PraiseNet.Org is an Internet-based Christian forum with a focus
on the African American Christian experi-
ence. Views expressed here are
solely those of the authors. By viewing this website you agree to our
Terms of Use. All Music and Art, Websites and Text are Copyright ©
and/or Trademarks of their respective owner(s). PraiseNet.Org does not
make a profit from this website. This site in no way challenges the
exclusive ownership of copyrighted images, sounds or text. See our
Terms Of Use for more information.
Media clips are the property of their respective copyright owners. The omission of specific copyright information in no way challenges or diminishes the exclusive rights of the respective copyright owners. “PraiseNet.Org,” “eStyle,” “Holla! At Neil Brown,” “Riverside,” “LifeLines,” and “Contextual Criticism For The African American Church” are service marks (SM) of and Copyright © 2001-2014 PraiseNet Electronic Media. All Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC BY-NC (Text Only)
No. 421 July 2014
Why Do Christians Suffer?

Suffering
Rather than ask God why He allows suffering in our lives, I’m more curious about why we believe we’ll be exempt from it.
Read Essay

Venezuela
This sadness is like luggage you carry around without realizing it. People who love people with this disease need to educate themselves on what we need to do to manage it.
Read Essay
Christians & Depression
Video: Remembering Maya Angelou


Hurrican Katrina
The ultimate lesson of Katrina may be the unthinkable horror of the Superdome, and the deep divisions not only between White and Black America, but between Black America itself.
Read Essay
An American Disgrace
Start The Lord Giveth Biblical Prophecy 101 Christians & Suffering Disaster: Hurricane Katrina Sunday Depression: Venezuela Lonliness: Table For One Heartbreak: A Preacher's Confession Divorce: Gone Disease: Those Who Wait Death: Still Here Zion: A Love Story
Sex is something rarely discussed from the pulpit much beyond a crowd-pleasing condemnation of the behavior, a criminalizing of something God ordained to be perfect and extraordinary. This perpetuates guilt, which holds God’s people in bondage because we don’t understand what the bible actually says about this stuff and, more importantly, what those words mean.
No. 420 June 2014
Blacks In White Churches

White Is The New Black
I am seeing lots of persons of color in white churches. What does the migration of blacks to white MegaChurches mean for our tradition and culture?
Read Essay

Go To Hell
My conviction is Hell is a place where God Is Not. Hell suggests a separation from the Divine. A punishment? No, more a choice: to dwell in the presence of God, or not to.
Read Essay
Go To Hell
Video: Remembering Maya Angelou


Neverland
With his hot new CD, I reflected upon how silent Michael Jackson’s accusers had grown in the five years since his passing. As it turns out, Jackson’s accusers have not, in fact, gone silent, and the very sad reality is coming into even tighter focus.
Read Essay
Neverland
Start America's Gun Mess The Diet of Worms Go To Hell White Is The New Black Pulpit Freedom Sunday Neverland: What Michael Taught Us Choice: Where Sould We Stand? Abortion: A Preacher's Confession Christ, The Christian & The Church Zion: A Love Story
No. 419 May 2014
Arrogance In Leadership

Diotrephes Does Not Receive Us
Why are people like this, people who know, for a fact, in their heart, that they do not belong to Christ, so determined to not only be in church but to be in church leadership?
Read Essay

Chimera
If you are convinced you are a Christian and yet you display no love, the voice you are hearing may not God at all but something pretending to be God.
Read Essay
Who IS This Guy?
Video: First Lady's Address


