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commentators engaging leaders that i want to quickly stay themes of our panel and introduce a panelist and open it up for conversation. of course this evening our event is entitled "the new jerusalem" black life life the church in the struggle for democracy. our hosts have given us the charge of taking on the theme of the fact that religious belief religious institutions and religious people came to be seen as essential to social freedom. this remains the central paradox in african-american life and political history. our discussion will examine the overlapping challenges of creating a basis for collective activism building independent black institutions determining the place of men women politics and religion in leadership. now to our panelists who all have long is such that they could take up the entire night so i will list the titles of their books and move into the conversation. first to my most immediate right and moving further along the panel. first is anthea butler, the author of "women in the church of god in christ" making a sanctified world as well as the forthcoming book, the gospel according to sarah palin -- the gospel according to sarah, how sarah palin and the tea partier got amazing the religious right out next year. next to anthea is eddie glaude the author of acts exodus raise religion and nation and early 19th century black america and more recently "in a shade of blue" pragmatism and the politics of black america. following eddie the reverend dr. dr. james forbes the author of 2000 hymnbook "who's gospel" a concise guide to progressive protestantism and their final panelist will be this up in conversation in a moment, obery hendricks the author of "the politics of jesus" rediscovering the two true revolutionary of jesus teachings and the universe bends towards justice radical reflections on the bible of the church and body politics. taking a launch off of professor hendricks most recent title with a "that suggest what is the most iconic and popular image of black churches in african-american religion taken them not from none other than dr. martin luther king. a whole host of assumptions from for me think about our title has the church squarely fit in american democracy and black life? reimagined black churches on the front lines marching and we forget in fact dr. king represent a minority movement. i want to invite you professor hendricks and his we move to the panel to go in whatever direction he wants thinking about what is appropriate way for us to think and understand the relationship between religion and general for black churches in particular in the larger context of american democracy so religion like church and democracy, how do we, how could we imagine them in this particular moment? >> thank you. i am glad to be here with this distinguished panel all of whom are my friends and colleagues and so i trust -- but it's a very broad question with regard to religion. they are some tensions that are usually discussed. religion is ultimately theocratic so it's not democratic. most churches are not democratic they are very hierarchical and patriarchal so that we have that there and in its most common terms of the most influential institution black community that filters down and so in a way it's disempowering to the black masses in my opinion. you mentioned dr. king. dr. king is trying to move to another level in his ministry, that being fighting economic justice. he was trying to mount the poor people's campaign and he called a meeting in virginia and 124 ministers were invited and guess how many came? none. i think this is sort of emblematic of a sort of, it speaks to the fiction of the church at large as being the forefront of our struggle. i will just say this. the other problem is though, it's not that until recently in the last couple of generations i think my generation of scholars that we saw any significant critical mass of black biblical scholars, theological scholars who were able to cut through some of this domination must dialogue, discourse that has permeated christian and with the result that the black church too often is held in thrall to the same kinds of misreadings of jesus and the gospel that we see in white churches. not just the patriarchs, not the unwillingness that the ambivalence about being political and seeing jesus as a political figure, a political activist that is concerned about political egalitarianism. so these are some of the opening things i would like to race but i want to remain clear that i do appreciate the deep centrality of the black church, the black life and the black church in many ways is the only thing that got us over for so long but it's now time that we can move a thing to a much more informed level and not just talk about black church is so revolutionary and in the forefront but really start to look at it more in a decisive answer systematic and programmatic way. see dr. forbes if we could extend this and dr. hendricks says that this strong -- black churches led by charismatic that king is believed to represent. you yourself are product of churches that are often written out of the story of black liberal protestant establishments that king would represent baptist and methodist churches. how might you see pentecostal churches but also the liberal protestant tradition of riverside is complicating that story? >> well, first of all, i think genesis helps us to look at our problem and that is that in genesis, there is this snake that comes up and begins to engage in conversation with e. e. fu and the snake actually purchase a paid and calling into question what god said and the implications of what we should do, so that the major religious may be viewed as probably having distorted the nature of black being and suggested that god said one thing about who black folks are and that the black church is god's rebuttal saying this is what i said and not what the snake said. now a snake is not in the farrakhan sense calling other people demonic in this regard but what this is is that the god who calls all of us god's children thereby suggesting the democratic ideal, that the black church gets caught between listening to what the snake said versus what god has clarified about who we are. and when the black church is really being the church that in a sense god uses to rebuke what was said by the other church, we are likely to be sensitive to the democratic ideal and engaged in activities that lead us to a more democratic society. when we listen to the other voice about who we are as black people we play the games of one upmanship, of gods having the outhouse in the in-house or about postponing the gratification until the great buy and buy. so the real challenge today is whether the black church believes what god said about us all being god's children or whether we have lots of divine dna testing testing as to who wy an authentic offspring of god. james washington used to say our problem was the fact that there has been deposited by others what he calls pseudo-sibs pc nation. we are all part of the same species that some of us are less >> show than others -- special than others and when we act like that all of the complications of the assault against the egalitarian ideals begins operating. now where's the black church today? my sense is we have got some folks books that are really struggling hard to be what god said and other folks are trying to square their future well-being was acting like they believe with the other folks say and the issue for us today in this conversation are what did god say and how do we challenge the black church to believe with the lord said rather than what the devil said? [applause] >> the that's what happens when you are the great james forbes, you know what i mean? that's what happens. [applause] sister valerie and everyone i am really delighted to be part of the conversation. this has been an extraordinary day, hasn't it? [applause] brilliance on display, elegance, sophistication and nuance in the face of weeks of tragedy, right? i want to approach the question from a different angle. there is always the problematic relationship between religion and democracy. and it has something to do with the history of democracy in the west, the relationship between democratic languages of rights, equal rights, rights discourse and the religious wars. how rights discourse emerges a way to kind of navigates sectarian differences, right? or there is always a kind of deity and skepticism of the place in religious discourse. actually thought of religion as a conversation stopper. these are my beliefs and these are what i hold. they are not up for debate. in the african-american community are so way in which religious discourses have always been a part of the way we engage in a