“The Christian-Evangelical Dilemma and Response to Racial Justice: Martin Luther King, Jr’s Beloved Community.”

When: March 11, 2021, at 7pm EST

Where: Zoom webinar (without cost)  

I would love for you to join us this Thursday night, March 11, 2021, at 7pm EST/ 6pm CST for a free virtual lecture with Dr. Jamal-Dominique Hopkins. Dr. Hopkins serves as the dean at the Dickerson-Green Theological Seminary at Allen University and regularly teaches in the area of biblical languages and literature. He teaches Old and New Testament Studies, Biblical Hebrew and Greek, and Early Judaism. His scholarly research and publications are in the area of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran Literature, Biblical Hermeneutics and African American Christian Thought. He is the only known person of African Descent to hold a doctorate in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Dr. Hopkins has a passion for matters of racial conciliatory activism. He sees it as a fundamental activity of the original Christian faith.

The title of Dr. Hopkin’s lecture will be “The Christian-Evangelical Dilemma and Response to Racial Justice: Martin Luther King, Jr’s Beloved Community.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. was betwixt and between his Black Christian fundamentalist upbringing and the classical liberal theological orientation of his educational training. Both contexts informed his orthodoxy which in turn helped govern much of his lived experience. While his fundamentalist upbringing largely reflected the rank-and-file participants of the civil rights campaigns (i.e., the poor and socially disenfranchised), white evangelical responses were markedly different. This session will explore these responses to forge solutions toward achieving the beloved community.

Click here to join us for the 1-hour lecture on the Zoom virtual platform this Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 7pm EST/ 6pm CST.

This Lead Like King project at The Urban Renewal Center is our brand-new emphasis on public theology. The goals are to:

1. Build stronger relationships in diverse communities;
2. Heal racial brokenness as a result of lived experience;
3. Assist organizations in their effort to build more cohesive communities of diversity.

Join us for all of the rich series in which theological scholar-practitioners, like Dr. Chandler and Dr. Hopkins, are sharing ways each of us can participate in the collective journey toward the vision of a promised wholeness at the Urban Renewal Center.

Sincerely, Dr. Antipas

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. giving his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Today is an important day in history. August 28th, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” Speech on the on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. during the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

We’ve come a long way since then; and, we still have work to do. Amidst our collective stride toward freedom, it is important that we pause a moment and in the words of that ole song, “Look where He brought [us] from!”

As we experience today’s nagging systems of injustice and sustained hate and bigotry, we must not ignore the gigantic needs for far more progress.

God did it. God is doing it. God will do it!

God uses human beings to advance God’s mission in the world. The Church is key mechanism for God’s work in the world.

For this reason, God summons the Church to fight the good fight of faith. Nothing flies in God’s face more than injustice and unrighteousness. We must engage spiritual warfare to advance God’s mission for His world.

Scripture bears record to God’s desire for our spiritual, personal, communal, and social wholeness. As we see this more clearly, we catch a hold of the divine depth of Dr. King’s dream as delivered in 1963.

Let’s remind ourselves and others of Dr. King’s dream. Let’s try to help others to catch hold of it. Then, in Dr. King’s own words, “We must remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

It is important that ask ourselves each day, “What can I do to help move the needle a little more to advance toward freedom and equality?”

Many blessings,

Dr. Antipas

David Daniels, Henry Winters Luce Professor of World Christianity at McCormick Theological Seminary, speaking at the Society for Pentecostal Studies convention on March 6, 2014.

David D. Daniels provides an insightful look at the uniquely interracial roots of early Pentecostals and some of the problems they encountered. He begins with a brief look at each of the three main renewal movements within the black church in America: the black Holiness movement, the black Restorationist movement, and the healing movement. All three of these movements had a goal of seeing blacks and whites worship together. By the early 1900’s these three groups had joined with parallel movements in the white renewal groups to set the stage for the Azusa Street Revival with it’s mix of interracial worshippers. The fact that Pentecostalism was seen as having two founders, one black (William Seymour) and one white (Charles Parham) was not lost on the early observers of the movement, including the press. Spurred on by these early successes many of the largest black Pentecostal fellowships began including white members and churches in their fellowships and vice versa. Unfortunately, according to Daniels, the power of the Jim Crow laws and racism of the day had started to erode what had been accomplished at Azusa and before. With the result that some black congregations started withdrawing from these new multiracial denominations as early as 1908 (due to the fact that some would not allow for black leadership in the denomination). As time progressed more white and black fellowships began to withdraw and form their own denominations until what remained was just a shadow of what had taken place only a decade earlier in the revival meetings. Daniels notes that by and large the two groups remained separated until the late sixties when some Pentecostal denominations began a new course of racial reconciliation and healing.

This article by David D. Daniels appeared in issue 58 of Christian History. The entire issue was titled, “The Rise of Pentecostalism,” and it included a number of articles on all aspects of the early Pentecostal movement. This excellent non-technical introduction to Pentecostal history had articles ranging from “The Pentecostal Tradition” by Stanley M. Burgess to articles about the ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson and other women. Several articles and departments looked at the controversial doctrines that aroused heated discussion earlier in this century, including pacifism and oneness. There were also interviews with Pentecostal historians and perspectives on why being a Pentecostal is more than just speaking in tongues. This particular issue would make an excellent addition to any church library or pastor’s study.

Reviewed by Joseph Joslin

Read “They Had a Dream” online at: www.christianitytoday.com/ch/1998/issue58/58h019.html [available March 17, 2014]

Joe Joslin and Raul Mock at a PneumaReview.com editorial committee meeting on March 11, 2014.