America’s Conscience: Moral Bankruptcy and Communal Decay

January 27, 2022 Shawn Bell Current Events, Feature, Proctor in Action

America’s Conscience: Moral Bankruptcy and Communal Decay

By Jamar Boyd

For if the disinherited get such a new center as patriotism, for instance — liberty within the framework of a sense of country or nation, then the aim of not being killed is swallowed up by a larger and more transcendent goal. Above all else the disinherited must not have any stake in the social order; they must be made to feel that they are alien, that it is a great boon to be allowed to remain alive, not be exterminated. This was the psychology of the Nazis; it grew out of their theory of the state and the place given the Hebrew people in their ideology. Such is also the attitude of the Ku Klux Klan towards Negroes. — Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

The poignant and timeless words of Howard Thurman seamlessly speak to the present dilemma of the disinherited within America who sit in the tension, terror and tragedy of a nation that consistently fails the “folk.”

“Folk,” those who are at the margins, exist in the gaps, are discarded in the valleys and left to survive on their own methods absent of communal or governmental intervention. Those bearing ailments, disabilities, possessing financial lack and material insufficiency, yet clinging to an internal disposition of survival while all the world around them decays. Those who sense there is no righteous indignation for their sustainability and progression.

This is the dilemma presently intensified within a United States Senate unable, and unwilling, to pass voter rights protections amid democratic decay as morale continues to decrease. Such is the state of America’s conscience marred in moral bankruptcy and communal decay.

This nation’s foundation, one claimed to be built upon communal concepts of justice and liberty for all, has long needed deconstructing and reconstitution. Institutional apathy, capitalistic abuse and white hegemonic fear exuded in displacement tactics have caused us to arrive at this present hour. An hour that is witnessing the American project hang in the balance as the folk are seen as disposable commodities and viewed as replaceable — irredeemable — cattle on the farm of American disenfranchisement and plains of fertile white fragility.

This is the same fragility that would lead the Senate to pass a bill granting the Congressional Gold Medal to Emmett Till and Mamie Till yet possessing no gumption to deem the acts of Jan. 6, 2021, as domestic terrorism.

This is the same fragility that sees no issue changing the filibuster rules under a Republican president to secure Supreme Court judges yet exasperates claims of “process” when the people are centered.

This is the same fragility that claimed sorrow and grief at the passing of Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John R. Lewis yet lacks the gall to ensure folks, Black folks, are seen as equal.

This is the same fragility evidenced in the words of Mitch McConnell from the Senate floor declaring, “If my colleague tries to break the Senate to silence those millions of Americans, we will make their voices heard in this chamber in ways that are more inconvenient for the majority and this White House than what anybody has seen in living memory.”

McConnell’s statement is a clear commitment to block the rights of some for the sake of retaining power. This is not an American anomaly, instead it’s the honest state of American consciousness.

There was living, and evidenced, angst and anger with the Trump administration coupled with undeniable agony toward our democratic affairs and nation’s republic. Manifested through a summer, in 2020, where Black bodies hung and lay in the streets as strange fruit only for thoughts and prayers to be uttered. All while a pandemic ravaged the homes, communities and lives of the disinherited whose existence is viewed no different than Henrietta Lacks. Black and brown bodies were deemed absent of patriotism and only worthy of death.

“This is the same fragility that sees no issue changing the filibuster rules under a Republican president to secure Supreme Court judges yet exasperates claims of ‘process’ when the people are centered.”

There was living, and evidenced, angst and anger with the Trump administration coupled with undeniable agony toward our democratic affairs and nation’s republic. Manifested through a summer, in 2020, where Black bodies hung and lay in the streets as strange fruit only for thoughts and prayers to be uttered. All while a pandemic ravaged the homes, communities and lives of the disinherited whose existence is viewed no different than Henrietta Lacks. Black and brown bodies were deemed absent of patriotism and only worthy of death.

Consequently, we arrive at this point of apathy as the minority struggles to find hope and help amid a government that has failed collectively. Jeremiah Wright Jr. in his 2003 sermon “Confusing God and Government,” highlighted such: “And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed.

Denial, deception and delusion enable a state of ill existence to become, and remain, normative. These practices must be replaced with a communal and reconstituted democracy built by and for the people, where the folks are not discarded. Where the aim of not being killed is swallowed up by a larger and more transcendent goal.

