Do you have a prophetic streak in your spirit? If so, please seriously consider preaching a series of 12 sermons on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression/injustice and justice. I suggest that you preach a sermon on oppression and follow that sermon with another on justice; six months, 12 sermons. Illustrate your sermons with U.S. examples. But you better have a plan B because I predict that half of the white preachers will be fired if they do preach these 12 sermons.
Suggested Six Sermons on Oppression
Background books to read: God So Loved The Third World: The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression by Thomas Hanks. Inheriting the [Slave} Trade by Thomas DeWolf.
Sermon 1: based on Exodus, chapters 1-5 with an emphasis on chapter one.
* Lifelong and generational systems of oppression crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill persons created in the image of God.
* Systems of oppression smash the body and crush the spirit.
* Systems of oppression not only damage individuals, but also families and communities; oppression damage leads to individual, family and community dysfunction. Damage precedes dysfunction.
* Systems of oppression are sweeping, radical, extreme and holistic; therefore, the solutions also need to be sweeping, radical, extreme and holistic.
* Adjectives and nouns from Exodus 1-5: forced labor, hard labor, ruthless, kill, misery, suffering, crying out, slave drivers, beaten, groaning, yoke, cruel bondage.
Sermon 2: Exodus 6:9; read from both the RSV and The Message " . . . . They could not hear (believe) him---they were that beaten down in spirit. . . ."
* For the Hebrew slaves, it seemed that God had gone on a deistic vacation and forgotten them for 400 years. So even as God presented himself as the I AM---the present and personal God---the crushed slaves could not believe.
* Note that those whose spirits have been crushed by oppression cannot believe God.
* Compare to soldiers suffering PTSD.
* See my blog [Lowell Noble's Writings] for the blog "Can Oppression Cause PTSD?" See also the comment by the Haitian Jean Thomas; Haiti has experienced 500 years of Spanish, French and American oppression.
* American colonial leaders committed genocide and slavery.
* Was the DeWolf clan "Great Folks" or "evil people". Were James DeWolf and klan worse than Pharaoh because they were involved in both the slave trade and slavery? Was the DeWolf clan worse than the Ku Klux Klan?
Sermon 3: Jeremiah 7:1-10, Amos 2:7 and 5:21-24, Isaiah 58:1-5
* religious institutions can become systems of oppression.
* Both Jeremiah and Jesus called the temple "a den of robbers".
* Worship without justice is dead.
Sermon 4: Luke 6:24
* "Woe to the rich" the religious, male, rich oppressors.
* Search the rest of Luke for numerous references to money, wealth, possessions, riches.
* Pharisees were condemned for being "lovers of money." and neglecters of justice---11:41 and 16:14.
* Rich man and Lazarus---16:19-31.
Sermon 5: Luke 19:45
* The TEMPLE: a religiously legitimated system of oppression, "a den of robbers," soon to be destroyed by the Romans.
* The Temple leaders were a male, religious rich
* Episcopal and Reformed churches were built on top of slave dungeons in West Africa.
* Pastor/Pope Francis has called upon priest and p[eople to leave the security of the stain-glassed sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets.
Sermon 6: James 1:27 through James chapter two and 5:1-4
* Pure religion releases the oppressed widows and orphans from their oppression and then protects them from systems of oppression.
* Pure religion honors the poor; worthless religion, flawed churches, favor the rich over the poor.
* The rich exploit/oppress the poor.
Six Sermons on Justice
Begin or end each sermon on justice by reading the following "Sabbath" quotation from the Poverty and Justice Contemporary English Version Bible. Just as systems of oppression such as genocide or slavery are sweeping, radical and holistic so must biblical justice be sweeping, radical, holistic or revolutionary and transformative.
"Leviticus is often viewed as a book full of obscure rules and ritual, yet it contains one of the most astonishing pieces of social legislation in history: the Sabbath years and the Jubilee. Every seven years, the land had a Sabbath, 'time off', allowing it to recover. During this year slaves were to be freed (Exodus 21:2) and debts were to be cancelled. (Deuteronomy 15:1-11)."
"And every fiftieth year there was a Jubilee, a kind of Sabbath of Sabbaths, where the entire social structure of Israel was to be reset. Every Israelite became, once again, a free citizen. Everyone could wipe the slate clean and start again, and significantly, the year began on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:9)---the day of national repentance and reconciliation. So, fresh starts spiritually and physically [socially]---a whole life view."
Sermon 1: Lev. 25; Deut. 15, Exodus 21:2
* Quote CEV on the "Sabbath".
* These are God designed principle/laws to prevent lifelong, even generational, systems of oppression.
* If American churches had practiced the Sabbath/Jubilee, would this have prevented Indian genocide and African slavery?
* Use Habitat for Humanity as a modern application of Jubilee justice; the 'rich' gave the money for capital funds so no interest is charged to the working poor reducing the cost of the house by one half or more depending on the rate of interest and the length of the mortgage.
Sermon 2: Amos 5:24, The Message
* "I want justice---oceans of it. I want fairness---rivers of it."
* A good Hebrew could not claim to be personally righteous unless she/he were also socially just.
* Read Job 29:7-17.
Sermon 3: Isaiah 58:6-14
* What true spirituality/justice is and does.
* How God blesses those who do justice.
Sermon 4: Luke 4:18-19; Messianic passages from Isaiah: 9:6-7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4
* The Spirit-filled church releases the oppressed poor by preaching and practicing Sabbath year/Jubilee justice; then, and only then, is the gospel really good news to the poor.
* The Spirit, the poor, the oppressed, Jubilee justice are the four key concepts.
* Implied concepts: the rich, the oppressors, shalom and the kingdom of God.
Sermon 5: Mt. 6:33 NEB "Set your mind on God's kingdom and his justice."
* See my blog "Rejusticizing the Sermon on the Mount".
Sermon 6: James 2:8-26
See my blog "Jesus AND the kingdom of God."
Keep the 12 sermons in mind as you read the following: "Is Pope Francis a Prophet?"
Will Pope Francis end up splitting the Catholic Church? Possibly, asserts Conservative Catholic scholar/journalist, Ross Douthat in a fine article in the May 2015 issue of The Atlantic entitled, "Will Pope Francis Break the Church?" Douthat is a fair and balanced Catholic conservative, not an ideologue. He is well read, rigorously logical and historically informed. He present the facts as he sees them, but he avoids dogmatic predictions about the future. Douthat does caution that the supposed right/left or conservative/liberal divide is overdrawn, that historically the church has proved to be adaptable and flexible, accommodating the extremes in various orders. In the U.S., Francis is equally popular among conservatives and progressives.
"Will Pope Francis Break the Church?" is the type of question a conservative Catholic would ask. But this is not the question Pope Francis is asking. Can Francis redirect the whole church to giving a high priority to the poor? Can he do this while making difficult reforms within the institutional Catholic Church? Pope Francis wants priest and people to move beyond the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets. In this regard, Douthat states the following about the "broadest theme of his pontificate: his constant stress on economic issues, the Church's social [justice] teaching, and the plight of the unemployed, the immigrant, the poor. . . . a sharp, prophetic stance."
For Pope Francis, the real question is, will the Church (not just an order within the church) return to a more biblical, prophetic stance or will it prioritize institutional church doctrine and leave the ministry among the poor as an afterthought, as an issue of charity instead of love and justice? The Catholic Church has a long history of bureaucracy and institutionalization. If Pope Francis succeeds in making a prophetic concern for the poor central, this will be the miracle of miracles. Even churches that begin among the poor such as Methodism quickly lose the priority of the poor in subsequent generations.
Douthat declares that "Francis seems to be trying to occupy a carefully balanced center between two equally dangerous poles." The prophetic pole is only "equally dangerous" to an overly institutionalized church. A biblically prophetic position is not "equally dangerous."
Next, some quotations from Douthat's article:
"The church is not yet in the grips of a revolution. . . . But his moves and choices have given a revolutionary atmosphere around Catholicism."
Regarding Francis's life: "youthful success, defeat and exile, unexpected vindication and ascent [to Pope]."
Now my interpretation. I see strong signs that Prophet Francis is taking the church back to its original calling---justice for the oppressed poor or to a James 2 gospel which combines faith and works. My question is: will Pope Francis live long enough to complete his revolution? And does he himself have a deep enough understanding of the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and justice to bring about the needed transformation. I am afraid Pope Francis doesn't yet have this deep biblical understanding. But possibly the Holy Spirit will lead him in this direction. Intercessory prayers are in order.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Friday, April 10, 2015
Best Biblical Practices: Works of Jubilee Justice
Best Biblical Practices: Works of Jubilee Justice
Introduction
A quotation from the Poverty and Justice Bible(CEV), Insert, page 21, "Sabbath."
"Leviticus is often viewed as a book full of obscure rules and ritual, yet it contains one of the most astonishing pieces of social legislation in history: the Sabbath years and the Jubilee. Every seven years, the land had a Sabbath, 'time off', allowing it to recover. During this year slaves were to be freed (Exodus 21:2) and debts were to be cancelled (Deuteronomy 15:1-11)."
"And every fiftieth year there was a Jubilee, a kind of Sabbath of Sabbaths, where the entire social structure of Israel was to be reset. Every Israelite became, once again, a free citizen. Everyone could wipe the slate clean and start again, and significantly, the year began on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:9)---the day of national repentance and reconciliation. So, fresh starts spiritually and physically [socially]---a whole life view."
Note the following from the Bible:
1. Worship without justice is dead (Amos 5:21-24).
2. Faith without works [of justice] is dead, a religious corpse (James 2:14-26).
3. Grace without works of justice is dead (Ephesians 2:8-10).
4. Love without works of justice is dead (I John 3:10-14).
5. Spirituality without works of justice is dead (Isaiah 58 and the Sermon on the Mount).
Mass Incarceration: Best Practices and Underlying Causes
The church should be heavily involved in drug rehabilitation; a friend of mine, now clean for years, told me that counselors told him that drugs are only five percent of a drug addict's problem. The underlying personal and emotional issues are 95 percent of the problem; the church could and should excel in dealing with the 95 percent.
