BOOKS & REVIEW | Black Clergy’s Misguided Worship Leadership
The Black Clergy's Misguided Worship Leadership:
Petition: No More Idol Gods for Black People
The Black Clergy’s Misguided Worship Leadership, This book is an incisive analysis showing why and how the black community’s worship of Jesus Christ, Christianity’s White male idol, is a subliminal, underlying cause of the high incarceration rates among young Black males. Citing cogent historical, educational, and behavioral reasons, Dr. Bell explains why the worship of the ancient Roman, Constantine- certified, white male idol Jesus Christ is misguided and afflicts black people with a deleterious white superiority syndrome. Dr Bell explains further how such worship spiritually emasculates and socially demeans black manhood and how many young black men intuitively react in ways that lead to high rates of delinquencies, violence, crime, and incarceration. In this book, Dr. Bell petitions the black clergy to stop this misguided worship and start teaching black people a new Christianity that espouses a “Worship only God, the source and sustainer of life” message and honors but does not worship prophet Jesus. Dr. Bell argues that this new Christianity will liberate black people from the damaging psychological effects of their white-male worshipping folkways. He also argues that the new Christianity will end the spiritual emasculation and disrespect imposed on young black men by the old Constantine-certified Christianity and will thus mediate downward the high rates of delinquencies, violence, and incarceration among young black men. Dr. Bell asserts that unless the black clergy takes the actions requested in his petition, black people will forever think of themselves as inferior to white people and many, angry young Black men will continue their plight and plunge toward incarceration.
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Book Review
The Black Clergy’s Misguided Worship Leadership
by Christopher C. Bell, Jr. Ed.D | Trafford Publishing
book reviewed by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
“To be black and accept consciously or unconsciously the image of God as a white man is the highest possible form of self-negation and lack of self respect…”
This book took great courage and deep insight to write. For readers interested in the causes and consequences of racism in our country, as well as for those interested in the history of the development of Christian doctrines and practice, this is an important and enlightening book. The author points out that Jesus the prophet who preached to not perpetuate hostility with anger but to love and forgive, who taught not to hoard but to share wealth, and not to abandon but to care about others, did not, in fact, found the Catholic church. It was the Roman Emperor Constantine who founded the one universal church of Rome, motivated by a desire to dominate the people of his empire. The author calls this “Constantine certified Christianity” and recommends a new form of Christianity that involves a concept of God that is not restricted to a race and gender specific anthropomorphic entity. Rather he recommends worship of God as the source and sustainer of all life—a universal source of life energy that we all share equally—so that we can all view ourselves and each other with equal respect, regardless of color or gender. He in no way disparages Jesus who would still be honored as a good and gifted teacher. The author also addresses how this business of worshipping a white male affects relationships between black men and women. Women of all colors will be inspired to consider how the worship of a male figure has affected their lives these past two millennia. For anyone concerned about how religion could and should better motivate everyone to be all that they can be and to make this a better world for all of us, equally, this is a must read—whatever your race, gender or ethnicity.
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The Author
Christopher C. Bell Jr. is an essayist, a poet, a lecturer on public education and race-related subjects, a Doctor of Education, and a retired U.S. Army major who served as an army lieutenant in Germany in the 1950s. After retiring from the army, he began his civilian career and served as an education administrator and management analyst in the District of Columbia Public School System and the Federal government.