Why Do Some Black Men Reject Christianity? | Chris Broussard

and i see in the quran and it talks about jesus not being the son of god and i know the bible says he's the son of god so i'm saying to myself i'm like okay there's no way both of these are from god and so i prayed i went to his room got on my knees and i just prayed i said lord i just want to serve you i said whatever if it's if serving you and being a man of god is being a muslim or being a christian i'll do whatever i just want to serve you [Music] well thank you for watching another episode of the g3 project podcast as always i'm your host lisa fields the founder of the g3 project and i'm so excited to bring you another special guest uh mr chris broussard welcome chris hey lisa how are you it's great to be on great to have you on uh i've been knowing you uh for a few years so it's good to have you finally on the podcast but though i've been wondering when i'm going to get at the beyond though you are so many great guests i am a regular uh watcher uh viewer of the jude 3 broadcast project you're doing a fantastic job and it is it is definitely meeting a need in the kingdom thank you chris i appreciate that for those who don't know who you are just tell our audience a little bit about you well i'm a uh sports broadcaster uh and a an nba analyst for fox sports so uh i'm on television on fox sports one on a variety of shows talking nba uh and then i have my own radio show with my co-host rob parker it's called the odd couple and that's on fox sports radio it's uh national radio show from 7 to 10 pm eastern 4 to 7 pacific um monday through friday in in about 400 markets throughout the country so uh people know me i used to work at espn i used to work at the new york times uh and most people know me as an nba reporter insider and analyst and so uh now i'm like more of a personality at fox but uh that's what i do uh for a living and then my passion is my ministry i founded a ministry about 10 years ago called the king movement which is a national christian men's movement that in a nutshell is geared towards strengthening men in their daily walks with christ monday through saturday uh through accountability encouragement support teaching uh and brotherhood and so that's what the king movement is about that's my passion and sports writing or sports broadcasting is my career that's awesome um and you uh you are a low-key apologist [Laughter] loki i hope we go there because man i i have some stories about that and i'm a little older than you and and a lot of the other uh apologists out there so i can really take it back a few yeah well you're more so probably uh i i guess the opposite of that would be a hockey apologist because you're you're actually engaging with people all the time what what did your passion for apologetics come from where did that kind of start for you yeah i got saved i became a christian my senior year in college that was 1989 i went to oberlin college which by the way oberlin college in ohio was the first college to uh officially admit african americans and um there were a couple of colleges that had blacks individual black students before that but oberlin was the first to make it a policy where we'll take people regardless of their race it was also the first college to admit women oh there's a great yeah great history there charles finney the evangelist was instrumental in um not the founding but in the early you know foundations of oberlin college and uh oberlin was a stop on the underground railroad as well and uh ice at the turn of the 20th century so the 19th early 1900s two-thirds of all black college graduates had come from oberlin wow it does have a rich history but i became a christian my senior year there and my brother is a year younger than me he went to howard university at hbcu in washington dc and i was talking to him on the telephone and witnessing to him telling him about you know how i got saved and sharing my testimony and he was really uh into what i was saying and open to it and we prayed and it seemed like he had gotten saved as well he started going to some church services or chris bible studies on campus at howard and at the same time he began going to nation of islam power studies they called him and this is when 1989 the nation of islam was just having a kind of his second surge or resurgence under louis firecon and ultimately after a few months kind of of doing both my brother joined the nation of islam and one of my best friends who went to tennessee state another hbcu he uh was very influenced by the nation of islam as well never officially joined but he was very influenced as well and so they were coming at me hard lisa i mean you can imagine i'm just saved i've been saved a few months i don't really know much about the bible yet and certainly not black biblical history and all that and my brother and my best friend were coming at me with christians the white man's religion uh you know they they only gave us christianity to make us better slaves make us more docile i mean just you know all i'm worshiping a white jesus on and on and on and i didn't know really how to combat them historically or with knowledge i could just say look i know what jesus did for me i know jesus ain't no racist you know there's nothing and jesus was from the middle east we know he wasn't even white that's like all i can say but as i i stood up solely on faith i was like look man i know what what i experienced with jesus christ and um i i'll give you a little story about that i don't want to be too long-winded but i went to visit my brother at howard during spring break of my senior year so i like i said i've been saved a few