The largely church-led abolitionist and civil rights revolutions are considered to be highly successful revolutions by most Americans. In some ways YES; but in other ways, NO. Freedom, yes; justice, economic justice, no.
The abolitionist movement, with the help of a violent civil war, was highly successful in ending slavery; the civil rights movement was highly successful in ending legal segregation. But there is a largely untold story that is missing from U.S. history. What is the REST of the story, as Paul Harvey would say? What was missing from the American church's theology that led to aborted revolutions?
The church has never fully understood nor fully practiced the justice message of the Bible---the Jubilee justice, the kingdom of God revolutionary message of justice for the oppressed poor. Therefore, the freedom for the slaves movement was soon replaced by neoslavery---legal segregation, economic sharecropping/oppression, prison gangs and lynching. Freedom without biblical justice leaves a big hole, a socioeconomic vacuum. The clever white American oppressors rushed in and filled the vacuum with a redesigned system of oppression.
Immediately after the end of the Civil War, evangelical Dwight L. Moody called a reconciliation conference, but not a justice conference. And it was a reconciliation to reconcile northern white and southern whites, not to reconcile blacks and whites. So much for the theological depth of the church.
There are two phases to a successful revolution:
1. destroying the old/evil social order
2. rebuilding a new/just social order
History reveals that most revolutions, even church-led ones, are better at destroying the old than rebuilding the new. Seminaries turn out many well trained pastors, but few prophets and rebuilders. Good rebuilders must understand the kingdom of God as both a freedom and justice message. Rebuilders must be experts at repair---repent, restitute, and repair.
According to Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, it takes both an Ezra and a Nehemiah to get the job done:
History had not treated the People of Israel well and they were in decline [because of idolatry and oppression]. A superpower military machine, Babylon, had battered them [a judgment of God] and then, leaving their city and temple a mound of rubble, hauled them into exile. Now, 128 years later, a few Jews back in Jerusalem had been trying to put the pieces back together decade after weary decade. But it was not going well at all. They were hanging on by their fingernails. And then Ezra arrived.
God didn't leave Ezra to do this single-handedly; he gave him substantial and critical help in the rescue operation in the person of Nehemiah---a building contractor, called in to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. His coworker Ezra was a scholar and a teacher, working with the Scriptures. Nehemiah worked with stones and mortar. The stories of the two men are interwoven in a seamless fabric of vocational holiness. Neither job was more or less important or holy than the other. Nehemiah needed Ezra; Ezra needed Nehemiah. God's people needed the work of both of them. We still do.
Right in the middle of the rebuilding process, Nehemiah discovered some oppression going on. Angrily, he demanded that it stop immediately, that restitution be made. See Nehemiah chapter five.
Back to the abolitionist movement. Was Lincoln a racist? Were many of the abolitionists racist? Google "10 Racist quotes Abraham Lincoln said about Black People" and "David Blight on Racism in the abolitionist movement." Northern racists never repented of their own racism; both northern and southern whites were racist. For Christians, repentance is a better option than fighting, killing. The North had made millions buying and selling slave-produced cotton. Without northern repentance, Reconstruction didn't last.
The American church needs to understand that repentance is the first and all important step in a successful revolution. Jesus said, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here." Next, release, restitution and rebuilding.
Next, the American Revolution. Many believe that our founding fathers who led the Revolution were Christians. This raises some difficult questions. George Marsden, a Christian historian (The Wars of America: Christian Views) asserts that the British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violent revolution. If this is so, why were Christian leaders leading a violent revolution? Marsden also says that once the war started, lay Christians became enthusiastic supporters of the revolution.
So what was really going on? Were our founding fathers frauds, con men, whose real goal as an American elite was simply to replace a corrupt and oppressive British elite? I think so, because neither the poor nor women, neither Indians nor slaves, were treated as equals as the declaration of Independence said was the purpose of the Revolution. Christian revolutions should begin with repentance, not deistic arrogance, not pious oppression.
Christian revolutions must be grounded in the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice for the poor and oppressed. If not, they quickly turn into masters of deceit. See Jeremiah 6 and 8.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Friday, March 4, 2016
High Impact African-American Churches
George Barna, an Euro American sociologist, and Bishop Harry Jackson, an Afro American pastor, have co-authored this book, High Impact African-American Churches (2004). George Barna, a skilled and experienced social researcher who is much more aware of racism/social justice issues than most Euro Americans, was amazed at how little he actually knew. The reading and research he did for this book transformed his understanding.
Some previous research he did illustrates his ethnocentrism and ignorance. Barna researched pastors' views on a biblical worldview. He found that Southern Baptists had a superior understanding versus a relatively weak understanding by Afro American pastors. But his research instrument was flawed. His definition of a biblical worldview was narrowly conceived, highly rational, and quite Eurocentric. It was based on six moral absolutes/truths: "the accuracy of biblical teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone, and personal responsibility for evangelism." But this is a selective list of biblical truths. What about the Trinity, all human beings are created in the image of God, the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice, etc.
A comprehensive biblical world view must also include orthopraxy, not just orthodoxy. Required orthopraxy might include: reconciliation across ethnic, class and gender lines, doing social justice, loving your ethnic neighbor, and ministry among the poor. In this more holistic biblical worldview, Afro American pastors and churches come through with flying colors. Barna comments:
As a Caucasian, I have to admit: analyzing the results of a large body of research focused upon the faith of the African American community blew me away. Prior to the research I was aware of the obvious differences: black church music is more energetic and soulful, their preachers are often spellbinding orators, .
However, I was not at all prepared for the nature and magnitude of the substantive difference I discovered between the black and white segments of the United States.
In the midst of massive injustice, past and present, something "truly spectacular was taking place in the lives of African Americans and it was ignited by the goings-on in their church." Here are some of the facts Barna discovered:
* Black adults are more likely to be born again Christians than are white adults.
