GOSPEL TIMES MINISTRIES: Sermons

FATHER KNOWS BEST!

For all fathers, especially Black Fathers, whose voices have not been heard, I sense your pride, feel your pain and hear your cry! Today is your day! The role of black fathers is one of the strongest and most important traditions in the black community. There is no question that in their earliest years in the New World enslaved African-Americans were concerned about their fathers- Moreover, their loyalty to their fathers.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN!

The president of the Chicago branch of the Lions’ Club, Harry Meek, is said to have celebrated the first Father’s Day with his organization in 1915; and the day that they chose was the third Sunday in June, the closest date to Meek’s birth date.

Ms. Dodd of Spokane Washington did a lot for father’s Day. Ms Dodd felt she had an outstanding father .He was a veteran of the Civil War. His wife had died young, and he had raised six children without their mother. Her church, then started celebrating Father’s Day.

States and organizations began lobbying congress to declare an annual Father’s Day. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson approved of this idea, but it was not until 1924 when President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event on the third Sunday in June.

TEXT:

I would like to call your attention to the following text for Father’s Day. This scripture is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago.

The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate. (Luke 15:21-24)

THE TEXT AND ITS APPLICATION!

The text deals with the parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke. This account is familiar to most of us. It's the story of a rebellious son who rejects his father's upbringing. Prideful and strong, the son heads-off to a far-away land, leads a wild life of adventure, and squanders everything of value (literally and symbolically). Not until he's confronted with failure and despair, does he return home, repentant and willing to do anything to win back his father's favor. To his surprise, and the surprise of others, he's welcomed, without question, into his father's loving and forgiving arms. No amount of time, no amount of money, and no amount of rebellion could get in the way of the father's patience and unconditional love for his son. "For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found" (Luke 15:24).

Of course, the awesome message of this parable is that God is patient and gracious with all of His children. He is willing to welcome each of us home into His loving and forgiving arms. The Prodigal Son is a reality for many of us. In the journey of life, we soon realize there are no guarantees as Christian parents. No matter how hard we strive to teach our children about God and His Word, and no matter how often we pray for our children to discover Jesus Christ and His message of salvation, some decide to reject it all! Even in those families where God is loved, trusted and glorified, children sometimes rebel and run from their roots!

PRODIGAL SON!

The road to God for each Prodigal Son is different. However, as the two stories above tell us, we should never give up - no matter how far away they seem! God gives us these examples in scripture so that we realize that our children may turn against God. He also gives us instruction on how to dig in spiritually for our prodigal children: Be in constant prayer, always lead by example, and follow through with love and grace, no matter how despairing things get.

WHAT IS A GOOD FATHER!

Remember God's promise to those who raise children in a Christian home: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6 KJV).This is the foundation for fatherhood or parenting period! Great fathers make God the head of the house!

What is a good father? The text seems to emphasize three major qualities of a good father. They are “love by example,” patience and unconditional love. I am sure there are many others.

EXAMPLES OF GOOD FATHERS!

Gardner Taylor is now 88 years old. He is considered one of the fifteen greatest English speaking preachers in the world. He was asked who had a major influence on his decision to become a minister. He stated that his father was that person. Rev. Taylor said that his father was not well educated, however, he taught himself by reading in many areas. This is a good example of ...love by example.

I was involved in teaching young children chess in the 1980’s.A young man called me from South Africa who was an outstanding teacher in that area and said he would like to come to Raleigh where I was at the time and do a class. I said sure! He came with his father and brother. His father was a medical doctor and his brother was a medical doctor .I was amazed that his father loved and respected his son the teacher just as much as his son the medical doctor. This is a good example of a father’s… love and patience.

I was very blessed growing up. I had the pleasure of growing up with my father and grandfather. They were both God fearing men. They were both farmers. They taught me great work ethics. I had to work very hard on the farm from the time I was six years old. However, we had a lot of down times. I still can remember the fishing and hunting trips I went on with my father and grand father. There were many times my father could not go with us; my grandfather and I would go fishing or hunting. They were great examples of how to work hard and have quality down time. When I did something wrong they were quick to show me the error of my way. When I got in trouble, they always knew what was best and could lead me in the right direction. My father and grandfather were great examples of …unconditional love.

PRODIGY SON!

My brother George learned much from them! He is a third generation farmer and has carried on their tradition well. I heard him say several weeks ago about his accomplishments as a father. He said… that his two daughters had graduated… from college and… owned their own homes. He also has... two grandsons... to follow after him. What a great accomplishment as a father.

He was the only child of four who built his career in the same town he was born. The other siblings moved away from home. He had the pleasure of being around my father and grandfathers all of his life. He has been successful in farming, mechanical engineering career, personal building and construction. He and his wife have also been successful in the assistant living business. Now, his leadership impacts the lives of hundreds of individuals in the community, on the job, and among family members. He and his wife were invited to the White House to be ...recognized by the... president for being ...successful minority business owners.

THE BLACK FATHER!

Belle Hooks, in her "Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism" (1988), reminds us that "scholars have emphasized the impact of slavery on the black male consciousness, arguing that black men, more so than black women, were the real' victims of slavery." She documents the reality that "sexist historians and sociologists have provided the American public with a perspective on slavery in which the most cruel and de-humanizing impact of slavery on the lives of black people was that black men were stripped of their masculinity, which the psychologists and historians argue resulted in the dissolution and overall disruption of any black familial structure."

BLACK FATHERS WILL OVERCOME! I HEAR GOD SAYING...KEEP THE FAITH...FATHER KNOWS BEST!

Regarding family and personal relationships, today's African-American males are no less sensitive than their forefathers. According to one black physician, "black men come to the psychiatrist's office in large numbers, in pain and genuinely seeking help. They have little or nothing to say about the statistics, myths and other sociological pronouncements so often made about them. Rather, they come in talking about depression, anxiety, frustration, fear, guilt, esteem issues and anger that are most often related to the close, ongoing relationships in their lives," (Henry E. Edward, "Black Families in Crisis: the Middle Class," 1988).

KEEP THE FAITH...FATHER KNOWS BEST! FATHER KNOWS BEST!!

CONCLUSION

God's promise to those who raise children in a Christian home: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6 KJV).This is the foundation for fatherhood or parenting period! Great fathers make God the head of the house!

Of course, the awesome message of this parable is that God is patient and gracious with all of His children. He is willing to welcome each of us home into His loving and forgiving arms. The same way the father did the Prodigal Son.

FATHER KNOWS BEST!

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!!

Esco Yancey, Jr., Ed.D.(ACSI) © 2008 GOSPEL TIMES MINISTRIES

Real Prosperity

"For you know what our Lord Jesus Christ gives freely, that though He was rich, for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich,”( 2 Corinthians 8:9).

‘Prosperity theology finds its foundation in the interpretation of several passages of Scripture. One of these is in the Third Letter of John, where in the greeting John expresses hope that the readers "may prosper and be in good health that it is well with your soul". The current form of the prosperity gospel says that this is more than just a greeting or a blessing. It is a way out of poverty.

This prosperity gospel has a great attraction to those in poverty. Especially those who see no hope for a change in their status, this seems to be away out of poverty. It appeals to middle and lower income people who have more to loose. It also appeals to individuals on social services and are not highly educated.

Here’s how it is sold: God wants you to be rich (and/or healthy), but He can not bless you unless you first send or give money (also known as a “seed-faith offering”) to whichever televangelist, minister or leader who tells you about this proposition. You put your money in and a blessing pops out,’Bible.org.

As scholar James R. Goff noted, God is “reduced to a kind of ‘cosmic bellhop’ attending to the needs and desires of his creation.” This is a wholly inadequate and unbiblical view of the relationship between God and man and the stewardship of wealth.

‘The immediate context of what Paul wrote in our text, however, is very clear. He was trying to get his fellow Christians to give money for the sake of other believers who were materially poor in the Jerusalem area. Paul was telling them to give what material wealth they could, so that those who were poor could be helped. The poor would be able to get the things they needed. Does this sound like he wants them to claim wealth for themselves? Paul was not saying "claim it", he was saying "give it", as an act of love. Be careful here, many prosperity preachers acknowledge the Bible's call to give freely, but turn it into a call to give to their ministry’ (which really means 'give it to me’, Apologetics Index.

“So I took the word “prosper” apart in the Greek and found out it’s made up of two words—the first word means good or well and the second road. It’s a progressive word, so it’s like a journey. So, here’s John saying, basically,”Beloved, I want you to have a good journey through life as your soul has a good journey to heaven.” It was a greeting! It did not have any thing to do with money,” Jim Baker.

Love is spiritual prosperity. In the two greatest commandments, Jesus encourages us to love God and love your neighbor. He said all the commandments are based upon this principle. He also taught his disciples, that if they desired to become great-then ,they should be the first to provide love and service to those in need.

‘In a prosperity gospel, I am what it's all about: my needs, my wants, my wealth, my success. I me mine. The only 'blame' I have is not from my behavior, but from the act of not withdrawing from the unlimited bank account that God has given me. Push the Gimme Button and expect it to come. The desperate and the gullible get suckered into it, especially with such limited-time offers such as the "hundred-fold blessing", the Ginsu Knife of the prosperity crowd, where you put your money down on a 100-to-one bet on God ‘(or the preacher), Spirit Home.

But critics, from Bible-quoting theologians to groups devoted to preserving the separation of church and state, abound. At best, they say, such a theology is a simplistic and misguided way of living. At worst, they say, it is very dangerous.

Michael Scott Horton, who teaches historical theology at the Westminster Theological
Seminary in Escondido, Ca, calls the message a twisted interpretation of the Bible – a “wild and wacky theology.

“Some of these people are charlatans,” Horton said. “Others are honestly dedicated to one of the most abhorrent errors in religious theology.

“I often think of these folks as the religious equivalent to a combination of a National Enquirer ad and professional wrestling. Its part entertainment and very large part scam.”

Sociologist William Martin of Rice University said that most people who follow TV religious leaders put so much trust in them that they want them to thrive. Martin is a professor of sociology at the university, specializing in theology.

The preachers’ wealth is “confirmation of what they are preaching,” Martin said.

…prosperity-tinged Pentecostalism is growing faster not just than other strands of Christianity, but than all religious groups, including Islam. Of Africa's 890 million people, 147 million are now "renewalists" (a term that includes both Pentecostals and charismatics), according to a 2006 Pew Forum on Religion and Public life study. They make up more than a fourth of Nigeria's population, more than a third of South Africa's, and a whopping 56 percent of Kenya's

“TBN is a very successful and wealthy Christian broad casting company. This organization supports the doctrine called the "prosperity gospel," which promises worshipers that God will shower them with material blessings if they sacrifice to spread His word.

This theme — that viewers will be rewarded, even enriched, for donating — pervades TBN programming.

"When you give to God," Crouch said during a typical appeal for funds, "you're simply loaning to the Lord and He gives it right on back."

Though it carries no advertising, the network generates more than $170 million a year in revenue, tax filings show. Viewer contributions account for two-thirds of that money.

Lower-income, rural Americans in the South are among TBN's most faithful donors. The network says that 70% of its contributions are in amounts less than $50.

