Christians are supposed to store up riches in heaven, but the AME church leaders have stored their riches on earth. And apparently someone ran off with a lot of it!
The abundance of riches in the afterlife is merely a trope the cowardly. The pimps at the pulpit understand that abundance can be manifested here in the flesh but they propagate delayed gratification to ensure the transfer of wealth from attendees to collection plates. I cannot wait to listen to this episode on my commute this morning.
This was an excellent analysis. 💯🎯 The elephant-in-the-room issue with the Black church is, while it finds a plethora of ways to raise funds for the building, sow into the "ministries" of its several clergymen, or otherwise extract finances from its parishioners (typically through the incentive of spiritual shame avoidance, or prosperity gospel preaching), it does not reciprocate financial literacy, job networking, business creation, or otherwise, back into the flock which continues to invest in them. 💸⛪🤑➡️👨🏾💼💼🌐🔃🤔
Why teach them astuteness with money, when you can convince the masses to hand over 10% (plus other offerings) of their money (which the Biblical tithe NEVER was) to said entity, which will garner them a proverbial "blessing" down the road, at an ambiguous point in time? 🤷🏾♂️⌛💀
This was an excellent analysis. 💯🎯 The elephant-in-the-room issue with the Black church is, while it finds a plethora of ways to raise funds for the building, sow into the "ministries" of its several clergymen, or otherwise extract finances from its parishioners (typically through the incentive of spiritual shame avoidance, or prosperity gospel preaching), it does not reciprocate financial literacy, job networking, business creation, or otherwise, back into the flock which continues to invest in them. 💸⛪🤑➡️👨🏾💼💼🌐🔃🤔
Why teach them astuteness with money, when you can convince the masses to hand over 10% (plus other offerings) of their money (which the Biblical tithe NEVER was) to said entity, which will garner them a proverbial "blessing" down the road, at an ambiguous point in time? 🤷🏾♂️⌛💀
Great points and the questions you pose are amazing if we are taking the church at face value which is to be a place of healing, restoration, and of giving to the community. Martin Luther King Jr. saw the path the Black church was heading down and warned that it would be reduced to a useless social club if it didn't start providing tangible benefits to Black people, THEY DIDN'T LISTEN. Now we are left with the result which is a social club where desperate and sometimes hopeless people give their money to grifters in hopes that a sky fairy gives them something in return in the future. The entire apparatus is a grift which is why it has fallen out of favor with the youth.