In America, racism never dies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The kingdom of God, repent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Eleven Woes of Luke

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luther or James?

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

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

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

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

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

The Bold Message of the Book of James

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion:

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

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

An Enormous Problem; One Plausible Solution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is it time for the Babylonian Exile?

Lessons learned from the Perkin's Center

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

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

Item 1:

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

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

Item 2:

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

Item 3:

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

Item 4:

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

Next, lessons in Christian Community Development from Haiti:


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

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

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

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

From Moses to Haiti!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For proof, read At Home with the Poor.