One Brave Christian Experiment: Day 8, I have a dream. . .

Editor’s Note: Contributor Christine Moughamian is blogging each day of Lent about her progress becoming “one brave Christian.” Follow her experiment on Twitter @1bravechristian.

By Contributor Christine Moughamian

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

I saw that affirmation yesterday, written on the North State Storage billboard. I was driving back from Carolina Beach, pondering the topic for today’s post. I’d already addressed two aspects of Sam Teague’s program: schedule and service.

“How about goals?” I thought to myself.

“A goal is a dream with a deadline,” the billboard answered.

The synchronicity was magical.

During my brave Christian meditation this morning, I considered what I’d written down “to build and develop my life.” Just like in construction, you start from the foundation and you build your way up stone by stone. In the same way, I wanted to find a strong spiritual foundation in my life.

– Foundation: integrity.

– First stone: Truth.

“What is the second stone?” I asked myself.

“Dedication,” I heard.

I wrote down: “Second stone: dedication.”

Then I prayed for today’s post: “Please, God, write it for me. It’s much easier that way.”

By then, I was done with Teague’s early morning practice. I closed his booklet, sat cross-legged, spine erect, thumbs and index fingers touching. I focused my eyes on a candle-flame for the type of meditation that works best for me: one-pointed mind concentration.

Then I repeated my mantra, a loose translation I did of the “Bhagavad Gita” chapter 6, verse 19.

“Such as the flame of a candle in a windless place, so too, the mind of the Yogini does not waiver but remains steady on the transcendental self.”

When I shared it with my mother a while back, she said to me: “Isn’t it a bit long for a mantra?”

“Yes,” I said, “but that’s what it takes to keep me focused.”

This morning, I didn’t have to stay focused too long before I was flooded with images for “dedication,” my second building stone.

Rosa Parks in 1955 with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background. Image via Wikipedia

A street sign I saw off Carolina Beach Road flashed into my mind: “Rosa Parks Ln.” I couldn’t help but think of the courageous black woman who stood her ground on a segregated bus. With her strong yet simple stance, Rosa Parks started the civil rights movement of the sixties.

I thought it a shame our community’s tribute for such a dedicated activist is but a short dirt road.

From Rosa Parks Lane, my mind jumped to Martin Luther King Parkway. On the last day of Black History month, I heard the leader’s voice loud and clear:

“I have a dream…”

Rev. King was another citizen dedicated to his vision who did not set out to start a revolution but to build his life one stone at a time.

Finally, the ultimate example of dedication came to me with a line from

Mother Teresa in 1986 in Germany. Image via Wikipedia

Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

“We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”

“I have a dream,” I thought to myself. “And it has a deadline.”

I opened my eyes, wrote in my booklet:

“Today, I dedicate myself to inspire people to greatness by writing with great love!”

Blacks say atheists were unseen civil rights heroes

African Americans for Humanism have erected billboards in several cities featuring black icons, including Langston Hughes on this billboard in Atlanta, alongside African-American atheists. RNS photo by Bob Mahoney.

By KIMBERLY WINSTON
c. 2012 Religion News Service
Reprinted with permission

(RNS) Think of the civil rights movement and chances are the image that comes to mind is of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leading the 1963 March on Washington.

But few people think of A. Philip Randolph, a labor organizer who

A. Philip Randolph in 1963. Image via Wikipedia

originated the idea of the march and was at King’s side as he made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Why is King, a Christian, remembered by so many and Randolph, an atheist, by so few? It’s a question many African-American nontheists — atheists, humanists and skeptics — are asking this Black History Month, with some scholars and activists calling for a re-examination of the contributions of nontheists of color to the civil rights movement and beyond.

“So often you hear about religious people involved in the civil rights movement, and as well you should, but there were also humanists,” said Norm R. Allen Jr. of the Institute for Science and Human Values, a humanist organization based in Tampa, Fla.

“No one is discussing how their beliefs impacted their activism or intellectualism. People forget we are a diverse community. We are not monolithic.”

Allen has promoted recognition for African-American nonbelievers since he founded the group African Americans for Humanism in 1989. This year, more than 15 local AAH chapters are expected to highlight Randolph and about a dozen others as part of their observance of a Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers on Sunday (Feb. 26).

The hope, Allen said, is that highlighting the contributions of African-American humanists — and humanists in general — both in the civil rights movement and beyond will encourage acceptance of nonbelievers, a group that polls consistently rank as the least liked in the U.S.

