JUSTICE, JUSTICE, JUSTICE!

Peter Beinart is my favorite political scientist who happens to be a Jew, an Orthodox Jew, who believes in the Hebrew concept of justice.  Most American Jews and Israeli Jews are secular, many of whom are justice ---lite.  Beinart can be very hard on his fellow Jews who, as the NT Pharisees did, neglected justice.

1.    In the December 2018 The Atlantic, Peter Beinart wrote this article, “How Far Left will the Democrats Go?”   

The very last sentence in the article reads, “The true cause of radicalism [revolution] is injustice, and the best guarantee of social peace is a more equitable country.” 

My paraphrase to this sentence would read, “Oppression leads to revolution; justice leads to peace.” 

A quotation from Beinart: “Disorder fueled a backlash in the mid-60s, too.  Five days after the signing of the Voting Rights Act, riots broke out in Los Angeles.  In the following three years, riots led to 225 deaths and more than $100 billion in property damage.  From 1964 to 1966, the percentage of Americans who told pollsters that the move toward racial equality was happening “too fast” jumped from 34 to 85 percent.  In 1966, Republicans---stressing law and order won 47 seats in the House.”

2.    In the January 2019 The Atlantic, Peter Beinart wrote, “The Global Backlash Against Women”.  Near the end of the article, Beinart writes:

“The personal is political.  Foster women’s equality in the home, and you may save democracy itself.”

Noble paraphrase: “Justice [gender equality] in the home usually leads to greater gender equality in the government.” 

Beinart’s quote: “There is a striking correlation between countries where women and men behave more equally in the home and countries where women are more equally represented in government.  Take Sweden, 44 percent of whose parliamentarians are women.  There, the gap between the amount of housework done by men and that done by women is less than an hour a day.  In the U.S., where women will soon make up roughly 23 percent of Congress, the housework gender gap is an hour and a half.  In Hungary, where women account for 10 percent of parliament, it is well over two hours.”

3.    The Christian Reformed Church/Nicholas Wolterstorff on justice

The Christian Reformed Church appointed a committee to study restorative justice; they issued a 41-page report.  The following excerpts are from that report, some of which was written by Nicholas Wolterstorff.  The first quotation is from a section entitled, “The Deep Grammar of Justice”:

 “What do we mean when we use the word, ‘justice’?  For all the differences among people in judging the justice of specific situations and the differences in culture in their expressions of justice, there seems to be a strong, nearly universal, notion of what justice is . . . . The word justice names a deep human impulse, or, better, a deep human need---the need for fairness, and reciprocity.  This impulse is so deep that we find it in children who have just begun to acquire language.  One of the first things they learn to say is: “That’s not fair.”  . . . . For most people the concept needs no justification.  It is as real as the grass on which we walk and the air that we breathe.  Justice, in this sense, just is . . . .  The root of our sense of justice is from our creator.  Our sense of justice reflects the character of our God.” 

“The vocabulary of this section includes several of the key OT words for justice, including yashar [“right, straight”], ‘emunah [“faithful, true”], tsedeqah [“righteous, just”], mishpat [“just decisions, the practice of justice”], chesed [“covenant loyalty, love”].  These words for justice describe “the word of the Lord.”  The psalm then goes on to say, “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made . . . .,” and describes the creating process as, “[The LORD] spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm”.  The word of the LORD that establishes justice is the word that created the universe.  Justice is built in.”

“Let us call this primary justice.  When the Bible says that the Lord loves justice, it is to this primary sense of justice that it refers.  The outcome of justice in this sense is shalom, not simply peace but right relationships, where each person, indeed, each part of creation, receives its due and lives in right relationship with every other part of creation.  The restoration of this glorious justice is the great theme of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.”

Noble comment: “Justice is in the DNA of the universe.”

. . . . “We need a concept of justice that corrects and restores what is broken . . . . Confusion sometime occurs because the single word justice is both used for justice in the sense of being right and justice in the sense of setting right.  The Bible is concerned, for the most part, with setting right.  Justice words such as tsedeqah in Hebrew and dikaiosune in Greek refer to not only to the concept of right, but also thus setting right of what is broken.

This, of course, is God setting right, but there is also in Scripture a call for a human setting right.”

The Community of Christ is Called to a Prophetic Role:

“What of the community of Christ---the church in the large sense?  Does the church have a role to play in advocating and supporting certain criminal justice practices rather than others?  The role of the Christian community with regard to this part of justice is probably best expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.  This role involves a creative and prophetic appeal for justice.  In the sermon, Jesus uses the metaphors of salt and light for the church’s role in society.  Both of these can be thought of as metaphors of enhancement.  Salt, once it dissolves into the food, cannot be seen, but it can be tasted; light makes visible what otherwise would be in the darkness.”

“The Bible tells us that systems of justice tend to go wrong over time.  We need periodic readjustments---Year of Jubilee---in which old debts are cancelled, prisoners are freed, and the poor allowed to go back to their ancestral homes---in short, the whole program of Isaiah 61:1-3 and a program claimed by Jesus for his own ministry.”  [Luke 4:18-19 & Isaiah 58:6] [The Message]

4.    To conclude this blog on justice I would like to quote

Amos 5:24:

“I want justice---oceans of it.  I want fairness—rivers of it.”

 [The Message]

L.B.J.: Sense of JUSTICE or Fear of REVOLUTION

I have heard several times American presidents [FDR may have been one of those presidents] say something like the following: "I would gladly sign your proposed legislation, but you will have to force me to do so."  They meant you and your friends will have to create the social and political pressure to force Congress and me, usually rich white males, to create and sign your legislation.

My favorite political scientist, Peter Bienart [December 2018, The Atlantic] recently showed me that the threat of disorder/revolution forced LBJ to act on civil rights legislation and social justice legislation more than a sense of justice did.

The following quotation is from Peter Bienart:

"After Kennedy's death, the promise of further disorder prodded Lyndon B. Johnson to pressure a recalcitrant Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act.  To overcome a filibuster, he needed the support of the Senate minority leader, the Republican Everett Dirksen.  He got it not long after the Congress of Racial Equality threatened to picket Dirksens's house.  After the passage of the civil-rights bill, King pressured Johnson on voting rights, warning him that if he stalled, "you'll see demonstrations on a level you have never seen before."  Fear of unrest also influenced Johnson's decision to launch the Great Society, which included federal aid for education, food stamps, job training, Head Start, Medicare, Medicaid, and a domestic analogue to the Peace Corps.  As Johnson said after riots in Harlem in 1964, "They've got no jobs.  They can't do anything.  They're just raising hell."



1960's Civil Rights Movement [Revolution]

1. Righteous rage of oppressed blacks.
2. Fear of oppressor whites--REVOLUTION.
3. REVOLUTION would damage/destroy the empire of the oppresser.
4. To avoid our destruction we need to do some justice to appease blacks.
5. LBJ and Congress passed civil rights laws, voting rights laws, and Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, etc. 1964-1965. 
6. LBJ appointed the Kerner Commission to study the cause of black ghettos and riots.  The Kerner Commission concluded that white racism was the cause. The Kerner Commission got it right, but nobody was listening. 1968.
7. LBJ rejected the white racism cause of his own commission.
8. Thus began the white backlash to the Civil Rights Movement; this led to the election of first Nixon, then Ronald Reagan.  

President Obama and Rich, White Males

The greed of rich, white males [the Wall Street/Big Bank types] caused the 2008 Great Recession.  Obama turned to rich, white males to keep the Recession from turning into the Great Depression which would have ravaged us all, rich and poor alike.  And it might have taken ten years to recover from a depression.  These Wall Street experts succeeded -- sort of.  The rich recovered and are back on top of things.

But, according to the secular prophet, Matthew Stewart, the top 10 percent are thriving in 2018 at the expense of the rest of us -- the 90 percent -- who are stagnating or declining.  [The Atlantic June 2018]

Next I would like to quote Peter Beinart. [The Atlantic December 2018]:

"In 2008, Obama raised more cash from the financial, insurance, and real-estate industries than his Republican opponent, John McCain did.  Once in office, he named former investment bankers to serve as three of his first four chiefs of staff."

Why would President Obama ever turn to rich, white males for help?  For several hundred years, at least as far back as the founding fathers, it was rich, white males [think slavery and segregation] who oppressed and traumatized his ancestors.  Instead of hiring rich, white males, he should have had them all executed.

All of the founding fathers were rich, white males, some of them also slave holders.  In addition to the terrible trinity of the rich, and white and male, the founding fathers added religion [deism] and culture [Anglo-Saxon] to this demonic trinity; thereby sanctifying social evil.

The trinity of rich and white and male was bad, very evil, but worst of all the American church neglected justice and the love of God, ignored the five hundred fifty-five references to oppression in the OT, dejusticised the English NT.  These theological sins allowed the ethnocentrism and oppression of rich, white males to dominate America.  The white American church has extreme guilt on its back; it has enabled rich, white males free reign and they have engaged in brutal ethnocentrism and oppression on a lavish scale.

