"Please remember that our spirituality should be a vitamin - not a drug."
(originally posted 9/14/08)
Dear friends,
According to almost all of the agencies of the mass communications media, if he is successful, which I believe he will be, Senator Barack Obama will become our nation's "first Black president". I do not like that moniker though. I find that notion bothersome, because, at least to me, it trivializes both the historical and present contributions made by African Americans to both the development and continued proliferation of the United States as an advanced world power.
In other words, to imply that Barack Obama winning this election is the greatest achievement of our cultural group, ignores the fact that the active protestations of African Americans have been at the lead, in enhancing both freedom and democracy, at every historical stage in this country, for all citizens. This includes the time when a "6-2' mulatto" man named Crispus Attucks, standing in the front of a group of English colonists, against British troops, on the Boston Commons, was the first one shot and killed that special day. That confrontation, of course, was the catalyst for the official start of the War of Independence that turned thirteen colonies into the nation in which we now live - and love.
African Americans are an African people, from many different African cities and villages, who were forcibly made part of an enterprise that initially began amongst Arabs and Eastern Europeans (from where the word "slave" came), about a thousand years or forty generations ago as the International Slave Trade. However, it deteriorated into being what Dr. W.E.B. DuBois described as the "hunting of black skins" not long after Christopher Columbus' famed voyage across the Ocean Sea, renaming that enterprise the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Yet, the institution now known as the "Black Church" did not begin when European enslavers used red-hot iron brands and scarred captive African workers, so-called slaves, while reading the latter verses from the Holy Bible, in a process called seasoning. Rather, the Black Church started in the holds of the aforementioned enslavers' hideous vessels. Again, people from different cities and villages, speaking different languages and having varied customs, were now forced to embrace that which they shared as Africans - their religiosity.
But when we talk about our "souls"/spirituality it seems to mean different things to different people. And so, in his work called After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley offered, "Our 'souls' are so little 'us' that we cannot even form the remotest conception how 'we' should react to the universe, if we were ignorant of language, or even of our own language. The nature of our 'souls' and of the world they inhabit would be entirely different from what it is, if we had never learnt to talk, or if we had learnt to talk Eskimo instead of English. Madness consists, among other things, in imagining that our 'soul' exists apart from the language our nurses happen to have taught us."
Huxley makes an observation here that helps to explain the photo above, which shows Senator Barack Obama, literally, surrounded, in a very private situation , by a group of fellow African Americans - engaging in a group prayer. To be sure, they are not concerned with whether or not he belongs to a particular religious denomination. There is something much deeper happening there. For African peoples have appreciated their spirituality, long before they had ever heard of Europeans, or even Asians, for that matter.
In his book African Religions and Philosophies, John Mbiti reveals, “Wherever the African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes religion with him to the examination room at school or in the university...Traditional religions are not primarily for the individual, but for his community of which he is a part...What people do is motivated by what they believe, and what they believe springs from what they do and experience. So then, belief and action in African traditional society cannot be separated: they belong to a single whole.”
Up until the end of 19th Century America, religious institutions were largely community-oriented, among both African Americans and European Americans. Today, however, for the most part, in this possession-oriented society, the individual as a "believer", as opposed to his or her membership in a community of believers, is what is promoted as the greatest importance to the commonweal.
Still, the congregants of Black churches have always been at the forefront of our cultural group's social progress, by engaging in activities that deal with our outer as well as our inner liberation, such as church folks helping to free captive workers (so-called slaves) during the period of chattel slavery to organizing then leading protest marches and providing facilities for breakfast programs for school children, as they did in the Sixties and Seventies - to helping to lead the fight against apartheid in South Africa, during the Eighties.
Unfortunately, too often today, a lot of concentration is on “being saved” and using the word “God” in every other sentence as some type of password to have membership in "the herd". Many folks are even using religion as a narcotic - like heroin or cocaine; a common refrain from them is: "I'm high on Jesus!".
Also, having “fellowship” is another term that is being bandied about these days. I went to a church, quite recently, whose Sunday program sheet read at the bottom, after the hymns and prayers listed: Worship ends, Service begins. Unfortunately, and shamefully, this was NOT in a Black church.
Black preachers must imitate the life of the historical Jesus who fed the hungry and healed the sick - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The latter did not just sit around and pray. S/he "worked" for change. During 1963, in his now famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, in part:
"There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.
Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets..."
While Dr. King's "letter" was largely directed towards "white" clergy, today, these words, very much, apply to most African American clerics across the nation, as well. That is a fact that should bring a feeling of shame to many who call themselves ecclesiastics. The Black Church has the power to change things! It is not up to "God" to make this world better. After all, if it is, then why does "He" need clerics?
Finally, to be sure, African peoples of the Americas, have a lengthy history of identifying with spiritual things. Had we not, then there would have been no way for us to have endured the long voyages crunched up beside - and stacked up on top of - one another in our mutual stench, for months at a time, much less being able to sustain ourselves, for centuries, in chattel slavery, as well as the continued impropriety directed towards us, even at this present date, by many of our fellows citizens, at all levels of society. Therefore, the real "spirit" of African American people is reflected in our legacy - a lengthy struggle for equality, dignity and justice. Friends, the power of love and its goodness will overcome the weakness of greed and injustice.
Moreover, please remember that our spirituality should be a vitamin - not a drug.
One Love, One Heart, One Spirit,
G. Djata Bumpus
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