Images of Black Christian Leaders Essay Example for Free

Images of Black Christian Leaders Essay African and Christian in the names of our denominations denote that we are always concerned for the well-being of economically and politically exploited persons, for gaining or regaining a sense of our own worth, and for determining our own future. We must never invest with institutions that perpetuate racism. Our churches work for the change of all processes which prevent our members who are victims of racism from participating fully in civic and governmental structures. † (Satterwhite, 1999) Race has been used by antebellum period social scientists to refer to distinctions drawn from physical appearance (skin color, eye shape, physiognomy), and ethnicity was used to refer to distinctions based on national origin, language, religion, food, and other cultural markers. â€Å"Race has a quasi-biological status and among psychologists, the use of race terminology is hotly debated In the United States, race is also a socially defined, politically oppressive categorization scheme that individuals must negotiate while creating their identities. † (Frable, 1997) This suggests racial motivation impetus more of a political-cultural propensity rather than a religious motivated trait. All along, even during the slavery, Americans of African descent, have consistently had a high sense of religious significance. The Christian Movement probably had a dramatic effect on the personal identity more so than the reference group orientation of black people as whole. African decedents as a whole, during this period in history, was observed as a singled reference group type orientation that determine behavior depended greatly on Black Christian leadership. The calls for religious framework forces one to consider the how the leaders was portrayed in current media of the period, i. e. newspapers, paintings photos, etc. What clearly points to the very success of black Christian leadership during the Civil War is indicated by the way unity was exhibited during this time black social and political culture. Both free black leaders and the masses of Southern slaves who rebelled against their masters turned a white war into a battle over slavery and racial injustice with religion as the foundational argument for both sides of the issue. Slaverys destruction, ironically, removed a common focus of protest, and more importantly, enticed certain black elites to accept the liberal concept of changing American political culture through religion by trying to join it and reform it from within. The black Christian movements of the late 1800s was a significant single indicator of common social beliefs that may simply be related with other dimensions and intangibles not yet discovered or even recognized during this time. In brief, due to the impact of during this forty to fifty year span, Black Christian consciousness and awareness had become so pervasive throughout the black population that single item common-fate solidarity was adequate to capture a fully politicized sense of group consciousness. The history of African American Christianity is bound up with the history of American slavery. African Americans encountered Christianity in the context of enslavement, and it was as captives that they began the long process of making the gospel their own. The process varied across time and space and defies generalization or easy description. Sometimes conversion came quickly, in explosive moments of awakening; more often, it unfolded over generations, as Christian belief and practices insinuated themselves into slaves daily rounds. â€Å"In some settings, the new creed seems almost completely to have displaced older religions, which survived only in a handful of disembodied beliefs and rituals. In other places, Christian usages were grafted onto still vital African religious traditions, producing dynamic, richly religion philosophical creeds. Yet whatever the pace or pathway, slaves across the Americas were drawn into the dialectic of conversion, transforming the religion of their captors even as it transformed them. † (Campbell, 1995) Preceding Any War As the antebellum period began, America was approaching its golden anniversary as an independent political state, but it was not yet a nation. There was considerable disagreement among the residents of its many geographical sections concerning the exact limits of the relationship between the Federal government, the older states, and the individual citizen. In this regard, many factions invoked concepts of state sovereignty, centralized banking, nullification, popular sovereignty, secession, all-Americanism, or manifest destiny. However, the majority deemed republicanism, social pluralism, and constitutionalism the primary characteristics of antebellum America. Slavery, abolition, and the possibility of future disunion were considered secondary issues. The history and sociopolitical influence of the African-American church documents an interminable struggle for liberation against the exploitative forces of European domination. Although Black religion is predominantly Judeo-Christian, its essence is not simply white religion with a cosmetic face lift. Rather the quintessence of African-American spiritual mindedness is grounded in the social and political experience of Black people, and, although some over the years have acquiesced to the dominant order, many