political domain. i don't want to be too abstract but it does want to say there is a kind of complex relationship between giving voice to political demands and religious language. it's always haunted democracy. in our community religion has been a crucial religious language that has been crucial to how we have given voice to our political aims. having a lot to do with the fact that we have been excluded from the body politic by virtue of the fact that we enter the modern world as somebody else's belongings. that we were not included in the democratic process because we were less than, right? so the church gave us this space for which we can exercise our political sense of things. it became the site for black life. so we can tell a story about how black churches were the side of black civil society out of which comes insurance companies, out of which come schools or my own beloved morehouse. i said morehouse. my own beloved morehouse founded in the basement of the church. we could go on and on and on so the institution is as a particular sort of role given our marginalization in the american society but what is the role of the black church today? e. franklin frazier kind of appeared into the future when he was writing and he said the closer we get to being included into mainstream life the institutions of the world of make believe will change, will transform and some will fade away. part of what we have to do and i'm going to be deliberately provocative, i always am, right? is to try to figure out what are the demographic shifts? would have been significant changes in an institutional life of the church that may have decentered it from being the most important institutional space in black america today. whether or not churches or neighborhood churches anymore. how many of these institutions have become atm gospel -- i didn't say that. prosperity but. prosperity folks. in a neoliberal moment. how many folks have turned their backs on a kind of prophetic approach? part of what i'm trying to suggest is there has always been to provide -- problematic relationship. our institutions and central because of the history of exclusion of black folk in the united states which is made religious discourse central to how we give them voice to our political demands but giving the shifts in change. the church or churches have been decentered and part of what we have to do is tell ourselves the story about what are the implications of that fact if it's a fact you are willing to concede to. then we can have a debate. i hope that made sense. did that make sense? [applause] >> well i am noted for being the fire bomb in the room so i'm going to go on. the black church today is that a serious crossroads. i'm going to take off from what you said in a may call it even better. i've been running e-mails for the last year tracking church foreclosures for the last three years. black churches are in a state of decline and we are talking about physical spaces. you can see the big mega-church in your community but the smaller 50 to 150 person church is dying. that is partially demographic. that is number one. number two the problem we have as younger people to not identify with tell me to keep my skirts long and holiness. because they don't understand that. because they don't have anybody to talk to them in a way that they need to be spoken to right now so you are losing other people. there a lot of people walking outside of the schomberg who will tell you my mother told me i was raised raised in the church but i don't want to go to church anymore because they aren't talking about nothing i want to hear about. all right baby i've been waiting to talk to for a long time. hold up. the other thing is and this is the real serious point i want to make because we can talk about jerusalem but we aren't in "the new jerusalem." we are fighting for jerusalem right now. i laughed at the title of this panel because this is like the crusades right now. we are fighting for a very democratic rights right now and part of that has to do with the church and if you don't believe that all i have to say is trayvon martin and you will understand and we will talk about that but one of the things that people in the black church need to understand is that the religious right playbook, they take your playbook from the civil rights movement. this is why they have so much power right now, at least they think they have power. temporal power and spiritual power are not the same thing. they are not the same thing. [applause] we do not wrestle with flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. i've been wrestling with principalities and powers this week from the right-wing and i want to look at this mic in saudi right now that i serve the god of abraham isaac and jacob. and that is the god we serve as black people but we can't critique this american god. god is in the thrall of capitalism and craziness that has is not looking at our communities because we link to get the pastor of a whole bunch of money for the pastor's anniversary. let me go ahead and call this out. we haven't talked about there a bunch of women sitting in church right now giving all their money to pastors that are messing them over. we have to talk about the bad things are happening but we also can talk about the good things that are happening in the black church. souls to the polls, people getting people out to vote in the 20s of election, things are happening in our inner-city communities where churches are working to stop nonviolence. so this can't be an abstract discussion today. has to be a serious discussion about where we are going because people are walking away from these institutions. they don't care about institutions. every institution in this nation is failing right now. it's not just the church. the government is failing. people don't work. we elect leaders that ain't working. if you want to your job they did with the congress did, they don't work. so churches are doing the same thing. churches are having issues right now. how do we build up the black church to be that institution that needs to be within our communities and to make those bridges across religious lines. because it's not just about christianity. it's about all the rest of these religious traditions we have in the african-american tradition and it's a moment where we have to come together we will fail. this democratic process is trying to crush us right now or it least what is passing for democracy. it's really a right-wing theocracy and you need to begin to think about how the message of the gospel here unadulterated message of jesus christ was a radical message that said we are for the poor and for the brokenhearted and the folks that don't have money to go to the hospital. it's not this other god so we need to really be the people who are out there saying look at who god is supposed to be an stop making it about something else. [applause] see if we make that move to a more practical direction many different ways you have all sort of talked about this black church emerging on the one hand but also acclaim around the christian gospels sensitive black identity. black churches could be going in any number of directions now. when we think about the last month whether it's doma the voting rights act trayvon we are all making claims made in response to fraser some might say in the small and black churches are free. other folks, what is reasonable to expect the black churches and where might we direct the relatively scarce resources that those institutions have in this moment? what issues might be the most important for black churches to be mobilized? >> this is an important implication of the point that was making. once we descent rate the black church or black churches from a kind of narrative and we have been talking about storytelling the way in which you tell the story of the civil rights movement that begins with rosa parks not getting up. king becomes the kind of iconic figure for all of the organizing gets buried. that story blocks from you a much more radical tradition of black struggle. what can we tell her story in this particular way we have narrowed what comes into view so when we tell the story of black institutional life at the center is always the church and the church has undergone institutional transformation and our expectation is that black people will rise when the church rises. the church itself functions differently. they may find yourself a moment where our imaginations have been captured and where we can't begin to think in a different sort of way. we are blocked in some ways so let me say this. when i say black churches are shifting i'm not saying that black churches are doing good work. there are some preachers and some congregations that are out there on the frontline doing amazing