular community. Why is this? I would like to posit that it is primarily because of the failure of Christians to approach the issue of race from a theological rather than anthropological perspective. This theological failure has kept us from appealing to the source of race from whom every family under heaven receives its name (Ephesians 3:14–15).

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 87). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Sacralization is the divergence from a comprehensive theology and a biblical worldview into the development of religious beliefs intended to serve the interest of a particular ethnic or racial group. Supported by tradition or generalized prejudices, it is often formulated to carry out a specific end result or to justify a specific behavior. Sacralization often leads to the creation

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 87-88). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

I knew the inferiority myth had taken root when as a budding adolescent I thought, as did many of my contemporaries, Maybe it would be better if I had been born white. This was the beginning

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 88). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Backdrop of the Black Experience

1. The Birth of Black Power

The Birth of Black Power

On February 1, 1960, four students from the Negro Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina, were refused coffee at a local variety store because of their color. In an act of rebellion, they sat at the counter until the store closed. This was the beginning of sit-ins that spread across the South. These protests rested on the heels of the Supreme Court decisions on voting and school desegregation as well as the Montgomery bus boycott. By the summer of 1960, the status of black Americans had become a burning issue on the national conscience. A growing preoccupation with civil rights had infiltrated every aspect of the black community. By the mid-1960s, large demonstrations across the country began taking place to force the issues of justice and equality and to protest the violence done to blacks. The “white backlash” of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 only increased through violent acts of physical, social, and economic oppression.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 189-190). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

2. The Emergence of Black Theology

The Emergence of Black Theology

A year after the public terming of what black people as a whole had been seeking for hundreds of years, riots broke out in Detroit. The Detroit riots of 1967 significantly impacted a young theologian named James Cone. When the riots broke out, Cone was teaching in Adrian, Michigan, at Adrian College after having studied at Garrett Theological Seminary and Northwestern University. Having been called to the ministry at the tender age of sixteen, Cone already wrestled with questions concerning his upbringing in Beardon, Arkansas, and its relationship to biblical truth. Was the God of grace that he had learned about at the Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church the same God of the roughly eight hundred white people in Beardon who saw him no higher than a servant, and whose church he dare not visit?

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 191). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Thus, black evangelicalism refers to a movement among African-American Christians that emerged out of the civil rights era and the rise of evangelicalism in the white community, which seeks to wed the strengths of the black church with an emphasis on a systematic approach to theology, ministry, and social impact. The Formation of Black Evangelicalism Christian blacks exposed to evangelicalism realized that if they were going to prioritize the evangelization and discipleship of black America successfully while remaining culturally and socially sensitive, they were going to have to unite for the purpose of ministry. So in 1963 a group of black leaders formed the National Negro Evangelical Association (NNEA), the first distinctively black evangelical organization. The NNEA became the primary information center for black evangelical outreach, fellowship, theological debate, and ministry exposure. It concerned itself with a commitment to the authority of the Scripture, a burden for the spiritual state of black America, the need for oneness in the body of Christ, and the application of the gospel to the issue of social justice.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 200). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

3. The Fathers of Black Evangelicalism

The Fathers of Black Evangelicalism

Scores of talented men paved the way for the inception and spread of black evangelicalism. The pages of this book are not enough to do justice to them all. However, a few men stand in need of special recognition as fathers to those of us who followed them. These include Dr. John Perkins, Rev. Tom Skinner, Dr. William Bentley, Dr. B. Sam Hart, and Dr. Ruben Conner.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 201). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

4. The Fundamentals of Black Evangelicalism

The Fundamentals of Black Evangelicalism

The presence of a black evangelical emphasis provides a number of distinctions that enhance the overall well-being of Christianity both in America and abroad. This is due to the convergence of the existing major theological tenets present in contemporary biblical Christianity with a concern for the oppressed as well as the social realities of the black experience. These distinctions include biblical authority, ministry development, evangelism and discipleship, racial reconciliation, personal responsibility, and biblical justice.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 203-204). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The Kingdom Agenda Throughout Scripture

The Kingdom Agenda Throughout Scripture,

God’s agenda is His kingdom. The Greek word used for kingdom is basileia, which essentially means “rule” or “authority.” A kingdom always includes three crucial components: First, a ruler empowered with sufficient authority; second, a realm of subjects who fall underneath this authority; and third, the rules of governance. God’s kingdom is the authoritative execution of His comprehensive governance in all creation.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 242). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Therefore, the universe we live in is a theocracy. Theos refers to God. Ocracy refers to rule. A kingdom perspective means that the rule of God (theocracy) trumps the rule of man (homocracy). Psalm 103:19 (NIV) expresses it this way, “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.” Therefore, the kingdom agenda is the visible demonstration of the comprehensive rule of God over every area of life.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 242). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

