Is Christianity a White Man's Religion? (Dr. Eric Mason) - (Part 1)

[Music] we're gathering at an event like this because a lot of the brothers and sisters are being pulled away from the church going behind what I feel is pop culture at the moment you know they're kind of being led by what different entertainers is saying behind the religion without doing research for themselves I think it's important for the church to address the elephant in the room there's a lot of believers that are conscious knitters love a people that not a belief that a conscience I think that for the church to engage the culture as far

as talking about conscience Christianity and how important the Christian Christian experience especially being african-american was not really popular or it's not really being focal a confidence magnitude other rid of the core word to it first time that I've heard anything like this from church you know I've heard things out here you know in different places but I think you know coming to the church you know what the body of believers knowledgeable biblical sources honestly I think each one of the sessions are going to be important I'm interested in that topic because I'm tired of being

told that I'm a fool for worshiping a white man's religion or following the white man's Jesus so I'm really excited to see what those topics are going to uncover it feel like of a slave trade and individual state being brought over here they made us believe this over to my understanding it's not just want to be able to have those questions for family and friends that have that question here is the is Christianity a white man's religion if we look through history you'll find out it is not but of course isn't this also has not

been really talked about due to the fact that a lot of people don't want us to know the truth of our heritage here in America and know the biblical roots that we have best place to get the information is from a reliable source from someone who's actually living and walking through their walk Christianity is not black man's religion Christianity is not a Middle Eastern man's religion or woman a high this night it's God's [Music] evening are y'all gonna do better than that good evening good evening how many y'all glad to be here tonight good good

good stuff good stuff I am going to quit and get out of time opened up with some prayer in a second want to just say a few things thankful for crossover putting this on the young adult ministry and the room within the vision of this church through this pastor Blake Wilson let's give her out of hand praise for this church for the leadership pass the Blake Wilson and allowing the young adults to put this on and they brought this to him as a passionate plea and he was very very clear on wanting to support them

and do this and so I'm thankful for them and thankful for everyone and everyone that's here to be able to talk through these major issues that we have time to work through and talk through I want to say hi to everybody cuz they're streaming right y'all screaming y'all screaming I want to say hi to everybody scream say hi everybody say hi so some people that are online I know epiphany la it's tuned in they got how many people play let's play a hundred people listening in LA so high we jealous of y'all a little bit

cuz I got more sunshine than us right now because it's about four o'clock there right we're not I'm easy cuz I'm it's five o'clock they're so thankful for y'all excited for you guys and ready digging let's pray and let's go ahead and dig into our time together Lord God Almighty we thank you and honor you for the opportunity to work through what I believe are systemic things I believe these things are important for a multitude of reasons Lord and I know that you are committed to people knowing you and seeing you clearly and in this

time period where there is a lot of confusion there's a lot of philosophical inventions and things that people are doing to create ways to figure life out and God we want to be able to give people answers give them a reason for the hope that is within them and God I'm praying in the mighty name of Jesus Christ that we would first be stable in our faith god I pray that we would be stable so that we're not trying to do apologetics or engage someone because our faith in you is waning so god I pray

in the mighty name of Jesus that you would be with us in this time help us to be equipped and help us to walk in the spirit of love as we do what you've called us to do now we thank you God we honor you in Jesus mighty name we pray everybody who that said amen amen amen well welcome to conscious Christianity again I'm glad to be here and ready to dig into all that we have to talk about tonight I've been given the subject matter of talking about is Christianity the white man's religion let

me just do a poll real quick how many of you are are specifically dealing with having to fight that question somewhere where you are show of hands hands up real high anyone anyone how many you're not dealing with that with anybody in your sphere that's not that's not something you're dealing with its Christianity the white man's religion no one's asked me because any of you dealing with anyone talking to you from a particular mystery cult in whether it's Hebrew Israelites or Kemetic science or more hands went up on that where you are dealing with this

Christianity white man has religion if you're dealing with a V didn't put your hand up you should have had your hand up because that is one of the foundations of this reality and this is a question that I think is a viable question the reason why I think it's a viable question and a vital question is because this is what this country has communicated this country has communicated and Christianity in particular has communicated through its cultural captivity to Western Eurocentrism the evangelical church has contributed to where we are today as it pertains to our relationship

with Christianity black people in this part of the hemisphere from the Caribbean uh all the way here any slave port area where the I like to say you should send it back in the day so-called Negroes y'all ever heard that before so-called Negroes are the so-called Negro with decay as the see in the place of it right and so today I want to walk through some things that help us to be equipped somebody say equipped or y'all come on y'all I'm in South I say have more feedback the neck equipped okay I'm just I'm just

