A. W. Tozer, a spiritual giant of the last century, spent hours in prayer and worship before the majestic God of the universe. Yet he led his congregation out of the south side of Chicago to the spiritual suburbs because the poor blacks who were moving into the community were "irreparably damaged"---dysfunctional and dangerous.
Jonathan Edward, the Puritan spiritual giant of the 1700s, went down to Providence, Rhode Island and picked out his own slave. Many of our "Christian" founding fathers were either slave holders or slave traders.
The full biblical gospel was designed for the poor and oppressed---the "irreparably damaged." Jesus said he came to bring good news to the poor and to release the oppressed; Jesus said blessed are the poor and woe to the rich.
So why did Tozer (and hundreds of other white churches) choose to flee from the oppressed rather than stay and release the oppressed? Why did Tozer and his flock choose to neglect justice and to fail to demonstrate the love of God to the oppressed poor of south Chicago? Were Tozer and his church more American than Christian? Did Tozer have a faith that was without works? Did Tozer understand that the kingdom of God demanded the practice of Jubilee Justice?
John Perkins would have seen the damaged and dysfunctional black community of south Chicago as a golden opportunity to both preach the biblical gospel and practice love and justice. Stay and do rather than fear and flee.
But I guess to most whites, white flight to maintain white privilege is more important than implementing the just kingdom of God.
Monday, December 21, 2015
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Freedom is Not Enough
In 2010, James T. Patterson wrote the book entitled Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle over Black Family Life.
Yes, freedom is not enough; nodding at oppression is not enough; liberals such as President Johnson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan are not radical enough, biblical enough. A Jubilee type justice is required to end systems of oppression, release the oppressed, and repair the enormous damage done to black individuals, families and communities.
On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson gave a commencement address Howard University. "He outlined . . . the most far-reaching civil rights agenda in modern history." He asserted that "freedom is not enough." Blacks and especially the black family had been battered by "centuries of oppression." Johnson declared that the "family is the cornerstone of our society. . . . When the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a large massive scale the community itself is crippled." As a nation, we need to move beyond civil rights to equality.
Commenting on the speech, Martin Luther King observed, "Never before has a president articulated the depths and dimensions [of our problem] more eloquently and profoundly."
Daniel Patrick Moyniham, a liberal, had co-written the LBJ address. It was based on a 78 page in house memo titled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Much of what Moynihan wrote was accurate; he wanted to move beyond welfare to employment for black males. But he made a fatal mistake, the same mistake that most well-meaning white Americans, including theologians and pastors, make. He did not first write a 78 page report on The White Oppressor: The Case for National Action.
There was mention of white oppression as the cause of black family dysfunction, but no in depth analysis of the history of white oppression, the redesign of systems of oppression nor the type of justice required to release the oppressed. While unintended, in some ways, the Moynihan Report ended up blaming the victim, blaming the dysfunctional black family, not the white oppressor.
Historian James Patterson excels in a careful examination of all the relevant literature on the black family by both black and white scholars, and what has happened to the black family in the last 45 years. So I highly recommend that you read this good book. One important book that he missed is Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. In the same year that Freedom is Not Enough (2010) was published, a blockbuster book, The New Jim Crow, hit the streets of America; Michelle Alexander examined the newest system of oppression that profoundly damaged the black family and community---mass incarceration.
The definitive book on white oppression has not yet been written; Michelle Alexander and Ta-nehisis Coates have come closest to doing so.
LBJ, apart from the Vietnam War, was a remarkable president in many ways. Important legislation was passed including civil rights, voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid. These were much needed reforms, but not revolutionary enough to stop long-standing and continuing American oppression. Later, LBJ refused to accept the Kerner Commission Report that bluntly stated that white oppression was the cause of the black riots. So, 50 years later, in 2015 two forms of oppression---economic inequality and mass incarceration are ravaging ethnic families and communities. Page 99 reveals that Moynihan didn't quite get it on white racism either though he went halfway on the issue.
At the same time that LBJ was pushing through significant reforms, MLK was also working hard on reforms in the South. Toward the end of his short life, 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." I think that if King were alive in 2015, he would still be talking about "a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."
The Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year principles were radical; a socioeconomic revolution every seven years---cancel debt, free slaves---is required to stop oppression. The American white church ignores the Jubilee. This allows white privilege, white systems of oppression, to continues, redesigned, for 355 years. Moynihan wanted jobs and socioeconomic equality for blacks; these are not possible apart from the Sabbath Year revolution.
In the gospel of Luke, the poor and near poor made up the majority of the population. Jesus spent most of his time among the poor ministering to their needs. The poor had many problems, but Jesus did not regard the poor as THE problem in society. For Jesus the rich were THE problem.
So also in modern America. The rich whites, the oppressors with power, are THE number one problem. But most Americans, including most scholars, regard poor blacks, the dysfunctional black family as THE problem. Between 1965 and 1980 "more than fifty books and five hundred journal articles addressed the effects of poverty and discrimination on black families." There was no similar torrent of scholarship devoted to an in depth analysis of white oppression, not even from the church who had the best book ever written on oppression in their hands---the Bible.
Now some quotations from Freedom is Not Enough: First the Moynihan thesis:
"The principal effect of exploitation, discrimination, poverty and unemployment on the Negro community has been a profound weakening of the Negro family structure."
"The primary challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain equality [especially socioeconomic] of results will now follow [after the civil rights revolution]."
Du Bois on Philadelphia (1899):
"The two greatest hindrances bedeviling black Philadelphia were economic: "the low wages of men and the high rents."
Du Bois, Frazier, Myrdal, Clark and Moynihan on the black family:
1. blacks suffered from economic exploitation.
2. slavery has disastrous long-range cultural effects.
An update from the December 17, 2015 Des Moines Register by lawyer James Benzoni titled "How state's demographics lead to its prison racial disparity."
"At any one time, about 25 percent of black males are involved in America's criminal justice system, whether prison, parole or probation or awaiting trial. Just as in the days of slavery, our society is systematically separating the black male population from their families and communities."
Yes, freedom is not enough; nodding at oppression is not enough; liberals such as President Johnson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan are not radical enough, biblical enough. A Jubilee type justice is required to end systems of oppression, release the oppressed, and repair the enormous damage done to black individuals, families and communities.
On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson gave a commencement address Howard University. "He outlined . . . the most far-reaching civil rights agenda in modern history." He asserted that "freedom is not enough." Blacks and especially the black family had been battered by "centuries of oppression." Johnson declared that the "family is the cornerstone of our society. . . . When the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a large massive scale the community itself is crippled." As a nation, we need to move beyond civil rights to equality.
Commenting on the speech, Martin Luther King observed, "Never before has a president articulated the depths and dimensions [of our problem] more eloquently and profoundly."
Daniel Patrick Moyniham, a liberal, had co-written the LBJ address. It was based on a 78 page in house memo titled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Much of what Moynihan wrote was accurate; he wanted to move beyond welfare to employment for black males. But he made a fatal mistake, the same mistake that most well-meaning white Americans, including theologians and pastors, make. He did not first write a 78 page report on The White Oppressor: The Case for National Action.
There was mention of white oppression as the cause of black family dysfunction, but no in depth analysis of the history of white oppression, the redesign of systems of oppression nor the type of justice required to release the oppressed. While unintended, in some ways, the Moynihan Report ended up blaming the victim, blaming the dysfunctional black family, not the white oppressor.
Historian James Patterson excels in a careful examination of all the relevant literature on the black family by both black and white scholars, and what has happened to the black family in the last 45 years. So I highly recommend that you read this good book. One important book that he missed is Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. In the same year that Freedom is Not Enough (2010) was published, a blockbuster book, The New Jim Crow, hit the streets of America; Michelle Alexander examined the newest system of oppression that profoundly damaged the black family and community---mass incarceration.
The definitive book on white oppression has not yet been written; Michelle Alexander and Ta-nehisis Coates have come closest to doing so.
LBJ, apart from the Vietnam War, was a remarkable president in many ways. Important legislation was passed including civil rights, voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid. These were much needed reforms, but not revolutionary enough to stop long-standing and continuing American oppression. Later, LBJ refused to accept the Kerner Commission Report that bluntly stated that white oppression was the cause of the black riots. So, 50 years later, in 2015 two forms of oppression---economic inequality and mass incarceration are ravaging ethnic families and communities. Page 99 reveals that Moynihan didn't quite get it on white racism either though he went halfway on the issue.
At the same time that LBJ was pushing through significant reforms, MLK was also working hard on reforms in the South. Toward the end of his short life, 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." I think that if King were alive in 2015, he would still be talking about "a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."
The Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year principles were radical; a socioeconomic revolution every seven years---cancel debt, free slaves---is required to stop oppression. The American white church ignores the Jubilee. This allows white privilege, white systems of oppression, to continues, redesigned, for 355 years. Moynihan wanted jobs and socioeconomic equality for blacks; these are not possible apart from the Sabbath Year revolution.
In the gospel of Luke, the poor and near poor made up the majority of the population. Jesus spent most of his time among the poor ministering to their needs. The poor had many problems, but Jesus did not regard the poor as THE problem in society. For Jesus the rich were THE problem.
So also in modern America. The rich whites, the oppressors with power, are THE number one problem. But most Americans, including most scholars, regard poor blacks, the dysfunctional black family as THE problem. Between 1965 and 1980 "more than fifty books and five hundred journal articles addressed the effects of poverty and discrimination on black families." There was no similar torrent of scholarship devoted to an in depth analysis of white oppression, not even from the church who had the best book ever written on oppression in their hands---the Bible.
Now some quotations from Freedom is Not Enough: First the Moynihan thesis:
"The principal effect of exploitation, discrimination, poverty and unemployment on the Negro community has been a profound weakening of the Negro family structure."
"The primary challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain equality [especially socioeconomic] of results will now follow [after the civil rights revolution]."
Du Bois on Philadelphia (1899):
"The two greatest hindrances bedeviling black Philadelphia were economic: "the low wages of men and the high rents."
Du Bois, Frazier, Myrdal, Clark and Moynihan on the black family:
1. blacks suffered from economic exploitation.
2. slavery has disastrous long-range cultural effects.
An update from the December 17, 2015 Des Moines Register by lawyer James Benzoni titled "How state's demographics lead to its prison racial disparity."
"At any one time, about 25 percent of black males are involved in America's criminal justice system, whether prison, parole or probation or awaiting trial. Just as in the days of slavery, our society is systematically separating the black male population from their families and communities."
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
What can the American church learn from James 2?
I like to combine Luke 4:18-19 and James 1:27- chapter 2. James contrasts worthless and pure religion; I am afraid much of the American church falls under the worthless/deceptive religion category. Worthless religion:
* it honors the rich and dishonors the poor.
* it favors the rich, even in the church.
* it substitutes faith talk for love/justice action.
* it ignores the oppression of oppressed widows and orphans.
* it substitutes clever worldly ideology for biblical wisdom/truth.
A pure religion church is described as:
* honoring the poor and oppressed.
* making ministry among the poor and oppressed its top priority.
* exposing the oppression of the poor by the rich.
* combining love and justice in behalf of the poor.
* insisting on a combination of faith and works.
* cultivating a wisdom based on truth, not ideology.
* a community of equals that does favor anyone or group.
What about the modern American church? Lee Harper, a black woman born and raised in Mississippi, expressed the continuing American dilemma with the following one-liner:
"For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appear just."
Questions for the white American church:
* If a church is not practicing pure religion, it is a predatory social institution?
* Are poor communities the victims of not only predatory lending but also worthless churches?
* Are our churches full of people who are hearers, but not doers?
* Do they hear fine expositions of the Word but are seldom guided into disciplined and sustained involvement in poor and oppressed communities?
* Do we need a new language, phrases, to capture the biblical necessity for community involvement such as church/community, pure/poor or spirituality/justice, or faith/works?
* Are American churches full of religious corpses? See The Message.
* it honors the rich and dishonors the poor.
* it favors the rich, even in the church.
* it substitutes faith talk for love/justice action.
* it ignores the oppression of oppressed widows and orphans.
* it substitutes clever worldly ideology for biblical wisdom/truth.
A pure religion church is described as:
* honoring the poor and oppressed.
* making ministry among the poor and oppressed its top priority.
* exposing the oppression of the poor by the rich.
* combining love and justice in behalf of the poor.
* insisting on a combination of faith and works.
* cultivating a wisdom based on truth, not ideology.
* a community of equals that does favor anyone or group.
What about the modern American church? Lee Harper, a black woman born and raised in Mississippi, expressed the continuing American dilemma with the following one-liner:
"For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appear just."
Questions for the white American church:
* If a church is not practicing pure religion, it is a predatory social institution?
* Are poor communities the victims of not only predatory lending but also worthless churches?
* Are our churches full of people who are hearers, but not doers?
* Do they hear fine expositions of the Word but are seldom guided into disciplined and sustained involvement in poor and oppressed communities?
* Do we need a new language, phrases, to capture the biblical necessity for community involvement such as church/community, pure/poor or spirituality/justice, or faith/works?
* Are American churches full of religious corpses? See The Message.
Is America Arrogant, Self-righteous and Unrepentant?
Is American the New Israel or the New Assyria? Self-righteous nations see no need for national repentance; America is always right.
Christian rabbi, Jonathan Cahn, in his 2011 book, The Harbinger, describes with courage and precision how both 9-11 and the 2008 recession were judgments from God upon America for its endless greed and economic and military oppression. I agree; in broad strokes, I wrote much the same shortly after 9-11.
America did not repent after 9-11; instead Democrats and Republicans defiantly declared that we would rebuild bigger and better. I see no signs of any of our presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican, leading us to national repentance. We all need to pray the Daniel 9 prayer for our nation. Instead we are fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 9:10-11: "We will arrogantly rebuild." We have rebuilt the Freedom Tower.
Cahn correctly understands 9-11 and 2008 as judgments from God; he also sees the Civil War as a judgment from the hand of God because of the enormous evil of slavery. But strangely, he does not grasp the even GREATER social evil of our colonial founding fathers. Especially from 1700-1789, the slave trade, slavery and Indian genocide dominated the economics and politics of this country. But Cahn ignores these hard historical facts and declares that we were founded as a good and godly nation by our founding father, George Washington. Washington owned hundreds of slaves; he did not free them in direct violation of the Sabbath Year requirement that slaves were to be freed every seven years. Washington was one of the richest men in the colonies gaining much of his wealth from oppressing slaves. Jesus declared "Woe to the rich" to this type of evil rich.
Yet Cahn states without qualification that America was "a civilization also conceived and dedicated to the will of God from its conception." The Puritans, "as with ancient Israel, saw America as in covenant with God." "It would give refuge to the world's poor and needy, and hope to its oppressed." But America engaged in prolonged and massive oppression of Indians, Africans and Mexicans, to name a few.
The Afro American pastor, Bill McGill, gives a more accurate view of American history: "The Christian Coalition should stop preaching the lie that this country was founded on Christian principles and values, and teach their children that only a godless [Assyrian-type?] people would be responsible for Indian genocide and African enslavement."
Cahn writes about how God used the terrorist nation Assyria to judge rebellious Israel. The Assyrians, at the peak of their power, ruled much of the ancient Middle East. They combined a high tech war machine combined with terror. "The Assyrians made terror into a science. The systematized it, perfected it . . . masters of terror."
As Americans engaged in the slave trade, slavery, Indian genocide, theft of Mexican land, the oppressed of this land saw supposedly Christian America acting like the Assyrians---the epitome of brutality, ruthlessness, oppression, evil. The false idea of Manifest Destiny was used as a cover for this continuing massive evil. In recent years, the unjust wars in Vietnam and Iraq continued American evil on a large scale. For more on America's often unjust wars, read The Wars of America: Christian Views.
Cahn foresees another judgment falling on America, worse than 9-11 and 2008, if America fails to repent. Here is how Cahn describes modern America: "idols of greed, money, success, comfort, materialism, pleasure, sexual immorality, self-worship, self-obsession." I would describe modern America as dominated by the American trinity of hypermaterialism, hyperindividualism, and hyperethnocentrism.
To summarize, Cahn wrote: "the nation responds without repentance. . . . American leaders vow We will rebuild." Trump asserted: "We should have the World Trade Center [rebuilt] bigger and better."
Cahn makes a big deal over President George Washington and other American leaders going to a small brick church in New York, St. Paul's Chapel located next to Ground Zero, and dedicating this new nation to God in 1789, also asking for divine blessing and protection. I am not sure God was listening to this unrepentant, deistic, Pharisee's prayers; Washington was a slaveholder who neglected justice and the love of God. There were no signs of repentance, no release of his oppressed slaves, no repair of oppression damage, no pledge to implement Jubilee justice, no pledge to end the slave trade, slavery and genocide.
Cahn is clear and blunt about America's need for national repentance today to stop the progression of divine judgment from 9-11 to 2008 to _______________. Cahn has a long list of national sins. America's list of sins was just as long and evil in 1789, but Cahn completely ignores these sins in his blind effort to portray America as a Christian nation.
Still I would recommend that all Americans read this book; you will learn much about how America's financial and economic system works and about our nation's ethnocentric arrogance which transcends party lines.
Christian rabbi, Jonathan Cahn, in his 2011 book, The Harbinger, describes with courage and precision how both 9-11 and the 2008 recession were judgments from God upon America for its endless greed and economic and military oppression. I agree; in broad strokes, I wrote much the same shortly after 9-11.
America did not repent after 9-11; instead Democrats and Republicans defiantly declared that we would rebuild bigger and better. I see no signs of any of our presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican, leading us to national repentance. We all need to pray the Daniel 9 prayer for our nation. Instead we are fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 9:10-11: "We will arrogantly rebuild." We have rebuilt the Freedom Tower.