The church should also be heavily involved in prisoner re-entry programs. But since I don't have experience and expertise in this area, I will let others speak to best practices in this area. But I would like to present ideas regarding underlying causes and possible solutions regarding mass incarceration.
Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling (over 400,000) The New Jim Crow, asserts that America never really ends systems of oppression such as slavery; it only redesigns them. And, she says, that even if America ends mass incarceration but does not address the underlying causes, it will soon create another system of oppression to replace mass incarceration. True, but a correction. The fourth system of oppression already exists alongside mass incarceration. The two systems interact, each making the other worse. The existing fourth system of oppression is the racial wealth gap---white households have 20 times the wealth as black households---which has existed since the founding of this country.
Ivory Phillips, an expert in black history, declares that at no point in American history have blacks experienced anything close to economic justice/equality; a measure of temporary freedom---Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement---but never economic justice. Martin Luther King, in a December 1967 speech that I have dubbed "I Live a Nightmare" asserted that his "black brothers and sisters were perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."
Martin Luther King has also addressed the underlying causes behind mass incarceration---a trinity of racism, capitalism and militarism. Most of the American church has either tolerated or sanctified these underlying causes so the church is a part of the problem. American theology has not yet dug into the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and justice, on the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God. Therefore, American theology is deficient, unable to identify and change these underlying causes. Other descriptions of these underlying causes are: 1) the rich, male, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and 2) the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism, and hyperethnocentrism.
Justice and Reconciliation
Attempts at reconciliation without works of justice is justice lite or cheap reconciliation; many blacks smell a rat and don't want to have anything to do with reconciliation which avoids the justice issue. This is why faith, love, grace and works MUST be closely tied to works of justice.
Works of Jubilee justice must precede or accompany efforts at personal reconciliation. In order to move from economic oppression to economic justice, repentance and restitution are REQUIRED (John the Baptist, Luke 3:10-14, and Zacchaeus, Luke 19:8). Both Roman and Jewish law required that a person must pay back four times the amount that was taken. But, in American churches, repentance and restitution are seldom even a part of the discussion. Wilberforce left out the repentance/restitution package in his political compromise to get rid of slavery. Britain paid reparations to slave owners, not to slaves.
Another way of putting it is that Jubilee justice requires action in order to achieve release and restoration. Justice is not a theological abstraction. Reconciliation is not a theological transaction devoid of works of justice.
The biblical principles of justice and reconciliation are both important to John Perkins. But a hint. The titles of John Perkins first two books are: Let Justice Roll Down and Justice for All. For a poor and oppressed person from Mississippi, biblical justice, Jubilee justice, kingdom justice, is of prime importance. Perkins defines biblical justice as: "Justice is an economic issue, an ownership issue, a management issue, a stewardship issue. Justice has to do with equal access to the resources of God's creation."
In my opinion, most of Perkins' closest disciples have put reconciliation ahead of justice; none of them have fully developed and applied the extensive biblical teaching on oppression/injustice---the 555 OT references to oppression and the anti-rich teaching of the NT. For expert help, I highly recommend first Thomas Hank's book For God So Loved The Third World: The biblical vocabulary of oppression. Then read Parry Yoder's book Shalom which is excellent on oppression, justice and shalom.
John Perkins wants us all to be biblically based; do your own biblical research.
Suggested Papers for the Best Practices Conference
1. Oppression in the OT.
2. Oppression (rich) in the NT.
3. Justice, reconciliation and shalom (peace) in the NT.
4. The Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.
5. King's trinity of racism, capitalism and militarism; my American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism; or the rich, male, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Introduction
A quotation from the Poverty and Justice Bible(CEV), Insert, page 21, "Sabbath."
"Leviticus is often viewed as a book full of obscure rules and ritual, yet it contains one of the most astonishing pieces of social legislation in history: the Sabbath years and the Jubilee. Every seven years, the land had a Sabbath, 'time off', allowing it to recover. During this year slaves were to be freed (Exodus 21:2) and debts were to be cancelled (Deuteronomy 15:1-11)."
"And every fiftieth year there was a Jubilee, a kind of Sabbath of Sabbaths, where the entire social structure of Israel was to be reset. Every Israelite became, once again, a free citizen. Everyone could wipe the slate clean and start again, and significantly, the year began on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:9)---the day of national repentance and reconciliation. So, fresh starts spiritually and physically [socially]---a whole life view."
Note the following from the Bible:
1. Worship without justice is dead (Amos 5:21-24).
2. Faith without works [of justice] is dead, a religious corpse (James 2:14-26).
3. Grace without works of justice is dead (Ephesians 2:8-10).
4. Love without works of justice is dead (I John 3:10-14).
5. Spirituality without works of justice is dead (Isaiah 58 and the Sermon on the Mount).
Mass Incarceration: Best Practices and Underlying Causes
The church should be heavily involved in drug rehabilitation; a friend of mine, now clean for years, told me that counselors told him that drugs are only five percent of a drug addict's problem. The underlying personal and emotional issues are 95 percent of the problem; the church could and should excel in dealing with the 95 percent.
The church should also be heavily involved in prisoner re-entry programs. But since I don't have experience and expertise in this area, I will let others speak to best practices in this area. But I would like to present ideas regarding underlying causes and possible solutions regarding mass incarceration.
Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling (over 400,000) The New Jim Crow, asserts that America never really ends systems of oppression such as slavery; it only redesigns them. And, she says, that even if America ends mass incarceration but does not address the underlying causes, it will soon create another system of oppression to replace mass incarceration. True, but a correction. The fourth system of oppression already exists alongside mass incarceration. The two systems interact, each making the other worse. The existing fourth system of oppression is the racial wealth gap---white households have 20 times the wealth as black households---which has existed since the founding of this country.
Ivory Phillips, an expert in black history, declares that at no point in American history have blacks experienced anything close to economic justice/equality; a measure of temporary freedom---Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement---but never economic justice. Martin Luther King, in a December 1967 speech that I have dubbed "I Live a Nightmare" asserted that his "black brothers and sisters were perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."
Martin Luther King has also addressed the underlying causes behind mass incarceration---a trinity of racism, capitalism and militarism. Most of the American church has either tolerated or sanctified these underlying causes so the church is a part of the problem. American theology has not yet dug into the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and justice, on the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God. Therefore, American theology is deficient, unable to identify and change these underlying causes. Other descriptions of these underlying causes are: 1) the rich, male, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and 2) the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism, and hyperethnocentrism.
Justice and Reconciliation
Attempts at reconciliation without works of justice is justice lite or cheap reconciliation; many blacks smell a rat and don't want to have anything to do with reconciliation which avoids the justice issue. This is why faith, love, grace and works MUST be closely tied to works of justice.
Works of Jubilee justice must precede or accompany efforts at personal reconciliation. In order to move from economic oppression to economic justice, repentance and restitution are REQUIRED (John the Baptist, Luke 3:10-14, and Zacchaeus, Luke 19:8). Both Roman and Jewish law required that a person must pay back four times the amount that was taken. But, in American churches, repentance and restitution are seldom even a part of the discussion. Wilberforce left out the repentance/restitution package in his political compromise to get rid of slavery. Britain paid reparations to slave owners, not to slaves.
Another way of putting it is that Jubilee justice requires action in order to achieve release and restoration. Justice is not a theological abstraction. Reconciliation is not a theological transaction devoid of works of justice.
The biblical principles of justice and reconciliation are both important to John Perkins. But a hint. The titles of John Perkins first two books are: Let Justice Roll Down and Justice for All. For a poor and oppressed person from Mississippi, biblical justice, Jubilee justice, kingdom justice, is of prime importance. Perkins defines biblical justice as: "Justice is an economic issue, an ownership issue, a management issue, a stewardship issue. Justice has to do with equal access to the resources of God's creation."
In my opinion, most of Perkins' closest disciples have put reconciliation ahead of justice; none of them have fully developed and applied the extensive biblical teaching on oppression/injustice---the 555 OT references to oppression and the anti-rich teaching of the NT. For expert help, I highly recommend first Thomas Hank's book For God So Loved The Third World: The biblical vocabulary of oppression. Then read Parry Yoder's book Shalom which is excellent on oppression, justice and shalom.
John Perkins wants us all to be biblically based; do your own biblical research.
Suggested Papers for the Best Practices Conference
1. Oppression in the OT.
2. Oppression (rich) in the NT.
3. Justice, reconciliation and shalom (peace) in the NT.
4. The Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.
5. King's trinity of racism, capitalism and militarism; my American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism; or the rich, male, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Jesus AND the kingdom of God
The following reflection on the NT Gospel comes from notes from a prayer summit, an article by Wesleyan theologian, Donald Dayton, entitled "Wesleyan Option for the Poor," and meditations on Amos 5:21-24 and the book of James. The question: What is the Gospel?
Some say the Gospel is all about Jesus and personal justification. Wrong! A full biblical Gospel must also include and give equal emphasis to the kingdom of God as justice for the oppressed. Acts 8:12 and 28:23 and 31 tie Jesus and the kingdom of God together as Siamese twins. Acts 1:1-8 tie the Spirit and the kingdom of God together as twins never to be separated. The key verse in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 6:33, NEB) reads, "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . . " Jesus begins his public ministry declaring, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here." Luke 4:18-19 provides the content or key characteristics of the Kingdom: The Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Sabbath Year justice. All four components are crucial, but few white theologians have kept all four components together; some highlight the Spirit and the poor but neglect releasing the oppressed and implementing the sweeping and radical principles of the Sabbath Year.
John Wesley and B.T. Roberts, the founder of the Free Methodist Church, highlighted the Spirit, the poor and love, but they were weak on oppression and justice with the one exception of slavery. As a result the second and third generations of Methodists and Free Methodists soon lost the original vision and became largely a middle class church.
