(courtesy of KINGMovement.com)

I recently attended an event where a well-known Black pastor was preaching. Hip, relatively young and Baptist, he delivered a scintillating sermon on social justice that at times had the audience cheering loudly. While I loved his message of empowering the poor and providing equal opportunities for the downtrodden, I was more than a bit turned off by the way he quoted three popular secular rappers as if they were Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.

He wasn’t quoting KRS-One, Chuck D or Dead Prez, mind you. Nah, the cats whose lyrics he recited with such gusto and admiration rose to worldwide fame by promoting themselves as pimps and glorifying selling drugs to Black people. Yet in a sermon in which this Reverend chastised the rich and powerful for their refusal to share the wealth and hammered the holy rollers for ignoring scriptures that address social justice, he saw fit to exalt dudes who flaunt their affluence in the faces of poor, struggling Blacks, who advocate the type of promiscuous lifestyle that helps fuel the fatherless crisis and all the negative outcomes that come with it, and who brag about their role in a drug game that’s sent millions of brothers to prison or the grave. (read more at KINGMovement.com)