months he had just maybe within the last month become like a full-fledged member of the nation of islam and so i was visiting him and we were going to black book stores there was a famous bookstore i i'm not sure if it's still there near howard's campus i think was called pyramid books and i think it was owned by muslims but we're in there and i'm looking at all these books the bible's tampered with they had a lot of great books but they had a lot of islamic books that were critical of christianity and things like that so i'm looking at all these books and one day my brother was in class i was in his apartment by myself and i had the quran right here and i had the bible right here and i was raised catholic so i didn't have hardly any i had hardly any biblical knowledge and so i was taught bible stories obviously about jesus i went to catholic school so i knew a lot of biblical stories and things like that but i had never read much of the bible myself and so i'm looking through both of them and i see in the quran and it talks about jesus not being the son of god and i know the bible says he's the son of god so i'm saying to myself i'm like okay there's no way both of these are from god and so i prayed i went to his room got on my knees and i just prayed i said lord i just want to serve you i said whatever if it's if serving you and being a man of god is being a muslim or being a christian i'll do whatever i just want to serve you and i started getting this overwhelming feeling it was almost audible of jesus jesus jesus jesus it just kept coming to me jesus jesus jesus and i was like man i can never leave jesus and so i took that quran put it on the shelf or something and from that point on i never had any doubts and again i had stood up solely on faith no historical knowledge no apologetic knowledge nothing but my relationship with jesus christ and knowing that he died and paid the price for my sins and so um once i stood up on faith it was like all of a sudden i started coming across a lot of books about christianity in africa before colonialism and the atlantic slave trade i started coming across books about black people in the bible and what certain words cush ham and things meant and how we could identify blacks in the bible so i really just started reading reading i have lisa 100 i have i'm i have probably 90 more than 90 of the books that have been written on blacks in the bible i have thousands of books i became like a like frederick douglass like a self-taught scholar on black history particularly as it uh pertains to the bible and to uh christianity in africa before slavery and so i actually began teaching seminars on blacks in the bible and uh because i did a lot of prison ministry and you know any time you do prison ministry or ministry on the streets or even in college campuses you're gonna have to deal with the notion that christianity is a white man's religion you're gonna have to deal with muslims and and kinetics and people other african-americans uh who are critical of christianity and so that really and that was the early 90s dr tony evans wrote some great books uh reverend william mckissick dwight mckissick wrote some a great book beyond roots uh reverend walter mcrae wrote what i think is the the best book on blacks in the bible called black black presence in the bible volumes one and two and at that point i i think like that was kind of that strain people were exposing blacks in the bible and you know the presence of black people in scripture historically and i think today with the dr eric masons the dr vince bontuz um adam coleman and the apologists they're taking it they're that next level of where they're really going out and disproving these urban are these you know black mystery religions or whatever you want to call them you know that that go against christianity and so um so yeah my my you know that's it goes back 30 years with me uh because you know that's my story of how i got into them apologetics no that's that's awesome um you obviously are with athletes all the time uh well probably not as much because of covet but you still are corresponding with them what is how has that been as far as i know many of them struggle with christianity being a white man's religion how does that conversation usually go for for you what are kind of the steps you you uh you kind of follow when you're engaging is it usually do you have a certain pattern or how is that well real talk i mean most of my conversation with athletes is not regarding you know the bible or christianity or things like that uh but obviously you know i've taken some public stances so virtually all of them know i'm a christian and i have talked with many of them about faith i haven't i think there may be a couple if i can remember i've maybe had a couple of conversations about blacks in the scripture or countering the the notion that christians the white man's religion but to be honest most of them it's just been about faith and uh it's just like as most african-americans obviously the nba is almost 80 black most of those brothers have grown up with some type of christian influence you know they they went to church a parent an aunt a grandmother whatever dragging them to church and um so they've had they've heard the gospel and things like that so for them the challenge is just do they want to live it out you know um so i haven't had a ton of discussions with them about blacks in the bible or christianity in the white man's religion when i've talked with them about faith it's just been more on you know living out your faith walking out your faith overcoming the temptations and things like that that's helpful when you do um encounter