Get Your Pretense On!

74 • Get Your Pretense On!

He married my mother, had a passel of children, and became an un-unionized meat packer in a Midwestern ghetto community living in a tough yet proud community. My father suffered defacto and dejure denial of his rights on every front, excluded intentionally from full participation in larger society: work, school, society. After living a full but difficult life, my father died the very year our nation guaranteed people like him the right to vote: 1965. As I ponder the life of my father, I can say that although his treatment was often brutal and unjust, he grew up as a happy man, a family man, and a churchman. He lived with dignity (though he was treated as one not having it), and he provided for us as a follower of Christ, loving my mother and the eight children till the very day he died. As I survey his life, I can testify of all the organizations and connections my family had, there was a single place in America that refused to define him by his color, or deny his rights because of weird social norms and ideas. What was it? The one place where my father and other adult Black men and women could go and affirm their full rights and commitments as human beings was the church of Jesus Christ! The church, Grant Chapel A.M.E., was the one place in my father’s orbit that both recognized and made room for his gifting, calling, person, presence, and potential. It allowed my dad to respond with his gifts as a leader and servant, and provided for growth and friendship for our little poor family, struggling for survival in a northern ghetto community. Contrary to Mr. Barna’s assertion, Grant Chapel, A.M.E. church, the little local assembly of poor believers, was our hope and vehicle for transformation. We experienced the life of the Kingdom in the relationships of that poor, Black congregation whose pastor could not attend the