However, if this nation is to change for the good of the folk, a larger and more transcendent goal must be imagined, sketched and actualized. This goal must not center on American exceptionalism, imperialism, militarism, supremacy or xenophobia but be directly confronted by the truthfulness of its failures.

We must be honest about this nation’s failures, commitment to abandon the vulnerable and unwillingness to reconstitute for the sake of all, forcing the folks to erect a more divine goal. We need a goal larger than amplifying American wins and losses, addressing white hegemonic fear amid massive demographic shifts, and skating the surface of inter-generational terror.

If America’s consciousness is to contain a morality of righteous indignation and communal ingenuity, the attitude of Congress and the nation toward and commitment to the disenfranchised must change — or the country we’ve known will be no more. Without such, the disinherited remain external to this nation’s construct and priorities and alien to the prospect of life.

***Jamar A. Boyd II*** *serves as senior manager for organizational impact with the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference.*

United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem

January 14, 2022 Shawn Bell Resources

United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem

The scourge of the drug trade contributes to untold human rights violations, massive corruption and violence that perpetuate brokenness and suffering on a worldwide scale. In 2009, the United Nations put forth a multilateral response to the global drug problems. The Political Declaration and Plan of Action on International Cooperation Toward an Integrated and Balanced strategy to Counter the World Drug Problem identified two foundational solutions. There needs to be more development assistance to reduce supply and focus more attention on health to lower the demand. The Plan had broad support by Member States and engendered great hope for progress in this area.

The Plan suggested “framing collective responses against drugs less like a war and more like an effort to cure a social disease.” It encouraged a middle ground approach between criminalization and legalization. The Plan was laudable, but in its application, supply and use of some substances decreased, while supply and use of other substances increased. Now, seven years later, there is growing awareness that the implementation of the strategies related to the original plan, particularly in the United States, included widespread criminalization of addicts. And as a result of the drug trade and such failed strategies, many are still trapped in a life-time cycle of criminalization, greater drug dependency and violence linked to the drug trade.

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the breach: BEARING WITNESS REPORT OF THE KATRINA NATIONAL JUSTICE COMMISSION

January 14, 2022 Shawn Bell Resources

the breach: BEARING WITNESS REPORT OF THE KATRINA NATIONAL JUSTICE COMMISSION

Over a year before Katrina left the shores of Africa, a federal contract was awarded to Innovative Emergency Management, Inc. to coordinate a simulation exercise of a Category Type 4 Hurricane in the New Orleans area. Local, state, federal and volunteer organizational emergency officials collaborated in this simulation and exercise. The Hurricane Pam exercise, as it was tagged, had all the ingredients of a virtual storm with winds of 120 mph and up to 20 inches of rain, topping the levees and flooding the New Orleans area. What was forecasted was that 300,000 people would not evacuate in advance; 1000 shelters would be needed; 97 percent of all communications would be down; boats and helicopters would be needed for thousands 2 of rescues; 175,000 people would be injured; 200,000 would become sick and 60,000 would be killed; over 500,000 buildings would be destroyed. The Delta was on alert – stand-by in New Orleans!

For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. Acts 4:20

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BEARING WITNESS: A NATION IN CHAINS

January 14, 2022 Shawn Bell Resources

BEARING WITNESS: A NATION IN CHAINS

Across the country, people of faith and conscience are waking up to the magnitude of the harm that has been inflicted by the War on Drugs and the “get tough” movement. We are beginning to acknowledge that our collective silence about the moral dimension of this crisis has made us complicit. Study groups, action committees, and coalitions are forming from coast-to-coast led by people of faith and conscience who are raising their prophetic voices and acting with courage, emboldened by the conviction that anything less threatens the future of generations to come.

Among the brightest lights in this emerging movement is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Bearing Witness is an excellent resource for faith communities, advocacy groups, and all those who are willing to speak with courage and work for justice. As this report makes obvious, the truth about mass incarceration is ugly and inconvenient. But if we turn away imagine this is not our concern, millions more will be lost to this system on our watch.

Michelle Alexander

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Awakening Sacred Memories: A Resource Guide for Healing, Restoration and Justice

January 14, 2022 Shawn Bell Resources

Awakening Sacred Memories: A Resource Guide for Healing, Restoration and Justice

Introduction

“We begin with ourselves. Each of us must answer the question: What will we do with the fullness and incompleteness of who we are as we stare down the interior material life of the cultural production of evil?”