* Did you know that when we tested 22 common goals the people pursue, the top-rated goal among black adults is to have a close relationship with God while that same goal is ranked fifth by whites?
* Black adults are nearly twice as likely as white adults to read the Bible during a typical week.
* Black adults are 50 percent more likely than white adults to strongly affirm that the Bible is totally accurate in everything it teaches.
* The typical African-American church raises more money for ministry each year than does the typical Caucasian church despite the lower levels of household income and membership in the black congregations.
Barna and Jackson state:
Black adults are more likely to struggle with finances and substance abuse. They often labor through feelings of loneliness and a sense of disconnection from other people. (This is especially true for black men.) They also fall prey to sexual temptation more often, whether that takes the form of physical intimacy with a non-spouse or enjoyment of pornographic materials. In fact, family realities become a point of confusion and stress for millions of blacks: they are twice as likely as whites to never get married and are more than twice as likely to have a child out of wedlock. Although black Americans recognize the importance of family and attribute their personal strength and success in large measure to what they absorbed from their family experience, millions of blacks admit that the typical black family is dysfunctional or a source of conflict rather than safety and security.
In the midst of past and continuing oppression and poverty, the church provides life integration of millions of Afro Americans. Oppression acts like a social pressure cooker creating enormous personal and family stresses. One-third of black youth say life is not worth living.
Some previous research he did illustrates his ethnocentrism and ignorance. Barna researched pastors' views on a biblical worldview. He found that Southern Baptists had a superior understanding versus a relatively weak understanding by Afro American pastors. But his research instrument was flawed. His definition of a biblical worldview was narrowly conceived, highly rational, and quite Eurocentric. It was based on six moral absolutes/truths: "the accuracy of biblical teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone, and personal responsibility for evangelism." But this is a selective list of biblical truths. What about the Trinity, all human beings are created in the image of God, the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice, etc.
A comprehensive biblical world view must also include orthopraxy, not just orthodoxy. Required orthopraxy might include: reconciliation across ethnic, class and gender lines, doing social justice, loving your ethnic neighbor, and ministry among the poor. In this more holistic biblical worldview, Afro American pastors and churches come through with flying colors. Barna comments:
As a Caucasian, I have to admit: analyzing the results of a large body of research focused upon the faith of the African American community blew me away. Prior to the research I was aware of the obvious differences: black church music is more energetic and soulful, their preachers are often spellbinding orators, .
However, I was not at all prepared for the nature and magnitude of the substantive difference I discovered between the black and white segments of the United States.
In the midst of massive injustice, past and present, something "truly spectacular was taking place in the lives of African Americans and it was ignited by the goings-on in their church." Here are some of the facts Barna discovered:
* Black adults are more likely to be born again Christians than are white adults.
* Did you know that when we tested 22 common goals the people pursue, the top-rated goal among black adults is to have a close relationship with God while that same goal is ranked fifth by whites?
* Black adults are nearly twice as likely as white adults to read the Bible during a typical week.
* Black adults are 50 percent more likely than white adults to strongly affirm that the Bible is totally accurate in everything it teaches.
* The typical African-American church raises more money for ministry each year than does the typical Caucasian church despite the lower levels of household income and membership in the black congregations.
Barna and Jackson state:
Black adults are more likely to struggle with finances and substance abuse. They often labor through feelings of loneliness and a sense of disconnection from other people. (This is especially true for black men.) They also fall prey to sexual temptation more often, whether that takes the form of physical intimacy with a non-spouse or enjoyment of pornographic materials. In fact, family realities become a point of confusion and stress for millions of blacks: they are twice as likely as whites to never get married and are more than twice as likely to have a child out of wedlock. Although black Americans recognize the importance of family and attribute their personal strength and success in large measure to what they absorbed from their family experience, millions of blacks admit that the typical black family is dysfunctional or a source of conflict rather than safety and security.
In the midst of past and continuing oppression and poverty, the church provides life integration of millions of Afro Americans. Oppression acts like a social pressure cooker creating enormous personal and family stresses. One-third of black youth say life is not worth living.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Nuggets of Information/Inspiration
1. By Haitian Didi Bertrand Farmer, anthropologist and wife of medical doctor, Paul Farmer:
"I knew when I moved here in 2006 that I had a lot to learn from Rwanda, but I could not have expected just how valuable these lessons would prove to be in Haiti. In March 2011, just over a year after the [Haiti] earthquake, a Rwandan colleague of mine put it this way: 'Rwanda and Haiti, they are the same. People lost family members. They lost husbands. They lost wives. They lost children. People's homes were destroyed and everything they owned was taken away from them. And afterward, people had to keep on living.' My colleague is a warm and generous Rwandan woman with a ready smile and an indefatigable spirit. Even after her husband, a Tutsi, was killed by a neighbor during the genocide, she took in six Hutu orphans to live alongside her own five children, and has supported all of them ever since. When I asked her how she kept on living in the wake of so much loss, she responded simply: 'I worked.' And she smiled as she said it."
"As of 1994, 70 percent of Rwanda's population was female. It was largely on the backs of these women---victims of rape and physical violence, wives abandoned by husbands imprisoned or fleeing imprisonment, women who had lost family members, friends, neighbors, lovers, children---that Rwanda was rebuilt. And as Paul [Farmer] often likes to say, it was built back better. In Haiti, we often wax poetic about the role of women as the centerpost of the nation, but Rwanda has actually put this idea into practice, with an emphasis on female leadership, economic empowerment, and education."
From Haiti: after the earthquake, the chapter titled "Mothers and Daughters of Haiti."
2. By Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking:
"My parents never acted mean to black people, even though they never questioned the system of racial discrimination that permeated every aspect of life. Daddy, an attorney, represented a slew of black clients, charging them five dollars for his services. It would take me a long time to understand how systems [of oppression] inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough."
