African American Women of Faith

Voices of Healing:

African American Women of Faith

Part I: Elizabeth Keckley:

A Voice of Hope

Note: Taken from Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Heroes of the Faith. For more information on this stirring book, please visit: http://bit.ly/YmaM1

African American Sisters of the Spirit

African American sisters of the spirit like Elizabeth Keckley, who ministered to the grieving Mrs. Lincoln, and Octavia Albert, who ministered to the soul-wounds of ex-enslaved African Americans, vividly demonstrate how to move beyond suffering to healing hope. Their courageous, hope-based spiritual care is a small sampler, an appetizer, if you will, of a great breadth of wisdom for soul care and spiritual direction contained in the history of women in the African American Church.

While space allows just this sampler, history is filled with powerful and empowering examples of African American feminine sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding.[i] Though some have tried to silence their voices, their speaking of God’s truth in love with hope can still be heard by those with ears to hear and hearts to learn.

Elizabeth Keckley: A Voice of Hope

Picture the scene. It’s Civil War America. Women have no right to vote. Across the South, blacks have no rights whatsoever. President Lincoln is assassinated. His widow, Mary Lincoln, is devastated. To whom does she turn?

To a black woman. To Elizabeth Keckley.

In the story of her life Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, Elizabeth (1818-1907) explains, “. . . I have been intimately associated with that lady [Mrs. Lincoln] in the most eventful periods of her life. I have been her confidante . . . I have written with the utmost frankness in regard to her—have exposed her faults as well as given her credit for honest motives.”[ii]

Given the inauspicious beginnings of Elizabeth’s life story, her spiritual friendship with Mary Lincoln is staggering. “My life has been an eventful one. I was born a slave—was the child of slave parents—therefore I came upon the earth free in God-like thought, but fettered in action.”[iii]

How did a black woman of that cultural era become confidante to the slain President’s wife? Elizabeth expresses her understanding with Christian humility. “God rules the universe. I was a feeble instrument in His hands. . .”[iv]

The Rest of the Story

For the rest of the story, please return to this blog for part two . . .

[i]Readers can enjoy the empowering narratives of over two-dozen African American women (and scores of African American men) narrated in Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering. For more information, please visit: http://bit.ly/XvsTu

[ii]Keckley, Behind the Scenes, xiv, xv.

[iii]Ibid., 17.

[iv]Ibid., xii.

Black History Month: Day Seven--From a Week to a Month

*Note: For The Journey: Day Twenty see my earlier post today.

Black History Month: The History and the Controversy

Day Seven: From a Week to a Month

Now that we know why Dr. Woodson selected a week in February for the study of Blacks in history, let’s discover how the week morphed into a month.

By the time Woodson passed away in 1950, Negro History Week had become a central part of African American life. Progress was being made in bringing more Americans to appreciate the African American legacy and to embrace the celebration.

However, there was a recognition of the need to devote more time to Black History. So, in 1976, fifty years after the initial celebration, the first Black History Month was celebrated.

The nation was coming to recognize the importance of Black History in the drama of the America story. Since 1976, all American Presidents have issued Black History Month proclamations.

Is one month enough? Is one month still needed? Now it’s time to move from the history to the controversy.

Stay tuned . . .

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise, Day One

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day One: The Journey Begins—From Victims to Victors

Join me on a forty-day intercultural journey of promise. I will be blogging, Lord willing, during the forty days from Martin Luther King Day on January 19, 2009, to the end of Black History Month on February 28, 2009. Our focus will be: The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.

I know, technically, that is forty-one days. February 28 will be a day of reflection on the previous forty-day journey. Each day I will highlight a stirring narrative from Black Church history. Then I will ponder application of this legacy to all of our lives today—regardless of our ethnicity, nationality, race, or cultural background. I will also include discussion questions so that you can individually, in your family, or corporately in your church ponder the implications for your life and ministry.

Day One: The Journey Begins—From Victims to Victors[1]

Free born Africans were ripped away from spouses, parents, children, village, and culture by capture. Stripped of everything, overnight they were transformed from farmers, merchants, scholars, artisans, or warriors into possessions. Without family, without status, they were treated as merchandise, as things—a mere extension of their captors’ will.

