“Pastor Rick Warren to Speak at the King Memorial
The service is scheduled for Jan. 19 at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is included in the official program of the 10-day King Center’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, which begins on Jan. 10.
The Reverend Mark Whitlock, senior pastor at Christ Our Redeemer AME Church in Irvine, said Obama’s invitation opened the door for positive communication between the conservative movement and the civil rights movement.â€
By ERIKA I. RITCHIE
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
From Keith Knight's K Chronicles
I always get knowledge reading the Field Negro. Rick Warren  is speaking at Ebenezer Baptist Church!! This truly floored me. How did this happen. Well I know how this happened. Years of backdoor dealing by the UnGodly megachurches have finally come to this. This is what the Civil Right’s Movement has been working for? Acceptance by a bunch of racist, homophobic, closed minded jerks?
I don’t think this was part of Martin Luther King’s dream. I’m certain that it wasn’t part of his dream.
Ebenezer Baptist Church is a significant church in American history.
In 1960 Martin Luther King Jr became a co-minister there and remained in that position until his death in 1968. His funeral was held at that church.
Now for years I’ve had issues with the rank and file of the black civil right’s movement and even though I’ve always had issues with their sexist and classist ways I wanted to be respectful, but uh, we’re done now.
As white churches tries to make their doctrine seem as the norm for white America (which is a lie) the black church in its dream of being just like their white brothers do the same thing.
As the religious right doesn’t give a damn about the average white person the religious right in the black community doesn’t give a damn about the average black person.
My greatest fear was that the puppet master members of the church driven Civil Right’s community where practitioners of Kyriarchy. Which is in a few words when an oppressed group uses the little bit of power they have to oppress another group. My fear as it turns out was not unfounded. In general the male dominated churchy traditional civil right’s movements oppression has been targeted towards women and black people they felt were embarrassing, but now they are going to broaden their net.
If this was a little church I might not feel compelled to write on this, but this is not a little church. This church was the birthplace of the Civil Right’s Movement.
The movement that opened the door to ethnic minorities in America, African-American, Latino-American and Asian-American. It challenged and the laws that said we were not human.
I’m sick of people being used by these churches to carry out an agenda of greed and power and exclusion against those in the community who didn’t go to Morehouse or Spellman or now Yale and Harvard. And against those who don’t interpret the manmade Christianity in the same manner as people who use it as a tool to hammer people with.
We on the bottom got hosed and had to walk during the bus boycotts in Alabama while their children got the benefits of top-tier schools and corporate job from the tithes of the grandparents of people who washed the floor and took out the trash.
The poor of rural Mississippi and Alabama have become the poor of urban Los Angeles, Detroit and Philadelphia. Not that much has changed for the people at the bottom.
I’m not an atheist. I believe in some kind of higher power. I don’t believe in organized religion. The reason why is because of this very thing.
So it’s progress to be embraced by the person with the boots.
Well I guess I just don’t get it.
This is what the widow of Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King thought about diversity:
“I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother, and sisterhood, for lesbian and gay people.” -(Reuters, March 31, 1998).
Speaking before nearly 600 people at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel, Coretta Scott King called on the civil rights community to join in the struggle against homophobia and anti-gay bias. “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood,” King stated. “This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.” – Chicago Defender, April 1, 1998, front page.
It is time for the Civil Rights movement to cut its UnGodly ties to the church. And as some in the traditional Civil Right’s movement would people to stop co-opting the struggle of African-Americans for their own agenda, I ask that the church stop co-opting Martin Luther King Jr’s ideas to carry forth power moves with hateful people.
Browne Molyneux
PS I’m going to add if you comment to please refrain from patholigizing all black people I don’t agree with homophobia, sexism or racism and I don’t believe using those tools against another oppressed people is ever an effective way to dialogue. I would like to have a conversation without demonizing a group of people owing solely to their ethnic group, sexual orientation or gender characteristics.
Inspired by Field Negro’s post: “See what you started Obama.â€
by Browne Molyneux
More info on Bayard Rustin can be found here.
Browne, good post,
You can dress em up, teach em to speak properly, even take em to town, but down deep they’ll always be yahoo’s.
Some more quotes from people that the mainstream media tries to hide from the public.
