This post is an assignment for my seminary course, The Good News, Culture and Anabaptism. The reading for this week is The Hip-Hop Church (Smith and Jackson). The first section of this post are quotes which caught my attention. The second part is my own reflections and comments.
“Today hip-hop is still very influential among youth and adults outside the church, yet developing ministry ‘wells’ with those living within hip-hop is not all that common.” (47)
“the ‘well’ of common ground between the church and hip-hop must be found both inside and outside the church.” (47) (John 4)
“How must the church position itself in order to gain a hearing and build relationships with those living in…the strongest expression of postmodern urban culture?” (Acts 17) (49)
“…in this postsoul culture there is a widening gap between African American culture and the church.” (54)
Source of empowerment/Liberation theology
“Hip-hop is an independent and unique community, an empowering behavior, and an international culture. (KRS-ONE as quoted in Smith and Jackson, 63)
“…made people ‘feel their existence most powerfully.’” (66)
“Hip-hop arose against the South Bronx’s backdrop of poverty, tension over economic injustices, social injustice and social change. The children, youth, young adults and older adults trying to raise families under difficult conditions have to be heard, and often the powers that be are not listening.” (67)
“Hip-hop takes rap…. Now a voice of a generation is being heard in order to empower an otherwise powerless class of people.” (72)
“It is difficult for a culture that is serious about the maintenance of social arrangements, economic conditions, and political choices that create and reproduce poverty, racism, sexism, classism, and violence to display a significant appreciation for musical expressions that contest the existence of such problems in black and Latino communities.” (Eric Dyson, Reflecting Black, quoted in Smith and Jackson, 72)
“Hip-hop gets on your nerves because it forces the listener to rethink their entire existence as it questions societal structures. Hip-hop exposes lies and provokes thought, leaving listeners grasping for something to hold on to as their assumptions about life are challenged.” (73)
“This is the tension about Christendom and hip-hop: most Euro-American evangelicals are so separate from ‘the world’ that they don’t really know what issues urban people are facing.” (81)
“…hip-hop’s sustainability does not rely on the medium of its message, rap, but on the identity it provides to a people group that have never really had an identity of their own. Ask yourself this question: What people group in America has had their identity taken from them and their dignity denied, has been exploited the most for others’ profit, and has had their life shaped by strife and injustice?” (82)
“We African Americans have never really expressed our own distinctly African identity in America independent of slavery. …Hip-hop came along as a way to bring meaning at a time when young African Americans needed a voice to proclaim what life is for them. …For years the African American community sought to fit it, to count, but never did. When belonging is a prevailing need, you will find a place or even create a place where you belong. Thus hip-hop culture. (83)
“When you don’t know the struggle of people, you don’t know the people. Black and Latino theologians, pastors, youth ministers and poets have to speak of theology out of their social context, the struggle of poverty and disenfranchisement. In the African American experience, struggle is a way of life and is best expressed through the arts and especially music.” (92)
“The dominant culture–from the perspective of the minority culture–looks at life from a self-centered vantage point…. This is oppressive to those who are not a part of the mainstream culture.” (93)
Comparing Negro spirituals to the blues, to hip-hop: “There are three key similarities among these three musical expressions…: a connection to liberation, a need to transfer values, and coded language.” (95)
“…hip-hop has its own language that is distinctive to the culture it is speaking to, and it keeps the dominant community out while seeking to advance hip-hop culture.” (96)
Who is at the table?
“the postmodern discussion among emerging Christian leaders consists mainly of young whites who grew up in the modern church complaining about what they don’t like about their daddy’s church. It is white folks talking about white church, white Jesus and white theology. What’s more, given that these discussions are mostly taking place outside the inner city, those around the table tend to overrepresent the socially privileged.” (105)
“Only in recent years has there been preaching and writing that has not only challenged a Eurocentric Christianity but also presented an alternative view that is more multicultural and in some cases more authentic. Some of these voices, such as James Cone, Tom Skinner, John Perkins, Martin Luther King Jr. and Renita Weems, were those of professed Christians seeking to dismantle a Eurocentric Christianity.” (109)
“Hip-hop culture has an influence as well as a tolerance that brings disparate people groups together. Hip-hop culture tends to swing toward the liberal side politically; this could be partly because the liberal political agenda seems more receptive to multiculturalism than does the conservative political agenda.” (110)
“To understand the spirituality of hip-hop, we must begin to grasp the intense quest of an oppressed people for a window of hope that can sustain life in the midst of crazy paradoxes.” (117)
“Hip-hop’s self-awareness recognizes only that something is missing; it does not recognize what it is and where it can be found. The church is the last place it would look for the answer.” (119)
“The desire to welcome you and to have you “come as you are” to the African American worship experience, however, is coupled with a weakness in practical application to build sustainable faith. It is true that the U.S. church as a whole has this flaw…” (121)
“The spirituality hip-hop offers is attractive but can’t provide consistent, holistic solutions–internal peace and sustainable life change.” (123)
“The African American church has always tended to be conservative theologically but liberal in regard to social issues.” (123)
“The teaching of the Five Percent Nation reflects the larger drive of hip-hop: the need to be self-supporting, self-educating and self-directed.” (127) Keep reading →
On this day of picnics and patriotic parades, I pause to remember those who have sacrificed much in the messiness of war. I remember the wars that have been fought and continue to be waged in the name of the United States of America. Afghanistan, Iraq, Persian Gulf, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, The Boxer Rebellion, Banana Wars (1898-1935), Philippine-American War (1899-1913), Spanish-American War (1898), Indian Wars (1865-1870), American Civil War (1861-1865), Continental expansion (1816-1860), War of Independence (1775-1783), Colonial Wars (1620-1774).
In this post I want to engage the integrative motif of Elizondo–mestizaje. 
Donald Miller (
This post is an assignment for class. The first half will be key assertions Albert Hsu makes in the book 
Interesting the connection between Christian faith and economics. This came through in our lesson from Acts 4:32-35 yesterday. “…no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common…. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.”
In 
On March 19, 1966, Texas Western College, now known as the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), put an all-black starting five on the floor for the first time in an NCAA basketball championship. That night the Texas Western Miners, led by coach Don Haskins with star players David Lattin and Bobby Joe Hill, defeated coach Adolph Rupp’s #1 ranked all-white Kentucky Wildcats, 72-65.
one of the larger construction projects of the first century BC (19BCE). Herod built temples for various pagan gods to serve the gentile populations, which were paid for by heavy taxes on the local Jewish population. But his masterpiece was to be the Temple of Jerusalem.
