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The difference between social media “action” and action
It is one thing to teach theology (like Niebuhr, Barth, Tillich, and most theologians) in the safe environs of a classroom and quite another to live one’s theology in a situation that entails the risk of one’s life. (Martin Luther) King agreed fully with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian pastor hanged in 1945 by the Nazis for resisting Hitler: “When Christ…
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Moderates and the South
James Cone recounted the support Blacks had from Reinhold Niebuhr, possibly the greatest theologian of the 20th Century. Niebuhr wrote of the plight of the Black American with fair consistency. But Cone is critical of Niebuhr for holding back when it counted.
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Lynching, suffering, and the cross
Because of their experience of arbitrary violence, the cross was and is a redeeming and comforting image for many black Christians. If the God of Jesus’ cross is found among the least, the crucified people of the world, then God is also found among those lynched in American history.
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Refusing to go down in despair
Unlike Kierkegaard and Job, however, blacks often refused to down into that “loathsome void,” that “torment of despair,” where one “struggles with death but cannot die.” No matter what trouble they encountered, they kept on believing and hoping that “a change gonna come.” (The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone)
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Black History IS American History
I am reflecting on mentors from Black Cultures (mentors who are no longer with us yet I am still learning from) the first part of 2024. While we’ve relegated “Black History” to one month, and yes, I’m posting these in February, I am concentrating in a space and place to stay focused. And to remind us, especially in a time…
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The education and transformation we need in conversations about race
These are not for your listening or reading “enjoyment.” Rather, I read and listen to learn, be challenged, and hopefully grow. I am grateful of these voices. Esau McCaulley writes about how we like to cherry pick our favorite parts of MLK. We don’t want to recognize King the Radical. McCaulley then cuts loose on the Holy Post Podcast, talking…
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Why we need more than a month for “black history”
Every February, Black History Month, Americans engage in a futile attempt to squeeze into 28 days the history of a people whose tribulations, contributions and successes are on every page of the American narrative. For African Americans, at least, the struggle to tell our story and make sense of our place in the American saga never recedes from view. Understanding…
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The Pilgrimage, Part 3
Part 1 Part 2 There are inadequate words. It is the model heads put on posts to remember the 1811 German Coast Rebellion. The leaders of the slave rebellion were immediately convicted and sent back to their owners where they would be executed and their heads cut off and impaled so everyone on the plantation had to walk by them…
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The Pilgrimage, Part 2
Part 1 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. (Ps. 84:5, NIV) We will journey to the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. Our hearts are being set on pilgrimage. I want this way set in my heart.
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The Pilgrimage, Part 1
In his book, How the Word is Passed, Clint Smith tells the stories of 8 different places in the U.S. that have been touched deeply by slavery and how those places tell the story. One place he visited was the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. It is the only plantation open for tours that takes the visitor on a journey entirely…
Category: Black History
