>I don't know why you didn't think the positions various people who would
>weren't already implicit on other threads. But I do know that you
>proposed using the black church as a matter of "fun" for the discussion
>list. In fact, what I'm really not sure of is what it means that you, or
>anyone, would propose that the black church is an autonomous discussion
>topic at all, as though the issues around the black church are different
>from the issues around "the church" or "race" in general. That's what I
>was responding to.
May God and everyone else forgive me for that scandalous turn of phrase.
I proposed it for a discussion topic because it seems rather important to me. Left anticlericals are happy to kick around white evangelicals, but they lose their voice when it comes to discussing what I think - do I have permission to say this? - is the often pernicious influence of Christianity on African-American political life. (Reed, whom you hold in low regard, is one of the few people who dares pick up this hot potato.) It's quite amazing to watch liberals and leftists indulge Cornel West's approval of the Million Man March, and his blather about nihilism and moral decay, but doesn't West's stance have something to do with the fact that the guy is a preacher?
Discussions about "'the church' or 'race' in general" - if you can ever discuss those things "in general" - were proceeding without any apparent intersection between the two, which I thought was a rather interesting division of labor.
Doug