Cahn correctly understands 9-11 and 2008 as judgments from God; he also sees the Civil War as a judgment from the hand of God because of the enormous evil of slavery. But strangely, he does not grasp the even GREATER social evil of our colonial founding fathers. Especially from 1700-1789, the slave trade, slavery and Indian genocide dominated the economics and politics of this country. But Cahn ignores these hard historical facts and declares that we were founded as a good and godly nation by our founding father, George Washington. Washington owned hundreds of slaves; he did not free them in direct violation of the Sabbath Year requirement that slaves were to be freed every seven years. Washington was one of the richest men in the colonies gaining much of his wealth from oppressing slaves. Jesus declared "Woe to the rich" to this type of evil rich.
Yet Cahn states without qualification that America was "a civilization also conceived and dedicated to the will of God from its conception." The Puritans, "as with ancient Israel, saw America as in covenant with God." "It would give refuge to the world's poor and needy, and hope to its oppressed." But America engaged in prolonged and massive oppression of Indians, Africans and Mexicans, to name a few.
The Afro American pastor, Bill McGill, gives a more accurate view of American history: "The Christian Coalition should stop preaching the lie that this country was founded on Christian principles and values, and teach their children that only a godless [Assyrian-type?] people would be responsible for Indian genocide and African enslavement."
Cahn writes about how God used the terrorist nation Assyria to judge rebellious Israel. The Assyrians, at the peak of their power, ruled much of the ancient Middle East. They combined a high tech war machine combined with terror. "The Assyrians made terror into a science. The systematized it, perfected it . . . masters of terror."
As Americans engaged in the slave trade, slavery, Indian genocide, theft of Mexican land, the oppressed of this land saw supposedly Christian America acting like the Assyrians---the epitome of brutality, ruthlessness, oppression, evil. The false idea of Manifest Destiny was used as a cover for this continuing massive evil. In recent years, the unjust wars in Vietnam and Iraq continued American evil on a large scale. For more on America's often unjust wars, read The Wars of America: Christian Views.
Cahn foresees another judgment falling on America, worse than 9-11 and 2008, if America fails to repent. Here is how Cahn describes modern America: "idols of greed, money, success, comfort, materialism, pleasure, sexual immorality, self-worship, self-obsession." I would describe modern America as dominated by the American trinity of hypermaterialism, hyperindividualism, and hyperethnocentrism.
To summarize, Cahn wrote: "the nation responds without repentance. . . . American leaders vow We will rebuild." Trump asserted: "We should have the World Trade Center [rebuilt] bigger and better."
Cahn makes a big deal over President George Washington and other American leaders going to a small brick church in New York, St. Paul's Chapel located next to Ground Zero, and dedicating this new nation to God in 1789, also asking for divine blessing and protection. I am not sure God was listening to this unrepentant, deistic, Pharisee's prayers; Washington was a slaveholder who neglected justice and the love of God. There were no signs of repentance, no release of his oppressed slaves, no repair of oppression damage, no pledge to implement Jubilee justice, no pledge to end the slave trade, slavery and genocide.
Cahn is clear and blunt about America's need for national repentance today to stop the progression of divine judgment from 9-11 to 2008 to _______________. Cahn has a long list of national sins. America's list of sins was just as long and evil in 1789, but Cahn completely ignores these sins in his blind effort to portray America as a Christian nation.
Still I would recommend that all Americans read this book; you will learn much about how America's financial and economic system works and about our nation's ethnocentric arrogance which transcends party lines.
Friday, December 4, 2015
Wanted: An Index on white American Oppression
We desperately need an index, a measurement of white American oppression---who the oppressors are, what systems of oppression are currently being used, how systems of oppression are redesigned over time, the damage done to the oppressed.
First step: create a biblical theology, a theory, of oppression. Since such a theology of oppression doesn't currently exist, this will be a major undertaking. Both the OT and NT containe much untapped material on oppression; 555 references to oppression in the OT; when combined, the concepts of oppression, injustice and the rich plus the Temple as a system of oppression provide the basis for a NT theology of oppression.
Second, reanalyze American history based on the biblical theology of oppression. For example, this reanalysis would destroy many myths about the Civil War. In actuality, the North was as racist as the South; the North just did not own slaves. But the North engaged in most of the slave trade that brought slaves to the South; the North profited greatly from the cotton produced by slaves; the North did not want freed slaves to come North in large numbers; the North believed blacks were inferior. The Civil War was fought in vain because soon after Reconstruction, the new system of oppression---segregation---took the place of slavery.
Third, create a current index or measurement of white American oppression. Who are the oppressors? Who are the oppressed? What systems of oppression are being used? Arthur Simon, in his book Faces of Poverty, himself a Lutheran pastor, described how the Lutheran church became a part of the segregation that divided Detroit. Over a 40 year period, 40 out of 44 Lutheran churches left the city of Detroit for the suburbs. I suspect that most white congregations of many denominations followed a similar pattern. I know that A.W. Tozer's church in south Chicago left for the suburbs because the changing surrounding community was "irreparably damaged." Could we measure the church's contribution to oppression?
Creating the theology and index of oppression needs to be given the highest priority. We need to make it a Manhattan type project---a project of great urgency given every possible resource. Theologians need to take some time off from discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or discussing pre-trib and post-trib arguments and create a white oppression index.
Daily the NYSE reports on the financial health of the nation, and to some degree the economic health of the nation. And we have quite accurate disease stats. But nothing similar exists to describe the extent of, the nature of, white oppression and the immense damage it has caused.
The prophets rather precisely exposed oppression in their day as did Jesus---"Woe to the rich" and the Temple as "a den of robbers."
In the US, we have data on supposed black crime; in Iowa, the data says that Iowa blacks are 12 times as criminal as whites---the worst incarceration ratio in the nation. But if we dig a little deeper, the 12-1 stat may, in reality be a good measure of white oppression and how it operates. Are Iowa whites who run the unjust criminal justice system the oppressors? Are Iowa churches that are silent and neglect justice part of the system of oppression?
While we are at it, let's create a Justice, a Jubilee Justice Index as well.
First step: create a biblical theology, a theory, of oppression. Since such a theology of oppression doesn't currently exist, this will be a major undertaking. Both the OT and NT containe much untapped material on oppression; 555 references to oppression in the OT; when combined, the concepts of oppression, injustice and the rich plus the Temple as a system of oppression provide the basis for a NT theology of oppression.
Second, reanalyze American history based on the biblical theology of oppression. For example, this reanalysis would destroy many myths about the Civil War. In actuality, the North was as racist as the South; the North just did not own slaves. But the North engaged in most of the slave trade that brought slaves to the South; the North profited greatly from the cotton produced by slaves; the North did not want freed slaves to come North in large numbers; the North believed blacks were inferior. The Civil War was fought in vain because soon after Reconstruction, the new system of oppression---segregation---took the place of slavery.
Third, create a current index or measurement of white American oppression. Who are the oppressors? Who are the oppressed? What systems of oppression are being used? Arthur Simon, in his book Faces of Poverty, himself a Lutheran pastor, described how the Lutheran church became a part of the segregation that divided Detroit. Over a 40 year period, 40 out of 44 Lutheran churches left the city of Detroit for the suburbs. I suspect that most white congregations of many denominations followed a similar pattern. I know that A.W. Tozer's church in south Chicago left for the suburbs because the changing surrounding community was "irreparably damaged." Could we measure the church's contribution to oppression?
Creating the theology and index of oppression needs to be given the highest priority. We need to make it a Manhattan type project---a project of great urgency given every possible resource. Theologians need to take some time off from discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or discussing pre-trib and post-trib arguments and create a white oppression index.
Daily the NYSE reports on the financial health of the nation, and to some degree the economic health of the nation. And we have quite accurate disease stats. But nothing similar exists to describe the extent of, the nature of, white oppression and the immense damage it has caused.
The prophets rather precisely exposed oppression in their day as did Jesus---"Woe to the rich" and the Temple as "a den of robbers."
In the US, we have data on supposed black crime; in Iowa, the data says that Iowa blacks are 12 times as criminal as whites---the worst incarceration ratio in the nation. But if we dig a little deeper, the 12-1 stat may, in reality be a good measure of white oppression and how it operates. Are Iowa whites who run the unjust criminal justice system the oppressors? Are Iowa churches that are silent and neglect justice part of the system of oppression?
While we are at it, let's create a Justice, a Jubilee Justice Index as well.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
criminalblackman or oppressorwhiteman
The new "N" word is criminalblackman; crime and blackness are intertwined in the minds of many white people. Even sociologists spend more time studying black dysfunctions than systems of white oppression. On the surface, the high incarceration rate for black males seems to confirm this impression of a criminalblackman.
Crime is bad, evil, but the evil connected to white oppression is ten times worse. So I am coining a new word criminallyoppressivewhiteman.
Last night I watched a Fox News pundit wax eloquent about black violence/crime in our inner cities. But he seemed to be afflicted with historical amnesia. There was no mention of the long history of white oppression with few white criminal indictments for evils such as Indian genocide, African enslavement and the theft of half of Mexico's land.
The more an American white talks about the criminalblackman, the more he covers up the fact that he is an oppressivewhiteman. Almost every discussion whites have about race quickly turns into a discussion of black inferiority, flaws or dysfunction; blacks are THE problem. White responsibility is largely ignored.
Ta-Nehisi Coates ("The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration") documents the long history of supposed black criminality; the following are some quotations from Coates.
"After decades of mass incarceration that have left the United States with the largest incarcerated population in the world, politicians of all stripes are suddenly declaring the policy a mistake. But their pronouncements have failed to reckon with the phenomenon's deep historical roots, or with the damage it has done to black families." Vanishing jobs and persistent racism a part of the story.
"black people are the preeminent outlaws of the American imagination."
"a portrait emerged of blacks as highly prone to criminality. . . . black villainy justified white oppression---which was seen not as oppression but as "the cornerstone of our republican edifice."
"Antebellum Virginia had 73 crimes that could garner the death penalty for [black] slaves---and only one for whites."
"Postbellum Alabama solved this problem by manufacturing criminals. Blacks [freed slaves] who could not find work were labeled vagrants and sent to jail, where they were leased as labor to the very people who had once enslaved them."
"From the 1890s through the first four decades of the twentieth century, black criminality would become one of the most commonly cited and longest-lasting justifications for black inequality and mortality in the modern urban world."
"If policing in New York under Giuliani and Bloomberg was crime prevention tainted by racist presumptions" in Ferguson "it was law enforcement tasked with the job of municipal plunder."
"The principal source of the intensifying war on crime was white anxiety about social control."
"To return to its 1972 incarceration rate, America would have to cut its prison and jail population by some 80 percent."
Criminalblackman is a classic case of 'blaming the victim' in order to retain white superiority and white privilege, and in order to avoid a focus on the evil of white oppression.
For the rest of the tragic story, read The New Jim Crow.
Republicans, Democrats, Americans in general, and far too much of the white American church have served the American trinity of individualism, materialism and ethnocentrism/racism so that even in 2015 a deep belief and practice of black inferiority and black criminality continues to damage the black community.
What can/should the church do?
1. Stop rationalizing white oppression, instead repent.
2. Stop redesigning systems of oppression; instead release the oppressed.
3. Engage in economic restitution and then repair oppression damaged communities.
4. Following the Sabbath/Jubilee Year principles of justice, design new systems of societal fairness.
Crime is bad, evil, but the evil connected to white oppression is ten times worse. So I am coining a new word criminallyoppressivewhiteman.
Last night I watched a Fox News pundit wax eloquent about black violence/crime in our inner cities. But he seemed to be afflicted with historical amnesia. There was no mention of the long history of white oppression with few white criminal indictments for evils such as Indian genocide, African enslavement and the theft of half of Mexico's land.
The more an American white talks about the criminalblackman, the more he covers up the fact that he is an oppressivewhiteman. Almost every discussion whites have about race quickly turns into a discussion of black inferiority, flaws or dysfunction; blacks are THE problem. White responsibility is largely ignored.
Ta-Nehisi Coates ("The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration") documents the long history of supposed black criminality; the following are some quotations from Coates.
"After decades of mass incarceration that have left the United States with the largest incarcerated population in the world, politicians of all stripes are suddenly declaring the policy a mistake. But their pronouncements have failed to reckon with the phenomenon's deep historical roots, or with the damage it has done to black families." Vanishing jobs and persistent racism a part of the story.
"black people are the preeminent outlaws of the American imagination."
"a portrait emerged of blacks as highly prone to criminality. . . . black villainy justified white oppression---which was seen not as oppression but as "the cornerstone of our republican edifice."
"Antebellum Virginia had 73 crimes that could garner the death penalty for [black] slaves---and only one for whites."
"Postbellum Alabama solved this problem by manufacturing criminals. Blacks [freed slaves] who could not find work were labeled vagrants and sent to jail, where they were leased as labor to the very people who had once enslaved them."
"From the 1890s through the first four decades of the twentieth century, black criminality would become one of the most commonly cited and longest-lasting justifications for black inequality and mortality in the modern urban world."
"If policing in New York under Giuliani and Bloomberg was crime prevention tainted by racist presumptions" in Ferguson "it was law enforcement tasked with the job of municipal plunder."
"The principal source of the intensifying war on crime was white anxiety about social control."
"To return to its 1972 incarceration rate, America would have to cut its prison and jail population by some 80 percent."
Criminalblackman is a classic case of 'blaming the victim' in order to retain white superiority and white privilege, and in order to avoid a focus on the evil of white oppression.
For the rest of the tragic story, read The New Jim Crow.
Republicans, Democrats, Americans in general, and far too much of the white American church have served the American trinity of individualism, materialism and ethnocentrism/racism so that even in 2015 a deep belief and practice of black inferiority and black criminality continues to damage the black community.
What can/should the church do?
1. Stop rationalizing white oppression, instead repent.
2. Stop redesigning systems of oppression; instead release the oppressed.
3. Engage in economic restitution and then repair oppression damaged communities.
4. Following the Sabbath/Jubilee Year principles of justice, design new systems of societal fairness.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
What is a conservative radical?
According to Ta-Nehisi Coates (October 2015), Daniel Patrick Moyniham was a conservative radical. What is a conservative radical? Simply put, a conservative believes in freedom and family; a radical believes in justice. A conservative radical is holistic in that she/he believes in freedom, family and justice. A biblical conservative radical (Luke 4:18-19) believes in a freedom that releases the oppressed and a Jubilee justice that repairs the damage done by oppression and then builds kingdom of principles into a new and more just society.
Moyniham served in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations but did not feel completely at home in any of them. As a scholar and senator, he thought deeper than any of them. But he was widely misquoted and defamed asserts Coates. Coates, a black scholar/writer, has redeemed the unfairly defamed Moyniham, a white scholar/ statesman. Moyniham deeply believed in society's most important social institution, the family. All government policy should support the family.
Moyniham served under President Johnson but he did not fully support the War on Poverty because it was too welfare oriented, did not provide adequate support/jobs for black fathers, and did not address the fundamental cause of poverty---oppression. In his book, The Negro Family addressed both the centuries of white oppression that damaged the black family, created the dysfunction, and then he designed policies to correct them. But the media and many scholars ignored his oppression argument and focused on his description of the tangle of pathology in the black family. Of course, few whites are comfortable with the white responsibility for oppression so they quickly change the focus to inferior blacks, black dysfunction.
A quotation from Coates:
"President Johnson offered the first public preview of the Moyniham Report in a speech written by Moyniham and the former Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin at Howard University in June of 1965, in which he highlighted 'the breakdown of the Negro family structure.' Johnson left no doubt about how this breakdown had come about. 'For this, most of all, white America must accept responsibility,' Johnson said. Family breakdown 'flows from centuries of [white] oppression and persecution of the Negro man. It flows from the long years of degradation and discrimination, which have attacked his dignity and assaulted his ability to produce for his family."
"The press did not generally greet Johnson's speech as a claim of white responsibility, but rather as a condemnation of 'the failure of Negro family life.'" Few whites understand oppression and fewer still accept responsibility for widespread Anglo oppression that caused Indian genocide, African enslavement, and the theft of half of Mexico's land.
Nixon liked some of Moyniham's ideas so he proposed the Family Assistance Plan, but it died in the Senate.
The American church has failed to combine freedom, family and justice because it does not understand the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and justice. So the clever forces of evil outsmarted the church and designed a new system of oppression---the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males.
American church: stop oppression, do justice or face judgment.
An historical example: Lincoln freed the slaves---released from oppression. Hooray! Well, not so fast. When the freed slaves walked off the plantation, they were instantly homeless, landless, foodless. As might be expected, many freed slaves died. Not a very pro-family policy. A society that is truly, actively, pro-family, must add justice to freedom. In an agricultural society, each freed slave family needed 40 acres and a mule to be self-sufficient. Lincoln and Congress did not pass such legislation; maybe Jubilee justice should have been part of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Freedom without justice is a hollow, shallow victory. Quickly, slavery was replaced by another system of oppression---segregation, sharecropping, prison gangs and lynching.
Luke 4:18---freedom, release of the oppressed; 4:19---Jubilee/Sabbath Year justice. Or with liberty and justice for all!
Moyniham served in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations but did not feel completely at home in any of them. As a scholar and senator, he thought deeper than any of them. But he was widely misquoted and defamed asserts Coates. Coates, a black scholar/writer, has redeemed the unfairly defamed Moyniham, a white scholar/ statesman. Moyniham deeply believed in society's most important social institution, the family. All government policy should support the family.
Moyniham served under President Johnson but he did not fully support the War on Poverty because it was too welfare oriented, did not provide adequate support/jobs for black fathers, and did not address the fundamental cause of poverty---oppression. In his book, The Negro Family addressed both the centuries of white oppression that damaged the black family, created the dysfunction, and then he designed policies to correct them. But the media and many scholars ignored his oppression argument and focused on his description of the tangle of pathology in the black family. Of course, few whites are comfortable with the white responsibility for oppression so they quickly change the focus to inferior blacks, black dysfunction.
