Introducing me. This is the first time we've met, but I'm glad that he's here at Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, because you need a Presbyterian around sometimes. And I'm so happy that you invited me to be your lecturer on this occasion. I feel like I've been at a banquet. And I just have been able to take the orders. And that's all because I feel rushed, you know? We just got here and here we are at the end. We have to leave. And I've been so excited to be with Dr. Taylor and with Henry and Ella mitchell. Other folks that I've known for years and haven't had a chance to talk to. I called Dr. Gardner Taylor this morning. I said, you know, you're going to be leaving quickly after your your lecture and I need to talk to you after I've got some things I want to ask you so that when he comes in, I want to try to get him aside for just a few minutes to talk. It's been great to be here with him, but we haven't had a chance to talk and we're living in the same hotel. But the schedule has not permitted conversation. I've also been excited by you, you students, because you've come to me with questions. I glory in your inquisitive minds and your zeal for ministry. So many of you have come to me to ask me about something I've written or something I've said, and it takes me back to my teaching days. And I've been out of the classroom for 14 years. I just wish I had an opportunity to stay around a while. Although I know that if that opportunity was given, there would be some other problems that would not permit me to do it. But I thank you, Dr. Cheney and the Planning Committee for this honor and this great opportunity to be with young minds again and to sit with the elders and see how we can communicate with one another. Now, yesterday in my first lecture, I tried to give a kind of overview. Of African-American spirituality. By lifting up the supposedly antithesis between pragmatic and utilitarian interests and the mystique or the mystery of spirituality in terms of seeking the presence of God and living in that transcendent presence. Those two things have been held apart. Concern for social, political action, for justice, and seeking the presence of God and living in the emotionality of the experience of the living God. And I tried to bring them together, as you recall, in my analysis. By using the term pragmatic spirituality or using the term that Singletary uses when he describes the life and work of Richard Allen, the founder of the African American African Methodist Episcopal Church, he called Allen a pragmatic mystic that's bringing the two together in the way that I want. I wanted to say yesterday. I tried to say that that pragmatic or utilitarian concern, that concern about the nitty gritty about the everyday life is what John and Betty and other African theologians have said is the essence of the African religions. While they did experience the ecstasy of worship. With the drums and the singing and the dancing. They still were concerned about the realities and the imperatives and the demands of everyday life. Food and water and family problems and colonialization, which was one of the great tragedies of the African continent. After the 1870s. African religion is concerned about those. And to the extent that we are Afrocentric. As a black church. And that's what we've said. We've said we are the African people and we are a spiritual people. To the extent that that is correct. We tapped into. That pragmatic mysticism. Of traditional African religion. But you recall I said something happened to us along the way. I didn't analyze it completely. And. And I didn't have time to do that and won't have time to do it today. But I suspect. At the slave Masters Preacher had something to do with that. And I suspect that. Charles Fox, Perram, and the whites who broke away from Seymour at Aziz's Street. But still exercise influence over black Pentecostals had something to do with that. And that's a church of God in crisis just now breaking out of that conservative white evangelicalism. And restoring and refreshing. Its connection to that radical slave religion of the 1850s up to the beginning of the Civil War. That great decade. Before the Civil War. When Henry MacNeill. Turner. Was a symbol of that. Pragmatic mysticism. That Richard Allen had. Now, the day I want to be a little more constructive. I want to be constructive in the sense of. Talking about affirmations that we say out of our experience as African-American Christians and negations. And I think it's important to recognize that both are there. We have to say yes to some things, but we also have to say no to some things and that no can be constructive. You see a sign that says no trespassing on an on a on a electrified fence that will electrocute you if you touch it. It says no trespassing, but it's constructive in the sense that it keeps you away from it and keeps you alive. So I want to talk about two affirmative and four negatives, which seem to me. To bring together to integrate this spirituality and this utilitarian or pragmatic interests within the context of the present day. When we were surrounded by many temptations. Many idols, many things that pull us away from that traditional radicalism that belonged to our forefathers into a kind of passivity. And to a kind of complacency. About the realities of