BOOK REVIEW NUGGETS: The New Jim Crow, The Problem with Racial Reconciliation, and Doing Democracy

These three books should be read together as a trio of closely related books:  The New Jim Crow written by a black lawyer; The Problem with Racial Reconciliation by a black, evangelical theologian; Doing Democracy by a veteran, white social activist or scholar/activist.  Since economic inequality (racial wealth gap) is closely tied to mass incarceration, I also recommend either The Hidden Cost of Being African American by a white sociologist, Thomas Shapiro, or Punishment and Inequality by Bruce Western, a white sociologist.

Michelle Alexander, in her brilliant and well-received expose of mass incarceration entitled The New Jim Crow, states that there are two requirements to solve the problem: 1) create a social movement to force the government to take action on unjust mass incarceration, and 2) to grapple with the underlying problem of racism (racial profiling).  Neither abolitionists nor the civil rights movement succeeded in destroying the racism behind slavery and segregation.  When the underlying racism was not eliminated, racist oppressors simply designed a new system of oppression---mass incarceration. 

In a previous essay, I discussed the book by Ken Young entitled The Problem with Racial Reconciliation.  Young shows that white evangelicals have not yet adequately grappled with racism and racialization.  He also explains how biblical justice and reconciliation are the key to a solution.

Doing Democracy: The MAP [Movement Action Plan] for Organizing Social Movements by Bill Moyers (not the PBS bill Moyers) is another book that must be read along with The New Jim Crow.  It describes in great detail how to create a successful social movement; Michelle Alexander believes that a social movement is beginning to build around mass incarceration.  Moyers is a disciple of the Gandhi, King, Mandela non-violent type of social movement; he wants to improve democracy, not destroy it.  Some readers might be overwhelmed by all the factors necessary for a successful social movement; some will be grateful for advance warning about the many factors that might derail a social movement.  

Now some nuggets from Doing Democracy:

In the United States, the recognition of basic human rights---the abolition of slavery, the right of labor to organize, child labor laws, the right for African Americans and women to vote---came about through the efforts of engaged citizens. . . . Nonviolent social movements, based in grassroots people power, are a means for ordinary people to act on their deepest values and successfully challenge unjust social conditions and policies, despite the determined resistance of entrenched private and public power.

MAP defines social movements as collective actions in which the populace is alerted, educated, and mobilized, sometimes over years and decades, to challenge the powerholders and the whole society to redress social problems or grievances and restore critical social values.

In 19th-century America, the abolition, temperance, labor, and women's movements used many nonviolent strategies, such a marches and rallies, to raise issues and demand change. . . . In the last three decades, the women's movement, which arose in the United States out of the civil rights and peace movements, has blossomed everywhere, with women in Africa and the Middle East also engaged in collective actions.

MAP allows activists to:
* identify where, on the normal eight-stage road of movement success, their movement is at any specific time;
* create stage-appropriate strategies, tactics, and programs that enable them to advance their movement along to the next step on the road to success;
* identify and celebrate their movement's incremental progress and successes;
* play all four roles of activism effectively;
* overcome irrational feelings of powerlessness and failure; and
* engage ordinary citizens in the grand strategy of effective social movements---participatory democracy.

There are four different roles activists and social movements need to play in order to successfully create social change: the citizen, rebel, change agent, and reformer.  Each role has different purposes, styles, skills, and needs and can be played effectively and ineffectively.

Change agent: move society from reform to social change by promoting a paradigm shift.

On page 27, there is a brilliant discussion of how citizen, rebel, change agent and reform roles can and often do conflict.

The eight stages of the process of social movement success are:

1. Normal times  2. Prove the failure of official institutions  3.  Ripening Conditions  4. Take off  5. Perception of failure  6. Majority Public Opinion  7.  Success  8. Continuing the struggle human society is made up of three interconnected and interdependent parts: individuals, culture, and social systems and institutions, the "I", "we", and "it."  They are different aspects of the same whole; consequently, one can't be transformed for long without the requisite changes in the other two.

To be continued

Economic Inequality: Political and Economic Oppression

Recently both Pope Francis and President Obama have vigorously spoken out against economic inequality.  Pope Francis identified corporate/financial capitalism as our current system of oppression using phrases such as unfettered capitalism, idolatry of money and deified markets.  President Obama called economic inequality the defining issue of our time.

I prefer the phrase political and economic oppression over economic inequality.  This phrase captures the essence of a plutocracy---rule by the rich who have taken over our democracy.  If a person understand that biblically oppression means the cruel and unjust exercise of power and authority (what oppression IS).  What does oppression DO to a people---it crushes them, humiliates them, treats people like animals; it also impoverishes, enslaves and kills human beings created in the image of God.

And tragedy of tragedies, we far too often have to add religious oppression to political and economic oppression.  Just as in Jesus' day when a religio-politico-economic elite ran the temple as a "den of robbers," so today in modern America much of the religious establishment either actively supports oppressive American corporate/financial capitalism or it tolerates it or only weakly opposes it.  Lacking a comprehensive socioeconomic theology of society, we are easily seduced by American materialism and don't know what to do about it.

