He is also an anthology that explores the sexual politics of black churches so without further ado please welcome josef sorret. [applause] good evening everyone. Thank you valerie for that introduction thread i want to thank our sponsors as well as their host for the opportunity to moderate this panel of insightful incisive commentators engaging leaders that i want to quickly stay themes of our panel and introduce a panelist and open it up for conversation. Of course this evening our event is entitled the New Jerusalem black life life the church in the struggle for democracy. Our hosts have given us the charge of taking on the theme of the fact that religious belief religious institutions and religious people came to be seen as essential to social freedom. This remains the central paradox in africanamerican life and political history. Our discussion will examine the overlapping challenges of creating a basis for collective activism building independent black institutions determining the place of men women politics and religion in leadership. Now to our panelists who all have long is such that they could take up the entire night so i will list the titles of their books and move into the conversation. First to my most immediate right and moving further along the panel. First is anthea butler, the author of women in the church of god in christ making a sanctified world as well as the forthcoming book, the gospel according to sarah palin the gospel according to sarah, how sarah palin and the tea partier got amazing the religious right out next year. Next to anthea is eddie glaude the author of acts exodus raise religion and nation and early 19th Century Black america and more recently in a shade of blue pragmatism and the politics of black america. Following eddie the reverend dr. Dr. James forbes the author of 2000 hymnbook whos gospel a concise guide to progressive protestantism and their final panelist will be this up in conversation in a moment, Obery Hendricks the author of the politics of jesus rediscovering the two true revolutionary of jesus teachings and the universe bends towards justice radical reflections on the bible of the church and body politics. Taking a launch off of professor hendricks most recent title with a that suggest what is the most iconic and popular image of black churches in africanamerican religion taken them not from none other than dr. Martin luther king. A whole host of assumptions from for me think about our title has the church squarely fit in american democracy and black life . Reimagined black churches on the front lines marching and we forget in fact dr. King represent a minority movement. I want to invite you professor hendricks and his we move to the panel to go in whatever direction he wants thinking about what is appropriate way for us to think and understand the relationship between religion and general for black churches in particular in the larger context of american democracy so religion like church and democracy, how do we, how could we imagine them in this particular moment . Thank you. I am glad to be here with this distinguished panel all of whom are my friends and colleagues and so i trust but its a very broad question with regard to religion. They are some tensions that are usually discussed. Religion is ultimately theocratic so its not democratic. Most churches are not democratic they are very hierarchical and patriarchal so that we have that there and in its most common terms of the most influential institution black community that filters down and so in a way its disempowering to the black masses in my opinion. You mentioned dr. King. Dr. King is trying to move to another level in his ministry, that being fighting economic justice. He was trying to mount the Poor Peoples Campaign and he called a meeting in virginia and 124 ministers were invited and guess how many came . None. I think this is sort of emblematic of a sort of, it speaks to the fiction of the church at large as being the forefront of our struggle. I will just say this. The other problem is though, its not that until recently in the last couple of generations i think my generation of scholars that we saw any significant Critical Mass of black biblical scholars, theological scholars who were able to cut through some of this domination must dialogue, discourse that has permeated christian and with the result that the black church too often is held in thrall to the same kinds of misreadings of jesus and the gospel that we see in white churches. Not just the patriarchs, not the unwillingness that the ambivalence about being political and seeing jesus as a political figure, a political activist that is concerned about political egalitarianism. So these are some of the opening things i would like to race but i want to remain clear that i do appreciate the deep centrality of the black church, the black life and the black church in many ways is the only thing that got us over for so long but its now time that we can move a thing to a much more informed level and not just talk about black church is so revolutionary and in the forefront but really start to look at it more in a decisive answer systematic and programmatic way. See dr. Forbes if we could extend this and dr. Hendricks says that this strong black churches led by charismatic that king is believed to represent. You yourself are product of churches that are often written out of the story of black liberal protestant establishments that king would represent baptist and methodist churches. How might you see pentecostal churches but also the liberal protestant tradition of riverside is complicating that story . Well, first of all, i think genesis helps us to look at our problem and that is that in genesis, there is this snake that comes up and