Nadra Enzi: Black Religious Arguments
By HHR | March 1st, 2010 | Category: General, HHR Contributors, HHR Publisher, Politics | 1 Comment »
By Nadra Enzi
Black folks and religion. The stuff of arguments galore. Wags like myself wonder what all the fuss is about? No less than Dr. King observed ” 11 o’clock Sunday ” is the most segregated time in America. This obtains among the country’s Black and White Christian majority. Against such a backdrop, are Black disagreements over worship worth it? The Black Church has a vigorous anti-Muslim contingent. They see Islam as competition for the hearts, minds and wallets of our people. African Traditionalists are called ” devil worshippers ” behind their backs.
Looking down upon other Black faith groups obscures seeing injustice among our majority religion. Focusing on discrimination by fellow Christians seems a more real concern. The fact that shared belief in Christ hasn’t softened racists on the other side of town seems lost in transmission.
Black Muslims and Christians, along with other faithful need to unite around shared issues. Gang bangers don’t exempt co-coreligionists when trigger time arrives. Thieves fail to skip targets based upon religious preference. Officials elected and appointed have yet to cease discriminatory policies because of common theology. Against such serious challenges Black folks indulge the luxury of arguing over religion.
A self-inflicted crime rate; lack of two-parent homes and other misery index highlights drowns out disagreements. Imagine everyone in the community adopting one religion en masse. Anybody see any change yet? The volume still rises as denominations quarrel beneath the same banner. Not to mention what other folks opt to do. Faith is an intensely intimate matter. Liturgical litmus tests insult the urgency of our era. Co-signing with extreme fundamentalist movements across the religious radius assists community crisis. The same prejudiced leadership in the alphabet soup of faiths keeps Black supporters in the back seat. Our bickering is music to their ears. This fails to use belief systems to help change stifling status quos.
A separation of church ( faith-based bickering ) and state ( secular empowerment ) seems reasonable in the wake of such squabbling. A non-denominational Black community can end pointless arguments over religion in favor of choosing something worth talking about. There isn’t a Christian way; A Muslim way;a Jewish way nor a Traditionalist way to improve our community. There’s only the right way, open to debate without bringing religion into it.
Nadra Enzi aka Capt. Black is a Republican activist who promotes crime prevention in Savannah, Ga. He can be reached at http://www.captblack.info
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Faith based institutions have a way of getting territorial to such a degree that street gangs start looking like boy scout troops. But then imagine Saint Peter at the pearly gates directing Muslims over to the Muslim portion of the kingdom. He is doing the same thing with the Pentecostals, the Baptists, the Missionary Baptists, the Southern Baptists, the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Seven-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, United House of Prayer, Church of God in, over, under and around Christ, plus the garden variety store-front churches. All have a piece of the rock or a mansion in heaven’s equivalent of a housing development. The specter of “denomination” has in essence snuffed out the “devotion” aspect of organized religion. Denomination goes hand in hand with being domineering. For organized religion it is not enough to order one’s step in the word, they seek to count out the cadence. They say jump, the congregation asks “how high”, they say squat, the congregation asks “how low”, they say “take a dump” the congregation asks “what color”. Is it any wonder that the average everyday people hold their noses literally at the mention of organized religion and shun them all. The exception is the “praying grandmother”. The “praying grandmother” is beseeching the pastor to give that gang-banger, thug grandson of hers a “homegoing” in a Christian church. The minister muses to himself “they sure are going to have to pay me well for I am about to prostitute myself and spin out “fairy tales” on someone I only saw twice, once when he was in “pampers” and the other time when his grandmother wanted me to go see him in the jail house. The funeral home folks say “well as long as the money is green, it makes no difference to us whether the deceased was “churched” or “unchurched”. Heck, now we even offer cremation services for those who opt to be “burnt offerings”. Their relatives can take turns having the urn on the mantelpieces in their houses, those who live in apartments can keep their loved ones in the kitchen or bathroom cabinet or on the window sill. Let the Almighty deal with the after-life portion of reuniting bodies with souls prior to placing them on the up or down elevator. At least the Black churches got that blue-eyed, blond-hair idol out of their sanctuaries, even the image no longer or rarely appears on those fans they use in the “heat of the moment”. As it has been said “one day at a time”. By the 22nd century, those fans will be passe. Glory, Hallelujah and Amen.