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The Black Church's Response To The Gulf Disaster
As Christians, our compassion should extend beyond the corner our churches are located on. But I can’t imagine justifying sending money away from our neighborhoods to help the huge corporations who own the beachfront resorts or the comparatively well-off sole proprietors who are certainly suffering but whose misery index remains much cheerier than that of much of Black America. The ecological disaster is heartbreaking but, again, unless you live in those areas, the heinous impact of the virtual genocide of dozens of sea species in the Gulf remains in the abstract. It is The Other. The Other Thing Happening To Other People. Our faith demands that we pray for those stricken communities, for those suffering people, but it’s difficult to draw a straight line from the sinking Deep Water Horizon to black pulpits across America. READ ESSAY
Dear Mom: Get Out
A Very Brief Thought About The Third Sunday In June
I dislike Mother's Day because of how emotionally manipulative and commercially exploitive it is. I dislike Father's Day for many of the same reasons, although dads tend to get the short end of the Exploit Day stick. Mothers are usually lavished with gifts and flowers and expensive meals and crowded restaurants. Dads tend to get neckties. Ugly, cheap neckties. And bad cologne. I don't wear cologne and I'm not a dad, but I can't begin to tell you how many bottles of bad, cheap cologne I've received over the years. Mothers tend to look forward to Mother's Day while many dads take Father's Day with a grain of salt and a bit of indifference if not outright trepidation. I know fairly few fathers who put much stock in the day or look forward to the ugly neckties and cheap cologne, most especially considering the fact many if not most dads in our community work hard and struggle to provide for their family, only to be rewarded by whatever junk the kids find on that bargain table closest to the check-out counters. As Christians, we are admonished to honor our father and mother. This ain't it. This is cheap. This is exploitive. If you really wanna honor dad, take the kids to the movies or something. Leave him alone for a day of peace and quiet, dozing off watching the game with a chicken wing in his mouth. All the rest of it really isn't for him—it's for you. For self-absorbed mommies who, despite years of having lived with a man, do not understand men. These mommies, trapped inside their own heads, see the entire universe from their own singular point of view. They thus go about emotionally blackmailing their men into all that Mother's Day nonsense, and then blackmailing him again with the emasculating and insulting Father's Day Half-Bake, forcing their men into participating in some half-baked approximation of the Mother's Day ritual, a ceremony dad neither wants nor particularly appreciates. It's one of those tribal motions we go through because we are slaves to the calendar. Seriously, you wanna do something for dad? Give him the day off. Take the kids and vanish. He'll thank you for it. POST REPLY
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PraiseNet Video Obama Signs Russian Nuke Treaty The Tea Party & African Americans 2010 State Of The Union Address
Clips
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You should watch this. Click links above to view
Yes, we post a lot of links to videos and other things here, but
you really should watch this. Even if you aren’t interested in
politics, Hardball’s “The Rise Of The New Right” is an important
and scary look into the new political movement in America. This
is a movement fueled by misinformation, intolerance, fear and
racism. A largely whites-only, America For Americans throwback
to the McCarthy era of the 1950’s. The fulcrum of this movement
is their universal hatred and refusal to accept the legitimacy
of the Obama presidency. It is a movement that uses increasingly
violent rhetoric, advocating political reform by armed
insurrection. You know, when George Bush was appointed president
in 2000, I had to just take a seat and eat it. This conservative
extremism goes way beyond my discontent
with the Bush Administration in that, no matter what I
thought of the man, I still acknowledged him as president. Even
if I thought his “election” was illegitimate, what was done was
done and I took my seat and ate it. These wing nuts are openly
promulgating violence in the name of political change and doing
so with nary a whisper of challenge from the black church or the
black community. Where are we? How do we just let this mess go
on?
This week, we are talking about the nature of compassion, about
what our response should be to the suffering going on in the
Gulf of Mexico as a result of the oil spill disaster. Frankly, I
do not believe we, the black church, are talking about it a
whole lot. I am certainly convinced we are turning a blind eye
and deaf ear to the hatred being spewed with alarming regularity
from the right fringe, a group that is growing in political
strength and influence. At my distance from them, it seems
disturbingly clear the very nexus of their discontent is not the
president’s policies so much as his skin color. As much as many
of these same people disliked President Clinton, the rhetoric
and, frankly, ignorance is now ratcheted up to unprecedented
levels. This disturbs me. It should disturb you.
