Help me pick two of the books listed below for my classes for the Spring semester, 2019. In addition to teaching “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, I would love to add two more books to the reading list:

1. The Native Son or Black Boy by Richard Wright
2. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
3. Dance on the Volcano by Marie Vieux-Chauvet
4. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
5. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

“Ten Major Crises and Weaknesses of the Haitian American Church in Contemporary American Society”

What is known in critical theory as “anticolonial” (associated with freedom, anti-human oppression, political independence and sovereignty, etc.) and “decolonial” (associated with a new beginning, a renewed mind, autonomy, a new humanity, etc.) have been a twin heritage of the Haitian people and a “sacrificial” and “enduring gift” their ancestors have given to the oppressed population in the world and humanity, at large. The anticolonial and decolonial achievement of Haiti is the culmination of the fruit of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)—a singular phenomenon and double-event that created the nation and Republic of Haiti and ended the practice and system of racial slavery in Saint-Domingue. Despite Haiti’s twin heritage to the oppressed and disadvantaged people of the world (these individuals continue to bear upon their psyche the destructive effects of colonization and in their lives the burden of aggressive economic capitalism and globalization), decolonization, for example, has not been fully realized in the Haitian experience and equally in Haiti’s current institutions and organizations—cultural, political, and even religious—both in Haiti and in the Haitian Diaspora.

The fact is that revolutionary Haiti has initiated both a grand anticolonial and decolonial emancipation movement in world history that has become the rich heritage of all people, individuals of African ancestry, and especially to Haitians regardless of their socio-economic standing, educational state, political allegiance, and religious confession; Haitian Christians (both Protestant and Catholic), Haitian Muslims, Haitian Buddhists, Haitian secularists and humanists, and even those with no religious affiliation and theological conviction in the Christian God or in the Vodou pantheon/Lwa, for example, are a collective people whose identity, destiny, and spirituality was future-oriented and shaped by the historic event and idea of 1804.

The earliest Haitian revolutionaries and the nation’s freedom fighters such as Francois Makandal and Boukman Dutty, inspired by their own religious traditions, in their revolutionary campaigns (Makandal in 1757 and Boukman in August 1791) toward both decolonization and independence from the unholy trinity of slavery, white supremacy, and colonization, made an emergency shout for a revolution of conscience, a reconstitution of the Haitian psyche, and ultimately a decolonization of Afro-Haitian spirituality and religious sensibility that was shaped both by the theological ideas and ecclesiastical practices of colonial Christianity. Colonial Christianity, which both Makandal and Boukman rejected, was an institutionalized religion that damned the human (African) soul, supported human suffering and enslavement, and generated among the slaves and subsequently among their descendants serious doubt about the credibility of biblical Christianity and the love and grace of the Christian God toward the enslaved African population and today to the free Haitian population—both in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora. Colonial Christianity and Catholic Christian missionaries as its agents rigged Biblical Christianity and its universal appeal for justice, love, and compassion among of all people and races.

Moreover, the religious leader Boukman, for example, in his famous prayer of August 1791, made a clarion call to reject the “colonized deity” of the French masters and Catholic Christian missionaries in the island of Saint-Domingue. According to Boukman, the God of colonial Saint-Domingue had no interest in the freedom (i.e. religious, physical, economic, mental) and emancipation of the enslaved Africans nor has he inspired a different and non-colonial order of human life and empowered a decolonized religious sensibility in the best interest of the Black slaves in the colony. Makandal, Boukman, Cecile Fatiman, Toussaint Louverture, Suzanne Sanité Bélair, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité, Catherine Flon, and other architects of Haitian decolonization and freedom of common and different religious persuasion and ideologies contributed to an alternative human order in the new Haiti, eloquently crafted in the powerful anticolonial and decolonial rhetoric of Haiti’s National anthem (“La Dessalinienne”); some of the strong lines of our freedom song include “for our country,” “united let us march,” “let us be masters of our soil,” “free, strong, and prosperous.” These noted verses call for decolonial practices and anti-imperial actions in the Haitian life; the original intent was both to promote and sustain life in Haiti and wherever Haitians will call home.

Unfortunately, since the beginning of the birth of the nation of Haiti in January 1, 1804, two-hundred and fourteen years have passed, most Haitian institutions and organizations, both in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora, have failed to embrace the rich anticolonial thought and decolonial legacy of the Haitian revolution; they have also failed to actualize in practical terms and in the Haitian experience the humanitarian ethos, as narrated in the poetic lines of Haiti’s National anthem: “We shall always be as brothers, Oh God of the valiant!/Take our rights and our life Our past cries out to us: Have a disciplined soul!” One of the major Haitian institutions in the Haitian Diaspora that has miserably failed the Haitian people and non-Haitian folk, correspondingly, to live up to Haiti’s revolutionary ideals and transcend nationalistic values is the Haitian American church in the United States.

