Dislodging a Culture of Ignorance


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by
Frank A. Jones

I have written elsewhere of this Culture of Ignorance [as I have labeled it] that is prevalent among many under-privileged and some privileged Black Americans and how that culture is cultivated and lauded as being significance in far too many Christian lives.

Writer Deborah Dessaso has written with great precision of thought in her essay Dissin Nineveh, saying and indicating that throughout the history of Christianity, Christians on the right and on the left have used the Bible and Christ to justify many hideous deeds. Indeed, some acts were so beyond the scope of human decency that they should have shamed their consciences. And it should be stated as a matter of fairness that so have other religions done some of the same acts.

In America, for many years, some Christian leaders have harmed the intellectual development of young African Americans who would be Christians and intellectuals as well.

First it was the slave owners who in the name of Christ forbade their slaves to develop their minds. Knowledge was and still is a threat to tyranny and oppression. These godly men wanted their slaves to know the Bible but in limited and prescribed amounts. Ephesians, Chapter 6, verse 5 was a favorite of the slaveholders for their slaves.

The American historian Kenneth Stampp, in his classic work, Peculiar Institution, wrote movingly about how the slaveholders hired out white ministers to preach to their slaves, forbidding those ministers to preach beyond prescribed verses. The idea was to keep them oppressed through limited knowledge and an entire culture of ignorance.

Through the use of limited, contorted teaching that was really contrary to the very principles and teachings of the church, slaveholders controlled those slaves who accepted Christianity via a form of ignorance that seemed to be enlightenment. And that culture was used to control and manage those slaves' yearnings to be free that will always come at the entrance of knowledge.

But truth and knowledge were not commodities slaveholders were interested in. They wanted to manage and control their slaves with as little problems as possible. And if the Bible and Christianity allowed and facilitated that, they encouraged their form of Christianity on the slaves.

This concept is not only detailed in Peculiar Institution, but in other slave descriptive literature also. And because the custom of using the Bible and Christianity distortedly for purposes of control was so powerful, many of the principles white slaveholders used during the antebellum era of this nation have come down through a number of slave descendants. Some customs and practices can be seen today in a number of Black churches throughout this nation.

And since the church is the most dominant institution in the African American community, the use of these techniques of ignorance harm too many of our young and old alike. Furthermore, as the slaveholders used the Bible and Christianity for their own benefits, those who have rekindled that old fire of ignorance are using it only for their own warmth. This condition must be dislodged that enslaved congregants can be freed to develop their minds and their spirituality.

Sadly, this Culture of Ignorance has reached beyond the church and into the hearts and lives of many young under-privileged African Americans. As I wrote elsewhere, many of our underclass demean and hold up to a strange ridicule other black youths who would develop their minds. They are unknowingly aping the behavior they have seen and learned from parents--a behavior that has come down from slavery almost like an Africanism.

But the goal must be to dislodge this Culture of Ignorance by its roots so that it is turned on its head and not allowed feet to stand, air to breath, or water to drink! It must be killed, hewn to bits before it kills us as a people!

This can be done quite easily if one is willing to view the Bible and study Christianity honestly and fairly. The Bible is plain about ignorance: God will have none of it for His people! The Apostle Paul repeatedly said to all Christians, study, don't be ignorant, Christ is made unto us wisdom and sanctification, etc. Throughout the Old and the New Testaments God's ministers have always admonished God's people to NOT be ignorant. Indeed, the prophets of old have said that God will actually destroy his own people because of their ignorance.

And since this is more than abundantly clear in the teachings of the New Testament and the Old Testament, where did the present small group of ministers get the idea that ignorance is somehow like godliness?

Tyrants and oppressors throughout history have always known that enlightened people cannot remain oppressed. Was it not Jesus who said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free? Truth is will not allow anyone, any class or people to remain under oppression. The truth urges one to know that freedom from tyranny is a birthright of all of us. But when we are ignorant we can easily be taken into captivity. It is this knowledge that oppressors have and that cause them to enslave and ensnare the people of God and all oppressed people.

