According to Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown, black pastor, doctorate from Princeton, author of I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., the longer King lived, the more radical he became. So the "mature King" can best be discovered in some of his 1967 speeches, not his famous 1963 speech, the "I Have A Dream" speech. Dyson's book reflects careful scholarship and a lifelong interest in King, beginning at age nine.
Here is a quotation from a December 1967 speech given just four months prior to his assassination; I have dubbed this speech "I Live A Nightmare" but its real title is "A Christmas Sermon on Peace." The "mature King" spoke these sobering words:
"In 1963 . . . I tried to talk to the nation about a dream I had had, and I must confess . . . that not long after talking about that dream I started to see it turn into a nightmare . . . It was when four beautiful Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty. . . . I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating. Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes." Increasingly, King spoke as a prophet of judgment as he saw America doing little to respond to the desperate economic straits of black Americans. While King never forsook his principles of love and nonviolence, more and more, he sounded like a revolutionary. King said that for years he labored "with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the South, a little change here, a little change there." After years of significant but slow progress, King concluded: "I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values."
According to Dyson, "Since his death, we have made three mistakes in treating King's legacy. First, we have sanitized his ideas, ignoring his [increasing] mistrust of white America, his commitment to black solidarity and advancement, and the radical message of his later life. . . . while schoolchildren grow up learning only about the great pacifist, not the hard-nosed critic of economic justice." To encounter the real King, we must examine "the dream deferred, the hopes shattered, the plans abandoned." The mature, more radical King "was sometimes seen as a threat to American values and perceived in some quarters as dangerous." He was dangerous to those who believed in American exceptionalism, American ethnocentrism/superiority/supremacy, and American expansionism/nationalism/imperialism.
How was King more radical?
1. From dream to nightmare
2. From reform to revolution
3. From civil rights to economic justice
4. From selective justice to comprehensive justice (against Vietnam war)
5. From friend of LBJ (civil rights legislation) to a perceived enemy of LBJ (opposition to Vietnam war)
6. When King changed his mind about race and class, he both enraged conservatives and alienated liberals.
King was an improbable combination of severe prophet and zealous patriot; he held prophet and patriot in difficult tension. Wynton Marsalis eloquently put it: "When I think of King, I think of a man who was the single person in the 20th century who did most to advance the meaning and feeling of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. He is the single most important person in the fight that America has to be itself [good self]." As a severe prophet to America, King fearlessly exposed and condemned the trinity of social misery: racism, capitalism/materialism and militarism. This evil American trinity called for social transformation/revolution; while reform will always be necessary, in this case reform is not radical enough.
Slowly King realized that the principles of democracy were divorced from the practice of democracy, at least as far as blacks and other ethnic groups were concerned. America was schizoid; if blacks pursued the positive route---patroit---, they were dammed; if blacks pursued the prophetic critique, they were dammed. So King and American blacks developed a love/hate relationship with America; they loved the potential promise of freedom, equality and justice for all. But far too often they were denied the above and forced to live with poverty and oppression. King had a deep and abiding belief in democracy---a government of the people, by the people and for the people; that all Americans are created equal and thus should be treated equal; an America, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
For most white Americans, capitalism is a divinely inspired, marvelously productive economic system that has created the highest standard of living in the world. So why did King include American capitalism in his trinity of social evil. One major reason why American capitalism has worked so well is that Native Americans graciously donated free, fertile, resource-filled land and blacks donated free or cheap labor. Building on free land and free labor, any economic system ought to thrive. But to King, if American capitalism is divinely inspired, the owners and operators were demonic. For blacks, the fruit of capitalism seems to be exploitation and poverty.
King concluded that capitalism was irreparably evil so it had to be replaced with something radically different. He began to call this new system, democratic socialism; probably more in line with Swedish democratic capitalism/socialism. I would prefer radical democracy built around economic cooperatives using Mondragon as a model. Mondragon built all of society around the cooperative model; America has chosen the corporate model.
Dyson knows King backwards and forwards; he has immersed himself in King's writings and other relevant literature, and he knows Malcom X as well. I feel like I could write forever on the issues that Dyson discusses. More from Dyson on King.
Instead of a static (the 1963 speech "I Have a Dream"), saintly statue now "honored" by a type of people who once would have vigorously opposed him in the 1960s, Dyson wants to resurrect the prophet, the radical, the vital and complex Martin Luther King. "So much has changed since the glory days of the civil rights movement and so much has stayed the same."
On April 18, on NPR radio, I heard a report on the resegregation of the South; a powerful combination of ethnocentrism/oppression or race and class that is resegregating schools, neighborhoods and churches creating poor black ghettos riven by low-quality schools, broken marriages and families as well as mass incarceration. The old legal segregation took place in the heavily churched South; the new resegregation is taking place in the heavily churched South.
Dyson: "African Americans command their place at every level of society, even the corporate boardroom---yet the gap between the American middle class and the black poor is as wide as ever." Where is the church? Sanctuary-bound or street-involved?
Who was Martin Luther King? A sinful saint with hopeful dreams and tragic nightmares who lived and struggled in a schizoid America that combined the Christian trinity and the American trinity that created and maintained WASP ethnocentrism/oppression that crushed blacks. Dyson asserts that even with his significant flaws, King was the greatest American who ever lived. He was the only national leader who courageously addressed, in depth, America's two great and enduring social evils: ethnocentrism/racism and economic oppression, just as Jesus did in Luke 4:18 and Luke 4:25-30. For me, the revered Washington and Jefferson come in a distant second because both Washington and Jefferson compromised/promoted ethnocentrism and oppression---they owned many slaves. And although Lincoln freed the slaves, he himself was a racist.
King was a complex and multi-faceted person who had to grapple with many social evils including a deeply flawed white ministry/church; at the same time, he tried to live and promote love, reconciliation and justice. I have concluded the following:
1. King was a towering intellectual and a down-to-earth pragmatist.
2. King was an idealist and a man of action.
3. King was a sexual sinner and a justice saint; many evangelicals are sexual saints? and justice sinners; some are both sexual sinners and justice sinners.
4. King was an angry person who despised racism, yet one who loved his enemies.
5. King was a passionate patriot who despised American nationalism/imperialism.
6. King hoped for an American dream of beloved community, but was forced to live an American nightmare of economic oppression.
7. King wanted social harmony, a color-blind society, but he was forced by society to be race-conscious.
8. King hated oppression, but he loved the oppressor.
9. If the law was just, King obeyed the law; if the law was unjust, King put the demands of justice ahead of the legalisms of the law.
After a famous person is dead and memories fade, it is easy for ideologues to pick and choose a few isolated truths about King, then create a caricature of the real King, soften his prophetic message. Dyson aims to recreate the full King with all his loving and prophetic sides. Both conservatives and liberals sought to soften King's radicalness. Conservative said that King supported colorblindness---the denial of racism, pretending that it no longer exists. Liberals rejected the mature King's dawning realization that most American whites were almost incurably racist and ethnocentric; they unintentionally supported an ongoing and pervasive racism. Still true in 2014.
Having earnestly desired but been denied the promises of American democracy---freedom, equality,justice---, King became a prophet who exposed the trinity of social misery---racism, capitalism and militarism or racism, materialism and militarism.