people on the street that have bought into a white man's religion uh first of all before we get to that why do you think that is kind of still so the narrative of the day in spite of all the information we received that that's a great question and i like that you use the word still because it there's really no reason for it to still be a myth in the black community and as you know from talking to dr vince bontu it's not just the black community it is you know with with some asian communities that's an issue because you know whites went and colonized most of the globe and brought their version of christianity with them which was in a lot of ways which was white supremacy with sprinklings of christianity on it and whether it was the asians or the indians or the africans they brought chris their christianity and so it became associated with them because they in many they were oppressive as well and so that's where it comes from and i have to say this because i didn't when i in my early years of doing these types of apologetics i i i think there are three ways to dispel the notion that christians white man's religion whether it's blacks or or other people of color but particularly african people of african descent one is simply the words of jesus and the bible obviously anyone with any knowledge of jesus in the bible and what he taught and paul's teaching and all that there is no white supremacy whatsoever in the bible uh white won't play a huge role in the scriptures you know in the old testament ethiopia and and cush and ham and black nations or in the bible are mentioned more than a thousand times in rome obviously two european nations are mentioned less than 50 times combined in the old testament so the words of the bible is the first way you can dispel the myth secondly is the black presence in the bible uh in the old testament it's obviously replete with blacks and in the new testament obviously there are many as well uh from the day of pentecost to you know simon who helped jesus carry the cross to acts 11 where you know men of cyrene uh which was in africa were the first to t to preach to the greeks because the hebrews were doubting whether or not they should teach them the gospel uh obviously acts chapter eight and so on and so on with the ethiopian eunuch and then the third way is christianity in africa from for the last 2 000 years and particularly from the first century right after jesus died and rose owned up until they encountered europeans in the 14th 15th century and nubia was a great christian nation ethiopia great christian nation first or second official christian nation ever egypt was one of the hubs of early christianity if not the early hub and so um you know those are the three ways i think you dispel it and then i have to say this uh and again early on in doing apologetics i didn't really go there because i didn't really think about it this way but it is a fact white people white christians or so-called christians have whether knowingly or unknowingly whether consciously or subconsciously have promoted christianity as a white religion they promote as the white man's religion when you look at how they use their you know they skewed and twisted the bible and theology uh and obviously they had the slave bible where they cut portions out to support white supremacy and shadow slavery uh you look at how they colonize in africa how they brought this picture of a european jesus which is couldn't be further from the truth in terms of historical accuracy all around the nation when you look today at the right wing politics of white evangelicals um and i'll be i agree with some portions of it but overall it is largely promoting white interests and and white supremacy and uh when you look at all of this they have promoted it as a white man's religion and so uh i get why a lot of brothers feel that way and so one of the key things about apologetics is what we're trying to do is remove that barrier because between the black man and christ in a lot of cases is this barrier this obstacle this stumbling block of racism and white supremacy christians white man's religion so if we can remove that barrier which is what we're trying to do then brothers can look at the gospel for what it is and and understand they don't have a problem acknowledging their sinners now it's like okay do you need a savior for your sins when you face god on judgment day do you want to face him and have him looking at you and all your sinfulness or do you want to face him have him look at jesus and his never having sinned on your behalf and if you can get that stumbling block out of the way then you can have a much better chance of reaching brothers with the gospel because lisa let's just face it i mean in this country whites control virtually every aspect even as we've had an african-american president now a vice president you know whites control the economic system that we live under they control the educational system that we live under they control the judicial system that we live under and brothers want spirituality is the one thing no man no white man black man who ever can control that's between you and god and so brothers do not want the white man controlling that too i'm controlling all these other factors in my life now he's controlling my religion now i'm controlling my faith my relationship with god and they don't want that and i get that because biblically there's only one mediator between god and man and that's jesus christ so if we we have to remove that barrier so brothers understand when you give your life to jesus christ the white man has nothing to do with it it is between you and god and jesus and so that's really