|
Books by James
Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs
Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century
/
The
American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's
Notebook
Living for Change: An Autobiography
/
Conversations in Maine: Exploring Our Nation's Future
Manifesto for a Black Revolutionary Party
/
Racism and the Class Struggle
* * * *
*
A
Thoughtful Conversation about Religion
By Grace Lee Boggs
In my experience
discussions about religion are usually argumentative. By
contrast, a recent conversation at the Boggs Center was
thoughtful and transformative.
The conversation began with remarks by Vincent
Harding. Vincent, who worked closely with MLK during the
1960s, is Professor of Religion and Social
Transformation at the Iliff School of Theology and
co-founder with his late wife, Rosemarie, of the
Veterans of Hope Project. He talked about Victoria Gray
Adams, a civil rights activist whose funeral he recently
attended. Victoria became a leader in the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 because she
took Jesus seriously. He also described his recent
visit to a church in a violent, drug-ridden North
Philadelphia neighborhood where a woman
preacher is trying to make a difference.
He was followed by Valdina Pinto, a priestess in
Camdomblé, an Afro-Indigenous religion which was brought
to Brazil from Africa during slavery. Speaking in
Portuguese (Rachel Harding translated), Valdina
explained how Camdomblé gives Brazilians of African
descent ways of interacting with the sacred and the
elements of Nature. It also
reconnects their current struggles to struggles in their
past.
Since the 1970s, she said, this indigenous religion has
been under assault from Pentecostal groups who are
preaching a gospel of Prosperity, building megachurches
and demonizing indigenous religions
as superstitions. They are creating a situation
dividing people from one another and from our natural
environment. “For us our richness is
in our connectedness to one another and to the Earth,
Air and Water.” By contrast they represent the
commodification of our Air and Water.
Especially for the sake of our children, she said, we
need to create a movement of connectedness rather than
consumerism, of Being rather than of Having.
As she was concluding, a young man got up, declared
that “those who own the Wealth make the rules” in
defense of the Gospel of Prosperity, and quietly left
the meeting. After regretting his departure, Vincent
pointed out how the civil rights movement was created by
people who didn’t believe that those with money and
power have the wisdom to make the rules.
People then shared stories. A mother described how her
children spent more time playing out of doors after
their TV was stolen. Even after their grandmother
replaced the TV, they looked at it less. An artist said
that he has been paying more attention to what he sees,
hears and feels, and asking himself what things are
really worth our time.
An elder said that we could learn a lot from the Amish
community’s response to last week’s killing of their
children. Because of their religion, they have refused
to allow their children to live the ideology of
consumerism. Instead of feeling vengeful at the truck
driver shooter, who killed himself after killing the
children, they shared the food they cooked for their own
grieving families with his survivors.
Vincent then wondered where we would be today if our
leaders, instead of going to war in retaliation for
9/11, had called on us to pray for the families of the
men who carried out the skyjacking.
The elder also talked about the importance of
intergenerational relationships. Elephants in Africa
are becoming more dangerous because we are killing the
older ones needed to help young bulls learn about how to
live peacefully.
The conversation reminded me of MLK’s thoughts about the
alienation of young people in one of his last sermons.
“The source of this alienation,” he said, “ is that our
society has made material growth and technological
advance an end in itself, robbing people of
participation, so that human beings become smaller
while their works become bigger.”
The way to overcome this alienation is by changing our
priorities. Instead of pursuing economic
productivity, we need to expand our uniquely human
powers, especially our capacity for Agape which is the
Love that is ready to go to any length to restore
community.
Source: Michigan Citizen, October 15-21,
2006 /
Living for Change: An Autobiography by Grace Lee
Boggs
posted 13 October 2006
* * *
* *
* * *
* *
* * *
* *
update 18 October 2007 |
