Dear Dr. Livezey:
Congratulations on your appointment as
Director of the Lilly Endowment funded, "Ecologies of Learning"
project here in New York City. It is our hope this "new urban
ministry research program" will succeed in its goal to "help churches
maximize their contribution to urban life."
Regrettably, it is our long considered
observation and view that our (Black) churches have had at best,
only marginal consequence in the lives of urban residents. We
believe our pastors, religious leaders and churches, individually
and collectively, have evaded, avoided and abdicated their Christian
duty and mission to uplift the lives of urbanites. Our clergy has
failed to provide the leadership needed to confront, address and
challenge any of the many maladies and underlying issues that
demean, damage and destroy the fabric of village life it takes to
raise our children.
Some of these issues like education for
example, are negatively affected by a cluster of many other social,
cultural, economic and spiritual problems. Health concerns include
the AIDS epidemic afflicting disproportionately, the
African-American community. The matriarchal structure of our
inner-city families has had long term disturbing social
consequences.
We however, consider one of the most
culturally devastating calamities to plague us since slavery and
segregation to be that of rap poison. Black secular and religious
leadership has allowed the commercially driven music industry to train
up our children in the way it suited them to go, and they are not
departing from it. The most unspeakable vile, language and behavior
messages and images are being drummed into the minds of our most
vulnerable population inner-city boys and girls, ages zero through
adolescence. Lucifer the musician has been permitted to turn a
combination of the most powerful mind and behavior modification mediums,
music and the word, against us without objection or protest from the
Black church.
Disgracefully, the greatest continuing gift
our church has given in service and support to Satan and his work
is that of object consensual silence. The essential question regarding
education strategies NYTS should consider for clerical students is the
goal, mission and purpose of the church itself. Should it be beacons of
light and agents of moral, spiritual, cultural and social change a la
Martin Luther King, Jr. or should it be stations of preaching, prayer
and praise offering refuge and deliverance to those who enter its gates
only?
In His Service,
Bert Irons, Coordinator CBLD
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