Showing posts with label black religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black religion. Show all posts

Saturday, January 24, 2015

I'm Republishing Breukelen Bleu's Comments About Abortion Rights Because The "For Harriet" Facebook Page Apparently Deleted Them


Dishonest, brain-dead mammy mules will be the death of “mainstream” African-American women and girls. The uncompromisingly mealy-mouthed, middle-of-the-road colored girl(s) who run the For Harriet Facebook page recently did a post titled “Why Roe vs. Wade Still Matter to Black Women 42 Years Later.”
It seems to me that when you publish something like that on your Facebook page, you’re looking to host a spirited, full-spectrum of ideas conversation about that issue. Not the uncompromisingly mealy-mouthed, middle-of-the-road folks at For Harriet. Whoever it is that runs the For Harriet Facebook page apparently deleted the excellent comments made by Breukelen Bleu (writer of the Black Woman Think Tank).
The uncompromisingly mealy-mouthed, middle-of-the-road folks who control the For Harriet Facebook page apparently deleted Ms. Bleu’s comment while allowing the following comment to remain:

Ain’t that about nothing? Mammy mules piss me ALL THE WAY off with this type of dishonest behavior. If you’re too weak-minded to host an honest discussion about abortion rights, then don’t bring it up! Stop pretending to discuss the issues that are literally destroying the African-American (AA) collective.

Well, since the uncompromisingly mealy-mouthed, middle-of-the-road colored girls who control the For Harriet Facebook page apparently deleted Ms. Bleu’s comments while allowing sexist negro troll comments to remain, I’m republishing Ms.Bleu’s Facebook post and related comments here.

Breukelen Bleu said:

It never ceases to fail that when the subject of black female sexuality, reproduction and child rearing is broached, black folk become the most conservative, moral and concerned people on the planet. Previously unused muscles of morality and righteous indignation, suddenly SPRING into action, as they remind us of our 'responsibilities' to God, race and nation. With the recent passing of a bill in Congress that is another step in the ongoing assault on a woman's right to choose, there is suddenly much discussion taking place about how it will affect BW. (After the fact, of course. We were to busy marching for negroes to notice while it was going down). So now the discourse about why BW need to care about reproductive rights is beginning to pop up all over the internet. One of these discussions....
https://www.facebook.com/forharriet/posts/824345864278868

...Is taking place on FB, around an article posted on the topic. In this discussion, blackmen (as usual) show up, to 'educate' us poor, dumb, baby killing negresses about the 'origins' of abortion and the political, social and economic 'agenda' of those who pushed for its availability many moons ago. One Concerned Citizen told us to...
............



">>Learn the history of abortion. It was intended to control the black population! The most dangerous place for a black baby is in his mother's womb. If you don't believe me Richard Nixon said it better. Black women should stop getting abortions! Black genocide. They have won."<<
He went on to say (after a few other comments where the word 'eugenics' was thrown around, along with history lessons on Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood, Richard Nixon and some others)....


>>" I only ask that women of color know the modern history of abortion in America, that's it. I don't believe the government should not allow women to choose"<<
.............
Now, I find all of this to be quite humourous. Black folk are QUICK to remind BW about the 'history' of those who have sought to harm, weaken or destroy us - as long as assailants were OUTSIDERS. And while on any other day, under any other circumstances, it is the OVER reproduction of BW that is blamed for all that ills our race and community, when the topic of abortion comes up, suddenly, there aint enough of us. Suddenly, all these 'bastards' that we are breeding to destroy the black race' are THE most important members of the community.

But yall know that negroes be on some TRANSFORMER shit, so that aint nothing new. But in order to set the record straight, ima prepost a version of my response on that thread ^^^ above. Yall take heed, and the next time some negro come with that "eugenics' okey doke, set the record straight and tell them Breukelen Bleu said it.
.....................................


The black population NEEDS to be controlled. We have become a race of RECKLESS BREEDERS with absolutely NO concern for the quality of life that our children are offered. We are being made The Sacrifice by each other and outsiders to the tune of MILLIONS. If we focused less on breeding for volume, and more on breeding for PEDIGREE, maybe our race would stand a chance. We are birthing all kinds of degeneracy into the world which is devouring us from the inside out. It would be best if BW would simply stop screwing these fools in the first place - then abortion would not be as necessary. But when someone suggests that they simply STOP IT (screwing and birthing them altogether), the 'genocide' accusation is leveled again.
 
