BOOK EXCERPTS
The New Slavemasters
By Bishop George D. McKinney
Cook Communications Ministries
CBN.com
-- In The New Slavemasters, Bishop McKinney—the
great-grandson of a slave whose position as an influential African-American
church leader, businessman, and civic activist earned him a prestigious
nomination for U.S. Senate Chaplain by evangelist Billy Graham
in 2003—asks the question: “Are we really free at
last?” In his 224-page response, the “new slavemasters”
becomes a powerful metaphor for the contemporary African-American
struggle, as well as seemingly insurmountable cycles of destructive
behavior that have enslaved people of all walks. Let Bishop McKinney
light the pathway to freedom for you and your loved ones who are
ensnared by the new slavemasters!
Introduction
“Nearly two centuries ago, Satan used mankind’s deeply
rooted sin and resulting inhumanity to enslave a race of God’s
creation—African-Americans. Through those dark centuries
of numbered tags and iron shackles, Satan worked to keep African-Americans
in cruel bondage. Babies were torn from their mothers’ arms;
husbands from the strong, supportive embrace of their wives; brothers
and sisters from their siblings’ trust. It was an enslavement
that shattered all hopes and dreams and destroyed a normally staunch
and resilient spirit, while it shattered God’s natural defense
to slavery’s horrific affects—the family. But in spite
of the terror that stalked those dark days, God was faithful to
sustain African-Americans by ministering to their deep painful
hurts. ...”
“In this new day, when African-Americans unquestionably
enjoy complete freedom, there are new, insidious Slavemasters
at work outside civilized law and labor to ensnare black families—and
for that matter, families of all races. These new slavemasters
are even more threatening than their whip-wielding predecessors.
While the latter were content with enslaving the physical being,
these new slavemasters are satisfied with the imprisonment of
the mind and spirit as well.
“As you turn these pages, I challenge you to look deeply
into the works of these New Slavemasters, and in so doing, to
inoculate yourself and those you love against their bitter influences.
If those near you are already ensnared, this book will help you
to understand the world in which they find themselves and to assist
them physically, emotionally, and spiritually to break their bonds,
so that all of us may proclaim and rejoice that we are truly ‘free
at last!’”
Dangerous People (Chapter 2)
“We as a people were inventive, creative, and imaginative,
and that we were practical, sensitive, and expressive ... we were
exactly the people kind of people God could use—and obviously
did use early on—to enhance and further civilization within
His earthly kingdom ... Those same attributes made us exceedingly
dangerous to God’s enemies, particularly Satan. He knew
that in our hands the Gospel would be powerful weapon against
him. And so he realized upon an opportunity to make us weak, too
isolated, to be the danger to him that we could have been.”
War on Families (Chapter 4)
“Although we think in terms of Satan corrupting individuals,
his sights are always on the family as a whole. He loves to shatter
the whole into a member of isolated, warring parts, as he did
through the old slavemasters.”
“Slavery, by its very nature, was horrifically cruel,
but breaking up families—husbands from wives, mothers from
children, brothers and sisters from their siblings—was devastatingly
so. It tore what was left of their slave hearts right out of them
... It would be nice to say families are safe from that kind of
abuse today. But they are not. Today, as you read these words,
the New Slavemasters still rip families apart, still grind their
hearts and futures beneath cold, thick souls.
“The slavemasters—old and new—want all of us,
everything that makes us who we are. Then they want to bend us
to their will ... for all those locked in the dungeon of substance
abuse. They lost 'who they were' and became who their Slavemasters
wanted them to be. That is what Satan wants for you. He wants
you to become someone those closest to you no longer know—and
no longer want to be around.”
People Become Things (Chapter 5)
“For the old slavemasters, even an institution as sacred
and intimate as marriage was merely and arrangement among property.
Slaves were merely things. They urged these things to marry, but
only in order to produce more things, and then to shackle them
and make it more difficult for them to escape. If a slave was
sold, the spouse (without benefit of divorce) was urged to marry
again. Things can’t be bigamists.
“To the materialistic [New] Slavemaster, people are merely
things—things acquired, things cherished, and things sought
....To the materialistic person, marriage is merely an entry point,
a gateway to all things that lay behind it; the big house, the
luxury car, the expensive jewelry—all that is by which materialists
measure their worth. The more stuff they have, the more important
they are. And spending money gives them a sense of power, especially
if they can exert influence over someone by spending it.”
Racism (Chapter 6)
“Man’s fallen state is raucously proclaimed by his
universal tendency to gather into groups, then declare his particular
group superior—more intelligent, more righteous, more highly
favored by god(s)—than all others. Having a common ethnicity,
skin color, religion, social class, economic status, social or
political philosophy, when their group gains political, social,
or economic power, they attempt to impose their beliefs and practices
on the powerless. When they do so, they practice racism.
