Bishop Eddie Long: Another Black Church Leader Exposed!

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Just when corporate news was killing us with Lindsay Lohan, now comes Bishop Eddie Long to spice it up.  By now we've all heard the allegations about the possible sexual exploits with young male members of his church. But, this is only a small portion of what ails Black America.  Eddie Long is far from being alone in his alleged nastiness, just check out the list on Eco.Soul.Intellectual's place.  Yet, this is really the symptom of another deep set disease of the mind as I see it. 

Eddie Long and other ministers of his "genre" are in love with the "getting" of money.  Eddie Long has previously allowed himself to be used (for money of course) by George Bush and the Republican camp to assist Dubya's re-election to office.  The "prosperity" ministers have long shown their love for the material over the spiritual, thus there should be no surprise about Bishop Long's alleged carnal exploits with young males since his ministerial focus has been on the physical.  But, this is not the disease. 

Self aggrandizement, selfishness and the teaching of such is the disease.  Huey P. Newton once wrote a book entitled To Die For The People based on the idea of self sacrifice for the uplift of the masses of Black people.  Yet, since COINTELPRO did such a great job in destructing Black leadership, self sacrifice became a pariah.  The ministry and society seemed to move towards a social construct of "getting" money will cure your ills and "prosperity" ministries began to flourish without conscientiousness, without a care for the uplift of the people (congregation.)  A grand sort of selfishness has come over Black ministers. 

All the while these ministers are teaching that if "you do what God says"  you will be blessed (with a whole lot of money) like me.  The ministers became the bright and morning star the congregation should look to. They put themselves up as the example of what God can do in your life.  Revolutionary Suicide was now dead, the ministers grew in wealth and the congregations financially languish. Obviously, because they are not doing "what God teaches."  The sacrafice of commiting Revolutionary Suicide or dying for the people is dead.  Symbolic or even real regicide (In the case of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King or El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) is no more.

Anna Reneean Afrospear guest writer and host of Anna Renee Is Still Talking presents several ministries that are working for the good of the people, mainly (at least the ministries she presents) assit in the education of the spread of HIV/AIDS.  However, this is far from our deepest issues(diabetes and high blood pressure affect more Black people than HIV/AIDS.)  Black people are in need of education, real financial and health education.  The response to statics put out by the CDC (who show no love for Black people) is far from enough.  This however, does not excuse any so called "prosperity" messages they may have presented over the last decade (if they are doing so.)  Prosperity messages as they are taught, are not uplifting the people.  These messages are filled with the false pos hoc logic, If you do what God says Then you will be blessed with money.  Merely attaining fiat currency is not enough.  If it were we would never see a broke lottery grand prize winner.  True economic education would result in true prosperity.  Prosperity for the congregation and for the surrounding community.  Not only for the pastor.

We are at time of great change.  Not the change that candidate Obama promised.  The change is in the economics of the United States.  We are at a time when there is an economic recovery without jobs, we are at a time of economic change in which we will probably see a rise in entrepreneurs making only the amount of money they may have made at a minimum wage job.  If these "prosperity" ministers such as Eddie Long were really committing Revolutionary Suicide there would be money changing hands in the church and surrounding community at least 10 times before those monies left the community.  There would be no need for college students that are members of the church to get loans from the government, they would get them in house from the church.  If prosperity were really the goal for the people and not for the bright and morning star of the church, the congregation would be engaged economically on every level and putting people to work in the community with stores, restaurants, gas stations and other business ventures.  But no, preachers like Bishop Eddie Long are the bright and morning star and not (Yeshua) Jesus who committed Revolutionary Suicide.  Black ministers had a history of dying for the people.   What happned?   The love of money?  A Chinese proverb says "Kill the chicken to scare the monkey."  In this case COINTELPRO killed the chicken and made chickens of the Black ministers!

Roots; African or American?

In the 1980’s, during the surge of Black “Afro-centric” authors and books, I became an avid reader of every angle of the history and legacy of Black people across space and time. From reading Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James to African Origin of Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Richard M. King to the Biography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley, Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton, and even Divine Horsemen by Maya Deren and Secrets of Voodoo by Milo Rigaud.

My reading addiction has not stopped, nor was it or is it all by Black authors on Black/African history and accomplishments. Eventually things began to become stale for me, as if I was beginning to read things that were being rehashed over and over, but with a little different spice added to the mix thus, in the end it was basically the same.

While listening to my favorite community radio station in Atlanta in December of 2000, there was an advertisement that would be rotated throughout the many hours of the day as I listened while I worked ,saying something to the affect of “Have you ever heard grandmamma or great grand ma was in Indian? Come down to the Auburn Research Library to learn more about this.”

Of course this peaked my curiosity since I had heard this very same thing all my life from my mother concerning her grandfather, my great grandfather “papa” all my life. She would point at his picture on our living room wall and say “look at papa, looking just like and Indian.” So, of course I was at the library’s auditorium promptly at 6 o’clock.

Shortly after 6 pm, the little auditorium was filled with many people, from college professors from the AU center (the center where several HBCU’s are located in Atlanta) and professors from Georgia State and a couple reporters from local Black newspapers, to average people wanting clarity about this “Indian” ancestry we have.

By 6:30, Rev. Radine Amen Ra took the stage and proceeded to layout her argument that the aboriginal people of the Americas , including the Caribbean islands were Black people and how European history books and European artists’ renditions of the aboriginal people of the Americas had been anglicized to fit the imaginations of the people back home in Europe.

She actually based her theory on several books, writings and portraits by George Catlin and county tax records and court documents of various states. She pointed to books by J. leitch Wright that wrote of the plight of Indians of the Southeastern United States. Rev. Amen Ra spoke of the logic and logistics of a huge Atlantic slave trade including cost and expense of transporting so many people from the west coast of Africa.(Ah yaw ne tak oar-A warriror of the Menominee or more specifically the Mamaceqtaw nation)

For years I had heard and read how the enslaved Africans would often runaway and live with the Native Americans, and if any Africans were enslaved by the Indian their slave system was nothing like the system of slavery that was instituted by the Europeans. Thus, the Africans would intermarry with the Indians and would often become great leaders of the “tribes.” This is what I was taught, which made sense to me and of course Alex Haley’s Roots re-enforced these lessons. But is that really the truth?

Next time what I learned.