The charismatic/Pentecostal churches are strong on worship and the gifts of the Spirit but weak on systems of oppression and kingdom justice. Do they fit into Amos 5:21-24 where God severely critiques worship without justice? Just as faith without works is dead so also worship without justice is dead. I would hazard a guess that nine out of ten white American churches practice worship without justice. A biblical church should give equal time to both worship and justice. Amos 5:26 ties worship without justice and judgment (exile) together. Amos 5:24 (The Message) declares: "I want justice---oceans of it." In America, the ocean is almost dry.
My paraphrase of Luke 4:18-19 would read as follows: "The Spirit has anointed me [and empowered the church] to release the oppressed by implementing Sabbath Year justice; this is truly good news for the poor whom I love dearly."
The church, if it is to practice pure, biblical religion must give high priority to releasing the oppressed poor such as widows and orphans by doing works based on love and justice. This will include charity, but much more than charity. The church must not in any way engage in worldly, worthless religion by favoring and honoring the rich and disrespecting and insulting the poor. How stupid! After all, it is the rich who oppress the poor.
Does your worship lead you to do justice by releasing the oppressed? Does your church devote as much time, energy and resources to doing justice as it does in worship? Does your church heed Pope Francis' exhortation to priest/pastor and people---to leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets?
Continuing the theme of Jesus AND the kingdom of God through the book of James. The letter from James to the church focused on ethical behavior, kingdom ethics, works of love and justice. Most white, male, American Bible scholars don't seem to understand fully this deep dimension of James, that James was fleshing out Mt. 6:33 "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . ."
Elsa Tamez, a woman, a Mexican, a Methodist, does grasp the oppression-justice message of James. As she reads her Spanish NT, Tamez encounters justice around 100 times. A reader of the KJV NT never encounters the word justice; a reader of the English NIV NT sees justice only 16 times. Note that injustice is a synonym of oppression.
Tamez already had a deep understanding of oppression before she wrote The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works is Dead, 1992. Based on her OT analysis of oppression, Tamez had previously written Bible of the Oppressed. No white, male, American theologian begins with this advantage. The gender and cultural blindness is so pervasive and so damaging that it appears there must be a conspiracy in our seminaries to avoid analysis of the extensive and important biblical teaching on oppression. In reality, it is a cultural conspiracy which whites can't or won't transcend.
Next, some insights from Elsa Tamez:
"We are dealing with a servant of Jesus Christ concerned with the poor and oppressed people of his time who were undergoing unbearable suffering. . . . "
"There is a community of believers that suffers [Remember that oppression smashes bodies and crushes spirits]. There is a group of rich people who oppress them and drag them before the tribunals. . . .by rich farmers who accumulate wealth at the expense of the workers' salaries. There is a class of merchants who lead a carefree life, with no concern for the poor."
"The oppressed in the Epistle of James are principally the poor. . . . The poor are poor generally because they are oppressed and exploited."
"Another group of oppressed people mentioned in the letter are the widows and orphans (1:27). In the Hebrew Bible these groups continually appear as representative of the oppressed classes. They are poor and oppressed because they have no one to defend them, nor can they defend themselves. They are truly helpless. Everyone takes advantage of them, especially those in power, . . . "
"The word used for oppression in this text is the Greek term thlipsis, commonly translated as 'tribulation,' 'difficulty,' 'affliction,'"
But these are weak English translations; oppression is a better translation.
"A [Greek] manuscript of the seventeenth century reads in 1:27, "Protect them [widows and orphans] from the world," instead of "keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world." The world as it is structured is hostile to the poor, for it keeps them out of the system constructed by the rulers and the powerful for their own benefit. James, then, urges that they be protected from the oppressive world."
"The poor were the ptochos, a Greek term designating those who totally lacked the means of subsistence and lived from alms; they were the beggars. The poor were also the penes, those who at least had a job but owned no property. Both groups were exploited by the rich and powerful, . . . ."
Next, James's summary of the characteristics of the rich:
1. "Unlike the poor, they dress elegantly."
2. "The rich are those who oppress the poor and drag them before the courts."
3. "The rich are anxious to acquire more and scheme to get it."
4. "They accumulate wealth."
5. "They live luxuriously, devoted to their pleasures."
6. "They condemn and kill the just person."
According to James 2, showing partiality or favoritism (rich over poor; also implied, Jew over Gentile, male over female) is wrong, sin evil. Especially so in the church. Instead, the church should preach and practice Gal. 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Or from The Message: "In Christ's family there can be no [social] division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. . . . you are all equal."
God's royal rule of love rules out, prohibits, forbids any type of segregation or disrespect.
James 2:1-4 declares what is wrong, evil, sin in the church. James 2:5-9 show why honoring the rich and dishonoring the poor is not only wrong, evil and sin, but also stupid. According to Douglas Moo:
1. God show no partiality; neither should the church.
2. Partiality insults the poor who are created in the image of God.
3. Partiality on behalf of the rich is stupid because the rich oppress the poor.
4. Partiality violates the law of love which requires love of neighbor, other ethnic groups, even enemies.
5. Partiality violates kingdom principles such as justice.
Remember, worship without justice is dead (Amos 5:21-24); instead give your highest priority to God's kingdom and his justice (Mt. 6:33).
Some say the Gospel is all about Jesus and personal justification. Wrong! A full biblical Gospel must also include and give equal emphasis to the kingdom of God as justice for the oppressed. Acts 8:12 and 28:23 and 31 tie Jesus and the kingdom of God together as Siamese twins. Acts 1:1-8 tie the Spirit and the kingdom of God together as twins never to be separated. The key verse in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 6:33, NEB) reads, "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . . " Jesus begins his public ministry declaring, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here." Luke 4:18-19 provides the content or key characteristics of the Kingdom: The Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Sabbath Year justice. All four components are crucial, but few white theologians have kept all four components together; some highlight the Spirit and the poor but neglect releasing the oppressed and implementing the sweeping and radical principles of the Sabbath Year.
John Wesley and B.T. Roberts, the founder of the Free Methodist Church, highlighted the Spirit, the poor and love, but they were weak on oppression and justice with the one exception of slavery. As a result the second and third generations of Methodists and Free Methodists soon lost the original vision and became largely a middle class church.
The charismatic/Pentecostal churches are strong on worship and the gifts of the Spirit but weak on systems of oppression and kingdom justice. Do they fit into Amos 5:21-24 where God severely critiques worship without justice? Just as faith without works is dead so also worship without justice is dead. I would hazard a guess that nine out of ten white American churches practice worship without justice. A biblical church should give equal time to both worship and justice. Amos 5:26 ties worship without justice and judgment (exile) together. Amos 5:24 (The Message) declares: "I want justice---oceans of it." In America, the ocean is almost dry.
My paraphrase of Luke 4:18-19 would read as follows: "The Spirit has anointed me [and empowered the church] to release the oppressed by implementing Sabbath Year justice; this is truly good news for the poor whom I love dearly."
The church, if it is to practice pure, biblical religion must give high priority to releasing the oppressed poor such as widows and orphans by doing works based on love and justice. This will include charity, but much more than charity. The church must not in any way engage in worldly, worthless religion by favoring and honoring the rich and disrespecting and insulting the poor. How stupid! After all, it is the rich who oppress the poor.
Does your worship lead you to do justice by releasing the oppressed? Does your church devote as much time, energy and resources to doing justice as it does in worship? Does your church heed Pope Francis' exhortation to priest/pastor and people---to leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets?
Continuing the theme of Jesus AND the kingdom of God through the book of James. The letter from James to the church focused on ethical behavior, kingdom ethics, works of love and justice. Most white, male, American Bible scholars don't seem to understand fully this deep dimension of James, that James was fleshing out Mt. 6:33 "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . ."
Elsa Tamez, a woman, a Mexican, a Methodist, does grasp the oppression-justice message of James. As she reads her Spanish NT, Tamez encounters justice around 100 times. A reader of the KJV NT never encounters the word justice; a reader of the English NIV NT sees justice only 16 times. Note that injustice is a synonym of oppression.
Tamez already had a deep understanding of oppression before she wrote The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works is Dead, 1992. Based on her OT analysis of oppression, Tamez had previously written Bible of the Oppressed. No white, male, American theologian begins with this advantage. The gender and cultural blindness is so pervasive and so damaging that it appears there must be a conspiracy in our seminaries to avoid analysis of the extensive and important biblical teaching on oppression. In reality, it is a cultural conspiracy which whites can't or won't transcend.
Next, some insights from Elsa Tamez:
"We are dealing with a servant of Jesus Christ concerned with the poor and oppressed people of his time who were undergoing unbearable suffering. . . . "
"There is a community of believers that suffers [Remember that oppression smashes bodies and crushes spirits]. There is a group of rich people who oppress them and drag them before the tribunals. . . .by rich farmers who accumulate wealth at the expense of the workers' salaries. There is a class of merchants who lead a carefree life, with no concern for the poor."
"The oppressed in the Epistle of James are principally the poor. . . . The poor are poor generally because they are oppressed and exploited."
"Another group of oppressed people mentioned in the letter are the widows and orphans (1:27). In the Hebrew Bible these groups continually appear as representative of the oppressed classes. They are poor and oppressed because they have no one to defend them, nor can they defend themselves. They are truly helpless. Everyone takes advantage of them, especially those in power, . . . "
"The word used for oppression in this text is the Greek term thlipsis, commonly translated as 'tribulation,' 'difficulty,' 'affliction,'"
But these are weak English translations; oppression is a better translation.
"A [Greek] manuscript of the seventeenth century reads in 1:27, "Protect them [widows and orphans] from the world," instead of "keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world." The world as it is structured is hostile to the poor, for it keeps them out of the system constructed by the rulers and the powerful for their own benefit. James, then, urges that they be protected from the oppressive world."
"The poor were the ptochos, a Greek term designating those who totally lacked the means of subsistence and lived from alms; they were the beggars. The poor were also the penes, those who at least had a job but owned no property. Both groups were exploited by the rich and powerful, . . . ."
Next, James's summary of the characteristics of the rich:
1. "Unlike the poor, they dress elegantly."
2. "The rich are those who oppress the poor and drag them before the courts."
