Reviving; Renewing; Restoring; and Redeeming Traditional Southern Black Christianity one Family at a Time…one individual at a time!
Reviving, renewing, restoring and redeeming Traditional Southern Black Christianity can only be done if Black Southern Christian individuals make the decision to revive, renew, restore, and redeeming themselves as individuals and repent of their ways, being more desirous of living a life and lifestyle more in keeping with the faith of our fathers.
Sons and Daughters of Ham Christian Ministries desire to be a resource in this mass renewal of Black communities all across America, the African Diaspora, and the world. We are committed to work with varying Interdenominational faith communities and traditions, which is why we 1) Encourage all current believers to stay in whatever local church or denominational affiliation you currently belong to. Fixing it and improving it is much more noble than abandoning it. In addition, it is better to attend a church within 5 miles of one’s home, so as to indeed make it a means of involvement in one’s community of faith in your geographic location.
JOIN US!
TO JOIN THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF HAM
- If you are a bible believer in a church presently, and/or with a historic family relationship to your current church stay in your church. If you are coming from outside the faith, or with no traditional church experience at all, begin attending from the geographically closest traditional mainline Black denominations near your home. Typically this would include Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal, COGIC, etc., and various other traditionally accepted forms of Black mainline Christian denominationalism.
- Increase your giving, increase your participation, increase your prayers and support. If you are no good to the folk where you are (and you live with them), then you are surely no good anywhere else, in another religion or denomination. Neither we nor they can fix in your ‘self’, what you didn’t care enough to try to fix in your environment where you were/currently are. It is a fantasy to think there is a perfect pastor, perfect denomination, perfect book, perfect religion, perfect guru, or even perfect savior, that will automatically make your life better.
- Repent of all and any former and current sin, and prepare to live a life devoted to God overtly and officially, with a relatively more consistently evolving personal and corporate Bible Study, devotion to spiritual practices such as meditation, and participation in church activities such as choir, usher, and other forms of ministry. This includes developing whatever gifts and graces God granted you to be of use to the operative Body of Christ in and to your community.
It is a principle of faith for all the Sons and Daughters of Ham that the stronger your home church is, in your home community, in your hometown, the more it will benefit the quality of your individual life and your family’s life. This is in contrast to supporting internet preachers, television preachers, preachers that sing or act way better than they pastor, and/or preachers and ministries that live and do work (even great work) in communities that are not your own.
Develop your faith where you are.
Your commitment to the ‘Sons and Daughters’ of Ham is reflected in the original aims and intentions of most current Southern Black Churches and there is nothing we are asking you to do, above what your commonsense obligations are to your local church in support and service. We simply present additional resources, perspectives, and information to Black Southern Christians, that draws from the rich tradition of mainline Jewish, Christian, Pan-African and sometimes Islamic historical sources, in order to root the ‘Body of Christ’ as it is formed in the Southern Black church, in the solid ground of Abrahamic faith and religion as it has excelled and manifested itself throughout the ages. Thus the information presented to the reader and the participant in the Sons and Daughters of Ham is simply for believers in Christ to have a firm understanding of some of the varieties of theological issues throughout the dispensations in order that they might refine and formulate their own orthodoxy and practice as possible. So in that sense we want you to buy books and resources, and participate when we come to your town. Perhaps even your church can partner with us to develop a more practical arrangement for increasing the quality of Christian life and association in your community.
In addition, we have our Pastor and leader in these aspirations, Rev. George aka ‘Brother Israel’.
4. Represents a commitment to upholding the Black Southern African American tradition of Choral Singing, Spirituals, Hymns/Hymnology, religiously themed Work Songs and Rhythm Songs/Ring Shout Folk steps and accompanying songs, Quartet and Small Group Harmony based singing and arrangements, Gospel Music Canon and Tradition. It is not hyperbole by any stretch of the imagination to suggest as I do that Black Southern Religious, that is to say principally Christian interpreted works songs, folk songs, shouts, spirituals, and gospel (the founder of which is Black man from rural Georgia named Thomas Dorsey, that played the Blues with Ma Rainey) influenced every other development in modern American Popular White mainstream music of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Blues and Swing, Rhythm and Blues, Gospel Blues, Soul, jazz, etc., all bear their mark of influence by the Black southern church and its music. Melisma, blue notes, slurred notes, and the importance of improvisation all were translated from the music of the historical southern Black church experience into all these various forms even Rock and Roll and European Classical.
Thus as a Son and/or Daughter of Ham you will join a choir or support a choir. You will enjoin upon your children singing in various children’s, teen’s, and adult choirs of varying sorts as they are able and have aptitude and will. They may as well sing the songs of Zion, they will certainly be singing the songs common to common culture as well. Enjoin this upon your children. Sing to them, around them, and sing with them. Sing to God. Sing his praises.
And at this point I will quote dearly beloved John Wesley of United Methodist fame, who in preface to the book he produced of Select Hymns, wrote the following words.
- Learn these tunes before you learn any others; afterwards learn as many as you please.
- Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.
- Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.
- Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
- Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make once clear melodious sound.
- Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.
- Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the choirs of heaven.
I will not say anything in addition to what the Saintly and devout Mr. Wesley said, for I agree with him whole heartedly…that is except in the case of Wesley’s instructions number one and two, and might offer a little qualification from the Southern Black Theological tradition, which is suffused with Hamitic Holy Ghost power.
His point one:
- Learn these tunes before you learn any others; afterwards learn as many as you please.
