Spencer Perkins and Philip Yancey

About two months before his death, Spencer Perkins told me that he was reading Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace?  Spencer said that Yancey's book might be the single best book he had ever read.  Previously under the guidance of John and Judy Alexander, Spencer and his White yokefellow, Chris Rice, had begun a new adventure of grace in their relationship and ministry which had helped them deal with "irreconcilable differences".

Without question, Philip Yancey's deep insights into grace expanded Spencer's understanding of and commitment to grace as a way of life.  Here are a few of Yancey's pearls of wisdom on grace:

1. From a Jewish woman in Israel regarding her attempts at reconciliation with Arabs: "I believe that we Jews have a lot to learn from you Christians about forgiveness.  I see no other way around some of the logjams.  And yet it seems so unfair.  I am caught between forgiveness and justice."(pg. 81)
2. Regarding Romans 12:19, "Do not take revenge, my friends. . . . it is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord."  "At last, I understood: in the final analysis, forgiveness is an act of faith.  By forgiving another I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am.  By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all the issues of fairness for God to work out.  I leave in God's hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy." (pg. 83)
3. "The word resentment expresses what happens if the cycle [of unforgiveness] goes uninterrupted.  It means literally, "to feel again": resentment clings tot he past, relieves it over and over, picks each fresh scab so that the wound never heals." (pg. 89)
4. "The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative." (pg. 91)  In other words, reliving the past with bitterness and resentment or becoming a prisoner of the past which shuts out future growth.
5. Martin Luther King: "Forgiveness is not just an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude." (pg. 125)

Spencer absorbed these profound ideas and applied them to himself and his fellow Afro-Americans.  Since Spencer and his father, mother, brothers and sisters lived in Mississippi most of their lives, they knew from bitter experience the daily trauma of racial oppression and poverty.  In addition to this they suffered from the profoundly traumatic events: the brutal beating of their father and the degrading experience of integrating Mendenhall high school as teenagers.  The humiliation, the bitterness went deep into their minds and emotions.

Joanie, for example, exploded, "I hate white folks," and it took her over 25 years before she finally could forgive white folks.

So Spencer's article, "Playing the Grace Card," reflects a personal intensity and reality that transcends even Yancey's superb book.  It is no small thing when a Perkins' family member replaces "I hate white folks.", with "I forgive white folks."

Here are some of Spencer Perkins's deep insights on grace:

1. "Our willingness and ability to give grace or to forgive others is an accurate indicator of how well we truly know God."
2. ". . . . my willingness to forgive them [my oppressors] is not dependent on how they respond.  Being able to extend grace and to forgive people sets us free.  We no longer need to spend precious emotional energy thinking about the day that they will get what they deserve."
3. "And if, one step at a time, our discipleship as Christians could include giving each other grace, if our children could learn and practice forgiveness as well as they practice praise and worship, if we could literally create a counter-culture of grace. . . . the world would have to take notice."

In Christianity Today, July 1998, Spencer Perkins' article, "Playing the Grace Card" I quote:

"We are at an impasse over race because we cannot forgive, declared Spencer Perkins in what became his last public statement.  Speaking at a conference on racial reconciliation last January, the activist and writer confessed his past struggles in dealing with "white folks" and how he discovered a radical way forward in helping our racial divide.  The following week he died of heart failure at the age of 44.  Perkins, along with Chris Rice, directed Reconcilers Fellowship in Jackson, Mississippi, coauthored More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (IVP), and coedited  Reconcilers magazine."

Spencer writes:  "It was winter 1970, and my mother was taking my seven siblings and me to visit our father in the hospital.  No auto accident or natural illness had landed him in the life-threatening condition.  Rather, it was the nightsticks and fists of white law-enforcement officers that had nearly beaten him to death for his civil-rights activities."  

"My sister Joanie, then 14 years old, took one look at my battered father and stormed out of the room repeating angrily, "I hate white people.  I will never like them!"

"My mother tried to convince her that her attitude was not very Christlike.  But at that moment, with my father lying bruised and swollen, I could tell that even though my mother knew the right things to say, her heart was not in the words she spoke."

