INTRODUCTION

My first experience in observing the prayers and rituals of another faith tradition and race struck
me as poignant and holy. Like most kids, I definitely could be silly and frivolousbut not about
religion. According to my mother, and many other adults in my neighborhood and at the Mount
Olive Baptist Church, I had the mark of divine anointment on me. In fact, my mother often told
me that Mr. Warren, our next-door neighbor in the Austin Homes Project, looked over in my crib
when she and my father brought me home from the old Colored General Hospital in Knoxville,
Tennessee, and yelled, Annie! Will! That little rascal will either be a preacher or go crazy! He
told them that he saw the light of Gods countenance shine upon my little face. Later, I indeed
felt that some strange sunshine was beaming excruciatingly hot rays upon my soul. A crass
materialist reading of my experience might conclude that it was the churning of hormones, or the
whirlwinds of the Civil Rights Movement. I was in a state of profound angst, but I did not have
the intellectual or social maturity to speculate about the source of my experience of Gods
presence. I only knew I felt the numinous clearly and powerfully.
The year was 1962, and I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade. The tumultuous public
anxiety surrounding the student sit-ins beckoned me to join the fray. I tried. But Willie, one of
my older brothers, threatened to beat me if he saw me embarrassing us by joining in with those
crazy students. I always took his threats seriouslyperhaps because he made good on them
with what I felt was rather malevolent precision. In order to keep me out of trouble, and
encourage me to help ease our poor familys enormous financial burdens, he secured a job for
me as his helper. He was the custodian of the Heska Amuna Synagogue, which belongs to the
Orthodox branch of American Judaism.
After sundown on Fridays, the men of this congregation, usually led by Rabbi Max
Zucker and the cantor, would have their prayer services. I found it enthralling and enchanting to
hear the descendants of Jesus sing praises and utter prayers to the God of Abraham and Sarah in
the Hebrew tongue. As I listened to their services, I thought about the lessons I was learning
from Mr. Lorenzo Grant, my black world history teacher, about the evils of Christendoms
pogroms against the Jews, and especially about what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil
that was shamelessly fomented by the Nazi Holocaust. I heard and felt the pain and suffering of
the Jewish people remembered and surrendered to Yahweh.
I was not sure even then, however, that these affluent people understood and appreciated
the terrors and pains of my peoples history. I sensed that they were more sensitive than most
other white people. But I felt their sensitivity was based more on pity than on personal
knowledge or affection. Too many of them did not even see me. I was invisible until they needed
a light switch turned on, a meat dish rather than a dairy dish, and so on. I did not feel the need to
hold this against them. After all, they were white. I had been taught to expect to be treated like a
whatnot by white people. But these Jews were a different sort of white people. They seemed to
have real religion. I felt the presence of God as they prayed and sang. For me, no ones religion
is a laughing matter, most certainly not my own.

We Bless God (1888)

ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
We bless God for all the favors and the mercies of the year! for health, comfort, prosperity, the
means of grace and for the hope of glory. We bless Him for even the tribulations of our lot in this
land, which is, without doubt, a schooling for future greatness. We bless Him for the promise,
discovered to sight by signal providences, of usefulness and exalted service, for Him, in this
nation, in coming times. And we beseech Him, for the Redeemers sake to make us faithful men
and women, in our families, with our children, in the church. In the entire Race: for the glory of
His great name, for the succor and safety of the nation and for the good of man.
*

A Prayer for Love (1958)

CHARLES ERIC LINCOLN
Lord, let me love; let loving be the symbol of grace that
warms my heart, of grace that warms my heart;
And let me find Thy loving hand to still me, to still me
when I tremble
At Thy command to love all humankind.
Lord, let me love, though love may be the losing
Of evry earthly treasure I possess.
Lord, make Thy love the pattern of my choosing.
And let Thy will dictate my happiness.
I have no wish to wield the sword of power,
I want no man to leap, to leap at my command;
Nor let my critics feel constrained to cower, feel constrained
to cower
For fear of some reprisal at my hand.
Lord, teach me mercy; let me be the winner
Of evry mans respect and simple love.
For I have known Thy mercy, though a sinner.
Whenever I have sought Thy peace above.
Lord, let me love the lowly and the humble,
Forgetting not the mighty, the mighty and the strong;
And give me grace to love those who may stumble, to love
those who may stumble,
Nor let me seek to judge of right or wrong.
Lord, let my parish be the world unbounded,
Let love of race and clan be at an end.
Let evry hateful doctrine be confounded
That interdicts the love of friend for friend. Amen.