Emilie M. Townes

Beloved,

I am pleased to share this educational resource which supports the sacred memory agenda of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference (SDPC). Our sacred memory agenda is an acknowledgement that we live in a world in which narratives and stories, images and social media are all a part of the cultural production of evil; they can likewise be part of the cultural production of good. Our sacred memory agenda is an affirmation that the responsibility and charge to keep our true narrative alive is ultimately ours. Our sacred memory agenda can serve to be a force for global good. Th e United Nations (UN) declared 2015 – 2024, the International Decade of People of African Descent and the Permanent Memorial to Honor the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade at the United Nations, entitled ‘Th e Ark of Return,’ has been established at its New York headquarters. As a UN, non-governmental organization (NGO), SDPC’s sacred memory agenda will contribute to the international collective impact of documentation, remembrance and celebration initiatives being undertaken by people of African descent throughout the world, under the rubric of the UN’s declaration.

Most of all, however, our sacred memory agenda is an expression of our faith by deed. Th e Word declares:

“Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” Deuteronomy 4:9 (NIV)

For centuries, we, people of African descent, in the Diaspora (and on the continent), have been living in a crucible of transgenerational enslavement and trauma borne out of the cultural production of evil. We have resisted, navigated, died and survived debilitating and destructive legacies in its many forms of systemic racism, sexual abuse and economic exploitation. We, all the people of the United States of America, have been living in a crucible of transgenerational myth-making and reinvention of narratives that support what Townes refers to as the “cultural production of evil.” Most especially these myths and their legacies, psychosocial and structural, are rooted in a refusal to admit or address the consequences of a proclaimed democracy that was in fact founded upon native genocide and African enslavement. With each generation, the unhealed wounds and chasms of material disparities present in this crucible undermine the possibilities for living in the fullness of one’s humanity.

Borne in the suffering of enslaved persons in the midst of a declared democracy, the prophetic tradition of the African American church and SDPC has been unwavering in its role and efforts to be a healing balm of hope and help while speaking truth to power about injustices. It is abundantly clear, that for such a time as this, Black church leadership must carry the mantle of “Servants as Wounded Healers and Warrior Healers.” And, as Healers, we must lead the people in acts of remembrance, lamentation and celebration of our journey.

SDPC’s sacred memory agenda is an extension of our past truth-telling educational, advocacy and activism initiatives. These initiatives include our “bearing witness” methodologies related to Katrina and mass incarceration and resulting in a documentary, commissions and hearings processes. By extension, this work has led to current projects that elevate truth telling, justice, racial healing and transformation ministry; thus, a sacred memory agenda. For us to be our best selves as “Wounded Healers” and “Warrior Healers,” more attention must be given to what Howard Thurman calls the “Inward Journey.”

We beseech and need you to continue the journey. We pray this guide will help us collectively to achieve that goal. May this guide prick your soul, your theological imagination and ministry gifts to unleash a bountiful blessing of healing and health, compassion and love, strength and creativity to the people you serve.

Dr. Iva E. Carruthers

General Secretary

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Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker

January 14, 2022 Shawn Bell Current Events, Feature, News and Highlights, Proctor in Action

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker The General Secretary and the Board of Trustees of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc, an organization that resources over 2,000 African American congregations across the country, today assailed the decision of the Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the keynote speaker for the King birthday observance. (Read full article) Huckabee is slated to give his remarks at an invitation-only event at the Governor’s Mansion on January 17. “This decision shows a flagrant disregard for Dr. King’s values and total disrespect of the work that Dr. King did in the name of civil and human rights for African Americans in this country and the world,” said the Rev. Dr. Iva E. Carruthers, the General Secretary. “Only those whose interests it serves to misappropriate Dr. King’s message and engage in revisionist history at this time in U.S. history, would favor this type of event with Mike Huckabee as the speaker. It is a further insult to the demand for justice that one that calls itself the “King Commission” would endorse and allow this,” she continued. “The event is being paid for by taxpayers, which makes the affront even more egregious,” said the Honorable Rev. Wendell Griffen, of Little Rock, AK and SDPC trustee who recently wrote that the policies being passed and carried out represent a “re-assassination” of Dr. King.