work. but i want to think about the shift. the best example i can use and i'm going to say this really quickly, would be the black press. there is a moment in our inclusion where this institutional space collapsed. remember the pittsburgh courier? the chicago defender, the black "associated press". in these venues black news circulated and jet and "ebony" emerges on the kind of margins of this extraordinary space where information, as black public space where deliberation took place. what happened? it collapsed. look at what is happening today. hbcu. at one point in black history every major intellectual was produced there. the brain trust of the country could be found at howard, morehouse, at a spelman or tuskegee. now what has happened? morris brown -- where is he? howard, we just saw the op-ed. it could be closed within three years although they said that's not true. institutional transforming. how many people attend churches in the neighborhood where the church happens to be located? the shift in the population. folks actually drive from where they live to the church so what is the organic relationship of churches to the communities in which they happen to be, if they have been relocated? so the function of the institution is what i'm trying to get out, not that churches aren't doing anything but how were we imagining black institutional life in this neoliberal moment? that is what i'm trying to get a >> especially as i hear you continue to speak of the decentralizing of the black church, being a pentecostal by background and now much more of hopefully a postmortem pentecostal -- [laughter] was it not a mistake for us to assume that because god was so near and dear to us in delivering us from the bondage of white supremacists i hate theology and mitigation of blackness, it was such a close thing that i remember at my churches congregation i thought 500 -- street was a center of the world. it felt like it. before happy. note evil could come near us. that was a mistake. god never did leave the liberating activity of creation to our churches. though it felt like it in the black church was never at the center of what god was doing to bring us into the democratic proximity. my thinking is that the holy spirit is at work and the church where we get happy on sunday morning but the spirit does not leave the printing press, did not leave the educational institution, did not leave the hospital's so my sense is we need to come to the awareness that in any kind of decline, possibly it's god's way of saying y'all like never did put all my eggs in your black basket i was doing stuff everywhere and i am still doing stuff but the problem is if the black church is not sensitive and does not learn how to be in coalition and in cooperation with the liberating activity that is taking place other places then we will die. we will call it -- at first but it's actually the cutting the the tree at the root. that is the issue to me. decentralizing that black church. it may have been the center of our activity that the holy ghost i hope has something else going on other than what has been happening in our congregations. [applause] and i want to just tie into that and say you know i think what we also forget is the church is not a building. its people and it's the people on the inside of and thinking about my book and i was thinking about the history of churches in christ and how people believe they were just congregational sunday didn't do anything. they won after doing stuff but i covered this great history about these women, mother lizzie robinson, reverend mallory. all of these women were involved with social movements. they were in the midst of all this stuff happening during the civil rights movement. it's a whole different way you can look at the history of black churches because there were people who are within those churches who are making connections with other organizations. national council of women, naacp, all of these things are now what is happening is that people within these churches have to start to make connections to outside organizations. urban league, naacp out those organizations made up of church people. they were the people who are paying into the organizations and everything and now we start to see people going down on all this stuff because the church people become insulin. they don't want to make these outside connection so what we have to do is begin to say we cannot exist is just a church in the entity of the black church unless we begin to make connections with outside organizations and other things to revitalize ourselves, to revitalize our neighborhoods, our communities, our kids, the educational system. unless we begin to make those kinds of connections with others who are like-minded whoever they might be the church will fail because if you just have this little thing where you are shouting the praises god on sunday then it doesn't happen. [applause] >> you know i am with you on that but i think there is a prior step that has to be taken and that is, i mean if churches keep the same theology that they have now you know all these coalitions. who will they be making coalitions with? remember when tomorrow, so called moral majority, talking about conservatives and conservatism. well, a lot of people conflated political conservatism with moral conservatism so do know nobody is more morally conservative than my mother, my grandmother and my father. they have nothing to do with jerry falwell and those neo-segregation's. because there was no real clear, a real clear theology that gave people a mode of discernment, literal discernment we saw a lot of black people supporting folks who were the exact opposite of their interests. and it's still happening so what we need to do though is i think it comes back to the basis, supposedly the basis and that is the biblical witness. what we see as a distortion of the biblical witness, what we see is this domination asked discourse going way back to constantine when the faith of the oppressed became the religion of the oppressor the emperor of the roman empire and since then we have had this big tradition of domination asked discourse which has consistently been in some way in the lead with the powers that be. but that causes is it of skiers this underlying revolutionary message particularly the gospel. jesus, when we talk about the poor and poverty does anyone realize that the one thing jesus talked about more than anything else was poor people and the exploitation of poor people? we are talking about other kind of stuff over yonder somewhere. jesus taught and taking out of the hebrew prophets that were very revolutionary, they were talking about they don't have the mind right of kings. everybody has the same rights which is the basis of the democratic ethics in my opinion. it doesn't go back to the greeks. it goes back to the biblical theory of a prophetic period so we have to start asking questions and reclaiming the reddick halaby of jesus. he was killed and crucified as a seditionist against the roman empire. whether he was -- are not with another question but until we start embracing their the radical and the politico buddy of the basis of christianity, until we start embracing that first we will not have a real clear stand of discernment and number two we won't get anywhere. we will be doing the same old thing over and over. lastly if we have really talked about democracy in which everybody has the same -- [inaudible] we have to start modeling bad in our religious communities. i am just so sick of hearing about the pastor has a vision so we have to follow it. i have seen that vision. and you know what i'm talking about. this hierarchy. we have to start being democratic throughout our lives and democracy means a galaxy are in it has their same right. we are not talking about big guys for little guys. we are talking about a get -- egalitarianism and the good samaritan. we have a responsibility, not just freedom, we have responsibility. that is the face of the biblical witness. i'm going to leave it there because i'm getting a little carried away. [applause] >> really quickly a think it's important for us to understand obery that there is an argument to be made. that is to say you've could posit the view that the gospel is this, so we can do the textual analysis and show that jesus spoke about the poor x number of of times into this particular interpretation by the right is a distortion. that is the beginning of an argument but when we look at the coalition around in california mormons and black folks, there's a kind of real baseline mobilization of interest. but when i am in new jersey and what john called jersey in jerusalem so i was confused by the title. [inaudible] but the idea of all of these black teacher standing behind chris christy who is decimating