begins to engage in conversation with e. E. Fu and the snake actually purchase a paid and calling into question what god said and the implications of what we should do, so that the major religious may be viewed as probably having distorted the nature of black being and suggested that god said one thing about who black folks are and that the black church is gods rebuttal saying this is what i said and not what the snake said. Now a snake is not in the farrakhan sense calling other people demonic in this regard but what this is is that the god who calls all of us gods children thereby suggesting the democratic ideal, that the black church gets caught between listening to what the snake said versus what god has clarified about who we are. And when the black church is really being the church that in a sense god uses to rebuke what was said by the other church, we are likely to be sensitive to the democratic ideal and engaged in activities that lead us to a more democratic society. When we listen to the other voice about who we are as black people we play the games of one upmanship, of gods having the outhouse in the inhouse or about postponing the gratification until the great buy and buy. So the real challenge today is whether the black church believes what god said about us all being gods children or whether we have lots of divine dna testing testing as to who wy an authentic offspring of god. James washington used to say our problem was the fact that there has been deposited by others what he calls pseudosibs pc nation. We are all part of the same species that some of us are less show than others special than others and when we act like that all of the complications of the assault against the egalitarian ideals begins operating. Now wheres the black church today . My sense is we have got some folks books that are really struggling hard to be what god said and other folks are trying to square their future wellbeing was acting like they believe with the other folks say and the issue for us today in this conversation are what did god say and how do we challenge the black church to believe with the lord said rather than what the devil said . [applause] the thats what happens when you are the great james forbes, you know what i mean . Thats what happens. [applause] sister valerie and everyone i am really delighted to be part of the conversation. This has been an extraordinary day, hasnt it . [applause] brilliance on display, elegance, sophistication and nuance in the face of weeks of tragedy, right . I want to approach the question from a different angle. There is always the problematic relationship between religion and democracy. And it has something to do with the history of democracy in the west, the relationship between democratic languages of rights, equal rights, rights discourse and the religious wars. How rights discourse emerges a way to kind of navigates sectarian differences, right . Or there is always a kind of deity and skepticism of the place in religious discourse. Actually thought of religion as a conversation stopper. These are my beliefs and these are what i hold. They are not up for debate. In the Africanamerican Community are so way in which religious discourses have always been a part of the way we engage in a political domain. I dont want to be too abstract but it does want to say there is a kind of complex relationship between giving voice to political demands and religious language. Its always haunted democracy. In our Community Religion has been a crucial religious language that has been crucial to how we have given voice to our political aims. Having a lot to do with the fact that we have been excluded from the body politic by virtue of the fact that we enter the modern world as somebody elses belongings. That we were not included in the democratic process because we were less than, right . So the church gave us this space for which we can exercise our political sense of things. It became the site for black life. So we can tell a story about how black churches were the side of black Civil Society out of which comes insurance companies, out of which come schools or my own beloved morehouse. I said morehouse. My own beloved morehouse founded in the basement of the church. We could go on and on and on so the institution is as a particular sort of role given our marginalization in the American Society but what is the role of the black church today . E. Franklin frazier kind of appeared into the future when he was writing and he said the closer we get to being included into mainstream life the institutions of the world of make believe will change, will transform and some will fade away. Part of what we have to do and im going to be deliberately provocative, i always am, right . Is to try to figure out what are the demographic shifts . Would have been significant changes in an institutional life of the church that may have decentered it from being the most important institutional space in black america today. Whether or not churches or neighborhood churches anymore. How many of these institutions have become atm gospel i didnt say that. Prosperity but. Prosperity folks. In a neoliberal moment. How many folks have turned their backs on a kind of prophetic approach . Part of what im trying to suggest is there has always been to provide problematic relationship. Our institutions and central because of the history of exclusion of black folk in the United States which is made religious discourse central to how we give them voice to our political demands but giving the shifts in change. The church or churches have been decentered and part of what we have to do is tell ourselves the story about what are the implications of that fact if its a fact you are willing to concede to. Then we can have