Overcome: Rite, Liturgy & Songs

Peter W. D. Bramble Ph.D.

Description

“The Overcome”, a liturgy of black remembrance modeled on the Jewish Passover. The awesome history of the passage since capture in Africa invites comparison with the Hebrew exodus and even the Holocaust. Instead of recoiling from the hypercharged distinctions on both sides, scholars might do well to follow the lead of Father Bramble and of Julius Lester...”

The Overcome

“The Rev. Dr, Peter Bramble, a black Episcopalian of Baltimore, has written a proposed ritual he calls “The Overcome”, a liturgy of black remembrance modeled on the Jewish Passover. The awesome history of the passage since capture in Africa, invites comparison with the Hebrew exodus and even the Holocaust. Instead of recoiling from the hypercharged distinctions on both sides, scholars might do well to follow the lead of Father Bramble and of Julius Lester...”
Taylor Branch, 1988 Pulitzer Prize Winner,
in New York Times book Review Section,
January 14, 1990

 

“Central to Dr. Bramble’s concept is the notion that Black people are inherently over-comers who triumph over adversity because they have a propensity for greatness. He acknowledges the tremendous problems facing the Black community, but Overcome...institutionalizes a core concept that Blacks have prevailed over their worst days of oppression, but have not realized it because there is no watershed date or ceremony commemorating that moment of triumph...the Black community has long needed a common story that the entire group could share and use to instill a sense of nationhood in both adults and children.”
R. B. Jones, Editor, Baltimore Times.

“... the book belongs to the general genre of black liberation theology. It is original in conceptualization and thesis...Overcome and liberation when fully understood are present tense positions with a moral imperative to act and to bring to birth...this is not a run of the mill book on religion or a sermon that one can sleep through. Bramble’s basic position is rooted in linguistic philosophy and the work of Gilbert Ryle, in particular, for whom the logical grammar of certain words and concepts has direct implications for the actions they impel.”
Howard Fergus, Ph.D. University of The West Indies.

The Rev. Dr. Bramble is rector of
St. Katherine of Alexandria Episcopa
Church in Baltimore, Maryland

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Histoire
• Overcome
• African-American history
• Slavery
• History

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 24 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663250186
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

OVERCOME: RITE, LITURGY & SONGS
 
 
 
 
 
PETER W. D. BRAMBLE, PH.D.
 
 
 

 
 
OVERCOME: RITE, LITURGY & SONGS
 
 
Copyright © 2023 Peter W. D. Bramble, Ph.d.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5017-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5019-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5018-6 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901621
 
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date:  05/18/2023

Drawing by James Earl Reid, Sculptor
CONTENTS
Dedication/Acknowledgements
Epigraph
About Peter W. D. Bramble
Preface
Introduction
The Overcome Feast: Liturgy, Rite, and Songs
The Overcome Creed
“An Overcome Song”
“The Overcome Song”
My Personal Creed
“Overcome Song”
“Overcome Rap”
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Appendix F
Appendix G
DEDICATION/ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is dedicated to the many people who made it possible. To my wife Joy, and our children, Cara and David, who allowed me to write while abdicating household chores. To my mother, Margaret, who taught me, without knowing it, the real meaning of The Overcome.
To Baltimore’s Saint Katherine of Alexandria Episcopal Church in Baltimore and its members who suffered 30 years ago through the development of the concepts with countless sermons on the issue and who often misunderstood the content and its very intent. Many thought it was an appeal to material overcoming. Some still cannot understand that the only overcoming that has value is conceptual and spiritual. It takes one “over” when all else is withdrawn.
Very special thanks go to my teacher and mentor, Professor Paul L. Holmer of Yale Divinity School.
He taught me how concepts function within a language. The convincing analogy about “icy roads” communicating more than a description and carrying heavy imperatives came off his lips and rested on my mind so that, in turn, I could make the move from the introduction of The Overcome concept to the imperative to lead lives in The Overcome mood. Professor Holmer influenced me greatly, and I truly thank him as I dedicate this book to him!
I also thank Paul F. Evans, of Baltimore, my friend and the publisher of the 1989 first edition of this book, for his help throughout every stage of the previous edition of this project and for his help in the second edition. I also thank Charles Lowder, the graphic designer, for his continuing assistance and in preparing this edition for further editorial work toward subsequent publication by iUniverse of Bloomington Indiana.
EPIGRAPH