We damned if we do, damned if we don't.

But heres whats never considered. Men (of all races) make life and death decisions EVERY DAY. They carry guns as police, join the military and act as GOD presiding over the health care, politics and economics of every human being on this planet. BILLIONS of people die from the decisions (and whims) of MEN - and nobody questions it because MALES are supposedly superior and thus, have that right. Women, on the other hand, are taught that we have NO right to decide what comes thru us - no power over life and death. We are told to be but 'vessel's for the 'seed' of men, with no power over if and when our bodies are used to bring forth life. We are told this, at the same time MALES are given the authority to determine the fates of every human being on this planet, with impunity.

Procreation is the WOMANS DOMAIN. Males have NO say and are NOT to preside over it. But they killed off the midwives and herb workers and Wise Women so that MEN could control fertility and birth rites. They are OUT OF ORDER in this and the entire human race has paid dearly for it.

Anyone who believes the black women did not terminate unwanted pregnancies before the 'white man' came, is a fool. Women of ALL races have exercised their reproductive rights since the very beginnings. It was MEN who took those rights away, forcing us to fight to get them back.

Patriarchy banks on the human males ability to control the womb of women. As long as men hold dominion there, they control everything. It is NOT the place of men to do this, and it is not 'divine order' for them to dictate to women what is for OUR minds only. WE are the First Cause. WE are the source of it all. They, as males, come after. THEY dont get to dictate to the Source what our rights are.

That is NOT their place.

The greatest indicator of poverty on this planet, is MOTHERHOOD. Men used the wombs of women to control resources, hoard wealth and have bodies to fill their factories, whore houses and military ranks. 70% of the worlds poor are WOMEN and CHILDREN and it is DESIGNED that way.

Black folk wanna talk about 'eugenics' and 'genocide'? Lets start there. Lets talk about the 2000 people who were killed in Nigera last week - BY black men. Lets talk about the untold numbers of adult black females and children of BOTH genders that are violated, tortured and killed at the hands of men who look JUST LIKE THEM, all around this world - and THEN lets talk about the 'genocide' of millions of black women and children who have harmed, raped, and murdered at the hands of BLACK MEN over the years. Lets talk about THAT shit. The history of black folk didnt start when the slave ships showed up. Our history goes back looooong before that and when we start looking there, some of our folk got some 'splainin to do.

So, after we throw out the bible verses and Jesus quotes talking about the 'sanctity' of life, lets talk about how we give MEN the right to preside over life and death (even black men) EVERY DAY all through out this world. Lets talk about the guns and weapons and bombs and biological agents and GMO's and all of that shit that kills HUMAN BEINGS by the millions, every year. Lets talk about why is it ok for men to decide who lives or dies (oftimes in the most horrific of ways), but not women. Lets talk about why we presume that men are better suited for that task, than the woman who actually CARRIES life within her? Lets talk about THAT.

Now lets get to this; If we gone talk about the 'history' of all the medical injustices that black folk have endured, lets talk about the fact that a good portion of the medical procedures that are used every day were created and perfected by the torture and mutilation, both PRE and post mortem, of black folk. Lets talk about the fact that there is a significant chance that any medical procedure that black folk have done - especially those that may be required to save their lives - were perfected first on black and brown people - without their consent and under very horrific and painful circumstances.

Lets ask, if every time black folk see a doctor - do they ask him for the 'history' of all the injustices and terrible things that went into creating that drug/procedure/surgery/knowledge that now saves their crusty behinds and makes their lives better? Do black women ask how many black babies had to die for the life saving procedure that THEIR black baby received, to be created? Do black men run and ask their doctors how many black people suffered so that that prescription for the hypertension medicine, insulin and 'little blue pill' they love to pop so they can continue to get a rise out of them ashy dicks, long past their prime, could be written?

Lets ask THAT shit.

