Kareng Article Analysis

The Trinity Bapitist Church, like most churches, saw themselves as being a positive addition to the African American community. After reading both the article and readings from Karenga, I found it hard to formulate the opinion that they didn’t. However, there were a couple of things that stood out to me as I read along. What I noticed that it did not agree with the historical role that Karenga articulated. Karenga states that the church stressing historical continuity would never be made (Karenga 264). I found this to be an interesting remark because it states that even though the church is supposed to be a spiritual place for people to congregate, they don’t teach the idea of social activism and the history of slavery. However, Reverand Wright saw otherwise because within the church he belonged to, African Americans were the minority. He stated that race in part, an assertion of self-determination, a declaration that no church is culturally natural (Sanneh). I can almost see why he would make
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. felt that it was necessary to have religion, which was consistent with Wright. King felt it was a social and spiritual function (Karenga 266). However, he felt that religion should depict the aspects of his experiences, which makes perfect sense because how else would one find spirituality with a religion or a form of worship that they could not relate to. And Wright attempted to do this through his sermons. First, he would still use the same readings from the bible, but he would put a twist and use his own dialogue so that he could draw in his members of his church. They were better able to relate this way because it was more upbeat and he used language that they all could understand. However, one could judge this because even though he was using language that everyone could interpret, it didn’t mean that it agreed with what the sermons actually