On December 11, 2018 on CBS morning news, I watched Paulson, Bernake, and Geithner--the three rich, white males, who at the request of President Obama guided the nation through its "recovery" from the 2008 recession.  To their credit, these three rich, white males were instrumental in preventing a disastrous depression.

For the rich, the recovery was robust.  Not for the rest of us however; not for the other 90 percent.  We live in economic stagnation or decline.

In 2018, the top 10 percent are thriving.  The overall economic growth figures look good, but only because the rich twist all the normal measures of economic growth.  From 2008-2018 income and wealth and equality has exploded; meaning the gap between the rich and the poor is worse than ever.
You may have your own name for what has happened in the last ten years.  I call rich, white males the terrible trinity, or ethnocentrism and oppression incarnated, or demonic duo plus one.  Avoid rich, white males like the plague!!  They are a plague!!  They turn a supposed democracy into a semi-dictatorship run by the rich.

To sanitize this evil, they invented and misused the following phrases:

"American Exceptionalism","Manifest Destiny", "Christian Nation", "Democracy"

If you want to see a similar phenomenon in the OT read Jeremiah 6:13 & 14 plus chapter 7.

Bush 41: The Reeessst of the Story 2nd draft

In a previous generation, Paul Harvey, a newscaster was famous for his segment entitled, The Reeesst of the Story in which he gave the background to news stories which people never heard.  This is my version of The Reeesst of the Story for George Herbert Walker Bush.

By American standards, by rich white male standards, Bush 41 was a family man, a good and gracious person and president.  His acolades were well deserved.

By biblical standards Bush 41 is found severely wanting; he was a neglector of justice and the love of God.  He was a practitioner of ethnocentrism and oppression as most American rich white males are.
Recommended scriptures are: Nehemiah 5; Isaiah 10:1-2; Isaiah 58; Luke 4:18; Luke 4:25-30;
James 5:1-6 and James 2.

On December 4, 2018, on IPTV, I watched a two hour documentary on Bush 41.  Some of my following comments are based on this documentary, but some are my own interpretations.  From this documentary I discovered some new [to me] information about Bush 41.

Around 1960, the Republican party in Texas was a small, insignificant minority.  The joke was you could hold a Republican state convention in a phone booth.  At that time Texas was a part of the solid south.  Meaning it was racist and segregationist.  As a young man, Bush 41 took over as chair of the Republican party determined to grow the party which he did.  In an unbelievably short period of time Texas moved from majority racist Democrat to majority racist Republican--a political miracle.

To do so, Bush 41 had to abandon a sense of moral and ethical principle.  Bush 41 willingly did so which was probably not hard to do since most rich, white males have little social ethic anyway.

Bush was greatly aided unintentionally by President Johnson, who himself, was a Texas Democrat.  Somehow, L.B.J. developed a sense of social justice; by the mid 60s, he was signing civil rights legislation.  Medicare and medicaid, which aided undeserving black poor according to racist, southern Democrats.   This enraged racist Democrats.  What were they to do?

Bush saw a great opportunity.  He recruited and welcomed the racist refuse of the Democratic party, the segregationist southerners into the Republican party.  Soon racist Democrats were almost entirely in the Republican party.  From racist Democrat to racist Republican.

Again since racist, white males have little sense of social ethics, it was easy to compromise on race in both the 60s and later in the 80s.  When Bush 41 was running for president in the late 80s, he ran what was probably the most racist ad ever, the infamous Willy Horton ad, designed to stoke fear in white Americans.

White Americans in general and rich, white males in particular are skilled at sanitizing our long American history of white ethnocentrism and oppression.  Thereby enabling Americans to enjoy the fruits of social evil without guilt and to avoid the necessity of repentance and restitution.

Secondly, this documentary reinforced what I already knew was that the Bush clan was rich.  So Bush was a rich, white, male.  I doubt if a person can be rich and white and male in America and be Christian.  For me, being rich alone is a disqualifier.  Jesus, himself, said, "Woe to the rich."  The only rich person that is not suspect in my eyes is one that has renounced his riches.  Remember the rich, young ruler?  Jesus told him, "Go sell what you have and give it to the poor. Then come and follow me."  A pretty strong hint you can't be both rich and Christian at the same time.

The same with whites in America.  White in America goes along with privilege, white superiority, black inferiority.  So unless whites have repented, engaged in restitution, they can't be Christian in America.  Recently, we had a public demonstration about being male in America.  We had a candidate for the Supreme Court who was publicly and convincingly exposed as a would-be rapist.  But his fellow rich, white males, on the judiciary committee, voted him to become the newest member of the Supreme Court.

I noticed almost all of the eulogies given to Bush 41 were by white males, many of them rich, white males.  I noticed at the funeral service in the National Cathedral, the congregation was made up of the "rich and the famous".  Mostly rich, white males; not many of the least of these were in the service and none gave eulogies.

The Haitian Slave Revolt --- 1791-1804

James Michener writes what are called historical novels.  There are a few fictitious names and color added to the novel that is far more history than novel.  Michener says, "The black General Toussaint L 'Ouverture, Napoleon's General Charles Le Clerc and his wife, Pauline Bonaparte, the English General Thomas Maitland and the black voodoo leader Boukman are all historic, as was the ill-fated Polish battalion.  All other characters are fictional, but the various swings of war and the ultimate black victory are accurately described."

So you should almost forget that this is a novel because in essence it is factual history.  Michener is a much better writer than most historians and a much better condenser of history than most historians.  So I regard The Tortured Land chapter int the book entitled, Caribbean, superior to most book length treatments of the early history/slave revolt of Haiti.

Michener calls his chapter on Haiti The Tortured Land.  I would rename this chapter The Oppressed People, or The Traumatized People.  Napoleon calls Haiti his most prosperous colony.  Did Napoleon make a pact with the devil to turn Haiti into his most prosperous colony?  Apparently so.  Napoleon's French slave masters were evil and arrogant, ethnocentric and oppressive, brutal and treacherous  beyond measure. 

I prefer daily and deadly demonic oppression, not a one time pact with the devil.  Under French slavery Haitians suffered from a daily and deadly demonic for one hundred years.  Then they experienced daily and deadly demonic oppression under one hundred years of French debt slavery.  Biblically oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, enslaves, traumatizes, impoverishes and kills people created in the image of God.  Biblically oppression smashes the body, crushes the spirit, and creates poverty.  This is what I mean by the daily and deadly demonic.

Only President Jefferson's treatment of his two hundred sixty slaves plus his planned treatment of Indians [Indian Removal Act or the genocide and land theft of all Indian land east of the Mississippi which was later implemented by President Jackson], would come close to the extraordinary evil of the French/Napoleon.

After the successful slave revolt, the evil of the French and Americans combined in the one hundred plus years of French debt slavery.  Today American oppression of Haiti is the dominant form of external oppression.  Haiti is our "puppet colony", economically and sometimes politically.

The unsubstantiated myth of Haitian slaves making a pact with the devil to gain their freedom conveniently blames Haitians, not the French, for their many problems.

If a Christian had a deep understanding of the five hundred fifty-five OT references to oppression, and  if an American church was busy at releasing the American oppressed, and if the American church understood the implied severe critique of Jewish ethnocentrism found in Luke 4:25-30, then American Christians would have the biblcial background to understand the French oppression of Haitians.

But since most American Christians are biblically ignorant about oppression and justice, are historically and sociologically ignorant about their own ethnocentric and oppressive history, they are nearly incapable of understanding deeply the role of French oppression in Haitian history.

Napoleon's title, The Profitable Colony, would have been true from his perspective in 1789.  1789 happens to be the first year of George Washington's eight year presidential reign.  1804 marks the successful end of the Haiti slave revolt.  Jefferson's presidential term was from 1801-1809.

Jefferson sided with the French oppressors.  He was against the successful slave revolt.  Jefferson was a master oppressor.

The French oppression of the Haitian slaves was indescribably evil.  The killing, the slaughter, the torture on both sides of the successful slave revolt was fueled by French ethnocentrism and oppression.  African enslavement, Indian oppression and land theft from both the Indian peoples and Mexicans was also indescribably evil and fueled by American ethnocentrism and oppression.

So, it is no surprise Americans sided with both French slavery for one hundred years and French debt slavery for another hundred plus years.  Yet, the French oppressors called themselves civilized and their slaves savages.  American oppressors called themselves civilized and their slaves and Indians savages.

Both the French and the Americans would have called themselves Christians, but they ignored Jesus' severe critiques of social economic oppression in Luke 4:18 and his severe critique of Jewish ethnocentrism against the Gentiles in Luke 4:25-30.