"Not that it would have mattered.  My sister was having no part of those tired, old words--love and forgiveness--anyway.  Those white people were not going to get off that easily.  All of us siblings wanted those men to get what they deserved.  To our knowledge, they never did."

"Today, to the casual observer, my sister looks as though she has reneged on her vow.  She has white friends, attends an interracial church, and functions well in a white environment.  But all her life, like many African Americans, Joanie has had a safe, time-tested method for emotionally dealing with whites."

In conclusion, I wish to make this final observation.  As important as it is for blacks to forgive their white oppressors in order to have authentic reconciliation between blacks and whites, it is ten times more important for white Christians, on a massive scale, to repent over their oppression, to engage in restitution, and then assist in the rebuilding of poor black communities.  But instead of repenting, most white Christians rationalize and see themselves as righteous ones.  Self-righteous people do not repent. 

Thy Kingdom Come--On Earth

Jesus wrote what we call the Lord's Prayer to teach his disciples how to pray.  This included the phrase, "Thy Kingdom Come, on earth."  So Jesus put the focus on the kingdom here on earth.
In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus gets even more specific.  He says kingdom people release the oppressed by doing Jubilee justice.

I have asked hundreds of people--Presbyterians and Pentecostals, Mennonites and Methodists to give me a one sentence of the kingdom of God.  Nearly all have presented me a spiritual and future dimension of the kingdom of God.  Few have emphasized the present and social dimensions of the kingdom.  No one has ever used the phrase, "Release the oppressed." as an essential component of the kingdom.  No one has ever tied the kingdom to the six messianic passages found in Isaiah--9:17; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4.
These six messianic passages stress justice as the essential characteristic of the kingdom.

There are three hundred dik-stems in the Greek New Testament.  In essence a dik-stem has justice as its central meaning, but English New Testament translations, and English theologians have dejusticized the New Testament.  In the process they have dejusticized the kingdom of God.

 The best Old Testament model for describing the New Testament kingdom of God can be found  Nehemiah 5 where we see both the oppression problem and the justice solution.  

If the church is going 

to implement the kingdom of God, as a Jubilee justice that releases the oppressed, it should follow the 

Nehemiah model.

The kingdom chant should be: "Release the oppressed by doing justice."

If I were given permission to edit the Lord's Prayer, I would add, "Your kingdom comes on earth when kingdom people release the oppressed by doing Jubilee Justice."

Church Refugees

Why are some of the best and brightest leaving the church in significant numbers?  They are not mad at God, but they are mad at the church.  Here is one reason why according to the book
Church Refugees.  The author, Josh Packard, writes the following:
"I recently talked to a pastor of a church of about 100 worshipers.  We added up all the time it took to produce the service, prepare his sermon, produce the podcast of the service, set up, practice, and so on.  When we finished, we figured his church was spending around 137 hours a week  and a full 60 percent of its budget to produce the 90 minute Sunday morning service.  The pastor was stunned. . . . The de-churched saw this devotion to the Sunday morning gathering as a resource hog."

Here is a different way of doing ministry.  I would like to cite the example of HCDF--Haiti Christian Development Fund.  HCDF focuses on Christian Community Development--a strategy to rebuild poor and oppressed communities.  Probably 90 percent of its budget and ministry is in the community of need, not the church.  So when Jean Thomas goes to work, he is not going to work to prepare a sermon, he is going to work to strategize and operationalize Christian Community Development.  

For example, HCDF working closely with the community, provided clean water for the community.
When disease wiped out the pig population, HCDF created a pig nursery to repopulate the pigs in their spot in rural Haiti.  HCDF and the community have planted over five million trees.  HCDF created a credit union.  HCDF started a farming project.  HCDF is now educating around 1,000 students.

After 35 years of Christian Community Development, HCDF has made a lasting impact in this oppression-ravaged, poverty-stricken portion of rural Haiti.

In addition, eight churches have been established, but HCDF is not content to just do church.  A major portion of their ministry is out in the community addressing the urgent needs of the people in the community.

What could the American church learn from HCDF?  Probably every American church should be spending at least 50 percent of their budget on some form of community outreach, community development.  A church that is spending the majority of its resources on itself, is not really biblical though it thinks it is.

