The largely church-led abolitionist and civil rights revolutions are considered to be highly successful revolutions by most Americans. In some ways YES; but in other ways, NO. Freedom, yes; justice, economic justice, no.
The abolitionist movement, with the help of a violent civil war, was highly successful in ending slavery; the civil rights movement was highly successful in ending legal segregation. But there is a largely untold story that is missing from U.S. history. What is the REST of the story, as Paul Harvey would say? What was missing from the American church's theology that led to aborted revolutions?
The church has never fully understood nor fully practiced the justice message of the Bible---the Jubilee justice, the kingdom of God revolutionary message of justice for the oppressed poor. Therefore, the freedom for the slaves movement was soon replaced by neoslavery---legal segregation, economic sharecropping/oppression, prison gangs and lynching. Freedom without biblical justice leaves a big hole, a socioeconomic vacuum. The clever white American oppressors rushed in and filled the vacuum with a redesigned system of oppression.
Immediately after the end of the Civil War, evangelical Dwight L. Moody called a reconciliation conference, but not a justice conference. And it was a reconciliation to reconcile northern white and southern whites, not to reconcile blacks and whites. So much for the theological depth of the church.
There are two phases to a successful revolution:
1. destroying the old/evil social order
2. rebuilding a new/just social order
History reveals that most revolutions, even church-led ones, are better at destroying the old than rebuilding the new. Seminaries turn out many well trained pastors, but few prophets and rebuilders. Good rebuilders must understand the kingdom of God as both a freedom and justice message. Rebuilders must be experts at repair---repent, restitute, and repair.
According to Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, it takes both an Ezra and a Nehemiah to get the job done:
History had not treated the People of Israel well and they were in decline [because of idolatry and oppression]. A superpower military machine, Babylon, had battered them [a judgment of God] and then, leaving their city and temple a mound of rubble, hauled them into exile. Now, 128 years later, a few Jews back in Jerusalem had been trying to put the pieces back together decade after weary decade. But it was not going well at all. They were hanging on by their fingernails. And then Ezra arrived.
God didn't leave Ezra to do this single-handedly; he gave him substantial and critical help in the rescue operation in the person of Nehemiah---a building contractor, called in to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. His coworker Ezra was a scholar and a teacher, working with the Scriptures. Nehemiah worked with stones and mortar. The stories of the two men are interwoven in a seamless fabric of vocational holiness. Neither job was more or less important or holy than the other. Nehemiah needed Ezra; Ezra needed Nehemiah. God's people needed the work of both of them. We still do.
Right in the middle of the rebuilding process, Nehemiah discovered some oppression going on. Angrily, he demanded that it stop immediately, that restitution be made. See Nehemiah chapter five.
Back to the abolitionist movement. Was Lincoln a racist? Were many of the abolitionists racist? Google "10 Racist quotes Abraham Lincoln said about Black People" and "David Blight on Racism in the abolitionist movement." Northern racists never repented of their own racism; both northern and southern whites were racist. For Christians, repentance is a better option than fighting, killing. The North had made millions buying and selling slave-produced cotton. Without northern repentance, Reconstruction didn't last.
The American church needs to understand that repentance is the first and all important step in a successful revolution. Jesus said, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here." Next, release, restitution and rebuilding.
Next, the American Revolution. Many believe that our founding fathers who led the Revolution were Christians. This raises some difficult questions. George Marsden, a Christian historian (The Wars of America: Christian Views) asserts that the British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violent revolution. If this is so, why were Christian leaders leading a violent revolution? Marsden also says that once the war started, lay Christians became enthusiastic supporters of the revolution.
So what was really going on? Were our founding fathers frauds, con men, whose real goal as an American elite was simply to replace a corrupt and oppressive British elite? I think so, because neither the poor nor women, neither Indians nor slaves, were treated as equals as the declaration of Independence said was the purpose of the Revolution. Christian revolutions should begin with repentance, not deistic arrogance, not pious oppression.
Christian revolutions must be grounded in the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice for the poor and oppressed. If not, they quickly turn into masters of deceit. See Jeremiah 6 and 8.
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