With these introductory comments, I now turn to  Michener's chapter on the slave revolt, The Tortured Land.

According to Michener Haiti was both blessed and cursed.  Blessed in being the most profitable colony, but "it's curse was that three classes of its citizens hated one another, and the wild upheavals of twenty years -- 1789-1809 -- not only failed to weld these groups into a reasonable whole; they divided them so thoroughly that tragedy became inevitable.  The three groups were white French slavemasters, black slaves, and mulattoes, or half breeds, commonly called in Haiti free-coloreds."

"In 1789 the whites, in Haiti, numbered about forty thousand, free-coloreds, about twenty-two thousand, black slaves not less than four hundred fifty thousand."

It appears that the French deliberately created these three groups to be enemies so that they could not unite in opposition to the French.

During the slave revolt, they fought with one another viciously.  The first leader was a Haitian black named Boukman.  He was a voodoo priest, but of greater significance, he found out information about the revolution that was going on in France.  "Big fighting in Paris.  People like you, me, we taking command.  All new.  All new.  Pretty soon, here in Le Cap, to big change.  There must be liberty for all.  There must be true fraternity between master and slave.  And there must be equality.  Do you know what equality is?  And he would scream, it means you are as good as the white man."

In August 1791, Boukman led the slave revolt.  The French would not give Haitian blacks equality so he told blacks, "They have enslaved us, and they must go!  They have starved our children, and they must be punished!"

Michener writes, "On the morning of 22 August, Boukman stopped his preaching and threw lighted brands into the powder kegs of the north.  Rallying a thousand slaves, then ten, then fifty thousand, he started in the far environs of Cap-Francais and moved like some all-encompassing conflagration toward the city.  Every plantation encountered was ablaze, every white man was slain, as were any women or children caught in the chaos.  The destruction was total, as when a horde of locusts strips a field in autumn.  Trees were chopped down, irrigation ditches destroyed, barns burned, and the great houses laid in ashes -- a hundred plantations wiped out in the first rush, then two hundred, and finally nearly a thousand; they would produce no more sugar, no more coffee.  The wealth of the north was being devastated to a point from which it could never recover."

"But the real horror lay in the loss of life, in the extreme hatred the blacks manifested toward the whites.  Hundreds upon hundreds of white lives were lost that first wild day: men killed with clubs, women drowned in their own private lakes, children pierced with sticks and carried aloft as banners of the uprising, and there were other savageries too awful to relate.  One black woman who had not participated in the orgy of killing said as she passed the piles of dead bodies: 'This day, even the earth is killed.' "

An American sailor visited Haiti soon after this slaughter.  He reported the following after he left his ship at Port-au-Prince to travel overland to rejoin his crew at Cap-Francais:

"I passed eight burned-out plantations a day, a hundred in all, and I was only one man on one road.  I saw white bodies stretched on the ground with stakes driven through them.  I saw innumerable white and black bodies dangling from trees, and I heard of scores of entire white families slain in the rioting.  At the edge of settlements where the whites had been able to assemble and defend themselves I would see heaps of slaves who had attacked guns with only sticks and hoes, and by the time I finished my journey and rejoined my ship, I no longer bothered to look at the latest indecency, but I did wonder whether, in this flaming burst of terror and murder, there was no slave who merely killed his master and let go at that, or no white who had been satisfied merely to shoot the slave without desecrating the corpse.  May God preserve us from such horrors."

The French soon caught Boukman, tortured and killed him.  The next leader of the slave revolt was Toussaint L' Ouverture.  He was a brilliant military strategist who outwitted the French again and again.  At one point in the slave revolt, the French and Toussaint agreed to sit down and negotiate a settlement.  Toussaint unwisely agreed to go to France for the political negotiations, but the treacherous French never intended to negotiate with a black savage.  They threw him in jail where he soon died.  


The French would have beaten down the slave revolt and were on the verge of winning the battle when the slaves were unexpectantly aided by yellow fever which killed far more Frcnch troops than the slaves ever did.

After the death of Toussaint, a new slave general took over named Dessalines.  He was almost driven insane by the French betrayal of Toussaint.  So he vowed to never show the French any mercy whatsoever.  From now on, under his command, it was ruthless murder and death for the French.  Dessalines was described as a "murdering monster", by Michener.

Dessalines won the battle.  The slave revolt succeeded.  "The great Napoleon, having lost the richest colony in the world and nearly one hundred thousand of his best European troops, temporarily gave up on Haiti."

In a final act of rage and betrayal and insanity, Dessalines tricked the free-colored slaves to come to Meduc where they were to be forgiven and reconciliation was to take place.  After the free-coloreds had gathered in the square, Dessalines came out and cried in a wild voice, "Kill them all!"

"Dessalines' behavior became so murderoussly irrational that his two military cohorts, Petion and Christphe, decided that there was no other course but to murder him, which they did.  Thus began the recurring cycle of dictatorship, mismanagement and assassination that would plague Haiti henceforth."

This is how Michener summarizes Haiti's history and slave revolt: "In 1789 it contained half a million prosperous and well-behaved people; now, probably less than two hundred thousand, they say.  Plus all the dead English and Spanish and Polish invaders.  Can a land tolerate such brutal abuse?  Does the blood spilled upon it not contaminate it?  Is our new Haiti condemned to be a ghost that will never be real?"

"Looking again to the north, he could see the roof of the chateau at Cap-Haitian and the multiple massacres its inhabitants had known: 1791, 1793, 1799, 1802 . . . no land could absorb such devastation; the scars would never be erased.  He thought of the individuals responsible for this unending tragedy; grands blancs like Jerome Espivent, who hated both blacks and free-coloreds. And then he winced: Or blacks like me, who 'cleansed the land' of whites and coloreds alike.  Well, now we have our black nation, totally black, and what are we going to make of it?"

"As the dark cold of night spread over his tormented land, he wondered if it would ever lift."

These last comments are by Lowell Noble, not from the pen of James Michener:

I believe that the American white treatment of Native Americans [Indian genocide and our land theft of Indian land] which went on for roughly three hundred years and our two hundred plus years of slavery; this combination of arrogance and evil, ethnocentrism and oppression, brutality and treachery is every bit as evil as what you have just read in the history of Haiti.  I realize that most white Americans will deny this and say that American social evil doesn't even come close to French social evil in Haiti, but I think if you could interview some Native Americans who lived through those times, and interview some slaves, they would confirm ,"Yes, our experiences were as demonic and deadly as that of the Haitians".  And they might even swear a little bit because American whites are experts at sanitizing history to make it look less evil.

Any caring human being should weep every day over the evil of Haiti.  Those same human beings should weep every day over the history of America.  Any American that is going to Haiti to assist Haitians today in the rebuilding of their communities should be brought to tears over the history that you just read about.  But they probably won't be brought to tears over the history of Haiti if they haven't previously been brought to tears over the victims of white ethnocentrism and oppression in America.  You should weep all day for the American tragedy and weep all night over the Haitian tragedy.  Don't say you love Haitians unless you have wept over this tragedy, this demonic evil.

Prayer and Oppression

This quotation is from Christianity Today, God's Refuge for Missionaries, by Eddie Byun:

"We're all familiar with the term culture shock.  But when it comes to missionaries, we often neglect the impact of culture stress: the regular [and continual] stressors that consciously and unconsciously hit a person living in a different culture.  Culture stress can lead to many different ailments such as anxiety, insecurity, fatigue, lack of joy, illnesses, discouragement, fears, anger, irritability, resentment, and homesickness.

One place I experienced culture stress most vividly was Guinea, Africa, where several of my friends were serving as missionaries.  Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world.  Before pulling out, the French destroyed plumbing lines, water wells, and all the paved streets, basically crippling the country into poverty and forcing it to start from square one."

This excerpt from Byun is good, but it doesn't go far enough.  He talks about the culture stress for missionaries, but he does not refer to the oppression trauma of the people and culture of Guinea.  The Bible uses the following words to define oppression trauma: crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill.  This is exactly what happened under the seventy years of the French colonization of Guinea.  Which included foreign Guinea to be a part of the evil save trade.

If intercessory prayer combined with doing justice was applied to Guinea, could it reduce the oppression and heal the trauma of the people?  If so, this would do more to release the stress the missionaries feel than just praying that the missionaries be sustained during this difficult ministry.


"I, Janet Pickar, have recently been to Haiti a number of times.  The trips, the rough road, the hours spent traveling, etc sound horribly familiar to what Byun experienced.  I noticed he described Guinea as 'extremely poor', but he did not mention it had been extremely oppressed."

To help understand the trauma of Guinea, remember that biblically oppression both smashes the body and crushes the spirit.  It may be one of the most demonic activities that takes place on the face of the earth.

Who was the worst Presidential Oppressor?

Which of the following presidents was the most ethnocentric and oppressive?  Washington, or Jefferson, or Jackson, or Polk, or McKinley?

