Black Folk Here and There

St. Clair Drake, author of Black Folk Here and There (1987), was a professor at Stanford university where he taught anthropology and sociology and directed the African and Afro American studies program.  Drake's book builds on Black Folk Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race (1941) by W. E. B. Du Bois.

In my review of Drake's book, I summarize:  In the Christian church prior to the sixteenth century, there was a mixed message regarding blacks.  There was some prejudice, but at the same time there were favorable stereotypes of Black people.  There was no systematic, institutionalized racism against Blacks at this time.  Soon the situation would change because "the sixteenth century was a watershed in race relations."

"The rise of the transatlantic trade in African men and women condemned to be enslaved on New World plantations meant that the system of multi-racial slavery, the norm in the Mediterranean, gave way to racial slavery in the Americas.  A doctrine of White Racism was gradually elaborated to defend this practice as well as European colonial imperialism.  This was a conscious and deliberate process of degrading Africans for economic and political ends."

Afro Americans have been degraded and dehumanized for so long in these United States that someone needed to set the record straight.  Drake has done so with thorough and balanced scholarship.

However, his analysis needs to be put into a larger context.  White racism against Blacks is historically a recent phenomenon.  Ethnocentrism, a cousin to racism, is both an ancient and widespread phenomenon.  Ethnocentrism is based on supposed cultural and/or national and/or religious superiority; often culture, nationality, and religion are mixed together as with the Christian Afrikaners in South Africa.

The ancient Greeks were highly ethnocentric; non-Greeks were regarded as barbarians.  The ancient Chinese were also highly ethnocentric as are modern Americans and modern Japanese.

Grace leads to generous giving

According to II Corinthians, chapters eight and nine, God's generous grace to use should lead to our generous giving to others.  Grace occurs 6 times---8:1,6,7,9; 9:8,14.  Generous 8 times---8:2; 9:5, 5, 6 , 6, 11,11, 13.  Gift, gave 13 times---8:1, 7, 12, 20; 9:5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9, 14, 15, 8:3, 5, 10.

There is a rhythm to grace and giving in these chapters.  Chapter 8 begins with the grace of God.  Chapter 9 ends with "the surpassing grace God has given you."

In between the beginning of chapter 8 and the end of chapter 9, we see the Macedonian churches engaging in an "act of grace," "rich generosity," and the "grace of giving."  Out of their own joy and poverty, they gave liberally, showing their love in this service to the Jerusalem saints in need because of famine.

Our generous giving has its source in God.

Question:  Is love an expression of grace or is grace an expression of love?  How are the two related?  "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. . . . "  Does love initiate grace?  Are love, grace and justice intertwined?

War and Oppression are EVIL

War and Oppression are Evil.

I base this blog on a Christianity Today article (June 2015) titled "War Torn."  CT summarizes the essence of the article in one sentence: "PTSD is not just trauma of the Mind but trauma of the Soul."  To me, a key sentence is : "In 2012, the United States lost more active-duty troops to suicide than to combat in Afghanistan."

This article is about war-caused PTSD; it sees PTSD as more than psychological trauma.  It is also moral injury, soul trauma."

Warren Kinghorn is a psychiatrist who was treating Viet Nam veterans suffering from PTSD.  Kinghorn had been taught that PTSD was an anxiety disorder driven by "intense fear, helplessness, or horror."  "Kinghorn learned to give a quick PTSD diagnosis and apply a simple formula for treatment: Prescribe medication to blunt the fear, recommend social support, and refer the patient for talk therapy."

Kinghorn was later introduced to the writings of Jonathan Shay.  "Shay concluded that the psychological and moral injury sustained in combat destroys trust. . . . when the capacity for social trust is destroyed, all possibility of a flourishing human life is lost."

One veteran described himself as a person with "strong religious beliefs."  When he went to Vietnam, "I wasn't prepared for it at all. . . . It was all evil.  All evil. . . . I'm horrified at what I turned into.  What I was.  What I did."

Another veteran wrote:  "The spiritual and emotional foundations of the world disappeared and made it impossible for me to sleep the sleep of the just. . . . I have a feeling of intense betrayal."