I'm just trying to see where y'all at well there's a few things that contribute to this we'll go through we're going to go through several things that I want to talk about some history we're gonna get at some Bible and then we want to talk about some needed things to help us to practically reflect and live this three out of the out there are several questions and you can put that up that the generations have been asking number one our car Ellis walks us through this I love this black people in this country have been

looking for identity somebody say identity dignity significance identity identity dignity and significance are three major things that particularly everybody asks but that african-americans in particular who are descendants of slaves have been asking in this country and in doing this blacks have been asking Who am I Who am I dignity what is my value in number three significance what is my purpose or what am I here to do what were those questions come up because ever since 1619 in the next year we'll mark for hun first so-called slaves were brought to the shores of Jamestown Virginia

and so as we see that reality happening because of the stripping of our language the stripping of our culture the stripping of our names the stand not only the stripping of our culture the scrip the stripping of what God based on James chapter 3 verse 9 and based on we'll get to that in a second and based on Genesis chapter 1 verses 26 through 28 was given to every human being and that is that we are all born in the image of God and because that being stripped and over the years having had had the

challenges of Christianity purporting theories that were borrowed from ancient Moors and Islam into utilizing the curse of ham as a means to infer to us that we the so-called Negroes as they say in America and across the world the dark-skinned descendants of ham are cursed to serve Shem even though the whites come from jpf they just inserted themselves as Shem but it really wasn't true that curse we'll get to that in a second but that being purported for years and not just purported through oral teachings of slave owners but also purported through things like the

Scofield Bible if you get an old first edition Scofield reference Bible you will find that it will have inside of it talking about brief statements about us being accursed people and so if in light of all that is happening in this country connected all of this has been stripped from us our identity Who am I and somebody would say well my identity is found in Christ well if God created your humanity he cares about who you are spiritually and physically and so if God cares about who he made you spiritually to be but also physically

to be then then we should be able to have that question properly answered from God's perspective not only that our dignity what is our value would our worth I love the teaching the pastor Blake does or the bride price when he talks about the difference between a virgins bride price and a non virgin bride price and it's a dignity issue there if you look in the book of Ruth and you talk about the fact that Boaz called Ruth and a Shahi ill or a woman of great value which is the prototype of the proverbs 31

woman the same idiomatic expression used of a woman of value in proverbs 31 is the same word that was prototype through a Moabite woman who happened to be a Gentile not a Jew was the prototype of wisdom at its best when a woman lives for God dignity so when he said that to her a woman that was an alien he was restoring somebody say restore he was restoring her dignity but not only that when we look at significant somebody say significance if you don't know who you are and what your value is it is impossible

to know your purpose and so many pastors nowadays do purpose series for offerings in these purpose series end up purpose having to do with marrying your job and your passion together so you can make a lot of money and at the end of the service given offering a lay it at their feet so that God will bring to pass your purpose through the offering not through his eternal decrees of what he's already said about you and so we will we will we bastardize purpose to resources verses representation which I'm gonna talk about in a second

and in relationship and the things that God has created us to be in him when we denounce the beauty of this so what what is gonna happen my wife Center in a beauty salon today and she texts man she's getting her natural hair did you know we in the we back to the natural hair age in our days amen I'm waiting hating on the weaves if you got a weave we did a outreach and gave weaves for free so we you know you know we we do haircuts natural hand weave so we are equal opportunity

outreach ministry amen but my wife is sitting in the chair this is like right here moms in a hotel room and she said she began to talk to this woman and this woman was a functional plural that she began talking about her nationality and what her complexion has to do with her value and how she's you she drew up Church of God in Christ but she found out who she really was and she's going into all of these different things no matter where you turn you could turn on sign of the TV we'll talk about

that later and you hear people talking about nationality and you turn on this thing you hear the more talking about sovereignty you turn over here and you're talking about who are you black man who are you black woman you'll hear over here the black woman is God do you know and all of these things are here and the issue is the question is is the church in a functional position biblically theologically and sociologically to be able to tell people their dignity identity and significance and so we must be prepared to be able to properly convey

these answers to people to help people to grow to help people develop and to help people not commit apostasy next let's turn over the first Timothy chapter 4 lay some foundation what's going on really it's couple of things as we look at that ideas that I've just laid out of dignity significance and identity there's something going on under the covers of the soul and I believe Paul already prophesied this 2,000 years ago this is not singularly prophesying this only event but I believe this is a napalm in prophecy when I say napalm II prophecy it

will continually be fulfilled as it gets closer and nearer to the day of the Lord are you tracking with me so so we look here it says now the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will depart from the faith paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings or doctrines of demons stop right there Paul got from the spirit Paul was always speaking from the Holy Spirit but he he almost seems to talk here about the fact that the spirit keeps giving not just general information about this happening but very very specific information over and

