Tag Archives: God

From the Black Church to New Thought

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As spoken at Unity Southeast in Kansas City’s Black History Month commemoration, entitled “From the Black Church to New Thought” on February 1, 2024.  An evening filled with music and attestations.

I grew up in the Black church. It’s almost a label — “Black Church” — as it doesn’t merely describe a church peopled with Black folk, but instead regards an institution uniquely of its own creation. Packed with history, much of which is trauma-generated, the Black Church has come to symbolize a kind of spiritual ablution & healing of the ancestral painbody, demonstrated in the exhortations, the dancing and shouting, and the speaking in tongues. My dear mother used to call it “gittin’ happy.” The Black Church is an unparalleled experience to behold. I was baptized at age 10, at Trinity Baptist Church in Los Angeles, under the ministry of the Reverend Elliott Mason. My siblings and I all sang in the Youth & Young Adult choir. For a brief time, as a teen, I was even the choir accompanist, as our choir director also happened to be my piano teacher, the Reverend Carl Johnson, and he believed in giving his students opportunities for growth and grown-up responsibilities, because in the Black Church you weren’t just raised by your parents; you were raised by the village. And to this day, Carl remains a force in my life. My maternal grandfather, the Reverend Felix Shepard, was a Baptist minister in St. Louis. My paternal grandfather, Prentiss Brown, had been a deacon at our church in L.A. My roots in the Black Church run deep. 

There came a point in my early adulthood when I graduated away from the church; not only the walls of Trinity, but the church as an institution. Because I had questions. About everything.  I questioned what I considered to be the fire & brimstone aesthetic. I questioned the very idea of a patriarchal deity, and an iron-handed one at that. I had questions. And my own personal experience was that you don’t have questions. You adhere. So I drifted away. And for a good decade or two after that, I lived with no relationship whatsoever to a church community.

Then Eastern Thought came into my life. The ancient Buddhist principles of the 8-fold path. The wisdoms of the Tao. Yogic practices of turning inward. Meditation. I joined retreats and dharma sits, led by Thai Buddhist monk, Thanissaro Bikkhu, of the Metta Forest Monastery in San Diego. I found great resonance with those practices. Still do, and always will. And it was during that time that I was invited by a friend to sing at my first Unity Church, Unity of Pasadena, under the helm of the Reverend Marilyn Roth, who singlehandedly brought my early church upbringing back into my personal fold in such a loving and beautifully metaphysical way that my heart began to expand in even newer and greater unfoldments. And what stood her out from the many is that though she blessedly didn’t sell the story of fear, as many Christian churches do, she also understood that rather than a reliance on feel-good salves for fragile souls, without the crucial first steps in any authentic spiritual work of courting the caves for exploration and excavation, the practice becomes precious rather than revolutionary. I loved her for that.

And before I knew it, I was singing and communing with the many Science of Mind and Unity communities around L.A. In addition to Unity of Pasadena, two other churches I also call home are the Center for Spiritual Living Granada Hills, under the Reverend Michael McMorrow, and the Center for Spiritual Living Simi Valley, under the Reverend Stephen Rambo, who both entrusted me with their choirs, and who have lifted me up always. And what all three of those churches have in common is that they are New Thought. New Thought has this tiny gem of an idea that God isn’t outside of us, and only reachable through a prism of dogma. God is the power within every cell and every molecule, living and demonstrating through every thing and every one.

I was chatting with a friend not long ago, and I mentioned my involvement with New Thought, and he, a very devout Christian traditionalist, reacted to the term, which he had never heard before, with “New Thought, huh? Like, as opposed to the Old Thought?” And his question betrayed a concern that his religious beliefs were now considered old and dusty. And my response to him was: “No. Not as opposed to. There is space for all of the voices out here trying to make sense of this baffling world we live in, and the immense responsibility we have, to wear these flesh uniforms and do our duty of making our connections with each other. And toward that goal, one size doesn’t fit all.” 

We are all connected, not separated. Not by religious labels, the color of our garments, the flag we wave. And for me, this is what New Thought holds as its essence. A welcoming of the mighty forces, many, for us to ponder, consider, examine. Even question. What New Thought has actually done for me is allow me to draw my childhood church experience back into my embrace, after all of the years away, and to think of that puberty in my life with a new set of eyes. When I examine my life today, and the Black Church in which I was raised, I realize I never truly left it, as I have taken with me into the rest of my life its uniquely roof-raising music. Its impenetrable sense of community. And I have taken its Christ Consciousness with me into the rest of my life, to sit right alongside the Buddha Consciousness. The Tao Consciousness. The Abrahamic Consciousness. The Pagan Consciousness. For the first time in my life, this past holiday season, I actually commemorated the 7 days of Kwanzaa. It just spoke to me to do so, out of the blue, and was a deeply meaningful experience. This is how Spirit, or Source, or God, works. It integrates. Not segregates. 

Three years ago I moved to Kansas City, where I had no family, and knew no one. It happened right at the beginning of global lockdown. And after a few months here, getting my footing, finding a job, and all in a locked-down environment, I decided to try and find the New Thought here. I actually just Googled it, and started calling numbers. And everything was closed. Except for Unity Southeast in Kansas City, under the helm of the Reverend Randy Fikki. It was still open, though with the strictest policies of temperature tests at the door, mask mandates, social-distance seating, and hand-sanitizer everywhere you turned. But it was still operating, I came to learn, because of its unwavering ministry to the houseless community, which didn’t stop needing help just because a pandemic had arrived. In that instant, I kind of fell in love. And I was welcomed in, embraced so fully and so instantly. And I knew I was home. One of many.

