President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty with some significant successes, but the War did not abolish poverty in these United States of America. Cynics said that poverty won the war. The well meaning War on Poverty did not result in an unconditional surrender by poverty. Why? It did not declare war on oppression and the rich. The biblical teaching is that the rich oppress the poor. None of the 2016 presidential candidates is likely to declare War against Oppression nor a War against the Rich. Both Democrats and Republicans are too American to take such a revolutionary position.
Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, there are signs that poverty/inequality will be a major issue. Already, Mitt Romney has raised the issue. Since nearly half of the U.S. population is either poor or near poor, poverty/wealth should be a central issue. Senator Elizabeth Warren declares, "The system is rigged." Not in favor of the poor.
Probably many of the proposed ideas, Republican and Democrat, would do some good, but beware of smooth talk and ask some tough questions.
1. Has the candidate ever lived among the poor for a period of time---ala John M. Perkins and CCDA (Christian Community Development Association)? Some good personal friends, Phil and Marsh Reed, have lived and ministered in West Jackson, Mississippi for around 40 years; through thick and thin, they have stayed and ministered. Lee Harper had a golden opportunity to leave her poverty-stricken, racist Mississippi, but she decided to stay in West Jackson and be a reconcilier.
2. Have any of the candidates, some of whom publicly profess to be Christian, made a thorough study of the biblical teaching on poverty, oppression, the rich, and justice? Romney profess to be a devout Mormon; Ryan, a devout Catholic; Huckabee, a devout evangelical; Clinton, a faithful Methodist. Are their ideas on inequality biblically informed or ideologically founded?
A War on Poverty or a War on the Poor?
A War on Poverty or a Skirmish on Poverty?
A War on Poverty or a War on Oppression?
A War on Poverty or a Flood of Justice?
Throughout its history, America has generally taken a pro-rich and anti-poor stance. Supposedly the rich create wealth and the poor are lazy, dysfunctional, social parasites (47 percent are takers). The good news: Americans have given lots of charity to the poor, and occasionally they have enacted major reforms on behalf of the poor such as food stamps, Medicaid and Medicare. The bad news: poverty and oppression are widespread in 2015.
Few Americans have taken a "Blessed are the poor. . . . Woe to the rich" stance. Few Christians understand the biblical teaching on oppression or justice or the kingdom of God here on earth. A Luke/Jesus perspective might look like this:
A War on the Rich Oppressors: release the oppressed poor.
A War on the Rich Oppressors; a flood of Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor.
A War on the Rich Oppressors; respect/honor for the oppressed poor.
In Luke, the rich are identified as THE social problem, not the poor.
But I suppose Jesus is somewhat suspect. He was well-informed on ethics but apparently not on economics. Any red-blooded America knows that it is capitalism that produces abundant goods and wealth; then the surplus wealth trickles down to the poor. The hard working rich are the key to reducing poverty.
Next, some ideas stimulated by reading Jennifer Harvey's book Whiteness and Morality (2007). As a Christian ethics scholar, she regards justice as the heart, the norm of ethics. In the past and presently, the injustice/justice has been the close relationship between the idolatry of whiteness and oppressive morality it spawns. Can whites who are white supremacists (in one way or another 99 and 44/100 of whites are white supremacists or benefit from white supremacy) critique/analyze white supremacy? Or are we too ethnocentric to do so?
So far, American history teaches us that from President Lincoln on down, we are too enculturated to do so. Only the Holy Spirit, the Word of God and some transformational experience can do so. I suggest living in an oppressed poor community for several years; also attend an ethnic or multiracial church. Most white history, sociology and theology are too slanted, too biased to be of much help. Even so-called Christian colleges and seminaries may do more harm than good unless you can find that rare enlightened professor.
Harvey emphasizes that white supremacy is multi-faceted; I agree. MLK emphasized the trinity of racism, militarism and capitalism. Some scholars emphasize the race, culture and religion combination found in WASPs. I emphasize the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism. White supremacy always has a strong economic oppression component; in the U.S., capitalism is implicated. White Christians must be extremely careful not to skip over quickly whiteness/white supremacy and rush on to cheap reconciliation, justice or Christian Community Development. Harvey does her Christian ethics from a justice and a liberationist perspective.
A few quotation from Whiteness and Morality:
Creation though "deeply broken" is "imbued with an incompressible and intimate presence of divinity." "No one is free if any is oppressed." "The United States was birthed through the imperialism of European expansion." "To be white in the U.S. is to be in moral crisis."
But if most whites believe they are right, superior and God chosen, there is no perceived moral crisis, nothing to repent of. Old Testament Israelites thought that they were OK since they were God's chosen, but they failed to repent and were sent into judgment.
According to Luke, the poor have many problems, but, contrary to popular opinion, they are not the problem in society. Instead, the rich are THE social problem. In the U.S., the blacks are considered to be the social problem; in reality white oppressors are THE social problem. If you are poor and black, you are doubly oppressed, doubly cursed.
Rich whites must repent and do justice. But do superior people ever feel the need to repent? Much like the Pharisees, no. The Pharisees were highly religious but they neglected justice and the love of God.
Though there is incessant cultural propaganda that poor blacks are the problem, the real truth is that rich whites are the problem. When was the last time you ever heard/saw the media highlight the rich whites as the brutal oppressors. Probably the media runs 10 to 1 poor blacks when it should be 10 to 1 rich whites. Who controls the media? Rich whites. Even NPR and PBS are guilty. Poor blacks sell and use drugs versus the truth that whites equally use and sell illegal drugs. Due to racial profiling, poor blacks fill our prisons. Poor blacks are on welfare versus the truth that rich whites received massive subsidies and tax loopholes.
