Slavery officially ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, but too many of us are still in shackles.
No, not iron shackles, binding our feet and hands, but mental and emotional shackles, which keep us from experiencing life to the fullest.
I thought about this last week, actually, when it became obvious to me that a whole lot of folks, black and white, are enslaved by the Conservative Right. The debacle with Shirley Sherrod made that all too clear, and, sadly, it showed that our president is included in the ranks.
The Liberal Left is enslaved because they are so worried about the upcoming elections and the 2012 presidential election. They are running scared, listening to poll numbers, and the rants of those on the Right who oppose President Obama and all he does.
The president is enslaved by that same group, and his slavery is exacerbated by a group of advisors, primarily white, who have advised him to steer clear of anything racial. Geez. President Clinton had more rapport and demonstrated more comfort talking about race than Mr. Obama.
That being as it is, however, my bigger concern is how WE are enslaved by the way we think. We think little. We think of all the reasons something cannot be done. We think of all the things we cannot do …and because of that, many of us are living stagnant, unproductive and unfulfilling lives.
There is something amazing that happens when we step out of our comfort zones, put our toes, metaphorically, in the warm sands of a new experience. It is as though the warmth beckons us and whispers to us that “we can,” and once we begin this new journey, we become transformed as we realize that the whispered message was correct.
We can do a whole lot more than we think we can.
Hard times are opportunities to find out just who we are, what we are made of, what is inside us. The Shirley Sherrod episode showed the NAACP and the White House how effectively they are enslaved by fear of the Right. President Obama, in addition, is enslaved by a fear of being “too black,” having been convinced that to talk on behalf of justice as concerns race is a sure way for him to alienate important voters in 2012.
We, on the other hand, ordinary people, are enslaved by clouds of self-doubt that serve to keep us “in our place.” We continue to be the backs upon which rich people get richer and powerful people become more powerful, mostly because we think we can do no better.
In this year of repentance and transformation, it is time for us to “turn away” from old things and “turn toward” the Christ. In that turning, it is time for us to ask Jesus to change our doubt to faith, to cleanse us of the skepticism which keeps us put, and to believe that Jesus will answer the prayer. It is time for us to stop saying what we cannot do, and jump into the possibilities of all that God has equipped us to do.
If God enpowered Gideon to beat 300,000 Midianite armed soldiers with 300 men armed with nothing but trumpets, jars and torches, then surely God stands ready to empower us to do great things as well, both individually and collectively.
Since God IS, we ARE. Physical slavery in this country was outlawed in 1863. It is time for us to outlaw our self-imposed slavery to the powers and principalities which can only survive if we decide we want to stay in our shackles
Monday, July 26, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Lessons in Black History: White Opposition to Passage of Civil Rights Law
Lessons in Black History:
White Opposition to Passage of Civil Rights Bill
The year was 1964, and the passage of a bill that would make it law to treat African Americans as Americans with rights outlined by the United States Constitution was nearly a reality.
White opposition to the bill, however, was broad and deep; although “segregationists” were expectedly opposed to the bill, so were many so-called liberals who felt that the balance of the United States was about to be horribly knocked askew.
People wanted “their country back,” and were incensed that President Lyndon Baines Johnson was intent on getting the bill passed.
That year, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-AZ, was running for president, and he didn’t want to make race an issue of his campaign, but did in fact shape his arguments so that people knew he was very well talking about race. About the pending passage of the civil rights bill, he “endorsed the segregationist charge that the new civil rights law was a cause rather than a cure for injustice” He said that” …the more the federal government attempted to legislate morality, the more it has actually incited hatred and violence.” The rift between those who believed in states’ rights and those who supported broader federal government involvement in some issues was highlighted as Goldwater criticized “big government” for imposing Social Security numbers, and telling you what to print on your cigarette pack.” (Pillar of Fire,p. 492)
Goldwater connected with Sen. Strom Thurmond,D-SC, and together, the Republican candidate for president and the Democratic senator criticized the element of the Democratic Party which supported passage of the bill. On September 16, Thurmond switched party affiliation, and as a new Republican, said, “The Democratic Party has abandoned the people…(it has) invaded the lives of people … has succored and assisted our Communist enemies…worships at the throne of power and materialism …has protected the Supreme Court in a reign of judicial tyranny.” (Pillar, p. 493) Thurmond and Goldwater agreed that if Democrats “prevail, freedom as we have known it in this country is doomed.” (p. 493)
Meanwhile, violence against black people in the South continued, largely ignored by law enforcement, local, state and federal. In fact, many law enforcement officers were known to participate in the violence, incidents which included bombings, murders and terrorism. As black people participating in the Civil Rights movement were being beaten and arrested, held without trial, and losing their homes, churches and their lives, many whites, from law enforcement to white newspapers, reported that the blacks were burning their own homes and murdering each other, and blaming white people.
