The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Eight: Who Are You in Christ?

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Calling Out a People

In September 1832, in Boston, Massachusetts, Maria Stewart did something that no American-born woman of any race before her undertook. “She mounted a lecture platform and raised a political argument before a ‘promiscuous’ audience, that is, one composed of both men and women.”

Maria Stewart

According to her personal testimony, she was a woman of profound Christian faith, moved by the Spirit to “willingly sacrifice my life for the cause of God and my brethren.” In the climate of that day, she did indeed take her life in her hands. In her characteristic fiery style, familiar to readers of her articles in The Liberator, she argued against the colonization movement to ship African Americans to West Africa. Using biblical imagery she challenged her racially mixed audience asking, “Why sit ye here and die?”

She called blacks and whites to action, in particular urging black Americans to demand their God-given rights. “Her message was unsparing and controversial, intended as a goad to her people to organize against the tyranny of slavery in the South and to resist and defy the restrictions of bigotry in the North.”

Arousing to Exertion

To fully comprehend Stewart’s staggering accomplishments, we have to backtrack to her less than advantageous upbringing.

“I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803; was left an orphan at five years of age; was bound out in a clergyman’s family; had the seeds of piety and virtue early sown in my mind, but was deprived of the advantages of education, though my soul thirsted for knowledge. Left them at fifteen years of age; attended Sabbath schools until I was twenty; in 1826 was married to James W. Stewart; was left a widow in 1829; was, as I humbly hope and trust, brought to the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus, in 1830; in 1831 I made a public profession of my faith in Christ.”

Married at 23, widowed at 26, converted at 27; she challenged a nation at 28. In the fall of 1831, she entered the offices of William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the newly established abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Stewart handed Garrison the manuscript of her challenge to African Americans to sue for their rights. Relegated to the paper’s “Ladies Department,” both ladies and gentlemen received her confrontation.

Stewart entitled her work Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build. She told her readers that she:

“Presented them before you in order to arouse you to exertion, and to enforce upon your minds the great necessity of turning your attention to knowledge and improvement.”

Here we have a young, female, African American widow writing in a white male abolitionist tabloid as a spiritual director to motivate her people to learning and action.

But God!

Stewart adeptly used a bevy of spiritual direction skills to inspire her audience. For example, she avails herself of the guiding competency of scriptural exploration.

“Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. He hath made you to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea (Genesis 1:26). He hath crowned you with glory and honor; hath made you but a little lower than the angels (Psalms 8:5) . . .”

Using the biblical truth of the imago Dei (image of God), she guides her readers toward the counter-cultural but scriptural truth that, “It is not the color of the skin that makes the man, but it is the principles formed within the soul.”

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Maria Stewart focused upon who we are in Christ and the imago Dei. What did she stir up in your heart when you read her words of challenge?

2. Who are you in Christ?

Tags: Beyond the Suffering, Black History Month, Identity in Christ, Maria Stewart, Sisters of the Spirit, The Journey

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Three: The Old Ship of Zion

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Empowering the Flock

Perhaps the greatest legacy of the founding fathers of the Black Church was that they did not endeavor to leave a personal legacy, but a corporate one. Ministry was not about themselves, but about empowering and equipping the flock to do the work of mutual ministry (Ephesians 4:11-16).

Truly they were fathers—birthing a family of shepherds.

Their corporate legacy produced fruit. Because of their examples, African American pastoral care has not simply been about what the pastor does for the flock, but has involved the mutual one another ministry of the flock.

“What, then is this distinct emphasis that makes a black perspective in pastoral care and counseling unique? It is the corporate nature of pastoral care and counseling in the black church. . . . The term corporate means that the care of the individual is the function of the whole community, rather than the function of the pastor or any other specially designated person who possesses specialized skills.”

On the “old ship of Zion,” there are no passengers, only crew members.

Entering the Great Family of Holy Freedom: Equipping for Family Life

Daniel Alexander Payne

On April 11, 1862, Congress passed a bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. Rev. Daniel Alexander Payne, then Bishop of the Second Episcopal District of the AMEC, visited President Lincoln to implore him to sign the bill. When Lincoln signed the bill five days later, Payne authored Welcome to the Ransomed to equip newly freed African Americans.

Using as his yardstick the Apostle Paul’s mentoring of Timothy as Timothy pastored the saints at Ephesus, Payne explains the duty of the laity.

“But foremost of all the duties which he enjoined upon the Ephesian ministry and laity were those of making ‘Supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks for all men.’”

Having stated the duty and quoted the verse, Payne painstakingly exegetes who to pray to, what to pray for, how to pray, and with what attitude to pray.

Their prayer lives inaugurated, Payne then guides them in the use of their new freedom.

