Faith in Action

Dr. Cain Hope Felder Benevolence Fund
1400 Shepherd Street, N.E., Suite 264-266
Washington, DC 20017
(202) 269-4311
(202) 269-0051 Fax
www.biscfelder.org

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The Biblical Institute for Social Change, Inc.

Dear Friends of Dr. Cain Hope Felder,

You are cordially invited to a formal gala to honor our beloved Dr. Cain Hope Felder. The benefit is to recognize, honor and celebrate his 35 years as a world-renown and brilliant Biblical scholar, masterful teacher, anointed preacher, prolific writer, and one who has sown into the lives of countless individuals. The black tie salute will be held Saturday, April 5, 2008 from 5:30 to 9:00 pm in the Blackburn Center on the main campus of Howard University in Washington, DC.

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Faith in Action has just confirmed that Dr. James Cone, Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary, will be our featured guest on the radio program (WWIN Spirit 1400AM) on Monday, March 31, 2008 1PM - 2PM EST.

Dr. Cone, considered by many to be the father of Black Liberation Theology, is probably best known for his ground-breaking works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969), A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), God of the Oppressed (1975), and Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare? (1991).

In light of the national discussion of Dr. Jeremiah Wright, democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and the character of Black preaching, I am honored to bring to the Faith in Action family a discussion with a man who can speak most authoritatively about the unique character of the Black Church and its Liberation Theology.

Tune in Monday, March 31, 2008 on Spirit 1400AM (Baltimore) from 1PM - 2PM EST as we speak with professor, author, and lecturer - Dr. James Cone.

In the meantime, enjoy this clip of Dr. James Cone at Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union 2003.

Hat Tip: Baltimore Examiner

Len Lazarick, The Examiner

Annapolis -
Wider collection of DNA samples from anyone charged with a violent crime tentatively passed the Maryland Senate on Tuesday.

But seven of the 10 African-American senators voted against the measure despite concessions they won from Gov. Martin O’Malley on a key component of his anti-crime agenda. Many black lawmakers said O’Malley’s proposal had potential to create another kind of racial profiling, with little knowledge of how genetic information could be used in the future.

Despite misgivings, Sen. Verna Jones, chairwoman of the General Assembly’s Legislative Black Caucus, voted for the bill initially — “a vote that’s very difficult for me” — then switched her vote after the measure passed on a preliminary 36-to-11 vote. She asked to have her name removed as a co-sponsor.

“I do have a problem with this bill, but I wanted to be supportive,” Jones told The Examiner. “I don’t think it’s as tight as it should be.”

The Senate amended the bill to make it similar to the one passed by the House last Wednesday. DNA samples would only be collected after a person was charged with a crime of violence, not after arrest, as O’Malley originally proposed.

The DNA would be tested after conviction, and it would be automatically expunged if the suspect was acquitted. In an important difference with the House, the Senate version “sunsets” the law — automatically repeals it — in five years.

“I had worked very diligently with the governor’s bill,” said Sen. Lisa Gladden, vice chairwoman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee and a public defender in Baltimore. “I still think it’s a bad bill.”

“I know who’s going to be in the database,” Gladden said — “poor people, African-American people.”

Sen. Delores Kelley, D-Baltimore County, said the bill was “premature” since O’Malley has neither provided the funding, created a commission of experts nor set up the regulations to be make sure the laboratories doing the testing were credentialed.

Four conservative Republicans joined in the opposition. “These are innocent people” from whom the DNA will be collected, said Sen. Alex Mooney. “We don’t know what they can do with DNA yet.”

Both sides expect the measure to be sent to a conference committee to work out differences between the two houses.

