I have just finished rereading James Michener's historical novel, based on real history and culture, The Covenant. This quotation is from the flyleaf: "the tragic results of wrong decisions made by a fundamentally decent people in the serene belief that they are right." I would paraphrase this statement somewhat differently "the tragic results of demonic lies made by a fundamentally evil people who legitimated their ethnocentrism and oppression with distorted biblical beliefs, believed and implemented with great fervor."
1. First biblical lie---the foundational falsehood; that they, the Afrikaner people, were like Israel, a chosen people; this was a religious myth.
2. Second biblical lie---God made a covenant with the Afrikaner people.
3. Third biblical lie---As a chosen people, Afrikaners are therefore a superior people, above black African, white English and mixed coloreds. By the way, some Afrikaners contributed to this despised racial mixing.
4. Fourth biblical lie---superior people must not intermarry, must be segregated, to maintain their biological and social purity.
5. Fifth biblical lie---if required, Afrikaners can use violence---war, oppression---to maintain their superior position.
6. Sixth biblical lie---All of the above is God's will, divine social order, Afrikaner shalom, Manifest Destiny.
Americans led by the theistic Puritans who also saw themselves as God's chosen and superior people, brought with their revered Bibles generous amounts of British ethnocentrism and oppression. The deistic founding fathers added Enlightenment principles and superior Anglo-Saxon culture. The Americans began implementing their similar religious lies BEFORE the Afrikaners did so in South Africa.
Change some faces and places, and the Afrikaner and American patterns are tragically similar. For more on the deep-seated social evil embedded in American history, I suggest you read: Before the Mayflower, Myths America Lives By, A Different Mirror and The Wars of America: Christian Views.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
HBS---Uncle Tom's Cabin
Daniel Goldfield (2011) wrote a book on Harriet Beecher Stowe titled America Aflame; Stowe was an evangelical Christian who was fiercely anti-slavery.
In a church service in 1851, "She experienced a vision: a white man wielding a whip onto an old slave, beating him until the black man died. The vision became Tom. The book became a retelling of the crucifixion in family terms."
For Stowe, "Here was an institution---human bondage---that also destroyed the family, stifled free expression, and contradicted the nation's self-evident truths of equality and dignity. America must purge itself of sin."
Her sister-in-law wrote: "If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." Harriet replied : "I will write something. I will if I live."
Uncle Tom's Cabin "was not an anti southern book. Slavery existed due to not only southern forbearance but to northern complicity as well. Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians have something more to do than denounce their brethren in the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves."
HBS got two out of three right, better than most white Americans. She understood the evil of oppression--slavery; she understood that the oppressed, the slaves, needed freedom from their bondage; but she did not take the next biblical step---justice for the freed slaves---40 acres and a mule. Without justice, the freed slaves soon lost their freedom.
Freedom is good, very good, a necessary step; but freedom alone is not good enough. Jubilee justice is also required.
In a church service in 1851, "She experienced a vision: a white man wielding a whip onto an old slave, beating him until the black man died. The vision became Tom. The book became a retelling of the crucifixion in family terms."
For Stowe, "Here was an institution---human bondage---that also destroyed the family, stifled free expression, and contradicted the nation's self-evident truths of equality and dignity. America must purge itself of sin."
Her sister-in-law wrote: "If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." Harriet replied : "I will write something. I will if I live."
Uncle Tom's Cabin "was not an anti southern book. Slavery existed due to not only southern forbearance but to northern complicity as well. Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians have something more to do than denounce their brethren in the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves."
HBS got two out of three right, better than most white Americans. She understood the evil of oppression--slavery; she understood that the oppressed, the slaves, needed freedom from their bondage; but she did not take the next biblical step---justice for the freed slaves---40 acres and a mule. Without justice, the freed slaves soon lost their freedom.
Freedom is good, very good, a necessary step; but freedom alone is not good enough. Jubilee justice is also required.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Did Billy Graham preach a gospel of cheap grace?
After reading Jim Wallis' America's Original Sin, especially chapter four on Repentance, I have concluded that Billy Graham, and thousands of other white American evangelical pastors/churches have in the past and are in the present, preaching and practicing half of the biblical gospel---or cheap grace.
Ironically Billy Graham and most white evangelicals believe the Bible is inerrant, divinely inspired and authoritative. So why do they ignore or only lightly touch so many important biblical truths? Evangelicals are 100 percent faithful to the cross, the resurrection, and justification by faith. But they only preach and practice about 10 percent of the kingdom of God gospel.
Around age 70, Billy Graham wrote something rather remarkable about the kingdom of God: "I have been preaching the cross and the resurrection all my life. Now I realize I also should have been preaching the kingdom of God which is justice for all." But, to my knowledge, he did little to follow through except that he integrated his evangelistic meetings and promoted giving to some charities in his meetings.
What is the kingdom of God gospel? It might be summarized concisely in the following way:
* To love God is to do justice.
* Liberty and justice for all.
* Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor
* Release for the oppressed poor.
* Incarnation of justice and shalom in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
To do the above requires an in-depth biblical knowledge of the following concepts:
* The 555 references to oppression in the Hebrew OT.
* The 100 references to justice in the NT---Spanish, French, Latin Vulgate, etc.
* The extensive teaching about ethnocentrism in the NT.
* The concept of Jubilee justice, the Sabbath year.
* The Spirit and the Kingdom of God
* Reconciliation in the NT.
Next, Jim Wallis on Repentance.
Biblical repentance requires fruit, not just feeling sorry for our sins. Zaccheus engaged in restitution; restitution repairs some of the damage oppression has done to the oppressed. Restitution is part of releasing the oppressed.
In America, we have never fully repented of ethnocentrism and oppression, Indian genocide and African enslavement, white superiority and white privilege. Instead of repenting, we enjoy the fruits of our ethnocentrism and oppression.
Jim Wallis calls upon the church to repent---to fully turn away from all our social evils and to fully implement the kingdom of God. Reform is not enough; revolutionary transformation is required. The American church must give highest priority to implementing the kingdom of God as Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year justice. According to Wallis, the American church has not come close to biblical repentance.
From the Conclusion of Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western:
"In the last decades of the twentieth century [beginning during the Reagan decade], mass imprisonment became a fact of American life. The deep involvement of poor black men [racial profiling] in the criminal justice system became normal. Those drawn into the net of the penal system live differently from the rest of us. Employment is more insecure, wages are lower. Families are disrupted as incarceration separates children from their fathers and breaks up couples. Pervasive incarceration and its effects on economic opportunity and family life have given the penal system a central role in the lives of the urban poor. [A system of oppression par excellence]."
Where was/is the American church in all of this social evil? AWOL?
Reformed philosopher/theologian, Hendrik Hart, is deeply troubled by the failure of his denomination to root out racism and do justice. The following excerpts are from his article in the Christian Scholar's Review, "The Just Shall Live: Reformational Reflections in Public Justice and Racist Attitudes."
Hart asserts that Calvinists do not understand their key Reformational verse, Hab. 2:4. In the midst of massive injustice, continue to live righteously and do justice, by faith; faith that the sovereign God of the universe will act justly in due time.l
"But public justice biblically understood would have our justice be sacrificial, would be the privileged extending their privileges to the poor, the weak, the ill, the hungry, the oppressed."
"In summary: a biblical concept of public justice calls for affirmative action by the government and its citizens. The government is called to promote a shift in the balance of power, to make the powerful more vulnerable by legislation and to use the law for making the newly available power accessible for the vulnerable."
"Racism is religious rebellion at the core. It is a sin against the first and second commandments, against the heart of all commandments. . . . I do not recognize God in my neighbor of a different race. . . . It also denies that person that person a proper place in the universe."
"Justice not only gives people of other races their due, but requires our conversion and repentance."
"If the civil rights machinery is there but the will and attitude of justice is lacking in whites, blacks are bound to become even more frustrated than in the past."
Ironically Billy Graham and most white evangelicals believe the Bible is inerrant, divinely inspired and authoritative. So why do they ignore or only lightly touch so many important biblical truths? Evangelicals are 100 percent faithful to the cross, the resurrection, and justification by faith. But they only preach and practice about 10 percent of the kingdom of God gospel.
Around age 70, Billy Graham wrote something rather remarkable about the kingdom of God: "I have been preaching the cross and the resurrection all my life. Now I realize I also should have been preaching the kingdom of God which is justice for all." But, to my knowledge, he did little to follow through except that he integrated his evangelistic meetings and promoted giving to some charities in his meetings.
What is the kingdom of God gospel? It might be summarized concisely in the following way:
* To love God is to do justice.
* Liberty and justice for all.
* Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor
* Release for the oppressed poor.
* Incarnation of justice and shalom in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
To do the above requires an in-depth biblical knowledge of the following concepts:
* The 555 references to oppression in the Hebrew OT.
* The 100 references to justice in the NT---Spanish, French, Latin Vulgate, etc.
* The extensive teaching about ethnocentrism in the NT.
* The concept of Jubilee justice, the Sabbath year.
* The Spirit and the Kingdom of God
* Reconciliation in the NT.
Next, Jim Wallis on Repentance.
Biblical repentance requires fruit, not just feeling sorry for our sins. Zaccheus engaged in restitution; restitution repairs some of the damage oppression has done to the oppressed. Restitution is part of releasing the oppressed.
In America, we have never fully repented of ethnocentrism and oppression, Indian genocide and African enslavement, white superiority and white privilege. Instead of repenting, we enjoy the fruits of our ethnocentrism and oppression.
Jim Wallis calls upon the church to repent---to fully turn away from all our social evils and to fully implement the kingdom of God. Reform is not enough; revolutionary transformation is required. The American church must give highest priority to implementing the kingdom of God as Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year justice. According to Wallis, the American church has not come close to biblical repentance.
From the Conclusion of Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western:
"In the last decades of the twentieth century [beginning during the Reagan decade], mass imprisonment became a fact of American life. The deep involvement of poor black men [racial profiling] in the criminal justice system became normal. Those drawn into the net of the penal system live differently from the rest of us. Employment is more insecure, wages are lower. Families are disrupted as incarceration separates children from their fathers and breaks up couples. Pervasive incarceration and its effects on economic opportunity and family life have given the penal system a central role in the lives of the urban poor. [A system of oppression par excellence]."
Where was/is the American church in all of this social evil? AWOL?
Reformed philosopher/theologian, Hendrik Hart, is deeply troubled by the failure of his denomination to root out racism and do justice. The following excerpts are from his article in the Christian Scholar's Review, "The Just Shall Live: Reformational Reflections in Public Justice and Racist Attitudes."
Hart asserts that Calvinists do not understand their key Reformational verse, Hab. 2:4. In the midst of massive injustice, continue to live righteously and do justice, by faith; faith that the sovereign God of the universe will act justly in due time.l
"But public justice biblically understood would have our justice be sacrificial, would be the privileged extending their privileges to the poor, the weak, the ill, the hungry, the oppressed."
"In summary: a biblical concept of public justice calls for affirmative action by the government and its citizens. The government is called to promote a shift in the balance of power, to make the powerful more vulnerable by legislation and to use the law for making the newly available power accessible for the vulnerable."
"Racism is religious rebellion at the core. It is a sin against the first and second commandments, against the heart of all commandments. . . . I do not recognize God in my neighbor of a different race. . . . It also denies that person that person a proper place in the universe."
"Justice not only gives people of other races their due, but requires our conversion and repentance."
"If the civil rights machinery is there but the will and attitude of justice is lacking in whites, blacks are bound to become even more frustrated than in the past."
Saturday, June 25, 2016
San Mateo revisited by Bryant Myers
A World Vision story of community development and evangelism in Colombia.
"In my last issue, I was telling you about my visit with a sick potter in Bogota. His intestinal problems often prevented him from finishing his pots. The middleman who bought his pots was taking advantage of his illness and paying less and less. The family's landlord was squeezing them by raising the rent.
"The potter's wife was worn out caring for five children. Teresa [World Vision staff], the young woman who cared so deeply for the children of San Mateo, was broken-hearted. Carlos and Flora, the courageous leaders of the recently reopened little church in San Mateo, did not know how to help."
A seemingly hopeless case. But Myers returned nine months later.
"Our visit began at the potter's house. It had been completely rebuilt. The roof was watertight, hundreds of pots rested on sturdy shelves. "What on earth happened?" I inquired with more than a little amazement. . . . Before the service began [lead by the potter], I was escorted to the back of the house to discover a roomful of women making candy. His church helps people to produce things to earn money. I was then shown the candle-making class in another room upstairs."
What were some of the keys to this turn around? Cesar Romero helped the potter wife take the pots directly to market, skipping the middle-man, making much more money. God healed the potter. Small businesses were started.