the hood. Which we ought to be addressing. As African-American Christians. What I am calling pragmatic spirituality. Was, first of all, a defense mechanism. A defense mechanism of the first black slaves. Against what they believed and they were correct. What they believed was the forced spiritual ization underscore that term, the false spiritual ization of some white Christian slave holders and their preachers. These slave holders and their preachers presented Christianity as being totally inward and otherworldly and passive. Concerning the slaves actual condition in the world in which she was living under captivity. That's the kind of Christianity they imbibed. George, your boss and ex-slave, was interviewed in 1863, and this is what he said. Loretta Lynch The religious feeling is used to induce the slaves to feel that they owe a duty to their masters and mistresses much more than to their great maker above certain parts of the scripture about obeying masters and mistresses. They quote very much, but not in the right light. End of quote. Jane Smith was a slave in Virginia, and he was interviewed by Henry Bibb in 1852. And here's the way he described how some of the slaves were introduced to religion and to their proposal to be baptized. They were interviewed before baptism, and this is the way he he describes it. On the day appointed. He was accordingly examined as the slave. Many questions were asked of him, to which he answered and gave general satisfaction. But before he was discharged, his master had one or two questions to ask, such as Do you feel as if you loved your master better than you ever did before? And as if you could do more work, you would do it better. End of quote. Do you feel willing to bear correction when it is given to you like a good and faithful servant without fretting, murmuring or running away as heretofore has been your practice? If so, it is evidence that you are a good boy and you may be baptized. He was finally received into the church and baptized. That's a corruption of Christianity. And there are many instances of this kind of false spiritual ization of the faith. There's ample evidence that the slave masters and their preachers inculcated a type of spirituality for black converts that would pacify them. Take their minds off of earthly things and intoxicate them with a kind of otherworldliness that focused on heaven rather than on their everyday lives. These masters were inclined. To encourage their intelligent slaves to become Christians in the first place. They were not inclined to encourage them to become Christians in the first place. As a matter of fact, in the first 150 years, there was very little proselytizing. Of the slaves by. The white Christians, especially the Episcopalians, the Anglicans. It's not until the baptism the Methodists became above ground that you do really have an introduction of Christianity to the slaves. But after some of the missionaries persuaded the owners that Christianity in the quarters would be better for their slaves than the inflammatory African religions, which they brought with them through the Middle Passage. Some of the owners. Even the Anglicans, Presbyterians and others relented and permitted evangelization. But most slave owners made no bones about distorting the Christian faith. My spiritual izing the benefits of joining the church and making the religion of Jesus serve the purpose of keeping their captive, singing and praying and dancing. The ring shout. Instead of plotting mischief. And rebellion. In the long run. Of course, that strategy failed. Our ancestors were not fools. Even before they could read the Bible for themselves, they knew intuitively. That the white man's religion was calculated to keep them in bondage. After being processed their lives, their recollection of their own religion back in Africa, and their own good sense that everybody talking about heaven ain't goin there made many of them publicly accept, but secretly resists. The false virtualization. Of white missionary Christianity. They were intelligent enough to carve out for themselves a more sensible and realistic faith. I go back to Peter Paris, as I did yesterday, and emphasis at Princeton Seminary, who supports this view. And he writes and I quote him, Even though the slaves were forbidden to learn how to read and write. And in spite of the biblical indoctrination they sometimes receive from their slaveholders, they gradually perceive an alternative gospel. From that which they received from their owners. The new gospel that they enthusiastically embraced portrayed God as the liberator of all a press peoples and opposed to all who are bent on maintaining oppressive systems. Such a god could be easily conjoined with the character of the God known and served by their forebears back in Africa. Further their belief that God wills that the good of all people should be realized in community is both common, Paris says. Comp is both commensurate with and expansive of the African traditional understanding of God. That is to say, their Christian God serves the well-being of the race. That is the tribal group in particular, and of all people universally. End of quote. In the next century. The Great A street revival of 1905 to 1908 in Los Angeles inspired more black Christians to adopt the mystical and conservative emphases of