“Enter the great family of Holy Freedom; not to lounge in sinful indulgence, not to degrade yourselves by vice, nor to corrupt society by licentiousness, neither to offend the laws by crime, but to the enjoyment of a well regulated liberty. . . Welcome to habits of industry and thrift—to duties of religion and piety . . .”

As a wise father, Payne teaches his children how to appropriately use their newfound freedom and growing responsibility.

His counsel ranges from the sublime (“We entreat you to never be content until you are emancipated from sin”) to the mundane (“Work, work, work!”). His advice is practical and culturally sensitive. “Permit us, also, to advise you to seek every opportunity for the cultivation of your minds. . . . Rest not till you have learned to read the Bible.

Payne reserves his most ardent counsel for parents.

“But of the children take special care. Heaven has entrusted them to you for a special purpose. What is that purpose? Not merely to eat and to drink, still less to gormandize. Not merely to dress finely in broadcloths, silks, satins, jewelry, nor to dance to the sound of the tambourine and fiddle; but to learn them how to live and how to die—to train them for great usefulness on earth—to prepare them for greater glory in heaven.”

Payne exhorts faithful parents to pass the baton of faith to faithful children who would continue the spiritual relay. In this he follows Paul’s ministry plan. “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2).

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. African American founding fathers empowered the flock by birthing a family of shepherds. Specifically, what can church leaders today do to equip equippers?

2. What can you do to equip other believers?

Tags: Beyond the Suffering, Black Church History, Black History Month, Daniel Alexander Payne

A Thanksgiving Reminder from a Hero of Black Church History

Absalom Jones was born in slavery on November 6, 1746, in Sussex, Delaware. At age sixteen he moved to Philadelphia, and by age thirty-eight he was able to purchase his freedom. Along with Richard Allen, he became a lay preacher for the African American members of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church. By 1794, he was ordained a deacon in the African Episcopal Church, and in 1804 he was ordained a priest.

Everyday Is Thanksgiving Day

The Rev. Jones teaches us that everyday can be Thanksgiving Day.

On January 1, 1808, in Philadelphia’s St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church, Rev. Jones preached a message entitled “A Thanksgiving Sermon: On Account of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.” The sermon parallels American slavery, the bondage of the Jews in Egypt, and God’s personal and powerful Exodus rescue of his people.

Rev. Jones begins his message by reading Exodus 3:7-8,

“And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.”

Commenting on this passage, Rev. Jones first highlights God’s sustaining care for His people. He then relates the historical Exodus narrative to current African American life on the basis of God’s unchanging nature.

“The history of the world shows us, that the deliverance of the children of Israel from their bondage, is not the only instance, in which it has pleased God to appear in behalf of oppressed and distressed nations, as the deliverer of the innocent, and of those who call upon his name. He is as unchangeable in his nature and character, as He is in His wisdom and power. The great and blessed event, which we have this day met to celebrate, is a striking proof, that the God of heaven and earth is the same, yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”

He Has Seen: Paying Attention to the Earthly Story of Suffering

Rev. Jones next shows that God has been watching every event of their earthly story. “He has seen the affliction of our countrymen, with an eye of pity.”

To emphasize how important it is to pay attention to the earthly story, Rev. Jones presents an outline of African American history: capture, middle passage, auction block sale, enslavement, separation from family, work from sunup to sundown, deprivation of food, clothing, and shelter, torture of the body, and withholding of religion from the soul.

Rev. Jones prefaces each point with the repeated phrase concerning God, “He has seen.” Thirteen times. Can you hear it? Feel it? Imagine it? Place yourself in the congregation.

“He has seen.” “Oh, yeah!” “He has seen.” “Preach it!” “He has seen.” “Come on!” “He has seen.” “Glory!” “He has seen.” “Yes, he has!” “He has seen.” Clapping. “He has seen.” Standing. “He has seen.” Swaying. “He has seen.” Hands raised. “He has seen.” Shouting. “He has seen.” “Amen!” “He has seen.” Tears streaming. “He has seen.” Kneeling.

He Has Heard: Paying Attention to the Heavenly Story

He has not only seen; He has also heard. Rev. Jones preaches:

“Inhuman wretches! though You have been deaf to their cries and shrieks, they have been heard in Heaven. The ears of Jehovah have been constantly open to them. He has heard the prayers that have ascended from the hearts of his people; and he has, as in the case of his ancient and chosen people the Jews, come down to deliver our suffering countrymen from the hands of the oppressors.”

The suffering Israelites and the suffering African Americans are one people of God.

Four times Pastor Jones repeats the phrase, “He came down.” Healing hope. God sustains and he saves. He climbs in the casket and He rolls the stone away leaving an empty tomb. He sees, and He comes down.

Thanksgiving: From Our Lips and In Our Lives

What worship response is appropriate? Celebrate the empty tomb!

