by Nicole Symmonds, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | Aug 13, 2014 | Headline News |
18-year-old Mike Brown was unarmed and shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri
On Sunday evening someone asked me if I got my “shout on” in church that day and I had to quickly tell them that 1) I am not the shouting type but, more importantly, 2) In the wake of the Mike Brown murder, Sunday was supposed to be day of lament, and we missed our cue. I attended two church services and neither lamented nor brought up Mike Brown. Instead they conducted business as usual, singing the same hymns that people like and preaching the homilies and sermons, preferring shouts of praise and personal affirmation to communal lament which is what, increasingly, our community needs.
On Sunday morning “Bless the Lord, O My Soul” was a hard song to sing particularly when we arrived at the refrain, “He has done great things.” It’s not that I don’t believe God has done great things but it was hard for me to belt those words out when 565 miles away from Atlanta the people of Ferguson were openly mourning and protesting the senseless death of Mike Brown. When the preacher at the second church I attended focused on Romans 8:31, “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” I shuddered to think how such a text would sound to the people of Ferguson, Missouri who may be hard pressed to say or believe that given their current circumstance. Communally such a message doesn’t make sense in light of Mike Brown, John Crawford, Eric Garner, and the scores of other young black men who were senselessly and mercilessly killed. For this we must lament.
Lament has been conspicuously missing from our churches—and not just black churches. In a Sojourners article entitled, The American Church’s Absence of Lament,” writer Soong-Chan Rah cites Glenn Pemberton’s “Hurting with God” which states that “lament constitutes 40 percent of the Psalms, but in the hymnal for the Churches of Christ, lament makes up 13%, the Presbyterian hymnal 19%, and the Baptist hymnal 13%.” And it’s not just what we sing in church but what we hear outside of church, a glance at both the Billboard Hot Gospel and Gospel Airplay charts reveal that praise songs dominate the charts. “Every Praise,” “Amazing,” “Say Yes,” all do well to attune us to praise in our daily lives but they fail to engage us in worship on a holistic level. This continuous cycle of praise creates a vacuum in the life of the believer which is capable of hollowing out the true self and ignoring lived experiences that are anything but catalysts for praise. To be clear, praise is a good and Godly thing, but it is a part of a cycle in worship where lament should precede it.
Lament Binds the Community and the Individual
In “The Costly Loss of Lament,” Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann explores two negative implications of the loss of lament, loss of genuine covenant interaction and stifling of the question theodicy. When we privilege praise and doxology we break down genuine covenant interaction with one another because we only give voice to celebrations of joy and well-being which doesn’t represent reality. When praise is what we do and only what we do, we implicitly silence those who may live in a continuous cycle of lament and shut them out of the space. Creating space for lament opens us up to truer dimensions of community that represent, more fully, our lived experience individually. But when we fail to detach ourselves from our habitual praise for long enough to engage in communal lament we end up in a space as problematic as the systemic oppression for which we must lament at this time. Shouting Sunday after Sunday can stifle the cries of those who are hurting and know nothing of a shout or praise and this can sever us from community. Now, more than ever, we must not mask ourselves from the harsh reality of the world but mold ourselves to it and press into the lament so that we can truly live in community and heal our land. Furthermore, our lament doesn’t just help us to connect better in covenant community but also in our covenant relationship with God. Of this Brueggemann says,
“Where there is lament, the believer is able to take initiative with God and so develop over against God the ego strength that is necessary for responsible faith. But where the capacity to initiate lament is absent one is left only with praise and doxology.”
Responsible faith is key. This is the faith that trusts God with not only our praise but our lament. It is the faith that forces us to be critically engaged with God and not fear repercussion because God wants us to love him with all our heart, soul, and mind. That should indicate that sometimes our communication and engagement with God will be risky, but that is what happens when you bring your whole self to the altar. Second to this commandment to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, is the commandment that you, “shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Part of that loving is lamenting with our neighbors. Many of us are at a distance from the community of Ferguson but we are no less responsible for sharing their pain and standing in solidarity with them. From where we are we must lament and keep our eye on the tragic vision(s) that are visiting us day after day through Mike Brown, John Crawford, Eric Garner and the scores of other young black men who are being mercilessly killed on an almost weekly basis. At the rate that our community is suffering violence we can’t do drive-by prayers or quickly remove ourselves from lament but we must sit in it as long as our brothers and sisters may be in it.