holiness and Pentecostalism. Of that time, this more effusive fan of spirituality begs a more complex analysis. But I only want to say now that while it was closer to the African original, it was so influenced by the Orthodox thinking and the Orthodox theology of the two great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th century, as interpreted by renegade white preachers like Charles Fox Parham, that the biblical inerrancy. And fundamentalism in theology was substituted for the social and political militants of the black church. Abolitionism developed in the pre-Civil War period. White holiness and Pentecostalism tended to subordinate and spiritual allies the more pragmatic carryovers from the West African religions. Consequently the surge of revival spirituality. Was strongly least. Throughout most of the 19th and 20th century with the right wing conservatism of mainline white Christianity. Not completely so. Not completely so because the National Baptist Convention, for example, in 1895, fought continuously against control by the White American Baptist Home Mission Society and the American Baptist Publication Society and the Southern Baptist Convention. National Baptist Convention, formed in 1895, fought for a long time against that white evangelical control from the north and from the south. Nevertheless, many congregations of the National Baptist Convention were influenced in their theology and in their biblical hermeneutics by the standard brand of theology and spirituality, which, aside from the social gospel movement, came down on the side of the racist status quo. That same influence can be seen in the history of the African Methodists and the black churches of a predominantly white denominations like my own Presbyterian Black Presbyterian Church. The Afrocentric spirituality of the slave cabins and the brush arbor churches that the Patti rulers is trying their best to snuff out. Was corrupted by the petty rulers, preachers, and all of us, all of us, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, whatever, drank from the cup of that racist spirituality of the late 19th and early 20th century. Dr. Benjamin Mays, in his epochal study of the sermons preached by black churches in the 16 centers of the nation between 1930 and 1931, found that more than 54 were distinctly otherworldly in character and contain what some might call, and I'm quoting him now, a naive conception of God. That is to say that they espoused these black preachers of that period, a religion that was mainly compensatory. That's the term that you recall Mays uses, mainly compensatory and fundamentalist following the main outline of conservative white evangelicalism. Now, be careful here. You have to note that Mays is not saying that this influence was totally negative for us or the African-American churches. To the contrary, the idea of a God who is almighty and can do all things for those who trust in him, a God who has prepared a place in heaven for the poor and oppressed, who suffer injustice and degradation on Earth, a God who does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, enabled Black Christians over a period of more than 200 years to transcend bitter slavery. And many of the troubles of this world. Mays does not discount the significance of this compensatory type of black religion that he found in his study. He does make very clear, however, that this kind of spirituality is more often quiet, stick and reactionary than it is oriented to liberation and to the overturning of the status quo. May sees both trends. In African-American ideas of God and religion. But he sees the boys see an influence frequently missing. In the spirituality of the churches that he studied in the 1930s. And now I quote him. The idea of God containing these two widely opposite trends the compensatory and those which move along the lines of social rehabilitation developed simultaneously in the same period particularly. Is this true of the ideas in prayers and sermons and in Sunday school literature? The masses on the whole see no connection. Between God and social and economic reconstruction. On the other hand, it seems clear that some ministers and a few Sunday school writers have been definitely influenced by those forces that aim to perfect some kind of social change. But for the most part. The social, educational and economic upheavals resulting from World War One, 1914 and its aftermath has not produced. A similar upheaval. And the thinking of the masses of Negroes with respect to the idea of God. The period prior to the Civil War seems to be less compensatory with respect to God than the modern period since 1914. So, writes Mayes in that. Pathfinding study. Of the Negros idea of God. So it was the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the influence of Baptist leaders like Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. Gardner. Taylor and those in the National Baptist Convention Inc. who followed him in the crisis of September six, 1961, which led to the organization of the National Progressive Baptist Convention. These people brought us back. To the social, gospel and social justice militants of a black church in the decade before the Civil War. Among the Methodist leaders like Herbert Belshaw of the Army Zion Church, Vinton are Anderson of the A.M.E. Church. Gilbert