the educational system, who is demonizing public teachers, who is killing black folks. but they have an argument. they are making claims on the basis of their christian witness. what what i am saying is over the course of over the last few decades what has stood in for christianity as such has been a particular conservative interpretation of what it means to be christian. and in its wake are aggressive christians have acted like they can't stand on their interpretation of what it means to be a christian and be committed and up what it means to be christian and to be dedicated to the poor so in some ways the public voice understanding has been this conservative voice that you want to say is wrong and then we witnessed the demobilization of more progressive voices within the christian voice. it seems to me what is needed is not to say that's just wrong and this is an interpretation. it seems to me we need more progressive christians to come out and make intensive intense arguments with extraordinary uses of social media, with the same kind of savvy that these folks coming out of of the mormon church and began to make the argument on christian morals that we can in fact support of this and that andersen that. do you see what i'm trying to say? >> that display i wrote "the politics of jesus." we have a new generation of folk but what we have to do is we are not saying it's wrong that these political stances are wrong. what we do have to point out though that in context the consolation of the vocalist excesses. the main concept is just us. we don't even talk about justice anymore and the second is righteousness, putting justice into action. we don't even talk about that anymore. so we don't have to say they are wrong but they are not fully informed and one last thing. i sit on the board of the public religion research institute in washington d.c. and we just put up this great survey that says that the younger generation there a more progressive christians to identify themselves as progressive christians then regressive -- don't know, conservative christians and what that means is that following the same trends we see a lot more progressive christians but we do have to draw a line and say look we have a text that was given a particular context and so it has a particular meaning and it's not all pie-in-the-sky. it has a particular social political and economic meaning and indications and we have to point that out and not be embarrassed about it and not -- be willing to say brother i love you but show me where that is. and much of what they say is not there. much of what they talk about has to do with doctrines and orthodoxies and jesus didn't know anything about it but that is christian. i think we can recognize in the same way they are diversities and dominations and traditions that represent what you are referring to is the black church but there've been competing interpretations over scripture so on one hand there is prosperity and one hand there is the progressive or prophetic and what we want to celebrate but how do we also think about more complicated, the more competent way the relation between the culture of black churches in the multiple ways in which they participate in american public life? we have in the wake of doma black preachers who are stepping up on one hand to say this is a right for all citizens regardless of race. at this time time they are saying that's not an endorsement on behalf of my church for same-sex marriage. so that we can read the scripture two different ways into different contexts. >> exactly and i think part of the genius sometimes the black church is we are able to hold tensions together. whether it's about lgbt issues, women in the pulpit, doma, marriage, all this other stuff we have been able to hold things together. the problem comes when we go over and decide we are not going to hold those things together anymore. let me talk about this. you talk about progressive christianity and since i'm a progressive christian i'm the person to speak about it. i want to tell a quick story. i wrote a op-ed about america's racist god. [applause] thank you, some of you read it. i got attacked by the right. i got attacked by fox sean hannity rush limbaugh and i'm saying the names out loud, all of them came at me this week. these people called me and p is c and everything they could call me except a child of god. why did they do that? because i had the nerve to critique this american gods, small g not be too mad. they said o'connor you are coming after god that i was coming up to their god. i was not coming after the god of the scriptures, the god that we know abraham isaac and jacob. i was talking about the god they worship, racism, the god they worship white supremacy so i know this is going to go out everywhere else but how many times can they e-mail my people and everything else. thank god i've got a great institution that takes care of me. i have tenure. i can get fired. a positive and for the people who called the schomberg this week to try to get me off this panel i hope you enjoyed the show. [applause] but wait, one more thing i want to say. this prophetic voice of progressive christianity is missing. we don't hear these voices anymore. it is violent because the voice of christianity we hear is a voice of complicity with the system and if we don't hear this voice of a radical christianity that will say that we need to be feeding the poor, that we need to care about these folks, that we need to call out this structural sin that is happening , if we don't have that radical boys because people are willing to do with the right is doing right now and to say, and i am fine with whatever they please. i'm not mad at them. i met at them when they can't -- they tell me i can't talk about race. they tell me we can't talk about racism because it's post-racial. if jesus came down and stood in front of the stage and had an afro-they would fall out. what i'm saying is this and let me be very brief. progressive christianity has to have a bigger voice. if we don't hear these voices it is not fair and so while we are doing that we need to have a voice. >> okay, i think progressive, it's hard because progressives are usually considered to be the more intellectually trained participants in the conversation but what really has to happen is either we have to have remedial christianity or like they did in in -- you have to get a renewal of your certificate every now and then. what we need to do is recognized that the older religious perspective is not so much wrong as jesus said and this is progressive. jesus says, i have a lot to tell you all that you were not able to bear in mind. however when the spirit of truth is, you will lead you to all truth which means the reason i came to you everything is because if i told you and you have not started as the questions the answer would have no meaning for you. what happens is the blood church has got to deal with the real questions that we are wrestling with. if the black church is not effectively addressing the trayvon martin situation, then we are not living up to our approach to the old tradition did this. you would twirl a chain and the person that the problem had to listen to the priests recite one of the poems of the tradition and when they person heard the issue even obliquely addressed that he was struggling with he would stop the priest and say stay right there and then together they would explore. i guess it's called the principle of correlation. if we don't get the people talking to the church about the problem that we are facing now, we do not live up to our african ancestry. now, my sense is we have got the trayvon thing. the church has got -- he would read from the sunday school guide and say what did you get out of that? what do you get out of the bible? in light of what's been going on in the criminal justice system as it is punctuated by the zimmerman situation. so what we have got to do is i think, let me tell you what has happened to me. i have read stuff for 50 years but now we have got some new problems crystallizing themselves before us. what do i think about the black church? we can talk all we want and cry all we want to about trayvon but if we do not get out of that the message that the lord gave elijah, this is a little preaching l.. the lord told elijah, elijah you need to specialize in fussing at erev. they called the prophetic because speaking truth to power. when god really anointed elijah again this is fascinating to me. the lord says now is elijah whereas in the past you concentrated on speaking truth to power i have got a new job for you. i want you to return to damascus and when you get there i want you to anoint hazy out as king and -- as king over israel and anoint elijah. which is to say used to spend your time cussing