James Bradley portrays the dehumanization of capture in all its horror in a letter that he wrote in 1834 while a student at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. “I think I was between two and three years old when the soul-destroyers tore me from my mother’s arms, somewhere in Africa, far back from the sea. They carried me a long distance to a ship; all the way I looked back and cried.”

Without a doubt, free-born Africans were victims of an inhumane institution. Yet, they were also victors wrestling to maintain their humanity and personhood. But how? In the midst of soul-destroyers, where did they find soul-deliverance? Their “Capture Narratives” tell their tale and provide our answer.

Born Free

“I . . . acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.” These words from the pen of the Christian Olaudah Equiano might seem trite until we realize that they introduce the narrative of his harrowing kidnapping and enslavement.

Equiano was born free in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin on the coast of Africa, then known as Guinea. The youngest of seven children, his loving parents gave him the name Olaudah, signifying favored one. Indeed, he lived a favored life in his idyllic upbringing in a simple and quiet village where his father served as the “chief man” who decided disputes and punished crimes, and where his mother adored him dearly.

Bathed in Tears: Weeping with Those Who Weep

At age ten, it all came crashing down. “One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both; and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, tied our hands, and ran off with us into the nearest wood: and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the robbers halted for refreshment, and spent the night.”

His kidnappers then unbound Equiano and his sister. Overpowered by fatigue and grief, they had just one source of relief. “The only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.”

Equiano and his sister model a foundational principle of sustaining empathy: weeping with those who weep. Far too often we rush in with words, and far too often those words are words of rescue. Our hurting friends need our silence, not our speeches. The shed tear and the silent voice provide great enrichment for our spiritual friends.

Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. How could your people ministry grow if you empathetically bathed others in your tears?

2. How could your people ministry grow if you applied the truth that your hurting friends need your silence, not your speeches?



[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.

The Legacy of African American Christian Christmas Celebration: Part II: Hardships Do Not Make It Too Hard to Love

The Legacy of African American

Christian Christmas Celebration
Part II:

Hardships Do Not Make It Too Hard to Love

For years now, Kwanzaa has been supported as a way to bring African American tradition into the Christmas celebration. However, what is severely lacking in Kwanzaa is the Christian legacy of African American Christmas celebration. This “mini-series” of blogs will explore the legacy of African American Christian Christmas Celebration.

A Brief Break from Horrible Hardships

Booker T. Washington discussed his memories of Christmas in The Booker T. Washington Papers. Washington noted that Christmas was the favorite holiday of the year for most slaves. It allowed them a respite from the horrible hardships and an opportunity to join as families to celebrate together.

During the Christmas season for slaves in Virginia, the slaves ceased to work for up to ten days. Some slaves received a present from their master. Washington recalled that a master who did not give his slave presents was looked down upon by other masters.[i]

Family Love Remembered at Christmas Time

Though everything fought against them, enslaved African Americans battled gallantly to maintain family cohesion—a cohesion that provided a sturdy platform from which to handle life courageously and to celebrate Christmas even during the horrors of enslavement.

Jennie Hill was born and enslaved in 1837 in Missouri. Florence Patton interviewed the ninety-six-year-old Hill in 1933. During her interview while talking about Christmas memories, Hill adamantly resisted the notion that enslaved families lacked closeness. “Some people think that the slaves had no feeling—that there was no heartbreak when the children were torn from their parents or the mother taken from her brood to toil for a master in another state. But that isn’t so. The slaves loved their families even as Blacks love their own today. . .”[ii]

Communicating the message of African American family love was so important to Reverend Thomas Jones that he bore witness to it on the very first page of his narrative. “I can testify, from my own painful experience, to the deep and fond affection which the slave cherishes in his heart for his home and its dear ones. We have no other tie to link us to the human family, but our fervent love for those who are with us and of us in relations of sympathy and devotedness, in wrongs and wretchedness.”[iii]

The slave narratives and interviews tell remarkable stories about family love celebrated at Christmas and year round. One ex-enslaved person, reflecting back on his favorite Christmas memories, recalls his enslaved father’s character. “I loved my father. He was such a good man. He was a good carpenter and could do anything. My mother just rejoiced in him. . . . I sometimes think I learned more in my early childhood about how to live than I have learned since.”[iv] All he ever needed to learn, he learned in his enslaved home.

