The Is The Integrated Pattern Of Human Behavior, Culture, Race, Ethnicity, And Culture

theology, the only true theology as Cone sees it, is not possible by white people as they are

The U.S. government has a moral responsibility to this race of people to compensate, African American’s because they were denied their heritage, religion, family, and culture. America alleges it is a religious-based country and their faith resides in God. The bible says: “If a man steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.” This country consistently contradicts itself in the way it wants to be perceived. If America has any belief in God, they should feel an obligation to compensate the African American descendants of slave ancestors. (Exodus 22, Bible).

Culturally speaking observing the worship service demonstrated just how important of a role religion is for African Americans. There seemed to be a lot of focus on social

For almost eight decades, enslaved African-Americans living in the Antebellum South, achieved their freedom in various ways—one being religion—before the demise of the institution of slavery. It was “freedom, rather than slavery, [that] proved the greatest force for conversion among African Americans in the South” (94). Starting with the Great Awakening and continuing long after the abolition of slavery, after decades of debate, scholars conceptualized the importance of religion for enslaved African-Americans as a means of escaping the brutalities of daily life. Overall, Christianity helped enslaved African American resist the degradation

Such unity and self-determination was evidenced in 1801, when Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church published a hymnal by and for African Americans (Costen, 81). Hymns have served black people in their everyday lives and had and have

The element of worship has always been an essential part of the Black American culture. Black Americans “are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole.” 87% of blacks vs. 83% of all Americans affiliated with a religion according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007 by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public

One of the first things that attracted the African American slaves to Christianity was a way of obtaining the salvation of theirs souls based on the Christian’s idea of a future reward in heaven or punishment in hell, which did not exist in their primary religion. The religious principles inherited from Africa sought purely physical salvation and excluded the salvation of the soul. However, they did believe in one supreme God, which made it easier for them to assimilate Christianity.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church also known as the AME Church, represents a long history of people going from struggles to success, from embarrassment to pride, from slaves to free. It is my intention to prove that the name African Methodist Episcopal represents equality and freedom to worship God, no matter what color skin a person was blessed to be born with. The thesis is this: While both Whites and Africans believed in the worship of God, whites believed in the oppression of the Africans’ freedom to serve God in their own way, blacks defended their own right to worship by the development of their own church. According to Andrew White, a well- known author for the AME denomination, “The word African means that our church was

While black power focuses on the political, social, and economic condition of black people, Black Theology sees black identity from a theological context. Much of black liberation theology’s foundation comes from God's deliverance of Israel from oppression under the Egyptians. According to James Cone, “the consistent theme in Israelite prophecy is Yahweh's concern for "the lack of social, economic, and political justice for those who are poor and unwanted in the society."# The dominate view of Black Liberation theologists is “God in action, delivering the oppressed because of His righteousness. He is to be seen, not in the transcendent way of Greek philosophy, but immanent, among His people." God is "immanent”” because he is present in many historical moments that focus on liberation of the poor. Its derives it beliefs from the fact that in the bible, God often enters human affairs and takes the side of the oppressed, that god is heavily worshipped where human beings experience humiliation and suffering. Because of these beliefs, blacks adopted a gospel relevant to the uplifting of blacks and ending black struggle under white oppression.# Black theology places both our past and present actions toward black liberation in a theological context, eliminating all false Gods and creating value structures according to the God of black freedom.

Long before their contact with whites, Africans were a strongly religious, and deeply spiritual people. During the early history of slavery, the African American spirituality was often seen by whites as a pagan faith. These rituals and dogmas were seen by whites as Voodoo, Hoodoo, Witchcraft, and superstitions. They often commented on these "pagan practices," and fetishes, and were threatened by them. As a result, great effort was put on eradicating these practices, and many were lost within a generation.# Although tremendous efforts was placed on eradicating the “superstitious” religious beliefs of the African slaves, they were not immediately introduced to the religion of white slave masters, Christianity. Many planters resisted the idea of converting slaves to Christianity out of a fear that baptism would change a slave's legal status. The black population was generally untouched by Christianity until the religious revivals of the 1730s and 1740s. The Bible was manipulated to support the institution of slavery and its inhumane practices. Christianity was used to suppress and conform slaves. Slaveholders, priests, and those tied to the Church undermined the beliefs of the millions of African-Americans converts.# White Christianity was used to justify the enslavement of blacks. By the early nineteenth century, slaveholders had adopted the view that Christianity would make slaves more submissive and orderly.