The rebellious potter's son was watching all of this; community development became a convincing form of evangelism. So he started going to church and before long became a Christian.
Three new churches have been started plus a dozen cell groups. Community development has become an effective form of evangelism.
"In my last issue, I was telling you about my visit with a sick potter in Bogota. His intestinal problems often prevented him from finishing his pots. The middleman who bought his pots was taking advantage of his illness and paying less and less. The family's landlord was squeezing them by raising the rent.
"The potter's wife was worn out caring for five children. Teresa [World Vision staff], the young woman who cared so deeply for the children of San Mateo, was broken-hearted. Carlos and Flora, the courageous leaders of the recently reopened little church in San Mateo, did not know how to help."
A seemingly hopeless case. But Myers returned nine months later.
"Our visit began at the potter's house. It had been completely rebuilt. The roof was watertight, hundreds of pots rested on sturdy shelves. "What on earth happened?" I inquired with more than a little amazement. . . . Before the service began [lead by the potter], I was escorted to the back of the house to discover a roomful of women making candy. His church helps people to produce things to earn money. I was then shown the candle-making class in another room upstairs."
What were some of the keys to this turn around? Cesar Romero helped the potter wife take the pots directly to market, skipping the middle-man, making much more money. God healed the potter. Small businesses were started.
The rebellious potter's son was watching all of this; community development became a convincing form of evangelism. So he started going to church and before long became a Christian.
Three new churches have been started plus a dozen cell groups. Community development has become an effective form of evangelism.
Brexit, Trump and Fragments of Justice
The unlikely has happened. A deep streak of British ethnocentrism, nationalism, racism and anti-immigrant ideas have surfaced, widespread enough to win an election.
In the U.S., the unlikely has also happened. No political pundit, no mainstream Republican saw it coming. With significant evangelical support, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. The Trump stance: a bold and blatant American ethnocentrism, nationalism, racism, anti-immigrant platform. This should have killed his nomination, but it didn't.
Up until Brexit, I would have said that Trump would not win the presidency. Now I am not so sure.
Will we learn from the Rwandan genocide? John Martin, managing editor of the Church of England Newspaper, wrote the following in 1996, "Rwanda:Why?"
"There is no escape from the truth that the Christian Church has been a major player in the tragic events in Rwanda which have horrified observers throughout the world in 1994. . . . Churches have been the scene of massacres and church leaders have acquiesced to hideous cruelty. . . . There must have been serious inadequacies and failings in the theology and spirituality of the church in Rwanda." How could this be in a highly Christian country that had experienced revival?
Possibly two fine Christian scholars who have studied justice in some depth can help us. First, Emil Brunner, a European theologian who wrote Justice and the Social Order, 1945, right after World War II. Brunner asserts that the Roman Catholic Church "possesses an impressive systematic theory of justice, but Protestant Christianity has had none for three hundred years. . . . Protestant statements . . . are so haphazard and improvised that they fail to carry conviction." Therefore, the Protestant church cannot stop ethnocentrism and oppression; far too often it remains silent or actively participates in ethnocentrism and oppression.
Karen Lebacqz, a Christian social ethicist, wrote Six Theories of Justice. In this recent book, she analyzed the best Western thinkers on justice. She concluded that all they had produced were "fragments of justice."
Why is the Western world, even Christian church, plagued with shallow thinking and action on justice? Lebacqz thinks that the main reason is that these scholars do not begin with oppression/injustice. Our theology on biblical oppression is even less than fragmentary; it is almost non-existent.
Without a solid biblical theology of oppression, ethnocentrism and justice, the church is powerless to release the oppressed, to do Jubilee justice. In the Latin Vulgate, there are around 100 references to justice in the NT; in the KJV NT there are no references to justice.
In the U.S., the unlikely has also happened. No political pundit, no mainstream Republican saw it coming. With significant evangelical support, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. The Trump stance: a bold and blatant American ethnocentrism, nationalism, racism, anti-immigrant platform. This should have killed his nomination, but it didn't.
Up until Brexit, I would have said that Trump would not win the presidency. Now I am not so sure.
Will we learn from the Rwandan genocide? John Martin, managing editor of the Church of England Newspaper, wrote the following in 1996, "Rwanda:Why?"
"There is no escape from the truth that the Christian Church has been a major player in the tragic events in Rwanda which have horrified observers throughout the world in 1994. . . . Churches have been the scene of massacres and church leaders have acquiesced to hideous cruelty. . . . There must have been serious inadequacies and failings in the theology and spirituality of the church in Rwanda." How could this be in a highly Christian country that had experienced revival?
Possibly two fine Christian scholars who have studied justice in some depth can help us. First, Emil Brunner, a European theologian who wrote Justice and the Social Order, 1945, right after World War II. Brunner asserts that the Roman Catholic Church "possesses an impressive systematic theory of justice, but Protestant Christianity has had none for three hundred years. . . . Protestant statements . . . are so haphazard and improvised that they fail to carry conviction." Therefore, the Protestant church cannot stop ethnocentrism and oppression; far too often it remains silent or actively participates in ethnocentrism and oppression.
Karen Lebacqz, a Christian social ethicist, wrote Six Theories of Justice. In this recent book, she analyzed the best Western thinkers on justice. She concluded that all they had produced were "fragments of justice."
Why is the Western world, even Christian church, plagued with shallow thinking and action on justice? Lebacqz thinks that the main reason is that these scholars do not begin with oppression/injustice. Our theology on biblical oppression is even less than fragmentary; it is almost non-existent.
Without a solid biblical theology of oppression, ethnocentrism and justice, the church is powerless to release the oppressed, to do Jubilee justice. In the Latin Vulgate, there are around 100 references to justice in the NT; in the KJV NT there are no references to justice.
What do Haiti the Philippines have in common?
Haiti suffered from both genocide and slavery; the Philippines, colonialism and near slavery. The Philippine experience was bad, but not as brutal as Haiti's.
Later both countries suffered from U.S. colonialism or neocolonialism. Even today there is an alliance between an U.S. elite and a Haitian and Spanish elite. U.S. ethnocentrism and economic oppression has driven U.S. relations more than democracy. When the U.S. conquered the Philippines, we killed directly or indirectly approximately 1,000,000 Filipinos.
By the way, the U.S. has received undue credit for driving the Spanish out of the Philippines; I would estimate that the Filipinos themselves did most of the fighting---probably 90 percent; all the U.S. did was win a last naval battle in Manila Bay; and the won the public relations battle, at least here in the United States and in the writing of history.
In a 1992 book, James Putzel examines the desperate need for land reform in the Philippines---A Captive Land: The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines.
"The vast majority of the archipelago's people live and work in rural barrios, or villages, trying to earn an income by cultivating the land." An estimated 80 percent are poor, many are landless who work for a landlord, and often they are hungry.
"A tiny minority of the population live in palatial homes surrounded by servants, work in air conditioned high-rise office buildings in Makati---the capital's financial district---and travel to foreign cities to conduct business with partners or vacation with the more fortunate citizens of the North whose lifestyle they share." The government is essentially controlled by this small elite; they own most of the good agricultural land.
Strangely "the U.S. supported [land] reform efforts in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea [as a part of the World War II peace treaty], while it never did so in the Philippines."
"Agrarian reform impacts issues such as poverty and inequality, low productivity of agriculture, concentration of property rights, landlessness . . . . "
The Spanish ruled for 350 years [an exploitive regime] followed by nearly 50 years of U.S. administration. This period saw "the rise of a landed oligarchy composed of families which still are prominent in political and economic life." Mark Twain once thought that the U.S. had good intentions, that it intended "to free the islands of the oppressive system of friar and landlord rule." Later, he said, "I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but subjugate the people of the Philippines."
What could and should have been. "The Japanese and Taiwan reforms abolished absentee ownership and set a low ceiling on land that could be retained by landlords. The liberal approach to reform in Japan and Taiwan involved a real transfer of power and wealth in the countryside." From a biblical perspective, they implemented Jubilee justice.
"When General MacArthur returned to the Philippines in 1944, he made no proposals for land reform. Instead he reinforced the status quo, monopoly landownership."
Later both countries suffered from U.S. colonialism or neocolonialism. Even today there is an alliance between an U.S. elite and a Haitian and Spanish elite. U.S. ethnocentrism and economic oppression has driven U.S. relations more than democracy. When the U.S. conquered the Philippines, we killed directly or indirectly approximately 1,000,000 Filipinos.
By the way, the U.S. has received undue credit for driving the Spanish out of the Philippines; I would estimate that the Filipinos themselves did most of the fighting---probably 90 percent; all the U.S. did was win a last naval battle in Manila Bay; and the won the public relations battle, at least here in the United States and in the writing of history.
In a 1992 book, James Putzel examines the desperate need for land reform in the Philippines---A Captive Land: The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines.
"The vast majority of the archipelago's people live and work in rural barrios, or villages, trying to earn an income by cultivating the land." An estimated 80 percent are poor, many are landless who work for a landlord, and often they are hungry.
"A tiny minority of the population live in palatial homes surrounded by servants, work in air conditioned high-rise office buildings in Makati---the capital's financial district---and travel to foreign cities to conduct business with partners or vacation with the more fortunate citizens of the North whose lifestyle they share." The government is essentially controlled by this small elite; they own most of the good agricultural land.
Strangely "the U.S. supported [land] reform efforts in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea [as a part of the World War II peace treaty], while it never did so in the Philippines."
"Agrarian reform impacts issues such as poverty and inequality, low productivity of agriculture, concentration of property rights, landlessness . . . . "
The Spanish ruled for 350 years [an exploitive regime] followed by nearly 50 years of U.S. administration. This period saw "the rise of a landed oligarchy composed of families which still are prominent in political and economic life." Mark Twain once thought that the U.S. had good intentions, that it intended "to free the islands of the oppressive system of friar and landlord rule." Later, he said, "I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but subjugate the people of the Philippines."
What could and should have been. "The Japanese and Taiwan reforms abolished absentee ownership and set a low ceiling on land that could be retained by landlords. The liberal approach to reform in Japan and Taiwan involved a real transfer of power and wealth in the countryside." From a biblical perspective, they implemented Jubilee justice.
"When General MacArthur returned to the Philippines in 1944, he made no proposals for land reform. Instead he reinforced the status quo, monopoly landownership."
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Part 2: Reinventing the Gospel and Church
A kinder and gentler plantation plantation owner that engages in oppression of his workers. The Philippine poor needed a holistic gospel. Charity handouts were a way to cover up "the wounds created by an unjust society, and, by helping, were perpetuating that society."
Before Father O'Brien left for a furlough, he reflected on his Philippine ministry: "I have been here nearly five years. Nothing has changed." His spiritual ministry had not changed the oppressive socio-economic conditions.
On his return, O'Brien decided to sit at the feet of some Filipino priests and learn what kind of a ministry he should initiate. They said that in the past, O'Brien established worship services but not Christian communities. Christian communities should be built on the following principles: 1) Sharing: time, treasure, talent; 2) group decision-making; 3) No injustice allowed; 4) Reconciliation; 5) Prayer together.
A priest further explained:
"By no injustice I mean that we cannot have community between two0 groups, one of which has its foot on the other's neck. There must be an attempt not only at charity but of changing the very structures which almost force people to oppress each other. But them again, we are not only after cold justice, some sort of mathematical equality. We want to work toward reconciliation. . . . awn intimacy, affection, love! And then we can pray together without being a mockery."
In summary, in building their Christian communities their goal was "total human development" or in biblical terms incarnation the kingdom of God in their communities. Socially, the kingdom of God is built upon or produces justice and shalom in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. "The parish life offered them sacraments but did not demand true and radical sharing,or offer true community."
The gospel must not only address poverty but also oppression:
"But I have only been talking about poverty; I have not even touched on oppression, which is something else. Poverty can be borne with patience because the source is not visible. People can be made to believe that it's the will of God or fate or bad luck, but oppression has the added sting of injustice. . . . people feel it deep within their souls when their little bit of land is taken by them by a man from the city who has done the paperwork. . . ."
"And then it's well known that the military are becoming more abusive. . . . Marcos says he needs them to keep the New People's Army in check, but the New People's Army has been borne out of the injustice created by the [oppressive] regime.
"What kills me is that so many middle-class people who are well educated and devout remain totally without outrage at what is happening."
Bishop Camara of Brazil once said: "If I feed the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor are poor [raise the oppression issue], they call me a communist." Note: it is usually the capitalist oppressor who raises the communist issue as a diversion from the real issue---oppression.
The Philippine medical system is a profit oriented system which does not include the poor in any comprehensive fashion. A Filipino doctor Jimmy Tan developed a community based health program using "herbs rather than drugs, home rather than hospitals, and prevention rather than cure." But there was one huge obstacle---the lack of nutritious food. And without land reform so the poor could own their own plot of land, the people could not be self-reliant in food.
