American society has come to see a decline in what used to be common values and virtues. As a result, today’s young adults have fallen into patterns of bad decision-making, causing our youth to have the highest rates of violence, black-on-black crime, teen and pre-teen pregnancy, drug use, and the spread of disease of all kinds. Young adults today are afflicted with cancer, lower puberty age, sexually transmitted diseases, drug addiction, involvement in organized crime, and other conditions that not even a generation ago would have been unthinkable for people at such young ages. Further, the choices that the youth are making are paving roads in directions the youth need not go, forcing them to deal with decisions the consequences of which can take years away from their lives or, worse yet, negatively alter not only their lives but the lives of future generations as well. The basis of the Chrismation is to instill in the child the values that will aid in good decision-making and create a foundation for a healthy, successful adult life for the child and the avoidance of a pattern of self-destructive and immoral behavior.

African-American communities are fragmented societies which are not grounded in stable cultural traditions.  Our people, especially young black men, have grown away from the values which in the past helped to create an atmosphere of trust and respect from the younger generation toward the elders of the community.  Today’s black youth cling to peer influence which is not informed by any traditional ethics and values.  Relying upon contemporary American values of individualism and consumerism, black youth are caught up in a spiral of violence directed toward them which ultimately engulfs the larger black community and society at large.  The data on murder among and by black youth reflects a psychopathology within the larger Afro-American society that can be observed by a study of single mother birth rates, sexually transmitted disease, unemployment, criminal convictions leading to prison sentences, stress related disease, dietary disorders leading to diabetes, strokes and heart disease.  The foundation of this problem stems from several generations of neglect centered around the issue of respect, or rather, of disrespect.  

In ancient times, rites of passage were tied to issues of survival skills.  The youth moving toward adulthood needed to possess those skills necessary to survive in a society governed by hunting and stealth.  The psychological elements of the rite of passage were built into the structure of the community.  The cultural elements of rites of passage were in the hands of the priests of the indigenous culture.  Together these elements – physical, psychological and cultural – comprised the necessary components to equip the child to enter adulthood.