A kingdom perspective does not view man’s condition first and then assign to God what we feel would best reflect Him. Rather, a kingdom perspective ascertains how God has determined to glorify Himself and then aligns itself with that despite our inability to always understand God’s processes. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good. However, God’s definition of good isn’t always ours. In fact, God often uses the very thing that we call “not good” as a tool to bring about an ultimate purpose, as well as the resultant manifestation of His greater glory.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 244). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

For our purposes in this chapter, the term I have chosen to use is biblical justice rather than social justice, because biblical justice provides society with a divine frame of reference from which to operate. The word justice in Scripture means to prescribe the right way. Since God is just (Deuteronomy 32:4) and is the ultimate lawgiver (James 4:12), His laws and judgments are just and righteous (Psalms 19:7–9; 111:7–8). They are to be applied without partiality (Deuteronomy 1:17; Leviticus 19:15; Numbers 15:16) seeing as justice identifies the moral standard by which God measures human conduct (Isaiah 26:7–8). It is the government’s role, then, to be His instrument of divine justice by impartially establishing, reflecting, and applying His divine standards of justice in society (Psalm 72:1–2, 4; 2 Samuel 8:15; Deuteronomy 4:7–8). Biblical justice, therefore, is the equitable and impartial application of the rule of God’s moral law in society. Whether exercising itself through economic, political, social, or criminal justice, the one constant within all four realms is the understanding and application of God’s moral law within the social realm.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 260-261). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Biblical justice is not a man-made, socially imposed, top-down system ultimately leading to the negation of freedom. Biblical justice promotes freedom through emphasizing accountability, equality, and responsibility in providing a spiritual underpinning in the social realms. Each of the four jurisdictions in God’s kingdom—personal, family, church, and state—is called upon to promote justice and responsibility under God in its own distinct way. Through

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 261-262). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

1. Mission of the Kingdom

Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37-40) Matt 22:34-40

Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20)

Great Compassion (Luke 4:18-19)

5. Biblical justice,

justice

1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments

biblical justice provides society with a divine frame of reference from which to operate. The word justice in Scripture means to prescribe the right way. Since God is just (Deuteronomy 32:4) and is the ultimate lawgiver (James 4:12), His laws and judgments are just and righteous (Psalms 19:7–9; 111:7–8). They are to be applied without partiality (Deuteronomy 1:17; Leviticus 19:15; Numbers 15:16) seeing as justice identifies the moral standard by which God measures human conduct (Isaiah 26:7–8). It is the government’s role, then, to be His instrument of divine justice by impartially establishing, reflecting, and applying His divine standards of justice in society (Psalm 72:1–2, 4; 2 Samuel 8:15; Deuteronomy 4:7–8). Biblical justice, therefore, is the equitable and impartial application of the rule of God’s moral law in society. Whether exercising itself through economic, political, social, or criminal justice, the one constant within all four realms is the understanding and application of God’s moral law within the social realm.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 260-261). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Biblical justice promotes freedom through emphasizing accountability, equality, and responsibility in providing a spiritual underpinning in the social realms. Each of the four jurisdictions in God’s kingdom—personal, family, church, and state—is called upon to promote justice and responsibility under God in its own distinct way.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 261-262). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The church is in the unique position of implementing biblical justice in a country in desperate need of an alternative. In order to do so, we must rally around three key principles for implementing biblical justice: restitution, reconciliation, and responsibility. Much can be accomplished when like-minded individuals embrace one another’s strengths to work together toward a shared vision.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 274). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Kingdom Impact in the Culture – Prophetic

Kingdom Impact in the Culture

In order to understand the potential impact of the church in a community, we need to look more deeply at what the Bible says about the cause of social upheaval in the life of a community or nation.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 289). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Since the church is the primary manifestation of the kingdom and is the primary means by which God is extending His kingdom rule in this world, local churches must be willing to work across racial and class lines in order to become intentional about having a comprehensive program that connects both the spiritual and social. Churches must work together to extend their influence beyond their individual walls in order to impact the broader communities that they serve. I have proposed a three-point plan for invoking a national impact by the church. This plan involves:

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 290). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

1. A national and localized solemn assembly among churches

2. Community-based good works done collectively for greater impact

3. Churches speaking publicly with one unified voice on the significant cultural issues of our day

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 291). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

One way of getting a jump-start on this collective impact is by identifying the Christian agencies and individuals who already have intellectual affinity and integration within the spheres of typical American society: education, health care, entertainment, news media, literary, government, business, research, family issues, law, national security, economics, community organizations, and social activism. The primary goal of such identification is to take advantage of opportunities of cross-pollinating efforts while also sharing research on cultural trends and indicators. In doing so, we provide a more synergistic approach to shaping the moral framework of our land. Some of the goals of this partner-platform might include:

• To awaken and initiate the desire for national revival, personal responsibility, spiritual integration, and progressive reformation.

• Developing a national strategy of social impact, scalable and implementable across cultural, geographical, and class lines.

• To increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the mobilization and management of American Christian resources for national kingdom impact.

• Developing a national ongoing prayer movement to support the initiatives.

• Building and promoting collaboration among churches, nonprofits, training institutions, and agencies.

• Facilitate research and discussion on national trends within the various mediums in order to stimulate strategic influence.

• To reduce wasteful duplication of efforts.

• To create a forum for the sharing of strategies and techniques while providing responsible forecasting.

• Producing artistically excellent, compelling means of storytelling to encourage kingdom thinking and personal responsibility through mainstream distribution channels.

• Leveraging social media and YouTube to transform thinking toward national renewal and kingdom values.

• To devise a corporate approach to deal with collective felt needs.

• To encourage thinking about community and national impact as also a local church strategy rather than solely a parachurch strategy.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 291-292). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

• And the promotion and production of a National Solemn Assembly drawing together spiritual leaders and laity to seek God’s face and invoke His hand in our land.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 292-293). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Collective Community Impact

Strategy One of the ways we can collectively impact our communities and our nation is done through what we have established in Dallas of a local model of church-school partnerships. Churches partnering with schools seek to rebuild communities by comprehensively influencing the lives of urban youth and their families in addressing the education, health, economic, and social needs of hurting people based on spiritual principles.

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (pp. 295-296). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

1. A national and localized solemn assembly among churches

2. Community-based good works done collectively for greater impact

3. Churches speaking publicly with one unified voice on the significant cultural issues of our day

4. Elevate everyone around the table, given authority, responsibility, accountability

5. Collective Community Impact

The necessity of urban apologetics

and Christian in America, and this has now been etched into the psyche of many African Americans. Consider the following quotes from proponents of what are commonly called “Black Conscious” communities: The so-called Negro must awaken before it is too late. They think the white man’s Christianity will save them regardless of what happens, and they are gravely mistaken. They must know that the white man’s religion is not from God nor from Jesus or any other of the prophets. It is controlled by the white race and not by Almighty Allah (God). 2 It shows how man can manipulate a religious text to support and justify their evil actions, in this case against black people. Whitenization by the Europeans and Roman Empire proved this to be true. The brainwashing began in Europe and spread easily to America. 500 years after white slavery, 1,000+ years after Arab slavery it is still evident today as people of African descent are still subjected to more social, economic, and political oppression than any other race in the world. Arabs and Whites today have been known to call black people “monkeys” and “slaves.” 3 I remember going to Sunday school class, and the teacher would pull these cardboard cutouts of Moses and Noah out of the box . . . and they were invariably old, white men in robes. They looked like my next-door neighbor, but in robes. Imagine as a child to have that inculcated in me that all of the heroes of Christianity are white. I do think that’s kind of wrong. 4

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 27). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