a debate. I hope that made sense. Did that make sense . [applause] well i am noted for being the fire bomb in the room so im going to go on. The black church today is that a serious crossroads. Im going to take off from what you said in a may call it even better. Ive been running emails for the last year tracking church foreclosures for the last three years. Black churches are in a state of decline and we are talking about physical spaces. You can see the big megachurch in your community but the smaller 50 to 150 person church is dying. That is partially demographic. That is number one. Number two the problem we have as younger people to not identify with tell me to keep my skirts long and holiness. Because they dont understand that. Because they dont have anybody to talk to them in a way that they need to be spoken to right now so you are losing other people. There a lot of people walking outside of the schomberg who will tell you my mother told me i was raised raised in the church but i dont want to go to church anymore because they arent talking about nothing i want to hear about. All right baby ive been waiting to talk to for a long time. Hold up. The other thing is and this is the real serious point i want to make because we can talk about jerusalem but we arent in the New Jerusalem. We are fighting for jerusalem right now. I laughed at the title of this panel because this is like the crusades right now. We are fighting for a very democratic rights right now and part of that has to do with the church and if you dont believe that all i have to say is Trayvon Martin and you will understand and we will talk about that but one of the things that people in the black church need to understand is that the religious right playbook, they take your playbook from the Civil Rights Movement. This is why they have so much power right now, at least they think they have power. Temporal power and spiritual power are not the same thing. They are not the same thing. [applause] we do not wrestle with flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. Ive been wrestling with principalities and powers this week from the rightwing and i want to look at this mic in saudi right now that i serve the god of Abraham Isaac and jacob. And that is the god we serve as black people but we cant critique this american god. God is in the thrall of capitalism and craziness that has is not looking at our communities because we link to get the pastor of a whole bunch of money for the pastors anniversary. Let me go ahead and call this out. We havent talked about there a bunch of women sitting in church right now giving all their money to pastors that are messing them over. We have to talk about the bad things are happening but we also can talk about the good things that are happening in the black church. Souls to the polls, people getting people out to vote in the 20s of election, things are happening in our innercity communities where churches are working to stop nonviolence. So this cant be an abstract discussion today. Has to be a serious discussion about where we are going because people are walking away from these institutions. They dont care about institutions. Every institution in this nation is failing right now. Its not just the church. The government is failing. People dont work. We elect leaders that aint working. If you want to your job they did with the congress did, they dont work. So churches are doing the same thing. Churches are having issues right now. How do we build up the black church to be that institution that needs to be within our communities and to make those bridges across religious lines. Because its not just about christianity. Its about all the rest of these religious traditions we have in the africanamerican tradition and its a moment where we have to come together we will fail. This democratic process is trying to crush us right now or it least what is passing for democracy. Its really a rightwing theocracy and you need to begin to think about how the message of the gospel here unadulterated message of jesus christ was a radical message that said we are for the poor and for the brokenhearted and the folks that dont have money to go to the hospital. Its not this other god so we need to really be the people who are out there saying look at who god is supposed to be an stop making it about Something Else. [applause] see if we make that move to a more practical direction many different ways you have all sort of talked about this black church emerging on the one hand but also acclaim around the christian gospels sensitive black identity. Black churches could be going in any number of directions now. When we think about the last month whether its doma the Voting Rights act trayvon we are all making claims made in response to fraser some might say in the small and black churches are free. Other folks, what is reasonable to expect the black churches and where might we direct the relatively scarce resources that those institutions have in this moment . What issues might be the most important for black churches to be mobilized . This is an important implication of the point that was making. Once we descent rate the black church or black churches from a kind of narrative and we have been talking about storytelling the way in which you tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement that begins with rosa parks not getting up. King becomes the kind of iconic figure for all of the organizing gets buried. That story blocks from you a much more radical tradition of black struggle. What can we tell her story in this particular way we have narrowed what comes into view so when we tell the story of black institutional life at the center is always the church and the church has undergone institutional