The Culture game

It is said that many crosses in the South after the Civil war were burned on the lawns of people who were not truly Christian.  They said that Church segregation was not only unusual since many White Christians had campaigned for  an end to the civil war and slavery. That is evident.  But, after the war, segregation in churches continued because if became clear that many black families had not fully let go of old ways  that are anathema to Christianity.  It was endemic to the black population and while the odd barren white family or their daughters may have had an unusual anger toward God, not heading the prayer of Hanna, the White church felt that it was best for a black pastor to deal with his own community's heretic aberrations in faith and the White pastor would deal with his own community without adding the burden of race to the issue in that tumultuous time.  You knew some of these newly free families were off in that they might have attended church every Sunday but when you visit the home, there would be a child walking around naked all day at an age when they should be taught to respect themselves and they were reading a witchcraft book of spells.  The parents took the child to the shop to buy the book but they should have given them a bible to read around the house.  That did not fit Sunday Church attendance where the other sons and daughters read scriptures and were applauded for it.   They had 15 children.  Some people point to Katrina(Hurricane) as God's message as well as the big oil rig disaster just a few years later down the coast in the gulf.  I am not sure how the oil disaster is God's message except that my family stopped using kerosene stoves 150 years ago and chose electric because it was cleanly, easy to clean up, cheap and cheerful(innit? like McDonalds right?).  Google GE and Thermador electric ranges; so classy my love!   He, Jehovah, might seek to reset things every now and again. Apparently Sodom and Gomorrah was on high ground and not so close to water like New Orleans but it seems He brings floods as well when He is ready and storms ( see Matthew 7).   A movie in the late 80's with  Robert Deniro and Lisa Bonet touched on these issues. It is quite sad really.  It became a bit much because some black families or their wives felt so upset with being turned away at the church door that thet went back to the old ways and many chickens were used and little dolls in New Orleans to vent this anger on the white families; including the preacher. The preacher knew something unusual was happening and they could not be precise except that there was a war of faith going on and cultural conflict.  Many white families were actually descendants of puritanical Celtic and  Gaelic Christian peoples that believed in monogamy and fidelity. Efforts in the 1970's and 1980's existed to change this historical notion of Christian Gaelic values on relationships but the tension was quite evident in the south during the reconstruction era after the civil fighting ended.  So, the Clan was really trying to preserve its Gaelic, Celtic culture without this niggling harassment from angry people that they actually helped many a day unwittingly and they did not put crosses on every black family’s lawn. After a while, you knew who had a bible in their pocket and who was prayerfully waiting on Him ( See Psalms 27).    They left many black pastors and teachers alone. W.E.B Du bois is evidence of this in addition to Miles Davis' father's family.  There is no other explanation for this as Miles Davis' father was a proud dentist with a black wife.  The churches bombed in the sixties were not burned by real clan but splinter groups who were resistant to change as neo nazi factions.  There is research on  this.  There was an underground railroad, as you know, but who do you think was driving the carriage and who owned the horse but white Baptists and Catholics.

This faith conflict started up again with a new influx of immigrants from the West Indies in the 1920's and 30's. Mylton Keynes  in the U.K. experienced the same problem and is now the witchcraft capital of the U.K. with an influx of Whitish West Indians practicing something they thought was devilishly English but not really.  England is a Christian country promoting Judeo Christian values ( see Wilberforce).  A house divided cannot stand. See Hobbes and Churchhill on the civic health of the nation.  It is also predominantly influenced by freemasonry with the country's first American style street grid system. Back in the states, these influxes led to increased conflicts reminiscent of reconstruction. One secret solution as crosses were sort of obvious and ugly was to bring hard drugs into the communities where these people lived. It's hard to burn a cross on a doorstep in Harlem but you can put drugs in coffee or encourage them to think it's glamorous and will lead to acceptance as if you were partying with Coco Chanel.  She was called Coco for her cocaine use as everybody knows. Billie Holiday sung a few songs about this experience in her lamentations as a beautiful woman in that era. Malcolm Little( known as X) experienced this conflict of faith first hand since his mother was from the Caribbean and his father was a preacher who died unusually while leaving a Christian book store and laundry mat. Cleanliness is next to being God dependent and free from  a duplicitous faith of old  ancestral heebee jeebee  practices and the unadulterated gospel. If you have come in to Christ, you have put away the old and have put on that which is new. You cannot put  old wine into new wine skins.  Moses beat the sorcerers in Egypt and he also beat a red sea with God working beside him.

It is time to heal.  The bible does say that tares grow along  with the wheat.  The wheat learns and comes to light and truth. The tares must love darkness and never "unlearn what they have learned" and continue to follow the ways of those who had a profound influence on them as adults during  early years and who fostered confusion and a mistrust of the word of God.  Simone the Cyrene was an African and we have no doubt that Noah was a dark skinned man according to scholarly research. Pharaoh was an Egyptian. Joseph married an Egyptian and Moses married a Moabite.  There is an Ethiopian Eunuch and if you want, you can say Adam and Eve were black as well. But, God has no grandchildren( you must be born again) and Abraham has biological children as numerous as the sands from every cultural and ethnic grouping, shade and color in the rainbow of humanity.  Rodney King was found dead late last year and as much as he may have been an informally educated man, he asked in simple and pungent language "...Can't we all get along?" After all these world wars and in-fighting in Europe and else where predicated on some doubt as to whether God existed, we must  be able to believe it now. Many  of us have seen footage of nuclear mushroom clouds and we know quite a bit about Hitler's private life that rivaled that of the devil in terms of evil concupiscence that was in stark contrast to the life of fidelity of an Elizabeth and Zacharias. Doubt is a faith in itself and just because something is old, it does not make it right. Moses beat the Egyptian sorcerers.  W.E.B. Du Bois gave us the imagery of crabs in a barrel when describing the Diasporan blackish African community. It is a strong and colorful image.  Martin Luther King quoted it often and that is why some people believe Vernon Jordan was the shooter at that Hotel or someone as Uncle Tomish. I doubt it but I also heard Vincent Foster died and Kwame Ture' died with the true answer to  the identity of King's shooter.  Crabs sometimes swim together and build little crab huts as in a village raising children; right? Oh well. You wonder then why the Harlem Globe Trotters are not called the Crab Trotters. They pass the ball like Kung Fu Ninjas throwing Ninja stars.  Cheryl Thomas, a prominent Journalist from St. Albans, Vermont, attempted to graduate with a law degree from England but she was evidently not up to snuff in that she no one could get her when she spoke and she told them often saying, "...you don't get me!" But, her ex boyfriend got her. She loved to use people and his father was old enough and covetous enough. He said often these two words "..I am." But, he could not finish the sentence so people asked noting his self-idolatrous confusion ".. you are what?" He did not have answer.  Cheryl decided to be a journalist in the end of the good news because her last name Thomas meant that she would be blessed in that she may not have seen the proof but she still believed.  She had a God given gift like Balaam but she used it for the wrong purposes. A lot of people do that. Read John 5:41 and have a new game inside your own personal expressions and reformulations of your uh  culture.