Black people pushed for civil rights, which included, first and foremost, the right to vote, in spite of having little to no support or protection from law enforcement. Meanwhile, segregationists, some members of the KKK and some not, perceived it their godly and religious duty to stop the movement of blacks toward equity. Imperial KKK Wizard Sam Bowers “quoted the Book of Romans to ordain that any ‘fourth degree sanctions’ (the KKK designated term for “murder”) be accomplished by compartmentalized command “without malice” in the spirit of Christian soldiers.” (Pillar, p. 500)
Surely, there was a need for a bill to give African Americans the rights due to any human being.
White Opposition to Passage of Civil Rights Bill
The year was 1964, and the passage of a bill that would make it law to treat African Americans as Americans with rights outlined by the United States Constitution was nearly a reality.
White opposition to the bill, however, was broad and deep; although “segregationists” were expectedly opposed to the bill, so were many so-called liberals who felt that the balance of the United States was about to be horribly knocked askew.
People wanted “their country back,” and were incensed that President Lyndon Baines Johnson was intent on getting the bill passed.
That year, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-AZ, was running for president, and he didn’t want to make race an issue of his campaign, but did in fact shape his arguments so that people knew he was very well talking about race. About the pending passage of the civil rights bill, he “endorsed the segregationist charge that the new civil rights law was a cause rather than a cure for injustice” He said that” …the more the federal government attempted to legislate morality, the more it has actually incited hatred and violence.” The rift between those who believed in states’ rights and those who supported broader federal government involvement in some issues was highlighted as Goldwater criticized “big government” for imposing Social Security numbers, and telling you what to print on your cigarette pack.” (Pillar of Fire,p. 492)
Goldwater connected with Sen. Strom Thurmond,D-SC, and together, the Republican candidate for president and the Democratic senator criticized the element of the Democratic Party which supported passage of the bill. On September 16, Thurmond switched party affiliation, and as a new Republican, said, “The Democratic Party has abandoned the people…(it has) invaded the lives of people … has succored and assisted our Communist enemies…worships at the throne of power and materialism …has protected the Supreme Court in a reign of judicial tyranny.” (Pillar, p. 493) Thurmond and Goldwater agreed that if Democrats “prevail, freedom as we have known it in this country is doomed.” (p. 493)
Meanwhile, violence against black people in the South continued, largely ignored by law enforcement, local, state and federal. In fact, many law enforcement officers were known to participate in the violence, incidents which included bombings, murders and terrorism. As black people participating in the Civil Rights movement were being beaten and arrested, held without trial, and losing their homes, churches and their lives, many whites, from law enforcement to white newspapers, reported that the blacks were burning their own homes and murdering each other, and blaming white people.
Black people pushed for civil rights, which included, first and foremost, the right to vote, in spite of having little to no support or protection from law enforcement. Meanwhile, segregationists, some members of the KKK and some not, perceived it their godly and religious duty to stop the movement of blacks toward equity. Imperial KKK Wizard Sam Bowers “quoted the Book of Romans to ordain that any ‘fourth degree sanctions’ (the KKK designated term for “murder”) be accomplished by compartmentalized command “without malice” in the spirit of Christian soldiers.” (Pillar, p. 500)
Surely, there was a need for a bill to give African Americans the rights due to any human being.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Our Disease Keeps Flaring Up
Perhaps we are living in a kairos moment, a God moment, and God Herself is parting the waters.
A brouhaha broke out last week when Ben Jealous, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), presiding over the 121st convention of that group drafted a resolution asking that the leadership of the Tea Party denounce the “racist elements” of that group. He was referring to the Tea Party members spitting on black legislators, referring to President Obama and his family in racist terms, and some of the other things we have all seen.
Jealous didn’t say the Tea Party itself was racist. He said that there were (and there are) racist elements in the Tea Party who have done and said offensive things and that the leadership should denounce them.
Mark Williams, the head of the Tea Party Express, fired back, saying that the entire NAACP was racist, and then he wrote a very offensive blog, a satire of Jealous, he said, where he had Jealous writing a letter to President Abraham Lincoln, asking what “we coloreds” would do, now that people expect us to take care of ourselves.
