How The Black Church Survives Pandemic

In post-pandemic virtual reality, a former president for the Black Public Relations Society of Washington, DC partners with a retired U.S. Marine Corps “Gunny” to journey where few have gone.  They cross a “Trail of Tears” via an INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY on a $2 trillion mission to discover “America.”  The Black Wall Street friends-n-kin rate is your key to HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA. Reservations required for HEADQUARTERS HOTEL luxury accommodations hosting the 1st Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of Meeples.

 

By Eric Stradford, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

AMWS, April 22, 2021, Muscogee –  For whatever reason, some “good people” seeking to heal from COVID-19 tend to value other “good people” as less than equal.  The term, “minority” so freely and habitually woven into our beliefs, reveals a remnant cause of a deadly effect on American lives.

Experience as equals among brother and sister warriors of all races uniquely equips veterans of the United States Armed Forces for service in the national defense.  Those who were raised in Black Church augmented military discipline with an inherent value of “double portions.”  But, too often, they return to hometowns that once seemed so big to a hometown mindset that’s just too small to “provide for the common defence.”

May 31, 2021 marks the 100^th year since terrorists attacked the Greenwood community of Tulsa, Oklahoma.   The attack on that community, dubbed “Black Wall Street,” was perhaps as unimaginable as the senseless murder of George Floyd.  And yet, almost no one will imagine the 121 old story sleeping beneath the sheets.

If anybody needs to be blamed for the wake-up call, it’s Eric C. Nelson.  The attorney for now convicted murderer Derek Chauvin impregnated an emerging global generation of jurists with an unacceptable version of reality.  Nelson’s attempt to exploit the last 9 minute 29 seconds on George Floyd’s Chronos timeline may have triggered a reset from Chronos to Kairos. 

The Reverend Dr. Robert Richard Allen Turner pastors the Historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Greenwood community.  He has been pounding the pavement at City Hall seeking reparations for the 100-year-old attack on Black Wall Street.  In his generation, a Black Lives Matter movement trods the stony road of social justice, paved with blood of folks who said they believe that “trouble don’t last always.”

Planners for The First Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of Meeples have been looking at “church” through a whole new generation of eyes.  What started as intentional, prosocial action in pursuit of “economic justice” for Black Lives across America has inspired a declaration for #EconomicSecurity.

The difference between “economic justice” and #EconomicSecurity is that one is granted by those with perceived power and the other is decreed and declared through sovereign authority.  #ManifestDestiny was a widely held cultural belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America. The current #EconomicSecurity reality for historically disadvantaged Americans stems from three basic themes of manifest destiny. 

Social action by “good people” has promoted “special virtues of the American people and their institutions.”  The concept, according to historians was born out of "a sense of mission.”  A perception of mission for the United States was to redeem and remake the west in the image of the agrarian East. 

It worked—for a season—just not here.

Survival for a growing number of #BlackLivesMatter supporters now drives an “irresistible destiny to accomplish an essential duty.”  Before COVID-19, there was already a racial-wealth gap, and this pandemic has exacerbated it,” states BLM. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, the United States government has never done enough to support Black people, leaving too many in survival mode.”

HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA justifies compromise on $2 trillion in U.S. government infrastructure spending.  The clarion call for healing frames a news cycle around an anticipated Kairos moment on a Chronos timeline.   Journalists, broadcasters, public relations practitioners, preachers, teachers, advertising executives and every beneficiary of a minority anything may qualify for credentials to right an historic wrong by writing the story of how America’s soul got healed.

“How To Reach The Masses” is one question on the minds of 2.4 billion believers.  Good people across “the nation” and around the world are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Good news is, there is a balm.

HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA will require sustainable information infrastructure. When you explore information infrastructure projects such as the Underground Railroad and the Trail of Tears, it’s not hard to see where $2 trillion in infrastructure spending might be needed most.  

The Black Church was “born in protest against slavery – against dehumanization of African people, brought to the American continent as labor,” according to The Right Reverend Adam J. Richardson, senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Inc.  The Black Church was unique in that, “It rejected the negative theological interpretations which rendered persons of African descent second class citizens,” stated Richardson. “Theirs was a theological declaration that God is God all the time and for every body.”   Let’s be real. Not every body trusts the government.  Perhaps that’s why “Everybody” hasn’t gotten a COVID-19 shot.

A. J. Richardson is the 115^th elected, consecrated bishop of a unique body of believers in 39 countries on five continents.  The terms, “every” and “body” does not necessarily mean the same as “everybody.” The Black church, regardless of denomination, carries out the spirit of the original Free African Society which values any “body” as a whole “somebody.”

Common vision for the future of Black Wall Street, Tulsa, OK means understanding provisions for #EconomicSecurity.  A “Meeple of Muscogee” may have been a vision of a whole “somebody” once valued as a minority.  

By declaration, the constitution of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, provides for a new reality in Tulsa, and perhaps a cornerstone for a 21^st Century community of whole believers.  “Under the guidance of the Almighty God, our Creator, #WeThePeople of Muscogee, do promote Unity, to establish Justice, and secure to ourselves and our children the blessings of Freedom, to preserve our basic Rights and Heritage, to strengthen and preserve self and local Government, in continued relations with the United States of America, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

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