White Iowans don't lynch, they incarcerate

White Iowans are too civilized to physically lynch Blacks, but they are barbaric enough to socially lynch Blacks through racial profiling and mass incarceration.

Most white Iowans brag about our progressive, civil rights record, but out of ignorance or denial, we are silent about our number one in the nation black-white incarceration ratio.  Iowa's Black population is only 2 percent, but Iowa's prison population is 24 percent Black ( a few years ago ).  Either Iowa's Black population is highly criminal or Iowa's white population, which runs the criminal justice system, is highly oppressive.

Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling The New Jim Crow, states: "Convictions for
non-violent crimes and relatively minor drug offenses--mostly possession, not sale--have accounted for the bulk of the increase in the prison population since the mid-1980's."

White, Blacks and Latinos use and sell illegal drugs equally--about 6 percent of each ethnic population.  So, if the criminal justice system prosecuted illegal drugs equally, Iowa's prison population ratio for Blacks should be 2 and 2, not 2 and 24.  The new Prohibition on drugs has a racial twist to it--massive racial profiling.

But there is some potential good news.  Yesterday, July 28, 2015, the Des Moines Register reported:

"State and community leaders say the state needs to reduce the disproportionate rate of minorities in Iowa's criminal justice system, and they hope an upcoming (third annual) summit will focus attention on the issue. . . . 'This is nothing short of a crisis,' said Betty Andrews, president of the NAACP. . . .
Chief Justice Mark Cady of the Iowa Supreme Court has made reducing racial disparities in the criminal justice system a top priority."

But Iowa may be moving "with all deliberate speed"---quite slowly; a crisis demands quick action, more walk than talk.  Will the appalling silence of Iowa's good people continue allowing racial profiling and mass incarceration, or is this the beginning of fundamental change?  What happens if Iowans don't repent, restitute and repair?  Donal Braman (doing time on the outside: incarceration and family life in urban America) describes what is now happening and what will continue to happen:

"Incarceration, something few families faced fifty year ago, is now an integral part of family life (and community life) in urban America (2004).  About one out of every ten adult black men in the District of Columbia is in prison, and at last count, over half of the black men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five were under some type of correctional supervision.  If these conditions persist, over 75 percent of young black men in the District can expect incarceration at some point in their lives."

". . .impoverished neighborhoods are also deeply injured by mass incarceration.  The disassembling of our society's most vulnerable families has wreaked material, emotional  and social havoc in the lives of millions, with consequences that will reverberate for generations. . . .families and communities have become collateral damage in the war on crime."

"We need to ask how our criminal sanctions shape the lives not only of criminal offenders but of their children, partners, parents, and communities. . . .accelerating the spiral of entire communities into poverty, illness, and despair. . . . They need real justice, something that is in short supply."

Real justice seems to be in short supply in Iowa; biblically, both the government and the church are called to do justice.  For the past 30 years, during the War on Drugs, neither the state government nor the Iowa churches initiated strong efforts to stop mass incarceration and restore justice.  Currently there is talk about doing something, but major, quick and concrete actions are in short supply.  The white Iowa churches, if they are biblical, should be leading the way---incarnating the kingdom of God as justice for Iowa's oppressed poor.

When chickens were dying by the millions, Governor Branstad declared a state of emergency; he needs to declare another state of emergency to stop immediately racial profiling and mass incarceration.  

In conclusion, Braman declares:  "By employing incarceration---the bluntest of policy instruments---as the primary response to social disorder, policymakers have significantly missed the mark. . . . (instead we need) long-term mandatory drug treatment, public housing programs that move poor families out of the ghetto, employment opportunities. . . . and family welfare programs."

Mass incarceration creates personal and social trauma.  Iowa's churches needs to heed Pope Franics' admonition:  "Leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets."

Grace and Justice: the Keys to Complete Reconciliation

Racial or ethnic reconciliation is now approaching center stage on the evangelical church's agenda.  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 reconciliation look like?

Reconciliation can and probably should begin at the personal relationship level.  That 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 of 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 move on to acts of justice.  Social justice is needed to heal the enormous damage of oppression; remember that biblical oppression means to crush, humiliate, animalize, enslave, impoverish and kill persons created in the image of God.  Oppression must stop; justice must be done.