Those small gifts underwrite a lifestyle that most of the ministry's supporters can only dream about,” Los Angeles Times September 19, 2004.

‘Most Christian leaders condemn the "prosperity gospel," the idea that God will reward the faithful with health and wealth. Yet observers say it is enjoying new popularity in this economically tenuous time, when many people are not prospering. What's come to be known as the prosperity gospel began as a staple of fire-and-brimstone preaching in early 20th-century revival meetings. It surged in popularity with television preachers in the 1980s, until scandals revealed that some preachers used money donated for ministry to support their own lavish lifestyles.

Now observers say the prosperity gospel is spreading among churches large and small, denominational and independent, as well as through the ministries of televangelists such as Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Paul Couch and Kenneth Copeland. These pastors, critics say, encourage their followers to "sow a seed" of faith by spending money - often in the form of a donation to their ministries - in order to reap prosperity in the future.

‘Many Christian leaders have long condemned prosperity gospel as aberrant theology, but most did so quietly. No more. In the past year, African-American pastors met at a national conference to discuss a problem they see spreading in their denominations. Mega pastor Rick Warren declared the prosperity gospel is wrong, and he challenged evangelical Christians to focus less on themselves and more on the poor and needy. Critics have even questioned the ministries of such nationally prominent mega pastors as T.D. Jakes – whose Potter’s House does extensive outreach to the poor -- and Joel Osteen -- pastor of Lakewood Church, the largest mega church in the country -- saying their brand of divinely assisted self-improvement is just a vamped-up version of the prosperity gospel,’ Christianity Today.

But when prosperity still does not come, and for nearly all it won't, eventually they walk away in bitterness, believing that Christianity is a con job. This undermines the true Christian witness .Christianity, the way it was taught by Jesus, is not and economics system. But the impact of prosperity gospel preachers is undeniable, is found everywhere, and is highly visible. It's also damaging, as the number of people who are embittered keeps rising. The followers, of prosperity preachers, give from their modest incomes, only to see these preachers and their ministries prosper.

There is a difference between the prosperity preachers and the prophetic minister. Most of the prosperity preachers have not had seminary training. Professional pastors, such as- Martin Luther King, Calvin Butts, Otis Moss, Jr., James Forbes, and Vashti McKenzie preach the whole counsel of God. These individuals graduated from qualities schools with graduate degrees in divinity and earned doctorates in ministry from accredited programs. They have an understanding of the humanities, philosophy, Bible History, and are even teachers on the college level. They are qualified to explain Biblical concepts as they were intended by the original writers. They can also explain how these principles apply today.

The pulpit has been the basic institution for the cultural education of the Black Ccommunity for years. It has also been the force behind civil rights, social justice and community concerns for Blacks Americans. In a real sense, the minister educates the community. Our children are influenced by our pastors. The greatest role model is Martin Luther King, Jr.

The prosperity gospel offers false hope and a short cut to success. In the real world, there are no short cuts. This prosperity approach undermines the true Christian doctrine and old fashion work ethics. It is hard to get a blessing when you need a high school diploma. Your money could be better spent on more education. We need to stick with the principles that have made the Black Community successful. Success is not an easy process; it requires discipline. Here are some recommendations:

Adults can be trained in trades to earn more
Develop and support Black Businesses
Educate our children
Fight racism in your community
Make sure our pastors are educated
Mentor young people in the community
Pastors must combat the prosperity doctrine
Read and be informed
Register to vote
Work with progressive community leaders.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that a sermon should appeal to the heart, imagination, and the intellect .His sermons appealed to all educational levels. In his message, he included a variety of disciplines: economics, history, science, philosophy, literature, and much more. Most people felt inspired, educated, and they also felt the need to research or read further into those concepts mentioned in his message. His messages forced us to read and study more. This is a good thing for children and adults. This is a good thing for society. One of the major problems with the prosperity preacher is that they do not have a command of the humanities and the correct knowledge of the Bible. These ministries do not model knowledge of educational theory nor do they promote education as the primary tool of success. Education is the major tool, for an ethic group ,to improve in society... not false hope.

Your odds at getting a big financial blessing, by giving a prosperity preacher your money, is probably worse than playing the lottery. Jesus taught love for your brother. He also said that the greatest person in the kingdom of God is the least among us. The greatest among us should be the servants of the poor. There is not a Biblical example where Jesus or his disciples took money from the poor so they could live rich and plush life styles.

In closing, the worse problem prosperity gospel is creating for Christianity and the world is its syncretism or topological approach to scripture interpretation. This approach has been condemned for years. These ministers will take a scriptural verse and interpret it according to what it means to them. Even though, it could sound logical; it is not sound. Rules of higher criticism require ministers to interpret scripture in the context of the history, sociology, and culture of the time. Your job is to understand what the original writer intended in the text.

Most scripture compares a pastor to a good shepherd who takes care of his flock. This is pretty much the example Jesus established himself. However, the prosperity ministers have reversed the concept. They are trying to accumulate wealth by taking money from the flock .They would like for the poor flock in many cases… to provide for all their needs.They are fleecing the flock.

Esco Yancey,Jr.,Ed.D.(ACSI).© 2008 GOSPEL TIMES MINISTRIES

"For all mothers whose voices are still not heard," I hear your cry! It has always been amazing to me how women can succeed at raising their children with less resources than men in most cases .The great majority of successful individuals assert that their mother is the foundation of their success .Booker T .Washington, George, Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Bill Clinton, this list is just a short example. “I attribute all my success in my life, to the moral, intellectual, and physical education I got from her,” said George Washington.

The text gives us a great paradigm of a woman who goes beyond the norm as a wife, widow and mother .I call your attention to the following verses:

Ruth 1:16-18
And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. When she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her.

Ruth, the Moabite, became King David's great-grandma. Her lineage... extends all the way to Jesus... because of her faithfulness to the Israelites. She was not a Jewish Semite. Moab was a prosperous country. However, the people worshiped false gods.

After the death of Naomi's sons, she was the loyal daughter-in-law who clung to Naomi and followed Yahweh, the God of Israel, giving up her complete heritage and lifestyle .Un like Orpah, the other daughter-in-law who separated from Naomi never to be heard of again. At the end of her book, Ruth becomes wife of the wealthy Boaz' and the mother of Obed's.

The Book of Ruth has four chapters which entails the story of a virtuous woman .It was written sometime after the period of the judges (1375-1050 B.C.). The books of Ruth and Esther have the distinction of being the only two books in the Bible written about women.

The dominant cultural stereotype of the "good mother, said Coll, is a woman who is married and works outside the home in a job that does not take her away "too much" from her parenting responsibilities. She has no more than two children, and they have no handicaps or behavioral problems; she conceived her children and is raising them in a heterosexual relationship; and she and her spouse are older than 20 and are of the same ethnic and racial background.

Mothers who are compromised in their ability to access resources will be vilified, such as welfare mothers, mothers in prison and mothers who are homeless. Other mothers will be the target of political campaigns such as lesbian mothers, working mothers and single mothers.

"The extent of mothers' self-sacrifices and their ability to cope with everything ... from breast feeding a two pound newborn... to raising a child who is disabled or has a difficult temperament ...is astonishing," said Coll. However, just as astonishing ...is society's inability or unwillingness to recognize... the true difficulty of all these endeavors! It has been said,” A mother understands what a child does not say."

I remember visiting the Greensboro, NC Urban Ministry Homeless Shelter. That facility had 132 beds total ...for men and women. There were 116 beds ...occupied by men and only ...16 occupied by women. This pattern seems to hold true all over the country.

Most churches seem to have more women as members than men. There are more African American Female business owners than men. The percentage of individuals in prison is greater among men than women.

It seems that the great common denominator between Ruth and the successful mothers of today is “perseverance.” This character trait seems to be the foundation for all achievement.” I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles,” said Christopher Reeve.


What can we learn from Ruth and today’s exceptional mothers? The case is clear! God Blesses Diligent and Faithful Mothers.
Consider the following:

Ruth refuses to leave her mother in-law Naomi
Ruth gives up her wealthy country of Moab to stay with Naomi
Ruth gives up her false god to serve the true God of Israel
Ruth is willing to work as a servant in Boaz's fields
Ruth marries the wealthy Boaz
Ruth gives up everything for God and family
Ruth is a “labor of love.”

When Mothers stay with God and Their Families; God Blesses Them!

Trust in the Lord and do well; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him. (Psalm 37:3-5, 7a)

Esco Yancey,Jr., Ed.D.(ACSI) © 2008 GOSPEL TIMES MINISTRIES

By Connie King-Young, Mentoring Coordinator

I saw a diagram recently that really got me to thinking about our youth, but at the same time it made me sad. Too often youth are written off as society’s hopeless and hapless, but they are neither. Young people are in dire need of guidance, encouragement and the tools necessary to build a successful future. These same youths are the ones who will sit in our chairs, run the businesses and make vital decisions as to what will happen to the prior generation – us. We must take a proactive part in their welfare now.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, Sr. said it best during his visit to Ocala. He challenged us that the state of our youth is not one group’s problem, but everybody’s. If we train, teach and invest in them, the less money we will spend to rehabilitate and resuscitate them; either we participate on the preventive end or pay later at the penal end.

The below statistics were provided by the Department of Children and Families from a study conducted in 2006. Outlined were common factors involved of families whose children who had been removed from their homes during some part of 2006.

• 90% were un-churched or had no faith involvement
• 88% were from single parent homes
• 86% came from families with no high school or college education
• 79% had unemployed parents
• 71% had no formal childcare setting (latchkey kids)
• 75% were not involved in the community

40 years ago Jack Eckerd, the founder of the Eckerd Drug store chain and Eckerd Youth Alternatives, Inc. sensed a need to help at-risk youth tap into their inner strengths and talents. He began by putting them in a wilderness outdoor therapeutic environment. The organization has evolved into a continuum of care with more than 40 programs nationwide. You may have heard of the Hi-Five program in Marion County, but not sure of its purpose. The Hi-Five program is an early intervention and prevention program that teaches 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students empathy, conflict resolution, problem solving skills, and anger management.

The Eckerd Mentoring Program is the latest effort of responsibility to youth. This mentoring program is unique in that it provides children of prisoners educational and relaxation opportunities outside of the classroom. The youth is matched with an adult who will model positive behavior. The mentor will spend a minimum of one hour per week for one year with the youth. I am touched by the solid response from the community. Teach a young man how to fish, or another woodworking skills, share your passion for model cars or airplanes; perhaps a young lady could learn how to quilt, explore a higher education; the sky is the limit, because all of us have so much to teach.

If you are unable to mentor, please give the information to your local church or civic group. We must find a common ground and build on it. Please call (352) 445-1410 for more information.

By A. Carl Prince, M.Div.
July 10, 2006

While the 1st and 2nd Century verdict of preaching was perceived as foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to Jews, it is my pervasive predilection that the core and circumference of liturgical life militates around preaching. So essential is preaching in the life of the ecclesiological arena and secular culture that in Romans 10:14-15, the Apostle Paul posited the following threefold interrogative.