Lament Challenges the Status Quo and Promotes Justice
Brueggemann’s second negative implication of the loss of lament is the stifling of the question of theodicy. Why does God allow suffering and evil in the world? This is the question of theodicy. Sometimes we choose not to ask those questions, settling for “But God is in control” and squelching any desire we may have to shake our fists and cry out. But shaking our fists and asking God “Why?” and “How long?” is a legitimate response and well within our rights as believers. To do so is to follow the example of many throughout the Psalms—lament is the largest category of the Psalms. Brueggemann points out that the lament Psalms are a complaint that point out four things:
-
Things are not right in the present arrangement
-
They need not stay this way but can be changed
-
The speaker will not accept them in this way, for it is intolerable
-
It is God’s obligation to change things
When we look at it is this way we should find ourselves in the footsteps of our brothers and sister in Ferguson who are actively lamenting the death of Mike Brown and the pervasive destruction of black bodies. Their protests against the foreboding law enforcement that are treating them like sheep being lead to the slaughter is an active lament. The community of faith of all stripes can and must lament tragedies such as Mike Brown especially when we are at a distance and out of reach of lending tangible assistance. We must acknowledge when things aren’t right in the present arrangement of the world, know that they need not stay this way, not accept them in this way and believe in God’s obligation to change things—which also rests in our responsibility to change things as well. Justice is what many of us are seeking in the case of Mike Brown and lament is justice-making work because it makes us active voices and critics of injustice in ways that praise alone cannot do. Questions of justice are questions for the throne of God if you believe God is concerned about justice. And, lest I be remiss, questions of justice–such as those surrounding the Mike Brown case and similar cases–are not just to be asked by the black church. Non-black churches have a responsibility to lament for the lives of young black men too just as they lament for small children in Palestine, little white missing children and so on, so forth; particularly if they are reaching toward the kingdom of God.
Lament As Sustained Practice in Worship
Our lament is not a drive-by prayer as part of an order of worship but a sustained time of passionate complaint that can either be addressed to God against our neighbor or addressed to God against God. In doing this we are using responsible faith to engage with the God in whom we have put our trust. This doesn’t imply that the individual waging the complaint has lost faith and confidence in God or doesn’t trust God—although in some situations that may be the case—it actually undergirds faith, confidence, and trust in God. The composition of lament in the Psalms show us that the petitioners trust in God, have confidence in God’s ability to help, and give reasons as to why God should help.
It’s easy for us to crowd the church house Sunday after Sunday, ready to jump, stomp, and shout until we go hoarse in praise of all God has done for us but we must get into the hard work of lament for our community. With the amount of tragedy in the world every Sunday can’t be about shouting lest we lose sight of what’s really going on. As Brueggemann concludes “The Costly Loss of Lament” he points out that Israel’s cry mobilized Yahweh to action. Exodus 2:23-25 tells us,
“After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”
We, as black people, know the Exodus narrative all too well and we know what it is to live out an Exodus experience. Maybe it is time to embody the narrative again in terms of Israel’s history of crying out to the God they knew was supposed to be for them when they were living in a situation that made God seem against them. Indeed it is time for us to return to lament to bind ourselves together in genuine covenantal community with each other and with our God.
Let us lament for Mike Brown, John Crawford, Eric Garner, and every person whose lives were taken by the hands of injustice.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Nov 8, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |
YES THEY DID: Supporters of President Barack Obama celebrated his election night victory at the McCormick Place rally in Chicago on Nov. 7, 2012. Obama defeated his Republican challenger Mitt Romney to win a second term in the White House. (Photo: Zhang Jun/Newscom)
Even more than the election that made Barack Obama the first black president, the one that returned him to office for a second term sent an unmistakable signal that the hegemony of the white male in America is over.
The long drive for broader social participation by all Americans reached a turning point in the 2012 election, which is likely to go down as a watershed in the nation’s social and political evolution, and not just because in some states voters approved of same-sex marriage for the first time.