For American ethnics the next step, according to Spencer Perkins, and Afro-American, is grace - grace to forgive the oppressor.  From the human standpoint, inward bitterness is a natural response to outward oppression.  It is best if the grace of forgiveness is offered in response to the oppressor's repentance and confession of sin.  But sometimes grace may need to be offered even if there is no repentance.

The oil of grace lubricates the path of love.  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 to reconciliation.  Justice, alone, can take us halfway also.  But both grace and justice are needed for full and complete reconciliation.

So far in this article on grace and justice, we have been talking about Christians - Christian principles to be lived out within the church.

Can we expect the larger society, even governments, to apply the concepts of grace and justice as principles of governance?  Or is this expecting too much of government?  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, the retribution/punishment type of justice?

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."  One of the meanings of grace is mercy.  Amnesty is a political act of grace, mercy, pardon and forgiveness.

So 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 in society.

Periodically in the Philippines violence broke out over land reform - who owned the land in a largely agricultural society.  The poor peasant farmers believed that the rich and powerful, often with the aid of the government, the military and sometimes the US government, were illegally taking control of more and more land.  This left millions of peasants either landless or farming marginal land.  In frustration, the peasants took up arms to regain their land.  The government, however, called the peasants rebels, enemies of the state, and tried to crush them militarily.

For twenty years, roughly 1975-1995, the civil war raged.  Many were killed, millions of dollars were wasted, and life in civil society disrupted.  Ramos was elected president (formerly he was a military general who led efforts to crush the rebels) and he decided that for the good of the 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 have been freed and given money to use to go back and rebuild their communities.  Some land reform 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 will reduce the tensions and conflict between the rich and poor.  The grace step of amnesty has opened the door to peace and reconciliation, 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 cheaper than wars of violence so an enlightened society ought to choose grace and justice.

Black South Africans faced a similar situation when they took over the power of government in the early 1990's.  What were they going to do about the violence and oppression conducted against them by past Afrikaner governments?  Would they hold trials and punish to the fullest extent those found guilty of violence and murder?  Some would argue that this approach is necessary to hold the standard of justice high.  Only if past wrongs are righted by just punishment can people hope for a future of justice.  (These ideas on South Africa are largely taken from "How much Truth Can We Take?" by L. Gregory Jones in Christianity Today, Feb 9, 1998.)

The new government did not take the punishment approach to justice.  Instead they decided on a grace approach and declared amnesty for the violent oppressors if they would come forward and fully confess the truth about their past actions.  Repentance and restitution were not required for amnesty, but confession and the full truth were conditions for amnesty.  Those who did not confess could be put through the traditional judicial approach, found guilty and punished for their crimes.

In 1994, the South African Parliament 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."  Remember, amnesty or pardon is an act of grace.

Is this cheap reconciliation?  There does not seem to be much emphasis on legal or social justice at this stage.  Some persons are confessing murder and the walking away with no legal punishment.  Some victims want vengeance and punishment; forgiveness at this time does not seem appropriate or possible.

Others, taking a longer view, say that punishment or retributive justice should give way to some higher goals - reconciliation or restorative justice.

Grace and forgiveness lay the foundation for the possible restoration of the oppressor.  But some oppressors are either so hardened in their conscience, or so theologically convinced of the rightness of their position that they refuse to repent of their misdeeds.

Reparation (apparently by the government) to the victims are provided as the Commission deems appropriate, so some degree of economic justice is provided.  The Commission hopes that the truthful confession will reduce the rationalization or justification of past misdeeds.  Also, truthful confession by the perpetrator seems to open the door to forgiveness from the lips of some of the victims.  Forgiveness is apparently more healing to the victim than is retribution or punishment of the oppressor.  And forgiveness potentially opens the door to reconciliation.

All of the above is possible only if a people begins with grace.  Usually governments have little to do with grace, but they attempt to dispense justice.  But here we have two governments, Philippine and South African, which are attempting to operate upon the highest of Christian principles - GRACE.