First some historical background.  The first American colonists were British.  What was happening in Britain around 1550--fifty years before the first British colonists came to American shores.  The Protestant civilized British were brutally conquering the Catholic savage Irish.  The Protestant British thought they were doing "God's Will".  The Protestant British were self-righteous, arrogant, ethnocentric and oppressive.  Some of these very same ethnocentric and oppressive British came to America as colonists.  The self-righteous Puritans, who neglected justice and the love of God, were among them.  They were also ethnocentric and oppressive.

Fast forward to the founding fathers.  They were proudly Anglo-Saxon [British].  They did not reject ethnocentrism and oppression.  Instead, they embraced it with enthusiasm.

Our first presidents--Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and McKinley--were predestined to be ethnocentric and oppressive.  None of these presidents repented of and rejected ethnocentrism and oppression.  Washington, for example, along with this wife, Martha, owned three hundred slaves.  He was our first president and set the precedent for continuing ethnocentrism and oppression.

Jefferson owned two hundred sixty slaves, and first promoted the Indian Removal Act in 1776-1779 when he recommended Cherokee and Shawnee tribes be driven out of their ancestral homelands to lands west of the Mississippi River.  This amounted to genocide and land theft.

Throughout his lifetime, President Jackson may have owned three hundred slaves.  President Jackson signed and implemented the Indian Removal Act in 1830.  Sixty separate removal treaties were signed.  More than ten thousand Native American died on The Trail of Tears.

President Polk owned slaves, he invaded Mexico in a act of raw imperialism.  It was not a just war and he forced Mexico to cede one half of their territory to the U. S.  We did compensate Mexico for the loss of their territory but it was done at the point of a gun.

In 1898, President McKinley, after defeating Spain obtained the Philippines; the U.S. purchased the Philippines from the Spanish.  However the Filipinos had been revolting against Spain since 1896.  They did not want to become the colony of another imperialistic power.  So they revolted against the U.S. army.  In the bitter war that followed probably one million Filipinos died, estimates the Filipino Reader.

Now I ask the reader to choose your number one oppressor.  Rank these five presidents in order of evil, one, two, three, four, five.

Any American that is planning to go to Haiti should first become aware of the wide spread, deeply imbedded history of oppression in the U. S. implemented by numerous presidents.  Then, once they arrive in Haiti, they will automatically raise the question, 'Who were the oppressors in Haiti that caused this extreme poverty? What systems of oppression did they use?'

Miscellaneous on Oppression and Justice

Which of the following statements are true and which are false?

1. One out of every three black males, born today, can expect to go to prison in his lifetime.
2. One out of every three black boys will go to college.
3. Three out of four black men don't do drugs.
4. Seven out of eight aren't teenage fathers.
5. Eleven out of twelve won't drop out of high school.
6. Five out of nine have a job.

According to the NAACP all of these statements are true.  

This is Lowell Noble's summary of the book of James, chapter two:

"Spirituality without justice is not only dead; it is socially dangerous because it is blind to, or tolerates, or actively participates in the oppression of the poor.  Spirituality without justice does not fulfill the scriptural requirement for the church to release the oppressed.   Why?  Because the church favors the rich.  Spirituality without justice is evil, sinful, and dangerous; it neglects both justice and the love of God."

The following is a quote from For God So Love the Third World, by Thomas Hanks:

 

"Translation of the noun thlipsis.  The most authoritative Greek lexicons give oppression as the first meaning.  However, our common English translations never translated by oppression; instead they use softer, more ambiguous terms such as affliction, tribulation, difficulty, suffering.  These weaker translations ignore the social economic nuances in thlipsis."

Intertwined Histories of Oppression

In the late 1700s, both the Haitian slaves and the American colonists gained their freedom--Haitian slaves from their French tyrants/slave masters and American colonists from their British tyrants.
Though the Christian historian, George Marsden, asserts British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violent revolution.

The Haitian slave revolution, against their French oppressors, began in 1791 and ended in 1804.  This overlapped with President Thomas Jefferson's term which began in 1801 and ended in 1809.

President Thomas Jefferson and all other American slave owners greatly feared the example of the successful slave revolution in Haiti; they feared that American slaves might try to copy the Haitian slaves' success and revolt here in America.  So from its very beginning as a new nation, Haiti was seen as an enemy of America.  Americans sided with the French oppressors during their hundred years of Haitian slavery, and also the following one hundred plus years of French debt slavery.

The following information might explain why President Jefferson sided with the French oppressors in Haiti.

• Jefferson, himself, owned 260 slaves; so oppression, exploitation and  brutalization was not a foreign concept to Jefferson.
• Jefferson raped at least one of his slave women.
• Jefferson approved of the Indian Removal Act designed to remove all Indians east of the Mississippi and force them to live west of the Mississippi.  Though it was President Jackson who implemented the Indian Removal Act, Jefferson fully endorsed this Indian genocide and land theft.  When you combine slavery, Indian genocide and siding with French oppressors, this makes Jefferson an exceedingly evil person.

This history of enmity affects U.S. relations with Haiti even today.  To Americans Haitians are blacks and therefore inferior.  So America treats Haiti as a puppet incapable of ruling itself, thereby legitimating American interference in the internal affairs of Haiti at any time.

In a strange case of twisted moral logic, white freedom-loving colonists denied their slaves their freedom.  Even as Americans enjoyed freedom, they denied freedom and justice to their African slaves.

This deeply intertwined history even enabled the U.S. to obtain the Louisiana Territory which extended all the way from New Orleans to the Canadian border west of the Mississippi.  After the successful Haitian slave revolution, Napoleon no longer needed the Louisiana Territory.  So he ended up selling it to America dirt cheap.  American negotiators had gone to France wanting to purchase New Orleans from the French.  Surprisingly the French offered to sell the whole Louisiana Territory from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains.  What we call the Louisiana Purchase might never have happened had the slaves not revolted in Haiti.  The territory west of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains might today still be French and all people living west of the Mississippi River would be speaking the French language.  The western border of the U.S. might not be the Pacific Coast, it might have been the Mississippi River.

Do the rich belong in the church?

Do the rich belong in the church?  Absolutely not, according to James 2.  The rich oppress the poor.  This treatment of the poor make the rich enemies of the poor.  And therefore, enemies of God.

There is one exception, however, the repentant rich, the restituting rich--the ones who sell all they have and give it to the poor, as Jesus told the rich, young ruler.  Do you know any such rich?

The following quotation is from the book entitled, The Scandoulus Message of James: Faith without works is dead, by Elsa Tamez:

"And if we look at the social class of our members, we find that there are more from the upper middle class than there are poor.  The rich in our congregations often take charge, and this is a story that is regularly repeated.  For the author of the epistle the natural members of the congregation were the poor, and he excluded the rich."

"This poses a question to our rich, Christian brothers and sisters today and those who aspire to be rich.  Why is it that from before the time of Constantine, up until our day, the church has opened its doors to the rich and the rich have largely taken control of the church.  This question concerning rich Christians is very serious and very complex.  The gospel response of "sell what you have and give it to the poor", is quite ingenious today, and does not respond to the structural complexity of society."

Oppression creates extreme poverty

Isaiah 1:15: "No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I'll not be listening, and do you know why?  Because you have been tearing people to pieces, and your hands are bloody."

In other words, people who oppress others have no grounds on which to pray.

1. Haitians have been brutalized by French and U.S. oppressors for 300 YEARS.
2. The Bible teaches that oppression TRAUMATIZES. [crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves, and kills.]  Haitian individuals, families, communities, and culture have long suffered and still are suffering from oppression-caused trauma.  In other words, varying degrees of PTSD.
3. Is there a biblical answer to the complexities and difficulties associated with PTSD?  Yes, the biblical answer is justice--JUBILEE JUSTICE AND KINGDOM JUSTICE.  Biblical justice releases and rebuilds; justice releases the oppressed, then rebuilds oppressed communities.
4. The kingdom of God is designed to implement the type of justice that releases and rebuilds.
5. Anyone who wants to help Haitians heal should be deeply grounded in the above biblical teachings.  Go online--lowellnobleswritings--and take the 13 week email Bible study, entitled Spirituality With Justice or Spirituality Without Justice.
6. Christian Community Development is a proven strategy to rebuild oppressed communities.  Haitian Christian Development Fund, directed by Haitian, Jean Thomas, has implemented thirty-five years of CCD in Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti.  For this remarkable story, see the book:   At Home with the Poor. 

In America, racism never dies

The following quotations come from an article, entitled, "A House Still Divided", in the October, 2018 The Atlantic magazine.  The author is Ibram X. Kendi.

"In 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned that America could not remain half slave and half free.  Today, the country remains divided by racism--and a threat is as existential as it was before the Civil War."