How, then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Consequently, I am categorically convinced our spiritual formation is shaped by preaching, e.g.-that which we believe and hold true theologically and anthropologically is hammered out on the anvil of preaching and is generally enunciated by a perpendicular personality called the preacher.

Philosophically, the Apostle Paul saw the preaching of the gospel as his ontological obligation and its abandonment as an affliction. In terms of preaching the gospel, Paul posited in 1 Corinthians 9:16, “For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”

What is this phenomenon called preaching? Couched in ambiguity a clarification of the phenomenon of preaching are many splendid things. To say the least, the phenomenon of preaching is multicultural, multi-linguistic, multifaceted as well as unquestionably multidisciplinary.

Not only is preaching a multicultural art form that addresses the cultures of countless countries and ethnic groups; preaching is multi-linguistic, lifted in various languages around the globe. As a multifaceted phenomenon encompasses many genres of preaching that will be addressed in greater detail later in this exchange. In a multidisciplinary manner preaching speaks to a range of psycho-social and spiritual contexts.

Comprehensively preaching comprises all the preacher says and does both verbally and nonverbally. Categorically preaching is both a visual as well as vocal process. Preaching is an articulate as well as well as anatomically action-oriented activity.

While we may not always perpendicularly and piously posture ourselves behind an ecclesial dais expounding the Word of God, we preach through our human interactions. These visualized, action-oriented preaching presentations beyond the sacred desk often provide a public theater of our persons that speak louder than any sermon ever preached in the parish. They linger longer and arrest the attention like none other.

In terms of the art of preaching, Homiletics is the science of preaching and teaching and comprises all forms of preaching, viz., the sermon, homily and catechetical instruction. Consequently, preaching is no helter-skelter exercise in empty elocution.

There is a procedure and progression to preaching. There is a course of action to its engagement, even a method to its madness. Sermonic presentations or preaching isn’t monolithic but pluralistic. There is no infallible, all encompassing global cookie-cutter approach to preaching. Nonetheless, preaching remains at its core a process.

In his book, The Certain Sound of the Trumpet, the late pulpiteer, educator, theologian and par excellence homiletician Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor posited a dialectical method of preaching. In this prophetic paradigm, he emphasized an antithesis, thesis, synthesis methodology of preaching.

The late Dr. Miles Jerome Jones, former pastor of Providence Park Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia affirmed Paul Tillich's correlation method of preaching. Through the correlation method, Dr. Jones, as skillfully as the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci placed paint on canvass, made preaching come alive in all of its hues.

In the book entitled On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, Fourth Edition, by John Broadus, Vernon Stanfield hones in on topical, textural, topical-textural and expository preaching. In Preaching, Fred B. Craddock lifts a theology of preaching that proceeds from silence, is heard in a whisper and is shouted from the housetop. In Homiletic by David Buttrick, Buttrick lifts the moves and structures of preaching, the place of preaching, the language and style of preaching and more.

Three of the most prominent sermons include the topical, textual and expository sermons. Delineated thusly, topical preaching preaches about the bible. Textual preaching preaches from the bible and expository preaching preaches the bible. Other sermon types include biographical preaching that traces the story throughout the bible while evangelistic preaching emphasizes conversion.

The genre Redemptive-Historical preaching is considered contextual-soteriological preaching, connecting the biblical context with salvation. While Jesus Christ was the world’s greatest extemporaneous preacher, preaching without notes in the Sermon on the Mount, others remain manuscript preachers who employ notes in their sermonic presentations.

History is replete with preachers who waxed eloquently unfolding the mystery of the Kingdom of God. Just as their types of sermons preached varied so did the thrust of their message. The leading exponent to the Gentile world the Apostle Paul preached Christ crucified. Peter preached repentance.

Bishop Ambrose, the fourth century Bishop of Milan was a mystagogical preacher. The Great Awakening preachers preached fire-and-brimstone. Although there is often a disturbing disconnect between their preachments and political practice, many evangelicals today preach morality.

In Preaching for Black Self-Esteem, Dr. Henry H. Mitchell, a venerable, 50 year voice from the black pulpit and theological academia weighed in on the black experience and black preaching offering stellar self-esteem insight to resurrect the buried hopes and dreams of African American youth.

In his book Preaching Liberation, James H. Harris, Senior Pastor of Second Baptist Church and professor of Pastoral Theology at the School of Theology at Virginia Union University both in Richmond, Virginia echo Cone as he posits Liberation preaching as the prophetic instrument that restructures society.

“Liberation preaching encourages blacks and the poor to participate in the system, to get an education, to get involved in the political process and to do those things that will gradually help to change and transform society.”

In terms of preaching in the black church tradition the thesis of Dr. Cleophas J. LaRue, Homiletics professor at the Princeton University Divinity School provide instructive clarity for the homiletic exercise.

In short, LaRue’s thesis is that the distinctiveness of black preaching lies in African Americans’ conception of God and their way of interpreting scripture. Moreover the social experiences of African Americans have provided the matrix for both the theological conception and the biblical hermeneutic.

While there are a multiplicity of ways of conceptualizing God as noted by Europeans cosmic conceptualizations that maintained the illegitimate system of chattel slavery for four hundred years in North America and Process approaches that see God as universal and indiscriminate in his affection, James Cone, celebrated as the Godfather of Black Liberation preaching posits an alternative view.

Cone contends a black theology of liberation is indispensable in altering systemic societal arrangements that run afoul of ethics and integrity. Cone identifies his conceptualization and biblical hermeneutic as antithetical to both Eurocentric and Process theologians indicating, “God is on the side of the oppressed.”

For the black theologian James Cone, black preaching is definitive preaching. It not only centers on sin and the ethical imperative to love one another and honor God in our actions but it prophetically pivots on the systemic ills of society and calls both humanity and systems of evil to account.

The salient normative in black preaching is its healing anthropological hermeneutic and a hopeful ontological homiletic. Black preaching affirms our ethnic identity and pays homage to both the hope of our existential arrangement as well as our eschatological aspirations. Thus, black preaching, e.g., black homiletics and hermeneutics is contextualized preaching in a decontextualized context.

The ontological and epistemological assumptions of black preaching suggest there is something spiritually off center within the culture, something egregiously inconsistent, at venomous variance in humanity that needs eternal atonement, which needs to be spiritually set right.

Black preaching then is the preaching of an atonement theology that seeks to set things right cosmologically. It is participatory communication that calls humanity to participate in God’s cosmic call to be spiritually, socially and ecotheologically reconciled to Him.

When the black preacher assumes the theological task of speaking on behalf of God, often body bent in a semi-perpendicular posture from the wear and tear of their years, they stand in dignity with a distinctive word from the divine for sun scorched sons and daughters of the Diaspora. Black preaching is an axiomatic word of liberation to captive masses yearning to be free.

In the black socio-cultural context Black preaching does not capitulate to the majority culture but seeks to overhaul Western hegemony that routinely seeks to undermine black self-determination. The domains of black preaching are multifaceted and include feminist preaching.
Within the framework of theological discourse, the epistemological mandate of feminist preaching is to challenge and seek to shift the paradigm of androcentric patriarchal structures and stereotypes that unceasingly undermine and interrupt women’s authentic and equal access, inclusion and advancement in the ecclesia.

Grounded in an unashamed understanding of the call of God upon his/her life, black preachers’ preaching celebrates the assorted African American genres of God talk. In terms of social justice, black preaching unapologetically speaks truth not only power but holistically to the human experience.

Black preaching speaks truth to systemic structures of power from a unique theological, anthropological and historical vantage point. It lifts a prophetic word to its oppressor through perpendicular personalities that have been personally pierced by the pain and paralysis of poverty and prejudice.

Lest we become arrogant as prophetic personnel, we must remain vigilant that our place in the prophetic peccking order does not become paralyzed by pride. For at best, we are nothing more than dust on duty for divinity. Despite our mega churches, prestigious appointments, conspicuous consumption or copious credentials, we are no more than earthen vessels, soiled servants.

Our genesis came from the ground. Though we have been categorically called and commissioned by the cosmic, sent by the celestial and empowered to articulate and advocate on behalf of the eternal, we need to stay grounded, never overlooking where we came from.

Let me park here parenthetically to say unapologetically, in a culture that deifies humanity, the office of the pastorate as well as professorships often have a tendency to succumb to egomania. Regrettably, many clergy have developed a catastrophic condition.

Tragically too many clergy today have psychologically and spiritually lost connection with their grounding. In their extraordinary arrogance, they’ve developed a spiritual amnesia that has not only caused them to overlook who God is but to disregard who they are not.

Many have tragically forgotten who called and commissioned them for Christian service. Rather than celebrate the God of their salvation for His willingness to employ them in his enterprise, like charlatans they merely celebrate themselves. Yet, despite our stratospheric stardom, we need to remain psychologically and spiritually grounded, fully cognizant of the fact that we are not indispensable to the process.

While black preaching is not a perfect profession, I am heartened that overall, God still has an innumerable host who are authentically called to the redemptive enterprise and remain grounded in the unapologetic understanding that they’ve been honored to serve in the black preaching profession. Regardless of their positions of prestige, their extensive accolades or the countless thousands they stand before weekly, they understand their identity remains one of disposable dust on duty for divinity.

With this anatomical and theological ethos historically, black clergy have ministered to their collective social striving from the contextualization, concretization and conscientization of their African, African American and Christian heritage. In Africa under kings and queens, black preaching was with us.

Through our dehumanization as chattel slave cargo aboard blood soaked slave ships of the Middle Passage, black preaching was resident among us. Throughout our African American odyssey as instruments of European exploitation and forced Western acculturation, black preaching sustained us.

Though we were compelled to be collateral for colonial commercial exchange, our constant companion has been the apparatus of black preaching. It marvelously ministered to our masses mired in misery. Black preaching honors our ancestry’s slave religion, acknowledges the anguish of our American experience.

Black preaching preaches hope to the hurting huddled masses despite their often hellish conditions in a politically raging inferno. Black preaching is hopeful preaching in pathos. It calls the black community to dare to dream despite its Western destabilization deprivation, degradation and often disintegration in their contemporary context.

Let me clarify the goal of preaching in the church and society. The goal of preaching is not to pander to the preconceptions of the pew, politicians or the mainstream media. Neither is the goal of black preaching to prove the preacher’s perspicuity, i.e., their prophetic grandiloquence. The goal of black preaching is redemptive communication through divine revelation for the purpose of holistic liberation through the dual venues of social and spiritual transformation.

In its most uncontaminated configuration, black preaching is not counterfeit commentary but authentic utterance that comes undiluted from the oval office of eternity. Black preaching is divine revelation for the purpose of spiritual education and empowerment. Black preaching is celestial communication with an eye to social and spiritual transformation with the ultimate end of human salvation. Black preaching is informational, inspirational and transformational preaching.

Black preaching lifts the light and love of God’s Word for the dual purposes of spiritual emancipation and social empowerment. Black preaching sets free that we might engage in socially redemptive service for the one who has called us out of darkness into the marvelous light.