GOP vs Obama
The world is watching the racism-fueled gridlock in Washington. It’s not necessarily Obama that Putin sees as weak, but America destroying itself with one self-created crisis after another.
Read Essay
Grand Old Opprobrium
Start Diotrephes Does Not Receive Us Sense & Nonsense About Prayer Knowing God's Voice Grand Old Opprobrium How To Make Peace With Your Church Musician Intellect vs. Emotion How To Make A Crooked Church Straight Ageism: A Preacher's Confession Zion: A Love Story
Women are the African American church's largest demographic, and yet most of our churches offer little in the way of useful, uncompromised insight and advice into the issues and challenges facing our sisters. This is a collection of no-holds-barred perspectives on key areas of women in the black church.
We, in our ignorance, tend to make Resurrection Sunday about egg hunts for children and increased head counts at our services, exhausting ourselves with the usual pageantry while missing the sobering reality of the terrible sacrifice which earned our redemption This collection is intended to reorient our thinking about this, the Christian faith's most holy day.
As we struggle, year to year, to keep the church doors open, many if not most of our churches are preoccupied with one thing: church growth. Here is a collection of reasons your church is not growing, and how to overcome them.
No. 418 March 2014
American Bigotry X

American Bigotry X
The deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, among others not as widely reported, are direct consequences of a political strategy specifically designed to reposition racism and racist attitudes as both normal and accepted within American society.
Read Essay

A Woman's Place
I have no idea why enlightened, thoughtful, educated black women would come to a place that treats them like children. Where their sexuality is treated like a curse, and where God’s truth remains subjugated to the time and culture in which it was revealed.
Read Essay
A Woman's Place
Video: The Murder of Jordan Davis


The Bible 101
These days, people prostitute the bible to mean all things for all causes. But the scriptures were never, ever, intended to be used that way. The bible, simply, reveals God to us.
Read Essay
The Bible 101
Bad Salesman The Bible 101 Off-Center American Bigotry X American Gothic A Woman's Place Trouble In The Village Anger: A Preacher's Confession Zion: A Love Story
Does Black History Month still matter? Media sources and retail outlets are increasingly ignoring it because they experience no measurable dropoff in black patronage when they do. If we don't care about it, why should they? And is our indifference providing momentum to the trend toward eliminating voting rights and affirmative action legislation? In this presumptively post-racial America, where is the black voice?
No. 417 February 2014
Christians should be anti-drunk, anti-wasted. This behavior abuses your body and denies God’s sovereignty on your life. We struggle with personal behavior and/or shortcomings which do not please God. This is part of the human condition, our carnal imperfection which can only be made perfect through the Holy Spirit. This is a conversation the church should have been having all along: what’s the argument against Christians smoking pot?
Weed The People

Weed The People
This is a conversation the church should have been having all along: what’s the argument against Christians smoking pot?
Read Essay

My Pagan Valentine
St. Valentine's Day infantilizes and demeans women who, in turn,
emasculate their men.
Read Essay
My Pagan Valentine
Video: Classic Obama


East of Eden
Cain and Abel: people who sin in an effort to please God.
Read Essay
Study: Conservative Christian Hatred
PraiseNet Essentials: 2013 Retrospective
Trust, loyalty, honor, support, faithfulness, absolute confidentiality:
all core values of both the Christian faith and the
Mob. How many of those ideals do we actually
practice? Somewhere along the line we have lost our way. In that respect, we
could learn a lot from the Mob--at least the way the
Mob is supposed to work.
As President Barack Obama completes the first year of his second term, here is a collection of essays about this historic and turbulent presidency, and this president’s constant uphill battle against irrational conservatism and racial hatred, from Election Day 2008 to the present.
No. 416 January 2014
It’s important to point out I’m not talking about
dumb people or even uneducated people.
Making a
conscious choice to not better ourselves, to not be
better informed or more rational, makes a virtue of
intellectual laziness. I blame most of this on Bart
Simpson, who made under-achievement a kind of ersatz
virtue. We are no longer stigmatized for being
stupid which is, in and of itself, stupid.
American Intellectualism In Freefall

Stupid People
Making a conscious choice to not better ourselves makes a virtue of intellectual laziness. I blame most of this on Bart Simpson.
Read Essay

Invictus
That a glitchy site could tarnish an entire year of a U.S. presidency speaks to how endemically fragile, and thus endemically flawed, Obama’s presidency is.
Read Essay
Obama Year Five
Video: The Newsroom


The Blood of Jesus On Trial
If you find yourself judging others, keep in mind that you are putting the blood of Jesus on trial.
Read Essay
The Blood of Jesus On Trial