Jesus Walks into Hip-Hop

Chuck Currie’s most recent blog posting of Kanye West’s Youtube video Jesus Walks is of great interest to me for a number of reasons. First, I silently rejoiced at the thought that we, as African Americans, might finally be creating a legacy of love and compassion with hip-hop, including powerful messages about God and not about retribution and death. Second, I was grateful to see there were not any women wearing bikinis in Jesus Walks. We are killing one another in spirit with constant misogynist messages dominating our hip-hop music culture. Third, by posting this song Rev. Currie is acknowledging the impact hip-hop has on our youth.
I wonder why more hip-hop artists don’t choose to create music more about the equality of men and women, equality of the races, God, the need for self-love (even if we don’t feel it we have to fake it!!), a community building up out of our own holocaust and less about anger and materialism. I understand there is so very much anger and hurt but I know we can, with God’s love and the love for one another, send a different message to our children. It is our choice what we sing about and what we praise.
I listen to an international reggae station and am continually struck by the fact that our Rastafarian brothers and sisters regularly sing about Jah, love and peace. They have also endured slavery, oppression and spiritual devastation. They have made a choice to praise hope and not death.
Let us learn from these lyrics and create a new future for Jah’s people.


Anthony B – All God’s Children
Different focus, different purpose
But a one man make us
We are
All Jah's children

Gingy Moses – Why Worry
Tell me why worry when you can pray
I see dem falling along the way
Tell me why worry when you can pray
A chapters a day keep the devil away


Everton Blender – False Words
False words are spoken
With twisted tongue
The truth is mistaken
Lies are told to the young
Stand firm with your pride
With nothing to hide
Our aim, our destiny
Is to be free
From Babylon mentality
And brutality
Yes I will love my enemies
Because they show me my weakness


Abyssinians- Jah Loves
jah loves u man
ever know jah needs u, woman
and to know the things u did
to him,
it makes u want to die.
for greatest love,
all u ever learned
is to love,
and be loved in return.
jah loves in return
why hate your brotha man
do the things to please jah woman,
do the right and not the wrong,
and b strong,
for u surely gonna die...
for greatest love,
all u ever learned
is to love,
and b loved in return.
jah loves in return (jah loves u man)

Amen.

Letting Our Fingers Do the Marching

So, the old news is the Jena 6 movement, the events that transpired in that small southern town. The news today is a message for the generation that marched and sang with Martin Luther King, Jr.. The civil rights movement(or as I also like to call it human rights/human dignity movement) is not defunct or in a state of repose but is alive and well, with new vigor (I pray) and a renewed sense of justice. The almost mythical leaders of the Civil Rights era appeared to have been caught off guard by the public's response to the incidents, possibly because the internet is where much of this particular movement and protest was organized and articulated. This is a youth movement and the youth are communicating their discontent more with their fingers than their feet. Blogging in conjunction with mass emails and sophisticated networking is the new medium for change. Just ask the youth to show you the way.

We feel it is the duty of Christians to create the kingdom of God on Earth among our brothers. This kingdom will exist only when we all have enough to eat, when our children, brothers, parents don’t have to die from hunger and malnutrition. That will be the "Glory," a Kingdom for we who have never known it.

- Rigoberta Menchu
I, Rigoberta: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

Our Struggle is Far From Over

There were two cover stories in the New York Times today highlighting the persistent oppression and violence millions of women and girls face on a daily basis throughout the world. What kinds of monsters deliberately and ceremoniously remove the clitoris of a child so that (as they assert) she remain chaste? This practice has been condoned in Egypt for centuries under the banner of Islam. How is it that we live in a world where girls are still considered subhuman, slaves, tantamount to beasts of burden? The spirit of the child is removed when her body is cut to make her sole purpose in life for the use and service of a man. Fortunately there is a movement that is challenging genital mutilation in Egypt, labeling it as haram and in violation of Islamic faith.
The other cover story is shocking in that domestic violence, in this particular instance found in the African American community, is treated as an anomaly and not the epidemic that it is. The self-proclaimed prophetess the Reverend Juanita Bynum was known for preaching about the woman’s role primarily as serving and uplifting the man in marriage until her own experience with domestic violence made her rethink her message. Once again, women were and are instructed to endure the violence, the dehumanizing and draining existence of subjugation and the humiliation of pretending to be without thought and feeling and independent spirit. One’s spirits dies if it is not nourished in return and given life by being free, the freedom of self-determination.
Oh, and then there was the story of the polygamist who is being prosecuted for raping his 14 year old wife, a young woman who was forced into the marriage. In all three instances what is claimed to be religious piety serves to deny the humanity and dignity of the girl or woman by making men their caretakers, masters, creators and destroyers. Religion is used to justify these oppressive codes yet, as history repeatedly demonstrates, the Bible and the Koran can liberate the very same people it condemns and enslaves. When will the women of the world be liberated to breathe the air on their own terms and walk out of the shadow of despots and cowards? We tell their stories and remind them of their sacredness, their power.

What About Our Sacred Democracy?