This is the knowledge that a small class of ministers use to harm many young Black would-be-intellectuals. They preach a gospel that touts ignorance and demeans intellectuality. This gospel is a gospel of oppression for purposes of control of those who follow them, just as the slaveholders used Christianity as a management and control tool, so do these untoward men.

Why control congregants? Only through control can this small class of ministers practice the infectious greed that Allen Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve Bank, speaks to among corporation executives. They preach a gospel that is not the gospel of Christ, but a gospel that subjugate the total man--their money, their wills, and their total obedience to them. This class of ministers, this Culture of Ignorance preacher, preaches and practices financial gain; for some it is for a mere desire to exercise raw power upon another individual--the ability to get others to do their wills. (Anatomy of Power, John K.Galbraith)

It was Jim Jones who mastered the use of this type of power. He took a people, all their money, made his will their wills, and eventually killed almost a 1,000 subjugated individuals who thought they were doing the will of God. But had they plainly checked the Bible's teachings they could have readily seen that they were doing the will of Jim Jones and not Christ.

But one reason they did not check the source of their belief is the same reason many blindly follow wicked men today: fear of these individuals. A fear that is as groundless as the supposed truths these men teach. I have seen grown men kowtow to other men as if they had some magical potions that they would invoke or pour upon them if they failed to do so. I have also seen that those who demand obedience to themselves demean those of learning and intelligence in such a way that promotes our young to latch onto their ignorance concerning intelligence and are crippled for life. And in so crippling them, these ministers of ignorance harm a portion of the larger Black and American community. All this harm is for the ministers' sole benefit, as they make merchandise of their congregants, as the great St. Peter said!

How horridly demeaning are the words of the young to other young African Americans who would develop their minds, when he says, "You are just trying to be white." And their horrid words have trickled down from the mouths of irresponsible ministers who see people only as financial gain that they must secure at all costs.

Consequently, these ministers, in the name of their god (which is money), breed a Culture of Ignorance--a systematic and systemic belittling of acquired knowledge and education as if ignorance is preferred by God and intelligence is sin. This paradigm is passed down to parents, who pass it down to the children, and the children pass it onto others on school campuses and among underprivileged Black youths. I am not writing in hyperbole; if anything other than straight forward, I am writing in understatement!

As some ministers demean intelligence, or not encourage it, the parents ape the ministers in demeaning or not encouraging it, and their children ape the parents. Hence, we have low school achievement levels and bitter words by the low achievers for those young Black students who achieve. This behavior is an ethos, a  culture; this is the behavior of ignorance. This is how the culture of ignorance is passed down from one generation to the next and becomes a mental gestalt. But this culture of ignorance must be dislodged from among wicked ministers and men who only want the wills and wallets of their congregants.

Because the Black church is so dominant in the lives of the under-privileged, this system cannot be dislodged from the community or out of the minds of our young until it is rooted out of churches that propagate it to and among our poor and underprivileged, who want only to be all that they can be in God and in life. They deserve that opportunity, and it should not be denied them because a few hustlers and sharks, greedy dogs, as the Bible calls them, want to be rich and they use their Christians as their corporate scam to become rich. The day should have long passed since the Rev. Ikes, Jim Joneses, Jamal Bryants, Robert Tiltons, Leroy Thompson and son, etc. But sadly they still lurk among our most vulnerable.

Is this essay a repudiation of Christianity? Certainly not. I paraphrase the Apostle Paul, I would have not known truth, honesty, or the tools of deception but by Christianity. This essay is not a repudiation of Christianity, but of greed and abuse and stifling of the hopes and aspirations of others because of some men's greed and deception. And in so doing, I affirm Christianity in its purist, most apostolic sense. But the Culture of Ignorance must be dislodged from the church and from among us. []

Republished 10/9/06

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