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Book Review: “Free at Last? The Gospel in the African American Experience” by Carl F Ellis, Jr.

Free at Last? The Gospel in the African American Experience by Carl F. Ellis, Jr. is an exploration of African Americans’ interactions with Christianity in the united states with an emphasis on evaluating it by means of the Gospel. The hugeness of the project Ellis, Jr. puts forward and my own unfamiliarity with anything but the broadest strokes of the same means that my evaluation will largely be based upon its content rather than my own confirmation of its analysis.

Ellis, Jr. interweaves the book with historical narrative and analysis of how racism and other negative outcomes occur in our society. African American experience in the United States started almost entirely with being enslaved. Ellis Jr. notes how this Christianity of the land of the United States became rejected by black thinkers like Frederick Douglass. Douglass wrote of a distinction between the Christianity of Christ and that of the land (of the US) in that the latter was based upon enslavement and cruelty while the former is “pure, peaceable, and impartial” (20). Ellis Jr. notes how perspective is incredibly important in understanding the experience of others.

The question of the truth of Christianity and the Gospel are central to Free at Last? Ellis, Jr. notes that “Scripture describes at least two types of unrighteousness: ungodliness and oppression…” The distinction is important because one can lead into another, even unconsciously: “For example, if a person has a racist attitude, he or she is guilty of ungodliness. If, however, that person imposes his racism on others, forcing he to live in substandard conditions, then he is guilty of oppression” (28). Grace can serve as a solution to these sinful attitudes, actions, and dispositions.

A majority of the rest of the book traces African American experience from the earliest times of the United States into the 1990s, with a particular focus on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X. However, these are also interspersed with broader historical insights, analysis of streams of thought, and more. A fascinating section has Ellis, Jr. arguing that the movement towards Islam in African American experience cannot provide the same universality that Christianity does. In part, this is because orthodox Muslim teaching is that the Qur’an “is in Arabic only” (152). More importantly, the attempted de-Christianization of black culture through Islam can only either turn black culture into Muslim/Arabic culture or result in unorthodox Islam (121ff). Christianity, argues Ellis, Jr., provides a way forward for black Americans to experience universal hope (158ff).

This does not mean that Christianity has no pitfalls, however, for African Americans and indeed for people generally. Ellis, Jr. notes several “Anti-God Christianity-isms” that corrupt Christianity’s message but are all too common. These include Christianity that is anti-intellectual, Christianity that attempts to make God obligated to humans, Christianity that makes God into a kind of religious tyrant, and Christianity that puts God in a box (167-168). The last chapter of the book offers Ellis, Jr.’s vision for a renewal of Christianity and black experience.

Free at Last? is a compelling account of African American experience in regards to Christianity. Originally published in the late 1990s, this updated version offers a strong challenge to the modern cries out against allegedly anti-Christian ideas and philosophies from within the church while also arguing strongly for a robust Christian vision going forward. It’s a fascinating read, and I recommend it.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of the book for review by the publisher. I was not required to give any specific kind of feedback whatsoever.

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Book Reviews– There are plenty more book reviews to read! Read like crazy! (Scroll down for more, and click at bottom for even more!)

SDG.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

“The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari” Babylon 5 and Repentence

I’ve never watched Babylon 5 before, but I got the whole series on a great sale and have been watching it from the beginning. In this post, please do not SPOIL anything past the episode discussed. There will, of course, be major spoilers for this episode.

Babylon 5 and Repentence: “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari”

The first, most obvious point to make here is that the episode title is a kind of play on “Dark Night of the Soul,” a mystic work by St. John of the Cross. The work focuses not on general difficulties, which the phrase is sometimes used to denote now. Instead, it focuses on divine union and the purgation, or purification, of the soul. And that is certainly the central theme in “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari.” 

Mollari appears to be poisoned at the beginning but instead has suffered from a heart attack, and in his dream, he is told that his heart is giving out from the weight of his conscience. From there, we are witness to a number of ghostly visitations somewhat like A Christmas Carol by Dickens. Mollari is visited by many characters whom we’ve grown to know and love, but they’re all seeming to push him through his own purgations of the soul. 

The primary purgation that must happen for Mollari is, quite simply, accepting responsibility. I think of the concept of responsibility in much deeper ways, having reflected on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s specific concept of responsibility as taking on the guilt–even of others–for the good of all. And Mollari is the master of evading responsibility. At this point in the series, he has already committed vast, awful acts of horrific scope. Or, at the very least, he has stood by silently observing those acts which he helped orchestrate. Although he’s tried to atone for them in some ways through his actions, he has continually refused to acknowledge the evil he has committed with anything more than a few facial expressions. In this episode, his reckoning has come.

The most powerful way this plays out is when the dream-G’Kar arrives and absolutely skewers Mollari for his complicity, time and again saying “You said nothing” as Mollari protests that he couldn’t have stopped the events. The refrain–“You said nothing” continues as G’Kar then props Mollari up on a whipping post himself so that he can experience psychologically the pain he visitied upon the Narn people. Ultimately, Mollari realizes that he wants to live, and that to live he must accept his guilt–his responsibility. He cries out “I’m sorry!” and in that moment, his eyes open, and he’s back on the operating table, looking at the real G’Kar. He manages to get out the words “I’m sorry.” G’Kar–now the real one, not the one who’d been torturing him in his dreams–acknowledges the apology with the tilt of his head and a slight smile. It may not seem like much, but for these two–who stood on opposite ends of an attempted genocide–it is a huge moment, and one that shows Mollari has grown and indeed learned quite a bit about his life during his “very long night.” 

There are other, subtle moments of theological and social commentary mixed throughout the episode. For example, Vir, in the dream, tells Mollari that prophecies are just guesses that turn out to be right, while if they turn out wrong, they are called metaphors. I found this less a jab on the concept of prophecy and rather a cautious warning about how to interpret prophecies. It’s easy today, for example, to devolve the reading of Scripture into headlines-reading attempts at prophecy. But to do that to the text of books like Revelation or Isaiah is to do great damage to the actual thrust of those biblical works, which are often much more a call towards justice and reconciliation than they are about whether attack helicopters would exist in two thousand years (or more) from the time they were written. We would do well to make sure we’re not falling into the “metaphor or guesses” camp and instead reading prophecy in context and trying to discover what it would have meant at the time and why. Prophecy is much more often, as I noted, a call for justice and a crying out for God’s help than it is some kind of secret code in which to find the sequence of future events. 

“The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari” is a superb, thoughtful episode of Babylon 5. We, too, need to take responsibility for our actions and do more than say nothing when we see injustice occurring. I hope you’ll join me in discussion of the episode, and make sure to check out my Babylon 5 Hub (on my other website) for more discussion of the series in general. 

Links

Babylon 5 Hub– My “Eclectic Theist” site features a number of posts discussing my first watch-through of Babylon 5. Check them out here!

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Also see my other looks into television (scroll down for more).

SDG.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.