"Lincoln saved the old house, with the decisive assistance of black troops.  Though he didn't live to see it, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 ensured that the United States would be permanently free.  But the racism that buttressed slavery remained in the living constitution of American policy and the American mind.  The house remained divided, remained separate and unequal."

"It remains divided today.  One hundred sixty years after Lincoln warned of the dangers of disunion brought on by slavery, Americans must bear witness to racism's destructive power.  This government cannot endure, permanently half racist and half antiracist."

Why has racism in America had such an enduring quality?  I found an answer to this haunting dilemma from the pen of Ronald Takaki.  Takaki went back fifty years into British history, fifty years before the first British settlers landed on America's eastern shore.

The Brits had been nibbling away on the Irish for several centuries. Now they engaged in a massive and brutal assault on the so-called inferior, savage Irish.  The Brits wanted Irish land to grow wheat and cattle to export to England.

In the process of the conquering and colonizing of Ireland, the British perfected a rationale for doing so.  The British believed they were superior and out of this flowed ethnocentrism.  And from British ethnocentrism flowed oppression.

Fifty years later, the first British colonists settled on the east coast and brought with them a fully developed ethnocentrism and oppression.

Early on the colonists referred to the Native Americans as Irish.

Our founding documents did not end ethnocentrism and oppression in America.  Our founding fathers such as Washington and Jefferson, did not end ethnocentrism and oppression, instead, they practiced it.  The American church has not incarnated the kingdom of God as justice that releases the oppressed.  So from the early 1600s down to 2018, there has been no restraint on the free excersise of ethnocentrism and oppression.  Ethnocentrism and oppression have ravaged this country like the plague.

The kingdom of God, repent

Jesus' first public words are recorded in Mark 1:15 [The Message]: "The kingdom of God is here, repent!"  The Jews refused to repent of their ethnocentrism and oppression and then do justice.  Therefore in forty years, judgment fell.  The Romans destroyed the sacred Temple, the heart of Judaism, in 70AD.

The kingdom of God was central to Jesus' ministry.  It also should be central in the church's ministry today.

1. Jesus began with the kingdom in Mark 1:15, in Matthew 4:17, in Luke 4:18-19.

2. Jesus teaching during his three years of ministry on earth was saturated with references to the kingdom of God.

 3. The book of Acts begins and ends with a strong kingdom emphasis.  Acts 1:3 and Acts 28:23 & 31.

4. Acts 8:12 provides a summary statement of the two-pronged gospel being preached.  They were preaching both the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ.

God wants his church in 2018 to incarnate his kingdom.  God wants human partners in the creation of his kingdom.  God wants the church doing justice that releases the oppressed.

The kingdom of God; Await it, or Create it?

This blog is based on something James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy of Calvin College, wrote in the Christian Century, October 10, 2018.

Based on 92 years of experience and reading, I conclude that the majority of the American church believes in some version of the following.  In an otherwise excellent article, Smith writes,"But the kingdom of God is something we await, not create."

The six Messianic Passages from Isaiah -- 9:7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4 -- flatly contradict this interpretation.  The church, in the power of the Holy Spirit, is called to release the oppressed poor by doing Jubilee Justice here and now; this is a present and social message about the kingdom of God.

For fifteen years in my retirement, 1994-2010, I volunteered at the Perkins' Center in West Jackson, Mississippi.  Many groups came to the center to learn about justice, reconciliation, and Christian Community Development from John Perkins.  Over these fifteen years, I asked hundreds of people, ranging from Presbyterian to Pentecostal, from Methodist to Mennonite, to write down a one sentence definition of the kingdom of God.  Most definitions were future and spiritual in nature, often vague and imprecise.  Only about 1 percent even mention justice.  NONE manifested a clear understanding of Isaiah's six Messianic passages.

A Princeton Seminary grad was in one of my workshops.  I distributed a handout which included all the Messianic Passages.  He found this the most valuable part of my workshop because he had not been exposed to Isaiah's Messianic passages in seminary.  To me, this is theological malpractice.  In every seminary, in the freshman year, all students must be exposed to these Messianic passages from Isaiah.

But, before you read the Messianic passages, first read Isaiah 10:1-2; then you will understand why these Messianic passages are so crucially important.

The Eleven Woes of Luke

In The Message translation, Eugene Peterson often translates "woe" as "doom".  I get the impression that the fuller meaning is you are doomed to hell unless you repent.  In other words, God is seriously mad at some issues, and this is a severe warning that you better repent and change your ways quickly.

Most of these woes were issued to religious people such as Pharisees.  For example, in Chapter 11 in Luke, one of these woes was issued to the Pharisees because, though highly religious, they were accused of neglecting justice and the love of God.  I get the impression that when you neglect justice, you are neglecting love.  Or that love and justice must go together.  You cannot claim to love God unless you are a doer of justice.  So Jesus warns the Pharisees that the law that they so reverently and meticulously try to obey, that law was built on the twin pillars of love and justice.

After living 92 years in America, I think that, by in large, the American church is guilty of neglecting to do justice and thereby neglects the love of God.  So we should take this woe with extreme seriousness.  Instead, I see a past and present in America riddled with things such as Indian genocide and land theft;  African enslavement, followed by a white segregation, sharecropping, prison gangs, and lynching. Also, the theft at the point of a gun of nearly half of Mexico's territory.  And the killing of a million Filipinos when we conquered their islands.

Our past is dripping with ethnocentrism and oppression.  We have neglected justice and the love of God.  The other woe I would like to highlight is found in chapter 6:24, "Woe to the rich!"  This also comes from lips of Jesus.  Apparently he is very angry with the rich of his day, many of whom were religious.  Why?  Because, in most cases, the rich were oppressing the poor.  Also falling from the lips of Jesus was the phrase, "den of robbers."  He called the sacred Temple which was intended to be the house of prayer and worship, "a den of robbers."  So apparently, the religious rich had moved in and taken over.

But with Jesus, woes are never the last word.  In chapter 6, there are four "blesseds" and four "woe"s.
One of the "blesseds" is, "Blessed are the poor."  This might be only a pious platitude, if the church sits on its hands.  If the church does nothing to release the oppressed.  If the church becomes active in releasing the oppressed poor by doing Jubilee justice then it is incarnating the kingdom of God.  If the church is doing that, the poor will call the church blessed.  But if the church is neglecting justice and the love of God, if the church is honoring the rich and discriminating against the poor, then the poor will have every right to curse the church.  The Spirit-filled church will be the key to the poor being blessed.

In James 2, it says, "God has chosen the poor to be the first citizens of the kingdom of God, with full rights and privileges."  But the rest of the chapter says this will only happen if the church is activating  its faith with works of love and justice.

Luther or James?

Luther thought the biblical book of James was theologically inferior because it was weak on justification by faith.  I think Luther was theologically inferior because he promoted a spirituality without justice or justification without justice.  This type of Protestant theology allowed ethnocentrism and oppression to run rampant, fueling colonialism and slavery in both north and south America.

By contrast, James exposed oppression -- the rich oppressing the poor.  James sharply rebuked the church which discriminated against the poor and favored the rich.

The James solution?  The church should combine faith and works of justice fueled by love.

What might a modern day expression of love, faith, works and justice look like?  Christian Community Development practiced by John Perkins in Mississippi or Jean Thomas in Haiti.

p.s. I also recommend you read a commentary on James by Elsa Tamez, entitled, The Scandalous Message of James: Faith without works is dead.

The Bold Message of the Book of James

Elsa Tamez has written a book entitled, The Scandalous Message of James: Faith without works is dead, 1990.  Tamez is a Methodist theologian who is also an expert in the OT teaching on oppression.
She brings her considerable OT expertise to bear on the NT Book of James.  The result is brilliant, but sometimes too much scholarly brilliance for the average reader.

On the surface, the book of James seems to be full of incoherent spiritual truths rather randomly organized.  In her short commentary, Tamez distills three interrelated themes:

1. Oppression -- Suffering
2. Hope
3. Praxis, or informed Action

As OT background to NT Book of James, I would like to give my paraphrase of Isaiah 10:2:

"Woe to the rich who withhold justice from the oppressed, who make defenseless widows and orphans their prey."

Tamez highlights the oppression message better than any other scholar on James, but would have been helpful for the reader for her to have tied James 1:27-2:6 to the OT meanings of oppression.
Such as: crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill.
The white American reader desperately needs this perspective on oppression.

Because oppression traumatized individuals and cultures [see Ex 6:9] at a deep level, hope is necessary in healing.  The traumatized need to be reassured that God is still on the throne, that God will have the last word, that there will be judgment for oppression.  In Tamez' words, "God has a preference for the poor, God will judge the oppressors, and the oppressed can anticipate the end of oppression."

Closely related to hope is the call for the church to engage in an informed action.  The church should engage in love-fueled, faith-fueled, works of justice that release the oppressed.  Or in other words, James exhorts the church to combine spirituality and justice, justification by faith and justice.