H. Caldwell of the United Methodist played a similar role among the great Methodist denominations. The Civil rights and Black Power movement of the mid 20th century was a great turning point, a great turning point. For our understanding of authentic Christian spirituality. But my point is that there has been considerable retrenchment. In the pulpits and the pews. Since those restless days. While our churches are more concerned about justice and social progress today than their white contemporaries are. Samuel DeWitt Proctor could say in his memoirs, which I assume all of you have read. Quote. It has always bothered me that Christianity had become an antiquated religion rather than a living one. While religion in the black church has always addressed issues of freedom and justice in terms of the basic theological agenda, it was stifling and narrow minded. It too was filled with anti-science sentiments that were never discussed openly, strongly wedded to a literal understanding of the Bible. It was also fundamentalists, but benignly so, he adds. Dr. Procter, it seems to me, puts the matter squarely where it ought to be. Hits the nail on the head. He talks about the failure of theology in the black churches to help our clergy and our laity to break out of the captivity of an antiquated fundamentalist spirituality to a new vision of God. And how devotion and obedience to God in Jesus Christ should be made manifest in the church and in the society of today. See, Eric Lincoln and Lars Amamiya support this position and their great research of the Black church in search of black consciousness and social action as a motif of black liberation theology during the 1980s. Their conclusion was that, and I quote the great majority of black urban ministers in the United States, at least two thirds of them. Have not been affected by the movement of black liberation theology at all. End of quote. It doesn't mean that we failed. We elders. Because. You're still reading our works. And you're still trying to. Find out how to implement these themes and motifs and your own ministry. When you look around some of your brothers and sisters. Preaching. In the neighborhood, you see an absence. Of this thrust. For bringing together a utilitarian and pragmatic view of life with the deep, profound spirituality of the African character and personality. If that's not so, you tell me. But as I look around, I see. A strong separation between our churches. And the African-American liberation theology that was developed out of some hard knocks and some suffering and the period of the civil rights movement and its aftermath. Concerning a pragmatic spirituality that balances praise and zealous personal holiness with justice making effectiveness. I would propose, as I said earlier. Two affirmations. And for negations which together to me constitute a kind of confessional position. I know the Baptist churches don't think of themselves as confessional churches as much as we do in the Presbyterian family and in some of the others. But I think these affirmations and negations form a kind of confessional position. For African-American churches that are ready to adopt a sound faith and action. In the real world in which we live. We're. And. That presents black banner headlines on the morning newspaper. Every day we wake up. I don't believe that any thoughtful Christian would accuse these two affirmations I'm going to make in these four negations of being contrary to the Bible or in conflict with the best examples of universal Christianity and the black religious experience as a whole. But of course, in my. Senior years. I may be as wrong as I am bold. And you must be the judge. As I said yesterday, age and experience do not render us infallible. But from where I sit and look back over the years. This is what I see as needed. In terms of the way the black church presents itself. To American society. Consider these affirmations. The first one can be stated in this way. We believe in the Holy Spirit. This is the credo. We believe in the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, and that the Spirit is a gift to the followers of Jesus Christ to produce in them an inward, powerful motivation to live a virtuous life according to the Scriptures. We believe that the spirit is expressed emotionally in worship by outward signs of our regeneration. But the pertinent passages of Scripture in this first affirmation are many. But I would begin with John 14, 15 and 17. Some of you are writing and I'm going to mention these acts 1628 and 212 11 and Galatians 527 226. This affirmation clears the air of any doubt. Let the Pentecostal experience of the most handy black congregation. Qualifies it. As authentic Christian worship. The point is that black liberation theology is grounded in a numerological foundation. That confessors faith in the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's work in our inner individual lives and in our outward public worship. And that includes everything. From in the garden. I walk in the garden alone, that highly personal mystic him that we sing to Isaiah 55. We make that affirmation. And the confidence that we have met Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. And we affirm that inward, emotional, deeply profound feeling of fellowship with God that is at the heart of black