over and over to him about this particular thing happening and what's going to happen it in later times some will depart somebody say depart the word depart here is the word we get apostasy from which means to abandon the faith I don't know if you've ever or have you been experiencing any of this reality of people quote unquote departing the faith now when we talk about someone departing the faith they were around the faith but they weren't in the faith okay it's I remember talking to a guy I was in the barbershop and talking I

went to a Muslim barber shop because it's the best cutting barber shop in my neighborhood Philly's known for shape-ups look up the stats and when you and we wouldn't he's got it we said we don't go to the barber shop is not nice get another yeah something we come to be able my boys you know me my sons rolled up in a barber shop chillin no Sam I don't know how it came up but somehow they found out I was a pastor and you know I try to keep it a secret so I can hear

with people there's people don't tell you the truth until you know sometime so I thought I was passing the guy cutting my son's head my youngest son here at the time he said I used to be a Christian now I was confused because when he told me he used to be a Christian I said that's impossible and all of the Clippers stopped at that moment and I began to talk in the middle of a Muslim barbershop it's called Mecca in the middle of a barber shop I begin to say it's impossible to unborn and no

it's impossible to be unborn again because Jesus says the III John even says I've written these things that those who have eternal life may know that they have in life in the son he who has the son has the life Jesus says and this is eternal life that you know God and His only Son that he said now I said if this eternal life it's impossible to make something that God says never ends in that's if it's eternal now that means you had temporal life that means you may have gone into a building but you

came out not with eternal life but temporal life and I said sir I don't mean no harm to your family you understand what I'm saying but what you had was not Christianity so use my friend were not a Christian at all and as we look at this reality we see that people are talking about apostasy we see even Kevin Wesley how many are know bug heaven Wesley the ex pastor young okay I thought this was the wool crowd okay my bad but he put out a video that's gone viral talking about him leaving Christianity he

was a pastor and he found out the truth that Christianity was created at not seeing I'm not gonna step on what you're gonna talk about tomorrow bastard Jerome but I was very just confused about the fact that Christianity started at Nicaea when African church fathers has been talking about it for centuries before nice eating so that's a whole nother discussion that we'll get to in a second and so these so called departures of the faith I can't tell you how many times I get calls from pastors talk about the talking about the challenge of these

departures that they're experiencing whether or not in their churches whether or not people are having challenges in the barber shop barber shop the beauty salon as a school on their college campus all of these different things are coming up and people are saying I used to be a Christian right but he says depart from the faith somebody say the faith faith here is not just beliefs okay it's the body what Paul uses the faith when he uses that in the pastoral epistles it's talking about all of the things that makes Christianity Christianity in other words

it's talking about it is talking about salvation by grace through faith in grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone and it's something about all of those foundational doctrines that are taught to a believer when they first become a believer so back in the day contrary to popular belief you didn't just come up front on Christian experience back in the day you didn't just come up and somebody shake your hand give you a piece of paper baptize you and you start coming to church join the ministry and tithing no becoming a Christian was a little

bit more serious back then than it is now and then becoming a Christian back then based on Hebrews chapter 6 verse 1 you learned several things you learned what repentance was how many of you learned repentance when you first believed don't you oh don't you any gotta put your hand up what repentance means how many of you learned with faith meant how many of you learned what the return of Christ meant how many of you learned what sanctification meant how many of you learned with the Trinity men how many of you learned with the hypostatic

Union men how many of you learned with in Aaron semen matter of fact how many of you learn what a sexual purity meant these were basic Bible doctrines that every believer when they became a believer was nurtured in and the problem today in our society is when that nurturing disciples we're babysittin believers then we get into now in emergency mode you can't start learning apologetics until you know the faith how do you want to defend against something that you don't even know they believe when you don't even know what you believe yet and so it's

time for us particularly african-americans don't get quiet on me now it's time for us to learn how to shout with one hand and how to read with the other see we we learn a half Church but we don't like to be the church what keeps people in the faith Paul wrote first Thessalonians because he was with the Saints for three weeks got kicked out of Thessalonica because of persecution when he got kicked out of persecution he sent Timothy back to sneak back to check in on the desolate Thessalonians to see how they were doing when

he gave them in three weeks was enough to sustain them for centuries what I'm trying to say is man I love clothes I love a hoop I love to Harlem my god all that's good but sometimes you will have to land and open the book and tell people what's in it so we talked about depart from the faith it says they will pay attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons what does this tell you about what's happening it's spiritual warfare had a person I found out had walked away from the faith at our ministry

and I you know I I liked the father with the Saints in my church on on their social media because that's how I get sermon application I give my exegesis from the text and I get my application from their Twitter line if Instagram line right so this person was had built an altar in their home had incense and pictures of different past family members on it worshipping the ancestors are y'all trekking with me tonight doctrines of demons and so fighting it's not a physical battle but a spiritual battle next 2nd Timothy 4 2nd Timothy 4

look at it look at it right here it's up on the put up on the board so we continue to track together he said for the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but according that word sound means healthy it's a word if the Greek word there is used to describe and define a doctor giving you a clean bill of health after a check-up it's the word hygiene when we get our word hygiene from so he said people won't tolerate sound doctrine but according to their own desires or in other words what

