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Meet Reformation Church Chicago's Black Lutheran Manifesto
"News & notes of young Barack Obama's community organizing sanctuary"
“Let envoys come out of Egypt; let Ethiopia hasten her gifts to God.” -Psalm 68:31/Roman Catholic Lectio Divina Version-
PROLOGUE
2 And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be [a]transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you]. -Romans 12:2 Amplified-
"Indeed, it is the sacred teaching of the ancestors in the Odu Ifa that 'If you are given birth, you must bring yourself into being again.' " Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor & Chair of Africana Studies, CSULB, KAWAIDA AND QUESTIONS OF LIFE AND STRUGGLE, 2008, LA.
"We are, then, the injured physicians who will heal and repair ourselves in the process and practice of repairing the world, transforming it into an ever- expanding realm of freedom, justice and human flourishing. For we are indeed our own liberators." (Same as Above) -Sub-Topic: "The Collective Vocation of Reparations: Repairing Ourselves and the World."
I. WHO:
1) RENEWAL is the African-Centered Lutheran Expression of Reformation Church Chicago.
2) We are Metro Chicago's Black Studies Off-Campus Ministry as Chaplaincy.
3) We believe in Lincoln & Mamiya's transcendent Black Sacred Cosmos with God Almighty at the Center.
4. We believe in the African American/African World relationship with God thru Jesus Christ.
5. We believe in the historic Black freedom Church as a key binding and distinctive institution of the Black American community and a key source of Black culture, traditional, national, and popular.
6. We believe that Black Lutheran formations are essentially an integral dimension of the distinctive historic Black Freedom Church and not the other way around.
7. This said, we believe we come to Lutheran denominational tables not to be saved but already fully dressed in our own stylish African American freedom movement culture.
8. We believe in Black theology as an integral expression of the twin 1965-1975 Black Power/Black Arts Movement(s) phase of the Post WW II Black Freedom Movement.
9. We believe in Black Self-Determination, Self-Respect, Self-Defense and continual striving, via a common overall Black agenda,as the key method of achieving the above three ends.
10) We believe in our ancestors from God Almighty at Creation to both our ancient and modern forebears, continental and diaspora.
11. We believe in racial and social justice and both God Almighty and Ethiopianist Christianity in the image and interest of African people -ancient and modern, continental and diaspora.
12. We believe in African American, Afro-Descendants, and African World Reparations not as a concession of White supremacy but as the Karengian "collective vocation" of the injured African people. We also unite with the vision of Dr. Karenga's Kawaida philosophy of African people, "who will heal and repair ourselves in the process and practice of repairing the world..."
13. We believe in "Operational Unity" as defined by Dr. Maulana Karenga's Kawaida philosophy i.e., (Black) "Unity in Diversity, Unity without uniformity."
II. WHAT:
1) We are an Afro-Descendants Theme Human Rights Defender Local Mission Congregation. More, we are an affiliate of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod (MCS) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Accordingly, we are a distinctive expression of the Church-Wide African Descent Lutheran Association (ADLA).
2) Structurally, we are organized under our denomination's Model Constitution that is at once a) Denominational, b) Synodical, and c) Congregational in polity. This said, we stand in the model of Alexander Dumas's (Favorite Son of a Haitian Mother and of Haiti's) Three Musketeers' "All for One and One for All" as well as in Christian theology's Holy Trinity constitutional model i.e., God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our ministry also embraces the classical and biblical Ethiopianist: "Ethiopia Unbound" autonomy model.
3. Structurally also, inside and outside MCS/ELCA/ADLA, we unite with Dr. Karenga's Kawaida philosophy's ETHICS OF SHARING hubed and hinged around the unity principles of: "a) Shared Status, b) Shared Knowledge, c) Shared Space, d) Shared Wealth, e) Shared Power, f) Shared Interests, and g) Shared Responsibllity."
III. HOW:
1) Our leadership consists of Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), Pastor & Council President, Deaconess Marsha Washington, Treasurer and Vice President, and Baba Yusufu Mosely, Secretary/Voting Member.
2. Added to this Site, we publish an annual yearbook/journal on ongoing and current critical issues.
3. Our 2020 theme is African Americans and Electoral Politics.
4. More, we publish UNITY & FAITH: Blog Notes on Dr. Maulana Karenga Speaks Weekly.
5. We've also pitched the International Worker's BIOPC Special Issue to do an article titled AFRICA BORN IN Us: Notes on Ethiopianism's Relevance to the Black Freedom Movement Today.
