Habits of the Heart, American Trinity

Habits of the Heart, first published in 1985, is a classic study of American society and character.  How to create and maintain a moral and social community in the midst of a highly individualistic society was their fundamental question.  ". . . . it is individualism, and not equality, as Tocqueville thought, that has marched inexorably through our history."  Freedom not balanced by justice degenerates into individualism.  Economic freedom, free market, capitalism, not balanced by justice leads to inequality, to oppression, to a wide gap between rich and poor.

When individualism and inequality dominate, they destroy community and civic responsibility; this leads to a decline in personal character and morality.  As Bellah and associates concluded their 1985 edition, they stated with some fear and trembling that an overemphasis on power and materialism might lead to the death or our civilization:

          Yet we still have the capacity to reconsider the course upon which we are
          embarked.  The morally concerned social movement, informed by republican and
          biblical sentiments, has stood us in good stead in the past and may still do so
          again.  But we have never before faced a situation that called our deepest
          assumptions so radically into question.  Our problems today are not just political.
          They are moral and have to do with the meaning of life . . . . Our common life
          requires more than an exclusive concern for material consumption.

Eleven years have passed by.  How is the state of America today?  Not good!  Bellah entitles the Introduction to the Updated Edition, "The House Divided."  The issues discussed in 1985 "have taken on a critical urgency."  Uneasiness, anxiety and a gnawing uncertainty are widespread.

We revisit individualism which "values independence and self-reliance" in the pursuit of economic happiness.  Does individualism "serve us well as a society?"  The answer in 1985 was "a qualified no", because it was partially checked by other values such as community, commitment and citizenship.  In 1996 it appears that the "no" is no longer qualified.  Commitment, community, and citizenship are fading more and more and they are dominated by an ever-increasing materialistic individualism.

Today, there is a "crisis of civic membership . . . . temptations and pressures to disengage from the larger society."  This disengagement is "threatening to [our] social coherence."  Our class divisions are deeper and wider.  "The result is not only income polarization, with the rich growing richer and the poor poorer, but also a shrinking middle class increasingly anxious about its future."

Increasingly a powerful elite is taking over political and economic control with less of "a sense of obligation to the rest of society."  In fact, this knowledge/power elite has become "predatory" toward society.  This elite has become an oligarchy which "looks out for its own interest by exploiting the rest of society."  And not only the underclass.

In France, the unemployed are called "the excluded" and they are a concern of the whole society.  Here they are condemned; they are failures and a burden to society.  The elite "wax indignant as the cost of welfare," and at the same time, they are changing government policies to make themselves richer.  Today, "we have reached the high point of income inequality in our recent history, and our civic life is a shambles."  We have a "revolution of the rich" with a "war against the poor."

A part of the civic disengagement is a decline of social capital---the "features of social organization, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefits."  There has been a decline in American associational life which impressed Tocqueville in the early 1800s.  The poor have suffered the loss of both economic and social capital, but nearly all of America is suffering from the loss of social capital.

The above powerful forces have also negatively impacted the family as well.  Excessive individualism undermines everything it touches including religion and family.  There is a crisis of morality both personal and social.  Which came first is sort of a chicken and egg question.  Second and third generation Puritans added individualism and materialism to their ethnocentrism/racism.  This negative trinity of values has corrupted our morals, personal and social, ever since.

One of the worst manifestations of the American trinity is what Bellah calls "neocapitalism" or Korten calls "corporate capitalism" which is a far cry for Adam Smith's brand of capitalism.  Not only is neocapitalism dominant ideologically, but through the power of enormous financial contributions it dominates politically as well.  "One of the conundrums of contemporary individualism is that it can combine an absolute belief in the freedom of individual choice with market determinism.

Potentially, Bellah argues, the church has the greatest power to challenge individualism and neocapitalism and turn society toward community and social responsibility.  If the American church would return to its biblical roots which combine personal righteousness and social justice, it could become a source of renewal in terms of both personal and social morality.  It is my opinion, however, that at present most of the American church has been so contaminated by individualism, materialism and ethnocentrism/racism that it needs to be renewed before it can renew society.

Bellah argues that our present national crisis is of the same magnitudes the moral/social crisis that led to the Civil War.  Fortunately, the nation had a strong leader in President Lincoln who stood for righteousness and justice, and the nation survived.  Bellah states:


          If we apply Lincoln's words to our situation we can say that the house today is
          divided not by slavery, but by deepening class divisions . . . . We believe that the
          degree of class difference today is wrong in the same sense that Lincoln believed
          slavery was wrong; it deprives million s of people of the ability to participate fully
          in society and to realize themselves as individuals.  This is the festering secret that
          Americans would rather not face.  Many nations have persisted while divided into
          a small elite that lives in luxury and a large mass in various stages of insecurity
          and misery, but this nation, with the ideals and hopes of the last 220 years, cannot
         permanently so endure.

As a nation we stand divided---a huge gap between rich and poor, a continuing ethnic division (with some signs of improvement), and ideologically divided between conservative and liberal.  We need a prophet to arise to call us to repentance---to personal righteousness and social justice.  Excellent scholars such as Nicholas Wolterstorff and Howard Snyder say that the Greek word dikaiosyne combines righteousness and justice in one word and in many cases ought to be translated as justice or righteousness/justice.  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice."  (Mt. 5:6) or "Set your mind on God's kingdom and his justice/righteousness," (Mt 6:33)

In the OT righteousness and justice are joined together like Siamese twins.  So also they should be in the NT.  Unfortunately, most English translations have separated the two so that we see the word righteousness often but seldom see the word justice.

Unless the church recaptures the holistic gospel of righteousness/justice, it has little chance of leading  this nation out of its crisis.  But a church empowered by the Holy Spirit that preaches both jesus Christ as personal Savior and the kingdom of God as justice for all, could renew itself and then the nation.

About the same time that Habits of the Heart was published, I had coined the term American Trinity to capture the same phenomenon.  I define the American Trinity which is in intense computation with the Christian Trinity as individualism, materialism and racism.  Today, 2018, I would define the American Trinity as hyper-individualism, hyper-materialism, and hyper-ethnocentrism.

Matthew Stewart in an article June, 2018 The Atlantic, asserts that America has gone from bad to worse.  It is now dominated by 10 percent of the population with the other 90 percent either stagnating or declining. Stewart says the top 10 percent, the rich, are a predatory 10 percent who have rigged the political and economic system to such an extent that the survival of our democracy is at risk.

Unfortunately, white evangelicals have no biblical social ethic, no understanding of the
kingdom of God as justice.  So they are much more a part of the problem than they are the solution.

John Lewis -- Civil Rights Movement

It is easy to overestimate how much you know about an historical event.  I consider myself fairly widely read on the Civil Rights movement, but I learned many new things as I read John R. Lewis' autobiographical account of his life and participation in the civil rights movement.  Lewis was present at the sit-ins, a founding member and later president of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), inspired by Martin Luther King and later board member of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), involved in Freedom Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, devastated by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and
Robert Kennedy in 1968 to name a few important events.

John Lewis not only give us detailed first-hand accounts (the facts), but he also gives us his interpretation of the context and significance of these events.

In the prologue Lewis states what inspired him to sacrificial living; it was an ideal larger than deliverance from race, class or gender oppression:

"That path involves nothing less than the pursuit of the most precious and pure concept I have ever known, an ideal I discovered as a young man and that has guided me like a beacon ever since, a concept called the Beloved Community. . . .it ushered me into the heart of the most meaningful and monumental movement of this American century, and. . . . it might steer us all where we deserve to go in the next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jim Lawson . . . .  and Dr. King . . . . taught [us] to believe . . . . the Beloved Community was nothing less than the Christian concept of the kingdom of God on earth."

John Lewis had a clear and compelling understanding of the kingdom of God, something Marcus Borg says is missing in most of the American church.

John Lewis, as he was growing up in rural Alabama, was highly churched; church was a central component in the Afro American community.  But church, as good and necessary as it may be, was not enough for Lewis.  He hungered for something more, something that could change the economic and social oppression around him, something that could transcend human divisions.  After hearing Martin Luther King, and after being exposed to the nonviolent but aggressive means of social change taught by Jim Lawson, Lewis found the ideal he was looking for---a clear and compelling vision of the kingdom of God, here on earth.

John Lewis provides answers to some gnawing questions many people have regarding the civil rights movement.  Why did SNCC so quickly move fro the lofty goal of loving nonviolent means to achieve justice to Black Power?  Why was SNCC at the cutting edge of social change and a major force in breaking the back of segregation in Mississippi but in a few years it faded out of existence?  Why did the civil rights movement, which was so powerful for a period of years, soon decline into insignificance?

Four assassinations play crucial roles in answering these questions; the assassinations generated a cumulative loss of faith in American society's willingness to respond justly and lovingly to the cries of the oppressed:

1. The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  Though his racial justice recored was checkered and though he often put politics ahead of justice, at times, Kennedy did what was right and provided a glimmer of hope.  In a USA Weekend poll, [Dec. 24, 1999], of the top new stories of the 20th century, Afro American voters ranked the JFK assassination as the number one story and Martin Luther King's assassination as number two; this ranking indicates the enormous loss they felt when JFK died.
2. President Lyndon Johnson's ruthless manipulation of the political process to deny the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party their seats at the Democratic National Convention in 1964.  The MFDP had played by the rules of the system, followed the political procedures to the letter of the law and still they were denied justice.  Bob Moses, a giant in the civil rights movement who lived by high principles and pursued an interracial democracy, was crushed; he vowed never again to speak to a white man, changed his name and moved to Africa.  President Johnson killed the MFDP and assassinated hope for many civil rights workers.
3. The assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968.  King was the visible leader of the civil rights movement, stood for love, justice and an interracial democracy; he was gone.  For millions hope disappeared and it was replaced by frustration and anger.  Therefore, riots exploded across the nation.
4. The assassination of Robert Kennedy as he was on the verge of becoming the Democratic nominee for President.  According to John L. Lewis, there had been a profound change in Robert Kennedy; he was now an authentic champion of racial and economic justice.  But in June, 1968, Robert Kennedy died.