3. "The rich are anxious to acquire more and scheme to get it."
4. "They accumulate wealth."
5. "They live luxuriously, devoted to their pleasures."
6. "They condemn and kill the just person."
According to James 2, showing partiality or favoritism (rich over poor; also implied, Jew over Gentile, male over female) is wrong, sin evil. Especially so in the church. Instead, the church should preach and practice Gal. 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Or from The Message: "In Christ's family there can be no [social] division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. . . . you are all equal."
God's royal rule of love rules out, prohibits, forbids any type of segregation or disrespect.
James 2:1-4 declares what is wrong, evil, sin in the church. James 2:5-9 show why honoring the rich and dishonoring the poor is not only wrong, evil and sin, but also stupid. According to Douglas Moo:
1. God show no partiality; neither should the church.
2. Partiality insults the poor who are created in the image of God.
3. Partiality on behalf of the rich is stupid because the rich oppress the poor.
4. Partiality violates the law of love which requires love of neighbor, other ethnic groups, even enemies.
5. Partiality violates kingdom principles such as justice.
Remember, worship without justice is dead (Amos 5:21-24); instead give your highest priority to God's kingdom and his justice (Mt. 6:33).
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
My Favorite Harvard Historical Sociologist/Anthropologist
My favorite sociologist on black Americans, on race relations, is Orlando Patterson who teaches at Harvard. His most recent book is The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, 2015. He is the author/editor of the 675 page tome assisted by 26 other scholars.
Patterson was born and educated in Jamaica and London in the fields of anthropology, economics and sociology; he is also widely read in history and psychology. Patterson is a multicultural person and a multidisciplinary scholar with a giant intellect. He is an expert on slavery worldwide and race relations in America. He has previously written The Ordeal of Integration, a positive read on the impact of the civil rights movement, and Rituals of Blood, a negative read on race relations. Patterson is not intiminated by either academic or political correctness. He can be a very heavy read at times, but his books are full of insights and wisdom. The following are a few gems from the Foreword:
"The past half century has witnessed remarkable changes in the conditions of African Americans and, more generally, the state of race relations in America. These changes, however, have created a paradoxical situation. The civil rights movement and subsequent policies aimed at socioeconomic reform have resulted in the largest group of middle-class and elite blacks in the world. . . . Yet the bottom fifth of the black population is among the poorest in the nation. . . . Blacks have a disproportionate impact on the nation's culture---both popular and elite---yet continue to struggle in the educational system and are severely underrepresented in its boom of scientific and high-end technology. Although legalized segregation has long been abolished, . . . the great majority of blacks still live in highly segregated, impoverished communities. It is a record of remarkable successes, mixed achievements, and major failures."
"Nowhere is this paradox more acutely exhibited than in the condition of black American youth, especially male youth. They are trapped in a seemingly intractable socioeconomic crisis, yet are among the most vibrant creators of popular culture in the nation and the world."
"What this paradox suggests is the need to explore the cultural life of black youth in order to deepen our understanding of their social plight as well as their extraordinary creativity."
Next some excerpts from the Conclusion; if you just read both the Foreword and the Conclusion, you will get the gist of the book:
"The chapters further demonstrate that disadvantaged black neighborhoods, like other urban neighborhoods of America, are actually socially and culturally variegated, consisting of at least three main groups (the inner-city middle-and lower-middle class, the working class [including the working poor], and the disconnected, the members of which observe one or more of four cultural configurations (adapted mainstream, black proletarian, street, and the hip-hop). . . . What is problematic for all who live in these neighborhoods is the street configuration of the disconnected minority, which is embraced by no more than a quarter of their populations, and often substantially less. . . . .the studies underscore that both culture and [social] structure matter in describing and understanding the lives of poor black youth."
"There is deep cultural continuity over time. For example, Robert Sampson shows in his chapter that neighborhoods inherit near-identical structural and cultural conditions decades later." The historical past haunts the sociological present."
"Fifthly, one of the most important things we have learned from this study is that segregation matters; it has colossal negative consequences, especially for poor black youth, . . . "
A paradox: "a radical transformation in Euro-American values on race, to the degree that young Euro-American are, arguably. the least racially prejudiced group of whites in the world; and, on the other hand, the extreme growth in inequality in America."
"In the final analysis, if the sociocultural problems that beset the lives of disadvantaged black American youth are to change, they will only come about through a combination of external and internal changes."
The last sentence from Orlando Patterson: "For a group that has contributed so much to the industry, civic life and culture of their great nation, African Americans and their youth deserve much better, from their government and economy and from themselves." And from Christian colleges, I would add.
All peoples, nations, and ethnic groups have a set of cultural values that are implemented through their social institutions. Some cultural values such as love and justice are good; other cultural values such as ethnocentrism and oppression are bad. Sometimes, far too often in a fallen world, good cultural values are misused and perverted to 'sanctify' social evils such as ethnocentrism and systems of oppression. Some examples of perversion: churches built upon slave dungeons; slave traders who were church members; Puritans who slaughtered Indians villages to eliminate "Canaanites" from the new Christian nation; Pharisees who zealously taught the Law but loved money and neglected justice; pious Iowa evangelicals who ignored or approved of the worst black-white incarceration ratio in the nation; Lincoln who freed the slaves but wanted to send inferior free blacks back to Africa (Why didn't he self-deport himself?); American missionaries to Haiti who emphasize voodoo but neglect to preach about 500 years of oppression.
Orlando Patterson is angry at the misuse and neglect of culture in academia. So he and his colleagues investigate how black youth survive and are even creative in a society that oppresses them in a number of ways. In America, we are skilled at blaming the victim (the dysfunctional culture of the oppressed), but we largely ignore the dysfunctional culture of the oppressors---the white supremacists. Compare and contrast two theories of poverty---Theory A and Theory B.
Theory A Theory B
1. Cultural values: rich, white, male supremacy 5. Inferior, poor, black males
example: founding fathers
2. Social institutions: political and economic 4. Government welfare
3. Systems of oppression: slavery, segregation, 3. Unqualified workers, mass incarceration,
mass incarceration family dysfunction
4. Segregation: communities, cultures of poverty 2. Culture of poverty
5. PTSD? Damaged individuals. 1. Dysfunctional individuals
Where (which theory and which level of which theory) should the church intervene? Which should be given highest priority by white churches? How should churches intervene?
Questions: Does theory A cause theory B? Does theory A describe how the damage is done and then theory B describes the dysfunction that follows? Does oppression damage precede individual and family dysfunction?
Patterson was born and educated in Jamaica and London in the fields of anthropology, economics and sociology; he is also widely read in history and psychology. Patterson is a multicultural person and a multidisciplinary scholar with a giant intellect. He is an expert on slavery worldwide and race relations in America. He has previously written The Ordeal of Integration, a positive read on the impact of the civil rights movement, and Rituals of Blood, a negative read on race relations. Patterson is not intiminated by either academic or political correctness. He can be a very heavy read at times, but his books are full of insights and wisdom. The following are a few gems from the Foreword:
"The past half century has witnessed remarkable changes in the conditions of African Americans and, more generally, the state of race relations in America. These changes, however, have created a paradoxical situation. The civil rights movement and subsequent policies aimed at socioeconomic reform have resulted in the largest group of middle-class and elite blacks in the world. . . . Yet the bottom fifth of the black population is among the poorest in the nation. . . . Blacks have a disproportionate impact on the nation's culture---both popular and elite---yet continue to struggle in the educational system and are severely underrepresented in its boom of scientific and high-end technology. Although legalized segregation has long been abolished, . . . the great majority of blacks still live in highly segregated, impoverished communities. It is a record of remarkable successes, mixed achievements, and major failures."
"Nowhere is this paradox more acutely exhibited than in the condition of black American youth, especially male youth. They are trapped in a seemingly intractable socioeconomic crisis, yet are among the most vibrant creators of popular culture in the nation and the world."
"What this paradox suggests is the need to explore the cultural life of black youth in order to deepen our understanding of their social plight as well as their extraordinary creativity."
Next some excerpts from the Conclusion; if you just read both the Foreword and the Conclusion, you will get the gist of the book:
"The chapters further demonstrate that disadvantaged black neighborhoods, like other urban neighborhoods of America, are actually socially and culturally variegated, consisting of at least three main groups (the inner-city middle-and lower-middle class, the working class [including the working poor], and the disconnected, the members of which observe one or more of four cultural configurations (adapted mainstream, black proletarian, street, and the hip-hop). . . . What is problematic for all who live in these neighborhoods is the street configuration of the disconnected minority, which is embraced by no more than a quarter of their populations, and often substantially less. . . . .the studies underscore that both culture and [social] structure matter in describing and understanding the lives of poor black youth."
"There is deep cultural continuity over time. For example, Robert Sampson shows in his chapter that neighborhoods inherit near-identical structural and cultural conditions decades later." The historical past haunts the sociological present."
"Fifthly, one of the most important things we have learned from this study is that segregation matters; it has colossal negative consequences, especially for poor black youth, . . . "
A paradox: "a radical transformation in Euro-American values on race, to the degree that young Euro-American are, arguably. the least racially prejudiced group of whites in the world; and, on the other hand, the extreme growth in inequality in America."
"In the final analysis, if the sociocultural problems that beset the lives of disadvantaged black American youth are to change, they will only come about through a combination of external and internal changes."
The last sentence from Orlando Patterson: "For a group that has contributed so much to the industry, civic life and culture of their great nation, African Americans and their youth deserve much better, from their government and economy and from themselves." And from Christian colleges, I would add.
All peoples, nations, and ethnic groups have a set of cultural values that are implemented through their social institutions. Some cultural values such as love and justice are good; other cultural values such as ethnocentrism and oppression are bad. Sometimes, far too often in a fallen world, good cultural values are misused and perverted to 'sanctify' social evils such as ethnocentrism and systems of oppression. Some examples of perversion: churches built upon slave dungeons; slave traders who were church members; Puritans who slaughtered Indians villages to eliminate "Canaanites" from the new Christian nation; Pharisees who zealously taught the Law but loved money and neglected justice; pious Iowa evangelicals who ignored or approved of the worst black-white incarceration ratio in the nation; Lincoln who freed the slaves but wanted to send inferior free blacks back to Africa (Why didn't he self-deport himself?); American missionaries to Haiti who emphasize voodoo but neglect to preach about 500 years of oppression.
