Hope for the Crisis in Black
America
No code of conduct ever compelled a father to love his children or a husband to show affection to his wife. The law court may force him to provide bread for the family, but it cannot make him provide the bread of love. A good father is obedient to the unenforceable.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.1
No other single segment of society suffers more from the national problem of missing fathers than the Black families of America. This is not a racist statement. It is simply the honest, tragic truth. This situation is largely due to the unique history of African-American men. The first Black men in America didn't arrive on the Mayflower. They arrived in chains in the cargo bays of slave ships. And their struggles did not end when slavery was abolished.
Today almost seven out of ten Black children in America are born out of wedlock. The illegitimacy rate
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in Black families has more than tripled in the last three decades. Before they reach the age of eighteen, an astonishing eighty-six percent of all Black children will spend part of their childhood in a single-parent home. The missing parent is almost universally the father.2
Since father absence is the biggest contributing factor to criminal behavior, it should come as no surprise that the prisons of America are disproportionately filled with Blacks. African-Americans constitute twelve percent of the total U.S. population, but fifty percent of its prison population.3 In large American cities, four out of every ten Black men between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five are either in prison, on parole, or wanted by the law.4 Half of all the young Black men between fifteen and twenty-four years of age who die from accidents and violence are victims of homicide.5
It's hard for people who do not live each day in this kind of environment to realize the tension that permeates the community. According to John Dean, an African-American who lives in the nation's capital:
It's very difficult to live outside of a black community and perceive of the thinking and feeling that goes on inside . . . It is that all-pervasive fear because you never know, as I say, when you step out whether you're going to come back, and mostly when you're even in your house you don't have the sense of security that the majority population takes for granted.6
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In the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., during the fall of 1995, some 400,000 Black American men gathered to proclaim that the greatest poverty in the Black community is not measured in dollars and cents or in crime statistics, but in the number of Black households from which responsible fatherhood has disappeared. This is really the same societal cancer that is ravaging all of America, but in the Black community the disease is found in a far more advanced stage. To understand why things have progressed to such an alarming stage in the Black community, we must begin by talking about what the American experience was like for the first African-Americans.
When Black Men Came to America
From the close of the eleventh century, Europeans began to seek a stronger trade with Africa. The Portuguese captured the North African city of Chute in 1415. During this time, slave-trading became a profitable venture among the Portuguese. Much of their business was aimed at supplying slaves to the Spanish colonies in the New World — the West Indies and Central and South America. The slaves were the Black people of northern and southern Africa.
The newly "reformed" Dutch Protestants quickly supplanted the Portuguese as the most active participants in the transatlantic slave trade to the New World and, in time, to North America. At a conservative estimate, fifteen million slaves reached the New World between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. And
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scholars of African-American history state that of those who were captured, only half actually reached the New World. The rest either died while imprisoned in Africa or during the long boat passage, were discarded as "unstable," were killed for rebellion, or committed suicide. Sometimes the entire shipload of slaves was lost, and on some occasions ship captains "cast their entire cargoes of slaves overboard."7
In August, 1619, the colonial government at Jamestown, Virginia, purchased its first twenty Black slaves from a Dutch ship. Thus began the importation of Black people into North American for servitude purposes, a national disgrace that would last almost two and a half centuries.
Slavery not only robbed Black men of their freedom and human dignity, but the purchase of individual slaves also promoted the breakup of Black families. It was common to capture young fathers while leaving their wives and children behind. Added to that, the system inherently created more instability in the slave family in America. Slave fatherhood was not legally recognized. A few states had laws forbidding the selling of mothers away from their children who were under a certain age. But there were no laws to prevent a Black father from being taken away from his family.
Making things worse, white male slave owners often raped Black slave women or took them as concubines. Slave women had no rights or protection against the sexual desires of their "masters." This disgraceful, tragic situation resulted in the births of 410,000
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"mulatto" slaves by 1860. So "slave breeding" further increased the instability of family life among the African-American slaves.