transformation and our expectation is that black people will rise when the church rises. The church itself functions differently. They may find yourself a moment where our imaginations have been captured and where we cant begin to think in a different sort of way. We are blocked in some ways so let me say this. When i say black churches are shifting im not saying that black churches are doing good work. There are some preachers and some congregations that are out there on the frontline doing amazing work. But i want to think about the shift. The best example i can use and im going to say this really quickly, would be the black press. There is a moment in our inclusion where this institutional space collapsed. Remember the pittsburgh courier . The chicago defender, the black associated press. In these venues black news circulated and jet and ebony emerges on the kind of margins of this extraordinary space where information, as black public space where deliberation took place. What happened . It collapsed. Look at what is happening today. Hbcu. At one point in black history every Major Intellectual was produced there. The brain trust of the country could be found at howard, morehouse, at a spelman or tuskegee. Now what has happened . Morris brown where is he . Howard, we just saw the oped. It could be closed within three years although they said thats not true. Institutional transforming. How many people attend churches in the neighborhood where the church happens to be located . The shift in the population. Folks actually drive from where they live to the church so what is the organic relationship of churches to the communities in which they happen to be, if they have been relocated . So the function of the institution is what im trying to get out, not that churches arent doing anything but how were we imagining black institutional life in this neoliberal moment . That is what im trying to get a especially as i hear you continue to speak of the decentralizing of the black church, being a pentecostal by background and now much more of hopefully a postmortem pentecostal [laughter] was it not a mistake for us to assume that because god was so near and dear to us in delivering us from the bondage of White Supremacists i hate theology and mitigation of blackness, it was such a close thing that i remember at my churches congregation i thought 500 street was a center of the world. It felt like it. Before happy. Note evil could come near us. That was a mistake. God never did leave the liberating activity of creation to our churches. Though it felt like it in the black church was never at the center of what god was doing to bring us into the democratic proximity. My thinking is that the holy spirit is at work and the church where we get happy on sunday morning but the spirit does not leave the printing press, did not leave the educational institution, did not leave the hospitals so my sense is we need to come to the awareness that in any kind of decline, possibly its gods way of saying yall like never did put all my eggs in your black basket i was doing stuff everywhere and i am still doing stuff but the problem is if the black church is not sensitive and does not learn how to be in coalition and in cooperation with the liberating activity that is taking place other places then we will die. We will call it at first but its actually the cutting the the tree at the root. That is the issue to me. Decentralizing that black church. It may have been the center of our activity that the holy ghost i hope has Something Else going on other than what has been happening in our congregations. [applause] and i want to just tie into that and say you know i think what we also forget is the church is not a building. Its people and its the people on the inside of and thinking about my book and i was thinking about the history of churches in christ and how people believe they were just congregational sunday didnt do anything. They won after doing stuff but i covered this great history about these women, mother lizzie robinson, reverend mallory. All of these women were involved with social movements. They were in the midst of all this stuff happening during the Civil Rights Movement. Its a whole different way you can look at the history of black churches because there were people who are within those churches who are making connections with other organizations. National council of women, naacp, all of these things are now what is happening is that people within these churches have to start to make connections to outside organizations. Urban league, naacp out those organizations made up of Church People. They were the people who are paying into the organizations and everything and now we start to see people going down on all this stuff because the Church People become insulin. They dont want to make these outside connection so what we have to do is begin to say we cannot exist is just a church in the entity of the black church unless we begin to make connections with outside organizations and other things to revitalize ourselves, to revitalize our neighborhoods, our communities, our kids, the educational system. Unless we begin to make those kinds of connections with others who are likeminded whoever they might be the church will fail because if you just have this little thing where you are shouting the praises god on sunday then it doesnt happen. [applause] you know i am with you on that but i think there is a prior step that has to be taken and that is, i mean if churches keep the same theology that they have now you know all these coalitions. Who will they be making coalitions with . Remember when tomorrow, so called moral majority, talking about conservatives and conservatism. Well, a lot of people conflated political conservatism with