“So often people look at atheists as if they have horns on their heads,” Allen said. “In order to correct that, it would be important to correct the historical record and show that African-American humanists have been involved in numerous instances in the civil rights movement and before.”

AAH is also promoting black humanists in a billboard campaign in several cities, including New York, Dallas, Chicago and Durham, N.C. Each one pairs a local black nontheist with a black nonbeliever from the past. “Doubts about religion?” the billboard reads. “You’re one of many.”

A billboard in Los Angeles pairs Sikivu Hutchinson, a humanist activist based in Los Angeles, with Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist of African-American culture who wrote of being an unbeliever in her childhood.

Zora Neale Hurston in 1938. Image via Wikipedia

Hutchinson, author of the forthcoming “Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels,” links blacks’ religiosity with social ills such as poverty, joblessness and inequality.

“To become politically visible as a constituency, it is critical for black nonbelievers to say we have this parallel position within the civil rights struggle,” she said.

A strain of unbelief runs across African-American history, said Anthony Pinn, a Rice University professor and author of a book about African-American humanists. He points to figures like Hubert Henry Harrison, an early 20th- century activist who equated religion with slavery, and W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP, who was often critical of black churches.

“Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes — they were all critical of belief in God,” Pinn said. “They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle.”

But they are often ignored in the narrative of American history, sacrificed to the myth that the achievements of the civil rights movement were the accomplishments of religious — mainly Christian — people.

Add in that black nonbelievers are a double minority — polls show African-Americans are among the most religious U.S. group — and it becomes even more difficult to discuss the atheism of heroes of black history.

“This is a country that loves the rhetoric of the belief in God,” Pinn said. “And think about how things currently stand. You can be socially ostracized and lose all sorts of connections by voicing one’s disbelief. If it raises these sorts of questions now, what were the consequences of doing it during the mid-20th century when everything about black life in the U.S. was in question?”

Juan Floyd-Thomas, a religious historian and professor at Vanderbilt University and author of a book on the origins of black humanism, agrees with Pinn, and called the traditional view of the civil rights movement as an inevitable extension of American Christianity “a mythology.”

Wright’s and Randolph’s critiques of organized religion, Floyd-Thomas said, “would not be too far out of step with the New Atheists” — best-selling atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But he laments that most African-Americans and even many nontheists are unaware of this history.

“One of the things that can be gained from shining a bright light on the contributions of nontheists to the broad sweep of the civil rights movement would have to be integrity,” he said. “These people had a moral core and that’s something that is sorely needed, whether you are a theist or a nontheist.”

“Our destinies are tied together.” Wilmington’s Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Ecumenical Service

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By AMANDA GREENE
Religion News Wilmington

The Rev. Robert Campbell wasn’t sure who prompted the close to 350 people to attend Sunday’s interfaith Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ecumenical Service at First Baptist Church in downtown Wilmington.

But the pastor of New Beginning Christian Church said he was sure they all came because they wanted to see social change in their communities.

“What we need to recognize is our destinies are tied together,” he said. “Moses, Isaiah, Martin Luther King, Jr., you and I are anointed, empowered, sent, ordained to make a difference.”

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Image via Wikipedia

Campbell was the keynote speaker at the annual service sponsored by the Wilmington Ministerial Roundtable and the Wilmington Interfaith Ministerial Alliance to honor the legacy of social ministry and change embodied in the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life. The services are housed at a different Wilmington church each year. The groups began meeting about 15 years ago to improve race relations, cooperation and fellowship between area parishes, synagogues and mosques.

Before Campbell spoke, spiritual leaders from local mosques, synagogues and churches read Bible and Koran passages. The audience recited parts of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Blue-and-white-robed teen girls from New Beginning Christian Church’s dance ministry performed a liturgical dance for the crowd.

“We invite you, as Martin Luther King did, to light a candle in this world, and do what is right, and call out what is wrong,” said Imam Abdul Rahman Shareef, spiritual leader of Tauheed Islamic Center.

Campbell’s thoughts focused on empowering the audience to make a change.

“One of the things greatly impacting our community is our young black men are getting in trouble, getting a record, and when they come out of prison, they can’t get a job, and the cycle starts all over again,” the pastor said. “Anyone here ever need a second chance? We need to make a difference.”

Rabbi Robert Waxman, spiritual leader of B’nai Israel Synagogue, gave the parting words for the event.