A quotation from Coates:
"President Johnson offered the first public preview of the Moyniham Report in a speech written by Moyniham and the former Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin at Howard University in June of 1965, in which he highlighted 'the breakdown of the Negro family structure.' Johnson left no doubt about how this breakdown had come about. 'For this, most of all, white America must accept responsibility,' Johnson said. Family breakdown 'flows from centuries of [white] oppression and persecution of the Negro man. It flows from the long years of degradation and discrimination, which have attacked his dignity and assaulted his ability to produce for his family."
"The press did not generally greet Johnson's speech as a claim of white responsibility, but rather as a condemnation of 'the failure of Negro family life.'" Few whites understand oppression and fewer still accept responsibility for widespread Anglo oppression that caused Indian genocide, African enslavement, and the theft of half of Mexico's land.
Nixon liked some of Moyniham's ideas so he proposed the Family Assistance Plan, but it died in the Senate.
The American church has failed to combine freedom, family and justice because it does not understand the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and justice. So the clever forces of evil outsmarted the church and designed a new system of oppression---the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males.
American church: stop oppression, do justice or face judgment.
An historical example: Lincoln freed the slaves---released from oppression. Hooray! Well, not so fast. When the freed slaves walked off the plantation, they were instantly homeless, landless, foodless. As might be expected, many freed slaves died. Not a very pro-family policy. A society that is truly, actively, pro-family, must add justice to freedom. In an agricultural society, each freed slave family needed 40 acres and a mule to be self-sufficient. Lincoln and Congress did not pass such legislation; maybe Jubilee justice should have been part of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Freedom without justice is a hollow, shallow victory. Quickly, slavery was replaced by another system of oppression---segregation, sharecropping, prison gangs and lynching.
Luke 4:18---freedom, release of the oppressed; 4:19---Jubilee/Sabbath Year justice. Or with liberty and justice for all!
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Trauma and Grace
For those interested in PTSD or PTSS (post traumatic slave syndrome), I now recommend three books: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy Leary, a black social worker; Trauma and Grace by Serene Jones, a white theologian; and, a chapter 3 "Soul Anatomy: The Healing Acts of Calvin's Psalms" recommendation by Jones (the best chapter in her book built around Calvin's Commentary on the Psalms).
The following is my review of Trauma and Grace.
PTSD/trauma is caused by violence. The violence can be either personal (such as rape) or personal/social (such as war or slavery). Violence is the cause; trauma is the result. This book is primarily about trauma, secondarily about violence. A biblical synonym for social violence would be oppression which is found 555 times in the OT. The best brief but vivid description of the trauma (RSV "broken in spirit") caused by oppression is found in Exodus 6:9. For context, read also Exodus 1 and 6:1-8.
In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58:6---"to release the oppressed"; in other words, not only the exploited, but the broken in spirit, the crushed, the traumatized, those in a spirit of despair.
Jones describes trauma in the following fashion: an injury, a wound, by a hostile, external force, not an internal flaw or weakness. An assault on both body and spirit. Trauma victims feel a threat of annihilation grounded in a real event, a shattering; even witnesses to violence can experience trauma. Of course, repeated events of trauma such as would occur in lifelong slavery would be much worse than just one incident; such would be overwhelming, truly shattering.
A victim of trauma is described as excessively vigilant, numbness, anxiety, sleeplessness, a compulsion to repeat events, loss of memory, loss of control, choice, meaning, a sense of isolation, fatigue.
"When trauma happens, it becomes difficult for victims to experience the healing power of God's grace because their internal capacities (where one knows and feels) have been broken. It is hard to know when your knowing faculties have been disabled. It is hard to feel divine love when your capacity to feel anything at all has been shut down."
Grace needs to be both gentle and powerful.
There are three stages to healing: establishing a safe zone for the telling of the trauma story; the church needs to provide a nonjudgmental place for the hearing of the story; the church needs to assist in the reintegration into both everyday life and church life, both short term and long term. Trauma is often enduring trauma, recycled trauma, relived trauma.
More on Calvin:
"He describes how, as a young and restless scholar in Paris in the mid 1500s, he suddenly found himself on the wrong side of a brewing civil war inside the royal family, and how, in the middle of the night, he secretly fled his French homeland, just barely escaping imprisonment and execution.
"He then describes finding himself in a German town and, rather by accident, being asked to minister to a community of similarly outcast French folks. . . . had been brutalized, as were their family members who remained behind them inside France. The list of atrocities they suffered was long: they were 'maimed, executed, tortured, burned, and assailed on all sides by the wicked.' In the midst of such tumultuous harm, he tells us that they turned to him for guiding wisdom and spiritual support to survive. He reminds his reader that this story is not that different from King David's own, . . . and because of this, the king's poetry had much to teach the Frenchman's outcast flock about remaining faithful in the midst of terrible isolation and constant attack. As he states it, "In considering the whole course of the life of David, it seemed to me that by his own footsteps he showed me the way, and from this I have received no small consolation."
Next, from Serene Jones:
"Stage One: Psalms of Deliverance: Establishing Safety, Providence, and Divine Witnessing: Psalm 10:12-18."
"Stage Two: Psalms of Lament and Mourning: Remembering and Offering Testimony: Psalm 22."
"Stage Three: Psalms of Thanksgiving: Reintegration of the Mundane and the Scope of Divine Grace: Psalm 119."
Trauma and Grace focuses primarily on trauma, not the violence that caused it. Now we need a theologian that will give the same thoughtful attention to oppression that Jones has given to trauma. The much needed book could be titled Oppression and Justice.
The following is my review of Trauma and Grace.
PTSD/trauma is caused by violence. The violence can be either personal (such as rape) or personal/social (such as war or slavery). Violence is the cause; trauma is the result. This book is primarily about trauma, secondarily about violence. A biblical synonym for social violence would be oppression which is found 555 times in the OT. The best brief but vivid description of the trauma (RSV "broken in spirit") caused by oppression is found in Exodus 6:9. For context, read also Exodus 1 and 6:1-8.
In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58:6---"to release the oppressed"; in other words, not only the exploited, but the broken in spirit, the crushed, the traumatized, those in a spirit of despair.
Jones describes trauma in the following fashion: an injury, a wound, by a hostile, external force, not an internal flaw or weakness. An assault on both body and spirit. Trauma victims feel a threat of annihilation grounded in a real event, a shattering; even witnesses to violence can experience trauma. Of course, repeated events of trauma such as would occur in lifelong slavery would be much worse than just one incident; such would be overwhelming, truly shattering.
A victim of trauma is described as excessively vigilant, numbness, anxiety, sleeplessness, a compulsion to repeat events, loss of memory, loss of control, choice, meaning, a sense of isolation, fatigue.
"When trauma happens, it becomes difficult for victims to experience the healing power of God's grace because their internal capacities (where one knows and feels) have been broken. It is hard to know when your knowing faculties have been disabled. It is hard to feel divine love when your capacity to feel anything at all has been shut down."
Grace needs to be both gentle and powerful.
There are three stages to healing: establishing a safe zone for the telling of the trauma story; the church needs to provide a nonjudgmental place for the hearing of the story; the church needs to assist in the reintegration into both everyday life and church life, both short term and long term. Trauma is often enduring trauma, recycled trauma, relived trauma.
More on Calvin:
"He describes how, as a young and restless scholar in Paris in the mid 1500s, he suddenly found himself on the wrong side of a brewing civil war inside the royal family, and how, in the middle of the night, he secretly fled his French homeland, just barely escaping imprisonment and execution.
"He then describes finding himself in a German town and, rather by accident, being asked to minister to a community of similarly outcast French folks. . . . had been brutalized, as were their family members who remained behind them inside France. The list of atrocities they suffered was long: they were 'maimed, executed, tortured, burned, and assailed on all sides by the wicked.' In the midst of such tumultuous harm, he tells us that they turned to him for guiding wisdom and spiritual support to survive. He reminds his reader that this story is not that different from King David's own, . . . and because of this, the king's poetry had much to teach the Frenchman's outcast flock about remaining faithful in the midst of terrible isolation and constant attack. As he states it, "In considering the whole course of the life of David, it seemed to me that by his own footsteps he showed me the way, and from this I have received no small consolation."
Next, from Serene Jones:
"Stage One: Psalms of Deliverance: Establishing Safety, Providence, and Divine Witnessing: Psalm 10:12-18."
"Stage Two: Psalms of Lament and Mourning: Remembering and Offering Testimony: Psalm 22."
"Stage Three: Psalms of Thanksgiving: Reintegration of the Mundane and the Scope of Divine Grace: Psalm 119."
Trauma and Grace focuses primarily on trauma, not the violence that caused it. Now we need a theologian that will give the same thoughtful attention to oppression that Jones has given to trauma. The much needed book could be titled Oppression and Justice.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
America's Unpardonable Sin?
I have recently decided that there is a second unpardonable sin---the near total failure of the white American church to stop oppression and do justice in behalf of the millions of oppressed poor. Biblically, oppression is a form of violence that crushes the poor and often it creates PTSD (Exodus 6:9). Most of the American church either neglects justice (a sin of omission) or participates in oppression (sin of commission).
Theologically, there is almost no literature on the extensive (555 OT references) biblical teaching on oppression. Rarely is the theme of oppression preached about from the American pulpit. Wolterstorff asserts that the English NT has been dejusticized. Result: oppression has run rampant in American society throughout our history including 2015.
In my home state of Iowa, we have a 2 and 24 problem---the worst incarceration ratio in the nation.
Two percent of Iowa's population is black; 24 percent of Iowa's prison population is black. At least 20 of the 24 percent of this high black incarceration is due to white oppression enacted through the criminal justice system, not to excessive black crime as is commonly believed. This high rate of oppression is what is truly criminal, evil, sinful; an unpardonable sin because there is no repentance by whites.
When will the white church repent, restitute and repair the extensive damage done to the oppressed.? Why are American systems of oppression never fully eliminated, only redesigned? (Read The New Jim Crow). It may be time for America to pray a Daniel 9 type prayer.
Daniel was as holy and righteous a person who has ever lived so he wasn't confessing his own personal sin. But as a citizen of the nation of Israel, he was identifying with the sins of Israel as if they were his own. And maybe they were. We cannot claim the rights and blessings of citizenship and then deny our responsibility for the sins of our nation. "Great and awesome God, . . . we have been wicked and rebelled. . . . . . . . . "
Here is my Americanized version of Daniel's prayer: "Great and awesome God, we have sinned greatly in your sight. Instead of repenting of our national sins of ethnocentrism and oppression, we have self-righteously rationalized them away. We have called ethnocentrism, American exceptionalism. We have neglected justice and the love of God. We have loved money as a substitute for God.
Our national sins are piled high; we deserve judgment, doom, perdition. If you will forgive us by your grace, we pledge to repair the damage done. For more, see blog "Lowell Noble's Writings."
Theologically, there is almost no literature on the extensive (555 OT references) biblical teaching on oppression. Rarely is the theme of oppression preached about from the American pulpit. Wolterstorff asserts that the English NT has been dejusticized. Result: oppression has run rampant in American society throughout our history including 2015.
In my home state of Iowa, we have a 2 and 24 problem---the worst incarceration ratio in the nation.
Two percent of Iowa's population is black; 24 percent of Iowa's prison population is black. At least 20 of the 24 percent of this high black incarceration is due to white oppression enacted through the criminal justice system, not to excessive black crime as is commonly believed. This high rate of oppression is what is truly criminal, evil, sinful; an unpardonable sin because there is no repentance by whites.
When will the white church repent, restitute and repair the extensive damage done to the oppressed.? Why are American systems of oppression never fully eliminated, only redesigned? (Read The New Jim Crow). It may be time for America to pray a Daniel 9 type prayer.
Daniel was as holy and righteous a person who has ever lived so he wasn't confessing his own personal sin. But as a citizen of the nation of Israel, he was identifying with the sins of Israel as if they were his own. And maybe they were. We cannot claim the rights and blessings of citizenship and then deny our responsibility for the sins of our nation. "Great and awesome God, . . . we have been wicked and rebelled. . . . . . . . . "
Here is my Americanized version of Daniel's prayer: "Great and awesome God, we have sinned greatly in your sight. Instead of repenting of our national sins of ethnocentrism and oppression, we have self-righteously rationalized them away. We have called ethnocentrism, American exceptionalism. We have neglected justice and the love of God. We have loved money as a substitute for God.
Our national sins are piled high; we deserve judgment, doom, perdition. If you will forgive us by your grace, we pledge to repair the damage done. For more, see blog "Lowell Noble's Writings."
Saturday, October 10, 2015
"The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration"
1. REQUIRED READING
"The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration," by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, October, 2015. Coates is the author of two other excellent articles in The Atlantic, one of which is entitled "The Case for Reparations."
Coates and Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling The New Jim Crow, are high quality thinkers and writers. Both analyze with great historical and sociological precision. Both authors have a deep understanding of American systems of oppression. Alexander is a Christian; Coates is an atheist. Both are black; neither writes from a specific biblical perspective.
Coates' 24 page article is full of gems of insight and wisdom.
Throughout American history, whites have engaged in an unending drumbeat of of supposed black inferiority and black criminality---a perfect diversion from white ethnocentrism and Anglo oppression. Whites have misused the law and the criminal justice system to enforce their racial profiling. So, in reality, whites are the immoral ones, the criminals par excellence, often with God's 'approval'.
Only a godless people would engage in Indian genocide, African enslavement and the theft of half of Mexico's land. Only a godless people would engage in widespread injustice and then try to hide their social evil under a veneer of superficial justice. Only a godless people would misuse religion to cover their diabolic evils.
Biblical justice releases the oppressed, sets things right, makes things right. White Americans, especially white churches, must repent, restitute and repair; or face divine judgment.
To provide some biblical perspective that neither Coates nor Alexander give, I suggest reading the following Scriptures:
1. The Messianic passages from Isaiah: 9:6-7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42"1-4; 61:1-4.
2. Mt. 3:1 and Mark 1:7 Repent.
3. Luke 4:18-30 Ethnocentrism and oppression; justice and reconciliation.
4. Acts 1:1-8
5. Acts 8:12; also 28:23 & 31.
6. Romans 14:17 NEB "The kingdom of God is justice."
7. Mt. 6:33 (NEB) "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice."
"The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration," by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, October, 2015. Coates is the author of two other excellent articles in The Atlantic, one of which is entitled "The Case for Reparations."
Coates and Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling The New Jim Crow, are high quality thinkers and writers. Both analyze with great historical and sociological precision. Both authors have a deep understanding of American systems of oppression. Alexander is a Christian; Coates is an atheist. Both are black; neither writes from a specific biblical perspective.
Coates' 24 page article is full of gems of insight and wisdom.
Throughout American history, whites have engaged in an unending drumbeat of of supposed black inferiority and black criminality---a perfect diversion from white ethnocentrism and Anglo oppression. Whites have misused the law and the criminal justice system to enforce their racial profiling. So, in reality, whites are the immoral ones, the criminals par excellence, often with God's 'approval'.
Only a godless people would engage in Indian genocide, African enslavement and the theft of half of Mexico's land. Only a godless people would engage in widespread injustice and then try to hide their social evil under a veneer of superficial justice. Only a godless people would misuse religion to cover their diabolic evils.
Biblical justice releases the oppressed, sets things right, makes things right. White Americans, especially white churches, must repent, restitute and repair; or face divine judgment.
To provide some biblical perspective that neither Coates nor Alexander give, I suggest reading the following Scriptures:
1. The Messianic passages from Isaiah: 9:6-7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42"1-4; 61:1-4.
2. Mt. 3:1 and Mark 1:7 Repent.
3. Luke 4:18-30 Ethnocentrism and oppression; justice and reconciliation.
4. Acts 1:1-8
5. Acts 8:12; also 28:23 & 31.
6. Romans 14:17 NEB "The kingdom of God is justice."
7. Mt. 6:33 (NEB) "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice."
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Key to Understanding Luke 4:18-19: "release the oppressed."
First, a few questions. For the children of Israel in Egypt, who was the oppressor, who were the oppressed, what was the system of oppression, what was the damage done to the oppressed? During the time of the NT gospels, who was the oppressor, who were the oppressed, what was the system of oppression, what was the damage done to the oppressed? In the modern U. S., (2015), who are the oppressors, who are the oppressed, what is the system of oppression, what damage is being done to the oppressed?
As Jesus was reading from Isaiah 61 (Luke 4:18-19), he inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58:6 "to release the oppressed." This idea must have been extremely important to Jesus for him to have added it to Isaiah 61.
But most white Americans are quite ignorant about oppression---biblically, historically and sociologically. During my 89 years, I have never heard a sermon on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression. There is almost no theological literature by white American theologians on oppression. Most Bible dictionaries either omit oppression altogether or lightly touch it, even though there are 555 references to oppression in the OT.
"To release the oppressed" in America, white Christians and churches must first identify and then repent from what they are doing, then engage in restitution, then repair the damage oppression has done to individuals, families, communities and cultures.
Biblically, oppression not only smashes the body, but it also crushes the spirit. Please extensively meditate on Exodus 6:9 which concisely describes the damage oppression did to the people of Israel. I think the same damage is being done today in America. Their spirits were so badly broken by oppression that they could not even hear or believe God when he said he would free them from slavery. Today, we might label this mass PTSD, or cultural PTSS. Oppression damage creates individual, family and cultural dysfunction. Damage precedes dysfunction.