Black preaching was born in African slave religion and has been our constant companion throughout our African American odyssey. The sacred text is the central source and soul of black preaching. Black preaching is the locus of faith development. For millennia in the recursive arena of black preaching, faith has been fashioned for billions and whether via trained or untrained black clergy, it was by the foolishness of black preaching that blacks found a stimulus for their faith formation.

The preaching trajectory or homiletic arc of black preaching has always included a minimum of six systematic fundamentals including a theology, Christology, a celebration of our theological anthropology as made in the imago Dei, soteriology, pneumatology, and eschatology.

While the style may have been different, i.e., mystics, lecturers, hoopers, etc., the black preaching genre has long been intimately acquainted with these distinctive elements under various classifications.

Preaching is not a secular but sacred process. In the House of God and the global community, black preaching is a theological exercise exhibited in a sociological context that intentionally seeks the ear of fallen humanity.

Black preaching is a portable process. Black preaching is not confined to the lofty pulpits of American, African or European culture. Black preaching is a portable process that crosses continents, cultures, and socio-spiritual conditions.

Internationally, black preaching is universal preaching. It is a prophetic word for the world. Yet it is simultaneously in process preaching. That is to say black preaching is never a finished product. Like an unfinished masterpiece, black preaching is dynamic preaching, continuously being conceived, stroked and critiqued by its practitioner as well as its prime mover.

While others have weighed in on this matter, I contend preaching a text without a context is a pretext for serious hermeneutical and homiletical misappropriation of the manuscript and any prophetic voice who engages in such is guilty of prophetic malpractice to say the least. Yet tragically, all too many preachers preach with no critical consideration of the context of the text, what the German Protestant theologian Hermann Gunkel considers the Sitz im Leben or setting of the text.

The relevant question is how can we preach a particular pericope without doing our exegetical work to excavate and elicit the authentic context or setting of the text? For a proper discernment of the context of the text is crucial for an authentic exegesis and engagement of the text.

Black preaching is contextual preaching. It critically examines the Sitz im Laben or setting of the text, e.g.-the occasions certain biblical passages were written for, the genres in which they were written such as in the form of letters, poems of lament, parables, psalms, and songs.

Through the Sitz im Leben or social setting of the text, black preaching explores the myriad interrogatives of the text in terms of who the speaker of a passage is. An examination of the Sitz im Laben raises questions of their role in life, the nature of their audience, etc.

Taken out of context, the original meaning of the pericope is often shattered. Things literal become allegorical. Poetry is taken as prose and more. Thus, the Sitz im Laben of the text is critical in reconstructing the culture and conditions of the Judeo-Christian tradition for black preaching today.

Preaching a text without its proper context creates catastrophic homiletical confusion. What’s more, this questionable exercise raises serious psychological and spiritual questions of the preacher guilty of such malpractice.

While other religious preachments pivot on prominent persons, we do not merely preach a prominent person. The person we preach is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity in the express personage of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The apparatus of Black preaching is forever contemporary, continuing to have social and spiritual relevancy today and tomorrow.

As quiet as its kept, black preaching like all other preaching is a phenomenon in fitful flux, always striving but never quite arriving and constantly seeking a more excellent way.

While I feel strongly there have been many outstanding black clergy across America, several prominent prophets are unsurpassed. In Richmond, Virginia, the persuasive and prophetic, 55 year plus, venerable voice of Dr. Benjamin W. Robertson, Sr. and Dr. John Kinney, Dean of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University come to mind.

In Washington, D.C., Dr. H. Beecher Hicks, Jr. stands at the apex of all prophets. In Baltimore, Maryland, the young Son of Thunder, Dr. Jamaal Bryant is unsurpassed. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania no one is more skilled a homilitician than Dr. William A. Shaw, President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. In New York, Dr. Johnny Youngblood, Dr. Floyd Flake and Rev. Al Sharpton remain unrivaled. In Detroit, Michigan, Dr. Charles Adams and Dr. James Perkins transcend anything terrestrial and extraterrestrial pulpit giants.

In Atlanta, Georgia, Rev. Dewey Smith is spectacular. In Dallas, Texas, Dr. Freddie Haynes, III. is untouchable. In Houston, Texas, Dr. A. Louis Patterson and Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell are scintillating. Charles Booth in Ohio is a preaching professional. In Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Jeremiah Wright and Rev. Jessie L. Jackson are two of the most anointed and informed intellectuals of the black pulpit ever. In Los Angeles, California, Bishop Charles Blake stands superlative. Finally, former Arch Bishop Desmund Tutu of South Africa is the Godfather of black preaching in the motherland.

In a stratosphere all their own are the intellectually exciting and homiletically inviting Dr. Renita Weems, Dr. Katie Cannon and Dr. Vashti M. McKenzie. Posthumous preachers include the late Dr. Prathia Hall, Dr. Martin L. King Jr., Dr. Emmanuel Scott, Dr. E.V. Hill, Dr. E.K. Bailey, Dr. William A. Jones and Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson. Retired preachers include two quintessential princes of the pulpit in the personage of Dr. Gardner C. Taylor and Dr. Caesar A. W. Clark.

Black preaching is the black preacher’s perpetual preoccupation. Categorically, like the ebb and flow of the tide, black preaching is an unappeasably unfinished business. The authentic African American cleric of any ilk, having traversed the world, nonetheless, finds preaching insatiably irresistible. In the words of the prophet Jeremiah, it is fire shut up in his/her bones.

From American slave plantations through Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Jim Crow Era, Civil Rights Movement, the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa to our 21st century odyssey, black preaching has been and remains a deep and durable phenomenon.

Though in many instances black preaching struggles to find its voice and its message is often threatened by megaministries that preach a prosperity gospel that celebrates immediate gratification for the sake of Western assimilation and personal gratification, black preaching shall stand. Black preaching shall stand because God is on the side of black preaching. Despite a new homiletic that emphasizes immediate access; God continues to rouse the moral conscience of the nation through the eloquent intonation of black preaching.

While I have clearly left many things unelucidated in this critique, this was done intentionally. For no word on the depth and breadth of black preaching is ever the final word. It is only a word, however erudite. Let me posit as a postscript that black preaching has a rich and robust heritage. Through the ages black preaching has been iconoclastic, organizing and mobilizing the masses to take a stand against oppression to change the world.

When the dust settles and the history has been written on the phenomenon of black preaching, I am persuaded it will hear God, the Heavenly Father say, well done thou good and faithful servant. To God be the glory for the distinctive of black preaching!

2006 Mount Hope Baptist Church. All Rights Reserved.

Preaching Quiz

1. Explain Apostle Paul’s position concerning the need for preaching?
2. What is the phenomenon called preaching?
3. What is the ontological nature of preaching?
4. What is catechetical instruction?
5. Explain Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor’s method of preaching.
6. Explain Dr. Miles Jerome Jones’s method of preaching.
7. What is the difference between textual and topical preaching?
8. Why Jesus was called an extemporaneous preacher?
9. Dr. Henry H. Mitchell believed in preaching to enhance self-esteem. Please explain?
10. What is liberation theology?
11. What is a deductive message?
12. What is an inductive message?
13. When would you preach an expository message?
14. What is the difference between exegesis and hermeneutics?
15. What is a “griot”? How does it relate to preaching?
16. According to Amos Jones, preaching should do three things. What are they?
17. What roles do your proposition; argument and proof play in preaching?
18. What has been the role of preaching in history?
19. What is the distinctiveness of black preaching?
20.What is biblical preaching?

Using Dr.Proctor's method, prepare a 1200 word or less message called, "God is on the side of the oppressed."

This project is due by April 30,2008.First,second and third place awards will be given.Contact:escoyancey@yahoo.com

“Not On My Watch!”
by
Rev. Dr. Samuel B. McKinney

For nearly a year, I have been greatly disturbed by the attack on the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ, which has culminated in recent weeks into a media feeding frenzy that, has tarnished everyone in the process.

For 36 years, this man of the Gospel and noted theologian has faithfully served his church, his community and his God, by helping those who could not help themselves and by lifting up those who have lost hope. Dr. Wright's ministry has been consistent and his commitment to the faith unmatched.

While media critics, who have not spent a day in seminary, and have no idea
how to exegete the Gospel, might find his sermons objectionable, Dr. Wright's theology and sermonic delivery are deeply rooted in the faith and sacred traditions of Black Church.

For those who do not know Black Church or for those who simply have not taken time to do the research, here is a mini-history lesson.

For the first 150 years of slavery, no organized religious bodies ever attempted to convert those who were enslaved. We established our own congregations and churches, based on our African-ancestored traditions mixed with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the process, we became committed to the idea of freedom. There were over 300 known slave rebellions in the United States, the vast majority of which were led by preachers of that day, like Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner.Because of that, two white men had to always be present at any slave-led church service. Even while enslaved we had preachers and pastors who spoke to the needs of our condition.

Now, there have always been accommodationist preachers, those who go
along to get along. In biblical terms, they are false prophets. A prophet is simply one who speaks on behalf of God and God's people. A true prophet speaks truth to power and is not politically correct.

The Old Testament prophets were not politically correct. The Apostle Paul was not politically correct. And Jesus, the son of God, was not politically correct. Jesus upset the status quo. He disrupted the comfortable. Remember, Jesus got angry and threw the money-changers out of the temple.

Jesus raised some holy hell. So why can't Dr. Wright? You see, true prophets speak for God, use colorful language and occasionally use a non-traditional method to get their message across.

There is a strong, historical and contextual relationship between the slave preacher and the social justice, activist preacher of today. And there is a place and role for God's angry prophets—think Amos, Micah, Isaiah and Jeremiah.They spoke on God's behalf to kings, to the poor and to the enemies of their nation. Then there are the 20th and 21st century prophets like Vernon Johns, Martin Luther King Jr., Samuel DeWitt Proctor and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

The difference between false prophets and true prophets is the false prophet speaks to what the masses and those in power want to hear. The true prophet speaks truth no matter how painful. There is a price to be paid for being a prophet. And Dr. Wright is now paying that price both publicly and privately.

It was author Alex Haley who underscored the role and relationship of the Black pastor and their congregations. He said, African American pastors are akin to the African griot, a leader, shepherd, father and the one in whom the story of
one's people has been embodied. For Trinity United Church of Christ and the greater African American faith community, Dr. Wright has been and is a formidable griot.

At 81, I am an elder in this tribe of social justice preachers, but I, too, can say the legacy and reach of Dr. Wright's ministry has influenced my faith.

So what has been lost in inflammatory rhetoric and the talking heads of the day is that Dr. Wright, a theological scholar who speaks five languages fluently, has inspired a church to create over 100 fully-functioning ministries, created seven separate corporations, led thousands to Christ, speaks Sunday after Sunday out of a long and storied, proud and prophetic tradition of our faith. And he speaks in the tradition of the slave-preacher and social justice proclaimer who
believed in setting the captives free. Dr. Wright represents the best among us, one of the best in this tribe of prophetic preachers.

He has made his church a place where one could express the centuries-old pain of being Black in America, while finding strength for a brighter day. An attack on this man of God is an attack on all those of the cloth who believe in the social Gospel of liberation. And I will not stand for it.Not on my watch.Not today.