“This is an election year, and in November, we must respond and vote to say, yes we can. Yes, we can make the former Virgo Middle School a center of learning again,” he said of a predominantly black school New Hanover County Schools closed last year because of low membership numbers and test scores. “Yes, we can make a difference.”

Annual Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. worship service Sunday to feature local pastor

By AMANDA GREENE
Religion News Wilmington

The Ministerial Roundtable of Wilmington’s and the Wilmington Interfaith Ministerial Alliance’s joint Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Worship Service will feature a local pastor this year.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Image via Wikipedia

The Rev. Robert Campbell, pastor of New Beginning Christian Church, will preach the interfaith sermon in honor of King at 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15 at First Baptist Church on the corner of Fifth and Market streets in downtown Wilmington.

The service will include music from area churches.

Details: 763-2471 or 763-2220.

Beloved hymns carried King through troubled times

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Courtesy of Religion News Service

By ADELLE M. BANKS
c. 2012 Religion News Service
Printed with permission

(RNS) At 87, the Rev. C.T. Vivian can still recall the moment, decades after the height of the civil rights movement.

As he stood to conclude a meeting in his Atlanta home, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. joined his activist colleagues in song, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“There is a balm in Gilead,” they sang, “to make the wounded whole.”

As the nation pauses Monday (Jan. 16) to mark King’s birthday, those who knew him say hymns, spirituals and other religious songs helped carry him through troubled times.

The spiritual fit King’s unique circumstances, said Vivian, who recently was named vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization co-founded by King.

“The average Christian doesn’t have to pick up his phone when it rings and think about somebody killing him or his children,” said Vivian. “The average Christian didn’t have any of that.”

Although King had other favorites, his widow, Coretta Scott King, wrote in her autobiography that it was “Balm in Gilead” that “my husband quoted when he needed a lift.”

The first stanza she cited in “My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.” reads:

Sometimes I feel discouraged

And think my work’s in vain

But then the Holy Spirit

Revives my soul again.

King also was comforted by “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” a hymn sung by Mahalia Jackson at his 1968 funeral and by Aretha Franklin at the dedication of the new King memorial in Washington last year. “Through the storm, through the night,” it goes, “lead me on to the light.”

Accounts of King’s life say it was the last song he requested, moments before he was shot on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn.

Lewis Baldwin, a religious studies professor at Vanderbilt University who has written on King’s cultural roots and prayer life, said the song addressed some of the helplessness the Baptist minister must have felt as he constantly faced threats and attacks.

“I think that song spoke of that,” said Baldwin. “Give me courage, give me perseverance.”

Beyond music that encouraged him, Baldwin said King particularly appreciated songs such as “If I Can Help Somebody” that moved people toward the goal of creating King’s “beloved community.”

“He cherished the great hymns of the church, particularly those that spoke to the ethic of service,” he said, “and to be involved in changing the quality of life of human beings.”

Music such as the movement’s iconic theme song, “We Shall Overcome,” and others that King favored incorporate timeless values, Lewis said. “Those are not songs that have meaning confined to the 1950s and ’60s,” he said.

King particularly enjoyed Jackson’s rendition of “Amazing Grace,” Vivian said. After she sang the spiritual “How I Got Over” at the 1963 March on Washington, Baldwin said, King later wrote her to say she set the tone for his “I Have a Dream” speech.

His love for a range of music was reflected in his sermons, where he sometimes recited lines or whole stanzas of sacred songs. In a 1957 sermon, he said the Easter message was reflected in such hymns as “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” and “In Christ There is No East or West” as well as words from the “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel’s “Messiah.”

In that way, lyrics became more important than the musical notes that accompanied them, helping King deliver his message, said James Abbington, who teaches church music and worship at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.

“King was a trained theologian,” he said. “Music becomes the platter or the handmaiden for theology.”

But in a life steeped in hymns, spirituals and other music of black culture, the question remains: Could King sing?

Friends and scholars say he often would sing with a group but seldom as a soloist. In her autobiography, his widow recalled that he once ended up singing “His Eye is on the Sparrow” as an unintentional solo and had to overcome “real stage fright” as he sang the whole song by himself.

“I never really told him he couldn’t sing,” wrote his widow, a trained classical vocalist, in her 1969 book. “He had a good voice for a choir.”

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King, laughed off the question.

“I refuse to comment on the grounds it might make me sound nasty,” he said. “His gift was speaking more than singing, but he loved music.”