I personally dream about in 1 so I build my life around dreams not God's deliverance so they will they will seek their own desires look we'll multiply oh god help me you to multiply teachers people get more teaching from YouTube and means than anything else and sweated and written books so I learned where you learn it from 10 minutes on YouTube will multiply for your teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear they will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths but as for

you this is in the context of people turn him away he says but after you exercise self-control in other words don't lose your mind because you heard something else he says in everything endure hardship in other words there gonna be times when Christianity isn't popular and you have to be okay with the lack of its popularity and I'm telling you to be black in a Christian nowadays is an oxymoron to people and he says he says in the midst of that don't be a sucker men and women do the work of an evangelist and so

that's what we're going to look at fulfill your ministry so we look at the image of God go to the next slide thanks for that we go to the next slide it says so God created man in His image still building a foundation he created him in the image of God he created them male and female so three things right here you go to the next one that this turns out to when we talk about being born in the image of God and created an image of God representation responsibility and relationship you you get to

be represent God that stopped the purpose of Adam and Eve being an image bearer they were called representatives of God that means they were to reflect his glory and to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with God look alikes responsibility God gave them responsibility in other words there is no such thing as a person who knows God who's bored because he's called us to have responsibilities but not only responsibility he's called us to relate to him and to one another properly so when you're walking in the image of God these are three of

the things that walking in the image of God looks like thing in the text as we move into this next section James chapter 1 verse 9 it says with it talking about our mouth we bless our Lord and father we'll come back to this later well actually just chapter 3 in that chapter 1 it says and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God so now let's look at where did this concept come from witness concept from for him come from what the white man's religion Christianity being a white man's

religion let's look at this European white supremacy in other words white supremacy was created by Europeans as a way to subjugate people and for them to justify the hatred of other nations in order to subjugate them and utilize them as tools of capitalism so when you look at the European izing of Christianity which happened many many years ago when you look at the white Jesus phenomenon we will get to that in a second but when you look at the European izing of Christianity people people like Albert Boyka Boyka I'm getting ahead of myself um you

know I'm talking about my mind went blank yeah yeah yeah it off of our neck Hey he he began to Europe that was in the eighteen hundreds but even prior to that Christianity was European eyes we'll talk about that in a second but Western Christianity being reshaped by cultural imperialism so when we talk about cultural imperialism that means that um we believe that our culture is supreme to yours and in order to be a Christian you have to become culturally like us that's what Christianity began to say particularly as it began to do missions even

after the Dark Ages that was a huge thing and I mean let me just say something to you and I don't care if you get mad at me many forms of reformed theology is cultural imperialism you what happens is not the theology of the doctrines of grace themselves but the purporting of it particularly that the Puritans are exalted as the purest form of godly Christianity that ever existed when they were a part of the problem so when you look at the European izing of Christianity but you see that it had to be changed from its

original format that God had created Christianity to be from the beginning and we'll get there when we get to the day of Pentecost and you kiss impossible so look at Christianity the way it's been reshaped in our time today one of the things when you study Elijah Muhammad one of my own one of my good friends at college he's the nation he what he was Nation of Islam real good I win him were talking recently and I said as you read Elijah Muhammad he really wasn't talking about historic Christianity he was really talking about Christianity

as he understands as it was given through Western culture post 1619 I said so when you when you when you stare reality a lot of these mystery costs and all of the people that are responding when I say mystery cause let me tell you what I'm talking about I'm talking about mystery religions that try to create significance dignity identity in the life of black people without Jesus Christ that's what I mean and so so so when we talk about this idea of cultural imperialism what they're really fighting about it's two-sided oh I wish I had

oh yeah I do have time I can't say I wish I had time here now I got time oh I'm gang got to say that I was like why am I saying that I got two days I'm good and so we look at the purporting of this idea of Christianity being reshaped by um by Western ideology this is what people are fighting against they're fighting against white supremacy that is now become synonymous with Christianity because it has now become synonymous with Christianity people believe in order to fight injustice we have to fight Christianity because people