Rev. Dr. Samuel B. McKinney
Pastor Emeritus
Mount Zion Baptist Church, Seattle Washington

Reverend Samuel Berry McKinney served as pastor of Seattle's Mount Zion Baptist Church from 1958 until his retirement in 1998, and provided the longest continuous pastorship in the history of the church. (Mount Zion is located at 19th Avenue and E Madison Street.) Rev. McKinney was a civil rights leader as well as a minister and did much to shape the conscience of Seattle.
A Preacher's Son

McKinney was born in Flint, Michigan, on December 28, 1926, to Reverend Wade Hampton McKinney and Ruth Berry McKinney. Young McKinney grew up listening to his father preach, watching him fight discrimination in the Midwestern city, and hearing national leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, and A. Philip Randolph speak at his father’s church.

Although he had every intention of becoming a civil rights lawyer when he enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, a deep inward drive propelled him into the ministry. After serving in the armed forces, he graduated from Morehouse in 1949 and went on to graduate from New York's Colgate Rochester Divinity School in 1952. He received his Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Colgate Rochester/Bexley Hall/Crozier Theological Seminaries (Rochester) in 1975. His book, Church Administration in the Black Perspective (co-authored with Floyd Massey) has gone through numerous printings.

Mt. Zion Becomes a Major Force in the Community

Before assuming the pastorate at Mount Zion, Reverend McKinney served as pastor of Olney Street Baptist Church in Providence, R.I. When he arrived in Seattle, the congregation at the church at 19th Avenue and E Madison Street numbered 800. Forty years later, as a result of his leadership, the church had more than 2500 members, making it the largest black congregation in the state, a church where political candidates have found it compelling to make a stop. Thousands of people have been fed, clothed, counseled, and educated within the walls of the Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Early on, the community knew of his stance on human rights and civil rights because he caused his voice to be heard not only in the church but in high offices. He worked to sensitize the community to the needs of the less fortunate, both black and white. He soon became the voice of the black community.

In 1961, he convinced his college classmate and friend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Seattle for a speaking engagement. Arrangements were made at the First Presbyterian Church, but at the last minute the church cancelled the agreement. The Eagles Auditorium was engaged, and Dr. King spoke there on November 10, 1961, during his only Seattle visit. A reception followed at the Plymouth Congregational Church.

During the 1960s, Reverend McKinney’s civil rights commitment grew even stronger. He marched in the streets of Seattle and, along with the leaders of CORE, NAACP, and the Urban League, pushed for equal job, housing, and educational opportunities. With other black church leaders, he was arrested when protesting apartheid in front of the South African consul’s house. He marched with Dr. King in Washington, D.C. in 1963 and in Selma and Montgomery in 1965.

During his 40 years of leadership at Mount Zion, a new African-inspired sanctuary was built (1975), the first black Protestant church credit union in the Pacific Northwest was founded, a day care center and kindergarten were established, and a scholarship fund which annually awards $20,000 in academic scholarships was instituted. Another legacy is the Samuel Berry McKinney Manor built in 1998, across the street from the church. The residence has 64 units, 40 of which are for low-income residents.

Reverend McKinney was a founder of Liberty Bank, the first black-owned bank in Seattle and was the first black president of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. He has served on the board of the Meredith Mathews East Madison YMCA, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the Washington Mutual Savings Bank. He is a 33rd degree Prince Hall Mason and a member of the Seattle Rotary, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and Sigma Pi Phi Graduate Fraternity.

Distinguished Cleric to Retire," The Source, February 1998, p.1; Mount Zion Baptist Church, Pastoral Anniversary and 40th Retirement Celebration (Seattle: Mount Zion Baptist Church, 1998).

I would like to submit to the hearers of the text that the majority of you would admit that the “Messiah” has come and that the reading of this scripture is an illustration and a celebration of that fact. It is my hope that those who are opposed to this position will be forced to reconsider their conclusion. With this in mind, I believe the following scripture sums up our sentiments today.

I call your attention to the book of St John, the 20th chapter, the 24th through the 29th verses:

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus,/ was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples said unto him,” We have seen the Lord.” But he said unto them,” Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails,/and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” And after eight days again his disciples were within,/and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus/the doors being shut/and stood in their midst and said,” Peace be unto you.” Then said he to Thomas, Reach hither thy hand/and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said into him,/"My Lord and my God.” Jesus said unto him," Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed./Blessed are they that have not seen/and yet believeth."

The above scripture deals with a post resurrection incident. The Roman Court and the Jewish hierarchy had put Jesus to death. The disciples that had followed him were confused and frustrated. They had seen their leader put to death.

The disciple Thomas ,who was a rational thinker, had heard some rumors that Jesus was alive. He stated to the other disciples that he did not believe it. He said that he would not believe until he saw for himself! Thomas was the last disciple to believe.

Thomas was trying to base his religion on empiricism. This is based upon what one can see, touch and observe. Many of us are like this today! This form of thinking has many limitations. Faith is greater than reason! Jesus Christ represents ultimate faith! Without faith, it is impossible to please him!

Faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation of our religion! Faith is not just the utterance of words, however, but a firm belief and conviction with one's mind and heart. It is also a commitment to be acted upon. Jesus does not need your senses to communicate with your heart, spirit and soul! Thomas was trying to evaluate this situation based upon facts and what he had observed.

Ultimate faith rose from the grave that Easter Sunday Morning! Jesus rose from the grave that Easter Sunday Morning! Jesus rose that Easter Sunday Morning with all power in his hands!

Then came Jesus/the doors being shut/and stood in their midst and said,” Peace be unto you!” If you have fears ,trouble and problems, I hear him saying,” Peace be unto you!"
Your way could be as dark as night. I hear him saying,” Peace be unto you!” He can come into any situation and say,” Peace be unto you!"

I would like to close by repeating the words of Jesus,” Peace be unto you."

Rev. Esco Yancey, Jr., Ed.D.(ACSI)--Click Press for Audio

"When Faith Trembles"

Biography
The Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall has been pastor of the Mt. Sharon Baptist Church in her native Philadelphia since 1978. She graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and is ordained in the American Baptist Church, where she has served on the Advisory Council of the Women in Ministry Project. Dr. Hall was Dean of Spiritual and Community Life, as well as Director of the Harriet Miller Women's Center, at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. Prathia Hall was dedicated to the struggle for justice and equality. She participated in the freedom rides and served with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960's. Prathia Hall died on August 12, 2002, following a long illness. Ebony Magazine ranked her as the greatest female preacher; our research supports that conclusion!!!


"When Faith Trembles"
Do you question God? Some will answer: Never! Others will answer: Of course I do, all the time. Most of us, however, will respond: I try not to; but yes, sometimes I do question God. We often have feelings of anxiety and discomfort when we question, sensing that it is irreverent to question God. We feel that we are stepping outside the appropriate boundaries of the created to creator relationship. When we are in those desperate spaces, when we feel that our backs are pressed to the walls of life, we pray for the faith of Abraham or of Job in his illness when he declared, "Although God is killing me, yet will I trust God." We pray as in that very old hymn:

...for a faith that will not shrink
Though pressed by every foe;
That will not tremble on the brink
Of any earthly woe.

Habakkuk is the story of a question written against the pain of ancient Israel's struggles with internal injustice, military defeat, desperation, decimation, deportation and destruction. The prophet Habakkuk had been praying a very long time. But the divine response was a long, frustrating and, I think, enraging silence.

Finally, Habakkuk could take it no longer and so he pranced into the holy presence wringing his hands and even shaking his fists at God. God, what's the matter? Is it you, or is there something wrong with my prayers? How many of us stand in Habakkuk's sandals? We have been praying so long and God is silent? We begin to wonder--has God heard us? Or does God care? Habakkuk had some urgent questions for God:

How long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at troubles.... The law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous--therefore justice comes forth perverted.

Finally, God answered:

Habakkuk. Look and Wait! Look at the nations and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.

God explained that the Chaldeans or Babylonians were being raised up as instruments of God for the correction of the nation's wayward injustice. Habakkuk persisted:

God, why are you silent when the wicked swallow the righteous?

Soon there was need for deliverance from the deliverers. God's answer was:

Write the vision. Make it plain. If the vision seems delayed wait for it. It will surely come. (And in the meantime let) the righteous live by their faith.

Next, God's promised vision was that of woe to the wicked:

Woe to you who heap up what is not your own.
Woe to you who get evil gain for your houses
Woe to you who build a town with bloodshed
Woe to you who (worship stone and wood, gold and silver)...
See there is no breath in it at all.

But God is in God's holy temple; let all the earth keep silent before God.

God's reply moved Habakkuk from complaint to fervent, reverent prayer:

Lord, I have heard of your greatness and I stand in awe of your work. Now, in our time, Lord, revive it, in our own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy.

So many of us have prayed this prayer, "God you are so great and so good. Please show up right now, in our time. Make your greatness and your justice and your mercy known right here and right now."

Finally, Habakkuk testified of a new vision. Not of deliverance via another nation. Not of woe to the wicked. No, this vision was the appearance of the Almighty God. The objective conditions have not changed. Wicked still swallow the righteous and justice is still perverted. The change is in what the praying prophet sees. Habakkuk tells us that he saw God, marching from Sinai toward Edom, for the deliverance of God's people. He tells us that God's glory covers the heavens and the earth is full of God's praise. God's brightness is like light rays flashing from the divine hand. The earth shakes and the nations tremble before the divine gaze. The eternal mountains are shattered and the everlasting hills sink low.

The prophet looked, listened and gave witness. "I hear and I tremble within. My lips quiver at the sound, rottenness enters my bones, my steps tremble beneath me."

Habakkuk is now ready and willing to wait for God's action. He says, "quietly will I wait for the day of trouble to come upon those who attack us." Habakkuk then gives to us one of the most profound canticles of praising faith and faithful praise in all the liturgy of worship:

Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines, though the produce of the olive falls and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exalt in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord is my strength, God makes my feet like the feet of a deer and makes me tread upon high ground.

Wow! Is this the same person who pranced into the holy presence and shook his fists at God? How has this transformation occurred? What brings a believer from the point of excruciating questions, to such exultant praise?

Habakkuk has had a vision of God. There is the ancient tradition that one cannot look at God and live. Yet it appears that in the Bible, every time God wants to use a person in a powerful way, that person has a visual encounter with God. Prophesy itself can be understood as a glimpse of God. The biblical roll-call includes Jacob, Moses, Job and so many others. God shows up in places God was believed to have abandoned, but we must also ask, could we have ever received that marvelous hymn of praise in Habakkuk 3:17, if ages before, the weary anguished prophet had not trusted God enough to ask God his questions?

Do we dare question God? In faith, I must answer, yes! Definitely! By all means! God can handle our questions. Do we believe for one moment that when questions press us to the wall, God, who knows us by name does not know that there are questions tearing at our very being? So when the questions rage, hang up the telephone. Your conversation partner has questions too. Why not take them directly to God?

Faith is not faith until it is tested in the crucible of struggle and the fiery trials of life. Elizabeth Achtemeier writes that Habakkuk's questions are not born of doubt. They are questions born of faith. I agree. After all, if all we know about Job is his patience we have not-read the book. Job had raging questions and he confronted God.