1. Why we need urban apologetics

WHY WE NEED URBAN APOLOGETICS

Urban apologetics is doing the work of sharing the gospel by giving an answer and a defense of Christianity to Black people in light of the intellectual, emotional, and ethnic identity concerns of minority communities. It is giving Black people a reason for the hope of the gospel amidst the cultural, historical, spiritual, and theological barriers Blacks have to the Christian faith. And at the core of urban apologetics is a restoration of the imago dei . Racial injustice and inequity have created a complex need to affirm humanity while challenging human sinful pride. Scripture demands that we treat all people as bearers of God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27; James 3:9). Urban apologetics also seeks to speak truth into a world that has become characterized by lies. We live in a world of bootleg truth where Black Religious Identity Cults (BRICs) peddle pieces of the truth or promote material they try to pass off as truth. Because many people haven’t learned to recognize truth from error, the real from the fake, they believe the lies. They have nothing to compare it to. Most of the ideologies or cults out there have a foundation in the Judeo-Christian worldview. They approach their rejections of Christianity and their framing of so-called truth in light of the Christian story; urban apologetics seeks to demonstrate that only Christianity proves to be reasonable and true as a worldview. Urban apologetics also dispels and addresses the multitude of urban legends, historical myths, theological fallacies, exegetical improprieties, scientific misnomers, sociological revisionism, spiritual synchronism, and reductionist views of Christianity that exist in the Black community. Much of what we combat in urban apologetics are arguments that were once popular in previous generations and are now reemerging with an ethnic slant. For example, we’re seeing a reemergence of the theory that Christianity is a copy of an Egyptian religion—an issue that was addressed and dispelled decades ago. 14 Because the Black community deeply distrusts white people and European ideas, many Blacks tend to be easily swayed by any suggestion of white corruption, and Christianity is an easy target. When BRICs suggest that Christianity is a white religion instituted by white Europeans, many Blacks believe them. Yet in reality, Christianity spread from Jerusalem to Africa and then to Europe. Christianity’s headquarters were in Alexandria, Egypt well before Christendom formed in Rome. The willingness of people to believe that Europeans spread Christianity to Africa highlights an even bigger issue. As Thomas C. Oden explains in his book How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind , Modern intellectual historians have become too accustomed to the easy premise that whatever Africa learned, it learned from Europe. In the case of seminal Neoplatonism, however, its trajectory from Africa to Europe (a south-to-north movement) is textually clear. But why is it so easy to forget or dismiss this trajectory? 15

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (pp. 32-33). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

After the hopeful promise of freedom from 250 years of brutal enslavement gave way to the nightmarish reality of segregation and racial terror, African Americans in the early twentieth century fought for the survival of their people. It was the era known as the “nadir,” a low point in the long quest for freedom and equality. 1 They watched as Black men’s bodies swung from trees—lynched for the audacity of demanding to be treated with respect. They lamented the economic and sexual exploitation of Black women, relegated to back-breaking domestic labor in white homes. As African Americans struggled to envision a meaningful future, they formed organizations, they marched, they wrote, and they prayed. They also turned to their rich past for inspiration to endure the uncertainty of what was to come.

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 35). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

In the 1720s, British missionaries from groups like the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts were sent to evangelize Africans in America—not because they cared about the destiny of their souls, but so that they could prove themselves superior to Catholics. 6 They used Ephesians 6:5, as if all the Law and the Prophets culminated in the message of slaves being obedient to their masters. However, enslaved Africans refused to accept a truncated, self-serving gospel, and the missionaries returned home to England unsuccessful. It wasn’t until bondspeople encountered the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening that African Americans began coming to faith in significant numbers.

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 39). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

2. Awakenings

Starting in the 1790s, less than a generation after the Revolutionary War transformed the British colonies into the independent United States of America, religious camp meetings began spreading across the new nation. Marked by emotionally charged preaching and teaching, these revivals emphasized repentance and faith as the singular path to salvation and declared that no one was out of the realm of God’s deliverance. For the enslaved, especially those who were born in the US and not Africa, this was their first encounter with the comprehensive gospel, and many embraced it with abandon.

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 40). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

The willingness of Baptists and Methodists to not only preach the gospel to Blacks but, in some cases, to ordain them as preachers led to the first generation of free and enslaved church leaders. For example, Andrew Bryan, born enslaved in 1737 on a plantation outside of Charleston, South Carolina, was led to the Christian faith and baptized by George Liele, the first Black man licensed to preach the gospel in Georgia. While a slave, and with the blessing of his master, Bryan assembled a small group of African American believers outside of Savannah, Georgia, and met with them regularly. As Bryan’s nascent congregation grew, so too did fears from slaveholders, some of whom forbade enslaved people from listening

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 40). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Upon the death of his master, Bryan purchased his freedom and continued teaching and preaching the gospel. By 1790, over 500 free and enslaved Blacks attended his services. Four years later, Bryan organized his congregants and established a church that eventually became African Baptist Church. Free and enslaved Blacks hired out their services and pooled their scarce resources and raised enough money to erect a church in Savannah—the first Black Baptist church in the United States. By 1810, the church planted an additional two churches, all led by Black men. 8

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 40). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

3. Free blacks in the north also faced persecution.

Free Blacks in the North also faced persecution.