As the Christian communities grew in maturity and in numbers, they began to actively, but non-violently, challenge the authorities and the oppressors. With large numbers, sometimes in the thousands, they began to "take on cases of land-grabbing, illegal gambling, corrupt local tax collectors and municipals."
The Pope came to the Philippines and spoke forcefully about oppression; he said:
"Injustice reigns when some nations accumulate riches and live in abundance while other nations cannot offer the majority of the people the basic necessities.
"Injustice reigns when within the same society some groups hold most of the wealth and power while large strata of the population cannot decently provide for the livelihood of their families even through long hours of backing-breaking labor in factories or in the fields.
"Injustice reigns when the laws of economic growth and ever greater profit determine the social relations, leaving in poverty and destruction those who have only the work of their hands to offer."
"On and on it went, interrupted only by wild cheering from the priests. . . . endorsing the right to unionize, now considered illegal and even subversive
in the Philippines."
After the Pope's speech, the bishop received a call from a sugar baron in Negros, "Who prepared the Pope's talk? If that is his message, then there will be war in Negros."
With experience, the Christian Communities became more sophisticated in their strategies of dealing with oppression.
1. Dialogue with the landowner who is exploiting you. If you cannot come to a fair agreement, then:
2. Ask the justice committee of your Christian Communities to try. If the landowner still does not listen, then:
3. Confront the landowner with all the justice committees of the mini-parish, and only if that fails do you then:
4. Come to the convent where the parish council will deal with it and, if necessary, have recourse to the diocesan legal aid office. If that fails, then:
5. There is still the possibility of active nonviolent pressure through the mobilization of the people.
On result of this new approach was that the medium-sized landowners who used to freely harass a peasant, now hesitated to do so, "because the peasant no longer submitted cravenly right away, but referred it to his or her community."
The traditional institutional church focuses on the gathered church---activities in the church building. The Christian community church focuses on the scattered church---the daily life of Christians in their own communities:
"We had no traditional parish organizations for a very good reason: I had never started them. Many of these organizations are formed precisely to give people a channel for implementing their desire to help others in one way or another. But if the parish is a family of sharing communities, then by their very nature these communities are involved all day and every day in helping those in need within the community. Sharing is a way of life, not an extracurricular activity.
Decentralization of church was paramount so much so that there was "no daily public Mass." Social justice is also done best if done by the scattered Christian communities, not the gathered church.
"Social justice was not just another parish office . . . with someone behind a desk with filing cabinets. It was the touchstone of the Christianity of each community."
The true story of Father O'Brien ends very well; he finally does discover the pain of the poor, God's priority of the poor in the ministry of the church, how systems of oppression crush the poor, and how the church as shared communities can be an instrument of justice.
But I am deeply troubled by one thing. Why didn't this priest leave seminary with this biblical perspective on the poor already in hand so from the very beginning of his ministry, he did it right?
Before Father O'Brien left for a furlough, he reflected on his Philippine ministry: "I have been here nearly five years. Nothing has changed." His spiritual ministry had not changed the oppressive socio-economic conditions.
On his return, O'Brien decided to sit at the feet of some Filipino priests and learn what kind of a ministry he should initiate. They said that in the past, O'Brien established worship services but not Christian communities. Christian communities should be built on the following principles: 1) Sharing: time, treasure, talent; 2) group decision-making; 3) No injustice allowed; 4) Reconciliation; 5) Prayer together.
A priest further explained:
"By no injustice I mean that we cannot have community between two0 groups, one of which has its foot on the other's neck. There must be an attempt not only at charity but of changing the very structures which almost force people to oppress each other. But them again, we are not only after cold justice, some sort of mathematical equality. We want to work toward reconciliation. . . . awn intimacy, affection, love! And then we can pray together without being a mockery."
In summary, in building their Christian communities their goal was "total human development" or in biblical terms incarnation the kingdom of God in their communities. Socially, the kingdom of God is built upon or produces justice and shalom in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. "The parish life offered them sacraments but did not demand true and radical sharing,or offer true community."
The gospel must not only address poverty but also oppression:
"But I have only been talking about poverty; I have not even touched on oppression, which is something else. Poverty can be borne with patience because the source is not visible. People can be made to believe that it's the will of God or fate or bad luck, but oppression has the added sting of injustice. . . . people feel it deep within their souls when their little bit of land is taken by them by a man from the city who has done the paperwork. . . ."
"And then it's well known that the military are becoming more abusive. . . . Marcos says he needs them to keep the New People's Army in check, but the New People's Army has been borne out of the injustice created by the [oppressive] regime.
"What kills me is that so many middle-class people who are well educated and devout remain totally without outrage at what is happening."
Bishop Camara of Brazil once said: "If I feed the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor are poor [raise the oppression issue], they call me a communist." Note: it is usually the capitalist oppressor who raises the communist issue as a diversion from the real issue---oppression.
The Philippine medical system is a profit oriented system which does not include the poor in any comprehensive fashion. A Filipino doctor Jimmy Tan developed a community based health program using "herbs rather than drugs, home rather than hospitals, and prevention rather than cure." But there was one huge obstacle---the lack of nutritious food. And without land reform so the poor could own their own plot of land, the people could not be self-reliant in food.
As the Christian communities grew in maturity and in numbers, they began to actively, but non-violently, challenge the authorities and the oppressors. With large numbers, sometimes in the thousands, they began to "take on cases of land-grabbing, illegal gambling, corrupt local tax collectors and municipals."
The Pope came to the Philippines and spoke forcefully about oppression; he said:
"Injustice reigns when some nations accumulate riches and live in abundance while other nations cannot offer the majority of the people the basic necessities.
"Injustice reigns when within the same society some groups hold most of the wealth and power while large strata of the population cannot decently provide for the livelihood of their families even through long hours of backing-breaking labor in factories or in the fields.
"Injustice reigns when the laws of economic growth and ever greater profit determine the social relations, leaving in poverty and destruction those who have only the work of their hands to offer."
"On and on it went, interrupted only by wild cheering from the priests. . . . endorsing the right to unionize, now considered illegal and even subversive
in the Philippines."
After the Pope's speech, the bishop received a call from a sugar baron in Negros, "Who prepared the Pope's talk? If that is his message, then there will be war in Negros."
With experience, the Christian Communities became more sophisticated in their strategies of dealing with oppression.
1. Dialogue with the landowner who is exploiting you. If you cannot come to a fair agreement, then:
2. Ask the justice committee of your Christian Communities to try. If the landowner still does not listen, then:
3. Confront the landowner with all the justice committees of the mini-parish, and only if that fails do you then:
4. Come to the convent where the parish council will deal with it and, if necessary, have recourse to the diocesan legal aid office. If that fails, then:
5. There is still the possibility of active nonviolent pressure through the mobilization of the people.
On result of this new approach was that the medium-sized landowners who used to freely harass a peasant, now hesitated to do so, "because the peasant no longer submitted cravenly right away, but referred it to his or her community."
The traditional institutional church focuses on the gathered church---activities in the church building. The Christian community church focuses on the scattered church---the daily life of Christians in their own communities:
"We had no traditional parish organizations for a very good reason: I had never started them. Many of these organizations are formed precisely to give people a channel for implementing their desire to help others in one way or another. But if the parish is a family of sharing communities, then by their very nature these communities are involved all day and every day in helping those in need within the community. Sharing is a way of life, not an extracurricular activity.
Decentralization of church was paramount so much so that there was "no daily public Mass." Social justice is also done best if done by the scattered Christian communities, not the gathered church.
"Social justice was not just another parish office . . . with someone behind a desk with filing cabinets. It was the touchstone of the Christianity of each community."
The true story of Father O'Brien ends very well; he finally does discover the pain of the poor, God's priority of the poor in the ministry of the church, how systems of oppression crush the poor, and how the church as shared communities can be an instrument of justice.
But I am deeply troubled by one thing. Why didn't this priest leave seminary with this biblical perspective on the poor already in hand so from the very beginning of his ministry, he did it right?
Monday, June 20, 2016
Does your concept of the gospel and practice of church need to be reinvented?
Is your concept of church primarily:
* sanctuary centered or community centered
* gathered church or scattered church
* dispenser of grace or doer of justice
* 1 day of week or 6 days of the week
The following is a review of a book, Revolution From the Heart, 1987, by Niall O'Brien. Hey, you Protestants may have something to learn as well.
Father Niall O'Brien worked for over 20 years in the Philippines on the island of Negros as a member of the Society of St. Columban. He arrived in the Philippines in 1964---a time when the Second Vatican Council was in full swing; it was introducing major changes within the Roman Catholic Church trying to make the church more accessible to the people and the poor.
As Father O'Brien arrived in Negros, he noticed a set of beautiful houses which belonged to the sugar planters. His colleague commented: "They own ninety percent of the land in the municipality of Kafankalau. Many of the owners don't live here at all, but live in Bacolod or Manila and have an administrator looking after the land." I am reminded of Galilee where most of the best agricultural land in Palestine was located. Much of it was owned by absentee Sadducean landlords living in Jerusalem.
O'Brien also noticed extensive poverty in the same area. In learning the language, he would go door to door talking with the people so he saw their poverty first-hand. By the way, the masses in Galilee were also poor people even though some of the surrounding land was fertile and productive. Rich land, poor people---in both Galilee and the Philippines.
O'Brien writes:
"I was taken aback by the poverty, but it did not disturb me deeply since I saw my work as being somehow 'spiritual.' To me that meant exclusively concerned with the 'soul,' which I pictured as a sort of invisible second heart, like a flame. My questions focused on whether the people were going to Mass, saying their prayers, or properly married. If there was a sick person, I would ask whether they had received the sacrament of the dying, the last anointing, and frequently as a result of these visits I found myself coming back to 'fix up' marriage or anoint the sick. I made sure to leave in every house a copy of the formal for baptism in danger of death. If there was a sick person in the house, I got them put on the list for our weekly Communion rounds, when the priests of the parish brought the Eucharist to the sick. I do not recall people asking me to help in medical matters or with problems of injustice."
Next O'Brien briefly summarized Spain's entry into the Philippines and the role the Catholic church played:
"Spain came in search of spices and gold: a voyage unashamedly commercial, funded by banking houses of Europe such as Fugger's. The found neither spices nor gold in quantity, but stayed to propagate their faith---the personal decision of Philip the Second, after whom the islands are named. Letters to Philip are still extant, in which the first priests vehemently attacked the oppression of the native population by the soldiery and corrupt government officials.
"As time went on, however, the Church was co-opted into the new ruling body and became almost identified with it---an important part of the colonial means of control. When the people rose up in 1896 and overthrew Spanish colonial rule, the Spanish Church fell with it and a great number of friars were expelled."
Then O'Brien describes how they church was relating to the people. He calls the relationship a "mechanistic theology" in which the parish church "provided the sacraments, education and grace." The people were not the Church, but "object of her care." The parish was like a filling station where one went to get these graces. A priest must be in each parish to attend the pump."
Then O'Brien went through a series of stages which ended in a revolutionary change in his ministry. Father O'Brien was familiar with the social fact of poverty, but one day he was deeply touched by the pain of poverty. As he was traveling in a remote area, walking, he took shelter from a rainstorm in a shack. "I took out my food and was thoughtlessly beginning to eat it when I noticed all eyes were upon me." Suddenly it dawned upon him, "that they were all hungry and there was no food." So he shared his food with the children. O'Brien experienced two things: 1) shame, because he started eating in front of hungry children, and 2) hunger because there was not enough food for him. For the first time in his life he "experienced hunger because there was no food."
This seemingly small incident shook Father O'Brien to the core of his being; he now realized that the ministry of the Columbans must address the issue of poverty.
When the time for O'Brien's yearly vacation arrived, he decided to attend a church congress in Manila where the top liturgists and pastoral theologians would be present:
"I had enjoyed the Congress and learned a lot, but as it was ending I suddenly realized that no one, not one speech or petition or statement, referred to the fact that so many of the world's people were hungry. My mind went back to the little shack in the mountains and the bloated hungry children gobbling my sandwich.
"I put my head down and let others leave. I had no heart to move. So much suffering, and the best and brightest had not even touched on it. Once again I was overcome by grief like the night I had seen the little boy in the doorway. It came on me like a storm, and now I was ashamed to lift my head in case anyone would see.
"Presently I felt a hand on my head. I looked up. I was alone in the great hall with an old bearded Greek archimandrite. "They never mentioned the poor," I said to him.
He nodded compassionately again and again. He understood. His threadbare clothes said the same thing. We remained there silently, understanding each other, anguished and shamed that the churches we loved so much should take so long, so long, to notice that Lazarus was at the gate."