HERE IS HOW THE SENATE VOTED:

Nays (11):

Joan Carter Conway, D, Baltimore City
Ulysses Currie, D, Prince George’s County
Nathaniel Exum, D, Prince George’s County
Lisa A. Gladden, D, Baltimore City
Janet Greenip, R, Anne Arundel County
David C. Harrington, D, Prince George’s County
Andrew P. Harris, R, Baltimore County & Harford County
Delores G. Kelley, D, Baltimore County
Allan H. Kittleman, R, Carroll & Howard Counties
Alex X. Mooney, R, Frederick & Washington Counties
C. Anthony Muse, D, Prince George’s County
E.J. Pipkin, R, Caroline, Cecil, Kent & Queen Anne’s Counties

Yeas (36):

John C. Astle, D, Anne Arundel County
David R. Brinkley, R, Frederick & Carroll Counties
James Brochin, D, Baltimore County
Richard F. Colburn, R, Caroline, Dorchester, Talbot & Wicomico Counties
James E. DeGrange, Sr., D, Anne Arundel County
George W. Della, Jr., D, Baltimore City
Roy P. Dyson, D, Calvert, Charles & St. Mary’s Counties
George C. Edwards, R, Allegany, Garrett & Washington Counties
Jennie M. Forehand, D, Montgomery County
Brian E. Frosh, D, Montgomery County
Robert J. Garagiola, D, Montgomery County
Barry Glassman, R, Harford County
Larry E. Haines, R, Baltimore County & Carroll Counties
Nancy Jacobs, R, Cecil & Harford Counties
Verna L. Jones, D, Baltimore City
Edward J. Kasemeyer, D, Baltimore County & Howard County
Nancy J. King, D, Montgomery County
Katherine A. Klausmeier, D, Baltimore County
Rona E. Kramer, D, Montgomery County
Mike Lennett, D, Montgomery County
Richard S. Madaleno, Jr., D, Montgomery County
Nathaniel J. McFadden, D, Baltimore City
Thomas M. Middleton, D, Charles County
Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr., D, Calvert & Prince George’s Counties
Donald F. Munson, R, Washington County
Douglas J.J. Peters, D, Prince George’s County
Paul G. Pinsky, D, Prince George’s County
Catherine E. Pugh, D, Baltimore City
Jamie Raskin, D, Montgomery County
James N. Robey, D, Howard County
Jim Rosapepe, D, Anne Arundel & Prince George’s Counties
Bryan W. Simonaire, R, Anne Arundel County
J. Lowell Stoltzfus, R, Somerset, Wicomico & Worcester Counties
Norman R. Stone, Jr., D, Baltimore County
Bobby A. Zirkin, D, Baltimore County

I’ve uploaded the interview to the big ipod on the right of the homepage. Take a listen and let me know what you think. (You can also subscribe in itunes)

Also, I want to encourage those in the Baltimore area to pick up this week’s edition of The Baltimore Afro American Newspaper. My radio program was featured on the Faith in Action page.

I’m extremely encouraged by how God is allowing the show to grow in such short time. We’ve only been on the air for about 7 weeks and have been featured in the Afro and cited in the Washington Post for out interview with Sen. C. Anthony Muse. We’ve also reached a great milestone via our feedburner service. We now have 104 subscribers to this blog! Couple that with the nearly 10,000 page hits in January and February 2008 and you get a sense of the potential of all of this.

Students from Morgan State University will soon be coming on board to provide further support (advertising/sales, alternative media, production) and thanks to Chip Dizard from Absolute Presence, you’ll soon be able to watch one of the radio programs. (Check out Chip’s blog too)

A special limited time offer is being extended to all businesses owners who would like to advertise products or services to my vast radio and internet audience. Please contact me for details. (It’d be a good idea to get on this train now. I’m offering BIG hook ups while I’m in the process of building my base. Once that base is built, special offers will be few and far between.)

Thanks to all of those who support the Faith in Action radio program on Spirit 1400AM and please continue to keep me in prayer.

Since this mainstream media report, the House of Delegates has voted on the bill and everyone voted in favor of it except Del. Jill Carter (D-41), Del. Michael Smigiel (R-36), Del. Richard Sossi (R-36) and Del. Donna Stifler (R-35A).

Del. Frank Conaway, Jr. (D-40) - who we initially identified as being one of the misguided African American delegates in a previous post - chose not to vote at all.

It was for male ex-offenders who were there to receive information that could potentially help their situation. Here’s part 1 of my sharing. You can check out the rest on my youtube page.

On that same day I conducted a Social Justice Bible Study session for the United Worker’s Association. They have an Organizer’s Training Program that they’ve just started with some of their low-wage workers. The day before I was in Annapolis meeting with members of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland meeting about Governor Martin O’Malley’s absurd DNA bill and from Annapolis did 95 on 95 to get to the studio of WEAA 88.9FM to be a guest on Front Page hosted by my good brother, Craig Thompson. We were talking about Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the Black Church, and Black Liberation Theology.