3. By Wilbur T. Dayton, author of an article, "The New Testament Conception of Flesh,"; he writes about the Greek word 'sarx' which occurs 145 times in the NT and is often translated as flesh in English. A common misinterpretation is "that evil is inseparable from flesh, and that, therefore, the flesh is incurably evil." But "there is no uniformly evil reference in the NT use of sarx." In redemption, "it was not flesh or humanity that was destroyed. It was the sin that was in humanity that had to go. . . . Christ came in the flesh and redeemed flesh." So a person in a human body can be an instrument of evil or an instrument of good; redeemed flesh can be a temple of the Holy Spirit.
4. The American Paradox by Ted Halstead:
"The country with the most patents, Nobel laureates, and millionaires is also the country with the highest levels of poverty, homicide, and infant mortality among modern democracies."
5. The Cultural Subversion of the Christian Faith by James Smart:
"an authoritative Bible, wrongly interpreted, can have disastrous social and political consequences."
"we have not yet captured the meaning of biblical words in our sermons unless it is as dangerous in our situations as it was for the original biblical spokesmen."
6. Jeff Madrick in the July 2010 issue of The Nation:
"The financialization of the economy is a major cause of the soaring incomes at the top. Financial companies account for about twice the proportion of GDP as they did thirty years ago [they are parasites on the economy, unneeded], and up to 40 percent of corporate profits. . . . In 2006, at least fifty people at Goldman Sachs made $20 million or more. . . . Wall Street paid $150 billion in salaries in 2009, when the rest of America was mired in the worst recession since the 1930s and one out of six Americans couldn't find a full-time job."
7. Black pastor Marvin McMickle, author of Where Have All The Prophets Gone?:
"The [American black] church is becoming a place where Christianity is nothing more than capitalism in drag." Neo-charismatics have combined, praise, prosperity and patriotism, neglecting justice and the love of God.
"I knew when I moved here in 2006 that I had a lot to learn from Rwanda, but I could not have expected just how valuable these lessons would prove to be in Haiti. In March 2011, just over a year after the [Haiti] earthquake, a Rwandan colleague of mine put it this way: 'Rwanda and Haiti, they are the same. People lost family members. They lost husbands. They lost wives. They lost children. People's homes were destroyed and everything they owned was taken away from them. And afterward, people had to keep on living.' My colleague is a warm and generous Rwandan woman with a ready smile and an indefatigable spirit. Even after her husband, a Tutsi, was killed by a neighbor during the genocide, she took in six Hutu orphans to live alongside her own five children, and has supported all of them ever since. When I asked her how she kept on living in the wake of so much loss, she responded simply: 'I worked.' And she smiled as she said it."
"As of 1994, 70 percent of Rwanda's population was female. It was largely on the backs of these women---victims of rape and physical violence, wives abandoned by husbands imprisoned or fleeing imprisonment, women who had lost family members, friends, neighbors, lovers, children---that Rwanda was rebuilt. And as Paul [Farmer] often likes to say, it was built back better. In Haiti, we often wax poetic about the role of women as the centerpost of the nation, but Rwanda has actually put this idea into practice, with an emphasis on female leadership, economic empowerment, and education."
From Haiti: after the earthquake, the chapter titled "Mothers and Daughters of Haiti."
2. By Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking:
"My parents never acted mean to black people, even though they never questioned the system of racial discrimination that permeated every aspect of life. Daddy, an attorney, represented a slew of black clients, charging them five dollars for his services. It would take me a long time to understand how systems [of oppression] inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough."
3. By Wilbur T. Dayton, author of an article, "The New Testament Conception of Flesh,"; he writes about the Greek word 'sarx' which occurs 145 times in the NT and is often translated as flesh in English. A common misinterpretation is "that evil is inseparable from flesh, and that, therefore, the flesh is incurably evil." But "there is no uniformly evil reference in the NT use of sarx." In redemption, "it was not flesh or humanity that was destroyed. It was the sin that was in humanity that had to go. . . . Christ came in the flesh and redeemed flesh." So a person in a human body can be an instrument of evil or an instrument of good; redeemed flesh can be a temple of the Holy Spirit.
4. The American Paradox by Ted Halstead:
"The country with the most patents, Nobel laureates, and millionaires is also the country with the highest levels of poverty, homicide, and infant mortality among modern democracies."
5. The Cultural Subversion of the Christian Faith by James Smart:
"an authoritative Bible, wrongly interpreted, can have disastrous social and political consequences."
"we have not yet captured the meaning of biblical words in our sermons unless it is as dangerous in our situations as it was for the original biblical spokesmen."
6. Jeff Madrick in the July 2010 issue of The Nation:
"The financialization of the economy is a major cause of the soaring incomes at the top. Financial companies account for about twice the proportion of GDP as they did thirty years ago [they are parasites on the economy, unneeded], and up to 40 percent of corporate profits. . . . In 2006, at least fifty people at Goldman Sachs made $20 million or more. . . . Wall Street paid $150 billion in salaries in 2009, when the rest of America was mired in the worst recession since the 1930s and one out of six Americans couldn't find a full-time job."
7. Black pastor Marvin McMickle, author of Where Have All The Prophets Gone?:
"The [American black] church is becoming a place where Christianity is nothing more than capitalism in drag." Neo-charismatics have combined, praise, prosperity and patriotism, neglecting justice and the love of God.
First-century economics and Haiti
According to New testament scholar, Reta Finger, this is what the socioeconomic situation looked like in Palestine at the time of Christ:
For 90 percent of ancient Mediterranean people, survival issues were foremost. Land was the most desired form of wealth in these agrarian societies. But in Palestine as elsewhere in the first century, land was gradually accumulating in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Living with just enough food for a day at a time, people had no cash reserve when drought struck. Forced to borrow at exorbitant rates from wealthy landowners, their only recourse was to hand over the plot of ground that had been in the family for generations. That meant sharecropping on other's land and keeping only a fraction for one's family.