James H. Cone’s God of the Oppressed is his examination of the origin, development, and significance of black theology as it relates to how he and the black Christian community view God. For Cone, in an America seemingly dominated by white theology and the white Christian community’s views of God, it is imperative to acknowledge and attentively listen to the voices of the theologies of other races and what God means to them, especially that of the black community. Cone asserts without hesitation that the God that is referred to in the Bible and black religion is a Deliver of those held captive by the bondage of oppression. Cone not only asserts this viewpoint of God as the Freer of oppressed people, but he validates this assertion through the use of Scripture, the black experience, history, and tradition. Overall, the central theme of this book is that a plethora of factors continually shape and construct a people’s theology and how that theology is significant in regards to how they see God, the world, and themselves.

Even though there are set values that are universally known to the public, people do not always follow those values within their groups. However, these people have to act in conformity and abide by the values in public. Although everyone assumes that “imagined communities” contain a common culture, in reality, they really do not due to the fact that there are many body of ideas and practices that are not shared. Many languages are spoken and countless number of religions are practiced in various countries, so these make the “common culture” idea a misconception among citizens of different countries. For example, people tend to think that America consists of culture that is common, but they do not know if the beliefs, values, and practices are universally shared by all Americans. Nonetheless, there was a time when a dominant culture in the United States actually existed. It was during when the religion of Christianity was prominent and when many countries in Europe spoke the English language. It should be known that black Americans, Chinese-Americans, and white Americans have a common culture because of everything they do and do not share. From the common culture would arise the social identity, which can cause problems in diversity. Diversity can be an issue because of the ignorance of all the contrasting values. These issues arise because racial and ethnic identities are compared to one another and both can also relate to genders and sexualities. Nevermore, distinct genders and sexualities often live together now with the same knowledge and values and can still grow into opposite racial identities. Ethnic identities are so different since they are created in family and community life and people want the solidarity from being unique to one

African-American religion dealt with life as blacks lived it. It was about pain and sorrow, sin and shortcoming, pardon and joy, praise and thanksgiving, grace and hope. This version of Evangelicalism provided a wonderful benefit; it was able to accomplish great things in their lives that were frequently shouted about. Whether it be through a simple shout during church, or a song sung in the fields Evangelicalism took root among African-Americans. Large numbers underwent conversion, baptism, instruction, worship, and lived the life of a Christian even in face of oppression. Although, the development of their own religious institutions would await Emancipation and the war 's end, there were many thousands of Negro Baptists and Methodists by 1850, which represented what African-American religious culture had grown into.

As I entered the home to conduct my interview, I was immediately greeted by very soft spoken female. She’s a 42 yrs old African American female, who’s married with two children. She migrated from the south 30 years ago along with her mother and sister. She’s currently working for the Department of Education as a substitute teacher with aspiration of becoming a child psychologist. The subject was eager to be interviewed. She thought it would be great to sure her views and perspectives of her culture. Culture is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as , the total of the inherited ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge, which constitute the shared bases of social action. To me culture is rich and fascinating filled with family, traditions, memories, and many dialects.

As an Indian born in The United States of America, I faced numerous challenges integrating myself into a society where I am a minority. At the beginning of my childhood, I did not see a difference between myself and my peers. I became friends with almost all the children that were my age in my neighborhood, and I began to compare our lifestyles. It was then that I realized that my family was distinct, in the sense that we ate Indian food instead of American, we practiced Hinduism instead of Christianity, and we spoke more Hindi instead of English. Many of the neighborhood families were interested in learning about our culture, yet some were distracted by our skin color.