“Sooner or later, those who feed a death wish find a way to destroy themselves. Over the course of the past three generations, we have watched and heard the death rattle of the society that rejected Martin Luther King Jr. during his lifetime, killed him, and has re-assassinated him since the day he died.,” Griffen wrote. “Now that the State of Arkansas has proudly announced its intention to “re-assassinate King” by having an un-reconstructed Southern Baptist preacher and right-wing politician named Mike Huckabee deliver a “keynote address” on the King holiday at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion at the invitation of the state agency that bears King’s name, we should be clear what its conduct means,” he said. “A society that behaves this way has gone beyond a death rattle. It is already morally and ethically dead,” Griffen concluded. Mike Huckabee has a history of speaking and working against the gains made by African Americans and others in this country. The former governor has

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. Trustees Join Hunger Strike for Voting Rights

January 14, 2022 Shawn Bell Current Events, Feature, News and Highlights, Proctor in Action

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. Trustees

Join Hunger Strike for Voting Rights

Members of the Board of Trustees of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) have joined with other faith leaders on a hunger strike to advocate for the passage of voting rights legislation on a Federal level to mitigate new, oppressive legislation in several states.

The hunger strike was organized and launched by the Rev. Stephen Green, chair of Faith for Black Lives.

SDPC trustees, Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas; Rev. Traci Blackmon, associate general minister, Justice and Local Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ; and the Rev. Willie Francois III, pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville, New Jersey, have joined the protest which began January 6, 2022, the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Insurrection, and which is to end January 17, 2022, the day the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to be celebrated across the country. Read full article

Rev. Francois said, in a local news article, “We put our bodies on the line for this nation. It’s a way of waging a nonviolent love revolution,” he said.

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Dr. Haynes, one of the co-chairs of the SDPC Board of Trustees, stated, “We have those in leadership – in Texas government – who have in their ideological DNA the same mindset of those slave masters who denied the humanity of Black people. The same mindset of those individuals who upheld Jim and Jane Crow segregation. …Gov. (Greg) Abbot and his Republican cronies have decided to dress up Jim and Jane Crow in a tuxedo of what they call voter integrity, but it’s still Jim and Jane Crow. … You are simply trying to create a problem for voters you don’t want to vote.” Read full article

Rev. Blackmon shared that she has been very introspective about the hunger strike and what it signifies for her. “I’ve joined the hunger strike because I believe escalation is necessary as the voice of my kindred and my descendants is threatened. For me, fasting is a natural escalation and is spiritual warfare. It is once again midnight in the nation, and I actually believe what I preach: something can only be cast out by fasting and prayer.”

Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, general secretary of SDPC, said that the actions of the trustees do not surprise her, “We have a group of trustees who are so deeply committed to the cause of justice that they are willing to experience physical discomfort for the good of all people. They are standing on the wall and in the breach. It is what our trustees do.”

Carruthers remarked that the country is in a precarious place right now, as the future of voting rights for all people – most importantly Black people – hangs in the balance.

“We have all worked too hard, for too long to just sit by,” she commented. “I applaud the trustees for their courage and conviction.”

The Gifted Seer and The American Heart

January 6, 2022 Shawn Bell Current Events, Feature, News and Highlights, Proctor in Action

The Gifted Seer and The American Heart

By Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

“…[B]orn with a veil and gifted with second-sight in this American world – a world…which only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn under.”

W.E.B. DU BOIS “OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS”

Howard Thurman remains among the celebrated and elite preachers of twentieth-century renown (1899-1981). Thurman, a prophetic thinker and a self-described mystic, was gifted with second sight; a phenomenon that W.E.B. Dubois once described on the pages of “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in The Souls of Black Folk.

“Thurman the gifted seer prophetically forewarned us about fascism’s content located in the American heart.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

Thurman was born within the veil of American oppression which may have been the source of his gift of second sight. The gift for Thurman is like an Old Testament Seer. “I am the seer,” Samuel replied. “Go up ahead of me to the high place, for today you are to eat with me, and in the morning, I will send you on your way and will tell you all that is in your heart” (1 Samuel 9:19). Thurman the gifted seer prophetically forewarned us about fascism’s content located in the American heart:

These [Fascist] organizations exploit the active and latent prejudices that the average American has against the non-white races on the one hand and against the Jewish people on the other. They make it possible for a creative rationalization to provide a cloak for group hatreds which can be objectified as true Christianity or true Americanism.

In other words, they provide for a legitimizing of sadistic and demonical impulses of which under normal circumstances they might be ashamed. To appeal to anti-Negro sentiment in many sections, communities and among many groups is a “natural” for the would-be demagogue. It is sure-fire.

The above words are Thurman’s and are included in Peter Eisenstadt’s “Howard Thurman’s ‘Fascist Masquerade’: The Black thinker who saw this coming 75 years ago.” Eisenstadt, also the author of Against The Hounds Of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, points toward the seer of Thurman’s second sight and how Thurman employed his gift to peer into the American heart.

What Thurman saw was a nation leaning toward, and eventually accepting, anti-democratic norms, its embrace of fascism and its sycophantic disciple’s unbridled and unadulterated lust for authoritarianism. Eisenstadt’s article on Thurman is subtitled “At the end of World War II, pioneering religious thinker Howard Thurman saw fascism coming to Christian America.”

“In Peter Eisenstadt’s “Howard Thurman’s ‘Fascist Masquerade’: The Black thinker who saw this coming 75 years ago.” Eisenstadt, also the author of Against The Hounds Of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, points toward the seer of Thurman’s second sight and how Thurman employed his gift to peer into the American heart.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

“In this new year, we approach the first anniversary of the infamous January 6 terrorist attack on the symbols of democracy.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

The subtitle underscores what I believe. That is, throughout his career, Thurman performed a spiritual examination of the American Heart:” His examination’s results were accurate. It pointed toward the looming, immoral, and political American dysfunction. Readers, we need only to remember the American terrorist demonstrative act on its symbols of American democratic institutions.

Nearly a year ago, January 6, 2021, the world witnessed the apocalyptic fulfillment of the prophetic Thurman’s warning. The attack on the United States Capitol, the symbol of America’s commitment to democracy and its norms, the symbol of the citadel and fortress that represents America’s commitment to the rule of law was compromised by treasonous confederates, which previously recited, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands one Nation under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

“There is no Martin Luther King, Jr.’s urgency of now.” Joseph Evans analyzes how the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s preaching brought the “living word” and various rhetorical techniques together in ways that helped people understand, and be given hope by, his messages. The author observes that James Baldwin – himself a gifted writer and provocative thinker – considered King to be an “Polished Preacher.”

This can no longer be believed about American Christianity as it has been defined by whites’ protestant traditions. Why? Because there is no outrage against our existential threat to democracy. There has been minimal public resistance from white mainline citizen Christians for justice, a reckoning, and an examination of the American heart.

Plainly stated, many so-called Christians as I have described have failed to demand an exacting justice against American fascism and its fascist acolytes who by blind rote pledge allegiance to a former rogue president who, like Nero, fiddled while Rome burned. This country’s and the world’s citizens wait to see if American jurisprudence will prevail, or will it succumb to what is now obviously an uncourageous American political and moral stalemate.

This book weaves Baldwin’s poetic and fiery words, passion for justice, and admiration of King’s oration into a detailed, thought-provoking examination of the rhythm of determination and transformative power in King’s speaking, writing, and faith. Click below to watch Joseph Evans talk about why he wrote “The Polished King”

It is the stalemate that underscores the straying democracy.

In the meantime, in horror, the world’s citizens, friends and foes watch the hypnotic looping cable news videos that endlessly continue. Among the world’s citizens, we wait for justice and reckoning. There is no Martin Luther King, Jr.’s urgency of now. Therefore, we wait with and as global citizens; we wait to exhale; we wait to breathe. We wait nervously and many prayerfully for justice and at the same time, we continue to witness America’s growing and unimpeded fascist leanings that are spreading and mutating like our strains of COVID viruses.

In this new year, we approach the first anniversary of the infamous January 6 terrorist attack on the symbols of democracy. As a response to newness, perhaps, someone will take notice of Thurman’s gift of second sight and have an urge to be gifted similarly. Still, the seer Thurman forewarned the nation and now the world over 75 years ago that this fascist deluge would soon emerge.

Well, it’s here and we must deal with it straight away and head-on. We must come to terms with the condition of the American heart, like Thurman, and like those before him, and those after him. And we are those after Thurman. We must protest by demanding that action be taken before it’s too late. The assignment is before us: we must spiritually examine the American heart.

Dr. Joseph Evans is the Dean of Morehouse School of Religion. Dr. Evans is the author of “Reconciliation and Reparation Preaching Economic Justice, and The Art of Eloquence: The Sacred Rhetoric of Gardner C. Taylor. (Published in 2021) The Polished King: Living Words of Martin Luther King Jr. is Dr. Evans current title; published by Judson Press January 3, 2022. Dr. Evans contributes ecumenical and social perspectives at ReelUrbanNews.com.

Article reprinted by permission