can't tell the difference in the landscape of American Christianity between the Bible and being white and so even historically art reinforce this in they did all kinds of attacks they did art attacks they did ideology attacks and one of the things that's powerful about art is art is one of the most destructive ways to work on the people because I believe that the white Jesus picture has done way more damage than the Confederate flag ever has because the white Jesus picture basically purported a lie and implanted into our subconscious a reality of the fact is

not just that Jesus could have been white but then he is white and that everything that has to do with whiteness we should have submission to and so when you look at that reality of just being reinforced even in the way their schools oh my goodness and I'll talk about this tomorrow in how schools have reported white supremacy through their educational format in seminaries they it has been done as well if I see one more book with the church African church fathers on it with a bunch of white dudes I'm going to stream in 40

tongues sick of it I've talked to publishers and told them and they still do it I said so y'all just really want to do that don't y'all anyway don't give me rent independent us being called a Christian country so when we look at all of this this is part of the concept with this concept of Christianity becoming one man's religion next next slide founding document inferentially assumed both coming from Christian principles yet racist now Christianity is not I mean America is not a Christian country it's a deistic country so when you say dere's think we

can say that at best is the istic why because we believe God created us but he abandoned us and let us do what we want to do that's what he is a means it was it's not necessarily a Christian country so it used the illiteracy of slaves to keep them ignorant of biblical Christianity this is gonna be fun in a second again the Scofield Bible note had the curse of ham which was actually the curse of Cain and I am and twisting Genesis 9:27 also revisionist history which I'm going to get into that you go

to the next slide also revisionist history which I'm going to push into this next section it's going to be what we work on so the problem of black identity among african-americans slavery Jim Crow Black Codes well I should put that in front of that because Black Codes came out to slavery because it was slave codes in Black Codes then Jim Crow okay our black holes was done during Reconstruction after slavery was abolished as a way of holding us over to they figured out how to re-enslave us so those Black Codes looking about when you get

a chance it's not it's not a it's not a college class so they look up Black Codes when you get a chance and you begin to see the type of things that leaders who call themselves Christians came up with the subjugate Christian black people then Jim Crow came as the actual way to subjugate us in the south racism systemic racism then it compounded our post traumatic stress disorder so how in the world do you rape women breed men break up families cut people's legs off teach them not to read do not teach them how to

read teach them a false form of religion and then release them from slavery and think they're going to be saying do you think you're gonna paint after all that and then say now you have to go out here and make it and so that was what was done through um all of these different forms which handed down generational trauma because we didn't get counseling out the slavery listen a person get molested in our culture one time which is a bad thing we need them to get therapy but can you imagine getting raped night after night

listening to your wife's getting raped then you get released from slavery and then you got a process through how to be in a relationship with her after she's been with someone else not by her own choosing how you gonna make ends meet how you gonna work and you got to work through that and you just got nothing to help you work nobody to sit on a couch with to help you to process through that you cannot tell me that doesn't have an effect on people and so that's the proportion of what Christianity had a cut

not Christianity not biblical Christianity but White's cultural captivity had a role in playing and helping that to happen but then we had white Christian patriotism and politics they played a role as well so these are some things that beautifully happen though in the midst of all of that jack nuttiness go to the next slide the problem of black identity among african-americans he's some blessings that happen the black church happened zeona win a shout the black church happened now somebody says somebody's out there somebody you're so evangelical well you know there should be a black church

hold on there wasn't supposed to be a black church the black church was God's plan because the white church refused to be the church so in order to find contextual ways to apply the gospel in the Word of God in our life without cultural imperialism we needed our own space to create and submit to our own identity and have our own institution where it will be the only place where we weren't called a boy or girl but we will call deacon and we will call Reverend and we will call bishop we will call brother we

will call sister and we will call beloved in the walls of the black church is where the history of dignity happened in this country the black church is the oldest standing living institution that has been the cradle and the womb of the black person how dare you go to your little seminary and learn from some white folk how dare you go to a low white church and you start liking being there in a way there go there I'm not saying don't go there but this act look at the black church with a crazy eye when

your great-grandmother got sad because y'all know crazy but wouldn't even be here if the black CD programs that were centuries before the Black Panther Party talk to me about no after-school eating program or the Black Panther Party man Abyssinian Baptist Church was doing that during the Harlem Renaissance oh my gosh I don't talk to me about the black church starting to break when the when we got red line in Harlem they couldn't buy any type of housing Abyssinian Baptist Church Abyssinian which means Ethiopian they started a bank gave out loans don't you let these people

