| White civilization, for all its glories, for all its mental and material achievement, may have forgotten the simpler truths of its own humble beginnings, the moral virtues of its medieval struggles. "The central fact," says William Barrett, of modern European history, has been the decline in religion. We praise modern intellectual advancement, but as Dr. Martin Luther King said, "Our mentality exceeds our morality." |
Edward Wilmont Blyden:"The whole of mankind is a vast representation of the Deity."
Blyden believed that the races and nationalities were each essential and complementary to each other and in their totality made up something approaching God's divinity. As each part of the human body has its funtion in the whole so does each race within humanity as a whole.
[I Corintians 12:14] "For the body is not one member, but many." Each race and nationality has its unique calling, and function, within the entire whole of humanity.
[I Corintians 12: 21-23] No part of the body can say to another part, I have no need of you. "Nay, much more those members of the body which seem more feeble, are necessary; And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness."
Robert W. July explains Blyden's views:
If the races were co-equal but different, it followed that each had its own special contribution to make to the sum of human civilization. The white man had his virtues and faults; he was didactic and strong-willed, accomplished in the sciences and preoccupied with material betterment. This could lead to salutary ends; for example, in Africa it meant an end to the slave trade and inter-tribal wars, economic improvement, and the introduction of modern medicine. But, Blyden went on, these advantages came at a price. The European colonizer was also dominerring and materialistic, selfish, and irreligious. Man, not God, became the sole object of human endeavor, the white race enslaved and bent others to its will. while religion was made to subserve material and temporal purposes.
Clearly, said Blyden, past performance by the Black man, suggested not mastery but service. "Africa's lot resembles Him also who made Himself of no reputation, but took upon Himself the form of a servant ... he who would be chief must become the servant of all, then we see the position which Africa and the Africans will ultimately occupy." Service to humanity, harmony with nature, and communion with God, suggested to Blyden the unique and essential offering which traditional Africa would make in a modernist, materialist, soulless world. Traditional Africa would bring to the world again, "the mightly principal of Love."
"Africa may yet prove to be the spiritual conservatory of the world," Blyden rejoiced,
"When the civilized nations, in consequence of their wonderful material development, shall have had their spiritual perceptions darkened and their spiritual susceptibilities blunted through the agency of a captivating and absorbing materialism, it may be, that they will have to resort to traditional Africa to recover some of the simple but enduring elements of ancient faith."
| The biblical term for Egypt is Mizraim, which grammatically (Hebrew) is in the dual number. But the origin of the word itself is not Hebraic. The Bibe also refers to Egypt as the land of Ham. Presumably the duality designates the "two" Egypts, upper (with "No" - ie. Thebes) and lower. (with "Noph" - ie. Memphis). In hieroglyphics this the ancient name of this land is written Kem, possibly pronounced Chem. This name signifies, in the ancient language and in Coptic, BLACK. It has been conjectured broadly that the hieroglyph Kem is the equivalent of the biblical Ham. Henry Morris asserts that it was Hamitic peoples who were the first mariners, the first city builders, the first printers, and probably the first to develop agriculture, animal domestication, and metallurgy, as well as many other technological contributions. The invention of writing, whether Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Phoenician alphabetic writing, seems to have been a Hamitic contribution. (Morris, page 442). Robert Rix declares that Emanuel Swedenborg argued that it was from Africa that other nations would be enlightened. The Africans human centered religion would challenge the false dogma of the old churches. It could raise Western nations to value Love and Wisdom, where they now keep their understanding of true Christianity ‘in obedience to the faith of the ministers of the church.’ The fact that Blake’s little black boy will teach the white boy about heavenly joy concurs with Swedenborg crediting the African with spiritual superiority. [p98. Robert Rix. William Blake and the cultures of radical Christianity] |
| T.S. Eliot, the Anglo-Caucasian poet and a Euro- Christian, spoke out a century later on some of the concerns Blyden foresaw: What is the problem of our socalled enlightened modernist culture, with its materialism, its smug complacency, its intellectual pride? Eliot writes: "We know too much, and believe too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion." Martin Luther King said [17 May 1957, WDC Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom]:[May we so live today, that ...] when the history books are written in the future, the historians will have to look back and say, 'There lived a great people. A people with fleecy locks and black complexion, but a people who injected new meaning into the veins of civilization; a people which stood up with dignity and honor and saved Western civilization in her darkest hour; a people that gave new integrity and a new dimension of love to our civilization.' When that happens, the morning stars will sing together, and the sons of God will shout for joy. [Job 38:7 -- King James Version] Again and again modern heroes of the spirit have arisen to demonstrate a courage and a belief in the power of brotherhood, if not divine love and power itself, that have inspired the multitudes. Some have been men of quiet or very private faith, others have been clergymen. All have been beacons to the Ages through their witness of character and truth. Following are recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients. How many other heroes are yet to be noticed, honored, or heeded? |
| Chief Albert Luthuli | Seventh Day Adventist | South African | hereditary chief-king |
| Archbishop Desmond Tutu | Anglican (Episcopal) | South African | minister prelate |
| Martin Luther King, Jr | Baptist | American | theologian/ minister |
| Nelson R. Mandela | Methodist | South African | attorney |