Such was the situation in Galilee when Jesus announced the revival of Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor (Luke 4:18-19). No wonder his message was received with enthusiasm in the Nazareth synagogue.
But this same Jubilee/kingdom of God message was seen as a threat by the Jewish religio-politico-economic elite. This elite ran the temple and the rest of Palestine as "a den of robbers." Or a religiously legitimated system of oppression. Jesus' kingdom of God message was a major threat to the oppressive status quo; they did not want to see this Jubilee justice message operationalized. Ultimately this religious elite was pushed to advocate the crucifixion of Jesus to eliminate this threat.
With historical variations, of course, a similar oppressive situation took place in Haiti. The slave rebellion was successful, but soon a small Haitian elite took over. Often they cooperated with a French and American elite to maintain political and economic power that exploited the masses, that created extreme poverty.
Next some quotations from the Book, Haiti: after the earthquake; from a well-educated Haitian, Leslie Voltaire:
Haiti's slave revolution in 1804 set the country on a course like no other. Since that time, political violence and the resulting instability have plagued Haiti. . . . When we had a colonial society, there was one set of infrastructure. Then we had a rupture [rebellion, civil war], which destroyed everything; the institutional, the physical, and the economic platform of that colonial society. So it reinvented a new society of free slaves, and organized the country around a few cities [controlled by an Haitian elite] with the vast majority of people living in the countryside without infrastructure. . . . [Today] Haiti needs to be self-sufficient in food and energy. . . . For these things to happen, Haiti needs institutional and physical infrastructure.
But past and current systems of oppression prevent Haiti's poor from progress. Yes, outside aid is often unwisely given resulting in failure, but the fundamental problem is current systems of oppression often aided by a U.S. elite; this prevents progress.
So Timothy Schwartz comments: "I've spent a large chunk of the past twenty years living and working in Haiti as a part of the aid industry. Like so many people who've worked here, a sense of frustration and failure haunts me. I've watched the country sink ever deeper into a quagmire of misery and despair while I've accomplished nothing tangible to stop the process."
Another story of failure: "the majority [one estimate is 80 percent]of Haiti's physicians and nurses had left the country altogether and those who remained were concentrated in the capital city." Conditions are so bad that even well-educated people leave Haiti when the opportunity arises. Coupled with education there needs to be taught that individual progress is not enough; all education needs to be infused with community development.
One example of doing things right can be found in rural Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti. Google Haiti Christian Development Fund for the 30 year story of Christian Community Development.
For 90 percent of ancient Mediterranean people, survival issues were foremost. Land was the most desired form of wealth in these agrarian societies. But in Palestine as elsewhere in the first century, land was gradually accumulating in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Living with just enough food for a day at a time, people had no cash reserve when drought struck. Forced to borrow at exorbitant rates from wealthy landowners, their only recourse was to hand over the plot of ground that had been in the family for generations. That meant sharecropping on other's land and keeping only a fraction for one's family.
Such was the situation in Galilee when Jesus announced the revival of Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor (Luke 4:18-19). No wonder his message was received with enthusiasm in the Nazareth synagogue.
But this same Jubilee/kingdom of God message was seen as a threat by the Jewish religio-politico-economic elite. This elite ran the temple and the rest of Palestine as "a den of robbers." Or a religiously legitimated system of oppression. Jesus' kingdom of God message was a major threat to the oppressive status quo; they did not want to see this Jubilee justice message operationalized. Ultimately this religious elite was pushed to advocate the crucifixion of Jesus to eliminate this threat.
With historical variations, of course, a similar oppressive situation took place in Haiti. The slave rebellion was successful, but soon a small Haitian elite took over. Often they cooperated with a French and American elite to maintain political and economic power that exploited the masses, that created extreme poverty.
Next some quotations from the Book, Haiti: after the earthquake; from a well-educated Haitian, Leslie Voltaire:
Haiti's slave revolution in 1804 set the country on a course like no other. Since that time, political violence and the resulting instability have plagued Haiti. . . . When we had a colonial society, there was one set of infrastructure. Then we had a rupture [rebellion, civil war], which destroyed everything; the institutional, the physical, and the economic platform of that colonial society. So it reinvented a new society of free slaves, and organized the country around a few cities [controlled by an Haitian elite] with the vast majority of people living in the countryside without infrastructure. . . . [Today] Haiti needs to be self-sufficient in food and energy. . . . For these things to happen, Haiti needs institutional and physical infrastructure.
But past and current systems of oppression prevent Haiti's poor from progress. Yes, outside aid is often unwisely given resulting in failure, but the fundamental problem is current systems of oppression often aided by a U.S. elite; this prevents progress.
So Timothy Schwartz comments: "I've spent a large chunk of the past twenty years living and working in Haiti as a part of the aid industry. Like so many people who've worked here, a sense of frustration and failure haunts me. I've watched the country sink ever deeper into a quagmire of misery and despair while I've accomplished nothing tangible to stop the process."
Another story of failure: "the majority [one estimate is 80 percent]of Haiti's physicians and nurses had left the country altogether and those who remained were concentrated in the capital city." Conditions are so bad that even well-educated people leave Haiti when the opportunity arises. Coupled with education there needs to be taught that individual progress is not enough; all education needs to be infused with community development.
One example of doing things right can be found in rural Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti. Google Haiti Christian Development Fund for the 30 year story of Christian Community Development.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Has The American Church Been in Hibernation for 30 years?
In 1984, I wrote the following article which was published in Faculty Dialogue; it was entitled "Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff." Earlier he had written "The Mission of the Christian College at the End of the 20th Century."
Judging by the first issue of Faculty Dialogue, Nicholas Wolterstorff has captured the attention of numerous people with his idea of the necessity of a Stage III Christian college---"the Christian in society." Wolterstorff suggests that a Stage III Christian college will need to be more than "international in its concerns and consciousness"; it will "have to explore new ways of packaging the learning it presents to students"; and it will have to "build bridges from theory to practice."