And even from the cross, our Lord Jesus utters the most agonizing question ever to pierce a grieving heaven and a hurting earth: "My God. My God why have you forsaken me?"

God can handle our questions. There seems to be a profound relation between the quality of the hymn of praise and the vehemence of the prophet's questions. Some might consider Habakkuk's exuberant pledge to rejoice in God even when there is famine and utter desolation in the land, foolish gibberish. But Habakkuk's own witness is that there is blessing in the praising. There is strength in the joy. There is power in the prayer. Habakkuk can now wait for God because he has already seen that for which he waits.

I have stood in Habakkuk's space. I am sure that you have too. Many of the faithful before us have stood there also. Martin Luther King was fond of quoting James Russell Lowell's wonderful hymn, written for just such moments in our lives when faith trembles. For our time, I paraphrase Lowell slightly:

Truth forever on the scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne
But, the scaffold sways the future and
beyond the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows
Keeping watch upon God's own.
Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall


Interview with Prathia Hall
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Dr. Hall, your powerful message centered on the Prophet Habakkuk's enraged dialogue with God, his shattered faith yet ultimately sustained. Can you talk about when your own faith has trembled; when you too stood in his sandals?

Prathia Hall: Oh, my. There have been my moments. There were certainly times back in the Civil Rights Movement when we faced so much pain—shootings, burnings of our churches, the killing of loved ones. Those were difficult moments and yet we were surrounded by God's presence and that's really all we need.

Talbot: And the loss of your own daughter, Simone?

Hall: Oh, yes.

Talbot: Her tragic death.

Hall: I am still learning to live in that space. My daughter suffered a massive stroke at the age of twenty-two and died three years later at the age of twenty-five. And it is an awesome question to learn to live in a space without the physical presence of the child of your own body and one who had been in your life for twenty-five years, but I am learning by living the question.

Talbot: And your faith is sustaining you?

Hall: There is no other way. I have learned through this experience that faith makes it barely bearable.

Talbot: The crucible of struggle that shows us the way. Thank you so much, Dr. Hall, for your powerful message.

Hall: Thank you.

Live well—wear your own shoes -
by

Joy Bennett Kinnon

MOST women can't wear another woman's shoes. Even if they are the exact same size, another woman's shoes will pinch and hurt and will eventually be flung aside. But while we can't wear another woman's shoes, we sometimes let other women tell us how to live our lives. Overheard at the wedding of a much-married friend--"Is this her last husband?" Overheard at the supermarket about a woman with more than 2.3 children--"Girl, I hope this is her last baby!" General discussion from a group of singles--"How many jobs has she had? Is this her last job?" Overheard at a high school graduation--"You know that gal ain't gonna be much."

It is amazing how jackleg soothsayers can pronounce with great finality over your life. Even more amazing is that some women, particularly young women just starting out in life and older women afraid of gossip, try to live their lives by what others say. Focusing on their history instead of their destiny, these women may never achieve their full potential. It's better to just be yourself. As the old Black church Sister once said with ungrammatical brilliance, "It's hard enough being who you is, let alone who you ain't."

Serena Williams found that out when she decided to stop trying to copy her big sister Venus and just be herself. She told EBONY, "I was Venus." But she didn't become the No. 1 tennis player in the world until she became Serena. "I realized that I liked doing different things, things' that Venus didn't like to do. I realized that just because she didn't like it didn't mean that I didn't have to like it. It had taken me all this time to realize that my name was Serena Williams, not Venus Williams." She is now at the top of her own game.

We recently lost two powerful examples of women who lived their own lives and the world and Black people were richer because of their courage. The first, the Rev. Dr. Prathia LauraAnn Hall, became a preacher when few people believed that women belonged in the pulpit. In 1996 she was one of EBONY's 15 choices for "Greatest Black Woman Preachers," leading the nominees in the magazine's historic first survey of the best women ministers. A community activist since high school and a graduate of the Freedom Movement of the `60s, she told me that the central commitment of her life could be summarized in two words: faith and freedom. Her oft-repeated statement is the mantra of Black female ministers: "I stood in the total authenticity of my being--Black, preacher, Baptist, woman. For the same God who made me a preacher, made me a woman. And, I am convinced that God was not confused on either count."

We need women like Prathia Hall to stand in the gap. We need to stop wasting our precious time trying to fit our lives into an accountant's ledger, adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying and tallying the totals. We need to discover what God has called us to do, spending time in prayerful meditation trying to discover our own task. "Service is the rent you pay for living," says Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund. "It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time."

There are some pronouncements that cannot be made this side of the grave. As long as there is breath in your body, you can serve.

Another Black woman who lived life on her own terms was the writer June Jordan. She knew that life is not a dress rehearsal and there is no time to do it over. Jordan succumbed to breast cancer this year, but she never allowed the disease to define her. The college professor was the author of more than 25 books, including poetry, fiction, essays, journalism, plays and even a libretto. She was defiant in the face of the disease. "I don't define myself by what assaults me or tries to destroy me, whether it's disease or sociopathic hatred," she said.

Jordan knew that labels tend to confine and distract and sometimes destroy our uniqueness as women. And what we learn from Williams, Jordan, Hall, Edelman and others is that every day is opening night. We learn from them that every day is a new day and that you are more than the sum totals of OPP (other people's predictions) on your life. The world badly needs your light, your own unique contribution to heal our land.

Wear your own shoes. And wear them well.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

Prathia Hall grew up in Philadelphia, but her family's Southern roots were deep. Her father, Reverend Berkeley Hall, was a Baptist minister and a passionate advocate for racial justice. Hall was nurtured in what she would later describe as "Freedom Faith," the belief that she was God's child and was therefore loved and important. As a young girl, she lived sheltered from the indignities other black people in America dealt with. But her family could not always keep her safe. At age five, on a train ride South to visit her grandparents, she and her sisters were forced to sit in a car behind the engine. Hall recalls the incident as her first encounter with the dehumanizing effects of racism.

Hall attended predominantly white schools until college, so she was insulated from Southern racism. By age 15, Hall ached to join the Civil Rights Movement.

After graduating from Temple University, she joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She became one of the first women field leaders in southwest Georgia. Hall and her companions in the Freedom Faith movement found courage and spiritual transformation in the prayers, songs, and examples of their peers. Prathia Hall lived to tell her story. Many who fought with her were not as fortunate.

Hall was ordained a Baptist minister and became pastor of her father's church, Mount Sharon Baptist Church in Philadelphia. She received her doctorate in theology from Princeton, where she specialized in womanist theology, ethics, and African-American church history. In 1982, Hall became the first woman to join the Baptist Ministers Conference of Philadelphia and Vicinity. Hall was also an associate professor at Boston University School of Theology, holding the Martin Luther King Jr. Chair in Social Ethics. Prathia Hall died on August 12, 2002, following a long illness.

KEY MOMENTS OF FAITH

BORN WITH A MISSION
Prathia Hall had a sharp eye and ear for the causes that affect social justice, and she described her origins in "freedom faith" as follows: "Well it sounds presumptuous to say you were born with a mission, but I have always had a deep passion for justice. I was raised by my parents in what I believe to be the central dynamic in the African-American religious tradition. That is, an integration of the religious and the political. It is a belief that God intends us to be free, and assists us, and empowers us in the struggle for freedom. So the stories of our history helped me to understand that we were called to be activists in this struggle for justice. "

SNCC: ACTIVISM AND DANGER
Prathia Hall helped Charles Sherrod to pilot SNCC's 22-county SW Georgia Project. Prathia was one of three voter registration workers wounded by night riders' shots in Dawson, GA in the summer of 1962. Charles Sherrod remembers: "Out of the night that covered us, pitch black, there were two blasts. Jack Chatfield (now an Associate Professor of History at Trinity College/Hartford) crouched, gliding into where I was. Suddenly, he snaps around, explaining quite suprisedly but not too excited - 'I'm hit.' Prathia Hall and Christopher Allen were grazed, one on the finger, the other on the arm. We were all on the floor. We were working together on Voter Registration. We had been shot at. Some were hit. There was blood. We were afraid. Where was the Federal Government? We crawled about on that floor as if we were in Korea on Pork Chop Hill."

BLOODY SUNDAY
The 600 marchers meant to call attention to their struggle for suffrage by marching from Selma to Montgomery. But state troopers at the Edmund Petttus Bridge blocked their way. Then they attacked. Television cameras recorded the event; public outrage over it led to passage of the Civil Rights Act. But that day, Prathia Hall's faith in the strategy of nonviolent confrontation was shaken. In retrospect, Hall said that a nonviolent movement "has to make space for the expression of authentic anger, even rage…we might have had even greater power if we had somehow found a way to allow space for the expression of righteous anger."

CRISIS OF FAITH AND PERSONAL TRAGEDY
Through four or five years, Hall struggled through a crisis of faith before deciding to go to Princeton Theological Seminary to take up her father's profession. She became one of the first women ordained in the American Baptists' Association. She suffered through tremendous personal tragedy — her daughter died at 23, after suffering a stroke; and she herself battled continued health problems stemming from a car accident.

POST CIVIL RIGHTS: PRATHIA HALL'S NEW MOVEMENT

Prathia Hall answered the challenge to her faith by digging deeper. She worked tirelessly through ministry to make a difference. She served on the steering committee of the American Baptist Conference (the Northern Baptists' conference) on the Partnership of Women and Men in the Community of Faith and served as chair of the Program Committee of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. She became known as a womanist theologian. Hall held the Martin Luther King Jr. Chair in Social Ethics at Boston University. Rev. Prathia Hall died August 12, 2002.
Biography of Prathia Hall

Amos's Sermon: What I Would Tell Fellow Graduates

By: Amos Jones
Posted: 4/20/06

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., APRIL 17, 2006 - In preparation for Commencement Exercises and in anticipation of nostalgia, certain to set in as I pack up and move away from this campus, I paid a visit to the Pusey Library, home of Harvard's Special Collections. There I examined Harvard artifacts including old Commencement Programs, which used to be printed in Latin. I was drawn there when I learned that a very distinguished Baptist pastor and 33-year president of Howard University delivered a graduation oration when he received his degree from the Divinity School in 1922. His topic was "The Religion of the American Negro." Eighty-four years later, I would take a similar approach. My topic would be "Social Engineering," my aim to affirm students of all political and social persuasions to contemplate their inevitable functions as social engineers. My speech would go something like what follows.

Look to your left. Look to your right. There is no Black House here.

Let me explain.

On this campus, in this community, racial constituencies are intentionally integrated. All Harvard students have been co-mingled since the undergraduate Houses were made open in the middle of the last century.

This has not been the case elsewhere. Amid the tide of social upheaval that defined the 1960s, many institutions similar to ours found themselves distracted from ordinary academic concerns because of extraordinary socio-political events - especially the apex of the Civil Rights Movement. In the wake of its successes, a push from many Black student groups came forth loudly and ceremoniously: "As we come to this campus," the pleading went, "grant us the option of living among our own. We want you to erect for us a special place where we can feel truly at home." Despite some reasonable arguments supporting the appeal, Harvard seemed to say, "Been there, done that." The University, to its everlasting credit, rejected the idea. The result today is one of the most thoroughly integrated environments in the academic world. We stand in the middle of a living example of sound social engineering.

