President Obama and Black Religious Leaders Meet
President Obama and Black Religious Leaders Meet
On Tuesday 20 African-American religious leaders met with President Obama. There had been claims that the President was ignoring Black religious leaders and the plight of the African-American community. Whether this claim is true or not, it is clear to me that the black church and community will continue to be ignored or at least not a priority of any administration until we are better organized. Forty years post-civil rights the Black church has neglected to build the proper institutions that would demand greater accountability from our government.
There are currently over 20 million Black people attending approximately 65,000 churches in the United States. These churches deposit billions of dollars in the bank every year. Yet the church seems to lack a cohesive local, national, or international vision for the empowerment of African ancestral people. Our vision must go beyond seminars and annual conferences. No MegaFest or any other major conference should leave our community without tithing in that community or contributing to a national black agenda.
Dr. R Drew Smith, director of the Public Influences of African American Churches Project at Morehouse, points out that Black church activism is centered on electoral activity. Dr. Smith in his book entitled "Long March Ahead" defines this relationship to the political process as a passive alliance. "Passive alliances are where voters entrust the governing process to persons they elect while seeking no further direct input into the process until the next election; while active alliances are defined as church facilitation of election-related activities, direct political contacts and interactions with government officials, and lobbying-related collaborations." Dr. Smith recommends "at the very least, it is important that each of the historically Black denominations have a person designated to represent their denomination's public policy concerns on Capitol Hill and preferably, at the state and local levels as well."
Every election cycle we watch as politicians parade in and out of the Black church looking for our support. They offer up hope and CHANGE, and we never see them again until election time. If we are going to move beyond rhetoric and toward revolutionary change we must build institutions that address the needs of our people. We must build national think tanks, research & public policy institutes, lobbies, and political action committees.
Developing institutions and relevant ministries will move us from being reactionary to proactive. Minister Farrakhan, Rev. Willie Wilson and other leadership from the Millions More Movement have laid out the prototype for such ministries. Every major Black denomination should look into incorporating these ministries or building coalitions with other denominations.
Ministries of the Millions More Movement are:
Ministry of Health and Human Service
Ministry of Agriculture
Ministry of Defense
Ministry of Art and Culture
Ministry of Trade and Commerce
Ministry of Education
Ministry of Information
Ministry of Spiritual and Moral Development
Ministry of Science and Technology
Having expectations for the President to respond to Black America is fair. Every ethnic group or special interest group lobbies on behalf of its constituents. La Raza is clear about its mission and purpose. So is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobby with over 100,000 members. While President Obama was running for president he promised to implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel. It's important to remember that Israel is about size of New Jersey and its Jewish population is 5.5 million, roughly the same in the U.S.
As we pray, protect and love President Obama, we must also organize and build institutions that hold his administration and future administrations accountable to our community.
In love and service,
Jamye Wooten
Kinetics
The Moral Measure of Obama's Presidency
by Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Ph.D.
I was among the first African American religious leaders invited to join the faith advisory committee of the Obama presidential campaign. I accepted this invitation not for the prospect of joining a winning team, for given our nation's tortured racial history, I did not imagine that a black man could be elected to the American presidency. The reason I joined the Obama campaign is because of the man I saw, a man who used his Harvard Law School degree not to get rich, but to try to love his neighbors as himself by working to empower them as an organizer in some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods. I noted the progressive political positions he had taken, the compassionate policies he proposed and supported as a state and national lawmaker. I listened to the content of his pronouncements and read the ethical vision underlying his words. I saw a devoted family man and a committed member of a Christian church which, with more than sixty community ministries (including senior's citizen healthcare and housing, HIV/AIDS and hospice care and twenty-two ministries for youths), is the very prototype of a Christian servant congregation. These factors convinced me that Barack Obama is a man of deep faith who is fundamentally committed to building a more just, more equitable, more abundant and more morally healthy nation for all Americans. That is why I chose to support him. |
In several recent articles, President Obama has been characterized as ignoring African American religious leaders despite having received overwhelming support from the black religious community. In two of those articles I was characterized as one of those critics. I was even quoted as claiming that the president "does not respect black ministers." For the record, by no means do I believe that the president lacks respect for African American clergy, although I do think there are ministers whose abdication of their responsibility to work to make this a more politically just and economically equitable society renders them not particularly worthy of respect, at least not in the public square. As for me, I take complete responsibility for not better representing my true sentiments to my interviewers. But what is important here is not whether I personally agree with these charges against the President - and I do not - but that they mischaracterize both the President's interaction with African American clergy and, far more importantly, who he is as a moral leader. "He is the president of the United States, not just the president of black people, the president of Latino people," said Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, a leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. "We expect him to put together policies and an agenda that will impact all of America and not just one special interest."Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie - Apr 5, 2010 - Washington Post
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Obama's nod to the black church
By Edward J. Blum
In it, we see the continued power and place of black churches in American politics and society. We also see that Obama is building upon several understandings and misunderstandings of the historical relationships between religious life and political maneuvering. First, it's smart politics to court ministers and keep them committed to your cause. President Obama knows what John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan both knew. To reach your sheep, contact the shepherds. Kennedy made certain to present himself as a friend to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., even if JFK couldn't stop King from being thrown in jail in 1963. Ronald Reagan let Nancy perform all the astrology she wanted as long as white evangelical ministers continued to champion his politics and show videos of him at Christian conventions for young people. And now, with mid-term elections looming and the Democratic Party in need of some energy, President Obama is reaching out to a powerful political network - black religious leaders. |
Reports of the demise of the black church are most certainly exaggerated. Although Princeton University's Eddie Glaude recently announced that "the black church is dead," President Obama's Eddie Glaude & Josef Sorett on The Death and Life of the Black
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