About this time another papal encyclical was published entitled "The Development of Peoples." It was an "impassioned plea for the poor' and it opened the door to the "idea of structural injustice," but O'Brien was not yet ready to understand and deal with systems of oppression. He was consumed by his successful missionary among the poor. The numbers of persons at Mass, in Catechism, in schools were increasing rapidly. As a religious professional, he was content to play the "numbers game."
In his next assignment, O'Brien ended up living on a sugar plantation where he got to know both the owner and the exploited workers well. The owner appeared to be a decent person, often quite humane and charitable. Yet the plantation system that he and others ran created semi-slaves out of the workers. After much reflection, O'Brien concluded:
"I was beginning---only beginning---to understand structural injustice and how important it was to its perpetuation that at the head of these unjust systems there should be a face, a good face, a friendly face, a human face like that of Juan Ramirez, to mask the real nature of the system."
Next bog: Part 2, Reinventing the Gospel and Church
* sanctuary centered or community centered
* gathered church or scattered church
* dispenser of grace or doer of justice
* 1 day of week or 6 days of the week
The following is a review of a book, Revolution From the Heart, 1987, by Niall O'Brien. Hey, you Protestants may have something to learn as well.
Father Niall O'Brien worked for over 20 years in the Philippines on the island of Negros as a member of the Society of St. Columban. He arrived in the Philippines in 1964---a time when the Second Vatican Council was in full swing; it was introducing major changes within the Roman Catholic Church trying to make the church more accessible to the people and the poor.
As Father O'Brien arrived in Negros, he noticed a set of beautiful houses which belonged to the sugar planters. His colleague commented: "They own ninety percent of the land in the municipality of Kafankalau. Many of the owners don't live here at all, but live in Bacolod or Manila and have an administrator looking after the land." I am reminded of Galilee where most of the best agricultural land in Palestine was located. Much of it was owned by absentee Sadducean landlords living in Jerusalem.
O'Brien also noticed extensive poverty in the same area. In learning the language, he would go door to door talking with the people so he saw their poverty first-hand. By the way, the masses in Galilee were also poor people even though some of the surrounding land was fertile and productive. Rich land, poor people---in both Galilee and the Philippines.
O'Brien writes:
"I was taken aback by the poverty, but it did not disturb me deeply since I saw my work as being somehow 'spiritual.' To me that meant exclusively concerned with the 'soul,' which I pictured as a sort of invisible second heart, like a flame. My questions focused on whether the people were going to Mass, saying their prayers, or properly married. If there was a sick person, I would ask whether they had received the sacrament of the dying, the last anointing, and frequently as a result of these visits I found myself coming back to 'fix up' marriage or anoint the sick. I made sure to leave in every house a copy of the formal for baptism in danger of death. If there was a sick person in the house, I got them put on the list for our weekly Communion rounds, when the priests of the parish brought the Eucharist to the sick. I do not recall people asking me to help in medical matters or with problems of injustice."
Next O'Brien briefly summarized Spain's entry into the Philippines and the role the Catholic church played:
"Spain came in search of spices and gold: a voyage unashamedly commercial, funded by banking houses of Europe such as Fugger's. The found neither spices nor gold in quantity, but stayed to propagate their faith---the personal decision of Philip the Second, after whom the islands are named. Letters to Philip are still extant, in which the first priests vehemently attacked the oppression of the native population by the soldiery and corrupt government officials.
"As time went on, however, the Church was co-opted into the new ruling body and became almost identified with it---an important part of the colonial means of control. When the people rose up in 1896 and overthrew Spanish colonial rule, the Spanish Church fell with it and a great number of friars were expelled."
Then O'Brien describes how they church was relating to the people. He calls the relationship a "mechanistic theology" in which the parish church "provided the sacraments, education and grace." The people were not the Church, but "object of her care." The parish was like a filling station where one went to get these graces. A priest must be in each parish to attend the pump."
Then O'Brien went through a series of stages which ended in a revolutionary change in his ministry. Father O'Brien was familiar with the social fact of poverty, but one day he was deeply touched by the pain of poverty. As he was traveling in a remote area, walking, he took shelter from a rainstorm in a shack. "I took out my food and was thoughtlessly beginning to eat it when I noticed all eyes were upon me." Suddenly it dawned upon him, "that they were all hungry and there was no food." So he shared his food with the children. O'Brien experienced two things: 1) shame, because he started eating in front of hungry children, and 2) hunger because there was not enough food for him. For the first time in his life he "experienced hunger because there was no food."
This seemingly small incident shook Father O'Brien to the core of his being; he now realized that the ministry of the Columbans must address the issue of poverty.
When the time for O'Brien's yearly vacation arrived, he decided to attend a church congress in Manila where the top liturgists and pastoral theologians would be present:
"I had enjoyed the Congress and learned a lot, but as it was ending I suddenly realized that no one, not one speech or petition or statement, referred to the fact that so many of the world's people were hungry. My mind went back to the little shack in the mountains and the bloated hungry children gobbling my sandwich.
"I put my head down and let others leave. I had no heart to move. So much suffering, and the best and brightest had not even touched on it. Once again I was overcome by grief like the night I had seen the little boy in the doorway. It came on me like a storm, and now I was ashamed to lift my head in case anyone would see.
"Presently I felt a hand on my head. I looked up. I was alone in the great hall with an old bearded Greek archimandrite. "They never mentioned the poor," I said to him.
He nodded compassionately again and again. He understood. His threadbare clothes said the same thing. We remained there silently, understanding each other, anguished and shamed that the churches we loved so much should take so long, so long, to notice that Lazarus was at the gate."
About this time another papal encyclical was published entitled "The Development of Peoples." It was an "impassioned plea for the poor' and it opened the door to the "idea of structural injustice," but O'Brien was not yet ready to understand and deal with systems of oppression. He was consumed by his successful missionary among the poor. The numbers of persons at Mass, in Catechism, in schools were increasing rapidly. As a religious professional, he was content to play the "numbers game."
In his next assignment, O'Brien ended up living on a sugar plantation where he got to know both the owner and the exploited workers well. The owner appeared to be a decent person, often quite humane and charitable. Yet the plantation system that he and others ran created semi-slaves out of the workers. After much reflection, O'Brien concluded:
"I was beginning---only beginning---to understand structural injustice and how important it was to its perpetuation that at the head of these unjust systems there should be a face, a good face, a friendly face, a human face like that of Juan Ramirez, to mask the real nature of the system."
Next bog: Part 2, Reinventing the Gospel and Church
Friday, June 17, 2016
Imperialism: U.S. and the Philippines
In August of 1994, I, Lowell Noble, spent two weeks in the Philippines teaching Free Methodist pastors and students about social justice, the kingdom of God and community development. In preparation for the trip, I did some background reading on the history of the Philippines. I was shocked and shamed as I discovered how Americans had brutalized the Filipino people, using a vicious combination of ethnocentrism and oppression that was often wrapped in God and the American flag. This pattern reminds me of what Lee Harper, an Afro American woman, wrote of her home state of Mississippi: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just."
Even though I was a college professor for much of my life, I was ignorant of our extensive mistreatment of the Filipino people. Previously I had been taught that we obtained the Philippines because we had defeated the Spanish during the Spanish-American War (1898), that we set up a school system and a public health system; after 50 years of doing good, we generously gave the Philippines their independence.
Upon reading The Philippine Reader, which consisted primarily of primary document, I discovered a trail of greed, imperialism, ethnocentrism and oppression of a scale and viciousness usually associated with a Hitler or a Stalin.
First, an excerpt from a speech given by President McKinley to Methodist church leaders in November 21, 1898. The Spanish had been defeated, largely by the Filipinos themselves and a last blow by the U.S. navy. McKinley's speech drips with religious piety and ethnocentrism to justify our conquest of the Philippines:
"When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps, I confess I did not know what to do with the. I sought counsel from all sides---Democrats as well as Republicans---but got little help. I thought first we would only takeManila; then Luzon; then the other islands perhaps also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way 1) that we could not give them back to Spain, 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany---our commercial rivals the Orient, 3) that we could not leave them to themselves---they were unfit for self-government---and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was, and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, . . . And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department, and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States."
In January, 1900 Senator Beverage spoke about U.S. war aims: our desire for markets for our goods, our need for cheap raw materials and tropical crops, our desire for military bases in the Orient, the rivalry with other commercial European powers, and the doctrine of white Anglo-
Saxon supremacy.
From ethnocentrism to oppression. How devastating was the U.S. conquest of the Philippines? The editors of The Philippine Reader summarize the cost of the war in terms of lives lost as follows:
"How many Filipinos died resisting American aggression? It is doubtful if historians will ever agree on a figure that is anything more than a guess. The figure of 250,000 crops up in various works; one suspects it is chosen and repeated in ignorance. . . . Records of the killing were not kept and the Americans were anxious to suppress true awareness of the extent of the slaughter in order to avoid fueling domestic anti-imperialistic protest. How many died of disease and the effects of concentration camp life is even more difficult to assess. . . . General Bell, who, one imagines might be in as good a position to judge such matters as anyone, estimated in a New York Times interview that over 600,000 people in Luzon alone had been killed or had died of disease as a result of the war. The estimate, given in May, 1901, means that Bell did not include the effect of the Panay campaign, the Samar campaign, or his own bloodthirsty Batangas campaign (where at least 100,000 died), all of which occurred after his 1901 interview. Nor could it include the 'post-war' period, which saw the confinement if 300,000 in Albay, wanton slaughter in Mindanao, and astonishing death rates in Bilidid Prison, to name but three instances where killing continued.
"A million deaths? One does not happily contemplate such carnage of innocent people who fought with extraordinary bravery in a cause which was just but is now all but forgotten. Such an estimate, however, might conceivably err on the side of understatement. To again quote the anonymous U.S. congressman, "They never rebel in Luzon anymore because there isn't anyone left to rebel."
General Smith ordered his men to : "kill and burn, kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the more you please me. . . . no time to take prisoners." When asked to define the age limit for killing, Smith replied, "Everything over ten."
What has happened since the brutal U.S. conquest of the Philippines?
1. The U.S. government and business elite have allied themselves with the Filipino landowning edit and political elite with the result that landownership has become more and more concentrated in the hands of a few people and corporations. The number of landless peasants has increased.
2. The U.S. invested much more money in the rebuilding of Japan after World War II than it did in rebuilding the Philippines. The Filipino people were promised major assistance but our ally received only a small amount of money.
3. The U.S. supported a Jubilee type land reform or agrarian reform program in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan after World War II; this land reform provided the basis for strong and more equitable economic growth. Each of these three nations is now quite prosperous with the number of poor sharply reduced. The U.S. opposed similar reform in the Philippines; instead it helped crush legitimate attempts by peasants to regain control of their land.
4. U.S. multinational corporations use Filipino land to produce cheap food exports for the U.S.
The U.S. involvement in the Philippines is a sad and tragic story. Instead of making the Philippines safe for authentic democracy, the U.S. has made it safe for exploitation.
In my 1994 seminar on the island of Mindanao, I taught 14 pastors. Half of the Free Methodit pastors
in the Philippines are women; Rev. Nancy Pedrosa wrote: "The cry of every Filipino is 'We want change, we want change. The hurt, the agony, the oppression. What if you are around and have heard this agony, this pitiful voice of the poor Filipino masses; what will your answer be?"
Even though I was a college professor for much of my life, I was ignorant of our extensive mistreatment of the Filipino people. Previously I had been taught that we obtained the Philippines because we had defeated the Spanish during the Spanish-American War (1898), that we set up a school system and a public health system; after 50 years of doing good, we generously gave the Philippines their independence.
Upon reading The Philippine Reader, which consisted primarily of primary document, I discovered a trail of greed, imperialism, ethnocentrism and oppression of a scale and viciousness usually associated with a Hitler or a Stalin.
First, an excerpt from a speech given by President McKinley to Methodist church leaders in November 21, 1898. The Spanish had been defeated, largely by the Filipinos themselves and a last blow by the U.S. navy. McKinley's speech drips with religious piety and ethnocentrism to justify our conquest of the Philippines:
"When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps, I confess I did not know what to do with the. I sought counsel from all sides---Democrats as well as Republicans---but got little help. I thought first we would only takeManila; then Luzon; then the other islands perhaps also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way 1) that we could not give them back to Spain, 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany---our commercial rivals the Orient, 3) that we could not leave them to themselves---they were unfit for self-government---and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was, and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, . . . And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department, and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States."
In January, 1900 Senator Beverage spoke about U.S. war aims: our desire for markets for our goods, our need for cheap raw materials and tropical crops, our desire for military bases in the Orient, the rivalry with other commercial European powers, and the doctrine of white Anglo-
Saxon supremacy.