It may be these veterans' nation and parents betrayed him; they took advantage of his youth, his patriotism and seduced him into fighting an unjust war.  Their definition of patriotism required that these veterans do unspeakable evil.  As a result, America has millions of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans trying to function as normal human beings but who are moral cripples.  Add to these veterans, the millions of Afro Americans, Indian Americans, Mexican Americans who are suffering from varying degrees of PTSD because of white oppression; they are seldom allowed the privilege of functioning as full-fledged human beings.

Kinghorn finally realized that PTSD was not primarily about fear, but was about "right and wrong."

It was about ethics, morality, spirituality.  This was missing from secular psychiatry.

Both war and oppression are EVIL; both cause TRAUMA; not only to the body and mind but also to the soul and spirit.  Both cause moral injury.

Thousand of years ago this truth was proclaimed again and again in the OT; there are 555 references to oppression in the OT.  This is how the Hebrew scholar Thomas Hanks describes, in one powerful sentence, the essence of oppression; "Oppression smashes the body and CRUSHES THE SPIRIT."
Crushing the spirit is another way of talking about what we moderns call PTSD.  Joy Leary, a black social worker, in the title of her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, captures this thought.  So does Exodus 6:9 when the Hebrew slaves could not believe the good news Moses had just delivered to them.

Where do we go from here?  Are there any solutions?  It seems as Americans we keep blundering from war to war, from one system of oppression to another.

After World War I, we insisted on reparations from the Germans which they paid but this demand was a heavy burden.  So when Hitler came along and promised that he would restore the glory of the fatherland, Germans followed this promised national Savior.  After World War II, we didn't make the same mistake.  Instead, America instituted the Marshall Plan, a way to help ruined Germany rebuild.  Germany is now a healthy prosperous nation and our friend.  We engaged in a form of community development.

Some radical suggestions for the future:

1.  Make community development a national goal, a patriotic act.
2.  Train as many community developers as soldiers.
3.  Put as many billions into community development as we do the military.

Our past approaches haven't worked very well so we need different strategies.

Martin and Malcolm and John

In 1991, James Cone wrote a great book titled Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare.  I want to add another equally important name, John M. Perkins.  Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and John Perkins.

On August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. uttered these immortal words:

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'  I have a dream that one day . . .  sons of formers slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

John Perkins was driving on the road from Mendenhall, MS to Jackson, MS while listening to King's speech on the radio.  John was so deeply moved that he had to pull off the road; he wept as he listened.  King's speech reinforced John's commitment to rebuilding poor and oppressed communities in Mississippi.

On April 3, 1964, Malcolm X uttered these powerful words, ideas born of bitter experiences with poverty and racism, ideas which King increasingly shared with Malcolm toward the latter part of King's ministry:

"I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism.  One of the . . . victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.  So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver. . . . I'm speaking as a victim of this American system [of oppression].  I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare."

Malcolm encouraged John to stand up and be a proud black man.  Perkins started wearing a goatee as a symbol that he was a man.  Under Mississippi segregation, black males were forbidden to wear beards reinforcing the fact that they were only boys.  John wants to be buried with his goatee intact.  In this sense, Perkins is a disciple of Malcolm X.

James Cone, who himself has written eloquently about the Afro-American experience in America, who has passionately condemned the oppression of blacks by white America, is at his scholarly best in Martin and Malcolm and America;  David Garrow accurately describes this book as 'an immensely valuable, landmark analysis by a scholar uniquely qualified to interpret both King and Malcolm.'"

In chapter eight titled "Shattered Dreams (1965-68," Cone traces King's developing awareness of the enormous poverty and suffering being experienced by millions of his Afro-America sisters and brothers.  Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill of 1965, King was reasonably optimistic about the future of black Americans.  This optimism was shattered five days later.  The Watts ghetto in Los Angeles exploded.  Thirty-four people died; whole blocks burned.

As King talked with the people of Watts, they told him that the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had not significantly reduced their problems of poverty and racism.  After visiting numerous ghettos, King, in December 1967, four months before his assassination, uttered these discouraging words:

"In 1963 . . . in Washington, D.C. . . . I tried to talk to the nation about a dream I had had, and I must confess . . . that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it.  It was when four beautiful . . . Negros girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama.  I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty.  I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, . . . turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. . . . Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes."