the goal of urban apologetics yeah that's extremely extremely helpful i love that you pointed out that people are like you can't have control over this area of my life and so it's that uh kind of that rebellion against uh the the white uh supremacist christianity uh framework when you present these things i know uh you have had debates king movement hosted one with vince and brother jabari um there's still pushback from those in the conscious community uh well before we we even get to their pushback can you define the conscious community for our listeners because i think some people may be unaware of a whole community i think many in the black church are are not necessarily up on what's happening in that space um even though some of their young people are yeah the conscious community i would say it's obviously a loosely put together community but it really is made up of black americans who um are skeptical of american hit america and who identify want to identify with our african past and care about the upliftment of african-american people and they think the best way to do it is for us to go back to our african past now that takes on many different as you know lisa the conscious community is very you've got convention of islam you've got uh the he black hebrew israelites and all of their various strains you've got uh other forms of islam even uh in the conscious community you've got uh the kinetics you've got brothers that think the black woman is god and you know it's just so many different poor you know points of view in the black conscious community but the one thing they all agree with is that we as african americans need to reconnect with our african past and we need to help you know work together to try to overcome the racism and white supremacy that we face so that in a nutshell is the conscious community and um it used to be the nation of islam from say the the 60s 50s and 60s going up to the early 2000s or so was the vanguard of the conscious community and at that time because the nation of islam is a religious organization and they do believe in morality uh similar to biblical morality uh because they were the vanguard of the kanji community through malcolm x and then louis farrakhan there was a morality associated with the conscious community when i was in college and i graduated in 1990 and then throughout the 90s if you said you were conscious the the the a righteousness came with that like if a brother said he was conscious you assumed he's living a relatively clean life he respects black women i'm not saying there was it wasn't some hypocrisy and behind the scenes some people were doing different things because obviously they were still sinners and not in christ so they were slaves to sin but they promoted righteous behavior malcolm x led a very clean life louis farrakhan in many ways leads a very clean life my brother when he was in the nation for eight years lived in it incredibly clean life morally and so there was that that kind of defined the conscious community even for brothers and sisters who weren't in the nation of islam not when the nation of islam was weakened and now it's very weak it's not even close to what it used to be uh with them weakening the conscious community now they're really that sense of morality and righteousness is kind of gone now i'm not saying there aren't some in the conscious community who try to live a certain way and have you know their morals of of living life a certain way but um it is not what it used to be and in a lot of ways you see it on the internet it's almost like battle rap uh but battling guys battling with historical knowledge so to speak and so-called knowledge and so uh it's not nearly what it used to be um but it does have an impact on the internet that's allowed the word to spread and i've been surprised because you know i've been on sidenetters network which is one of the more popular in the conscious community and lisa the first time i went on there every time i've been on i've been defending christianity and and railing against the notion that it's the white man's religion and proving that it's not and i have had you would be i've had brothers from corporate america wow who you would never think even knew who saw netter was or or what these brothers on the streets were talking about reach out to me and be like man thank you because i was starting to question my faith i was having doubts and and you know lisa here's the deal most black men did not join the nation of islam and don't join the nation of islam most black men will not become hebrew israelites most will not become kinetics and join one of these mystery religions if you will but what happens is even if they don't join the group it and even if they continue to go to church it weakens their faith so much they may not have the guts or or whatever to leave the church and become a full-fledged muslim become a full-fledged comedic they got a job when they can't do that or whatever but they become so weak in their faith and they're so doubtful of christians even as they claim to still be a christian that they become very weak they have no victory and they really whether they're saved or not they just aren't very strong in their faith and so it is not you know like i said not a lot of people joined the nation of islam relatively speaking but there they promoted them being one of the first to really promote that christianity was the white man's religion that has had much wider impact than their numbers would suggest and finally let me say this before we move on i always tell the brothers in the conscious community two of your three patron saints if you will their their their trinity if