Fortunately, some highly important civil rights laws had been passed during the 1960s which endured with lasting positive effects, even in the midst of the loss of hope and faith, as these visible leaders were assassinated.  And there were many grassroots leaders such as Ella Baker and John Lewis who continued the battle.

What about the role of the church?  At time, the Christian church, primarily segments of the Afro American church, came through with flying colors.  Without the support of the Afro church, the civil rights movements would never have succeeded to the degree that it did.  With an occasional exception, by and large, the Euro church failed.  For the most part, the Euro church remained neutral or actively supported the racist status quo.  It feared change rather than leading change.  Even liberals often turned out to be fair weathered friends.

Why did the Christian church so often fail to meet the test?  One answer could be a weak or incomplete theology.  John Lewis, his family, his community were church oriented.  America as a whole when compared to Europe, is highly churches.  Both Afro and Euro communities in the South were highly churched.  But, Lewis saw massive poverty and vicious ethnocentrism in the midst of a highly churched South.

What was missing?  John Lewis discovered that it was the kingdom of God---the Beloved Community.  The Christian church is supposed to incarnate the kingdom of God in the larger society.  In so doing ethnocentrism, sexism and oppression are to be exposed and replaced by reconciliation, justice and shalom.  Too often the ministry of the church takes place primarily within the four walls of the church and only in a limited fashion impacts the outside society.

Lewis was profoundly and permanently impacted by King's vision of the kingdom of God here on earth.  This vision sustained him during times of serious danger, deep disappointment and exhaustion.  It sustained him when close friends turned on him and followed different ideologies.  But those who both understood and were committed to the spiritual/social dimensions of the kingdom of God were few and far between so the glorious years of the civil rights movement soon faded.

Most readers are quite familiar with some of the successes of the civil rights movement: nonviolent, loving, aggressive demonstrations in the pursuit of human rights and social justice; President Johnson's speech on behalf of civil rights legislation; the passage of federal civil rights laws; the March on Washington and King's "I Have A Dream" speech; Freedom Summer in Mississippi, etc.  John Lewis gives us the inside story of these successes, but he also tells of failures.  The 1960s reveal both the best of America and the worst of America.  For example, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party story represents both.

In the 1960s, the Democratic Party controlled the South and it was high segregated.  So one of the aims of Freedom Summer was to get access to the political process.  This required the creation of a separate Democratic Party---The MFDP.  With the help of lawyers, all the rules were meticulously followed.  An enormous effort was put forth by hundreds of people.  As the MFDP delegation arrived in Atlantic City for the national convention, everyone was optimistic:

     How could we not prevail?  The law was on our side.  Justice was on our side.  The entire nation

     was with us.  I couldn't see how these convention seats could be kept from us. (p. 278)

Fannie Lou Hamer testified before the Credential Committee.  She detailed her own experiences:

     The savage beatings she endured in pursuit of the vote, the cruel humiliations, the violent 

     violations of her basic rights as a human being and as an American citizen. (p. 279)

The entire nation was watching this riveting testimony; victory was at hand.  But, President Johnson, the super-political, was also watching.  He saw the solid Democratic South slipping away and his election doomed if the MFDP was seated.  The President began working behind the scenes and developed a plan to deny the MFDP full representation; he offered a token two seats.  he manipulated the political process and won.

  The defeat of the MFDP left its delegates stunned.  John Lewis, who was there, comments:

     

      As far as I am concerned, this was the turning point of the civil rights movement.  I am absolutely

      convinced of that.  Until then, despite eery setback . . . . the belief still prevailed that the  

      [democratic] system would work . . . . Now, for the first time, we had made our way to the very   

      center of the system.  We had played by the rules . . . . had arrived at the doorstop and found the 

      door slammed in our face. 9pg. 282)

  There was an enormous "loss of faith [which] would . . . . extend out of the 1960s, into the '70s and 

  80s, and on up to today."

      It was a major letdown for hundreds and thousands of civil rights workers, both black and white,      

      young and old alike who had given everything they had to prove that you could work through the  

      system.  They felt cheated.  They felt robbed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  It turned many of them into 

      radicals and revolutionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  People began turning on each other.   

     The movement started turning on itself. (p. 283)

  The impact of this rejection was most profoundly felt by Bob Moses, the "Moses" of the civil rights 

  movement in Mississippi:

     

     But people like Bob Moses, people who had insisted up until then that we must incorporate white  

     into the movement, that an interracial democracy must be pursued interracially now began  

     abandoning that belief.  Atlantic City was the last straw for Moses.  This is what he had sweated 

     and suffered for, what he watched so many suffer and die for.  He had created this political party.  

     He had planed the Summer Project.  More than any other individual, he had personally steered this 

     journey.  And at the end he was shunned, slapped in the face, told in so many words that he was a 

     fool.  It was a cruel lesson for Bob Moses, one from which he never recovered.  He left Atlantic 

     City vowing never to speak to a white man again.  Within a year, he would change his name and  

     move to Africa. (p. 283)

  John Lewis said he was also "devastated".  But he refused to let himself become bitter.  "I've always   

  refuse to do that." Anger, yes, but bitterness, no.

  SNCC was divided and torn apart; a Black Power faction took over so SNCC became a separatist 

  movement.

  Ironically, at the same time the apostle of black nationalism and separatism, Malcolm X, was moving in the opposite direction.  John Lewis took a trip to Africa and accidentally met Malcolm X in Kenya.  Malcolm X talked at length about his trip to Egypt, Mecca and Africa and the profound impact of that trip upon his thinking.  Lewis comments:

     The man who sat with us in that hotel room was enthusiastic and excited . . . . He seemed very 

     hopeful.  His overwhelming reception in Africa by blacks, whites, Asians and Arabs, alike, had  

     pushed him toward believing that people could come together.

     . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

     I recall very well that he said he had been struck by how the majority of black people in Cairo    

     were light-skinned . . . . The focus among blacks in America on the shading of skin, on race, was 

     misdirected, he said.  He talked about the need to shift our focus, both among one another and 

     between us and the white community from race to class. (p. 287)

Back in the US, in connection with the Selma violence, President Johnson made the "strongest speech any American president has ever made on civil rights."  President Johnson had moved from crass political manipulation to deny equal rights to the MFDP to becoming a vigorous supporter of the 1965 Voting rights Act and the architect of the War on Poverty.   Unfortunately, the War on Poverty turned out to be only a skirmish because the war in Vietnam took precedence, a war that both King and Lewis opposed.

Fast forward to 1968.  In April, Martin Luther Kings was assassinated.  King had introduced Lewis to the kingdom of God as the answer to social problems.  Even through times of disagreement, Lewis never deserted King.  Lewis served on the SCLC board of directors and was still on the board at the time of King's death.  King's untimely death was another terrific blow to those who had faith that America was becoming more just.

AT this same time, Robert Kennedy was running for the presidency.  As attorney general under JFK, Robert had been a reluctant supporter of civil rights.  But over time, he had had a conversation to economic and social justice.  Lewis believed that this was genuine conversation [I had always been skeptical until I read Lewis].  So Lewis joined Robert Kennedy's political team.

John Lewis was with Robert Kennedy when Martin Luther Kings was shot.  Kennedy spoke extemporaneously with deep conviction.  He urged the nation to put aside distrust, bitterness and hatred and to rededicate ourselves to living out King's ideals of compassion, love and justice.  The speech is printed in Lewis' book.

In June, as he was on the verge of winning her Democratic nomination, Robert Kennedy was assassinated.  Lewis describes his reaction:

     I sleepwalked through the next few weeks, wondering if I could ever put my belief and faith and 

     trust in someone again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we lost something with the death of those two 

     leaders that year . . . . that as a nation we will never recover. (p. 397)

But in August Lewis began to move forward again, inspired in part by a statement made by
Robert Kennedy:

     Some men [people] see things as they are and say, Why?"
     I dream things that never were and say, "Why not?" (p. 401]

Toward the end of the book, Lewis described the New South, the "remarkable progress" that had been made due to the civil rights movement.

Lewis had personal reservations about the election of Jimmy Carter, but he was overjoyed "that the hands that picked cotton had now picked a president."

In 1986, Lewis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.  He has been reelected five times.  So these last 12 years Lewis has been attempting to live out his high principles in the rough and tumble politics of Washington.  He is still devoted to "the principles of nonviolence, social action and a truly interracial democracy."  He keeps in touch with poor communities.

     I go home to Atlanta almost every weekend . . . . I see the homeless, the drugs and
     the despondency.  It is real, it is pervasive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     The path that remains to lead us to the Beloved Community is no longer racial
      alone . . . . [There are now] divisions and canyons created by class. (p. 460)

John Lewis' own life provides a glimmer of hope in the midst of continuing serious problems.  John was born in extreme poverty in a highly segregated community.  New he is an influential, well-educated, politician/statesperson in Washington.  John Lewis has never given up his ideals; he has continued the struggle against all odds.  Now thousands of Christians need to join in and complete the task.  Much remains to be done; the task will take enormous effort and deep commitment.  We will need a clear and compelling vision of the kingdom of God to motivate and sustain us.



