The Anglo-African DiasporaL An Instrument of Providence (Gomorrah, tradition, Sodom)
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Scriptural References: Genesis 1:26, Isaiah 9:1-2, Isaiah 45:5-8, Matthew 7:13-14, Acts 1:1-8, Acts 17:26-30 and Revelation 7:9:12.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, made reference to an ‘Inescapable Network of Mutuality’ in his diagnosis of some relationships between Black and White citizens of America. Various interpretations of these words have been offered over the years with the general admission that they were artful, but not esoteric by any stretch of the imagination, references to some sensitive matters that by tradition is never broach*ed in polite company.
One of these matters, speaking more to the point, evidently has enjoyed a visibly increasing but maligned presence in America since the early 17th century birth of the first mulatto child in the Jamestown colony. This providential birth, in both the most oxymoronic liberal and conservative contexts of current racial attitudes, symbolizes the physical birth of a ubiquitous institution that has attempted to hide in plain sight.
I am speaking, of course, of the Anglo-African Diaspora in America, i.e., one of the symbiotic affinities referred to by MLK in more artful terms but not the one that prompted the first American miscegenation laws in 17th century Virginia. The Diaspora that is the object of my interest has its roots roots in the Tudor Dynasty, the Protestant Reformation, the theology of Martin Luther, the miraculous victory of Queen Elizabeth’s navy over the Invincible Spanish Armada and the existence of indigenous slavery in Africa for a thousand years before the arrival of the first European slave traders. I am speaking, fellow Christians, of the Diaspora that, as a consequence of American Slavery, the American Theological War (1861-65) and the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, for those with ears to hear, signaled the beginning of a new and still prospering era in the advancement of the Kingdom of God.
Christian Americans, especially those in the Anglo-African Diaspora, are in the forefront of evangelism in the earth. This is not an accident! Did He agree not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if Abraham could find five righteous people in the cities?