I wish I had at my fingertips one of Adolph Reed's critiques of the malignant role of the church in black politics. Sure there was King, but there were also many decades during which what should have been secular political discontent was diverted into hymns and worship. Maybe the old imperialists knew what they were doing when they sent in missionaries to convert the colonized.
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Now for a (hopefully brief) personal aside.
As a kid, I knew that my relationship, so to speak, with the fundamentalist church I grew up in was doomed when:
A.) Instead of reading the official instructive text during Sunday school, I slipped a paperback copy of "1984" between the covers and studied, as if it were true holy writ, that section of the novel when Winston reviews the "Principles of Newspeak"
B.) A popular Minister, pandering to the audience's misunderstanding of space probes such as Voyager, declared that Christ, during his triumphal return to earth via the cosmic highway, would "cleanse" each and every planet visited by our sinful machines of their Godless taint.
At that point, my bags were already mentally packed.
This sort of talk is not rare and serves no useful function in the modern moment other than to comfort people who're disturbed by the present complexity.
DRM
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