religion. The second affirmation is like unto the first in that it should be considered fundamental or foundational for what we mean when we speak of black theology or black worship or black praxis. Moreover, moreover, notwithstanding its ethnic distinctiveness, they are in harmony, that is to say, black theology and black worship and black praxis are in harmony with the historic Christian confessions going back to the earliest years. That is all the way back to the Nicene Confession, to the ecumenical councils of the first five centuries. This second affirmation may be stated in this way We confess that the liberation of the poor and the oppressed is of the essence of the message of Jesus, the message that Jesus preached, and that in its sometimes raucous and revolutionary expression in history, it is nevertheless the sign of the present reign of Jesus Christ over every principality and power and of the ultimate transformation of this world through God's justice and love. Here again. Scriptural basis. I would recommend to you, Luke four 1618 a most familiar passage to all of us. Romans 819 and 25 at Great Passage in Colossians first, Chapter 15 to 20. And Revelation 21 one, two, four. Now, these two affirmations ought to be a part of the confessional stance. I think of all African American churches in order to establish the basis for black theology. As a Christian theology. Some people say, well, this is black, the only Christian. I found that it is Christian because it's rooted and grounded and this kind of proclamation, this kind of affirmation. However, in recognition of the special history and the role of African-American churches in North America, in the North American context, the two affirmations that I've just mentioned are accompanied by four corresponding negations without which the mission of the black church seems to me to be rendered irrelevant at best in our era. These negations contain prophetic warnings for our churches in their present state of quiescence. And an equally emphatic announcement to the world that we know how to say no. To those who would manipulate us in the interests of racial hegemony. The negations are, and here they are, the four of them. No elaborate praise without commensurate performance. Two. No permanent peace without progressive justice. Three. No true reconciliation without meaningful liberation. And finally, no participation without power. I'd like to deal very briefly with each of these in order, and then I'm through. No elaborate praise without commensurate performance. Today. We seem to be experiencing a rapid decline of true spirituality among many black churches that may be mistaking a good feeling of. For good faith. By reducing theology to phraseology. Don't misunderstand me. There is, to be sure, a positive emphasis in historic black religion upon praising God with the whole body. I don't have to repeat that here. You know that together with the loud clashing symbol, Psalm 150, verse five. These are historic and well known characteristics of worship in Africa, in the Caribbean and South America, and in most black congregations in North America today. However, a reactionary white Christianity, and this is the last time we're going to see it flying under the colors of a highly emotional revival. Service orientation sneaked through the back door of many of our black congregations to disparage corporate, social and political action in the public square. Itzy has just finished. A study of the values of African-American congregations. I don't have time to deal with this at length, but you can pick this up. It's called the Members Voice Project. The Members Voice Project, done by Professor Razor and his colleagues at the Internet Nomination and Theological Center in Atlanta. And on the last page, they have a study of the most valued and the least valued. Actions are at. Or contributions of the African-American church. They scan 13,000 parishioners in 27 states and the District of Columbia. And they found it's no surprise that preaching and Bible study. Was high priority for 46% and 38% respectively, at the top of the priority list preaching and Bible study. But at the bottom of the list, they found 12% interested in wider community care. Social activities and only 9% in adult education. I'm not surprised. Preaching by the stay at the top. But I would have hoped. After the civil rights movement. Action in the community. Deal with the problems of poverty. Issues that our people are wrestling with and the in the hood would be somewhere near the top of what they understand to be the mission of the black church. I contend that fundamentalist Bible colleges. Popular television and radio evangelists. The spiritual formation literature of conservative Christian bookstores commercialized gospel music and spectacular mass choirs packing city convention centers. The proliferation of soul saving stations and non-denominational tabernacles emphasizing praise and word ministries that all of these I contend all of these factors. That served to blunt the sharp edge of the corporate Christian action that was the hallmark. Of the civil rights movement under the auspices of African-American churches. Today we are singing and shouting more and going home to do less and less. Our young people are singing about Jesus. But have not joined his mission. We, who