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The Black Messiah

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Albert Cleage (1911-2000; later changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) was a Black Christian religious leader, political organizer and author. He is founder of the Shrine of the Black Madonna Church and Cultural Centers in Detroit and Atlanta, and later founded a church-owned "Beulah Land Farms" in South Carolina and spent most of his last years there.

He writes in the Introduction to this 1989 book, "The sermons included in this volume were preached to black people. They are published in the hope that they may help other black people find their way back to the historic Black Messiah, and at the request of many black preachers who are earnestly seeking ways to make their preaching relevant to the complex and urgent needs of the black community. White people who read these pages are permitted to listen to a black man talking to black people."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"(T)he historic truth is finally beginning to emerge---that Jesus was the non-white leader of a non-white people struggling for national liberation against the rule of a white nation, Rome." (Pg. 3)
"Black people cannot build dignity on their knees worshipping a white Christ. We must put down this white Jesus which the white man gave us in slavery and which has been tearing us to pieces." (Pg. 3)
"Jesus was a revolutionary black leader, a Zealot, seeking to lead a Black Nation to freedom, so the Black Church must carefully define the nature of the revolution." (Pg. 4)
"All religions stem from black people... The white man has never created a genuine religion. He has only borrowed religions from non-white people." (Pg. 38)
"We cannot pray for racial peace yet. Not in this church, because we know whom we serve." (Pg. 131)
"The white man is an enemy. I know that you wish we could say the same thing some other way. But there is no other honest way of saying it!" (Pg. 194-195)

The seminal book, actually a book of sermons, that sought to interpret the Black Power Movement from a theological perspective. For those who wish to speak truth to power, as the late Albert B. Cleage, Jr., pastor of the Shrine of the Black Madonna (the former Central United Church of Christ and Central Congregational Church) of Detroit, Michigan did, I believe you will find this book motivating. I was a teenager in Detroit when the author spoke truth to power during the aftermath of the Detroit Rebellion of July 1967. His Central Church was the site of the tribunal that tried in absentia the Detroit police officers who killed the three teenagers at the Algiers Motel on July 26.