Conclusion:

The following is Lowell Noble's summary of the book of James.
I draw on the NIV translation for two phrases: "Worthless religion and pure religion."

Here are my thoughts.
1. "Pure religion" when practiced by the church, protects the defenseless widows and orphans from oppression by the world's systems.
2. "Worthless religion" honors the rich oppressors and discriminates against the oppressed poor. Damm the James' Church; it was practicing worthless religion!
3. "Pure religion" combines faith, love, and works of justice to release the oppressed poor.
4. 2018. Christian Community Development is pure religion at the local church level.
For more information, see Mississippian, John Perkins, and his seventeen books on Christian Community Development; or see Haitian, Jean Thomas, author of At Home With the Poor, and director of Haiti Christian Development Fund.

An Enormous Problem; One Plausible Solution

Isaiah 10:1-2 [Noble paraphrase] provides a scriptural perspective on the following editorial found in the September 26, 2018, Chrisitan Century, entitled, "Up markets down side":

"Woe to the rich who make unjust laws.  Woe to the rich who issue oppressive decrees.  Woe to the rich who deprive my poor of their rights.  Woe to the rich who withhold justice from the oppressed.  Woe to the rich who make defenseless widows and orphans their prey."

From the Christian Century, "Up Market's down side":

"Investors in the U.S. stock market are riding what some are calling the longest-running bull market ever seen in the American economy.  By some calculations, the market has been on the rise since March 9, 2009, and during that period it has created some $18 trillion in wealth.  Many Americans are celebrating this run, and over the past decade politicians of both parties have taken credit for it.

But the personal wealth created by the stock market is concentrated dramatically in the hands of the wealthiest households.  Of the $18 trillion created, 85 percent of it -- or about $15 trillion -- has gone to the richest 10 percent.  About half of all Americans have nothing at all invested in the market.  The median American household has 34 percent less wealth than it did before the Great Recession. . . ."

"A recent United Way study found that 43 percent of the households don't earn enough to cover the basics -- housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, and a mobile phone."

"One creative, market-based way to let more Americans share in the wealth is the creation of "social wealth funds," invested and managed by the government.  Each citizen is given a share and receives dividends as the value of the fund grows.  The People's Policy Project, which has extensively researched this concept, points out that a version of such a fund has operated for decades in Alaska, where each citizen gets a check from the Alaska permanent Fund based on the income the state earns from the sale and lease of its natural resources.  that form of sharing the wealth has the enthusiastic backing of virtually all Alaskans regardless of ideology or political party.  It's an approach that could be expanded and adapted for the whole country. . . ."

Is it time for the Babylonian Exile?

Lessons learned from the Perkin's Center

I, Lowell Noble, spent most of the years between 1994-2010 in West Jackson, Mississippi volunteering at the John Perkins Center.  Between the Perkins Center and downtown Jackson, a distance of about two miles, was an area of poverty dating back at least to the year 1900.  Slavery had vanished from Mississippi, but blacks were still maids and servants who walked to work from shotgun housing to downtown Jackson.  Hundreds of these shotgun houses, areas of extreme poverty, still existed.  Some had been abandoned, some torn down, but some were still lived in.

Jackson State University was located in this area.  Jackson State was a historically black university with a black president and mostly black faculty.

Item 1:

Jackson State University could have and should have taken advantage of their strategic location and mounted in major, long-term effort to develop this poor area.  Jackson State had considerable expertise in social work, education, business and community development which they could have brought to bear to gradually eliminate most of the poverty in West Jackson.  Working closely with expertise that already existed such as the Perkins Center and churches, JSU could have trained dozens of community developers as it developed West Jackson.

In my opinion, JSU did only token community development; it did more displacement of the poor than development.  The poor were displaced, so JSU, as an institution, could develop.

Item 2:

A black Baptist church built a new million dollar church complex near JSU and next to some shotgun housing and extreme poverty.  But this black Baptist church did little to rehab or replace poor housing.  They built cathedral housing for God, but little housing for the poor.

Item 3:

Olin Park was the name of a shotgun house complex in West Jackson.  Voice of Calvary Ministries, a Christian Community Development Ministry, went into Olin Park and rehabbed about ten shotgun houses.  A necessary thing to do.  But a few years after completing this housing remodel, Voice of Calvary Ministries turned Olin Park over to local leadership.  Unfortunately, this local leadership had not been trained on how to continue Christian Community Development.  So Olin Park languished in continued poverty.  Any Christian Community Development ministry should think long-term, probably a whole generation, and deal in many facets of community life.  One single project ministries, while important in themselves, are never enough.

Item 4:

About a mile away, still in the shotgun housing area, Habitat for Humanity came in and tore down about ten shotgun houses and replaced them with brand new housing of the poor.  Again, a very good single project ministry, but Habitat for Humanity did not do additional community development, which is necessary to help a poor community thrive.

Next, lessons in Christian Community Development from Haiti:


Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti, an extremely poor village and county in rural Haiti, was blessed to have two forms of Christian Community Development.  The first was a Protestant one named Haiti Christian Development Fund, directed by Jean Thomas, a Haitian trained in Christian Community Development by John Perkins from West Jackson, Mississippi.  Jean Thomas had been trained at a seminary in the United States and he had a four year internship on Christian Community Development in West Jackson from John Perkins.  HCDF did multi-pronged community development.  Clean water, reforestation, education, farming project, pig nursery and pig cooperative, and so forth.

HCDF started some churches, but they were modest churches.  They built no cathedral housing for God.  Instead the resources that might have went into cathedral housing for God went into community development.  Jean Thomas stayed in the community for thirty-five years.

At the same time, but completely separate from HCDF, Catholics were doing their form of Christian Community Development.  They did one project only, moving from a simple medical clinic, to a rather sophisticated hospital for a poor, rural area.  In later years, they were assisted by the Kellogg Foundation.  The Catholics did not build cathedral housing for God; instead, most of their resources went into community development for the poor.

Fond-des-Blancs has been extremely blessed by having two types of community development that were done the right way.  Multi-pronged and long-term.  The Kellogg Foundation recognized this remarkable situation so in recent years they have put considerable financial resources into expanding these already quality ministries.  Conclusion, in Fond-des-Blancs, Christian Community Development was done the right way, better than in West Jackson.  For those that want to read more about HCDF see At Home with the Poor.

From Moses to Haiti!

From Moses to Isaiah, to Jesus to Haiti.  What is their common theme?  Release the oppressed!!

Moses was called to release the oppressed slaves, Ex 1:1-6
Isaiah was called to release the oppressed poor, 58:6
Jesus was called to release the oppressed poor, Luke 4:18

Throughout its history, Haiti has been full of oppressed slaves and oppressed poor, but few Christians have responded to the biblical call to release the oppressed in Haiti.

Who oppressed the Hebrew slaves?  The ethnocentric Egyptians.  Who oppressed the poor in Isaiah's time?  The oppressors were ethnocentric, religious Jews.  Who oppressed the poor in Jesus' time?
Ethnocentric, religious, rich Jews.  Who oppressed the Haitian poor?  Ethnocentric, rich, French, ethnocentric rich Americans, ethnocentric Haitian elite.

Isaiah 10:1-2 applies to all four of the above, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and Haiti.  This version of
Isaiah 10:1-2 is a Noble paraphrase:

"Woe [doomed to hell] to the rich who make unjust laws.  Woe to the rich who issue oppressive decrees.  Woe to the rich who deprive my poor of their rights.  Woe to the rich who withhold justice from the oppressed.  Woe to the rich who make defensless widows and orphans their prey."

Moses is good, but not good enough.  Isaiah is better.  Isaiah prophesied about justice and the coming of the Messianic kingdom.  9:7;11:1-14; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4.  These Messianic passages were all about the justice that would release the oppressed poor.

Isaiah is very good, but Jesus is better.  Jesus to describe the kingdom of God that he was initiating referred back to Isaiah 61, a Messianic passage.  So in Luke 4:18-19 we find the Holy Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice highlighted.  When we turn to Haiti, in the midst of endless poverty and oppression, we find a bright light shining in Fond-des-Blancs county.

Jean Thomas and the Haiti Christian Development Fund are showing us how to move beyond releasing the oppressed to rebuilding oppressed communities.  Jean Thomas calls this Christian Community Development.  He has been doing this for 35 years in Fond-des-Blansc.  Separately, but alongside HCDF, the Catholics have been doing their own version of Christian Community Development.  Moving from just a medical clinic to a rather sophisticated hospital for poor, rural Haiti.  The Kellogg Foundation spotted these two remarkable efforts to rebuild the village/county of Fond-des-Blancs.  So they are putting considerable funds into both the hospital and an effort to expand community development even beyond HCDF's remarkable efforts.