What is the biblical answer to oppression? It is found in 4:19: "the year of the Lord's favor." This refers to the OT Sabbath Year, the Jubilee Year when slaves were freed every seven years, when debts were canceled every seven years, when land was returned every 50 years. How radical is your understanding of justice? Bandaid justice will not suffice. Only a kingdom of God justice, a liberating justice will do. A shallow understanding of oppression leads to a shallow practice of justice; far too common in modern America. In America, we really don't end systems of oppression, though we think we do; we merely redesign them.
Who in the Bible actually did release the oppressed? Pharaoh finally released the Egyptian slaves, but relunctantly, after judgment, after God slayed the first-born.
Not even Jesus succeeded in releasing the oppressed in Israel. He tried hard to convince the Jewish religio-politico-economic elite to repent---"Woe to the rich" Luke 6:24; "Woe to the scribes and Pharisees" Mt. 23 and Luke 11; and he cleansed the temple and called it a den of robbers. All to no avail; they refused to repent and end the oppression. James, in chapter 2, scorched the church for being pro-rich, pro-oppression, and anti poor. Most of the modern American white church has repeated the James 2 church error, either sitting idly by or participating in Indian genocide, slavery, segregation, taking half of Mexico's land. For the past 30 years doing little to stop mass incarceration.
Luke 4:18-19 guides the Spirit-filled church on how to release the oppressed by implementing Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year justice. Why has the American church chosen to neglect this part of the gospel?
Nineveh, the great city, did repent; Zaccheus, the tax collector did repent and restitute. But for the most part people, even most American Christians prefer to enjoy the fruit of ethnocentrism and oppression---superiority and wealth---so much that they refuse to repent and release the oppressed poor.
World Bank, Bread for the World, and many other NGO's are committed to ending extreme poverty by 2030. Will the church commit itself to ending extreme oppression by 2030?
As Jesus was reading from Isaiah 61 (Luke 4:18-19), he inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58:6 "to release the oppressed." This idea must have been extremely important to Jesus for him to have added it to Isaiah 61.
But most white Americans are quite ignorant about oppression---biblically, historically and sociologically. During my 89 years, I have never heard a sermon on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression. There is almost no theological literature by white American theologians on oppression. Most Bible dictionaries either omit oppression altogether or lightly touch it, even though there are 555 references to oppression in the OT.
"To release the oppressed" in America, white Christians and churches must first identify and then repent from what they are doing, then engage in restitution, then repair the damage oppression has done to individuals, families, communities and cultures.
Biblically, oppression not only smashes the body, but it also crushes the spirit. Please extensively meditate on Exodus 6:9 which concisely describes the damage oppression did to the people of Israel. I think the same damage is being done today in America. Their spirits were so badly broken by oppression that they could not even hear or believe God when he said he would free them from slavery. Today, we might label this mass PTSD, or cultural PTSS. Oppression damage creates individual, family and cultural dysfunction. Damage precedes dysfunction.
What is the biblical answer to oppression? It is found in 4:19: "the year of the Lord's favor." This refers to the OT Sabbath Year, the Jubilee Year when slaves were freed every seven years, when debts were canceled every seven years, when land was returned every 50 years. How radical is your understanding of justice? Bandaid justice will not suffice. Only a kingdom of God justice, a liberating justice will do. A shallow understanding of oppression leads to a shallow practice of justice; far too common in modern America. In America, we really don't end systems of oppression, though we think we do; we merely redesign them.
Who in the Bible actually did release the oppressed? Pharaoh finally released the Egyptian slaves, but relunctantly, after judgment, after God slayed the first-born.
Not even Jesus succeeded in releasing the oppressed in Israel. He tried hard to convince the Jewish religio-politico-economic elite to repent---"Woe to the rich" Luke 6:24; "Woe to the scribes and Pharisees" Mt. 23 and Luke 11; and he cleansed the temple and called it a den of robbers. All to no avail; they refused to repent and end the oppression. James, in chapter 2, scorched the church for being pro-rich, pro-oppression, and anti poor. Most of the modern American white church has repeated the James 2 church error, either sitting idly by or participating in Indian genocide, slavery, segregation, taking half of Mexico's land. For the past 30 years doing little to stop mass incarceration.
Luke 4:18-19 guides the Spirit-filled church on how to release the oppressed by implementing Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year justice. Why has the American church chosen to neglect this part of the gospel?
Nineveh, the great city, did repent; Zaccheus, the tax collector did repent and restitute. But for the most part people, even most American Christians prefer to enjoy the fruit of ethnocentrism and oppression---superiority and wealth---so much that they refuse to repent and release the oppressed poor.
World Bank, Bread for the World, and many other NGO's are committed to ending extreme poverty by 2030. Will the church commit itself to ending extreme oppression by 2030?
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Pope Francis, the kingdom of God, and . . . .
Pope Francis, the kingdom of God, and the failure of the American church to preach and practice the kingdom of God/Jubilee justice gospel.
As he spoke to the nation, Pope Francis presented a brilliant biblical blend of the pastoral and prophetic, a call to do justice in love. Matthew 25, one of pastor Francis' favorite biblical passages, draws a stark line between acts of love and justice, and the neglect of justice and the love of God. One path leads to heaven; the leads to judgment.
America stands at a fork in the road. God has spoken through Pastor Francis. Now will all the American church speak and act much more biblically than in the past? If not, can judgment be far away?
Insiders say that when Francis became Pope, he became a different person, a transformed person, an empowered person. My interpretation: the Holy Spirit anointed pastor Francis for his special mission/ministry. Believers and non-believers alike recognize something special in Pastor Francis.
It has been great to have Francis in our nation preaching the justice gospel; also practicing, at least symbolically, the priority of taking the gospel to the poor and oppressed. But it will be 100 times more important for every pulpit in American, every church in America, every Protestant and Catholic, to follow up Francis with a series of sermons on oppression an the OT, a series on oppression in the NT, a series on justice in the OT, a series on justice in the NT; a sermon on the relationship of the Spirit and the kingdom based on Acts 1:1-8; the combined gospel, the kingdom and Jesus, based on Acts 8:12; 28:23 & 31; the Messianic passage from Isaiah beginning with 9:6-7; the tie between Luke 4:18-30 and Mt. 25:31ff.
Then every church will be prepared to heed Francis'admonition: "Leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets." Or John Perkins: "Every church should start or support and Christian Community Development ministry among the oppressed poor."
According to Mt. 3:2 and Mark 1:15, a different version is found in Luke 4:18-30, Jesus began his public ministry with these important words: "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here!" (Noble paraphrase). In dozens of informal surveys of hundreds of persons from 1995 to 2010, I have not found a clear and compelling understanding of the kingdom of God. Why this almost total ignorance about the kingdom in the American church? The American church has not repented for the social evils of ethnocentrism and oppression; instead it has rationalized social evil as necessary and renamed it as something good; ethnocentrism becomes American exceptionalism, oppression becomes Manifest Destiny. Without repentance, one cannot enter nor understand the kingdom of God.
What is biblical repentance? It is a paradigm shift, a radical change in both attitude and action, a turning around and a going in a new direction; a turning from sin and a doing of right. Biblical repentance must include restitution and repair of individuals, families, and communities damaged by oppression. If repentance does does not end with doing justice, it is flawed.
Most American Christians are too self-righteous, too nationalistic to repent. In terms of Haiti, President Clinton did repent; for the full story, read Haiti: After the Earthquake, page 150. Clinton shipped too much food to Haiti thereby undermining Haitian farmers, driving some rice farmers out of business.
The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice---justice that releases the oppressed and repairs the damage done. The dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit---the power, wisdom and truth needed to identify social evil and then implement Jubilee justice.
American church: repent, restitute and repair; incarnate the kingdom.
As he spoke to the nation, Pope Francis presented a brilliant biblical blend of the pastoral and prophetic, a call to do justice in love. Matthew 25, one of pastor Francis' favorite biblical passages, draws a stark line between acts of love and justice, and the neglect of justice and the love of God. One path leads to heaven; the leads to judgment.
America stands at a fork in the road. God has spoken through Pastor Francis. Now will all the American church speak and act much more biblically than in the past? If not, can judgment be far away?
Insiders say that when Francis became Pope, he became a different person, a transformed person, an empowered person. My interpretation: the Holy Spirit anointed pastor Francis for his special mission/ministry. Believers and non-believers alike recognize something special in Pastor Francis.
It has been great to have Francis in our nation preaching the justice gospel; also practicing, at least symbolically, the priority of taking the gospel to the poor and oppressed. But it will be 100 times more important for every pulpit in American, every church in America, every Protestant and Catholic, to follow up Francis with a series of sermons on oppression an the OT, a series on oppression in the NT, a series on justice in the OT, a series on justice in the NT; a sermon on the relationship of the Spirit and the kingdom based on Acts 1:1-8; the combined gospel, the kingdom and Jesus, based on Acts 8:12; 28:23 & 31; the Messianic passage from Isaiah beginning with 9:6-7; the tie between Luke 4:18-30 and Mt. 25:31ff.
Then every church will be prepared to heed Francis'admonition: "Leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets." Or John Perkins: "Every church should start or support and Christian Community Development ministry among the oppressed poor."
According to Mt. 3:2 and Mark 1:15, a different version is found in Luke 4:18-30, Jesus began his public ministry with these important words: "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here!" (Noble paraphrase). In dozens of informal surveys of hundreds of persons from 1995 to 2010, I have not found a clear and compelling understanding of the kingdom of God. Why this almost total ignorance about the kingdom in the American church? The American church has not repented for the social evils of ethnocentrism and oppression; instead it has rationalized social evil as necessary and renamed it as something good; ethnocentrism becomes American exceptionalism, oppression becomes Manifest Destiny. Without repentance, one cannot enter nor understand the kingdom of God.
What is biblical repentance? It is a paradigm shift, a radical change in both attitude and action, a turning around and a going in a new direction; a turning from sin and a doing of right. Biblical repentance must include restitution and repair of individuals, families, and communities damaged by oppression. If repentance does does not end with doing justice, it is flawed.
Most American Christians are too self-righteous, too nationalistic to repent. In terms of Haiti, President Clinton did repent; for the full story, read Haiti: After the Earthquake, page 150. Clinton shipped too much food to Haiti thereby undermining Haitian farmers, driving some rice farmers out of business.
The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice---justice that releases the oppressed and repairs the damage done. The dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit---the power, wisdom and truth needed to identify social evil and then implement Jubilee justice.
American church: repent, restitute and repair; incarnate the kingdom.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Do We Need the Justice of the New Testament Desperately?
Back in New Testament times, there was a small rich elite that ran Palestine composed of Herodians, high priests, and a lay aristocracy, one to two percent of the population. Another 5 percent served the rich elite. Rural peasants---small landowners, tenants, day laborers and slaves---made up around 75 percent of the Palestinian population; the majority were poor or near poor. Things were going from bad to worse as a predatory financial/economic system was pushing farmers off their land. Justice was broken; oppression was running wild; some of the worst oppressors were the religious rich. For more documentation, google Matthew: A Log Cabin Publican? Good News for Sex Workers.
Rich elites seem to prosper in either dictatorships or democracies (aristocracies/plutocracies.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, brilliant Reformed philosopher/theologian, declares that English translators and theologians have "dejusticized" the English translations of the New Testament, have separated justice and love. This also means that few English readers of the New Testament tie the kingdom of God and liberating justice together; most, therefore, neglect justice and the love of God (Mt. 6:33; Luke 11). Therefore, they do not grasp Graham Cray' assertion: "The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit."
Steven Voth, a professional Bible translator (chapter 14, The Challenge of Bible Translation), documents Wolterstorff's claim that English New Testaments have been dejusticized. Voth made a statistical comparison of different language translations of the New Testament. The KJV NT has zero references to justice; the NIV, only 16 references to justice; whereas a typical Spanish, French or Latin translation of the NT has around 100 references to justice.
Wolterstorff says there are around 300 dik-stems in the Greek NT; the fundamental meanings of dik are just, justice or adik injustice/oppression.
In Matthew 25:31-46. the whole meaning of the passage hangs on were you just or unjust in your treatment of others; the final judgment is based on the doing of justice or the neglect of justice. "Luke contains the same number of dik-words as Matthew (28) but the additional 25 uses in Acts make Luke the New Testament author second only to Paul (114 uses plus 25 in the pastoral letters). In Luke-Acts, 19 of the 53 uses involve words signifying oppression/injustice."
The Christian Reformed Church's Committee to Study Restorative Justice states:
"[American] Justice is broken. . . . we need a concept of justice that corrects and restores what is broken [as a result of oppression]. . . . Confusion sometimes occurs because the single word justice is used for both justice in the sense of being right and justice in the sense of setting right. The Bible is concerned, for the most part, with setting right. It does not so much describe justice as prescribe it. . . . .Paul has in mind a setting right of what is wrong. This, of course, is God's setting right, but there is also in Scripture a call for a human setting right [a liberating justice]."
In modern day America, justice is broken and ethnocentrism and oppression are running wild. Not only is America refusing to repent and repair over its sins, its social evil, it has renamed and rationalized them. We have sanitized our national evils by calling them American exceptionalism, westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, Christian nation, the American Dream, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Out of our ignorance and arrogance, we built an Arch to celebrate our sin of Indian genocide. Lewis and Clark are celebrated as heroes, not as genocide spies
When a nation doesn't repent of its sins, it repeats them over and over again---in Hawaii, in the Philippines, in Tokyo Bay. Could our invasion of Tokyo Bay been one of the factors that, long term, led to Pearl Harbor? We don't repent because we reap the fruit of oppression. The DeWolf slave trading clan said they were in it for the MONEY. Jefferson and Jackson wanted free Indian land. Washington and Jefferson wanted free black labor.
When faced with a choice to repent or celebrate, we celebrate our sins, our social evils; we sin and celebrate. Seldom do our pastors pray the Daniel 9 prayer for America. After all, a self-righteous people sees no need to repent and repair.
Rich elites seem to prosper in either dictatorships or democracies (aristocracies/plutocracies.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, brilliant Reformed philosopher/theologian, declares that English translators and theologians have "dejusticized" the English translations of the New Testament, have separated justice and love. This also means that few English readers of the New Testament tie the kingdom of God and liberating justice together; most, therefore, neglect justice and the love of God (Mt. 6:33; Luke 11). Therefore, they do not grasp Graham Cray' assertion: "The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit."
Steven Voth, a professional Bible translator (chapter 14, The Challenge of Bible Translation), documents Wolterstorff's claim that English New Testaments have been dejusticized. Voth made a statistical comparison of different language translations of the New Testament. The KJV NT has zero references to justice; the NIV, only 16 references to justice; whereas a typical Spanish, French or Latin translation of the NT has around 100 references to justice.
Wolterstorff says there are around 300 dik-stems in the Greek NT; the fundamental meanings of dik are just, justice or adik injustice/oppression.
In Matthew 25:31-46. the whole meaning of the passage hangs on were you just or unjust in your treatment of others; the final judgment is based on the doing of justice or the neglect of justice. "Luke contains the same number of dik-words as Matthew (28) but the additional 25 uses in Acts make Luke the New Testament author second only to Paul (114 uses plus 25 in the pastoral letters). In Luke-Acts, 19 of the 53 uses involve words signifying oppression/injustice."
The Christian Reformed Church's Committee to Study Restorative Justice states:
"[American] Justice is broken. . . . we need a concept of justice that corrects and restores what is broken [as a result of oppression]. . . . Confusion sometimes occurs because the single word justice is used for both justice in the sense of being right and justice in the sense of setting right. The Bible is concerned, for the most part, with setting right. It does not so much describe justice as prescribe it. . . . .Paul has in mind a setting right of what is wrong. This, of course, is God's setting right, but there is also in Scripture a call for a human setting right [a liberating justice]."
In modern day America, justice is broken and ethnocentrism and oppression are running wild. Not only is America refusing to repent and repair over its sins, its social evil, it has renamed and rationalized them. We have sanitized our national evils by calling them American exceptionalism, westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, Christian nation, the American Dream, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Out of our ignorance and arrogance, we built an Arch to celebrate our sin of Indian genocide. Lewis and Clark are celebrated as heroes, not as genocide spies
When a nation doesn't repent of its sins, it repeats them over and over again---in Hawaii, in the Philippines, in Tokyo Bay. Could our invasion of Tokyo Bay been one of the factors that, long term, led to Pearl Harbor? We don't repent because we reap the fruit of oppression. The DeWolf slave trading clan said they were in it for the MONEY. Jefferson and Jackson wanted free Indian land. Washington and Jefferson wanted free black labor.
When faced with a choice to repent or celebrate, we celebrate our sins, our social evils; we sin and celebrate. Seldom do our pastors pray the Daniel 9 prayer for America. After all, a self-righteous people sees no need to repent and repair.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Ethnic History and a Theology of Reconciliation
This review essay is based on the following books:
Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, 1996. Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, 1993. Stephan and Abigal Thernstorm. America in Black and White, 1997. Andrew Sung Park. The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, 1993. Andrew Sung Park. Racial Conflict and Healing, 1996.
Miroslav Volf was a professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary who now teaches at Yale. A native Croatian, he writes out of his own experience of teaching in Croatia during the civil war in former Yugoslavia. In a time of ethnic conflict, even ethnic cleansing which is a type of genocide, we need a word of forgiveness and reconciliation. Is such a thing possible in the midst of bitterness, hatred and violence? Volf says YES!---that exclusion or ethnocentrism can be replaced by the embrace of reconciliation.
Sometimes people who have experienced suffering and oppression can speak a clear and powerful word that can clarify for the rest of us what an appropriate Christian response should be. Volf does so with both personal passion and theological sophistication. Little theology of this kind exists so Volf's contribution is welcome indeed. In the Preface, Volf describes his dilemma:
"After I finished my lecture Professor Jurgen Moltman stood up and asked one of his typical questions, both concrete and penetrating: 'But can you embrace a cetnik?' It was the winter of 1993. For months now the notorious Serbian fighters called 'cetnik' had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities. I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God embraced us in Christ. Can I embrace a cetnik---the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? . . .
