Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Christianity, Islam, Love, and Progress
When I originally published the following essay almost twelve years ago in a local Peace Action Network newsletter and on my "Imagine Peace Project" website, I had deeply mixed feelings. The words were accurate and well weighed, and the feelings were absolutely honest. Somehow, at the time however, it didn't convey the level of respect that I felt was absolutely necessary for writing anything about religion. I eventually I got too burnt out with the stress of work and too furiously frustrated at what was passing for public discourse in those days to continue imagining peace. So I stopped. I honestly don't know what I'm imagining now. But I found myself rereading this piece and realizing that it was not only right on then, but needs to be said again right now, exactly as it was said back then. So here 'tis. Peace!
The hypothesis that Christianity has progressed beyond Islam because Christianity embraces forgiveness and the love of enemies has been expressed often of late in one form of another. The sentiment is understandable as the U.S. administration pursues a “war on terrorism” that at time of writing anyway, seems to be focused on Islamic people and regimes. While the feeling is understandable, particularly among Christians, the logic contains deep flaws that we as Americans are particularly prone to because of our relatively shallow understanding of the world at large and of its many diverse lands and cultures. Humorous words that a Christian preacher shared with me about a year ago, perhaps say it best. “If you speak two languages, then you are bi-lingual,” he said. “And if you speak three languages, then you are tri-lingual. But if you only speak one language, then by God, you’re an American!”
Luckily, the fact that such humor could be shared and appreciated by two monolingual Americans, such as the preacher and myself, indicates that we can begin to broaden our perspectives without necessarily quitting our jobs, going back to school and learning a bunch of languages. In fact, the methods for doing so can be found in the exact same guidelines for analytical reasoning that have been embraced by the Western Christian world perhaps more so than by any other culture. An analysis of the question at hand, for instance, immediately indicates that we need to define the primary terms in the opening hypothesis. What is Christianity? What is Islam?
All religions, including Christianity and Islam, can be understood from many perspectives that include the teachings of the religion, the behavior of people who claim to follow the religion, and the political histories of cultures that have espoused the religion. For instance, Ernest Thompson Seton, a former head of the Boy Scouts of America, and Julia M. Seton compiled a book, entitled “The Gospel of the Redman,” that has been in print at least since 1937 and has been sold in Boy Scout supply stores perhaps from then until now. The Setons open the first chapter of their book with the following comparison of Western Christian culture to that of the Native Americans:
“The culture and civilization of the Whiteman are essentially material; his measure of success is ‘How much property have I acquired for myself?’ The culture of the Redman is fundamentally spiritual; his measure of success is, ‘How much service have I rendered to my people?’” Elsewhere in the book, the Setons also point out the terrible historical irony that despite sublime Christian teachings of forgiveness and love, the history of Christianity is probably more brutal than any other religion. With regard to the opening hypothesis, the extermination of Native American cultures, Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow, Apartheid, Imperialism, Inquisition, Crusades and World Wars I and II (just to mention a few) make any assertion of Christian progress based on exceeding anyone else in matters of forgiveness and love hard to swallow at best. In terms of modern American experience we find the oft-quoted observation by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that the hour of Christian worship on Sunday is “the most segregated hour in America.”
Back to the original analysis, however, a Muslim teaching that is relevant to the opening hypothesis can be found in the scriptural statement that “there is no compulsion in religion (or in the way of life).” I’m sure that many of the people and cultures who were forced to convert to Christianity probably wished that the Christians had and had followed such a teaching also. Nonetheless, this essay is not about the semantics of religious teachings; it is about the behavior of religious people and religious civilizations. Despite cultural differences between Christians and Muslims they are, qualitatively speaking, equivalent in terms of espousing great teachings that they don’t follow very well.
As an African-American, who has spent almost three decades as a devout Christian, almost two decades as a devout Muslim, a tour of duty in the U.S. armed services and a little over two decades struggling to explain the inconsistencies of religion and politics to my offspring, I believe that I can say this based on experience. A rigorous argument to this effect would take far more space than the medium allows, and it is also a topic that no longer interests me. This, by the way, is where the analysis ends and we start to put the pieces back together. The teachings of Christianity and Islam both begin in the same Semitic monotheistic source, Judaism. The teaching stories or parables have varied somewhat with time and culture, but the messages are the same. In that light, rather than analyze the concepts of relative progress among religions, it becomes more relevant to ask what Jesus, Muhammad or Moses would think of the “progress” of their respective followers.
In the modern Christian world, Jesus would be confronted with the same religious and political hypocrisy as he was in the Christian scripture. He would probably have to be assassinated all over again for speaking out against it, just as the Rev. Dr. King was assassinated in modern times. In the modern Muslim world, Muhammad would probably be fleeing for his life after speaking out against brutal and corrupt Arab regimes, as he was doing at the opening of the Muslim calendar 1400 years ago. And if Moses were still alive, he would probably tell the Jews, as he did thousands of years ago, that they have to spend at least one more generation in the wilderness before they are ready for the Promised Land. While modern technology, artistry and political sophistication may build the best golden calves that money can buy, it must not, as the Setons imply in the first chapter of their book, be confused with love.
Ironically, as the descendant of a culture of scripture-less pagans, I am finding myself increasingly grateful on a daily basis, particularly in the aftermath of Sept. 11, that my ancestors were victims rather than perpetrators of the “progress” about which modern religions and civilizations rival each other and boast. Today Jews, Christians and Muslims probably control the lion’s share of resources on the Earth. Yet instead of sharing what in many cases was brutally taken from others anyway, the diverse followers of Abrahamic teachings are fighting amongst themselves. It seems that in the glorious rush to progress, we have all left behind something of great importance. And considering the decidedly ugly turn of current events, it would behoove all of us to stop patting ourselves on the back for a little while anyway, so that we can go back and retrieve what we have lost. In the wise and loving words of the great Pogo, “We have met the enemy and they is us.”
Hassaun Ali Jones-Bey is (or was back in 2001 when this was initially published) a senior editor for a high technology trade magazine, and he is (was) developing an online storytelling project (which as of this afternoon he's thinking of starting again) at www.imaginepeace.org.
The hypothesis that Christianity has progressed beyond Islam because Christianity embraces forgiveness and the love of enemies has been expressed often of late in one form of another. The sentiment is understandable as the U.S. administration pursues a “war on terrorism” that at time of writing anyway, seems to be focused on Islamic people and regimes. While the feeling is understandable, particularly among Christians, the logic contains deep flaws that we as Americans are particularly prone to because of our relatively shallow understanding of the world at large and of its many diverse lands and cultures. Humorous words that a Christian preacher shared with me about a year ago, perhaps say it best. “If you speak two languages, then you are bi-lingual,” he said. “And if you speak three languages, then you are tri-lingual. But if you only speak one language, then by God, you’re an American!”
Luckily, the fact that such humor could be shared and appreciated by two monolingual Americans, such as the preacher and myself, indicates that we can begin to broaden our perspectives without necessarily quitting our jobs, going back to school and learning a bunch of languages. In fact, the methods for doing so can be found in the exact same guidelines for analytical reasoning that have been embraced by the Western Christian world perhaps more so than by any other culture. An analysis of the question at hand, for instance, immediately indicates that we need to define the primary terms in the opening hypothesis. What is Christianity? What is Islam?
All religions, including Christianity and Islam, can be understood from many perspectives that include the teachings of the religion, the behavior of people who claim to follow the religion, and the political histories of cultures that have espoused the religion. For instance, Ernest Thompson Seton, a former head of the Boy Scouts of America, and Julia M. Seton compiled a book, entitled “The Gospel of the Redman,” that has been in print at least since 1937 and has been sold in Boy Scout supply stores perhaps from then until now. The Setons open the first chapter of their book with the following comparison of Western Christian culture to that of the Native Americans:
“The culture and civilization of the Whiteman are essentially material; his measure of success is ‘How much property have I acquired for myself?’ The culture of the Redman is fundamentally spiritual; his measure of success is, ‘How much service have I rendered to my people?’” Elsewhere in the book, the Setons also point out the terrible historical irony that despite sublime Christian teachings of forgiveness and love, the history of Christianity is probably more brutal than any other religion. With regard to the opening hypothesis, the extermination of Native American cultures, Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow, Apartheid, Imperialism, Inquisition, Crusades and World Wars I and II (just to mention a few) make any assertion of Christian progress based on exceeding anyone else in matters of forgiveness and love hard to swallow at best. In terms of modern American experience we find the oft-quoted observation by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that the hour of Christian worship on Sunday is “the most segregated hour in America.”
Back to the original analysis, however, a Muslim teaching that is relevant to the opening hypothesis can be found in the scriptural statement that “there is no compulsion in religion (or in the way of life).” I’m sure that many of the people and cultures who were forced to convert to Christianity probably wished that the Christians had and had followed such a teaching also. Nonetheless, this essay is not about the semantics of religious teachings; it is about the behavior of religious people and religious civilizations. Despite cultural differences between Christians and Muslims they are, qualitatively speaking, equivalent in terms of espousing great teachings that they don’t follow very well.
As an African-American, who has spent almost three decades as a devout Christian, almost two decades as a devout Muslim, a tour of duty in the U.S. armed services and a little over two decades struggling to explain the inconsistencies of religion and politics to my offspring, I believe that I can say this based on experience. A rigorous argument to this effect would take far more space than the medium allows, and it is also a topic that no longer interests me. This, by the way, is where the analysis ends and we start to put the pieces back together. The teachings of Christianity and Islam both begin in the same Semitic monotheistic source, Judaism. The teaching stories or parables have varied somewhat with time and culture, but the messages are the same. In that light, rather than analyze the concepts of relative progress among religions, it becomes more relevant to ask what Jesus, Muhammad or Moses would think of the “progress” of their respective followers.
In the modern Christian world, Jesus would be confronted with the same religious and political hypocrisy as he was in the Christian scripture. He would probably have to be assassinated all over again for speaking out against it, just as the Rev. Dr. King was assassinated in modern times. In the modern Muslim world, Muhammad would probably be fleeing for his life after speaking out against brutal and corrupt Arab regimes, as he was doing at the opening of the Muslim calendar 1400 years ago. And if Moses were still alive, he would probably tell the Jews, as he did thousands of years ago, that they have to spend at least one more generation in the wilderness before they are ready for the Promised Land. While modern technology, artistry and political sophistication may build the best golden calves that money can buy, it must not, as the Setons imply in the first chapter of their book, be confused with love.
Ironically, as the descendant of a culture of scripture-less pagans, I am finding myself increasingly grateful on a daily basis, particularly in the aftermath of Sept. 11, that my ancestors were victims rather than perpetrators of the “progress” about which modern religions and civilizations rival each other and boast. Today Jews, Christians and Muslims probably control the lion’s share of resources on the Earth. Yet instead of sharing what in many cases was brutally taken from others anyway, the diverse followers of Abrahamic teachings are fighting amongst themselves. It seems that in the glorious rush to progress, we have all left behind something of great importance. And considering the decidedly ugly turn of current events, it would behoove all of us to stop patting ourselves on the back for a little while anyway, so that we can go back and retrieve what we have lost. In the wise and loving words of the great Pogo, “We have met the enemy and they is us.”
Hassaun Ali Jones-Bey is (or was back in 2001 when this was initially published) a senior editor for a high technology trade magazine, and he is (was) developing an online storytelling project (which as of this afternoon he's thinking of starting again) at www.imaginepeace.org.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Whose Child are You?
The free Sunday Spirit exhibit of Religious Images by African American Artists in the Bade Museum at Berkeley’s Pacific School of Religion closed on December 14, 2012. I attended the opening in September and was personally impressed enough to use the imagery as a backdrop for the following analysis of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time that I wrote for a class on African American Christianity and Freedom Struggle during the Civil Rights era.
In The Fire Next Time James Baldwin addresses issues of identity and community for an African American teenager growing up in New York City in the middle third of the twentieth century by literally raising concerns and events from his own life to mythic proportions. In the two essays that comprise the book – one a letter written in 1963 to his fourteen-year-old nephew and the second an autobiographical account that begins with Baldwin’s religious identity crisis at age fourteen, but twenty-five years earlier – the question “Whose little boy are you?” is posed repeatedly, implicitly in the first essay and explicitly in the second. Baldwin’s words offer a rhetorical answer in light of modern social concerns. And Baldwin’s imagery, particularly when interpreted through the lens of the Sunday Spirit exhibit of Religious Images by African American Artists, offers what might be described as an “archaic” answer as well.(1)
In writing about African-American religious art “as an essential source for Black theology and African-American biblical interpretation,” James Noel borrows the term “archaic” from Charles H. Long to describe an imaginative level of consciousness common to both aesthetic perceptions and religious experience. It is predicated on the priority of something given or already there and resides at a deeper level of awareness than language can interpret or express. Since the archaic manifests as symbol rather than discursive speech, bridging the gap between the archaic and its interpretation requires a participatory mode of consciousness that is obscured by modern language but commensurate with forms the interpreter wishes to understand.(2)
Upon taking Baldwin’s question, “Whose little boy (or girl, or child) are you?” into the Sunday Spirit exhibit, one notices that among nineteen images only one includes an actual living child in a familial context: an untitled mother-and-child portrayal by Ademola Williams, a writer and lecturer at the University of Benin in Nigeria. The child, while riding in the back of the mother’s garments, appears to be glancing backward into the exhibit space as the mother walks out of it. What appears to be the photograph of a child in another image entitled “Mother and the Presence of Myth” by Michael D. Harris turns out to be a childhood photo of the artist’s mother combined with elements of Yoruba religious aesthetic and symbols to suggest social transformation.
The only images in the exhibit that evoke the thought of children within the African-American Christian tradition are two that commemorate the 1963 church bombing that killed eleven-year-old Denise McNair, fourteen-year-old Addie Mae Collins, fourteen-year-old Carole Robertson, and fourteen-year-old Cynthia Wesley while they attended Sunday School at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. “Voices from a Birmingham Church” by Evangeline Montgomery presents a fiery red conflagration. In “I Remember Birmingham” by John Scott, a gauze-like layer of warm colors through which angry and sorrowful words seem to fall like rain or tears, barely mutes the blood-smeared white cross beneath it with a similarly smeared white church at its center. And is that a white-garbed figure, in a yet deeper layer, running to escape the crime? Since The Fire Next Time was published in 1963 and the first of two essays that comprise the book is titled “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” the Sunday Spirit exhibit seems to provide an appropriate venue for contemplating a deeper level of meaning.
The first essay is presented as the text of letter from Baldwin to his young namesake nephew, conveying warnings and advice for a young black man entering the world that Baldwin describes in the second essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in my Mind.” Both essays deliver a ringing critique of modern Western white supremacist society. They also warn of potentially disastrous consequences for white as well as black people, if black people respond to whites with in-kind racial hatred. Early on, Baldwin warns his nephew about the tragic mistake of Baldwin’s father: “Well, he is dead, he never saw you and he had a terrible life; he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what the white people said about him. This is one of the reasons he became so holy…. You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger.”(3)
Baldwin’s words are powerfully reminiscent of the “natal community connection” that Orlando Patterson says is ceremoniously broken when the bond of slavery is made, often broken in a way that humiliates the slave and breaks his or her spirit.(4) “The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you,” Baldwin explains and then continues later on. “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear…. You must accept them… with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”(5) Baldwin describes them as if they are lost children.
He begins the second essay by describing a “prolonged religious crisis” that descended upon him when he turned fourteen. Evidently Baldwin’s fear of sinking into the moral depravity of Harlem street life became so acute that his best friend introduced Baldwin to his pastor. “There she sat, in her robes, smiling, an extremely proud and handsome woman, with Africa, Europe and the America of the American Indian blended in her face. She was perhaps forty-five or fifty at the time…. [S]he looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Whose little boy are you?’…. [P]recisely the phrase used by pimps and racketeers on the Avenue when they suggested, both humorously and intensely that I ‘hang out’ with them…. [W]hen the pastor asked me with that marvelous smile,… my heart replied at once, ‘Why yours.’”(6)
In some ways this second essay reads like the Yoruba storytelling of Amos Tutuola, in which young people disobey their elders or break fundamental social rules to consequently become ensnared in wildly supernatural and sometimes grisly adventures.(7) Baldwin’s father is a pastor, but the father-son relationship, as the first essay suggests, is very poor. So Baldwin is sorely tempted at the onset of puberty to take up an apprenticeship in the “church” of Harlem street life, which in the Yoruba mythology of Tutuola and of the Sunday Spirit artists who portrayed children, might be thought of as Esu, the trickster. Before succumbing to Esu however, Baldwin finds himself answering in the affirmative when another pastor (a yin to counter his father’s yang) whose description evokes the Yoruba mythological imagery of a honey-hued Osun, love goddess. Baldwin’s relatively short-lived apprenticeship to the Christian incarnation of Osun seems doomed at the outset, however, when he realizes, during the conversion experience that precedes his three-year evangelical preaching career that “God—and I felt this even then, so long ago, on that tremendous floor, unwillingly—is white.”(8)
Perhaps predictably, twenty-four years later Baldwin finds himself under the influence of another irresistible smile that seems to ask once again, “Whose little boy are you?” This time the smile belongs to the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In Yoruba mythology, however, Baldwin is now in the presence of Sango, the king and wielder of thunderbolts. Baldwin manages to resist the invitation this time, which probably saves him from another disturbing conversion experience in which the Black God he was expecting turns out to be an Arab.
“The Negro has been formed by this nation for better or for worse, and does not belong to any other—not to Africa, and certainly not to Islam,” Baldwin declares. “The paradox… is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. To accept one’s past… is learning to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. How can the Negro past be used? The unprecedented price demanded—and at this embattled hour of the worlds history—is the transcendence of the realities of color, of nations, and of altars.”(9)
Baldwin now appears to answer the central question “Whose little boy are you?” The American “Negro has been formed by this nation,” he states. So we must be America’s children. But the fiery red imagery from Birmingham, the departing mother and child, and the biblical archaeology in an adjacent art exhibit seem to hold out a potential for further and perhaps deeper interpretive exploration. Baldwin's words seems to ask the question of Americans who are not of African heritage as well. If you get a chance to visit the exhibit perhaps you can ask that question for yourself, ponder the “archaic” firsthand, and come up with an answer of your own.
After meditating on this for several weeks, I find myself coming back to add a conclusion of my own. My essay only gives Baldwin three archetypes to choose from, and I imagine him both in life and in The Fire Next Time in the archetype of the Trickster. The Trickster is able to communicate with everyone, and Baldwin used that power very capably to communicate both the message of the powerful king, and of the love goddess to people all sorts of people. Perhaps that is the role of the artist. I'm reminded of a song I released about four years ago, entitled "God, Goddess, and Trickster." If you'd like to hear it or read the lyrics, you can find it online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AozJXuTRqw. Abiding peace, abundant blessings, and one love to you and yours.
References
1. Details of the Sunday Spirit Religious Images by African American Artists from the Jean and Robert E. Steele Collection, currently on display at the The Doug Adams Gallery at the Badè Museum can be found online at http://care-gtu.org/doug_adams_gallery.php
2. James A. Noel “African American Art and Biblical Interpretation” in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, edited by Brian K. Blount, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2007, 75, 80
3. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 13-14
4. Orlando Patterson “Authority, Alienation, and Social Death” in African American Religious Thought: An Anthology edited by Cornell West and Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2003, 118
5. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 19
6. Ibid., 43-44
7. Amos Tutuola The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Grove Press, New York, 1953.
8. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 46
9. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 110-111
In The Fire Next Time James Baldwin addresses issues of identity and community for an African American teenager growing up in New York City in the middle third of the twentieth century by literally raising concerns and events from his own life to mythic proportions. In the two essays that comprise the book – one a letter written in 1963 to his fourteen-year-old nephew and the second an autobiographical account that begins with Baldwin’s religious identity crisis at age fourteen, but twenty-five years earlier – the question “Whose little boy are you?” is posed repeatedly, implicitly in the first essay and explicitly in the second. Baldwin’s words offer a rhetorical answer in light of modern social concerns. And Baldwin’s imagery, particularly when interpreted through the lens of the Sunday Spirit exhibit of Religious Images by African American Artists, offers what might be described as an “archaic” answer as well.(1)
In writing about African-American religious art “as an essential source for Black theology and African-American biblical interpretation,” James Noel borrows the term “archaic” from Charles H. Long to describe an imaginative level of consciousness common to both aesthetic perceptions and religious experience. It is predicated on the priority of something given or already there and resides at a deeper level of awareness than language can interpret or express. Since the archaic manifests as symbol rather than discursive speech, bridging the gap between the archaic and its interpretation requires a participatory mode of consciousness that is obscured by modern language but commensurate with forms the interpreter wishes to understand.(2)
Upon taking Baldwin’s question, “Whose little boy (or girl, or child) are you?” into the Sunday Spirit exhibit, one notices that among nineteen images only one includes an actual living child in a familial context: an untitled mother-and-child portrayal by Ademola Williams, a writer and lecturer at the University of Benin in Nigeria. The child, while riding in the back of the mother’s garments, appears to be glancing backward into the exhibit space as the mother walks out of it. What appears to be the photograph of a child in another image entitled “Mother and the Presence of Myth” by Michael D. Harris turns out to be a childhood photo of the artist’s mother combined with elements of Yoruba religious aesthetic and symbols to suggest social transformation.
The only images in the exhibit that evoke the thought of children within the African-American Christian tradition are two that commemorate the 1963 church bombing that killed eleven-year-old Denise McNair, fourteen-year-old Addie Mae Collins, fourteen-year-old Carole Robertson, and fourteen-year-old Cynthia Wesley while they attended Sunday School at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. “Voices from a Birmingham Church” by Evangeline Montgomery presents a fiery red conflagration. In “I Remember Birmingham” by John Scott, a gauze-like layer of warm colors through which angry and sorrowful words seem to fall like rain or tears, barely mutes the blood-smeared white cross beneath it with a similarly smeared white church at its center. And is that a white-garbed figure, in a yet deeper layer, running to escape the crime? Since The Fire Next Time was published in 1963 and the first of two essays that comprise the book is titled “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” the Sunday Spirit exhibit seems to provide an appropriate venue for contemplating a deeper level of meaning.
The first essay is presented as the text of letter from Baldwin to his young namesake nephew, conveying warnings and advice for a young black man entering the world that Baldwin describes in the second essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in my Mind.” Both essays deliver a ringing critique of modern Western white supremacist society. They also warn of potentially disastrous consequences for white as well as black people, if black people respond to whites with in-kind racial hatred. Early on, Baldwin warns his nephew about the tragic mistake of Baldwin’s father: “Well, he is dead, he never saw you and he had a terrible life; he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what the white people said about him. This is one of the reasons he became so holy…. You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger.”(3)
Baldwin’s words are powerfully reminiscent of the “natal community connection” that Orlando Patterson says is ceremoniously broken when the bond of slavery is made, often broken in a way that humiliates the slave and breaks his or her spirit.(4) “The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you,” Baldwin explains and then continues later on. “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear…. You must accept them… with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”(5) Baldwin describes them as if they are lost children.
He begins the second essay by describing a “prolonged religious crisis” that descended upon him when he turned fourteen. Evidently Baldwin’s fear of sinking into the moral depravity of Harlem street life became so acute that his best friend introduced Baldwin to his pastor. “There she sat, in her robes, smiling, an extremely proud and handsome woman, with Africa, Europe and the America of the American Indian blended in her face. She was perhaps forty-five or fifty at the time…. [S]he looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Whose little boy are you?’…. [P]recisely the phrase used by pimps and racketeers on the Avenue when they suggested, both humorously and intensely that I ‘hang out’ with them…. [W]hen the pastor asked me with that marvelous smile,… my heart replied at once, ‘Why yours.’”(6)
In some ways this second essay reads like the Yoruba storytelling of Amos Tutuola, in which young people disobey their elders or break fundamental social rules to consequently become ensnared in wildly supernatural and sometimes grisly adventures.(7) Baldwin’s father is a pastor, but the father-son relationship, as the first essay suggests, is very poor. So Baldwin is sorely tempted at the onset of puberty to take up an apprenticeship in the “church” of Harlem street life, which in the Yoruba mythology of Tutuola and of the Sunday Spirit artists who portrayed children, might be thought of as Esu, the trickster. Before succumbing to Esu however, Baldwin finds himself answering in the affirmative when another pastor (a yin to counter his father’s yang) whose description evokes the Yoruba mythological imagery of a honey-hued Osun, love goddess. Baldwin’s relatively short-lived apprenticeship to the Christian incarnation of Osun seems doomed at the outset, however, when he realizes, during the conversion experience that precedes his three-year evangelical preaching career that “God—and I felt this even then, so long ago, on that tremendous floor, unwillingly—is white.”(8)
Perhaps predictably, twenty-four years later Baldwin finds himself under the influence of another irresistible smile that seems to ask once again, “Whose little boy are you?” This time the smile belongs to the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In Yoruba mythology, however, Baldwin is now in the presence of Sango, the king and wielder of thunderbolts. Baldwin manages to resist the invitation this time, which probably saves him from another disturbing conversion experience in which the Black God he was expecting turns out to be an Arab.
“The Negro has been formed by this nation for better or for worse, and does not belong to any other—not to Africa, and certainly not to Islam,” Baldwin declares. “The paradox… is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. To accept one’s past… is learning to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. How can the Negro past be used? The unprecedented price demanded—and at this embattled hour of the worlds history—is the transcendence of the realities of color, of nations, and of altars.”(9)
Baldwin now appears to answer the central question “Whose little boy are you?” The American “Negro has been formed by this nation,” he states. So we must be America’s children. But the fiery red imagery from Birmingham, the departing mother and child, and the biblical archaeology in an adjacent art exhibit seem to hold out a potential for further and perhaps deeper interpretive exploration. Baldwin's words seems to ask the question of Americans who are not of African heritage as well. If you get a chance to visit the exhibit perhaps you can ask that question for yourself, ponder the “archaic” firsthand, and come up with an answer of your own.
After meditating on this for several weeks, I find myself coming back to add a conclusion of my own. My essay only gives Baldwin three archetypes to choose from, and I imagine him both in life and in The Fire Next Time in the archetype of the Trickster. The Trickster is able to communicate with everyone, and Baldwin used that power very capably to communicate both the message of the powerful king, and of the love goddess to people all sorts of people. Perhaps that is the role of the artist. I'm reminded of a song I released about four years ago, entitled "God, Goddess, and Trickster." If you'd like to hear it or read the lyrics, you can find it online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AozJXuTRqw. Abiding peace, abundant blessings, and one love to you and yours.
References
1. Details of the Sunday Spirit Religious Images by African American Artists from the Jean and Robert E. Steele Collection, currently on display at the The Doug Adams Gallery at the Badè Museum can be found online at http://care-gtu.org/doug_adams_gallery.php
2. James A. Noel “African American Art and Biblical Interpretation” in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, edited by Brian K. Blount, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2007, 75, 80
3. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 13-14
4. Orlando Patterson “Authority, Alienation, and Social Death” in African American Religious Thought: An Anthology edited by Cornell West and Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2003, 118
5. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 19
6. Ibid., 43-44
7. Amos Tutuola The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Grove Press, New York, 1953.
8. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 46
9. James Baldwin The Fire Next Time Dell Publishing, New York, 1964, 110-111
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Ancestors
Lift Every Voice and Sing...
The Wall Street financial district in New York City, also known as the financial capital of the world, is built upon a burial ground for African slaves and their descendants. The actual Wall Street was originally a wall built by European settlers and their African slaves in the early 1600s to protect settlements from indigenous people, who at times joined revolting slaves in struggles for freedom. On January 1, 1804, during a time when sugar was as important to the world economy as petroleum is today, revolting slaves who had risen up from bondage on the world’s richest sugar plantations made Haiti the first truly free nation in the modern world. They also returned the name of the new nation to Ayiti (land of high mountains), which is what the entire island was called by its inhabitants before Columbus “discovered” and renamed the people and their homeland three hundred years earlier. Within a couple of decades after Ayiti’s liberation, however, the young republic was forced to mortgage its freedom to powerful banks to reimburse slaveholders for the loss of their human property. To protect the interests of these banks from “civil unrest,” the U.S. sent troops to occupy Ayiti for two decades (1915-34) and still intervenes in the governance of Ayiti’s impoverished people. So, the image of Occupy protesters gathering around Wall Street at the beginning of this holiday season reminded me of James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice,” which was written in 1900 and later came to be known as the “Negro National Anthem.”
… ‘til earth and heaven ring…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing.
Autumnal equinox foreshadows
Short, dark days of yellow, red
And warm brown into black earth tones,
Spirituals, wind chimes, falling leaves
From deciduous tropical family trees
Landing in America, looking for my soil to feed.
So I run and rescue them from asphalt and the
Concrete buzz of leaf-blower-engine whine.
Then I ask ancestral saints to bless
November Days of Dead, to feed
My weary soul, anoint my dreadlocked head.
…Ring with the harmonies…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing.
My Harvest Feast gives thanks
For Boukman Dutty, Toussaint L’Ouverture,
And Capois-la-Mort’s November battle that
Won the freedom war. Yet Ayiti still struggles,
Through many generations, liberating me
From shame of nations built on slavery.
My winter solstice Christmas, too,
Receives God’s freedom shining forth, anew
With each New Year, I joyfully hear
My own holy mother, child and family decree:
Know that we are people, no longer property.
…Of liberty…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing
But winter’s snow is concrete,
Ice is steel and glass:
Concrete, steel, and glass walls
Built to keep me from my past.
The sweet-toothed bards of liberty
In these cold Western lands
Consumed my ancestors like fuel,
For church and state aggrandizement,
To feed the fires of empire, until
Ayiti shouted “No!” bursting through
The concrete, braving bitter chill alone.
…Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing.
The truth that sets us free and
Reflects mythically in creeds is but
The cycling of nature and her seasons.
Even concrete crumbles away,
Like Jericho’s wall on trumpet day,
Opening for March rebirth, through the
Vernal equinox of Black Madonna Earth;
Until Juneteenth summer solstice days
Make us whole once more, before
Autumn storms return. So drum and dance
And sacrifice for healing rains to cleanse us all.
…Let it resound
Loud as the rolling seas…
For me the Occupy movement begins to recognize that countless souls throughout the world who have been buried under Wall Street for a very, very long time, and continue to be literally killed and buried, to this day, by seemingly endless and institutionalized greed. So, Occupy also offers hope that all of us might “rise up and sing” the rest of this verse as we join hand in solidarity to make it come true:
Sing a song
Full of the faith
That the dark past
Has taught us
Sing a song
Full of the hope
That the present
Has brought us
Facing the rising sun
Of our new day begun
Let us march on
‘Til victory is won
The Wall Street financial district in New York City, also known as the financial capital of the world, is built upon a burial ground for African slaves and their descendants. The actual Wall Street was originally a wall built by European settlers and their African slaves in the early 1600s to protect settlements from indigenous people, who at times joined revolting slaves in struggles for freedom. On January 1, 1804, during a time when sugar was as important to the world economy as petroleum is today, revolting slaves who had risen up from bondage on the world’s richest sugar plantations made Haiti the first truly free nation in the modern world. They also returned the name of the new nation to Ayiti (land of high mountains), which is what the entire island was called by its inhabitants before Columbus “discovered” and renamed the people and their homeland three hundred years earlier. Within a couple of decades after Ayiti’s liberation, however, the young republic was forced to mortgage its freedom to powerful banks to reimburse slaveholders for the loss of their human property. To protect the interests of these banks from “civil unrest,” the U.S. sent troops to occupy Ayiti for two decades (1915-34) and still intervenes in the governance of Ayiti’s impoverished people. So, the image of Occupy protesters gathering around Wall Street at the beginning of this holiday season reminded me of James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice,” which was written in 1900 and later came to be known as the “Negro National Anthem.”
… ‘til earth and heaven ring…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing.
Autumnal equinox foreshadows
Short, dark days of yellow, red
And warm brown into black earth tones,
Spirituals, wind chimes, falling leaves
From deciduous tropical family trees
Landing in America, looking for my soil to feed.
So I run and rescue them from asphalt and the
Concrete buzz of leaf-blower-engine whine.
Then I ask ancestral saints to bless
November Days of Dead, to feed
My weary soul, anoint my dreadlocked head.
…Ring with the harmonies…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing.
My Harvest Feast gives thanks
For Boukman Dutty, Toussaint L’Ouverture,
And Capois-la-Mort’s November battle that
Won the freedom war. Yet Ayiti still struggles,
Through many generations, liberating me
From shame of nations built on slavery.
My winter solstice Christmas, too,
Receives God’s freedom shining forth, anew
With each New Year, I joyfully hear
My own holy mother, child and family decree:
Know that we are people, no longer property.
…Of liberty…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing
But winter’s snow is concrete,
Ice is steel and glass:
Concrete, steel, and glass walls
Built to keep me from my past.
The sweet-toothed bards of liberty
In these cold Western lands
Consumed my ancestors like fuel,
For church and state aggrandizement,
To feed the fires of empire, until
Ayiti shouted “No!” bursting through
The concrete, braving bitter chill alone.
…Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies…
My ancestors were buried under Wall Street
And are about to rise up singing.
The truth that sets us free and
Reflects mythically in creeds is but
The cycling of nature and her seasons.
Even concrete crumbles away,
Like Jericho’s wall on trumpet day,
Opening for March rebirth, through the
Vernal equinox of Black Madonna Earth;
Until Juneteenth summer solstice days
Make us whole once more, before
Autumn storms return. So drum and dance
And sacrifice for healing rains to cleanse us all.
…Let it resound
Loud as the rolling seas…
For me the Occupy movement begins to recognize that countless souls throughout the world who have been buried under Wall Street for a very, very long time, and continue to be literally killed and buried, to this day, by seemingly endless and institutionalized greed. So, Occupy also offers hope that all of us might “rise up and sing” the rest of this verse as we join hand in solidarity to make it come true:
Sing a song
Full of the faith
That the dark past
Has taught us
Sing a song
Full of the hope
That the present
Has brought us
Facing the rising sun
Of our new day begun
Let us march on
‘Til victory is won
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)