Where were the Christians during this era? What about the Puritans and those people who were set free from the evil hierarchy that denied them religious freedom? They now not only enslaved, but imposed their religious systems on a subjugated people. Some of these "pious" Dutch reformers are my direct ancestors, who helped purchase and establish New Amsterdam (New York) with the sweat of their slaves.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out, no one in the Protestant church in America "can deny the shameful fact that it has been an accomplice in structuring racism into the architecture of American society. The church, by and large, sanctioned slavery and surrounded it with the halo of moral respectability."8
The famous Puritan leader Cotton Mather, misused the Holy Scriptures to set up some "Rules for the Society of Negroes," which outlined discipline and punishments for "disobedient" slaves. The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the African-American. Once again in history, ethical Christianity vanished and the moral nerve of religion was atrophied as human beings made in the image of God were treated as property. Black fathers, stripped of their families and their human dignity, were seen as nothing more than a piece of farming machinery.
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With the end of the Civil War and the end of chattel slavery in America, Blacks were free, but still not equal. After the outlawing of slavery, Blacks were segregated and treated as second-class citizens for another hundred years. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally ended segregation, but not the real-life problems of many Black families. So we began to try to remedy the remaining problems with a host of social programs.
For the last thirty years we have poured trillions of dollars into well-intended social programs that have, in too many cases, harmed the very people they were intended to help. The social policies of the last three decades have been a prime factor, not in reconnecting Black men with their families, but in driving them farther away.
George Gilder, senior fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, observes:
The chief cause of black poverty is welfare state feminism. Thirty years of affirmative action programs have artificially elevated black women into economic power over black men.
This regime prevailed from the highest levels of the economy, where black female college graduates with five years on the job significantly out-earned black men in 1991, to the underclass, where a typical package of welfare benefits produced disposable income 28% above a typical job in 1994. It prevailed on college campuses, where more than 60% of the blacks are women. It dominated government job
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training programs, where girls are found to benefit far more than boys. It even invaded such male bastions as the cockpits of fighter planes, police squad cars, fire stations, construction sites and university athletic teams....
It is an unpopular fact of life that in all societies and in all races monogamous marriage is based on patriarchal sex roles with men the dominant provider. Welfare state feminism destroyed black families by ravaging the male role of provider. Some observers claim that black communities benefit from matriarchal institutions. Looking more closely, however, you will find inner cities implacably ruled by gangs of young men, with the "matriarchs" cowering in their triple-bolted apartments in fear of them.
Men either dominate as providers or as predators. There is hardly any other option. The key problem of underclass — the crucible of crime, the source of violence, the root of poverty — is the utter failure of socialization of young men through marriage. The problem resides in the nexus of men and marriage. Yet nearly all the attention, subsidies, training opportunities and therapies of the welfare state focus on helping women function without marriage. The welfare state attacks the problem of the absence of husbands by rendering husbands entirely superfluous.
Welfare reform continues the policy, giving welfare mothers new training and child-care benefits and further obviating marriage by pursuing unmarried fathers with deadbeat dad campaigns.
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Today, in large American cities, fully 40% of young black men between the ages of 17 and 35 are in prison, on probation, or on the lam; and some 40% of young black women say they have been forced into unwanted sexual activity. To fear young black males has become a mandate for survival on the streets of many American cities. This unspeakable social tragedy — with all its infuriating reverberations on law-abiding black citizens — is the inevitable harvest of government policy.9
A Surprising Trend
Many Black men have come to realize the solution to their problems does not lie in inept government social programs which promote irresponsible male behavior. Disillusioned with Protestant Christianity and hungry for dignity and self-discipline, Black men of America, by the hundreds of thousands, are turning to Islam. Over one-and-a-half million African-Americans are Muslims. A recent Newsweek article predicts, "At its current rapid rate of growth, Islam will become the second largest religion in the United States by the year 2000."10
Famous professional athletes such as boxing's former heavyweight champion, Mohammed Ali, basketball's all-time great, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, football's all-pro wide receiver turned commentator Amad Rashad, and more recently boxing's Mike Tyson spring to mind when one speaks of Black men converting to Islam. But there have been numerous others as well.