A few years ago, my home state of Iowa, full of good-hearted and salt-of-the-earth people, had a 2 and 24 problem, the worst black-white incarceration ratio in the nation. Blacks were being incarcerated at 12 times the rate of whites in Iowa, mostly for drug offenses. But around 6 percent of each population are into illegal drugs. There was no massive church, media or public outcry at this oppression, this miscarriage of justice. In fact, Iowa has just finished building a new prison whereas Texas has stopped building new prisons.
Iowa has improved slightly; it is now only third in the nation, not first for the worst incarceration ratio. Recently the head of Iowa's Supreme Court publicly noted the bad incarceration ratio in Iowa. But the Iowa Supreme Court has not ruled that the current incarceration ratio is wrong or unconstitutional or cruel and inhumane punishment. In effect, our criminal justice system is still built upon the Dred Scott decision---that blacks are second class citizens, if, legally, they are citizens at all.
Did the U.S Supreme Court make its Dred Scott decision based on the Constitution? If so, the Constitution is deeply flawed. If not, it made its decision based on racist public opinion. On page 189, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, makes the following analysis of Supreme Court decisions:
"The parallels between mass incarceration and Jim Crow extend all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the years, the Supreme Court has followed a fairly consistent pattern in responding to racial caste systems, first protecting them and then, after dramatic shifts in the political and social climate, dismantling these systems of control. . . . In Dred Scott v. Sanford, the Supreme Court immunized the institution of slavery from legal challenge on the grounds that African Americans were not citizens. . . . Currently, McClesky v. Kemp and its progeny serve much the same function as Dred Scott and Plessy. In McClesky, the Supreme Court demonstrated that it is once again in protection mode [protecting unjust mass incarceration which is based heavily on racial profiling]. . . . The new racial caste system operates unimpeded by the Fourteenth Amendment and federal civil rights legislation---laws designed to topple earlier systems of control. The Supreme Court's famous proclamation in 1857---"[the black man] has no rights which the white man is bound to respect"---remains true to a significant degree today, so long as the black man has been labeled a felon."
We could probably add male to rich white---a triple oppression. And far too often, we could add religion. Religious, white, rich males running our church, our government, our economic/financial systems as systems of oppression.
Will the religious, rich, white males repent and do justice? I don't see any mass movement of repentance. Most rich, white males, and especially the religious one, arrogantly rationalize their oppression, often misusing scripture to do so. The self-righteous, religious oppressors are not known for humility and repentance; God's chosen ones have no need for repentance.
In Iowa, they seem to be everywhere, in small towns and in big cities; they attend church, worship God, and neglect biblical justice.
Some people accuse poor blacks of being takers, social parasites. Actually the opposite is true. The religious, rich, white males are the real social parasites, the takers par excellance:
* takers: massive federal subsidies, generous tax breaks.
* rapers: of society which is their playground; often they don't pay a living wage.
* riggers: of the political and economic systems.
* crushers: of the poor.
* damagers: the social damage of oppression usually precedes social dysfunction.
But the rich cleverly accuse the poor of being the takers; of being welfare cheats, criminals and dysfunctional.
PS
The following is from an editorial in the January 29, 2015 Mason City Globe Gazette, "ALICE shows working poor aren't making it."
In 1963, Mollie Orshansky developed the federal government's poverty guidelines. Based on her formula, the 2015 "poverty threshold for a family of four is $24,250."
Now a new formula has been developed by Rutgers University and United Way. "The idea was to estimate the actual cost of household survival budgets for five basic necessities: housing, child care, food, health care and transportation. It measures employment income as well as help from government programs and charitable aid." The acronym is ALICE. "In the six states surveyed in 2012---California, Indiana, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey and Connecticut---at least 35 percent of families were living under ALICE thresholds. They comprise 8.7 million working poor families on top of the 4.3 in those states officially living in poverty." So the current federal poverty index severely underestimates the extent of poverty in these United States of America.
If a person would add the near poor to the working poor and the welfare poor, the U.S. could end up with 45 to 50 percent of the U.S. population in or near poverty. Romney's 47 percent as 'takers' is close the the actual number of poor and near poor.
There is one simple step which could be taken, and has been taken by Aetna Insurance Co., which could make a huge dent in the problem if all corporations would do the same. "Two weeks ago, Aetna's CEO, Mark Bertolini, announced that the minimum wage for company employees would be raised to $16 an hour. The move will benefit 12 percent of Aetna's employees and cost the company $14 million in the first year. But it could also reduce the company's annual turnover cost of $120 million. Higher wages can yield better, more loyal employees."
Friday, January 30, 2015
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Wanted: A WASP Killer
Wanted: A WASP Killer; REPENT. "God's kingdom is here." (The Message)
After 240 years, will the white American church finally repent of its WASP superiority?
"Hundreds of kodaks clicked all morning at the scene of the lynching. People in automobiles and carriages came from miles around to view the corpse dangling from the end of a rope. . . . Picture cards photographers installed a portable printing plant at the bridge and reaped a harvest in selling the postcard showing a photograph of the lynched Negro. Women and children were there by the score. At a number of country schools the day's routine was delayed until boy and girl pupils could get back from viewing the lynched man." (The Crisis 10, no.2, June 1915).
On occasion, lynchings took place after church, on church property, with full approval of the church. Just as bad was the silence of the church nationwide.
America: From slavery to neoslavery (segregation, sharecropping, prison chain gangs, lynching, Jim Crow laws) to today's neoslavery: mass incarceration/racial wealth gap; in other words, 240 years of unending systems of oppression with the white American church usually approving or participating or standing silently by.