"My thought was pulled in two different directions by the blood of the innocent crying out to God and by the blood of God's Lamb offered for the guilty. How does remain loyal to both the demand of the oppressed for justice and to the gift of forgiveness that the Crucified offered to the perpetrators?"
How can we celebrate our ethnicity without degenerating into ethnic superiority (ethnocentrism) or exclusion? What is the relationship between our ethnic identity and our Christian identity? Can we maintain both? Must one be given priority? Can I hold strong to my own ethnic heritage and still respect a different ethnic heritage? For Volf, answers center in the cross.
The cross is an example of self-giving love, not only for all sinners but also for all enemies. The cross involved suffering, sacrifice and pain; no cheap forgiveness or cheap reconciliation here. We are offered the grace of God, forgiveness, reconciliation. Can we, will we, offer the same to our enemies? Volf says, "I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."
Exclusion or embrace? Only through Christ can "we distance ourselves from ourselves and our cultures in order to create space for the other" person. Does the emphasis on embrace sweep oppression under the rug? Where does justice come in? Whose perspective on justice? We seem to want to define justice more by our own class and culture than by God's universal standards. Must we struggle against injustice before a full agreement on what justice is can be agreed upon? Must we understand oppression before we can understand justice?
The above questions are not idle speculations to Volf. He struggles with them at length and in depth. These are not tangential issues; they go to the heart of the Christian faith. See the end of this article for a list of quotations from Volf.
Next, A Different Mirror by Takaki. In my opinion, Ronald Takaki, a Japanese American, is the foremost historian of ethnicity in America today. He has a doctorate in American history and he has been a professor in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than two decades. His first two books dealt with Afro American studies; two other books covered Asian Americans. This book is a broad survey of ethnic history in America.
Takaki asserts that we need to know more about our ethnic past in order to prepare for our increasingly ethnic future. In the 1990s, "one-third of the American people do not trace their ancestry their origins to Europe." By 2056, the majority of Americans will trace their ancestry to non-European origins. Some America scholars such as Allan Bloom. E. D. Hirsch and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., are worried about the loss of "civilized values," that we are becoming an ethnic "tower of Babel," or that we are experiencing a "disuniting of America."
Instead, Takaki sees this increasing ethnic diversity as an asset, an opportunity; a "multicultural curriculum enables us to reach toward a more comprehensive understanding of American history."
We could, of course, degenerate into increasing ethnic conflict as is happening in many areas of the world. Religio-ethnic conflict has been a tragic part of too much of European history. If Euro Americans (WASP"s) insist on maintaining their superior position, glorifying Western civilization and values and denigrating other cultures and values, then unending ethnic conflict will be our destiny also. But if Euro Americans, and especially Euro Christians, will humble themselves and sit at the feet of an ethnic scholar such as Takaki, repent, and then see other ethnic heritages as of equal value, then we can build a new American culture that will be much better than our often tragic past of Indian genocide and African enslavement.
Though brimming with a broad and sophisticated scholarship, Takaki writes with an easy reading prose punctuated with interesting stories, poems and songs. The reader is caught up in the human dimension of ethnic history, not just the tragic side. Multiculturalism can be seen as a threat or an asset. I believe that the reader will conclude after reading this rich tapestry of American history that our future as a nation will be bright if we see our ethnic diversity as an asset.
On the negative side,one of the most important insights to be gleaned from A Different Mirror is the way the British treated the Irish and how this pattern of ethnocentrism was transplanted to America. Before the British colonists landed on American shores, the British had conquered and colonized Ireland. They developed an ethnocentric vocabulary of dehumanization which called the Irish savages and brutes; this type of language and attitude legitimated the acts of violence that followed, including violence and depopulation of the land so the British could settle it. Takaki says the British colonists saw Indians as similar to the Irish; so the colonists repeated the same ethnocentrism and oppression against the Indians. It is almost as if the brutal treatment of the Irish was a dress rehearsal for the later treatment of American Indians and African slaves.
Though I was already fairly widely read in ethnic history, I gained many new insights as I read A Different Mirror. I highly recommend it as a must read.
Next America in Black and White by the Thernstorms. This is a large book (545 pages of text and 124 pages of notes) crammed with historical information, social data and public policy analysis. The historical section (from the rigid segregation Jim Crow era of the South up to 1960) is probably the best part of the book. The third section dealing with public policy and the changing racial climate is the more debatable and controversial section.
At its best, this book approaches a masterpiece; at its worst, it become a bit of ideological propaganda, arguing against almost any and all government action to improve race/ethnic relations. It is a tricky book to read for the average reader because the text flows easily from historical and social fact to ideological interpretation. At times, only an expert will be able to sort out fact from ideology. So, in one sense, this book is a must read, but, in another sense, it is a dangerous read.
Glenn Loury, an Afro American scholar, complains that on the racism issue the Therstorms miss the point when they say the worst of racism is over. Loury asserts that the ethnocentrism problem is worse than the Thernstorms admit, and he is particularly incensed at their assertion that "black failure" is now the heart of the problem. To read Loury's ten page review, see the November, 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
Next, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin by Andrew Sung Park. Few theologians have been close enough to oppression to feel the pain of it and thus be driven to wrestle with it theologically. Therefore a serious discussion of oppression is missing from most theology. Listen to the personal comments by Park, a Korean American theologian:
"Among our family members, my mother has suffered the most: patriarchal suppression and repression, the wars, and the hardship of a preacher's wife. Her life was a series of tragedies and human anguish. She was born in han and died in han [suffering/oppression]. She is the reason I write about han, so that fewer people might suffer as she did.
"The deep pain of human agony has been a primary concern of my theological reflection. This issue of han has been more significant in my life than the problem of sin. Accordingly my theological theme has been how to resolve the human suffering which wounds the heart of God."
Park see the doctrine of justice for the oppressed as important as the doctrine of justification by faith is for the sinner. In fact, he is highly critical of a one-sided emphasis on justification by faith alone. He sees this as overly individualistic. Full salvation must include justice for the oppressed. Love and justice for the oppressed must be put along side justification by faith and grace.
In his next book, Racial Conflict and Healing, Park calls for a theology of society. Right on, but from my perspective Park could have strengthened his theological discussions by going directly to the Scriptures and doing his own analysis of oppression as well as his own analysis of what the Scriptures teach about ethnos and ethnocentrism.
Next, a few quotations from Exclusion and Embrace:
"Europe colonized and oppressed, destroyed cultures and imposed its religion . . . in the name of its own absolute religion and superior civilization."
"" . . . truth and justice are unavailable outside of the will to embrace the other [enemy]. I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."
"Our coziness with the surrounding culture has made us so blind to many of its evils that instead of calling them into question, we offer our own versions of them---in God's name and with good conscience."
"[When] Christian and cultural commitments merge . . . it can transmute what is in fact a murder into an act of piety."
"What we should turn away from seems clear: it is captivity to our own culture, coupled so often with blind self-righteousness."
" . . .the struggle against oppression must be guided by a vision of reconciliation between oppressed and oppressors, . . . "
Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, 1996. Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, 1993. Stephan and Abigal Thernstorm. America in Black and White, 1997. Andrew Sung Park. The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, 1993. Andrew Sung Park. Racial Conflict and Healing, 1996.
Miroslav Volf was a professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary who now teaches at Yale. A native Croatian, he writes out of his own experience of teaching in Croatia during the civil war in former Yugoslavia. In a time of ethnic conflict, even ethnic cleansing which is a type of genocide, we need a word of forgiveness and reconciliation. Is such a thing possible in the midst of bitterness, hatred and violence? Volf says YES!---that exclusion or ethnocentrism can be replaced by the embrace of reconciliation.
Sometimes people who have experienced suffering and oppression can speak a clear and powerful word that can clarify for the rest of us what an appropriate Christian response should be. Volf does so with both personal passion and theological sophistication. Little theology of this kind exists so Volf's contribution is welcome indeed. In the Preface, Volf describes his dilemma:
"After I finished my lecture Professor Jurgen Moltman stood up and asked one of his typical questions, both concrete and penetrating: 'But can you embrace a cetnik?' It was the winter of 1993. For months now the notorious Serbian fighters called 'cetnik' had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities. I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God embraced us in Christ. Can I embrace a cetnik---the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? . . .
"My thought was pulled in two different directions by the blood of the innocent crying out to God and by the blood of God's Lamb offered for the guilty. How does remain loyal to both the demand of the oppressed for justice and to the gift of forgiveness that the Crucified offered to the perpetrators?"
How can we celebrate our ethnicity without degenerating into ethnic superiority (ethnocentrism) or exclusion? What is the relationship between our ethnic identity and our Christian identity? Can we maintain both? Must one be given priority? Can I hold strong to my own ethnic heritage and still respect a different ethnic heritage? For Volf, answers center in the cross.
The cross is an example of self-giving love, not only for all sinners but also for all enemies. The cross involved suffering, sacrifice and pain; no cheap forgiveness or cheap reconciliation here. We are offered the grace of God, forgiveness, reconciliation. Can we, will we, offer the same to our enemies? Volf says, "I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."
Exclusion or embrace? Only through Christ can "we distance ourselves from ourselves and our cultures in order to create space for the other" person. Does the emphasis on embrace sweep oppression under the rug? Where does justice come in? Whose perspective on justice? We seem to want to define justice more by our own class and culture than by God's universal standards. Must we struggle against injustice before a full agreement on what justice is can be agreed upon? Must we understand oppression before we can understand justice?
The above questions are not idle speculations to Volf. He struggles with them at length and in depth. These are not tangential issues; they go to the heart of the Christian faith. See the end of this article for a list of quotations from Volf.
Next, A Different Mirror by Takaki. In my opinion, Ronald Takaki, a Japanese American, is the foremost historian of ethnicity in America today. He has a doctorate in American history and he has been a professor in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than two decades. His first two books dealt with Afro American studies; two other books covered Asian Americans. This book is a broad survey of ethnic history in America.
Takaki asserts that we need to know more about our ethnic past in order to prepare for our increasingly ethnic future. In the 1990s, "one-third of the American people do not trace their ancestry their origins to Europe." By 2056, the majority of Americans will trace their ancestry to non-European origins. Some America scholars such as Allan Bloom. E. D. Hirsch and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., are worried about the loss of "civilized values," that we are becoming an ethnic "tower of Babel," or that we are experiencing a "disuniting of America."
Instead, Takaki sees this increasing ethnic diversity as an asset, an opportunity; a "multicultural curriculum enables us to reach toward a more comprehensive understanding of American history."
We could, of course, degenerate into increasing ethnic conflict as is happening in many areas of the world. Religio-ethnic conflict has been a tragic part of too much of European history. If Euro Americans (WASP"s) insist on maintaining their superior position, glorifying Western civilization and values and denigrating other cultures and values, then unending ethnic conflict will be our destiny also. But if Euro Americans, and especially Euro Christians, will humble themselves and sit at the feet of an ethnic scholar such as Takaki, repent, and then see other ethnic heritages as of equal value, then we can build a new American culture that will be much better than our often tragic past of Indian genocide and African enslavement.
Though brimming with a broad and sophisticated scholarship, Takaki writes with an easy reading prose punctuated with interesting stories, poems and songs. The reader is caught up in the human dimension of ethnic history, not just the tragic side. Multiculturalism can be seen as a threat or an asset. I believe that the reader will conclude after reading this rich tapestry of American history that our future as a nation will be bright if we see our ethnic diversity as an asset.
On the negative side,one of the most important insights to be gleaned from A Different Mirror is the way the British treated the Irish and how this pattern of ethnocentrism was transplanted to America. Before the British colonists landed on American shores, the British had conquered and colonized Ireland. They developed an ethnocentric vocabulary of dehumanization which called the Irish savages and brutes; this type of language and attitude legitimated the acts of violence that followed, including violence and depopulation of the land so the British could settle it. Takaki says the British colonists saw Indians as similar to the Irish; so the colonists repeated the same ethnocentrism and oppression against the Indians. It is almost as if the brutal treatment of the Irish was a dress rehearsal for the later treatment of American Indians and African slaves.
Though I was already fairly widely read in ethnic history, I gained many new insights as I read A Different Mirror. I highly recommend it as a must read.
Next America in Black and White by the Thernstorms. This is a large book (545 pages of text and 124 pages of notes) crammed with historical information, social data and public policy analysis. The historical section (from the rigid segregation Jim Crow era of the South up to 1960) is probably the best part of the book. The third section dealing with public policy and the changing racial climate is the more debatable and controversial section.
At its best, this book approaches a masterpiece; at its worst, it become a bit of ideological propaganda, arguing against almost any and all government action to improve race/ethnic relations. It is a tricky book to read for the average reader because the text flows easily from historical and social fact to ideological interpretation. At times, only an expert will be able to sort out fact from ideology. So, in one sense, this book is a must read, but, in another sense, it is a dangerous read.
Glenn Loury, an Afro American scholar, complains that on the racism issue the Therstorms miss the point when they say the worst of racism is over. Loury asserts that the ethnocentrism problem is worse than the Thernstorms admit, and he is particularly incensed at their assertion that "black failure" is now the heart of the problem. To read Loury's ten page review, see the November, 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
Next, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin by Andrew Sung Park. Few theologians have been close enough to oppression to feel the pain of it and thus be driven to wrestle with it theologically. Therefore a serious discussion of oppression is missing from most theology. Listen to the personal comments by Park, a Korean American theologian:
"Among our family members, my mother has suffered the most: patriarchal suppression and repression, the wars, and the hardship of a preacher's wife. Her life was a series of tragedies and human anguish. She was born in han and died in han [suffering/oppression]. She is the reason I write about han, so that fewer people might suffer as she did.
"The deep pain of human agony has been a primary concern of my theological reflection. This issue of han has been more significant in my life than the problem of sin. Accordingly my theological theme has been how to resolve the human suffering which wounds the heart of God."
Park see the doctrine of justice for the oppressed as important as the doctrine of justification by faith is for the sinner. In fact, he is highly critical of a one-sided emphasis on justification by faith alone. He sees this as overly individualistic. Full salvation must include justice for the oppressed. Love and justice for the oppressed must be put along side justification by faith and grace.
In his next book, Racial Conflict and Healing, Park calls for a theology of society. Right on, but from my perspective Park could have strengthened his theological discussions by going directly to the Scriptures and doing his own analysis of oppression as well as his own analysis of what the Scriptures teach about ethnos and ethnocentrism.
Next, a few quotations from Exclusion and Embrace:
"Europe colonized and oppressed, destroyed cultures and imposed its religion . . . in the name of its own absolute religion and superior civilization."
"" . . . truth and justice are unavailable outside of the will to embrace the other [enemy]. I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."
"Our coziness with the surrounding culture has made us so blind to many of its evils that instead of calling them into question, we offer our own versions of them---in God's name and with good conscience."
"[When] Christian and cultural commitments merge . . . it can transmute what is in fact a murder into an act of piety."
"What we should turn away from seems clear: it is captivity to our own culture, coupled so often with blind self-righteousness."
" . . .the struggle against oppression must be guided by a vision of reconciliation between oppressed and oppressors, . . . "
Monday, August 31, 2015
Review of Haiti: After the Earthquake
Paul Farmer, M.D., has written another masterful book on Haiti---Haiti: After the Earthquake, 2011.
A Haitian, Joia S. Mukherjee, has written a preface entitled "Neg Mawon," Haiti's equivalent to our statue of liberty:
"Haiti was founded by a righteous revolution in 1804 and became the first black republic. It was the first country to break the chains of slavery. . . . Tragically, this history of liberty and self-determination has drawn two centuries of political and economic ire [oppression] from powerful countries [U.S. is one of them] resulting in policies which have served to impoverish the people of Haiti.
"Fear by Thomas Jefferson for their successful [slave] uprising; extorted by France in 1825 for 150 million France [unjust forced reparations] . . . occupied by the U.S. military between 1915 and 1934, . . . . disrespected in their quest for democracy by an unrelenting series of dictators and coup-d'etats backed by Western [U.S.] countries: the free people of Haiti have been continually re-shackled [re-enslaved] politically and economically.
"Admist the rubble of the houses, buildings, and schools, and in front of the once grand National Palace stands Neg Mawon---the symbol of Haiti.
"When I arrived in Haiti on Thursday, January 14, 2010, I asked my friend who was driving---"Where is the free man?' . . . there, rising from the dust of the still trembling earth, stood the statue of Neg Mawon. I was drawn by the image out of the car and as I stood, weeping, an old woman put her arm around me; she too was crying. I said, "the free man is still standing." And she replied, powerfully, "my dear, the free man will NEVER be broken."
This is a truly inspiring story, but it is only a half truth, a hollow shell, a delicious fantasy. Free men need to live in a just society. True freedom, complete requires justice.
Both Haiti and the United States have statues of liberty/freedom. But neither country has a statue of justice. Without Jubilee justice, countries bounce from one system of oppression to another. In the U.S., from Indian genocide to African enslavement to segregation-sharecropping to mass incarceration to dominance by a rich, white, male elite. In Haiti, from Indian genocide to African enslavement to debt slavery to dictatorships to dominance by a small rich elite. Never justice, never justice with freedom.