I agree with Wolterstorff. The need is great. In my opinion, it is a case of "mutual salvation." I am sensing that our white middle class evangelical Christian college students are increasingly conformed to the American trinity of individualism, materialism, and racism. They profess to be born again, but their life style and values seem more American than Christian. A colleague recently told me about a visit to his alma mater, a Christian college. He described the students as sons and daughters of the 'new rich' evangelicals; students who had graduated a generation ago and who made it big in the corporate, medical, or legal world. In one sense, they were models of success, but their sons and daughters seemed more materialistic than Christian; insulated and isolated from the 'real' world of the poor and minorities in their homes, churches, schools, and colleges.
In the past I believed that the poor and minorities needed us with our education, resources, and skills---we needed to serve them. Now I see that we need them to humanize us, to Christianize us. We desperately need each other. It is an authentic case of "mutual salvation."
We must build a new curriculum which contains major and sustained intellectual and social interaction with the poor and oppressed. Our colleges must aggressively seek to employ minorities in staff, faculty, administrative, and trustee positions. Our religion departments must engage in extensive dialogue with minority pastors and theologians so that, to use Carl Ellis' terminology, classical and jazz theologians can learn from each other.
For the past ten years, I have lived and worshipped in an inter-ethnic neighborhood. Next door lived a female-headed, poor, black family with all the problems normally associated with such families. We became good friends. I learned much from this interaction. It made me a better Christian and a better teacher.
I now believe I have a much better grasp of the overall biblical message. I have condensed it into this simple outline. A colleague said this outline was very helpful to him and should be shared with the wider evangelical community. I am indebted to Carl Ellis (Beyond Liberation) for some of these ideas.
I. Sin is unrighteousness
A. Personal ungodliness
B. Social Oppression
II. The kingdom of God is righteousness
A. Personal salvation
B. Social justice
Oppression dehumanizes both the oppressor and the oppressed, but in different ways. The American middle class is isolated from the oppressed communities. Thus we are insensitive to the biblical issue of oppression. If we lack an biblical understanding of oppression and a concern for the oppressed, we will likely not pursue justice. Only a prolonged and intimate contact with the oppressed plus an intense study of the 555 biblical references to oppression and to the many references to justice with develop our social conscience.
May the Holy Spirit add to our personal piety a deep commitment to Jubilee justice.
A 2016 update---30 years later.
What has happened in society and in the American church over the past 30 years? It appears to me that the American church and the American Christian college has been in hibernation, largely uninvolved in some of the major social problems of the day. During this 30 year period, there was an explosion in the mass incarc eration of young black and Hispanic males based heavily on racial profiling; during this same time period, the income and wealth gap widened. At the same time, there was an increasing discussion of justice in may churches, but little of it reached the streets.
Still missing in our churches and colleges: a NT theology of oppression, a NT theology of justice---the English NT needs to be rejusticized, NT theology that ties the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God and Jubilee justice together.
Judging by the first issue of Faculty Dialogue, Nicholas Wolterstorff has captured the attention of numerous people with his idea of the necessity of a Stage III Christian college---"the Christian in society." Wolterstorff suggests that a Stage III Christian college will need to be more than "international in its concerns and consciousness"; it will "have to explore new ways of packaging the learning it presents to students"; and it will have to "build bridges from theory to practice."
I agree with Wolterstorff. The need is great. In my opinion, it is a case of "mutual salvation." I am sensing that our white middle class evangelical Christian college students are increasingly conformed to the American trinity of individualism, materialism, and racism. They profess to be born again, but their life style and values seem more American than Christian. A colleague recently told me about a visit to his alma mater, a Christian college. He described the students as sons and daughters of the 'new rich' evangelicals; students who had graduated a generation ago and who made it big in the corporate, medical, or legal world. In one sense, they were models of success, but their sons and daughters seemed more materialistic than Christian; insulated and isolated from the 'real' world of the poor and minorities in their homes, churches, schools, and colleges.
In the past I believed that the poor and minorities needed us with our education, resources, and skills---we needed to serve them. Now I see that we need them to humanize us, to Christianize us. We desperately need each other. It is an authentic case of "mutual salvation."
We must build a new curriculum which contains major and sustained intellectual and social interaction with the poor and oppressed. Our colleges must aggressively seek to employ minorities in staff, faculty, administrative, and trustee positions. Our religion departments must engage in extensive dialogue with minority pastors and theologians so that, to use Carl Ellis' terminology, classical and jazz theologians can learn from each other.
For the past ten years, I have lived and worshipped in an inter-ethnic neighborhood. Next door lived a female-headed, poor, black family with all the problems normally associated with such families. We became good friends. I learned much from this interaction. It made me a better Christian and a better teacher.
I now believe I have a much better grasp of the overall biblical message. I have condensed it into this simple outline. A colleague said this outline was very helpful to him and should be shared with the wider evangelical community. I am indebted to Carl Ellis (Beyond Liberation) for some of these ideas.
I. Sin is unrighteousness
A. Personal ungodliness
B. Social Oppression
II. The kingdom of God is righteousness
A. Personal salvation
B. Social justice
Oppression dehumanizes both the oppressor and the oppressed, but in different ways. The American middle class is isolated from the oppressed communities. Thus we are insensitive to the biblical issue of oppression. If we lack an biblical understanding of oppression and a concern for the oppressed, we will likely not pursue justice. Only a prolonged and intimate contact with the oppressed plus an intense study of the 555 biblical references to oppression and to the many references to justice with develop our social conscience.
May the Holy Spirit add to our personal piety a deep commitment to Jubilee justice.
A 2016 update---30 years later.