More excerpts from Walking With the Wind:

"The Community Organization Project was aimed at establishing cooperative, credit unions and community development groups in rural and urban neighborhoods in towns and cities throughout the Deep South.  This was grassroots work, very much in keeping with the War on Poverty.  My partner was a young, energetic white man from North Caroline named Al Ulmer, a former SRC staffer who now worked for the agency as a consultant.  He had not been involved in the civil rights movement, but he had spent time in the Peace Corps, and he was a big believer in community organizing from the bottom up, a big believer in the concept of self-help." (p.380)

"We traveled all over the South, Al and I, into little towns and farming areas, many of the same places I'd spent time in during the first half of the decade.  Selma, Greenwood, Americus--they were the same, but they were different now, too.  No marching, no battalions of troopers, no press.  The press had moved north now, following the movement and the action into the cities.  The "revolution," riots, Black Panthers, campus unrest, Vietnam--these were the big stories now.  The civil rights movement was old news.  There were no more stories down south, at least not the kinds of stories that make front-page headlines." (pgs. 380-381)

"Little towns like McComb and Rujeville and Andalusia had problems now that wouldn't be helped by marching or singing.  The people living there could finally vote, but other needs--food and shelter and jobs--were wanting.  My job was about helping these people join together, helping them help one another to fill those needs.  It was about showing people how to pool what money they had to forma bank of their own, a credit union.  Or how to band together to buy groceries, or feed, or seed, in bulk amounts at low prices--how to form cooperatives." (p. 381)

     "Sweet potato cooperatives."
     "Okra cooperatives."

     "Hog cooperatives." (p. 381)

"We even helped organize quilting cooperative, where farmers' wives made quilts and sold them all over the country, then used the money to buy a refrigerator for one family, or a stove for another, or a washing machine." (p. 381)

"This was hands-on-work, and I loved it.  I felt at home again, literally.  Once again, I was often sleeping in the homes of families who would invite me to spend the night--me and Al and a staff member named Charles Prejean, who accompanied us unmanly of our trips.  More than once the three of us would bunk down in a back room of a small shotgun home, sometimes with two of us sharing the same bed.  Or we'd stay in an empty dormitory room at a college like Tuskegee or Jackson State.  Anyplace to lay our head, and anyplace felt good." (p. 381)

"I finished my schoolwork during this time, earning my degree in philosophy from Fisk by writing a paper on the impact of the civil rights movement on organized religion in America.  My central thesis was that the movement essentially amounted to a religious phenomenon.  It was church-based, church-sanctioned; most of its members and it activities flowed through and out of the black church, in small towns and rural communities as well as urban areas." (p. 381)

"That was what the church had come to mean to me.  I felt the spirit, the hand of the Lord, the power of the Bible--all of those things--but only when they flowed through the church and out into the streets.  As long as God and His teachings were kept inside the walls of a sanctuary, as they were when I was young, the church meant next to nothing to me." (pigs. 381-382)


A final word from SNCC and John R. Lewis to the people:

     You don't have to wait until Roy Wilkins comes to town.  You don't have to wait until Martin
     Luther King comes to McComb.  You can do it yourself . . . . There is no leader as powerful as
     you, if you pull together. (p. 189)

The Jubilee as Land Reform: There Shall be no Poor Among You

John Perkins tells this story:

  Give a person a fish and she eats for a day (charity).
  Teach a person to fish and he eats for a lifetime (job training).
  That's a lie!  The crucial question is:  Who owns the pond? (ownership)

The purpose of the Sabbatical/Jubilee laws was:  "There shall be no poor among you."  The method:
stop oppression and do justice.  Traditional debt and slavery led to lifelong or even generational (children) oppression so every seven years debts were to be canceled; every seven years slaves were to be freed.  Every fifty years land was to be returned to the original family owner.  In an agricultural society every family should own their own plot of land.

  The following are examples of the practicing of some aspects of the Jubilee:

1. Nehemiah 5--from poverty and oppression to justice.
2. Jubilee 2000--a massive campaign to cancel some of Third World debt with some success.
3. General Grant--by military decree he rented freed slaves the Davis plantation to farm.  They worked hard, had a good crop and made a profit.  They started to build a community.  But, after the Civil War, as an act of reconciliation, the farm was returned to the Davis family.  This left the freed slaves out in the cold.  Freedom, but no land.  They did not own the pond--the "Forty Acres and a Mule".  Without ownership, without justice, soon what freedom they had was lost as they fell under the bondage of segregation.
4. India--after Gandhi, after Independence, the government initiated massive land reform.  As peasants were able to own their own far, great social and economic improvements followed.  Documented in Behind Mud Walls, by Wiser.
5. World War II Pacific Peace Treaty--Demanded major land reform in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, but not in the Philippines.  MacArthur was friends of the Filipino elite.
6. Early church fathers strongly opposed the Roman emphasis on private property so often abused by the rich.  They wanted the koina, [natural resources], to be used to promote koinonia.  See Ownership:  Early Christian Teaching, by Charles Avila.

Rwandan Genocide and the Church

The following quotations are from Rwanda: Why?, by John Martin, and the full article can be read in Transformation Magazine, April 1996:

"RWANDA IS WITHOUT DOUBT one of Africa's most evangelized nations.  Eight out of ten of its people claim to be Christians.  Moreover, thanks to the East African Revival, in the 1930s and a spontaneous movement of the Holy Spirit in the majority Roman Catholic Church in the 1970s, Rwanda has been held up as one of the jewels in the crown of charismatic Christianity."

"So how is it that a Christian country deeply affected by revival should have perpetrated a holocaust of ethnic purification in the same league as the former Yugoslavia?"

"There is no escape from the truth that the Christian Church as been a major player in the tragic events in Rwanda which have horrified observers throughout the world in 1994.  Churches have been the scene of massacres and church leaders have acquiesced to hideous cruelty."

"The world-wide Church should be deeply concerned: not just in their compassion for suffering on the part of its fellow human beings, but as a warning to itself.  There must have been serious inadequacies and failings in the theology and spirituality of the church in Rwanda if the East African Revival and mission legacy could prove so weak.  Other churches should take very seriously the dramatic breakdown of Christianity and evangelism under pressure."

Four basic components of the gospel:

1. the cross
2. the resurrection
3. the person and power of the Holy Spirit
4. the kingdom of God as justice--in opposition to ethnocentrism and oppression

The Puritans, Afrikaners, and White Southerners were all strong on preaching the cross and the resurrection, but weak on the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God as justice.  They all engaged in ethnocentrism and oppression.

The Rwandans were strong on the cross, the resurrection and the Holy Spirit, but weak on the kingdom of God--little biblical teaching on justice and against ethnocentrism and oppression.  Result:

near genocide.

It is dangerous to preach and practice only 2 or 3 components of the gospel.  All 4 components must be preached and practiced.

Puritans, Northern White Evangelicals, Southern White Evangelicals all had no biblical social ethic, no biblical theology of oppression, no biblical theology of New Testament justice.  A weak understanding of the kingdom of God as justice.  The Protestant Reformers had a good theology of the cross and the resurrection, a weak theology on the Holy Spirit, and a weak theology on the kingdom of God.  Pentecostals added the Holy Spirit to the cross and the resurrection, but neither the Protestant Reformers nor Pentecostals had a biblical understanding of the kingdom of God as justice that releases the oppressed.  As a result, in America, Indian genocide and African enslavement, coexisted for hundreds of years with the cross and the resurrection.  The Rwandan genocide was terrible, but lasted only a short period of time.  American-Indian genocide and African enslavement was terrible and it lasted for centuries.  

The American Church still does not understand the kingdom of God as justice that releases the oppressed.  So we have not ended systems of oppression in America, we have only redesigned them.

Is Justice a Joke?

I am at the brainstorming stage on a new book to my knowledge has never been written in the history of the Christian church, but one that is badly needed.  Key themes would be: ethnocentrism and oppression, justice, shalom and reconciliation; also the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.  While grounded in the OT, the major focus would be on the NT.  I need a black and a woman co-authors or contributors.

Working title:  Justice a Joke?

Is the promise of justice a joke, a cruel hoax? [The Message, Habakkuk, chapter one].  Is justice always the loser? [CEV].  Is justice always perverted? [RSV].  The OT prophet Habakkuk thought so.

In America, is the promise of justice a joke?  A Native American Habakkuk would likely agree that the promise is hollow.  So would an Afro American Habakkuk, a Mexican American Habakkuk, a Chinese American Habakkuk, a Japanese American Habakkuk, a Hawaiian American Habakkuk, a Filipino Habakkuk.  In spite of a large Christian presence in America, justice was far too often perverted.  Spirituality is divorced from the doing of Jubilee justice; therefore, ethnocentrism and oppression are unchecked and unchallenged so they run rampant.  But worse than this, religion is often perverted to legitimate oppression.

To Habakkuk, injustice ran so deep and so wide that it appeared to him that God had gone on a deistic vacation.  The supposedly just God was AWOL.  Habakkuk demand an answer from God.  God did answer Habakkuk [my paraphrase]:

"I will take care of this huge injustice problem in due time.  I do know what is going on; I am not sleeping on the job.  In the meantime, I have a marching order for you [and the church].  Continue to live righteously and doing justice, even in the midst of massive injustice.  Do this by faith, that in my sovereign wisdom, I will act and bring the unrepentant oppressor to judgment.  The choice for all is:
do justice or face judgment.  I, God, love justice; therefore I call my people to engage in works of justice."

Is justice a joke in these United States of America?  Unfortunately, the answer is resounding, YES!  From its colonial beginnings down to the present.  Why?  Primarily because of the catastrophic heresies in the the white evangelical church in terms of failing to preach and practice a comprehensive kingdom of God gospel with a focus on justice for the oppressed poor.  To put it simply, we have been plagued with a gospel that promotes a spirituality without justice; or a gsopel that weds spirituality and justice.  [See Isaiah 58 and its NT counterpart, The Sermon on the Mount].

You demand evidence for these strong words?

1. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has written a book on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression.
2. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has written a book on poverty who has included a chapter on the biblical teaching on oppression.
3. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has thoroughly rejusticized the NT.
4. Two Protestant spiritual giants, Jonathan Edwards and A.W. Tozer, promoted a spirituality without justice; both are social heretics.
5. The supposedly biblical Puritans paid money for the scalps of Indians; and they praised God when disease wiped out Native Americans.
6. The supposedly Christian founding fathers made Native Americans, Afro American.  Women and the poor, second-class citizens.
7. Many Christians supported the near genocide of Indians and the stealing of their land.
8. Many Christians supported the unjust Mexican American war and the settlement which took nearly half of Mexico's land.
9. A praying U.S. president conquered the Philippines, killing roughly a million Filipinos who resisted "God's will." [The Philippine Reader]

I have briefly described the rampant oppression which has characterized much of American history and the tragic results.  But what was/is the cause?  The gospel of Luke can help us with this dilemma.

In Luke, Jesus highlights the oppressed poor in his ministry, but in his teaching, Jesus spends more time identifying and confronting the religious rich as the primary cause.  For Jesus, the religious rich are THE social problem, not the poor; the poor have many problems but they are NOT THE social problem.  Based on the larger context, Jesus' "Woe to the rich" statement could well have been said, "Woe to the religious rich!"  The religious rich ran the Temple as a "den of robbers", the religious rich were condemned as a people who neglected justice and the love of God.

Justice is a joke because the religious rich are in control; these religious rich are the oppressors.  The religious rich in America co-opt the church, the only institution in America that could, if it would, release the oppressed from the grips of the rich and then do Jubilee justice.  When the church is seduced by the rich and preaches a toothless justice gospel, all hope is lost.  And then the rich oppressors praise God; their only potential opposition has been silenced.  Religious piety is only good if it is tied to Jubilee justice; this rarely happens in America and when it does, it only goes halfway.

Centuries of ethnocentrism and oppression in America have produced physical, psychological and social death on a large scale; therefor justice is a joke.  When justice is broken, people are crushed.  Systems of oppression such as mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap continue unabated.

Bibliography

*The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century by Forrest Wood, Northeastern University Press, 1990.  "The central thesis of this book is that Christianity has been fundamentally racist in its ideology, organization and practice."

*Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Oxford University Press, 2000.  Evangelicals, themselves, are preserving the racial chasm with an individualistic; theology which ignores the biblical teaching on oppression and justice, assert these two professional Christian sociologists.

*Puritans, Indians, and the Concept of Race", by G.E. Thomas in The New England Quarterly, March 1975.  "The record of Puritan attitudes, goals, and behavior in every major interaction with Indians reveals a continued harshness brutality, and ethnocentric bias which had fatal consequences for Indians as a race."  And, tragically, the Puritan example set the pattern for the rest of American history.

*Facing West:  The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building by Richard Drinnon, New American Library, 1980.  "From the first Puritan confrontation with Native Americans to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, there have been two constants in American policy and purpose.  One is a racism that perceives [all[ non-whites as at once childlike inferiors and murderous savages.  The other is a hunger for new land and economic markets over which to exert control. . . . these factors have interwoven, strengthening the other."

*The Wars of America:  Christian Views edited by Ronald Wells.  George Marsden, one of the eight professional Christian historians, declares that the American Revolution was not a just war because the British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violet revolution.  Nor were many of America's wars, yet many Christians enthusiastically supported these unjust wars.

*Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki, Penguin Books, 1989.  "A personal and social history of the thousands of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian immigrants to the U.S.  Their contributions to this country's development were immense, especially in the West and Hawaii, but they experienced disgraceful ethnocentrism and oppression."

*Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Cost of Economic Power by Gene Dattel.  "Cotton and Race in the Making of America is about money and the uses and abuse of power.  Because of its connection with race, cotton is uniquely tainted in American history. . . . Once we begin following the money trail, we realize that it leads to the heart and sole of America."

American Gestapo??

"How ICE Went Rogue", by Franklin Foer, September, 2018 The Atlantic.

This article is a must read.

"Since its 2003 creation, ICE has grown at a remarkable clip for a peacetime bureaucracy."

"ICE consistently ranks among the worst work places in the Federal government.  In 2016, the organization ranked 299th on a list of 305 agencies."

"The government doesn't have the resources to remove the nations 11 million undocumented immigrants.  But it can create circumstances, unpleasant enough, to encourage them to leave on their own."

"Where immigration is concerned, Trump has installed ideologues with a deep understanding of the law enforcement machinery they now control."

Anti-blackness or oppression?

Quotations in this article are based on a new book titled Anti-blackness and Christian Ethics.
This book is reviewed by Edward J. Blum, an American historian.  His quotations are from that review in the August 15, 2018 Christian Century:

"The term anti-blackness is relatively new.  Some think it should replace racism and white privilege as the organizing concept for addressing the mistreatment of African Americans.  For them, racism is too general and malleable, as it can be deployed to discuss any form of differential treatments based on conceptions of race.  Though white privilege draws attention to the many benefits of being deemed a white person--like the reality that I don't feel anxious when I walk by a police car--it fails to account for the horrifying treatment of those regarded as black.  White privilege keeps one person from being shot by the police, but it does not explain why other individuals are far more likely to have bullet holes riddle their bodies.  Anti-blackness clearly names the problem: the personal, cultural, social, legal, and structural attacks on people called black."

I prefer using a biblical term when possible.  Racism is not a biblical term; race is not a biblical category.

Oppression is a biblical term.  It is found 555 times in the Old Testament.  I think it is a better term than either white privilege or anti-blackness.  Oppression can include the oppressor and the oppressed.  So it could refer to the white oppressor and include white privilege as a benefit of white oppression.

Here is my paraphrase of Isaiah 10:1-2 which could be applied to the white oppressor:

"Woe [doomed to hell] are those who make oppressive laws to deprive the poor of their rights, and withhold justice from the oppressed widows and orphans."

And the oppressed are included in the biblical usage which could be applied to anti-blackness.  Biblical definitions of oppression have the following meanings: crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave, and kill.  We could also include anti-Indian, anti-Mexican, anti-Asian under the biblical concept of oppressed.

A second quotation from the review by Blum:

"Anti-blackness and Christian Ethics shows how American religion and Christianity have been creators, shapers, and legitimizers of anti-blackness."

"By pointing to the inheritance of anti-blackness, Anti-blackness and Christian Ethics is a wonderful conversation starter.  On the question of how anti-blackness can be overturned, the book has less to say.  The editors acknowledge that although 'the problems are clear, the solutions are often less so'."

Again this is where the Bible can come to our rescue.  The Bible has a clearer theology of justice and the kingdom of God.  Justice is the only way to end oppression.  The Old Testament prophets are full of justice.  Amos declares in 5:24 [The Message]: "I want justice--oceans of it."

Though not apparent in any English translation of the New Testament, any French, Spanish, or Latin translation of the New Testament contains about 100 references to justice.  So in reality, the New Testament is as justice oriented as the Old.  Though one would not know this reading the King James which has zero references to justice and the NIV which only has sixteen.

So I urge all my readers to develop considerable biblical expertise on both oppression and justice.

Black South Africa in 1987

The following excerpt is from the pen of Nicholas Wolterstorff, June 1987, The Reformed Journal.

In my opinion, Wolterstorff would get my vote for the #1 Christian scholar in the nation; he is a reformed philosopher theologian.  This quotation was stimulated by a meeting of reformed theologians in South Africa in 1987:

"The speeches of the South Africans were extraordinarily moving.  Thus, it was not abstract theology that they did.  They spoke of their wounds and of the wounds of their people, wounds to their bodies and wounds to their spirits: shootings, detentions, beatings, torture, starving, expulsions, demeaning indignities.  The speeches were also insightful.  I was reinforced in my view that Christian theology is best done in situations of crisis and suffering."

"Then, late on an afternoon, something of a totally different order happened, unplanned.  I had marveled at the confident, joyous faith of these people.  Now suddenly a crisis of faith was laid before us--the raw, bleeding flesh of a faith torn by uncertainty.  The question was not whether to continue believing in Jesus Christ.  These South Africans would not cease to believe.  The question was not whether Christ's cause of justice and freedom and peace would be victorious.  They never doubted that it would.  The question was whether Jesus would carry a gun in South Africa, to answer the millions of guns carried by Satan."

"I do not remember exactly how the issue of violence came up.  But, suddenly, there it was before us. Speaker after speaker said they had been taught by all their Christian leaders not to resort to violence.  For some of those teachers, non-violence was a matter of Christian principle.  For others, it was a matter of strategy.  What could a few revolutionary guns do in the face of millions of government guns?  And look how violence had corrupted the soul of the Afrikaner.  Who wanted to become like that?"

"This is what they had been taught.  This is what they had always believed.  But now the faith by which they had lived was being torn apart.  For they could no longer stand the sight of the suffering of their people.  In that suffering they saw nothing redemptive, only pointless pain.  A young black woman, now studying in North America, told how each night her dreams were nightmares of relocations and shootings and prisons.  She concluded by saying, in ever so soft a voice, that when she returned to South Africa, it would be to carry a gun.  Then she broke out in loud, uncontrollable sobs.  Some of the men also began weeping, more quietly, more controlled.  One walked over to put his arm around her, to console her, I thought.  But then I saw that he was weeping too."

Understanding and doing justice

Stage II --- Private Property and Land Ownership

At the end of stage one, I highly recommended Money and Power, by Jacques Ellul.  In stage two, I also highly recommend Ownership, by Charles Avila.  Avila, a Catholic priest from the Philippines, was troubled by the huge gap between the rich and poor.  Unequal land ownership seemed to be a primary factor.  So Avila decided to study the early church fathers to see what they had to say  He was surprised to find a very strong anti-private property and anti-Roman position.  Roman law allowed for almost unlimited accumulation of land.  Her is what Augustine had to say:

"Augustine lived in fourth century Roman Africa, where Roman law theory and practice of private property had led, quite naturally, to the possession by a few persons of very great wealth, at the price of the dispossession and impoverishment of very many other persons.  This theological giant of the patristic age saw the prevailing oppression, the blatant injustices perpetrated against the poor, as an assault on Christ! . . . . He argued that this legalized right was an affront . . . . to the absolute dominion and paternal providence of the Creator, who had willed all of creation to be all in common, according to each person's need. . . ."