We have overcome.
We have overcome.
We have overcome today.
Oh! Oh!
Deep in our hearts, we know for sure.
We have overcome today.
ABOUT PETER W. D. BRAMBLE

The Reverend Canon Peter W. D. Bramble is a retired black Episcopal priest now residing in Maryland. He served as Rector of St Katherine of Alexandria Episcopal Church in Baltimore from 1976 to 1997 and as Rector and Pastor of St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, New York from 1997 to 2015. St Mark’s was at the time the largest black Episcopal congregation in the United States.
Bramble is a graduate of Codrington College, Barbados, the Yale Divinity School and the University of Connecticut from where he received a Ph.D. degree in the Philosophy of Education in 1976. Father Bramble was one of the principals who initiated uniforms in the Public Schools of Baltimore. The project was highlighted in many major news media including TIME, NEWSWEEK, and various national TV programs.
Known by some as the ‘done deal man’ and labelled by The Baltimore Sun as “The Entrepreneurial Priest,” Bramble developed high rise apartments for the elderly at Baltimore’s PennNorth Plaza and in East New York, Brooklyn. He also acquired the largest Day Care Center in Baltimore, established the BATGO program to re-direct troubled youth away from the Criminal Justice System by providing them Housing, educational opportunities and job apprenticeships. That program was established over 25 years ago and still serves young people in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1986, Canon Bramble with his wife Joy started THE BALTIMORE TIMES NEWSPAPER featuring “positive stories about positive people.” This was developed to balance out the negative vibes fed to blacks in multiple forms: they lived pathology, heard about it on radio, saw it on Television and read it in the local papers. There being no media for conveying positive stories, The Baltimore Times was established and was so well received that the company went on to publish similar TIMES papers in Annapolis, Baltimore County, Prince George’s County and the Shore Times on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Today, only The Baltimore Times and The Annapolis Times are published.
Dr. Bramble in the late 1980’s and early 1990s Published his first book: THE OVERCOME: A BLACK PASSOVER. In the book he argues for the introduction of major victory concepts into black life, something he believes must occur before blacks can overcome their various pathologies. He believes that victory concepts must be present in the thinking, hoping, talking and doing of blacks in order to enable blacks to become OVERCOMERS of the negativities that plague their story telling and their living.
Father Bramble later developed THE OVERCOME RITE with re-enforcing songs by people who heard Dr. Bramble speak. It is through that rite that he seeks to install THE OVERCOME as the collective victory that blacks can celebrate together. He dares to claim that the Civil Rights Movement, crowned by the death and consequent elevation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., must be seen as that which holds the collective victories that must be re-interpreted in positive ways and celebrated much as the Jewish people celebrate their Passover. He also thinks April 4, the day on which Martin Luther King Jr. was sacrificed for his people should become OVERCOME DAY!
In 1989, The Baltimore Black Academy of Arts and Letters named Father Bramble the “Living Legend in Religion.”
PREFACE

Why reissue a book thirty years after its original publication?
Thirty years ago, the spirit of the times elevated the Civil Rights Movement, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who taught us that going forward, all people should be judged by “the content of their character and not the color of their skin.” That was perceived to be the closing argument of the Civil Rights Movement. No one at that time conceived that in thirty years the mantra: “to judge people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin” would be cancelled with the introduction of a new doctrine being propagated known as “Critical Race Theory” (CRT), which claims the very opposite of what the icon of the Civil Rights Movement lived, taught, and died to establish.
The Overcome: A Black Passover was written to install into the thinking of blacks the fact that what they had fought for through the struggles of their foreparents had now been accomplished. All that was needed now was a new logic, a new way to interpret the fights (struggles) in such a way as to claim victory. CRT does the opposite. It directly cancels Dr. King’s message and in effect claims that there has been no progress over the years. Nothing has been achieved after all these years of struggle and fighting for equality because CRT claims that blacks effectively are, because of their black skin which is an immutable characteristic, forever locked into an inferior status when compared to whites whom they claim have special white privileges.