Response: Sir and Madam, the situation is so dangerous and dire in the African American community with regard to the quality of Black Southern Christianity, that we must encourage Son and Daughter of Ham and child of God, to reflect on any gospel and religiously themed songs that they know for purposes of edification, and the oft necessary necessity of ‘encouraging oneself’ in the faith, as well as one’s community of faith. Thus as to any specific set of orthodox tunes, that must be learned and must be done specifically as instructed by the writers, this is irrelevant to our purposes. This is done for us in the Black tradition by basic understandings of the common Black southern musical historical tradition, its rhythms, its sonic and other music influences, instrumental development, and its extensions into so-called ‘popular’ Black and White mainstream culture. All this is a rich tradition of Black Southern religious and spiritual music that has endured every tribulation in Black American culture, from slavery and the Invisible church, to post-modern contemporary Black gospel music (or anything that calls itself an extension of Black Southern Gospel Music such as Gospel rap, gospel reggae, etc.
Do you think it a coincidence that Operatic greats such as Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Kathleen Battle, Marian Anderson, and Atlanta’s own historic Operatic Diva Mattiwilda Dobbs, 1st Mayor of Atlanta Maynard Jackson’s Aunt; all got their start singing the High Spirituals and Hymns of the Southern Black Church. Equally on the men’s side of Black Americans love affair with performance European Classical Music and men such as Robert McFerrin, Lawrence Brownlee, Paul Robeson, and my big homey Baritone/Bass Morris Robinson from Atlanta, all got starts in the Black Church singing gospel and choral arrangements as preparation for singing the complex intricacies of European Classical music. All of the Marsalis boys, and their abilities to excel in Classical music and Jazz were nurtured not just by their upbringing in New Orleans, which deserves its own section here as regards New Orleans contribution to Gospel/Blues/Jazz music and American music in general (Mahalia Jackson, but by the Catholic Church and faith mother Delores Marsalis, and father Ellis Marsalis raised them in. But we need not look to such distinguished musicians to see the impact and influence of the Black Southern Church musical tradition. It is no coincidence that Reuben Studdard, Fantasia, Jennifer Hudson, and many, many others got their start in Black churches all across the South, Midwest, and Northeast, but all with specific vocal and music traditions that go back to the dawn of the Antebellum Southern Church musical tradition.
All of this shows how flexible the Black southern Folk and Church based Christian Musical tradition is, and how we must not abandon it to the vagaries of whether it is commercially viable, or whether we are in a phase of White mainstream American culture when they are ‘affirming us’ and think our quaint little songs about Jesus are cute.
Thus the range of music(s) and songs Black Southern children and youth should be exposed to just from going to church is large and powerful, and represents a powerful cultural and religious tradition that the Black Southern Church must begin to support and be proud of. These are the songs I would have you learn as a Son and/or Daughter of Ham, and these are the songs you WILL learn, even by osmosis, attending nearly any Black church regularly, especially the mainstream denominations. Regular attendance and participation will get you exposure over time to the entire range of Black southern music, in the myriad forms it has taken over the past 400 years of our time in America.
For instance there are times and points during the year in most Black mainline denominational churches where it is common to sing spirituals and songs our ancestors might have sung during ‘work song’ slavery days, rhythm cadences and ring shout Invisible Church songs. Quite often songs of this antebellum nature are sung in February, as in the performance of aspects of what is currently known as Black History Month. Then there are songs like old favorites that are sung during congregational times like prayer, offering, meet and greet, etc., that tend to be old favorites, popular tunes from as far back as and grandma and granddad’s childhoods. In this way intergenerational sharing of a communal culture is perpetuated.
Then at times when the choir sings, those tend to be moments where more contemporary gospel is sung, or exemplary songs from the entire range of the Black and mainstream gospel and Christian themed music. As long as it appeals to the congregation, and ferments and foments in them a collective positive spiritual response, let it be done.
Which brings me to my next qualification of Wesley’s very, very good advice here.
“Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.”
‘Au contraire mon frere’. What makes all musical forms great are their uniqueness. This is how three choirs can sing the exact same song and glory to God for one choir it sounds like the Mississippi Mass is singing it, the next choir sounds like Kirk Franklin is doing it, a quartet does it and it sounds like the Dixie Hummingbirds, and another group does it and it sounds like Johnny Cash or Bluegrass Gospel. And they all have value, and they all are reduced by making them conform to what is written on the page. Every gospel singer knows full well that gospel music requires sometimes pronouncing words with a certain drawl or inflection, with absolutely no regard to so-called standard English. And yet that is precisely what gives that particular phrase unique meaning and comfort to a Black audience, or an audience which knows the rhythms and cadences of the Black church and Black historical popular music. Similarly, a gospel singer might employ a growl on particular words or phrases to emphasize the meaning, the feeling, or communal effect.
The last thing I want to do is go visit a church to share and worship with them, and they sing my songs that I do, exactly like I do on the record, or my choirs and groups. And to be frank that hardly ever happens because Black people are well used to working with the talent they have on hand in the average choir at any given moment, and then realizing exactly what they had is what makes them special and unique when they learn how to harmonize and blend their unique talents together and work together.
I hope you understand how important singing is to the Black Southern Church as defined by the Sons and Daughters of Ham.
And with that I will see you at a Church Anniversary, Youth Program, Prayer Band Church Group, and choir Anniversary, where we did it like the old days and different churches invited other churches and their associated groups to participate in the program. As we say in the Black Church… ‘Sang y’all’!
5. QUIT the lotto and gambling. Invest in your Father, spiritual books, commentaries, etc., and the House and Work of the Lord in your community. Invest in your church, your education, and your children and family’s education. Invest, that is to say gamble, if one must label it such a thing for the sake of the sense of excitement, in the commercial and industrial potential, capacity, and capabilities of the community you live in. If you have any left over after that and other philanthropic responsibilities, which still would be a better ‘investment’ than commercial gambling…then perhaps…