Punk you know your history not just your personal black history know your black church history Richard I'm a farmer people don't know he bought the grounds that mother Bethel was on based on his entrepreneurial service as a chimney cleaner I go on all day with that but the black with a black preacher of the day that's patronized as a pimp always worth it that way you know back on talkback it's okay I'm by myself I'm by myself so the AME Zion Church came into existence and they were the ones that took the literacy level of

slaves from zero to 30% single-handedly y'all in the room with me tonight uh-uh and viewed as a major part of his mission the AME came into existence matter of fact epiphany Fellowship is two miles from the place where Absalom Jones and Richard Island were praying and got kicked out of the church and had to start that day the first black denomination since as well as the Church of crowd in Christ started by Bishop Mason no don't ever rag on the Church of God Christ no more because there were another promoter of our dignity from that

late 1800 to the early 1900s when you look everybody in the North Oh their existence partially to the Church of God in Christ why because when wit guess what they did they were the one of the first groups to sin intercontinental missionaries to the migration with food to feed people and men and women shared the gospel and they planted churches in the northeastern cities I wish I had time it's our brother it's just crazy how much the black church has been a part of the dignity development of black people in this country where my own

time oh lord have mercy cuz I got like 65 slides in I'm on slide 12 help me so I'm I going I'm not gonna keep y'all tuna I'm gonna go like 15 more minutes no okay no keep okay okay my bad the pastor talking so I'm gonna do what the pastor said all right he says so as black churches took over white buildings this was huge huge in inner cities particularly in the north y'all fly down here y'all got landing things we had nothing up there in the north y'all flat in the mud 66,000 square

feet lights camera action I ain't hatin there was an artistic taking of the images of white imperialism now go to next slide we look at this idea we believed in black dignity so much that the church created pan-africanism did you hear me pattering in ISM didn't come out of 125th Street in New York pan-africanism came by two individuals in particular Edward W Biden a black applied in rather he's the father of pan-africanism yes who he was disciple by the famous John Knox give me Scotland or I die refuted admission to theological schools because of race

later became a Presbyterian minister beastmode dude read about him second dude that gets no credit for what he does is Alexander crummell Alexander crummell is actually the spiritual father possib w eb des bois good WBT b the boys in his in his book was a black folk have an entire section on Alexander crummell Alexander crummell was a pastor planned africanist he influenced the boys he influenced Dunbar and guess who the conscious community loves they loved Marcus Garvey but if there was no Alexander crummell there would be no United Negro Improvement Association so why am I

saying all of this this is all important the reason why we're talking about this family of God is because historically we are known for in the midst of black dignity being under attack letting our theology and understanding of the Scriptures influence the way that we fight against that by applying being committed to informing black dignity without giving our brothers and sisters who are white the middle finger because being woke as a black Christian does it mean hating white people in other words it means we're not going to do to you what you did to us

in but you're not going to stop me from having a healthy love of self you know you can't stop that so this is not hate talking this actually in order to be able to be healthy you can't even be married unless you love yourself it features five says who doesn't cherish him on his own self the Bible D'Souza but if it's removed from you through subjugation and oppression you get married and you become an abuser that's a whole nother sermon most abusers are plagued with dignity identity and significance issues anyway that's the pastor coming out

next but what happened and no no no no for the next we'll go back go back go back go back I'm gonna get it away there you go thank you so there are few things that happened that the church began to not be it became programmatically driven now the black church began to create institutions like the black church began to help create black colleges it's hard to find a historically black college that does not have some type of etymological and historical connection to the black church wanting to educate african-americans because of the challenges of getting

into white universities so what happened was is the black church became strongly institutional driven which I think we needed to but what we forgot about is we forgot to be ideologically driven in why the institutions exist in our ideology and our biblical theology that always has been a part of us it became influential versus explicit so in the early nineteen hundreds what began to happen is is when the AME Church and the other churches went more of the institutional route because of what we were dealing with the murky and lurking in all of the cities

were groups let's go to the next slide no but Raleigh and Wallis fraud Mohammed Elijah Mohammed the Malcolm fact that Clarence 13x to five percent nation conscious yes hip-hop y'all known about death and then our current day what we're dealing with let's go to the first slide so noble trolley in the 23 scientists he began I'm gonna just tell you right now Nobel jolly is if all roads of everything conscious in America unredeemed conscious leads back to him all of it leads back to him because he was one of the first to begin to use

what we call esoteric doctrine are y'all trekking with me this esoteric doctrine was really the beginning of inner city doctrines of demons when he began to do was he began to study Eastern mysticism and 18th 18th century white Egyptologists took Islam ancient Moorish science pieces of Christianity and put it into something called the son of the more somewhat more science devil and so he was the beginning of that next the upgrade but we got the white man's religion huh anyway WAP fraud Muhammad that's funny to me but what is fraud maja Wallis fard Muhammad is