Signs on "the dividing wall of hostility" Ephesians 2:14

After studying Ephesians 2:11-22, these are some ideas stimulated by this Bible study

1. New Testament Jews

 God's Chosen Superior People *

• chosen/superior righteous
• righteous people need not repent
• no repentance leads to judgment

social institution temple - "den of robbers"

*a corruption of God's servant/just people

2. Americans

 God's "Chosen" Superior People

• manifest destiny
• American exceptionalism
• WASP - White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant
• rich, white, males

social institution slavery, white church

3.  French/Haitian

• superior people/culture
• Although the French blamed Haitians for being voodoo ridden and demonic the truth is the real demon was woven tightly with French ethnocentrism and oppression. In other words, the institution of slavery was far more demonic than voodoo ceremonies.

social institution slavery, rich elite

4.  Conclusion:

Jews, Americans and French were all ethnocentric; ethnocentrism is a form of idolatry.  Ethnocentrism/idolatry is license to oppress others. 

5.  Solutions:

What new sign or signs should the church put on the walls of hostility to replace false ethnic superiority and social institutions of oppression?  How can social reconciliation based on the cross and implemented by the church replace walls of hostility?  One key component to a solution by the church would be to develop biblically based theologies on oppression and justice.  

How radical is the kingdom of God?

This is a book review of a brand new book by Frank Viola titled, "Insurgence".  This is a call to live out the radical kingdom of God, and to reject the many American substitutes for the kingdom.

Viola describes this radical kingdom with these words.  He wants American Christians to "unleash the titanic, explosive, cataclysmic, earth-shaking, life-altering gospel of the kingdom."

This book contains many good and important biblical truths; it comes close to delivering its promise, but, in the end, Viola backs away from fully understanding and endorsing the radical justice that the biblical kingdom calls for.

Viola is superb on social evil, evil social order, the demonic world system, the rich, American nationalism and American capitalism.  The only weakness I detected in the area of social evil was that apparently Viola does not know about the 555 references to oppression in the Old Testament; therefore he does not understand that oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills people created in the image of God.

From page 363 we find this quotation:
"If you live in the West, the two main idols or false gods are nationalism and capitalism.  I live in America and these two idols have this nation in its grip.  People kill, sacrifice, and die for these idols. Anything is justified for love of country (nationalism) and love of money (capitalism).  And this mindset has even bled into the Christian community."

In terms of justice being central to the kingdom of God, Viola ignores the all important messianic passages from Isaiah.  All six of which stress justice as characterizing the kingdom.  These six Isaiah passages can be found in 9:7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4.

For me this was the number one weakness in the book.  These passages define the kingdom.  Viola says there are no New Testament passages which define the kingdom.  Not quite true if you read Mathew 6:33, "seek first God's kingdom and his justice" (NEB). Two other clues warned me about this potential neglect of justice.  Glancing at the biography I saw no black names listed, such as:
John Perkins, John Skinner, Barbara Williams Skinner, Martin Luther King.  As far as I could tell it was an all white list.  He also listed his four mentors; I think all four were white.  One of them was
A.W. Tozer.  I sort of detected that Viola would like to be in the same vein of A.W. Tozer who was widely respected as maybe the most spiritual leader in America in the the last century.

Let me tell you something my wife discovered about Tozer. Towards the end of his book the biographer reveals this story.  Tozer's church was located in south Chicago.  As time went by more and more poor blacks moved in around the church.  Tozer's white congregations saw these poor blacks as a dangerous threat.  His biographer described the black community as "irreparably damaged."  In other words, nothing could be done to repair or rebuild that community.  So this white church might as well move out to the suburbs.  The church, with Tozer's approval, planned to move.

Tozer's Almighty God could not help the church address this problem.  Had John Perkins been pastor, he would have seen this as a golden opportunity for the church to minister to the needs of the community through what he called Christian Community Development.  Neither Tozer nor his church had such a vision, so they cut and ran.  The radical kingdom of God would have stayed and ministered.  So for me, anything that looks like Tozer now is suspect.

Though Viola would deny it, Tozer represents a spirituality without justice, and in the final analysis, I conclude that Viola's understanding of the kingdom is also without justice.  Viola is fairly good on the
Old Testament and justice, but tragically weak on the New Testament and justice as are almost all white American biblical scholars.

So in spite of great promise, great potential, Viola's book, "Insurgence", does not deliver.  Being forwarded I still recommend you read it.