The Rev. Will D. Campbell was a poor white boy from Mississippi who preached his first sermon from a pulpit stocked with a Bible from the Ku Klux Klan. But this son of the segregated South — a self-avowed "good ol' boy with crazy ideas" — did not follow the conventional career path for a Southern Baptist minister in the 1950s.

He became the only white man admitted to the founding meeting of the seminal Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. That same year, when nine black students attempted to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., he was one of three white ministers who guided them past a fierce white mob. Later, when civil rights workers targeted Nashville lunch counters, he rounded up sympathetic whites to nudge the business owners toward integration.

Often his actions brought threats, such as the time when, as chaplain at the University of Mississippi, he openly played pingpong with a black person. The next thing he knew, someone had slipped excrement into his punch bowl....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture

[KIM] LAWTON: On Thursday May 2nd, “The Children’s March” began. Students left their classrooms mid-day and gathered in Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. They came out marching and singing, row after row after row of them, some as young as six years old. Waiting police arrested them for parading without a permit, but the kids kept coming, and when the paddy wagons were full, the police had to get a school bus to take them all away. Nearly a thousand children had signed up to march, and more than 600 were taken into custody on that day.

LAWTON: As hundreds and hundreds more children showed up to demonstrate and face possible arrest, Bull Connor was anxious to restore order. He instructed his forces to bring out the fire hoses and the dogs.

Some of the most shocking confrontations happened in Kelly Ingram Park, across from the church, where monuments to the marchers now stand. Officials aimed the water hoses full blast at the marching children. McKinstry was among those hit.

[CAROLYN] MCKINSTRY: The water came out with such tremendous pressure and, uh, it’s a very painful experience, if you’ve never been hit by a fire hose and I thought, whoa.

Read or watch it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

While [Dr. Gregory] McGriff says he is forced to do things most other doctors wouldn't necessarily do, he also notes that the disparity — while seeming unfair — has served up a bit of sweet irony: It has helped make him a better doctor. At a time when cost-cutting and understaffing place pressure on physicians to move swiftly through their rounds, McGriff adopted a bedside manner to earn a patient's trust that has now become his signature at Rutherford Regional hospital.

"I make a point to do something that many of my partners don't do — most physicians don't do anymore. I sit," McGriff says. "I sit in the room, and I ask the patient to tell me their story. I'm really interested in these stories, by the way, and every client I meet has a very interesting story.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • History • Race/Race Relations • Rural/Town Life • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Let me begin by telling you about Stephen, a mature intelligent man of 38, a successful architect, with a wife and children of whom he is very proud. A man loved and respected by his wider family and the community where he lives and in which he is a blessing to many.

This is one of the real possibilities that the future held for Stephen Lawrence who was murdered 20 years ago this Monday in an unprovoked racist attack by a gang of white youths in Eltham. An attack whose devastating effect not only tragically denied Stephen a future, but also reverberated through many lives, causing pain which cannot be calculated this side of the grave.

As we remember Stephen’s death at this time, we need to renew our determination to rid our communities of racism, hatred, fear, ignorance, stereotyping, and the advantaging or disadvantaging of others because of their colour or ethnic origin.

Read it all from the Yorkshire Post.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

The biographical film "42" depicts Jackie Robinson's courageous battle to break the color barrier in major league baseball. At the same time, the film provides a glimpse of his religious faith, which afforded the strength he needed to overcome fierce opposition.

"It took two Christians to pull this off," says Chris Lamb, the author of "Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training" (University of Nebraska, 2004). "Robinson was a Christian and Branch Rickey was a Christian," he notes. "Sometimes we miss this."

Lamb was blind to it himself until he researched Robinson's life for his book. "I kept wondering all these years what kept Robinson together," he says. "Finally I realized what I missed before – the core came from above."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • Sports

Fifty years ago, in June 1963, the Christian Century found itself near the center of American public debate when it was the first large-circulation magazine to publish the full text of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The letter would shortly thereafter stand as the manifesto of those King led in pursuing African-American civil rights in the mid-1960s by means of nonviolent direct action. And it eventually assumed pride of place alongside Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” as a touchstone for the theory and practice of civil disobedience in American protest politics.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

And they were telling me, now it doesn't matter now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Read it all (video versions on the web are available also).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Eschatology

Critics say the show takes reality TV one step too far, exposing personal, intimate and sometimes unflattering details about pastors' wives. But Domonique Scott, former first lady of The Good Life Ministry church, tells NPR's David Greene that The Sisterhood was somewhat of a calling for her. "We definitely believe that God told us to do it," Scott says. "Individually, and together as a group."

"I think for us, the assignment was to step out," adds Christina Murray, the first lady of Oasis Family Life Church. "We knew it would probably be a little controversial, but we don't do anything just for people to understand and give us our approval; we do everything for what God is trying to lead us to do." But, Murray says, appearing on The Sisterhood was not a decision any of the women made lightly. "Basically, you're putting your life out there with the control of somebody else."

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television • Race/Race Relations • Women

It was 50 years ago this August that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. closed his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with his rendering of a dream he had for the country’s future. The soaring final sentences were somewhat extemporaneous — he let his emotions and sense of the occasion carry him past parts of the prepared text and on to the right words, concluding with the rousing “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last.” It was an exultant moment for much of this country, and in the national memory it has acquired the gauzy image of a happy ending to our long struggle with racial inequality and bigotry. Less vibrant in memory is an image from less than three weeks later: four girls dressed all in white because they were to lead youth day services at their Birmingham, Ala., church, their lives suddenly ended by a racial terrorist bombing.

“During the short career of Martin Luther King Jr., between 1954 and 1968, the nonviolent civil rights movement lifted the patriotic spirit of the United States toward our defining national purpose,” writes Taylor Branch, a chronicler of those years. But it was a hard lifting.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Today, the people who saw their lives changed in that turbulent time or in its wake say it is their job to keep King’s legacy alive.

“The whole era has taken on less significance than it had,” said Bernard Powers, College of Charleston history professor. “Next month is Black History Month, and he’ll be talked about along with Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, almost as if they were contemporaries.”

Today, more than 30 volunteers from the community — black and white — will be helping Ruth Ann Carr of James Island build her home. It’s a service day for Sea Island Habitat for Humanity, honoring the iconic civil rights leader on the holiday dedicated to him.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * South Carolina

As [Ralph] Abernathy tells it–and I believe he is right–he and King were first of all Christians, then Southerners, and then blacks living under an oppressive segregationist regime. King of course came from the black bourgeoisie of Atlanta in which his father, “Daddy King,” had succeeded in establishing himself as a king. Abernathy came from much more modest circumstances, but he was proud of his heritage and, as he writes, wanted nothing more than that whites would address his father as Mr. Abernathy. He and Martin loved the South, and envisioned its coming into its own once the sin of segregation had been expunged.

“Years later,” Abernathy writes that, “after the civil rights movement had peaked and I had taken over [after Martin’s death] as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,” he met with Governor George Wallace. “Governor Wallace, by then restricted to a wheel chair after having been paralyzed by a would-be assassin’s bullet, shook hands with me and welcomed me to the State of Alabama. I smiled, realizing that he had forgotten all about Montgomery and Birmingham, and particularly Selma. ‘This is not my first visit,’ I said. ‘I was born in Alabama–in Marengo County.’ ‘Good,’ said Governor Wallace, ‘then welcome back.’ I really believe he meant it. In his later years he had become one of the greatest friends the blacks had ever had in Montgomery. Where once he had stood in the doorway and barred federal marshals from entering, he now made certain that our people were first in line for jobs, new schools, and other benefits of state government.” Abernathy concludes, “It was a time for reconciliations.”

