NOTES INTRODUCING… IMANI FOR JUSTICE: INTERFAITH FOR NATIONAL BLACK AGENDA
CONSORTIUM-CHICAGO (IFJ)
First, heretofore
conspicuous by its absence has been a clearly articulated National Black Agenda
Consortium-Chicago (NBAC-C) membership, outlook, and plan for faith and ethical
community development and inclusion. This absence ignores the need of seeking support
of the key moral and spiritual institution essential-the Black house of worship
and/or ethical culture community-for effectively promoting NBAC-C’S overall Black
community agenda among the African American people City-wide, regionally and
nationally.
Second, IFJ seeks to address NBAC-C’ S
previous absence of an articulated outlook and plan for Black faith community and/or
ethical society inclusion by serving as a diverse Africana faith persuasion
united front and outreach project organized to advance the NBAC-C’S agenda inside
and outside Black sacred communities. Put another way IFJ stands to promote Black faith-based
operational unity. Meaning we promote Black religious and ethical culture “unity without
uniformity” behind the NBAC-C project, Black faith and moral community “unity
in diversity.”
Third, the
general aim of IFJ is to build a Black ecumenical and interfaith coalition for
racial and social justice supportive of the overall thrust of NBAC-C. By ecumenical we mean advancing the historically
established tradition of Black Church ecumenism meaning both spontaneous and
formal unity among Black Christian denominations, local congregations, and
Black para-church organizations against White supremacy and racism as well as for
racial and social justice. By
interfaith we mean extending the historic Black Church united front practice to
include the increasing number of Black adherents to diverse faith-based and/or
moral communities beyond established Black Church Christianity.
Forth, because
the basic cause of IFJ is that of advancing NBAC-C’S agenda on the Black religious
and/or ethical culture front, the initiative borrows from, and further
develops, the diverse faith-based support model of Euro-American-led interfaith
coalitions lately spawned around the American labor movement’s urban network of
metropolitan central labor councils-of which the Chicago-based Interfaith for Worker
Justice (IFWJ) is an important local example.
More, a key inter-faith model of the Black context, adopted by IFJ, is the
grassroots Black Community Clergy and Labor Alliance of Los Angeles (BCCLA)
organized out of the African American Cultural Center/Us of Los Angeles-now in
its 50th year of “service, struggle, and institution building.”
Finally,
IFJ is best understood as an Afrocentricity faith-based and/or moral community
united front. This said, IFJ is an
advocate of the Seven Principles (N’guzo Saba) of the Pan African cultural
holiday of Kwanzaa on the one hand and its companion Kawaida cultural
nationalist philosophy for racial and social justice on the other-both established and advanced by Dr. Maulana
Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, CAL State ULB-as a
distinctive approach inside and outside the field of Afrocentricity.
IFJ
further understands Afrocentricity as a development out of the Africana Studies
discipline itself a viable Black and humanist multicultural alternative to the mono-culturally
imposed social policy of Euro-centricity in education and all other established
order media forms. More, IFJ seeks to help
institutionally unite the Black Studies Academy and the Black community
(including especially Black faith and moral communities) not only for the advancement
of the National Black Agenda but to also contribute to developing an African
World agenda as well as that aimed at serving
the general public good in the U.S. and internationally.
Rev.
Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma) Reformation Church-Chicago, "A NATIONAL BLACK AGENDA CONSORTIUM-CHICAGO FAITH COMMUNITY CHURCH," 9/23/15/ 9th
Draft