“O! let us give thanks unto the Lord: let us call upon his name, and make known his deeds among the people. Let us sing psalms unto him and talk of all his wondrous works.”

What ministry response is appropriate? Work to extend justice and freedom.

“Let us unite, with our thanksgiving, prayer to Almighty God, for the completion of his begun goodness to our brethren in Africa.”

Liberation starts with spiritual freedom from sin through Christ. It continues with personal freedom from slavery. However, it is never finished until there is universal freedom from the slavery of sin and the sin of slavery.

Beyond the Suffering

I excerpted today’s blog post from my book Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. For a free sample chapter, to learn more about the book, or to order your own copy, please visit here.

The Journey: Forty Days of Hope and Healing

If you find today’s post encouraging, please return to www.rpmministries.org from Martin Luther King Day (January 18, 2010) through the end of Black History Month (February 28). I’ll be posting daily on what all Christians of all races can learn from the remarkable heroes of Black Church history. 

The Rev. Absalom Jones

Tags: Absalom Jones, Black Church History, Thanksgiving

Kellemen’s Christian The Best Of Guide

The Best of Multicultural Ministry and Intercultural Relationships: Part Two

Kellemen’s Christian The Best of Guide: Making your life easier by finding, summarizing, evaluating, and posting the best resources on a wide variety of topics from a Christian perspective. 

Note: Excerpted from African American History, Life, Christianity, and Ministry: An Annotated Resource Guide, by Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC. For information on the full version please visit our Store. 

Annotated Bibliography

Esterline, David, ed. Shaping Beloved Community: Multicultural Theological Education. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2006.

Many Christians talk about multicultural ministry. Esterline and his team outline how to teach, train, and equip ministers in a multicultural seminary setting. Personally, teaching in a seminary with no majority culture in the Washington, D. C. area, I found Esterline’s views practical, helpful, and realistic.

Gilbreath, Edward. Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006.

Edward Gilbreath has written a powerful and priceless book on reconciliation in Evangelical circles—or the sad, disappointing lack thereof. Writing with openness and candor, Gilbreath shares his own experiences in Evangelicalism and the process and progress of his journey. He then narrates the wider Evangelical scene historically and today, especially in para-church and church life. His book combines hope and realism, human action and trust in God’s direction. The practical examples of churches that do it and barriers that hinder reconciliation are worth the price of the book.

Griffin, John. Black Like Me. Reprint Edition. New York: NAL Trade, 2003.

In 1959, John Howard Griffin temporarily abandoned his privileged life as a Southern White male, medically darkened his skin, and posed as a Black man in the deep South. Some rightly question whether a short period of immersion such as this can allow the pain of racism to etch onto and penetrate into one’s soul. Of course it cannot. It cannot allow for the decade after decade after decade build-up of racist attitudes and history. Nor can it allow for the day after day after day of soul-numbing hatred. Still, for its time, this book was revolutionary. And even for our time today, Black Like Me can at least provide Whites with some small slice of the horrors of racism.

June, Lee, Sabrina Black, and Willie Richardson. Counseling in African-American Communities: Biblical Perspectives on Tough Issues. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.

Counseling in African-American Communities presents a well-researched, practically-developed, biblical methodology for pastors, lay people, and counselors working from a Christian perspective and/or working with the Christian client. Though focused on African-Americans, the material can quite effectively be used cross-culturally.

The editors, June and Black, divide the book into four parts. Part I delves into various addictions, their nature, development, and treatment. Part II focuses upon family issues. Part III highlights mental health matters. Part IV is entitled, “Confronting Other Critical Issues,” and includes matters such as conflict, faith, demonology, unemployment, and research in clinical practice.

In each chapter within each section, the research is presented in easy-to-digest form, almost always with helpful charts. Interspersed within each chapter, the reader finds real-life vignettes that bring the material to life. The foundation of every chapter is the biblical counseling diagnosis and treatment plan. The authors use theological concepts as well as specific principles from pertinent passages to build a biblical approach to the topic. Finally, every chapter includes a brief, helpful bibliography for further research.

The book’s audience is clearly the helper—the professional counselor, pastor, or lay care-giver. The lay person himself/herself, struggling with a particular issue, could benefit through reading the pertinent chapter(s). However, the intent of the book is not primarily to be a “self-help” manual. Counseling in African-American Communities provides a comprehensive introduction to a biblical perspective on a wide-range of issues facing counselors, pastors, and spiritual friends.

Kellemen, Robert W. and Karole A. Edwards. Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007.

Beyond the Suffering is a one-of-a-kind African American narrative. It is not simply a history of America, not simply a history of African Americans, not simply a history of African American Christianity, but a narrative of how African American Christians ministered to one another. As the title suggests, the book tells how African American believers helped one another to move beyond their horrific suffering to a place of healing and hope.

