Philip Yancey, noted Christian author, was born and raised in the South; he was Christianized in a legalistic, fundamentalist church which went along with a Klan like culture. Fortunately Yancey rejected this cultic brand of Christianity and found a much more biblical God. His book, Soul Survivor, tells about 13 mentors such as Martin Luther King and Gandhi who showed him the more excellent way.
As a teenagers, Yancey witnessed a Klan beating of a group of black males. He comments:
"Although nearly four decades have passed, I can still hear the crowd's throaty rebel yells, the victim's pleas, and the crunch of the Klansmen's bare fists against flesh. And with much shame I still recall the adolescent thrill I felt---my first experience of the mob instinct---mixed in with horror, as I watched that scene transpire.
"Today I feel shame, remorse, and also repentance. It took years for God to break the stranglehold of blatant racism in me---.. . .with perhaps the most toxic societal efforts. When experts discuss the underclass in urban America, they blame in turn drugs, changing values, systemic poverty, and the breakdown of the nuclear family. Sometimes I wonder if all those problems are consequences of a deeper, underlying cause: our centuries-old sin of racism."
Yancey moved from a Klan culture of hate to a King culture of love. She represents radical repentance. Few American whites do this. Good, very good, but not good enough. Yancey does not talk about restitution, rejection of white privilege, and Jubilee justice. Yancey's repentance still does not match the magnitude of America's centuries of continuing racism, even in 2017.
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