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One of them is Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. In the the 1960s he was known as H. Rap Brown, a Black Power advocate and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). America's "rap" music was named after him because he could powerfully communicate his political rhetoric with spontaneous and effective poetry. Brown spent over five years in prison and it was there he became a Muslim. One of his reasons for converting to Islam came from his personal desire for self-control and discipline over passion.
Jamil explains, "Islam enables you and teaches you not to be controlled or to do things out of anger. The Prophet pointed out that the strong man is not he who is a good wrestler, but he who can control his anger. That doesn't mean that you don't get upset about things, but if you can't control it, then you will be victimized by it."11
Now Jamil is one of the nation's most influential Muslim leaders, with nearly 10,000 followers in more than thirty cities across America. Once known as a rebel against authority, Jamil teaches his followers to discipline themselves through prayer, fasting, charity, and persistent faith.
Probably the most influential African-American leader in this century, besides Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was Malcolm X. Malcolm X was the most dynamic Black leader of the Nation of Islam. Anyone who had read his personal autobiography, as told to Alex Haley could not help but be stirred by the life of this man. He converted from a life of crime and became a Muslim
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"ascetic." He was killed by a hail of assassin's bullets at the age of thirty-nine because of his decision to leave the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) for mainstream Islam after his pilgrimage to Mecca. Malcolm X viewed himself as the "Billy Graham" for Islam in America.
Malcolm was born May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, His father, the Reverend Earl Little, was a Baptist minister who also worked for Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Malcolm's father was a "visiting" preacher. Malcolm wrote, "I remember especially his favorite sermon, 'That little black train is a-comin' ... an' you better get all your business right!' "12
Church "confused and amazed" Malcolm, who said he would gaze "goggle-eyed at my father jumping and shouting as he preached, with the congregation jumping and shouting behind him, their souls and bodies devoted to singing and praying. Even at that young age, I just couldn't believe in the Christian concept of Jesus as someone divine. And no religious person, until I was a man in my twenties — and then in prison — could tell me anything."13
There were serious reasons why the young Malcolm couldn't receive the teachings of his father. His father, Earl, had so many rules it was hard for his children to remember them all. But, according to people who knew him, he failed to observe them himself. Biographer Perry Bruce wrote, "In addition to being brutal to his wife and children, he was notoriously unfaithful to Louise — 'a natural born whoremonger,' his friend
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Chester Jones called him. From childhood onward, Malcolm would have great difficulty trying to decide whether to follow the path of virtue his father preached or the path of vice he often practiced."14
This explains why the following poem by Edgar Guest became one of Malcolm's favorites during his "conversion" years in prison.
I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day;
I'd rather one should walk with me than merely show the way.
The eye's a better pupil, and more willing than the ear;
Fine counsel is confusing, but example's always clear.
The best of all the preachers are the men who live their creed.
For to see the good in action is what everybody needs.
I can soon learn how to do it if you'll let me see it done.
I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run.
And the lectures you deliver may be very wise and true,
But I'd rather get my lesson by observing what you do,
For I may misunderstand you, and the high advice you give,
But there's no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.