The characters are the African American believers themselves. The plot is their real-life battles told in their empowering words. The authors are a co-authoring team, one an African American female, the other a Caucasian male. Together, they embrace the legacy of how African Americans sustained, healed, reconciled, and guided one another in the faith.

Written in an engaging style that allows African Americans to tell their own story, Beyond the Suffering reads like a novel. It empowers African Americans and all people of all races and nationalities to love like Christ loved even in the worst of circumstances. Readers not only are riveted by the powerful historical chronicles, but are also equipped to apply soul care and spiritual direction principles to their own lives and ministries.

McNeil, Brenda Salter. The Heart of Racial Justice: How Soul Change Leads to Societal Change. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004.

Brenda Salter McNeil has written a ground-breaking book on racial reconciliation. The subtitle alone speaks volumes about the core change needed: soul change. Only when the individual is changed by the infinite love of Christ can society then even begin to be changed. Writing with wit and wisdom, experience and truth, and speaking the truth in love, The Heart of Racial Justice offers a stirring, practical model for positive racial change and reconciliation.

Ortiz, Manuel. One New People: Models for Developing Multiethnic Churches. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996.

Manuel Ortiz has written a very practical “why and how to” book on developing multicultural congregations. He provides transcultural and time-tested models for moving a church (change management) culture from monolithic to multicultural. Though dated (and thus the demographics tend to be outdated), the principles and practices are timeless.

Sande, Ken. The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict. Third revised updated edition. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004.

Ken Sande has spent a lifetime studying, teaching, and applying biblical principles of conflict resolution. His credentials as a lawyer and student of the Bible combine to make him eminently qualify to write this work. Though the subtitle emphasizes the resolution of personal conflict, The Peacemaker and its principles can be used in corporate/church conflict resolution situations, also. With each principle, Sande presents the biblical foundation as well as practical applications.

Steele, Shelby. White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006.

Shelby Steele writes about race in the style and substance of Bill Cosby. Both men speak as successful Black men who have lived their “up-by-the-boot-straps” philosophy. Both men also insist that African Americans must maintain personal responsibility for their present condition, while recognizing that White Americans were responsible for the horrors of the Black past.

Steele’s basic premise concludes that, yes, African Americans were horribly treated and that at the onset of the 60s Civil Rights movement, a “balancing act” was necessary to provide disenfranchised Blacks with a “fair start.” However, Steele affirms that along the way, something went wrong. This something, he calls “White Guilt.” Liberal Whites, in particular, attempted, in Steele’s view, to gain the moral high ground by punishing current White Americans for the past guilt of White America.

In the process, and as a result, Blacks who now, according to Steele, had a more or less level playing field, were re-classified as an entire race of people in need of a White hand up and a White hand out. Thus, liberal White guilt was still White racism: “We are better than you and you need our help to survive.” When African Americans accepted this Faustian bargain, they wandered off the path of meritocracy (you earn success) to mediocrity (you are given an easy way toward success), according to Steele. Being raised in Gary, Indiana in the 60s and 70s, and living in the 90s and early 00s in D.C., and now having returned to the Gary region, I have, as a White male, witnessed the eras of which Steele speaks. Much of what he says resonates with me. In fact, I would give him five stars for White Guilt except for a few issues.

First, I don’t see the end of racism of which he seems to speak. I still hear it and see it, albeit, in subtle ways, and even more subtle policy-making. Additionally, I’m not convinced that the playing field is always level. Certainly, I am convinced that African Americans have total equality of ability. I’m simply not sure that everywhere in America they have total equality of opportunity. One final point of departure: by his definition of White guilt, we may take away from the historical reality that there was true White guilt. False guilty feelings and faulty guilt-driven policies may mask the reality that there was (and is) true guilt. European Americans did indeed despicably mistreat and literally beat down African Americans. I would be saddened if Steele’s title caused anyone to minimize the suffering. In fact, it is in admitting and facing the suffering that we see the true resilience and character of individual and corporate African Americans who rose above and went beyond the suffering.

Walker, Clarence. Biblical Counseling with African Americans. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.

Biblical Counseling with African Americans is an excellent contribution to multicultural counseling from a Christian perspective. Walker integrates biblical theology, research on African American culture, and his own extensive counseling practice to weave together a very practical and thorough book. Some books of this genre tend to be heavy on theory or on methodology. Walker nicely balances the two, linking understanding to practice. The book is now a little dated in terms of research works quoted (most coming from the 70s and 80s), but besides that it has withstood the test of time.

Wimberly, Edward. African American Pastoral Care. Nashville: Abingdon, 1991.

African American Pastoral Care is Wimberly’s 1991 “sequel” to his 1979 Pastoral Care in the Black Church. In his newer work, Wimberly continues his important focus on sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding, while highlighting a new emphasis: pastoral care through narrative. Narrative therapy has been a growing model for at least two decades. Wimberly nicely blends the historical African American use of oral tradition with the insights of post-modern narrative therapy.