Dyson devotes chapter four to a discussion of King's attitude toward American capitalism. King saw capitalism as an economic system of oppression. A month before his assassination, King spoke in Memphis; the following is Dyson's account of what happened:
"What is especially striking about the occasion is that King is documented in full transition from fighting segregation to opposing class oppression. King had retreated from focusing solely on race when he saw that blacks would continue to suffer if they lacked economic equality. . . . his stepped-up criticism of capitalism and the economic 'manipulation of the poor' got him branded by conservative critics as a lethal troublemaker." "No longer a liberal reformer who believed that the basic structures of American society were sound, though in need of adjustment, King was now a radical revisionist who argued that the fundamental institutions of American life must be made over in fairness to the poorest citizens. King's stringent dissent on the question of economic equality alienated him from most of the few allies that remained. . . . " In order to achieve the necessary radical change, "mass civil disobedience" would be required. To end capitalism's brutal effects, a "massive redistribution of wealth" would be required. King was precise and relentless in his condemnation of American capitalism as a brutal system of oppression.
Next we examine Dyson on King's analysis of American racism:
"Martin Luther King, Jr., hoped for a color-blind society, but only as oppression and racism were destroyed. . . . As he lamented, the 'concept of supremacy is so imbedded in the white society that it will take many years for color to cease to be a judgmental factor.'"
"For the most part, King had been broadly trusting of whites. He believed that even the most vicious bigots [and white ministers] would be won over by black suffering. But during the last three years of his life, King questioned his understanding of whites. . . . In the past, King believed in the essential goodness of whites. . . . Most whites, he sadly concluded, were racist."
"White America had practiced psychological and spiritual genocide against black people."
Now I would like to express some of my reflections on the throny problems of ethnocentrism and racism. King's instincts and life experiences led him in the direction of truth on race/racism, but there was a surprising lack of scientific and sociological precision in both his analysis and communication. Without question, he understood that racism---the belief in superior and inferior races---was wrong. But it is not clear that he fully understood that the concept of race itself was erroneous, invalid both biblically and scientifically.
The only 'validity' that race/racism had was due to the social construction of reality, ideological propaganda had for generations promoted error as truth so that most people in American society had been convinced that there were separate and distinct black and white races and that whites were the superior race. Totally false, yet acted upon as if it were true.
King did invent a rather vague and imprecise term to indicate that there was something deep and abiding in white society that went beyond Klan type bigotry. He called this "unconscious racism." I think he was moving toward pervasive white ethnocentrism---an assumed and unquestioned supposed white ethnic superiority. Race has no scientific validity; ethnicity does. Ethnicity/culture/language differences are real; difference does not mean superior and inferior---ethnocentric. The founding fathers were more ethnocentric than racist. They held a deep belief, especially Thomas Jefferson, that Anglo-Saxon culture/civilization was superior.
Since the issue of race/racism/ethnocentrism was so central to the civil rights movement, King should have been more precise in his analysis and communication. Scientifically and biblically, the concept of race is false, erroneous, totally inaccurate. For ethnocentric and ideological purposes, race was invented by whites. King and his colleagues successfully abolished the worst of Klan bigotry and legal segregation---no small accomplishment---but American ethnocentrism or WASPishness is still alive and well and thriving in 2014.
America needs a better understanding of the problem. We are battling not just racism, not just ethnocentrism, not just pseudo-religion, but a trio of factors, a trinity of social evil. I like the seldom-used term White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant; White or whiteness, Anglo-Saxon culture, and Protestant (think American civil religion or evangelical Protestants). These supposedly superior American traits then are used to sanctify capitalism and nationalism.
In conclusion, another Martin Luther King (or better yet a million mini-Kings) are needed to finish the job. They need to understand that the agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit. They need to create a NT sociotheology built on the teaching about ethnocentrism and oppression; also the combination of love, reconciliation and justice.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Monday, April 7, 2014
The Death Dance: First Oppression, then Damage, Dysfunction and Demonization
The Death Dance, the double whammy: from American oppression to American demonization.
Thesis Statement: White male oppressors have falsely , but successfully, blamed oppressed urban blacks for their high rates of unwed mothers and unmarried fathers, citing flawed character and culture as the primary cause.
Kathryn Edin, graduate of North Park University, former Harvard prof now at Johns Hopkins, a sociologist who specializes in urban poverty, has coauthored Promises I Keep: Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage and Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. Her latest coauthored book is Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City (2013).
In terms of her sociological research, Edin practices what John Perkins preaches and practices---relocation. She lives among the urban poor; her research clients become her friends; they are persons, not just sociological stats. In anthropological terms, she practices participation-observation and indepth interviews. Edin is the best of the best on urban poverty, urban marriage and family issues. She receives high praise from one of America's foremost experts on the urban ghetto, William Julius Wilson. Alex Kotlowitz correctly asserts: "Doing the Best I Can turns many of our assumptions about [urban] fatherhood on their heads."
Edin not only has done her own pioneering research, she has also read all the relevant literature covering the past 60 years, including Tally's Corner by the anthropologist Eliot Liebow about the 1960s street-corner men in Washington, DC. Liebow concluded that most black men wanted a successful marriage and family; they want to be a good bread-winner, fulfill the traditional role of husband and father, but because of lack of education and job skills, they could not get and hold a good job. A sense of constant failure was too shameful to live with so they split and lived on the streets.
In her Introduction, Edin traces the demonization of urban, mostly black, unmarried fathers. Conservative William Bennett rages: "It is unmarried fathers who are missing in record numbers, who impregnate women and selfishly flee. . . . who deserve our censure." Bill Cosby, President Obama, Former Senator Moynihan, Bill Moyers, President Reagan and Clinton and most Americans seem to agree. There is almost universal American censure of these unmarried fathers.
But the person who has done the most damage, the worst demonization, is the liberal Bill Moyers and his close friend, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1965, Moynihan wrote The Negro Family which sharply critiqued out-of-wedlock childbearing and the "complete breakdown" of the inner city black family. 20 years later, in 1986, Bill Moyers in a CBS Special Report "The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America" continued the theme. This was TV so its impact was much greater than the book. Edin states: "The Vanishing Family went on to win every major award in journalism. Those commenting publicly on the broadcast were nearly unanimous in their ready acceptance of Timothy McSeed as the archetype of unmarried fatherhood."
Black and white leaders, conservatives and liberals, seemingly everyone participated in the demonization, the verbal lynching of unmarried black fathers. "Only a lone correspondent from Canada's Globe and Mail offered a rebuttal, fuming that Timothy 'could have been cast by the Ku Klux Klan; you couldn't find a black American more perfectly calculated to arouse loathing, contempt and fear." Most sociologists did little to correct this demonization; statistics seem to confirm the half-truth; the damage had been done; the demonization was complete.
Missing from this one-sided view of black males is the story of death---physical, psychological and social death. 400 years of unending oppression which have profoundly damaged cultural values and social institutions such as marriage and family. Under slavery, marriages and families were broken up again and again. Under segregation and sharecropping (neoslavery), marriage and family were put under enormous stress. Today, in 2014, unjust mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap have continued the process. For Latinos, under President Obama's reign, there have been 2 million deportations, again fracturing the family.
Before we demonize black men, we should first demonize evil white men who created and maintained numerous systems of oppression from Indian genocide to slavery to segregation to mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap. Before we demonize black men, we first should demonize white Luthern pastors who over a 40 year period led 40 out of 44 Lutheran churches out of the city of Detroit. Before we demonize black men, we should first demonize white pastors in Mississippi who according to black Mississippian Lee Harper "allowed injustice to run deep and cloak itself well among those things that appeared just." White churches legitimated oppression.
