“Repent for the Kingdom of God is at Hand!”
Sons and Daughters of Ham Christian Ministries
Any consideration of the state of Black culture and civilization in North America is mirrored in the state of the Southern Black Church. Our families have been decimated by cultural and economic forces to the point that out of wedlock births are at a whooping 70% with no sign of slowing. Many Black communities suffer from low levels of economic development and the resulting decreased opportunities, decreased property values, decreased public school graduation and performance rates, and the like, all leading to compromised qualities of life in many Black communities. Family instability breeds youth instability, which breeds problematic schools, combining with nearly all the students needing subsidized lunches leads to a downward spiral that is paralyzing many Black urban communities and chocolate cities and municipalities. All of this leads to higher crime rates and the perception of not being safe in one’s own community.
Sons and Daughters of Ham it does not have to be this way. Our communities do not have to be zones that induce fear. Our schools don’t ‘have’ to have metal detectors or armed officers patrolling every hall in order to maintain order. For this to happen we must go back to the old-time way, old time values, grandma and them’s old time religion. That isn’t to say we aren’t doing it with quite a bit more information than they had, but nevertheless that old time Black Southern Religion, the closest to Africa is and always was the foundation. When it is out of order Black culture and civilization in the Western Hemisphere is out of order. Old time Black Southern Christian values…God Family Education Commerce and Industry! Black people were united across working class, middle class and bourgeois elite classes with regard to these values and ethics. We have seen where 60 years of dysfunctional families, LGBTQIA+ propaganda, and #BLM styled socialist atheism have gotten us. We have seen how depending upon White goodwill, inclusion, affirmative action, etc., have gotten us, when Trump and his Republican flunkies can come along at any minute and say we got it all by DEI and were thus not qualified…. ending distinguished careers in the process. We have seen where materialism has gotten us as our children clamor and press for the latest iPhone, shoes, or car, but with all that sense of expectation and what they deserve, do not progress academically or behaviorally enough to warrant such a thing. And yet they feel so entitled they must be on antidepressants and perpetually indulged because absent what you buy them, they can barely manifest a will to live.
Our families, our schools, and our communities can be healthy and prosperous, our healthy children dancing in the streets out of joy and fulness of life, rather than sneaking in and out of cars and homes looting and looking for guns and other opportunities to cause mayhem. But that takes a committment to God, family, education, commerce and industry in our communities…and who is willing to do that. It is the assumption of Sons and Daughters of Ham Ministries that there are Black people committed to these values and manifesting them in the Black community. Surely there must be some Black men and women, Descendants of Africa, descendants of Ham that want to preserve the southern Black tradition of committment to God, commitment to the traditional family, commitment to education for education’s sake, and commitment to commerce and industry that so animated our ancestors that even with the legacy of slavery, made them endeavor to seek ways of making a life and making propserity all over North America. Truly we can speak of Black Culture and Civilization in North America, and even more true is that the Southern Black Church is the heart and soul African American Culture and Civilization in North America.
Reviving, Renewing, Restoring, and Redeeming Black Southern Christianity from those who would trivialize it with attempts to equate it with socialist atheist LGBTQIA+ social justice rhetoric, those who would mock it by claiming that it is no longer of use for individuals or a people to improve themselves, and from those who would argue Black Christianity only justifies its existence by proclaiming that devotees will experience health, hedonistic material wealth, and wield the ‘power to name things and claim them’ at will, as well as redemption from those who would entrap and stifle Southern Black Christianity in the idea that reparations and ‘seats at the ruling tables and councils of our former masters are the only ways, and the limits of how God wants to use us in the World for his Glory!
Senior Pastor
George Von Israel
brotherisrael@sonsanddaughtersofham.org
M. Div 2011 (Gammon Constituent Seminary) of The interdenominational Theological Center located in the Atlanta University Center
B.A. South Carolina State University 1996
Atlanta, GA
Southwest Atlanta-Ben Hill Community
Wolfsburg Edition
Genesis 49:27 Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.
