Theology Issues Half 8: Thank God for our liberation

There’s a Jewish competition that lasts eight days, it begins on December 25 and commemorates the re-taking of Jerusalem and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C.

The rebellion started with a household often called the Maccabees and have become often called the Maccabean revolt towards the Greek Seleucid Empire. The competition is named Hanukkah.

Many who are usually not Jewish see it as a spiritual vacation for Jewish folks, however in actuality it’s what we’d name a secular commemoration that honors the bodily liberation of previously subjugated folks. It’s a commemoration of a individuals who thank God for his or her liberation and honor these Jewish individuals who fought and received their liberation. They don’t, nevertheless, give credit score to their former oppressors for liberating them.

I point out this because the Juneteenth celebration approaches June 19 as a result of there are spiritual individuals who will bifurcate the sacred and secular.

They are going to separate the spiritual from the bodily. They are going to put the Juneteenth celebration in a secular class and miss the non secular and non secular roots of the that means of Juneteenth. By the way, that is what many within the church have executed to Kwanzaa. They see Kwanzaa as a secular ritual and beneath their spiritual routines when in actuality they’re flip sides of the identical coin.

That’s the reason I began out with the commemoration of Hanukkah and the way different folks see their bodily deliverance from oppression as a part of their spiritual idea and apply.

Juneteenth has now grow to be a federal vacation, which implies it’s now being noticed by People on the whole. I’m undecided making it a federal vacation was the most effective factor for Black folks. I’m satisfied that in some ways it was a compromise to pacify Blacks following the uprisings that occurred within the wake of George Floyd’s homicide, uprisings that weren’t solely taking place in America however worldwide, as a result of the world was shut down as a consequence of a pandemic, and all people noticed the heinous and brutal homicide of George Floyd. Individuals had been so incensed by it that protests all around the globe occurred in consequence.

In truth, I need to shut with a robust anecdote regarding George Floyd and Juneteenth that was shared by Africana Research Professor Greg Carr, which is informed within the e-book “Juneteenth at Comanche Crossing,” by Doris Pemberton.

Dr. Carr first identified that Juneteenth, or what is called Emancipation Day, is widely known not solely within the Southern portion of the US, however within the Caribbean. Every August in locations like Jamaica, Emancipation Day has been celebrated for a lot of, a few years, marking when Black folks liberated themselves; it’s simply not known as Juneteenth.

In different elements of the south like Alabama and Arkansas, Emancipation Day is widely known in Might, why? It’s as a result of the Civil Conflict was principally fought within the east. Subsequently, because the confederates had been shedding the warfare, they tried to flee with the Africans they held in bondage to the west, and when the warfare was ended the troops started marching from east to west to declare the information. All alongside the way in which African folks organized celebrations of how they took their freedom relying on once they obtained the information that the warfare was formally over. They known as their celebrations Emancipation Day, or Jubilee Day or Freedom Day.

This additionally debunks a delusion that Africans didn’t know upfront of Common Granger that the warfare was over. Africans in locations like Galveston, Texas, already knew as a result of Africans unfold the phrase, however they might not simply go away the plantations till the army help got here by way of.

In Houston, Texas, there’s a park known as Emancipation Park within the Third Ward of Houston. The park property was bought in 1872 by three previously enslaved Africans for $1,000.

They bought this property for the aim of celebrating Juneteenth. One of many previously enslaved who helped to buy the property was a person by the identify of Jack Yates. Yates was born in Virginia, however his spouse had been offered away to a plantation in Texas. When the Civil Conflict was over, Yates traveled throughout nation, like so many different previously enslaved Africans, to seek out his spouse.

He discovered his spouse in Texas, and so they joined with the opposite two individuals to buy the property and named it Emancipation Park to commemorate African folks liberating themselves. That park is the oldest park in Houston. And it’s now a public park.

Yates was so revered that they named a highschool after him. It’s the Jack Yates Excessive College in Houston, and George Floyd who used to reside in Houston went to Jack Yates Excessive College and probably attended the Juneteenth celebrations at Emancipation Park.

Lastly, I level out that the previously enslaved Africans didn’t rejoice the 4th of July, as a result of they, like Frederick Douglass, who in his now iconic tackle in Rochester New York, 1852, on July fifth, requested the excoriating query, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” They’d not rejoice the liberty of their oppressors when those self same oppressors persecuted them.

These Africans additionally noticed that they liberated themselves with the assistance of God and never an Emancipation Proclamation that in actuality deliberately did NOT free one previously enslaved individual. Lincoln couldn’t free enslaved folks within the south, and his proclamation ignored the enslaved within the north as a result of he coveted the votes of white enslavers within the north.

Juneteenth is as a lot a spiritual or non secular celebration as it’s a secular commemoration. If God delivered God’s folks from bondage in Egypt and Babylon, then it was God and the oppressed Black folks on this nation collectively who introduced deliverance and liberation to Black folks and never oppressors.

Thank God and thank Black individuals who fought and resisted in so some ways till Black folks had been freed from chattel slavery.

Theology Issues!

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Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. twentieth Ave. in Gary. “We aren’t simply one other church however we’re a culturally aware, Christ-centered church, dedicated to the neighborhood; we’re unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by e-mail at [email protected] or by telephone at 219-944-0500.