African-American Preaching: Prophetic Tradition

[Blue_Tires]

Give the Israelites credit. When they recorded their history, they did not spare themselves. "We have sinned as our forebears did; we have done wrong and dealt wickedly," says Psalm 106. The Bible was not written by Parson Weems.

Americans are not so introspective. Although academics compose tomes about the nation's stains, the general public views history through a less critical lens. U.S. attitudes toward the past (and the present as it is defined by the past) recall a line from Eliot's "Burnt Norton": "uman kind cannot bear very much reality." While "reality" and "history" are not synonymous, they rate as kin.

Major events, usually catastrophes, provoke superficial comments about cause and effect, comments about how a country almost 250 years old once again has lost its innocence. Thus terrorist attacks have been attributed in part to the failure to ratify the Kyoto Accord, or, according to preachers of a certain disposition, to homosexuality. God is love.

We now move to a newly published anthology of African-American sermons. Preaching With a Sacred Fire carries its subject from 1750 to the present. Many of the entries reflect the prophetic tradition. Richmond's John Jasper appears. The collection concludes with a controversial preacher of more recent vintage. On the first Sunday after 9/11, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered "The Day of Jerusalem's Fall" at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Few outside his congregation knew of the sermon; seven years later it provoked national consternation.

Excerpts from the sermon affected the 2008 presidential campaign. Critics blasted not only Wright for preaching hate but Barack Obama for worshipping at his parish. Hillary Clinton likened Wright to Don Imus. Many accused Wright of racism and Obama of the same. Obama gave a speech regarding race. The reaction split as one would have expected. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line." The color-line will continue to be a problem of the 21st.

Probably one in several million of those who passed definitive judgment on Wright's sermonizing read "Jerusalem's Fall" in its entirety. Preaching With Sacred Fire reprints the complete text. In many respects it recalls the Book of Amos. This is not an endorsement of all its particulars but a recommendation to consult it and others included in a welcome anthology that shows the many ways in which believers hear God's voice.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/aug/18/ed-jere18-ar-459129/