have voiced a passionate demand for freedom now. The history of the African-American church demonstrates that the institution has contributed four indispensable elements to the Black struggle for ideological emancipation, which include a self-sustaining culture, a structured community, a prophetic tradition, and a persuasive leadership. The church of slavery, which began in the mid-eighteenth century, started as an underground organization and developed to become a pulpit for radicals like Richard Allen, (discussed in detail) and the platform for revolutionaries like David Walker. For over one hundred ears, African slaves created their own unique and authentic religious culture that was parallel to, but not reflective of the slave-owners Christianity from which they borrowed. Meeting on the quiet as the invisible church, they created a self-preserving belief system by Africanizing European religion. Commenting on this experience, Alice Sewell, a former slave of Montgomery, Alabama, states, We used to slip off in de woods in de old slave days on Sunday evening way down in de swamps to sing and pray to our own liking (Simms, 1970, p. 263). During the late 1700s, when slavery was being dismantled in the North, free Black Methodists courageously separated from the patronizing control of the white denomination and established their own independent assemblies. This marked the genesis of African-American resistance as a nationally structured, mass-based movement. In 1787, Richard Allen, after suffering racist humiliation at Philadelphias St. George Methodist Episcopal Church, separated from the white congregation and led other Blacks, who had been similarly disgraced, to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A. M. E. ) in 1816. The new group flowered. By 1820 it numbered 4,000 in Philadelphia alone, while another 2,000 claimed membership in Baltimore. The church immediately spread as far west as Pittsburgh and as far south as Charleston as African-Americans organized to resist domination. Through community groups, they contributed political consciousness, economic direction, and moral discipline to the struggle for freedom in their local districts. Moreover, Black Methodists sponsored aid societies that provided loans, business advice, insurance, and a host of social services to their fellow-believers and the community at large. In sum the A. M. E. Churches functioned in concert to organize African-Americans throughout the country to protect them selves from exploitation and to ready them for political emancipation. Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World During this same period, David Walker exemplified the prophetic tradition of the Black church with his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, published between 1829 and 1830. Walker employed biblical language and Christian morality in creating anti-ruling class ideology: slaveholders were avaricious and unmerciful wretches who were guilty of perpetrating the most wretched, abject, and servile slavery in the world against Africans. To conclude, the church of the slave era contributed substantially to African-American social and political resistance. The invisible institution provided physical and psychological relief from the horrific conditions of servitude: within the confines of hush arbors, bonds people found unfamiliar dignity and a sense of self-esteem. Similarly, the A. M. E. congregations confronted white paternalism by organizing their people into units of resistance to fight collectively for social equality and political self-direction. And finally, the antebellum church did not only empower Blacks by structuring their communities; it also supplied them with individual political leaders. David Walker made two stellar contributions to the Black struggle for freedomhe both created and popularized anti-ruling class philosophy. He intrepidly broadcasted the conditional necessity of violence in abolishing slavery demanding to be heard by his suffering brethren and the American people and their children in both the North and the South. As churches grew in size and importance, the Black pastors role as community leader became supremely influential and unquestionably essential in the fight against Jim Crow. For instance, in 1906, when the city officials of Nashville, Tennessee, segregated the streetcars, R. H. Boyd, a prominent leader in the National Baptist Convention, organized a Black boycott against the system. He even went so far as to operate his own streetcar line at the height of the conflict. To Boyd and his constituents no setback was ever final, and the grace of God was irrefutability infinite. African Methodist Episcopal†¦Mark of Independence When Richard Allen was 17, he experienced a religious conversion that changed his life forever. (PBS, Allen) Even though born into slavery in Philadelphia in 1760, he became not only free but influential, a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its first bishop. Allen, recognize as one of the first African-Americans to be emancipated during the Revolutionary Era, had to forge an identity for his people as well as for himself. Richard Allen Allowed by his repentant owner to buy his freedom, Allen earned a living sawing cordwood and driving a wagon during the Revolutionary War. After the war he furthered the Methodist cause by becoming a licensed exhorter, preaching to blacks and whites from New York