By Wil LaVeist
June 17, 2010
The Hampton University Ministers' Conference is one of the most influential gatherings of black church leaders. And HU chaplain Debra Haggins O'Bryant is the event's driving force.
How many eighth-grade Bible studies lead with Lamentations? Or Leviticus? Not many that I'm aware of.
Yet last I checked, Lamentations and Leviticus are part of the biblical canon, along with Romans and Revelation and lots of other heady reading material.
Should it matter to pastors, then, that the average graduate of America's city schools reads at an eighth-grade level and that many high school graduates don't even rank that high?
As far as African American history books go, Heroes in Black History is unique. First of all, it was written by a white couple whose passion for their subject matter leaps off the page. Second, the book places the spiritual lives of its subjects front and center and shows how vital their Christian faith was to their historic accomplishments.
It's no secret that America is a very religious nation. A comprehensive study in 2007 by the Pew Forum revealed that a whopping 92 percent of all Americans say they believe in God, and 82 percent say that their religion is very or somewhat important to their lives. Of these, 78.5 percent claimed affiliation with some branch of Christianity.