Increasingly King spoke as a prophet of judgment as he saw America doing little to respond to the desperate economic straits of millions of Black Americans.  While King never forsook his principles of love and nonviolence, he sounded more and more like a revolutionary.  He was deeply disappointed in white moderates, most of whom did not support King when he moved beyond civil rights and voting rights to economic rights, economic justice, economic equality.  King never found an effective means of dealing with poverty though he was an eloquent prophet against poverty and racism in his last years.

It may be that now is the time to give heed to another great Afro-American, one who is not yet widely known.  John Perkins, born and raised a poor black in Mississippi, started a unique ministry in rural Mississippi in 1960.  As this ministry developed, it combined evangelism and social justice into what Perkins now calls Christian Community Development.  CCD is a strategy that brings rich and poor, black and white together to rebuild poor and oppressed communities.

For more, read some of John Perkins 17 books.  Perkins, whose formal education ended around third grade, has received 13 honorary doctorates.  Perkins was deeply disillusioned with the white church in Mississippi:  "The white church institutions in Mississippi have been the last bastion of racism and discrimination. . . . So if somehow all the church and church institutions had been wiped out in Mississippi, we would be much further along in terms of progress than we are at the present time."

Opioid Epidemic: What To Do?

Opioid Epidemic.  How do we understand it and what to do about it?  Consult with experience and wisdom.

Joseph A. Califano, author of High Society, 2007, was educated by Jesuits who "gave me a sense of the transcendent importance of social justice."  And his book reflects a lifetime of experience and wisdom which we ignore at our peril.  Califano lived through the dominance and downfall of the tobacco industry along with a profound change in social norms regarding the acceptability of tobacco products.

Califano realizes that the current dominance of Big Pharma could change as well, the gullibility and greed of some of doctors, pharmacists and the medical system could change also.  Money talks loudly
but so does angry, organized public opinion.

Rightly or wrongly, public opinion changed surprisingly quick on gay rights.

The bad guys, Big Pharma, may have gotten too greedy, caused too many deaths.  The pendulum may be beginning to swing in the other direction.  Will you give the pendulum a big push?

From High Society:

"From 1977 to 1979, Mr. Califano was U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and became the first voice of alert the nation to the explosion of health care costs and teenage pregnancy, mounted the first national antismoking campaign, began the computer policing of Medicare and Medicaid to eliminate fraud and abuse. . . . "

"In 1992, he founded The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University."

His book is titled High Society.  The drug epidemic, legal and illegal, is much more than individual addiction; it is a public health problem, a public policy issue, a parental issue.  It "calls for a fundamental change in our attitude about substance abuse and addiction and a revolution in how we deal with it."  Though written in 2007, this book is not outdated though some things have changed.More from High Society:

"Although we are 4 percent of the world's population, we Americans consume 65 percent of the world's illegal drugs."  Why the high U.S. demand?  Many factors, but I think the underlying one is the destruction of our values and meaning of life by the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism, and hyperethnocentrism.  Into the social vacuum rushes opioids.

"Substance abuse and addiction is a chronic disease of epidemic proportions, with physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual elements that require continuing and holistic care.

"A child who gets through age twenty-one without using illegal drugs, smoking, or abusing alcohol is virtually certain never to do so."

"Chemistry is chasing Christianity as the nation's largest religion. . . .  Indeed, millions of Americans who in times of personal crisis and emotional and mental anguish once turned to priests, ministers, and rabbis for keys to the heavenly kingdom now go to physicians and psychiatrists who hold the keys to the kingdom of pharmaceutical relief, . . . "

Noble's perspective/summary:

Why do we take so many legal and illegal drugs?

* to escape physical and/or psychological pain/trauma.
* from pain to pleasure; even though the relief is temporary, it is welcome.
* from priest and pastor to physician and pharmacist.
* from prayer to pill.

Replace American Trinity with:

* kingdom of God justice.
* release the oppressed; end their endless pain and trauma.
* end mass incarceration for illegal drug use.
* end massive income and wealth gap.

Compare with Canada:

* Canadian banking system ranked number one; U.S. 40th.
* Canadian criminal justice based on rehabilitation, not punishment.
* Canadian health care system; medicare for all.

A comprehensive solution must include:

* public policy and public health.
* politician, pastor, physician, pharmacist
* all have a role to play; every party needs to step up.
* if you are actively a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Society is Like a Spider Web.