From ethnocentrism to oppression. How devastating was the U.S. conquest of the Philippines? The editors of The Philippine Reader summarize the cost of the war in terms of lives lost as follows:
"How many Filipinos died resisting American aggression? It is doubtful if historians will ever agree on a figure that is anything more than a guess. The figure of 250,000 crops up in various works; one suspects it is chosen and repeated in ignorance. . . . Records of the killing were not kept and the Americans were anxious to suppress true awareness of the extent of the slaughter in order to avoid fueling domestic anti-imperialistic protest. How many died of disease and the effects of concentration camp life is even more difficult to assess. . . . General Bell, who, one imagines might be in as good a position to judge such matters as anyone, estimated in a New York Times interview that over 600,000 people in Luzon alone had been killed or had died of disease as a result of the war. The estimate, given in May, 1901, means that Bell did not include the effect of the Panay campaign, the Samar campaign, or his own bloodthirsty Batangas campaign (where at least 100,000 died), all of which occurred after his 1901 interview. Nor could it include the 'post-war' period, which saw the confinement if 300,000 in Albay, wanton slaughter in Mindanao, and astonishing death rates in Bilidid Prison, to name but three instances where killing continued.
"A million deaths? One does not happily contemplate such carnage of innocent people who fought with extraordinary bravery in a cause which was just but is now all but forgotten. Such an estimate, however, might conceivably err on the side of understatement. To again quote the anonymous U.S. congressman, "They never rebel in Luzon anymore because there isn't anyone left to rebel."
General Smith ordered his men to : "kill and burn, kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the more you please me. . . . no time to take prisoners." When asked to define the age limit for killing, Smith replied, "Everything over ten."
What has happened since the brutal U.S. conquest of the Philippines?
1. The U.S. government and business elite have allied themselves with the Filipino landowning edit and political elite with the result that landownership has become more and more concentrated in the hands of a few people and corporations. The number of landless peasants has increased.
2. The U.S. invested much more money in the rebuilding of Japan after World War II than it did in rebuilding the Philippines. The Filipino people were promised major assistance but our ally received only a small amount of money.
3. The U.S. supported a Jubilee type land reform or agrarian reform program in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan after World War II; this land reform provided the basis for strong and more equitable economic growth. Each of these three nations is now quite prosperous with the number of poor sharply reduced. The U.S. opposed similar reform in the Philippines; instead it helped crush legitimate attempts by peasants to regain control of their land.
4. U.S. multinational corporations use Filipino land to produce cheap food exports for the U.S.
The U.S. involvement in the Philippines is a sad and tragic story. Instead of making the Philippines safe for authentic democracy, the U.S. has made it safe for exploitation.
In my 1994 seminar on the island of Mindanao, I taught 14 pastors. Half of the Free Methodit pastors
in the Philippines are women; Rev. Nancy Pedrosa wrote: "The cry of every Filipino is 'We want change, we want change. The hurt, the agony, the oppression. What if you are around and have heard this agony, this pitiful voice of the poor Filipino masses; what will your answer be?"
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Abuse of Freedom or freedom with Justice
In the West freedom has far too often been divorced from justice; without justice, freedom quickly degenerates into individualism and materialism.
Due to flawed English translations of the Bible and to flawed English theology, justice has been shallowly understood and practiced. Nicholas Wolterstorff and C. D. Marshall can help us better understand justice. First, some nuggets of wisdom from Wolterstorff (Justice in Love):
"In the Latin text of his commentary on Romans, Calvin speaks regularly of justice---naturally since the Latin text with which he was working translated dikaiosune as justice." All Romance languages such as Latin, French and Spanish translate the Greek word dikaiosune as justice; in English we rarely do so.
Wolterstorff insists that justice and love be closely tied together: "Doing justice is an example of love." "Treating the neighbor justly is an example of loving the neighbor."
C. D. Marshall (Beyond Retribution) writes:
"Modern readers seldom realize how often justice language features in the New Testament. This is mainly because English translations render the key terms---those employing the dik-stem---with a double set of equivalents deriving from two different linguistic stocks (Anglo-Saxon and Latin). Sometimes the terms are translated [Anglo-Saxon] with "right-" terms ("right," "righteous," "righteousness"), at other times [Latin] with "just-" (just," "justify," "justification"). Because of this linguistic peculiarity, English-speaking readers sense little obvious connection between the "right" language of the New Testament and the concept of justice."
"Mishpat denotes applied justice, fair judgments in a court, for example. "Sedeqah refers to justice in a normative sense." In other words, a standard. Justice and righteousness in the biblical sense are more relational than legal.
"The most common image for justice in the West is a set of scales, symbolizing the balancing of rights and obligations. . . . The prophetic symbol of justice is a mighty, surging river (Amos 5:24). . . . Abraham J. Heschel, "a power that will strike and change, heal and restore, like a mighty stream bringing life to the parched land. . . . Justice is more than an idea or a norm: justice is charged with the omnipotence of God."
The Spirit-filled church must be busy doing justice, releasing the oppressed, making things right. We are to seek with vigor, seek unceasingly, kingdom of God justice.
Due to flawed English translations of the Bible and to flawed English theology, justice has been shallowly understood and practiced. Nicholas Wolterstorff and C. D. Marshall can help us better understand justice. First, some nuggets of wisdom from Wolterstorff (Justice in Love):
"In the Latin text of his commentary on Romans, Calvin speaks regularly of justice---naturally since the Latin text with which he was working translated dikaiosune as justice." All Romance languages such as Latin, French and Spanish translate the Greek word dikaiosune as justice; in English we rarely do so.
Wolterstorff insists that justice and love be closely tied together: "Doing justice is an example of love." "Treating the neighbor justly is an example of loving the neighbor."
C. D. Marshall (Beyond Retribution) writes:
"Modern readers seldom realize how often justice language features in the New Testament. This is mainly because English translations render the key terms---those employing the dik-stem---with a double set of equivalents deriving from two different linguistic stocks (Anglo-Saxon and Latin). Sometimes the terms are translated [Anglo-Saxon] with "right-" terms ("right," "righteous," "righteousness"), at other times [Latin] with "just-" (just," "justify," "justification"). Because of this linguistic peculiarity, English-speaking readers sense little obvious connection between the "right" language of the New Testament and the concept of justice."
"Mishpat denotes applied justice, fair judgments in a court, for example. "Sedeqah refers to justice in a normative sense." In other words, a standard. Justice and righteousness in the biblical sense are more relational than legal.
"The most common image for justice in the West is a set of scales, symbolizing the balancing of rights and obligations. . . . The prophetic symbol of justice is a mighty, surging river (Amos 5:24). . . . Abraham J. Heschel, "a power that will strike and change, heal and restore, like a mighty stream bringing life to the parched land. . . . Justice is more than an idea or a norm: justice is charged with the omnipotence of God."
The Spirit-filled church must be busy doing justice, releasing the oppressed, making things right. We are to seek with vigor, seek unceasingly, kingdom of God justice.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Is the church AWOL?
After our retirement in 1994, my wife and I spent most of the next 15 years volunteering with the Perkins Center in West Jackson, Mississippi. On Memorial day, 2005, John Perkins and I were standing in the parking lot of Antioch House, discussing the decline of the West Jackson community. Voice of Calvary Ministries had been doing Christian Community Development for 30 years, Habitat for Humanity had been building house for the poor. But John, in one of his rare discouraging moments, asserted that the forces of decline were overwhelming the attempts to rebuild.
This fact raised the big question, WHY? Many reasons, of course, such as the flight of not only whites, but also many middle class blacks to the suburbs.
But I would like to focus one factor---the lack of church involvement. Since this is Mississippi, one might expect the white church would not do much to assist poor blacks. But most of the black church in West Jackson was also uninvolved in ministering to their surrounding community. They existed as spiritual oasis's.
Fast forward to 2016. Jim Wallis has written another masterpiece calling on the white American church to repent of its white superiority and white privilege---its original sin---and commit itself to incarnating the kingdom of God as justice among the poor and oppressed.
Here are some nuggets from America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America:
"we will see that white privilege is the legacy of white supremacy. White privilege is the assumption of racial entitlement and the normality of whiteness, something that most of those of us who are white still fail to recognize or resist. . . . repentance is much more than saying we are brokenhearted and sorry; it means turning in a totally new direction."
American history, as it is commonly taught, is full of half-truths and untruths, even in Christian colleges. "Untruths that we believe are able to control us, dominate us, and set us on the wrong path." "And if the untruths are, more deeply, idols, they also separate us from God."
"New York City police commissioner William Bratton acknowledged at a church breakfast in 2014 the negative role of police against African Americans throughout American history. 'Many of the worst parts of black history would have been impossible without police. . . . Slavery, our country's original sin, sat on a foundation codified by laws enforced by police, by slave-catchers."
"An elder in my white church said to me one night, 'Son, you've got to understand: Christianity has nothing to do with racism; that's political, and our faith is personal."
""you can't continue to say you are not racist when you continue to support and accept systems that are."
"The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another."
"To benefit from oppression is to be responsible for changing it."
"Just as surely as blacks suffer in a white society because they are black, whites benefit because they are white."
What is biblical repentance? It is turning in a new direction; it leads to transformation, revolution, the kingdom of God. White American Christians are much like the Pharisees (Luke 11) "full of greed . . . who neglect justice and the love of God." Kingdom people are full of generosity, justice and the love of God.
This fact raised the big question, WHY? Many reasons, of course, such as the flight of not only whites, but also many middle class blacks to the suburbs.
But I would like to focus one factor---the lack of church involvement. Since this is Mississippi, one might expect the white church would not do much to assist poor blacks. But most of the black church in West Jackson was also uninvolved in ministering to their surrounding community. They existed as spiritual oasis's.
Fast forward to 2016. Jim Wallis has written another masterpiece calling on the white American church to repent of its white superiority and white privilege---its original sin---and commit itself to incarnating the kingdom of God as justice among the poor and oppressed.
Here are some nuggets from America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America:
"we will see that white privilege is the legacy of white supremacy. White privilege is the assumption of racial entitlement and the normality of whiteness, something that most of those of us who are white still fail to recognize or resist. . . . repentance is much more than saying we are brokenhearted and sorry; it means turning in a totally new direction."
American history, as it is commonly taught, is full of half-truths and untruths, even in Christian colleges. "Untruths that we believe are able to control us, dominate us, and set us on the wrong path." "And if the untruths are, more deeply, idols, they also separate us from God."
"New York City police commissioner William Bratton acknowledged at a church breakfast in 2014 the negative role of police against African Americans throughout American history. 'Many of the worst parts of black history would have been impossible without police. . . . Slavery, our country's original sin, sat on a foundation codified by laws enforced by police, by slave-catchers."
"An elder in my white church said to me one night, 'Son, you've got to understand: Christianity has nothing to do with racism; that's political, and our faith is personal."
""you can't continue to say you are not racist when you continue to support and accept systems that are."
"The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another."
"To benefit from oppression is to be responsible for changing it."
"Just as surely as blacks suffer in a white society because they are black, whites benefit because they are white."
What is biblical repentance? It is turning in a new direction; it leads to transformation, revolution, the kingdom of God. White American Christians are much like the Pharisees (Luke 11) "full of greed . . . who neglect justice and the love of God." Kingdom people are full of generosity, justice and the love of God.
Monday, June 13, 2016
The Price of Civilization by economist Jeffery Sachs, 2011
Jeffery Sachs is a world-renowned macro economist whose most well-known book is The End of Poverty, 2005. He literally believes that we now have the knowledge that could enable us to end poverty in our world. The question is, do we have the passion, the will to do so? So the End of Poverty is a rather optimistic book, By contrast, The Price of Civilization is a more negative and more honest examination of American culture and American capitalism.
A quotation from The Price of Civilization:
"Too many of the American elite---among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia---have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."
Sachs thinks the middle class is O.K., (though later in the book he severely condemns consumerism); I think that all of America is much like Israel described in Jeremiah 6 and 8---everyone from the prophet and priest down to the ordinary person is greedy for gain.
Sachs writes about the "interplay of political, economic, and a society's values." Or another way of putting it is an interplay of the religion-politico-economic elite. Sachs pushes hard for the rich to stop their greed and oppression and become socially responsible.
"Our greatest national illusion is that a healthy society can be organized around the single-minded pursuit of wealth. The ferocity of the quest for wealth throughout society has left American exhausted and deprived of the benefits of social trust, honesty, and compassion. Our society has turned harsh, with the elites on Wall Street, in Big Oil, and in Washington among the most irresponsible and selfish of all."
"We are living through a new Gilded Age exceeding the gaudy excesses of the 1870s and the 1920s."
