This is not a criticism of the black church but a question that I address that I wonder if others ponder too.
What’s in History
I have read a lot of black history from the days of slavery in America. The thing that amazes me the most is that the southern churches supported slavery. Few ever spoke against it. The religion claimed that the black people were only animals and did not deserve the rights or respect given to the white race. They upheld the right of the white slave owners to treat their slaves like children. They allowed them to be cruelly beaten, to be sold at live auctions, to have women sold away from their men and their children seldom allowing a family unit to continue, to have the dogs set upon anyone who attempted to run away, to have the right to punish them at will even to hang them until their death.
The abuse was rampant of every kind and the churches claimed that the white race was god’s children and agreed fully and perpetuated this violation of the rights of the black human beings. Yet here we are with the black race following the same churches, the same god, the same people who enslaved them and tortured them. I suppose it shows just how deep programming goes into a human when the abuse supports the abuser. I can understand that the white people’s names were taken up by their slaves after the war freed them because they did not have their own last name. But they work their selves into such a fervor worshiping the same god of the religions that keep them in bondage. Once they received freedom and later rights and education why do they allow the programming to continue and never seem to question it?
I love all people and respect that god-fire that is within all life.
I ponder this question and seek an understanding of it from those participating in it. Is it the same as an abused woman who claims to love the man who continues to beat her up and disrespect her? Is it the same reason that those raised as Christians or Muslims stay in the religion, the social consciousness, the environments that each was raised in never investigating anything that might work better for them the black race is becoming a powerful force in the political field. I would love to see them break free of this religious close-mindedness (that which I perceive it to be) and participate at a level that does not have a judgmental god as their foundation of beliefs.