What has happened in society and in the American church over the past 30 years? It appears to me that the American church and the American Christian college has been in hibernation, largely uninvolved in some of the major social problems of the day. During this 30 year period, there was an explosion in the mass incarc eration of young black and Hispanic males based heavily on racial profiling; during this same time period, the income and wealth gap widened. At the same time, there was an increasing discussion of justice in may churches, but little of it reached the streets.
Still missing in our churches and colleges: a NT theology of oppression, a NT theology of justice---the English NT needs to be rejusticized, NT theology that ties the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God and Jubilee justice together.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Haiti: after the earthquake
Paul Farmer's 2011 book entitled Haiti: after the earthquake has a chapter titled "A History of the Present [Socioeconomic] Illness." Using a medical phrase, "acute-on-chronic," Farmer, a medical doctor with a doctorate in anthropology, sees the earthquake as an acute event made much worse by chronic politico-socio-economic conditions in Haiti. So Farmer devotes a chapter to explaining why the chronic made the acute worse and made the recovery even more difficult.
Remember the old saying that the historical past haunts the sociological present? Or as a young Haitian recently said, "We're still paying the price for defeating the architects of slavery," even though Haitians gained their freedom 200 years ago---in 1804. This raises a fundamental question: are a people really free if they are denied economic justice. Is freedom hollow if not accompanied by Jubilee justice?
Haiti, a country that has suffered from 500 years of ethnocentrism and oppression. The ethnocentrism [supposed superiority of the white Spanish, French and Americans and the supposed inferiority of African slaves] of the Spanish, French and Americans legitimated the massive and horrific atrocities against past slaves and currently 'free' Haitians.
For approximately 200 years (1492-1697), the Spanish engaged in first Indian genocide and then African slavery. For the next 100 years (1697-1804), the French engaged in brutal physical slavery to make Haiti into the Pearl of the Antilles---a highly productive colony that exported coffee, sugar and tropical fruits to Europe. For the next 100+ years, from 1825 to around 1950, the French engaged in debt slavery, forcing Haiti to pay reparations to France. During this same time period, the U.S. joined France in treating Haiti as a pariah nation.
From 1915 to 2016, the U.S. dominated and exploited Haiti joining forces with a small Haitian elite. From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. marines controlled Haiti; they used forced labor to build roads. From 1957-1986, the U.S. supported two Haitian dictators, Papa Doc and Baby Doc. In many ways, the United States treat Haiti as a puppet state.
Back to the Haitian slave rebellion which gained political freedom for the slaves. The first slave uprising started in 1791; the civil war devastated the country. In 1801, France assembled a massive army to retake Haiti, France's prized colony. Again, the Haitians defeated the French but at a terrific human and economic cost. The country was devastated, much worse than the U.S. after its civil war. The freed slaves, of course, had no experience or tradition of democracy, no educational system. Into the vacuum stepped a few elite to gain control of the ports and what few exports there were. These elite have controlled much of Haiti ever since, often in alliance with an American elite.
Now some quotations from Haiti: after the earthquake, chapter 4:
Farmer describes the chronic conditions this way: "shoddy housing, bare hillsides and overfished waters, scarce access to clean water and modern sanitation, an undesirable business environment, cash-strapped health and school systems, high structural unemployment, and frequent political upheaval."
Most outsiders, including most Americans, tend to avoid or minimize the 500 years of ethnocentrism and oppression and engage in "the old and pernicious tendency to blame solely the Haitians and their culture." But "whether they can read or not, Haiti's people walk in history, and live in politics." Moreau de St-Mery describes the horror of slavery this way:
"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them is sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat shit? And, after having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup?"
Farmer continues: "In 1801, Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, Captain-General Leclere, to retake the colony [Haiti]. Leclerc sailed at the head of one of the largest armadas ever to set forth for the New World. . . . [Haitian] "Dessalines and his irregulars routed the French by November of 1803."
"The end of slavery in Haiti caused ripples throughout the Americas, from Venezuela to the United States and back to Europe. . . . " The French "orchestrated an economic and diplomatic embargo, the first of many against the troubled young nation." The U.S. did not recognize Haiti until 1862.
"It can be reasonably said that no one helped the Haitians on the road to independence, and that many forces, the deliberate policies of their neighbors among them, stymied their growth as a nation. . . . Absurdly, the French demanded reparations, and not just for the losses of French plantations but for the losses of their slaves too. Desperate for trading partners and international recognition, Haitian leaders agreed, in 1825, to pay France 150 million francs. . .For more than a century, the Haitians paid the debt [debt slavery]." Of course, justice demanded that reparations be paid to the slaves, but justice did not happen.
Farmer quotes Danner:
"This new nation, its fields burned, it plantation manors pillaged, its towns devastated by apocalyptic war, was crushed by these astronomical reparations, . . . that strangled its economy for more than a century. It was in this dark aftermath of war, in the shadow of isolation and contempt, that Haiti's peculiar political system took shape, mirroring in distorted form, the slave society of colonial times."
Again the horrors of the historical past haunt the sociological present in Haiti.
Remember the old saying that the historical past haunts the sociological present? Or as a young Haitian recently said, "We're still paying the price for defeating the architects of slavery," even though Haitians gained their freedom 200 years ago---in 1804. This raises a fundamental question: are a people really free if they are denied economic justice. Is freedom hollow if not accompanied by Jubilee justice?
Haiti, a country that has suffered from 500 years of ethnocentrism and oppression. The ethnocentrism [supposed superiority of the white Spanish, French and Americans and the supposed inferiority of African slaves] of the Spanish, French and Americans legitimated the massive and horrific atrocities against past slaves and currently 'free' Haitians.
For approximately 200 years (1492-1697), the Spanish engaged in first Indian genocide and then African slavery. For the next 100 years (1697-1804), the French engaged in brutal physical slavery to make Haiti into the Pearl of the Antilles---a highly productive colony that exported coffee, sugar and tropical fruits to Europe. For the next 100+ years, from 1825 to around 1950, the French engaged in debt slavery, forcing Haiti to pay reparations to France. During this same time period, the U.S. joined France in treating Haiti as a pariah nation.