Society is like a spider web---many complex and interrelated parts; history is like a spider web---many complex and interrelated parts.  Sociology alone can provide, at best, half of the truth; history alone, at best can only provide half of the truth.  We need more historical sociologists or social historians.  Orlando Patterson of Harvard is a model of an historical sociologist.

From Alan Hubbard, author of Mississippi in Africa:  "myth and reality are blended seamlessly into what passes for fact."

Life is complex and confusing; not as simple, as black and white, as ideologues portray.  The liberal arts should liberate us from half-truths posing as the whole truth.  But what if the liberal arts or, God forbid, theology are themselves riddled with partial truths posing as the whole truth?

Some biblical examples of the complexities of life, of half truths exposed by Jesus.  From Luke 4:18-30:  The Nazareth Jews were both oppressed and oppressors at the same time.  They were economically oppressed by a Jerusalem based religio-politico-economic elite that ran not only the Temple but all of Palestine.  At the same time, the Nazareth Jews were religio-cultural oppressors who treated Gentiles and Samaritans as inferior and even dangerous Others.

From Luke 9:55-59:  Jesus own disciples, James and John, wanted to misuse God's power and authority to destroy an impertinent Samaritan village.  Jesus rebuked James and John.   In Luke 9:1-2, Jesus gave these very same disciples power and authority to heal, to implement the kingdom of God.

Back to Mississippi in Africa.  The key person, Issac Ross, owned many slaves and became rich by growing cotton.  Compared to most white Mississippi slave owners, Issac Ross who died in 1836 was a 'kind' slave owner who never sold any of his slaves, never broke up families, even educated some of them.  Yet there were many mulattos---mixed blood offspring--- so there was either rape or black mistresses.  In the comfort of your own home you might piously proclaim that you would never stoop so low as to become a mistress.  But I dare say that most of you, given the rigors of slavery, would do most anything to escape some of the endless oppression of slavery.

In his will, Issac Ross freed all his slaves and provided monies to go back to Africa should they choose to do so.  But Ross's son contested the will.  It looked like the slaves might lose their promised freedom so out of desperation, out of sense of betrayal, they burned down the plantation house.  In hindsight, Issac Ross should have freed his slaves while he was alive when he still had full control. 

The following are some quotations from Mississippi that illustrate the complexities of life:

"There were legions of wealthy planters in Jefferson County before the Civil War, but what set Ross apart was that he ordained, from his deathbed, the destruction of the very thing that he had spent his life building up---his prosperous, 5,000-acre plantation. . . .  Ross stipulated that . . . Prospect Hill would be sold and the money used to pay the way for his slaves who wanted to emigrate to Liberia, where a colony of freed slaves had been established. . . .
By 1849 approximately 200 of the 225 slaves had been given their freedom and had emigrated to Liberia."

From the lips of a descendant of a slave mulatto:

"It's a funny thing.  I was playing gin rummy with my daughter not long ago and . . . she said, 'Dad, what do you like about yourself?'  I said, 'Well . . .everything!' . . . . There is one thing:  my complexion.'  My wife looked up and said, "What're you talking about?'  I said, "It's always kinda bothered me that sometimes there might be several of us applying for a job, and maybe some of them were more qualified than me, but I got it because I'm lighter skinned.  That's happened a lot in my life. . . .  I feel bad that I was given preference over darker people---even by blacks---because of my complexion."

The complexities and moral confusion of life in society has pushed me, especially in my retirement, to combine history, sociology and Bible to create a theology of society that grapples with the American neglect of ethnocentrism and oppression, of justice and the love of God.  See my blog, "Lowell Noble's Writings" for 400 plus such blogs.

The Double Horrors of Christianized Rwanda

Pastor Rick,

I just reread The Bishop of Rwanda; this rereading prompted the following thoughts.  I have entitled these thoughts The Double Horrors of Christianized Rwanda, 2007.

I am a Free Methodist.  In 1860, Free Methodists took a strong anti-slavery, pro-poor stance.  So I was especially dismayed to read on page 107, this statement:

"Bishop Aaron Ruhumuliza, head of the Free Methodist Church, in Kigondo, Kigali, helped the militia carry out a massacre in his own church on April 9, 1994."