Millions of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants--white supremacy/superiority, supposed Anglo cultural superiority, and perverted religion---should commit social suicide---by deep repentance from Anglo cultural superiority/white American exceptionalism and by complete conversion to the kingdom of God as justice for the oppressed poor. Our founding fathers who believed in Anglo-Saxon superiority (Jefferson was fanatical in his belief) have passed this flawed American cultural gene down through history (see Race and Manifest Destiny). Most American Christians have never confessed this national sin so their conversions were shallow, incomplete. In fact, millions of born again Christians are proud of this idolatry.
James Cone documents the above in chapter two titled "The Terrible Beauty of the Cross and the Tragedy of the Lynching Tree: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr" in his excellent book The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Niebuhr was in some ways one of America's great theologians, yet he was deeply flawed on racial and justice issues. He was only a moderate when America needed a radical. In some ways, James Cone admired Niebuhr:
"Today I teach a course on Niebuhr because of his profound reflections on human nature, the cross, and creative social theory focusing on justice, self-interest and power. My understanding of the cross is deeply influenced by his perspective on the cross. . . . What I questioned was his limited perspective, as a white man, on the race crisis in America. His theology and ethics needed to be informed from critical reading and dialogue with radical black perspectives."
But,in a telling footnote, Cone added:
"My biggest problem with Niebuhr on race was not merely that he failed to associate himself with black organizations fighting for racial justice but, more importantly, what Niebuhr wrote about America's greatest moral issue was at best moderate in a time when he was radical on other issues that were dear to him. . . . Niebuhr did not have a deep commitment to racial justice, at least not in his writings or his life."
How did the American church respond to lynching? Not well. Cone asserts: "White conservative Christian's endorsement of lynching as a part of its religion, and white liberal Christian's silence about lynching placed both of them outside of Christian identity."
Why this catastrophic failure? Is there a connection between the white church's failure on lynching and the total white theological failure to engage the extensive biblical teaching on oppression (the 555 OT references)? I think so. If the white church started preaching that oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills person created in the image of God, it would have preached itself under conviction. But this biblical silence allowed the American cultural stance that white is right, best, superior, and even necessary for civilization to stand unchallenged. If major cracks is this wall of deceit and denial had appeared, if the wall supporting oppression had started to crumble, then the charity response would have been seen as inadequate. The church would have been pushed hard in the direction of repentance and justice.
The white church in the past and today in 2015 usually has chosen, either by participation or silence, oppression over justice. It needs a series of sermons on Isaiah 58 and James 2. Many of the Christian abolitionists, including Lincoln, believed in white superiority and black inferiority. The civil rights movement stopped legal segregation but not white supremacy. White oppressors then created another clever system of oppression---mass incarceration.
Wanted, for the first time in American history, a biblical white church that will attack and destroy white supremacy or WASPs or white superiority or the American trinity, not comfortably co-exist with them. After 240 years of massive racial justice failure, it is long past time for a crisis response. I suggest that each church, each seminary, each Christian college/university assign one person/faculty full time to organize/lead the response in their institution. I suggest the following books: Thomas Hanks, God So Loved the Third World: The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression; James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree; Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow; Perry Yoder, Shalom; Edward Blum, W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet; Jennifer Harvey, Whiteness and Morality; Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christian. By the way, most white American evangelicals are personal theists but social deists; Du Bois may have been a personal deist but a social theist.
Other quotations from The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a book that never would have been written by a white theologian:
"Lynching was not regarded as an evil thing but a necessity---the only way a community could protect itself from bad people. . . . "
". . . . cinematic masterpiece of racist propaganda The Birth of a Nation (1915), first seen at the White House and praised enthusiastically by President Woodrow Wilson. Whites, especially in the South, loved Birth and regarded seeing it as a "religious experience." "It rendered lynching an efficient and honorable act of justice" and served to help reunite the North and South as a white Christian nation, at the expense of African Americans."
A black Mississippian said, "Back in them days, to kill a Negro wasn't nothing. It was like killing a chicken or killing a snake. The whites would say, 'Niggers jest supposed to die, ain't no damn good anyway---so jest go an' kill them'"
"Whites lynched blacks in nearly every state."
"Like black men, they [women] were tortured, beaten, mutilated and hanged, burned and shot, tarred and feathered, stabbed and dragged, whipped and raped by angry white mobs." Not only lynching trees, but raping beds.
"Love in society is named justice."
"An apology, although important, . . . is not justice."
Apologies, charity, reforms and reconciliation are good and necessary, but alone they are not good enough, they are not substitutes for justice.
In addition to his chapter on Niebuhr, Cone also has a chapter on Martin Luther King; I drew these conclusions:
Niebuhr was a brilliant theologian but a limited doer of justice; King was also brilliant and a risk-your-life doer of justice.
Niebuhr has a limited understanding of oppression both biblically and experientially; King was deeply immersed in the poverty and oppression of others.
Niebuhr was better informed on racial issues than most white theologians, but he was too WASPish to go all the way; King practiced the Sermon on the Mount; he was a doer, not just a hearer.
Will the White American church repent and prepare the way for the kingdom of God? Repent---get rid of all competing allegiances, idolatries that stop the kingdom of God; for Americans, forsake the American Dream, American exceptionalism, white supremacy/superiority, WASPness, the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism. During my 88 years, I have discovered that most American Christians have a shallow understanding and commitment to the kingdom of God. Many have futurized and spiritualized the kingdom; few have a strong grasp of the present and social dimensions of the kingdom. Or many have falsely combined the kingdom with the American Dream.
The New Testament kingdom of God, like the Old Testament Sabbath year and the Jubilee year, is meant to be extreme, sweeping, radical, comprehensive, revolutionary, transforming. The Upside-Down Kingdom by Kraybill and the article "Jesus and the Kingdom of God" by Borg are among the few scholars who understand the profound social implications of the kingdom of God.
