The Tie That Binds - Commentary

First, a review I posted on Michael Eric Dyson's web site regarding "April 4, 1968":

I was exactly 5 years old April 4, 1968.

It was April 3, 1968 I was sitting with my dad listening to Dr. King deliver "I've been to the mountain top." I remember asking my father "what does longevity mean?"

I also remember seeing him, a man that had been a golden gloves boxer in his youth and in the Navy, crumpled over in front of the television. It was like someone had punched him hard in the gut. His eyes were red. I remember my mother wailing like Rachael. April 4, 1968 was a Thursday.

That Friday, I was dropped off at my daycare, Bethlehem Community Center in Winston-Salem, NC. I later learned when I took my youngest son there on a home visit, the United Methodist Church designated "Bethlehem" to kindergartens on the east/black side of town and "Wesley Community Center" to facilities on the west side of town.

The teachers sat us down and explained what happened. I think it was more for them than for us. Amazingly, we understood and responded with hot tears, anger and genuine hurt. I personally felt like I'd lost an uncle or close relative. We were to graduate from kindergarten that June. I thought "I don't have him with me," and I knew that fall I would start first grade and the beginning of my academic life, still in a segregated society - forced busing would integrate us in the fourth grade - without him. I tear up as I type this.

Everyone I graduated college with has a memory of that day and the reactions, the gunshots, the news coverage. We are the last generation that will hold such memories.

I remember confederate flags flying and horns honking as others were happy apparently that Dr. King had died. This was also repeated apparently in Vietnam, a war he spoke out against, according to black veterans I've spoken with. What they could not have fathomed is the seeds planted by the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King would germinate into a harvest in history in the personage of Barack Obama.

I bought the audio version of the book and listened to it at work. I plan to expose my sons - 25 and 15 - to your words. Thank you.

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Since the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, I've picked up my copy of James H. Cones' "A Black Theology of Liberation." I bought it while home in Winston-Salem, NC at a local black bookstore. I'd thumbed through some pages and like many books I mean to complete, other priorities took effect. It's an interesting read.

I've also read commentary about the so-called apostasy of "prosperity gospel."

(I mention this because Dr. Dyson lists himself as an opponent of it and opines/personifies Dr. King as one in his final chapter.)

Lastly, by Karl Evanzz "The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad."

So, what is the tie that binds Liberation, Prosperity and Nation of Islam theology?

Racism.

In "The Messenger," the crucible that built The Nation was the racial climate of the times, even to the point Evanzz (yes, his name is spelled with 2 z's) suggests that the Klan helped finance them since their stated goal is (still) a separate black state or states within the US.

In a lot of the commentary about prosperity gospel, like Dyson in "April 4, 1968," the author and the commentators site quite clearly what they think the ministries are doing wrong as in: the display of wealth, a God that only cares for the wealthy, etc. Absent from their critique is what they actually think and can admit the ministries are doing right.

TD Jakes preached to about 14 people for over a decade until a conference he thought he'd do one time called "Woman, Thou Art Loosed." He wrote it up and tried to go the conventional route of publishing. He ended up self-publishing it, and that was the start of his business empire. Had that fortune not occurred, we probably would not be hearing about a TD Jakes. He rightly points out the 50 ministries his church sponsors like HIV/AIDS, the reduction of recidivism and financial education to name a few.

Cone sites only that prosperity gospel makes you feel good but "fails to help those in need." He also fails to site - other than Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church of Christ - where the Black Liberation Theology model yields similar results.

My Socratic question:

What if: our so-called Founding Fathers freed the slaves? Would that not typify a "Christian nation?"

Our founding fathers were "deist," which Webster defines as " a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe." The perfect religious philosophy for defining Africans as 3/5 human in the Constitution. Jefferson went so far as to write his own bible, excising every miracle Jesus ever performed: http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/.

Manumission was granted to Africans in the United Kingdom in 1872. There are no "African British" or "African English" as they've had full citizenship as Americans of African descent have experienced the Jim Crow version of apartheid until recent history.

The answer, in my mind, is that typifying the Christian values of mercy and charity, the seeds of a Nation of Islam, Black Liberation Theology and Prosperity Gospel would not have been planted and these "chickens would not have come home to roost," and these variants would not exist on US soil.

It is hope that we reach for. History and self-esteem (Nation), Liberation and Prosperity had so long been denied us, we will gravitate towards centers of worship that answers those vital questions. It is acerbic to suggest the Nation is only populated with hate speech, since they have by all regards an effective ministry towards the reduction of recidivism in the black community. It is a sound bite we hear when Reverend Wright says "G-D America" without the supporting text to the sermon that he was preaching post 9/11/2001 (9/16/2001), albeit over-the-top, it took a journalist and researcher to FIND this sermon seven years later and loop it on You Tube. It is naive to suggest prosperity ministers have no care for the poor since many of them have the same type of ministries as their Liberation Theology brothers, as Liberation Theology has to concentrate somewhat on financial wealth building techniques. The "Balm in Gilead" are the constructs we've made to bind the wounds we receive as numerical minorities in Corporate America and in political races.

No repudiation asked of the Clinton's for their pastor - convicted for pedophilia with a seven-year-old girl LAST year, or John Hagee - the Roman Church as the "whore of Babylon" and "Jesus never claiming to be the Messiah" has been asked of McCain.

So I say: if the establishment wants the monies to these ministries to dry up, if they want them to cease to function as they do against white supremacy, a bumper sticker says ERACISM.

Obama would be questioned if TD Jakes were his pastor. If he wore a tie pin every day, the news would be the one time he didn't!

And, if our deistic Founding Fathers had made like Spike Lee and done "The Right Thing" would we be having this conversation at all?

Remember: the president that got us into this war that's cost us $4 per gallon gas, increased grocery and utility bills wears a flag pin and supposedly goes to church.