In his introduction and first chapter, Wimberly concisely explains the nature of narrative story-telling in African American pastoral care. In each subsequent chapter, he demonstrates how this model can be used in various counseling issues such as addiction, bereavement, life stages, marriage, and family matters.

Important Stuff

*Your Guide: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, is the Founder and CEO of RPM Ministries (www.rpmministries.org) through which he writes, speaks, and consults to equip God’s people to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth. He blogs daily at here.

*My Necessary Disclaimer: Of course, I don’t endorse everything in every article, book, or link that you’ll find in Kellemen’s Christian The Best of Guide. I report, you decide.

*Your Suggestions Are Welcomed: Feel free to post comments and/or send emails (rpm.ministries@gmail.com) about resources that you think deserve attention in various categories covered in Kellemen’s Christian The Best of Guide.

Herein lie buried many things, which if read with patience may sow the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the twentieth century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. (W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk [New York: Pocket Books, 2005]: 3.)

“But how can a Christian vote for Obama?”

I am paraphrasing a question asked of me while in attendance at the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference five weeks ago. It had become obvious to my interrogator that an African American, Democratic version of wrapping the Cross of Christ in the Stars and Stripes had taken a prominent place in the sermons of those preaching at the conference. We were being challenged by speakers to be diligent not to squander our moral responsibility to push Obama into the White House. Roaring responses of clapping and shouting followed these charges as if all of the thousands of African American church leaders and laity present were in full agreement.

Such laudation of the senator from Illinois, by those proclaiming to know the Creator through the Incarnate Son, bothered my friend. An Illinois citizen and theologically conservative Christian, he could not reconcile a vote cast for Obama with anyone who professed the name of Christ. To him, it was very obvious that Obama’s views on abortion and same-sex marriage are so far from what Scripture requires of us that, seemingly, to vote for Obama would be to deny the very things Christians believe. So he turned to me for some explanation of how African American Christians could vote in good faith for Obama without sensing conviction for endorsing one who takes anti-Christian positions on the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage.

The Issue of Hope

I started by explaining that for African Americans, there is a sense of hope no longer being deferred. Instead, hope is at the front door knocking furiously, waiting to see if African Americans will answer. If we open the door, forty million African Americans are going to witness a fellow African American getting the largest slice of the American Dream Pie—a dessert many had hoped to see people of color eat in their lifetime, but the many fell asleep having embraced such promises from afar. As the struggle for social and economic equality has been a struggle for all African Americans, regardless of belief system(s), we all share in the joy when one of our own achieves the (presumptive) nomination for the highest office in the land—an office that has been reserved for white males only until now. Obama’s candidacy would allow all African Americans to say to our forefathers, “we finally did it! Your attempts at escaping slavery, deaths by lynching, scars from the scourge of slave masters’ whips, pain from the full blast of unleashed water hoses and muzzle-free police dogs, humiliation by white hecklers at lunch counters, degradation at “coloreds only” fountains and restrooms, indignation on the back of buses, forced acceptance of poorer educational materials and facilities, and marches at the threat of beatings and bombings have not been for naught! Hope, yea victory, is finally here! We are equal at the highest level!”

Factoring all of the historical pockmarks into the hope equation seems to be African Americans’ expression of the reality of “the problem of the Twentieth Century” (DuBois). For African Americans, Christians and non-Christians alike, race, racial prejudice, racial segregation, racial discrimination, racial injustice, racial hatred, racial educational and economic disparity, racial self-consciousness, the racialization of society and all attempts to address problems attributed to the majority culture’s mistreatment of African Americans in any form based on race alone only serve to remind African Americans of their “double-consciousness” (DuBois). As Dubois wrote, in this society African Americans are:

a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world— a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world… It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness— an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder, (3).

The Issue of Identity

If we take DuBois’ musings as an accurate analysis of African American existence, we can see another factor involved in Christian African Americans’ support of Obama: identity. We now have a candidate who we think identifies with the experience of African Americans. He has experienced the struggle of the great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves (even though he is not one). So surely, it is supposed, he will fight for policies and programs that will be sensitive to the plight of his people and that work toward uplifting the entire race of people to the place where the playing field is level. Surely, as one of us, he will sign into law measures that will protect the gains made during the Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights Eras. Because he is one of us, we have hope that we will no longer have to look at ourselves through the contemptuous eyes of others—i.e., white Americans. We now can look at ourselves through the eyes of the man who could hold the most well-known office in the free-world, and he can look at the world through our eyes. Such looking is inherent when one is in the majority culture; in that culture it is never hoped for or awaited. It is part of being in the majority. For African Americans, to deny Obama would then be, in some sense, to deny one’s own identity. Yet it remains true that no one ever thinks a white man not voting for Clinton, Bush or McCain is a denial of whiteness.