Many black men have their flaws, but they are caught between the impossible evils of demonization and oppression. Note what slavery did to Hebrew slaves: "But when Moses delivered this message [I am going to rescue you from slavery], they didn't even hear him---they were that beaten down in spirit [broken, crushed in spirit] by the harsh slave conditions [the system of oppression]." Exodus 6:9, The Message.
The facts:
1. The demonic oppressor created the damaged and then dysfunctional oppressed.
2. In terms of the 20-1 racial wealth gap, the demonic oppressor is 20 times more evil than the damaged oppressed.
3. In terms of unjust mass incarceration in Iowa, the demonic oppressor is 10 times more evil than the damaged oppresed.
4. So the nation needs a 10 part documentary on The Demonic White Oppressors to follow the single documentary on the Vanishing Black Family.
The propaganda:
1. The good guys (white males) try to help the bad guys (black males) with welfare.
2. White is normal, good; black is flawed, demonic.
The historical facts:
1. Blacks have been oppressed and demonized for 400 years.
2. Whites have been the oppressors and the demonizers for 400 years.
3. The white American god is the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism.
This perverted American trinity is more fundamental to America than is liberal or conservative ideology so both conservatives and liberals demonize urban black males.
THE WHITE MALE DEMONIC OPPRESSORS CREATE PHYSICAL. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL DEATH AMONGST URBAN BLACKS.
Then the white demonic oppressors cleverly labeled the severely damaged/dysfunctional black oppressed as the demonic one; to get away from the dangerous damaged black community, the white demonic oppressors fled to the safety of the 'spiritual suburbs'. White churches joined the mass exodus; they did not stay to repair the damage.
The moral of the tragic story for biblical kingdom of God Christians:
1. Do not tolerate or in any way participate in the Death Dance sponsored by the American Trinity.
2. Do not allow biblical ignorance about oppression and justice to lead you to neglect justice and the love of God.
3. Be willing to leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets.
The Divine Dance: From Doing Justice to Experiencing Joy
The Death Dance is led by Pharisee type people who neglect justice and the love of God. The Divine Dance is led by kingdom of God people who do Jubilee justice in love. According to Pastor/Prophet/Pope Francis, kingdom of God type people should leave the security of the sanctuary and relocate among the suffering of the streets, among the damaged oppressed.
Conclusion:
Fellow Americanized Christians, when you choose which dance to join---The Death Dance or The Divine Dance---, be wary of following the 'biblical' Puritan example because they oppressed and demonized Native Americans. Also be wary of listening to advice from the founding fathers who followed the American Trinity.
Suggestions:
If you are not yet fully convinced of my thesis, I suggest that you read Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Some nuggets from the book:
1. "terrorizing black people with relentless physical and psychological violence."
2. "The pace and unrelenting nature of work broke many slaves psychologically as well as physically." Think Exodus 6:1-9.
3. Solomon Northup on his first whipping "My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell."
4. Northup describes the impact of the unbelievably severe whipping of Patsey: "Indeed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. The burden of a deep melancholy weighed heavily on her spirits. She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step---there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor---the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth were gone. She fell into a mournful and desponding mood. . . ."
And you should read the Introduction of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander who wrote: "A human rights mightmare is occurring on our watch. . . . The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not---as many argue---just a symptom of poverty or poor choices [flawed character or culture], but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work [a redesigned system of oppression]."
The above explains why Edward Blum wrote the following about W.E.B. DuBois: "This spiritual rage touched every element of his career and was one of the defining features of his long and storied life." Would spiritual rage be much better than our current apathy?
Thesis Statement: White male oppressors have falsely , but successfully, blamed oppressed urban blacks for their high rates of unwed mothers and unmarried fathers, citing flawed character and culture as the primary cause.
Kathryn Edin, graduate of North Park University, former Harvard prof now at Johns Hopkins, a sociologist who specializes in urban poverty, has coauthored Promises I Keep: Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage and Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. Her latest coauthored book is Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City (2013).
In terms of her sociological research, Edin practices what John Perkins preaches and practices---relocation. She lives among the urban poor; her research clients become her friends; they are persons, not just sociological stats. In anthropological terms, she practices participation-observation and indepth interviews. Edin is the best of the best on urban poverty, urban marriage and family issues. She receives high praise from one of America's foremost experts on the urban ghetto, William Julius Wilson. Alex Kotlowitz correctly asserts: "Doing the Best I Can turns many of our assumptions about [urban] fatherhood on their heads."
Edin not only has done her own pioneering research, she has also read all the relevant literature covering the past 60 years, including Tally's Corner by the anthropologist Eliot Liebow about the 1960s street-corner men in Washington, DC. Liebow concluded that most black men wanted a successful marriage and family; they want to be a good bread-winner, fulfill the traditional role of husband and father, but because of lack of education and job skills, they could not get and hold a good job. A sense of constant failure was too shameful to live with so they split and lived on the streets.
In her Introduction, Edin traces the demonization of urban, mostly black, unmarried fathers. Conservative William Bennett rages: "It is unmarried fathers who are missing in record numbers, who impregnate women and selfishly flee. . . . who deserve our censure." Bill Cosby, President Obama, Former Senator Moynihan, Bill Moyers, President Reagan and Clinton and most Americans seem to agree. There is almost universal American censure of these unmarried fathers.
But the person who has done the most damage, the worst demonization, is the liberal Bill Moyers and his close friend, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1965, Moynihan wrote The Negro Family which sharply critiqued out-of-wedlock childbearing and the "complete breakdown" of the inner city black family. 20 years later, in 1986, Bill Moyers in a CBS Special Report "The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America" continued the theme. This was TV so its impact was much greater than the book. Edin states: "The Vanishing Family went on to win every major award in journalism. Those commenting publicly on the broadcast were nearly unanimous in their ready acceptance of Timothy McSeed as the archetype of unmarried fatherhood."
Black and white leaders, conservatives and liberals, seemingly everyone participated in the demonization, the verbal lynching of unmarried black fathers. "Only a lone correspondent from Canada's Globe and Mail offered a rebuttal, fuming that Timothy 'could have been cast by the Ku Klux Klan; you couldn't find a black American more perfectly calculated to arouse loathing, contempt and fear." Most sociologists did little to correct this demonization; statistics seem to confirm the half-truth; the damage had been done; the demonization was complete.
Missing from this one-sided view of black males is the story of death---physical, psychological and social death. 400 years of unending oppression which have profoundly damaged cultural values and social institutions such as marriage and family. Under slavery, marriages and families were broken up again and again. Under segregation and sharecropping (neoslavery), marriage and family were put under enormous stress. Today, in 2014, unjust mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap have continued the process. For Latinos, under President Obama's reign, there have been 2 million deportations, again fracturing the family.
Before we demonize black men, we should first demonize evil white men who created and maintained numerous systems of oppression from Indian genocide to slavery to segregation to mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap. Before we demonize black men, we first should demonize white Luthern pastors who over a 40 year period led 40 out of 44 Lutheran churches out of the city of Detroit. Before we demonize black men, we should first demonize white pastors in Mississippi who according to black Mississippian Lee Harper "allowed injustice to run deep and cloak itself well among those things that appeared just." White churches legitimated oppression.