On Tuesday, Obama received the votes of barely one in three white males. That, too, was historic. It almost certainly was an all-time low for the winner of a presidential election that did not include a major third-party candidate.
“We’re not in the ’50s any more,” said William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer. “This election makes it clear that a single focus directed at white males, or at the white population in general, is not going to do it. And it’s not going to do it when the other party is focusing on energizing everybody else.”
How Obama Won
Exit-poll data, gathered from interviews with voters as they left their polling places, showed that Obama’s support from whites was four percentage points lower than 2008. But he won by drawing on a minority-voter base that was two percentage points larger, as a share of the overall electorate, than four years ago.
The president built his winning coalition on a series of election-year initiatives and issue differences with Republican challenger Mitt Romney. In the months leading up to the election, Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, unilaterally granted a form of limited legalization to young, undocumented immigrants and put abortion rights and contraception at the heart of a brutally effective anti-Romney attack ad campaign.
The result turned out to be an unbeatable combination: virtually universal support from black voters, who turned out as strongly as in 2008, plus decisive backing from members of the younger and fast-growing Latino and Asian-American communities, who chose Obama over Romney by ratios of roughly three-to-one. All of those groups contributed to Obama’s majority among women. (Although a far smaller group, gay voters went for Obama by a 54-point margin.)
“Obama lost a lot of votes among whites,” said Matt Barreto, a University of Washington political scientist. “It was only because of high black turnout and the highest Latino turnout ever for a Democratic president that he won.”
Obama planted his base in an America that is inexorably becoming more diverse. Unchecked by Republicans, these demographic trends would give the Democrats a significant edge in future presidential elections.
But, despite opposition from conservative religious movements, President Obama captured the votes of 30 percent of white evangelicals. What’s more, he once again won the Catholic vote — which some attribute to his strong support among Hispanic Catholics.
The Latino Effect
GOP SAVIOR: The Republican Party is counting on emerging superstars like Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to broaden its base. Rubio is a Latino conservative who supports immigration reform.
Latinos were an essential element of Obama’s victories in the battlegrounds of Nevada and Colorado. States once considered reliably Republican in presidential elections will likely become highly competitive because of burgeoning Latino populations, sometimes in combination with large black populations. North Carolina, where Obama won narrowly in 2008 and came close this time, is one. The Deep South state of Georgia is another. Texas and Arizona in the Southwest are future swing states, by 2020, if not sooner.
Besides demography, Obama had another edge: the superiority of the voter-tracking operation that his campaign built over the last six years, which generated increased turnout on Tuesday among young people and unmarried women.
“That was pure machinery. Hats off to them,” said Republican strategist Sara Fagen, a former Bush White House political aide. “Our party has a lot to learn and needs to invest very serious resources in improving our own machinery.”
But Democrats Have a White Problem
The election was not an unblemished success for Democrats, who face a potentially serious threat from the loss of white votes. “I don’t think you can be a major party and get down to support approaching only a third of the white population,” said demographer Frey. “In some ways, maybe, Obama dodged a bullet here. If the Republicans had made a little bit of an effort toward minorities and kept their focus on whites, they might have won.
Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster, said that with Obama having run his last race, “we’ll have demographics working for us, but it is not going to be so easy to keep it patched tight. It’s going to fray.”
Without Obama on the ticket, socially conservative black voters might have been more inclined to follow the urgings of their ministers, who asked them to stay home to protest the Democrats’ endorsement of gay marriage.
But the Republican Party’s problems are more immediate, and much tougher to solve. Some GOP strategists have been warning for years about the risks of hitching the party’s fortunes to a shrinking share of the electorate.
What Should Republicans Do?
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who combines a tea-party pedigree with Latino heritage, said in a post-election statement that “the conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it, and Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them.”
Al Cardenas, a leading Republican fundraiser, said his party is “out of step with the demographic challenges of today.” Like Rubio, the Cuban-born Cardenas is close to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has long sought to broaden the party’s appeal to Latino voters and will be a prominent voice in the debate over the party’s future.
Romney’s chances ultimately depended on his ability to turn out a bigger white vote against Obama than Republican nominees received in earlier races. Eight years ago, Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush, defeated Democrat John Kerry by 17 percentage points among white voters and won re-election. Romney took the white vote by 20 percentage points and lost.