“Racism in America is systemic. No institution is free
from its influence. No family, no community, no social group has
escaped the diabolical poison of hatred, indifference, and violence.
Nowhere is its influence so vividly demonstrated than in today’s
Church. Whether liberal or conservative, this telltale reality
remains the same: Sunday morning is the most segregated time in
America ...The practice of apartheid in the American Christian
church is part of a schizophrenic pattern; there is great concern
for doctrinal purity, theological orthodoxy, and liturgical correctness
with no corresponding concern for biblical righteousness or social,
environmental, and economic justice and human rights here and
around the world. The New Slavemaster is alive and thriving.”
“But after four hundred years, the United States has clearly
demonstrated that social, economic, and political solutions are
not effective in solving what is essentially a spiritual problem.
Yet many Christians still adopt an attitude of indifference to
racial problems.”
“We are one family; black, white, yellow, red, the blood
of our Savior runs through all our veins...Racism is sin because
it teaches the lie that grace is racially motivated—instead
of looking at the heart, God looks at color—that it’s
not our sin, but our skin. Such belief places culture and custom
above God’s inspired Word.”
Frederick Douglass’ Slave Family History (Chapter
8)
“Frederick Douglas’ grandmother had served her master
faithfully ‘from youth to old age.’ Her work brought
her master wealth; her children and their children and their children’s
children had worked his plantation. When he died, she was left
a slave to watch her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
divided-up like ‘so many sheep,’ without being allowed
a word to shape their own destinies. Then, to put the final punctuation
on the long death sentence of her life, when she grew unable to
perform the duties required of her, they took her to the forest,
built her a drafty little shack, then made her live there and
support herself with her own twisted arthritic hands.”
War on our Children (Chapter 10)
“Satan is no fool. He knows the easiest way to keep a people
enslaved, isolated, and weak is to defeat their children. If he
can shatter their hopes, keep their not-so-distant horizons filled
with ravaging storms, then he believes they are his forever.”
God’s Committment to Family (Chapter 12)
“We were profoundly poor out there on the farm, but as a
very conservative Christian family, our poverty didn’t dampen
our Christian fervor. If anything, living on the ragged edge of
solvency strengthened it. When you are hanging by your fingernails,
you grasp at lifelines, and God is the best lifeline of all. From
the beginning, God was placed, and thereafter remained, at the
very center of our home. But with fourteen children, keeping Him
there required thought and discipline. And the limitation of the
temptations that usually stalked us kids. Deeply suspicious eyes
studied all forms of entertainment, which was obviously just the
devil trying to get us to drop our guard and sweep us into something
spiritually disastrous. So we didn’t dance, didn’t
play cards, didn’t go to movies, and didn’t read novels.”
Your Legacy: Do The Right Thing (Chapter 13)
“Our future is built on our present. If we want to create
strong vibrant tomorrows, we must create strong, vibrant todays.
What better way to subdue these new slavemasters that try to demean
and destroy you, than to take lives of shame and defeat and turn
them into lives for which we want to be remembered ....Our enslaved
ancestors had no control over their families. It was the slavemaster’s
call where the family ended up, and generally they ended up apart
... If from this moment on, we build our family His way, using
the blueprint in the Bible, our family won’t just happen—it
will become part of God’s kingdom here on earth and part
of His plan to nurture and further it. Our family will be fashioned,
supported, and blessed by God and used to His glory.”
Ashes (Chapter 14)
“St. Stephens Church of God in Christ is where I have labored
for forty years. In the fall of 1984, on the eve of our twenty-second
anniversary—just two weeks after we had dedicated our new
school to the Lord’s service—Satan sent a young man
enslaved to rage and bitterness to do his worst against us. The
night before was unusually hot and humid for September. That discomfort,
mixed with my excitement at the next day’s activities, meant
I couldn’t sleep. I was still awake at 2 a.m. when the phone
rang. Seconds later, I rushed to see angry flames devouring our
beloved church. Firefighters worked bravely and feverishly, but
St. Stephens could not be saved. And as the dawn broke over gray
eastern hills, all our hopes for the future, all the hopes I had
planned to raise up to God in that morning’s address to
thousands of our faithful, lay before us in smoldering black ash.”
“...God wasn’t telling me to give up. He was telling
me to rebuild and recommit, that it wasn’t our efforts that
would make St. Stephens a wondrous beacon to the community again,
but His. I have come to believe that horrific morning was allowed
so we would know that our future, a future much greater than our
past, would most assuredly be built on Jesus, by Jesus.”
Husbands Love Your Wives (Chapter 15)
“The Word of God tells husbands to make their wives’
well-being their reason for living. Strong words. But strong words
are needed. We, as fallen human beings, first look inward to our
own needs; then, when those needs are satisfied, we may look to
the needs of others. This is not the model our spouse’s
need. For husbands, selfishness is out—selflessness is definitely
in.”