Many black men have their flaws, but they are caught between the impossible evils of demonization and oppression. Note what slavery did to Hebrew slaves: "But when Moses delivered this message [I am going to rescue you from slavery], they didn't even hear him---they were that beaten down in spirit [broken, crushed in spirit] by the harsh slave conditions [the system of oppression]." Exodus 6:9, The Message.
The facts:
1. The demonic oppressor created the damaged and then dysfunctional oppressed.
2. In terms of the 20-1 racial wealth gap, the demonic oppressor is 20 times more evil than the damaged oppressed.
3. In terms of unjust mass incarceration in Iowa, the demonic oppressor is 10 times more evil than the damaged oppresed.
4. So the nation needs a 10 part documentary on The Demonic White Oppressors to follow the single documentary on the Vanishing Black Family.
The propaganda:
1. The good guys (white males) try to help the bad guys (black males) with welfare.
2. White is normal, good; black is flawed, demonic.
The historical facts:
1. Blacks have been oppressed and demonized for 400 years.
2. Whites have been the oppressors and the demonizers for 400 years.
3. The white American god is the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism.
This perverted American trinity is more fundamental to America than is liberal or conservative ideology so both conservatives and liberals demonize urban black males.
THE WHITE MALE DEMONIC OPPRESSORS CREATE PHYSICAL. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL DEATH AMONGST URBAN BLACKS.
Then the white demonic oppressors cleverly labeled the severely damaged/dysfunctional black oppressed as the demonic one; to get away from the dangerous damaged black community, the white demonic oppressors fled to the safety of the 'spiritual suburbs'. White churches joined the mass exodus; they did not stay to repair the damage.
The moral of the tragic story for biblical kingdom of God Christians:
1. Do not tolerate or in any way participate in the Death Dance sponsored by the American Trinity.
2. Do not allow biblical ignorance about oppression and justice to lead you to neglect justice and the love of God.
3. Be willing to leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets.
The Divine Dance: From Doing Justice to Experiencing Joy
The Death Dance is led by Pharisee type people who neglect justice and the love of God. The Divine Dance is led by kingdom of God people who do Jubilee justice in love. According to Pastor/Prophet/Pope Francis, kingdom of God type people should leave the security of the sanctuary and relocate among the suffering of the streets, among the damaged oppressed.
Conclusion:
Fellow Americanized Christians, when you choose which dance to join---The Death Dance or The Divine Dance---, be wary of following the 'biblical' Puritan example because they oppressed and demonized Native Americans. Also be wary of listening to advice from the founding fathers who followed the American Trinity.
Suggestions:
If you are not yet fully convinced of my thesis, I suggest that you read Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Some nuggets from the book:
1. "terrorizing black people with relentless physical and psychological violence."
2. "The pace and unrelenting nature of work broke many slaves psychologically as well as physically." Think Exodus 6:1-9.
3. Solomon Northup on his first whipping "My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell."
4. Northup describes the impact of the unbelievably severe whipping of Patsey: "Indeed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. The burden of a deep melancholy weighed heavily on her spirits. She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step---there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor---the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth were gone. She fell into a mournful and desponding mood. . . ."
And you should read the Introduction of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander who wrote: "A human rights mightmare is occurring on our watch. . . . The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not---as many argue---just a symptom of poverty or poor choices [flawed character or culture], but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work [a redesigned system of oppression]."
The above explains why Edward Blum wrote the following about W.E.B. DuBois: "This spiritual rage touched every element of his career and was one of the defining features of his long and storied life." Would spiritual rage be much better than our current apathy?
Friday, April 4, 2014
Oppression and Shalom
This essay is heavily drawn from Willard M. Swartley's 2006 book Covenant of Peace; how to overcome evil with good by loving your enemies.
Oppression is one of the worst forms of evil, especially lifelong or generational systems of oppression; such systems of oppression cause physical death, psychological death and social death. Physical death as in individual death or even genocide; example: all of the original Indian inhabitants on all of the Caribbean Islands were exterminated. Psychological death: the Hebrew slaves are described in Exodus 6:9 as broken in spirit, crushed in spirit. Social death: social institutions such as marriage and family in urban ghettos are broken, severely damaged. cannot function normally.
In the NIV, oppression occurs 125 times; in an Hebrew OT, there are 555 references to oppression and its synonyms (Hebrew roots). No major theologian has made oppression a central theological concept. In a survey of volunteers at the Perkins Center, only 1 in 20 had heard a sermon on oppression. In a survey of 40 college students (March 2006) from three different Christian liberal arts colleges, none of the 40 had had a bible prof who took at least one class period to teach on oppression. It is hard to effectively counter something you don't understand.
Oppression and shalom are polar opposites. Peace, eirene, is found 100 times in the NT. Shalom occurs over 200 times in the OT. The basic meaning of shalom: "well-being, wholeness, completeness." Other meanings: "peace, salvation, prosperity, health, welfare." Eirene and shalom stand against "oppression, deceit, fraud, and all actions that violate the divine order for life." Violence is the opposite of shalom. Shalom is sometimes paired with justice and righteousness.
"The Roman Empire was celebrated as an ideal state of affairs . . . a time of prosperity and order. These features accord with the Hebrew notion of shalom. But the empire was also a situation in which many subjugated people suffered oppression from Rome's golden age of prosperity---features that oppose and mock shalom."
What is the relationship between the NT Greek eirene and the OT Hebrew shalom? They are essentially synonymous. "shalom is translated in the LXX [Greek OT] by eirene" most of the time.
It is possible to love your enemy in such a way that you not only stop oppression, but you win over your oppressor. A case in point: At one time Senator Stennis from Mississippi openly supported segregation and opposed the civil rights movement. He and other souther senators met every Tuesday to plan how to stop the civil rights movement. But, years later, as Stennis was retiring, he told fellow senator Joe Biden, "The Civil Rights Movement did more to free the white man than the black man. . . . It freed my soul. It freed my soul."
Love and justice combined can stop oppression and create shalom. Neglect of justice and the love of God allows oppression to thrive.
Oppression is one of the worst forms of evil, especially lifelong or generational systems of oppression; such systems of oppression cause physical death, psychological death and social death. Physical death as in individual death or even genocide; example: all of the original Indian inhabitants on all of the Caribbean Islands were exterminated. Psychological death: the Hebrew slaves are described in Exodus 6:9 as broken in spirit, crushed in spirit. Social death: social institutions such as marriage and family in urban ghettos are broken, severely damaged. cannot function normally.
In the NIV, oppression occurs 125 times; in an Hebrew OT, there are 555 references to oppression and its synonyms (Hebrew roots). No major theologian has made oppression a central theological concept. In a survey of volunteers at the Perkins Center, only 1 in 20 had heard a sermon on oppression. In a survey of 40 college students (March 2006) from three different Christian liberal arts colleges, none of the 40 had had a bible prof who took at least one class period to teach on oppression. It is hard to effectively counter something you don't understand.
Oppression and shalom are polar opposites. Peace, eirene, is found 100 times in the NT. Shalom occurs over 200 times in the OT. The basic meaning of shalom: "well-being, wholeness, completeness." Other meanings: "peace, salvation, prosperity, health, welfare." Eirene and shalom stand against "oppression, deceit, fraud, and all actions that violate the divine order for life." Violence is the opposite of shalom. Shalom is sometimes paired with justice and righteousness.
