EL Kornegay, Jr., Ph.D.

Caught up together in the Clouds

Mon, 11 May 2020 09:46:14 -0700

We live in a time that is defined by electronic snippets sown together to create a loose canopy of moral interpretations buffeting a landscape upon which groupings of people find themselves holding onto the dust of identity as the fate of the world plays itself out on social media platforms, RSS feeds, and you tube videos detailing interpretations of blood moons and various Machiavellian schema.

The dwindling and very precious commodity we call time is being expended on creating and defending new traditions that accommodate the latest manifestations of human ego. It is within this space that the believer finds his/herself: a space where faith and belief is both edified and contested.

In this current age, technological innovation has outpaced the ability of many believers to effectively manage messaging both sacred and profane across platforms. As such, many believers limit sharing or end up shunning the gospel in this space in hopes of not offending or being offended. The result is that social media is overwhelmed with spiritual messaging that offers more information than revelation. Yet, we need a word, a message, that infuses the social media space with revelation which helps us to understand the place of technology in God’s plan for salvation.

It is time for the revelation of God’s desire for technology’s use by and for the faith community,the church, the believer, to move to the center of cyberspace and into the cloud. Revelation has the capacity to move faster than the speed with which data is exchanged and believers must begin to rely on the Word of God to challenge and overtake the narratives of terror and hopelessness dominating social platforms. In other words the most important user of technology is the born-again believer. Why? Because of the power the born-again Christian possesses, especially in the cloud!

Between the proclamation made by Jesus that he has given us power (Luke 10:19) and his...Read More

THE CAUSALITIES of OUR CALL

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 23:03:54 -0700

So much pruning, "...while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes..." or you might say death comes to that which will not yield your greatest potential. With accepting what you must do to move forward... "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all..." first encounter the misunderstanding and accompaniment of shame that must be endured. The cutting off your own self away, out and into the Call on your life; not that which you can canonize, memorialize "Launch into the deep and cast...yourself - the net - into the waters of life; and only after toiling with legs crossed, sock ablaze, polished wings on tips of Italian leather...Santoni, maybe, just...maybe. The investment is great, the endowments that secure the pay for your presence even greater. Write about it all, greek gaze, greek nature of the economy of learned wisdom framing it all. Regalia is ever-ready, colors, insignia, signing, sophisticated gangs, hellenized and colorized ready to flex, to stomp, poses set, scripts to write...new age gospel. So much investment...so much pruning.

Do not follow the path...No one will ever understand the peculiar decisions, the fire and starts, the delays and misgivings that accompany moments of success and frame the disastrous memories which most remember. Go where there is no path to begin a trail...

Fait accompli? Maybe...yes, no, okay then.

The light that so readily draws love, admiration, desire is also the same light burns, scorches the earth, and leaves you standing alone, standing up...if I be lifted up...

It's that force, the one that you try to control, to bridle with normality, the muzzling of the shekinah, the domestication of brilliance, which defies all settling.

Jealousy goes misunderstood and decisions continually lead to casualties. Things, places, people...no one who has left home... We don't get it, no one gets it. Life lived with the hope of safety, dangerous crossings, greatness...Read More

Immunity from Nostalgia

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 12:12:35 -0700

The phrase "new normal" is, for me, quite striking. First, is how it is understood, second is its composition, and third is how its done. When I think about these elements I can only come to one conclusion: what is the role of nostalgia in its formation? What comes to mind is the sitcom "Happy Days" and how reruns of older sitcoms, dramas, even the novels and essays depicting~capturing~interpreting times past flood the present with a nostalgic homage to it and offering integers for calculating the future. Nostalgia has become more of a science and less of a means of reminiscence of the bucolic remnants of days gone by. Current events, current ideas weaponize nostalgia, turning and twisting to create identities it never embodied in ways that the history it reflects can be translated or transferred into what can even be considered normal or new.

Nostalgia is a longing for a past wherein normal could be found, a blessed assurance, even in the midst of abounding uncertainty. Nostalgia offer up borders and boundaries, a segregated space unified by a singular memory signified by a primal hope that was greater than any fear. Nostalgia is a signification which points to an unbreakable triumphal continuum of joy that has existed and is readily passed on from generation to generation. Not a curse, but a blessing.

The new normal is merely how we think about things that have already been done and the desire to them again - maybe better~mostly worse. It is a falsity we chase like a high achieved from narcotics. We are caught up the perverse love affair, addiction, to what was first - without a connection to it for ourselves. This is the essence of addiction: the idea that you can re-create the virginal experience of that first moment of discovery with chemically induced euphoria. Chasing nostalgia is no less fiendish than chasing the elusiveness of the quintessential high. We do it to escape and in doing so repeat cycle after cycle of doing over what has...Read More

@ =Mark of the beast?

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 13:18:58 -0700

No one could buy or sell without this mark. (This mark is the name of the beast or the number of its name.) – Revelation 13:17

The symbol or the mark - @ - is something almost every human being has. In fact, if you engage in any online activity you must use an email address, which is tethered together with the symbol/mark - @. In some instances, the symbol/mark - @ - is automatically assigned to you. The convenient options made available by cloud technology that “man might buy or sell…” can only happen if you have an email address; and every email address requires the symbol/mark - @. You cannot access the e-market “…except you that have the mark! (see again Revelation 13:17) Revelation 13:16 reads:

The second beast also forced all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to have a mark put on their right hand or on their forehead.