Read it all (my emphasis).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations

At 87, the Rev. C.T. Vivian can still recall the moment, decades after the height of the civil rights movement.

As he stood to conclude a meeting in his Atlanta home, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. joined his activist colleagues in song, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“There is a balm in Gilead,” they sang, “to make the wounded whole.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Liturgy, Music, Worship • * Culture-Watch • History • Music • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

You can find the full text here.

I find it always is really worth the time--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations

Almighty God, who by the hand of Moses thy servant didst lead thy people out of slavery, and didst make them free at last: Grant that thy Church, following the example of thy prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of thy love, and may strive to secure for all thy children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations

A new year was just beginning -- an extraordinary year, in which so much would change.

Half a century ago, on Jan. 14, 1963, George Wallace took the podium to give his inaugural address as governor of Alabama. His words framed a fiery rejoinder to a civil rights movement gathering strength.

"I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny," he thundered, "and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"

Fifty years later, the words still have the power to shock. In college classes like "The Sixties in History and Memory," today's students recoil.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

More than 60 autumns ago, a young Atlantan named Martin Luther King Jr. arrived to start graduate school at Boston University. There, he fell under the influence of a theologian, Howard Thurman, who taught him about Gandhian nonviolence. That concept became one of Dr. King’s guiding principles in the civil rights movement.

On a brilliant fall morning this Sunday, a torch of black Christianity was passed to another minister, scholar and son of Atlanta, who was born five years after Dr. King’s death, the Rev. Jonathan L. Walton. In a combined worship service and installation ceremony, Mr. Walton took on the position of Pusey minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard, a pulpit of importance inside and outside the university.

Mr. Walton’s appointment, which also includes an endowed professorship of Christian morals, forms part of a generational transition in the African-American church. Ministers and theologians who came of age during the civil rights era are being supplanted by those, like Mr. Walton, 39, of elite universities, the diversity movement and hip-hop culture. To underscore how much else has changed at Harvard, Mr. Walton was formally given the pulpit Sunday by Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s first female president.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Education • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture

They walked with heads held high, harboring dreams imagined in black and gold, marching to the peculiar orders of the times.

A movement was beginning. That day, 50,000 people passed through the doors of Three Rivers Stadium, the massive concrete structure looming just west of the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, this time hoping that the Steelers, after 40 irrelevant seasons, were finally taking them somewhere worth going.

Each person in the stadium had his or her own dramas outside of it. There was the war that seemingly would not end, the intensifying of racial tensions across the city and, for those who were paying close enough attention, the fear that those hulking mills that lined the rivers were not going to be needed forever. But, the Steelers were host to the Oakland Raiders in the first round of the NFL playoffs, and such pressing matters could be thrust to the back burner for the good of Pittsburgh.

An absolute must read article for oh-so-many reasons, but perhaps above all for what it teaches about American history. Take the time to peruse it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • Sports • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

The number of multicultural churches -- those in which at least one in five people is from a different ethnic group -- is still relatively tiny. Even within diverse denominations such as the Assemblies of God, where about a third of the churches have minority congregations, or the Southern Baptists, where 20% of churches have minority congregations, only a small percentage meet that one-in-five criteria.

Mark DeYmaz, pastor of Mosaic Church, a diverse non-denominational church based in Little Rock, says he believes the number is going to grow. DeYmaz said his congregation of 600 is about 40% white, 33% African-American, 15% Hispanic, with the rest from a variety of backgrounds.

When Mosaic opened in 2001, DeYmaz said he knew of few diverse churches. Now he knows of several hundred.

"When we get to heaven, the kingdom of God isn't going to be segregated," he said. "So why should the local church be segregated?"

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Multiculturalism, pluralism • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

A new documentary, “Sanford: the Untold Story,” highlighting the racial reconciliation journey being experienced in Sanford, Fla., following the tragic death of Trayvon Martin in February, is being released on iTunes, YouTube, and aired nationwide around Labor Day weekend.

In this 30-minute film, CHARISMA founder and program host Steve Strang reveals how local pastors – including black, Hispanic and Caucasian--have taken the lead to confront the racial divide that spans generations in their city by regularly meeting, sharing and prayingtogether.

"I was genuinely moved to see how these pastors have passionately stood together and are now reaching out to help hurting people," Strang said. "Their story will inspire audiences across the country to initiate a similar approach in their communities--because racism isn't limited to Sanford, Fla."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

In 1986, he was invited to take over Franklin Avenue Baptist Church [in New Orleans]. Under him, its congregation grew from a couple of dozen people to 7,000 — the largest Southern Baptist church in Louisiana. Then Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, destroying the sanctuary.

"It would have been easy for Fred Luter to have said, 'I think God's calling me elsewhere,' " says Russell Moore, dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. "And he could have gone to a very comfortable pastorate anywhere in the country.

"And yet, he stayed," Moore says. "And he stood with the people of New Orleans and said, 'We'll be back, we'll rebuild' — and became a spiritual anchor."

Read (or better listen to) it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists

Lawrence and Trenton are adjacent. But given the different racial demographics of these two New Jersey towns — the former is predominantly white and the latter 52% black— they might as well be a hundred miles apart. Such is the magnitude of the chasm crossed by Lawrence's David Moriah and Trenton's Shiloh Baptist Church, where Moriah is not only the sole white male member but also has been accepted into the highly respected rank of deacon.

Credit goes to the black congregation in Trenton and the new white deacon for their commitment to racial reconciliation. Too bad a story like this stands out as such an anomaly. The Christian church in this country remains disturbingly segregated. But as Moriah has learned, connecting with the black church tradition can transform your perspective on race — whether you're religious or not....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

In the early 1990s, The Education of Little Tree became a publishing phenomenon. It told the story of an orphan growing up and learning the wisdom of his Native American ancestors, Cherokee Texan author Forrest Carter's purported autobiography.

The book was originally published in 1976 to little fanfare and modest sales, but in the late 1980s, the University of New Mexico Press reissued it in paperback — and it exploded. By 1991, it reached the top of The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. It was sold around the world, praised by Oprah Winfrey and made into a Hollywood film.

The Education of Little Tree would go on to sell more than 1 million copies. But the book and its author were not what they seemed.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • History • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

In the service lay a story of black Christians and white Jews who once shared a kind of promised land, a peacefully integrated section of Indianapolis called Southside. Its decades of harmony were a rebuke to the Southern-style racial divisions that characterized Indiana for much of the 20th century, from the Ku Klux Klan’s heyday in the interwar years to George Wallace’s popularity with the state’s voters in the 1960s.

Upward mobility, Interstate 70 and the construction of a football stadium hollowed out the neighborhood starting in the late 1960s, scattering its residents and severing bonds of commerce and friendship. But in the last four years, an anthropology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Susan B. Hyatt, has set about finding former Southsiders and restoring those ties through social events and reciprocal worship services at South Calvary and the Etz Chaim Sephardic synagogue.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Baptists • Other Faiths • Judaism

With five weeks’ passage, the fateful encounter between a black youth who wanted to go to college and a Hispanic man who wanted to be a judge has polarized the nation.