"The Roman Empire was celebrated as an ideal state of affairs . . . a time of prosperity and order. These features accord with the Hebrew notion of shalom. But the empire was also a situation in which many subjugated people suffered oppression from Rome's golden age of prosperity---features that oppose and mock shalom."
What is the relationship between the NT Greek eirene and the OT Hebrew shalom? They are essentially synonymous. "shalom is translated in the LXX [Greek OT] by eirene" most of the time.
It is possible to love your enemy in such a way that you not only stop oppression, but you win over your oppressor. A case in point: At one time Senator Stennis from Mississippi openly supported segregation and opposed the civil rights movement. He and other souther senators met every Tuesday to plan how to stop the civil rights movement. But, years later, as Stennis was retiring, he told fellow senator Joe Biden, "The Civil Rights Movement did more to free the white man than the black man. . . . It freed my soul. It freed my soul."
Love and justice combined can stop oppression and create shalom. Neglect of justice and the love of God allows oppression to thrive.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Oppression, Jubilee Justice and Shalom
Why are white American evangelicals fully biblical in inspiration, but selectively biblical in theology? The NT gospel is two-pronged so why do American evangelicals preach a one-pronged gospel?
The full NT gospel is about both Jesus and the kingdom of God (Acts 8:12; 28:23; 28:31). The NT gospel is about personal transformation and social transformation, about personal reconciliation and social reconciliation, about personal justification and Jubilee justice. White American evangelicals are very strong on the personal transformation gospel based on the cross and the resurrection, but very weak on the social transformation gospel tied to the kingdom of God. So this essay will highlight the key biblical concepts tied to the kingdom of God gospel: oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom; also ethnocentrism and reconciliation.
How do we understand and implement the kingdom of God gospel which Romans 14:17 (Noble paraphrase) summarizes as "justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit?" Jesus sums it up in Luke 4:18-19 (oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom) and in Luke 4:25-30 (ethnocentrism, equality and reconciliation).
Luke 4:18-19---from oppression to Jubilee justice
1. incredibly good news for the oppressed poor
2. releasing the oppressed poor from their systems of oppression
3. replacing the systems of oppression with Jubilee justice (year of the Lord's favor)
4. when Jubilee justice is implemented, a community/society experiences a measure of shalom
Luke 4:25-30; also Eph.2 and Gal. 3:28---from ethnocentrism to reconciliation
1. the arrogant sense of religious and ethnic superiority held by the Jews created the ethnocentric division between Jew and Gentile
2. God's grace and love is equally available to the despised Gentiles
3. the cross breaks down the ethnic divisions, hostility, and reconciles Jew and Gentile in one body. Eph. 2:1-10---personal reconciliation based on the cross; 2:11-22---social reconciliation based on the cross.
The gospel aims at revolutionary transformation, not just reform. Reforms are good, but not good enough. Contrary to popular opinion, neither the abolitionist movement nor the civil rights movement were revolutionary enough; therefore they were soon followed by new systems of oppression.
On a continuum, oppression is on one end of the line and shalom at the other end; Jubilee justice is in the middle of the continuum with one arrow pointing toward oppression and another arrow pointing toward shalom. Oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom can be studied as individuals concepts to begin with, but a comprehensive kingdom of God theology requires that they be treated as a social package, as a unit.
No white American evangelical theologian that I know of has studied oppression/injustice in the NT. Little has been done on justice in the NT; the NT desperately needs to be rejusticized. There is little scholarship on shalom in the NT. End result: white evangelicals neglect justice and the love of God. To get started, I suggest that you read Perry Yoder's Shalom and Willard Swartley's Covenant of Peace.
Both the abolitionist and the civil rights movements achieved one dimension of biblical justice---freedom from a specific systems of oppression, slavery and segregation. Tremendous accomplishments, but neither movement abolished the underlying ethnocentrism/racism; many white abolitionists were racist as was Lincoln. A second failure. Jubilee justice requires not only freedom from oppression but also access to enough creation resources (a plot of land) so that individuals, families and communities can have self-sufficiency/well-being/shalom. Neither movement was able to destroy or limit the American trinity; in large part this was because most of the white evangelical church was silent or an active participant in oppression and ethnocentrism.
For total Jubilee justice, in an agricultural society, land reform (40 acres and a mule) must accompany freedom; in an industrial society, _______________ must accompany freedom; in a high tech society, ______________ must accompany freedom. An historical example of what could and should have been. After Grant conquered Vickburg, by military order, he initiated economic justice. He took over the Jefferson Davis plantation, leased it to freed slaves, loaned them supplies to put in a crop. The ex-slaves worked hard and skillfully, produced a good crop, paid off the loan, and made a profit. Grant was impressed so he doubled the program the next year. Same success. Given half a chance, freed slaves quickly achieved a degree of self-sufficiency. But this Jubilee justice type program did not last long because after the War was over, as an act of reconciliation, the plantation was given back to the Davis family. Understandable, but I think justice for blacks should have been given higher priority than reconciliation between northern and southern whites. Dwight L. Moody also made the same mistake; he put reconciliation between northern and southern Christians before Jubilee justice for freed black slaves.
The successful just combination between freedom and economic justice ended in part because the church pulled back after freedom was obtained; it did not push equally hard for Jubilee justice. Freedom without justice is shallow, hollow.
Even today white American evangelicals have little understanding of the extensive biblical teaching on oppression both in the OT and the NT. I once asked a seminary prof to do a literature search for me on the biblical teaching on oppression; he found no such evangelical theological literature; neither have I. This is one reason why the American church is so shallow in its understanding and action on social problems, why most Christians and churches know little about and are doing little to end the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males nor the 20-1 racial wealth gap. These evils are thriving in 2014.
Also no white evangelical theologian has rejusticized the NT leaving the church with a shallow understanding of the biblical teaching on oppression and justice. So inspite of some nice-sounding rhetoric on shalom theology, oppressors are beating the church hands down. Evangelical pastors, scholars, theologians, where are you? Standing on the sidelines?? Are you continuing to send out missionaries with a flawed, incomplete gospel?
In 1990, I wrote an article entitled "A Sociologist Looks at Oppression and Shalom." With a few revisions, I now quote from that article:
The Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron and his sons, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel; you shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace [shalom].
Here the blessing of God is the grace of God resting upon his obedient people granting them shalom. Shalom is a rich word meaning more than peace; it carries a sense of wholeness, completeness, harmony. Shalom is a total sense of well-being for not only individuals but also for a community, a people walking with God together. The blessing of shalom carries a sense of well-being in all of life---good health, economic necessities, social harmony and spiritually. The people blessed with shalom experienced authentic joy in life.
It is rather obvious why a true prophet of God would preach and promote shalom. But, according to Jeremiah, the false prophets also proclaimed shalom; Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11 state: "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying 'Peace, peace,' when there was no peace." Or 'shalom, shalom,' when there was no shalom."
If there was no shalom, what was there? Again and again the prophets thundered that there was religious idolatry and social oppression; social oppression was often a consequence of religious idolatry. In Jeremiah 6:13 and 8:10, we hear oppression described: "Because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely." Or Jeremiah 5:26-28: "For wicked men are found among my people . . . Therefore they have become great and rich, they have grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds in deeds of wickedness; they judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy."
