For 25 years, a Baptist congregation in Brooklyn, N.Y., staged a theatrical production exposing the trans-Atlantic slave trade in all-too tragic and graphic detail. When the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the annual production of “The MAAFA: A Healing Journey,” St. Paul…
Black History Month: Remembering, waiting, watching
Black History Month has ended for 2021. This year during Black History Month the Public Broadcasting System aired a four-hour documentary, produced by Henry Louis Gates, about the Black church. Across the nation, people paid tribute to the contributions by…
What if we cared about Black History Month as much as Lent?
Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s as an independent Baptist in an all-white church, the first 20 Februarys of my life came and went without any awareness of either Lent or Black History Month. Liturgy was considered something the…
Making the case for why Black History Month is necessary
Black History Month has its critics, but Chalice Overy isn’t one of them. Overy, associate pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C., said the focus on Black heroes and accomplishments every February growing up prepared her for being…
Black History Month: I’m all in, but let’s tell the WHOLE story
The story of our struggle is a story of resilience, resistance and triumph-in-the-midst-of-tragedy that actually has the power to redeem this nation from the sins of the fathers and the privilege of the few that has come at the expense of the many.
Do your sources of information and inspiration all look like you and share your point of view?
To limit our intake of books, podcasts, movies, TV shows, sermons and articles to those produced by white men is the equivalent of limiting our understanding of God.
For whites observing Black History Month, remember what seat you’re sitting in
White navel-gazing is not the proper orientation toward Black History Month. We’ve got to do the needed self-examination, but we are not the center of the narrative. Using the work of blacks to put ourselves back at the center of the story is not the right strategy. But while reading all that black history, it does help to know what seat we are sitting in.
‘Others’ – a hymn to remember Martin Luther King Jr
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’” (From: The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr., 2011).