This selective morality, HYPOCRISY and FAUX OUTRAGE of black folk, who scream "GENOCIDE!!" when it comes to black woman's right to choose, but then go RIGHT up into that hospital to get some life saving procedure that was created and perfected on the bodies of enslaved, impoverished and oppressed black folk, needs to be called the fuck out. All this consternation over the loss of 'black life' is bulshit. Black folk dont care about black lives. If they did, they'd treat black women and children - the ones who are actually BORN, with much more respect.

No. This shit here is about CONTROL. Its about controlling BW and dictating fake morality so that we remain POWERLESS - not only under white supremacy, but under black patriarchy, too.

The next time so 'pro-life' negroe that you know goes to get a teeth cleaning or a pap smear, you might want to remind them to ask the doctor what black person had to suffer for that 'routine' procedure to become successful enough to keep their teeth in their mouths or the wombs from being ravaged by cancer. And since they are SO concerned about the 'history' of shit, remind their asses to cancel them appts until they have proven that no black person was harmed in the commission of creating it.

I mean, since we all need to be 'informed' and shit.

Breukelen Bleu ©2014.


My Previous Comments About Abortion

During the comments to the post “Inception” And African-Americans, I said the following:

RevolutionaryAndJoyful,

You’re welcome!

I can tolerate the forced birth ideology a little bit better when it’s coming from sincere Catholics who have a consistently expressed interest in preserving all forms of human life. This is the “Consistent Ethic of Life” that Joseph Cardinal Bernadin talked about. Because the Catholics who are sincerely concerned about “the seamless garment” of life (apparently a reference to John 19:23 in the Bible), tend to ALSO oppose the death penalty, nuclear weapons, and most wars.

However, I’m disgusted by the vast majority of the pro-forced-birth, Negro Muslim and Negro Protestant AAs that I encounter. For many reasons:

(1) These people generally ONLY profess concern about fetuses. Once somebody is born, then the pro-forced-birth AAs’ actions demonstrate that they are no longer concerned about that particular individual’s life. This shows that their true motives are more likely driven by the pleasures of: (a) a cheap form of holiness that revolves around cracking the whip on women; and (b) comes at somebody else’s expense.

(2) The bulk of these people are NOT doing anything to clean up the current disasters created by the legions of existing unwanted, AA children. And they don’t have any sort of plan for how to clean this up. They’re not willing to risk endangering themselves and their biological children by taking these children into their homes. Not that I necessarily blame them. My issue is their lack of seriously thinking through the consequences of what they’re proposing (having even more unwanted AA children). As far as I’m concerned, this lack of follow-up thinking makes their position an utterly irresponsible one.

I’m not recommending that naive, unprepared people take these unwanted children into their homes. The “typical” parent can handle normal children. But the bulk of the children in foster care are NOT normal children. You really need specialized preparation to deal with most of them.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time working in the child welfare system (be it in court, or as a caseworker) can tell you an extremely ugly reality—many of the already existing discarded/taken away children in foster care are safety risks. For everybody around them. Many of them have negative genetic inheritances such as very low IQs and predispostions for severe mental illness. On top of these negative genetic inheritances, many of them have also been severely traumatized by their experiences of living with neglectful and abusive biological parents.

Nobody talks about the adopted toddlers who hoard food in their pockets. Or the toddlers who bang their heads against walls when they don’t get their way. Or the adopted first-graders who try to rub the genitals of every adult they encounter—because that’s what they’ve been trained to do by their mother’s new-baby-daddy. Or who masturbates in public. Or the adopted 8-year-old who sexually molests the adoptive parents’ younger biological children. Or who is revealed to be schizophrenic when they hit puberty. All of this came up during a post at the previous blog (which is now a chapter in the book—the chapter about single adoption being “Plan B” for many AA women who haven’t married by 35).

Nobody talks about the many failed adoptions that end up back in the child welfare courts.

I’ve never met a pro-forced-birth AA who had any sort of plan for dealing with the existing unwanted pregnancies that turned into the above-described deranged AA children. No, they’re through with the situation after the woman/girl gives birth.

(3) I’m annoyed by their often childish manner of evaluating ideas. Yes, it’s important to factor in who the source of a particular idea is. However, that’s only part of the scrutiny that should be given to ALL ideas, whatever their source. Even a stopped clock is factually correct twice a day.