to South Carolina. To reconcile his faith and his African-American identity, Allen decided to form his own congregation. He gathered a group of ten black Methodists and took over a blacksmiths shop in the increasingly black southern section of the city, converting it to the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church hence, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen was chosen as the first bishop of the church, the first fully independent black denomination in America. He had succeeded in charting a separate religious identity for African-Americans. Although the Bethel Church opened in a ceremony led by Bishop Francis Asbury in July 1794, its tiny congregation worshiped separate from our white brethren. In 1807 the Bethel Church added an African Supplement to its articles of incorporation; in 1816 it won legal recognition as an independent church. In the same year Allen and representatives from four other black Methodist congregations (in Baltimore; Wilmington, Delaware; Salem, New Jersey; and Attleboro, Pennsylvania) met at the Bethel Church to organize a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. To be noted, the white Methodists of the New York Conference resisted the move toward independence, but those of the Philadelphia Conference, in Richard Allens territory, gave a conditional blessing, an irony that must have galled the Bethelites (as Allens group was popularly known). Of the two black denominations, the Bethelites enjoyed greater growth and more stable leadership in the pre-Civil War decades. The Great Awakening The Great Awakening as a marker for a cultural and religious upheaval did not appear immediately, but in scholastic research on religion in the eighteenth century, the time reflects the complexity of attitudes toward, and consequences of, religious activity in the African American communities. Taken in total, the landscape of Black Christian images presented a vast picture, still incompletely realized, from the earlier and persistent view of a monolithic vision accepted by many. Possibly only to save a few rationalists or extremists could see a different scenario. After his own religious conversion, Richard joined the Methodist Society, began attending classes, and evangelized his friends and neighbors. Richard and his brothers attended classes every week and meetings every other Thursday. A. M. E. leaders began to use both written biographical materials and public commemorations of Allens life to instill a sense of history and tradition among the largely illiterate masses. Their complementary use of public commemorations and written accounts of Allens life during this period suggest a more general attempt among Black leaders to bridge the overlapping worlds of morality and literacy in order to establish a sense of tradition, an empowering historical memory, and a pantheon of Black heroes who might one day gain their rightful place in the national pantheon. (Conyers, 1999) Notwithstanding its name, the AME Church was clearly the most respectable and orthodox of black American independent churches. While some recognizably African elements surfaced in services, AME leaders tended to disdain if not actively to suppress those beliefs and practices that scholars today celebrate as signs of Africas persistence in the New World. The whole point of racial vindication was to demonstrate blacks capacity to uphold recognized standards in their personal and collective lives and thereby to hasten abolition and full inclusion in American society. Surely people interested in connections between black America and Africa should look elsewhere than the AME Church. Historically, the first separate denominations to be formed by African Americans in the United States were Methodist. The early black Methodist churches, conferences, and denominations were organized by free black people in the North in response to stultifying and demeaning conditions attending membership in the white-controlled Methodist Episcopal churches. This independent church movement of black Christians was the first effective stride toward freedom by African Americans. Unlike most sectarian movements, the initial impetus for black spiritual and ecclesiastical independence was not grounded in religious doctrine or polity, but in the offensiveness of racial segregation in the churches and the alarming inconsistencies between the teachings and the expressions of the faith. It was readily apparent that the white church had become a principal instrument of the political and social policies under girding slavery and the attendant degradation of the human spirit. In all fairness, without exception, Richard Allen embodied the assertive free-black culture that was maturing in the North by the 1830s. Despite criticisms of his domineering manner and personal ambition, Allen had attained by the time of his death in 1831, a position of respect among his people that was rivaled by very few of his contemporaries. Mother Bethel Church Via Allen’s single minded influence, the denomination reached the Pacific Coast in the early 1850’s with churches in Mother Bethel Church Stockton, Sacramento, San Francisco, and other places in California. Moreover, Bishop Morris Brown established the Canada Annual Conference. Remarkably, the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, and, for a few years, South Carolina, became additional locations for AME congregations.