Malcolm's brother, Philbert, who had been an especially devoted Christian as a young child, had written to Malcolm in prison saying he had discovered the "natural religion" for Black people. Malcolm's two
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brothers, Reginald and Philbert, and two of his sisters, Wilfred and Hilda, had joined the Nation of Islam.15 Both Hilda and Reginald visited Malcolm in prison and continued to send him literature produced by the Nation of Islam. Finally, after writing letters for more information, Malcolm received a reply letter from Elijah Mohammed, the leader of the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm converted. "The leap of faith, which he completed before or by early 1949, was not achieved without conflict; the price was complete submission to Allah. The conflict was so intense that it took Malcolm a week to bend his knees and pray for forgiveness. Every time he began to prostrate himself, something drove him back up. But his need for atonement, he later acknowledged, drove him back down."16
Malcolm used his time in prison as practice for spiritual discipline. "I was in prison before entering here . . . . The solitude, the long moments of meditative contemplation, have given me the key to my freedom."17
Dancing, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling, and all criminal activity were given up for hard work, short vacations, less sleep, and seeing sports as a frivolous pursuit. Cosmetics were discouraged by the Nation of Islam, swimming with the opposite sex was forbidden, men and women were separated in temple worship for concentration's sake, dating was seen as a danger, and premarital sex was called fornication. Such discipline soon began to help "demolish the myth that the majority of America's blacks were promiscuous, sports-crazy, hard-drinking, indolent lawbreakers."18
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Fasting also became a new discipline for Malcolm. "The former fast-living drug addict who had tried to solve the problem of gratification by continual indulgence had become an ascetic who mastered the need for gratification by denying it."19
Malcolm rejected Christianity. From his own experience he saw it as incapable of saving his people. During his serious years in prison, he sought diligently and tirelessly to discover what kind of leader would appeal to America's Blacks. He converted to Islam because he found a discipline and purpose that could harness himself — and thus save others. Like most other converts to Islam, Malcolm apparently never knew he could have found the dignity and self-discipline he sought in the ancient, historic Faith of the Christian Fathers. He had only seen a pale and warped image of Christian Faith.
Why African-Americans Are Turning to Islam
Why are African-Americans ignoring the violent history of Islam and embracing it as their historical and spiritual heritage, when in fact it is neither? Why are they rejecting "American" Christianity? I believe it is due to the spiritual failure of the Protestant movement in America. Black America is looking to reverse its fall into self-destruction with something that works — that saves. Given the grim and tragic statistics for Black males in today's America, especially within the inner cities, many Black leaders say that this is no time to work with a system that has failed them in the past. It is an hour of crisis,
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and Islam is looking sane, strong, and stable in their eyes. Islam provides the discipline which enables Black males in America to become responsible fathers for their families once again.
Why has Western Christianity failed to fill this need? Because African-Americans inherited from their slave-masters a Christianity that had been severed from the spiritual disciplines of the historic Church. The Western Christianity of the reformed Dutch and English Puritans, on which much of this country was founded, was in almost every respect a departure from and reduction of the ancient Christian Faith which was born in the East. To some extent, this "new" American Christianity was what Black Muslims call it — a white man's religion. It was an invention of the European Reformation and a reaction against the medieval Scholasticism of the Latin Church. Whatever else it might have been, early American religion was not the Faith of the Early Church Fathers. Because Blacks were involuntarily disconnected and cut off from the eastern roots of Christianity (which some of their forefathers had known in Africa), the descendants of slaves did not inherit the true historic Church in all her fullness, and especially in her disciplines.
An African-American historian, Carter G. Woodson, understood the African's spiritual roots in Christianity. In 1926 in the Journal of Negro History, Woodson made an attempt to remind his people of their early Christian history, saying:
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"Christianity is from the Orient [the East]. Jesus was a Syrian Jew who was preserved alive in childhood [when Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod's sword] under the shadow of the African pyramids and by the banks of the African Nile. The Negro is Oriental by blood and racial heritage... The birthplace of his ancestors is in the Orient; and Egypt, where the child Jesus was carried to be saved from the fury of Herod, is the backdoor of Africa. The early history of Christianity is closely connected with things African and has a distinct African flavor. The first foreign missionaries after the Apostles were from Africa. One-half of the Ante-Niceae library was African in origin. This library grew for fifty years, and during those years the most important questions of doctrine were settled under the leadership of African scholars."