The Holy Spirit is the key to the incarnation of the kingdom of God here on earth. Borg asserts that the kingdom of not only refers to the reign of God, "but also to the life lived in response to God as King." According to Borg, the principles of life tied into the incarnation of the kingdom of God are sharply contrasted with the "conventional wisdom" of culture. Every culture presents us with a picture of socal reality. But Jesus, in his teachings about the kingdom of God became a subversive radical; he called into question "their understandings and loyalties, and invited them to participate in another way---namely life under the kingship of God."
Borg's judgment is that the American church has largely failed to understand the nature of the kingdom of God, and failed to tie the person, power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit to incarnating the kingdom of God here on earth. The result:
"The church to a large extent participates in our culture's conventional wisdom, indeed often legitmating it. Much of contemporary American Christianity is 'enculturated religion,' radically adapted to culture and domesticated within it. We live in a Babylon often declared to be Zion."
Borg's comments remind me of the Introduction to Jude in The Message:
"Our spiritual communities are as susceptible to disease as are our physical bodies. But it is easier to detect whatever is wrong in our stomachs and lungs than in our worship and witness. When our physical bodies are sick or damaged, the pain calls our attention to it, and we do something quick. But a dangerous, even deadly, virus in our spiritual communities can go undetected for a long time [240 years in the American WASP church]. As much as we need physicians for our bodies, we have an even greater need for diagnosticians and healers of the spirit."
"Jude's letter to an early community of Christianity is just such a diagnosis. It is all the more necessary in that those believers apparently didn't know anything was wrong, or at least not desperately wrong. . . ."
Americans need the radical good news of the kingdom of God/justice approach. Pursue passionately, give your highest priority to, incarnating the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice among the oppressed poor. As Graham Cray says, "The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit." Cray is echoing the apostle Paul, Romans 14:17: "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Noble paraphrase
Diagnosis: America's demonic and profoundly damaging social evil is our WASP or American trinity idolatry.
Cure: The American church must incarnate the kingdom of God as justice among the oppressed.
Prescription: The person, power, and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
Warning: If the church does not do justice, it faces the judgment of God.
Prayer: Pray a Daniel 9 confession (The Message).
P.S. Reread my September blog "Can Oppression Create PTSD?"
After 240 years, will the white American church finally repent of its WASP superiority?
"Hundreds of kodaks clicked all morning at the scene of the lynching. People in automobiles and carriages came from miles around to view the corpse dangling from the end of a rope. . . . Picture cards photographers installed a portable printing plant at the bridge and reaped a harvest in selling the postcard showing a photograph of the lynched Negro. Women and children were there by the score. At a number of country schools the day's routine was delayed until boy and girl pupils could get back from viewing the lynched man." (The Crisis 10, no.2, June 1915).
On occasion, lynchings took place after church, on church property, with full approval of the church. Just as bad was the silence of the church nationwide.
America: From slavery to neoslavery (segregation, sharecropping, prison chain gangs, lynching, Jim Crow laws) to today's neoslavery: mass incarceration/racial wealth gap; in other words, 240 years of unending systems of oppression with the white American church usually approving or participating or standing silently by.
Millions of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants--white supremacy/superiority, supposed Anglo cultural superiority, and perverted religion---should commit social suicide---by deep repentance from Anglo cultural superiority/white American exceptionalism and by complete conversion to the kingdom of God as justice for the oppressed poor. Our founding fathers who believed in Anglo-Saxon superiority (Jefferson was fanatical in his belief) have passed this flawed American cultural gene down through history (see Race and Manifest Destiny). Most American Christians have never confessed this national sin so their conversions were shallow, incomplete. In fact, millions of born again Christians are proud of this idolatry.
James Cone documents the above in chapter two titled "The Terrible Beauty of the Cross and the Tragedy of the Lynching Tree: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr" in his excellent book The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Niebuhr was in some ways one of America's great theologians, yet he was deeply flawed on racial and justice issues. He was only a moderate when America needed a radical. In some ways, James Cone admired Niebuhr:
"Today I teach a course on Niebuhr because of his profound reflections on human nature, the cross, and creative social theory focusing on justice, self-interest and power. My understanding of the cross is deeply influenced by his perspective on the cross. . . . What I questioned was his limited perspective, as a white man, on the race crisis in America. His theology and ethics needed to be informed from critical reading and dialogue with radical black perspectives."
But,in a telling footnote, Cone added:
"My biggest problem with Niebuhr on race was not merely that he failed to associate himself with black organizations fighting for racial justice but, more importantly, what Niebuhr wrote about America's greatest moral issue was at best moderate in a time when he was radical on other issues that were dear to him. . . . Niebuhr did not have a deep commitment to racial justice, at least not in his writings or his life."
How did the American church respond to lynching? Not well. Cone asserts: "White conservative Christian's endorsement of lynching as a part of its religion, and white liberal Christian's silence about lynching placed both of them outside of Christian identity."
Why this catastrophic failure? Is there a connection between the white church's failure on lynching and the total white theological failure to engage the extensive biblical teaching on oppression (the 555 OT references)? I think so. If the white church started preaching that oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills person created in the image of God, it would have preached itself under conviction. But this biblical silence allowed the American cultural stance that white is right, best, superior, and even necessary for civilization to stand unchallenged. If major cracks is this wall of deceit and denial had appeared, if the wall supporting oppression had started to crumble, then the charity response would have been seen as inadequate. The church would have been pushed hard in the direction of repentance and justice.