I would suggest that Obama, more than any other candidate, has the ability to say to African Americans, “my fellow Americans,” and do so with the implicit trust of African Americans. His Father’s Day speech demonstrated this ability, for he is the only presidential candidate who can risk bringing up a major social problem in the African American community in an African American pulpit without fear of ostracizing himself. He was able to play a black race card on an all black table in such a way that to outsiders it simply looked as if he still had his card in his hand. But those at the table gladly folded their cards having seen the winning hand.

Being able to see the potential for mutual embracing of identities in a candidate further means that African Americans will not feel the need to settle on the candidate who represents the lesser of two evils. By common consent, many African Americans feel that their votes are taken for granted by one major political party, and only courted as tokenism by the other major party. The votes do not result in policy changes that benefit African Americans as a whole no matter which party’s candidate wins office. As a result, African Americans often resign simply to give a vote to one of the two white candidates, without feeling that their best interests will be taken up truly. An Obama candidacy immediately changes the hopeless feelings of resignation as the fall approaches. His candidacy means African Americans will have the opportunity to make a choice excitedly and confidently. Higher than average African American attendance at the polls in November could be a reflection of the joy brought on by the ability to pick a candidate without mental or emotional reservation and resignation.

The Issue of Justice

I think there is a third reason African American hail Obama: justice. That is, we have placed faith in liberal government to save us when we perceived that those who were conservative politically were weak in running to aid those experiencing race-related injustices. Historically, it seemed that change in race-relations in America was slow to come about through personal moral change on a wide scale. As a result, African Americans looked to Federal policy to institute change in institutional structures. That is, “if you will not find it in your heart to grant me the same access to bid on business contracts, I will look to the government to enact legislation to make you give me access to bid equally on business contracts regardless of my skin color.”

An Obama nomination looks like a nomination for social justice – far more than does a nomination for someone from the other party. If the Illinois senator will carry both white and Black voters in November, unlike Democratic candidates from other ethnicities, he will not be able to make promises to African Americans without accountability to keep his promises. Instead, he will be under pressure not to let his people down judicially. He will have to reject policies that stand against the Democratic version of racial progress, and he will have to sign into law policies that stand for such progress. Anything short of this will bring more ire from African Americans than that directed toward any other president who fell short on his promises. Because the hope is greater, the expectation will be greater, and the backlash for perceived failure will be greater. But African Americans do not expect Obama to fail. They expect social and economic justice policies to find favor with this candidate, for Affirmative Action to be strengthened, for racial profiling and racial inequities in the legal systems to be brought into account and see diminishing statistics, and for “equal justice for all” to be more than words on the halls of justice.

An Obama presidency would portray justice in another odd sort of way. Akin to the issue of hope above, his election would be seen as vindication. It would have a self-correcting effect on the errors of America’s history, with its sins of chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, and ongoing civil injustices. What better way for African Americans to hear the country say, “join us in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!” What greater way is there for African Americans in turn to say, “We have overcome!” What an Obama in the White House would do for African Americans is allow us to feel we can say, “Now this country is going to treat us equally, fairly, justly.”

In order to understand the sentiment of African Americans as a whole – of whom Christian African Americans are a part – one would do well to consider that African Americans have not yet been free in this country for as long as we were slaves, (1654-1865, [211 years] vs. 1865-2008. [143 years]). Moreover, the Civil Rights Era only ended 33 years ago with the extension of the Voting Rights Act (1975). It was only ten years prior to this extension that Jim Crow laws were brought to an end with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many of the citizens who rode through this era on the back of the bus are still alive waiting on even more gains for African Americans—gains they feel will not come at the hands of white leadership. These same citizens, who often daily drank in the fears of an Emmett Till episode or a Birmingham bombing—this while whites separately drank in American prosperity free from fear, at the expense of African Americans— diligently taught their children to trust African Americans to uplift African Americans. That generation, and their children to the third and fourth generations, sees in Barak Obama one for whom we can say, “finally, we’re driving this bus.” This attitude even has been expressed by African American conservatives, such as J. C. Watts and Armstrong Williams, who are considering jumping party lines in order to cast a vote for Senator Obama.

The Cross and the Ballot

The above thoughts do not make a judgment on whether Christian African Americans should or should not vote for Obama. The intention of this work is only to offer some reasons that explain why Christian African Americans might vote for Obama in the fall. It does not address the suggested contradiction between voting for a pro-choice candidate and claiming to be a voter who holds a pro-life position. Personally, I think that sanctity of life issues only deal with one of ten areas of sin in the Decalogue, so they are not to be elevated above all of the other prohibitions and commandments. I hold this belief in spite of the fact that my favorite modern Christian author, John Piper, who is a pastor, theologian, Christian statesman, and friend that I highly respect and with whom I rarely find disagreement, proposes a different view of the significance of one issue in an election process, writing “everybody knows a single issue that for them would disqualify a candidate for office.” (See the antecedent hyperlink for the full article and bibliographical information.)