you will of marcus garvey nat turner and malcolm x those are probably the three pillars of the congress community the ones they hold in the highest regard you know there's others elijah mohammed and others but not turner marcus garvey malcolm x are really the three pillars two of them were christians matt turner and marcus garvey and if you read their writings and read about their life they weren't nominal christians they weren't just church goers they weren't only christians because you know we were in slavery or marcus garvey was you know right out you know early 20th century and no we didn't know any better no one of marcus garvey's closest uh uh confidants was a muslim so he knew about islam they had other alternatives and they still believed in jesus christ as lord and savior and stood up for that belief and so i always tell brothers in the conscious community that and uh just to make them think about it what is their response usually they usually try to say well you know they they didn't know any better or you know back then of course what else were they going to be you know and stuff like that and the other thing i tell them lisa is that i say a lot of y'all will get saved you will you will become christians because that's black american history you know there are so many christians who at one time were in the nation of islam who at one time were black hebrew israelites who at one time were black panthers who you know have various ideologies you know black power or afrocentric ideologies um and eventually they came to christ and that is going to happen with a lot of brothers in the conscious community and what i tell them is i say look we want you to get saved while you're young and vibrant and energetic you know 75 80 years old you done tried every scheme in the book you tried every scam you know you you done you broken down and you at your wits in and on your last leg and you come to jesus just out of desperation now if you do that praise the lord you're safe but we would ideally like you to get saved when you're young and when you can really go and be a major benefit for the kingdom and help really uh strengthen and empower the african-american community and so um yeah it's and i'll say this last thing you asked me earlier why this myth still persists a lot of these brothers lisa this is what they do to make money you know they teach um and they teach you know whether whatever strain it may be this is how many of them make whatever amount of money they make and i don't begrudge them for making money you know white whites get paid for teaching and and blacks who work in mainstream america colleges high schools elementary school get paid for teaching as well the teaching is off just like with in the conscious community so i don't mind brothers making a living off teaching what they teach uh but i think a lot of them is all they have to hold on to and as far as making some money at least in their mind and so i think that also is why some of them continue to teach it or hold on to it desperately even as we go and and do apologetics with them and beat them in these debates uh you mentioned dr bantu vs brother jabari we had hebrew israelites there captain zazariak and some others were there uh we had a nation of islam members and comedics there and outside of the kinetics i assume most of the other ones who weren't christians that were there at least told me they thought dr bontu won that scene will be for the most part the consensus and even brothers in the conscious community who saw it on video who weren't there and so um we're coming for man and my whole thing lisa because i kind of kick started the getting us dr mason adam coleman dr bontu um uh damon richardson uh who i think is like the goat of of the urban apologists at least in debating um getting them in there because i approached i looked i went on 125th street in harlem and was looking for saneter because i live in new jersey i'm not far from harlem i spent a lot of time there and i met him and he knew me from television from sports and we we developed somewhat of a friendship but i i my whole purpose lisa was to get the christian community a place in that conscious discussion that's what i want to do because they beat on christian regardless of their very different ideologies they all beat on christianity and a lot of it obviously is with falsehoods and so i was like let's i want to get some christian brothers in this space who can defend the faith contend for the faith and reach people for the gospel and so i did a few interviews with saneter but then i wanted to get the ones who even you know they have more knowledge than me in this area and those are the ones i mentioned so now they appear you know they they talk with saneter or they're on this his channel and you know with the other brothers in the conscious community and that's really what i wanted to do because christians were being left out of the discussion and uh not being able to there was nobody there to contend for the faith so i really want to just open that door and get them in there yeah that's helpful especially them seeing um other black men who have the information to go uh kind of toe-to-toe with the information they're they're giving um white out to bk the apologies too i don't want to leave him out okay tell us about uh as before we close i definitely want to hear about uh your upcoming conference with the king movement and kind of what's the the premise behind that and when is it happening who's going to be there all of that stuff yeah thank you for that our we every year the king movement has a national summit we call it and this is the sixth annual national king summit