Thus the Negro church and ministry are . . . fitted to interpret Jesus to the race, and to show that the travesty which the white church [American Protestantism] and ministry present to the world as Christianity is but a faint shadow of the meaning of the life and words of the gentle Syrian Jew.20
Mr. Woodson was referring to the ancient Christian Church which was born in the East and flourished in North Africa. Most people don't know that over ten thousand Orthodox Coptic parishes and numerous monasteries are still thriving in Ethiopia and Egypt today.
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This unchanging historic Church, which was founded by Christ and the Apostles, was not available to the slaves in a mainly Protestant world. Thus Blacks, like Americans of all races, fell victim to the failing Protestant "experiment." This experiment has shattered into more than 26,000 "Christian" denominations in America today — ranging from one extreme of social liberalism without a Christ, to the other of the "prosperity gospel" hucksters without a cross. The Protestant church has desperately failed African-Americans.
Self-exiled from the historical means of spiritual growth, Protestantism has left the door open for Islam, a seventh-century departure from the doctrine of Christ, to offer to the Black men of America the kind of spiritual disciplines which will reconnect Black males as responsible fathers.
Islam, while theologically heretical, actually held to some of the essential practices of the historic Orthodox Faith more than did the children of the Protestant Reformation. For instance, the five obligatory acts of worship for Muslims are faith, prayer, fasting, purification, and pilgrimage. All of these aspects of spiritual life are actually ancient and biblical Christian spiritual disciplines. For six centuries before Islam was founded, Christians everywhere exercised faith, prayed several times daily, fasted regularly, gave alms often, battled with the passions continually and went on pilgrimage to holy places whenever possible.
Mohammed "borrowed" some very essential disciplines from ancient Christianity in his syncretistic
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efforts to form a new religion. These disciplines, which embody some divine principles, have provided great strength and attractiveness to the Islamic religious movement, which, in subtle ways, is a counterfeit of ancient Christianity and thus its greatest enemy.
In calling Black men in America to their ancestral roots, Islam does not call them to go back far enough. The presence of Old Testament tradition, together with the coming of the Apostle Matthew and the Evangelist Mark, caused Christianity to spread rapidly through the Horn of Africa, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. The Christian Faith was embraced so fervently that unequaled examples of spirituality were produced, to which the rest of historic Christianity has looked for guidance since the first few centuries. Early African Christian saints — Aommoun of Nitria; Mary of Egypt; Abber Phou-p-koht; Moses the Ethiopian; Pachomeus and Theodore of Tabennisi; Abba Shenoute, the idol destroyer; Amma Sarah of Pelusia; Abba Theophilus, the archbishop; Thekla Hymanat; Gabra Manfred Kaddus; Thalassios the Libyan; and countless others — represent the epitome of a personal striving along the path of Christ.
Mohammed and Islam
By the time of Mohammed's birth in the late sixth century, a series of significant occurrences had brought the Arabian peninsula into closer association with the events of the Judeo-Christian Middle East. Two of these events helped provide circumstances favorable to
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the rise of Islam in the seventh century. First, as a result of the Jewish Diaspora after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, scores of Jewish settlements throughout the western half of the Arabian peninsula had introduced the Old Testament and its tradition into Arabia by word of mouth. Also, though condemned for the second time at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in A.D. 553, the Nestorian heresy remained influential along the Syrian border, giving Arabia a distorted view of authentic Orthodox Christianity and the New Testament.