I should also say that even the most simul justus et peccator among us vote both righteously and selfishly at the same time. As I have said elsewhere,

Preserving what we each value the most serves as the motivation for almost everyone’s vote. It would be difficult to find anyone who votes from a purely selfless stance, i.e., “this is in the best interest of the entire country.” Rather, we each vote from either a “survival” or “success” stance. Those who have experienced financial and/or material success generally care about issues that will ensure that such success is maintained. Issues of survival seem trite to them. In contrast, those attempting to survive, or to get to a certain level of social achievement—whether that is to gain the American Dream so as to get out of coal mining and Black Lung disease, to get out of a neighborhood of poorer schools and crime to the suburbs, or to keep from losing all they have earned in life—generally do not concern themselves with the issues of the successful. They want mobility, access, opportunity and aid.

What person of success would selflessly vote in the interest of those needing aid at his own expense? And what citizen simply trying to survive would vote for smaller government, although this would certainly be the wisest and best choice for any successful business owner? Yet believers are called to consider others better than themselves, to deny themselves, and to care for the poor, needy and oppressed. This calling cannot be set aside as one exercises one’s right to suffrage (”Believers at the Ballot Box,” Beauty for Ashes Magazine [July/August, 2008]).

While it might seem a contradiction for Christian African Americans to vote for Senator Obama, each of us votes with many contradictions in both the righteous and selfish hopes of having the best possible earthly government and society. Such hopes yield appointments of pro-life justices and unjust war decisions. But when we “pull the lever,” we vote our consciences, our blind spots, and unknown future actions of our candidates and those in their selected cabinets and staff. At best, going to the ballot box as believers is one great act of hope in the God who rules all things for good, who “removes kings and sets up kings,” and whose “dominion is an everlasting dominion” (Dan. 2:21; 4:34). It is best that we look to his Son for true hope, identity and justice. This is the only way any of us will stop throwing cards on the table each election cycle.

Erin Haines (an African American reporter for the AP who has covered race and civil rights since 2005) published an intriguing article this Friday on Barack Obama and American culture. She accurately, I think, noted that, “Obama’s candidacy is about race and it isn’t. It has illuminated the fact that black and white America don’t really know each other all that well, and has forced both sides to rethink what they thought they knew about each other and themselves.”

Add to this the “near miss” that Hillary Clinton experienced in her run to be the first female nominee for President in a major American political party, and we all wonder whether racial and gender prejudices are finally crumbling in America.

You don’t have to be pro-Democrat, pro-Obama, or pro-Hillary-Clinton to be hesitantly excited about the prospects that Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech may becoming a reality. Is the day at last dawning when the color of our skin and our gender is no longer looked upon as something that makes us lesser-than?

Being a “voice for the voiceless” is in my DNA. That’s why, with Karole Edwards, I co-authored Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. That’s why with Susan Ellis I am co-authoring Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Feminine Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors.

African Americans have a treasure of Christian spiritual care to offer all Americans. Christian women throughout Church history have a treasure to offer all Christians.

Reading the incredible wisdom of African Americans and women throughout church history buoys my spirits. It reminds me that God grants great spiritual abilities to all people of all races and both genders.

And . . . he gives great leadership abilities to all people of all races and both genders. Again, whether one is pro-Obama, pro-Hillary, or not, is not the specific issue for me personally. I am pro-respect, value, voice-for-the-voiceless. And I would like to think, along with Erin Haines, that maybe, just maybe, we Americans are at long last coming to a point where prejudices are crumbling in the face of mutual respect.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) was, of course, one of the main leaders of the American Civil Rights movement. What is lesser known today is King’s training and ministry as a Baptist pastor. Even fewer people know the long history of African American ministers promoting civil rights.

That history begins with the Reverends Richard Allen (1760-1831) and Absalom Jones (1746-1818). Allen and Jones were foremost founding fathers of the African American independent churches and of the American Civil Rights movement.

Allen’s Ministry

Allen traveled extensively, preaching in Delaware and Pennsylvania. In February, 1786, he preached at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Thinking that he would be there one or two weeks, ministry needs led Allen to a settled place of service in Philadelphia.

Concerned for the wellbeing of African Americans in this parish, he established prayer meetings. “I raised a society in 1786 of forty-two members. I saw the necessity of erecting a place of worship for the coloured people.”

It was at this time that the Rev. Jones united with Rev. Allen. Their little band met great opposition, including “very degrading and insulting language to us, to try and prevent us from going on.”