are graduates of accredited church related theological seminars, need to talk to our people about this. Particularly our young people. We need to tell them that there can be no authentic praise without commensurate performance. By performance I mean action in the world. The Holy Spirit who moves our emotions, moves our hands and our feet to a meaningful Christian praxis in the world. No elaborate praise without commensurate. Performance. Secondly, no permanent peace without progressive justice making the political, economic and juridical structures of the great metropolitan areas are designed to enforce peace, order and domestic tranquility as the first order of business. Justice making for them has always been a secondary concern. Bread and circuses are offered to the masses, and if that doesn't work, the police baton and tear gas will. Once black congregations were the mainstays of justice for the poor and marginalized. Today, some congregations sponsor a variety of social services feeding programs, clothes, closets, etc.. Crisis counseling for the neighborhood. But as I look around, Hughes seemed to be engaged in full time Justice Ministries, a deal with the root causes of our people's misery. Most of us are go along with the game in the interests of peace. And we look at it from our suburban enclaves. We look at the situation and. We say That's not my concern. Not now. Howard Dodson, who is the chief of the Schomburg Research Center in Black Culture in Harlem, writes, and I quote him, The identification of black liberation with the material success of a few who are physically and mentally separate from the black masses makes a mockery of the unity essential for the salvation of us all. Even the material good fortune of that few is poisoned by emptiness and isolation from the people's struggle, without which the mission of Jesus Christ can be neither understood or undertaken. The ghettos and barrios of our nation are always on the brink of violence and civil disorder. Beyond our borders, the rise of a long suppressed people in Asia and Africa and Latin America and the Middle East should disabuse us of any assumption that it is any longer possible to live in a beautiful suburb surrounded by slums, to live a peaceful. Life within a gated community surrounded by the conditions of misery and subjugation. The church is slowly becoming suburban, but is still ghettoized. It needs to keep before the leaders of the society that it is not enough to treat the symptoms with the bandaids of social services. Rather, a radical reconstruction of the institutions that are supposed to be serving the people is required. Absolutely necessary. If distributive justice is going to be made realizable and available in the world we live in, we need constantly to remind our congregations. And local and state and national governments. That there can be no permanent peace. For anyone, anywhere in the world. Without progressive justice for all. Thirdly. No true reconciliation without meaningful liberation. More than 30 years ago. James Cone. And James, Doris Roberts and others debated about whether one of these great goals of Christian action had priority over the other liberation or reconciliation. The behavior of the predominantly white denominations suggest an answer to the question today. Racial justice concerns. Check it out. I've practically dropped out of the agenda of American Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. You go down the list and look at all the denominations. That had strong, well-funded programs for racial justice in this country 20 years ago. And you'll find that some of them are trying to exist on a pittance today or do not exist at all. It's scarcely talked about in the black churches. African-American congregations have just grown weary of it, weary of, quote, educating white folks and, of course, about race. And they themselves must accept some responsibility. Our churches accept some responsibility for the low level of interest in racial justice and American Christianity as a whole. Those of us who have a voice must continue to speak out not only to save our own souls, but to purify and unify the whole Church of Christ. The leaders of black Presbyterians and the first African-American moderator of my denomination, Dr. Edward G. Hawkins, founder of St Augustine's Church and in the branch, used to tell us not to give up the struggle to save the soul of the white church and, of quote. We must insist that before we can hold hands. And seeing black and white together, we shall overcome. The white church must return to the struggle to end the victimization and oppression of people of color in the inner city. A kind of oppression that is destroying the masses of African-American and Hispanic peoples in the ghetto in the barrio. We had our allies. And the mission to this society must insist that there can be no true fellowship at the altar without meaningful partnership in the public square. In other words, no reconciliation without liberation. And then finally, no participation. Without power. The fourth negative. This final negation reminds us elders of the accusation we receive from both black and white conservative Christians of being un-Christian and substituting the acquisition of power for love in the Black Power movement of the 1960s Post King era. However, that