The difference: despite an aggressive voter-mobilization effort, the white share of the electorate has fallen to 72 percent, from 74 percent in 2008 and 77 percent in 2004.
What It Means
Viewed narrowly, this week’s election essentially left Washington untouched. A Democratic president will continue to battle a divided Congress. Within the halls of the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-led Senate, the balance of partisan power scarcely budged at all.
But pull back and a very different picture emerges. The civil rights, women’s and gay rights movements, designed to allow others to reach for power previously grasped only by white men, have made a real difference, and the outlines of 21st century America have emerged.
For more on how shifting demographics are changing the church, check out “The Culture Clasher,” our earlier interview with author Soong-Chan Rah, and “The Future Is Mestizo” by Duke Divinity School scholar Chris Rice.
© 2012 Tribune Co. Distributed by MCT Information Services. Used by arrangement with Newscom. Maeve Reston of the Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
by Edward Gilbreath | Apr 19, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |
NBEA President Rev. Dr. Walter A. McCray
Today when the world hears the word “evangelical,” it often associates the term with a white, politically conservative brand of Christianity. Those within the evangelical movement, however, know the reality is far more diverse. In fact, defining the identity of the movement and sorting out its many theological and cultural dimensions has been the subject of countless books and conferences over the past 200-plus years. One group that has helped assert the existence and valuable contributions of non-white evangelicals is the National Black Evangelical Association (NBEA). Over the years, the group has provided intellectual community and spiritual support to a who’s who of Black scholars and preachers — influential leaders such as Tom Skinner, Tony Evans, Howard Jones, Clarence Hilliard, Carl Ellis, and Melvin Banks (founder of UrbanFaith’s parent company, UMI).
Next week in Chicago, the NBEA will host its forty-ninth annual convention. Rev. Dr. Walter A. McCray, author of several books, including The Black Presence in the Bible, has been president of the NBEA since 1999. UrbanFaith recently spoke with him about the history of the organization and why this year’s conference has a special focus on missions and Christianity’s African roots.
URBAN FAITH: Give us some brief background on the NBEA. How was it formed and what’s its purpose?
REV. WALTER McCRAY: In 1962, Black evangelical leaders prayed. They were praying in different locales across the nation. They prayed in California, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and other places. They prayed about themselves and how they could reach their Black communities with the Gospel of Christ. They prayed earnestly, and they prayed for their unity and cooperation in the ministry of Christ. Women prayed, men prayed, ministers prayed, laypersons prayed, young prayed, old prayed. And God answered their prayers in an exceptional way. He gave them an idea, and an organization through which they found Black Christian fellowship and empowerment to accomplish their goal — reaching the lost, making the wounded whole. So in 1963, in L.A., the National Negro Evangelical Association (NNEA) was born.
The co-founders of NNEA, which later became the NBEA “National Black Evangelical Association,” composed an impressive gathering of dedicated servants of Christ, who were committed to the Lord’s church. It was a small but powerful group that included the likes of Rev. Aaron M. Hamlin, Mother Dessie Webster, Rev. Marvin Prentis, Bishop Holman, and the host pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Rowe. Others joined this number at the inaugural convention: Rev. William H. Bentley, Missionary Ruth Lewis (Bentley), Rev. Tom Skinner, Rev. Howard Jones, Rev. Charles Williams, and others.
So, this new association of brothers and sisters, which also included some white believers, formed around three important values: fellowship, ministry, and networking resources. Their overriding passion was to win the lost, and to provide support for churches and leaders who were attempting to do this amidst the revolutionary times of the 1960s. It was no small task, but their God was not lacking the necessary greatness and power for the challenge! So they marched forward.
You’ve been leader of the NBEA since 1999. In your view, what is the state of black evangelicalism and the wider evangelical movement today?