The white church in the past and today in 2015 usually has chosen, either by participation or silence, oppression over justice. It needs a series of sermons on Isaiah 58 and James 2. Many of the Christian abolitionists, including Lincoln, believed in white superiority and black inferiority. The civil rights movement stopped legal segregation but not white supremacy. White oppressors then created another clever system of oppression---mass incarceration.
Wanted, for the first time in American history, a biblical white church that will attack and destroy white supremacy or WASPs or white superiority or the American trinity, not comfortably co-exist with them. After 240 years of massive racial justice failure, it is long past time for a crisis response. I suggest that each church, each seminary, each Christian college/university assign one person/faculty full time to organize/lead the response in their institution. I suggest the following books: Thomas Hanks, God So Loved the Third World: The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression; James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree; Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow; Perry Yoder, Shalom; Edward Blum, W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet; Jennifer Harvey, Whiteness and Morality; Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christian. By the way, most white American evangelicals are personal theists but social deists; Du Bois may have been a personal deist but a social theist.
Other quotations from The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a book that never would have been written by a white theologian:
"Lynching was not regarded as an evil thing but a necessity---the only way a community could protect itself from bad people. . . . "
". . . . cinematic masterpiece of racist propaganda The Birth of a Nation (1915), first seen at the White House and praised enthusiastically by President Woodrow Wilson. Whites, especially in the South, loved Birth and regarded seeing it as a "religious experience." "It rendered lynching an efficient and honorable act of justice" and served to help reunite the North and South as a white Christian nation, at the expense of African Americans."
A black Mississippian said, "Back in them days, to kill a Negro wasn't nothing. It was like killing a chicken or killing a snake. The whites would say, 'Niggers jest supposed to die, ain't no damn good anyway---so jest go an' kill them'"
"Whites lynched blacks in nearly every state."
"Like black men, they [women] were tortured, beaten, mutilated and hanged, burned and shot, tarred and feathered, stabbed and dragged, whipped and raped by angry white mobs." Not only lynching trees, but raping beds.
"Love in society is named justice."
"An apology, although important, . . . is not justice."
Apologies, charity, reforms and reconciliation are good and necessary, but alone they are not good enough, they are not substitutes for justice.
In addition to his chapter on Niebuhr, Cone also has a chapter on Martin Luther King; I drew these conclusions:
Niebuhr was a brilliant theologian but a limited doer of justice; King was also brilliant and a risk-your-life doer of justice.
Niebuhr has a limited understanding of oppression both biblically and experientially; King was deeply immersed in the poverty and oppression of others.
Niebuhr was better informed on racial issues than most white theologians, but he was too WASPish to go all the way; King practiced the Sermon on the Mount; he was a doer, not just a hearer.
Will the White American church repent and prepare the way for the kingdom of God? Repent---get rid of all competing allegiances, idolatries that stop the kingdom of God; for Americans, forsake the American Dream, American exceptionalism, white supremacy/superiority, WASPness, the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism. During my 88 years, I have discovered that most American Christians have a shallow understanding and commitment to the kingdom of God. Many have futurized and spiritualized the kingdom; few have a strong grasp of the present and social dimensions of the kingdom. Or many have falsely combined the kingdom with the American Dream.
The New Testament kingdom of God, like the Old Testament Sabbath year and the Jubilee year, is meant to be extreme, sweeping, radical, comprehensive, revolutionary, transforming. The Upside-Down Kingdom by Kraybill and the article "Jesus and the Kingdom of God" by Borg are among the few scholars who understand the profound social implications of the kingdom of God.
The Holy Spirit is the key to the incarnation of the kingdom of God here on earth. Borg asserts that the kingdom of not only refers to the reign of God, "but also to the life lived in response to God as King." According to Borg, the principles of life tied into the incarnation of the kingdom of God are sharply contrasted with the "conventional wisdom" of culture. Every culture presents us with a picture of socal reality. But Jesus, in his teachings about the kingdom of God became a subversive radical; he called into question "their understandings and loyalties, and invited them to participate in another way---namely life under the kingship of God."
Borg's judgment is that the American church has largely failed to understand the nature of the kingdom of God, and failed to tie the person, power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit to incarnating the kingdom of God here on earth. The result:
"The church to a large extent participates in our culture's conventional wisdom, indeed often legitmating it. Much of contemporary American Christianity is 'enculturated religion,' radically adapted to culture and domesticated within it. We live in a Babylon often declared to be Zion."
Borg's comments remind me of the Introduction to Jude in The Message:
"Our spiritual communities are as susceptible to disease as are our physical bodies. But it is easier to detect whatever is wrong in our stomachs and lungs than in our worship and witness. When our physical bodies are sick or damaged, the pain calls our attention to it, and we do something quick. But a dangerous, even deadly, virus in our spiritual communities can go undetected for a long time [240 years in the American WASP church]. As much as we need physicians for our bodies, we have an even greater need for diagnosticians and healers of the spirit."
"Jude's letter to an early community of Christianity is just such a diagnosis. It is all the more necessary in that those believers apparently didn't know anything was wrong, or at least not desperately wrong. . . ."
Americans need the radical good news of the kingdom of God/justice approach. Pursue passionately, give your highest priority to, incarnating the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice among the oppressed poor. As Graham Cray says, "The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit." Cray is echoing the apostle Paul, Romans 14:17: "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Noble paraphrase
Diagnosis: America's demonic and profoundly damaging social evil is our WASP or American trinity idolatry.
Cure: The American church must incarnate the kingdom of God as justice among the oppressed.
Prescription: The person, power, and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
Warning: If the church does not do justice, it faces the judgment of God.
Prayer: Pray a Daniel 9 confession (The Message).
P.S. Reread my September blog "Can Oppression Create PTSD?"
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
The American Church: greed or generosity, oppression or justice
Is your church an Acts 4:32-35 church or a James 2 church?
