AF AM 110. Religion (cont'd) Oct 6, 2015 [The spirit does not descend without song] YouTube: Tuna Turner (What's Love Got to Do with It?

AF AM 110. Religion (cont’d) Oct 6, 2015

[The spirit does not descend without song] YouTube: Tuna Turner (“What’s Love Got to Do with It?”)

Picking up the thread of our conversation from Thursday: Disambiguation of the word love

But, even before this, a more considered response to Mr. Wright’s question to me. MLK (YouTube: Martin Luther King Jr. as You Have Never Heard Him. 2:18. Excerpt from his “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” (April 4, 1967; Riverside Church). “A time comes when silence s betrayal.” [Gary Younge’s “The Speech: The Story Behind Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream (Haymarket Books, 2015); The Misremembering of ‘I Had a Dream’” in The Nation (August 14, 2013)]

MLK: [Sermon in Birmingham, AL in 1963] “Lest We Forget,” volume 2 (Smithsonian Folkways), Track #5. (Label: Folkway Records; Year of Release: 1980). Played in class on October 1st (Thursday)

Three senses (or meanings) of the word love –

Eros. έρως

Philia. φιλία

Agapé. αγάπη

James Cone, Selection from Black Theology & Black Power (NY: Harper & Row, 1969). Call & Response, ed. Gates & Burton (NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1969).

“For me, the burning theological question was, how can I reconcile Christianity with Black Power, Martin Luther King Jr.’s idea of nonviolence with Malcolm X’s ‘by any means necessary’ philosophy?” (quoted by editors in their Intro to this selection, 615a)

What is the church? (Cone, 618a-20a). ἐκκλησία. Ekklesia (617a, four lines from bottom of column)

Definition of ekklesia (617a, four lines from bottom of page)

Defining features of the church (618a-20a)

Preaching (kerygma)

Service (diakonia). Call to service

Fellowship (koinonia)

“The White Church & Black Power” (620b-22).

“The black revolution is the work of Christ” (622a, last sentence of this column)

MLK (1929-68). “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” (April 16th, 1963).

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.* … For years now I have heard ‘Wait.’ Etc.” (603b, 1st full paragraph)

[*Frederick Douglass (1818-1895): “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”]

Malcolm (1925-65). “Letter from Saudi Arabia” (1964) (Call & Response, 610-11)

“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases the race problem from its society” (611a, 7 lines from bottom)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor in 1947 in NYC). “Why I Converted to Islam” (March 29, 2015)

“And when you convert to an unfamiliar or unpopular religion, it invites criticism of one’s intelligence, patriotism and sanity. I should know. Even though I became a Muslim more than 40 years ago, I’m still defending that choice.”

“I came to realize that the Lew Alcindor everyone was cheering wasn’t really the person they imagined. They wanted me to be the clean-cut example of racial equality. The poster boy for how anybody from any background — regardless of race, religion or economic standing — could achieve the American dream. To them, I was the living proof that racism was a myth.”

“I knew better. Being 7-foot-2 and athletic got me there, not a level playing field of equal opportunity.”

“Much of my early awakening came from reading ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ as a freshman. I was riveted by Malcolm’s story of how he came to realize that he was the victim of institutional racism that had imprisoned him long before he landed in an actual prison. That’s exactly how I felt: imprisoned by an image of who I was supposed to be. The first thing he did was push aside the Baptist religion that his parents had brought him up in and study Islam. “

“Some fans took it very personally, as if I had firebombed their church while tearing up an American flag. Actually, I was rejecting the religion that was foreign to my American culture and embracing one that was part of my black African heritage. (An estimated 15 to 30 percent of slaves brought from Africa were Muslims.) Fans thought I joined the Nation of Islam, an American Islamic movement founded in Detroit in 1930. Although I was greatly influenced by Malcolm X, a leader in the Nation of Islam, I chose not to join because I wanted to focus more on the spiritual rather than political aspects. Eventually, Malcolm rejected the group right before three of its members assassinated him.”

“Our belief is based on a combination of faith and logic because we need a powerful reason to abandon the traditions of our families and community to embrace beliefs foreign to both. Conversion is a risky business because it can result in losing family, friends and community support.”

“Part of my conversion to Islam is accepting the responsibility to teach others about my religion, not to convert them but to co-exist with them through mutual respect, support and peace. One world does not have to mean one religion, just one belief in living in peace.”

Frederick Douglass (1818-95): “We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country. … We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be remodified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be, What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go with this people, either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations.” Essay in North Star (November 1858);