I. Have we not watched as the Post-Modern Woke Black church has abandoned family values, abandoned all notions of the importance of family itself, and abandoned the church as a community institution in favor of objectifying individualism, materialism, luxury and wealth, thus infantilizing the mind of Black Christians in ridiculous ‘name it’ and ‘claim it’ schemes, and ‘health and wellness’ schemes that are worse than any snake oil salesmen. These preachers are more ‘personalities’, ‘influencers’, and ‘celebrities’, and ‘salesmen’ than leaders of God’s flocks. Their sense of entitlement is mind numbing.
II. Have we not watched as the Post-Modern Woke Black church has forgotten its role in our community nurturing Black children’s education, HBCUs, and social and business contacts, in favor of thinking ‘White grace’ and high positions in mainstream American political leadership positions is better than God’s grace. Such that if the White mainstream does not provide reparations, DEI, affirmative action, and government programs we don’t know what we are going to do! Somehow the current Black church, feels that the proper role of the church is to facilitate the begging of the White mainstream to help us, via protests of varying sorts, such that the government undertakes its ‘responsibility’ towards the well-being of its Negro citizens. What about our responsibility to ourselves? Who is holding the Black community responsible for its responsibility to itself! A Black Christianity that doesn’t take responsibility for the condition of the Black community is no Christianity at all!
And Why? Why has Post-Modern Black mainstream denominational Christianity reneged on all these functionalities it once did as a matter of course? Black denominations have declined in their numbers and their witness due to their abandoning of traditional Christian themes in favor of various forms of socialist-atheist LGBTQIA+ Social Justice rhetoric and positions of power in the Democrat Party power structure. The Black church traded the power of its witness (rooted 100% in the Ever-living Word of God), for temporal power, with Raphael Warnock and Berneice King being the primary example of this. This is how every January the so called Martin Luther King Jr. event, is attended by high ranking White mainstream political representatives from both parties, and even White mainstream Hollywood celebrities, but Warnock and ‘Little Girl King’ can’t get a single Negro in the impoverished and working class Black communities surrounding the Great and Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church of MLK Jr. fame, to put down the guns and pick up the books, with the Bible being the first. This is how the Black church got co-opted from what it was during and prior to the Civil Rights Movement, to what it is now supporting Democrat socialist-atheists, and the LGBTQIA+ political and cultural agendas. We gained high positions in the Democrat Party Machine apparatchik, only to lose every vestige of ‘witness’ to the Black communities we served. Quite precisely, we ‘gained the world and lost our souls’! This is not to say that the Republicans as such represent anything better.
How does the Southern Black Church, with its roots in the direct Jim Crow and Slavery experiences of our Noble Ancestors reclaim its God given witness to African America and the WORLD? How does the Southern Black Church renew itself to confront the challenges of African American citizens as family instability, materialism, hedonism, nihilism, drug and alcohol addictions, and brute savage criminality ravage urban and rural Black communities all over America? How does the Southern Black church confront challenges such as the implications of AI, and the implications of a disastrous national and international policy undertaken by Post-Trump White mainstream American culture that devalues and destroys any White mainstream sense of working cooperatively with the Negro and other minorities, and devalues and destroys relationships with former European allies formed over the course of two world wars and a Cold War? Do we really need reparations, affirmative action, reliance on state aid programs, and other state managed programs in order to stabilize and increase the quality of life in Black communities?
Is America destined to be completely off track, and bound not just for World War III, but the hellfire as well if we don’t repent?
America needs a fresh Re-Transvaluation of Values – The Only Time America had hope, no matter what the magnitude of its sins, was when it was religious and embracing Christian Evangelism and values consistent with religious understandings about life such as Democracy and Capitalism, internally and externally. Will we abandon these underpinnings for a post-Trump world where truth doesn’t matter, and our public and private lives and values don’t matter as long as we have the trappings of power and wealth. The Black church must stand!
Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
THE SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH HAS A MESSAGE!
Jeremiah 13:18 Say unto the king and to the queen, Humble yourselves, sit down: for your principalities shall come down, even the crown of your glory.