One of the major shortcomings of the Haitian church in America is the absent of a prophetic voice and a radically prophetic vision of Christian ministry grounded and rooted in the Prophetic Tradition of the Bible, as can be observed in the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Prophets and the liberative teachings of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, and Founder of Christianity. Haitian churches and ministers are disengaged with the American culture and society. The Haitian American church in the twenty-first century American culture is still a “colonized institution” that is unintentional to pursue the decolonization process in the footsteps of its brave ancestors, the protagonists of God-given human liberty, and the antagonists of human oppression and suffering in colonial Saint-Domingue. Even contemporary Christian churches in Haiti are still trapped in a colonial mindset and neocolonial habits. These Christian congregations of various denominational expressions—such as Baptist, Methodist, Church of God in Christ, Presbyterian, Apostolic Faith, l’Armée Céleste Churches, Seventh Day Adventist, etc.—inherited a foreign theology that undermines the dignity and worth of the Haitian people, and an alien theological language that encourages the suffering and resignation of Haiti’s Christian communities.

This imported theological narrative does not engage the messy lives of the Haitian poor and the predicament of the general masses in Haiti. It is a theology without passion and zeal for the Haitian people; it is an uncharitable and soulless theology. Similarly, Haitian Christians inherited the neocolonial God of American and Western capitalism and globalization. This God is a bourgeois deity wrapped in the rainbow of American and Western NGOs coupled with the sustaining support and grace of imperial Christianity. This particular Haitian theology of God promotes a troubling narrative of economic dependence, human isolation, an abhorrence for anything Haitian and African, and the white-Savior ideology. Interestingly, the Haitian diasporic church in the United States is the very product and continuity of such destructive theologies and ecclesiastical praxis.

Below, I articulate ten major crises and weaknesses of the contemporary Haitian American church:

1. The Haitian American church is silent on justice and race relations issues in the American culture that are radically affecting both its parishioners and the black (“ethnic black folk”) and brown American populations.
2. The Haitian American church is silent on the socio-economic and political matters that are transforming the lives of its own congregants, the American people, and Christians at large in this culture.
3. The Haitian American church turns its back on the poor, the widow, the immigrant, and the economically-disadvantaged population in its midst and beyond its walls.
4. The Haitian American church is not missional and incarnational in its outreach; it distances itself from the hurting people in its neighborhoods and closes its doors on the face of the needy and the suffering population in its residential zones.
5. The Haitian American church lacks the moral courage and integrity, and the collective conscience and intentionality to be a beacon of light and hope, and a catalyst of human progress and transformation in the American culture.
6. The Haitian American church is an institution that does not welcome internal change (“transformation within”) nor does it contribute to external change (“transformation outside”); from this perspective, it is a plateaued, static, and declining institution/church.
7. The Haitian American church does not integrate itself in the American society; it is resistant to (America’s) cultural knowledge and proficiency, and it continues to be an institution that remains uninformed of the American way of life, values, and worldviews.
8. The Haitian American church as an “immigrant community of faith” does not participate in protest movements nor socio-political campaigns to demand the protection of the (human) rights and life of undocumented people (even the unlawful Haitian population).
9. The Haitian American church is an institution without future legacy and future heritage; it undermines the talents, skills, and cultural knowledge and proficiency of the second generation of Haitian Americans and undermines its youth population, who are the future, soul, and conscience of the next Haitian American church.
10. The Haitian American church is disengaged with the Haitian experience and life in Haiti; as a diasporic immigrant Christian organization, it is not actively involved in the rebuilding and construction process of Haiti toward human flourishing and the common good of the Haitian people. Because of the triumph of the white-Savior complex mentality in their milieu, Haitian American Christians wait upon non-Haitian churches and non-Haitian Christians to use their resources, man-power, and assets in the realization of human potential and future development of Haiti, their native land.

In order for the Haitian American church to develop a prophetic vision of the Christian life, communicated or channeled through rigorous theological confessions, social outreach and caring programs, and ecclesiastical practices and social justice ministries, Haitian ministers and churches need (1) to reject unconstructive foreign theology to embrace a more biblical theology of human life and pastoral care for the poor, the weak, and the needy in their city; (2) to challenge current theological discourses and habits that preach only spiritual salvation, but neglect the existential dire needs and abject poverty of the people in the city; (3) to reject neocolonial traditions in Haitian American churches and religious habitus that hinder the freedom of the conscience, progressive thinking, and the freedom of action; (4) to develop decolonial theological thinking and ecclesiastical practices that will serve as powerful weapons (a) to promote greater Christian piety and spiritual growth toward God and among Haitian American Christians, and (b) to become an institution that fosters the conscientization of Haitian Americans and Haitian American Christians; and (5) finally, to reclaim the Prophetic Tradition of the Bible that have radically shaped the ethics and teachings of Jesus, the mission of Jesus’ earliest disciples, and the preaching and missionary endeavors of Apostle Paul.

