Posted on 01/01/2004 11:08:42 AM PST by Right_Handed_Writer
There was a time in the recent near past that all one needed to do to bilk a church or Christian organization was to say "praise the Lord, the Lord told me ..." or "the Lord has revealed to me ..."
Those words, or any combination thereof, were enough to get the snake charmer the keys to the treasury. And many a church's treasury has been pillaged through the use of such cunning.
But stealing the church's money and attempting to steal the very souls of the congregants through subversion of the truth and distortion of facts is heretical.
Yet that is exactly what Ron N. Everett, Paul Scott and their votaries are guilty of.
Ron Everett, also known as Maulana Karenga, is the creator of Kwanzaa. Scott is a minister and founder of New Righteous Movement.
Scott's ignominious claim to fame is his perspective of Jesus. He has been quoted as saying, "The image of a white man portraying the Messiah is more dangerous to black children than gangsta' rap."
Forgetting color for a moment, how can a man who says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke 4:18), be more dangerous to black children than "gangsta' rap?"
Snoop Dogg, whose lyrics include oral sex, pimps and whores; R. Kelly arrested for allegedly having sex with underage girls and videotaping the same, including reported footage of his using a minor for bathroom practices; Ice-T, the pimp-gangster turned rapper turned actor-rapper, whose lyrics include killing cops; Suge Knight, gangster, convicted felon – these people are less dangerous than a white Jesus?
Black illegitimacy is at 70 percent and black-on-black crime numbers are frightening. In black urban communities drugs, guns, illiteracy and HIV are at staggering levels, and this "minister" is worried about the color of Jesus?
Everett invented Kwanzaa in 1966, as a black alternative to Christmas. His idea was to celebrate the end of what he considered Christmas-season exploitation of blacks.
Al Sharpton said it performs the valuable service of "de-whitizing" Christmas.
Were his racist sensibilities offended because blacks participated in yuletide cheer, or was it that he saw an opportunity to capitalize on a bogus holiday? Kwanzaa not only has no roots in Africa, it is not celebrated anywhere in Africa. It is a complete fabrication from the mind of Everett.
Everett said, "I came up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country wouldn't celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that's when a lot of bloods would be partying." "Bloods" is a '60s California slang term for black people. (Paul Mulshine – Happy Kwanzaa, Dec. 24, 1999).
Businesses in America, however, celebrated it to the tune of mega-millions of dollars in Kwanzaa sales each year. So much so that the International Black Buyers and Manufacturers Expo and Conference, sent a scathing letter to firms like Hallmark Cards and Giant Food telling them to stop selling Kwanzaa-related products. The organization found the sale of Kwanzaa products by non-black enterprises "arrogantly exploitative of the culture of African people." They found "it insulting and disrespectful to the actual spirit of Kwanzaa."
How do they justify their actions against Everett's words?
While I may wonder how Italians feel about black-owned stores selling spaghetti, the bigger question is Everett, himself, and how a he landed in the position he now holds.
In 1971, Everett was sentenced to 1 to 10 years for brutally assaulting two of his (black) followers. After forcing them to strip, they were beaten with an electrical cord and a karate baton. He put a hot soldering iron in the mouth and against the face of one of the women and crushed the big toe of the other woman in a vice. He then put detergent and running hoses in their mouths.
Christmas is singularly a Christian celebration commemorating the birth of Christ. All other aspects are purely perfunctory. Self-segregation – whether the work of a lost minister or Ron Everett, now a Marxist and a professor at California State University at Long Beach and the chairman of the Black Studies Department – serves only that master with that doctrinal whip.
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Mychal S. Massie is an op-ed columnist and talk-radio guest host. He also makes regular appearances on political and community-oriented programs in the Philadelphia, Pa. area, is a self-employed business owner of 30 years and a frequent inspirational speaker.
All a bunch of WHITE lies, I presume....
Well, that's a lovely image, isnt it? NOT!
This sadist should be locked up and the key thrown away.
I don't think I've ever read of a "minister" or someone in leadershp such as he has thrust himself, doing something so horrible to his "followers" and it's here in America. YUk. Double yuk.
The best thing "bloods" can do is ignore this stupid, fictitious holiday but it seems to me that they've fallen for it, believing, erroneously, that they are celebrating something "importnat" to their African(?)-American experience. Since most of them are NOT decendants of Africans but of Americans, this hokey-pokey should be put to rest.
At what point do African-Americans finally become AMERICANS?
What ever the origins of the Shroud-be it a forgery, a copy or an authentic relic - it is clear that the face represented is "Eastern" and close to the Greek Iconic image of Jesus from which tradition says was inspired by the Mandelion (which may or may not be the Turin Shroud).
Note the split beard on the Greek icon also found on the Shroud.
PS: I have no opinion on Kwanza and think people can invent whatever holiday they wish.
Freedom is a bitch that I won't bitch about.
The ones that do practice Kwanzaa actually are the upper class more educated Blacks rather than the poorer and less educated ones. I know many upper echelon Blacks long for a heritage they can cling to and since theirs is hard to pin down they are prone to huckstersims such as claiming Egypt's glory as Black African glory or to pseudo-West African heritage ceremonies such as Kwanzaa. Thankfully few educated Blacks buy the fake Egypt white man stole civilization lore anymore because in that arena scholarship demolishes wishful thinking. In the field of culture NO weapon can change what people feel, If a ceremony makes people feel good they will do it.
I will give you an example. The modern secular aspect of Christmas-the tree-the lights-Santa are only recent inventions that like Kwanzaa had some origin in a remote pagan past reimagined for the present. Since this version of Christams touched on something in the culture that made people feel good it remained and grew beyond its small WASP/Dutch origins. If Kwanzaa has this secular reaction for Blacks who am I to say it is wrong? Is Christmas time wrong for brining in trees and light "ceremonies" to our homes?
As long as it is not made a paid holiday (Christmas was not a federal holiday until the end of the 19th century) let us live and let live.
Whatever the appearance Christ takes on the "Scandanavian" Jesus you mention did not originate with the Shroud of Turin is all I wanted to point out. The Greek/Byzantine early church icons all show Jesus looking like that icon. From the standards of Americans in the 18th and 19th century who considered Southern Italians as "Blacks" the Jesus in the icon and the Turin Shroud image would be considered "non Aryan" or Black (or whatever term was used to describe Whites of the Northern European type 100 years ago over Whites from Southern Europe).
That was just my point-blonde Jesus has nothing to do with the Shroud of Turin-an image which was not known well until after the invention of photography.
PPS: Sorry for my history nerdiness.
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