African Americans are a religious people. They have been religious before coming to this nation, but the conditions under which they came and existed have generated further religious fervor. Often people who are oppressed and enslaved find solace in religion; that is what happened to Africans coming to America.

In America, Africans were new and estranged from their homelands so they sought the comfort and benefits that religion offered. It offered them the only freedom they would know--through religion, they could congregate with other Africans, they could learn to read and write, and they could exercise organizational and leadership skills that were forbidden outside of religion. It was religion that allowed many to plot rebellions and escapes from a distant land and the unknown wiles of a vicious oppressor.

But as African Americans escaped through Christian religion, it became a part of them. And although they escaped through it, they did not escape from it. Today, the leadership of the black community is found principally in the church. When black or white politicians want votes, they go to the church; the Civil Rights Movement, following the tradition of the freedom movement, made its seat inside the church and its leadership and nurture were from the church.

Even today, when the black community is most financially stable and affluent, when our businesses have proliferated, the center of life is still primarily in the church or the mosque. The influence of the church is so profound that even when in nonreligious or church meetings, many African Americans still respond with the call that is familiar to the church, "Amen!" The church is deeply ingrained in the black community's psyche. For blacks Sunday is still a day that the vast majority find themselves in church or feel ashamed that they are not there.

This ingrained religious nature acts to develop a gestalt of receptivity to the religiously unscrupulous of our society. And because there are no recognized and enforced rules concerning who can speak for God, any unscrupulous person or con man, designing to merchandise religiosity can claim a calling from God and deceive many who are so disposed to hearing from God, even when he has not spoken through the con man.

This is the condition that Jim Jones capitalized on, killing 917 people, most of whom were black Americans. They sold all their possessions and gave their wills and discernment to Jim Jones, a con artist who claimed hat God was speaking through him. This was not a new action, however, but history is short and often over looked when that pull of a gestalt of receptivity blinds the minds of a people.

Even with the looming of Guiana in their minds, many African Americans, in the light of the present atrocities exceeding Jim Jones, still give their wills over to many ministers who have not been called, not been tested, not been ordained, or licensed by any authority other than by themselves. That type of circular certification is dangerous and can not weed-out the con artists and the false representatives who prey on African Americans because of their historically built-in proclivity and receptivity to religion.

Jim Jones often told his congregation of African Americans that he had gone beyond the Bible and that they should listen to him! And he concocted false healings and miracles to buttress his claim. Likewise, many ministers with black congregations, while not making such bold and blasphemous claims, still exercise similar authority and power over many believers who submit their wills to them. This thoughtless religious obedience because of a gestalt that has been historically developed in blacks can pose a serious danger.

It was a type of mindless belief-following that caused the 920 + Africans of Uganda to sell all their possessions and give them to defrocked Catholic priest and nun leaders because they too had gone beyond the Bible and had declared that year 2000 was the end of the world. Were these parishioners thinking, they would have immediately separated themselves from that group. A correct reading of the Bible is that: "It any man (person) transgresses and abides not in the doctrine of Christ (New Testament Bible) he has not God." Any pronouncement that the end of the world is upon us, must be compared with what Jesus has said, viz., "...No man knows the hour that the son of man shall appear." When one announces that Jesus will return on a certain day, that is the clearest identification of that person as one not called of God, if the Bible is the protocol that governs the Christian's belief.

Any pastor, minister, or another who attempts to sway the Christian beyond the teachings of the Bible condemns himself to error and separation. But if that congregation is thinking and not carried or pulled beyond its rational mind by a gestalt of receptivity, that congregation should be able to see that such a one is a con artist, not a minister of God. Sadly, too many African Americans have followed ministers who have taken them, plundering their resources, destroying not only their faith, but also destroying their lives.

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