-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-
1) WHO: Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), Bi-Vocational Pastor, Reformation African American Lutheran Church Congregationalists-Chicago, Voluntarily MCS/ELCA. Rev. Washington (Sangoma) is also a registered Ida B. Wells Investigative Reporters Society Blogging Member. He additionally serves as the MOOD INDIGO: Saving the Black Churches Yearbooks Blogger, Publisher and Anthologist. More, Rev. Washington (Sangoma) is voluntarily on the Retired Leadership Roster of Metropolitan Chicago Synod (MCS) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
2) WHAT: Bi-Vocational Pastor Washington (Sangoma) also promotionally organizes MI as a distinctive Third Coast-Chicago & Midwest Black Churches Preservationist Voice. More, said voice is additionally conceived and advanced as a series of Annual Midwest Book Collections serving Black Churches preservation in particular and African American Historic Preservation generally.
3) WHEN: Effective immediately.
4) WHEN & HOW: MI (MOOD INDIGO) Initially serves via Pastor Washngton’s (Sangoma’s) pre-existing WORKING WITH WORDS BLOGGER as new electronic media platform (Web-Log) especially but not exclusively. MI is also dedicated to effectively building, maintaining, and developing a MOOD INDIGO INSTITUTE (FOR MIDWEST BLACK CHURCHES PRESERVATIONISTS).
4A) By institute we mean MI seeks to serve as an off-peak business hours discussion center of, by, and for Black Church preservationists already active in the field.
4B) By off-peak business hours we mean MI seeks to promote Black Church preservationist discussions organized around breakfasts, lunches, dinners, weekend meetings, and retreats as well as via both telephone and video conferencing.
5) WHY: Needed: A More effective, Black Church-based, building capacity toward establishing, strengthening, and expanding moral, active, and financial support for Black Church preservation. Said enhanced capacity building seeks to emerge at once inside and outside the new Saving the Black Churches Movement.
5B) The movement has been recently jump-started (called to combined professional action) by the NATIONAL TRUST’S AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL HERITAGE ACTION FUND (AACHAF) that is itself sparked by the Fund’s Founding Executive Director & African American Architectural & Cultural Historian, Dr. Brent Leggs, both in association with the PBS Black Church Documentarian, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. & the Indiana-Based Lilly Endowment.
5C) For MI, the Black Church (singular and plural) is essentially a group of African American men, women, and youth organized around the Christian Word and Sacraments. Said Church is secondarily, yet still importantly, one of bricks and mortar.
5D) Theologically speaking, then, the Black Churches represent the African American people’s (the Black American National Popular) institutionalized relationship with God Almighty through Jesus Christ.
5E) Said African American people’s (Black American National Popular) institutional decision to follow Jesus is not, at first glance, an apparent claim of Black Church works righteousness. Rather, it is a distinctive assertion of Black Church religious freedom and independence both in contrast to the White Anglo/Saxon Protestant (WASP) Christian tradition as well as distinct within the Christian Church Universal.
5F) MI, then, inclines toward the Black Churches Congregationalist ethos and/or the Baptist Principle of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ministry.
NOTE #1: MI is currently in conversation with CHRISTIAN FAITH PUBLISHERS’ (CFP’) Senior Lead Editor, Ms. Marie Lewis, who currently serves as a book publishing advisor. We are thereby negotiating the challenge of moving our pre-existing collection of blog posts into a series of book anthology manuscripts.
NOTE # 2: We are also in contact with Mr. Kasahun Jacoli, Publisher of AFRICA WORLD PRESS (AWP)/RED SEA PRESS (RSP). AWP/RSP serves among the leading independent African American/African World publishers inside and outside the U.S. It was AWP’S publisher who first suggested and continues to recommend the book anthology format, focused on a central theme, as a viable model for successful Black Books marketing. More, our tact is to eventually forge a fruitful collaborative relationship with AWP and CFP going forward.
NOTE # 3: MI’S name is inspired by the 1930s Jazz standard “MOOD INDIGO” composition of Duke Ellington -particularly the 1962 “Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins” recording. More, the late Black freelance poet and author, Langston Hughes (“Lang Hue”), serves as MI’S Patron Saint.
Respectively submitted: Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), Bi-Vocational Pastor, Reformation African American Lutheran Church Congregationalists, Southside Chicago, MI African American Lutheran Blogger, Publisher, & Promotional Organizer of MOOD INDIGO: Saving the Black Churches Yearbooks (MI). Updated 5-17-23 & 7-14-23
-APPENDIX-
Our Young Barack Obama Historic Organizing Sanctuary Story (Reformation Church Chicago’s Call to Black Church Preservationists’ Action), January 2022, January 2021 linked below: https://partneringreformation.wordpress.com/2021/01/22/reformation-church-chicagos-historic-place-story
MOOD INDIGO: Saving the Black Churches Yearbooks 