{"id":542,"date":"2014-01-23T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/?p=542"},"modified":"2014-01-22T16:01:40","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T21:01:40","slug":"vds-feature-%e2%80%9cdo-you-understand-what-you-are-reading%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/2014\/01\/vds-feature-%e2%80%9cdo-you-understand-what-you-are-reading%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"VDS Feature: \u201cDo You Understand What You are Reading?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Academy of Young Preachers is a trans-denominational organization that seeks to identify, support, and inspire young preachers and their calls to preaching. \u00a0Founded by Dwight Moody in 2010, the academy holds nationwide conferences when young preachers are invited to preach sermons on the theme of conference. This year, young preachers from around the nation gathered in Indianapolis, Indiana, to preach on the theme “Questions of the Soul.” \u00a0The following sermon was delivered by James Wesley Dennis III, Academy of Young Preachers Class of 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo You Understand What You are Reading?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Acts 8:30, NRSV<\/em><\/p>\n

In the name of the Lord, the most gracious, the most merciful; Creator of the Seen and the Unseen.\u00a0 It is in the Lord that we put our trust.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it wonderful that the fire has not burnt us and the waters have not drowned us?\u00a0 For we are still in the land of the dying on our way to the land of the living. <\/em><\/p>\n

Friends, history has taught us that one of the greatest tools toward the liberation of marginalized and oppressed people is the ability to read. This is because reading takes from the marginalized and the oppressed the bliss of ignorance.\u00a0 Reading creates a state of perpetual discontentment as it exposes the readers to the truth about their existential reality.\u00a0 Reading allows the otherwise disenfranchised readers to connect themselves and their struggles to the freedoms, ideas, thoughts, and beliefs of the privileged majority, and it causes their minds to be liberated from the mental chains of slavery.\u00a0 For you see, freeing the mind is the perquisite to freeing the self.\u00a0 If you free the self before you free the mind, you would have created only people who look free but who are still controlled by the power, privilege and propaganda of the ruling majority.\u00a0 This is why W.E.B. Du Bois said of the African slaves living in this country that \u201cThe slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back into slavery.\u201d\u00a0 Why? Although their bodies were free from the torture of slavery, their minds were still wrapped around the fingers of slave masters who would rather see those black men and women dead before they were free.<\/p>\n

The ability to read is powerful because it liberates the mind, in other words, it makes people think for themselves.\u00a0 This is evident in the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.\u00a0 His owner disapproved of his learning how to read because he knew that learning to read would create discontentment for Douglass and make him want freedom.\u00a0 Once you acquire knowledge, you can\u2019t return to the slave dungeons of ignorance anymore.\u00a0 Douglass writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I read and contemplated the subject, behold the very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish\u2026\u00a0 I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing\u2026. I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity\u2026 The sliver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this happened because he learned how to read.\u00a0 Reading, literally, freed his mind into thinking without having to accept the way other folks were trying to make him think.\u00a0 He learned how to think for himself.\u00a0 He did not have to wait for anyone to tell him how to think because he had the power of words.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the power of words put a vision in you, you can no longer be content with the same old same old.\u00a0 Reading has the power to change your life.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to read the entire sermon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Academy of Young Preachers is a trans-denominational organization that seeks to identify, support, and inspire young preachers and their calls to preaching. \u00a0Founded by Dwight Moody in 2010, the academy holds nationwide conferences when young preachers are invited to preach sermons on the theme of conference. This year, young preachers from around the nation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1576,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}