So, as a reminder, we need to move beyond the remarkable ministry of Moses to release the oppressed, beyond the remarkable ministry of Isaiah, the remarkable ministry of Jesus to release the oppressed, to the super remarkable ministry to release the oppressed and rebuild oppressed communities that is now occurring in rural Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti.

For proof, read At Home with the Poor. 

America's Hidden and Inglorious Past

American history as seen through the eyes of G.E. Thomas, Reginald Horsman, Ronald Takakiu, Forrest Wood and Ronald Wells.

Though I earned two BA's, two MA's and a Specialist in Arts degree [mini-Ph. D.], and three of these degrees were from evangelical Christian liberal arts colleges, I never learned any of the information that I am about to summarize and reveal in this article.  Now it seems as though there was conspiracy of silence to hide much of America's past from me; unlike the raw truth of the Bible, our history was sanitized.  Some of our past approaches the brutality of a Hitler or a Stalin so I guess shame alone may have driven our scholars to hide some of our inglorious past.  Few of my friends today fully know about this past so it is still hidden from most Euro American evangelical Christians; when told many reject this truth still convinced that the Puritans and our founding fathers were great persons, even Christians.

One of the first shockers for me was the reading of The Wars of America: Christian Views [1980].  I found myself shaking my head in disbelief as I read the true account of why we fought our wars from the pens of eight Christian historians.  Only one of the eight is a pacifist; the other seven believe in the just war theory.  All eight authors are members of the Conference of Faith and History, but this book is not an official project of that organization.

Prior to reading The Wars of America: Christian Views, I would have believed, in large part, this statement:  America is a nation with a Christian heritage even a chosen people, to spread democracy and Christianity around the world.  Therefore, our wars were in large part justified wars or even legitimate crusades.  Though the prior Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War had begun to raise some serious doubts, these were countered by what appeared to be a legitimate crusade against Communism which at one time looked like it might conquer the world.

After reading Wars of America, I came to realize that we have often been imperialistic---dominated and/or conquered other peoples---it all started by us illegitimately conquering [on our maps it is often politely called annexed], Indian and Mexican territory.  I concluded:

1. We rely too heavily on military power to achieve our purposes, and too little on negotiation.
2. We, like Israel, have often arrogantly misused the idea of being God's chosen people.  Has this been a form of idolatry?  Instead of using our power and resources to serve [in times of disaster we sometimes do so], we too often have used them to dominate.  Example: our relationship with the Central American and Caribbean countries over the years; again and again we have sent in troops to force our policies on the region.
3. What we jealously guard---our own national sovereignty---we blatantly ignore for other nations.  We fell justified in interfering in other nation's affairs if it is in our national interest.
4. War is often oppression on a massive systematic scale; it is often motivated by ethnocentrism and/or nationalism.  But public propaganda somehow justifies war by tying it to national security or even peace and justice.

Ronald Wells, editor of Wars of America asserts that:

"To examine a nation's experience of war and its response to it, is to learn something fundamental about a nation's values and social order." [Emphasis added]

What values are our young people willing to fight and even die for?  What values are mothers and fathers willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters for?  Do we take the time to sort out truth from ideological propaganda?  Patriotic sounding words may not always equal truth; they could be used to cover deception.

War is serious business.  This is why it reveals our basic values.  Are we willing to die for freedom, for justice, for materialistic gain, for patriotism, for territorial expansion, for God's will and purposes, for perceived threats to our national security, for cheap oil, for ethnocentrism [to preserve our supposed superiority?].

Why have Americans been so gullible, especially American Christians, and swallowed ideological propaganda to justify unjustified wars?  Listen to the pious religious cover given by 

President McKinley to legitimate our invasion of the Philippines and the brutal and wanton slaughter of thousands of Filipinos; his speech drips with ethnocentrism/racism:

"I walked the floor of the White House night after night . . . . I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance . . . . one night late it came to me . . . . that we could not give them [Philippines] back to Spain  . . . . that we could not leave them to themselves --- they were unfit for self-government --- . . . . 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 by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died...  And I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly."

Then the slaughter began.  Only in preparing for a trip to the Philippines, did I discover the magnitude of the horror of our oppression; previously, I had gullibly believed that we did have the good of the Filipinos in mind.  After all, we had established an American style education system and a public health system.  Even the account in Wars of America, which is critical of our intervention, severely underestimates the number of Filipino deaths.  An American general who had successfully developed techniques to conquer and destroy Native Americans was sent to do the same there.  Tragically, he succeeded.

Our founding fathers said they wanted to avoid war because they did not want to repeat Europe's mistake.  Europe had been torn by war again and again.  But inspite of these lofty sentiments, we have fought many wars, some of them over imperialistic expansion and greed.  Violence turned out to be as American as apple pie.  We took this land from Native Americans by violence and deceit.  Even the often glorified American Revolution was unnecessary violence as we shall see.

George Marsden is the historian who fearlessly analyzes the American Revolution and asks, "Was the Revolution a Just War or a Crusade?  As two nations fight a war both usually rationalize that their cause is just, but their opponents are unjust.  Both may pray to the same God for victory.  Usually the ideological propaganda does not square with the facts.  In the case of World War II, racist America fought a racist Hitler; it was not entirely the good guys versus the bad guys.

Marsden argues that for Christians war should be the last resort:

"Christian citizens should be willing to kill at the command of their leaders only in cases in which the killing is the only means available to protect the innocent and thereby promote justice and restore peace.  This is the essence of a "just war" theory."

In reality, American Christians have too often "been in the forefront in turning their 'just wars' into such crusades," when the supposedly righteous cause justifies the most aggressive violence against the unrighteous enemy.  Marsden asserts:

"The American Revolution is a pivotal instance for understanding how modern nations have transformed supposed "just wars" into secular crusades.  It is pivotal for considering other wars of America, since the patterns of nationalism and civil religion established at the time of the Revolution became important elements of the mythology that determined America's behavior in subsequent wars." [Emphasis added]

After a thorough discussion, Marsden concludes that

"the rebelling colonists . . . . appeared to have been dead wrong in concluding that without armed rebellion absolute tyranny was inevitable."

But many of the Christian leaders believed the ideological propaganda that the tyranny was terrible and that God was on their side.  So many religious leaders fueled the rhetoric of rebellion, not caution and constraint based on love and justice.  Thus the American revolution became not only a just cause, but a "sacred duty."  Out of the American Revolution a 

"new religion was born.  This new religion is the now-famous American civil religion in which the state is an object of worship, but the imagery used to describe its sacredness is borrowed from Christianity."

Legally, in this country church and state are separate.  But American civil religion is a way to blend the two.

This same syncretistic spirit was carried over into the War of 1812 and expressed by 

Francis Scott Key:

"Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: "In God is our trust".

During World War II, this sentiment was expressed a little more brashly:

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, and we will all stay free."

Jefferson argued against the War of 1812, but materialism and expansionist ideology won the day.  Christians both supported and opposed the War, but civil religion won the battle; deception won over Biblical truth.

The War with Mexico provided an opportunity for the future expansion of American civil religion legitimated by many Christians during the American Revolution.  Some Americans saw the war for what it was --- "a blatant act of aggression against a helpless neighbor."  But those who believed in Manifest Destiny, that it was God's will for the American nation to spread from coast to coast, won the ideological battle.  National interest won over human rights and international justice.

The war with Mexico was an easy sell to the American public in the sense that it was easy to characterize Mexicans as an inferior race.  Racism/ethnocentrism seemed to fit hand-in-glove with Manifest Destiny.  Lacking a good theology to counteract ethnocentrism and oppression, the majority of American Christians either tolerated or supported the war.

Even in the year 2000, American Christians are still using a twisted theology to justify or excuse ethnocentrism and oppression.  We still lack a theology to expose and oppose it.  Christianity Today has a one page "Good Question" column.  My good friend, Ronald Potter, an Afro American scholar, was asked to answer this question: "Was Slavery God's Will? Some Christian writers have said slavery in America was divinely sanctioned because it helped bring Africans to Christ.  Is it true?"

Potter began his reply with this true story:

"At the 1996 Promise Keepers pastors conference in Atalanta, a Native American brother stood up and chronicled the many gross sins committed by white Americans against Native Americans over the centuries.  He reminded the audience of the violation of hundreds of treaties, the slaughter of millions of buffalo, and the near genocide of numerous tribes.  His conclusion, however, disturbed me.  In spite of the horror, he told the gathered pastors, most of whom were white, if the white man had not come to the Americas, we would not know Jesus.  The crowd of 40,000 shouted "Amen!" in stirring unison.  I returned home in a quandary."