In 1786, an elder at St. George’s Methodist Church invited a man named Richard Allen to preach to the Black congregants. Richard Allen, who was born a slave in Delaware, had purchased his own freedom just three years earlier. He was preaching the gospel throughout the region to African Americans and was committed to living out his faith by working to end slavery in the rest of the country. When Allen was asked to preach at St. George’s, he agreed. However, the predominantly white church practiced segregation and held an all-Black, pre-sunrise service at 5:00 a.m. so as not to upset the white congregants. Despite these conditions, the number of Black worshipers increased at St. George’s. Unfortunately, so too did the hostile attitudes of the white members. Tensions reached a fever pitch when Blacks were physically thrown out of a service while kneeling to pray. Richard Allen later recounted what happened that day: The Meeting had begun, and they were nearly done singing, and just as we got to the seats, the elder said, “Let us pray.” We had not been long upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking. I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees, having hold of the Rev. Absalom Jones, pulling him off of his knees, and saying, “You must get up—you must not kneel here.” Mr. Jones replied, “Wait till prayer is over.” The man said, “No, you must get up now, or I will call for aid and force you away.” Mr. Jones said, “Wait until prayer is over and I will get up and trouble you no more.” With that he beckoned to one of the other trustees to come to his assistance. He came, and went to William White to pull him up. By this time prayer was over, and we all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church. 11

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 41). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

African Americans did not blindly embrace the religion of their oppressors. In fact, the teachings of the Black church inspired some of the most powerful critiques of racism and the American slave regime. Slave insurrectionists Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, preachers within their respective communities, saw in their faith an inspiration to overthrow slavery—with violence, if necessary. Frederick Douglass offered scathing criticism of the church’s failure to acknowledge the slave’s plight. In his famous 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” the abolitionist declared “the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters.” 12

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 42). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

a follower of Christ after the death of her husband in 1829. A year later, she declared that she had been called to be a “strong advocate for the cause of God and the cause of freedom.” Stewart was the first woman of any race to address public audiences containing both men and women, and she provided piercing insight into the specific ways that racism and sexism intersected to impact the lives of Black women. However, her critiques were always rooted in her unshakable faith in Christ and his redemptive power. In a speech that was delivered to an audience of free Blacks in Boston and later published as a pamphlet, Stewart offered this reflection, demonstrating a powerful understanding not only of Scripture but the US Constitution:

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 42). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

4. Reconstructing a people

RECONSTRUCTING A PEOPLE

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, millions of newly freed African Americans sought to rebuild their lives. Among the first things they did was to establish churches in their communities. They pooled their meager resources, and with their own sweat and labor, they chopped wood and laid bricks to build their churches with their own hands. In addition to meeting the spiritual needs of their communities, these churches housed what were called Sabbath Schools. Legally prohibited from learning how to read and write while in bondage, freed people, ranging in age from toddlers to the elderly, gained literacy in the pews of the churches they built. These church-based schools laid the foundation for many of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that exist today. Building upon the legacy of the white philanthropists who created Cheyney University in 1837 and Lincoln University in 1856, the American Baptist Home Mission founded Shaw University in North Carolina in 1865 to provide a theological education to freed Blacks. Just two years later, Moses Adams, a Black pastor in Holly Springs, Mississippi, began a school in his church’s basement that became Rust College. That same year, a group of ministers met in Augusta, Georgia, at Springfield Baptist Church, one of the nation’s oldest independent Black churches. These men would go on to establish Augusta Institute with the goal of helping to prepare Black men for the ministry. Augusta Institute would later move to Atlanta and become Morehouse College. Of the 101 HBCUs that exist today, about 40 are Christian founded or based. The impact of these HBCUs cannot be overstated. During the many decades of Jim Crow segregation, these institutions faithfully educated the Black doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, social workers, activists, educators, ministers, and artists who sustained Black communities. They opened their doors to Black scholars and professors who were unable to secure employment at predominantly white schools. 14

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (pp. 43-44). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

The years after the demise of Reconstruction also saw the resurgence of white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, who terrorized Black communities with rampant racial violence. Despite (or because of) this, it was also a period of rapid growth in church planting. The expansion of the church caught the attention of historian Carter G. Woodson, who chronicled the phenomenon in his 1921 book, The History of the Negro Church . For Woodson, the continued subjugation of Black people after slavery’s legal end only underscored that emancipation did not translate into equality or true freedom. As such, African Americans had to build their own independent institutions to help them navigate the era of segregation.