at kings and now i want you to make kings. the black church today stop crying now about trayvon so much as to see every black boy and girl in the street as possibly the new king or queen. we could concentrate on making kings and queens and not spending nearly as much time just fussing at the powers that be. then you will have done christianity, christianity that is appropriate for today. [applause] that is what i think we ought to do. >> in some ways that seems to -- we have 15 minutes before we open up for q&a but that gets to the core tension between the black churches and institutions that socializes american citizens as a primary space that produces american democrats through its various educational programs. at the same time there is the broader claim of part critiquing kings rule so i wonder all of you are invested and have some strong stringent critiques of the limits of black churches and institutions more generally but you also actively engage these churches. maybe before before we opened up i i would be interested to hear where do you see that side of hope? where do you see something being made out of nothing, something being made out of nothing, sort of the black tradition. is there a possibility that if the black church is dying some source of resurrection? is there an organization at the forefront of bringing together collaboration and where's the prospect for moving the -- forward in this moment? >> it's a real good question and my experience, there are a lot of folk in the pews, and the pulpit is largely in the way. they critique of clergy because folks know what's wrong. they know that something hasn't changed but if you are raised like i was initially, people from virginia and you have this old-time religion you know something is wrong but you don't know what to do about it. or you feel something is wrong but you don't know what it is. what that says is that remedial christianity has to be consciousness-raising christianity. for instance we touched on democracy but democracy is something that is not just some abstract word that is out there. something we really have to discuss. what are the limits of democracy? what does democracy asked for? are we in a democracy right now? what do we write -- have a right to ask for a democracy? that is just one thing and with regard to the bible i must must say and maybe it's because i'm a biblical scholar and a dedicated the last 25 or 30 years of my life to the history of language and the interpretation of the bible but i see that there are even some who know something is wrong and something has to change but until it's presented to them things remain the same. and so there has to be a think this real concerted effort, much more concerted than we have had before to say wait a minute. this is what it says here in context, to make it clear and though i make a real effort to raise consciousness in the church and the community and i've tried to do that in the looks i've written and i've tried to do that in the lectures i give and the speeches i give and the sermons that they used to invite me to give. and i think we all have to do that in our own way and see the church as a site of struggle, it a site of struggle. it's a place to go to be somebody into worship and all that but it's also a site of struggle to empower our people and to let them see that this faith that they believe in is not just for over there. jesus set the spirit of the lord is upon me. the spirit of the lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor which has institutional implications and liberation to the captives and free folk from jail. what are we talking about now? the prison industrial complex. all of these things are things on the ground. the lord's prayer is about politics and economics in making sure everyone has enough bread. lord please forgive our debt because we are beaten down by debt structures. we have to raise their consciousness and let them know that this is what it's really about. that is the power drill he has for us. >> it's great to be on stage with a bunch of preachers. it's hard when you are on the stage with a bunch of preachers. >> what does that mean. >> you know, i am teasing you. i'm thinking about philadelphia right now because i live there is no what the problems are with the teacher thinks i want to give a concrete example of what i think churches can be doing. a group of testers there have been instrumental in going out and helping people to protest the closing of the schools and the part -- firing of all these teachers. one of the things i've been thinking about is the historic role of the black church in education and now was currently happening in the educational system. we have these major cities in the nation that are firing teachers and not replacing them, closing schools. we are going to be in very bad shape in philadelphia so one of the things i think churches can do and i'm thinking about my friend at her church where she is getting people out there to protest and to do these kinds of things that we really need to do. it has to not just be the abstract. all of us here upon the stage can be abstract all the time but what i'm interested in is how can we build the bridge between the church and the academy? have come a public intellectuals about religion but also the intellectuals that work with religion to do something? i don't think it really means anything to me to get off of the stage and not advocate for the causes in a way that i can. so i do think something interesting is happening because all the services are dying in our major cities. churches are looked at as a place to get the services that they are not going going to to be a legit benefit on a financial means to do so and they think this creates the opportunity but it also creates a challenge and we have to figure out how that's going to come together. >> really quickly part of the reason why the church is being pushed forward to actually step in and social service delivery is precisely because his troublesome neoliberal state. the state function is to protect the workings of the market and everything else comes back for individual self-care and that's health care turns out to be simply our ability to make choices and the churches are being complicit in that. that is really complicated but true. what's interesting way of an example of what can happen in north carolina. so north carolina is off the chain. the republican takeover of the governor of the governor's house as well as the legislature has led to all sorts of -- behavior and to see a mobilization of churches and civil rights organizations and grass right -- grassroots organizations in the state that some of us know about because we have folks down on the front lines doing it and we are reading the blogs and we don't see it on cnn or "msnbc" a lot. we might see it on "msnbc" but the point is we have an example so churches have a model of how to mobilize around a particular issue. i just want to say this really quickly because we are running out of time. it's dark out here. it's like a -- out here. folks are catching hell out of here. since 2008 we have experienced a great black depression. folks are losing homes and they have lost their retirement. folks can't get jobs. in february we were at 14%. right now we are at 13.7% unemployment and those numbers are cooked. at the height of the summer teenage unemployment is jumping through the roof. we don't need to address negative reinforcement. they need jobs. 43.6% health care delivery. we are not getting it. we lived there. we are sleepwalking. and we are looking for the church to wake us up and part of what we don't want to hear is that some of these folk are complicitous and evil. i'm sorry to be polemical but it's dark out here. and we have got a black man in the white house but it's dark out here. trayvon martin has gotten so many people excited and elbows are getting sharp because folks want to march. the brother who organized the million for the march when nobody was talking about it, where is he? we see al sharpton and jessie getting in front of the microphone and talking. now we have ph.d. pundits and everything they want to say in the world about what's happening and what happened to trayvon martin. it's dark out here and people are playing games. do you see what i'm saying? it's in those moments that you want to hear a word, a fresh word to embolden the spirit to get us up so that we can see the business that is needed. the first thing i need to say and i'm going to say it has passed away as i can is that it's dark out here. and people are playing games. i can give less than a dam that we have our first african-american president. i am saying it on national television. the symbolic cash value of that is at zero. it's dark out here and what happens when