In a letter to the editor, I replied:

"Was Slavery God's will? . . . . because it helped Africans to Christ?"  [CT, May 22, 2000].  For this question even to be asked and the implied answer approved by thousands of pastors at a meeting promoting ethnic reconciliation, indicates the low level of Christianity in America today.  The question is an insult to God and a disgrace to the church.  The real question should have been --- why were Christians so often involved in the oppression of Native Americans, Afro Americans and other ethnic groups?  Why did the Puritans turn arrogantly ethnocentric and start oppressing
Native Americans --- at times killing whole villages, slaughtering men, women and children, even paying money for the scalps of Indians?  Why did Jonathan Edwards, the great early American theologian, own slaves?  Why did the Bible Belt engage in cruel slavery and later brutal segregation? In the kingdom of God, Christians are called to love their neighbors, to do justice.
Reread Mt 28: 18-20 and Acts 1:8; these verses say nothing about oppression being a part of evangelism."

Both sides in the Civil War believed that their cause was just, that God was on their side.  The founding fathers left some issues such as slavery unresolved.  Later President Jefferson introduced a bill to prevent slavery in new states; it lost by one vote.  The great national sin almost destroyed these United States.  A fearful price was paid to keep the Union intact.

In the Spanish-American War high-sounding motives such as free Cubans from Spanish imperialism quickly degenerated into "a war of American conquest."  Manifest Destiny, American ethnocentrism and imperialism soon combined  to fuel the war.  Many evangelicals joined the fusing of the gospel with racism and nationalism.  President McKinley, a "devout, church-going man" mixed humanitarian motives with raw imperialism and the war became a "righteous crusade."

The Filipinos did not accept this occupation as "God's will", so they fought bitterly to keep their freedom.  US troops brutally suppressed the Filipinos; oppression, again, had become a part of Manifest Destiny.  Oppression and "God's will."  Oppression and "God's will."  This reminds me of Jeremiah's many warnings about deceitful distortions of God's truth [Jer. 8:10-12]:

"From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit.  They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.  Peace, peace [shalom, shalom]. they say, when there is no peace.  Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct?  No, they have no shame at all."

There can be no shalom in the midst of oppression and idolatry.

World Wars I and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War are also discussed by an expert in each war.  Each of these wars had serious flaws from a Christian perspective even though most Christians supported them.  For example, in World War II, we copied Hitler's bombing of civilians as a legitimate war tactic, a clear violation of just war theory.

In a concluding chapter, Wells asserts the American ideology including Manifest Destiny, corrupted Christian theology.  Our theology of society and justice was weak so theology could not correct American theology.  The American church desperately needs a theology of society based on justice and shalom and against ethnocentrism and oppression so that it can challenge rationalizations and deceptions promoted in the name of God.

Americans, American Christians, do you really want your sons and daughters to be sacrificed in unjust wars?  Don't believe everything you hear even from fellow Christians.  Over the years, Christians have been tragically gullible.  Why have so many Christians supported unjust wars fully convinced that they were doing God's will?

I believe that our founding fathers and the Puritans bear a heavy responsibility for setting America on a course of bleeding Christianity with American ethnocentrism/nationalism.  Does the good they did atone for the bad they did?  G. E. Thomas documents "the rest of the story" --- largely untold and unknown in Christian circles --- better than anyone I know ["Puritans, Indians, and the Concept of Race," New England Quarterly, March, 1975].  He quotes but disagrees with Alden Vaughan that orthodox history believes "that the New England Puritans followed a remarkable human, constructive and just policy in their dealing with the Indians."  Thomas' conclusion, however, is that

"the record of Puritan attitudes, goals and behavior in every major area of interaction with Indians reveals a continued harshness, brutality, and ethnocentric bias, which . . . . had fatal consequences for the Indians as a race."

In addition to fighting wars with Indians, and, at times, slaughtering whole villages, the Puritans began offering money for the scalps of Indians on a sliding scale with the most money being paid for the scale;ps of young men and adult males.  Puritans saw the hand of God in the widespread deaths of Native Americans from disease.  Forrest Wood declares:

"The belief that God had cursed the Indian population in order to prepare New England for his children was preached from every pulpit and quickly became an enduring part of Puritan folklore . . .  a part of a divine plan to establish the Kingdom of Christ in the New World.  With this type of twisted theology, it would be easy to move to believing that slavery was also God's will."

Puritans had an English background and the English and done much the same to the Irish.
Ronald Takaki documents the savage treatment of the Irish in A Different Mirro: A History of Multicultural America[1993], pp. 26-28 and 140-141.

"While the English were generally brutal in their warfare practices at that time, they seemed to have been particularly cruel toward the Irish.  The colonizers burned the villages and crops of the inhabitants and relocated them on reservations.  They slaughtered families, "men, woman and child,". . . .

The death toll was massive but this was good because it meant vacant land for English resettlement.  The British took Irish heads as trophies.  The British called the Irish savages, but it seems the savage British is more appropriate.  "The first English colonizers in the New World found that the Indians reminded them of the Irish."  So it is not surprising to find the English settlers soon treating the Indians as savagely as they did the Irish using some of the same methods.  The Puritans brought British ethnocentrism and oppression with them.  Their brand of Christianity did not purity them of these evil social values; instead it seemed to legitimate them.

Another feeder of British and American ethnocentrism was the mythology of the superiority of Anglo-Saxons.  Reginald Horsman has examined in exhaustive detail the origin and development of "racial Anglo-Saxonism" in Race and Manifest Destiny, [1981.  In essence, Horsman argues that the American brand of racism was developed as a rationalization/justification for Manifest Destiny --- the belief that it was God's will for the so-called super Judeo-Chrisitan heritage to spread from coast to coast and also impact the world.  Manifest Destiny was supported by a religion-politico-economic-cultural and even linguistic sense of superiority which justified an ethnocentric oppression of any ethnic group that got in the way.  It legitimated cruel slavery, the near genocide of Native Americans, and oppressive imperialistic expansion against Mexico.

The idea of a distinct Anglo-Saxon race has no basis in fact; it is an ideological myth.  But this myth took hold as if it were fact.  The people of England were a mix of original Celtic tribes, Germanic tribes, Viking settlements and Norman conquest.  There are no pure Teutonic or Aryan roots.  But the founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, were enamored with this superior Anglo-Saxon myth. Horsman states:

"this view of Anglo-Saxon England was in its way as unreal as those writings which pictured Arthur's England as a Camelot of brave knights, but it persisted in English and American thinking long after Jefferson's death."

The myth of being from a race of superior qualities [Anglo-Saxon] was blended with the myth of being a chosen people.  False history and false biology mixed with faulty theology combined to create a zealous, militant, arrogant ethnocentrism/nationalism which led to oppression carried out in the name of God.

Forrest Wood, author of The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century [1990], was born and raised in a conservative Protestant family.  As an adult, he was troubled by racism in America a wondered if we could ever overcome it.  As he researched the problem historically, he discovered that, for the most part and with some exceptions, the Christian church had often led, supported or tolerated racism in the church as well as society.

This discovery was highly significant to Wood since he also discovered the pervasive influence of the Christian religion upon American culture:

". . . . what really surprised me was how far Christianity's influence had reached beyond the sanctuary.  Biblical maxims, the Puritan work ethic, Pauline moral preachments, Old Testament conceptions of the Elect, . . . . the Ten Commandments . . . . permeate every fiber of secular life.  The exalted American commitments to individualism, free enterprise, and the diffusion of democratic principles are I, came to believe, nothing more than secular extensions of the Christian precepts of a personal relationship with Christ, man's dominion over the earth, and the bringing of the Good News to all peoples."

In the next paragraph, Wood adds this contradictory thought:

"The central this of this book is that Christianity, in the five centuries since its message was first carried to the peoples of the New World --- and, in particular, to the natives and the transplanted Africans of English North America and the United States --- has been fundamentally racist in its ideology, organization, and practice."

Since Christianity was so pervasive, it had the potential to destroy racism had the full gospel of the kingdom of God as justice and shalom for all ethnic groups been preached and practice.  But, in general, Christianity accommodated itself to racism.

Dwight Perry, author of Breaking Down Barriers: A Black Evangelical Explains the Black Church [1998], in discussing the accommodation of the White evangelical church to racism and bigotry, explains the problem this way: white evangelicals had a "right theology, but wrong sociology."  I think that he means that evangelicals had a good theology of personal sin and personal salvation based on the cross and resurrection, but at the same time, tolerated and practiced ethnocentrism and oppression.  I would restate the problem as evangelicals had an "incomplete theology and a terrible sociology as a consequence of this partial theology."  Yes, a good theology of personal sin-personal salvation and related doctrines, but since they did not understand the kingdom of God as "justice for all" [Billy Graham's phrase], since they did not incarnate the kingdom of God as justice and shalom and oppose ethnocentrism and oppression, evangelicals, themselves, often became agents of social evil or ethnocentric and oppressive.

Try reading all the Messianic passages from Isaiah in sequence form NIV.