In the Acts 4 Jerusalem church, the rich members gave very generously so that all of the basic economic needs of the poor members were met; a rough estimate would put 80 percent of the membership as poor, near poor or working poor. So generosity eliminating daily desperate poverty on a large scale was an economic miracle indeed. This was a remarkable Spirit-filled church.
By contrast, in the James 2 church, the rich oppressors were honored and the oppressed poor were treated as second class citizens. There was partiality, favoritism, discrimination, and judgmentalism in the church. There was a distorted faith without works, a spirituality without justice. In such a shallow spirituality, the rich oppressors can feel good about going to church. According to Robert Wuthnow (Tough Country), the rich feel more comfortable in the Texan church than poor people do.
In modern America, I would conclude that most white churches are James 2 churches; there are not many American Acts 4 churches. Why?
1. American churches lack a biblical theology of social evil; almost a total absence of a theology of oppression; no New Testament theology of the rich as oppressors, the cosmos as evil social order. To begin the process of developing a theology of social evil, I recommend God So Loved the Third World and the first chapter in Biblical Ethics and Social Change.
2. American churches neglect justice and the love of God; American churches treat Jubilee justice as a quaint Old Testament idea that is not applicable in a modern, industrial, urban society. See Stephen Mott's article "The Contribution of the Bible to Economic Thought."
3. Therefore, most American churches participate in or tolerate social evil. Historically and currently, we discriminate against the poor, women, blacks, Indians and Mexicans, to name a few.
Jesus once roared "Woe to the rich. . . . " Sounds like Jesus never studied economics. To get out of poverty, every society needs to generate some wealth, create prosperity. A person invents something, builds a factory to produce it, and in the process, makes a profit. OK, good, but a couple of ethical questions:
1. How much profit? A million or a billion?
2. How much wages? Minimum wage or a living wage? A living wage is double a minimum wage; a minimum wage leaves a person in poverty. Henry Ford paid a robust living wage; Costco pays a living wage. Walmart pays a minimum wage, but Walmart does not have a maximum profit. The Walton children are multibillionaires. If everyone prospers, we have a just economic system; cooperatives come closest to this ideal. If only a few rich people really prosper, this situation results in oppression for the poor; the poor who equally are created in the image of God are crushed and humiliated.
What would an ethical maximum profit be? Twice a living wage which would be $30; 10 times a living wage which would be $150; 100 times which would be $1500 an hour? Because we live in a fallen world, the process of producing wealth is often flawed by greed and oppression.
According to the Bible, justice should be the organizing principle of any economic system, that is a Jubilee-type of justice with the oppressed poor central, not an afterthought. Not the market, not the invisible hand, not the government, but justice. Capitalism represents one extreme, socialism another extreme with cooperatives in the middle. Coops blend individual and social responsibility. Mondragon is a model of how to organize an entire society around cooperatives.
Our process of production is well developed, but our ethics of economics is poorly developed. For a scholarly analysis of a biblical economics, see "The Contribution of the Bible to Economic Thought" by Stephen Mott. Mott takes the idea of social evil very seriously. He understands that we live in a fallen society full of fallen individuals. Because we all live in fallen societies, the process of producing wealth is often flawed by greed (personal sin) and oppression (social evil).
Mott's understanding of social evil is grounded in the New Testament concepts of cosmos (evil social order) and the principalities and powers. No white North American theologian nor any major theologian in the history of the church has ever made the biblical concept of oppression central in their theology. Both my mentor John Perkins and the black theologian James Cone have a keen sense of oppression based on their personal experience of living in the South, but neither has published a major biblical study on oppression. I have heard John Perkins preach/teach hundreds of times but never has he preached on biblical oppression.
In terms of the American economic system, social evil rages on unchecked and unchallenged. For most Americans, capitalism is God's economic system. Case closed.
In the Acts 4 Jerusalem church, the rich members gave very generously so that all of the basic economic needs of the poor members were met; a rough estimate would put 80 percent of the membership as poor, near poor or working poor. So generosity eliminating daily desperate poverty on a large scale was an economic miracle indeed. This was a remarkable Spirit-filled church.
By contrast, in the James 2 church, the rich oppressors were honored and the oppressed poor were treated as second class citizens. There was partiality, favoritism, discrimination, and judgmentalism in the church. There was a distorted faith without works, a spirituality without justice. In such a shallow spirituality, the rich oppressors can feel good about going to church. According to Robert Wuthnow (Tough Country), the rich feel more comfortable in the Texan church than poor people do.
In modern America, I would conclude that most white churches are James 2 churches; there are not many American Acts 4 churches. Why?
1. American churches lack a biblical theology of social evil; almost a total absence of a theology of oppression; no New Testament theology of the rich as oppressors, the cosmos as evil social order. To begin the process of developing a theology of social evil, I recommend God So Loved the Third World and the first chapter in Biblical Ethics and Social Change.
2. American churches neglect justice and the love of God; American churches treat Jubilee justice as a quaint Old Testament idea that is not applicable in a modern, industrial, urban society. See Stephen Mott's article "The Contribution of the Bible to Economic Thought."
3. Therefore, most American churches participate in or tolerate social evil. Historically and currently, we discriminate against the poor, women, blacks, Indians and Mexicans, to name a few.
Jesus once roared "Woe to the rich. . . . " Sounds like Jesus never studied economics. To get out of poverty, every society needs to generate some wealth, create prosperity. A person invents something, builds a factory to produce it, and in the process, makes a profit. OK, good, but a couple of ethical questions:
1. How much profit? A million or a billion?
2. How much wages? Minimum wage or a living wage? A living wage is double a minimum wage; a minimum wage leaves a person in poverty. Henry Ford paid a robust living wage; Costco pays a living wage. Walmart pays a minimum wage, but Walmart does not have a maximum profit. The Walton children are multibillionaires. If everyone prospers, we have a just economic system; cooperatives come closest to this ideal. If only a few rich people really prosper, this situation results in oppression for the poor; the poor who equally are created in the image of God are crushed and humiliated.
