The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2023   On the evening of May 31, 1921, a mob of white people attacked the homes and businesses of Black people who lived in the thriving Greenwood community considered the “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Throughout that night and into the following day, June 1, the white mob burned homes, churches, and even a school. Here is a link to a 2021 National Public Radio retrospective about the event based on the account of Olivia Hooker, who was six years old when the massacre happened ( https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1001376496/100-years-later-a-survivors-story-of-the-tulsa-race-massacre ). Now read this online report about the Tulsa Race Massacre from Britanica ( https://www.britannica.com/event/Tulsa-race-massacre-of-1921 ). Please read the February 2001 official report that is linked in that report ( https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf ). People should also read Dr. Jerrolyn Eulinberg's womanist perspective on the Tulsa Race Mass...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2023 As of today, the following persons have announced their candidacies for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in 2024. ·        Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina. ·        Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida. ·        Former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. ·        Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. ·        Former President Donald Trump from Florida. Although he has not yet announced his candidacy, it is likely that former Vice President Mike Pence from Indiana will also seek the Republican Party nomination at some point in the foreseeable future. These politicians will spend countless hours and millions of dollars between now and 2024 trying to persuade Republican voters that they differ from one another. They will travel across...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2023     May 15, 1948 – 75 years ago - a human rights travesty began which most US politicians, religionists, and media outlets do not mention. On May 15, Palestinians and those of us who are in solidarity with their liberation and human rights movement will commemorate what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba. “Nakba” means “catastrophe” in Arabic. Understanding the Palestinian Nakba requires knowing the history behind the place that leaders of the Israeli apartheid regime and their US pro-Zionist enablers and sympathizers call a “democracy.” I recommend former US President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book, Palestine – Peace Not Apartheid , for an easily read and well documented history of what some Christians call “the Holy Land.” I In his book, Jimmy Carter writes that Jews and Arabs inhabited the Holy Land, together, for centuries before A.D. 135, when it was conquered by the Romans. The Romans changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina...

  © Wendell Griffen, 2023   The United States leads the world in mass murders caused by firearms. It leads the world in deaths caused by firearms. It leads the world in the number of firearms manufactured, marketed, and purchased by civilians. Yet, white people in the US - the racial group responsible for manufacturing, marketing, selling, purchasing, and using firearms and objecting to laws regulating firearms – complain loudest and most about being concerned about public safety. White people in the US who self-identify as “evangelical Christians” profess to be followers of Jesus, a Palestinian Jewish rabbi who was murdered by a Roman Empire occupation force. Yet, white “evangelical Christians” rarely can be seen, heard, or found supporting calls to rein in militarized policing of Black, Latino, and indigenous persons. Instead, they are the core constituency supporting strongarm policing of non-white persons. A federal jury in New York City recently found Donald Trump...

  GREAT COMMISSION RELIGION VERSUS THE RELIGION OF JESUS ©Wendell Griffen, 2023   In a February 2019 article a Roman Catholic religious studies professor named Matthew Smaltz who teaches at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts published a short article titled What Is the Great Commission and Why is It So Controversial ( https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-great-commission-and-why-is-it-so-controversial-111138#:~:text=Briefly%2C%20the%20Great%20Commission%20is%20a%20concept%20that,%E2%80%9Cdisciples%20of%20all%20the%20nations%E2%80%9D%20and%20%E2%80%9Cbaptize%E2%80%9D%20them ). In the article, Smaltz shared some interesting observations.   ·       A 2019 survey indicated that a majority of church-going American Christians are unfamiliar with the term “the Great Commission. ·       Of the minority of church-going American Christians who recognized the “Great Commission” term, 25 percent could not explain what ...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2023   Harry Belafonte died on Tuesday, April 25, 2023, at the full age of 96 years in his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in New York City, reportedly (from his longtime spokesperson, Ken Sunshine) due to congestive heart failure. As befitting someone of his celebrity as a performing artist (thespian, Caribbean folk singer, motion picture actor, and highly paid artist), and activist for human rights, Belafonte’s death was a leading news story the day he died, made the front page of most major US newspapers the following day, and prompted memories of his long and influential life. I prefer to remember Harry Belafonte as a prophet for our time. That does not mean I disagree with the fame he achieved as a performing artist. I enjoyed hearing him sing and seeing him act. But Harry Belafonte was always for me an unflinching prophet for social justice. Not only did he befriend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Belafonte supported King’s ministry, co...

  ©Wendell Griffen           On March 31, 2023, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Lucretia Clemons issued a 39-page ruling that denied Mumia Abu Jamal’s latest attempt to obtain a fair evidentiary hearing related to his 1982 conviction for murder in the 1981 death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Judge Clemons ruled that Abu Jamal’s accusation that the District Attorney used peremptory challenges to strike Black persons from the jury in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal constitution and contrary to the 1986 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in Batson v. Kentucky is time-barred, meaning that it was raised too late for consideration and relief. Judge Clemons also ruled that even if she were to grant Abu-Jamal’s contention that the District Attorney’s office violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process by failing – for thirty-six years – to disclose exculpatory...