With regards to the Black Values System, I think it’s great for a community or civil rights organization but not necessarily as a founding statment for a church. My reasoning for this is as follows. The church is the body of Christ. It purpose is to be a light unto the world as you bring Glory to God. The point is to spread the Gospel of Christ. The moment that is no longer your primary focus, you need to stop and regroup. A Christian should be Christ centered. Before you are anything you are a Christian. Before you are black, man or woman, daughter, son, mother, father, etc. The moment you take the foucs from God and shift it to your race or anything else you have lost the purpose of the chruch.

Now I don’t care what churches of the past have done. Pointing fingers to what others have done is juvenille and it shows a lack of responsibility and maturity. When you have a values system for a chruch that mentions God twice, christ twice, christian once and Black well over 20 times, there needs to be a reassessment of who you are serving.

This is my humble opinion and before you jump on me with you objections or some minor discrepency, I ask that you consider what I said.

Thanks for taking the time to make a thoughtful and responsive post. I really do appreciate it. So many just post drivel.

I agree that many places have segregated housing and schools (even though they seem to meet the legal requirements), but in our case the non-white population (which includes Blacks, Hispanics, Asian and other non-Whites) is less than 5% of the total population and I live in one of the poorest counties in the nation. It’s not intentional segregation–at least I can’t see how it is.

12 years ago we had an abused spouse and her five children live with us for 6 months. My boys have certainly been exposed to black children–and have seen them as their own brothers and sisters–but as far as our local society there isn’t much interaction.

I don’t know how to fight the battle, nor do I know how you and others can fight the battle. I’m sure you are tired.

But how does that solve anything? We both agree there is a huge problem, but I don’t hear any solutions from anyone. That’s not your problem, maybe there is no solution. Maybe what would need to happen is so extreme it won’t happen until critical mass is achieved.

And none of us want that, though it may be inevitable.

I can embrace African Americans as my fellows, I can teach my children to not see race as the most important characteristic of a person, but will the few of us who do this change the United States? I doubt it.

One of the most important and insightful statements I have read is one you wrote: “You have already lost.”

I agree, we (the white ruling class in America) have already lost. We just don’t realize it yet. It will be a very short time until Caucasians are a minority in the US and Hispanics become the majority.

And while I agree it would be a problem if blacks gave up, it may actually do some good. What if blacks took a day off work? What would happen to our industry, our service providers, our economy? It might be the best wake up call the country could have.