{"id":21361,"date":"2022-05-25T09:45:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T13:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21361"},"modified":"2022-05-25T09:51:52","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T13:51:52","slug":"21361","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21361","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S5tGdzyeRYc\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Does It Mean to Be Black, Christian, and American?&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Dant\u00e9 Stewart, a minister and writer, honors the central place the Bible held in his family:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s an old King James Version Bible sitting on my bookshelf. It is black, rugged; the gold lining on the pages shines as light hits it. The jacket is missing, and the threads have unloosened from one another over the years. It has been tried. It has traveled across the South, across time. Now it sits on a shelf where it keeps the company of books written by Black folk. Black folk who have read a similar Bible, who have wrestled with it, been confused by it. Black folk who have held it as tight as I do today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I open up this old Bible . . . I am suddenly surrounded by preachers and mothers and friends and saints and sinners who tried to love and live well\u2014while failing, learning, and trying again. When I read these ancient scriptures, I hear the way they flowed from my momma\u2019s lips. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was her language. It was the language of my grandmother, the language of her mother. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>After many years of worshipping and working in white church spaces, Stewart came to a crossroads in his faith<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I live and move and have my being in this country, I wonder to myself:&nbsp;<em>How do I be Black and Christian and American?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I return to this old King James Bible, and our Black prayers, and Black sermons. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have learned that many of us have not given up on faith, just the way our faith has been used to oppress others. We have not given up on the Bible, just the way it has been used to marginalize others. We have not given up on Jesus . . . <strong>we\u2019re not becoming less spiritual or religious. It\u2019s just that we have learned to put up with less, much less. <\/strong>Today many people talk a lot about people leaving churches, giving up on Christianity, and rejecting Jesus. In reality, <strong>they have given up on the white supremacist brand of Christianity that cares more about power than Jesus, that does not care enough to take either our bodies or our futures seriously<\/strong>. Like James Baldwin, we are holding on to Jesus while also living with our fear, trauma, doubts, and hope. Our story and the story of Jesus are bound together in faith, hope, love, and community. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Faith\u2014honest, deep, vulnerable faith, as Baldwin writes\u2014<strong>is about growing up, becoming more loving, more honest, and more vulnerable. <\/strong>It is facing ourselves and what we desire. It is finding a way to begin again each day. It is not that we have the right answer, or all the right solutions. It is that we have found deep meaning in the story of Jesus. We have learned, as James Cone writes, that \u201cbeing black and Christian could be liberating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"338\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/image-7-500x338.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-21362\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/image-7-500x338.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/image-7-300x203.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/image-7-768x519.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/image-7.png 1800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does It Mean to Be Black, Christian, and American?&nbsp; Dant\u00e9 Stewart, a minister and writer, honors the central place the Bible held in his family:&nbsp; There\u2019s an old King James Version Bible sitting on my bookshelf. It is black, rugged; the gold lining on the pages shines as light hits it. The jacket is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21361"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21361"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21366,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21361\/revisions\/21366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}