And, now this modest central Florida community finds its name being mentioned with Selma and Birmingham on a civil rights list held sacred in black American culture, while across the country, the parsing of the case has become cacophonic and political, punctuated by pleas for tolerance, words of hatred, and spins from the left and right.

Read it all and also note The Events Leading to the Shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Media • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • Teens / Youth • Violence

While much of the frenzy has centered on Zimmerman's past run-ins with police and on Martin's musings and photos posted to Twitter and MySpace, the avalanche of coverage has been unable to resolve the most critical unknowns: Who instigated the final confrontation? Did Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, have good reason to feel he was in danger? Did local police handle the case evenhandedly?

Past experience - for example, in the 1991 Rodney King beating - has demonstrated that facts aren't easily agreed to when cases take on a racial tinge. Opinions and preconceptions have even greater currency in an era of 24-hour news and social networking.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Media • Race/Race Relations • Rural/Town Life • Violence

Two days after he was consecrated as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, Gregory Brewer was marching Monday with the crowd demanding justice for Trayvon Martin.

He was the only white clergyman to address the Sanford City Commission inside the Civic Center that evening, urging city leaders to address the concerns of the black community.

"I thought it was very courageous," said Andy Searles, a pastor with Aloma United Methodist Church in Winter Park. "It would have been very easy for him to sit in his office and organize the paperwork on his desk, but he made a statement of what the church should be."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Race/Race Relations • Violence

[This case]...is evolving into a case of two justices: separate and, like Jim Crow laws, far from equal.

From the apparent racial profiling, overt violation of neighborhood watch protocols and real-time police directives, to accusations of tampered evidence, to the failure to undertake reasonable measures afforded by the law, I count a multitude glaring discrepancies. How did "The System" fail to ensure that this boy's life was not inconsequential?

As a citizen, I understand that no case is all black or all white, despite appearances to the contrary. I realize that justice is fraught with nuances, not the very least of which is Florida's "stand your ground" law, which was designed to protect threatened parties, and in all irony of all ironies appears to be the very thing keeping the instigator out of prison, in complete contrast to the spirit of the controversial pro-gun law.

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • Violence

Why were white clergy so reluctant to engage in this issue? It may be because they lead suburban congregations composed by and large of parishioners whose daily lives are socially isolated, antiseptic, homogeneous, and largely segregated by race and class. It may also be the lingering legacy of the South, except that many of the faith leaders, like those in the pews, have moved here from other regions of the country. They have different explanations for the silence. They may simply have been waiting for all the facts of the incident to emerge, and not rush to judgment.

"To be honest, I don't know why," said the Rev. David Charlton, the recently arrive pastor of Sanford's First United Methodist Church. "I don't have a good answer, and it's happened on my front steps."

Read it all (and alert blog readers are asked to note the quote from Bishop Greg Brewer mentioned in the previous blog post--KSH)

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Race/Race Relations • Rural/Town Life • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Meet the Rev. Fred Luter Jr., pastor of New Orleans's 4,500-member Franklin Avenue Baptist Church—and the man who this spring will likely become the first black president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He announced last month that he was putting himself in the running, and the convention's movers and shakers seem almost unanimous in their support.

The SBC was born in 1845 after Baptists from the Northern states refused to appoint slaveholders to missionary posts, and the Southern states decided to break off. Like many Protestant denominations in America that split over the issue of slavery, the Baptists remained separate long after the Civil War. Though the leadership of the SBC supported an end to segregation even before Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the denomination's churches in many cases remained hotbeds of racial animus.

It wasn't until 1995 that the SBC issued a resolution on racial reconciliation....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists

“This is a cultural war, a cultural shift, and those who are in rebellion have decided to portray us as bigots and prejudiced,” says [Nathaniel] Thomas, pastor of Forestville New Redeemer Baptist Church, a trim, pale-brick building across from a storage facility on a dead-end road just inside the Beltway near Pennsylvania Avenue.

He knows that some gay activists are incredulous that black ministers could oppose a civil rights initiative. “ ‘How dare a black preacher take this position,’ they say, ‘because you’ve felt this pain,’ and I have,” he says. Over the decades, he has marched for voting and housing rights and fought for equal protection for blacks.

But Thomas and the 77 other Baptist ministers in the association do not see same-sex marriage as a civil rights matter. Rather, they say, it is a question of Scripture, of whether a country based on Judeo-Christian principles will honor what’s written in Romans or decide to make secular decisions about what’s right.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

The book seems to suggest that you think African-American kids have lost touch with the struggles of their forebears. Do you?

Absolutely. They came into a world where, after these battles had been fought, they have a lot more opportunities and the ability to see themselves as being able to go anywhere and do anything. We have to maintain continuity by giving them the history of what the struggle was all about....

Is the U.S. in a postracial era in professional sports?

I don't think we'll ever be postracial, because of the fear and anxiety of dealing with the other — people who aren't like you. But the ability of racism to distort and corrode our society has become a lot less.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • Men • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • Sports • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

When I tell people I'm working on a book on black Catholics in Charleston, the initial response is disbelief. "There are black Catholics?" they ask. Indeed, there are Catholics of African heritage in Charleston, and this community has been a significant part of the city's social and religious life for centuries. Some African immigrants were Catholic before they were enslaved. In the 18th century in Charleston, the majority of black Catholics were free. And French.

Thousands of refugees came to North America after the revolution in France in 1789 and to its wealthy island colony, Saint-Domingue, two years later. About 500 black and white emigres arrived in Charleston by early 1792. They brought what possessions they could carry along with servants and slaves. Most had witnessed the destruction of their homes, businesses and plantations in the Caribbean.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * South Carolina

After months of urging from other Baptists around the country, the Rev. Fred Luter told his African-American congregation that he will seek to become the first black man to lead the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention.

Several Baptist leaders said Luter becomes the prohibitive favorite for the post, to be filled in a potentially historic election at the Southern Baptists' annual meeting here in June.

SBC Today, a Baptist-focused news website, carried the announcement on Wednesday. Youth pastor Fred "Chip" Luter III separately confirmed Luter's announcement to his church on Sunday.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Police are investigating racist e-mails sent to Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, after he spoke out against gay marriage.

North Yorkshire Police confirmed they are treating e-mails sent to the Ugandan-born Archbishop as potential hate crimes....

A police spokesman said: “We can confirm that a complaint has been received from the office of Archbishop John Sentamu, following the receipt of e-mails containing racially offensive statements. The e-mails are being investigated as a hate crime.”

Read it all (subscription required).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Before the American Revolution, when South Carolina and Eastern Georgia were still Colonies subject to the king and Church of England, Catholics were not much welcomed, and black Catholics were the most unusual of aberrations.

“(A)ll Christians which now are, or hereafter may be, in the province (Papists only excepted), shall enjoy the full, free, and undisturbed liberty of their consciences,” states a colonial act of 1696-97.

But Catholicism could not be shut out, and a minority of blacks soon embraced it.

Read it all from the Faith and Values section of the local paper.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * South Carolina

At 87, the Rev. C.T. Vivian can still recall the moment, decades after the height of the civil rights movement.

As he stood to conclude a meeting in his Atlanta home, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. joined his activist colleagues in song, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“There is a balm in Gilead,” they sang, “to make the wounded whole.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

For teachers, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday comes with some heavy challenges. One reporter sat down with a group of teachers, who talked about keeping the lesson fresh — and whether white teachers are prepared to teach about civil rights.

Listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • History • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Patrick Kennedy, 44, served eight terms in Congress, ending his political career last January. He heads "The Next Frontier," a campaign to raise money for brain-disorder research.

"I guess the phrase, 'We all stand on the shoulders of giants' applies to me especially," he said, referring to his father.

He stressed the importance of Harvey Gantt, for whom the award is named. Gantt is a Burke High School graduate who became the first black student at Clemson University, after a lengthy legal battle that went to the Supreme Court. After being repeatedly ignored when he asked for information on the engineering program, he finally sued the school.

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * South Carolina

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations

Check it out--a series of videos under five different headings.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

America's political process is locked in a contentious stalemate that reflects deep, race-based divisions.

Some pessimistic Americans believe that aptly describes the United States of 2012. Yet it's a far more fitting assessment of the United States of 1962.

And thanks to an extraordinary, Georgia-born preacher, we're a far more united -- and much fairer -- nation today than when his epic life was cut brutally short in 1968.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * South Carolina

Because many misunderstand the origin of King's theology in the black church, they also misunderstand his relation to black theology. Many assume that black theology and Martin Luther King, Jr. have completely different theological and political perspectives. Persons who hold this viewpoint often explain the difference by saying that King was concerned primarily with love, non-violence, and the reconciliation between blacks and whites. But black theology, in contrast to King, seldom mentions love or reconciliation between blacks and whites and explicitly rejects non-violence with its endorsement of Malcolm X's contention that blacks should achieve their freedom "by any means necessary." Some claim that black theology is a separatist and an extremist interpretation of the Christian faith. But King was an integrationist and a moderate who believed that whites can and should be redeemed.

During a decade of writing and teaching Black Theology, the most frequent question that has been addressed to me, publically and privately, by blacks and especially whites, has been: "How do you reconcile the separatist and violent orientation of black theology with Martin Luther King's emphasis on integration, love, and non-violence?" I have always found it difficult to respond to this question because those who ask it seem unaware of the interrelations between King, black theology, and the black church.

While it is not my primary intention to compare King and black theology, I do hope that an explication of his theology in the context of the black church will show, for those interested in a comparison, that black theology and King are not nearly as far apart as some persons might be inclined to think.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Theology

In America’s poorest ghettos, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s portrait is one of the most popular subjects of public art. These images, which I have been documenting since 1977, regularly appear on the walls of the liquor stores, auto-repair shops, fast-food restaurants, mom-and-pop stores and public housing projects of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and many other cities across the country. The majority are the work of amateur artists. Though Dr. King is usually front and center, he is often accompanied by other inspirational figures: Nelson Mandela, John Paul II, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Pancho Villa. He is often accompanied by his famous phrase, “I have a dream” – a reminder that in many of the communities where these murals exist, the gulf between hope and reality remains far too wide. -- Camilo José Vergara

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Art • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Americans err if we believe that it's only a black responsibility to right the social wrongs of racial inequality. It's a white responsibility, too — and a Christian responsibility. Why Christians? It's not that other faiths can't do their part as well, but Christians — by sheer number and religious tradition — could be our best hope.

History shows that the teachings of Christianity hold an undeniable power to inspire positive social movements and call Americans to conscience, as they did during King's time. Many Christians will be the first to tell you they should be held to a higher standard — because their religion insists on it.

Let's improve educational and economic opportunities for African-Americans. Let's acknowledge and root out the racism that mocks the American ideal. Let's reject the harmful message of the prosperity gospel and reclaim the best of the nation's black church tradition, with Christians — white as well as black — leading the charge for the dispossessed.

As the distinguished columnist Roger Cohen recently reminded, it is on the matter of race where one finds the greatest gulf between American behavior and American ideals. Will history find the same gap between Christian behavior and Christian ideals?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The full text is always very powerful to read, but I find listening to it to have still more impact. Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

God of our forebears and our God, who has summoned women and men throughout the ages to be thy witnesses and sometimes martyrs for thee, we bow before thee this day in remembrance and thanksgiving for the life and legacy of thy servant, witness and martyr, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We thank thee for his time among us, for his words and for his deeds, and for the quality of his living witness which eases the pain of recalling the brevity of his years. We rejoice in his example of obedient faith and the scenes and stations of his life which inform and enrich our own faith journeys. And we beseech thee this day for the strength, steadfastness and courage not only to remember but also to obey.

We remember the footsteps of Dr. King: walking everywhere in Montgomery, Alabama, during the bus boycott; sidestepping snarling dogs, swinging billy clubs, and torrential fire hoses in Birmingham; charting a King's highway in the desert wastelands of bigotry and hatred from Selma to Montgomery, from Memphis to Jackson, from Chicago to Cicero; walking ever and always where Jesus walked among the lonely and the lost; the downtrodden and the outcast; those denied their dignity and robbed of their rights. Lord, guide and enable us to follow his footsteps that we too may be found in those places of danger, division, discord and sorrow where love is so desperately needed but so painfully absent. Let us hear and feel anew the words of the old freedom song beckoning us to faith commitment in community with our fellow disciples of Jesus Christ, saying, "Walk together children, and don't get weary."

We remember the gentle, patient courage of Dr. King, as he made the teachings of Jesus the literal rule for loving: refusing the temptation to render an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth but rendering instead good for evil; nonviolently offering the other cheek to those who, blinded by hate, taunted and loving those who chose to be his enemies and persecutors; following his Lord in showing the greatest love of all by laying down his life for others. Lord, give us the courage to live by what we say we believe and to accept the teachings of Christ as codes of conduct rather than mere words of inspiration.

We remember the restless and unrelenting commitment of Dr. King, as he refused to barter justice or compromise thy Word; insisting that the demand for justice, freedom and human dignity applies to all thy children in Southeast Asia as well as the South Bronx, and throughout the two-thirds of thy creation where injustice and oppression preserve the privilege of the other third. Lord, save us from the temptation to be satisfied with partial fulfillment and limited expression of thy truth. Help us both to love our neighbors and also to see the whole world as our neighborhood.

O God, fashion and mold our memories into a guiding vision for active discipleship, so that we may not only long and yearn for thy coming kingdom but may also recognize its arrival and presence in the risen Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, in whose blessed name we pray. Amen.

-- The Reverend Dr. Randolph Nugent
General Secretary, Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Anglican Church head Rowan Williams on Saturday praised pioneer missionaries to Malawi for ending the slave trade, at a service to mark their arrival in the country 150 years ago.

"The missionaries devoted their lives to liberation and challenged the evil of slavery," Williams said at Magomero, northeast of Blantyre, at a colourful ceremony attended by President Bingu wa Mutharika and hundreds of worshippers.

The slave trade "degraded everyone and everything it touched," the Archbishop of Canterbury said, adding, "The Church has done a great job in Africa."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Provinces • Church of Central Africa • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Malawi

The execution of Troy Davis last night in Georgia has reinvigorated public debate over the death penalty. Davis was convicted in the 1989 murder of Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail. The execution made headlines because there were questions raised about the evidence in the case, including recantations by seven of the nine witnesses against Davis.

The execution was condemned by Pope Benedict XVI, former president Jimmy Carter, and governments around the globe. In the U.S., most Christians support the use of the death penalty to punish murders. Unlike Catholics and mainline Protestants, evangelicals support for capital punishment remains high even among those who say their views are shaped most by their religious beliefs.