it's dark? who was supposed to give us a clarion call pastor? where we supposed to hear the word? i don't know. >> speaking of remedial christianity -- [applause] i think maybe we have to start obery at an earlier level because take the situation where jesus finds a young daughter 12 years old dead and jesus comes in and he says child, get up in the actually raises the dead. that was a time when the black churches thought we had the ministry of raising the dead. we could do that but that's a little too tough for us now. the fascinating thing that i noticed is after jesus wakes up the girl from the dead and the mother and father say thank you jesus for raising our daughter from the dead jesus stops and says don't be praising me so much. give her something to be now. that's the most fascinating thing. here he has performed a miracle and then he takes time to say, she has been sick. she can't go to school, she can play with the kids unless you give her something to d and of the next chapter almost as if to reinforce that their 5000 people out there and they have been listening to the kingdom and the good preaching and jesus says give them something to eat. what i would like to suggest is that maybe if the black church decides we are not going going going to be to have been to the specialization raising the dead but we can't give folks something to eat. that means that this is a manageable problem almost been less you know the magnitude of hunger in the united states. so what has to happen is we have to get nerve enough to say to church people that when you pay your taxes, that is your lunch with five or early loaves and two fishes. now you have got to go until the congress persons don't fuss at them, just tell them the all the lord needs my tax money to feed some folks and if you're legislature is cutting off food stamps for some people that that's all they have got you were in trouble. just say jesus needs my lunch. i just paid my taxes and is y'all ain't going to mess me up with my jesus. unless you are going to our range to feed these hungry people i am in trouble. if i'm in trouble you are going to be in trouble. [applause] .. >> all right. so we have a question. if you could, if you please state your question as clearly and concisely, and if you have a particular member of the panel you'd like to address it to, that'd be great as well. >> thank you for your performance. thank you. i find it remarkable that when we hire people to run our churches, we want them to have a prophetic voice. but instead, we call them pastor, and we want them to be administrator, financial so thao they instead, instead of being a progressive voice, they wind up running an institution. sot progressive voices fall for the main problem of which are. s -- churches, that we're civil religion. what would be wrong with hiring someone for a church and calling him prophet? and we would expect the main job he or she did was bring togethei a community of compassion and justice and with the spirit's help, help us to learn that salvation comes through al compassionate and just communitc struggling, struggling to findng salvation? salvation? >> okay. i think my answer would be that you should stop putting pastors up if you think the primary focus and energy is found in that. i would rather go with james luther adams called the property fete -- prophet of all believer. everybody who is brought to the church and baptized should be told that part of what be baptized is in to is a tradition. each of you is called upon to fulfill a vocation. when you get red i i -- ready to hire a pastor, find a pastor whose primary task it is to mobilize the energy present in the people or the stimulate to be prothreatic with respect to the responsibility. we can't expect the preacher -- [applause] you want me to tell you something? the preacher is most frequently primarily a reflecter of what these people are as well as what god is calling them to be. i would rather -- in fact -- let me say. what you're calming for is i think we need another great awaking. that is a revitallyization of the culture so almost all of the majors institutions know we need spiritual rerevisittization that's what happens. i would like to be -- if you hired somebody who was primarily going to be a prophet. number one, that's audacious. many call for the fear -- but let's challenge the church to fulfill the pastor, the prothreatic function. and let the lord pick out some specialist because the dna and our personality inventory will say some folks will do that and others. here's why we do it. some folks to march, other folks to pray. so the marchers don't get weary on thuation. [applause] maybe to make sure we get the question up here. maybe we can take the questions back to back and give you a chance to respond so we don't run out of time. >> mine is a quick one. thank you. the panel is great. very eye opening. on one point the person on the end -- i'm sorry i don't know your name. [inaudible] you said the church sob the site of struggling. that struck me. i was wondering, like, i feel like, like, the church could be the side of struggling. i'm whether or not you feel that -- anyone on the panel, the church ha to be on the side of struggle ago whether or not the energy put in to make the church struggle is really worth it. because we can also be putting energy directly in to political activity that is really not, you know, complicated by the mission of the church. >> that's a good question. let me get a couple of more questions in so we have time. get them all. >> hi my name is -- [inaudible] black and i'm a cure rater. i'm going to do have something swt art. in term of the tight of the panel, the struggle for american democracy and church. i grew up in the church of god and christ, so, you know, the salvation is still there. it's part of a me. i'm still passioned but i'm also ab artist. what the lord has given me some years ago was go to the church and struck the church, show the church, the lack of using the arts in the struggle, the lack of using the art to bring the people in to the church. so my question is looking back at the harlem renaissance, that's the first movement addressing social, educational, and culture change in america. low do you see the church being a part of that struggle? is it or not part of a struggle today? >> another great question. >> thank you, again, as well for the panel. it's enlightening. i also had a quick question. my question was have taken the tbhiebl blueprint of, you know, all things. the belief. the little bit of research that i've done, you know, africa had a, you know, had, you know, values, rights, religion and everything like that. why have we abandoned that? could there be some answers for us, you know, african-american in that african religion? outside of christianity. >> yes. i've been the deacon in my church for the last tbel of years. i don't make the distinction between religion and politics. i think it's the social movement. my question is, you know, the black community has churches all over the place. you can go in every corner. how do we effectively get them involved? i'm telling you, if you have all the black churches in one direction, it will be powerful. >> i would like to also thank all the panelists for what has been an insightful conversation. what i'm hearing is that there's a crisis in the black church and, you know, i appreciate and support, i think, hendrix leading the panelists to have us think about many things. the black church doctrine around radical, social democracy. and so i support that as well. but i would like us to go a little bit further and think about, you know, why is that we don't see ourselves as black people in the church? why haven't the u.s. black church been able to incorporate something that perhaps one of the questions already asked african culture traditions. other black communities in the caribbean and latin america have been able to singtize -- what about the black church reenvisioning. taking a more critical, you know, examination of the history cam theologies see ourselves in the sacredness of the church. it has been done elsewhere, it can be done, i think, that perhaps it may, you know, make the black church in the u.s. a little bit more legitimate, you know, at least people like me look like me. >> one more question and give you a chance to weigh in. >> thank you. good evening. i enjoyed the panel so much. and i think that religion right now in the black community is very important. as [inaudible] i still have that belief. some of my family are catholic. [inaudible] became politicians -- [inaudible] one of the things i was concerned about our youth. the church now as the congregation get older and die off we haven't been bringing enough young people to the church. we need to find a way to