From 1915 to 2016, the U.S. dominated and exploited Haiti joining forces with a small Haitian elite. From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. marines controlled Haiti; they used forced labor to build roads. From 1957-1986, the U.S. supported two Haitian dictators, Papa Doc and Baby Doc. In many ways, the United States treat Haiti as a puppet state.
Back to the Haitian slave rebellion which gained political freedom for the slaves. The first slave uprising started in 1791; the civil war devastated the country. In 1801, France assembled a massive army to retake Haiti, France's prized colony. Again, the Haitians defeated the French but at a terrific human and economic cost. The country was devastated, much worse than the U.S. after its civil war. The freed slaves, of course, had no experience or tradition of democracy, no educational system. Into the vacuum stepped a few elite to gain control of the ports and what few exports there were. These elite have controlled much of Haiti ever since, often in alliance with an American elite.
Now some quotations from Haiti: after the earthquake, chapter 4:
Farmer describes the chronic conditions this way: "shoddy housing, bare hillsides and overfished waters, scarce access to clean water and modern sanitation, an undesirable business environment, cash-strapped health and school systems, high structural unemployment, and frequent political upheaval."
Most outsiders, including most Americans, tend to avoid or minimize the 500 years of ethnocentrism and oppression and engage in "the old and pernicious tendency to blame solely the Haitians and their culture." But "whether they can read or not, Haiti's people walk in history, and live in politics." Moreau de St-Mery describes the horror of slavery this way:
"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them is sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat shit? And, after having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup?"
Farmer continues: "In 1801, Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, Captain-General Leclere, to retake the colony [Haiti]. Leclerc sailed at the head of one of the largest armadas ever to set forth for the New World. . . . [Haitian] "Dessalines and his irregulars routed the French by November of 1803."
"The end of slavery in Haiti caused ripples throughout the Americas, from Venezuela to the United States and back to Europe. . . . " The French "orchestrated an economic and diplomatic embargo, the first of many against the troubled young nation." The U.S. did not recognize Haiti until 1862.
"It can be reasonably said that no one helped the Haitians on the road to independence, and that many forces, the deliberate policies of their neighbors among them, stymied their growth as a nation. . . . Absurdly, the French demanded reparations, and not just for the losses of French plantations but for the losses of their slaves too. Desperate for trading partners and international recognition, Haitian leaders agreed, in 1825, to pay France 150 million francs. . .For more than a century, the Haitians paid the debt [debt slavery]." Of course, justice demanded that reparations be paid to the slaves, but justice did not happen.
Farmer quotes Danner:
"This new nation, its fields burned, it plantation manors pillaged, its towns devastated by apocalyptic war, was crushed by these astronomical reparations, . . . that strangled its economy for more than a century. It was in this dark aftermath of war, in the shadow of isolation and contempt, that Haiti's peculiar political system took shape, mirroring in distorted form, the slave society of colonial times."
Again the horrors of the historical past haunt the sociological present in Haiti.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Grace and Justice
Grace and justice are the biblical keys to complete reconciliation.
Racial or ethnic reconciliation is now approaching center stage in some areas of the America church. This is a good, though long overdue, move. The question now is: How deep does the reconciliation process go? And what would full and complete biblical reconciliation look like?
Reconciliation can and probably should begin at the personal level. Biblical reconciliation forgives enemies and builds new friendships. This is the level of most ethnic reconciliation today. What are the next steps?
Organizationally, leadership and power must be shared with ethnic leaders.
For Euro Americans, the next step is acts of justice---concrete action to rebuild the lives and communities among the poor and oppressed. We must move from personal relationships to social justice. Ethnic groups are rightly suspicious of personal reconciliation efforts that do not begin with or move on to acts of Jubilee justice. Jubilee justice, kingdom of God justice, is needed to heal the enormous damage of centuries of oppression. Remember that biblically oppression means means to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill persons created in the image of God often causing a personal or social PTSD or PTSS. As Isaiah chapter one says, the church is to stop oppression and do justice.
For American ethnics the next step, according to Spencer Perkins, is grace---grace to forgive the oppressor. From the human standpoint, inward bitterness or outward hate is a natural response to oppression. It is best if the grace of forgiveness is offered in response to the oppressor's confession and repentance. But sometimes grace may need to be offered even if there is no repentance.
The oil of grace lubricates the path of love. Or grace is the highest expression of love. To keep the process of reconciliation moving, generous grace must come from both parties.
Grace alone can take us halfway along the road of reconciliation. Justice alone can take us halfway also. But both grace and justice are needed for full biblical reconciliation.
So far in this essay, I have been talking about Christians---Christian principles to be lived out primarily within the church. Can we expect the larger society, even governments, to apply the concepts of grace and justice as principles of governance? Is this expecting too much of secular governments? What should a government do in response to the violence of a civil war or to the violence of systematic and brutal oppression? Is there any way out of the violence cycle?
Some governments are trying amnesty programs to stop the cycle of violence? The word amnesty is related to amnesia; amnesty comes from a Greek word meaning "a forgetting, a general pardon, especially for political offenses." Amnesty, then, is a political act of grace---pardon and forgiveness. The political act of amnesty is taken not only to stop the cycle of violence, but also to establish the grounds for some degree of social healing, restoration and reconciliation.
Periodically, in the Philippines, violence over land, who owned the land in a largely agricultural society, and the need for just land reform. The poor peasant farmers asserted that the rich and powerful, often with the aid of the government, the military, and sometimes the U.S. government, were illegally taking control over more and more land. This left millions of peasant either landless or farming marginal land. In frustration, the peasants took up arms to regain their land. The government, however, called the peasants rebels, terrorists, enemies of the state, and tried to crush them militarily.