Public opinion on the death penalty has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. According to polls by Gallup, support for the death penalty was highest in the late 1980's and early 1990's. At that time, 80 percent of Americans said they favored executing murderers. Since then, support has dropped to 64 percent.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Capital Punishment • History • Law & Legal Issues • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

On September 24, 2011, from 9:00 am until 4:30 pm, Trinity Episcopal Church in Natchez, Mississippi will host a full day of free lectures entitled “No More Silence at Second Creek: Slave Resistance and the Onset of the Civil War.”

This symposium, co-sponsored by The Diocese of Mississippi, helps commemorate the 150th anniversary of a violent and little understood local episode: the planning of a slave uprising on the Second Creek plantations southeast of Natchez, and the vigilante trial and hangings of 40 enslaved people that followed.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture

Watch it all.

Update: I see Time has an interesting article on this over here.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Race/Race Relations • Women

An earthquake and a hurricane may have interrupted plans to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the nation’s capital but religious leaders and civil rights veterans on Saturday (Aug. 27) said King’s legacy is unshakable. The interfaith service was the last official event to mark the dedication of the new King memorial on the National Mall after Hurricane Irene caused officials to postpone Sunday’s official dedication.

“If Martin Luther King was anything else, he was an obedient servant of the Lord,” said King’s daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, who was 5 when her father became a modern-day martyr in the fight for civil rights.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

[FRED] DE SAM LAZARO: This unveiling comes at a time of serious political polarization in this country. Do you think that the monument has the potential any way to provide some healing in that divide?

[THE REVEREND DR. ROBERT] FRANKLIN: I believe so, and I certainly hope so. Dr. King was a man of healing and reconciliation even in the context of calling for justice. American politics is broken today, and Dr. King’s message, his life, his values and virtues can offer us a strategy for healing what is broken. It means political opponents must never dehumanize each other. They must speak truth to power, but they must also be willing to negotiate as well as confront, and I think the King memorial will be an inspiration and a reminder that that reconciliation is possible in America.

Read or watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Perry’s style as a litigator and advocate was resolute, dignified, strategic — and inexhaustible. As a young black lawyer facing all-white juries and judges, he learned to accept defeat at the trial level while building a record to support his case when appealed to higher courts, where he often won and established significant precedents. Patience and determination were key elements in his approach, often in contrast to lawyers who preferred a louder, bolder approach.

“In life you come to realize that there are some things that you can change and some that you cannot change, at least not immediately; and one of them happens to be racial attitudes,” Perry said in an interview with Columbia College history professor Robert Moore for a 2004 article.

In a conversation with The State last month, Perry acknowledged the phrase “at least not immediately” was key to his thinking. The goal always, he said, was “insist upon the enforcement of rights.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was abolitionist propaganda, but it was also a brilliant novel that intertwined the stories of a host of memorable characters: the long-suffering slave Uncle Tom, the sadistic overseer Simon Legree, the defiant fugitive George Harris, the antic slave girl Topsy, the conscience-stricken slave owner Augustine St. Clare, and a teeming cast of abolitionists, Southerners and African-Americans. By presenting an array of emotive story lines—e.g., the bonding of Uncle Tom with St. Clare's saintly daughter Eva, Tom's fatal persecution at a Louisiana plantation, and the dramatic flight of the Harris family to freedom in the North—the author Harriet Beecher Stowe rendered American slavery as a soul-destroying system of grinding injustice and, for the first time in American literature, depicted slaves as complex, heroic and emotionally nuanced individuals.

The novel shocked Americans North and South not just with its heart-rending portrayal of slavery's cruelty but with its attention to such subversive themes as interracial sex, cross-racial friendship and black rage. "Wherever it goes, prejudice is disarmed, opposition is removed, and the hearts of all are touched with a new and strange feeling, to which they before were strangers," declared an editorialist in Washington's National Era newspaper.

In the first year after its release in 1852, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" sold 310,000 copies in the United States, triple the number of its nearest rivals; it sold one million copies in Britain alone.

Read it all (especially appropriate in light of the previous blog entry--KSH).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Gracious God, we offer thanks for the witness of Harriett Beecher Stowe, whose fiction inspired thousands with compassion for the shame and sufferings of enslaved peoples, and who enriched her writings with the cadences of The Book of Common Prayer. Help us, like her, to strive for thy justice, that our eyes may see the glory of thy Son, Jesus Christ, when he comes to reign with thee and the Holy Spirit in reconciliation and peace, one God, now and always. Amen.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • History • Poetry & Literature • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

While unemployment among the general population is about 9.1 percent, it's at 16.2 percent African Americans, and a bit higher still for African American males.

CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports that, historically, the unemployment rate for African Americans has always been higher than the national average. However, now it's at Depression-era levels. The most recent figures show African American joblessness at 16.2 percent. For black males, it's at 17.5 percent; And for black teens, it's nearly 41 percent.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

Charleston, S.C.--After the shish kebab and blueberry pie, as dusk calmed the Lowcountry heat, the dinner guests gathered around Park Dougherty’s table prepared to sing. They clapped hands in one rhythm, beat their feet against the floorboards in another, and lifted their voices into a song that had been passed down to them through generations and in defiance of a rigid racial divide.

“Een muh time ob dyin’,” Mr. Dougherty began, “Uh don wan nobody fuh moan.” These were the words, in Gullah dialect, to a spiritual about the wish to die easily and to be taken into heaven by Jesus. Mr. Dougherty’s mother had first heard the song as a teenager in the 1930s, and she requested it for her own funeral six decades later.

Now, on this evening in June 2011, the financial adviser and social worker and music professor and Navy officer, and the other half-dozen people joining in harmony from their chairs, were engaging in a profound act of cultural conservation. In a city built on the slave trade, in the state where the Civil War started, these white men and women were the curators of an African-American religious and musical treasure.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Music • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * South Carolina

It was last Saturday, and we were sitting with about 300 other Mormons, including dozens of children, at the annual picnic of the Genesis Group, a social organization for black Mormons and their friends. Some were Latino or American Indian, and nearly half were white, the parents and siblings of adopted black children. It was the most racially integrated church event I had ever attended.

Having been introduced to Mormonism by kindly white neighbors in his hometown of Colorado Springs, the teenage Darius [Gray] read his way through much of the scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He had no idea about the racist church policy. His newfound faith was badly shaken.

“I went home and prayed,” Mr. Gray said. “And I received a personal revelation, an inspiration from God: ‘This is the restored Gospel, and you are to join.’ So the next day, I entered into the waters of baptism. Then the next day I went to church as a member for the first time.” And a little girl addressed him using a certain racial epithet. That was a first, too.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Mormons

Death rates for black Americans surpass those of Americans overall for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV and homicide, the CDC reports.

"Educationally, we're doing better. Economically, we're doing better, so why is it that this gap will not go away?" asks Michelle Gourdine, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and author of the newly released Reclaiming Our Health: A Guide to African American Wellness.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The Nashville VA Cemetery is home to a unique monument where long forgotten history is now being honored. The cemetery has been home to war monuments for decades, but the latest statue, erected to honor the nearly 2,000 U.S. Colored Troops from the Civil War who are buried there, is unlike any other in the country.

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations

Each of the 90 federal historic sites in the United States has its appeal. But for all their cultural value, the sites don’t change much. A studious tour given by a park ranger. A plaque to read. Another note in a travel journal.