moral conservatism so do know nobody is more morally conservative than my mother, my grandmother and my father. They have nothing to do with Jerry Falwell and those neosegregations. Because there was no real clear, a real clear theology that gave people a mode of discernment, literal discernment we saw a lot of black people supporting folks who were the exact opposite of their interests. And its still happening so what we need to do though is i think it comes back to the basis, supposedly the basis and that is the biblical witness. What we see as a distortion of the biblical witness, what we see is this domination asked discourse going way back to constantine when the faith of the oppressed became the religion of the oppressor the emperor of the roman empire and since then we have had this big tradition of domination asked discourse which has consistently been in some way in the lead with the powers that be. But that causes is it of skiers this underlying revolutionary message particularly the gospel. Jesus, when we talk about the poor and poverty does anyone realize that the one thing jesus talked about more than anything else was poor people and the exploitation of poor people . We are talking about other kind of stuff over yonder somewhere. Jesus taught and taking out of the hebrew prophets that were very revolutionary, they were talking about they dont have the mind right of kings. Everybody has the same rights which is the basis of the democratic ethics in my opinion. It doesnt go back to the greeks. It goes back to the biblical theory of a prophetic period so we have to start asking questions and reclaiming the Reddick Halaby of jesus. He was killed and crucified as a seditionist against the roman empire. Whether he was are not with another question but until we start embracing their the radical and the politico buddy of the basis of christianity, until we start embracing that first we will not have a real clear stand of discernment and number two we wont get anywhere. We will be doing the same old thing over and over. Lastly if we have really talked about democracy in which everybody has the same [inaudible] we have to start modeling bad in our religious communities. I am just so sick of hearing about the pastor has a vision so we have to follow it. I have seen that vision. And you know what im talking about. This hierarchy. We have to start being democratic throughout our lives and democracy means a galaxy are in it has their same right. We are not talking about big guys for little guys. We are talking about a get egalitarianism and the good samaritan. We have a responsibility, not just freedom, we have responsibility. That is the face of the biblical witness. Im going to leave it there because im getting a little carried away. [applause] really quickly a think its important for us to understand obery that there is an argument to be made. That is to say youve could posit the view that the gospel is this, so we can do the textual analysis and show that jesus spoke about the poor x number of of times into this particular interpretation by the right is a distortion. That is the beginning of an argument but when we look at the coalition around in california mormons and black folks, theres a kind of real baseline mobilization of interest. But when i am in new jersey and what john called jersey in jerusalem so i was confused by the title. [inaudible] but the idea of all of these black teacher standing behind Chris Christy who is decimating the educational system, who is demonizing public teachers, who is killing black folks. But they have an argument. They are making claims on the basis of their christian witness. What what i am saying is over the course of over the last few decades what has stood in for christianity as such has been a particular conservative interpretation of what it means to be christian. And in its wake are aggressive christians have acted like they cant stand on their interpretation of what it means to be a christian and be committed and up what it means to be christian and to be dedicated to the poor so in some ways the public voice understanding has been this conservative voice that you want to say is wrong and then we witnessed the demobilization of more progressive voices within the christian voice. It seems to me what is needed is not to say thats just wrong and this is an interpretation. It seems to me we need more progressive christians to come out and make intensive intense arguments with extraordinary uses of social media, with the same kind of savvy that these folks coming out of of the Mormon Church and began to make the argument on christian morals that we can in fact support of this and that andersen that. Do you see what im trying to say . That display i wrote the politics of jesus. We have a new generation of folk but what we have to do is we are not saying its wrong that these political stances are wrong. What we do have to point out though that in context the consolation of the vocalist excesses. The main concept is just us. We dont even talk about justice anymore and the second is righteousness, putting justice into action. We dont even talk about that anymore. So we dont have to say they are wrong but they are not fully informed and one last thing. I sit on the board of the Public Religion Research institute in washington d. C. And we just put up this great survey that says that the Younger Generation there a more progressive christians to identify themselves as progressive christians then regressive dont know, conservative christians and what that means is that following the same trends we see a lot more progressive christians but we do have to draw a line and say look we have a text that was given a particular context and so it has a particular meaning and