"And Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase not only were the central actors in the financial crisis of 2008 but were the very places to which Obama turned to staff the senior economic posts of his administration."
"How did the world's leading economy reach such a position of despair and apparently in a short period of time?" After World War II to the 1970s, political and economic leaders created a healthy mixed economy, but in the 1980s, things began a severe downturn.
Sachs continues: "After decades of global economic leadership, America began in the 1980s to forget the basic lessons of economics, parroting slogans (typically about the wonders of the free market) while neglecting the art of economic policy. One of the most basic and important ideas of economics---that business and government have complementary roles as part of a 'mixed economy'---have been increasingly ignored, to my amazement and consternation." Reagan was wrong when he stated that government was the problem.
Sachs states that there are five core ideas of modern mixed capitalism:
" * Markets are reasonably efficient institutions for allocating society's scarce resources and lead to higher productivity and living standards.
" * Efficiency, however, does not guarantee fairness or justice in the allocation of incomes.
" * Fairness requires the government to redistribute income.
" * Markets systematically underprovide certain 'public goods' such as infrastructure, environmental regulation, education, scientific research.
" * The market is prone to financial instability, which can be alleviated through active government policies, including financial regulation and well-directed monetary and fiscal policies."
Another comment on detrimental side of the Reagan policies: "The main effect of the Reagan Revolution. . . . a new antipathy to the role of government, a new disdain for the poor . . . a new invitation to the rich to shed their moral responsibility, released greed more than entrepreneurial zeal."
Twenty years before Sachs wrote The Price of Civilization, a conservative Republican, Kevin Phillips, had seen the handwriting on the economic wall. The Politics of Rich and Poor documents the origins of the wealth gap between rich and poor due in large part to deliberate government policy.
For a liberal perspective on the decline, see Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman.
By the way, neither Bush nor Clinton nor Bush nor Obama have done much to reverse the disastrous Reagan Revolution.
A quotation from The Price of Civilization:
"Too many of the American elite---among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia---have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."
Sachs thinks the middle class is O.K., (though later in the book he severely condemns consumerism); I think that all of America is much like Israel described in Jeremiah 6 and 8---everyone from the prophet and priest down to the ordinary person is greedy for gain.
Sachs writes about the "interplay of political, economic, and a society's values." Or another way of putting it is an interplay of the religion-politico-economic elite. Sachs pushes hard for the rich to stop their greed and oppression and become socially responsible.
"Our greatest national illusion is that a healthy society can be organized around the single-minded pursuit of wealth. The ferocity of the quest for wealth throughout society has left American exhausted and deprived of the benefits of social trust, honesty, and compassion. Our society has turned harsh, with the elites on Wall Street, in Big Oil, and in Washington among the most irresponsible and selfish of all."
"We are living through a new Gilded Age exceeding the gaudy excesses of the 1870s and the 1920s."
"And Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase not only were the central actors in the financial crisis of 2008 but were the very places to which Obama turned to staff the senior economic posts of his administration."
"How did the world's leading economy reach such a position of despair and apparently in a short period of time?" After World War II to the 1970s, political and economic leaders created a healthy mixed economy, but in the 1980s, things began a severe downturn.
Sachs continues: "After decades of global economic leadership, America began in the 1980s to forget the basic lessons of economics, parroting slogans (typically about the wonders of the free market) while neglecting the art of economic policy. One of the most basic and important ideas of economics---that business and government have complementary roles as part of a 'mixed economy'---have been increasingly ignored, to my amazement and consternation." Reagan was wrong when he stated that government was the problem.
Sachs states that there are five core ideas of modern mixed capitalism:
" * Markets are reasonably efficient institutions for allocating society's scarce resources and lead to higher productivity and living standards.
" * Efficiency, however, does not guarantee fairness or justice in the allocation of incomes.
" * Fairness requires the government to redistribute income.
" * Markets systematically underprovide certain 'public goods' such as infrastructure, environmental regulation, education, scientific research.
" * The market is prone to financial instability, which can be alleviated through active government policies, including financial regulation and well-directed monetary and fiscal policies."
Another comment on detrimental side of the Reagan policies: "The main effect of the Reagan Revolution. . . . a new antipathy to the role of government, a new disdain for the poor . . . a new invitation to the rich to shed their moral responsibility, released greed more than entrepreneurial zeal."
Twenty years before Sachs wrote The Price of Civilization, a conservative Republican, Kevin Phillips, had seen the handwriting on the economic wall. The Politics of Rich and Poor documents the origins of the wealth gap between rich and poor due in large part to deliberate government policy.
For a liberal perspective on the decline, see Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman.
By the way, neither Bush nor Clinton nor Bush nor Obama have done much to reverse the disastrous Reagan Revolution.
We need a fully biblical university in Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti
I do not know of a single holistic Biblical university or seminary in the U.S. though I am sure that all of them would claim to be biblical. There are over 100 Christian colleges and universities in the U.S. and 251 seminaries in the U.S. and Canada. To my knowledge, none of these institutions have developed and integrated a biblical theology of:
1. Oppression, Old and New Testaments
2. Justice, especially justice in the NT.
3. Jesus Christ and the contemporary kingdom of God.
4. The relationship of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.
5. The church and community development.
A suggested motto for such a fully biblical university might be: Christ, kingdom, church and community.
1. Jesus Christ---crucifixion, resurrection, justification by faith.
2. Kingdom of God---Spirit and truth, Spirit and justice.
3. Church---that combines spirituality and justice.
4. Community---a church that incarnates Luke 4:18-19 and 4:25-30 in its surrounding community.
A concise summary of the complete biblical gospel can be found in Acts 8:12; 28:23 & 31. Simply stated, the gospel is the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ. The kingdom is mentioned first in each of these verses. The kingdom of God is Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor; Jesus Christ provides justification by faith, forgiveness of sins.
Luke 4:18-19 and 4:25-30 provide eight crucial concepts that are key to creating a fully holistic NT gospel; these concepts are: the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed, Jubilee justice, the rich, the oppressors, shalom and the kingdom of God.
1. The Spirit
Only a Spirit-anointed revival/movement, a spiritual/social movement greater than any previous movement in all of U.S. history, will be able to fundamentally transform America. One Spirit-anointed movement, the Azusa Street revival, started right but was soon coopted and divided by American racism. Without a theology of society, it was soon distorted by the American trinity.
All four ministries of the Holy Spirit are needed to implement a holistic gospel:
1) The Spirit of Truth---John 14, 15, 16 and I John.
The Spirit of Truth will help the church discern truth in the midst of a society full of false teaching, deception, and half-truths posing as the whole truth.
2) The relationship of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God---the Messianic passages from Isaiah, 9:6-7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4. See also Luke 4:18-19; Acts 1:1-8: 8:12; 28:23-31.
3) The fruit of the Spirit---Galatians 5:22-23 provides Christian character.
4) The gifts of the Spirit---Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12. Without character the gifts can become focused on self edification rather than church edification.
John Perkins life and ministry is the best example of a balanced and holistic ministry of the Holy Spirit. My chapter on the Four Ministries of the Spirit in the life of John Perkins can be found in the book Mobilizing for the Common Good.
2. The Poor
If Jesus put the poor front and center in his gospel, so must the Haitian church. There is an extensive biblical teaching on the poor. Who are the poor? Why are the poor, poor? A bishop once said, "If I feed the poor they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor are poor [a justice question], they call me a communist."
I am a follower of John Wesley who may have led the greatest spiritual/social movement since NT times. But I am not sure that Wesley wrestled deeply with the why question, the justice question, involved in any fully biblical ministry to the poor.
3. The Oppressed
There is a great need for a biblical scholar to produce a book on the complete biblical teaching on oppression. There is very little evangelical literature on oppression. Luke 4:18 is a quotation of Isaiah 61:1-2. But as Jesus was reading directly from the Isaiah scroll, he ad-libed; he inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58:6. This is no reference to oppression in Isaiah 61, unless you translate the Hebrew word for poor as oppressed as at least two English translations do (CEV and NRSV).
Jesus goes out of his way to include the concept of oppression in Luke 4:18. Why? Because most poor, but not all poor, are poor because they have been oppressed. Good news to the poor must include release from oppression, an idea missing from most evangelical expressions of the gospel. What are the major systems of oppression in Haiti that must be identified by the church and confronted by the church?
4. Jubilee Justice
The phrase "the year of the Lord's favor" has little meaning to the typical reader of the Bible so I prefer to paraphrase this phrase as "Jubilee justice".
The God-designed Sabbatical/Jubilee laws were given to the children of Israel so that there would be no poor among them. Three fundamental actions were required: 1) release slaves every seven years, 2) cancel debts every seven years, and 3) restore land to original family owner every 50 years. These actions would prevent any lifelong or generational systems of oppression. Landownership could not be monopolized by the rich.
Also implied in Luke 4:18-19 are four additional concept: the rich, the oppressors, shalom and the kingdom of God.
5. The Rich
In a fallen society, the rich and poor coexist; the poor do not live in isolation from the rich. They may be segregated, but through systems of oppression controlled by the rich, the rich impact the poor.
In Luke, Jesus spent much more of his time ministering among the poor, but there is much more teaching about the rich, wealth money and possessions than teaching about the poor. So any biblical theology of society will need to include a careful analysis of the rich, who they are, what systems of oppression they run, and why the rich are rich.
Some biblical clues: Jesus said, "Woe to those who are rich," "You cannot serve both God and Money." The Temple was operated as "a den of robbers."
6. The Oppressors
In a fallen society (cosmos), if there are the oppressed, there also obviously oppressors. In Luke, who are the oppressors? Contrary to popular opinion, the number one oppressor of the Jews, according to Jesus, was not the Romans. Instead, Jesus' main focus was on the religious rich who ran the temple, who"were lovers of money," who "neglected justice and the love of God." In other words, the religion-politico-economic elite.
An Afro American friend of mine once summed up the history of Mississippi---and Palestine---in one concise sentence: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just."
7. Shalom
The word shalom---a wholeness, community concept---is not mentioned specifically in Luke 4:18-19. But if the Spirit-anointed church is preaching good news to the poor, is releasing the oppressed, is incarnating Jubilee justice in a poor and oppressed community, then a measure of shalom exists in that community. Shalom is the end result of operationalizing Luke 4:18-19.
8. The Kingdom of God
The phrase the kingdom of God is not found in Luke 4:18-19. But if the Spirit-filled church has fulfilled their assigned mission, if justice and shalom are manifest in a formerly poor and oppressed community, then the kingdom has come, is here.
Paul, in Romans 14:17, sums it up in this way (Noble paraphrase): "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom, and joy in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit."
9. Reconciliation
In Luke 4: 25-30, Jesus exposes the deep ethnocentrism of the Jews against the Gentiles and asserts that God's grace is equally available to the Gentiles; this provides the basis for reconciliation between Jew and Gentile.
1. Oppression, Old and New Testaments
2. Justice, especially justice in the NT.
3. Jesus Christ and the contemporary kingdom of God.
4. The relationship of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.
5. The church and community development.
A suggested motto for such a fully biblical university might be: Christ, kingdom, church and community.
1. Jesus Christ---crucifixion, resurrection, justification by faith.
2. Kingdom of God---Spirit and truth, Spirit and justice.
3. Church---that combines spirituality and justice.
4. Community---a church that incarnates Luke 4:18-19 and 4:25-30 in its surrounding community.
A concise summary of the complete biblical gospel can be found in Acts 8:12; 28:23 & 31. Simply stated, the gospel is the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ. The kingdom is mentioned first in each of these verses. The kingdom of God is Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor; Jesus Christ provides justification by faith, forgiveness of sins.
Luke 4:18-19 and 4:25-30 provide eight crucial concepts that are key to creating a fully holistic NT gospel; these concepts are: the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed, Jubilee justice, the rich, the oppressors, shalom and the kingdom of God.
1. The Spirit
Only a Spirit-anointed revival/movement, a spiritual/social movement greater than any previous movement in all of U.S. history, will be able to fundamentally transform America. One Spirit-anointed movement, the Azusa Street revival, started right but was soon coopted and divided by American racism. Without a theology of society, it was soon distorted by the American trinity.
All four ministries of the Holy Spirit are needed to implement a holistic gospel:
1) The Spirit of Truth---John 14, 15, 16 and I John.
The Spirit of Truth will help the church discern truth in the midst of a society full of false teaching, deception, and half-truths posing as the whole truth.
2) The relationship of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God---the Messianic passages from Isaiah, 9:6-7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4. See also Luke 4:18-19; Acts 1:1-8: 8:12; 28:23-31.
3) The fruit of the Spirit---Galatians 5:22-23 provides Christian character.