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 44). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Upon further investigation, Woodson found that while the Black population increased only twenty-six percent from 1890–1920, the number of church organizations, church buildings, and seating capacity all increased by over fifty percent. The value of church property, Woodson found, more than doubled. 16 However, the impact of this expansion would pale in comparison to the demographic shift on the horizon that would forever transform the Black church—the Great Migration.

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (pp. 44-45). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

5. A modern exodus

A MODERN EXODUS

Life in the Jim Crow South became so unbearable that African Americans, like the Hebrew children before them, longed for deliverance and a promised land free of oppression. Lured by the hope of better economic opportunities, a chance to vote, and an escape from racial violence, between 1910 and 1970 over six million African Americans left all that was familiar to embark on a new life in cities like New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia. At the end of the nineteenth century, ninety percent of the Black population lived in the South. By the time WWII started, almost half of all Black Americans lived in urban areas in the North and Midwest. 17

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 45). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Structural Changes

1. Office of racial reconciliation

2. Ongoing conversation

3. Urban church planting Center

Resources

Evans, Tony. Oneness Embraced (p. 275). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (pp. 62-63). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Baucham Jr., Voddie. Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe (p. 151). Salem Books. Kindle Edition.

The Whitewashing of Christianity: A Hidden Past, A Hurtful Present, and A Hopeful Future Hardcover – June 28, 2021 by Jerome Gay (Author)

Related Media

Related Sermons

The Gospel as the Foundation for Racial Reconciliation

Introduction

1. Who I am: Faith, Family, Friends, Finance

2. History of the UB Church & Core Values

3. My journey into understanding race relations in the USA

4. Race relations through the eyes of Christian Black Man

a. Grady & Pat

Definitions: Understanding various terminologies relating to race

1. Liberty

2. Identity

3. Justice

4. Dignity

5. The pattern of racial reconciliation

1. Image of God: God is the father of all human beings

Imago Dei ("image of God")

2. Addressing racial hindrances based on the scriptures

a. God used this image to tell Peter that he was to repeat the very same work among the Gentiles that was being done among the Jews (Acts 10:11–29).

b. Recognize Common Ground In Samaria, Jesus rested at Jacob’s well (John 4:6).

d. Choosing of the 7 deacons: elevated and empowered the marginalized - Acts 6:1-7

3. Man’s attempt at racial reconciliation

a. Slave trade

b. Constitution

Slave Rebellions

Abolitionist Movement

c. Amendment

The Dred Scott decision

The Missouri Compromise

The Compromise of 1850

Segregation

The Supreme Court and Segregation

Housing Segregation

Abstract

Segregation During the Great Migration

The Green Book: The Black Travelers’ Guide to Jim Crow America

Segregation and the Public Works Administration

Red-Lining

Housing Segregation

Segregation in Schools

Boston Busing Crisis

Segregation in the 21st Century

Sources

e. Affirmative Action

f. Civil Rights

The Rise of the Inferiority Myth

1. The Creation of the Myth

2. The Curse of Ham

3. The Impact of the Inferiority Myth

4. The infamous 1947

5. The reinforced myth in the:

a. legal system

b. language

c. educational system

d. Churches

6. Sociology Reinforced the Myth

7. Education Perpetuated the Myth

8. The Family Perpetuated the Myth

9. The Media Perpetuated the Myth

10. The Myth Remains

11. Debunking the Myth

The Church Fathers

12. The Church Fathers

The Black Church

1. ﻿The Birth of the African-American Church

2. Evangelization

3. A Natural Integration of Their Beliefs

4. The Bible

5. The Communal Nature of the Black Church

6. The Conservative Nature of the Black Church

7. The Theological Contradiction of the White Church

The Backdrop of the Black Experience

1. The Birth of Black Power

2. The Emergence of Black Theology

3. The Fathers of Black Evangelicalism

4. The Fundamentals of Black Evangelicalism

The Kingdom Agenda Throughout Scripture

1. Mission of the Kingdom

5. Biblical justice,

Kingdom Impact in the Culture – Prophetic

1. A national and localized solemn assembly among churches

2. Community-based good works done collectively for greater impact

1. The Birth of the African-American Church