Listening to Church Radio

Before you draw your own speculative conclusions, let me let you in on something:



Yes, I do have a problem with the Preacher Class "leading" the Black Church.

I think it lacks vision/courage/imagination. And I think that, in its current orientation, the Black Church is an institutional subtraction of power in the development of collective Black economic power in a hyper capitalist civilization like my country, the United States of America.

 I also think Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have a problem with the present day Preacher Class and their money making religious enterprises.

So... I'm listening to church radio. In Baltimore. One "sermon" was about being born with purpose, the other about being blessed. The latter sermon covered all ground -- blessed if you got, blessed if you don't got. A dozy of spiritual malpractice.

I was raised in the church in the Sixties.

 Say...from about 1963 when Mom died on up to the early 1970s when I started smelling myself, you know, as a teenager and stopped going. Those oh-so-smart-TEENagers!!

I have no problem with God. God is ever present in you, in me, in all things, and God is expressed everywhere all-in-all. Next to mine, your ideas of God may and likely are more restrictive and controlling like the sleight-of-hand of the Euro-Western world:

Dr John Henrik Clarke, Master Teacher

Missionary style. Imposition. Inquisition. Nullification. Right at all cost.

But I love what I call 'Big Choir' gospel music or any Gospel music with harmony and the substance of the resilience (FC Barnes & Janice Brown) of faith. Or just traditional Gospel, like the Gospel Caravans.

In the Sixties, Black folk where contained in Baltimore City and just moving into areas depopulated of Whites. Black pockets were in the counties -- I heard of some places like Winters Lane and on the other side of town, an area called Wilson Park. And some place called Turners' Station.

My first time as a kid on Garrison Blvd was when the Angelic Voices sang at a church there. Church boy that I was, I sang on the choir. So green and lush and sunny was the day and I remember how beautiful Garrison Blvd looked to me. The houses, big. The boulevard, broad. The trees, magnificent. Shall I say it? Compared to my neighborhood of neat working class row houses, super sparkly marble steps and street gutters cleaned daily by neighbors, Garrison Blvd (Walbrook Junction) was another planet.


Over the past 20 to 40 years, Blacks migrated to the greener areas of Baltimore City. Whites loaded up the pioneer wagons and moved to the suburbs. Blacks moved to the suburbs. Whites loaded up and moved to the outer burgs. But Black Churches in the city did not migrate with their, now, commuter congregations.

When I went to church growing up, I walked about 6 blocks through the neighborhood to get there. My friends in the neighborhood walked, too. (We never called our neighborhood "the hood", today's other-worldly dark nefarious zip codes of crime, death, shootings, diabetes, bad health, bad food, false hair, no belts, frivolous spending and no Black owned stores.) Oops! Did I say that!?

Listening to church radio Sunday night I felt so sorry for people. Those Preachers say just enough to keep people dependent on them. First 22 minutes of the "sermon" was a verbally hypnotic retelling of a Bible story. Milk toast. Maybe 5 minutes of meat. Something concrete. Then 5 minutes to wrap it up with the same religious crescendos I heard as a child in the Sixties at Shiloh CC Church, located Catherine and Lombard Streets, Baltimore, MD. Rev. George C. Baynard would be ashamed of his colleagues for keeping people hostage to "hope" in the 21st century.




People Actually believe God is somewhere "outside" of themselves, in heaven, looking down on them and doling out mercy like fickle Zeus or Aphrodite (or was it Athena?) doling out favorable outcomes  to the Greeks waging war against Troy.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

And now...we are in the era of Trump and the nullification of Dr. King's vision of democracy. 
Black Americans will need more than milk toast sermons to restore their rightful place. Cunning people are plotting after Black American dollars, that massive immature 1.2 trillion dollar Black American money pie befuddled grotesquely by integration over the past 40 years. That's a lot of confused dollars.

Gently Intellectual Virgin says, milk toast is no defense in a hyper capitalistic civilization whose pathological DNA birth construct is slavery and the nullification of Black People. And their nascent wealth. And any ideas of self-determination to decide to organize to help them selves, like, you know, for real for real.

You know this is bad. Like bad as in bad B A D BAD. Like bad, like a very very VERY bad B-grade science fiction movie bad. 

James Brown

Just plain bad. So bad, hurts your eyes to watch. Your Brain saying to your Eyes, put on the James Brown "I can't stand it." It's so bad.


Sound the alarm!!  Wanted: New Heroes and Sheroes needed. Early 20s to early 30s. Fearless. Conscious. Well read. Not burdened with too much debt. Lovers of Black people.

The new Heroes and Sheroes are the ones who will challenge this current leadership gang and its plethora of contradictions such that a blind man could see that something is quite-not-right here. Quite...Not...Right. Young and Fearless come forth. --Bill Curtis / 21st Century Productions

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