Wildeves Flaws and how they contribute to his problems. Essay

Wildeve's Flaws and how they contribute to his problems. Hardy often relates his characters to their surrounding natural landscape, therefore creating the backdrop to the story, with the characters in it. Wildeve's name invokes up images of the 'wild' of the heath and this reflects his passionate and impulsive behaviour. Another way in which Hardy creates the image of Wildeve is by using the 'gossip' of other minor characters. Through a discussion of the heath-folk that Wildeve's name is firstly introduced to the reader, " To give him his due he's a clever learned fellow in his way.. An engineer- that's what the man was, as we know; but he threw away his chance." Hardy's description is essential in developing Wildeve's character. He describes him as being a man of two properties, "farm and motion" and he is explicitly depicted as a physically attractive persona. Hardy enforces this, "the grace of his movements was singular: it was the pantomimic expression of a lady killing career". Wildeve's distanced superiority towards the heath folk further highlights his egotism. They however do not seem to perceive his cold opinions to them. His approach and the way he conducts himself contrasts greatly with their enthusiasm and genuine feeling. "Wildeve made no reply and probably feeling that the sooner he treated them the sooner they would go". Wildeve's selfishness is also illustrated by his attitude to Thomasin. Although Thomasin has had a tiresome and emotional journey, his first words to her lack real warmth and feeling, "How could you leave me in that way darling?", this statement seems careless, and as if he has no concern about her safe arrival. Wildeve plays with Thomasin's feelings. She has t... ...thin human limitations. Wildeve cannot initiate rebellion. He can only respond to Eustacia's fire and be consumed in her flames, like the moth-signal he sends her. The weakness and unpredictability in his character, rather than evil and the troubled beauty and vanity of Eustacia, combined for predictable longing, rejection and ultimately tragedy. When Eustacia no longer showed interest, he was dying for her, and when he comes into an inheritance that will allow him to make his dreams come true, and effectively escape the heath, he tells Eustacia his plans to 'live it up' and travel. Ironically he is unable to make this happen, for he sacrifices himself trying to save Eustacia from drowning. His superstitious nature allowed him to get involved in something risky, but despite his flaws and mistakes, like Eustacia he is now permanently buried on the heath.

William Loyd Garrison

â€Å"I will be Heard† William Lloyd Garrison Struggle against slavery In the early years of William Lloyd Garrison, Garrison believed in a gradual emancipation. In the later years, Garrison's views on slavery changed. He believed that there was only one true way of abolishing slavery, and that the most powerful way was through moral persuasion. Although, Garrison was willing to allow a standard for slaves which was different from his personal views in using only moral persuasion. He believed that it was impossible to hold slaves to his standards of persuasion.Garrison also believed that the oppressed may be justified in using force when necessary. Garrison and his colleague Isaac Knapp, and several others had started to write a journal called The Liberator. This journal struck at the very heart of slavery, bringing forth the evils of its creation and denying our utmost principles of humanity. The Liberator also struck at the Declaration of Independence declaring that all men are equal and by that very pen which the Declaration was created sets forth hypocrisy in which knows no bounds through the depths of slavery itself. TheChurch was also held accountable for its refusal to condemn slavery. This journal was a radical viewpoint in the nineteenth century. Garrison's views were particularly unpopular in the South where slaves were more abundant and was the essential element of the economy. Even in the North, with New York being the largest holding slave state, had no intentions of a total emancipation. Americans had no desire to live with people of African descent. Many white Americans believed that those of African descent were unfit for full participation in the new republic. Within the different areas of theNorth free blacks were withheld from entry into public places, churches, schools and warned those free people of color that if they did not voluntarily leave that they would be removed. Often they were assaulted physically as well as verbally. Free blacks were also denied the right to vote, sit on a jury, testify in court, carry a gun or even travel freely. Free people of African descent faced many obstacles in America. Many opponents of slavery believed the only possible way of total abolition were upon removing free blacks from the country. In the first