A Prayer for National Healing and a Wounded Nation!

Lord: We pray in this way for holistic healing and restoration of this nation:

where there’s hate, grant us us love.
where there’s despair, give us hope.
where there’s division, grant us unity.
where there’s chaos, give us peace.
where there’s isolation, grant us community.
where there’s sin, give us repentance.
where there’s retaliation, grant us forgiveness.
where there’s vengeance, grant us reconciliation.

Lord, we mourn with those who are mourning, and we lament with those who are lamenting today. Give us and them strength, courage, perseverance, and boldness to resit the forces of evil and hatred in our society and in the world. Let us together seek a place in You for shelter, comfort, and shalom.

Amen!

“Haitian Studies and the Tens”

10 Major and Prolific (Contemporary) Haitian Writers Writing in English You Must Read:

1. Edwidge Danticat
2. Robert Fatton Jr.
3. Alex Dupuy
4. Michel S. Laguerre
5. Myriam J. A. Chancy
6. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith
7. Leon D. Pamphile
8. Gina Athena Ulysses
9. Marlene Daut
10. Paul Camy Mocombe

***This list for English speakers who have an interest in Haitian intellectual production in English. The listed individuals above are contemporary writers.

10 Major and Prolific (Contemporary) Haitian Writers Writing in French You Must Read:

1. Franketienne
2. Rene Depestre
3. Jean Casimir
4. Laennec Hurbon
5. Dany Laferriere
6. Lynel Trouillot/Louis-Philippe Dalembert
7. Gary Victor
8. Yanick Lahens
9. Kettly Mars
10. Evelyne Trouillot

10 Major and Prolific (Contemporary) Non-Haitian Writers Writing in English about Haiti You Must Read:

1. David Patrick Geggus (Historian)
2. Laurent Dubois (Historian)
3. Brenda Gayle Plummer (Historian)
4. Philippe R. Girard (Historian)
5. Martin Munro (Literary scholar)
6. Nick Nesbitt (Literary Scholar)
7. Jana Evans Braziel (Literary scholar)
8. Jeremy D. Popkin (Historian)
9. Kaima L. Glover (Literary scholar) & Amy Wilentz (Literature and History)
10. Terry Rey (Religious scholar)

“Let Christ be honored through your Political Choice: A Word of Wisdom to American Christian Voters and Citizens During this time of election”

Do not put your hope on politics and the powers and authorities of this country and in this world. Rest yourself assured on God, the supreme authority and the one who calls you His own and to whom you belong. No existing political party is worthy of the full devotion and commitment of Christ’s followers. Absolutely none! Absolutely nobody, but Christ alone.

Christ, the Sovereign Lord and Ruler of the nations and the cosmos, demands from his disciples and all peoples and nations absolute and complete allegiance to himself, not to a political state or power, and even a political party. God does not have a political party in this country–whether it is Republican, Democrat, or Independent. No contemporary political party is worthy of the full devotion and unnegotiable commitment of the people of God.

No existing political party in America embodies the whole

“On Unity and Reconciliation”

When we Christians think about reconciliation and unity in terms of race relations and dynamics in American churches and society, what is it exactly do we want or desire to pursue?

The Oxford Dictionary defines reconciliation in three broad areas and categories, followed by an example for each conceptualization or definition:

“1.The restoration of friendly relations.

‘his reconciliation with your uncle’
count noun ‘the earl was seeking a reconciliation with his wife’

2. The action of making one view or belief compatible with another.

‘any possibility of reconciliation between such clearly opposed positions’
More example sentences

3. The action of making financial accounts consistent; harmonization.

‘the reconciliation process should be consistent with the business strategy.'”

Accordingly, reconciliation is a project that aims at restoring friendship, promoting a shared worldview or a common perspective on (certain) issues, and promoting balance, harmony or consistency in life and in human interactions and relationships.

How’s the Oxford rendering of reconciliation differ, challenge, or harmonize the biblical call for Christian unity and (human) reconciliation in the body of Christ and in society?

“God is not done with you yet”

“God is not done with you. He will give you a future”

I feel like preaching this morning 🙂

Even those who are incarcerated to a life sentence behind the mighty prison bars need to hear a message of hope & love from the Almighty God.

The young lady or the single mother who has been/is a victim of physical abuse and rape needs to hear a message of restoration and freedom from the God of Hope who is the Repairer of broken branches and lives.

The individuals who are victims of racial humiliation and discrimination should set their hope in God their Maker.

The worker who has been exploited at work needs to know God will give you justice.

The immigrant who has been abused and humiliated at the workplace and other public spaces need to hear it loudly that God is not done with you. He will give you a future.”