Freedom and justice are Siamese twins; they must not be separated. When will the American and Haitian churches combine freedom and justice as part of their gospel. As Graham Cray asserts: The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom is the Holy Spirit. But this important part of the gospel seems to be missing from Americanized and Haitianized Christianity
On January 12, 2010, an earthquake killed several hundred thousand Haitians, and destroyed or damaged much of the capital city Port-au-Prince. Most of Haitian higher education was centered in Port-au-Prince; much of it was destroyed as well. ". . . the nursing school had collapsed during class, killing students and faculty alike." "A far greater aspect of the tragedy was the loss of thousands upon thousands of Haitians, students who died at schools and universities, . . . When the seminary fell, all the seminarians in Haiti died. The loss of the national treasure of an entire generation of Haiti's best and brightest is a loss that cannot be measured. The school system . . . must be the first priority"
Paul Farmer uses a medical term to describe the earthquake: "an acute-on-chronic event." Or a natural disaster pile on top of centuries of socio-economic disaster---500 years of oppression first by the Spanish, then by the French (slavery and debt slavery), next by America (neocolonialism), now by a Haitian elite. But when one listens to most American pundits talk about Haiti's problems, one would think the past never happened, a convenient historical amnesia.
Is there any hope? Enter Didi Farmer, Paul Farmer's wife who is Haitian and an anthropologist. She has written a chapter entitled "Mothers and Daughters of Haiti." In this chapter, she compares Haiti with Rwanda; after the genocide/civil war in Rwanda, both Haiti and Rwanda were considered hopeless countries. But Rwanda, thanks to the leadership of its women, it beginning a remarkable turn around. Haiti has yet to educate and marshal the talent of its women. Who will release and empower Haitian women?
The above are just a few of the deep insights one can find in Haiti: After the Earthquake.
A Haitian, Joia S. Mukherjee, has written a preface entitled "Neg Mawon," Haiti's equivalent to our statue of liberty:
"Haiti was founded by a righteous revolution in 1804 and became the first black republic. It was the first country to break the chains of slavery. . . . Tragically, this history of liberty and self-determination has drawn two centuries of political and economic ire [oppression] from powerful countries [U.S. is one of them] resulting in policies which have served to impoverish the people of Haiti.
"Fear by Thomas Jefferson for their successful [slave] uprising; extorted by France in 1825 for 150 million France [unjust forced reparations] . . . occupied by the U.S. military between 1915 and 1934, . . . . disrespected in their quest for democracy by an unrelenting series of dictators and coup-d'etats backed by Western [U.S.] countries: the free people of Haiti have been continually re-shackled [re-enslaved] politically and economically.
"Admist the rubble of the houses, buildings, and schools, and in front of the once grand National Palace stands Neg Mawon---the symbol of Haiti.
"When I arrived in Haiti on Thursday, January 14, 2010, I asked my friend who was driving---"Where is the free man?' . . . there, rising from the dust of the still trembling earth, stood the statue of Neg Mawon. I was drawn by the image out of the car and as I stood, weeping, an old woman put her arm around me; she too was crying. I said, "the free man is still standing." And she replied, powerfully, "my dear, the free man will NEVER be broken."
This is a truly inspiring story, but it is only a half truth, a hollow shell, a delicious fantasy. Free men need to live in a just society. True freedom, complete requires justice.
Both Haiti and the United States have statues of liberty/freedom. But neither country has a statue of justice. Without Jubilee justice, countries bounce from one system of oppression to another. In the U.S., from Indian genocide to African enslavement to segregation-sharecropping to mass incarceration to dominance by a rich, white, male elite. In Haiti, from Indian genocide to African enslavement to debt slavery to dictatorships to dominance by a small rich elite. Never justice, never justice with freedom.
Freedom and justice are Siamese twins; they must not be separated. When will the American and Haitian churches combine freedom and justice as part of their gospel. As Graham Cray asserts: The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom is the Holy Spirit. But this important part of the gospel seems to be missing from Americanized and Haitianized Christianity
On January 12, 2010, an earthquake killed several hundred thousand Haitians, and destroyed or damaged much of the capital city Port-au-Prince. Most of Haitian higher education was centered in Port-au-Prince; much of it was destroyed as well. ". . . the nursing school had collapsed during class, killing students and faculty alike." "A far greater aspect of the tragedy was the loss of thousands upon thousands of Haitians, students who died at schools and universities, . . . When the seminary fell, all the seminarians in Haiti died. The loss of the national treasure of an entire generation of Haiti's best and brightest is a loss that cannot be measured. The school system . . . must be the first priority"
Paul Farmer uses a medical term to describe the earthquake: "an acute-on-chronic event." Or a natural disaster pile on top of centuries of socio-economic disaster---500 years of oppression first by the Spanish, then by the French (slavery and debt slavery), next by America (neocolonialism), now by a Haitian elite. But when one listens to most American pundits talk about Haiti's problems, one would think the past never happened, a convenient historical amnesia.
Is there any hope? Enter Didi Farmer, Paul Farmer's wife who is Haitian and an anthropologist. She has written a chapter entitled "Mothers and Daughters of Haiti." In this chapter, she compares Haiti with Rwanda; after the genocide/civil war in Rwanda, both Haiti and Rwanda were considered hopeless countries. But Rwanda, thanks to the leadership of its women, it beginning a remarkable turn around. Haiti has yet to educate and marshal the talent of its women. Who will release and empower Haitian women?
The above are just a few of the deep insights one can find in Haiti: After the Earthquake.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
The Wars of America: Christian Views
In 1981, eight professional Christian historians wrote The Wars of America: Christian Views, a scholarly book, a readable book, that will enlighten and shake up your understanding of American history.
It is not easy to apply biblical principles such as oppression, justice and shalom to modern society. They easily get tangled with existing ideologies or co-opted by politicians. Nowhere is this more difficult than in the area of war. Do American Christians support wars, fight in wars, for the right reasons? Were these wars justified in terms of biblical principles?
Fortunately, eight professional Christian historians have volunteered to teach us. Each historian is an expert on the war they describe, analyze and evaluate. Seven of the eight subscribe to the just war theory; only one is a pacifist. None believe that wars should be fought as crusades.
"In general, Christians have advanced three attitudes about war and peace: pacifism, the just war, and the crusade. The early church . . . was pacifist. . . . After the fourth century, when the church became closely associated with the state [Constantine], Christians took over theory extant in Roman culture, the just war [Augustine]. . . . The third position . . . the crusade, emerged in the Middle Ages. A crusade was to be fought under the authority of the church [or later the state when fighting for a 'righteous' cause]."
"The way in which a nation wages war reveals a great deal about its basic values. . . . To examine a nation's experience of war, and its response to it, is to learn something fundamental about a nation's values and its social order." Jefferson was appalled by Europe's tendency toward "eternal war" and wanted the U.S. to be a nation of "peace and fraternity with mankind." Sadly, it didn't turn out that way.
George Marsden on The American Revolution
"Christians have often been in the forefront in turning their 'just wars' into crusades. These modern crusades, however, have not been ones in which the church dominates the world; rather the nation has set the agenda and Christians have supplied the flags and crosses. The American Revolution is a pivotal instance for understanding how modern nations have transformed supposed 'just wars' into secular crusades. It is pivotal for considering other wars of America, since the patterns of nationalism and civil religion established at the time of the Revolution became important elements of the mythology that determined American's behavior on subsequent wars."
Marsden, respected historian of American religious history, continues:
"One of the aspects of the revolutionaries' stance that is most puzzling is how they came apparently to believe that theirs was one of those extreme and exceptional instances when revolution, . . . was justified. . . . their claim that they faced a case of extreme tyranny seems extravagant. . . . the rebelling colonists nonetheless appeared to have been dead wrong in concluding that without armed rebellion absolute tyranny was inevitable."
The Introduction by Ronald Wells
Unless war is fought according to just war principles, it is oppression on a massive scale, often motivated by ethnocentrism and/or nationalism. But the public propaganda covers the ethnocentrism and oppression by declaring our cause is righteous and the enemy's cause is evil. The false prophets did much the same in the OT by declaring 'shalom, shalom,' in the midst of massive idolatry and oppression. The fundamental question raised in this book is whether Christians made their decisions regarding war based on biblical principles or whether they gullibly followed national national leaders into war, accepting their values and reasoning.
Thomas Jefferson asserted that these United States would not be like the nations of Europe which he called "nations of eternal war." But history shows that we also became a nation of war. Why is this so? We believed that we were a unique, chosen nation with a God-given destiny. As a free and just democracy, we would be God's light to other nations
"The spiritual pride of the United States consisted in acting innocently upon the pretense of its special calling despite the fact that it was almost constantly at war, either with Indians at home or with other nations or peoples on this continent or abroad."
We have not consistently practiced what we preached---or did we? Tocqueville, the perceptive French observer of America in the early 1800s, personally witnessed the brutal removal of the Choctaw Indians from Mississippi. He noted the American rationalization of this oppression and wryly commented: "It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of America." (Democracy in America)
George Marsden's chapter titled "An American Revolution: Partisanship, Just Wars, and Crusades."
At the time of the American Revolution, there was great fear [exaggerated fear] of being dominated by political and/or religious tyranny. One of the reason freedom/liberty was so highly prized was that it was achieved only by hard fought victories in Europe. The colonists did not want to be returned to either religious or political tyranny. Small steps in that direction were perceived to be giant steps. Fear distorted their perceptions of reality.
As an historian, Marsden is quite certain that the level of tyranny did not justify a violent revolution---a civil war. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the American Revolution was not necessary, not justified. But most American Christians at the time were convinced that the revolution was justified and so many even turned it into a righteous crusade. The cynic in me, Lowell Noble, believes that an American rich, white, male elite wanted to replace the British elite.
More of Noble's ideas; none of the eight Christian historians have gone as far as I have in their critique of America though Marsden comes close, I believe. Was the American government ever a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people?" Probably not, in spite of Lincoln's eloquent expression. Our revered founding fathers, many of whom were slave owners, never abolished slavery. Slave owners are tyrants, are they not?
Our founding fathers were a rich, white, male, deistic elite who stole land from Indians and who took Indian lives, who stole labor and liberty from black slaves, who made the poor and women second-class citizens, who were exceptionally ethnocentric and exceptionally oppressive---direct violations of Luke 4:18-30. Instead of a democracy, we got a plutocracy; the British tyrants were replaced by American tyrants. Today, America has a government of corporations/Big Banks/ Wall Street, by corporations/Big Banks/Wall Street, and for corporations/Big Banks/Wall Street. From dictatorial tyrants to democratic tyrants?
Now more from Marsden:
"Yet the American revolutionaries had taken a good cause, the virtues of which they had overestimated because of their partisanship and their political preconceptions, and they had vastly inflated its importance by sanctifying it with biblical imagery. Thus the good cause . . . became an idol.
"Perhaps the most important outcome of this process was that in it a new religion was born. This new religion is the now-famous American civil religion in which the state is an object of worship, but the imagery used to describe its sacredness is borrowed from Christianity. Church and state in the Western world since the time of Constantine had been intimately connected. Indeed it has been this close association of religion and politics that has been one of the greatest obstacles to a genuine Christian critique of the political order, specifically of its military virtues. Now in the new American situation, even with the disestablishment of the church, the religious-political intimacy was maintained by applying sacred rhetoric to describe the status and mission of the secular government. This civil religion . . . has continued to shape, and indeed to distort American visions of her own justice in subsequent wars."
Ralph Beebe, "The War of 1812."
We learned from Gorge Marsden that American civil religion was created to tie informally the cause of church and state together. This sanctifying of the purposes of the state were used again and again to justify future wars---even wars of imperialism, aggression and oppression. This same phenomenon occurred in 1812---an unnecessary war of materialism and imperialism. This was an "In God is our trust" war:
"America was a new nation with an ironically ambivalent self-image that stressed its freedom from the old world's propensity for war, while at the same time the nation pursued a strongly materialistic 'success' ethic that caused its people to engage in pursuits that were certain to lead to conflict."
Jefferson strongly condemned the approaching war which seemed to be designed to secure the immense profits in reexport trade with Europe. In the eyes of Britain, this violated our neutrality in the European wars.
With the British attack on the Chesapeake, previous reason and restraint were thrown to the wind. Now it was a matter of "God and Country" for many American Christians. Beebe concludes that the war of 1812 falls far short of just war standards.
Ronald Wells, "The Mexican-American War"
There was no justification for this tragic war; it was a war of American imperialism, ethnocentrism and oppression falsely justified under Manifest Destiny. Abraham Lincoln was against the Mexican war.
"Over the years Mexicans had become increasingly aware that many Americans looked upon Mexicans as inferior beings. This had frightening implications, for Americans had respect for neither the rights nor the culture of those whom they considered inferior. They had been merciless in their treatment of the Indian and had reduced blacks to a brutal form of servitude. Mexicans were perceptive enough to recognize that a similar fate threatened them should they fall under American domination."
Those clergy and churches that had already approved of the idea of Manifest Destiny supported this unjust war.
Ronald Rietveld, "The American Civil War."
Both the North and South thought they were fighting a just war, but Lincoln concluded the nation was under God's judgment. The unity of the country was shattered largely over the issue of slavery, an issue our founding fathers had left unresolved. This sand in our foundation, our failure to extend liberty and justice for all almost led to the collapse of the nation. Not even the churches could avoid splitting over the issue of slavery.
For Southerners, slavery was righteous, blessed, a Christianizing force.
For Northerners, slavery was wrong, a curse, an evil, a sin in the sight of God and humans.
What did the North and South have in common; both were deeply racist. The Civil War did not solve the racism problem; the values behind the system of oppression were not eliminated. Therefore, a new system of oppression was quickly created---segregation and sharecropping.
Since freedom was not followed by justice, one could argue that the civil war dead died in vain.
Augustus Cerillo, Jr., "The Spanish-American War."
A contradiction: "pretentious views of the purity and innocence of our national motives, actions, and goals and the actual harsh consequences of the exercise of our power." A war that began to liberate Cuba from the oppressive domination by Spain soon developed into "a war of American conquest." The president who declared in his inaugural address: "We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression," soon embarked on wars of conquest and territorial aggression.
"The US, so morally repulsed by Spain's treatment of her colonial subjects, was forced to suppress in brutal fashion a Filipino rebellion against American imperial rule."
We began to spread Manifest Destiny beyond our shores. Much of this expansion was driven by economic motives and materialism---the perceived need for new markets abroad.
"America's efforts to expand trade and investment abroad were free from the constraints of the biblical norms of equity, justice, and preference for the poor. By fusing the gospel, racism, and nationalism, evangelical leaders at home contributed to the inordinate amount of national pride that pervaded American thought by giving a sort of priestly blessing."
Richard Pierard, "World War II."
Was the "Day of Infamy"---the Japanese attack on Pear Harbor---preceded by 50 years of infamy by the US against Japan? Did we extend the concept of Manifest Destiny too far into Asia thus threatening Japan? Admiral Perry sailed his fleet into Japan and forced Japan to open itself up to the outside world; to the Japanese, this was an act of intimidation and humiliation.
Another troubling problem. Hitler started bombing civilians and then we started doing the same, first in Germany and then in Japan. We firebombed Dresden; then we dropped two atomic bombs on cities, on civilians. There were military targets nearby. Targeting civilians violates just war principles.
From the Afterword
"Given the prevailing ideology, Americans could not help but think that their wars were 'just,' precisely because their historic role in the world was 'just.'"
"To ask how Christians might have acted in particular wars is to ask how Christians in our day might act in future wars."
"[American] Christian participants, far from being more detached and somewhat immune from the dangers of partisanship, seem more often to be particularly prone to them---especially when they have the Bible in hand. With supporting texts, not only are they likely to perceive their partisan self-interest is just, but they are likely to inflate their cause, seeing the conflict as a struggle between the absolute righteousness of God and Satanic aberration."
PS
The U.S. often in alliance with the French has waged continuous economic, political and sometimes military war with Haiti.
It is not easy to apply biblical principles such as oppression, justice and shalom to modern society. They easily get tangled with existing ideologies or co-opted by politicians. Nowhere is this more difficult than in the area of war. Do American Christians support wars, fight in wars, for the right reasons? Were these wars justified in terms of biblical principles?
Fortunately, eight professional Christian historians have volunteered to teach us. Each historian is an expert on the war they describe, analyze and evaluate. Seven of the eight subscribe to the just war theory; only one is a pacifist. None believe that wars should be fought as crusades.
"In general, Christians have advanced three attitudes about war and peace: pacifism, the just war, and the crusade. The early church . . . was pacifist. . . . After the fourth century, when the church became closely associated with the state [Constantine], Christians took over theory extant in Roman culture, the just war [Augustine]. . . . The third position . . . the crusade, emerged in the Middle Ages. A crusade was to be fought under the authority of the church [or later the state when fighting for a 'righteous' cause]."
"The way in which a nation wages war reveals a great deal about its basic values. . . . To examine a nation's experience of war, and its response to it, is to learn something fundamental about a nation's values and its social order." Jefferson was appalled by Europe's tendency toward "eternal war" and wanted the U.S. to be a nation of "peace and fraternity with mankind." Sadly, it didn't turn out that way.
George Marsden on The American Revolution
"Christians have often been in the forefront in turning their 'just wars' into crusades. These modern crusades, however, have not been ones in which the church dominates the world; rather the nation has set the agenda and Christians have supplied the flags and crosses. The American Revolution is a pivotal instance for understanding how modern nations have transformed supposed 'just wars' into secular crusades. It is pivotal for considering other wars of America, since the patterns of nationalism and civil religion established at the time of the Revolution became important elements of the mythology that determined American's behavior on subsequent wars."
Marsden, respected historian of American religious history, continues:
"One of the aspects of the revolutionaries' stance that is most puzzling is how they came apparently to believe that theirs was one of those extreme and exceptional instances when revolution, . . . was justified. . . . their claim that they faced a case of extreme tyranny seems extravagant. . . . the rebelling colonists nonetheless appeared to have been dead wrong in concluding that without armed rebellion absolute tyranny was inevitable."