In 2004, Americans celebrated what is widely regarded as a high-water mark of social engineering. We toasted 50 years of life under the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. That case declared the concept of separate but equal unconstitutional. And although its impact remains somewhat ambiguous because racial disparities in education remain, the case is generally regarded as prudently decided. It spurred the gradual eradication of legalized racial discrimination in all other areas of American life.

Last fall, Harvard University vicariously celebrated the decision in honoring one of the Law School's most influential alumni. Charles Hamilton Houston was the intellectual architect of the legal strategy that resulted in the Brown decision, which was unanimous. Dr. Houston was the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He earned the Bachelor of Laws in 1922 and the Doctor of Juridical Science in 1923. As dean of the Howard University Law School, Dr. Houston acted upon his belief that without the diligence of law teachers and legal scholars, the law might never be more than precedents, with new judgments merely confirming the correctness of earlier judgments.

The Brown decision, of course, flatly reversed the 58-year-old Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. (Talk about bad social engineering!) Thankfully, Dr. Houston and his students, including Thurgood Marshall, set out against that judicial travesty, which authorized from the bench a 58-year reign of terror. Dr. Houston famously and continually announced to his students, quote, "A lawyer's either a social engineer or he's a parasite on society." In September of last year, Harvard Law School opened the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

But the question remains. Just what is a social engineer? A social engineer, in Houstonian jurisprudence, is a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who understands the Constitution and knows how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of communities and in bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens. Now, please keep in mind that social engineering, like engineering within the natural sciences, can have positive and negative consequences. The Big Dig in Boston would represent generally good engineering. The levee system that failed New Orleans would represent generally bad engineering.

If I have learned anything at Harvard - in the Law School and also in the two Divinity School courses I took - it is that solving vexing problems requires the input of an informed, empowered, and self-aware aggregation of committed individuals. And lawyers are rarely the parties primarily responsible for large-scale social transformation. Lawyers, in fact, are constrained to act upon the requests of clients and potential clients. Social engineering, therefore, is primarily the province of everybody.

The Reverend President Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, who spoke from this platform as a Divinity School degree candidate in 1922, articulated the theological manifestation of this mandate. In his capacity as a Baptist pastor, he had written: "This religion reemphasized with new aspects to suit the modern needs will bring forth great moral and spiritual engineers. God grant that I might be one of these among my own people!" It is worth noting that several years later, as Howard University's first Black president, Dr. Johnson facilitated Dr. Houston's promotion within the Howard Law School.

Recall, as well, that at the micro extreme, Brown v. Board of Education began with a walkout orchestrated by the late Barbara Johns, a 15-year-old Black girl fed up with dilapidated school facilities in Prince Edward's County, Virginia. At the macro extreme, the fulfillment of Brown's promise was animated by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., who channeled the will of multicultural masses into an edifice including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

It is already the year 2006 - and there is no Black House here. But we cannot afford to assume that the hardest questions are not re-appearing in other forms. Important choices of substantial societal impact are certain to present themselves over and over. As products of these esteemed graduate and professional schools, we will choose how to respond. We will sit on the premises of what we have learned, or we will stand on its promises.

In contemplating our new degrees - these auspicious indications of sharpened sensibilities - may each of us resolve to contribute in some way to rightly transformative social engineering.

Amos's Sermon: Why This Column is So Called
By: Amos Jones
Posted: 11/17/05

During my 1L year, an extremely impressive member of my Harvard Law School class told me that he was atheistic. He explained that he was unlike his grandparents, that he did not attend religious services. He admitted that he saw no sense in going around a bunch of people who gather weekly "to feel good about themselves."

I was startled that somebody so smart could be so uninformed; what he was claiming to avoid is not what happens during typical religious services, which have at their hearts the delivery of a sermon.

Effective sermons challenge. They convict. They inspire. They call listeners to self-examination, to choose the moral value systems upon which the sermons are based or, if that decision has been made, to live more consistently with those values. These are the purposes I pursue in this space, the sufficient condition, in my opinion, of a work's qualification as a sermon.

It is a happy coincidence that my parents named me after the most famous Amos in history, the one of the Old Testament, who cried out in Iraq, told the truth regardless of the consequences, and was condemned by the authorities for his uncompromising sermons - all during the days around 760 B.C., when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam king of Israel, presiding over glittering economic prosperity and listless ethical complacency.

More recently, it was the American sermon that influenced the first patriot freedom fighters who would help fulfill the American Revolution. (That's one of the reasons for which the Communists shut down houses of worship after the Bolshevik Revolution.) It was the American sermon that startled many ordinary black Americans into active resistance to slavery in America. (That's one of the reasons for which the government of South Carolina virtually shut down the African Methodist Episcopal Church there during the mid-1800s.) It was the American sermon that captured America's imagination and compelled the country to live up to its ideals. (That's one of the reasons for which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.)

The Rev. Dr. D. James Kennedy, whose sermons are televised around the world weekly from his pulpit in the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, has written and preached about what happened a few miles from our Harvard Law campus 230 years ago: "The clergy of New England mobilized their flock for war against Britain and stood with them when the 'shot heard round the world' rang out. The Rev. Jonas Clark was the most influential churchman and politician in the Lexington-Concord region at the time of the Revolutionary War. On the night of April 18, 1775, he hosted John Hancock and Samuel Adams at his home. When the warning came that evening from Paul Revere that Gen. Gage's soldiers were advancing on Lexington, Clark's guests asked whether the men of his town would fight. He is said to have replied, 'I have trained them for this very hour.'"

Clergy today continue in the grand sermonic tradition, as can be seen on congregations' Web sites.

On a recent Sunday in my hometown of Lexington, KY, the Rev. Dr. Michael Mooty, Senior Minister of Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), opened somewhat existentially: "How did you get here this morning? … By that I mean, what and who influenced you, shaped your life, so that you came to the conclusion that Christian faith says something fundamentally true about human life and that following Jesus of Nazareth is the way that you can live most fully and most deeply and most richly? How did you come to the conclusion that the church is important, important for the growth and nurture of your own spiritual life, important because together we make a difference, we transform human life and change the world?"

Sermons, you see, take up serious questions.

In his Rosh Hashanah morning sermon on October 4, titled "Decisions, Decisions, Decisions," Dr. Anthony D. Holz, Rabbi of Congregation K. K. Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, advised: "The High Holy Day season reminds us that decisions have consequences. This is true for us as a nation, as individuals and as a congregation." The rabbi anchored the message in passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy, reminding congregants in this home of the first stirrings of American Reform Judaism: "When confronted with pressures and problems, it is very important to make wise decisions, the kind that will lead to a better future, because the alternatives are not good. Hurricane Katrina provides a compelling example. … Because leaders at all levels would not or could not find the funds to do what was needed, it is now clear that the water damage and destruction is enormous and the economic costs will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Katrina is evidence not only of a failure of political and economic leadership but also of moral judgment. At the mouth of the Mississippi River, New Orleans is a major shipping port and tourist attraction; Louisiana is a state awash in oil; and the current wealth of the United States is without rival. But the huge income available was never permitted to reach tens of thousands of poor people who lived permanently with poverty and crime and no hope of escape. … [B]ecause (whether led by Republicans or Democrats) our Federal Government ignored repeated warnings and so permitted this state of affairs to continue indefinitely, we are all tainted by the toxic sludge of New Orleans."

Sermons, you see, address tough issues.

From her pulpit at the Arlington Street Church in downtown Boston, the Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie explained two weeks ago her denomination's tendency to rely on humanistic principles: "[Unitarian Universalists] call ourselves a living tradition; we believe in evolution and reformation, including the evolution and reformation of our faith. We say, 'Revelation is not sealed.' Neither doctrine nor dogma unite us; we are a free faith. There is a through-line, though, of this faith tradition, reflected in our principles and purposes, ethical teachings that express our devotion to the world, this world - not whatever might come next, but what is right here, before us."

Sermons, you see, offer challenges to conventional thinking.

We today enjoy access to manifold sermonic traditions. Even though we all never will agree on every message or the validity of the foundational authorities, we all can appreciate that sermons often deliver on their mandate to serve as forces for collective good. And that is my aim in writing this column.


Amos Jones is a 3L from Lexington, KY. Reach him at amosjonescomment@aol.com.
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© Copyright 2008 The Record

By: Amos Jones
Posted: 2/8/07

He was among Harvard's earliest black Ph.D. recipients, a professor at Howard University, and a columnist in newspapers of distinction. He refuted prevailing stereotypes and chronicled black achievements. He criticized the professional-education process as delivered to black Americans of the 1920s and 1930s.

"He" was Carter G. Woodson, the founder of what is known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the organization through which he systematized the study of Black History and gave the world Black History Week, which we now observe as Black History Month, February.

As Howard University historian Daryl Michael Scott notes on the jacket of Woodson's legendary and recently republished 1933 book of observations, prescriptions, and analyses, "The Mis-Education of the Negro," Woodson "dedicated his life to two simple yet Herculean tasks: vindicating the black race from the charge of inferiority and restoring Africans and peoples of African descent to their proper place in the annals of history. His field of battle was scholarship and knowledge, and his weaponry, historical truth. Though he had many predecessors and co-workers, Woodson's singularity of purpose [and] his immense skills as a scholar, a businessman, and an institution builder garnered for him the much deserved title of the Father of Black History."

I recently read the 123-page book for the first time. Its brief but powerful arguments left me refreshed, inspired, energized, and transformed. I regard Woodson as the essential cross between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, a black thinker of their era who sketched a vision for blacks that bridged formal learning with utilitarian ends. I gave copies to everybody in my immediate family for Christmas.

Woodson would be delighted to see that black and white Americans have improved in key respects since the 1930s. He would be dismayed (but not surprised), however, to learn that so much of his criticism of both communities remains applicable to their conditions 76 years after his death in April 1950. Some scholar should produce a contemporary annotation of Woodson's book, a chronicle that explains the extent to which Woodson's ideas have been actualized, and where we find ourselves as a result. I found myself glad that certain conditions have changed since he wrote, but I am intrigued by the fact that many other observations still ring true, particularly those concerning the effects of slavery upon interracial and intraracial dynamics.

Carter G. Woodson wrote with unusual clarity, power, and authority. As we conclude the first third of Black History Month 2007, I offer some fascinating passages from his 1933 volume.

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."

"Cooperation implies equality of the participants in the particular task at hand. On the contrary, however, the usual way now is for the whites to work out their plans behind closed doors, have them approved by a few Negroes serving nominally on a board, and then employ a white or mixed staff to carry out their program. This is not interracial cooperation. … This unsound attitude of the 'friends' of the Negro is due to the persistence of the medieval idea of controlling underprivileged classes. Behind closed doors these 'friends' say you need to be careful in advancing Negroes to commanding positions unless it can be determined beforehand that they will do what they are told to do. You can never tell when some Negroes will break out and embarrass their 'friends.' After being advanced to positions of influence some of them have been known to run amuck and advocate social equality or demand for their race the privileges of democracy when they should restrict themselves to education and religious development."