Mohammed, founder of Islam, lived in the vicinity of a somewhat "mixed bag" of Nestorianism which confused the Person and natures of Christ. From the perspective of Orthodox Christianity, the teachings of Islam — allegedly "handed down" to Mohammed by Allah in the form of the Koran — have always been seen as an amalgamation of Arab paganism and misinterpretation of authentic Christian traditions, from which Mohammed was geographically isolated. St. Athanasius of Sinai and St. John of Damascus, both seventh-century Christian theologians, were among the first to identify that the religious beliefs of the "Ishmaelites" or "Hagarenes" did not represent a separate religion, but in fact constituted heretical teachings of Christianity. As Monk Gregory Niklasson points out, "By acknowledging the existence of Jesus Christ yet denying His divinity, Mohammed had asserted a point shared by dozens of other heresies which could demonstrate no historical or scriptural foundations."21
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Islam and Slavery
Ancient and modern-day scholars of history acknowledge Islam's major role in the enslavement of the people they conquer. Mohammed owned dozens of slaves and maid-slaves as well, even after he proclaimed himself to be a prophet. One of the most respected scholars and historians of Islam wrote in his book, Zad al-Ma'ad, saying,
Mohammed had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more than he sold, especially after God empowered him by His message, as well as after his immigration from Mecca. He sold one black slave for two. His name was Jacob al-Madder. His purchase of slaves were more [than he sold]. He was used to renting out and hiring many slaves, but he hired more slaves than he rented out.22
Mohammed's followers throughout the ensuing centuries acted upon his example and enslaved hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. Many of these slaves were Byzantine Orthodox Christians in North Africa.
The ancient Islamic scholar, Malik Ibn Ons, writes regarding the right of a Muslim to force his slave to marry: "The master does not have the right to force the female slave to wed to an ugly black slave if she is beautiful and agile unless in case of utmost necessity."23
Slavery is practiced in certain Islamic communities
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to this day. In Sudan, the Islamic fundamentalist government permits the enslavement of men, women, and children by Islamic Sudanese. Most of these slaves are Black Christians from the southern part of the country.24 The research director of the American Anti-Slavery Group reports that, according to U.S. State Department estimates, in 1995 in the African country of Mauritania, there were over 90,000 Black Muslim slaves who were the property of Arab-Berber Muslim masters.25
Back in America, leaders of the Nation of Islam have been silent regarding the enslaving of Africans by their brother Muslims. The "it's none of our business" attitude of Black Islamic leaders in America is ironically akin to the attitude displayed by many in the northern states in the U.S. in the early nineteenth century, who claimed that slavery in the southern states was none of their business.
Compare this Muslim practice with the Christian Faith. Jesus Christ never owned slaves or encouraged others to do so. When St. Paul and other Apostles or early Fathers of the Church commented on slaves being content in their present state, their statements were far from being an endorsement of the institution of slavery. The focus for them was always on ultimate issues. And they knew that there were worse fates than slavery. They knew full well that many people who were outwardly free were often, in reality, utterly enslaved to greed, lust, anger, and every kind of sin. They also knew and taught that a slave who was united to Christ was
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ultimately more free than his non-Christian master. But this knowledge does not in any way justify the enslaving of one human being by another. European and American Christians who owned slaves could only justify their behavior by a twisted and heretical interpretation of the Scriptures.
While people who called themselves Christians were among the slave owners of America, it was also people who called themselves Christians who led the way in the fight to abolish slavery in America. They did so in the spirit of the Scriptures, which say, "whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — [we] have all been made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13).
True Christians view themselves, to use St. Paul's phrase, as "slaves of God" (Romans 6:22), but true Christians do not believe in forced servitude or the ownership of slaves.
Jesus or Mohammed?
The historic Orthodox Church, after nearly two thousand years, faithfully worships the same Christ, the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies written over a period of fifteen hundred years concerning the Messiah: His birth, His death, His Resurrection and His Ascension into heaven. The words of Christ are true and the holiness of His life has never been seriously questioned. He not only preached but lived in moral purity and peace with all men. By the admission of friend and foe alike, no one has made a greater impact on the history of mankind than Jesus Christ.
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Now compare with that the life of Mohammed, the "one and only true messenger of Allah." After the death of his first wife, Mohammed married two more wives, and subsequently a number of other women — wives and concubines — were added to his establishment. In one situation, Mohammed gave his young cousin Zanib to his adopted son Zaid in marriage, and afterwards, "when Zaid had accomplished his want of her," the Prophet took her and married her himself. Mohammed even experienced a mutiny in his harem because he showed undue favor to an Egyptian concubine who had borne to him a boy. One of his wives was a Jewess, Safiyya, whom he married on the evening of the battle in which her husband had been captured and executed. He saw the captured woman at the end of the day, liked what he saw, and took her to his tent.