The Introduction by Ronald Wells
Unless war is fought according to just war principles, it is oppression on a massive scale, often motivated by ethnocentrism and/or nationalism. But the public propaganda covers the ethnocentrism and oppression by declaring our cause is righteous and the enemy's cause is evil. The false prophets did much the same in the OT by declaring 'shalom, shalom,' in the midst of massive idolatry and oppression. The fundamental question raised in this book is whether Christians made their decisions regarding war based on biblical principles or whether they gullibly followed national national leaders into war, accepting their values and reasoning.
Thomas Jefferson asserted that these United States would not be like the nations of Europe which he called "nations of eternal war." But history shows that we also became a nation of war. Why is this so? We believed that we were a unique, chosen nation with a God-given destiny. As a free and just democracy, we would be God's light to other nations
"The spiritual pride of the United States consisted in acting innocently upon the pretense of its special calling despite the fact that it was almost constantly at war, either with Indians at home or with other nations or peoples on this continent or abroad."
We have not consistently practiced what we preached---or did we? Tocqueville, the perceptive French observer of America in the early 1800s, personally witnessed the brutal removal of the Choctaw Indians from Mississippi. He noted the American rationalization of this oppression and wryly commented: "It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of America." (Democracy in America)
George Marsden's chapter titled "An American Revolution: Partisanship, Just Wars, and Crusades."
At the time of the American Revolution, there was great fear [exaggerated fear] of being dominated by political and/or religious tyranny. One of the reason freedom/liberty was so highly prized was that it was achieved only by hard fought victories in Europe. The colonists did not want to be returned to either religious or political tyranny. Small steps in that direction were perceived to be giant steps. Fear distorted their perceptions of reality.
As an historian, Marsden is quite certain that the level of tyranny did not justify a violent revolution---a civil war. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the American Revolution was not necessary, not justified. But most American Christians at the time were convinced that the revolution was justified and so many even turned it into a righteous crusade. The cynic in me, Lowell Noble, believes that an American rich, white, male elite wanted to replace the British elite.
More of Noble's ideas; none of the eight Christian historians have gone as far as I have in their critique of America though Marsden comes close, I believe. Was the American government ever a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people?" Probably not, in spite of Lincoln's eloquent expression. Our revered founding fathers, many of whom were slave owners, never abolished slavery. Slave owners are tyrants, are they not?
Our founding fathers were a rich, white, male, deistic elite who stole land from Indians and who took Indian lives, who stole labor and liberty from black slaves, who made the poor and women second-class citizens, who were exceptionally ethnocentric and exceptionally oppressive---direct violations of Luke 4:18-30. Instead of a democracy, we got a plutocracy; the British tyrants were replaced by American tyrants. Today, America has a government of corporations/Big Banks/ Wall Street, by corporations/Big Banks/Wall Street, and for corporations/Big Banks/Wall Street. From dictatorial tyrants to democratic tyrants?
Now more from Marsden:
"Yet the American revolutionaries had taken a good cause, the virtues of which they had overestimated because of their partisanship and their political preconceptions, and they had vastly inflated its importance by sanctifying it with biblical imagery. Thus the good cause . . . became an idol.
"Perhaps the most important outcome of this process was that in it a new religion was born. This new religion is the now-famous American civil religion in which the state is an object of worship, but the imagery used to describe its sacredness is borrowed from Christianity. Church and state in the Western world since the time of Constantine had been intimately connected. Indeed it has been this close association of religion and politics that has been one of the greatest obstacles to a genuine Christian critique of the political order, specifically of its military virtues. Now in the new American situation, even with the disestablishment of the church, the religious-political intimacy was maintained by applying sacred rhetoric to describe the status and mission of the secular government. This civil religion . . . has continued to shape, and indeed to distort American visions of her own justice in subsequent wars."
Ralph Beebe, "The War of 1812."
We learned from Gorge Marsden that American civil religion was created to tie informally the cause of church and state together. This sanctifying of the purposes of the state were used again and again to justify future wars---even wars of imperialism, aggression and oppression. This same phenomenon occurred in 1812---an unnecessary war of materialism and imperialism. This was an "In God is our trust" war:
"America was a new nation with an ironically ambivalent self-image that stressed its freedom from the old world's propensity for war, while at the same time the nation pursued a strongly materialistic 'success' ethic that caused its people to engage in pursuits that were certain to lead to conflict."
Jefferson strongly condemned the approaching war which seemed to be designed to secure the immense profits in reexport trade with Europe. In the eyes of Britain, this violated our neutrality in the European wars.
With the British attack on the Chesapeake, previous reason and restraint were thrown to the wind. Now it was a matter of "God and Country" for many American Christians. Beebe concludes that the war of 1812 falls far short of just war standards.
Ronald Wells, "The Mexican-American War"
There was no justification for this tragic war; it was a war of American imperialism, ethnocentrism and oppression falsely justified under Manifest Destiny. Abraham Lincoln was against the Mexican war.
"Over the years Mexicans had become increasingly aware that many Americans looked upon Mexicans as inferior beings. This had frightening implications, for Americans had respect for neither the rights nor the culture of those whom they considered inferior. They had been merciless in their treatment of the Indian and had reduced blacks to a brutal form of servitude. Mexicans were perceptive enough to recognize that a similar fate threatened them should they fall under American domination."
Those clergy and churches that had already approved of the idea of Manifest Destiny supported this unjust war.
Ronald Rietveld, "The American Civil War."
Both the North and South thought they were fighting a just war, but Lincoln concluded the nation was under God's judgment. The unity of the country was shattered largely over the issue of slavery, an issue our founding fathers had left unresolved. This sand in our foundation, our failure to extend liberty and justice for all almost led to the collapse of the nation. Not even the churches could avoid splitting over the issue of slavery.
For Southerners, slavery was righteous, blessed, a Christianizing force.
For Northerners, slavery was wrong, a curse, an evil, a sin in the sight of God and humans.
What did the North and South have in common; both were deeply racist. The Civil War did not solve the racism problem; the values behind the system of oppression were not eliminated. Therefore, a new system of oppression was quickly created---segregation and sharecropping.
Since freedom was not followed by justice, one could argue that the civil war dead died in vain.
Augustus Cerillo, Jr., "The Spanish-American War."
A contradiction: "pretentious views of the purity and innocence of our national motives, actions, and goals and the actual harsh consequences of the exercise of our power." A war that began to liberate Cuba from the oppressive domination by Spain soon developed into "a war of American conquest." The president who declared in his inaugural address: "We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression," soon embarked on wars of conquest and territorial aggression.
"The US, so morally repulsed by Spain's treatment of her colonial subjects, was forced to suppress in brutal fashion a Filipino rebellion against American imperial rule."
We began to spread Manifest Destiny beyond our shores. Much of this expansion was driven by economic motives and materialism---the perceived need for new markets abroad.
"America's efforts to expand trade and investment abroad were free from the constraints of the biblical norms of equity, justice, and preference for the poor. By fusing the gospel, racism, and nationalism, evangelical leaders at home contributed to the inordinate amount of national pride that pervaded American thought by giving a sort of priestly blessing."
Richard Pierard, "World War II."
Was the "Day of Infamy"---the Japanese attack on Pear Harbor---preceded by 50 years of infamy by the US against Japan? Did we extend the concept of Manifest Destiny too far into Asia thus threatening Japan? Admiral Perry sailed his fleet into Japan and forced Japan to open itself up to the outside world; to the Japanese, this was an act of intimidation and humiliation.
Another troubling problem. Hitler started bombing civilians and then we started doing the same, first in Germany and then in Japan. We firebombed Dresden; then we dropped two atomic bombs on cities, on civilians. There were military targets nearby. Targeting civilians violates just war principles.
From the Afterword
"Given the prevailing ideology, Americans could not help but think that their wars were 'just,' precisely because their historic role in the world was 'just.'"
"To ask how Christians might have acted in particular wars is to ask how Christians in our day might act in future wars."
"[American] Christian participants, far from being more detached and somewhat immune from the dangers of partisanship, seem more often to be particularly prone to them---especially when they have the Bible in hand. With supporting texts, not only are they likely to perceive their partisan self-interest is just, but they are likely to inflate their cause, seeing the conflict as a struggle between the absolute righteousness of God and Satanic aberration."
PS
The U.S. often in alliance with the French has waged continuous economic, political and sometimes military war with Haiti.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Nicholas Wolterstorff on Justice
In 2008, Nicholas Wolterstorff, esteemed Reformed philosopher/theologian, wrote Justice: rights and wrongs. The following is my review and interpretation of his three chapters on the Bible and justice. Wolterstorff distinguishes between what he calls primary justice and rectifying justice. I understand primary justice to be an ideal, a standard, an unchanging substance, anchored in the character of God. God is just and he loves justice. Rectifying justice judges and correct the oppression of the vulnerable such as the widows, orphans, resident aliens and the poor. Love and justice are inseparably intertwined. Justice lifts the downtrodden.
Wolterstorff is basic and solid in his chapter on justice in the Old Testament, but he breaks extremely important new ground as he discusses the equally important teaching on justice in the New Testament. He strongly contradicts the common theological interpretation that justice fades in the NT and is largely replaced by personal salvation and love.
Wolterstorff devotes a chapter to the "de-justicizing" of the NT. According to Wolterstorff, one important reason for the de-justicizing of the NT in the English speaking world is the deeply flawed English translation of dikaios and dikaiosune, the Greek words usually translated as righteous and righteousness. The dik-stem occurs around 300 times in the NT so justice should be seen all over the NT or at least justice/righteousness.
But in the KJV, the dominant English translation for centuries, justice is found zero times in the NT. In the NIV, justice is found only 16 times, the whole Bible, 134 times. In the Spanish NVI, justice occurs an astounding 426 times; in the Latin Vulgate, around 400 times; in the French NVS, 380 times; in the German Revised Martin Luther text, 306 times. I interpret the above data and Wolterstorff's comments to reflect a catastrophic English translation failure of the biblical concept of justice, especially in the NT. In the Romance languages---Spanish, French, Latin---, justice occurs around 100 times in the NT.
When dikaiosune is translated justice in the Sermon on the Mount, these verses read: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice" "persecuted for the sake of justice" "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice." I interpret Wolterstorff to believe that the dejusticizing of the NT, the separation of love and justice, the near removal of the word justice in the NT in favor of righteousness, to be one of the great heresies in the history of the church though Wolterstorff is much too judicious to actually say this.
Wolterstorff on Romans: "For while Romans, as I interpret it, says more about justice than any other of the New Testament letters, it has also, ironically, served as the locus classicus for those who wish to de-justicize the New Testament."
To conclude, I would like to present a couple of quotations from Wolterstorff to indicate the quality of his insights: "Those at the bottom are usually not there because it is their fault. They are there because they are downtrodden. Those at the top "trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth." (Amos 2:7)
When center and circumference are one's basic metaphors, the undoing of justice will be described as including the outsiders. When up and down are one's basic metaphors, the undoing of injustice will be described as lifting up those at tyhe bottom. . . . The rectification of injustice requires not only lifting the low ones but casting down the high ones."
"The coming of justice requires the humbling of those who exalt themselves. The arrogant must be cured of their arrogance; the rich and powerful must be cured of their attraction to wealth and power. Only then is justice for all possible.
Wolterstorff is basic and solid in his chapter on justice in the Old Testament, but he breaks extremely important new ground as he discusses the equally important teaching on justice in the New Testament. He strongly contradicts the common theological interpretation that justice fades in the NT and is largely replaced by personal salvation and love.
Wolterstorff devotes a chapter to the "de-justicizing" of the NT. According to Wolterstorff, one important reason for the de-justicizing of the NT in the English speaking world is the deeply flawed English translation of dikaios and dikaiosune, the Greek words usually translated as righteous and righteousness. The dik-stem occurs around 300 times in the NT so justice should be seen all over the NT or at least justice/righteousness.
But in the KJV, the dominant English translation for centuries, justice is found zero times in the NT. In the NIV, justice is found only 16 times, the whole Bible, 134 times. In the Spanish NVI, justice occurs an astounding 426 times; in the Latin Vulgate, around 400 times; in the French NVS, 380 times; in the German Revised Martin Luther text, 306 times. I interpret the above data and Wolterstorff's comments to reflect a catastrophic English translation failure of the biblical concept of justice, especially in the NT. In the Romance languages---Spanish, French, Latin---, justice occurs around 100 times in the NT.
When dikaiosune is translated justice in the Sermon on the Mount, these verses read: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice" "persecuted for the sake of justice" "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice." I interpret Wolterstorff to believe that the dejusticizing of the NT, the separation of love and justice, the near removal of the word justice in the NT in favor of righteousness, to be one of the great heresies in the history of the church though Wolterstorff is much too judicious to actually say this.
Wolterstorff on Romans: "For while Romans, as I interpret it, says more about justice than any other of the New Testament letters, it has also, ironically, served as the locus classicus for those who wish to de-justicize the New Testament."
To conclude, I would like to present a couple of quotations from Wolterstorff to indicate the quality of his insights: "Those at the bottom are usually not there because it is their fault. They are there because they are downtrodden. Those at the top "trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth." (Amos 2:7)
When center and circumference are one's basic metaphors, the undoing of justice will be described as including the outsiders. When up and down are one's basic metaphors, the undoing of injustice will be described as lifting up those at tyhe bottom. . . . The rectification of injustice requires not only lifting the low ones but casting down the high ones."
"The coming of justice requires the humbling of those who exalt themselves. The arrogant must be cured of their arrogance; the rich and powerful must be cured of their attraction to wealth and power. Only then is justice for all possible.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
A Meditation on the Pledge of Allegiance
What does "one nation under God" do? It provides "liberty and justice for all" its citizens. This remarkable phrase "with liberty and justice for all" is a precise and concise summary of both the Jubilee/Sabbatical laws (Lev. 25 and the New Testament kingdom of God (Isa. 9:6-7; 61:1-4; and Luke 4:18-19).
The famous cracked Liberty Bell has this biblical inscription: "Proclaim liberty through all the land unto all the inhabitants." The full message of the Jubilee ties liberty (freedom for the poor and oppressed) with doing justice (restoring land to poor families). The Liberty Bell precedes the Pledge by 140 years. Both the Liberty Bell (1752) and the Pledge (1892) emphasize the same point---liberty---, as does the Declaration of Independence (1776)---"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." But only the Pledge specifically ties liberty and justice together. If I were given permission to change one word in the Declaration, I would make the following change: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Justice."
Rumor has it that the Pledge was written by a socialist, but don't tell anybody.
What would the priorities be of one nation, under God, that pursues justice: the needs of the poor and oppressed, widows and orphans, immigrants and ethnic groups (our equivalent to the despised Samaritans and Gentiles). Pure religion, according to James, is reaching out to oppressed and neglected widows and orphans. But it seems like most white American Christians are like the Pharisees who "neglected justice and the love of God." (Luke 11)
Job did not neglect justice and the love of God (NIV, Job 29:12-17).
I rescued the poor who cried for help
and the fatherless who had none to assist him;
The man who was dying blessed me;
I made the widows heart to sing
I put on righteousness as my clothing;
justice was my robe and turban.
I took up the case of the immigrant;
I broke the fangs of the oppressor.
If Job were living today, he might add:
I stopped unjust mass incarceration;
I ended the racial wealth gap.
The famous cracked Liberty Bell has this biblical inscription: "Proclaim liberty through all the land unto all the inhabitants." The full message of the Jubilee ties liberty (freedom for the poor and oppressed) with doing justice (restoring land to poor families). The Liberty Bell precedes the Pledge by 140 years. Both the Liberty Bell (1752) and the Pledge (1892) emphasize the same point---liberty---, as does the Declaration of Independence (1776)---"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." But only the Pledge specifically ties liberty and justice together. If I were given permission to change one word in the Declaration, I would make the following change: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Justice."
Rumor has it that the Pledge was written by a socialist, but don't tell anybody.
What would the priorities be of one nation, under God, that pursues justice: the needs of the poor and oppressed, widows and orphans, immigrants and ethnic groups (our equivalent to the despised Samaritans and Gentiles). Pure religion, according to James, is reaching out to oppressed and neglected widows and orphans. But it seems like most white American Christians are like the Pharisees who "neglected justice and the love of God." (Luke 11)
Job did not neglect justice and the love of God (NIV, Job 29:12-17).
I rescued the poor who cried for help
and the fatherless who had none to assist him;
The man who was dying blessed me;
I made the widows heart to sing
I put on righteousness as my clothing;
justice was my robe and turban.
I took up the case of the immigrant;
I broke the fangs of the oppressor.
If Job were living today, he might add:
I stopped unjust mass incarceration;
I ended the racial wealth gap.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Ownership and Justice: Rich People are Idiots, unless. . . .
I will build my comments upon Luke 4:18-19. Here I find four crucial concepts: the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and justice, Jubilee justice. Most of 4:18-19 is from Isaiah 61, but the phrase "to release the oppressed" is from Isaiah 58:6. In chapter 58, Isaiah condemned an apparently deeply religious people who worshiped, fasted and prayed, but these same people also exploited their workers and exploited their poor. Isaiah called upon these hypocrites to stop their oppression and do justice.
When Jesus finished reading from Isaiah, the synagogue congregation was amazed as Jesus said, "Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in you hearing." Or my paraphrase, "Today, I begin my ministry of incarnating the kingdom of God here on earth with a special focus on justice for the oppressed poor."
Biblically, the primary, but not the only, cause of poverty is oppression. According to Thomas Hanks, there are 555 references to oppression and its synonyms in the Old Testament, and often one will find poverty in the context. So a biblical ministry among the poor must deal with oppression. Oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslave and/or kills persons created in the image of God.
