Honestly, if I were an outsider looking in, I’d think we were crazy.

My general religious/spiritual beliefs nonwithstanding (save it for another day), John Fountain took the words out of my head with his recent Washington Post article. Granted, I don’t quite get the correlation between the failings of the church and the disconnect with black men specifically, but maybe you have to be one to understand. I see it as a failing of the Protestant Christian church as a whole.

The church, or at least the face that you see/hear/know about on a public level, is about money more than anything else. I truly cannot tell you the last time I heard about a church other than my own doing something for someone out in the community, but I can tell you how many times today I’ve heard mentioned the name of this celebrity pastor, or that star-spangled congregation, or the big new building that’s being built. I have heard “so-and-so church has their sanctuary paid off!” thrown around as a major compliment more times than I need to. I used to watch a lot of different televised church services while I was away at school, but I had to stop, because I just couldn’t take the greed anymore. I’m not sure if this is a new thing or if I’m just now noticing it, but the message seems to be that blessings=riches and “God’s fruits” all come in the form of monetary and material gain. I’ve sat in church and heard pastors say that you are not a Christian if you don’t tithe. I’ve listened to more than one popular, TV-show-having preacher make the statement that they or someone close to them “never received a blessing” until they “sowed a seed” that they could barely afford to spend to someone’s ministry. You’re a pastor and you’re telling me that your “blessings” have all come in the form of cars, houses, and enough money to finance a new rec center? Are you serious? And here I thought the Bible said that it’s easier to fit a camel through a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. Oh, but wait: it’s okay to be filthy rich as long as it’s for the ministry. Pardon me.

Yes, it takes funding to build buildings, do outreach, and get the message across to as many people as possible. But the church today has crossed the line into downright materialism. I’m tired of hearing these so-called religious leaders ranting about how they’ve been “blessed” with the millions to afford personal chefs and send their children to private school. I suppose the CEOs who get rich off divesting people of their pensions and pimps who profit from exploiting children are the holiest people of all; they sure are some of the richest. T.D. Jakes must be making at least a mil yearly… he should take a leap of faith and “sow” $999 thousand to see how far he gets, instead of investing in any more of those shiny suits.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m only seeing the face of Christianity that’s in the newspapers, television, magazines, and internet every day, and this is an innaccurate depiction. Maybe my little shiny-suit-free church isn’t one in a million, and these temples of plenty are in the minority.

In that case, they need to stop making us po’ folk look bad.

“Some niggas recognize the light but they can’t handle the glare.”
~Common, The Light

Read this article first, then get back at me.

I respect the notion that sometimes a woman has to take the back seat and submit in order to get and keep a happy relationship with a “good black man.”

But I darn sure don’t agree with it.

Now, before I go any further, let the record show I’m single and have been for 99.9% of my life. It’s not that I don’t want want a boyfriend,
it’s that I don’t just want a boyfriend. You see, I tend to get caught in the “friend zone.” You all know that zone. You meet a guy, you become friends, and gradually you become really good friends. Like, help me move out of the dorms friends. Let’s do our laundry together friends. “Hey, could you help me pick out a birthday gift for this girl I really like?” friends.

Yeah, that zone.

I dislike it, but I don’t run from it. I like being a friend, and having good friends. I can’t imagine getting lovey dovey with someone without having been friends first. The problem is that most of the world sees it the other way around. The common advice is “don’t date your friends.” Well, why would I want to spend time with someone who’s not even my “friend?”

I know some people say that the friendship grows later, after you’ve gotten to know one another. But my inclination to swap bodily fluids with someone I don’t already know quite well is reserved for celebrities and soccer players. Sam Spade on the street doesn’t make the cut. If it weren’t for all those Jim Crow laws and lynchings, I probably would have done well being born a couple of generations earlier.

But I wasn’t, so I’m single. Because by the time I know enough about a gentleman to want his tongue in my mouth, he knows enough about me to not want it there. I’ve crossed the line from girlfriend to girl-friend. And boys don’t want to date their friends, no matter how wonderful and consoling and helpful they are. Obviously not, if they’re scared off by a woman who won’t just “take his hand and go with the flow.” Maybe things are different when boys become men, but I doubt it. In any case, I’m just not the type to wait around for someone to take care of me. I’m not saying that I’ll never yearn for companionship; I’m saying that I don’t need any ol’ man. And I am not willing to accept any fellow that I cannot consider my friend.

I’m not ready to just take a hand and follow you; I need you to be secure enough to take my hand and walk with me. If you have to take control of the household because you feel emasculated in the white man’s world, hit the door. I’m defeminized in the white man’s world. But that doesn’t mean I need to put on a petticoat and nurse a baby to feel secure in myself as a girl. It works both ways.

It’s not that I don’t ever want to be with someone, it’s that I’m not willing to settle on one of the biggest decisons of my life. If I’m single forever, I might be a little miffed, but I’ll have no regrets. I know how great I am.

And I always get what I deserve.

the black community can actually get somewhere. That is, according to Rev. Willie Wilson of Union Temple Baptist Church in DC. He expounded upon some of his uplifting opinions earlier this month during a controversial sermon in which he warned that “lesbianism is about to take over our community” and that “Sisters [are] making more money than brothers and it’s creating problems in families… that’s one of the reasons many of our women are becoming lesbians.”

Well call me a monkey’s uncle. I thought it was ‘cause of playing too much sports.

But his opinions don’t surprise me. I have noticed this vaguely misogynistic undertone among many in the black church in recent years; this belief that until now was confined to the pulpit that young black girls are “turning into lesbians” at an alarming rate. Now, I know Florence isn’t the most cutting edge place in the world, and I know that Charlotte is still on the come-up, but I think if there was a lesbian craze, my never-could-get-a-boyfriend self would have at least known about it (or maybe I was too homely for the butch girls, too?) I really don’t know where it’s coming from.

What does surprise me is that this pastor has done work in the past to “build bridges between gay and straight African Americans.” He has instituted a widely acclaimed AIDS outreach program in his church. So why did he choose now to espouse his pretermitive views? Given his role as a leader of the Millions More March it’s as if he’s deliberately trying to alienate the black gay community.

To me, the sermon is more shocking for his imagery than his philosphy. A lot of preachers (and parishioners) agree with his beliefs, but I’m just not used to hearing about strap-ons and butt grease on Sunday morning. But that brings me back to the question I’ve been asking since I was old enough to fashion it: why are so many “Christians” so obsessed with homosexuality?

I hear so many people talking about how they put a stop to their daughters’ “dressing like a boy,” but is anybody stopping their sons from calling girls bitches and ‘hos at every turn? So many parents take issue with their sons playing with their sisters’ dolls or “acting like sissies,” so they turn around and buy them toy guns instead. The real underlying problems are so often neglected, while society only focuses on the superficial, “what’s everybody going to think” type junk.

It really bothers me when I see a girl like Kristin, a precious little girl who will no doubt blossom into a gorgeuos young lady (sooner than we’d all like), relectant to buy a skirt that doesn’t reach her ankles or a summer top that reaches her knees because the boys at school tease and disrespect her about having a shape. Has anyone ever thought that maybe that’s the reason so many young girls, and young ladies, have no desire to date or “mess with” any of the man-boys they meet? Not because they’d rather be with each other, but because they’d rather be alone than deal with a mess of a “man.” Can we focus on raising a generation of men worthy of our daughters, instead of alienating a generation of women stuck between surrender and solitude?