"The Negro will never be able to show all of his originality as long as his efforts are directed from without by those who socially proscribe him. Such 'friends' will unconsciously keep him in the ghetto."

"In the schools of theology Negroes are taught the interpretation of the Bible worked out by those who have justified segregation and winked at the economic debasement of the Negro sometimes almost to the point of starvation. Deriving their sense of right from this teaching, graduates of such schools can have no message to grip the people whom they have been ill trained to serve. Most of such mis-educated ministers, therefore, preach to benches while illiterate Negro preachers do the best they can in supplying the spiritual needs of the masses."

"In schools of journalism Negroes are being taught how to edit such major metropolitan dailies as the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times, which would hardly hire a Negro as a janitor; and when these graduates come to the Negro weeklies for employment they are not prepared to function in such establishments, which, to be successful, must be built upon accurate knowledge of the psychology and philosophy of the Negro."

"Negro law students were told that they belonged to the most criminal element in the country; and an effort was made to justify the procedure in the seats of injustice where law was interpreted as being one thing for the white man and a different thing for the Negro. In constitutional law the spinelessness of the United States Supreme Court in permitting the judicial nullification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments was and still is boldly upheld in our few law schools."

"In the schools of business administration Negroes are trained exclusively in the psychology and economics of Wall Street and are, therefore, made to despise the opportunities to run ice wagons, push banana carts, and sell peanuts among their own people. Foreigners, who have not studied economics but have studied Negroes, take up this business and grow rich."

"In the case of the white youth of this country, they can choose their courses more at random and still succeed because of numerous opportunities offered by their people, but even they show so much more wisdom than do Negroes. For example, a year or two after the author left Harvard he found out West a schoolmate who studied wool [during college]. … On the contrary, the author studied Aristotle, Plato, Marsiglio of Padua, and Pascasius Rathbertus when he was in college. His friend who studied wool, however, is now independently rich and has sufficient leisure to enjoy the cultural side of life which his knowledge of the science underlying his business developed, but the author has to make his living by begging for a struggling cause."

"The Negro girl who goes to college hardly wants to return to her mother if she is a washerwoman, but this girl should come back with sufficient knowledge of physics and chemistry and business administration to use her mother's work as a nucleus for a modern steam laundry."

"Graduates of our business schools lack the courage to throw themselves upon their resources and work for a commission. The large majority of them want to be sure of receiving a certain amount at the end of the week or month. They do not seem to realize that the great strides in business have been made by paying men according to what they do. Persons with such false impressions of life are not good representatives of the schools of business administration."

"Often when [the highly educated Negro] sees that the fault lies at the door of the white oppressor whom he is afraid to attack, he turns upon the pioneering Negro who is at work doing the best he can to extricate himself from an uncomfortable predicament."

"'Educated people' hope to make the Negro conform quickly to the standard of the whites and thus remove the pretext for the barriers between the races. They do not realize, however, that even if the Negroes do successfully imitate the whites, nothing new has thereby been accomplished. You simply have a larger number of persons doing what others have been doing. The unusual gifts of the race have not thereby been developed, and an unwilling world, therefore, continues to wonder what the Negro is good for."

"The differentness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess. It is by the development of these gifts that every race must justify its right to exist."

"We have long had the belief that the Negro is a natural actor who does not require any stimulus for further development. In this assertion is the idea that because the Negro is good at dancing, joking, minstrelsy and the like he is 'in his place' when 'cutting a shine' and does not need to be trained to function in the higher sphere of dramatics. Thus misled, large numbers of Negroes ambitious for the stage have not bloomed forth into great possibilities. Too many of them have finally ended with roles in questionable cafes, cabarets, and night clubs of America and Europe; and instead of increasing the prestige of the Negro they have brought the race into disgrace."

"The Negro church … although not a shadow of what it ought to be, is the great asset of the race. It is a part of the capital that the race must invest to make its future. The Negro church has taken the lead in education in the schools of the race, it has supplied a forum for the thought of the 'highly educated' Negro, it has originated a large portion of the business controlled by Negroes, and in many cases it has made it possible for Negro professional men to exist. It is unfortunate, then, that these classes do not do more to develop the institution. In thus neglecting it they are throwing away what they have, to obtain something which they think they need. … How an 'educated Negro' can thus leave the church of his people and accept such jimcrowism has always been a puzzle. He cannot be a thinking man. The excuse sometimes given for seeking such religious leadership is that the Negro evangelical churches are 'fogy' … They say that in some of the Negro churches bishoprics are actually bought, but it is better for the Negro to belong to a church where one can secure a bishopric by purchase than be a member of one which would deny the promotion on account of color."

"The large majority of Negroes [in the arts] have settled down, then, to contentment as ordinary clowns and comedians. They have not had the courage or they have not learned how to break over the unnatural barriers and occupy higher ground. The Negro author is no exception to the traditional rule. He writes, but the white man is supposed to know more about everything than the Negro. So who wants a book written by a Negro about one? As a rule, not even a Negro himself, for if he is really 'educated,' he must show that he has the appreciation for the best in literature. The Negro author, then, can find neither a publisher nor a reader; and his story remains untold. The Negro editors and reporters were once treated the same way, but thanks to the uneducated printers who founded most of our newspapers which have succeeded, these men of vision made it possible for the 'educated' Negroes to make a living in this sphere in proportion as they recover from their education and learn to deal with the Negro as he is and where he is."

Amos Jones ('06) is a Visiting
Scholar in the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Reach him at amosjonescomment@aol.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright 2008 The Record

Amos Jones in Australia
AMOS N. JONES is a Washington, D.C., attorney who recently served for nine months as a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar and Visitor to the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. He analyzed the influence of political culture upon the legal development of the Bill of Rights and collateral social allowances proposed for Australia. In addition to lecturing and speaking, Jones served as a Residential Tutor in Whitley College, the Baptist College of Victoria, while writing his occasional column in the Harvard Law Record.
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Jones’s scholarship focuses on the law of racial discrimination, the development of international human rights, and the role of religion in lawmaking. He has advised legal practitioner-scholars in the Republic of Georgia on liberty provisions of that country’s constitution drafted after the Rose Revolution of 2003. Jones’s recent publications include: Crimes of the Holocaust, an international law book note at 19 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 299 (2006); The Ghosts of Ward’s Cove, an employment-discrimination article at 21 HARV. BLACKLETTER L.J. 163 (2005) (D. Alexander Ewing, co-author); and Black Like Obama, a constitutional law essay at 31 T. MARSHALL L. REV. 79 (2005). Jones’s recent publications include Setting Aside the Will of the Plaintiffs, a professional-responsibility article at 23 GA. ST. U. L. REV. 289 (2006), and Egypt’s Competitive Liberalization in Services: Bilateral, Regional, and Multilateral, an international-trade article (co-authored with Professor Mohamed Hassanien) in 16 CURRENTS INT’L TRADE L. J. (2007).

Last year Jones earned the Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard University, where he served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and the Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal and was a Columnist for the Harvard Law Record. In Cambridge he also served as a Research Assistant for Professors Lani Guinier, Charles Ogletree, and Kenneth Mack and as a fund-raiser among alumni for the Harvard Law School Fund, a five-year, $400 million capital campaign. Jones spent his law-school summers in large, international firm settings in Washington, D.C., and New York City, concentrating in International Trade Regulation, Labor/Employment Litigation, and Public Law and Policy Strategies.

In 2003 Jones earned the Master of Science from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he served as President of the Columbia Journalism Guild and Resident Trustee on International House New York’s board. Before entering graduate school, he worked as a journalist in the southeastern United States for Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers of the New York Times Company, Cox Newspapers, and Knight Ridder, all Fortune 500 publishing companies. While working as a News Copy Editor for The Charlotte Observer in 2000-01, Jones also was a Staff Violist in the North Carolina city’s fully professional Charlotte Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jones earned the Bachelor of Arts cum laude in political science from Emory University in Atlanta, which he attended on the full, academic merit-based Woodruff Scholarship and where he was awarded the Burt and Betty Schear Family Prize as the Emory undergraduate “most likely to make a uniquely positive impact on his or her universe.” USA Today placed Jones on the national newspaper’s Year 2000 All-USA College Academic First Team, ranking him as one of the twenty most outstanding college students in America. He is a 1999 Harry S. Truman Scholar, carrying a distinction conferred annually by the federal government upon not more than eighty-five college juniors in recognition of leadership potential. In July 2000, he addressed 1,000 delegates at the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church, affirming the denomination’s historical relationship with Emory University. He served as an American Honors Student Delegate to the Academy of Achievement’s October 2000 summit in London, England, which culminated in the Banquet of the Golden Plate at Hampton Court Palace.

Jones is a native of Lexington, Kentucky, where in 1996 he received the Commonwealth Diploma and was named a National Merit Scholar at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. On January 17, 2006, he returned to his home state to deliver the first offering in the Christian Vocation & Public Life lecture series at Georgetown College, a Baptist-affiliated liberal arts institution chartered 1829.

From the Desk of the Editor...
Every February, Americans celebrate
Black History Month. This tribute
dates back to 1926 and is credited
to a Harvard scholar - Dr. Carter G.
Woodson.

The son of former slaves, Woodson
spent his childhood working in the
Kentucky coal mines and enrolled in
high school at age twenty. He graduated
within two years and later went on
to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard.

The
scholar was disturbed to find in his
studies that history books largely ignored
the black American population.
Woodson took on the challenge of
writing black Americans into the nation’s
history, gaining them a respectable
presence in history books.

He established
the Association for the Study
of Negro Life and History (now called
the Association for the Study of Afro-
American Life and History) in 1915,
and a year later founded the widely
respected Journal of Negro History.

In
1926, he launched Negro History
Week as an initiative to bring national
attention to the contributions of black
people throughout American history.

Woodson chose the second week of
February for Negro History Week because
it marks the birthdays of two
men who greatly influenced the black
American population, Frederick Douglass
and Abraham Lincoln. However,
February has much more to show for
its significance in black America history.
For example:
• February 23, 1868:
W.E.D. DuBois, important civil rights
leader and co-founder of the NAACP,
was born.
• February 3, 1870:
The 15th Amendment was passed,
granting blacks the right to vote.
• February 25, 1870:
The first black U.S. senator, Hiram R.
Revels (1822-1901), took his oath of
office.
• February 12, 1909:
The National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People
(NAACP) was founded by a group of
concerned black and white citizens in
New York City.
• February 14, 1957:
The Southern Christian Leadership
Conference was formed
with Martin Luther King,
Jr., as president.
• February 1, 1960:
In what would become a
civil-rights movement
milestone, a group of
black Greensboro, N.C.,
college students began a sit-in at a
segregated Woolworth’s lunch
counter.
• February 21, 1965:
Malcolm X, the militant leader who
promoted Black Nationalism, was assassinated
in Harlem by three Black
Muslims, members of the Nation of
Islam.

In an effort to bring national attention
to the contributions of black
Americans, Woodson dedicated his
life to ensuring that black history was
accurately documented and widely
dispersed.
From Rosa Parks to Tiger Woods,
Black History