Notwithstanding, they established prayer meetings and meetings of exhortation, with many people becoming Christians. Their growing congregation, still without a building, often attended services at St. George’s Church. When the black worshippers became more numerous, the white leaders “moved us from the seats we usually sat on, and placed us around the wall.”

Jones’ Convictions

It was at this juncture that one of the most noteworthy events in the American Civil Rights movement occurred. Taking seats that they thought were appropriate, prayer began. Allen describes the scene.

“We had not long been upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking. I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees, H. M., having hold of the Rev. Absalom Jones, pulling him up off of his knees, and saying, ‘You must get up—you must not kneel here.’ Mr. Jones replied, ‘Wait until prayer is over.’ Mr. H. M. said ‘No, you must get up now, or I will call for aid and I will force you away.’ Mr. Jones said, ‘Wait until prayer is over, and I will get up and trouble you no more.’”

By the time the second usher arrived, prayer was over, and, according to Allen, “We all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church. This raised a great excitement and inquiry among the citizens, in so much that I believe they were ashamed of their conduct.”

The Birth of the Black Church

As a result, Allen and Jones birthed the first independent Black Church in the North when they hired a store room and held worship by themselves. Facing excommunication from the “mother church,” they remained united and strong.
Allen stirringly recounts the situation. “Here we were pursued with threats of being disowned, and read publicly out of meeting if we did continue to worship in the place we had hired; but we believed the Lord would be our friend. . . . Here was the beginning and rise of the first African church in America.”

Some twenty years later, when increasing numbers of African Americans could not worship without harassment in the Methodist Church, Allen and others called a conference which established the first African denomination in America. It was resolved, “That the people of Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc., should become one body, under the name of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.”

While Americans rightfully pause to remember the historic work of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is equally important to reflect on precursors to his work. The Revs. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones paved the way for heroic African American ministers to pursue civil rights, equality, and religious freedom for all Americans.

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Christian Counseling, Church, Discipleship, Equipping, Kellemen, Ministry, Pastors, RPM Ministries, Soul Care, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Formation

To appreciate the meaning, message, and mutual ministry of the slave spirituals, it is vital to understand how and why they were composed. Carey Davenport, a retired Black Methodist minister from Texas, had been born enslaved in 1855. He vividly depicts the spontaneous nature of slave spirituals. Sometimes the Colored folks would go down in dugouts and hollows and hold their own service, and they used to sing songs that come a-gushing up from the heart.”

These were not polished, practiced anthems designed to entertain. They were personal, powerful psalms designed to sustain. “Songs were not carefully composed and copyrighted as they are today; they were ‘raised’ by anyone who had a song in their hearts.”

Slave spirituals were shared songs composed on the spot to empathize with and encourage real people in real trouble. Anderson Edwards, a slave preacher, remembers, “We didn’t have any song books and the Lord gave us our songs and when we sang them at night it just whispering so nobody would hear us.”

The creation of individual slave spirituals poignantly portrays care-giving at its best. When James McKim asked a slave the origin of a particular spiritual, the slave explained, “I’ll tell you; it’s this way. My master called me up and ordered me a hundred lashes. My friends saw it and are sorry for me. When they come to the praise meeting that night they sing about it. Some are very good singers and know how; and they work it in, work it in, you know; till they get it right; and that’s the way.” Spirituals were born from slaves observing and empathizing with the suffering of their fellow slaves as a way of demonstrating identification and solidarity with the wronged slave.

Creating and singing spirituals in the middle of their predicament became a means for reciprocal bonding. Slaves wove the words into the fabric of their worship and into the tapestry of their everyday life together. This resulted in communal empathy. The flexible, improvisational structure of the spirituals gave them the capacity to fit an individual slave’s specific experience into the group’s experience. One person’s sorrow or joy became everyone’s through song. Singing the spirituals was therefore both an intensely personal and vividly communal experience in which an individual received consolation for sorrow and gained a heightening of joy because his experience was shared. It was a lasting portrait of the truth that shared sorrow is endurable sorrow.

In the very structure of the spirituals, we see articulated the idea of communal support. Frequently the spirituals mentioned individual members present, either by name—“Sister Tilda, Brother Tony,”—or by description—“the stranger over there in the corner.” This co-creation included everyone in the experience of mutual exhortation and communal support. Drawing from the Bible, Protestant hymns, and sermons, the slaves fashioned spiritual music which expressed their faith in moving, immediate, and dramatic terms.

The spontaneous creation of the spirituals exemplifies what people-helpers call “staying in the moment,” “being present,” and “immediacy.” The African American spirituals demonstrate that caring for people is not so much about skills, but about artful connecting through real and raw relating.

[i]Excerpted with permission of Baker Books from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction.

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Christian Counseling, Church, Discipleship, Equipping, Kellemen, Ministry, Pastors, RPM Ministries, Soul Care, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Formation