Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
by Lenrod Nzulu Barak
On July 02, 2022, I accepted an invitation to visit a church located in the parish of St Joseph in Barbados. The discussion section of the service centered on the twenty-third Psalm commonly referred to as the Shepherd’s Psalm.
The Jewish writer of Psalm twenty-three affirms that the deity of the Old Testament is the shepherd of the Jewish people and with good reason.
The story of the Jewish exodus, popularised by the classic movie Ten Commandments and the cartoon version Prince of Egypt, is familiar territory to people of African ancestry.
The exploits of the Jewish deity and people are celebrated by Black people in song and sermon.
According to the Old Testament, the deity of the Jews liberated the Jewish people from slavery while simultaneously reducing Egypt to rubble with ten spectacular biological and environmental attacks.
The deity of the Bible instructed the Jews to borrow items of value from their Egyptian neighbours as payment for their centuries of humiliation and oppression. That sure sounds like reparations to me.
The deity further led the Jewish people by a pillar of fire at night and a cloud by day. The pillar of fire would have provided light and warmth at night while the cloud by day would have provided shade from the African sun as the Jews crossed over from Africa to what we today call the Middle East. Last and most significantly, the liberated Jews in addition to receiving reparations from their former oppressors were given a land to call their own.
The occupation of this land would be accompanied by some horrendous genocide but as we all know, genocide that is ordained by voices from another dimension is totally acceptable especially in religious circles.
The Jewish writer of Psalm twenty-three had every right therefore to affirm that the deity of the Old Testament was the shepherd of the Jewish people. In an effort to make the discussion more relevant to the experience of people of African ancestry I asked the moderator what evidence he had that the deity of the Jews was also the deity of people of African ancestry in light of the discrepancy in the treatment of Jews and people of African ancestry.
After all there were no ten plagues on Europe and America to precipitate the emancipations of sons and daughters of Africa. Europeans and Americans were allowed to keep all the wealth they accumulated from the blood, sweat, and tears of enslaved Africans.
To this day not even the Eurocentric churches that are supposed to be the custodians and propagandists of the stories of the Bible have put forward a compelling argument for reparations to be paid to the descendants of enslaved Africans. In the aftermath of our emancipation there was no pillar of fire to provide light and warmth in our dark night of the soul. There was no cloud over our heads to protect us from the savage sun of racially motivated violence.
Most telling, however, was the absence of an exodus and a journey to land that we could call our very own. Not only were Black people not given a Canaan, we were not even given anything close to the forty acres and a mule promised to emancipated African Americans.
Regrettably, the moderator of the discussion saw my question as a diversion and in a later exchange he frankly stated that he was more interested in discussing sin and salvation rather than delving into racial questions. His response did not surprise me in the least for this has been the default position of many Black Christians historically.
Many Black Christians fail to realise that shunning race issues will not make the issues less real or cause the issues to disappear. When Black Christians refuse to adequately deal with issues related to race their response can be construed as trivializing and downgrading the plight of people of African ancestry. This course of action may keep Black Christians off the critical radar of Caucasians and the sponsors and leaders of their denominations but it will not lead to greater legitimacy among Black people that are forced daily to deal with the legacies of oppression.
Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center. He is also author of The Rebirth of Black Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again.