THE SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH IS CONFIDENT!
Romans 8:38 For I am persuaded, of neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
THE SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH IS CONFIDENT BECAUSE OUR GOD IS ALL POWERFUL!
Colossians 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
THE SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH IS CONFIDENT OF THE VICTORY BECAUSE
Colossians 2:15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
AND THE SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH KNOW WHY GOD IS DOING IT THROUGH US, FORMER SLAVES!
Ephesians 3:10 To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,
AND THE SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH KNOWS ITS DUTY!
Titus 3:1 ¶ Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,
Beloved Sons and Daughters of Ham, our destiny awaits, REPENT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!
Any people that organizes itself around certain values, commonly known as bourgeois values, will improve their condition and they are destined to improve their condition but there are rules and demands made by God on that people for this to happen. They must put these values at the tops of their lives as a people.
GOD – FAMILY – EDUCATION – COMMERCE – INDUSTRY
- Reclaim the importance of scripture in developing knowledge, wisdom, character, discipline, etc., and in developing a personal responsibility for experiential, academic, and theological contemporary Black southern Christian praxis. Any version of Christianity that doesn’t include intense Bible study is little or no Christianity at all.
- Any version of Black Christianity that ignores or disdains Judaism, Islam, Rastafarianism, Indigenous African religion(s), and/or other major World Religions, and has no will or desire to work with these other religious manifestations to improve the lives of the Sons and Daughters of Ham scattered throughout the World is little or no Christianity at all.
- Any version of Christianity that ignores, disrespects, and disdains the historical Antebellum (so called ‘Invisible Church’ out of the direct oversight of Whites) and does the same to the Jim Crow Southern Black Church, as well as the preaching traditions, musical traditions, and other religious cultural appropriations of African Americans to religion and theology is little or no Christianity at all.
- Any version of Christianity that disrespects Ethiopia in any of four particular concerns is little or no Christianity at all for the Renaissance Southern Black Church. 1) The tradition of the presence of the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia historically or presently; 2) The descent of Ethiopian Kings from Solomon and Sheba down to His Majesty Hailie Selassie; 3) The presence of the Falasha Jews, and 4) the oldest State Christian Church predating Rome’s and the Papacy.
- The Southern Black Church must uphold the importance of the traditional bible-based family, the importance of extended family relationships, and the importance of the ‘family’ as such in church/religious life, community life etc., and this is inseparable from the health of any municipality, county, state or nation. To all humans with the inclination and physicality to marry and bear children, it is incumbent upon one to do so. God decides of them who can, who can’t, who will, who won’t, for whatever reason. Glory to God. But any philosophy, sexual or otherwise that denies the value and importance of family life and procreation is misguided and dangerous.
- Similarly, there is no debate over traditional biblical notions of human sexuality and their value. Folk have always been able to do precisely what they way to do by their own conscious and private decisions. But there is no ‘public’ or ‘public theological’ debate, and thus the church should refrain from it. There is no debate on scripture we can interpret it, exegete it, provide all sorts of context, and debate it, but there is no debate on 3500 years or so of Abrahamic scripture and tradition and its value. It is what it is, the same as mammalian, reptilian, and flora and fauna evolutionary history as it relates to the obvious nature of the male/female polarity and dichotomy. How an individual chooses to live is their business, but the church is going to cease debating how you live with you.
- The ‘Sons and Daughters of Ham’ are not limited to any form of denominational Christianity, as Southern Black Christianity as it was and is practiced by former slaves and their descendants throughout America is unique in its own theological, homiletic, and musical underpinnings. As such it transcends whatever denominational constraints denominationalism (European or otherwise) superimposed upon it.
- Any version of Southern Black Christianity that doesn’t include 100% forgiveness (Total forgiveness) to White mainstream America (or anybody else that participated in the slave trade in the western hemisphere) for their crimes against humanity. Bearing that in mind, forgiving is not forgetting, however ‘free in Christ’ also means free of anger and resentment, and any lingering sense of dependence, for any reason, upon White mainstream culture or institution