is to say, after 68. We were told that we should adopt a more spiritual method of moral suasion. Appeals to reason the rejects of grievances by conciliation and reliance on the working out of a democratic process to ensure the rights of those at the bottom of the barrel. The word of the Lord to zero. Do it not by night, nor by power, but but my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts Niagara for six. Was frequently quoted at us as a warning to the to the advocacy of black power, while the leaders of the majority group in this nation erected unassailable power structures to keep us in our place. But African-American theologians join with the leaders of mass movements like Saul Alinsky of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the NAACP, Reverend Lucius Walker's Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization. I hope you've heard of it, Iffco. We join these groups to insist that only by the acquisition of legitimate power to participate in changing the status quo. Only by that kind of participation could minorities act meaningfully. In the quest for equity and the quality of life. Most white people enjoy. And it's not delude ourselves, brothers and sisters. It is true, as Zacharias four six attests, that ultimate power belongs only to God, whose Providence rules over and over wields the power of human beings. Yet God sanctifies. The power of God's creatures. To create and design and maintain that social, economic and political order which serves the cause of justice and love. All humankind must participate with responsible power in this constructive work that is delegated by the Creator. Genesis 125. Deuteronomy 818. Romans 13 one through seven. Those are passages which tell us that God wants humanity to work together, to participate with those within and outside of the church for a better world. But the effectiveness of participation depends upon the genuineness of a delegated power to do good according to the will and purpose of God. We need to make sure and to make clear to both the church and the state in this imperfect world that we inhabit, that there can be no true or effective participation in doing good works without effective power. Power is not antithetical to love. Indeed, no true application of love in the public square in society can happen without a responsible application of power. The main issue that I've been wrestling with in these two lectures has to do with a necessary and essential balance between a Pentecostal experience of the Holy Spirit in the devotional life of African-American Christians and the necessity of a theological reconstruction proposed by black liberation theology. I'm calling, in other words, for a style of Christian faith in life that brings together into one African centered consciousness and pedagogy, a realistic and constructive attack on the ills of the social order. Upheld and inspired by the enthusiastic, spirit filled preaching and worship of the historic black religion that we've known in our journey in this country. These congregations. That exhibit. This pragmatic spirituality exists today. In several parts of the country and several denominations, but they are all too few, as you know well as I do, and for the most part, many of them. And I can think of several. Are ignored by their denominations, by their parent bodies. They're not held up as models of what the black church can be. By their denominational peers, the masses of black Christians in America, urban and rural, particularly our young people, are generally ignorant. Oh, and. Unaffected by. The pastors and congregations that I have in mind as models of what we've been talking about these two days. These pace setting congregations. It is, I believe, the sacred responsibility of predominantly African-American theological seminaries to lead the way to the integration of the dialectic of pragmatic behavior in the world. With the praise orientation of so many of our churches today. Our God is worthy of all praise and adoration and all that we can give in that regard. But Jesus Christ says, Take my yoke upon you. And learn of me. That means taking up the cross. I close with those great words from him that I love once to every man, nature and nation, which says. By the light of burning martyrs. Jesus is bleeding. I try. Toiling up great mountains with the cross that turns not back. New occasions. Need new. Duty. Yes. We must upward on and onward. Who would keep it abreast of truth. I'm in my senior moment right now. I can't remember all the lines at least, but you get the point, I think. And it is the cross of Christ that that we carry. And as we are faithful to our caller. We will carry that cross through the wilderness of this world. With our eyes wide open. Remembering the things that we affirm as Christians, but also the things that we negate. Lest our enemies overcome us. I thank you for this opportunity. It's been great to be here. And I look forward to. I look forward to being with you again sometime. You ever come to Washington, lock me up where you live, and the Ingleside Presbyterian Retirement Community. And my blood always races and my heart beats faster when I talk with young men and women about the mission of the church and their own personal ministry. Thank you.

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