6. Our Ministry also publishes RESTORATION: New Media Voice on Preserving African American Historic Sites-such as Reformation's house of Worship.
IV. WHY:
As RENEWAL serves as Reformation Lutheran Church Chicago's voice for defending Afro-Descendants human rights, both seek to unfold within the OAS Afro-Descendants Theme context curated below:
The Afro-descendants Theme in the Americas by the Organization of American States (OAS) Secretariat.
1) There are approximately 200 million people of African descent in the Americas, yet, despite comprising one third of the region’s population, Afro-descendants are one of the most vulnerable minority groups in the hemisphere.
2) It should be noted that in the Declaration of Santiago and the Declaration of Durban, the American states recognized that people of African descent have to confront obstacles as a result of the social discrimination and prejudice that prevail in public and private institutions and also recognized that this is due to centuries of racism, racial discrimination and enslavement and of the denial by history of many of their rights This situation also results in a lack of recognition for the contribution of this group to the cultural heritage of the Americas.
3) We should draw attention to the fact that the Inter-American Democratic Charter recognizes that elimination of all forms of discrimination and respect for ethnic, cultural and religious diversity in the Americas contribute to strengthening democracy and citizen participation.
4) International Public Law provides several instruments against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. At the universal level the United Nations has driven substantial efforts to combat these scourges.
5) In the inter-American sphere, too, a number of mechanisms have been created to tackle this phenomenon and encourage respect for the rights of people of African descent in the Americas. Examples of this are the creation of the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Afro-Descendants and against Racial Discrimination of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the allusions to people of African descent in the Declaration of Mar del Plata in the framework of the Fourth Summit of the Americas in 2005 and in the Declaration of the Regional Conference of the Americas (Preparatory meeting for the Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance), held in Santiago, Chile, in 2000.
Respectfully submitted: Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), African-Centered Lutheran Pastor/Freelance Journalist, International Workers of the World/Freelance Journalists Union-"ONE BIG UNION!-" (IWW/FJU), 7-9-2020 , Updated, 7-14-2020
APPENDIX
Full Disclosure: The philosophical and literary content of this Home Page , and this Website as a whole, is indebted to the Kawaida (Tradition & Reason) African-Centered philosophy, which we’ve studied, dialoged with-for over 40 years-and advocate.
More, Kawaida was created and is advanced by Dr. Maulana Karenga, African-Centered Ethicist, Maatian Moral Teacher, Professor, and Chair of Africana Studies at California State University-Long Beach.
Dr. Karenga is the Creator of Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba, Executive Director of the African American Cultural Center/Us, Los Angeles, Chair of Us Organization and the National Association of Kawaida Organizations (NAKO), and author of over 24 Books and innumerable scholarly and Black Press articles.
Additionally, Dr. Karenga is Co-Chair of Black Community Clergy and Labor Alliance (BCCLA)-South Central L.A.’s Black United Front.
More, Dr. Karenga is a weekly OP/ED Columnist and Kawaida philosophy opinion maker of the Los Angeles Sentinel, the highest circulation Black News Weekly West of the Mississippi.
Author of ESSAYS ON STRUGGLE-Position and Analysis, 2016, Dr. Karenga has a forthcoming book who’s working title is “The Liberation Ethics of Minister Malcolm X (Al Hajj Malik Shabazz): Critical Consciousness, Moral Grounding, and Transformative Struggle.”
Finally, Dr. Karenga is also the subject of the path-breaking work "Maulana Karenga: An Intellectual Portrait" by Dr. Molefi Keti Asante, Temple University.
The above said, all short-comings in the above document are our ministry's fault.
For an in-depth essay on how RENEWAL resources Dr. Karenga's Kawaida philosophy in our ministry, please go to DR. KARENGA Q&A at our website's MORE drop-down window in the upper-right corner of our HOME PAGE for lap
tops-upper-left for mobile phones.
CONTACT: JKWASHINGTON@comcast.net or
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Reformation Church Chicago's Journeying Home Chaplaincy Network (REWORK)
Hours
Mon | 09:00 am – 05:00 pm | |
Tue | 09:00 am – 05:00 pm | |
Wed | 09:00 am – 05:00 pm | |
Thu | 09:00 am – 05:00 pm | |
Fri | 09:00 am – 05:00 pm | |
Sat | Closed | |
Sun | Closed |