But this week, one of the sites held the sort of electric charge usually not found among dusty period chairs and explanatory dioramas.

Inside the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church — the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was both baptized and eulogized — a new, meticulous renovation underscored the weight of one of the most significant social movements in modern America.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists

Check out all 21 shots.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * South Carolina

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations

FFG: What side did the bishops take? How did the Vatican figure in?

Barnes: The archbishop of New York, “Dagger” John Hughes, who built St. Patrick’s Cathedral, was a very important figure in the northern war effort. He supported the Union. Abraham Lincoln consulted him a number of times during the war. And he was instrumental in calming New York after the draft riots.

On the southern side, there was the bishop of Charleston, S.C., Patrick Neeson Lynch. He was born in Ireland and emigrated to the United States as a young man and was ordained a priest in Charleston and ultimately became the bishop. He was a quite unapologetic Confederate, a strong supporter of the confederacy. In fact, the day Fort Sumter fell, he presided over a high Mass of thanksgiving in the cathedral. He, in a kind of mirror image of the way Lincoln treated Hughes, was quite influential in his own way in the Confederacy....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

But even putting political hyperbole aside, the Civil War does still very much inform the American experience. The emancipation of blacks is not quite resolved and the disagreements between Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln throw their long shadows across issues like health-care reform and entitlements. Moreover, the tea party, promoting small government, has risen to challenge the post-Civil War view of government as a superior, benevolent force of good.

After the Civil War, "the older Jeffersonian tradition was suppressed by the new Lincolnian vision of a unitary nationalist regime, and it was never able to digest the Jeffersonian tradition," says Donald Livingston, a philosophy professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "But it's still there, suppressed, in the memory of Americans. What's interesting about the South is that it held onto the Jeffersonian tradition longer – which is why you can't understand America today without seeing this deep conflict between these two groups."

Indeed, 56 percent of Americans, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, believe the Civil War remains relevant. That's partly because of its overarching themes, but also because it remains a deeply personal conflict for many Americans: One out of 17 Americans – or about 18 million – can claim a direct line to someone who fought in the war. "It really wasn't that long ago," says Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, a Southern nationalist group in Killen, Ala.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

More than once during the Civil War, newspapers reported a strange phenomenon. From only a few miles away, a battle sometimes made no sound — despite the flash and smoke of cannon and the fact that more distant observers could hear it clearly.

These eerie silences were called “acoustic shadows.”

Tuesday, the 150th anniversary of the first engagement of the Civil War, the Confederacy’s attack on Fort Sumter, we ask again whether in our supposedly post-racial, globalized, 21st-century world those now seemingly distant battles of the mid-19th century still have any relevance. But it is clear that the further we get from those four horrible years in our national existence — when, paradoxically, in order to become one we tore ourselves in two — the more central and defining that war becomes.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

On April 12, 1861, the first shots of the Civil War rang out in South Carolina.

Confederate forces, firing on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, helped launch a four-year war that would kill more than 620,000 soldiers.

It's been nearly 150 years since the war began. But even now, the city of Charleston is still figuring out how to talk about the war and commemorate the anniversary.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * South Carolina

Almighty God, who by the hand of Moses thy servant didst lead thy people out of slavery, and didst make them free at last: Grant that thy Church, following the example of thy prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of thy love, and may strive to secure for all thy children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The Mt. Elgon sub-region district local governments in partnership with Diocesan bishops of eastern Uganda have sealed discussions intended to start an African Anglican University (AAU)a living memorial to African martyrdom.

The proposed university will be established at the Bishop Usher Wilson Theological College, Buwalasi in Sironko.

It is to be a living memory of particularly Bishop Jonan Luwum and Dr. Martin Luther King Junior and a South African martyr, Manche Masemola.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Education • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Slavery and its heritage are everywhere here. Charleston was one of the main colonial ports of the 18th century, dealing in rice, indigo and slaves. In 1860 South Carolina held as many slaves as Georgia and Virginia, which were at least twice its size. The genteel grace and European travels of its wealthy citizens were made possible by the enslavement of about half the population.

So on a recent visit, I searched for a public display of an understanding of that American past and its legacy. After all, is there any more vexed aspect of this country’s history than its embrace and tolerance of slavery? And is there any aspect of its past that has been less well served in museums, exhibitions and memorials?...

Of course, in the North slavery can seem like a distant abstraction, creating its own problems. But in Charleston all abstractions are gone. The strange thing is how long it has taken to see the substance, and how much more is yet to be shown. Several directors of the region’s historical plantations and homes, which offer tours of these once-prosperous estates, told me that until the 1990s, slavery’s role was generally met with silence.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * South Carolina

For those of you with access to HBO, Laurence Fishburne's one man show (it is based on a play) entitled Thurgood [for Thurgood Marshall whom Fishburne portrays] is simply splendid--KSH.

You may find information on this here.

Filed under: * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Movies & Television • Race/Race Relations

For close to two years, Ms. [Angela] Sims has traversed the country in search of such memories, the recollections of African-American elders about lynching. From New Jersey to California, through Alabama and Oklahoma, she has recorded nearly 85 men and women speaking on a subject most had been determined to avoid, a degradation never to be reawakened.

Ms. Sims has sought to elicit and so defang the sense of shame. As an ordained Baptist minister and a professor of ethics and black church studies at the St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo., she is gathering the accounts to preserve the historical record and to grasp the faith that allowed lynching’s witnesses and survivors to persevere.

“I’m listening for what salvation and redemption might look like,” said Ms. Sims, 54, during a break between interviews. “I’m listening for how grace might play out and for notions of forgiveness.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Zion Baptist Church on Sunday was loaded and hot, nearly every pew full.

This by itself is not unusual for a Sunday, but seeing white and black worshippers sitting side by side was a little different.

"(First Baptist Church) Pastor (Tom) Bayes and I had talked about how Sunday mornings were one of the most segregated times in America," said Pastor Samuel Duren of Zion Baptist. "We don't feel like that has to be that way, and so we decided to join the worship services."

Zion Baptist, a predominantly black church, and First Baptist, a predominantly white church, are separated by only a few blocks, but the two had never really come together until recently.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists

Despite severe losses during the recession, the majority of African Americans see the economy improving and are confident that their financial prospects will improve soon.

That optimism, shared to a lesser degree by Hispanics, stands in stark contrast to the deeper pessimism expressed by a majority of whites. In general, whites are more satisfied with their personal financial situations but also more sour about the nation's economic prospects.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

Whereas [Martin Luther] King's goals were primarily about changing laws and influencing wider public opinion, these current goals are primarily about individual responsibility.

Unfortunately, that distinction seems to have been missed by the recently revived Conference of National Black Churches. Relaunched last month after a few dormant years, the CNBC comprises nine of the largest black denominations, made up of as many as 30 million individuals and more than 50,000 congregations. Led by the Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson, the conference says that it speaks with a "unified voice" on health, education, public policy, social justice and economic empowerment.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Laity • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the election of Gov. Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indian parents, leaves him optimistic, but to move forward the state needs to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Chief among the mistakes, Randolph said, is the mistreatment of people and the celebration of the Confederacy. Randolph likened the festive events in Charleston to mark the signing of the Ordinance of Secession in December to a "9/11 party" or a celebration of the Wounded Knee massacre in which 300 Sioux Indians were killed by U.S. troops in 1890, or a happy commemoration of the atomic bombings on Japan or one for "Hitler's hostility."

