Learning from Marcus Garvey

Last updated on: February 19, 2019 at 9:42 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent. Reading much Marcus Garvey is an education in difference. The millions of African-Americans were not just Martin Luther King, Malcom X, or Alice Walker: the sort one is encouraged to read in a left-of-center grad school. The joy of reading African-American literature, theology, and philosophy is the diversity. Nobody can... Read more

Barracoon and What Interests Us OR Hurston and History

Last updated on: February 17, 2019 at 8:26 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

History refuses to fit any simple minded ideological storage boxes: people neatly separated into heroes, villains. History does show us good and evil: the slave trade in the Atlantic was evil, but people are always more complicated than lazy judgments. We must let the witnesses of the past speak and accept what they said and did as what they said and did. The Bias of My Perspective: Start With What We Have I think Christianity is true: there is a... Read more

The Limits of Education OR Ph.D. OR Langston Hughes and CS Lewis Agree?

Last updated on: February 17, 2019 at 11:17 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

Ph.D. He never was a silly little boy Who whispered in the class or threw spit balls. Or pulled the hair of silly little girls, Or disobeyed in any way the laws, That made the school a place of decent order Where books were read and sums were proven true And paper maps that showed the land and water Were held up as the real wide world to you, Always, he kept his eyes upon his books: And now... Read more

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)

Last updated on: February 16, 2019 at 6:42 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

To have a life to live, joy to share, only to be stifled by injustice, sometimes from the ones who love you, is hard, but life and joy can still be, even if only for a time. Their Eyes Were Watching God shows a human being, an African-American woman, finding a way. Hurston herself was able to do important work in anthropology and write novels, so she had no trouble keeping two injustices firmly at the front of the novel African-Americans... Read more

Grandpa’s Stories (Papaw!) OR Langston Hughes Reminds Me of the Best Stories

Last updated on: February 16, 2019 at 9:54 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

Grandpa’s Stories (Langston Hughes) The pictures on the television Do not make me dream as well As the stories without pictures Grandpa knows how to tell. Even if he does not know What makes a spaceman go, Grandpa says back in his time, Hamburgers only cost a dime, Ice cream comes a nickel, And a penny for a pickle. Both my grandfathers could tell a good story, but Papaw Reynolds was a story telling Jedi. He had standard voices he... Read more

A January Dandelion, In February (George Marion McClellan)

Last updated on: February 14, 2019 at 10:12 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

Love is a great god or so the ancients claimed. Yet Plato and all our experiences show us that love is fuel not the goal. When we worship love, then we are, all of us, deceived. Love is a natural response to beauty and to the good, but when we confuse the fuel with the destination, we end up dead from the fumes. Christian poet and thinker George Marion McClellan knew what Plato speculated: love can get us to the Good,... Read more

An American Marriage (Tayari Jones)

Last updated on: February 14, 2019 at 10:46 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

Any married American will find much of the book familiar, moving. This is an author gifted enough to make a President’s summer reading list and be selected by Oprah for her book club. The story and writing is can’t stop reading good. In a nation that too often hunkers down into narrow niches, those not African-American (especially) might get an education from a powerful American voice. The particular experience of America from college, wealth, success, police, justice, and power in the... Read more

Reading, So Vital, God’s Own Gift (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper)

Last updated on: February 14, 2019 at 12:00 am By John Mark N. Reynolds

I am convinced if more people read well many of our disagreements would vanish. We learn to read, but then let the skill go. I compare even sports writing from my childhood to the sports writing of today and with notable exceptions, the stories today are written in English that is less complex and rich in expression. This is very bad in a Republic based on a written Constitution; citizens must be free to try, including as free as possible within... Read more

Plain Theology for Plain People- The Last Things (Charles Octavius Boothe 9/9)

Last updated on: February 13, 2019 at 11:01 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

Charles Octavius Boothe began in God, moved from creation, to our fall, redemption, and life in Christ’s church. Now he comes to last things. One thing is certain for all of us: Jesus will return in no more than one hundred years from the moment you read this sentence for each one of us. Why? We shall all die and at that moment the end has come: we are, each of us, hurtling toward the last things. We should live, day... Read more

Plain Theology for Plain People- The Christian Church (Charles Octavius Boothe 8/9)

Last updated on: February 11, 2019 at 11:47 pm By John Mark N. Reynolds

Some churchmen failed Charles Octavius Boothe, but the Lord of the Church never did. Some Christians in America still ignore his life and voice, but the Lord of the Church does not. Theology got bent to fit fashion and economics several times in his life, but the Lord of the Church changes not. There are many kinds of prophecy, though commonly we only recognize the jeremiad. Dr. Boothe called the church to holiness and Jesus. He saw the church as... Read more