4) The gifts of the Spirit---Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12. Without character the gifts can become focused on self edification rather than church edification.
John Perkins life and ministry is the best example of a balanced and holistic ministry of the Holy Spirit. My chapter on the Four Ministries of the Spirit in the life of John Perkins can be found in the book Mobilizing for the Common Good.
2. The Poor
If Jesus put the poor front and center in his gospel, so must the Haitian church. There is an extensive biblical teaching on the poor. Who are the poor? Why are the poor, poor? A bishop once said, "If I feed the poor they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor are poor [a justice question], they call me a communist."
I am a follower of John Wesley who may have led the greatest spiritual/social movement since NT times. But I am not sure that Wesley wrestled deeply with the why question, the justice question, involved in any fully biblical ministry to the poor.
3. The Oppressed
There is a great need for a biblical scholar to produce a book on the complete biblical teaching on oppression. There is very little evangelical literature on oppression. Luke 4:18 is a quotation of Isaiah 61:1-2. But as Jesus was reading directly from the Isaiah scroll, he ad-libed; he inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58:6. This is no reference to oppression in Isaiah 61, unless you translate the Hebrew word for poor as oppressed as at least two English translations do (CEV and NRSV).
Jesus goes out of his way to include the concept of oppression in Luke 4:18. Why? Because most poor, but not all poor, are poor because they have been oppressed. Good news to the poor must include release from oppression, an idea missing from most evangelical expressions of the gospel. What are the major systems of oppression in Haiti that must be identified by the church and confronted by the church?
4. Jubilee Justice
The phrase "the year of the Lord's favor" has little meaning to the typical reader of the Bible so I prefer to paraphrase this phrase as "Jubilee justice".
The God-designed Sabbatical/Jubilee laws were given to the children of Israel so that there would be no poor among them. Three fundamental actions were required: 1) release slaves every seven years, 2) cancel debts every seven years, and 3) restore land to original family owner every 50 years. These actions would prevent any lifelong or generational systems of oppression. Landownership could not be monopolized by the rich.
Also implied in Luke 4:18-19 are four additional concept: the rich, the oppressors, shalom and the kingdom of God.
5. The Rich
In a fallen society, the rich and poor coexist; the poor do not live in isolation from the rich. They may be segregated, but through systems of oppression controlled by the rich, the rich impact the poor.
In Luke, Jesus spent much more of his time ministering among the poor, but there is much more teaching about the rich, wealth money and possessions than teaching about the poor. So any biblical theology of society will need to include a careful analysis of the rich, who they are, what systems of oppression they run, and why the rich are rich.
Some biblical clues: Jesus said, "Woe to those who are rich," "You cannot serve both God and Money." The Temple was operated as "a den of robbers."
6. The Oppressors
In a fallen society (cosmos), if there are the oppressed, there also obviously oppressors. In Luke, who are the oppressors? Contrary to popular opinion, the number one oppressor of the Jews, according to Jesus, was not the Romans. Instead, Jesus' main focus was on the religious rich who ran the temple, who"were lovers of money," who "neglected justice and the love of God." In other words, the religion-politico-economic elite.
An Afro American friend of mine once summed up the history of Mississippi---and Palestine---in one concise sentence: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just."
7. Shalom
The word shalom---a wholeness, community concept---is not mentioned specifically in Luke 4:18-19. But if the Spirit-anointed church is preaching good news to the poor, is releasing the oppressed, is incarnating Jubilee justice in a poor and oppressed community, then a measure of shalom exists in that community. Shalom is the end result of operationalizing Luke 4:18-19.
8. The Kingdom of God
The phrase the kingdom of God is not found in Luke 4:18-19. But if the Spirit-filled church has fulfilled their assigned mission, if justice and shalom are manifest in a formerly poor and oppressed community, then the kingdom has come, is here.
Paul, in Romans 14:17, sums it up in this way (Noble paraphrase): "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom, and joy in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit."
9. Reconciliation
In Luke 4: 25-30, Jesus exposes the deep ethnocentrism of the Jews against the Gentiles and asserts that God's grace is equally available to the Gentiles; this provides the basis for reconciliation between Jew and Gentile.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Extreme Wealth and Extreme Poverty
Extreme wealth/inequality plus extreme armaments are the primary causes of extreme poverty/poverty. Extreme armaments would be anything from AK-47s to nuclear weapons.
What are the primary solutions? Extreme use of cooperatives such as Mondragon; high priority given to education with a strong emphasis on girls/women; crash program to expand the use of solar energy. Or extreme coops, extreme education, extreme solar.
Key organizations: World Bank, Oxfam, Bread for the World, Haiti Christian Development Fund, to name a few.
1. World Bank, "Ending Extreme Poverty," June 2016, Christian Century:
"Inscribed in stone at the headquarters of World Bank in Washington, D.C., are these words: 'Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty.' In recent years the world has made remarkable progress toward realizing that dream. Last fall the World Bank projected that for the first time in history less than 10 percent of the world's population was living in extreme poverty---down from 37 percent in 1990 and 44 percent in 1981. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less that $1.90 person per day." 24 percent of Haiti's population living in extreme poverty.
2. Oxfam See articles "even it up" and "Extreme inequality and poverty" It appears that most of the persons exiting extreme poverty have entered the ranks of those in poverty; the decline of those living in poverty have also declined but much more slowly. They are only a few dollars away from falling back into extreme poverty. According to Oxfam, the gap between the rich and poor has exploded in the last 30 years. If extreme wealth were eliminated, the decline in both poverty and extreme poverty would increase rapidly.
There is a thriving Oxfam Haiti organization.
What are the primary solutions? Extreme use of cooperatives such as Mondragon; high priority given to education with a strong emphasis on girls/women; crash program to expand the use of solar energy. Or extreme coops, extreme education, extreme solar.
Key organizations: World Bank, Oxfam, Bread for the World, Haiti Christian Development Fund, to name a few.
1. World Bank, "Ending Extreme Poverty," June 2016, Christian Century:
"Inscribed in stone at the headquarters of World Bank in Washington, D.C., are these words: 'Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty.' In recent years the world has made remarkable progress toward realizing that dream. Last fall the World Bank projected that for the first time in history less than 10 percent of the world's population was living in extreme poverty---down from 37 percent in 1990 and 44 percent in 1981. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less that $1.90 person per day." 24 percent of Haiti's population living in extreme poverty.
2. Oxfam See articles "even it up" and "Extreme inequality and poverty" It appears that most of the persons exiting extreme poverty have entered the ranks of those in poverty; the decline of those living in poverty have also declined but much more slowly. They are only a few dollars away from falling back into extreme poverty. According to Oxfam, the gap between the rich and poor has exploded in the last 30 years. If extreme wealth were eliminated, the decline in both poverty and extreme poverty would increase rapidly.
There is a thriving Oxfam Haiti organization.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
The Deeply Flawed Gettysburg Address
Over a million dead and wounded in the Civil War; approximately 50,000 dead and wounded at Gettysburg. No trivial matter, but did these Americans die needlessly, in vain?
Lincoln gave this memorable speech in an attempt to honor the dead and to comfort the nation during a time of unspeakable tragedy. But the even greater tragedy is that these lives should not have even been fighting in a civil war.
Our founding fathers were deeply flawed, ethical cowards. Instead of conceiving our nation in liberty and justice, they conceived it in ethnocentrism and oppression against Native American and Afro Americans. Before writing the Constitution, our founding fathers should have ended oppression, released the oppressed, and they could have built a society where there was justice for all, treated all peoples equally. If they had done the above, there would have been no reason to fight the Civil War.
Another reason the Civil War dead died in vain is though the War ended slavery, it did not prevent future segregation, sharecropping, prison gangs and lynching. Why? Because it did not end white superiority, white privilege, the underlying causes.
Lincoln never mentioned either oppression or justice in his eloquent speech. This nation, under God, cannot have a new birth of freedom without justice. We cannot have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people without Jubilee justice. A government by an elite cannot be a just government. Lincoln and others ignored the Nehemiah five solution---repentance, restitution and repair.
Lincoln gave this memorable speech in an attempt to honor the dead and to comfort the nation during a time of unspeakable tragedy. But the even greater tragedy is that these lives should not have even been fighting in a civil war.
Our founding fathers were deeply flawed, ethical cowards. Instead of conceiving our nation in liberty and justice, they conceived it in ethnocentrism and oppression against Native American and Afro Americans. Before writing the Constitution, our founding fathers should have ended oppression, released the oppressed, and they could have built a society where there was justice for all, treated all peoples equally. If they had done the above, there would have been no reason to fight the Civil War.
Another reason the Civil War dead died in vain is though the War ended slavery, it did not prevent future segregation, sharecropping, prison gangs and lynching. Why? Because it did not end white superiority, white privilege, the underlying causes.
Lincoln never mentioned either oppression or justice in his eloquent speech. This nation, under God, cannot have a new birth of freedom without justice. We cannot have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people without Jubilee justice. A government by an elite cannot be a just government. Lincoln and others ignored the Nehemiah five solution---repentance, restitution and repair.
Elsa Tamez: world's top expert on biblical oppression and justice
Elsa Tamez is the rare theologian who understands both oppression in the OT and oppression in the NT as well as justice in the NT. I do not know of a single white American evangelical theologian with any expertise on oppression in the Old and New Testaments nor justice in the NT. The result is that white evangelical scholars, pastors and lay persons are largely ignorant about the extensive and important biblical teaching on oppression and justice.
Enter Elsa Tamez who has written a book on OT oppression---Bible of the Oppressed. Her first language is Spanish which turns out to be very important for a theologian. A Spanish NT contains around 100 references to justice whereas the English KJV NT has zero references to justice and the NIV has only 16. Tamez grasps the importance of oppression and justice in the NT. To my knowledge, she is the only theologian to do so. Wolterstorff has declared that the English NT has been dejusticized.
So every white theologian and pastor must read not only Bible of the Oppressed (1980), but also The Scandalous Message of James (1989), and The Amnesty of Grace (1993). In Amnesty of Grace, as Tamez discusses the book of Romans, she writes much about injustice and justice but little about unrighteousness and righteousness. She ties justification and justice together. The poor need liberation from oppression followed by justice. See Acts 8:12; 28:23 and 31---think Jesus Christ and justification; the kingdom of God and justice
so those violated. This not to be understood in a behavioristic sense, but in a theological sense. . . . We would like to report to the churches that man is lost, lost not only in the sins of his own heart but also in the sinning grasp of principalities and powers of the world, demonic forces which cast a bondage over human lives and human institutions and infiltrate their textures."
In his book, Sin, Ted Peters agrees with Fung:
"Covert blasphemy: using the name of God directly or indirectly in order to hide evil behind a veil of righteousness. . . . co-opts the goodness of God to cover over insidious injustice. . . . Inherent in sin is the denial of truth. . . . Everyone has a stake in hiding the truth of sin. This makes uncovering the mystery of how sin works difficult, because wherever we dig, lies rush in to fill the hole."
So also Andrew Sung Park book, The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Concept of Sin:
"Among our family members my mother had 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 (oppression and the suffering that follows) and died in han. She is the reason I write about han, so that fewer people might have to suffer as she did.
"The deep pain of human agony has been a primary concern of my theological reflection. The issue of han [oppression] has been more significant in my life than the problem of sin. . . . The doctrine of repentance is for the oppressor and the doctrine of forgiveness is for the oppressed. The doctrine of justification is for the oppressor and the doctrine of justice is for the oppressed. . . .
"Seeing [the social other] is a visual dialogue and understanding arousing sympathy. Staring is a visual monologue and unpleasant leering."
Comment by Noble: Due to ethnocentrism and segregation, socially we don't know the ethnic other. We stare at each other from a distance. As we stare, we mostly see their weaknesses, faults and flaws. Then we compare these perceived weaknesses with our strengths, our goodness. Excluded others become evil others.
Back to Tamez. She quotes the Kairos document from South Africa:
"In our situation in South Africa today it would be totally unChristian to plead for reconciliation and peace before the present injustices have been removed. Any such plea plays into the hands of the oppressor by trying to persuade those of us who are oppressed to accept our oppression and to be reconciled to the intolerable crimes that are committed against us. This is not Christian reconciliation, it is sin."
The purpose of the gospel according to Romans 6:13 is to make "human beings instruments or weapons of justice in the service of God."
"The faces of women are found in all communities and cultures. Women are discriminated against gratuitously, not for anything they have done against others. They are discriminated against mercilessly solely because of their sex, just as the Black and the indigenous person are discriminated against because of who they are, because of their color."
On Paul, the freeborn artisan:
"artisans suffered scorn and marginalization by their society. They were stigmatized by the aristocracy as slaves, uneducated, and useless. They were treated like slaves, because the majority of them in fact were. . . . In Greco-Roman society generally, manual labor . . . without dignity."