bring them back to the churches. i belong to a church that has a thick youth in the church. and after the absence of -- [inaudible] trayvon not guilty for zimmerman -- we were upset about it. i cried a lot about it. and not there but assistant pastor said one thing that was profound and i have to take it to heart he said that trayvon died that it was an -- it wasn't an evil face that killed him. it was an evil system. the stand your ground must be stopped. >> we have a question of youth, mobilization of all the churches, the relevance of other religious tradition to the church, the art, and the viability of the church on the sight of strewing l. we have five minutes. if you want to weigh in briefly. >> the church -- what i meant is as a basis for movement, does it make more sense? i don't stay in the church and struggle in the church. our empowered to go for it and do must be done. not just visually empowered but politically empowered as well. and second was what? -- [inaudible] the churches have to be -- [inaudible] they have to nurture the people and change the world. that's the responsibility for all churches, not all churches responsibility but they have to do that. what that says is that we go beyond institutional maintenance. we get empowered to go outside the wall of the church and must be that we want to change the society and change the world. not just go out and save soul and bring them back to the church and do what you do. you -- you see what i'm saying? it has to be a real basis of movement to really be the choice jesus envisioned. >> some of the work in the church is preparation, socialization, learning the tools, the skills to engage if broader activity. so what we engage in struggle in local organizations and institutional space within civil society. those are training ground for when we stop out of the institutional space. it has some -- i understand. i would like to respond the question about getting black churches together. it was my privilege to participate some years ago in what was called the congress of national black churches. it brought together the major black denomination, the heads of the major black denominations to be in collaboration with everyone. this organization was funded by a foundation. as a law as the foundation money kept coming, we were able, at least, to strengthen the institution, but then as point came when it was asked that each denomination make a contribution to the coalition, and beyond that, they were asked, well, give us your mailing list so that we can appeal to your people. the bishop and the major leaders president of the organizations were fine as long as somebody else was funding it. they were all at the survival within their own institution and carefully mating their list let somebody else brick about other division of the resources. my thinking that is until black institutions have economic viability sufficiently, to think about being sacrificial for a larger movement beyond institutionalization is not going happen. so that's a good problem to say that marginal economic existence is the fame of most of our institution. and none of us can be what god wants us to be until our community is lifted above the mere survival level. which means that you don't have to teach us to be political. we have to, as charge -- churches say, we can't be all that jesus wants us to be if poverty continues to be the defining realty regarding most of the member of our church. it becomes necessary for every church not only to ask how do we keep the institution going, but how do we manage to do the hard work? that's a real struggle. the hard work of getting our fair share of the resources. and god called us to do what we are called to do. i gave the resources somebody must be hording it. and the word redistribution, which was the major problem with the president, because when he said the word some folks said he's not our man. we have to recognize we cannot be the chris christians we ought to be apart from redistribution of pressure resources so we can say yes to the lord in substantiative ways. >> real quick. [applause] i know we are about to leave. i want to say this. this is not a direct answer to one of the questions. it has something to do with the church's capacity. i think churches around the country need to focus on one of three issues. they need to figure out how to mobilize the con gracious around education, problem of the criminal justice system, and the problem of jobs. for example, if you are organizing around the criminal justice system. how do you engage in a preventing church -- go back in to jail. or you mobilize around undermining mandatory minimum. how do you do it? in other words i'm saying every church should organize itself around a particular issue focused in around education, criminal justice system, or jobs. we can focus our resources in one of the areas around a particular issue in one of these issues then the churches can begin to do some serious work. i think that can make a tangible effect impact in the -- the reasons and religions within the church. ting would be hard for some churches, not all, but some to embrace this. because they have deep seated theological issue. having said that, i think the place to look for this kind of vitality are in african immigrant churches already here in the country who are doing dpe nominally well. if you want to have a change about what you want to see what a black church looks like. you need to go to an african church that is from an immigrant perspective. either from the caribbean or africa itself. that has a lot of vie brans. vie brans. what is important we need think about how do we incorporate our ancestors? how do as live though this is a cosmologist we don't see that separation? because we have got to think a lot like western thinking. this is the problem. once we let go of the western thinking, there becomes more possibility for spiritual life and listen to the voice of our ancestors who are telling us and -- showing us what we need to develop peanut don't have to struggle the church neesdz to be a place of life, fruitfulness. a place where people can be built instead of torn down. last throughout sister. we can talk about it after wards. it's a hugely important piece. without the art and the play and these things things where that happened that was a drawing or sculpture, music, all the things produced out of the black church. we need another renaissance. we absolutely need another renaissance. because we can't just keep singing the same old thing and expect the youth to be there. they're not coming. [applause] >> let's give our panel one final round of applause. plls [applause] all right. we want to quickly just recognize that we have reached the end of a great day of programming. that we want to thank all of our day's sponsors, including colombia university, our host, as well as which is c-span which has been broadcasting all day as well as the host of other sponsors out on the street and in the reception area all day long. most importantly, i want to thank you for sticking around for the final conversation. please give yourself a hand. [applause] with that note. good night to our p >> this event was part of the 15th annual harlem book fair. for more information visit qbr.com. >> next from nevada we hear about samuel clemens, also known as mark twain, and his time in carson city. local historian guy rocha shares details of the author's life in the area. >> twain was a very young man when he was here in carson city. he arrives in 1861. he's, what, 25, going on 26 years old. this is a very formative period in his life. and it's the experiences he has here, all the things he does and then the things that he writes and then the notoriety that he gets beginning in san francisco and new york city. this laid the foundation for the man who would become one of the greatest writers in american history. samuel clemens came with his brother on august 14, 1861. his brother had been appointed by president abraham lincoln as secretary of nevada territory, and sam -- looking for some opportunities and maybe getting away from the civil war -- saw the chance for riches, perhaps. certainly a job. his brothers had suggested he might have a job for him, so they boarded a stagecoach in st. joseph, missouri, and found their way to carson city, nevada. and when they arrived here, it wasn't too long already sam discovered there wasn't much in the way of a job opportunity. and this is where he began to explore nevada territory. he went up to lake tahoe, and what he was doing there was trying to establish what is called timber claims. he was looking at mining, but if he can get money selling timber, he's going to do that. unfortunately, he starts a fire up at the lake. he would go to aurora in what was then ez me rell da