Will Adam’s father, a foreman on a Texas plantation, always came home exhausted after a long day’s work. However, he never failed to take his son out of bed and play with him for hours.[v]

Satan longs to blind African Americans to their legacy of family love. He wants all of us to believe that hardships make it too hard to love. These Christmas reflections from enslaved African Americans teach hardships do NOT make it too hard to love.

[i]Jessica McElrath, “Slaves and Christmas Celebration,” About.com.
[ii]Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering, p. 84, from Blassingame, Slave Testimony, p. 593.
[iii]Andrews, p. 211.
[iv]Johnson, God Struck Me Dead, p. 80.
[v]Rawick, The American Slave, vol. 4, Texas, pt. 1, p. 2.

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise

The Journey:

Forty Days of Promise

Celebrating the Legacy of

African American Christianity

Thirty days from now you are invited to join me on a forty-day journey. I will be blogging, Lord willing, during the forty days from Martin Luther King Day on January 19, 2009, to the end of Black History Month on February 28, 2009. The title will be: The Journey: Forty Days of Promise--Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity. I know, technically, that is forty-one days. February 28 will be a day of reflection on the previous forty-day journey. I will highlight each day a stirring narrative from Black Church history. Then I will ponder application of this legacy to our lives today. Finally, I will include discussion questions so that you can individually, or in your family, or corporately in your church ponder the implications for your life and ministry.

Heroes in Black Church History

Friends,

RPM Ministries is please to announce the launch of another new, power-packed, one-day seminar: Heroes in Black Church History: Learning Life Lessons from the Legacy of African American Christians.

In just one day, your church or para-church group will be introduced to over 250 years of amazing African American men and women of faith.

All of it condensed into a creative, engaging, empowering summary contained in 15 pages of notes, over 100 PowerPoint slides, and an interactive experience.

Your people will leave motivated to develop multi-cultural relationships and equipped to sustain, heal, reconcile, and guide one another by following the legacy of past African American Believers.

If you are interested in creating a competent, caring, multi-cultural community in your congregation, contact me for more information.

Bob

PS: Here's a summary of the goals and an outline of the day.

Christians of All Races Will:

*Be empowered by the founding fathers of the African American church about how to be a godly male leader.
*Be equipped by the heroic sisters of the spirit of the African American church to be a powerful female spiritual friend.
*Be enriched by past African American husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers concerning how to nurture and enjoy godly living in the home.
*Be enlightened to apply proven ways to help people find healing hope in the midst of deep pain by identifying with past African American believers.
*Be enabled to minister more effectively in cross-cultural settings by uncovering the buried treasure of wisdom contained in the legacy of African American soul care and spiritual direction.
*Be encouraged to skillfully practice the historic soul care arts of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding.
*Be enthused to build healing communities where Christians find courage and comfort in God and each other.

Schedule:

8:00-8:45 Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:45-8:55 Worship
8:55-9:00 Greeting and Prayer
9:00-10:30 Session One: So Great a Cloud of Witnesses: Following the
Ancient Paths
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:00 Session Two: Watered with Our Tears: Communal Comfort
and Family Faithfulness
12:00-1:00 Lunch Provided
1:00-1:10 Worship
1:10-2:30 Session Three: The Old Ship of Zion: Uniting in Christ
2:30-2:45 Break
2:45-4:00 Session Four: This Far by Faith: Embracing the Lost
Spiritual Legacy
4:00 Closing Benediction
4:00-4:30 Optional Book Signing

My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir

My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is normally so quiet--on the bench and about his public life--that he almost has been perceived as reclusive. Finally, thoroughly, and happily, he has spoken (written) with "My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir." Thomas chronicles his rise from poverty, his upbringing by his grandfather who taught him lessons of personal responsibility, and his up-and-down road to the Supreme Court.

All the while Thomas honestly depicts the barriers he faced and the hurdles he had to overcome. Of course, Thomas also finally speaks about the Anita Hill charges. With candor about the pain and with substantiating evidence about the facts, his side of the story is finally told. But the greater message of the book is the story of how Thomas moved beyond suffering and prejudice and bias to live the America dream. It is a story filled with hope and dignity. It is a story worth telling and worth reading.