Welcome to the Home of the International Association of Black Religions and Spiritualities
Mission
The objective of the International Association on Black Religions and Spiritualities is to draw on the progressive religions and spiritualities of darker skin peoples globally in the struggle for human dignity and justice.
The International Association on Black Religions and Spiritualities (IABRS) is a global network of darker skin peoples focused on education and advocacy around the issues of human dignity and justice for poor communities and oppressed people. We draw on the progressive spiritualities and religions of darker skin peoples because we believe another world is possible. Black people in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands survive, thrive, celebrate, and resist using their spiritualities and religions. All forms of sacred practices among darker skin peoples – for instance, indigenous religions, African Traditional Religions, black Judaism and Islam, Dalit spirituality, Australian Aboriginal and New Zealand Maori cultures, Candomble, different types of Christianity, Santeria, black Buddhists, and others – offer important examples for better human relations. To model new, collective human interactions, the IABRS combines half female and half male participation at all levels of the international network. It includes young people in order to pass on the wisdom of the older generations. It has a strong presence of practitioners and academics. It works in solidarity with other marginalized movements. And it impacts policies that will be helpful for poor people.
We work with existing organizations and institutions to put them together through a global network. Also, the IABRS offers solidarity among its own members – both individuals and the various darker skin peoples and countries represented in the network.
A sense of values glues our peoples, communities, and oppressed nations together. For us, spiritualities and religions unite the sacred and “secular” as one. The sacred covers all reality – the rituals of worship and even how we collect firewood and water, the naming of our children, and even our ties to land inheritance.
In progressive religions and spiritualities, the value of social justice and change of earthly systems unites with the value of healing the pains of individuals. In social analysis and self analysis, we see another world is possible.
A major experience of spiritualities and religions or our sacred values is collective and individual human dignity. The necessity to have human dignity stands at the center of what it means to be a human being. Being human is dignity for the identity of oppressed peoples and of the individual self. And individual human dignity takes place within the context of community human dignity.
Human Dignity
Human dignity is close to human rights. But dignity is different from rights. To have human rights assumes that an oppressed community or an individual already enjoys dignity. So human dignity comes before human rights.
What is human dignity? It is made up of at least three parts – self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Self-love means an oppressed people loves their own identity – how the sacred has created them and how they are born beautiful and healthy and sacred as a people. Love of self accepts the self without wanting to be someone else. Self-love in an oppressed community embraces its culture, wisdom, languages, spiritualities, religions, ancestors, and ways of being, seeing, and acting in the world. And self-love includes a love of nature, animals, birds, plants, fish, air, water, earth, and the minerals of the earth.
Self-esteem happens when a people who love themselves put value on themselves. There is worth to our very being. We hold our selves in high regard. When an oppressed community loves itself, it values its history, ancestry, land, language, traditions, its unborn, its very existence, its right to live on earth, and its connections to the sacred and all of creation.
If we love ourselves and hold ourselves in high esteem, we become more self-confident as an oppressed people. Self-confidence helps us to act out our love and esteem of self in the world around us, especially as a peoples movement to change the world for justice. With confidence we protect our being and creation. We move in the world to challenge those obstacles that prevent the health of human beings and creation. We have strong confidence in the future and the future of our unborn. We struggle for justice now. And we have a deep hope in a better society and better relations between humans and all of creation. We have hope that healthy societies will one day come on earth. Self-confidence encourages an oppressed people to define its own self and the space around it in such a way that we are in harmony and balance with our selves, neighbors, our ancestor, all of creation, and the sacred.
Being Black
In addition to our spiritualities and religions, defined by collective and individual human dignity, we are all “black” people. By “black” we mean the darker skin communities of the world. Black is a broad umbrella word. It represents more than skin color. It stands for a tradition of struggle against colonialism caused by Europe and the U.S.A. It represents a history of being the objects of Christian missionary work. Today it indicates attacks on our culture by global propaganda that tries to define what is beauty and the effort to force the entire world to become like the culture of only one superpower. So from the negative side, to be black is to be ugly, dirty, lack leadership abilities, ignorant, uncivilized, backward, savage, volatile, overly sexed, low morals, and criminals. Unfortunately, too many of us in our own communities believe that those blacks with lighter skin are more beautiful, intelligent, and moral than the darker ones among us.
Blackness, in its negative sense, sometimes means passive consumers of products from the major monopoly capitalist corporations in the world. Not only are we seen as easy consumers of these products. Our communities are the ones who work and produce the wealth, products, and income for the small group of families, primarily from the U.S.A. and Europe, who own and control the majority of human beings and creation. These elite families and monopoly capitalist corporations have historically stolen and continue today to steal wealth, money, land, and resources from the Third World or Two Thirds World. The transfer of wealth and income taking place globally shows us that the key concern for the world’s majority is the elimination of poverty and the establishment of justice.
But we also have to admit that just as black spiritualities and religions have been positive by sustaining us, helping us to survive and thrive, and resisting negative forces outside of our communities, our own black spiritualities and religions have a deep negative side This negative side comes from the unhealthy aspects of our traditions and from us accepting the negative influences of powers seeking to control us and our land. Not all parts of black religions and spiritualities are positive. A key sign of our harmful spiritualities and religions is the extra oppression faced by women. We have to be aware of negative external and internal factors. But our main vision is to realize that black religions and spiritualities mean that another world is possible.
Community
We want on earth a healthy individual and healthy communities. This means darker skin peoples developing their human dignity. This means darker skin peoples controlling the resources of their communities so all can share equally in food, shelter, land ownership, education, health, recreation and sports, jobs, small and large businesses, and forge a new politics based on the bottom of society. Because black people and countries fall at the bottom of societies and the family of nations, when darker skin people become healthy, they help the rest of the world to be healthy. When black people and nations are no longer poor and oppressed, they remove immoral and unjust systems and then all peoples and countries can simply be human beings celebrating the beauty of all peoples and the gift of all sharing equal ownership in the earth’s resources. Indeed, another world is possible.