we're doing it in and it really is a men's conference and we're doing it in conjunction with uh christian cultural center in partnership with them pastor a.r bernard and their men's ministry which is the icb international christian brotherhood so it's a partnership the theme this year is it's kingdom time it's kingdom time and it's march 19th and 20th and it's virtual march 19th and 20th so it's virtual to be that friday night the 19th from 7 to 10 p.m and saturday the 20th from 12 noon to 5 p.m and we have one of the things and i'm sure you know this lisa uh one of the things about everything being virtual right now is that you can get better guests than you could when you have to have them in in person you don't have to fly them in you don't have to pay for hotels they're charging less for their feed honorariums because you know it's virtual versus being there and so we have got a just a an outstanding collection of christian men who are going to be at this summit ministering to our men and uh we've got as far as pastors dr a.r bernard from the christian cultural center in brooklyn new york the largest church in uh new york city we got pastor dale browner from atlanta we've got pastor derwin gray from charlotte north carolina we got pastor eric mason from philadelphia uh as far as biblical scholars we've got dr michael brown who's a jewish believer in jesus christ we got dr vince bontu as i mentioned agency costa and donald cogdale who who have been adjunct professors at nyack college we got rappers show baraka uh reconciled d1 and uh speech from the group arrested development is a he's a minister now and has been for many years he's also a participant then athletes we got hall of famer brian dawkins uh hall of fame football player we've got super bowl champions ben watson and greg jennings we've got former nfl mvp shawn alexander we've got um allen houston former nba all-star hall of fame coach tony dungy we've got uh monty williams the coach of the phoenix suns nba championship player and coach lionel hollins we got eton thomas clark kellogg and then uh celebrities we got headache who was famous from the and one mixtapes he's a member of king gonna be there we got a comedian ron g so it's gonna be awesome and what we did was we mix things up because we don't we understand virtually that just one message after another could get boring so we have keynote speeches we have uh interviews and then we have discussions so we're gonna have interviews and discussions on things like kingdom finance which is your finances from a biblical perspective kingdom sex which honor and god with our bodies kingdom diversity uh the the subtitle of that one is is it a faith for all nations or the white man's religion and that's a discussion between me and dr bantu dr vince bontu we've got uh kingdom justice which is a the subtitle is uh a biblical viewpoint of today's fight for racial justice and equality we've got a kingdom uh family how to be a godly husband and father kingdom challenges what challenges do we face as christian men in america in the 21st century and how do we overcome them kingdom unity which is how can we uh have unity in the body of christ in america across racial lines which obviously we haven't been able to do and so uh all of those are discussions like i said we got hip-hop videos we got a step team it's just it's gonna be phenomenal and i know any man that tunes in is going to be blessed incredibly by this uh this summit and where can i get tickets they can register i'm looking now i'm supposed to get the uh here the uh generation okay so general registration opens on friday which is what is february 5th by february 5th general registration opens you can go to kingmovement.com that's kingmovement.com or send an email to king kingmovement.com to register kingmovement.com or king kingmovement.com to register and we will send you a link directly registration is 50 and um like i said it's going to be well worth it you could just sit back and watch and learn and um it's going to be fantastic it's going to be fantastic so the men out there watching make sure you register for the king movement uh this sounds like a phenomenal time and an amazing lineup chris how can people get in contact with you online you can uh you can go to our website kingmovement.com to learn more about the king movement we have about 15 chapters throughout the country and uh we're growing and so any men even interested in becoming a part of the king movement uh you can email us at king kingmovement.com we're on instagram the king movement uh at the king movement we're on twitter same thing at the king movement um but yeah those websites kingmovement.com and or email king kingmovement.com and you're on instagram and twitter under chris broussard correct i'm on twitter at chris underscore broussard and instagram at chrisbrussard68 chris broussard68 awesome thank you so much chris i've enjoyed talking to you and i know our audience has enjoyed um your insight and wisdom as well thank you all for tuning in to another episode of the ju3 project podcast remember here at the g3 project we're helping you to know what you believe in why make sure you grab our curriculum through eyes of color take an online course or become a monthly partner all at ju3project.org until next time grace and peace and god [Music] bless you

Channel: Jude 3 Project

Views: 57,908

Rating: 4.8838711 out of 5

Keywords: Chris Broussard, White man's religion, nation of islam, christianity, kemeticism, vince bantu, hebrew israelites, urban apologetics, black Hebrew Israelites

Id: 2CCVbKle5PE

Length: 42min 54sec (2574 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021