If the Free Methodist Bishop had just been one of a few bad apples in the church, that would have been one thing.  Unfortunately, this betrayal of the gospel appears to have been widespread in both Protestant and Catholic churches.

I am reminded of Ephesians 2:14-16 where social reconciliation is based on the CROSS:  "destroyed . . . the dividing wall of hostility [between Jew and Gentile]."  In Rwanda, the western missionaries and the Rwandan church joined in building a dividing wall of hostility between Tutsi and Hutu which previously didn't exist.

Rwandans themselves cannot tell who is Tutsi and who is Hutu by race or language or culture.  Widespread intermarriage blurred all this common lines of division.  So how did the colonists, missionaries and churches combine to create such enmity that Hutu killed Tutsi in huge numbers?  By ignoring biblical teaching on justice and love?  What were the fatal flaws?  Why?  Why?  Why?

Again and again and again in the NT, the church addressed the deep divisions between Jew and Gentile, Jew and Samaritan.  At the very beginning of his ministry as recorded in Luke 4:25-30, Jesus directly attacks the religio-cultural ethnocentrism of the Nazareth Jews.  These Nazareth Jews tried to kill Jesus on the spot for his 'heresy', and would have done so had Jesus not been the Son of God.

The genocide of a Samaritan village because of the religio-cultural ethnocentrism of disciple, James and John, was only avoided because Jesus himself intervened, rebuked James and John for their demonic desire to misuse God' power and authority.  The western missionaries and the Rwandan church did not preach and practice justice and love which could have stopped ethnocentrism and oppression in their tracks.  But few in the American church have practiced biblical justice and love; so ethnocentrism and oppression have run rampant for 400 years.

The first horror of horrors of the Rwandan genocide---1,000,000 deaths.

The second horror of horrors---worse than the first---is the Western missionary/Rwandan church complicity and partnership in the genocide.  For decades, the missionaries and the Rwandan church had actually been teaching ethnocentrism---the supposed superiority of the Tutsi and the inferiority of the Hutu.  Evil European colonialism combined in this diabolic teaching and practice.

Every person, every people, seems to enjoy being superior; ethnocentrism is universal.  Superiority leads to systems of oppression against supposedly inferior people.  Superiority is prized because it leads to privilege.  Therefore the church needs a strong biblical teaching against ethnocentrism and oppression.  None exists so ethnocentrism and oppression far too often run rampant even in the church.

Next, some documentation of the Rwandan horrors from the pen of John Rucyahana; the genocide was a long time in the planning, but a short time in execution:

"Unfortunately, most of the world is misinformed about the genocide in Rwanda, dismissing it as a civil war or a tribal conflict.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The extremist political parties Paramahutu and MRND, which controlled the government of Rwanda since its independence in 1962, plotted and planned for years the genocide of the Tutsi people [combining ethnocentrism and oppression]. . . . There were mass executions of a particular group of people."

"The government began to talk about what they called the 'final solution', which meant eliminating every Tutsi man, woman, and child.  The Hutu extremist government was dependent on the aid of France."

"What happened between 1926 and 1994 that changed a somewhat primitive but peaceful society into the monsters of the genocide?"

"It wasn't just the Belgians who taught these myths; they also were taught in the church schools and in the churches."

"Like all colonial masters, the Belgians exploited African resources.  There was very little regard for Africans as human beings."

"Ironically, much of it began in the churches.  Church printing presses produced propaganda about how the Tutsis had been favored.  Then the radio talked about it, . . . and the brainwashing began."

"In those days, church leaders abdicated their prophetic roles and became as bad as the colonial officials."

In my opinion, the U.S record is much worse than the Rwandan genocide;

* untold millions of Indians eliminated by a combination of human brutality and disease, sometimes the disease was spread deliberately, sometimes crops burned deliberately.

* untold millions of blacks killed during the slave trade and slavery, even an estimated million who died from starvation and disease after emancipation.

* loss of life and theft of Mexican land.

* a million Filipino lives; see Philippine Reader.

* etc., etc.

A final thought.  Even after many mass shootings in America, we have done little to stop them.  Many righteous rationalizations for doing nothing.  The same seems to be true regarding 400 years of unchecked ethnocentrism and oppression.  Righteous rationalizations such as Christian nation, Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism but little repentance, restitution or repair by the white American church.