the real father of the Nation of Islam who studied in the classes of noble drew Ali took that and strained it out in a distilling of theological distilling device and began teaching the next slide Elijah Poole become Elijah Muhammad came into existence while these first important because these beginning became functional saviors for black people to be able to begin to hear information on black dignity again now in hearing information on black dignity again what began to happen is is Elijah Muhammad or der to give people and help improve black people you couldn't just come to

live with improvement you had to come there with them with religion married to improvement okay there's black people are spiritual people right I know y'all heard that before and so when we looked at this and he comes into and he begins to create his own esoteric doctrines which is really a form of black masonry I don't have time to talk about that y'all go to urban apologetics dr. organ Mohammed to tell you about it next the Malcolm factor now when Malcolm happened it was over that's when the nation Islam blew up now why is this

important because even though a lot of black people did not become a part of the Nation of Islam they became influenced by at least the sociological and economic aspects of the doctrines of the Nation of Islam so what you had was an appreciation without indoctrination okay and so when you have that appreciation without indoctrination why did they thrive they thrive on several things they thrive on the fact that black people had an identity that goes beyond America but then also the greatest attack was on Christianity because they believed it was the white man's religion and

that it's not the indigenous religion of black people so when you have this type of ideology there was not now when you look at this period of time there is no known writing that went on to at least affirm some of the socio-economic and socio-political ideologies of a Malcolm X while denouncing the supreme wisdom of the Nation of Islam that talked about us coming from the moon and all that kind of stuff in the mothership I don't know what we spooky I was confused when I start here now then next Lee got Clarence 13x nation

of gods in another minute on the backpack nation of gods and Earth's and that and that that came and that comes back and weighs matter of fact it's back with Avengers they separated from the Nation of Islam again this was another attempt to give black dignity I'm not even talking about the daddy grace movements and other movements that were helping to try to help a black dignity I didn't even get into the commandment keepers and those who ended up going to Liberia all of those who ended up moving to Israel who are still trying out

new lies by Israel I mean black people in this country have been fine trying to find our dignity significance and identity for a long time and we are reaching out and trying to hold out anything that we can and these people tried to fit in together they went so far to say the black man is God and the black woman is Mother Earth and so now you have this coming on the scene and they're finally now we today I'm skipping a lot of stuff but when you get here now who's filling the ethnic identity void

we have all of these different groups you have hidden colors which is the worst document every black people ever put together I could even watch 20 minutes ever if you will put out truth and it will put our information they do something yes this stuff is horrible do you have puma Johnson which let me this we have to do we can't lie about certain things that they say that's true okay um but we do need to denounce the foolishness that's not true okay so when he's on his school to education economic stuff boom I think

he's awesome good stuff when he talks about educate when he talks about churches starting banks I'm like didn't you know we already did that anyway um so I'm not a TV and then polite and all of them so that's it with that right so these are some fallacies that came from this these some fallacies that came from this okay fallacies that came from this first Christianity let's go - you just go to the next aisle for a fantasy number one fallacy number one Christianity didn't come to black people until the 16th to 18th centuries in

the US and Africa go to next line let's debunk that but several of the church fathers were African Tertullian from Carthage Tunisia Egypt he was a philosopher and he coined the term Trinity Oz guess what doctrine that was the doctrine of the Trinity he coined the doctrine of the Trinity based on the teaching of the Apostles because he was just born a little while after the apostles were living where we get our word Trinity northern church father next to his father now I know you used to seeing these people hyper Anglo which is impossible to

be North African or Middle Eastern and be blond-haired blue-eyed that's a form of imperialism to make us think that only whiteness is valued but several of the church fathers again were African origin he's from Alexandria Egypt that sounds like you know the content of Africa to me he's the father of modern-day exegesis the way seminaries do exegesis comes from him the beginnings of systematic theology he's the first one to think through theology systematically one of the first ones are North African and the expanded on the doctrine a trip cuz he was deeply influenced by Tertullian

are y'all start reckon with me all right next one since but several also also Athanasius he's guess what he's from Alexandria Egypt legend has it that his enemies called him the black dwarf and he had a hooked nose and stuff like that he was real short defeated and he defended the hypostatic Union taught eternal sonship and was an apologist did you know that at the Council of Nicaea he defended the doctrine of hype the hypostatic Union as a deacon No okay me ask you a question y'all a nympho how many deacons do you know know

what the hypostatic union is I'm not trying to dog people I'm not trying to beat highfalutin I'm trying to say being a deacon back then wasn't to fight with pastors it was to support pastoral doctrine hypostatic healing okay hypostatic Union um hey Sam I said hey man hyper static Union Philippians chapter 2 says although he existed in the form of God morphe he was found in the morphe of a servant the word form their means is more faith which means essence so he was found in the essence of God meaning what made God God he