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.'”—Saint Augustine

*Let Jesus be your Carrier in all things.He wants to give you rest & peace.

Have a happy and Christ-centered Sunday!

Pastor Joseph

“The Cause of a Christmas Smile”

According to Facebook Statistics, I’m the most popular guy in the world of social media– having reached 5000 friends. 😆

I need 100 of those “existing and interactive friends” to donate one toy that will be distributed as a Christmas present/gift to 100 little girls and little boys in Port Margot, in Northern Haiti. I and a team of people from the Treasure Coast will be going to Haiti on a mission trip (December 13-22, 2018), the week before Christmas.

You can mail the toy to the address listed below, by November 15, 2018:

Hope for Today Outreach (HTO)
P.O. Box 7353
Port Saint Lucie, FL 34985

If you’re a local resident in the Treasure Coast (i.e. Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, Port St Lucie) and want us to pick it up from you, please send us an email at jesuscentercc@gmail.com

Blessings and Peace!

What do the Millennials Really Want from University Professors and Grade School Teachers?

I love teaching and am a passionate teacher. I enjoy relating information and knowledge to students, facilitating the acquisition process, and fostering transformative teaching pedagogy. Teaching moves me and shapes my identity and interactions with my students, colleagues, and people around me. I have been a teacher for 15 years and have taught University, Seminary, and High School students.

Similarly, I love teaching young people and the millennial generation, in particular.(Although I love teaching a class in which the student body is multi-generational, culturally diverse, and racially different, I love teaching students who would like to see a connection between the academic life and the everyday life experience.)

During my journey as a teacher, mentor, role model, and friend to my students, I have made five key observations I would like to share with you below; my observations include my interactions with students inside and outside of the classroom. I believe effective teaching and lasting mentorship also take place outside of the classroom.

1. Students want to know more than the content of the subject you are teaching them–be it English, Theology, Sociology, History, Economics, etc. They want to know how a story from a novel in a literature class, for example, relates to real life situations and the implications of the subject content upon their personal life, choices, and preferences, and their everyday interactions and communication with other people in their life. This is the way they define effective and relational teaching.

2. This group of young men and women are looking for direction and guidance, mentorship and othermothering. As their instructor, they long to see in you an individual whom they can trust and one who can embody hope, resilience, compassion, relationality, sympathy, civility, hospitality, and understanding. Many of them desire you to be their mentor and role model; they may never reveal that to you. Perhaps, you may have to take the initiative and the lead to offer your mentoring service to them and woo them to yourself so you help them to explore their full potential. For them, teaching means relationship and the modelling of love and compassion.

3. This group of young individuals are both skeptical and optimistic about life and their future. Their skepticism has to do about their fear of failure. They do not want to experience failures and disappointments in life nor do they want to see their friends failed. They want success and to be successful in all of their endeavors. Their optimism is based upon their collective sense of self-confidence, self-worth, and independence. They’re not afraid to explore future possibilities and navigate through different options this life has to offer to them. From this viewpoint, they interpret teaching as that which provides human hope and human empowerment.

4. They’re looking for answers about life’s big questions pertaining to ethical and moral choices, and pertinent issues concerning war, death, oppression, justice, life after death, the meaning of life, peace at home and peace in the world, etc. As their teacher, they want you to give them an answer to these challenges of life and foster empowering hope and resistance; they also anticipate that you would guide them through the tough times and to orient them to find the right response to these vital matters in life. It does not matter what subject you teach; if you provide the space, access, resources, and freedom to your students to flourish in life, they will be open and vulnerable to you. From this perspective, students define teaching as consisting of life adventures and life explorations.

5. Finally, this generation of students want more than passing your class with an A. While academic excellence does matter to them, they want to relate to real life situations the academic life and personal goals.They’re thirsty for knowledge, understanding, and practical wisdom to experience every day’s challenges. Their desire is from you is to guide them to nurture the life of the mind and the life of the human experience and relationships. From this point of view, they interpret teaching as both an intellectual exercise and practical reality.

#teachtochangelives
#teachingmillennials

Twenty Major Concepts That Appear to be the Same, but They Do Not Share the Same Meaning!

1. Calvinism and Fatalism
2. Social Gospel and Social Justice
3. Social Gospel and Maxist Socialism
4. Liberation Theology and Liberal Theology
5. Feminism and Womanism
6. Race and Colorism
7. Gender and Sexuality
8. Linguistics and Literature
9. Grammar and Composition
10. Sociology and Anthropology
11. Physics and Physiology
12. God’s Foreknowledge and God’s Election
13. Vodou and (Black) Magic/Sorcery
14. Historical and Historiography
15. Hispanic and Latino
16. African American and Caribbean Black
17. Christianity and Judaism
18. Nationalism and Patriotism
19. White and Purity/Sanctity
20. Black and Impurity/Darkness