For 20 years, roughly 1975-1995, the civil war raged. Thousands died, millions of dollars wasted, and life in civilian society was disrupted. Then General Ramos was elected president; previously he was a general who led the efforts to crush the rebels. As president, Ramos decided that for the good of society the cycle of violence had to be stopped. The government declared an amnesty for those involved in the civil war; peace negotiations were initiated with the goal of bringing about reconciliation. Some of the imprisoned rebel leaders were freed, then given money to use to go back to rebuild their communities. Some land reform, an act of justice, has begun, but so far it has been too limited.
If, in the future, full and comprehensive land reform does take place, such as happened in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan after World War II, then this act of justice would reduce the tensions and conflict between the rich and poor. The grace step of amnesty has opened the door to reconciliation and peace, but it must be followed by acts of justice to complete the reconciliation process and produce a measure of shalom in society. Economically, acts of justice are much cheaper than wars of violence, so an enlightened society ought to choose grace and justice.
Black South Africans faced a difficult moral choice when they took over the government in the early 1990s. What were they going to do about the violence and oppression conducted against them by past Afrikaner governments? Should they hold trials and punish the oppressors to the fullest extent?
The new government led by Mandela did not take the punishment approach to justice. Instead they decided on a grace approach and declared amnesty for the oppressors if they would come forward and confess the truth about their past actions. In 1994, the South African government passed a bill establishing a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation: "This commission linked together amnesty, truth telling, and a goal of reconciliation as key features of one process."
Here we have two governments, the Philippine and South African, which to solve enormous social problems, attempted to operate upon the highest of Christian principles---GRACE.
Racial or ethnic reconciliation is now approaching center stage in some areas of the America church. This is a good, though long overdue, move. The question now is: How deep does the reconciliation process go? And what would full and complete biblical reconciliation look like?
Reconciliation can and probably should begin at the personal level. Biblical reconciliation forgives enemies and builds new friendships. This is the level of most ethnic reconciliation today. What are the next steps?
Organizationally, leadership and power must be shared with ethnic leaders.
For Euro Americans, the next step is acts of justice---concrete action to rebuild the lives and communities among the poor and oppressed. We must move from personal relationships to social justice. Ethnic groups are rightly suspicious of personal reconciliation efforts that do not begin with or move on to acts of Jubilee justice. Jubilee justice, kingdom of God justice, is needed to heal the enormous damage of centuries of oppression. Remember that biblically oppression means means to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill persons created in the image of God often causing a personal or social PTSD or PTSS. As Isaiah chapter one says, the church is to stop oppression and do justice.
For American ethnics the next step, according to Spencer Perkins, is grace---grace to forgive the oppressor. From the human standpoint, inward bitterness or outward hate is a natural response to oppression. It is best if the grace of forgiveness is offered in response to the oppressor's confession and repentance. But sometimes grace may need to be offered even if there is no repentance.
The oil of grace lubricates the path of love. Or grace is the highest expression of love. To keep the process of reconciliation moving, generous grace must come from both parties.
Grace alone can take us halfway along the road of reconciliation. Justice alone can take us halfway also. But both grace and justice are needed for full biblical reconciliation.
So far in this essay, I have been talking about Christians---Christian principles to be lived out primarily within the church. Can we expect the larger society, even governments, to apply the concepts of grace and justice as principles of governance? Is this expecting too much of secular governments? What should a government do in response to the violence of a civil war or to the violence of systematic and brutal oppression? Is there any way out of the violence cycle?
Some governments are trying amnesty programs to stop the cycle of violence? The word amnesty is related to amnesia; amnesty comes from a Greek word meaning "a forgetting, a general pardon, especially for political offenses." Amnesty, then, is a political act of grace---pardon and forgiveness. The political act of amnesty is taken not only to stop the cycle of violence, but also to establish the grounds for some degree of social healing, restoration and reconciliation.
Periodically, in the Philippines, violence over land, who owned the land in a largely agricultural society, and the need for just land reform. The poor peasant farmers asserted that the rich and powerful, often with the aid of the government, the military, and sometimes the U.S. government, were illegally taking control over more and more land. This left millions of peasant either landless or farming marginal land. In frustration, the peasants took up arms to regain their land. The government, however, called the peasants rebels, terrorists, enemies of the state, and tried to crush them militarily.
For 20 years, roughly 1975-1995, the civil war raged. Thousands died, millions of dollars wasted, and life in civilian society was disrupted. Then General Ramos was elected president; previously he was a general who led the efforts to crush the rebels. As president, Ramos decided that for the good of society the cycle of violence had to be stopped. The government declared an amnesty for those involved in the civil war; peace negotiations were initiated with the goal of bringing about reconciliation. Some of the imprisoned rebel leaders were freed, then given money to use to go back to rebuild their communities. Some land reform, an act of justice, has begun, but so far it has been too limited.
If, in the future, full and comprehensive land reform does take place, such as happened in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan after World War II, then this act of justice would reduce the tensions and conflict between the rich and poor. The grace step of amnesty has opened the door to reconciliation and peace, but it must be followed by acts of justice to complete the reconciliation process and produce a measure of shalom in society. Economically, acts of justice are much cheaper than wars of violence, so an enlightened society ought to choose grace and justice.
Black South Africans faced a difficult moral choice when they took over the government in the early 1990s. What were they going to do about the violence and oppression conducted against them by past Afrikaner governments? Should they hold trials and punish the oppressors to the fullest extent?
The new government led by Mandela did not take the punishment approach to justice. Instead they decided on a grace approach and declared amnesty for the oppressors if they would come forward and confess the truth about their past actions. In 1994, the South African government passed a bill establishing a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation: "This commission linked together amnesty, truth telling, and a goal of reconciliation as key features of one process."
Here we have two governments, the Philippine and South African, which to solve enormous social problems, attempted to operate upon the highest of Christian principles---GRACE.
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