had 100% God more faith found in the form of a servant 100% man 100 100 boom together you merged them together into one person on a mixed nature yet one person united forever and we called it hypostatic because it's a static union that's beautiful and so we this guy stood up to Constantine while you simius was his lap boy and he stood there with his short dark skin faced and defended the doctrines of the dedicate of the doctrines of the Apostles and so we have today understanding that Jesus Christ not only that he's God but

he was eternally the son that's enough but that'll come back a few centuries later then we go y'all still struggling with me right then comes Augustine the beastmode theologian who's the father of modern-day rhetoric and Western philosophy he helps shape it he was born in Algeria and he's best known for his Western information that he's put out his Western literature as a matter of fact city of God is seen and studied as major literature so I'm gonna go through a couple more fallacies and then we're gonna shut it down because we're gonna have Q&A fallacy

number two fallacies that came from this is number two the Bible what's changed I'm gonna make this simple and then I'ma close this is real simple to me all you got to ask somebody is where don't make that real simple somebody tell you the Bible's been changed just say where the Bible guy sold me I don't know if y'all see back in the day I shot with the black collar so everybody was walk the FIDE in the early 90s they 8390 you know y'all gonna remember the cross colors and and you know the African necklace

is the ethic that Malcolm X hats you're gonna understand what saying one side of your gene was Green the other side was red you know and the top was yellow you know and then you had a pick that you let say your head with the fist like that y'all don't know nothin about that all right um but and I'm a god was you they used to tell us to read the King James Version and go down how many spaces you don't remember that you remember that Blake how you gonna count spaces Shakespeare wrote his name

in it okay I don't know if any this is just an old folklore stuff that's his old-school style yeah King be a guy be Kings a Merdeka Jesse James Bible so but what I asked the guy one time when eating we talked about when people talk about the bottom of the chalice ask them where and if they showed me English I said well you don't you might as well just fall back already they said why you for about I said because the Bible in order for you to show me it's been changed you have to

show me in three you have to show me in Hebrew never show me in Aramaic and Daniel you have to show me in the lingua franca Koine Greek if you can't show me in those three languages with a viable text that the Bible has been changed you can't talk to me about the Bible being changed why is this type of argumentation so important in our day because I believe and I believe and I'm actually encouraged first off by this even going on that's first off I'm encouraged by it even going on because I think that

I believe that churches in this season and Beyond are going to have to upgrade our discipleship capacity in in upgrading our discipleship capacity and commitment that means that we're gonna have to have Bible classes at the church and church history classes at the church I like what's going on nowadays because we need African Americans writing books for children anybody let's talk back right there we need you we need African American men and women writing theology we need to be able to put into our communities hands in other words we're not saying we hate our white

brothers and sisters book we appreciate what y'all did but what we need to do is we have to create our own spaces because they had they had what do they have they had they had the oneness ideology they had the Jesus Seminar I don't even I didn't even know what that was the Jesus enough they got all these things that they're fighting in their scholarly sphere they're fighting form critics and source critics and higher critics I'm talking about that some of y'all like what in the world is there but we've been fighting the nation Islam

chromatic science Egyptology voodoo Hebrew Israelites what we have to do is we have to say we love you guys but we have to work on doing theology that applies to making sure our people understand their dignity and that it's rebuilt that they understand the faith in their language and they have examples that relate to them not just poor examples because all black people aren't poor but examples somebody will get their own way home but examples that reflect the black experience in America that helps us to more deeply understand our theology and our depth so that

we can grow and we can develop and what happened in judges will happen to us god forbid that we have a judges chapter 2 in 20 years where their rise as a generation that knows not the Lord the reason why we're doing this fam in closing is for us to make disciples and raise families where we build dignity in our homes I have four kids I have three black men and a chocolate brown black girl I am determined for my 15 year old from my soon-to-be nine year old and my three-year-old son and my two-year-old

daughter to all grow up not hating other ethnicities but appreciating her own their own as being born in the image of God but then added to that and not just the icing on the cake but to create depth in it to enjoy the reality of being changed in her soul by grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone and the her blackness and their blackness is only at its best in its Christ's likeness I'm done father we thank you and we honor you for um in trolling ourselves into these truths and so I'm praying God

that you would continue to open up our eyes open up our hearts and equip us to breaking the chains of seeing this generation and generation beyond it relevantly engage the questions that people who have I mean good questions Lord we can't run from people's questions we have to be honest about people's questions hear from them and be able to give a reason for the hope that is within us be with us in this time in Jesus mighty name we for Margaret that's it amen