While I assume some small percentage of our pastors are discussing this
to one degree or another, I would prevail upon the speculative
majority of black pastors to, in their rush to collect their
weekly paycheck, pause to spend at least a few minutes equipping
God’s people with the disturbing truth about this mounting
threat to our liberty, our civil rights, and our very society.
The black church must wake from its coma. Lies must be
challenged. And we must not allow anarchists and reactionaries
to decide for us what is and what is not a legitimate election
in this country.
A Preacher's Confession by Neil Brown
My mission in life is to destroy the myth that young people have nothing to say and nothing to contribute to the body of Christ. Why is there a feeling that someone “my age” has nothing to say to an older generation? Paul told Timothy to let no man despise your youth, but rather told him to be an example and to rely on what he had been taught. Paul told him to have a stick-to-it-and-persevere attitude. But as a young man in the ministry, I must admit that it is discouraging to think, to know, and to experience discriminatory attitudes in the church regarding how old I am. READ ESSAY
What The Bible Says, What The Bible Means
I know of precious few single or divorced Christians who practice celibacy. Well, some practice, but they're not very good at it. With marriages failing and people foregoing marriage for careers, what I see is a pattern of failure, conviction and repentance, only to start over again. Which is, by definition, bondage. The bible never says, anywhere, that sex outside of marriage is wrong. Nowhere in the bible is that concept even modeled. Men practiced polygamy and had concubines on the side. It was simply understood: Under Levitical law, sex outside of marriage could get you killed. We are no longer under the Law but under Grace. Which isn't a green light to do what we please, but, rather, it changes our rationale for reserving intimacy for marriage: not because we fear God but because we love Him. But who can live like that? READ ESSAY
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sample/edit of Love, Peace & Happiness by Lisa Kimmey, Otto
Price and Ric Robbins and Just The Way by Lisa
Kimmey and M. Taylor. Performed by Out of Eden.
From the Gotee CD of
Love, Peace & Happiness. Copyright © 2004
Gotee Music. All Rights Reserved.
PraiseNet Mix 20
Contains Sample / edit of You
by Sean Combs / Jamison, M. / Jones, M. /
Knight, J. / Winans, M. Performed by Faith
Evans, One Twelve and Carl Thomas. From the Verity CD
WOW Gospel 2002.
Copyright 2002
©
ZOmba Recording Corp. All
Rights Reserved. Sample/edit of Only God's In
This by Crawford, S./Daniels, D./McMasters,
K./Severson, M. Performed by Virtue. From the
Verity CD
Free.
Copyright © 2003 ZOmba Recording Corp. All
Rights Reserved. Sample/edit of Personal Jesus
by Al Green/Mabon “Teenie” Hodges/A.C. Williams
II, Anthony C. Performed by Tonex. From the Jive
CD Pronounced Toe-Nay. Copyright 2000 © ZOmba
Recording Corp. All Rights Reserved.
Sample/edit
of
I Can Make It
by Tye Tribbett. Performed by Tye Tribbett & GA.
From the Sony Urban / Columbia CD
Life. Copyright © 2004 Sony Music. All
Rights Reserved. Sample/edit of Say A Prayer by
Donald Lawrence. Performed by Faith Evans. From
the Verity CD
I Speak Life.
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Audio Bible
Romans Chapter 16. Excerpts from
Inspired By...The Bible Experience
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PraiseNet Minister Darryl Cherry Sampler 57
Contains sample/edit of
Running For Jesus by David Allen, Expect Your Miracle by Twinkie Clark, The Lord's Prayer and Were You There? (Traditional) Arranged by Minister Darryl Cherry,
Covenant, Waiting For An Answer, and Song Of Deliverance by Minister Darryl Cherry.
Performed by Minister Darryl Cherry and Lincoln Heights. From the Lincoln Heights MBC CD
In This Temple.
Copyright © 2010 Lincoln Heights MBC. All Rights
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THIS Is Adrianne
Archie