(4) In addition to having no plan to clean up the existing mess created by existing unwanted AA children, the pro-forced-birth AAs don’t understand that the birth of more unwanted AA children will be the DEATH of the rest of us. Having an AA collective that is increasingly filled with low IQ, predisposed to be mentally ill, neglected and abused children who are likely to continue the abuse cycle when they grow up does NOT help any of us.

And let’s be real about our distate with so-called eugenics: The plain truth is that it’s the LEAST capable AAs who are having an ever-increasing proportion of AA births. Productive modern AAs generally don’t have more than 3 children. Many of our best and brightest BW are not having children (for a variety of reasons). Meanwhile, the AA female drug addicts, never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives welfare recipients, and criminals generally have at least 3-4 children—and it’s more like 5-6 births. This overall pattern does not bode well for the future of the AA collective.

I said the following during a post at the previous blog, Home Is Where The Hate Is: Black Religious-Inspired Bigotry in Place of Godliness:

I’ve been stunned into befuddled silence by the recent outbreaks of right-wing violence. From the assassination of a doctor who offered abortion services to the murder of a guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

I was even more stunned when I pondered how African-Americans’ religious-inspired bigotry helps create the atmosphere that makes these slayings possible. We love to engage in hateful, hypocritical, bigoted talk.

Our fake “holiness talk” isn’t about love of God. It’s about the pleasure of cracking the whip on other people. We revel in verbally stepping on people who are engaged in sexual activities that we have no interest in participating in, such as the gays. Meanwhile, the majority of our births are out of wedlock. Despite all of our “We want forced births to be the law of the land” rhetoric, we are avid consumers of abortion services.

We are hateful bigots.

We are shameless hypocrites.

We are self-destructive fools.

By our bigoted statements and actions, we are ultimately supporting White, racist politicians who will turn back the clock on all of our (already extremely fragile) advancements.

This is what happened when many confused African-Americans voted for Pres. Bush to have a second term in office. I had many arguments with many confused Blacks who told me that they were voting for Bush because of so-called “moral issues” (translation: their opposition to gays having rights). Many of the Black folks saying these things were shacked up and had illegitimate children. [Translation: “By stepping on gays, I get to feel a rush of holiness without having to engage in any sort of self-discipline.”] I noticed that some of this “moral issues” talk dried up after Pres. Bush did a “heckuva job” of ignoring the Black deaths and suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina.

By our bigoted statements and actions, we are ultimately supporting White, racist extremists who will turn their guns on US.

Even worse, I believe that our fake religiosity (which takes the form of bigoted statements and actions) is pushing us further and further away from God! The proof is in our ever-declining collective quality of life.

__________________________________________________

Magenta,

You said, “During slavery, BW were seen by massa as nothing but breeders and these black “pro-lifers” are doing nothing but reading from the same racist, sexist script. That is why you will hear nothing about providing assistance or stability to these mothers and children. BW are just incubators and nothing more to these people.”

I agree. Like I said above, I would have more respect for that position if the Black folks talking that stuff: (1) were consistent in their professed concern about “life,” and (2) had a plan for dealing with the existing unwanted AA children.


The Bottom Line About These Dishonest “Trickbag” Conversations About African-American Women’s Life & Death Issues

Ladies, beware of “talking head” colored girls who only pretend that they want to discuss AAs’ life and death issues. The real deal is that their Tightly Scripted To Only Fall Within Certain Parameters Conversations are a safety valve in support of the continued oppression of AA women and girls.


These tightly scripted conversations are designed to allow AA women to let off steam about the deadly woman-hating hypocrisy within the AA collective while also blocking access to the strongest analytical arguments in support of AA women's survival. These fake conversations are a trickbag to keep AA women corralled into the stale ideologies that have them living the very worst quality of life of all women in the U.S.
Addendum. Someone from For Harriet is stating that:
For Harriet This is a complete fabrication and a very strange thing to make up. I've reviewed every comment on this thread including those that have been removed. "Breukelen Bleu" never posted here. Her comments have not been deleted. Frank Purdue has, however, been banned. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. If, however, I've overlooked something, I encourage Ms. Bleu to let us know, and I'll happily apologize.