county. come back, hang around carson city with his brother a little bit, then he'd go up to later in the year after the first territorial session where he found some work covering the session, he went out to unionville in humboldt county looking for a silver mine. he's always looking to make money. one thing about sam clemens is how do i get rich quick. and, of course, it's very, very elusive for him. he comes back, again meets with his brother, spends time trying to find work, covers the second territorial legislative session and then decides he's going to make it big in aurora. and, of course, he mines his brother first, gets a lot of money from his brother. trust me, i'll find the big one. and then writing for more money and more money and getting nowhere doing this. he gets some extra work by being a stringer for the territorial enterprise in virginia city. and so now he's starting to write. he'd written before in his life for his brother and with his newspaper in keokuk and other places. but here he is, he's using the name josh, the pen name josh, and he's talking about his experiences in aurora. and he's beginning to learn the craft now, beginning to develop this voice. and a lot of it's based on exaggeration and satire, hyperbole and, well, the mine didn't play out. it ended up being an empty hole. the but the territorial prize said come to virginia city, and we'll give you a full-time reporter's position. and that's what he did in september of 1862. at that point he's writing all the time for the paper, and he's developing a profile. he's also writing some stories that people are enjoying and getting some attention. he's starting to make a name for himself. we're here today in front of his brother's house. he would find his way back here before his brother lived here and get the name mark twain. now, where did that come from? before he came to nevada territory, he worked on the mississippi river, and he became a steam boat captain. and the term mark twain is two fathoms. okay, deep. they would plum the water and so for the draft of the steam boat they would say mark twain. well, he liked that, apparently, when he came here. this is the story that's generally accepted. there's another story about him having a tab at the bar, and if he had someone with him, he'd say mark twain, mark two, put it on my tab. i think they do that in virginia city for tourists. but i think the generally accepted point of view is from being a steam boat captain. so here he is, he's writing for the territorial enterprise, first time he puts mark twain, and it's published february 3rd of 1863. from then on he is mark twain. and his stock would grow as his stories would be picked up. it wouldn't be just in virginia city. a newspaper in aurora would pick it up, newspapers in sacramento would pick it up, newspapers in san francisco. mostly in the western united states through the use of the telegraph. and he's very, very funny although he says some things that they don't know if it's the truth or not. are they hoaxes? he has one story about a family not far from carson city, just east of town here, where the father goes berserk, kills the whole family over stock fraud, okay? scalps his wife and brings her scalp into town when he turns himself in. it's horrible, horrible. everybody printed it as though it was news. and he says, well, no, i told you, i gave you a hint here. a lot of people -- he made some enemies because sometimes he didn't really give it away. and so i want to capture mark twain. he's pursuing money. he likes to play games, hoaxes. he likes to manipulate be perception. people enjoy his writing, but they don't know sometimes when he's telling the truth or not. got himself in trouble here in carson city with a women's organization called -- they were promoting the sanitary fund. it was like the precursor to the red cross for union soldiers, getting them money for their medical needs. and he said, well, some of that money's going to a missong nation society back east, interracial mixing. wow, that is very tough stuff to accuse anybody of at that time. of course, he's from missouri, and he has his own kind of racial ideas and dynamics that'll play out in huckleberry finn. but those women take exception, and their husbands take exception. and he also says with a rival newspaper editor that they haven't been paying towards the fund. they're not coming through with their money. well, again, he said i didn't mean that to be published. when everything goes crazy, now he's backing off again. i didn't mean that. shouldn't have happened. there are a lot of people so upset, there's some talk of a duel. in fact, he gets in it with the other virginia city newspaper editor, and he essentially challenges him to a duel. impugning my integrity. of course, he doesn't plan to do it. i don't think he had the guts to do it. ultimately, things got so hot he high tailed it out of nevada territory on may 29, 1964. and he went to san francisco. so he was here between august 14th 1861 and may 29, 1864. and in that time is when sam clemens became mark twain not only in name, but where he got that voice. you know, it was the crucible, the experiences. and he was getting attention when he met artimus ward in 1863 on a tour. he introduced him to the new york city audiences in the mercury, okay? he was being published in the golden era in san francisco. so this was the beginning of mark twain. after mark twain heft the nevada territory -- left the nevada territory in 1864 and went to san francisco and got himself in trouble down there, by the way, he went to the hawaiian islands, the sandwich islands. and with his experience there, people wanted him to tour and share that experience. now, the first time he ever spoke for a paid audience was here in carson city at the presbyterian church just south of here. and it raised money to complete the church which his brother was a trustee in that church. well, now he's looking at the big bucks and going through the mining towns of california, the mother lode, and then to virginia city and carson city. so he came back in 1866 for the first time since he high tailed it, and there were some people who wanted to play a little trick on sam up on what's called the divide near virginia city and on the comstock, and they robbed him, robbed him of his watch. he was incensed, he was so angry. you know, this was so terrible. and then his friends returned his watch, and he was even angrier. he could dish it out, but he couldn't take it, and that -- mark twain always had a little soft spot that way. that it was easier for him to play with people, but he didn't like to be played with himself. that incident up on the divide is one of the great incidents that kind of show mark twain's temperament, you know? because he was quick to anger, and he didn't like people playing with him. so he came back one other time. after he went to europe and the middle east which led to the writing of the book "the innocence abroad," everybody wanted to hear about that experience, and he was? san francisco. -- he was in san francisco. he had been writing stories in the newspaper about that experience, putting that book together. so he made another tour, and he came back here in april and may of 1868, and he arrived at the time in virginia city to watch a man hanged. he had never witnessed anything like that. it was a legal execution for the murder of a well known prostitute by the name of julia. and he describes in the chicago republican -- see, getting work in stringing for other newspapers -- in a very, very descriptive way how this man died. and i remember the final word, aargh, all the life and blood going out of his body. and i think this moved him to a point where he was opposed to capital punishment when he saw the way this man died. but he did find his way here down to carson city, reacquainted himself with people. went back to virginia city, and when he bid everybody good-bye including his editor, joe goodman, it was the last time mark twain, samuel clemens, ever came back to nevada territory. the perception of sam clemens/mark twain is the infanter terrible, the bad boy. with the passage of time, it's going to modify because his stock's going to go up in the country. in 1866 he was, memories weren't that short, and there were still people that wanted to do to him what he had done to others. by the time he came back in 1868, he's becoming a national figure. and then, of course, he never comes back after 1868, but he's embraced, he's now the great american writer. oh, he's one of us. people forgot his sins, his many, many sins because they were so proud that he had spent time here, and i think probably what was the critical publication that changed it was "roughing it." ..
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