its not all pieinthesky. It has a particular social political and economic meaning and indications and we have to point that out and not be embarrassed about it and not be willing to say brother i love you but show me where that is. And much of what they say is not there. Much of what they talk about has to do with doctrines and orthodoxies and jesus didnt know anything about it but that is christian. I think we can recognize in the same way they are diversities and dominations and traditions that represent what you are referring to is the black church but thereve been competing interpretations over scripture so on one hand there is prosperity and one hand there is the progressive or prophetic and what we want to celebrate but how do we also think about more complicated, the more competent way the relation between the culture of black churches in the multiple ways in which they participate in American Public life . We have in the wake of doma black preachers who are stepping up on one hand to say this is a right for all citizens regardless of race. At this time time they are saying thats not an endorsement on behalf of my church for samesex marriage. So that we can read the scripture two different ways into different contexts. Exactly and i think part of the genius sometimes the black church is we are able to hold tensions together. Whether its about lgbt issues, women in the pulpit, doma, marriage, all this other stuff we have been able to hold things together. The problem comes when we go over and decide we are not going to hold those things together anymore. Let me talk about this. You talk about progressive christianity and since im a progressive christian im the person to speak about it. I want to tell a quick story. I wrote a oped about americas racist god. [applause] thank you, some of you read it. I got attacked by the right. I got attacked by Fox Sean HannityRush Limbaugh and im saying the names out loud, all of them came at me this week. These people called me and p is c and everything they could call me except a child of god. Why did they do that . Because i had the nerve to critique this american gods, small g not be too mad. They said oconnor you are coming after god that i was coming up to their god. I was not coming after the god of the scriptures, the god that we know Abraham Isaac and jacob. I was talking about the god they worship, racism, the god they worship White Supremacy so i know this is going to go out everywhere else but how many times can they email my people and Everything Else. Thank god ive got a Great Institution that takes care of me. I have tenure. I can get fired. A positive and for the people who called the schomberg this week to try to get me off this panel i hope you enjoyed the show. [applause] but wait, one more thing i want to say. This prophetic voice of progressive christianity is missing. We dont hear these voices anymore. It is violent because the voice of christianity we hear is a voice of complicity with the system and if we dont hear this voice of a radical christianity that will say that we need to be feeding the poor, that we need to care about these folks, that we need to call out this structural sin that is happening , if we dont have that radical boys because people are willing to do with the right is doing right now and to say, and i am fine with whatever they please. Im not mad at them. I met at them when they cant they tell me i cant talk about race. They tell me we cant talk about racism because its postracial. If jesus came down and stood in front of the stage and had an afrothey would fall out. What im saying is this and let me be very brief. Progressive christianity has to have a bigger voice. If we dont hear these voices it is not fair and so while we are doing that we need to have a voice. Okay, i think progressive, its hard because progressives are usually considered to be the more intellectually trained participants in the conversation but what really has to happen is either we have to have remedial christianity or like they did in in you have to get a renewal of your certificate every now and then. What we need to do is recognized that the older religious perspective is not so much wrong as jesus said and this is progressive. Jesus says, i have a lot to tell you all that you were not able to bear in mind. However when the spirit of truth is, you will lead you to all truth which means the reason i came to you everything is because if i told you and you have not started as the questions the answer would have no meaning for you. What happens is the blood church has got to deal with the real questions that we are wrestling with. If the black church is not effectively addressing the Trayvon Martin situation, then we are not living up to our approach to the old tradition did this. You would twirl a chain and the person that the problem had to listen to the priests recite one of the poems of the tradition and when they person heard the issue even obliquely addressed that he was struggling with he would stop the priest and say stay right there and then together they would explore. I guess its called the principle of correlation. If we dont get the people talking to the church about the problem that we are facing now, we do not live up to our african ancestry. Now, my sense is we have got the trayvon thing. The church has got he would read from the sunday school guide and say what did you get out of that . What do you get out of the bible . In light of whats been going on in the criminal Justice System as it is punctuated by the zimmerman situation. So what we have got to do is i think, let me tell you what has happened to me. I have read stuff for 50 years but now we have got some new problems crystallizing themselves before us. What do i think