Orlando Patterson is angry at the misuse and neglect of culture in academia. So he and his colleagues investigate how black youth survive and are even creative in a society that oppresses them in a number of ways. In America, we are skilled at blaming the victim (the dysfunctional culture of the oppressed), but we largely ignore the dysfunctional culture of the oppressors---the white supremacists. Compare and contrast two theories of poverty---Theory A and Theory B.
Theory A Theory B
1. Cultural values: rich, white, male supremacy 5. Inferior, poor, black males
example: founding fathers
2. Social institutions: political and economic 4. Government welfare
3. Systems of oppression: slavery, segregation, 3. Unqualified workers, mass incarceration,
mass incarceration family dysfunction
4. Segregation: communities, cultures of poverty 2. Culture of poverty
5. PTSD? Damaged individuals. 1. Dysfunctional individuals
Where (which theory and which level of which theory) should the church intervene? Which should be given highest priority by white churches? How should churches intervene?
Questions: Does theory A cause theory B? Does theory A describe how the damage is done and then theory B describes the dysfunction that follows? Does oppression damage precede individual and family dysfunction?
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
My book review and commentary of Inheriting the [Slave] Trade (2008)
Where do I begin this review and commentary on the troubling book, Inheriting The [Slave] Trade, 2008. I have been shaken to the core of my being as I have read it twice and spent two weeks reflecting on the profound issues that have been raised. Especially when I combine Inheriting the Trade with The New Jim Crow and Dear White Christians.
If this review seems rambling, it is because I am in turmoil with my train of thoughts going in many directions all at the same time. I know that conclusions are supposed to go at the end of an article, but I am going to begin with my conclusions after having read The New Jim Crow four times, Dear White Christians twice and most recently Inheriting the Trade twice.
My conclusion: People (white male Americans) who see themselves as chosen, exceptional and godly are not likely to see any need to repent of social evil; just the opposite, they see themselves as model citizens, as model Christians. At the same time these fine folks "neglect justice and the love of God." They deceive themselves by thinking their charity for the poor meets the demands of justice. Such self-righteous people see no need to repent. In the Bible, such people were called Pharisees; in America such people are called white evangelicals with the liberals not far behind.
A question: Does "releasing the oppressed" first require repentance by the oppressor?
Is the American South more evil, worse oppressors, than the American North. Most self-righteous Northerners think so. But I believe that the historical record refutes that assertion.
Case in point: The North was THE center of the slave trade. I would argue that the horror, the evil, of the slave trade, the Middle passage, was worse than slavery itself. And the North not only made a huge profit from the slave trade, but later also from the whole cotton economy. Northern greed was just as bad as Southern greed.
From Martin Frazer: "Wall Street and much of this city's renowned financial district were built on the burial ground of African slaves. New York's prosperity stems in large part from the grotesque profits of the African slave trade and African enslavement. . . . Each year thousands of students in the nation's largest school system study the history of New York with hardly a mention of slavery."
During colonial times, New England Puritans regarded Rhode Island as a "moral sewer." See Cynthia Johnson's 2014 book James Dewolf and the Rhode Island Slave Trade. Most Northerners see the South as a moral sewer as well. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Did you know that the revered Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards, personally went down to Providence, Rhode Island to pick out a slave; he owned at least two slaves for the rest of his life. Only later in life did Edwards condemn the slave trade, but never slavery. Talk about theological social evil hairsplitting! Jonathan Edwards would have been better off spending his time figuring out precisely how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Shades of A. W. Tozer! This revered preacher/theologian and his church board voted to move their church out to the spiritual suburbs because poor blacks had moved into his community and "irreparably damaged" the community. Sound like Tozer's theology was irreparably Damaged because it included nothing on oppression and justice, nothing on "releasing the oppressed."
And did you know that over a 40 year period, 40 out of 44 Lutheran church moved out of Detroit? This is from a Lutheran pastor who wrote Faces of Poverty. I imagine many of the ex-Detroit Lutherans were talking about the moral decay of black Detroit; why didn't they stay and prevent the decay or were they themselves decayed? Were these Lutherans reading Edwards and Tozer on the sly? Or maybe they should have been reading more Bible and less Luther. Theological depravity! Hypocrisy!
Now that I have the Reformed, Lutheran and Baptists (by the way, the Reformed church also built a church on top of a slave dungeon)mad at me, who else wants to join in. If you don't believe what I have written, google Jonathan Edwards owned slaves, Puritans and the slave trade, Boston as a center of the slave trade, and Wall Street and the slave trade.
First a bit of Northern history from Heirs of Oppression. The premier Northern slave trader was James DeWolf whose nefarious business was headquartered in Bristol, Rhode Island. Slave trading drove the whole Bristol economy and much of the wider colonial economy. Stockholders often earned "a 25 percent return on their investments."
The entire Bristol "community supported the slave trade, and serves as a microcosm of how the U.S. generally supported it. It was the insurance companies that insured slaves, many banks that supplied loans to slave trade businesses, the ironworkers who produced the shackles of slavery, the coopers who manufactured the rum barrels, and the distillers who made the molasses into rum which was the primary currency of purchasing slaves in Africa. . . . Boston, Salem, New London, New Haven, and many rural areas. . . . In today's currency values it would equal billions. . . . And during most of the time that the Dewolf's practiced in the slave trade, it was illegal in the United States. . . . one local businessman requested that the slave whipping post be removed from the front of his building because of the blood splatterings on the windows."
Now to the book Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy As The Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. Katrina Browne, a DeWolf descendant, made the documentary film "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. Katrina said: "It's hard and scary to know that one is connected to evil people. There was so much family pride. . . . I prided myself on being self-aware and self-reflective in thinking about issues of race and society. And yet I had managed to completely repress the fact that I was descended from slave traders." Repress and rationalize is also the theme of Heirs of Oppression and Dear White Christians. Will white Christians ever repent and repair?
Christians are supposed to be experts at confession and repentance of their sins. White American Christians excel at social evil amnesia; they conveniently or deliberately ignore or cover up the sins of ethnocentrism and oppression---sins that Jesus put front and center (Luke 4:18-30). Two books excel at uncovering white supremacy---American white ethnocentrism/oppression. Dear [socially evil, unrepentant] White Christians (2014) and Inheriting the Trade (2008); both should be read at the same time; together they make an incredibly powerful double whammy. Dear White Christians is a precise ethical/historical analysis of whiteness---white supremacy. Inheriting the Trade exposes evil in American history through the DeWolf family---a family history of church involvement and legitimation of the slave trade.
Each reader will be called to repent and repair, to repent and engage in Jubilee justice, to repent and incarnate kingdom of God justice.
In addition to the slave trade and slavery the U.S. was involved in, many European nations including even the Swedes practiced the slave trade. Before the Western Christians became involved, Muslims were doing the slave trade. Combined Christians and Muslims represent 1000 years of slave trading destroying countless families and communities. The holocaust of holocausts!
Now some quotations from Inheriting the Trade:
"I learned that slavery wasn't limited to the South: black people were enslaved in the North for over two hundred years, the vast majority of all U.S. slave trading was done by northerners, and, astonishingly, half of all those voyages originated in Rhode Island."
A 2000 year letter from Katrina:
"For all the progress that has been made in race relations and racial equality, the disparity in social opportunity and life prospects is still huge and the lack of trust still profound between blacks and whites."
Bristol: "Two hundred years ago, these pews were filled by ancestors of these same people; they were churchgoing folks who were involved in the slave trade."
During Communion, "I was consumed by thoughts about the church and its people, not only their role in the slave trade hundreds of years ago but their involvement or noninvolvement in injustice that exists today."
"Race matters in this country. How do I benefit from having white skin or from having this family ancestor?"
"Though Mark Antony DeWolf first sailed to Africa in 1769, it wasn't until after the Revolutionary War [after freedom!] that Bristolians, and the DeWolf family in particular, attained great wealth and influence through shipping, privateering, and the trading of rum for African people."
Through the generous use of bleach the evil slaving trading family was historically sanitized into "The Great Folks."
James Dewolf gave two black slave children to his wife as Christmas gifts in 1803.
What motivated the Dewolf slave trade? "Dear brother: Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. . . . "
Bristol has the longest running Fourth of July parade; they go all-out to celebrate; there is, of course, no hint of the slave trading past.
A quotation from Frederick Douglas, July 4, 1852:
"Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine."
President James Madison on Rhode Island:
"Nothing can exceed the wickedness and folly which continues to rule there. All sense of character as well of right [justice] have been obliterated." Correct, but this self-righteous statement was made by a person who owned 100 slaves when he died. From 1725 to 1807, Rhode Island was the center of the slave trade; the years of James DeWolf---1764-1837.
Are American Christians exceptionally skilled at rationalizing/excusing social evil---oppression? In Inheriting the Trade, there is a discussion between the author Tom, a lapsed Christian with a social conscience and a cousin who is a retired Episcopalian priest. They have spent a week in Ghana tracing the slave trade past; this included discovering an Episcopal church that was built on top of a slave dungeon. Tom writes: "listening to historians and scholar, we've heard "'You've got to place it in the context of the times. . . .' And I sit in that dungeon and I say bullshit. It was an evil thing and they knew it was an evil thing and they did it anyway." Tom and Katrina were the only ones of the group of ten that seemed to really get it. Maybe it was because Tom was writing a book on it and had to process and reprocess the slave trade over and over again as did Katrina who made the documentary film.
Every American needs to take a course on white supremacy. Here is a suggested course description: "Our revered founding fathers excelled in deistic, demonic double-talk. They talked freedom; they practiced slavery. The results of the Revolution: an ethnocentric, oppressive founding father elite replaced a British ethnocentric, oppressive elite; women, the poor, Native Americans and Afro Americans suffered then and now.