You will probably not hear these accounts from the mouths of Islamic spokesmen. But they are in the history books. Search for yourself. Black men of America, is this the kind of spiritual hero you want for your children?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in his book, Where Do We Go from Here?:
Deeply rooted in our religious heritage is the conviction that every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth.
Our Judeo-Christian tradition refers to this inherent dignity of man in the Biblical term “the image of God.” The “image of God” is universally
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shared in equal portions by all men. There is no graded scale of essential worth. Every human being has etched in his personality the indelible stamp of the Creator. Every man must be respected because God loves him. The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his intellect, his racial origin or his social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God. An individual has value because he has value to God. Whenever this is recognized, “Whiteness” and “Blackness” pass away as determinants in a relationship and “son” and“brother” are substituted.26
African-Americans are increasingly turning away from Christianity to Islam, or to no faith at all, because they did not encounter the true face of Christ in American Christianity. And it's not just the celebrities who are leaving. Does this complaint sound familiar? " 'The church was just too women-oriented for me,' says Jason Gordon, a 21-year-old from Los Angeles who recently left the Baptist Church for Islam — over his mother's strenuous objections. 'Men my age didn't really seem to have an active place. And they do in Islam.' "27
I believe that Islam is a subconscious call to manhood. It presents itself as a solution to the family crisis in Black America. Unfortunately, it is not a call to truth. African-American males, like all American males, need to return to authentic fatherhood, fatherhood as taught and lived by faithful men and saints throughout the history of God's people in His holy Church.
Chapter 9 || Table of Contents
1. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 100.
2. Harrison Raine, "A New Awakening," U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 30, 1995, p. 36.
3. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1995, pp. 31, 219.
4. George Gilder, "The Roots of Black Poverty," Wall Street Journal, Monday, Oct. 30, 1995, p. A18.
5. Statistical Abstract, p. 99.
6. MacGillis, Crime in America, p. 63.
7. Kenneth G. Goode, From Africa to the United States and Then . . . (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1969), p. 18.
8. King, Where Do We Go from Here, p. 96.
9. Gilder, "The Roots of Black Poverty," p. A18.
10. Carla Power and Allison Samuels, "Battling for Souls," Newsweek, Oct. 30, 1995, p. 46.
11. Steven Barboza, American Jihad (New York: Doubleday, 1994), pp. 50-51.
12. Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), p. 4.
13. Ibid., p. 5.
14. Bruce Perry, Malcolm (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press), pp. 7, 8.
15. Ibid., p. 113.
16. Ibid., p. 116.
17. Ibid., p. 120.
18. Ibid., p. 148.
19. Ibid., p. 1.
20. Carter G. Woodson, The Journal of Negro History (The Association for the Study of Negro Life & History, 1926), Vol. XI, pp. 6, 7.
21. Monk Gregory Niklasson, "The Search for God in Ancient Africa," AGAIN, Vol. 17, No. 2, June, 1994, p. 7.
22. Behind the Veil, Part 1, p. 160 (no author or publisher record because of terrorist threat). Original source is a book called Zad-al-Ma'ad, by Qayyim al-Jawgiyya.
23. Behind the Veil, Vol. 6, Part 9, p. 469. Original source, "The Sweetest," by Ibn Hagm Al Mohalla.
24. Paul Liben, "Farrakhan Honors African Slavers," Wall Street Journal, Friday, Oct. 20, 1995, p. A15.
25. Charles Jacobs, "Letters to the Editor — Black Slaves in Africa," Wall Street Journal, Thursday, Nov. 2, 1995.
26. King, Where Do We Go from Here, p. 97.
27. Power & Samuels, "Battling for Souls," p. 47.