In 1987, I wrote a book entitled Sociotheology; chapter 12 charted the beginnings of a biblical economics.  The following comes my self-published book:

There seems to be an endless debate over which economic system is more Christian---capitalism or socialism.  Each is regarded by the other as a great evil visited upon the earth.  Unfortunately neither landlord agricultural capitalism not state controlled, collective agriculture, neither industrial, corporate capitalism nor state-run, industrial socialism as they are commonly practiced in our world today come close to following scriptural principles.  Baptizing either capitalism or socialism with a few scripture verses will not make either Christian.  Greed and power have corrupted both economic systems almost beyond repair.  Each is essentially a secular system.

Jacques Ellul, author of Money and Power, a French sociologist and Christian ethicist, is not enamored with either capitalism or socialism.  Both fall short of kingdom of God principles.  Ellul states:

Capitalism has progressively subordinated all of life---individual and collective---to money. . . .  One by one the state, the legal system, art and the churches have submitted to the power of money. . . . One of the results of capitalism . . . is the subservience of being to having.

In a socialist society, individuals . . . remain entirely submitted to production.  The economy is the basis of their lives.  This is precisely the source of real alienation--not the subservience of being to personal having, but the subservience of being . . . to collective having.

Old Testament

We need to go back to the basics; we need a fresh look at the Scriptures.  Fortunately, we have a person who has done his scriptural homework who can guide us.  Christopher J.H. Wright (Ph.D., Cambridge), has written two masterpieces, an article and a book, on old Testament social ethics.  The article is "The Ethical Relevance of Israel as a Society," published in Transformation, an evangelical journal on social ethics.  The book is entitled An Eye for An Eye: The Place of Old Testament Ethics Today.  Both the article and the book cover much the same material, but the article delves in greater detail on some socioeconomic aspects of Israeli society.  Though Wright does not use the term. I call these masterpieces, sociotheology.  In my judgment, sociotheology can give us the setting and guidelines for a just economic system.

To be continued

The Enigma of Nelson Mandela: the agnostic who lived a more Christlike life than most Christians live.

Richard Stengel, author of Mandela's Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love and Courage (2009) and who assisted on Mandel's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, asserts the following about Mandela:

"He saw injustice and tried to fix it."  Mandel strove for national "harmony and equal opportunity."  He put these ideals ahead of personal and family needs:  "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity.  It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.  But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." (1990)

Observers of Mandela have described him as a person of grace and humility, one who forgives and reconciles, a person who was kind and redemptive.  He not only desired to free his people from oppression (apartheid), but also to reconcile both the oppressors (Afrikaners) and the oppressed (Africans) so that both could live in harmony in a new South Africa.  Grace, forgiveness and reconciliation are normally words we use to describe biblical Christians or Christ himself.  But in reading about Mandela, watching media reports and documentaries, I have not noted a single reference to a deep religious faith or that God called and empowered Mandela.  In fact, Richard Stengel at the end of his book declared that Mandela did not believe in a higher power, that we each shape and determine our own destiny.  So where did this remarkable ability to combine justice and reconciliation come from?

I wish to suggest six factors that shaped Mandela's life and ministry:

1.  The Image of God

Mandela may refuse to acknowledge this truth because he doesn't believe in God, but the fact remains that he was created in the image of God.  This is a remarkable gift to any human being.  He and we can use our minds to think creatively and wisely, to think, at least partially, the thoughts of God.  Sin/depravity confuses and distorts, but it does not destroy the image of God.

2.  The Common Grace of Creation

Romans 1:19-20: "God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities---his eternal power and divine nature---have been clearly seen. . . . so that men are without excuse."  The creation around us reveals God.  Some of this wisdom has been preserved in the liberal (liberating) arts.  Mandela read widely in this treasure of human wisdom.

3.  Disciple of Gandhi and King

Gandhi and King lived out the non-violent, peace-making, justice-seeking, love and reconcile with your enemies/oppressors message of the Sermon on the Mount.  Mandela drank deeply from this kingdom of God ethic even though he ignored the God part.

4.  Bi-cultural

Mandela believed deeply in ubuntu, the African ideal of the collective, more we than me (enlightenment); this shaped his goal of making the nation of South Africa, one nation with liberty and justice for all.  But he was also shaped by Western culture.  When a person is bi-cultural, he is less like to be trapped by tradition and ideology as substitutes for truth.  Both Gandhi and King were bi-cultural as are John Perkins and Jean Thomas who are remarkable leaders in their own right.  Being bi-cultural broadens your perspective.

5.  An independent thinker

Mandela was very much a free and independent thinker; he enjoyed conversing with other independent thinkers so he could see all angles, all sides of an issue.  Mandela was not doctrinaire, legalistic.  He held deeply to a few core principles such as human dignity, freedom, justice, etc. but in other things he was willing to change and adapt.

6. His prison experience

The younger Mandela was passionate and committed, but too immature to be a great leader in a time of crisis; 27 years of prison refined Mandela into maturity---the ability to see and chart the way to a new nation with the needed forgiveness to reconcile bitter enemies.