Would any red-blooded, patriotic American sign up for such a course?
If this review seems rambling, it is because I am in turmoil with my train of thoughts going in many directions all at the same time. I know that conclusions are supposed to go at the end of an article, but I am going to begin with my conclusions after having read The New Jim Crow four times, Dear White Christians twice and most recently Inheriting the Trade twice.
My conclusion: People (white male Americans) who see themselves as chosen, exceptional and godly are not likely to see any need to repent of social evil; just the opposite, they see themselves as model citizens, as model Christians. At the same time these fine folks "neglect justice and the love of God." They deceive themselves by thinking their charity for the poor meets the demands of justice. Such self-righteous people see no need to repent. In the Bible, such people were called Pharisees; in America such people are called white evangelicals with the liberals not far behind.
A question: Does "releasing the oppressed" first require repentance by the oppressor?
Is the American South more evil, worse oppressors, than the American North. Most self-righteous Northerners think so. But I believe that the historical record refutes that assertion.
Case in point: The North was THE center of the slave trade. I would argue that the horror, the evil, of the slave trade, the Middle passage, was worse than slavery itself. And the North not only made a huge profit from the slave trade, but later also from the whole cotton economy. Northern greed was just as bad as Southern greed.
From Martin Frazer: "Wall Street and much of this city's renowned financial district were built on the burial ground of African slaves. New York's prosperity stems in large part from the grotesque profits of the African slave trade and African enslavement. . . . Each year thousands of students in the nation's largest school system study the history of New York with hardly a mention of slavery."
During colonial times, New England Puritans regarded Rhode Island as a "moral sewer." See Cynthia Johnson's 2014 book James Dewolf and the Rhode Island Slave Trade. Most Northerners see the South as a moral sewer as well. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Did you know that the revered Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards, personally went down to Providence, Rhode Island to pick out a slave; he owned at least two slaves for the rest of his life. Only later in life did Edwards condemn the slave trade, but never slavery. Talk about theological social evil hairsplitting! Jonathan Edwards would have been better off spending his time figuring out precisely how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Shades of A. W. Tozer! This revered preacher/theologian and his church board voted to move their church out to the spiritual suburbs because poor blacks had moved into his community and "irreparably damaged" the community. Sound like Tozer's theology was irreparably Damaged because it included nothing on oppression and justice, nothing on "releasing the oppressed."
And did you know that over a 40 year period, 40 out of 44 Lutheran church moved out of Detroit? This is from a Lutheran pastor who wrote Faces of Poverty. I imagine many of the ex-Detroit Lutherans were talking about the moral decay of black Detroit; why didn't they stay and prevent the decay or were they themselves decayed? Were these Lutherans reading Edwards and Tozer on the sly? Or maybe they should have been reading more Bible and less Luther. Theological depravity! Hypocrisy!
Now that I have the Reformed, Lutheran and Baptists (by the way, the Reformed church also built a church on top of a slave dungeon)mad at me, who else wants to join in. If you don't believe what I have written, google Jonathan Edwards owned slaves, Puritans and the slave trade, Boston as a center of the slave trade, and Wall Street and the slave trade.
First a bit of Northern history from Heirs of Oppression. The premier Northern slave trader was James DeWolf whose nefarious business was headquartered in Bristol, Rhode Island. Slave trading drove the whole Bristol economy and much of the wider colonial economy. Stockholders often earned "a 25 percent return on their investments."
The entire Bristol "community supported the slave trade, and serves as a microcosm of how the U.S. generally supported it. It was the insurance companies that insured slaves, many banks that supplied loans to slave trade businesses, the ironworkers who produced the shackles of slavery, the coopers who manufactured the rum barrels, and the distillers who made the molasses into rum which was the primary currency of purchasing slaves in Africa. . . . Boston, Salem, New London, New Haven, and many rural areas. . . . In today's currency values it would equal billions. . . . And during most of the time that the Dewolf's practiced in the slave trade, it was illegal in the United States. . . . one local businessman requested that the slave whipping post be removed from the front of his building because of the blood splatterings on the windows."
Now to the book Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy As The Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. Katrina Browne, a DeWolf descendant, made the documentary film "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. Katrina said: "It's hard and scary to know that one is connected to evil people. There was so much family pride. . . . I prided myself on being self-aware and self-reflective in thinking about issues of race and society. And yet I had managed to completely repress the fact that I was descended from slave traders." Repress and rationalize is also the theme of Heirs of Oppression and Dear White Christians. Will white Christians ever repent and repair?
Christians are supposed to be experts at confession and repentance of their sins. White American Christians excel at social evil amnesia; they conveniently or deliberately ignore or cover up the sins of ethnocentrism and oppression---sins that Jesus put front and center (Luke 4:18-30). Two books excel at uncovering white supremacy---American white ethnocentrism/oppression. Dear [socially evil, unrepentant] White Christians (2014) and Inheriting the Trade (2008); both should be read at the same time; together they make an incredibly powerful double whammy. Dear White Christians is a precise ethical/historical analysis of whiteness---white supremacy. Inheriting the Trade exposes evil in American history through the DeWolf family---a family history of church involvement and legitimation of the slave trade.
Each reader will be called to repent and repair, to repent and engage in Jubilee justice, to repent and incarnate kingdom of God justice.
In addition to the slave trade and slavery the U.S. was involved in, many European nations including even the Swedes practiced the slave trade. Before the Western Christians became involved, Muslims were doing the slave trade. Combined Christians and Muslims represent 1000 years of slave trading destroying countless families and communities. The holocaust of holocausts!
Now some quotations from Inheriting the Trade:
"I learned that slavery wasn't limited to the South: black people were enslaved in the North for over two hundred years, the vast majority of all U.S. slave trading was done by northerners, and, astonishingly, half of all those voyages originated in Rhode Island."
A 2000 year letter from Katrina:
"For all the progress that has been made in race relations and racial equality, the disparity in social opportunity and life prospects is still huge and the lack of trust still profound between blacks and whites."
Bristol: "Two hundred years ago, these pews were filled by ancestors of these same people; they were churchgoing folks who were involved in the slave trade."
During Communion, "I was consumed by thoughts about the church and its people, not only their role in the slave trade hundreds of years ago but their involvement or noninvolvement in injustice that exists today."
"Race matters in this country. How do I benefit from having white skin or from having this family ancestor?"
"Though Mark Antony DeWolf first sailed to Africa in 1769, it wasn't until after the Revolutionary War [after freedom!] that Bristolians, and the DeWolf family in particular, attained great wealth and influence through shipping, privateering, and the trading of rum for African people."
Through the generous use of bleach the evil slaving trading family was historically sanitized into "The Great Folks."
James Dewolf gave two black slave children to his wife as Christmas gifts in 1803.
What motivated the Dewolf slave trade? "Dear brother: Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. . . . "
Bristol has the longest running Fourth of July parade; they go all-out to celebrate; there is, of course, no hint of the slave trading past.
A quotation from Frederick Douglas, July 4, 1852:
"Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine."
President James Madison on Rhode Island:
"Nothing can exceed the wickedness and folly which continues to rule there. All sense of character as well of right [justice] have been obliterated." Correct, but this self-righteous statement was made by a person who owned 100 slaves when he died. From 1725 to 1807, Rhode Island was the center of the slave trade; the years of James DeWolf---1764-1837.
Are American Christians exceptionally skilled at rationalizing/excusing social evil---oppression? In Inheriting the Trade, there is a discussion between the author Tom, a lapsed Christian with a social conscience and a cousin who is a retired Episcopalian priest. They have spent a week in Ghana tracing the slave trade past; this included discovering an Episcopal church that was built on top of a slave dungeon. Tom writes: "listening to historians and scholar, we've heard "'You've got to place it in the context of the times. . . .' And I sit in that dungeon and I say bullshit. It was an evil thing and they knew it was an evil thing and they did it anyway." Tom and Katrina were the only ones of the group of ten that seemed to really get it. Maybe it was because Tom was writing a book on it and had to process and reprocess the slave trade over and over again as did Katrina who made the documentary film.
Every American needs to take a course on white supremacy. Here is a suggested course description: "Our revered founding fathers excelled in deistic, demonic double-talk. They talked freedom; they practiced slavery. The results of the Revolution: an ethnocentric, oppressive founding father elite replaced a British ethnocentric, oppressive elite; women, the poor, Native Americans and Afro Americans suffered then and now.
Would any red-blooded, patriotic American sign up for such a course?
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Book Review: Inheriting the [Slave] Trade
The following is my book review of the 2008 book titled Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. There is a companion documentary film Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. I have drawn three fundamental conclusions from my reading of Inheriting the Trade.
1. Widespread American historical amnesia is a dangerous convenience, past and present, because our historical past, unconfronted, haunts our sociological present. The Dewolf family clan slave-trading dynasty was closely tied to the Episcopal Church; they were an "evil people," but the DeWolf's are remembered today in Bristol, Rhode Island as "The Great Folks".
2. The American church, past and present, has failed to oppose oppression and do justice. So systems of oppression such as slavery are not really ended, only redesigned.
3. American Christian colleges and seminaries have failed to address widespread social evils such as ethnocentrism and oppression, past and present; there is no biblical theology of oppression.
When ten DeWolf descendants visited Ghana, they found an Episcopal Church built on top of a slave dungeon. In 1790, half of the ministers in Connecticut owned slaves; Puritan theologian/preacher Jonathan Edwards owned a slave. The North, not the South, was the center of slave trading. Both the North and the South were and still are deeply racist. Religious piety sanctified evil. Were the DeWolfs American Pharisees posing as Christians?
The Dewolf clan committed sins of commission (ethnocentrism and oppression, Luke 4:18-30) and sins of omission (neglect of justice and the love of God, Luke 11).