Once I got home Tuesday night from this long 48 hours of giving and sharing I went straight to bed and slept for 12 hours. (I never do that)

I’m tired ya’ll. My body, mind, and spirit needs a break. I’ve been going full throttle for months now. Vacation please!?

Hat Tip: God’s Politics

The media frenzy over the remarks of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, raise critical challenge to the prophetic role and voice of the black church. These “incendiary” remarks have set off a firestorm in the media, exposing the deep divide that exists on Sundays - America’s most segregated hour of the week. This controversy serves as a stark reminder that the problem of the color line that still divides the U.S. and its churches. This often misguided debate obscures the rich and necessary prophetic role of the black church. Most coverage fails to capture the competing narratives and self-definitions of the U.S. that coexist depending on one’s race and social location. While I’m uncomfortable with some of Dr. Wright’s overly provocative rhetoric, and disagree with some of his claims (like his suggestion that AIDS was a creation of the U.S. government), I still vehemently defend the prophetic tradition that Rev. Wright has advanced over the course of 36 years of ministry. I agree with the Rev. Otis Moss III, the new Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, that we do a grave disservice by boiling down over 207,000 minutes of Dr. Wright’s preaching into a handful of 30-second sound bites, most taken out of context.

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REMARKS OF SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: ‘A MORE PERFECT UNION’

Philadelphia, PA | March 18, 2008
As Prepared for Delivery

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

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Hat Tip: Baltimore Examiner

By BRIAN WITTE, The Associated Press
2008-03-18

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -
A measure to expand the collection of DNA samples from people arrested for violent crimes and burglary has run into strong resistance from the NAACP and members of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, who walked out of a House caucus meeting Tuesday in frustration.

Opponents are fighting the bill because they say it’s too broad and requires DNA collections from innocent people who haven’t been convicted of any crimes. Initially the bill, which is one of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s priorities this session, would have required that DNA samples be kept by law enforcement - even if people ended up being exonerated.

The measure has been amended so that authorities would have to inform someone of the right to expunge the sample, if the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted.

When the bill was brought up on the House floor Tuesday morning, Delegate Joseph F. Vallario Jr., the Judiciary Committee Chairman, told lawmakers to “feel free” to bring more amendments to the committee.

“Our door is always open,” Vallario said, shortly before action on the bill was put off until Thursday.

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A “hustler for justice” - that’s what a good sister-friend of mine called me not too long ago. And if that is the case then today I got my hustle on big time.

Faith in Action the radio program aired on Spirit 1400AM at 1PM and we talked about whether Faith or Race should hold ultimate authority as Believers engage matters of politics, public policy, etc. Pamela Wilson, author of Finding Soul Brothers: Dismantling Black Christian Racialism and Dr. Jonathan Walton, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside were our guests. The conversation was pretty interesting. Wilson contends that our cultural identification should be minimized when we “come to Christ” while Walton took the position that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be narrowly defined by the “either-or” lenses of Faith or Race. You know where I stood with my Red, Black, and Green, Pan-Afrikanist, Daishiki-wearing, Revolution starting, White Power Structure critiquing self. (Have you donated to the Faith in Action show yet? If not, why not? I haven’t proved myself yet?)

We were joined in the conversation by Tracy Ward, reporter and writer with The Baltimore Afro American Newspaper. Sis. Ward is a powerful orator, poet, community activist, etc. who has given new life to the Faith in Action page of The Afro. That page has been a place where one could read about everything BUT people of Faith putting into practice what they believe. Ward’s writing is a breath of fresh air as she is on the grind telling the stories of Believers who are in the trenches living out Luke 4:18,19. Sis. Tracy was in the studio today working on a piece about me and the work that I’m doing in the Baltimore Metro area. The piece may be out this Friday, March 21, 2008 - “Good Friday.” I pray that the piece encourages those who are out there “hustling for justice” and that it convicts those who choose to neglect their duty as laborers in the vineyard. (I believe that at this stage if you’re a preacher and you’re not active in some substantive way in the community then it’s because you don’t want to be. Ignorance is not an excuse.)

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