Reading Up: Hip Hop Pastor as Postmodern Prophet

At first, I thought this reading was going to be insanely dated. When I pick up a book called titled The

Rev. Otis Moss III preaching it up.

Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation that was written in 2007, I'm automatically skeptical. Most cultural critics I've encountered consider the "hip hop generation" to be a pretty broad term for African Americans born after the Civil Rights Movement. And with hip hop's roots in the 1980s, it's a genre that's been recognized in pop culture for over 30 years. As early as 2006, cultural critics were writing that African American youth coming of age at the turn of the millennium were better understood to be a "post hip hop generation." So, in reaching Rev. Otis Moss III's chapter, "The Hip Hop Pastor as Postmodern Prophet," I was unsure what to expect. Was it going to be dated advice already? Praise God, it's not.

Moss does a good job of contrasting "soul culture"--the culture out of which artists like Rev. Al Green, Jackie Wilson, and Aretha Franklin emerged--and "hip hop culture." For Moss, hip hop culture has prophetic roots in its cultural critique, but has since been co-opted by mainstream America as just another cultural product. Moss sketches a vision of hip hop at its best--a prophetic word against forces of oppression, domination, and injustice with a voice and sound deeply rooted in African and African American experience and tradition. In fact, Moss sketches the same vision for the church, in this way articulating that the co-opting of hip hop is no different than the co-opting of church that has happened over the course of the last few decades. Rather than functioning as cultural critics, Moss sees both hip hop and the church functioning as cultural products. He calls the church to adopt the spirit of hip hop to recover its unique voice in a world that sounds like the same old stuff.

By the end of this, I realized that Moss' critique could be applied to any counter-cultural movement in any tradition, be it punk rock, indie rock, folk, Americana, etc. His critique didn't just speak to the African American church experience, but to the American church experience. 

Some favorite quotes:

• "The strength of the church--particularly the black church--when rooted in a liberation ethic is revolutionary transformation through Christ. The church is one of the only places where the people are forced to struggle together in community and come to grips with the message of a Savior who demands not personal salvation but community trasnformation" (118).
• "African American faith has always wrapped its worship experience in the existential and eschatological. In other words, we have always worshiped with one foot in the soil of our present pain and another foot in our future hope" (124).
• "...African American children and adults are bombarded with images that perpetuate ungodly, racist, and destructive stereotypes. The church should be a place where children of color see themselves in a positive light. It is critical that the church place symbols, artifacts, and photographs that show African people as a part of the ancient biblical world. Christ should never be depicted as a European in a black church but at least Afro-Asicatic! His disciples should be viewed in a variety of dark and light hues reflective of the ancient world they occupied" (126).
• "We must be clear on this: the hip hop generation sees people with passion and conviction all the time...The church, beyond all others, has someone named Christ to be passionate about, but many of our traditional churches have lost all sense of passion. Only when passion is rekindled can celebration truly take place" (127-8).
• "Music in the church context, though it has the high calling to illuminate Christ, also is trapped by the cultural memory of the congregation. When a person says, "I don't like that song," he or she is really saying, "That song invokes no memory for me."...The clash between generations is as much about new and old memories as it is about methodology." (130).
• Music done well with the ethic of inspiration demands that we use what will undergird the Word, regardless of style (130).
• Moss' Post-Soul Tests scattered throughout the chapter are really excellent ways to frame questions about one's church culture.

Reading Up: Knowing your message and preaching to the margins.

Reading Yvette Flunder's chapter in Birthing the Sermon, I was struck by two things: 1) She has such a clear understanding of the underlying gospel message she is charged with preaching. She writes, "That struggle [for equality, parity, and justice] is the long, strong, deep, resonant bass line of all I preach, sing, and pray about" (68). 2) She also has a deep sense of who her audience is when she preaches--those who are marginalized or feel marginalized by the church.

What is the bass line for my preaching? The line everything else hangs on?

And who is my audience? I already have a hint at this--I feel called to preach to those who don't realize that the church could be for them, that the gospel message could be for them, that God could be for them. Marginalized? Yes.

Favorite Quotes:

• "Mine is a voice that passionately preaches justice and freedom with responsibility; however, not to the exclusion of Jesus" (68).
• "People who have for generations been abused by the preaching of the Bible need to hear the Bible preached in ways that affirm and validate them" (68).
• "The gospel is from the community as well as to it" (69).
• "It is not enough for me to simply be profound; I must seek to be a profound blessing, by hearing from God and paying close attention to the 'voice' of the listening congregation" (69).
• "We all keep secrets, so what would they[the biblical writers] rather we did not know?" (71).
• Preaching to people who are on the edge of society and the mainline church must have good content and good form. Preaching to marginalized people mus be believable, powerful, and passionate" (73).