Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries from Monday, July 23, 2007

Display the "Hot Ghetto Mess" For The World To See

Monday, July 23, 2007

I will make no friends with this post but some parts of black America are trapped in a moral crisis. The crisis will be on display this Wednesday when B.E.T. (Black Entertainment Television) debuts a new show called “We Got To Do Better” which is based off of a website called “Hot Ghetto Mess.” It’s time to stop playing words games and be honest: blacks (and others) who embrace a “ghetto” mentality are in deep trouble and, by extension, so are the rest of us.

The NAACP should be marching against the worldview on display on this show much more than fighting a crusade against the “N-word.”

The Washington Post describes the show:

Since 2004, [Jam Donaldson’s] Web site, http://Hotghettomess.com, has featured a motley assortment of gangbangers, hip-hop poseurs and strutting hoochie mamas, set off by quotes and comments that suggest Donaldson’s disapproval. The featured “Mess of the Month” for June is an unnamed plus-size woman wearing a halter top split almost to her navel. Her accessories are arm and chest tattoos and an oversize necklace with a cross. The caption beneath her photo is a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “Nothing in [all] the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

[The show] features video clips of young African Americans (as well as folks of the Caucasianpersuasion) engaged in various acts of idiocy (random street brawls, gratuitous booty-shaking, etc.). It also puts cultural ignorance on display (people are asked in man-on-the-street interviews whether they know what “NAACP” stands for; they don’t). The tone, Donaldson says, is more or less in keeping with the same finger-wagging critique embedded in the Web site’s slogan: “We Got to Do Better.”

I have mixed emotions about the show. But it’s good to expose this for the following reasons:

(1) The shows puts on display for the world to see the moral crisis in some parts of black American culture. Perhaps many in the black community will take notice.

(2) The show will validate the concerns of many blacks like Bill Cosby, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Starr Parker, John McWhorter, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, LeShawn Barber, Shelby Steele, and others.

(3) The show will expose how the “ghetto mentality” is sabotaging significant portions of American culture, of all races. Perhaps the show will highlight a point made in the movie Forrest Gump, “stupid is as stupid does.”

(4) Hopefully, this will rally some black pastors to deal with issues in the black community instead of building names for themselves and trying to build the largest churches possible. The “ghetto” culture is completely void of any moral voice or authority.

(5) The show will highlight the fact that for much of black America the largest obstacle to overcome in the 21st-century is not racism but the adopted norms of “ghetto” culture.

(6) The “ghetto” life must cease to be glamorized and normalized in the entertainment industry. Sadly, there is a huge demographic of Americans who are medicating their own personal pain through self-sabotaging, “ghetto” behaviors. The show represents a massive cry for help!

The content of the website is pathetic, disturbing, sad, and frustrating. The burning question remains: what must happen to turn blacks, and others, away from “ghetto mess” onto the journey of healing, virtue, dignity, and human flourishing?

Posted by Anthony Bradley at 15:56 | Comments (3) | Trackback

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hip hop, hot ghetto mess

A Weekend Emergent Village Experience

Monday, July 23, 2007

This weekend’s Midwest Emergent Gathering, held July 20-21 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, was an event that I enjoyed participating in immensely. I was invited, by my friend Mike Clawson of up/rooted (Chicago), to answer several questions in a plenary session. I was billed as a friendly “outsider.” We laughed about this designation since many of my critics now assume that I am a “heretical insider” to Emergent. The truth is that neither is totally true. I am not so much a part of this movement, at least not in any recognizable or formal way, as I am a real friend of all things missional that sincerely address the basic questions that I feel very strongly must be faced by Christians within Western culture.

It is a basic fact that the church regularly reduces the gospel, to something less or other than than the gospel, in its various attempts to translate the good news into a faithful witness within any culture. This is true in Asia, Latin America and Africa as well. (Witness the cover story of the current Christianity Today on the impact of the prosperity gospel in Africa, where the greatest church growth is also taking place.) This does not mean the church is no longer the church. It does mean reformation is always necessary, thus the faithful church must be semper reformanda, always reforming. This realization grows out of a sober view of the humanity of the church. (The church is a divine organism with the life of Christ in it but it is also very human at the same time.) But many conservative Christians, especially if they are over forty, tend to think serious criticism of the church, or questioning the ways Christians think and believe (epistemology), is tantamount to arrogance and undermining the faith itself. Because I want to open a wide discussion of epistemology (i.e., the ways that we know what is true and not true) I am routinely questioned about whether I still believe in truth at all. When I say that I clearly and strongly do believe in the truth then I am then called a liar, or given some similar flattering insightful response.

(Continue reading the rest of the article at the John H. Armstrong blog...)

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”

Posted by John H. Armstrong in Bible and Theology at 12:09 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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christianity, emerging church, theology

National Security and Energy Policy

Monday, July 23, 2007

Over at the Becker-Posner blog, the gentlemen consider the question, “Do National Security and Environmental Energy Policies Conflict?” (a topic also discussed here.)

Becker predicts, “Driven by environmental and security concerns, more extensive government intervention in the supply and demand for energy are to be expected during the next few years in all economically important countries. Policies that meet both these concerns are feasible, and clearly would have greater political support than the many approaches that advance one of these goals at the expense of the other.”

Posner observes the difference between a gasoline and a carbon tax, noting that the former would “have a direct effect in reducing demand for oil, thus reducing, as Becker points out, the oil revenues of oil-producing nations.”

But for a policy that addresses both national security and environmental concerns, “a gasoline tax would be inferior to a carbon tax from the standpoint of limiting global warming, because producers of oil, refiners of gasoline, and producers of cars and other products that burn fossil fuels would have no incentive to adopt processes that would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per barrel of oil, gallon of gasoline, etc. A carbon tax would create such an incentive and would also have a strong indirect negative effect on the demand for fossil fuels.”

There’s a lot more to these posts worth mulling over.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 08:41 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
carbon emissions, carbon tax, climate change, energy, gasoline tax, global warming, national security