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Spirituality: Why I Don't Do Kwaanza
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By Bruce A. Dixon
December 19, 2014 - blackagendareport.com
I don't do Kwaanza, I just don't. I never have, and the very thought of it evokes some difficult memories and feelings for me. It's not the holiday's religious trappings or its Afro-syncretic fusion of Jewish menorahs, Swahili words, Kemetic, Christian and other rituals. I understand people do have a perfect human right to adopt or make up the cultural and religious practices that suit them. Rastafarianism, Voudon and Candomblé all borrow from multiple traditions, as does Islam from Judaism and Christianity, and Christianity from Judaism, Greek and Roman sources, and so on. So I have no quarrel whatsoever with those who celebrate and find value in Kwaanza.
But for many of us who took part in or were simply aware of the Black Panther Party in the late 60s and early 70s, the Kwaanza holiday is inseparable from the career and persona of its inventor, Ron Karenga, now a tenured professor in California. Back in the day, Karenga headed up an organization called US. As a tool of COINTELPRO, the federal counterintelligence program directed at movement organizations, Karenga's US organization murdered 2 leading members of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins, and 2 more in San Diego, Sylvester Bell and John Savage. To my knowledge, Mr. Karenga has never expressed the faintest remorse or regret for these murders, or for his part in furthering the nefarious aims of federal and local police agencies in their assault upon the movement of those times. Karenga was later convicted along with his wife, of kidnapping and torturing two women in his own organization, a crime for which he served 4 years in prison, and one of which he still claims to be innocent. Some of Karenga's close and credible associates however, like former US chair Wesley Kabaila, maintain Karenga was not only responsible for those women's torture, but that it was part of an ongoing pattern over the years.
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Spirituality: The Politics Behind "One" God
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Western Definition of Monotheism masks Imperialism
By Corey Gilkes
May 01, 2014
So, following on from the last two articles, I want to look now at monotheism, the belief in a one and only god. To be more precise, the Eurocentric definition of it. What REALLY makes that concept so morally superior? What makes it more legitimate and righteous than the (so-called) polytheistic belief systems that came before? I'll tell you, nothing.
And as if what I just said isn't blasphemous enough, I'll further argue that that specific definition of oneness – supreme singularity – filled a philosophical, not spiritual, need for a culture that came to understand relationships only in terms of absolute power. As such, the way that that culture misappropriated the spoken and written word made the "conventional" Christian ethic guilty of the same idolatry it accuses non-Christian faiths. They just repackaged it nicely and backed it up with weapons. Again, doh vex with me, go and check out de history.
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Spirituality: Interrogating the Sex of God
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By Corey Gilkes
April 09, 2014
Continuing from my last long ramble, I want to offer my opinions on the issue of using sex-specific terms in Western religious tradition – in other words, the "sex" of "god." To the deeply pious – and perhaps even the moderately pious – that kinda talk is flat out preposterous, nothing short of sacrilegious and a mockery of religious beliefs. I agree, it is.....actually no, I don't agree, it's not. In really progressive societies, including the colonising one that put the rubbish in we head in de firs place, these are the kinds of conversations that take place. In any event, essentially every one of the major religions, particularly the Abrahamic faiths, started out acknowledging the Divine Feminine principles and then they all in one form or another concealed and wrote them out of their narratives. The only thing that is preposterous is *why*. Hey, doh vex with me, study the history very carefully and then take it up with your minister who withheld this information all these years. They went to a seminary or theological college so they damn well supposed to know about all this.
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