No matter who you are, cloud technology forces all people to take the mark - @. You might say here that “I don’t have a symbol in my hand or in my forehead: but, we all do! Yes! We do! Most quite willingly, carry the symbol around in their hands via smart devices on every APP! Most have seared into their memories every email address used to access the apps that hold all the information we use to conveniently buy and sell 24 hours a day, seven days a week! Many of us tithe and give offerings this way! So, is this the mark of the beast? Revelation 13:18 reads:

Anyone who has understanding can find the meaning of the beast’s number. This requires wisdom. This number is the number of a man. It is 666

God gives us wisdom through the revelation of his word. Revelation 1:1 tells us to be mindful of what the words of John signify. To signify means to verbally “misdirect” or as in the case of John describe something that has yet come to pass; which is made available to those who ask God to give wisdom to know what is signified by His Word, His...Read More

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Beloved Communities 2020: An Excerption from "Martin Luther King, Jr. and Paul Tillich: A Comparison / Contrast Of Paul Tillich’s Spiritual Community and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Beloved Community” December 2002

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 19:53:15 -0800

It is without question that Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time. Born January 15, 1929, the second child of Rev. and Mrs. King would grow into a man whose life would come to represent the ideals of civil rights and equal justice for the poor and oppressed, “regardless of race, creed, or color.” Though he had options to preach or teach in the North, Martin Luther King, Jr. chose to enter into full-time pastoral ministry while completing his doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University. Feeling a moral obligation to return to the South, King accepted a call in 1954 to become pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Less than one year later, Rosa Parks would refuse to give up her seat on a city bus in protest, leading to the young King being thrust into a leadership role which he carried the rest of his life.

Though Martin Luther King, Jr. held many titles – head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.), civil rights advocate, orator, and Nobel Peace laureate – the one title or image that best encapsulates his personhood is that of a committed Christian minister. His detractors have said that he perverted the Christian message, but in reality he captured its very essence. In reference to this John Henderson Cartwright says, “Thus it was neither King the humble humanitarian nor King the rootless radical who challenged the status quo of the 1950s and 60s. Rather it was King the committed Christian who, firmly grounded in the tradition, reminded his Christian brothers and sisters that”:

You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity. Your highest loyalty is to God, and not to the mores or the folkways, the state of the nation, or any man-made institution. If any earthly institution of custom conflicts with God’s will, it is your

Christian duty to oppose it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of...Read More

surviving the fire

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 14:43:23 -0800

What has shaped the racial points of my humanity have also molded me as an academic, a scholar, and man of faith. Yet, both my personal history and research of that Negro experience of blackness, is not enough to fully explain who I am and what I am becoming. Many of the social and cultural markers of my historical and racial identity – from the dirt roads, thick magnolia and soaring pine trees, to the tin roofs, oil heaters, to the people who raised me and blessed me are now gone. My blackness is not a thing I rely on for vetting the progress of justice or for whether or not this life matters. Issues surrounding racial identity remain insoluble, though many – maybe most contend that race or some sort of intersectional racial facsimile remain at the center of the pursuit of justice; for segments of our society that remains a valuable currency; especially for policing sacred social mandates used to maintain certain checks and balances codified in scarcity and abundances, levels of living, access to certain liberties, all sorts of happiness (both legal and illegal), and the pursuits thereof as it relates to identity. Racism is therefore a political act and race – the black race – a kind of political party. And it is Baldwin who reminds me, and I quote, “Color [race] is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.”[i] What then do these opening ideations, quite personal in nature, that I am sharing very publically, mean for us all right now? Well, I am certain that it means that political fortunes have changed, but our orientation towards race has not. It (race) is the un-reconciled, unexamined site of outrage that has as returned to us as a disease that is spreading outward from urban city centers to the bucolic landscapes of suburbia and small town America where minoritzed communities that are majority poor, colored, some queered, undereducated, unemployed, and overwhelmed by violence. The examination of rage is...Read More

A shifting paradigm: how do you see justice?

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 22:18:08 -0800

“When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” John 6:12
The hard work of justice comes when we are not concerned with the fragments it creates characterized here as the lost and the left-behind. The lost and left behind are the many who fall through the cracks wherein nascent potential is squandered in the traditions of survival unique to a penal lifestyle. Such is the microcosm of American lessons of excess, which is built on a calculus of dross: the scum or unwanted material left behind in which the masses are to wade through in their attempts to survive in the arena of American success. It is learned behavior peculiar to many for whom success is a (uneasy) given to mischaracterize the dross through which the masses wade with the people themselves. As such, anyone wading through the muck and mire of what is left of the American ideal of success and the concomitant fragmented life is most likely to have their potential swallowed up and hidden under the cloak of survival.
Because we are trained to leave crumbs behind, to leave meat on the bone, a little bit of water in a glass, bits and pieces of our meals on the floor; we easily walk over the fragmented lives in our community, because we find no value in what is left behind. But we are called to pay attention to fragments, to bits and pieces because they are part of the whole and not just cast offs. It all has worth and it all has value.
This is true outcome of justice: that none be lost - lost to the injustice indifference in any form for everyone. We are responsible for the fragmented: those who remain subject to the possibility that they may be lost. How you understand justice is directly proportionate to your response to injustice and determines whom we deem worthy of justice. Amos 5:24 reads,“but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Justice is about fulfillment: it is the...Read More