"There is never a time ... (when) we should be practicing and bragging about disrespect," he said.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * South Carolina

A coalition of Christian churches answered the Rev. Martin Luther King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” conceding that Americans have often have chosen to be comfortable rather than “prophetic” on racism.

Leaders of Christian Churches Together in the USA, meeting in Birmingham, Ala., said they were “chastened by the unfinished nature” of overcoming racism after visiting Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where a bomb killed four young black girls in 1963.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

The history of black Americans since Emancipation is being revisited by a generation of historians who have found in it a touching and tragic story of aspirations and efforts for education, justice and equality, most of them crushed by overwhelming force and political power. But the most important figure in this reconsideration was not a historian; it was a preacher, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. King, celebrated on this day two days after his birthday, came to prominence in the mid-20th century as the foremost figure in what became a new Reconstruction. Part of it was a national drama that included working people boycotting the buses in Montgomery, Ala., because a dignified and determined woman named Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Then there were the efforts, in different places and by different people, to take a seat at a lunch counter, ride an interstate bus, stay in a motel, register to vote. By the time of Dr. King's death, little more than a dozen years after the bus boycott, the federal government had legislated open accommodations and protection for the voting rights of all Americans. Racial prejudice, openly expressed, was gradually becoming unacceptable in this country.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations

In America’s poorest ghettos, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s portrait is one of the most popular subjects of public art. These images, which I have been documenting since 1977, regularly appear on the walls of the liquor stores, auto-repair shops, fast-food restaurants, mom-and-pop stores and public housing projects of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and many other cities across the country. The majority are the work of amateur artists. Though Dr. King is usually front and center, he is often accompanied by other inspirational figures: Nelson Mandela, John Paul II, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Pancho Villa. He is often accompanied by his famous phrase, “I have a dream” – a reminder that in many of the communities where these murals exist, the gulf between hope and reality remains far too wide. -- Camilo José Vergara

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Art • History • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Prison/Prison Ministry • Race/Race Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

I find it always worthwhile--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

God, in whose service alone is perfect freedom: We offer thanks for thy prophets WilliamLloyd Garrison and Maria Stewart, who testified that we are made not by the color of our skin but by the principle formed in our soul. Fill us, like them, with the hope and determination to break every chain of enslavement, that bondage and ignorance may melt like wax before flames, and we may build that community of justice and love which is founded on Jesus Christ our cornerstone; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations

A drive through Atlanta's older "intown" residential areas quickly bears out new Census findings: That segregation by race in the US is fading in many, though far from all, American neighborhoods.

Atlanta is one of several predominantly Southern and Western cities that showed a noticeable integration trend over the last five years as both middle-class blacks and whites moved into each other's neighborhoods, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey of 10 million Americans, released Tuesday. The ACS is the largest demographic survey ever done in the United States.

The shift is part of a "complicated story with lots of nuances" that includes changes in social attitudes, the emergence of new housing and economic opportunity, and an age gap that shows young America is dramatically more diverse – and open to diversity – than older generations, says Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Census/Census Data • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Mary E. Gilbert often drove right by the large, intimidating church buildings in her community, never stopping to go inside because she feared she would not be accepted or welcomed.

God would invite her in, if He was there, but would the all-white congregation be as hospitable? The thought kept her away.

The 26-year-old Jackson State University student recently shared her feelings with a diverse congregation at Central United Methodist Church.

Sunday Morning Segregation: How much has changed since the days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the latest topic of The Medgar Evers/Ella Baker Civil Rights Lecture Series.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Methodist

Even many South Carolinians barely remember the night when two unarmed black college students and a high school senior were killed, and 28 others injured, after state troopers opened fire at a civil-rights demonstration on Feb. 8, 1968. It was the first incident of its kind on an American campus, but the news was swamped by the Tet Offensive a week earlier and the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. two months later.

There was no heavy news coverage like the Jackson State killings in Mississippi received in 1970, no unforgettable photograph like the image that burned the Kent State shootings into the American consciousness that same year.

Among those unaware of the incident, in spite of growing up two miles from where it happened at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, was Calhoun Cornwell, a budding student playwright there. But he was gripped by classroom lectures on the ’68 shootings that had become known as the Orangeburg Massacre, and in 2009, at the urging of classmates, he wrote a play about the event.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Theatre/Drama/Plays • * South Carolina

Recent days have brought multiple allegations of sexual abuse against Atlanta megachurch Bishop Eddie Long. It would be premature to judge the truth of these allegations, but it is not too soon to weigh in on his opulent lifestyle. His fancy cars, expensive clothing and vast estate, all funded on a multimillion-dollar salary, are part of his act—pushing the so-called prosperity gospel on mostly African-Americans. Whatever Mr. Long has done in his personal life, his brand of theology has contributed to a troubling trend among black churches in America.

The prosperity gospel—the idea that God guarantees truly faithful believers physical health and financial wealth—is not new. But cable and satellite television broadcasting have turned prosperity preachers into celebrities that have followings similar to musicians and movies stars. A movement and a theology that once seemed like an aberration among black churches now appears to be mainstream....

Teaching that desire for more material possessions is a sign of one's religious piety is simply offering a justification for crass consumerism. Prosperity theology elevates greed to a virtue instead of leaving it as one of the seven deadly sins.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Nobody keeps track of how many black Orthodox Jews are in New York or across the nation, and surely it is a tiny fraction of both populations. Indeed, even the number of black Jews over all is elusive, though a 2005 book about Jewish diversity, “In Every Tongue,” cited studies suggesting that some 435,000 American Jews, or 7 percent, were black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian.

“Everyone agrees that the numbers have grown, and they should be noticed,” said Jonathan D. Sarna of Brandeis University, a pre-eminent historian of American Jewry. “Once, there was a sense that ‘so-and-so looked Jewish.’ Today, because of conversion and intermarriage and patrilineal descent, that’s less and less true. The average synagogue looks more like America.

“Even in an Orthodox synagogue, there’s likely to be a few people who look different,” Professor Sarna said, “and everybody assumes that will grow.”

Through the Internet, younger black Orthodox Jews are coming together in ways they never could before.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Mr. Fisher, who is African-American, was arrested in upstate New York and returned to Oklahoma, where he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He faced execution if convicted, a prospect that, records show, his well-respected lawyer did little to avoid.

The lawyer, E. Melvin Porter, a civil rights advocate and the first African-American elected to the Oklahoma State Senate, later said that at the time he considered homosexuals to be “among the worst people in the world,” and Mr. Fisher to be a “very hostile client.”

Mr. Porter was shockingly ill-prepared for trial — “unwilling or unable to reveal evident holes in the state’s case,” a federal appellate court later noted, yet “remarkably successful in undermining his own client’s testimony.” He exhibited “actual doubt and hostility” about his client’s defense, the court said, and failed to present a closing argument, even though the state’s case “was hardly overwhelming.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Poverty • Prison/Prison Ministry • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

This is a must-listen-to (reading it really won't work here, it will ruin the real impact in this case). I caught it in the car by accident--it is unspeakably powerful. Please be advised that the contents would not be appropriate for some blog participants--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Violence • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

It is a familiar lament of single African-American women: where are the “good” black men to marry?

A new study shows that more and more black men are marrying women of other races. In fact, more than 1 in 5 black men who wed (22 percent) married a nonblack woman in 2008. This compares with about 9 percent of black women, and represents a significant increase for black men — from 15.7 percent in 2000 and 7.9 percent in 1980.

