Celebrating Black Churches
TAMPA, Fla. – The Rev. Fred Allen highlights the ministry of Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century during a celebration of ministry at the 2012 General Conference. (File photo by Mike DuBose, UM News).
Special to United Methodist Insight
In the Black Church, we sing, “I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus.” We, in the Civil Rights Movement adapted that and sang, “I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Freedom”. For Christians, “Jesus is freedom, and freedom is Jesus”.
Awake this morning, not as early as Wesley did, I share the following:
1. I continue to believe that a GC 2020 that places Black Empowerment, in the USA, Africa and the world on its agenda, would counter the perception/fact that for the UMC, homosexuality is its major and only agenda.
2. A USA President who refers to Haiti and the countries of Africa as “shit-hole countries”, who has opened the door to worldwide white nationalism, supremacy, and resistance to immigrants of color, “stands in the need of (more than) prayer.” The world will be watching GC 2020 for one reason. Let them see in bold terms a predominantly white UMC with a Black Anti-Racism Agenda.
3. GC 2019, meeting during the USA's Black History Month, said little if anything about the 400th anniversary of Black slaves from Africa, landing in what is now the USA, nor about the 80th anniversary of the 1939 “Unification Conference” that created the Black racially segregated, Central Jurisdiction. A 2020 corrective is in order
Could the Council of Bishops create a task force, committee, etc.,composed of African American, African, and other Bishops to Plan a Black agenda item for GC 2020? “Back in the day” during the African Independence struggle, Bishop Emilio J. M. DeCarvalho of Angola was a source of significant attention given to that struggle by our denomination. Would that African, African American, and All Bishops, could make a confrontation and challenge of the “original sin of racism” a major mission/ministry.
A way to resolve our bitter struggle to punish or protect same gender loving persons, would be to announce a Council of Bishops' response to racism, thus eliminating our heterosexism, with its homophobic underpinnings legislation, as reflected in the Traditional Plan.
Gilbert Caldwell
The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell. Photo by Mike DuBose, United Methodist Communications.
The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell of Asbury Park, N.J., is a retired clergy member of the Mountain Sky Conference (formerly Rocky Mountain). He describes himself as "a foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement" and was co-founder of Black Methodists for Church Renewal and United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church.