After being told by a commenter that Ms. Bleu did indeed comment in that thread, the For Harriet representative goes on to say that:

For Harriet I've looked through every comment including those that have been removed. I see no sign of Breukelen Bleu posting on this thread. Perhaps she removed the comments herself. That is the only way I, as the moderator, wouldn't be able to see them. Moreover, she has deleted the post on her page in which she accuses us of deleting her comments. FH has a staff of exactly two people. This is very much an independent media outlet. I don't think there's a complete understanding of what goes into running a community of this size, but we're working hard. I only heard of the spreading of this inaccuracy because someone sent me a link to the post elsewhere. The measures we've taken to moderate aren't catching everything, but when it's brought to our attention, we act. Facebook inboxes are open; email addresses are prominently displayed and Twitter handles are easy to locate. Feel free to forward concerns there. Comments beneath Facebook posts are the most ephemeral because of the sheer amount of content we post each day. And again I invite Breukelen Blue to shed some light on what I'm missing here. -Kim

  • For Harriet Screenshots would also be helpful, so we can look into the issue. -Kim 

  • Yes, Ms. Bleu did post several comments to that particular thread (that I've republished above). I and the other readers who saw Ms. Bleu's comments weren't having some sort of shared hallucination. We all read the same comments from Ms. Bleu, and then those comments mysteriously disappeared from that thread. In responding to the For Harriet staff person, another commenter said:
    Elizabeth Henderson Ms. Bleu certainly did post here. Several of us read her comments when they were posted here. Perhaps, as they were a response to someone else's commentary, they were deleted as part of the banned person's.
    Like · 1 · 10 hrs
    Maybe that's what happened. I have no idea. I just found it extremely  . . . peculiar . . .  that Ms. Bleu's comments disappeared while the sexist negro troll's comments remained (until recent hours, when all of this was apparently brought to the attention of the For Harriet staff).

    And yeah, it would be nice to have some screen captures of Ms. Bleu's comments. I didn't take any because I didn't expect her comments to disappear. But now that I'm on notice that peculiar and mysterious things apparently happen on the For Harriet Facebook page, for future reference I'll know to take screen captures of anything else of interest on that page. Starting with screen captures of the above exchange. Lord have mercy.

     

    Friday, June 12, 2009

    Twelve Factors For Determining If Your Church/Mosque Is Simply Unhealthy Or Downright Dangerous

    A blogger named Sara Robinson (who contributes to The Group News Blog, Orcinus, and OurFuture.org) has written many excellent articles detailing the rise of right-wing extremism. In this post, she discusses some of the criteria intelligence agencies use to determine if a group is simply crazy or on the road to domestic terrorism.

    http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/how-dangerous-flds

    It's a good exercise to read the post and consider how our various houses of worship measure up according to these criteria.

    Twelve Factors For Determining If Your Church/Mosque Is Simply Unhealthy Or Downright Dangerous

    1. Marching Toward the Apocalypse
    2. A Theology of Violence
    3. The Chosen One
    4. Goin' Up To The Country
    5. Political Influence
    6. Takin' Care of Business
    7. Crimes of Intimidation
    8. Increasingly violent rhetoric
    9. Blaming the government
    10. Intensification of illegal activities
    11. Shaming the Leader
    12. Blundering Authority

    Thursday, June 11, 2009

    Home Is Where The Hate Is, Part 1: Black Religious-Inspired Bigotry In Place of Godliness

    I've been stunned into befuddled silence by the recent outbreaks of right-wing violence. From the assassination of a doctor who offered abortion services to the murder of a guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    I was even more stunned when I pondered how African-Americans' religious-inspired bigotry helps create the atmosphere that makes these slayings possible. We love to engage in hateful, hypocritical, bigoted talk.

    Our fake "holiness talk" isn't about love of God. It's about the pleasure of cracking the whip on other people. We revel in verbally stepping on people who are engaged in sexual activities that we have no interest in participating in, such as the gays. Meanwhile, the majority of our births are out of wedlock. Despite all of our "We want forced births to be the law of the land" rhetoric, we are avid consumers of abortion services.

    We are hateful bigots.

    We are shameless hypocrites.

    We are self-destructive fools.

