Sunday Service Announcement Throwback

It's been a month of Sundays since I published anything that felt like our OG Sunday newsletters, shoutout to Paul Opoku for this submission bringing that energy back.

How many OG Blackstackers are in the building? Let me know in the comments if you remember reading the original newsletter, Sunday Service Announcements, or what issue you were ever featured in.

The intention behind publishing exclusively written work on Sundays is to tap into the cultural remembrance of Sundays and the community that came with it. I’m feeling the push into a direction that captures that essence, but with a layer of substance woven in that many of us are searching for.

We have questions where answers are patiently waiting for us to discover. Our writing practice is our way of discovery of not only the answers we seek, but the parts of ourselves we try to hide.

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How to See Ourselves in Holy Books

Written by Paul Opoku

“History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been, what they have been, where they are, and what they are. Most important, history tells a people where they still must go, and what they still must be. The relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child.” From Baba John Henrik Clark.

I've been wondering, and maybe you have as well. How come whenever I read the bible or quran or any commentative work dealing with philosophical matters, I hear an elderly white man's voice? He's narrating to me like I'm watching the Lord of the Rings or some medieval Western European folklore. I bet you hearing it right now.

On top of that, anytime I read, say, a chapter of the bible, why did I often depict the characters as caucasians in my head? Films such as The Ten Commandments (1956), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and The Passion of the Christ (2005) (the animated film The Prince of Egypt is an exception) didn't help either, as they'd often star all European casts, leaving me wondering, where do I fit into these stories?

The three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and even the faiths of the far East can trace their origins to Ancient Egypt and the Nile Valley Civilizations. Many of the monuments and structures that millions flock to today have stood the literal test of time thanks to the ingenuity of Africans. 3,000 years prior to the birth of Jesus (Yeshua) the Christ, the Ancient Egyptians had a savior complex named Heru etched in stone in the temples of Edfu. Before the prophets Moses & Muhammad arrived on the scene, the laws of Ma’at were being followed by Africans embodying the ideals of morality, order, harmony, law and justice. What we often call African history or Black history is actually the missing pages of world history. Conveniently omitted from the atriums of respectable discourse of the history of humankind.

It's time we reclaim our rightful place. Read your interpretation of these stories. They whitened it up, so you too now blacken it up.

According to Genesis, the Most High created man and woman with the soil of the Earth. I ain't never seen plain dirt before. All them names that end in “ah” and “yah”? That sure don't sound like European names to me anymore. Why did it take the Israelites, what should've been a 6-day trip to Canaan, 40 years? You know niggas don’t be following directions. All them sacrifices and burnt offerings they was doing? Niggas was putting meat on the grill for YAWH! Samson never cutting his hair? That brother must've had locs and was hydrating them with shea butter. King Solomon was carried in a palanquin (Song of Solomon Chapter 3 Verse 9), much like kings in West Africa have been for centuries, even till today.

Even Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus had to hide in Egypt, of all places, for some time, and when it was time for him to die on a tree, an African man named Simon of Cyrene (modern day Libya) was compelled into carrying his cross with him. When it was revealed to John (one of his disciples) how Jesus was seated on a throne, having “feet like burnt brass and white woolly hair,” that sounds like somebody's elder.

History matters.

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