about the black church . We can talk all we want and cry all we want to about trayvon but if we do not get out of that the message that the lord gave elijah, this is a little preaching l. The lord told elijah, elijah you need to specialize in fussing at erev. They called the prophetic because speaking truth to power. When god really anointed elijah again this is fascinating to me. The lord says now is elijah whereas in the past you concentrated on speaking truth to power i have got a new job for you. I want you to return to damascus and when you get there i want you to anoint hazy out as king and as king over israel and anoint elijah. Which is to say used to spend your time cussing at kings and now i want you to make kings. The black church today stop crying now about trayvon so much as to see every black boy and girl in the street as possibly the new king or queen. We could concentrate on making kings and queens and not spending nearly as much time just fussing at the powers that be. Then you will have done christianity, christianity that is appropriate for today. [applause] that is what i think we ought to do. In some ways that seems to we have 15 minutes before we open up for q a but that gets to the core tension between the black churches and institutions that socializes american citizens as a primary space that produces american democrats through its various educational programs. At the same time there is the broader claim of part critiquing kings rule so i wonder all of you are invested and have some strong stringent critiques of the limits of black churches and institutions more generally but you also actively engage these churches. Maybe before before we opened up i i would be interested to hear where do you see that side of hope . Where do you see something being made out of nothing, something being made out of nothing, sort of the black tradition. Is there a possibility that if the black church is dying some source of resurrection . Is there an organization at the forefront of bringing together collaboration and wheres the prospect for moving the forward in this moment . Its a real good question and my experience, there are a lot of folk in the pews, and the pulpit is largely in the way. They critique of clergy because folks know whats wrong. They know that something hasnt changed but if you are raised like i was initially, people from virginia and you have this oldtime religion you know something is wrong but you dont know what to do about it. Or you feel something is wrong but you dont know what it is. What that says is that remedial christianity has to be consciousnessraising christianity. For instance we touched on democracy but democracy is something that is not just some abstract word that is out there. Something we really have to discuss. What are the limits of democracy . What does democracy asked for . Are we in a democracy right now . What do we write have a right to ask for a democracy . That is just one thing and with regard to the bible i must must say and maybe its because im a biblical scholar and a dedicated the last 25 or 30 years of my life to the history of language and the interpretation of the bible but i see that there are even some who know something is wrong and something has to change but until its presented to them things remain the same. And so there has to be a think this real concerted effort, much more concerted than we have had before to say wait a minute. This is what it says here in context, to make it clear and though i make a real effort to raise consciousness in the church and the community and ive tried to do that in the looks ive written and ive tried to do that in the lectures i give and the speeches i give and the sermons that they used to invite me to give. And i think we all have to do that in our own way and see the church as a site of struggle, it a site of struggle. Its a place to go to be somebody into worship and all that but its also a site of struggle to empower our people and to let them see that this faith that they believe in is not just for over there. Jesus set the spirit of the lord is upon me. The spirit of the lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor which has institutional implications and liberation to the captives and free folk from jail. What are we talking about now . The prison industrial complex. All of these things are things on the ground. The lords prayer is about politics and economics in making sure everyone has enough bread. Lord please forgive our debt because we are beaten down by debt structures. We have to raise their consciousness and let them know that this is what its really about. That is the power drill he has for us. Its great to be on stage with a bunch of preachers. Its hard when you are on the stage with a bunch of preachers. What does that mean. You know, i am teasing you. Im thinking about philadelphia right now because i live there is no what the problems are with the teacher thinks i want to give a concrete example of what i think churches can be doing. A group of testers there have been instrumental in going out and helping people to protest the closing of the schools and the part firing of all these teachers. One of the things ive been thinking about is the historic role of the black church in education and now was currently happening in the educational system. We have these major cities in the nation that are firing teachers and not replacing them, closing schools. We are going to be in very bad shape in philadelphia so one of the things i think churches can do and im thinking about my friend at her church where she is getting people out there to protest and to do these kinds of things that we really need to do. It has to not just be the abstract. All of us here upon the stage can be abstract