issue of The Liberator, Garrison apologized for his previous support for the pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition† a belief that he no longer supported. Garrison demanded an immediate end to slavery. He condemned slavery as a sin. He believed in the principles of human equality and he was persistent in denouncing the evils of slave holding. He believed in the eyes of God that white and black could not be distinguished. Therefore should not be distinguished in man made laws as well. The Liberator sparked opposition due to the radical assault on the society of the American republic on white over black. Before the circulation of The Liberator the District ofColumbia tr ied to keep it from being distributed by prohibiting free people of African descent from attaining copies at the post office. In North Carolina Garrison was indicted for distributing his literature and in Georgia the legislature offered a five thousand dollar bounty for anyone arresting Garrison. In the years that followed he began to attract the more moderate community. This group did not repudiate the Constitution for the antislavery coalition they embraced it and worked within the system to build political parties that would overturn slavery. For some reason Garrison distanced himself from oliticians who campaigned on the antislavery ticket. Although, he did not discourage their assault on slavery. Likewise, the antislavery politicians also distanced themselves from Garrison and his group. Although, no one would refuse the effectiveness of that was drawn from the assault on slavery. Soon after the reelection in 1864 Lincoln invited Garrison to the White House. Lincoln remarked th at he considered himself â€Å"only an instrument in the struggle for emancipation. † â€Å"The logic and moral power of Garrison and the antislavery people of the country and the army, have done it all. † â€Å"The liberator had been heard. †

Why Babies Are Born With Blue Eyes

You may have heard that all babies are born with blue eyes.  You inherit your eye color from your parents, but no matter what the color is now, it may have been blue when you were born. Why? When you were an infant, melanin—the brown pigment molecule that colors your skin, hair, and eyes—hadnt been fully deposited in the irises of your eyes or darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light. The iris is the colored part of the eye that controls the amount of light that is allowed to enter. Like hair and skin, it contains the pigment, possibly to help protect the eye from the sun. How Melanin Affects Eye Color Melanin is a protein. Like other proteins, the amount and type your body produces are coded into your genes. Irises containing a large amount of melanin appear black or brown. Less melanin produces green, gray, or light brown eyes. If your eyes contain very small amounts of melanin, they will appear blue or light gray. People with albinism have no melanin in their irises at all. Their eyes may appear pink because the blood vessels in the back of their eyes reflect light. Melanin production generally increases during the first year of a babys life, leading to a deepening of eye color. The color is often stable by about six months of age, but it may take as long as two years to fully develop. However, several factors can affect eye color, including the use of certain medications and environmental factors. Some people experience changes in eye color over the course of their lives. In some cases, people can even have eyes of two different colors. Even the genetics of eye color inheritance isnt as cut-and-dried as was once thought, as blue-eyed parents have been known (rarely) to have a brown-eyed child. Furthermore, not all babies are born with blue eyes. A baby may start out with gray eyes, even if they ultimately become blue.  Babies of African, Asian, and Hispanic descent are more likely to be born with brown eyes. This is because darker-skinned individuals tend to have more melanin in their eyes than Caucasians. Even so, a babys eye color may deepen over time. Also, blue eyes are still possible for babies of dark-skinned parents. This is more common in preterm babies because melanin deposition takes time. Humans arent the only animals that experience eye color changes. For example,  kittens are often born with blue eyes, too. In cats, the initial eye color change is fairly dramatic because they develop so much more quickly than humans. Feline eye color changes over time even in adult cats, generally stabilizing after a couple of years. Even more interesting, eye color sometimes changes with the seasons. For example, scientists have learned that reindeer eye color changes in the winter. This is so that reindeer can see better in the dark. Its not only their eye color that changes, either. The collagen fibers in the eye change their spacing in the winter to keep the pupil more dilated, allowing the eye to capture as much light as possible.