What would an ethical maximum profit be? Twice a living wage which would be $30; 10 times a living wage which would be $150; 100 times which would be $1500 an hour? Because we live in a fallen world, the process of producing wealth is often flawed by greed and oppression.
According to the Bible, justice should be the organizing principle of any economic system, that is a Jubilee-type of justice with the oppressed poor central, not an afterthought. Not the market, not the invisible hand, not the government, but justice. Capitalism represents one extreme, socialism another extreme with cooperatives in the middle. Coops blend individual and social responsibility. Mondragon is a model of how to organize an entire society around cooperatives.
Our process of production is well developed, but our ethics of economics is poorly developed. For a scholarly analysis of a biblical economics, see "The Contribution of the Bible to Economic Thought" by Stephen Mott. Mott takes the idea of social evil very seriously. He understands that we live in a fallen society full of fallen individuals. Because we all live in fallen societies, the process of producing wealth is often flawed by greed (personal sin) and oppression (social evil).
Mott's understanding of social evil is grounded in the New Testament concepts of cosmos (evil social order) and the principalities and powers. No white North American theologian nor any major theologian in the history of the church has ever made the biblical concept of oppression central in their theology. Both my mentor John Perkins and the black theologian James Cone have a keen sense of oppression based on their personal experience of living in the South, but neither has published a major biblical study on oppression. I have heard John Perkins preach/teach hundreds of times but never has he preached on biblical oppression.
In terms of the American economic system, social evil rages on unchecked and unchallenged. For most Americans, capitalism is God's economic system. Case closed.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
America: a cousin to the Kingdom or a dangerous substitute?
America: a cousin to the kingdom of God or a dangerous substitute?
The above title topic was stimulated when I read a 2014 book entitled America by Dinesh D'Souza. In one sense, I would call this book a must read because it is necessary to force some deep thinking about American exceptionalism and the kingdom of God as justice for the oppressed poor. On the other hand, it may be a dangerous read for those not already deeply grounded in the biblical teaching on the kingdom and justice---Jubilee justice. The book will raise the question: Is there a cultural war between American exceptionalism and the kingdom of God or is America a cousin to the kingdom of God?
Though D'Souza identifies himself as a Christian, the book America is built upon American historical arguments, not biblical truths. D'Souza is smart enough to know that most of the founding father were deists, not theists, that the deist, Thomas Jefferson, edited the supernatural out of the gospels. See the Jefferson Bible.
The key historical argument in the book is that America is an exceptional nation, hence the phrase "American exceptionalism." A few years ago, a poll revealed that around 60 percent of Americans still believe in American exceptionalism. D'Souza believes that the political and economic geniuses who created this great nation around the concepts of democracy and capitalism. This is why America is the greatest nation in the world and why much of the rest of the world has copied some aspects of our democratic process and our capitalist system.
Again, D'Souza does not specifically claim that America is a Christian nation, as many Americans do, but he does believe to the core of his being that America is an exceptional nation. And, though he does not use this phrase as such, America is almost the kingdom of God here on earth. D'Souza is smart, brilliant. Using a clever mixture of truths and half-truths, he will probably convince all but the historically and biblically well-informed, that what he writes is true.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; the founding fathers wanted to be free from British tyranny. But Jefferson himself was a tyrant. How? He owned around 260 slaves, probably raped slave women, endorsed the idea of removing all Indians east of the Mississippi, this idea was later implemented by President Jackson, and Jefferson wanted to "annex" Cuba (conquer and colonize). Jefferson, an America tyrant, wanted to replace the British tyrant. Is this part of American exceptionalism? Later American tyrants conquered and "civilized" the West and stole half of Mexico. D'Souza explains why all this necessary and ultimately good, even for slaves and Indians.
If you already believe in American exceptionalism, this book will convince you beyond the shadow of a doubt. If you already believe in the kingdom of God as justice, you will see American exceptionalism, as a diabolic substitute for the kingdom.
The full title of the book is America: Imagine a World Without Her; this implies a disaster if America continues on a downward path led by socialist Obama, and especially if he is followed by Hillary. On the front book jacket this question is raised; was America conceived in liberty or in oppression? The good news: Our founding father created the closest thing to the kingdom of God on earth. The bad news: Progressives such as President Obama and Hillary Clinton are ruining this great nation. If Clinton is elected in 2016, the decline may become irreversible. So argues the brilliant Denish D'Souza, immigrant from India, now American citizen, who is eternally grateful to America for giving him an opportunity to succeed.
My introduction might imply that he is a crackpot, but if he is, he is a brilliant crackpot who should not be lightly dismissed. He may be wearing rose-colored glasses as he interprets America, but he has done his research homework thoroughly, read the relevant literature, and argues his case well. He professes to be a Christian, but he makes only historical arguments; he ignores the biblical teaching on oppression, poverty, ethnocentrism repentance, restitution and justice which if fully faced would gut some of his key arguments.
Was America conceived in liberty? Yes, for the WASP rich, white male elite? Was America conceived in oppression? Yes, for Native Americans, African Americans, women and the poor.
One red flag that D'Souza acknowledges, but then largely ignores, is found on page 43: "Admittedly, out of the fifty-five men [founding fathers] who gathered in Philadelphia, no less than thirty owned slaves." Others were involved in the slave trade in one way or another, such as building slave ships. Slavery was pervasive and corrosive in American society during the late 1700s.
