Update, Thursday, February 24, 2021

My sermon is this Sunday is Misunderstood Ministers: Jeremiah Wright.

In 2008 Dr, Wright addressed the National Press Club in Chicago. His remarks provide important insight into his faith and his work. Here is a short excerpt from that address.

Now, in the 1960s, the term “liberation theology” began to gain currency with the writings and the teachings of preachers, pastors, priests, and professors from Latin America. Their theology was done from the underside. 

Their viewpoint was not from the top down or from a set of teachings which undergirded imperialism. Their viewpoints, rather, were from the bottom up, the thoughts and understandings of God, the faith, religion and the Bible from those whose lives were ground, under, mangled and destroyed by the ruling classes or the oppressors. 

Liberation theology started in and started from a different place. It started from the vantage point of the oppressed. 

In the late 1960s, when Dr. James Cone’s powerful books burst onto the scene, the term “black liberation theology” began to be used. I do not in any way disagree with Dr. Cone, nor do I in any way diminish the inimitable and incomparable contributions that he has made and that he continues to make to the field of theology. Jim, incidentally, is a personal friend of mine. 

I call our faith tradition, however, the prophetic tradition of the black church, because I take its origins back past Jim Cone, past the sermons and songs of Africans in bondage in the transatlantic slave trade. I take it back past the problem of Western ideology and notions of white supremacy. 

I take and trace the theology of the black church back to the prophets in the Hebrew Bible and to its last prophet, in my tradition, the one we call Jesus of Nazareth. 

The prophetic tradition of the black church has its roots in Isaiah, the 61st chapter, where God says the prophet is to preach the gospel to the poor and to set at liberty those who are held captive. Liberating the captives also liberates who are holding them captive…

Following worship on Sunday (11;30ish) there will be an online Soul Food Dinner. There will be sharing of recipes, music and a program featuring our children and youth.

A recommendation from Beverly Bitagon, a new friend of LABC

Saturday, Feb 27 at 3 – 4:30pm PST/ 6 – 7:30pm EST

Virtual Screening of Rhythms of the Land Trailer
Note the different time zones: 3 pm – 4:30 pm PST and 6 pm -7:30 pm EST

Together in Spirit meets tonight at 6:00.