Black Nativity Turns from Bitter Roots

During the Christmas season, when the arts enhance our lives, they might also bring insights for business. For instance in Black Nativity, Langston Hughes develops an amazing flip side to experiences of inequality and oppression he saw in so-called "Christianity" as a young man. Listening to the celebratory gospel-drenched Black Nativity which celebrates "Joy to the World" and "Peace on earth to men of good will," you would not realize that Hughes had struggled thirty years earlier. His forgiving spirt shines forth yearly in Boston's National Center of Afro American Artist's production.

Langston Hughes, a wonderfully gifted poet of the Harlem Renaissance, developed a mistrust of religion, especially directed at people who used Christianity as a cloak behind which to hide their oppressive actions. "Goodbye Christ" most explicity conveys Hughes's attitude in the late 1930's. He pours forth gut feelings...

Listen, Christ,
You did alright in your day, I reckon--
But that day's gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
Called it Bible--
But it's dead now.
The popes and the preachers've
Made too much money from it.
They've sold you to too many.

Langston questioned the oppression he felt in a so-called Christian society. Yet he somehow turned that around. And again this Chrismas season, the age old story of Christ's birth dons the rich milieu of African-American culture to stir hearts and minds of people. Black Nativity's message and renoun draws people from around the world.

Amazingly, Langston Hughes, clothed the gospel with Afro-American richness to turn around an earlier bitter root. I am very humbled and inspired by Hughes's Black Nativity. Thoughts?