Black America: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Orlando Patterson, historical sociologist at Harvard is a genius on slavery and on neoslavery (segregation).  He has written two classic books; first, The Ordeal of Integration in which he argues for some blacks, since the civil rights movement, this has been the best of times.  In his next book titled Rituals of Blood, Patterson argues this is the worst of times for American blacks.  Though he doesn't use the phrase, he is essentially saying slavery and neoslavery caused PTSD among black individuals, marriages and families.

The following quotations are from Rituals of Blood; his focus is on "persisting problems."

"An analysis of persisting problems, . . . must return to the past in completing the search for causes."

"There is a crisis in nearly all aspects of gender relations among all classes of Afro-Americans, and it is getting worse."

"Afro-Americans have the lowest rate of marriage in the nation, and those who do get married have the highest rate of divorce of any major ethnic group.  The result is that most Afro-Americans, especially women will go through most of their adult lives as single people."

"the myth of the hood, the belief that viable informal friendship patterns exist, compensating for the breakdown or absence of more formal institutions."

"The sad truth is that Afro-Americans are today the loneliest of all Americans---lonely and isolated as a group; lonely and isolated in their neighborhoods, through which they are often too terrified to walk; lonely as households headed by women sick and tired of being 'the strong black woman';
 lonely as single men fearful of commitment; lonely as single women wary of a 'love and trouble' tradition that has always been more trouble than love."

"I go against the prevailing revisionist view that slavery had little or nothing to do with present gender and familial problems."

"Martial and family relations have always been in crisis. . . .  This crisis is the major internal source of the wider problems of Afro-Americans.  It is the main means by which the group ends up victimizing itself.  For, without consistent and lasting relations between men and women, and without a durable, supportive framework within which children are brought up, a group of people is in deep trouble.  Even more tragically, this internal wound is the main means by which the externally originating problems of Afro-Americans are magnified and transmitted."

"The declining marriage rate, increasing divorce rate, increasing rate of female-headed families, and rising rate of teenage pregnancy that are beginning to beset and alarm Euro-Americans have long been experienced by Afro-Americans.  Indeed, the Euro-American trend seems to trail the Afro-American by about fifteen years or so."

Patterson concludes that the black ghetto is so badly damaged that is impossible to rebuild it; instead, blacks should be dispersed into the larger society.

Where is the Church when it hurts?

Some years ago Philip Yancey wrote a fine book titled Where is God when it Hurts?  But while a legitimate question in one sense, it is the wrong question, even a misleading question.  The better question is Where is the Church when it hurts?  Supposedly, the church is the body of Christ here on earth.

John Perkins once wrote that Mississippi, or more precisely, the blacks of Mississippi, would have better off had the white church not existed.  The church of Mississippi neglected justice and the love of God; this neglect allowed ethnocentrism and oppression to run wild, unchecked.  Even worse, the white church often participated in the ethnocentrism and oppression.

I am afraid that the same could be said for the church in the other 49 states as well.  Much the same could be said about the church in Rwanda as is presented in the book Bishop of Rwanda, 2007.  Bishop Rucyahana asks the following question: "Why did God allow the massacre of more than a million people in Rwanda?"

Again, I think this is the wrong question.  For me, there are several questions that should be asked.  "What was missing from the gospel that Western missionaries brought to Rwanda?  Why did the Rwanda church neglect justice and the love of God so that ethnocentrism and oppression flourished, not shalom?

A paragraph description from the pen of the Bishop:

"The amount of pain from sorrow or guilt in Rwanda is inconceivable to those who have not been here.  And the fact that so much of this pain came through the churches and other religious institutions has only made matters worse.  To whom do the people turn for hope when they have been betrayed by the very ones who claim to represent God's love?  During the genocide, there were pastors who killed people in their congregations; priests who bulldozed their churches on top of the people who were hiding in them, pleading for mercy; nuns who set fire to church buildings holding people begging for their lives; and ministers who lured their congregations to their deaths with the promise of protection.  Can you imagine the pain and hopelessness that generates in people?"

Think Exodus 6:9.  More than forgiveness and reconciliation are needed; we need a justice that both releases the oppressed and then rebuilds, repairs the damage ethnocentrism and oppression have done.

