In the midst of the recent deluge of neighborhood violence in the city and cries from the community for action, Saint John’s United Church of Christ (UCC) is working with its partners to try to answer the question, “What is the church doing?” with “The Beloved Community: Equipping the Saints for the Work of Justice,” an ecumenical conference that will provide practical tools and information that citizens and communities of faith can put into action immediately.  The event will be held November 5-9^th at Saint John’s UCC, 4136 North Grand Boulevard, at the corner of Grand and Lee Avenue.  It includes two worship experiences, a play by The Black Rep, three separate ministry institutes, a discussion on faith and politics and two community service opportunities.  Conference partners and supporters include the Missouri Mid-South Conference of the UCC, The African American Pulpit Journal (Memphis, TN), The Black Rep, Washington Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church,…

Sitar player Imrat Khan of India will appear at Saturday's Festival of World Sacred Music. Photo courtesy Gitana Productions.

“There is something in music that transcends and unites. This is evident in the sacred music of every community . . . music that expresses the universal yearning that is shared by people all over the globe.” His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Music from many of the world’s faith traditions will be played at Saturday’s St. Louis Festival of World Sacred Music,  Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union Blvd. in the city’s Central West End neighborhood.

The festival begins at noon. The last performer takes the stage at 7 p.m. Artists appearing include both local favorites and musicians with worldwide followings.

“Every culture creates music that is sacred, music that
expresses universal emotions. The Festival of World
Sacred Music reflects our commitment to global healing, by bringing
together international and local musicians who represent diverse
spiritual and religious interests,”…

As much as the exclusive, masculine language above rubs me the wrong way, it really does get across the point of this post.  I’ve recently been in dialogue with a number of young adults (particularly college students) who struggle with decisions about the development of their lives of faith.  The most difficult for those who live in the city in which they grew up is whether they will continue to worship in the same congregation of their families. 

While this may sound odd, it is a difficult decision because for many of them joining those congregations was never a decision.  The choice of sanctuary, synagogue or mosque for people like me who grew up nurtured by religious traditions is really not our own.  My mom made sure I was at Union Missionary Baptist Church for worship, Sunday School, choir rehearsal, mid-week prayer service and youth activities on Saturday every week.  When mom decided our family membership would change…

My hipster brother in Chicago, who always has his inner radar tuned to music to knock your socks off, passed along this YouTube clip. “Good music will always find a way in the dirty soul,” he says.

This is Black Gospel at its finest by one of its finest, Dorothy Love Coates.

If this doesn’t get you up offa that thing, clapping your hands, and shouting “Amen!”, you better check your pulse.

I have a friend whose uncle manufactured condoms. “Never depend on a condom,” he told her. Always use an additional form of birth control.”

That was “back in the day,” as everyone seems to be saying now, back when condoms were supposed to prevent conception and birth rather than death.

The Holy Father, too, made recent cautionary statements about condoms, just a few days ago, and despite the ratcheting up of stakes — death rather than birth — the pope  royally annoyed a whole slew of the usual critics — mainly from the West.

This onslaught of disapproval has been so noisy, one can be forgiven for believing the Pope is entirely alone with his “quaint” and “dangerous” views.

Think again: Dr. Edward Green, Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard School of Public Health and Center for Population and Development Studies has gone on record the last few days as defending the…

Since President Obama is the world’s most powerful church “seeker” (he still hasn’t found a church home since his split with southside Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ), The New York Times provides an interesting overview of the pastors who now advise the President on pastoral and spiritual matters.

It is an intriguing group. They would all be considered what we would broadly define as evangelicals. But they defy stereotypes. They represent a wide spectrum in political beliefs and could hardly be called politically conservative, even though their theology certainly would be.

They represent what has historically been some of the hallmarks shared between American evangelicalism and the Black church: theologically conservative, politically progressive. By “history,” I mean the same strains of evangelical faith and action that propelled the anti-slavery and women’s enfranchisement movements, not its more recent incarnation in the “religious right.”

As the Times points out, though, they would certainly represent conservative views on…

Rev. Dr. Ronald L. Bobo, Sr. - Candidate for NBCUSA, Inc. President

The Rev. Dr. Ronald Bobo, Sr., pastor of West Side Missionary Baptist Church of North St. Louis and Florissant, recently declared his candidacy and began a campaign to become President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated.  This religious organization has the distinction of being the largest body of African American Christians in the world.  As a matter of fact, with an estimated 7.5 million members, it is the largest collection of African Americans on the globe.  The group has been led by The Rev. Dr. William Shaw of Philadelphia, PA since 1999.

“Change” for Bobo is a call to return to the Convention’s 1886 founding purpose, focusing on collective Missions and Education.  This fits well into his own ministry focus and service, which includes terms as Chair of the Foreign Mission Board for the Missionary Baptist Convention of Missouri and the Evangelism and Education…

The Rev. Jermiah Wright

With the election over many are attempting to assert that President-Elect Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremy Wright will affect his policy-making. Even if Obama was affected, many scholars are beginning to argue that black theology is only alive in the academy and is so dead everywhere else that it wouldn’t matter how much one was influenced by it. That is, there should be no fears regarding Obama being influenced. Alistar Kee argues the death of black theology is his book, The Rise and Demise of Black Theology (Ashgate, 2006). Kee writes,

“There is the arrogance of Black Theology repeating year after year the same essentialisms and stereotypes which are frankly embarrassingly naïve in academic circles. There is a need for proper analysis of the worsening situation of Black poverty, a little more humility in view of the fact that ‘we are more confused than ever about the reasons for…

Bishop Martin D. Holley, a black priest and Auxilliary bishop of Washington, D.C.,  responded quickly to a recent Guttmacher Institute report indicating U.S. black women have abortions at five times the rate of white women.

Bishop Holley serves as Chair of the Sub-Committee on African American Affairs and he is a member of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Bishop Holley said,

As an African American, I am saddened by evidence that Black women continue to be targeted by the abortion industry. The loss of any child from abortion is a tragedy, but we must ask: Why are minority children being aborted at such disproportionate rates?

Over 80 percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority neighborhoods…..

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, began the ‘Negro Project’ to reduce the Black population…..

My brothers and sisters, we can overcome abortion in our nation.

Let us defend our community…

Photo from Resman Associates

David Briggs at the Cleveland Plain Dealer has a fascinating story about black churches leaving lower-income neighborhoods. Oddly, this has been a centuries old practice among whites but it has rarely uttered an objection. What we find, in fact, is not that the “black church” is simply moving out of low income areas but the second large wave of black middle-class folks are now moving to the suburbs–a trend that began in the 1960s when blacks were given more freedom to let the market inform our living preferences.

There are still black churches in black communities. For example, if you drive up and down Page Avenue between Vinita Park and downtown, you cannot drive half a mile without seeing a black church. However, Briggs writes,

[T]he black church is at a crossroads. Longtime congregations like are critical to struggling neighborhoods, providing safety, social services and an anchor for revitalization plans.

In…