Part of writing this has been to recognize the importance of roll-calling all of the spiritual leaders who have been pivotal and vital to my life and personal growth. That’s why the litany of names and shout-outs to the Pastors, the Monks, the Teachers, who have shaped me, lit a fire under me, tempered my pain, and still aid me in finding my way in this world. Because — again — this is how the majesty of it works. It integrates. Not segregates.

AMAZING GRACE : Have We PC’d the Marrow Right Out of It?

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amazing-grace

As we prepare our tables for Thanksgiving and our hearts to be in a space and place of gratitude, a song that always rings in my head is Amazing Grace.  I’ve never known a song to express such humility of spirit, and perhaps the association in my brain is because humility is the first step toward gratitude. Gratitude is about accepting one’s present, as opposed to resenting one’s past or coveting a certain future. It is about humbling oneself to being moved by the great fortune of being alive and being loved. I believe that gratitude cannot and does not exist when one’s legs and knees are stiffened in a kind of pride and entitlement. It takes humility first to experience an attitude of gratitude.

So, in preparing my own symbolic table this year, I decided to read up on my favorite hymn.  Amazing Grace has often been associated with the American South, and I, for one, did think its origins were from the tradition of the Negro Spiritual.  It was, in fact, written by an Englishman.

But here’s where my own mental association wasn’t completely off-base.  John Newton was an English slave trader, trafficking thousands of men, women, and children from Africa to the auction blocks. In 1748 a violent storm threatened to sink his ship. Frightened for his life, he made a promise to God that if he survived he would change his ways. And sure enough around the age of 45, he had a crisis of conscience and became a minister and a composer of hymns. Yet it would be years later before he would give up his involvement in the slave trade, and a total of thirty-three years from the time of his “spiritual conversion” before he would break his long silence, a watershed moment in his life, and publish his brutal book on the subject, which included an apology for “a confession, which comes too late.  It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” He promptly became a prominent supporter of the abolition of slavery in England. As more years passed, Newton drew deeper and deeper inward to his monastic life, as he found himself haunted by what he constantly called his twenty-thousand ghosts. He bemoaned having been a part of the dehumanizing of these Africans who’d had beautiful names but were only ever referred to with grunts. He would say that while these captured were treated as beasts, it was the slave traders, him above them all, who had been the beasts.

It was fifteen years BEFORE his public confession, in the year 1772, that he had composed a hymn called Faith’s Review and Expectation.  It became one of the most recognizable songs in the history of the world, and the most recorded, a song now known as Amazing Grace.  And to have now learned of Newton’s spiritual journey and redemption, it is so clear to me that this hymn is his confession.

The song’s history has a wild and glorious path, as it has become associated with having the power to give hope where there has seemed none, and expresses a God of absolute mercy and forgiveness. Just a few points on the map of its presence in the hearts and minds of the global collective:

  • It was used as a requiem by Native Americans on their Trail of Tears (the ethnic cleansing and forced relocation of Native Americans from the southeast parts of the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830).
  • It was sung by Civil Rights protesters during the freedom marches and rides.
  • It held a prominent place in the proceedings when Martin Luther King, Jr. shared his dream on the steps of the Washington Monument.
  • It was played the world over when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison.
  • It was sung when the Berlin wall came down.
  • On 911, it rang out to comfort a world in mourning.

It is a song of such startling humility that I find myself privately conflicted whenever I’m obliged to sing it for jobs, as I recently did for one of the churches at which I periodically sing, and am requested to do the PC thing of changing the word wretch to soul . . . or something else, anything else! other than this awful word that only degrades us. That’s the subtext anyway. The reason I’m conflicted is because I maintain that wretch is absolutely appropriate, as it calls on, and calls out, the basest of our human instincts, to stand and be accountable, to bend our knees prostrate and humbly offer that we’ve been to Hell and back, or have given Hell to others (haven’t we all dealt, or been dealt, a little Hell at some point in our lives?), that we are human and therefore with flaw, and that ONLY in the owning of that truth are we able to rise, to heal, to transform and transcend.  By the instinct to couch and cushion our delicate sensibilities in more conciliatory words like soul, we are basically saying that we don’t have the ability or the humility to own up.

We are presently in an era where, in an effort to be removed from the dogma of more traditional practices (an instinct I’m inclined to embrace), our modern spiritual movements seem largely to have, as their agenda, a reliance on salves and unguents for fragile souls, but without the crucial first steps in any authentic spiritual work of courting the caves for exploration and excavation. I believe this is as important a part of a heart-centered practice as a room buzzing with namastes.  Yet as I make my way around the New Thought circuit (a movement I do regard fondly) as a vocalist, I find this particular feel-good bent more and more prevalent. The practice becomes precious rather than revolutionary.

And so, because I often find myself caught between self-governance and employment, both of which are important to me, I do sing soul instead of wretch when I am paid to sing the song, because it is the job required of me, but never when singing it for my own reward. I believe that John Newton understood the state of grace only because of how far down he had once sunk, and how much of a wretch he had been. He could not possibly have authored a more perfect set of words from any other internal place than his own lowest spiritual ebb.  Why do we SO fear the personal investigation of such states?  Isn’t that a fairly important step in the journey towards connecting to our greater god-realized selves? Joseph Campbell understood that when he said: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”  So, too, John Newton, when he composed an efficient set of stanzas as powerful, timeless, and iconic as:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

Humility, grace, gratitude . . . these are all states of the heart and mind that we reflect on during this season. Frankly, it’s my favorite time of year, because I do tend to have a reflective sort of nature, and this song expresses the absolute largeness of that concept. And now I even know a little bit about its author, after all these years of singing it and loving it, which only makes me feel even more interconnected with this globe of beautiful, imperfect, sentient beings.

In any case, that’s my light bulb.  Here’s wishing for us all a few breathtaking insights, perhaps a stunning illumination or two, and some amazing grace.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.