Some more quotations from the Bishop:

"In 1926, the Hutu made up about 80 percent of the population, the Tutsi just under 20 percent. . . . no trace of systematic violence between the Tutsi and Hutu. . . .  there was no such thing as a universal Hutu-versus-Tutsi animosity.  They were considered equals, they intermarried."

"What happened between 1926 and 1994 that changed a somewhat primitive but peaceful society into the monsters of genocide?  The sad truth is that this hatred was created and manipulated by the Belgian colonial masters in order to make the people easier to control."

"This was used to completely draw the Tutsis in so they would feel that they were closer to white people. . . . It wasn't just the Belgians who taught these myths; they also were taught in the church schools and in the churches."

" . . . the myth of Tutsi superiority. . . . The Hutu began to believe that they were indeed inferior.  The result was that they began to hate all Tutsis, even those who were poor."

"Throughout the 1950s, when I was a young boy, the racial tension began to grow.  Church printing presses produced propaganda about how the Tutsis had been favored."

" really started to hate religion during this time, because I knew that religious leaders were cooperating with the persecution. . . . I was very bitter."

Next to Rituals of Blood by Orlando Patterson; expert of slavery:

"fundamentalist preachers . . . . were at the vanguard of such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. . . . 40,000 fundamentalist ministers joined the Klan. . . .  Without these ministers and the fundamentalist revival of the twenties . . . the KKK could never have enrolled the fantastic numbers nor have gained the remarkable power it wielded between 1922 and 1925."  The southern church blended culture and religion thereby sanctifying social evil.

The New American Pioneers

I thought I was fairly well-informed on the illegal alien/Mexican immigrant controversy until I read The New American Pioneers by Juan Hernandez, 2006.  I had previously read the chapter titled "The War With Mexico" by Ronald Wells, Christian historian at Calvin College (See The Wars of America: Christian Views, 1981).  Wells had convinced me that the U.S. had attacked Mexico (1846-1848) illegally, that the war was an imperialistic land-grab, resulting in the U.S. taking around one-half of Mexico's territory.  The war started with American settlers in Texas; they were illegal aliens on Mexican territory.  As the numbers of American illegals increased, they claimed Mexican Texas as their own.  Should the Mexicans now living in Texas and California do the same?

Congressman Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the Mexican-American War, said, "the Polk administration had deceived the American people."  Polk falsely believed in Manifest Destiny, that it was God's will for the U.S. to spread from coast to coast.  After Texas, California was the coveted territory.  American ethnocentrism was another important factor; the U.S. saw Mexicans as inferior human beings.  In summary, present day Texas, NewMexico, Arizona, California and parts of other states were stolen from Mexico.  To make this point clear, I sometimes say that I support the building of an impenetrable wall between the U.S. and Mexico.  The Wall's location:  on the northern border of Texas, on the northern border of California, etc. so the U.S. can never again invade Mexico.

Now let us fast forward from 1848 to 2017.  First, some information on the author, Juan Hernandez:

"Born in Forth Worth, Texas, the son of a Mexican father and a North America mother, Juan Hernandez has always had one foot in the U.S. and the other in Mexico.  He spent most of his childhood in Guanajuato, Mexico, attended the University of Guanajuato, Lawrence University in Wisconsin, and later earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in English and Mexican Letters from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth."

Hernandez is bi-racial, bi-cultural, bi-lingual and bi-national, so he is unusually well qualified to discuss immigrant/alien problems.  When Vicente Fox became president of Mexico in 2000, Hernandez was appointed head of the President's office for Mexicans Living Abroad, making him the first U.S. citizen to become a Mexican cabinet member.

Poverty and joblessness in Mexico have driven millions to seek employment in the U.S.  Trade policies have enabled the U.S. to ship cheap corn into Mexico thereby driving Mexican corn farmers out of business, pushing them to seek jobs across the border.  Rather than putting money into a border wall, we should put those billions into promoting community development in Mexico.

Hernandez supports President Bush's ideas as outlined in a January 7, 2004 speech:

"As a Texan, I have known many immigrant families, mainly from Mexico, and I've seen what they add to our country.  They bring to America the values of faith in God, love of family, hard work, and self-reliance; the values that made us a great nation."