    By our bigoted statements and actions, we are ultimately supporting White, racist politicians who will turn back the clock on all of our (already extremely fragile) advancements.

    This is what happened when many confused African-Americans voted for Pres. Bush to have a second term in office. I had many arguments with many confused Blacks who told me that they were voting for Bush because of so-called "moral issues" (translation: their opposition to gays having rights). Many of the Black folks saying these things were shacked up and had illegitimate children. [Translation: "By stepping on gays, I get to feel a rush of holiness without having to engage in any sort of self-discipline."] I noticed that some of this "moral issues" talk dried up after Pres. Bush did a "heckuva job" of ignoring the Black deaths and suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina.

    By our bigoted statements and actions, we are ultimately supporting White, racist extremists who will turn their guns on US.

    Even worse, I believe that our fake religiosity (which takes the form of bigoted statements and actions) is pushing us further and further away from God! The proof is in our ever-declining collective quality of life.

    The Gaudy Carnival of Modern Black Fake Religiosity

    All of this has brought to mind some earlier conversations that Pioneer Valley Woman has hosted at her excellent blog Episcopalienne (which is listed on my side blog roll). Through her blog, Pioneer Valley Woman is providing one of the few safe spaces where we can seriously discuss Black religious issues. Thank you, Pioneer Valley Woman!

    As I've mentioned in other conversations, I've spent much of my career doing indigent defense (after barely tolerating working as a prosecutor---but that's a tale for another day). In addition to criminal rotations, I did rotations in my area's child welfare and child support courtrooms. It has been extremely eye-opening in many ways.

    Friends at work and I have talked about our observations and we can't figure out if the patterns reflect class issues in terms of different denominations or church/mosque misleadership issues. I'm beginning to think that both class issues and religious misleadership are creating these patterns.

    I apologize in advance to anyone that I inadvertently offend; but this is what we've seen in our large metropolitan area's criminal, delinquency, child welfare, and child support courtrooms:

    The vast majority of the criminal, delinquency, and child-welfare defendants and child support litigants are African-Americans. No surprises there. Public aid requires female recipients to name the "baby daddies" involved in order to recoup some of the welfare money from these men. [Please note that my jurisdiction makes a distinction between child support in the context of divorce, and out-of-wedlock child support. Before the local legal aid society's federal lawsuit, the out of wedlock child support cases were heard in criminal courtrooms housed in police station complexes. There are still separate courtrooms in different types of buildings allocated for these two contexts.]

    Among the Black defendants and child support litigants who claim any religious affiliation at all, the VAST majority of them seem to come from "sanctified," "holy roller" churches. Specifically, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is well-represented among the criminal defendant/out-of-wedlock child-support litigant population. My Black co-workers and I have seen VERY FEW Black Catholics, Lutherans, or Episcopalians over the years.

    Over the years, I've listened to a lot of clients engage in a lot of talk (lip service) about "anointing," "spirits," etc. The COGIC clients often make a big show of being angry when my Black Christian colleagues won't "touch hands" and pray with them before court appearances. They hear my Muslim name upon introduction, and thankfully don't approach me with that "let's pray" stuff. One child welfare defendant/mother is still angry with her attorney (who, unknown to her, is also a COGIC member) because of this!

    There is a large population of what I call "jailhouse" Muslims. The jailhouse Muslims typically have better Arabic pronunciation of religious expressions than me! A client explained to me that he accepted Islam in prison because he didn't have gang affiliations to protect him; and the prison Muslims will fight to defend each other from assault (similar to the protection offered by prison gang membership). From what I've seen, they claim Islam only while in prison. Once released, they get back to their previous (criminal) pursuits.

    There is a small, but noticeable, subsection of Negro Muslims among the out of wedlock child support litigants. These are the foolish, usually hijab-wearing colored girls who call themselves involved in plural marriages. Of course, they are on welfare and their "husbands" dutifully collect the proceeds from these public aid checks.

    These are the Negro Muslim male clients that I had the most heated exchanges with. I don't wear hijab, and some of these fools thought they were going to "check" me about that. They were shocked when I put them on blast about how it was impossible to distinguish their activities from those of a pimp and his stable of prostitutes.