So, what is the truth about sacred violence today, in the United States? Author Chris Hedges presents a horror-like scenario in his book American Fascist describing apocalyptic violence aimed at cleansing the population of non-believers (or inadequate believers) of Christianity. I don’t want to become yet another victim to and devotee of fear. I don’t want to have my suspicions and anger consume me. I don’t want to become like those we are supposed to fear and look behind every speech and sermon, organization and a stranger's expression of Christ’s calling as a threat to my practice, my family, my life.
Yet, it might be my disbelief in the potential evil in humanity that will leave me regretting my inaction today. As I read about the youth movement BattleCry (I also reluctantly checked out their site and was saddened to find the “seductive language of violence” Hedges describes) I began wondering why it is I try to share a text with people who can turn the Bible into a weapon of war and oppression. What is the balance between keeping vigilant watch of our human rights and sacredness - with a trace of requisite anxiety for self-preservation - and maintaining a secure belief in our country’s system of checks and balances, Bill of Rights and supposed culture of tolerance (however forced it may be)?
In a recent editorial in USA Today (I am sure to the great dismay of millions of fundamentalist readers), the author revealed the greatest non-secret in the history of our Republic: the United States Constitution does not in any way explicitly or implicitly establish a Christian nation. God, nor Christianity is mentioned, not once. In fact, the very first Amendment secures our rights to worship (or not) unhindered, unbounded, unfettered! We all know the founders were Christian but they did not write their faith in words (though perhaps in spirit) into this brilliant document.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amen!

Are there really individuals and movements who truly believe this nation is singularly devoted to the preservation and spread of Christianity? This is where scrutiny, curiosity and contradiction are essential in a democracy. If there is one thing I am grateful for about attending law school it is that I was taught to think critically. If we as a people fail to question and unconsciously (or very consciously) adopt dogma spewed by this reverend or that politician then we will find ourselves without a democracy.
Traits of some of the nefarious movements Hedges discusses are the absence and restriction of critical analysis, introspection has ceased and disagreement (as Umberto Eco states in his essay Eternal Fascism) is viewed as treason. So they become nothing but gangs, inviting isolated souls to join them on their crusades. We all want membership to something, to belong. We all have passion for something, it just depends for what. This is what gives meaning to life. Of course the “battle against darkness” is one of the most appealing. In the extreme fundamentalist movements, the battle against darkness appears to also be a battle against our sacred democracy.
We cannot fear. We cannot run. We must begin each day with ideas on how to grow the churches and synagogues and mosques that teach love and tolerance. We must expose the language and agenda of those orchestrating the rumblings of apocalyptic victory. Most importantly, we can't do as they do and turn the language of God's love on its head and make the Bible a book about hate and death.

Oh Villain, Where Are You?

As I read the essay Hallowed Be Your Name by Marilynne Robinson where she describes ,as she terms, the anti-Darwinists or neofundamentalist assault on the "holiness of the human person and of humanity" and Chris Hedges chapter outlining the Dominionist's agenda of cultural, religious and political domination I became afraid. My fear stemmed equally from the idea of distortion and restriction on the freedom to love, the destruction of sacred words like liberty and the restructuring of our democratic system to resemble a totalitarian Christian state (where only complete surrender of one's moral discernment and abandonment of "rational and intellectual inquiry" is accepted) and from the simple fact that I can't see them. I can't find these dominionists or tyrannical fundamentalists on the street or in my supermarket. Maybe I should say they have not adopted the swastika or an armband or a certain dress code, yet, that distinguishes them, sets them apart from the "dilettante Christians" and other humans occupying this planet. I don't want to start pointing fingers at whole groups of people, labeling them without knowing who they are, what their motives and beliefs are. Otherwise I become like them, whoever "them" might be. Perhaps this is why we need to be on watch.
It would be much easier if they were like those startlingly malevolent villains in my son's comic books, Doom, Sandman or Venom. They are a known quantity evil with faces, in direct competition with good. Who are the villains outside of this graphic dualistic world? If there is a beast, a villain attempting to dominate our thoughts, our lives and potentially the planet, right in our very midst, I will stand guard to make sure that we don't awaken one day to wonder, too late, what happened to love (the real love for one another and for our enemies), to equality and our own ability to decide between what is right and wrong.

One More Brick Towards Building The Kingdom

In the light of day, as I watch hummingbirds from my window flutter from one tree to another, disappearing like fairies into the branches, it occurs to me that UCC minister Chuck Currie is right. The world is turned upside down and is not prepared to hear the message of God's love. My Seminary class chatted with him online yesterday late into the evening and he graciously and patiently answered our many questions about his blogging ministry. As our conversation progressed the answer to my question of "Why blogging?" became apparent. I learned that as an advocate for public theology I need to be able to articulate to people, my congregation, friends, family and strangers why public theology is so very important and powerful. Also, how I, we, the Christian and human community can use it to do good in the world and help build the Kingdom of God here on earth, today!
Though the world may not be ready for the message of love, Reverend Currie said that as Christians (and I assert as all humans living in community, in mutuality) it is our duty through baptism to give "loving critiques of conventional wisdom" or attempt to turn this world right-side up. Susan Thistlethwaite, President of Chicago Theological Seminary, would add, a loving critique framed from a theological perspective. She said that theology is changed by the issues and perhaps more importantly that properly articulated and studied theology from the heart can change the issues.
To blog is to build. It is one more brick in the edifice of the Kingdom we so passionately pray for and dream about. In the light of day, I understand that simple prayers alone won't get us there, that the prophets challenged us out of complacency and guided us towards hope and that my public ministry, God willing, will serve to turn even one heart towards love.