FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact:
Rev. Heber Brown, III
Vice President
Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance
(410) 402-3211
pastor@pleasanthope.org

 
Baltimore, MD, December 2, 2010 - The Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance condemns the attack of the 15-year-old youth by a group of Jewish men on November 19th in the Upper Park Heights Community. Wanton violence is unacceptable and we welcome the opportunity to meet with youth and all concerned community groups. We will not stand by and allow our children to be victimized by over zealous violent fringe groups such as Shomrim.

 

We also are concerned that the incident is only now coming to public attention. We look forward to receiving the full investigative report, which we expect to be immediately forthcoming from the Baltimore City Police Department. We wish to see all of the offenders prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There is no place for vigilantism in a civil society.

 
The Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance is an historic federation of clergy-activist across the Baltimore Metro area, which advocates in solidarity with marginalized communities both locally and globally.

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Pleasant Hope Baptist Church
430 E. Belvedere Avenue Baltimore, MD 21212

 

During the 1960s, many religious leaders, led by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, sharply criticized the methods and advances claimed by the civil rights movement. By far the most vocal Christian minister advocating a more radical approach to obtaining civil rights was Albert Cleage, Jr.

 

Albert Cleage was born in Indianapolis in 1911 and grew up in Detroit. He received his B.A. from Wayne State in 1942 and his Bachelor of Divinity from Oberlin Graduate School of Theology in 1943. Cleage was ordained in the Congregational Church in 1943.

 

After a brief-and disappointing-term as pastor at an integrated church in San Francisco, Cleage returned to Detroit in 1951 and served at St. Marks United Presbyterian mission. He soon clashed with white Presbyterian leaders over issues of how he should lead his black congregation. In 1953, Cleage and a group of followers left to form the Central Congregation Church. They were committed to ministering to the downtrodden, and offered several programs for the community's poor.

 

Throughout the 1960s, Cleage was active in issues of education and black political leadership. By the late 1960s, his vision of Christianity had radicalized alongside the disappointments of the civil rights movement and rise of Black Power. He launched the Black Christian National Movement in 1967, which called for black churches to reinterpret Jesus' teachings to suit the social, economic, and political needs of black people. That Easter, Cleage unveiled an 18-foot painting of a Black Madonna, and renamed Central Congregational the Shrine of the Black Madonna.

 

In 1968, following a year of racial unrest in Detroit, Cleage published The Black Messiah, which detailed his vision of Jesus as a black revolutionary leader. In 1972, he published his second book, Black Christian Nationalism, and inaugurated the Black Christian Nationalist Movement as a separate denomination. The name was later changed to the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church (PAOCC), and Cleage changed his own name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, meaning "liberator, holy man, savior of the nation" in Swahili. The PAOCC includes churches in Atlanta, GA, and Houston, TX, several cultural centers, bookstores, community service centers, and a working farm.

 

Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman died on February 20, 2000. The PAOCC continues his mission to uplift and liberate the Pan African world community through the teachings of Jesus, the Black Messiah.

 

Leaders plan meeting in racially divided Park Heights

Black community and civil rights leaders are calling for a Jewish neighborhood patrol group to be disbanded pending an investigation after one of the patrol's members was charged this week with assaulting a black teenager walking through a Northwest Baltimore neighborhood.

 

Fearing racial unrest, Jewish and black leaders are planning to meet next week so members of their communities can discuss long-standing concerns. Both groups have lived in the neighborhood for decades, but they respectively claim the north and south quadrants of the Northern Parkway corridor.

 

The alleged assault by a member of the Shomrim neighborhood patrol is "a horrific situation, and quite frankly, this kind of activity has caused riots in other parts of the country," said the Rev. Cortly "C.D." Witherspoon, a pastor working to organize the meeting. "What we need to do is fully explore this with the community and ease their fears, to ensure that this is not a culture."

 

The Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, meanwhile, condemned Shomrim as a "violent fringe group" and said it would "not stand by and allow our children to be victimized."

 ... You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell. (Isaiah. 58:12)