The Importance of Two-Parent Families (Chapter 16)
“I stress the idea of having two parents as the head of
the freedom family for several reasons. First, as we have seen,
two parents are simply better than one. If you are looking to
start a family, make sure the family you establish has two parents—a
man and a woman. If you are married and either have children already
or plan to have them soon, make sure you and your mate do everything
you can to stay together. If you are a single parent, like Cyndi,
realize that your children need the influence of the opposite
gender. ...”
“A friend once confided his father was an alcoholic and
seldom around. ‘There were times I did things simply because
I was sure real men did them. I risked my life in Vietnam because
I thought that’s what real men do. I gave up a career for
which I was truly suited in favor of another I found manlier—and
I hated it. Not having a good male role model in the home cost
me a great deal. ...’”
“Her little face was bruised with the whole print of Mrs.
Gatewood’s hand ... His deep, profound helplessness helped
him to come face to face with the fact that he, his wife, and
his vulnerable little daughter were property, powerless to deal
with those who whipped and tortured their infant daughter ...
The New Slavemasters want to do the same to your family. They
want you to one day look at your children and be helpless to protect
them from what they have in mind for them: drugs, pregnancy, abortion,
alcohol, anything that locks them into emotional and physical
slavery.”
Slave’s Duty to Escape (Chapter 18)
“Slavery is only mentioned in Scripture because it existed
in biblical times as well , and slaves, like all Christians, are
to work within the world where God has placed them—unless
that world becomes threatening. Their duty is to escape. Although
mentioned and dealt with, slavery was never a godly practice.
The Jumbled Family (Chapter 21)
“The New Slavemasters of drugs and violence, aided by the
deep decay of our nation’s moral fiber, have wreaked havoc
on this and many other families. It is as if each member of the
family was a piece from very different puzzles and was suddenly
thrown onto a table and forced to fit together. Like Bryan and
Martha, grandparents and even great-grandparents now find themselves
raising MTV-generation teens. Or older children who have planned
limitless futures are now anchored in the present as the 'parents'
of younger siblings. Everyone battles confusion, anger, and bitterness—while
those who fill the parental role do their best to learn new skills,
often overnight. And these new 'kids' often bring some pretty
weighty baggage along with them. These are our jumbled families.
In spite of what may appear these are families God has brought
together from confused and broken places so that all can be raised
up and nurtured—and that may be glorified.”
The Unmarried Father
“The New Slavemasters are delighted when men see themselves
as little more than sperm donors, willing to casually separate
themselves from the children they spawn. That is certainly what
the old slavemasters wanted. Separating children from their fathers
separates them from the strength and guidance fathers provide.
“Even if you were tricked into fatherhood—even if
their mother lied about using birth control, for instance—when
you engaged in a sexual relationship with her, you signed a contract,
if a baby results, you are the father. Admit it to the mother,
the children (if appropriate), and to God. ‘These are my
children; I am responsible for them. I want to do what’s
right, and God, I want your help.’”
Children of Children
“Your child, no matter how committed she is to her child,
wants a childhood. She wants fun parties, long talks with acquaintances,
connections to best friends. And a smattering of that is healthy
for her. But her child is her main responsibility now. One of
your jobs is to help her maintain a good balance. To limit the
babysitting hours available to her is one way to do that. Make
it four hours a week, for instance, and two evenings a month.
You decide, but make it reasonable and firm. Another parishioner
gave the young parent unlimited babysitting; it just cost her
so much an hour.”
What Will Be Our [Church] Legacy? (Chapter 26)
“Frederick Douglass observed: “The man who robs me
of my earnings and at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader
on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of
salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitutions,
stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims
it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me that right of
learning to read the name of the God who made me ... I love the
pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore
hate the corrupt, slaveholding, woman-whipping, cradle-plundering,
partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”
Closing
“This book’s purpose is to help you break free from
and remain free of the New Slavemasters ... I am a prime example
of God’s using one of His children in ways that child never,
ever thought possible. How could the son of a poor sharecropper,
one of fourteen children, the great-grandson of a slave ever imagine
that god would make Him a bishop in a large and prestigious denomination?
How could he have ever dreamed of being even a small part of the
work within God’s kingdom? ... May God help you to remain
free, and may He bless your legacy. May the legacy you envision
for yourself now be a mere shadow of the legacy He has in mind
for you.”
Taken from The New Slavemasters by Bishop George D.
McKinney. Copyright © 2005 by Bishop George D. McKinney.
Reprinted with permission of Cook Communications Ministries.
Order
your copy of The New Slavemasters
Q &
A with Bishop McKinney
More from
Cook Communications Ministries
More from the Black
History Section on CBN.com
CBN IS HERE FOR YOU!
Are you seeking answers in life? Are you hurting?
Are you facing a difficult situation?
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.