Basil, the Great, said that land, rain and sun are koina, a part of nature to be available to all.  Koina are to be used to promote koinonia.  Ta koina (common goods) are contrasted with ta idia (one's own things).  Basil warns that one should not make private, one's own, what should be public, for the common good.  Further, Basil warns:  "The private appropriation of the koina, such as land, is robbery.  Hence, continued excessive landownership is but fresh and continued theft."

It sounds like the Church fathers had something in common with the church described in the book of Acts (4:32-35):

"All the believers were one in heart and mind.  No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. . . . There were no needy persons among them.  For from time to time, those who owned land or houses, sold them, bought the money from the sales and put it at the apostle's feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

Principles of justice, concern for the poor, must control the possession and use of private property.  If this does not happen, appeal to the right of private property (beyond a house to live and a farm to provide a livelihood), can be misused to create systems of socioeconomic oppression.

At the time these United States were founded, there was an attempt to add a sixteenth article to the Bill of Rights which would have restricted concentrated ownership of land.  This is how the proposal was stated:

"An Enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and Destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind, and therefore, every free State hath a right by its laws to discourage the Possession of Such Property."

The founding fathers were a white, male, rich, propertied elite who benefited from concentrated ownership so it is not surprising that this article was defeated.  The defeat of the sixteenth article may have a tie to our current financial/economic crisis.  There was too much sand in the foundation of our current financial/economic system.  According to the experts, it would have all collapsed in 2007-08 if the Federal Reserve System had not stepped in with massive, and probably some illegal, rescue efforts.  Looking back, it appears that we should have let the existing financial/economic system collapse, as catastrophic as that would have been for most American, including myself.

Already much of Wall Street and many corporations are back making big profits while much of Main Street is struggling with high unemployment.  We need a new financial/economic system with the power of corporations and Wall Street severely constrained.

The family farm which is fast disappearing needs to be revived.  Small businesses which are being battered by the Walmart's of the world need protection.  Cooperatives should replace most of the modern corporations.

Jacques Ellul and Charles Avila have already outlined the principles of a more humane and just economic system.  Now we need some of the scholars at our Christian universities to provide a blueprint on how to build this new economic system.  In my humble opinion, our current financial/economic system is still fragile and will likely collapse in two to five years.  We need to be ready with plans to rebuild.

I am reminded of Jeremiah six where he says:  "From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain."  And tragically, in the midst of this combination of idolatry, oppression and greed, the people preferred the teaching of the false prophets.  And we all know the end result; all of the above were sent into exile.

Stage III ---  The Spirit, the Kingdom and Justice

We, as evangelicals, need to blend a John 3:16 gospel with a Luke 4:18-19 gospel: a two-pronged gospel.  John 3:16 is a personal-sin, personal-salvation gospel based on the cross and resurrection.  Luke 4:18-19 is a Spirit/Kingdom gospel concerned about justice for the poor and oppressed.  A complete, holistic gospel combines justification by faith and justice for the poor.

Luke 4:18-19, a neglected Scripture in most evangelical circles, is a quotation from Isaiah 61.  Tied to other Messianic passages from Isaiah (9:7-8; 11:1-4; 16:5;28:16-17;42:1-4; 61:1-4, a supporting scripture: 10:1-2), we glean a clear grasp of Isaiah's understanding of the nature of the coming Messianic kingdom.  What we call the kingdom of God in the New Testament has three characteristics: the Spirit, the kingdom, and justice for the poor.

Read and reread these Messianic passages in the NIV.  Memorize some or even all of them.  Saturate your thinking with these truths.  Then bring these truths with you into the New Testament and they will transform your understanding of the kingdom of God.  Here is my paraphrase of Isaiah 61:1-4:

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
  because the Lord has anointed me to preach
  good news to the poor,
  to proclaim freedom and release by practicing
  Jubilee justice for the poor.

  To bestow on the poor
  a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
  the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
  a garment of praise instead
  of a spirit of despair.

  These transformed poor will be called
  oaks of righteousness or trees of justice.

  These transformed poor will rebuild
  the ruined cities."  (Noble paraphrase)

In Luke 4:18-19, we find four key concepts: the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice.  As you read Acts 1:1-8, in which there are two themes---the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God---bring the truths from the Messianic passages and Luke 4:18-19 with you.  Then Paul sums all of this up beautifully and concisely in Romans 14:17, one of the most overlooked passages in the Bible.  My paraphrase of Romans 14:17 is as follows: "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit."  Note how the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God are tied together, and how justice and shalom are an integral part of this package.

Stage IV --- Justice

Stop.  If you are reading an English translation of the Bible, put it down.  If you are reading the KJV, throw it out. Instead, learn to read the Bible in either Spanish or French or Latin, or any of the Romance languages.  Even German or Dutch are better than English.  In these languages, the justice message comes through loud and clear, but, by comparison, only weakly so in English.  In the RSV, the NIV or NKJV, you will find the word justice from 125 to 134 times.  In a Spanish, French or Latin translation, justice occurs from 350 to 400 times, about three times as often.  If you translate the Bible from Spanish to English, suddenly you will find justice in Romans; of course, in English translations, dikaiosune is usually translated righteousness.

The old KJV was much worse than our modern English translations.  In the KJV, there is no reference to justice in the New Testament, and justice is rarely found in the Old Testament.  KJV translators translated mishap as justice only once; most of the time mishap as justice about 100 times.  The KJV translated sedaqah as justice (correctly) many times, but the KJV was a disaster in terms of communicating the biblical concept of justice widely and correctly.  So, for centuries, the English-speaking world was cursed with an inferior translation of the all-important concept of justice.  Probably this is a primary reason for evangelicals being justice deficient.  For scholarly documentation of the above charges, see chapter 14, "Justice and/or Righteousness," by Steven Both in the book entitled, The Challenge of Bible Translation.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, a brilliant Reformed philosopher/theologian, asserts that translators of classical Greek into English almost always translate dikaiosune as justice, not righteousness as New Testament translators into English are wrong because they put the strong justice message of the Bible.  See his recent book entitled, Justice, for four chapters that specifically address the biblical perspective.

Joseph Grassi, a Roman Catholic bible scholar, in his book informing the Future:  Social Justice in the New Testament, has a chapter on the gospel of Matthew which he call Matthew:  the gospel of Justice.  Grass is dogmatic in asserting that dikaiosune should be translated justice in the
Sermon on the Mount.  If so, then there would be two major themes in the Sermon, the kingdom of God and justice.  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice . . . ."  Or "Seek first the kingdom and its justice . . . ."

When we combine the theological failure to expound on the large biblical teaching on oppression, with the translation failure on justice, we find an explanation for the white, American evangelical failure to understand and act on socioeconomic systems of oppression and social justice.  Given the above sad state of affairs, it is not surprising that when Karen Lebacqz did her Harvard dissertation on Six Theories of Justice, she discovered that the best western scholars on justice were severely deficient in their understanding of justice and injustice.

The door is wide open for some bright, young, evangelical bible scholar to write what could be the single most important biblical treatise since the book of Romans --- the definitive work on the
Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God and justice for the poor and oppressed.

Stage V --- Biblical Solutions

We need a few bible scholars who will think in a multifaceted, comprehensive fashion to address the complex problems.  Recently, I read a brilliant book on being filled with the Spirit.  It reflected aid-ranging scholarship, but it was narrowly conceived; not much relating the Holy Spirit to the kingdom of God and justice.

I suggest that we need some in-depth scholarly work on Luke 4:18-19 tying the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice together.  These verses also imply that the rich, the oppressors, shalom and the kingdom of God must also be included.  Because Luke 4:18-19 have not been central to the Americanized  gospel that has been preached in America, ethnocentrism and oppression have largely been unchallenged.  For example, Blacks have suffered under three systems of oppression in America: slavery, segregation, and now massive incarceration.  The abolitionist and civil rights movements temporarily solved the problem, but soon the oppressors reorganized and redesigned a new system of oppression.  Because the evangelical church did not have a comprehensive theology of society to guide, it did not recognize the new system of oppression, or even worse, often condoned it. Today the evangelical church is largely silent about the horror of mass incarceration even though it has been going on for almost 30 years.  Our biblical theology in the areas of ethnocentrism and oppression is bankrupt.  We need an evangelical think tank, a crisis response, to adores these issues immediately.

One of the projects the think tank needs to tackle is replacing the American trinity with community, sharing and reconciliation.  for a scholarly critique of American trinity, especially the individualism part, see The Kingdom Revisited: An Essay on Christian Social Ethics (1981), by Charles Kammer.
Hammer believes that the modern Western world, especially the United States is in a state of crisis in many ways (economically, socially and politically).  [Noble: Things are much worse today (2010) than they were in (1981.]  The heart of this crisis, however, is a moral crisis.  Negatively, Kammer asserts, it is "a misconceived individualism" which views society only as a negative factor impeding individual progress.  Positively, Kammer shows how the sociology of Emile Durkheim and the Christian concept of the kingdom of God can be used to bring back a balance between the individual and the society.

Stage VI -- How does he American evangelical church operationalize Luke 4:18-19 today?  This will be incredibly difficult because, for themes part, white American evangelicals are blind to they own massive social sins.  I suggest four steps:
*Admit, identify, specify the social sins.
*Confess those social evils.
*Repent of these social sins.
*Restore, do justice.

