October 9, 2001

For Immediate Release

For More Information Call

Joann Anderson 301-564-6075

Ministers Learn about PowerNomics, Racism and Terrorism

On October 5-6, Dr. Claud Anderson, president of The Harvest Institute, conducted a training seminar for Black ministers in and around New Orleans, on new ways to deal with the legacies of slavery, neo-racism and terrorism and how to use PowerNomics principles in their ministries.

Dr. Anderson, author of the best selling book PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America, based the seminar on Chapter 8 of his book. This chapter presents Black churches principles and strategies they can use to design activities that will make Black America more self-sufficient and competitive. In the seminar, he showed that historically religion has been used to justify slavery, Jim Crow, racism and the current spate of terrorism.

Dr. Anderson encouraged the ministers to continue to feed their flocks spiritually, but to consciously work to improve their lives here on earth. He made two fundamental points. First, that Blacks have a unique position in the Bible and that ministers should begin to teach their congregations that Blacks are a special people, the original people, the first people created by God in the Garden of Eden. Second, he challenged the ministers to lead their members to a better economic life and create ownership and control opportunities for their congregations so that they can build wealth individually, as an organization, and as a race. He presented 10 major empowerment steps, drawn from historical analysis, that churches can use to reach those goals.

This seminar was the second in a series sponsored by a group of Black ministers who have formed a national organization to promote PowerNomics in churches, Black Alliance of Family Christian Agenda (BAFCA) and the Allen Foundation, a family philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles. The partnership of the two groups represents one of the few times in history that a foundation has used its funds to pull together elements of the Black community for the specific purpose of resolving the structural problems of the race.

BAFCA is the outgrowth of a special focus workshop The Harvest Institute held for ministers in May. On December 1, The Harvest Institute moves its focus to the law and ways that lawyers, judges and others in the legal system can use PowerNomics to achieve a new racial reality for Black America. For more information, contact The Harvest Institute at 301-564-6075.

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