President Bush has proposed a temporary worker program that would create a more orderly flow of immigrant workers to match available jobs and require a return home after the work visa ended.  He would also create paths to citizenship for aliens now in the U.S.

Dick Morris, who wrote the Foreword, is a Fox News analyst.  Morris makes some compelling arguments asserting Mexican immigration is good for the U.S.  Many developed countries are declining in population.  By 2050 Russia will decline from 145 million to 100 million.  Japan will decline from 125 million to 100 million.  Declining population creates a number of problems such as fewer workers making contributions to pension systems.  A slow but healthy growth rate of one percent is ideal for the socioeconomic health of a society.  Current immigration rates bring us to the one percent growth rate.

The average age of an immigrant is well below the national average keeping our population young.  Today, legal and illegal immigrants contribute billions to our Social Security system; many of these immigrants will not be able to draw upon their Social Security and will end up subsidizing the rest of us.

"Immigration keeps down inflation.  When an economy runs out of workers, the risk of wage driven inflation is enough to cool down any efforts at economic stimulus."

Immigrants begin working at low wage jobs, often back breaking jobs most Americans will not do.  They deserve our respect and gratitude.  The second generation often becomes  middle class and homeowners, an asset to society.

The U.S. makes up four percent of the world's population, but owns a whopping 29 percent of the world's wealth.  "The U.S. has an affirmative obligation to help the poor of other nations, especially our next door neighbor, Mexico.  Remittances sent home by immigrants total $20 billion a year; this money goes directly to poor Mexican families.   Only Mexican oil revenues exceed remittances as a source of national wealth."

Many Americans focus only on the negative side of Mexican immigration, but there are also positive contributions from immigration.  We need to rewrite immigration laws to make the process legal and orderly, and less dangerous.

Some facts:

* About 60 percent of the children in California are of Hispanic or Mexican descent.
* About 24 million Mexicans or Mexican Americans live in these United States of America.
* Mexican Americans are the largest ethnic group in this country.
* 1.3 million Mexicans cross the border each year.  Most are caught and sent back to Mexico.  About 300,000 stay in the U.S.
* The overall economic benefits from immigration outweigh the costs.

Most Mexicans would prefer to stay in Mexico, stay with family, if they could find jobs.  So it would be best if the U.S. could develop an economic partnership---the equivalent of a Marshall Plan---to promote economic development and prosperity in Mexico.

Are Americans Religious Secularists?

Americans are and always have been religious secularists; we inherited this from British Protestants who, just before they colonized America, colonized nearby Ireland; they did this brutally and efficiently so they could have more wheat and meat.

The secularization of the American church deeply troubles Rod Dreher, a conservative Catholic.  So Dreher wrote a book on the problem and the solution called The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.  Dreher says:  "Christians today may think we stand in opposition to secular culture, but in truth we are as much creatures of our own time as secular people are."  American Christians are secular Christians.

Dreher is strong on philosophy---ideas have consequences; strong on the history of the church; strong on family and community.  But he is a terrible sociologist; he ignores the biblical imperatives of love and justice; he ignores the church's neglect of love and justice.

At one time in the West, everything was God-centered; slowly but surely the West became man-centered, secular.

Americans are religious secularists who worship God on Sunday but who live as secularists the other six days.  But even their worship of God may be tainted by secularism.

Though American Christians created the fiction that they came to America to create a Christian nation, and most believe this fiction, from near the beginning of colonization in the 1600s, the real goal quickly became the elimination of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans.

As with the Jewish Pharisees, Americans chose "full of greed. . . .and neglect of justice and the love of God."  See Luke 11:40-42.  American chose prosperity and privilege based on ethnocentrism and oppression.  At the very same time, they were building churches on nearly every block, building Christian colleges where they trained more religious secularists.  These colleges have not created a theology of oppression, a desperately needed theology, nor a NT theology of justice.

Some American theists engaged in the slave trade and slavery; some American deists engaged is the slave trade and slavery.  Theists did not stop slavery at the founding of our country; instead they legitimated it.

White American Christians prize their prosperity and privilege, so much so that they self-righteously refuse to repent and restitute, repair and rebuild the damage their oppression has caused.

Dreher admits that the church is secular, implying that secularism seduced the church; wrong, the church chose to mix individualistic, materialistic secularism with religion.