It will be very difficult to even get started with the admit stage, because evangelicals are very self-righteous in the area of social evil.  We are experts at identifying the evils of others, such as homosexuals and abortionists, but blind to our own sins of ethnocentrism and oppression.  We are highly skilled at rationalizing, even Christianizing, them away.  We do not see that injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just.  We as white evangelicals are usually not Klan type bigots, but most of us rather quietly, but deeply, assume that we know best, we are superior.  Whether consciously spoken or not, this implies that Blacks are inferior; their problems are largely self-imposed, not the results of systems of oppression created and maintained by us.  So there is nothing for us to confess, to repent of.  Everything is stopped before it can get started.

Is there any way to break the impasse?  I know of only one way.  Somehow expose evangelicals to the HORROR OF OPPRESSION.  How?  Four possible ways to come to mind: 1) Engage is a serious bible study of at least 50 of the 128 verses on oppression; discover how oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills persons created in the image of God;
2) read a book like the New Jim Crow which describes the devastation and damage being done by the massive incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males; 3) go see with your own eyes a current system of oppression, but have a person from the oppressed community interpret what you are seeing;
4) then come and see me and I will show you how our historical past of extensive ethnocentrism and oppression haunts our sociological present.

If the Holy Spirit cannot break through to you, using the HORROR OF OPPRESSION, you are a hopeless case.  Enjoy the present, because the fires of hell will soon singe you, burning the less off your bones.

May I cite an example?  The War on Drugs was started in 1982.  Whites created the War; Whites financed the War; Whites operationalized the War; Whites built the prisons.  The War on Drugs has targeted young Black and Hispanic males.  White evangelicals never organized to stop the evil, oppressive War on Drugs.  I assume most of us approved of it.

Who do we organize to change things?  The church?  The Christian liberal arts colleges and universities?  The seminaries?  In some ways all of the above have been a part of the problem throughout the history of America and still are today.  If so, how can they become a part of the solution?

Are white racists stupid, not superior?

Did God create whites with a few extra stupid genes?  Whites DESCRIBE blacks as inferior, yet  DEFINE blacks in such a way as to multiply their numbers by millions.  Why not proclaim all superior white genes as their own and multiply the number of superior whites by millions?

Is it really true that only a few drops of black blood could counter 99 percent white genes and make one black?  Are black genes that strong and white genes that weak?

Are whites obsessed with race?  I once taught a class titled,  Racial and Cultural Minorities.  One of my students insisted that Jews were a race; after all, everyone had to have a race--even though a visiting Rabbi insisted that Jews, as a people, were a culture, a religion, not a racial group.

Does this white stupidity lead to an irrational white fear of blacks?  To separation, to segregation, even segregated churches?

Eccl 10:2: "Stupid thinking leads to wrong living."

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin's life and musical ministry was anchored in her black church base so her musical ministry must be interpreted in this light.  Even her title, The Queen of Soul, must be understood from the black church tradition.

Soul has two components: agony from oppression and the healing from trauma.  Black women were doubly oppressed by racism and sexism.  Healing from trauma was captured in her two famous ethical anthems: "Natural Woman" & "Respect".

Franklin, herself, experienced both racism and sexism.  She had the courage, musical skills, and the intelligence to forthrightly express these issues in her songs.

Music can heal some of the trauma, but only justice can end the oppression.

Will white Christians have the same courage and intelligence to repent, restitute, and repair (do justice)?  White Christians could do justice that would end oppression, but so far, white privilege has been more important than ending oppression.

President Obama's tribute to Franklin is the most eloquent and insightful I have read.

Oppression-caused damage

The following quotation is from Freedom Song, by Mary King, pg 170:

"The Wretched of the Earth changed me and modified SNCC.  There was one inescapable conclusion from exposure to Fanon.  The most important innovations were not necessarily external but had to take place internally--in the self-concept of black people."

John Lewis, Civil Rights leader

John Lewis was well known for his fearless Civil Rights protest, but there was much more to his ministry.

The following quotation comes from John Lewis' book, Walking with the Wind, pg 381:

"Many of the same placed I'd spent time in during the first half of the decade.  Selma, Greenwood, Americas--they were the same, but they were different now, too.  No marching, no battalions of troopers, no press.  The press had moved north now, following the movement and the action and the cities.  The "revolution," riots, Black Panthers, campus unrest, Vietnam--these were the big stories now.  The civil rights movement was old news.  There were no more stories down south, at least not the kinds of stories that make front-page headlines."

"Little town like McComb and Rujeville, and Andalusia had problems now that wouldn't be helped by marching or singing.  The people living there could finally vote, but other needs--food and shelter and jobs--were wanting.  My job was about helping these people join together, helping them help one another to fill those needs.  It was about showing people how to pool what money they had to form a bank of their own, a credit union.  Or how to band together to buy groceries, or fee, or see, in bulk amounts at low prices--how to form cooperative."

"I finished my schoolwork during this time, earning my degree in philosophy from Fisk by writing a paper on the impact of the civil rights movement on organized religion in America.  My central thesis was that the movement essentially amounted to a religion phenomenon.  It was church-based, church-sanctioned; most of its members and tis activities flowed through and out of the black church, in small towns and rural communities as well as urban areas."

"That was what the church had come to mean to me.  I felt the spirit, the hand of the Lord, the power of the Bible--all of those things--but only when they flowed through the church and out into the streets.  As long as God and His teachings were kept inside the walls of a sanctuary, as they were when I was young, the church meant next to nothing to me."

"My work, my commitment to community, had become my church, both during the movement and now, as I was making my way on my own."

Two types of Indigenous Leadership Needed

We need two types of Christian indigenous leadership.  One kind of indigenous leadership should come from poor and oppressed communities and it would give leadership in the rebuilding of these poor communties.  John Perkins serves as a model for this type of indigenous leadership.

Another kind of indigenous leadership should come from the rich and oppressor communities, especially the evangelicals in these communities.  They should identify the existing systems of oppression and then lead in the dismantling of these systems of oppression.  Then they should create just alternatives to the systems of oppression.  William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson serve as models for this type of indigenous leadership.  They, and their British colleagues, abolished the slave trade and then slavery in the British empire.

Ideally, both types of indigenous leadership would exist at the same time and they would cooperate with each other.  It is not right to expect the indigenous leadership from poor communities to also provide the leadership to dismantle the systems of oppression.  The people who "made the mess," i.e., those who created, funded and operationalized the system should "clean up the mess," i.e., the evangelical leaders from within the oppressor communities should lead the dismantling of the system of oppression.

Every graduate of every Christian liberal arts college, university and seminary should be taught at least in rudimentary fashion, how to identify a system of oppression and how to dismantle such systems; also strategies for creating just alternatives.  For the most part, this has not happened.  So what has taken place in American history in the presence of millions of evangelicals?

As a nation, we have moved from slavery (roughly 1660-1865) to legal segregation
(roughly 1875-1965) to the massive incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males (1982-20??).  The abolitionist and civil rights movements accomplished much, for a while; they provided, historically, a short burst of freedom and a degree of justice, but tragically, rather quickly, each time the oppressors cleverly redesigned a new system of oppression, according to Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow (2010), the mass incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males has produced a new racial caste system, a redesigned system of oppression as damaging as were slavery and segregation.

Most of the evangelical church is not even aware that this new Jim Crow exists.  Evangelicals have not yet led an aggressive and sustained movement to abolish this current racial caste system.  Many evangelicals, possibly most, may even believe that this mass incarceration of Blacks is a good and necessary thing because Blacks are supposedly drug prone and unusually criminal.

Where is the white evangelical indigenous leadership on this issue?  Why are we so blind, ignorant, uninvolved or even endorsing the current system of oppression?  Is it because we do not understand nor practice the rather large biblical teaching on oppression and justice?  If we believe the Bible is inspired from cover to cover, why has this happened?

Because of our ignorance and uninvolvement, millions (31 million since 1982) of our fellow human beings created in the image of God are being crushed, humiliated, animalized, impoverished, imprisoned and even killed while we stand idly by.  Don't we know?  Don't we care?

Now through the eyes of Kristof and WuDunn (Half the Sky, 2009, pp. 234-6), I would like to examine the remarkable British effort led by Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, white evangelicals who led the effort to abolish both the slave trade and slavery in the British empire.

I could label this section of the essay, "The British; the Good, the Bad and the Ugly."  The major focus of this section will be upon the good, but first let's put the good in the context of some bad and very ugly.  This makes the good even more remarkable.

In the late 1500s, the British who had been nibbling away on Ireland for centuries, moved aggressively and brutally to invade, conquer and colonize Ireland.  Though of the same race, the British combined a vicious blend of religion ethnocentrism and oppression to dehumanize the Irish.

Shortly thereafter, the brutal British began invading, conquering and colonizing the eastern seaboard of America.  In addition to the Protestant religion, the colonizers brought with them lock-stock-and-barrel, the same combination of ethnocentrism (supposed Anglo-Saxon superiority) and acts of oppression.  This "God-sanctified" ethnocentrism and oppression dominated and legitimated the westward expansion of these United States.  My friend, Lee Harper, summarizes American history in one concise sentence:
"For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just."

In the midst of all of this evil spewing forth from England, including heavy involvement in the slave trade and slavery in their colonies in the West Indies, something remarkable happened.  A surge of morality, inspired by the Holy Spirit and spawned in large part by the Methodist Revolution of the 1700s, overcame the considerable political and especially the economic vested interests in the slave trade.  Now Kristof and WuDunn speak:

"In the early 1780s, slavery was an unquestioned part of the global landscape--and then, astonishingly, within a decade, [the abolishment] of slavery was at the top of the British national agenda.  The tide turned, and the British banned the slave trade in 1807 and in 1833 became one of the first nations to emancipate its own slaves."