What drives the oppression of blacks in the U.S.? A perverse and exceedingly complex mixture of economic greed, Anglo cultural superiority, corrupted religion, and erroneous concepts of race. Which factor is most important? No one really knows, not even the best scholars. If I had to choose, I would vote for economic greed; the DeWolf's testified that it was "Money, money, money, money, money, money" that drove their nefarious business. But their arrogant cultural superiority also played an important part. Religious piety seemed to sanctify the oppression. Skin color soon became a quick and convenient way to identify the inferior, second class citizens. And probably male dominance played an important part. And a highly self-righteous refusal to repent of social evil so whites blindly or deliberately repeated the same sins generation after generation.
I do not know of a single white American theologian who has addressed adequately this complex set of social evils.
We must give abolitionists and civil rights activists honor and respect for all they accomplished. But even Martin Luther King said in a December, 1967 speech (after the civil right and voting rights bills had been passed, after Medicare and Medicaid) that he saw his dream turn into a nightmare because so many blacks were living on an island of poverty in vast ocean of prosperity; they still lacked economic justice.
In 2015, a large racial wealth gap exists as well the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males.
Watch for more commentary on Inheriting the Trade in a future blog.
1. Widespread American historical amnesia is a dangerous convenience, past and present, because our historical past, unconfronted, haunts our sociological present. The Dewolf family clan slave-trading dynasty was closely tied to the Episcopal Church; they were an "evil people," but the DeWolf's are remembered today in Bristol, Rhode Island as "The Great Folks".
2. The American church, past and present, has failed to oppose oppression and do justice. So systems of oppression such as slavery are not really ended, only redesigned.
3. American Christian colleges and seminaries have failed to address widespread social evils such as ethnocentrism and oppression, past and present; there is no biblical theology of oppression.
When ten DeWolf descendants visited Ghana, they found an Episcopal Church built on top of a slave dungeon. In 1790, half of the ministers in Connecticut owned slaves; Puritan theologian/preacher Jonathan Edwards owned a slave. The North, not the South, was the center of slave trading. Both the North and the South were and still are deeply racist. Religious piety sanctified evil. Were the DeWolfs American Pharisees posing as Christians?
The Dewolf clan committed sins of commission (ethnocentrism and oppression, Luke 4:18-30) and sins of omission (neglect of justice and the love of God, Luke 11).
What drives the oppression of blacks in the U.S.? A perverse and exceedingly complex mixture of economic greed, Anglo cultural superiority, corrupted religion, and erroneous concepts of race. Which factor is most important? No one really knows, not even the best scholars. If I had to choose, I would vote for economic greed; the DeWolf's testified that it was "Money, money, money, money, money, money" that drove their nefarious business. But their arrogant cultural superiority also played an important part. Religious piety seemed to sanctify the oppression. Skin color soon became a quick and convenient way to identify the inferior, second class citizens. And probably male dominance played an important part. And a highly self-righteous refusal to repent of social evil so whites blindly or deliberately repeated the same sins generation after generation.
I do not know of a single white American theologian who has addressed adequately this complex set of social evils.
We must give abolitionists and civil rights activists honor and respect for all they accomplished. But even Martin Luther King said in a December, 1967 speech (after the civil right and voting rights bills had been passed, after Medicare and Medicaid) that he saw his dream turn into a nightmare because so many blacks were living on an island of poverty in vast ocean of prosperity; they still lacked economic justice.
In 2015, a large racial wealth gap exists as well the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males.
Watch for more commentary on Inheriting the Trade in a future blog.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Dangerous Half-truths Posing a the Whole Truth
This blog is primarily about Christian ethicist, Jennifer Harvey's excellent book entitled Dear White Christians (2014). This both a review and a commentary on her must read book, though at times a heavy read. She calls for a paradigm shift, a radical reorientation, for white American Christians; this is a hard truth that most white Christians will deny and reject; they will continue on in their white supremacy ways.
My revised title to make her thesis clearer would read like this: Dear [Evil]* White Christians: first repent**, then do justice***.
* "Evil" highlights the profound moral crisis all white American Christians are a part of in God's eyes, even though most white Christians are only dimly aware of or would flatly deny it.
** "Repent"---thoroughly repent of white supremacy which began with the Puritans and continues in 2015.
*** "Justice"---the white American church, on a massive scale, must engage in the doing of Jubilee/shalom/kingdom of God justice to release America's millions of oppressed peoples.
After living for 88 years in America in both the North and the South, after living for 35 years in poor black communities, after reading the ground-breaking book Dear White Christians, after rereading the Daniel 9 prayer (a prayer of confession and repentance for the nation)and the Nehemiah led justice revival which released the oppressed and restored justice(Nehemiah 5), I have concluded that all white pastors of all white churches should pray this of confession/repentance:
God Almighty, holy and just God, we confess that we have greatly sinned against both you and our fellow Americans: Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Haitian Americans.
First we confess our false and pervasive sense of superiority, our arrogance, our oppression, that we believe our fellow, non-white citizens are inferior, criminal, lazy and dysfunctional. Instead, we confess that we are the evil inferior ones.
As white pastors and white churches, in the spirit of Nehemiah and Zaccheus, we pledge to engage in works of repentance, restitution and justice. We have neglected to preach and practice Leviticus 25, the Messianic passages from Isaiah, Isaiah 58, Luke 4:18-19; Acts 4:32-35 and James 2. We pledge to preach and practice the whole truth of the gospel.
After a person reads Dear White Christians and The New Jim Crow, also ALICE in New Jersey, he/she becomes keenly aware that theology has not kept up with these social crises. We need a new biblical emphasis on "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here." We need to repent of both personal sin and our involvement is social evil---whiteness and richness, of white Anglo ethnocentrism and oppression from the early 1600s down to 2015. This repentance demands a paradigm shift, a radical reorientation, a fundamental rethinking of both our interpretation of the Bible and of American history. We must reject rich white privilege, white self-righteousness.
We will have to give the highest priority to God's kingdom and his justice, a justice for the oppressed poor, to release the oppressed and repair the damage that oppression has done.
In the white community, dangerous and deceptive half-truths are being taught as the whole truth. This is especially true in the white evangelical church in the area of social evil and social justice. I am not referring to cultic type of false teaching, but mainstream history and theology. Either sins of omission (neglect of justice and the love of God), or sins of commission (participation in ethnocentrism and oppression); there is no middle ground, no neutral ground.
I was educated in evangelical Christian colleges and later I taught at evangelical colleges. I am now 88 years old; rarely have I found a white evangelical scholar with a deep understanding of ethnocentrism and oppression, of the kingdom of God as justice. The typical white evangelical is taught both historical half-truths and biblical half-truths---the cross without the kingdom, justification without justice, love without justice, personal sin but not social evil, faith without works of justice.
In terms of history, supposedly, America has a Negro Problem---crime and dysfunction; in reality, the White Problem of ethnocentrism and oppression has caused/created the Negro Problem. America supposedly has a savage, uncivilized Indian problem; in reality, we have a greedy, white colonial, imperialistic problem proudly symbolized by the St. Louis Arch. Or we have a founding fathers problem, a rich, white, Anglo-Saxon, male elite problem, many of whom owned slaves or participated in a slave economy.
The following one-liners by three black leaders highlight the white American problem:
From the Reverend Bill McGill: "The Christian Coalition should stop preaching the lie that this country was founded on Christian principles and values, and teach their children that only a godless people would be responsible for Indian genocide and African enslavement."
From Mississippian, Lee Harper: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just."
Lawyer, Michelle Alexander: "We have not ended racial caste, we have merely redesigned it [mass incarceration]."
From Jeremiah 7: "Truth has disappeared."
From Daniel 9: "We have done evil things, rebelled, dodged and taken detours around your clearly marked paths. We have turned a deaf ear to your prophets. . . . all we have to show for our lives is guilt and shame, the whole lot of us." The Message
The reconciliation/love your enemies/integration/beloved community paradigm did not go deep enough into the oppression justice problem, did not demand repentance from centuries of oppression, did not repair the damage done by oppression. No one blended the strengths of both King and Malcom X. Malcom raised the white oppression issue better than King. But whites then and now rejected Malcolm's 'radical' but correct ideas.
Reconciliation and love without repentance from oppression and the doing of justice are not much more than pious platitudes. Even King, four months before his death, began to realize this; He said:
"In 1963 . . . I tried to talk to the nation about a dream I had had . . . I started to see it turn into a nightmare. . . . I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. . . . Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes."
White America remembers King for his "I Have a Dream" speech, but few know about his "I Live a Nightmare" (my title) speech. We know only half-truths about the civil rights movement. Had both Martin and Malcolm lived another ten years, they might have joined forces. I highly recommend James Cone's book Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare.
Joe Feagin is in my opinion the premier white expert on racism (Racist America, 2000); he declares:
"The current prosperity, relatively long life expectancies, and relatively high living standards of whites as a group in the United States, as well as in the West generally, are ultimately rooted in the agony, exploitation and impoverishment of who were colonized and enslaved, as well as in the oppression and misery of their descendants."
But self-righteous white people seldom repent; instead they rationalize away their social sins and cleverly blame the oppressed for their evil. Harvey documents and then issues a strong call for repentance, restitution, repair by doing justice.
In her excellent book, Dear White Christians, Harvey discusses three powerful paradigms; paradigms are fundamental ways/worldviews of thinking and living; paradigms are not philosophical abstraction; they describe social reality. Harvey does specifically describe whiteness/white supremacy as a paradigm, but she treats it as such.
A whiteness paradigm, a reconciliation paradigm, a reparations paradigm. The white supremacy paradigm (ethnocentrism and oppression) has dominated all of American history from the colonial era down to the present. After living in America for 88 years, after reading Dear White Christians, I have concluded that white America, and especially white Christians, are incredibility evil, dense, stupid and deceptive. Some advice: don't ever associate with one of them---you might become contaminated.
A relatively small number of white Christians, churches and denominations have tried to improve race relations in America by using the reconciliation paradigm. This well meaning approach has largely failed or only superficially succeeded because the reconciliation paradigm has left out two crucial concepts---repentance and justice. WHITE AMERICAN CHRISTIANS ARE TOO SELF-RIGHTEOUS TO REPENT, TOO BIBLICALLY ILLITERATE TO RELEASE THE OPPRESSED, TO DO JUSTICE. These American Christians have inflicted enormous damage on Native Americans, African Americans and other ethnic groups. Personally, I think judgment is just around the corner.