Sociologists said the rate of black men marrying women of other races further reduces the already-shrunken pool of potential partners for black women seeking a black husband.

“When you add in the prison population,” said Prof. Steven Ruggles, director of the Minnesota Population Center, “it pretty well explains the extraordinarily low marriage rates of black women.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Race/Race Relations

Not so long ago, Memphis, a city where a majority of the residents are black, was a symbol of a South where racial history no longer tightly constrained the choices of a rising black working and middle class. Now this city epitomizes something more grim: How rising unemployment and growing foreclosures in the recession have combined to destroy black wealth and income and erase two decades of slow progress.

The median income of black homeowners in Memphis rose steadily until five or six years ago. Now it has receded to a level below that of 1990 — and roughly half that of white Memphis homeowners, according to an analysis conducted by Queens College Sociology Department for The New York Times.

Black middle-class neighborhoods are hollowed out, with prices plummeting and homes standing vacant in places like Orange Mound, White Haven and Cordova. As job losses mount — black unemployment here, mirroring national trends, has risen to 16.9 percent from 9 percent two years ago; it stands at 5.3 percent for whites — many blacks speak of draining savings and retirement accounts in an effort to hold onto their homes. The overall local foreclosure rate is roughly twice the national average.

The repercussions will be long-lasting, in Memphis and nationwide. The most acute economic divide in America remains the steadily widening gap between the wealth of black and white families, according to a recent study by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University. For every dollar of wealth owned by a white family, a black or Latino family owns just 16 cents, according to a recent Federal Reserve study.

A long but important article--take the time to read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • City Government

Charleston was in ruins.

The peninsula was nearly deserted, the fine houses empty, the streets littered with the debris of fighting and the ash of fires that had burned out weeks before. The Southern gentility was long gone, their cause lost.

In the weeks after the Civil War ended, it was, some said, "a city of the dead."

On a Monday morning that spring, nearly 10,000 former slaves marched onto the grounds of the old Washington Race Course, where wealthy Charleston planters and socialites had gathered in old times. During the final year of the war, the track had been turned into a prison camp. Hundreds of Union soldiers died there.

For two weeks in April, former slaves had worked to bury the soldiers. Now they would give them a proper funeral.

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations • * South Carolina

Standing before a room full of fellow African-Americans, Jamila Bey took a deep breath and announced she's come out of the closet.

Her soul-bearing declaration is nearly taboo, she says.

"It's the A-word," said Bey, 33, feigning a whisper. "You commit social suicide as a black person when you say you're an atheist."

Bey and other black atheists, agnostics and secularists are struggling to openly affirm their secular viewpoints in a community that's historically heralded as one of America's most religious.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Atheism

In the first decade of the American nation, a former slave turned itinerant minister by the name of Richard Allen found himself preaching to a growing number of blacks in Philadelphia. He came to both a religious and organizational revelation. “I saw the necessity,” he later wrote, “of erecting a place of worship for the colored people.”

Allen’s inspiration ultimately took the forms of Bethel African Church, founded in 1794, and the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, established in 1799. As much as it can be dated to anything, the emergence of a formal African-American Christianity can be dated to Allen’s twin creations.

Over more than two centuries since then, the Black Church has become a proper noun, a fixture, a seeming monolith in American society. Its presence is as prevalent as film clips of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering the “I Have a Dream” speech and contestants on “American Idol” indulging in the gospel style of melisma.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture

[GREG] COLLARD: It's not just a Charlotte problem. U.S. Census figures show almost two-thirds of African-American kids don't have a biological father living at home, and that can lead to other issues. A Justice Department report found the incarceration rate for black men in 2008 was six-and-a-half times that of white men.

Mr. WARREN BROWN (Bishop): We're not just going to visit you in prison, we're going to try to keep you out of prison.

COLLARD: That's Bishop Warren Brown speaking this month in Columbia, South Carolina, at what was billed The Great Gathering. Almost 7,000 people attended a meeting of the major black Methodist denominations: the AME, AME Zion and CME.

Mr. BROWN: We recognize that oftentimes we feel that we will deal with our young black men in the eighth or tenth grade. That's too late. We've got to work with them out of kindergarten.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • Pastoral Care • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

In the era of apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu railed against the injustice and inhumanity of South Africa's government, and his passionate advocacy helped make the change that came to that country in the 1990s.

Now 78, in a magenta habit with a crucifix around his neck, he is the picture of a holy man. But looking back on his boyhood in one of South Africa's black townships, Tutu remembers an urchin with a fondness for marbles and comic books. And even in church, "we had fun," the archbishop tells NPR's Renee Montagne.

The memories linger even now. There's joy in Tutu's voice as he recalls a song he sang as a child: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" the verse asked.

"It was a fantastic thing to have much, much later," Tutu says — "to remember, 'Yes, if God be for us in our struggle against injustice and oppression, who can be against us?' "

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of South Africa • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theology: Scripture

It was the first time the three biggest black Methodist denominations convened in 45 years, and they gathered with a transcendent purpose in mind: to address the plight of the black male, who is disproportionately unemployed and incarcerated in the United States.

The "Great Gathering," a three-day convention held in Columbia last week (despite a continuing NAACP boycott of South Carolina), drew at least 2,000 members of the African Episcopal Methodist Church, African Episcopal Methodist Zion Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

Organized by the Rev. Staccato Powell, pastor of Grace Church in Raleigh, the event featured speeches by Children's Defense Fund founder and President Marian Wright Edelman and social critic Cornel West.

Edelman said the cradle-to-prison pipeline in which so many black men get caught is sufficient reason to start a new civil rights movement.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Men • Race/Race Relations • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • * South Carolina

What is notable about both Plessy and Roe, is that the majority in each found it necessary to ignore the obvious to rule the way they did. At best, they bought into a lie. And sadly, whatever the motivations of individual judges, the black community targeted by Plessy, has also been affected disproportionately by Roe.

The majority's decision in Roe could not have had a good outcome under any circumstances, but the current controversy is yet another example of how poorly adjudicated decisions tend to have unintended -- and often terrible -- consequences beyond those readily realized.

Of course, in the 1950s, many legal experts, law professors and politicians insisted that the segregation allowed by Plessy was "settled law." Today, "experts" and politicians say the same about the abortion legacy of Roe.

But Plessy was unhinged from reality, and the courage of brave men and women such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks unsettled this "settled law" and earned the respect of the judgment of history.

Roe too is unhinged from the truth that everyone knows. Needed are more brave men and women willing to stand up and demand that a nation's law on abortion will never be settled until it is brought into conformity with the truth.

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Race/Race Relations • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

(Please note the above headline is theirs and not the way I would choose to word it--KSH).

For years the largely white staff of Georgia Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, tried to tackle the disproportionately high number of black women who undergo abortions. But, staff members said, they found it difficult to make inroads with black audiences.

So in 2009, the group took money that it normally used for advertising a pregnancy hot line and hired a black woman, Catherine Davis, to be its minority outreach coordinator.

Ms. Davis traveled to black churches and colleges around the state, delivering the message that abortion is the primary tool in a decades-old conspiracy to kill off blacks.

The idea resonated, said Nancy Smith, the executive director.

“We were shocked when we spent less money and had more phone calls” to the hot line, Ms. Smith said.

Read it all (from the front page of yesterday's New York Times).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology