Wednesday, November 21, 2012

GIFTS OF LIFE YARD SALE FUNDRAISER


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Soup and Sandwich Ministry: Thanksgiving Day Meal

Today marked the annual Thanksgiving Day Meal for the Soup and Sandwich Ministry here at Gifts of Life Ministries. Guests, members and friends enjoyed turkey and dressing, sweet potatoes  okra, potato salad, collard greens, hot watered cornbread, scallop potatoes, cucumber salad, and an assortment of cakes. We thank the Soup and Sandwich ministry for providing and cooking the meal and members of Fusion for helping serve.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

EUR Book Look: 'Unfinished Business: Black Women, the Black Church and the Struggle to Thrive in America'

By Keri Day


“This book explores the Black Church as a black religious site that can offer not only hope and cultural flourishing for poor black women but can also participate in a project of economic justice toward their well-being… Their spirituality is both a catalyst for social interactions and an interpretive lens used in formulating responses to their harsh political and economic conditions…

While capitalist institutions and systems perpetuate impoverishment for so many black women and their children, poverty deeply affects their human personality… Hopelessness within poor black communities is often left unaddressed as poor blacks are blamed for their own poverty…

Poverty is produced and reproduced when the poor are locked out of America’s wealth-producing structures… My overall goal is to evaluate the social implications of black women’s poverty in this country and offer an understanding of thriving that can address their suffering and alienation.” — Excerpted from the Introduction (pgs. 3, 4, 8 & 10).

*In this age of mega-churches and prosperity theology, it is natural to wonder how many members of the black clergy even bother to minister to the needs of the least of the their brethren anymore. That question came to intrigue Professor Keri Day, Director of Black Church Studies at Brite Divinity School, after noting that Christianity is now a very different experience for sisters, depending on their social class.

While many black females have been fortunate enough to make the leap to the middle and upper-classes, the bulk remain poor with less and less hope for deliverance from their plight. In her book, Unfinished Business, Dr. Day outlines a plan to return to the times when poverty was a primary concern of the Black Church.

Read more here:

God will cause 'complete economic collapse' because Obama won -- Rev. Franklin Graham

By Herbert Dyer, Jr.


The Rev. Franklin Graham is the son of the world-renowned 94-year-old Rev. Billy Graham. Like his father, Franklin is a Republican, an “evangelical,” and a leader of the “religious right” of America. Franklin, therefore, views the American political landscape through the prism of religion. His post-election analysis is simple and straight forward, if not simplistic.

In a Newsmax TV interview, Graham declared that President Obama was re-elected despite the country’s “deep economic quagmire” because as a country “we have turned our backs on God.”

“The more we turn our backs on God, the bigger our problem becomes. I didn’t hear any of the candidates say that we needed to call our nation to prayer. I didn’t hear any of the candidates say that we needed to ask God for help.

“We still think that we can work our way out of this problem – and I don’t think we can,” Graham added. “I don’t have confidence in the Republican Party right now, and I don’t have confidence in the Democratic Party.

“I don’t believe there is leadership in Washington that can solve this problem. We just deal with it as issues for the day, and it kicks the can further and further down the road. We need God’s help to solve this problem – we can’t go without God.”

According to Graham, then, America’s re-election of Obama was confirmation that America is doomed. She has been damned by God himself to skip happily along the “path of destruction,” Graham said.

“There is no question that America has been a nation that has been blessed by almighty God. There is no other nation in the history of mankind that has done what his nation has done – and it’s because of God’s hand and his blessing.

“In the last four years, we have begun to turn our backs on God. We have taken God out of our education system. We have taken him out of government. You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any public forum.

“What has happened is we have allowed ourselves to take God out everything that we do – and I believe that God will judge our nation one day.”

But, for me, here is the meat of Graham’s complaint, which borders on treason: “[M]aybe God will have to bring our nation to our knees – to where that we just have a complete economic collapse. Maybe at that point, people will again call upon the name of almighty God.”

Interestingly, Rev. Franklin Graham is the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The Internal Revenue Service is investigating the Association for violations of it tax-exempt status. The investigation was prompted by complaints from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They aver that Graham’s group supports advertisements which urged people to “vote biblical values” throughout this election cycle, thereby contravening IRS rules covering religious groups and political campaigning. Rev. Graham’s response to both Freedom From Religion and the IRS?

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “The African-American churches do this all the time. Candidates go to their churches and stand in the pulpits and give political messages and sermons. Why can’t we do the same?

“We didn’t tell anybody how to vote for a candidate. We told them how to choose candidates – and made that plural – who backed biblical principles. There are a lot of Republicans, Tea Party people, Democrats that we focused these ads on.

“We wanted people to remember that, as they were going into the voting booth, that there were political decisions, no question, but there also were moral issues. At every level, we need to think about who we are voting for and encourage Christians, especially, to vote for candidates who support biblical values.

“They want to shut the mouths of evangelicals. They want to shut the mouths of Christians.

“One hundred years ago, political leaders in every community were the pastors. They were the voices that were heard. They were the voices that had the influence. Politicians know that and the government knows that – and they are trying to shut the mouths of especially evangelicals.

“I’m going to continue to speak out,” Graham vowed. “I’m not afraid. I’m not worried.”

Opinion:
Because of space limits, I’ll only address one aspect of Rev. Graham’s diatribe:
America’s modern civil rights movement began in the black church because the church was the only place black people could gather in significant numbers – usually – unmolested by bosses and government authorities. It was within the sanctity of the church that blacks could meet, strategize, complain and develop the methods and means of defeating Old Jim Crow. Thus, Rev. Graham’s assertion that black churches “do this [politics] all the time” assumes that there is, and always has been, a “level playing field” for the conduct of political activity between white and black churches. He ignores the 400-year history of repression of black political conduct. He pretends to not know this history, this restriction of black politics to one, and only one, area of socio-political life.

Finally, I travel to Ghana on Africa’s West Coast every year. On my first trip in 1998, I toured the dungeons where captured Africans were held before being shipped to “The New World.” I walked across the cold stone floors of these deep pits of pain and agony. At the very deepest, darkest point of the Cape Coast dungeon, our tour guide, using only candle light, pointed upwards toward the ceiling. He then said, “Just above you, ladies and gentlemen, sits the very first Catholic Church built in the whole continent of Africa in 1482.” That’s all he said.

He left it to us to ponder what must have been going through the minds of those earnest Catholics so long ago as they sat in comfort atop thousands of suffering and dying people.