Some nuggets from the pen of Mandela:

His mission was "to liberate the oppressed and the oppressors both because both are robbed of their humanity when human freedom is restricted."

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."

Pope Francis and President Obama

While Gandhi, King and Mandela were remarkably successful in gaining freedom and reconciliation, nonviolently, for their people, they did not have the same success in achieving economic justice for their poor.  But today God is raising up two persons to provide leadership in attacking economic inequality (systems of economic oppression that excessively reward the rich and exploit the poor).  Pope Francis and President Obama are these leaders.  Both have given recent speeches/teachings on this defining issue of our times.

But they cannot achieve economic justice alone; citizens, pulpits and pews must also become fully engaged.  Here are some of my proposals; what are yours?

1.  Increase the minimum wage into a living wage of around $15.00 an hour; predistribution (living wage) is much better than redistribution (welfare type programs).

2.  In the financial sector, sharply cut back on Wall Street by expanding community banks, state banks and credit unions.

3.  In the production sector, tightly regulate corporations such as we now do with utilities.  Reduce CEO salaries, heavily tax the 1 percent.  Greatly expand Mondragon style cooperatives.  Sharply cut subsidies to Big Oil and corporate agriculture.  Instead, assist family farms and small businesses.

4.  At the college and university level, create a salary cap for coaches at $100,000.  Reduce staff numbers by half.  Prioritize teacher education department by increasing their salaries, resources and prestige.

5.  Create a NT theology of society addressing such social evils as ethnocentrism and oppression and solutions such as justice and reconciliation.

6.  What are your proposals?  What are you willing to commit to?

7.

8.

9.

Pope Francis and President Obama and Us

I see the hand of God, the Holy Spirit, at work through Pope Francis and President Obama; now it is up to we the people and we the pew to act.

More REQUIRED READING: 

Charles Blow, my favorite Afro American political pundit, sees the handwriting on the wall in his editorial column in the Dec. 5, 2013 entitled "The President, the Pope and the People."  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/opinion/blow-the-president-the-pope-and-the-people.html?emc=eta1

The New York Times Editorial Board, Dec.4 writes about the president's recent speech on inequality; they sum up the speech and its signficance with phrases such as "one of his strongest speeches" he "will spend the rest of his presidency on the defining challenge of our time, reducing economic inequality and improving upward mobility."  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/opinion/the-president-on-inequality.html?emc=eta1 

Both Pope Francis and President have spoken boldly and bluntly on economic inequality and how it oppresses the poor; now will pastors and priests and rabbis do the same.  Now will NT scholars finally get down to business and create a NT theology of society built upon love and justice, upon an understanding of the social evils of ethnocentrism and oppression.  Could CCDA host a summit bringing Pope Francis, President Obama and John Perkins together to chart a new direction for America?

John Perkins and Pope Francis are biblical justice cousins

Pope Francis' exhortation/manifesto entitled "The Joy of the Gospel" is REQUIRED reading. Google "Pope Francis The Joy of the Gospel" and you can read the complete text.  I would have sub-titled his manifesto "Joy Requires Justice."

In my opinion, John Perkins and Pope Francis are biblical justice cousins.  Pope Francis has his own version of John Perkins' three "r's"

Relocation---from the sanctuary to the streets.

Reconciliation---from exclusion to inclusion.

Redistribution---from economic inequality to justice.

I also see Pope Francis reflecting both Luke 4:18-19 and Luke 4:25-30.  Luke 4:18 highlights the oppressed poor and Luke 4:25-30 grapples with religious ethnocentrism (exclusion).

Francis urges the church to move from the security of the sanctuary to the suffering of the streets; the church should be among "the bruised, hurting and dirty," among the marginalized, excluded and oppressed.

Pope Francis, almost thou hast persuadest me to be a Catholic, at least in terms of your profoundly biblical social teaching.  I see you as a desperately needed prophetic figure for today's times.  Martin Luther King was a drum major for justice.  I see you as a drum major for the poor and against systems of economic oppression run by the rich.  Your exhortation is bold and clear.

King was beginning to become a biblical prophet against the rich and for the poor when he was assassinated.  One pundit sees your recent prophetic teaching "The Joy of the Gospel" as the equivalent to King's "I Have a Dream" speech; it also echoes King's "I Live a Nightmare" speech [my title] given in December 1967.  Matthew Fox, a radical priest who was defrocked because of his anti-rich and pro-poor stance, is glowing in his praise of "The Joy of the Gospel."  Fox asserts:

I think that he [Pope Francis] delivered a tremendous message yesterday with this document about justice in the world.  I think it goes far beyond church reform. . . . he is willing to really critique the economic system with strong language and connecting it to the biblical tradition of justice and the prophetic work on behalf of the poor . . . [who are] defenseless against the deified market.

Note some of the powerful phrases Francis uses:  "unfettered capitalism, a new tyranny, idolatry of money, trickle-down economics, deified market, consumerism, covetous heart, feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, blunted conscience, where powerful feed upon the powerless, crude and naive trust in the prevailing economic system, the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root, evil crystallized in unjust social structures."

I also see that Pope Francis, in his own way, critiques the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism. 

To be continued