The state of evangelicalism today, as intentionally labeled and defined, is one that has a changing face. Due to its emphasis on “diversity,” its face is changing from white to other ethnic groups. Yet, it maintains its centeredness and dominance in maleness, and White and Western culture. I recommend Soong-Chan Rah’s book The Next Evangelicalism for an overview of where things are going. The next evangelicalism in America is discoverable in immigrant and indigenous ethnic communities. Evangelicalism is growing in areas of the Southern hemisphere. Black evangelicalism, of the intentional variety, is undergoing redefinition along cultural and theological lines. There is a reawakening of Black consciousness and its theological applications within the socio-political sectors of White evangelicalism, and especially as a pushback against politically right-wing evangelicals. Some White evangelicals also are pushing back against their very socially and politically conservative counterparts. When it comes to the implicit side of African American evangelicalism, vis-à-vis the Black Church, we see a state of flux, wherein traditional Black Christian faith, amidst pressing social challenges, is grasping to reconnect with the core cultural and social values of their African-descended peoples.
I believe Intentional Black evangelicalism must wed with implicit Black evangelicalism to serve the best interest of African American people, and to fulfill our divine purpose in God’s world. This is something that I explore in my next book, Pro-Black, Pro-Christ, Pro-Cross: African-Descended Evangelical Identity.
The annual convention convenes next week. Could you tell us a little bit about what you have in store for those who attend?
The theme is “Looking Black to Move Forward: Reclaiming Our Heritage, Fulfilling Christ’s Mission” (Psalm 68:31). This is our second meeting of a two-year emphasis on missions. We will emphasize looking back into our past, so that we can see how God has historically used Black people in His redemptive work. We will also look into our present so that we can appreciate the Black spiritual contributions and other resources that the Lord has placed at our disposal to do His work. We have jam-packed our program with a wealth of speakers, and topics that can benefit local Black communities, as well as Africa and other places to which Christ calls us to serve.
Could you talk a little bit about the African American church’s relationship to local and global missions?
The African American church needs more intentional involvement in missions. Pressing needs among Black Americans have served to capture the focus of our churches — sometimes to the abdication of our responsibilities of spreading the Gospel of Christ throughout the world. Our people must recapture the missionary fervor of Black churches and missionaries of previous generations. We must be both indigenous and international in our mission endeavors. For instance, we must work to redeem our imprisoned men especially and others from “the New Jim Crow” that Michelle Alexander talks about in her important book. At the same time, we must send bi-vocational workers to the mission fields of Africa to dig wells for clean water and stem the tide of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Then, we must rescue women and young girls who are enslaved in sex-trafficking. Black believers and churches have a “both and” responsibility. Validated “charity” begins at home, but it must then spread abroad in the true fashion of the divine love of Christ, whose giving and sacrificing continues to manifest itself beyond the sectors of one’s immediate group or culture.
The African roots of Christianity will be one of the topics discussed at this year’s convention, and I understand the theologian Thomas Oden will be addressing the event via Skype. Could you talk about the importance of this and what the church needs to understand about the church’s historic African connection?
So-called Black evangelicalism has existed for over two-millennia. Those roots are found in the Black/African peoples of the New Testament, and in the early African church of the second century A.D. and beyond. Tom Oden and the Center for Early African Christianity have been doing a premier, paradigm-shifting work in demonstrating, in the words of Oden’s book, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind.
As Black peoples, we must look back to the earliest stages of the Christian faith to discover how God worked through and used African people and African Church Fathers in His work of salvation and redemption. We must discover how they wed their faith to their culture in ways that were positive and made tremendous contributions to the Christian faith worldwide. From the second century onward, the Christian faith first spread from south in Africa to north in Asia and Europe. NBEA’s Institute for Black Evangelical Thought and Action will explore these topics and more at the convention.
What else can people look forward to at the convention?
Prayer, fellowship, food, networking, information, celebration, book signings, workshops, preaching, teaching, mission-opportunities, and much more happen next week. We invite all: Blacks and non-Blacks, women and men, youth and young adults, pastors and laypeople, churches and organizations, professionals and non-professionals, missionaries and sending agencies, community workers and global partners — we invite all who desire to strengthen themselves in holistically sharing the Gospel of Christ with their Brothers and Sisters in the Christian faith. Together, we want to “Reclaim Our Heritage” as we “Fulfill Christ’s Mission.”
The NBEA convention takes place April 25-28 at the Chicago/Oak Lawn Hotel. Click here for more information.