To fit biblical terminology better, I would rename the whiteness paradigm, the ethnocentrism-oppression paradigm; I would rename the reparations paradigm, the justice paradigm.
Markers of a paradigm shift might be:
* from hubris to humility
* from rationalization to repentance
* from self-righteousness to justice
* from reform to revolution
* from partial change to paradigm shift
* from tokenism to transformation
Will American theologians catch up to the issues raised by Dear White Christians, The New Jim Crow, Martin and Malcolm in America and ALICE in New Jersey (see also "ALICE shows working poor aren't making it" Globe Gazette?
Next, a few quotations from Dear White Christians:
"to be white is to exist in a state of profound moral crisis."
"The moral crisis of whiteness throws the reconciliation paradigm into complete chaos because 'whiteness' is a difference we simply cannot and should not embrace and celebrate---at least not yet," because repentance has not yet taken place; we cannot reconcile with current social evil.
"Race is real. Race is powerful. But race is also a social construct. . . . the construction of race is deeply and directly linked to white supremacist social structures. In the way it becomes clear that "white' and 'Black,' for example. are not parallel differences." Whites are the oppressors and blacks are the oppressed; they are equal in social evil.
"race was not a problem of general or generic brokenness. It was a problem of oppressor and oppressed. And empowering the oppressed---beginning by naming oppression and oppressors in unflinching terms---was essential to actually transforming the fundamental nature of thos relationships."
"reconciliation en masse without redress of such conditions as so much babble, abstraction, and absurdity. . . . In a reparations paradigm, repentance replaces cultivation of multicultural sensitivity.
Repair and redress of harm done replace learning to better embrace difference."
My revised title to make her thesis clearer would read like this: Dear [Evil]* White Christians: first repent**, then do justice***.
* "Evil" highlights the profound moral crisis all white American Christians are a part of in God's eyes, even though most white Christians are only dimly aware of or would flatly deny it.
** "Repent"---thoroughly repent of white supremacy which began with the Puritans and continues in 2015.
*** "Justice"---the white American church, on a massive scale, must engage in the doing of Jubilee/shalom/kingdom of God justice to release America's millions of oppressed peoples.
After living for 88 years in America in both the North and the South, after living for 35 years in poor black communities, after reading the ground-breaking book Dear White Christians, after rereading the Daniel 9 prayer (a prayer of confession and repentance for the nation)and the Nehemiah led justice revival which released the oppressed and restored justice(Nehemiah 5), I have concluded that all white pastors of all white churches should pray this of confession/repentance:
God Almighty, holy and just God, we confess that we have greatly sinned against both you and our fellow Americans: Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Haitian Americans.
First we confess our false and pervasive sense of superiority, our arrogance, our oppression, that we believe our fellow, non-white citizens are inferior, criminal, lazy and dysfunctional. Instead, we confess that we are the evil inferior ones.
As white pastors and white churches, in the spirit of Nehemiah and Zaccheus, we pledge to engage in works of repentance, restitution and justice. We have neglected to preach and practice Leviticus 25, the Messianic passages from Isaiah, Isaiah 58, Luke 4:18-19; Acts 4:32-35 and James 2. We pledge to preach and practice the whole truth of the gospel.
After a person reads Dear White Christians and The New Jim Crow, also ALICE in New Jersey, he/she becomes keenly aware that theology has not kept up with these social crises. We need a new biblical emphasis on "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here." We need to repent of both personal sin and our involvement is social evil---whiteness and richness, of white Anglo ethnocentrism and oppression from the early 1600s down to 2015. This repentance demands a paradigm shift, a radical reorientation, a fundamental rethinking of both our interpretation of the Bible and of American history. We must reject rich white privilege, white self-righteousness.
We will have to give the highest priority to God's kingdom and his justice, a justice for the oppressed poor, to release the oppressed and repair the damage that oppression has done.
In the white community, dangerous and deceptive half-truths are being taught as the whole truth. This is especially true in the white evangelical church in the area of social evil and social justice. I am not referring to cultic type of false teaching, but mainstream history and theology. Either sins of omission (neglect of justice and the love of God), or sins of commission (participation in ethnocentrism and oppression); there is no middle ground, no neutral ground.
I was educated in evangelical Christian colleges and later I taught at evangelical colleges. I am now 88 years old; rarely have I found a white evangelical scholar with a deep understanding of ethnocentrism and oppression, of the kingdom of God as justice. The typical white evangelical is taught both historical half-truths and biblical half-truths---the cross without the kingdom, justification without justice, love without justice, personal sin but not social evil, faith without works of justice.
In terms of history, supposedly, America has a Negro Problem---crime and dysfunction; in reality, the White Problem of ethnocentrism and oppression has caused/created the Negro Problem. America supposedly has a savage, uncivilized Indian problem; in reality, we have a greedy, white colonial, imperialistic problem proudly symbolized by the St. Louis Arch. Or we have a founding fathers problem, a rich, white, Anglo-Saxon, male elite problem, many of whom owned slaves or participated in a slave economy.
The following one-liners by three black leaders highlight the white American problem:
From the Reverend Bill McGill: "The Christian Coalition should stop preaching the lie that this country was founded on Christian principles and values, and teach their children that only a godless people would be responsible for Indian genocide and African enslavement."
From Mississippian, Lee Harper: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just."
Lawyer, Michelle Alexander: "We have not ended racial caste, we have merely redesigned it [mass incarceration]."
From Jeremiah 7: "Truth has disappeared."
From Daniel 9: "We have done evil things, rebelled, dodged and taken detours around your clearly marked paths. We have turned a deaf ear to your prophets. . . . all we have to show for our lives is guilt and shame, the whole lot of us." The Message
The reconciliation/love your enemies/integration/beloved community paradigm did not go deep enough into the oppression justice problem, did not demand repentance from centuries of oppression, did not repair the damage done by oppression. No one blended the strengths of both King and Malcom X. Malcom raised the white oppression issue better than King. But whites then and now rejected Malcolm's 'radical' but correct ideas.
Reconciliation and love without repentance from oppression and the doing of justice are not much more than pious platitudes. Even King, four months before his death, began to realize this; He said:
"In 1963 . . . I tried to talk to the nation about a dream I had had . . . I started to see it turn into a nightmare. . . . I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. . . . Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes."
White America remembers King for his "I Have a Dream" speech, but few know about his "I Live a Nightmare" (my title) speech. We know only half-truths about the civil rights movement. Had both Martin and Malcolm lived another ten years, they might have joined forces. I highly recommend James Cone's book Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare.
Joe Feagin is in my opinion the premier white expert on racism (Racist America, 2000); he declares:
"The current prosperity, relatively long life expectancies, and relatively high living standards of whites as a group in the United States, as well as in the West generally, are ultimately rooted in the agony, exploitation and impoverishment of who were colonized and enslaved, as well as in the oppression and misery of their descendants."
But self-righteous white people seldom repent; instead they rationalize away their social sins and cleverly blame the oppressed for their evil. Harvey documents and then issues a strong call for repentance, restitution, repair by doing justice.
In her excellent book, Dear White Christians, Harvey discusses three powerful paradigms; paradigms are fundamental ways/worldviews of thinking and living; paradigms are not philosophical abstraction; they describe social reality. Harvey does specifically describe whiteness/white supremacy as a paradigm, but she treats it as such.
A whiteness paradigm, a reconciliation paradigm, a reparations paradigm. The white supremacy paradigm (ethnocentrism and oppression) has dominated all of American history from the colonial era down to the present. After living in America for 88 years, after reading Dear White Christians, I have concluded that white America, and especially white Christians, are incredibility evil, dense, stupid and deceptive. Some advice: don't ever associate with one of them---you might become contaminated.
A relatively small number of white Christians, churches and denominations have tried to improve race relations in America by using the reconciliation paradigm. This well meaning approach has largely failed or only superficially succeeded because the reconciliation paradigm has left out two crucial concepts---repentance and justice. WHITE AMERICAN CHRISTIANS ARE TOO SELF-RIGHTEOUS TO REPENT, TOO BIBLICALLY ILLITERATE TO RELEASE THE OPPRESSED, TO DO JUSTICE. These American Christians have inflicted enormous damage on Native Americans, African Americans and other ethnic groups. Personally, I think judgment is just around the corner.
To fit biblical terminology better, I would rename the whiteness paradigm, the ethnocentrism-oppression paradigm; I would rename the reparations paradigm, the justice paradigm.
Markers of a paradigm shift might be:
* from hubris to humility
* from rationalization to repentance
* from self-righteousness to justice
* from reform to revolution
* from partial change to paradigm shift
* from tokenism to transformation
Will American theologians catch up to the issues raised by Dear White Christians, The New Jim Crow, Martin and Malcolm in America and ALICE in New Jersey (see also "ALICE shows working poor aren't making it" Globe Gazette?
Next, a few quotations from Dear White Christians:
"to be white is to exist in a state of profound moral crisis."
"The moral crisis of whiteness throws the reconciliation paradigm into complete chaos because 'whiteness' is a difference we simply cannot and should not embrace and celebrate---at least not yet," because repentance has not yet taken place; we cannot reconcile with current social evil.
"Race is real. Race is powerful. But race is also a social construct. . . . the construction of race is deeply and directly linked to white supremacist social structures. In the way it becomes clear that "white' and 'Black,' for example. are not parallel differences." Whites are the oppressors and blacks are the oppressed; they are equal in social evil.
"race was not a problem of general or generic brokenness. It was a problem of oppressor and oppressed. And empowering the oppressed---beginning by naming oppression and oppressors in unflinching terms---was essential to actually transforming the fundamental nature of thos relationships."
"reconciliation en masse without redress of such conditions as so much babble, abstraction, and absurdity. . . . In a reparations paradigm, repentance replaces cultivation of multicultural sensitivity.
Repair and redress of harm done replace learning to better embrace difference."
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