    A noticeable percentage of our Latino coworkers (attorneys and support staff) have become Protestants. Meanwhile, the Latino defendants retain at least nominal affiliation with the Catholic Church. These patterns only become noticeable when you see people in the huge volume that we do at work.

    It Wasn't Always Like This

    To further set the stage, let me describe the 2 main coworkers I've been discussing this with over the past few years:

    Coworker #1 is a COGIC member in her early 50s. Her grandfather founded one of the largest and oldest COGIC churches in the area. She's horrified at all the "Let's pray for Sister So and So's son, who was just sentenced to 80 years!" appeals at her grandfather's church. It wasn't like this when she was growing up. She can't quite pinpoint when the congregation turned into a different sort of population. This is a source of great concern to her.

    Coworker #2 is in her early 40s, is originally from a small Black town outside of Macon, Georgia (I can't quite imitate her Southern accent *Smile*), and grew up in the COGIC. Her father is a high-ranking official (bishop?) in the South, and her childhood was filled with attending tent-revivals. She joined the Episcopal church as an adult.

    Both of these coworkers are true and sincere "church ladies" that I greatly admire and respect. They actually ARE what many of the clients like to pretend to be. Curiously, they don't run around using religious phrases like "I'm blessed and highly favored" etc. They actually practice their values by their actions. It's quite a contrast from the clients (and I may add some of our coworkers) whose lifestyles have no connection whatsoever to their overt "church jargon."

    The same pattern applies to the jailhouse Muslims and other corrupt Muslims I've observed. Prison Muslims love to insert Arabic phrases and words into their speech. Even non-religious words like saying "akhi" instead of "brother."

    It seems to me that the worst people are usually the ones who flamboyantly insert religious jargon and slogans into everyday conversations.

    Anyway, Coworker #2 has noticed that there are a lot of West Indians and a sprinkling of Africans in her church. They seem to have "inherited" participation in these denominations from "back home." During an earlier conversation at her blog, Pioneer Valley Woman pointed out that class has some connection to all of this. I believe that she's right about this.

    Most African-American Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians that I've met are middle class. And grew up in the middle class. However, I think there's something in addition to class and ethnic affiliations going on.

    Coworker #2's church is one of the area's oldest Black Episcopal churches. It's located in the middle of what was the city's Black belt when Blacks of all classes were segregated together. The church's neighborhood is now mainly composed of poor African-Americans. Coworker #2's church members are very zealous and sincere in their efforts to assist and do outreach among the local poor residents. But the locals are not responding.

    Let me be blunt: I think they're not responding based on their antipathy to: (1) serious church doctrine and (2) the emotional styles of these non-sanctified churches.

    I haven't fully formed these thoughts, but here are my half-formed impressions from talking to my coworkers about this. One concern that I heard expressed with these storefront-type churches is the lack of accountability regarding doctrine. For all anybody knows, they could be preaching anything in these places. [In my uninformed opinion, the lack of firm doctrine in a lot of the majority-Black denominations has helped the spread of "prosperity ministries" in the Black community. My coworkers and I feel that these prosperity ministries have really damaged Black spirituality.]

    I have no clue what the problem is within the COGIC. Coworker #1 says that it wasn't previously filled with the Black underclass. I can't tell if the problem is that COGIC members in other demographics migrated to other denominations, or what. I just don't know.

    The other factor is that the client population is NOT attracted to the emotional climate in the non-"sanctified" denominations. To be candid: the Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal churches are perceived as "too" cerebral by this population. Another attorney coworker who attends a storefront-type church explained to me point blank that "Black people want to be entertained in church." [!!!]

    The client population can tolerate Islam (which is also "lacking" in entertainment value) because it offers physical perks---physical protection while one is in prison, and extra wives when one is out of prison.

    It Doesn't Have To Be Like This

    Something has gone horribly wrong in a lot of African-American houses of worship. We have more churches and mosques per capita than almost anybody else, and yet are collectively living worse than the people my grandmother used to call "heathens." From my vantage point, there is no longer any ethical center in the African-American community. This ethical core has been replaced with slogans: "I'm blessed & highly favored!" "Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatullah!" [I won't bother to translate---since it's often (mostly?) insincere it doesn't matter what it "officially" means].

    In Part 2 of this series, we'll talk about solutions.