John Blake posted a story on the CNN website entitled the Modern black church shuns King's message. I have inserted portions of that story on this blog. Blake asserts that the so-called black church has failed to carry forth kings model of prophetic ministry in challenging the status quo and speaking truth to power. He reveals the growing debate in the black community over so-called prosperity preaching as done by T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar and prophetic preaching as exemplified by preachers like Jerimiah Wright. I have posted my observations and comments at the end of his his quote. You can find the entire story at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/06/mlk.role.church/index.html
The contemporary white church has largely accepted King as a religious hero. Yet some observers say there is one religious community that continues to shun King -- the black church
Forty years after his death, King remains a prophet without honor in the institution that nurtured him, black preachers and scholars say. King's "prophetic" model of ministry -- one that confronted political and economic institutions of power -- has been sidelined by the prosperity gospel.
Prosperity ministers preach that God rewards the faithful with wealth and spiritual power. Prosperity pastors such as Bishop T.D. Jakes have become the most popular preachers in the black church. They've also become brands. They've built megachurches and business empires with the prosperity message.
Black prophetic pastors rarely fill the pews like other pastors, though, because their message is so inflammatory, says Henry Wheeler, a church historian. Prophetic pastors like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, often enrage people because they proclaim God's judgment on nations, he says.
"It's dangerous to be prophetic," said Wheeler, who is also president of the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana.
"I don't know many prophetic preachers who are driving big cars and living very comfortably. You don't generally build huge churches by making folks uncomfortable on Sunday morning," he said.
The prosperity gospel started as a fringe doctrine in the black church. It was pioneered by "Rev. Ike," a prosperity televangelist with a pompadour who boasted during his heyday in the 1970s that "my garages runneth over."
Jonathan Walton, author of "Watch This! Televangelism and African American Religious Culture," says that although people may have chuckled at Ike's flamboyance, his theology exerts more influence in the modern black church than King's.
It is not coincidental but significant that King found his model for social change and civil disobedience in Mahatma Gandhi not Paul or Peter or Jesus; Hinduism not Christianity. There simply is no Christian tradition of King-style, Gandhi style Civil Disobedience and protest.
The gospel message came initially to the Jews who were an oppressed people. The Jews were disenfranchised and discriminated against. They were second class citizens in their own country. They had a legacy of suffering, slavery and abuse yet the message Christ and the Apostles delivered to them focused on deliverance from spiritual bondage and satanic oppression not a this-present-world social agenda.
The message was "love not this world neither the things of this world... Set your affections on things above and not on things of this earth."
The fact is you can read the New Testament from beginning to end and you will find no support whatsoever for a church based social activism.
The concept of a black and a white church is not biblical. Though there certainly is a black church sociologically speaking there is no such thing as a black church scripturally speaking. Faithful gospel preachers do not owe allegiance to a so-called black church but to the church that Jesus said, "I will build." The only traditions a minister of Jesus Christ is obligated to observe and uphold are those handed down by the Apostles of Jesus Christ.
King was a great civil rights leader but King was not and is not God's model for preachers. No mere human is. Jesus is our model. What do you think?
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1 comment:
First of all, I'm in agreeance with your post. Society has branded the notion that people/"we" need a physical personification for a movement (thus MLK). Oftentimes, the designated figurehead becomes larger than the so-called movement itself. As most of us on here will agree, Christ is not only the "figurehead" of the Church but He's THE HEAD of the Church. In other words, Christ was "the movement"...lol. MLK did inspire many social movements, but his spiritual message was not aligned with the mark that Jesus established through his word given to him by the Father (and eventually passed on to the Apostles...and thus the Bible).
Yes; The Church is responsible for reaching out to the community to save souls. The community around us should be able to see our good works/fruit; however, Jesus didn't intend for preachers or the Church to become political conjurers of their own agendas. If evangelism and preaching the truth are not at the top of the preacher's priority, he is obviously seeking the wrong "calling". So right on LBJ! Good post.
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