"There were variations in the social circumstances of the different categories of slaves. For example, marked contrasts existed between city workers and those in the fields. Those from rural areas lived in worse conditions than those in the city. In Italy and in other provinces, for example, the slaves who constituted the majority of workers in the mines and agriculture were brutally exploited and despised, while slaves in the city who worked in households lived in better conditions [more like servants]. The latter at least were able to aspire to manumission at age of thirty. . . . Closely parallel to the situation of agricultural slaves was often that of freed slaves and freeborn persons who, because of their extreme poverty, found themselves obliged to work under the same conditions and to endure the same suffering as slaves."
Paul and the gospel:
"Paul contrasted the power of God with the power of sin manifest in the concrete injustices of history. The gospel is a force in which the justice of God is manifest . . . in a world plagued by injustices. . . .
Paul arrived at the conclusion that people had imprisoned truth in injustice. . . . injustice had usurped the place of truth."
Enter Elsa Tamez who has written a book on OT oppression---Bible of the Oppressed. Her first language is Spanish which turns out to be very important for a theologian. A Spanish NT contains around 100 references to justice whereas the English KJV NT has zero references to justice and the NIV has only 16. Tamez grasps the importance of oppression and justice in the NT. To my knowledge, she is the only theologian to do so. Wolterstorff has declared that the English NT has been dejusticized.
So every white theologian and pastor must read not only Bible of the Oppressed (1980), but also The Scandalous Message of James (1989), and The Amnesty of Grace (1993). In Amnesty of Grace, as Tamez discusses the book of Romans, she writes much about injustice and justice but little about unrighteousness and righteousness. She ties justification and justice together. The poor need liberation from oppression followed by justice. See Acts 8:12; 28:23 and 31---think Jesus Christ and justification; the kingdom of God and justice
so those violated. This not to be understood in a behavioristic sense, but in a theological sense. . . . We would like to report to the churches that man is lost, lost not only in the sins of his own heart but also in the sinning grasp of principalities and powers of the world, demonic forces which cast a bondage over human lives and human institutions and infiltrate their textures."
In his book, Sin, Ted Peters agrees with Fung:
"Covert blasphemy: using the name of God directly or indirectly in order to hide evil behind a veil of righteousness. . . . co-opts the goodness of God to cover over insidious injustice. . . . Inherent in sin is the denial of truth. . . . Everyone has a stake in hiding the truth of sin. This makes uncovering the mystery of how sin works difficult, because wherever we dig, lies rush in to fill the hole."
So also Andrew Sung Park book, The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Concept of Sin:
"Among our family members my mother had 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 (oppression and the suffering that follows) and died in han. She is the reason I write about han, so that fewer people might have to suffer as she did.
"The deep pain of human agony has been a primary concern of my theological reflection. The issue of han [oppression] has been more significant in my life than the problem of sin. . . . The doctrine of repentance is for the oppressor and the doctrine of forgiveness is for the oppressed. The doctrine of justification is for the oppressor and the doctrine of justice is for the oppressed. . . .
"Seeing [the social other] is a visual dialogue and understanding arousing sympathy. Staring is a visual monologue and unpleasant leering."
Comment by Noble: Due to ethnocentrism and segregation, socially we don't know the ethnic other. We stare at each other from a distance. As we stare, we mostly see their weaknesses, faults and flaws. Then we compare these perceived weaknesses with our strengths, our goodness. Excluded others become evil others.
Back to Tamez. She quotes the Kairos document from South Africa:
"In our situation in South Africa today it would be totally unChristian to plead for reconciliation and peace before the present injustices have been removed. Any such plea plays into the hands of the oppressor by trying to persuade those of us who are oppressed to accept our oppression and to be reconciled to the intolerable crimes that are committed against us. This is not Christian reconciliation, it is sin."
The purpose of the gospel according to Romans 6:13 is to make "human beings instruments or weapons of justice in the service of God."
"The faces of women are found in all communities and cultures. Women are discriminated against gratuitously, not for anything they have done against others. They are discriminated against mercilessly solely because of their sex, just as the Black and the indigenous person are discriminated against because of who they are, because of their color."
On Paul, the freeborn artisan:
"artisans suffered scorn and marginalization by their society. They were stigmatized by the aristocracy as slaves, uneducated, and useless. They were treated like slaves, because the majority of them in fact were. . . . In Greco-Roman society generally, manual labor . . . without dignity."
"There were variations in the social circumstances of the different categories of slaves. For example, marked contrasts existed between city workers and those in the fields. Those from rural areas lived in worse conditions than those in the city. In Italy and in other provinces, for example, the slaves who constituted the majority of workers in the mines and agriculture were brutally exploited and despised, while slaves in the city who worked in households lived in better conditions [more like servants]. The latter at least were able to aspire to manumission at age of thirty. . . . Closely parallel to the situation of agricultural slaves was often that of freed slaves and freeborn persons who, because of their extreme poverty, found themselves obliged to work under the same conditions and to endure the same suffering as slaves."
Paul and the gospel:
"Paul contrasted the power of God with the power of sin manifest in the concrete injustices of history. The gospel is a force in which the justice of God is manifest . . . in a world plagued by injustices. . . .
Paul arrived at the conclusion that people had imprisoned truth in injustice. . . . injustice had usurped the place of truth."
Friday, June 3, 2016
Dear White America
U.S. history has been characterized by 400 years of ethnocentrism and oppression punctuated by well-meaning, even heroic efforts to change things, but with little long term success. Why? Because few white churches have repented fully nor restituted massively. For the most part, our supposed Judeo-Christian heritage seems to have supported ethnocentrism and oppression more than led to reconciliation and justice. This was certainly true of the Puritans and our founding fathers, and today. of most white evangelicals.
In the last few decades, there has been an effort by some American churches to bridge the racial divide by using the reconciliation paradigm. According to Jennifer Harvey this well-meaning effort has failed to resolve the fundamental issues. Harvey sees more hope and promise in using a reparations/justice paradigm, difficult as this may be.
The reconciliation paradigm seldom puts the primary focus on white superiority and privilege and the need for white churches to repent, restitute and repair. The reparations/justice paradigm does force the issue and has the potential to move America away from oppression toward justice.
Chapter 8, "Becoming Repairers of the Breach," in Harvey's book, Dear White Christians, tells the story of the Diocese of Maryland Episcopal Church's attempt to implement the reparations paradigm. The following quotations are from that chapter:
"The history and depth of complicity in slavery and its aftermath is deep in this region. Despite having been a free state during the Civil War, Maryland is a place where the living, breathing presence of centuries of racial atrocity remains very much pervasive, though rarely spoken of in mixed racial company."
"A number of congregations did not know that the property [buildings] they were in was built by slaves."
David Clark comments: "I believe that part of what happened in our committee . . . was that we finally understood there has been a great injustice that was evil and wrong done to this group of people in ways that the general public has no concept of. Traces of the [Slave] Trade began to address it. We began to understand the need for making it right in a holy context because we acknowledged that that was really evil."
Colleen Clark comments about a loving aunt and uncle from the deep south: "They were so good to us kids and, you know, I just loved them dearly. But I remember we went to church. . . . And this car passed my uncle and it was driven by a Black man, and if you could have heard the tirade that came from my uncle's mouth. . . . I had never heard that kind of hate. . . . You think this person's this wonderful, loving person, and then you see this evil side of them."
Ron Miller: "I've been ordained since 1964, and every decade there's been this work on racism and it never goes anywhere."
Mary Miller: "Before the reparation piece it's just been about 'getting along.'"
Colleen Clark: "That's how you heal, by talking about it. . . . It's the same thing as when my first husband died. I didn't heal by not talking about all of that. I had to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. . . . It's grief work. It's the same thing with the reparation. You don't heal and you don't get beyond without talking about it."
"Repentance and reparations must come before reconciliation."
In the last few decades, there has been an effort by some American churches to bridge the racial divide by using the reconciliation paradigm. According to Jennifer Harvey this well-meaning effort has failed to resolve the fundamental issues. Harvey sees more hope and promise in using a reparations/justice paradigm, difficult as this may be.
The reconciliation paradigm seldom puts the primary focus on white superiority and privilege and the need for white churches to repent, restitute and repair. The reparations/justice paradigm does force the issue and has the potential to move America away from oppression toward justice.
Chapter 8, "Becoming Repairers of the Breach," in Harvey's book, Dear White Christians, tells the story of the Diocese of Maryland Episcopal Church's attempt to implement the reparations paradigm. The following quotations are from that chapter:
"The history and depth of complicity in slavery and its aftermath is deep in this region. Despite having been a free state during the Civil War, Maryland is a place where the living, breathing presence of centuries of racial atrocity remains very much pervasive, though rarely spoken of in mixed racial company."
"A number of congregations did not know that the property [buildings] they were in was built by slaves."
David Clark comments: "I believe that part of what happened in our committee . . . was that we finally understood there has been a great injustice that was evil and wrong done to this group of people in ways that the general public has no concept of. Traces of the [Slave] Trade began to address it. We began to understand the need for making it right in a holy context because we acknowledged that that was really evil."
Colleen Clark comments about a loving aunt and uncle from the deep south: "They were so good to us kids and, you know, I just loved them dearly. But I remember we went to church. . . . And this car passed my uncle and it was driven by a Black man, and if you could have heard the tirade that came from my uncle's mouth. . . . I had never heard that kind of hate. . . . You think this person's this wonderful, loving person, and then you see this evil side of them."
Ron Miller: "I've been ordained since 1964, and every decade there's been this work on racism and it never goes anywhere."
Mary Miller: "Before the reparation piece it's just been about 'getting along.'"
Colleen Clark: "That's how you heal, by talking about it. . . . It's the same thing as when my first husband died. I didn't heal by not talking about all of that. I had to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. . . . It's grief work. It's the same thing with the reparation. You don't heal and you don't get beyond without talking about it."
"Repentance and reparations must come before reconciliation."
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
TED Talks on Iowa Public Television, May 30, 2016
Three remarkable TED talks which I shall summarize and make my own applications.
1. Social alienation [cultural PTSD] is widespread in this nation and is as destructive as physical/emotional trauma [individual PTSD]. I think social alienation is a driving factor behind legal and illegal drug abuse.
Another way of stating it: the American trinity of hyper individualism, hyper materialism and hyper ethnocentrism is destroying community, creating loss of social meaning and purpose. Extreme capitalism, the Wall Street 1 percent, is behind it all.
2. A woman doctor who has worked overseas in Third World countries where there are civil wars and terrorism; she says these are fueled heavily by an abundance of cheap small arms such as AK 47s.
The primary sellers of this explosion of small arms are countries that are permanent members of the UN Security Council, countries such as the U.S. and Russia. Those who are supposed to keep world peace are fueling another type of terrorism. Those who are complaining about one type of terrorism are themselves terrorists driven by profits from sales of guns.
3. War or non-violence
If the U.S. was founded on Christian principles---Jesus was the Prince of Peace---:
why were none of our founding father apostles of peace and non-violence.
why were there no Memorial Day honorees of peace and non-violence.
why are there no West Points training Americans in peace and non-violence.
why are there no Purple hearts for Americans dying for the cause of peace and non-violence.
Why are we going to spend a trillion dollars modernizing our nuclear weapons when that trillion could be much better spent on education for the world's poor and solar energy panels for sustainable energy.
1. Social alienation [cultural PTSD] is widespread in this nation and is as destructive as physical/emotional trauma [individual PTSD]. I think social alienation is a driving factor behind legal and illegal drug abuse.
Another way of stating it: the American trinity of hyper individualism, hyper materialism and hyper ethnocentrism is destroying community, creating loss of social meaning and purpose. Extreme capitalism, the Wall Street 1 percent, is behind it all.
2. A woman doctor who has worked overseas in Third World countries where there are civil wars and terrorism; she says these are fueled heavily by an abundance of cheap small arms such as AK 47s.
The primary sellers of this explosion of small arms are countries that are permanent members of the UN Security Council, countries such as the U.S. and Russia. Those who are supposed to keep world peace are fueling another type of terrorism. Those who are complaining about one type of terrorism are themselves terrorists driven by profits from sales of guns.
3. War or non-violence
If the U.S. was founded on Christian principles---Jesus was the Prince of Peace---:
why were none of our founding father apostles of peace and non-violence.
why were there no Memorial Day honorees of peace and non-violence.
why are there no West Points training Americans in peace and non-violence.
why are there no Purple hearts for Americans dying for the cause of peace and non-violence.
Why are we going to spend a trillion dollars modernizing our nuclear weapons when that trillion could be much better spent on education for the world's poor and solar energy panels for sustainable energy.
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