Black Panther Huey Newton said (9-15-70, “The Women’s Liberation & Gay Liberation Movements†Speech, Reprinted in Workers World News 6-30-94): “We should try to unite with homosexuals in a revolutionary fashion. Homosexuals are our friends. When we have revolutionary conferences, rallies, and demonstrations, there should be full participation of the gay liberation movement. We must relate to the homosexual movement, because it is a very real thing.â€
Dr. Cornel West said (from the classic film on homosexuals and the Black Church, “All God’s Childrenâ€): “If I have one word for fellow Christians, I would ask them to keep their eyes on the love of Jesus, and not to confuse the blood at Calvary with the KoolAid of homophobia in America…We have to call into question our own particular prejudices that we inherit, that have nothing to do with the loving gospel of Jesus…that challenge is to the Black Church…precisely because we have too many Black folk who are suffering because of the inability to talk about sexuality.â€
Dr. King said: “God is not just interested in the freedom of Black men, God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race. All life is interrelated. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. The Negro’s primary aim is to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law. God is love. Death is not the ultimate evil, the ultimate evil is to be outside God’s love. The trailblazers in human, academic, and religious freedom have always been in the minority. Evil never voluntarily relinquishes its head, short of a persistent, almost fanatical resistance.â€
MLK was a radical. He was a radical leader. He was killed not because he wanted to help black people, he was killed because he wanted to help all people and he wanted to stop the oppression of the capitalist system.
The mainstream doesn’t have a problem with people who stay in their designated box. You can be as wild as you want as long as you stay as wild as you want in your community once you start reaching out across to the entire human community that’s when you become a problem.
True radicals see all humans as their brothers and sisters.
Warren is a bigoted asshole and I find it highly offensive that he would be invited to a MLK day celebration.
I’m extremely pissed right now, though I am always a little pissed 😉
Browne
It’s amazing how co-opted the life of MLK has been. The more & more I read about him, independently, the more I realized he was much more radical than how he is portrayed today. I especially liked how later in his life he said how does the US gov’t have the moral clout to tell people to only struggle non-violently, when it is sending its young men to Viet-Nam to _BE_ violent.
Julio exactly MLK was a radical and the Vietnam statements that is what got him killed. The mainstream wants people to think that the MLK dream was that one day all black people would dress in suits and be CEOs and that was so far from what he wanted, but that’s a good story. That’s an excellent way to oppress people.
“You better shut up and be nice and study, so you can be a good little tool, that was Dr King fought for.”
That is such bs. The internet is scary for that reason. You can just cut and paste what you want from a person’s life and completely cut out all of the things that would work against the lie you are trying to sell.
As King got older (and he was only 39 when he died) he got broader and more universal in his vision, but that part of his life is never discussed. He also was slowly drifting away from the traditional church I am almost certain had he lived he would have been cut off or left the traditional organized church on his own. Not that he would have left his definition of faith, but he wouldn’t be down with the kind of thing that is going on now.
Here is a link to his landmark speech on Vietnam.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/Beyond_Vietnam.pdf
Here are some excerpts:
Excerpts:
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
“War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.”
“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”
In the speech he also talked about marching for the peoples of Guatemala, Peru, Thailand, Cambodia, Mozambique and South Africa…yeah so after he started talking about going worldwide with the marching thing his fate was pretty much sealed.
I had a dream was nice, but he had gone way beyond just wanting us to hold hands.
When he was telling black people to be nonviolent that was cool when he started telling the US gov’t to be nonviolent they killed him.
Browne
as one who deals with software most of my days, i have come to embrace the free (as in freedom, not “free” as in beer) software movement. i’d like to think despite mlk’s distaste for computers, he would approve of the free software movement in light of today’s environment of pervasive computing.
what makes free software great is that all ideas see the light of day. when bad ones get through in any given project, eventually someone realizes it and either improves the project by correcting the bad idea or starts over from scratch and builds a new project. occasionally, the bad idea is so minor, it gets left in and many projects are so bad, they just get abandoned. in any case, it is only when the project’s entirety, guts and all, is exposed that such a process can even begin.
i’m not here to defend either rick warren or the ebenezer baptist church. however, i do see the value in letting the bigots have their say. ever since rachel maddow started having pat robertson on as a regular, he seems to have been reduced from the bogeyman to comic relief sidekick. and, of course, we all know what happened to sarah palin. even as she was buoyed by ever-bigger crowds, her national approval sank. my hope is that the same happens to rick warren and, if warranted, ebenezer baptist.
actually, my real hope is rick warren and ebenezer baptist talk to the people of the congregation, understand their real concerns and address them. the hope should be that all parties learn from each other. that’s probably a bit unrealistic, so i reserve my hopes for a robertson/palin style downfall.