In talking about Jerusalem, the supposed city of shalom, Jeremiah (6:6) declares: "this is the city which must be punished; there is nothing but oppression within her." In 7:6 he calls on Israel not to "oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow. . . . " Jeremiah 9:6: "Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, says the Lord." Oppression is the opposite of shalom and the absence of justice; oppression and shalom are polar opposites. What is oppression and what does oppression do? Oppression occurs when people in power and authority, usually through social institutions, misuse that power and authority cruelly and unjustly to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill persons created in the image of God.
In contrast shalom occurs when a community, a people of God, are walking in covenant with God and neighbors according to the standards of justice and righteousness Oppression crushes people; justice release the crushed ones. Oppression humiliates persons; justice affirms persons. Oppression animalizes people; justice humanizes people. Oppression impoverishes people; justice prospers (necessities of life) people. Oppression enslaves persons; justice liberates persons. Oppression kills; only justice beyond this life can provide shalom for these persons.
English speaking evangelicals have written very little on the biblical concept of oppression. Until the 1980s there was very little of substance on oppression in standard bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. The only semi-thorough (nothing from the NT) article on oppression is found in the revised (1986) International Standard Bible Encyclopedia with a total of 222 lines; the 1929 ISBE article consisted of a brief, shallow 30 lines. The 1986 ISBE entry on oppression drew heavily from research done by Thomas Hanks and Elsa Tamez, Spanish speaking evangelicals. The norm, however, is no listing of oppression, as in The Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1980) published by InterVarsity Press; this dictionary lists Ophrah, Oracle, Orchard and Ordination, but nothing on the 555 references to oppression (Hebrew roots).
A question: Why this lack of scholarly research on biblical oppression by white American evangelicals? Have our theologians come primarily from the white middle class? Do they lack exposure to, sensitivity to, the experience of being oppressed? Do they read their Bible through white middle class cultural lenses? Strangely, even their limited awareness of oppression may have been forced upon evangelicals by black theologians and liberation theologians. Even in 2014, I still sense a lack of biblical knowledge by white North American evangelicals.
In 1983, Thomas Hanks, a North American evangelical teaching at the Latin American Biblical Seminary in Costa Rica, published in English God So Loved the Third World; The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression. In 1982 the English translation of Elsa Tamez's Bible of the Oppressed appeared. Tamez was an evangelical colleague of Hanks. We should all be immensely grateful for these quality analyses of the biblical concept of oppression.
Tamez states that "there is an almost complete absence of the theme of oppression in European and North American biblical theology." Hanks asserts: "Anyone who has read much in the theological classics (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Berkouwer et al) will recognize that the theme of oppression has received little or no attention there. One might think that the Bible says little about oppression. . . . However, when we strike the rock of a complete Bible concordance, to our great surprise we hit a gusher of texts and terms that deal with oppression! In short, we find a basic structural category of biblical theology.
After a thorough study of the Hebrew roots for oppression, Hanks concludes: "Oppression is a fundamental structural category of biblical theology, as in evidenced by the large number of Hebrew roots denoting it (10 basic roots, 20 in all); the frequency of their occurrence (555 times); the basic theological character of many texts that speak of it (Gen. 15; Exod. 1-5; Ps. 72,103,146; Isa. 8-9,42,53,58, etc.); and the significance of oppression in Israel's great creedal confession (Deut. 26:5-9).
In my judgment, unless a Christian has a profound understanding of the horror of oppression, a Christian is unlikely to develop a passionate and informed concern for social justice, Jubilee justice. The American church has little biblical understanding of oppression; the church has done little to execute justice on behalf of the oppressed poor. Some charity, yes, but not always well-informed; some reform, yes; but little transformational Jubilee justice.
Perry Yoder, an OT scholar and author of Shalom, says the major thesis of his book is that shalom "is squarely against injustice and oppression. Indeed, we shall argue that shalom demands a transforming of unjust social and economic orders." In order to achieve shalom, Christians must "do justice," "execute justice," "pursue justice," and "give justice." Yoder adds that "God's justice sets things right, it is a liberating justice."
When Jesus spoke about Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor in the Nazareth synagogue, it is no wonder that "all spoke well of him." Would that the American church would do the same! Will we be well known for stopping oppression, doing justice; then experiencing shalom and celebrating with authentic joy---all in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
The full NT gospel is about both Jesus and the kingdom of God (Acts 8:12; 28:23; 28:31). The NT gospel is about personal transformation and social transformation, about personal reconciliation and social reconciliation, about personal justification and Jubilee justice. White American evangelicals are very strong on the personal transformation gospel based on the cross and the resurrection, but very weak on the social transformation gospel tied to the kingdom of God. So this essay will highlight the key biblical concepts tied to the kingdom of God gospel: oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom; also ethnocentrism and reconciliation.
How do we understand and implement the kingdom of God gospel which Romans 14:17 (Noble paraphrase) summarizes as "justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit?" Jesus sums it up in Luke 4:18-19 (oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom) and in Luke 4:25-30 (ethnocentrism, equality and reconciliation).
Luke 4:18-19---from oppression to Jubilee justice
1. incredibly good news for the oppressed poor
2. releasing the oppressed poor from their systems of oppression
3. replacing the systems of oppression with Jubilee justice (year of the Lord's favor)
4. when Jubilee justice is implemented, a community/society experiences a measure of shalom
Luke 4:25-30; also Eph.2 and Gal. 3:28---from ethnocentrism to reconciliation
1. the arrogant sense of religious and ethnic superiority held by the Jews created the ethnocentric division between Jew and Gentile
2. God's grace and love is equally available to the despised Gentiles
3. the cross breaks down the ethnic divisions, hostility, and reconciles Jew and Gentile in one body. Eph. 2:1-10---personal reconciliation based on the cross; 2:11-22---social reconciliation based on the cross.
The gospel aims at revolutionary transformation, not just reform. Reforms are good, but not good enough. Contrary to popular opinion, neither the abolitionist movement nor the civil rights movement were revolutionary enough; therefore they were soon followed by new systems of oppression.
On a continuum, oppression is on one end of the line and shalom at the other end; Jubilee justice is in the middle of the continuum with one arrow pointing toward oppression and another arrow pointing toward shalom. Oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom can be studied as individuals concepts to begin with, but a comprehensive kingdom of God theology requires that they be treated as a social package, as a unit.
No white American evangelical theologian that I know of has studied oppression/injustice in the NT. Little has been done on justice in the NT; the NT desperately needs to be rejusticized. There is little scholarship on shalom in the NT. End result: white evangelicals neglect justice and the love of God. To get started, I suggest that you read Perry Yoder's Shalom and Willard Swartley's Covenant of Peace.
Both the abolitionist and the civil rights movements achieved one dimension of biblical justice---freedom from a specific systems of oppression, slavery and segregation. Tremendous accomplishments, but neither movement abolished the underlying ethnocentrism/racism; many white abolitionists were racist as was Lincoln. A second failure. Jubilee justice requires not only freedom from oppression but also access to enough creation resources (a plot of land) so that individuals, families and communities can have self-sufficiency/well-being/shalom. Neither movement was able to destroy or limit the American trinity; in large part this was because most of the white evangelical church was silent or an active participant in oppression and ethnocentrism.