If oppression is a central biblical concept, then we must identify the oppressor before we can do justice. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus identifies the oppressors in Luke 6:24 and in a host of other references: 1:53; 3:10-14; 8:14; 11:39-42; 16:13-14; 18:22-24; 19:45-46; 19:8. Luke powerfully and concisely summarizes these teachings about the rich and poor in this statement: "Woe to the rich!" The worst oppressors in Palestine were not the Romans; instead the worst oppressors were the local religio-politico-economic elite who ran the sacred Temple and had turned it into "a den of robbers." or a system of oppression. There was so much gold in the temple when the Romans destroyed and looted it and then began to circulating it, that the price of gold dropped by one-half in nearby Syria.
Who are the greedy oppressors? They are idiots who hoard wealth. The Greek phrase "ta idia" means 'one's own." Having enough to be self-sufficient in terms of the necessities of life is fine, but piling up more and more of "one's own," becoming rich, is idiocy. Are you an idiot?
When Jesus finished reading from Isaiah, the synagogue congregation was amazed as Jesus said, "Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in you hearing." Or my paraphrase, "Today, I begin my ministry of incarnating the kingdom of God here on earth with a special focus on justice for the oppressed poor."
Biblically, the primary, but not the only, cause of poverty is oppression. According to Thomas Hanks, there are 555 references to oppression and its synonyms in the Old Testament, and often one will find poverty in the context. So a biblical ministry among the poor must deal with oppression. Oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslave and/or kills persons created in the image of God.
If oppression is a central biblical concept, then we must identify the oppressor before we can do justice. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus identifies the oppressors in Luke 6:24 and in a host of other references: 1:53; 3:10-14; 8:14; 11:39-42; 16:13-14; 18:22-24; 19:45-46; 19:8. Luke powerfully and concisely summarizes these teachings about the rich and poor in this statement: "Woe to the rich!" The worst oppressors in Palestine were not the Romans; instead the worst oppressors were the local religio-politico-economic elite who ran the sacred Temple and had turned it into "a den of robbers." or a system of oppression. There was so much gold in the temple when the Romans destroyed and looted it and then began to circulating it, that the price of gold dropped by one-half in nearby Syria.
Who are the greedy oppressors? They are idiots who hoard wealth. The Greek phrase "ta idia" means 'one's own." Having enough to be self-sufficient in terms of the necessities of life is fine, but piling up more and more of "one's own," becoming rich, is idiocy. Are you an idiot?
The Pillage Must End; God's Kingdom Has Come
Matthew 3:1 and Mark 1:14 both declare that we should repent for the kingdom of God has come; Luke 4:18-19 does the same in different words. See also Acts 8:12; 28:23 and 31. Matthew 3:1 and Mark 1:14 are as an important part of the gospel as John 3:16, but strangely I cannot ever recall a sermon on these verses, not even in CCDA circles. So, hang on, the following is my first sermonette on these verses. Let me know if you have ever preached a sermon on these verses and what the content of your sermon was.
Biblical repentance: radical change, paradigm shift in loyalities, allegiances, includes restitution that leads to the repair of communities.
According to Ta-Nehisi Coates, the white American Dream has been built on pillage---400 years of pillage of life, liberty, labor and land, slave labor and theft of Indian and Mexican land. According to the book, This Economy Kills: Pope Francis on Capitalism and Social Justice, capitalism has been highly productive but socially destructive. I would add that the sacred free Market has far too often been tied to ethnocentrism, oppression and theft. So God issues a call to America to repent.
What does biblical repentance look like? Luke 3:11-14 describes specific acts of repentance---share your surplus food and clothing, don't extort money, don't misuse your power and authority over others. Luke 19 describes repentance and restitution; Zacchaeus gave half of his possessions to the poor, and he gave four times the amount he had cheated.
What does non-repentance look like? Luke 18:18-22 is about the rich young ruler---a personally good and righteous guy who refused to radically repent and abundantly share; he refused to share and repair. Repentance, restitution and repair are major steps on the road to justice. God says he loves justice, that he wants oceans of justice.
According to Graham Cray, the agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; Matthew 6:33 declares that we are to seek first God's kingdom and his justice. So what is biblical justice? Jubilee justice that releases the oppressed poor and then repairs damaged individuals, families and communities.
"Repent, for the kingdom of God is here" The kingdom of God and the American Dream are not the same thing.
Biblical repentance: radical change, paradigm shift in loyalities, allegiances, includes restitution that leads to the repair of communities.
According to Ta-Nehisi Coates, the white American Dream has been built on pillage---400 years of pillage of life, liberty, labor and land, slave labor and theft of Indian and Mexican land. According to the book, This Economy Kills: Pope Francis on Capitalism and Social Justice, capitalism has been highly productive but socially destructive. I would add that the sacred free Market has far too often been tied to ethnocentrism, oppression and theft. So God issues a call to America to repent.
What does biblical repentance look like? Luke 3:11-14 describes specific acts of repentance---share your surplus food and clothing, don't extort money, don't misuse your power and authority over others. Luke 19 describes repentance and restitution; Zacchaeus gave half of his possessions to the poor, and he gave four times the amount he had cheated.
What does non-repentance look like? Luke 18:18-22 is about the rich young ruler---a personally good and righteous guy who refused to radically repent and abundantly share; he refused to share and repair. Repentance, restitution and repair are major steps on the road to justice. God says he loves justice, that he wants oceans of justice.
According to Graham Cray, the agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; Matthew 6:33 declares that we are to seek first God's kingdom and his justice. So what is biblical justice? Jubilee justice that releases the oppressed poor and then repairs damaged individuals, families and communities.
"Repent, for the kingdom of God is here" The kingdom of God and the American Dream are not the same thing.
Monday, August 17, 2015
British White Supremacy and Savagery
The relationship of British White Supremacy and their Savagery against the Irish.
The following ideas have been gleaned from George M. Fredrickson's White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History, 1981. Fredrickson asserts that:
"white supremacy refers to the attitudes, ideologies, and policies associated with the rise of blatant forms of white or European dominance over 'nonwhite' populations. . . . It suggest systematic and self conscious efforts to make race or color a qualification for membership in the civil community."
The concept of savagery developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "constituted a distorting lens through which the early colonists assessed the potential and predicted fate of non-European peoples they encountered." English plans for colonization were first practiced and perfected against the Irish and later applied across the Atlantic. In 1565, the British officially announced their goal to conquer and colonize Ireland.
"Between 1565 and 1576 a series of colonization enterprises were organized and promoted, involving many of the same West Country gentlemen who were to be leading figures in the earliest projects for English settlements in North America. . . . The rationale for expropriating their land and removing them from it was the the Celtic Irish were savages, so wild and rebellious that they could only be controlled by a constant and ruthless exercise of force."
Since the Christianity of the Irish was weak and superficial and could not control the Irish savage impulses, the consciences of the Protestant British did not bother them as they implemented
"virtually every kind of atrocity that would later be perpetrated against American Indians---women and children were massacred, and whole communities were uprooted and consigned to special reservations."
Once ethnic cleansing had occurred, four fifths of Northern Ireland was set aside for British and Scottish settlers. Fredrickson states that the Puritans who settled New England were an "intensely ethnocentric English community." So it is not surprising that the British settlers soon labeled Native American savages and started oppressing them. The British transferred their ethnocentrism and oppression against the Irish, lock-stock-and-barrel, to American Indians.
Some scholars have asserted that Hitler picked up some of these ideas from the British and Americans and applied them in Germany.
It is true: The historical past haunts our sociological present.
The following ideas have been gleaned from George M. Fredrickson's White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History, 1981. Fredrickson asserts that:
"white supremacy refers to the attitudes, ideologies, and policies associated with the rise of blatant forms of white or European dominance over 'nonwhite' populations. . . . It suggest systematic and self conscious efforts to make race or color a qualification for membership in the civil community."
The concept of savagery developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "constituted a distorting lens through which the early colonists assessed the potential and predicted fate of non-European peoples they encountered." English plans for colonization were first practiced and perfected against the Irish and later applied across the Atlantic. In 1565, the British officially announced their goal to conquer and colonize Ireland.
"Between 1565 and 1576 a series of colonization enterprises were organized and promoted, involving many of the same West Country gentlemen who were to be leading figures in the earliest projects for English settlements in North America. . . . The rationale for expropriating their land and removing them from it was the the Celtic Irish were savages, so wild and rebellious that they could only be controlled by a constant and ruthless exercise of force."
Since the Christianity of the Irish was weak and superficial and could not control the Irish savage impulses, the consciences of the Protestant British did not bother them as they implemented
"virtually every kind of atrocity that would later be perpetrated against American Indians---women and children were massacred, and whole communities were uprooted and consigned to special reservations."
Once ethnic cleansing had occurred, four fifths of Northern Ireland was set aside for British and Scottish settlers. Fredrickson states that the Puritans who settled New England were an "intensely ethnocentric English community." So it is not surprising that the British settlers soon labeled Native American savages and started oppressing them. The British transferred their ethnocentrism and oppression against the Irish, lock-stock-and-barrel, to American Indians.
Some scholars have asserted that Hitler picked up some of these ideas from the British and Americans and applied them in Germany.
It is true: The historical past haunts our sociological present.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Reagan and Myths America Lives By
Was Reagan exceptionally evil or a normal white American in his implementation of the racial wealth gap and racial mass incarceration? I continue my book review of Myths America Lives By by Richard Hughes; it is my impression that the myths Hughes discusses explain Reagan's red-blooded American behavior.
Chapter 1 The Myth of the Chosen Nation: The Colonial Period
Hughes observes:
"Among the most powerful and persistent of all the myths that Americans invoke about themselves is the myth that America is a chosen nation and that its citizens constitute a chosen people. . . . It is one thing to claim that American is exceptional in its own eyes. It is something else to claim that America is exceptional because God chose America and its people for a special mission in the world."
There was only one chosen people---the nation of Israel. They were chosen for a specific reason---to be a servant people to bring the Messiah into the world. Unfortunately, they violated this covenant and moved from being a humble servant people to being a ethnocentric, superior people. They attempted to make God into their own private God.
As the Puritans saw it, only they and their theology were fully biblical. Other Christians such as Roger Williams were excluded; he was not one of God's chosen. The Puritans became religiously ethnocentric and this led to oppression done in the name of God. Chosenness, ethnocentrism, oppression---a dangerous, demonic mix. Before long Puritans were paying money for the scalps of Indians. Allen Carden, an expert on the Puritans, believe that, in the course of American history, the Puritan example legitimated the oppression of Native Americans which eventually led to the near genocide of the Indian population.
To Native Americans and Afro Americans, it often seemed that America was more like the evil city of Babylon than it was an expression of the kingdom of God. Hughes concludes:
"But when shorn of the notion of covenant and mutual responsibility, the myth of the Chosen Nation easily became a badge of privilege and power, justifying oppression and exploitation of those not included in the circle of the chosen."
Chapter 2 The Myth of Nature's Nation: The Revolutionary Period
During the 1800s, Europe was devastated by religious warfare; "Catholics and Protestant vied for power and control." An Englishman, Edward Lord Herbert, figured out a way to resolve this bloody religious warfare. He concluded that the Bible, especially various new translations, was the problem. It would be better, less controversial, to use a second book that God has authored---the world of nature. Nature's fundamental truth were self-evident and could be agreed upon by all religions. Reason and Nature would take center stage; the Bible would be de-emphasized.
Deism, a religious perspective, and the Enlightenment, a philosophical perspective, undergirded the founding of this country:
"In Herbert's zeal to seek religious truths in nature alone, for example, he scuttled all those doctrines that could be known only from the biblical text. In Deism, therefore, theologies about Jesus Christ as the Son of God went out the window. So did any teachings about the Holy Spirit. All that was left was God. . . . In America, Deism institutionalized itself in the Unitarian Church."
God does not have the same meaning in deism and biblical theism; do not read theistic ideas into deistic statements. The god of deism is a gutted God, a half God, a depersonalized god. Mother Nature is a good deistic phrase. Jefferson regarded the orthodox, biblical teaching of Christianity as "metaphysical insanities." He argued that his brand of deism "represented the heart of Jesus'teachings and the purest form of Christianity." He even created a gutted Bible---the Jefferson Bible.
The Declaration of Independence is pure deism: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, . . . . " Evangelical theists today bring their bible-based, trinitarian ideas of God with them and interpret these beautiful sentiments as Christian, but the original context was deism.
Hughes asserts "that the Declaration made Deism America's national faith." As the reader may have noted, many American presidents mention God in their speeches, but seldom Jesus Christ.
An Afro American, David Walker, opposed Jefferson head-on. Jefferson had argued that 'blacks were by NATURE inferior to whites." This directly contradicted the Declaration of Independence. Walker believed that Americanized Christianity made Christians more racist, more oppressive:
"American whites were bad enough without their religion. As Christians, they are ten times more cruel, avaricious and unmerciful than they ever were. . . . "
Frederick Douglas wrote an equally scathing passage:
"Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. . . . I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whippping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."
Some concluding observations by Hughes:
* "I should note that those who absolutized America's national myths were often the powerful and the privileged. . . . "
* "Indeed, I have tried to pay attention to the impact that corrupted and absolutized myths have exerted on the poor and the dispossessed throughout the course of American history."
* "While Americans often absolutize their myths during peacetime, they must absolutize them during wartime." For extensive documentation, see The Wars of America: Christian Views.
My conclusion: Reagan was just being a good ethnocentric white American elitist when he initiated the unjust War on Drugs and targeted blacks and Latinos, when the doubled the wealth gap. The theistic Puritans were ethnocentric and oppressive and demonic; the deistic founding fathers were ethnocentric, oppressive and demonic. Reagan repeated their wrongs.
Chapter 1 The Myth of the Chosen Nation: The Colonial Period
Hughes observes:
"Among the most powerful and persistent of all the myths that Americans invoke about themselves is the myth that America is a chosen nation and that its citizens constitute a chosen people. . . . It is one thing to claim that American is exceptional in its own eyes. It is something else to claim that America is exceptional because God chose America and its people for a special mission in the world."
There was only one chosen people---the nation of Israel. They were chosen for a specific reason---to be a servant people to bring the Messiah into the world. Unfortunately, they violated this covenant and moved from being a humble servant people to being a ethnocentric, superior people. They attempted to make God into their own private God.
As the Puritans saw it, only they and their theology were fully biblical. Other Christians such as Roger Williams were excluded; he was not one of God's chosen. The Puritans became religiously ethnocentric and this led to oppression done in the name of God. Chosenness, ethnocentrism, oppression---a dangerous, demonic mix. Before long Puritans were paying money for the scalps of Indians. Allen Carden, an expert on the Puritans, believe that, in the course of American history, the Puritan example legitimated the oppression of Native Americans which eventually led to the near genocide of the Indian population.
To Native Americans and Afro Americans, it often seemed that America was more like the evil city of Babylon than it was an expression of the kingdom of God. Hughes concludes:
"But when shorn of the notion of covenant and mutual responsibility, the myth of the Chosen Nation easily became a badge of privilege and power, justifying oppression and exploitation of those not included in the circle of the chosen."
Chapter 2 The Myth of Nature's Nation: The Revolutionary Period
During the 1800s, Europe was devastated by religious warfare; "Catholics and Protestant vied for power and control." An Englishman, Edward Lord Herbert, figured out a way to resolve this bloody religious warfare. He concluded that the Bible, especially various new translations, was the problem. It would be better, less controversial, to use a second book that God has authored---the world of nature. Nature's fundamental truth were self-evident and could be agreed upon by all religions. Reason and Nature would take center stage; the Bible would be de-emphasized.
Deism, a religious perspective, and the Enlightenment, a philosophical perspective, undergirded the founding of this country:
"In Herbert's zeal to seek religious truths in nature alone, for example, he scuttled all those doctrines that could be known only from the biblical text. In Deism, therefore, theologies about Jesus Christ as the Son of God went out the window. So did any teachings about the Holy Spirit. All that was left was God. . . . In America, Deism institutionalized itself in the Unitarian Church."
God does not have the same meaning in deism and biblical theism; do not read theistic ideas into deistic statements. The god of deism is a gutted God, a half God, a depersonalized god. Mother Nature is a good deistic phrase. Jefferson regarded the orthodox, biblical teaching of Christianity as "metaphysical insanities." He argued that his brand of deism "represented the heart of Jesus'teachings and the purest form of Christianity." He even created a gutted Bible---the Jefferson Bible.
The Declaration of Independence is pure deism: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, . . . . " Evangelical theists today bring their bible-based, trinitarian ideas of God with them and interpret these beautiful sentiments as Christian, but the original context was deism.
Hughes asserts "that the Declaration made Deism America's national faith." As the reader may have noted, many American presidents mention God in their speeches, but seldom Jesus Christ.
An Afro American, David Walker, opposed Jefferson head-on. Jefferson had argued that 'blacks were by NATURE inferior to whites." This directly contradicted the Declaration of Independence. Walker believed that Americanized Christianity made Christians more racist, more oppressive:
"American whites were bad enough without their religion. As Christians, they are ten times more cruel, avaricious and unmerciful than they ever were. . . . "
Frederick Douglas wrote an equally scathing passage:
"Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. . . . I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whippping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."
Some concluding observations by Hughes:
* "I should note that those who absolutized America's national myths were often the powerful and the privileged. . . . "
* "Indeed, I have tried to pay attention to the impact that corrupted and absolutized myths have exerted on the poor and the dispossessed throughout the course of American history."
* "While Americans often absolutize their myths during peacetime, they must absolutize them during wartime." For extensive documentation, see The Wars of America: Christian Views.
My conclusion: Reagan was just being a good ethnocentric white American elitist when he initiated the unjust War on Drugs and targeted blacks and Latinos, when the doubled the wealth gap. The theistic Puritans were ethnocentric and oppressive and demonic; the deistic founding fathers were ethnocentric, oppressive and demonic. Reagan repeated their wrongs.
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