"For more than half a century, the British public bore tremendous costs for their moral leadership.  On the eve of the British abolition of slave-trading, British ships carried 52 percent of the slaves transported across the Atlantic, and British colonies produced 55 percent of the world's sugar.  Without new slaves, the British colonies in the New World were devastated, and Britain's great enemy, France, benefited enormously.  So did the United States.  Sugar production in the British West Indies fell 25 percent in the first thirty-five years after Britain's abolition of the slave trade, while production in competing slave economies rose by 210 percent."

For the British, the effort to abolish the slave trade and slavery was much more than a side issue.  Kristof and McDunn document the considerable cost to the British in both lives and treasure.

"The British navy led the way in trying to suppress the slave trade in the Atlantic and within Africa itself.  This led to the loss of some five thousand British, plus higher taxes for the British people.........for sixty years Britain sacrificed an annual average of 1.8 percentage points of its GNP because of its moral commitment to ending slavery.  That is an astonishing total, cumulatively amounting to more than an entire year's GNP for Great Britain (for the United States today, it would be the equivalent of sacrificing more than $14 trillion), a significant and sustained sacrifice in the British standard of living.  It was a heroic example of a nation placing its values above its interests."

Thomas Clarkson, who was was important as Wilberforce in the effort to abolish slavery and the slave trade, did a research paper on slavery as a college student.  What he discovered horrified him and he became an abolitionist for the rest of his life.  This experience was much more than a passing, one-day, reaction of horror, then back to his normal daily routine of life the next day.

Clarkson became a leader in an enormous grassroots campaign.  He, himself, traveled 35,000 miles on horseback all over Britain to organize the common person to take a stand against slavery.  An ex-slave, Olaudah Equino, lectured all over Britain on a five-year book tour.  300,000 person boycotted sugar.  Huge numbers signed a petition asking parliament to abolish the slave trade.

We need some white evangelical indigenous leaders to lead a similar effort in the US against the current system of injustice---the massive incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males.  Are there  any Clarksons or Wilberforces in our midst?

Occasionally, the American church has produced fragments of justice.  But, in the midst of oceans of oppression (a 25-1 Black-Whie incarceration ratio and a 20-1 racial wealth gap), fragments of justice are not enough.  What does God want?  God, speaking through his prophet Amos (The Message) thundered: "I WANT JUSTICE---OCEANS OF IT."

How the rich got richer

Two books and two articles, all essentially tell the same story.  How the rich in America got richer.
The two books are, the 1990 book by Kevin Phillips, The politics of the Rich and Poor, the story of the Reagan years.  The second book, the 2010 book by Hacker N. Pierson, titled Winner Take all Politics:
how Washington made the rich richer -- and turned its back on the middle class.

The first article is by Matthew Stewart published in The Atlantic magazine, June, 2018, in which Stewart writes about the top 10 percent in America, and how they created a predatory taxation system and a predatory government spending system which favored the rich.

And the last article by Derrick Jackson was published in the September 3rd, 2001 South King County Journal.

Anthony Robinson reviewed the book Winner take all politics in the March 8, 2011 Christian Century.  Robinson's review was titled, How the rich got richer.  So the following quotations are from  Winner Take all Politics:

The first quotation: "Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson tell a story that is at once familiar and unfamiliar.  The familiar part is that over the past 30 years inequality in both wealth and income has grown dramatically in the United States."

"Since the last 1970s the wealthiest 1 percent of the nation's population has pocketed more than
35 percent of the real national income growth, which is more than the bottom 90 percent of the population combined. . . . "

The second quotation:  "The less familiar part of the narrative is about how this inequality came about.  Hacker and Pierson trace the story of a 'thirty-year war' that began, unexpectedly, in the Carter years. . . .

The third quotation:  "Rather, it was the result of government policy. . . ."

The fourth quotation:  "Since the late 1970s business and corporate interest have fought successfully for lower tax rates, especially for the most affluent; deregulation of financial markets and executive pay; and erosion of the powers of countervailing groups--labor unions chief among them. . . ."

The fifth quotation:  "The balance of their readable book tells the story of the 30-year war: the tremendous growth in conservative PACs, think tanks and advocacy groups; the huge sums of money raised to support the agenda of tax cuts; the growing radicalization of the Republican Party; and the role of the Democratic Party, which pretty much went with the cash flow, sometimes actively, sometimes passively. . . ."

The sixth quotation:  "This decline of a stable and secure middle class, which once carried the freight for civil society, is the real story of the last 30 to 40 years of the U.S. . . . ."

The seventh quotation: "Does religion figure in the story?  Hacker and Pierson's only explicit discussion of religion relates to the growing role of the Christian right, which moved evangelical Christian voters into political activism for the Republicans.  This is a crucial bloc that has voted, at least sometime, more on the basis of cultural values than economical self-interest."

I would add that white evangelicals never have had a biblical social ethic or a biblical social--economic ethic.

So neither civic institutions, nor labor unions, nor the democratic party, nor the church could withstand the political, economic power of the rich.  This all happened prior to the rise of Trump; in fact, in prepared the way for Trump's improbable success.

This next article is about justice and wages, more specifically, minimum wage and the living wage, by Lowell Noble:

These United States have an economic system that generates enormous wealth --  a ten trillion dollar economy.  Yet we have millions of poor people including many working poor and working near poor. In a wealthy nation does not every working person deserve a living wage that will provide the necessities of life for her/his family?

First some economic facts reported by Derrick Jackson in the South King County Journal, Sept 3, 2001:

          1.  "If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace of American productivity since 1968, it would be $13.80 and hour," not the current $5.15 federal minimum wage."

          2.  "If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace as domestic profits since 1958, it would be $13.02."

          3.  "If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace as profits in the retail industry, it would be $20.46.  Nearly half of all workers in the retail industry make less than $8 an hour."

          4.  "If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace as executive pay since 1990, it would be $25.50 an hour."

          5.  "If the average pay for production workers had risen at the same level as CEO pay since 1990, the annual salary would be $120,491, not $24,668."

          6.  "The wealthiest 1 percent control about 38 percent of America's wealth."  "The bottom
80 percent control 17 percent of America's wealth."

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the average American family needs $33,551 to meet its basic needs -- a living wage.  The federal government says that a family of two adults and two children needs $17,500 a year to stay out of poverty.

60 US cities and counties have passed living wage laws to move low-wage workers out of poverty into sufficiency.  After Chicago passed its living wage law, Diane Cunningham, a home health aide, was able to purchase a house with her increased income.  Justice requires that every working person deserves a decent wage.

I urge you to only to support increases in the minimum wage, but also any effort in your city or county to require a living wage.  Workers deserve it and our economy can afford it.  In fact, providing all workers with a living wage would stimulate our economy which would be good for us all.

Jubilee Justice, Part 2: Restoring Economic Justice

The Sabbatical year and the Jubilee year had the same basic purpose:  to give person access to the resources required to provide the necessities of life.

Sabbatical

The following Scriptural quotations are highlights from Deut. 15 whose basic principle is that, "At the end of every seven years, you must cancel debts."  [RSV "grant a release;" RSV uses the word release five times in this chapter.]  The ideal was that there "should be no poor among you."  There would not be if "you fully obey the Lord your God," because then "he will richly bless you."

However, because of the damage of sin, there will be some poor people.  "If there is a poor man among your brothers freely lend him whatever he needs. . . . Give generously. . . . Supply him liberally. . . . Give to him as the Lord your God has blessed you."

The message is:  economic justice requires the periodic canceling of debts and generous giving to those in need.  Could an economic system really work if the principle of grace is applied?  Is grace key to justice?

Jubliee

The following Scriptural quotations are highlights from Lev. 25: "Count off seven sabbaths of years. . . . Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land. . . . It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property. . . . The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine. . . . But if he does not acquire the means to repay him, what he sold will remain in the possession of the buyer until the Year of Jubilee.  It will be returned in the Jubilee, and he can then go back to his property."

Then there follows three sets of instructions regarding the different circumstances under which "one of your countrymen become poor:"  1) lend money without interest and sell food at cost,  2) hire him as a hired worker, not as a slave,  3) the poor Jew retains these same rights if hired out to a non-Jew.

Three times (25:43, 46 and 53) the people are warned not to take advantage of the powerless poor and oppress them--"rule over them ruthlessly. . . ."

Again, the economic principle of the Jubilee is grace.  Grace is one key to economic justice.

Perry Yoder, under the statement, "By seeking justice for the needy, biblical law is an instrument for shalom," wrote:

                         These laws were a type of economic reform legislation to redistribute the 

                         capital resources of the community so they would not become concentrated

                         in the hand of a few. . . . two resources are to be redistributed: land and money.

Donald Kraybill summarizes the purposes of the Sabbatical/Jubilee years as follows:

                        Their religious practices, however, turned social life upside-down. . . .

                         Land was given a vacation. . . . Slaves were release. . . . Debts were 

                         erased. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

                         As God's social blueprint for his people, the Jubilee dream put its finger on the three    

                         major factors which generate socioeconomic inequality.  Control of land represents                

                         access to natural resources.  Ownership of slaves symbolized the human labor 

                         necessary for production.  Borrowing and lending money points to the management

                         of capital and credit.  The use of these three factors -- natural resources, human

                         resources, and financial capital are the keys to determining the amount of inequity

                         in any society. . . . 

It is clear that the religion-economic principles of the Jubilee were not minor cosmetic adjustments to the economic system, but instead they were a major overhaul.  Jubilee type justice is crucial to dealing with rich-poor issues.

So Jesus was not speaking idle, casual words when he read from Isaiah 61 and said he had come to minister to the poor and oppressed and to proclaim a Jubilee type of justice for them.  This good news for the oppressed poor was also bad news for most of the rich of that time.  Throughout much of the rest of the gospel of Luke, Jesus scorches the rich as symbolized by this statement from Luke 6:24:

"Woe to the rich. . . ."  For Luke the poor had problems, but the rich were the social problem.  They had monopolistic control over the resources and wealth leaving the masses poor.  Much of this was legitimated by the religio-politico-economic elite in Jerusalem.  They were part and parcel of the massive system of oppression.  