For total Jubilee justice, in an agricultural society, land reform (40 acres and a mule) must accompany freedom; in an industrial society, _______________ must accompany freedom; in a high tech society, ______________ must accompany freedom. An historical example of what could and should have been. After Grant conquered Vickburg, by military order, he initiated economic justice. He took over the Jefferson Davis plantation, leased it to freed slaves, loaned them supplies to put in a crop. The ex-slaves worked hard and skillfully, produced a good crop, paid off the loan, and made a profit. Grant was impressed so he doubled the program the next year. Same success. Given half a chance, freed slaves quickly achieved a degree of self-sufficiency. But this Jubilee justice type program did not last long because after the War was over, as an act of reconciliation, the plantation was given back to the Davis family. Understandable, but I think justice for blacks should have been given higher priority than reconciliation between northern and southern whites. Dwight L. Moody also made the same mistake; he put reconciliation between northern and southern Christians before Jubilee justice for freed black slaves.
The successful just combination between freedom and economic justice ended in part because the church pulled back after freedom was obtained; it did not push equally hard for Jubilee justice. Freedom without justice is shallow, hollow.
Even today white American evangelicals have little understanding of the extensive biblical teaching on oppression both in the OT and the NT. I once asked a seminary prof to do a literature search for me on the biblical teaching on oppression; he found no such evangelical theological literature; neither have I. This is one reason why the American church is so shallow in its understanding and action on social problems, why most Christians and churches know little about and are doing little to end the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males nor the 20-1 racial wealth gap. These evils are thriving in 2014.
Also no white evangelical theologian has rejusticized the NT leaving the church with a shallow understanding of the biblical teaching on oppression and justice. So inspite of some nice-sounding rhetoric on shalom theology, oppressors are beating the church hands down. Evangelical pastors, scholars, theologians, where are you? Standing on the sidelines?? Are you continuing to send out missionaries with a flawed, incomplete gospel?
In 1990, I wrote an article entitled "A Sociologist Looks at Oppression and Shalom." With a few revisions, I now quote from that article:
The Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron and his sons, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel; you shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace [shalom].
Here the blessing of God is the grace of God resting upon his obedient people granting them shalom. Shalom is a rich word meaning more than peace; it carries a sense of wholeness, completeness, harmony. Shalom is a total sense of well-being for not only individuals but also for a community, a people walking with God together. The blessing of shalom carries a sense of well-being in all of life---good health, economic necessities, social harmony and spiritually. The people blessed with shalom experienced authentic joy in life.
It is rather obvious why a true prophet of God would preach and promote shalom. But, according to Jeremiah, the false prophets also proclaimed shalom; Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11 state: "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying 'Peace, peace,' when there was no peace." Or 'shalom, shalom,' when there was no shalom."
If there was no shalom, what was there? Again and again the prophets thundered that there was religious idolatry and social oppression; social oppression was often a consequence of religious idolatry. In Jeremiah 6:13 and 8:10, we hear oppression described: "Because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely." Or Jeremiah 5:26-28: "For wicked men are found among my people . . . Therefore they have become great and rich, they have grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds in deeds of wickedness; they judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy."
In talking about Jerusalem, the supposed city of shalom, Jeremiah (6:6) declares: "this is the city which must be punished; there is nothing but oppression within her." In 7:6 he calls on Israel not to "oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow. . . . " Jeremiah 9:6: "Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, says the Lord." Oppression is the opposite of shalom and the absence of justice; oppression and shalom are polar opposites. What is oppression and what does oppression do? Oppression occurs when people in power and authority, usually through social institutions, misuse that power and authority cruelly and unjustly to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill persons created in the image of God.
In contrast shalom occurs when a community, a people of God, are walking in covenant with God and neighbors according to the standards of justice and righteousness Oppression crushes people; justice release the crushed ones. Oppression humiliates persons; justice affirms persons. Oppression animalizes people; justice humanizes people. Oppression impoverishes people; justice prospers (necessities of life) people. Oppression enslaves persons; justice liberates persons. Oppression kills; only justice beyond this life can provide shalom for these persons.
English speaking evangelicals have written very little on the biblical concept of oppression. Until the 1980s there was very little of substance on oppression in standard bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. The only semi-thorough (nothing from the NT) article on oppression is found in the revised (1986) International Standard Bible Encyclopedia with a total of 222 lines; the 1929 ISBE article consisted of a brief, shallow 30 lines. The 1986 ISBE entry on oppression drew heavily from research done by Thomas Hanks and Elsa Tamez, Spanish speaking evangelicals. The norm, however, is no listing of oppression, as in The Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1980) published by InterVarsity Press; this dictionary lists Ophrah, Oracle, Orchard and Ordination, but nothing on the 555 references to oppression (Hebrew roots).
A question: Why this lack of scholarly research on biblical oppression by white American evangelicals? Have our theologians come primarily from the white middle class? Do they lack exposure to, sensitivity to, the experience of being oppressed? Do they read their Bible through white middle class cultural lenses? Strangely, even their limited awareness of oppression may have been forced upon evangelicals by black theologians and liberation theologians. Even in 2014, I still sense a lack of biblical knowledge by white North American evangelicals.
In 1983, Thomas Hanks, a North American evangelical teaching at the Latin American Biblical Seminary in Costa Rica, published in English God So Loved the Third World; The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression. In 1982 the English translation of Elsa Tamez's Bible of the Oppressed appeared. Tamez was an evangelical colleague of Hanks. We should all be immensely grateful for these quality analyses of the biblical concept of oppression.
Tamez states that "there is an almost complete absence of the theme of oppression in European and North American biblical theology." Hanks asserts: "Anyone who has read much in the theological classics (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Berkouwer et al) will recognize that the theme of oppression has received little or no attention there. One might think that the Bible says little about oppression. . . . However, when we strike the rock of a complete Bible concordance, to our great surprise we hit a gusher of texts and terms that deal with oppression! In short, we find a basic structural category of biblical theology.
After a thorough study of the Hebrew roots for oppression, Hanks concludes: "Oppression is a fundamental structural category of biblical theology, as in evidenced by the large number of Hebrew roots denoting it (10 basic roots, 20 in all); the frequency of their occurrence (555 times); the basic theological character of many texts that speak of it (Gen. 15; Exod. 1-5; Ps. 72,103,146; Isa. 8-9,42,53,58, etc.); and the significance of oppression in Israel's great creedal confession (Deut. 26:5-9).
In my judgment, unless a Christian has a profound understanding of the horror of oppression, a Christian is unlikely to develop a passionate and informed concern for social justice, Jubilee justice. The American church has little biblical understanding of oppression; the church has done little to execute justice on behalf of the oppressed poor. Some charity, yes, but not always well-informed; some reform, yes; but little transformational Jubilee justice.
Perry Yoder, an OT scholar and author of Shalom, says the major thesis of his book is that shalom "is squarely against injustice and oppression. Indeed, we shall argue that shalom demands a transforming of unjust social and economic orders." In order to achieve shalom, Christians must "do justice," "execute justice," "pursue justice," and "give justice." Yoder adds that "God's justice sets things right, it is a liberating justice."