all the time but what im interested in is how can we build the bridge between the church and the academy . Have come a public intellectuals about religion but also the intellectuals that work with religion to do something . I dont think it really means anything to me to get off of the stage and not advocate for the causes in a way that i can. So i do think Something Interesting is happening because all the services are dying in our major cities. Churches are looked at as a place to get the services that they are not going going to to be a legit benefit on a financial means to do so and they think this creates the opportunity but it also creates a challenge and we have to figure out how thats going to come together. Really quickly part of the reason why the church is being pushed forward to actually step in and social Service Delivery is precisely because his troublesome neoliberal state. The state function is to protect the workings of the market and Everything Else comes back for individual selfcare and thats health care turns out to be simply our ability to make choices and the churches are being complicit in that. That is really complicated but true. Whats interesting way of an example of what can happen in North Carolina. So North Carolina is off the chain. The republican takeover of the governor of the governors house as well as the legislature has led to all sorts of behavior and to see a mobilization of churches and civil rights organizations and grass right grassroots organizations in the state that some of us know about because we have folks down on the front lines doing it and we are reading the blogs and we dont see it on cnn or msnbc a lot. We might see it on msnbc but the point is we have an example so churches have a model of how to mobilize around a particular issue. I just want to say this really quickly because we are running out of time. Its dark out here. Its like a out here. Folks are catching hell out of here. Since 2008 we have experienced a great black depression. Folks are losing homes and they have lost their retirement. Folks cant get jobs. In february we were at 14 . Right now we are at 13. 7 unemployment and those numbers are cooked. At the height of the summer teenage unemployment is jumping through the roof. We dont need to address negative reinforcement. They need jobs. 43. 6 health care delivery. We are not getting it. We lived there. We are sleepwalking. And we are looking for the church to wake us up and part of what we dont want to hear is that some of these folk are complicitous and evil. Im sorry to be polemical but its dark out here. And we have got a black man in the white house but its dark out here. Trayvon martin has gotten so many people excited and elbows are getting sharp because folks want to march. The brother who organized the million for the march when nobody was talking about it, where is he . We see al sharpton and jessie getting in front of the microphone and talking. Now we have ph. D. Pundits and everything they want to say in the world about whats happening and what happened to Trayvon Martin. Its dark out here and people are playing games. Do you see what im saying . Its in those moments that you want to hear a word, a fresh word to embolden the spirit to get us up so that we can see the business that is needed. The first thing i need to say and im going to say it has passed away as i can is that its dark out here. And people are playing games. I can give less than a dam that we have our first africanamerican president. I am saying it on national television. The symbolic cash value of that is at zero. Its dark out here and what happens when its dark . Who was supposed to give us a clarion call pastor . Where we supposed to hear the word . I dont know. Speaking of remedial christianity [applause] i think maybe we have to start obery at an earlier level because take the situation where jesus finds a young daughter 12 years old dead and jesus comes in and he says child, get up in the actually raises the dead. That was a time when the black churches thought we had the ministry of raising the dead. We could do that but thats a little too tough for us now. The fascinating thing that i noticed is after jesus wakes up the girl from the dead and the mother and father say thank you jesus for raising our daughter from the dead jesus stops and says dont be praising me so much. Give her something to be now. Thats the most fascinating thing. Here he has performed a miracle and then he takes time to say, she has been sick. She cant go to school, she can play with the kids unless you give her something to d and of the next chapter almost as if to reinforce that their 5000 people out there and they have been listening to the kingdom and the good preaching and jesus says give them something to eat. What i would like to suggest is that maybe if the black church decides we are not going going going to be to have been to the specialization raising the dead but we cant give folks something to eat. That means that this is a manageable problem almost been less you know the magnitude of hunger in the United States. So what has to happen is we have to get nerve enough to say to Church People that when you pay your taxes, that is your lunch with five or early loaves and two fishes. Now you have got to go until the Congress Persons dont fuss at them, just tell them the all the lord needs my tax money to feed some folks and if youre legislature is cutting off food stamps for some people that thats all they have got you were in trouble. Just say jesus needs my lunch. I just paid my taxes and is yall aint going to mess me up with my jesus. Unless you are going to our range to feed these hungry people i am in trouble. If im in trouble you are going to be in trouble. [applause]