Can slave owner types be trusted to set up a society that provides liberty and justice for all??? Liberty and justice for all or ethnocentrism and oppression for all non-Anglos? A deep sensitivity to the biblical horror of oppression would have alerted D'Souza and patriotic evangelicals to push much deeper on the slavery issue.
Dinesh believes that America is in decline because of the socialism of progressives such as Obama and Clinton. But our decline began with the Puritans and the founding fathers; our decline also began with a church that neglected biblical justice, with a church that failed to release the oppressed, with a church that allowed a rich elite to control both the political and economic policies of the country. That same highly Americanized church is still failing in 2015.
Justice was not central in the Declaration; justice was not central in the Constitution; justice is central only in the Pledge---"with liberty and justice for all." The Pledge was written by a socialist, the kind of people D'Souza asserts are destroying America.
A final thought: Freed slaves died like flies. Why? At the moment the slaves walked of the plantation shouting Hallelujah, they became homeless, landless, foodless and justiceless.
The above title topic was stimulated when I read a 2014 book entitled America by Dinesh D'Souza. In one sense, I would call this book a must read because it is necessary to force some deep thinking about American exceptionalism and the kingdom of God as justice for the oppressed poor. On the other hand, it may be a dangerous read for those not already deeply grounded in the biblical teaching on the kingdom and justice---Jubilee justice. The book will raise the question: Is there a cultural war between American exceptionalism and the kingdom of God or is America a cousin to the kingdom of God?
Though D'Souza identifies himself as a Christian, the book America is built upon American historical arguments, not biblical truths. D'Souza is smart enough to know that most of the founding father were deists, not theists, that the deist, Thomas Jefferson, edited the supernatural out of the gospels. See the Jefferson Bible.
The key historical argument in the book is that America is an exceptional nation, hence the phrase "American exceptionalism." A few years ago, a poll revealed that around 60 percent of Americans still believe in American exceptionalism. D'Souza believes that the political and economic geniuses who created this great nation around the concepts of democracy and capitalism. This is why America is the greatest nation in the world and why much of the rest of the world has copied some aspects of our democratic process and our capitalist system.
Again, D'Souza does not specifically claim that America is a Christian nation, as many Americans do, but he does believe to the core of his being that America is an exceptional nation. And, though he does not use this phrase as such, America is almost the kingdom of God here on earth. D'Souza is smart, brilliant. Using a clever mixture of truths and half-truths, he will probably convince all but the historically and biblically well-informed, that what he writes is true.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; the founding fathers wanted to be free from British tyranny. But Jefferson himself was a tyrant. How? He owned around 260 slaves, probably raped slave women, endorsed the idea of removing all Indians east of the Mississippi, this idea was later implemented by President Jackson, and Jefferson wanted to "annex" Cuba (conquer and colonize). Jefferson, an America tyrant, wanted to replace the British tyrant. Is this part of American exceptionalism? Later American tyrants conquered and "civilized" the West and stole half of Mexico. D'Souza explains why all this necessary and ultimately good, even for slaves and Indians.
If you already believe in American exceptionalism, this book will convince you beyond the shadow of a doubt. If you already believe in the kingdom of God as justice, you will see American exceptionalism, as a diabolic substitute for the kingdom.
The full title of the book is America: Imagine a World Without Her; this implies a disaster if America continues on a downward path led by socialist Obama, and especially if he is followed by Hillary. On the front book jacket this question is raised; was America conceived in liberty or in oppression? The good news: Our founding father created the closest thing to the kingdom of God on earth. The bad news: Progressives such as President Obama and Hillary Clinton are ruining this great nation. If Clinton is elected in 2016, the decline may become irreversible. So argues the brilliant Denish D'Souza, immigrant from India, now American citizen, who is eternally grateful to America for giving him an opportunity to succeed.
My introduction might imply that he is a crackpot, but if he is, he is a brilliant crackpot who should not be lightly dismissed. He may be wearing rose-colored glasses as he interprets America, but he has done his research homework thoroughly, read the relevant literature, and argues his case well. He professes to be a Christian, but he makes only historical arguments; he ignores the biblical teaching on oppression, poverty, ethnocentrism repentance, restitution and justice which if fully faced would gut some of his key arguments.
Was America conceived in liberty? Yes, for the WASP rich, white male elite? Was America conceived in oppression? Yes, for Native Americans, African Americans, women and the poor.
One red flag that D'Souza acknowledges, but then largely ignores, is found on page 43: "Admittedly, out of the fifty-five men [founding fathers] who gathered in Philadelphia, no less than thirty owned slaves." Others were involved in the slave trade in one way or another, such as building slave ships. Slavery was pervasive and corrosive in American society during the late 1700s.
Can slave owner types be trusted to set up a society that provides liberty and justice for all??? Liberty and justice for all or ethnocentrism and oppression for all non-Anglos? A deep sensitivity to the biblical horror of oppression would have alerted D'Souza and patriotic evangelicals to push much deeper on the slavery issue.
Dinesh believes that America is in decline because of the socialism of progressives such as Obama and Clinton. But our decline began with the Puritans and the founding fathers; our decline also began with a church that neglected biblical justice, with a church that failed to release the oppressed, with a church that allowed a rich elite to control both the political and economic policies of the country. That same highly Americanized church is still failing in 2015.
Justice was not central in the Declaration; justice was not central in the Constitution; justice is central only in the Pledge---"with liberty and justice for all." The Pledge was written by a socialist, the kind of people D'Souza asserts are destroying America.
A final thought: Freed slaves died like flies. Why? At the moment the slaves walked of the plantation shouting Hallelujah, they became homeless, landless, foodless and justiceless.
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