When Jesus spoke about Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor in the Nazareth synagogue, it is no wonder that "all spoke well of him." Would that the American church would do the same! Will we be well known for stopping oppression, doing justice; then experiencing shalom and celebrating with authentic joy---all in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Martin Luther King's Social Ethic
In 1985, William D. Watley published Roots of Resistance: The Non-Violent Ethic of Martin Luther King, Jr. He earned a Ph.D from Columbia University and served a pastor of St. James A.M.E. Church in Newark. According to Watley, the following are some of the key points of King's Christian social ethic:
1. There are "demonic forces or systems or orders of evil that dehumanize, oppress, and prevent persons from achieving full humanity." These principalities and powers are spiritual forces which work in political, social and economic institutions, and far too often religious institutions such as the Temple. Persons are involved but the social evil is much more than just personal sin. The oppressor is caught up in this social evil as much as the oppressed though each is affected differently.
2. This social evil must be challenged by forces of good, of justice. The power to do so comes from God working through the Black church and Black religion.
3. While King was a widely read scholar, Watley is convinced that King's Black religious heritage was the primary factor shaping King's theology, ethics and ministry. His Black Church experience and his studies under Black scholars at Morehouse College laid the foundations for his life and ministry. King maintained what Watley called an "evangelical liberalism" midway between fundamentalism and modernism. King took 34 hours from Prof. George Washington Davis while at Crozier Seminary; Davis was an evangelical liberal.
4. In spite of massive social evil, King believed in a moral order in the universe. Part of this belief flowed out of an "African mind-set that did not make the Western distinction between the sacred and profane. Rather, life was viewed as all one piece, and the moral order was inextricably interwoven with the physical universe."
5. Allied with a belief in a moral order in the universe was a strong belief that God works in history. God was active in starting the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama and throughout the movement just as he was in the Exodus. God is immanent as well as transcendent.
6. While King recognized the proper individuality of persons, he stressed the social character of human life. All of life is interrelated. All persons are caught up "in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
7. Another major philosophical/theological concept held by King was personalism. This was not individualism, but a belief that the human being, personhood, was central to truth and life. "The meaning of ultimate reality is found in personality." So God was personal and each human being had a basic worth and dignity. Racism depersonalized both the oppressor and the oppressed. God as a personal God became more and more real as King agonized over racism and struggled against great odds to improve the lot of Blacks.
8. King's nonviolent ethic and method was not developed in a full-blown and final sense prior to the civil rights movement. Instead it was developed and refined in the crucible of reality and suffering. And over the years it expanded to cover economic justice and international peace.
9. Watley believes that King's nonviolent ethic was built upon six principles:
a. Nonviolence was the weapon of the strong. It takes a profound commitment to certain basic values as well as an inner spiritual strength to implement nonviolence as a means to achieve social justice. King despised cowardice more than violence. King's nonviolence as aggressive, not passive.
b. The goal of nonviolence is reconciliation. "The goal of nonviolence is not humiliation or defeat of the opponent but winning of the enemy's friendship and understanding." This does not always happen nor does it happen quickly, but the goal is "to stir the conscience of the opponent or to awaken in the opponent a sense of moral shame." Evil must be exposed before there can be genuine reconciliation.
c. The third principle is that the opponent is a symbol of a greater evil. Nonviolence was "directed against the forces of evil rather than against the persons who committed the evil. The evildoers were victims of evil as much as were the individuals and communities that the evildoers oppressed." So the real issue was not between Blacks and whites but between injustice and justice.
d. The fourth principle is redemptive suffering. There is "moral power in voluntary suffering for others." Suffering without retaliation. Suffering as a moral education for the oppressor. Suffering to redeem. "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering." As Paul said, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."
e. Agape. Not only should one refuse to use violence against the oppressor, but one should also refuse to hate the oppressor. Love should create community among humans. King called this new community the "beloved community," his phrase for the kingdom of God, a community of love and justice.
f. The universe is an ally of justice; God loves justice. This principle provides faith and hope to persevere when injustice seems to dominate. A faith in a personal God is the grounds for this principle.
1. There are "demonic forces or systems or orders of evil that dehumanize, oppress, and prevent persons from achieving full humanity." These principalities and powers are spiritual forces which work in political, social and economic institutions, and far too often religious institutions such as the Temple. Persons are involved but the social evil is much more than just personal sin. The oppressor is caught up in this social evil as much as the oppressed though each is affected differently.
2. This social evil must be challenged by forces of good, of justice. The power to do so comes from God working through the Black church and Black religion.
3. While King was a widely read scholar, Watley is convinced that King's Black religious heritage was the primary factor shaping King's theology, ethics and ministry. His Black Church experience and his studies under Black scholars at Morehouse College laid the foundations for his life and ministry. King maintained what Watley called an "evangelical liberalism" midway between fundamentalism and modernism. King took 34 hours from Prof. George Washington Davis while at Crozier Seminary; Davis was an evangelical liberal.
4. In spite of massive social evil, King believed in a moral order in the universe. Part of this belief flowed out of an "African mind-set that did not make the Western distinction between the sacred and profane. Rather, life was viewed as all one piece, and the moral order was inextricably interwoven with the physical universe."
5. Allied with a belief in a moral order in the universe was a strong belief that God works in history. God was active in starting the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama and throughout the movement just as he was in the Exodus. God is immanent as well as transcendent.
6. While King recognized the proper individuality of persons, he stressed the social character of human life. All of life is interrelated. All persons are caught up "in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
7. Another major philosophical/theological concept held by King was personalism. This was not individualism, but a belief that the human being, personhood, was central to truth and life. "The meaning of ultimate reality is found in personality." So God was personal and each human being had a basic worth and dignity. Racism depersonalized both the oppressor and the oppressed. God as a personal God became more and more real as King agonized over racism and struggled against great odds to improve the lot of Blacks.
8. King's nonviolent ethic and method was not developed in a full-blown and final sense prior to the civil rights movement. Instead it was developed and refined in the crucible of reality and suffering. And over the years it expanded to cover economic justice and international peace.
9. Watley believes that King's nonviolent ethic was built upon six principles:
a. Nonviolence was the weapon of the strong. It takes a profound commitment to certain basic values as well as an inner spiritual strength to implement nonviolence as a means to achieve social justice. King despised cowardice more than violence. King's nonviolence as aggressive, not passive.
b. The goal of nonviolence is reconciliation. "The goal of nonviolence is not humiliation or defeat of the opponent but winning of the enemy's friendship and understanding." This does not always happen nor does it happen quickly, but the goal is "to stir the conscience of the opponent or to awaken in the opponent a sense of moral shame." Evil must be exposed before there can be genuine reconciliation.
c. The third principle is that the opponent is a symbol of a greater evil. Nonviolence was "directed against the forces of evil rather than against the persons who committed the evil. The evildoers were victims of evil as much as were the individuals and communities that the evildoers oppressed." So the real issue was not between Blacks and whites but between injustice and justice.
d. The fourth principle is redemptive suffering. There is "moral power in voluntary suffering for others." Suffering without retaliation. Suffering as a moral education for the oppressor. Suffering to redeem. "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering." As Paul said, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."
e. Agape. Not only should one refuse to use violence against the oppressor, but one should also refuse to hate the oppressor. Love should create community among humans. King called this new community the "beloved community," his phrase for the kingdom of God, a community of love and justice.
f. The universe is an ally of justice; God loves justice. This principle provides faith and hope to persevere when injustice seems to dominate. A faith in a personal God is the grounds for this principle.
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