To what extent is the American economic system similar to the Jewish economic system at the time of Christ?  Do our Christian leader legitimate a system of economic oppression as the Jewish leader did?  How does the American economic system measure up to Jubilee principles?

Kevin Phillips is a respected, veteran political analyst with a conservative Republican perspective; he worked for Ronald Reagan.  But in the 1990s, Phillips has become a vocal critic of a politics, a public policy, that favors the rich.  He wrote a book on the issue The Politics of Rich and Poor, and as a commentator on National Public Radio he has again and again sharply critiqued the growing gap between the rich and poor.

In The Politics of Rich and Poor, Phillips states:

           that the 1980s had been a decade of fabulous wealth accumulation by the richest Americans 

           while many others stagnated or declined; that the 1980s were, in fact, the third such capitalist

           and conservative heyday over the last century or so;

Philips argues that trickle-down economics was not working; during the Reagan era both billionaires and the homeless grew in number.  At times, the excessive growth in wealth was aided by public policy.  Since then, Phillips has argued that for the most part, the Clinton administration has continued policies that favor the rich; as a result, the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow.

Are biblical principles relevant to modern economic systems?  Can efficiency and profit mix with justice and grace?  Could Jubilee principles be applied in a non-Christian setting?  YES!!!  We have some 20th century historical examples to prove it:

As a part of the WWII Peace Treaty in the Pacific region, Russia, America, and other nations approved comprehensive land reform programs in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.  Previously in each of these countries a small number of landlords owned most of the agricultural land.  They were required by the treaty to divest themselves of almost all of their land.  Then the governments made this land available for purchase by the landless peasants.  These peasants, now owners of the land, soon increased production and this just economic base laid the foundation for future national economic growth in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

It was the Russians, the atheistic Communists who pushed hardest for land reform that was much like the OT Jubilee land reform.  The Americans grudgingly went along with the Russian demand.  The American preferred the capitalist landlord status quo over what they thought was a socialist idea.  So supposedly Christian America did not fully support the biblical land reform solution. 

Much the same happened in parts of India after India gained its independence in the late 1940s.  Comprehensive land reform became public policy making it possible for landless peasants to own their own land.  Government extension agents aided the farmers and again production soared and the previously dirt poor farmers began to prosper.

General MacArthur refused to push for comprehensive land reform in the Philippines after WWII because he was friends of the Filipino elite.  As a result of this failure, Filipino society has often been torn by civil war largely fueled by a poor peasantry wanting access to their own land.

Sabbatical/Jubilee principles of justice are good economic and public policy.  If properly implemented, not only the poor but also the total society can benefit and prosper and live in relative peace.

On Friday, October 13, 1989, the Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy article on poverty in the Mississippi Delta.  A Congressional study certified the lower Mississippi Delta as the poorest region in America.  This Delta region not only includes part of the state of Mississippi but also parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky and Illinois.

The Journal headline read: "River of Despair: Along the Rich Banks of the Mississippi Live Poorest of U.S. Poor."  A rich land filled with poor people:

          For here is a region that epitomizes the extremes of American wealth and poverty.

          It is almost unbelievably fertile, with topsoil 25 feet thick or more.  It has mansions and 

          big cars and a wealthy gentry that for decades has gathered round the fountain in the 

          orante lobby of the Memphis grand old Peabody Hotel.

The Delta "has county poverty rates that range from 20 percent to 50 percent plus."  It has medical problems and an infant mortality rate that approximates a Third World country.  In Tunica county approximately one-half of "the high school graduates, girls as well as boys, go into the military.  It's a way out, an escape."

Could the Jubilee be an answer to the poverty of the Delta?  A brief moment in the past history hints that this could be so.

After General Grant had conquered Mississippi, he initiated a bold experiment.  He gave the old Jefferson Davis plantation to freed blacks.  "Seventy able men were given 30 acres a piece."  The first year of farming was a success so the Army expanded the program in 1865.  "Five thousand acres were divided among more than 1,800 blacks organized into 181 associations or companies."  The government loaned them equipment and supplies.  The ex-slaves set up stores, schools, local government, etc.

          The system was an astounding success.  The year 1865 was a good one for cotton, and by its 

          end, the colonists had sold over $400,000 worth of cash crops.  After paying their loans, they 

          cleared nearly $180,000. . . . "

After the Civil War was over, the Davis brothers were pardoned and their plantation was returned to them.  The "grand experiment" abruptly stopped.  The lesson:  "If the David Bend experiment had been allowed to continue, it might have offered a real solution to the problem of securing political and economic rights for newly freed black Mississippians."

Emancipation, freedom was a large step in the right direction but because it was not followed by a comprehensive Jubilee type of justice, freed blacks were soon put back into the semi-slavey of segregation.

In an article in the May-June, 1998 Sojourners magazine, Marie Dennis writes about a worldwide movement for Third World debt relief.  She asserts that this movement for debt relief is rooted in the Jubilee.  Dennis claims that there is a link between debt and poverty and that this link "is one of the most pressing moral issues for people of faith as we approach the new millennium. . . .  Every person in the global South now owes about $300 (U.S.) to foreign creditors, more than an entire year's income for many of our world's peoples."

The debt is so large for many Third World countries that it takes one-half of their national budget to make the payment.  Because of the need to earn hard currency, such as US dollars, debt shapes the type of economy, for example, cash crops.  It also reduces the amount spent on health and education.

Many of the loans made by Western governments and banks were made to corrupt leaders; the people did not benefit much from these loans.  But now excessive payments to repay these loans drain the wealth of the poor countries and the poor people.  The creditor nations as well as the debtor nations should share the responsibilities and the risk.  Excessive debt equals bondage and poverty.

          This has sparked an international movement, named Jubilee 2000, of people who agree that it is      

          time for a definitive level of cancellation of the debt that prevents countries from providing a

dequately for the basic rights and needs of their people.

Jubilee 2000 does not call for a universal cancellation of all debts, but only "death-dealing debt in impoverished countries and at a level substantial enough for lasting benefit."  This debt relief must be coupled with efforts to reform unjust economic systems in Third World countries.

In an article in the March/April 1998 Prism magazine, Fred Clark argues that there are numerous businesses in the US that take advantage of the poor by charging them excessive interest.  Technically, usury is a felony in most states, but many businesses have found a way to get around these laws.  Michael Hudson in Merchants of Misery (1996) states:

          The poverty industry is made up of an array of businesses: pawnshops, check-cashing outlets,

          rent-to-own stores, finance companies, used-car dealers, high-interest mortgage lenders, trade

          schools for the poor and uneducated.  It's growing in size and raking in dollars at a dizzying 

          pace by targeting people on the bottom third of the economic ladder - perhaps 60 million 

          consumers who are virtually shut out by banks and other conventional merchants.  Many live 

         below the poverty line, but many more are solidly blue-collar folks squeezed by falling wages 

         and lousy credit records.  The poverty industry fills a niche for them - at a stiff price.  An    

         affluent credit-card holder can shop around and pay as little as 6 or 8 percent annual interest to 

         borrow money and make purchases on credit.  But a sheet-metal worker with a dubious credit 

         record may pay as much as 240 percent for a loan from a pawnbroker, 300 percent for a finance-

         company loan, 20 percent for a second mortgage, even 2,000 percent for a quick "payday" loan

         from a check-cashing outlet.

These businesses are often funded by our nations most prestigious banks.  Apart from tightening the laws, what can be done.  "We also need to promote more positive options, such as credit unions, community development loan funds or local banks that allow low-balance, no-fee checking accounts."

In the July-September 1990 issue of Together, there is a story of how World Vision broke the bondage of debt in a farming community in the Philippines (Barangay Escalante).

To put in a rice crop, a farmer must borrow money for fertilizer, etc., and pay a high rate of interest - 10 percent monthly. To pay off his loans, the farmer sells his rice at harvest time when the price is lowest.

          Marginal farmers like Mang Juan lived for years with the unscrupulous and unfair trading 

          practices of the usurers and middlemen, silently submitting as victims of exploitation. . . . 

          They are obliged to sell their produce to those who provide their capital. . . . Many Juan may

          inherited poverty or indebtedness from his parents, and he may pass on larger debts to his 

          children. . . . 

To help break the bondage of debt and oppression, World Vision started a community development program.  Working with the people a worker helped them develop a toilet construction project and a water system.  Then they started a credit union which loaned money to farmers for 3 percent a month.  They started a cooperative to buy and sell rice thus eliminating the middleman.  Slowly, but surely, this farming community is taking control of its economic destiny; economic oppression is being replaced by economic self-sufficiency.

Hudson, Michael. Merchants of Misery.  Common Courage Press, 1996.

Kraybill, Donald. The Upside-Down Kingdom.  Herald Press, 1976.

Loewen, James W. and Charles Sallis, editors.  Mississippi: Conflict and Change, Rev. ed., Pantheon 

     Books, 1980, pp. 136-7.

Phillips, Kevin.  The Politics of Rich and Poor, 1990.

Putzel, James.  A Captive Land:  The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines, Manila Univ  

      Press, 1992.

Wiser, Williams and Charlotte.  Behind Mud Walls: 1930-1960.

      Univ of Calif. Press, 1971.

Yoder, Perry.  Shalom.  Faith and Life Press, 1987.

The rich and poor, wealth and poverty, are prominent themes in the gospel of Luke.  In one setting, read all of the following verses:

   1:52-53

   3:4-14

   4:18

   6:20-24

   7:22-23

   8:14

   12:13-34

   14:12-14

   14:21-22

   16:1-15

   16:19-31

   18:18-30

   19:1-10

   20:45-47

   21:1-4