A member of the Tea Party later expelled Williams from the Tea Party Express, a black man, actually, who couldn’t say that what Williams had written was racist (“I am not able to say what is racist and what is not,” he said) but it was offensive, and took away from the goals of the Tea Party, which is to push for less government, less government spending, and lower taxes.
Well, folks got riled up, on both “sides,” and someone dug up a speech where Shirley Sherrod, who until this week worked for the federal government, was heard on tape saying that she was offended when a white farmer acted like he was talking down to her and didn’t do as much as she might …
But what she did do is help this same farmer save his farm, when it seemed nobody else could or would. The elderly white farmer said on television this week that she was not racist, that she saved their farm, a farm which they still have. “She’s not no racist,” the elderly Mr. Spooner, the farmer, said. “Seems to me like somebody just wanted to stir something up.” His wife agreed.
Ms. Sherrod says that as she was doing her job yesterday, “the White House,” or someone from the White House, a Cheryl Cook, Deputy Secretary for Underdevelopment, called her three times and pressured her to resign her post. She said that this Ms. Cook told her first to go on administrative leave. She was driving a government car, so she left her meeting and was on her way home. On that drive, she got three calls from Ms. Cook, pressuring her to resign. Ms. Cook said that Glenn Beck was going to run the tape that evening of what she’d said on that tape, and finally, asked pull over to the side of the road and offer her resignation.
Then, to add insult to injury, Ben Jealous, on behalf of the NAACP, denounced this woman.
My question is, why didn’t the government and Jealous look into the entire statement and speech Sherrod made before they threw her on the chopping block? Sherrod said that she promised her father, the night he was murdered by a Klansman, that she would not leave the South and that she would do all she could to end racism, in her own little way. She said she decided to turn the pain of knowing her father had been murdered for no other reason than he was hated by some whites … that she would turn this negative into a positive.
Someone should have looked into the depth of this story before they threw Sherrod under the bus.
All of us who are African American have felt the discomfort of feeling looked down upon by some white person just because of our color. We have known the difficulty of doing right when we have felt like not doing it. I think I heard her say that though on the day she met with Mr. Spooner she didn’t do all she could on that day, she eventually relented to her sense of right in the eyes of God, and helped that man save his farm.
Oh, the story needs to be opened and told. The Tea Party and Right Wingers who dug this up as a sort of trump card following the dispute between the Tea Party and NAACP got her fired. How many real cases of discrimination have gone ignored? How many white government workers have not done all they can to help black farmers.
Oh, by the way. Ms. Sherrod made the statement 24 years ago, and she wasn’t working for the government at the time.
A brouhaha broke out last week when Ben Jealous, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), presiding over the 121st convention of that group drafted a resolution asking that the leadership of the Tea Party denounce the “racist elements” of that group. He was referring to the Tea Party members spitting on black legislators, referring to President Obama and his family in racist terms, and some of the other things we have all seen.
Jealous didn’t say the Tea Party itself was racist. He said that there were (and there are) racist elements in the Tea Party who have done and said offensive things and that the leadership should denounce them.
Mark Williams, the head of the Tea Party Express, fired back, saying that the entire NAACP was racist, and then he wrote a very offensive blog, a satire of Jealous, he said, where he had Jealous writing a letter to President Abraham Lincoln, asking what “we coloreds” would do, now that people expect us to take care of ourselves.
A member of the Tea Party later expelled Williams from the Tea Party Express, a black man, actually, who couldn’t say that what Williams had written was racist (“I am not able to say what is racist and what is not,” he said) but it was offensive, and took away from the goals of the Tea Party, which is to push for less government, less government spending, and lower taxes.
Well, folks got riled up, on both “sides,” and someone dug up a speech where Shirley Sherrod, who until this week worked for the federal government, was heard on tape saying that she was offended when a white farmer acted like he was talking down to her and didn’t do as much as she might …
But what she did do is help this same farmer save his farm, when it seemed nobody else could or would. The elderly white farmer said on television this week that she was not racist, that she saved their farm, a farm which they still have. “She’s not no racist,” the elderly Mr. Spooner, the farmer, said. “Seems to me like somebody just wanted to stir something up.” His wife agreed.
Ms. Sherrod says that as she was doing her job yesterday, “the White House,” or someone from the White House, a Cheryl Cook, Deputy Secretary for Underdevelopment, called her three times and pressured her to resign her post. She said that this Ms. Cook told her first to go on administrative leave. She was driving a government car, so she left her meeting and was on her way home. On that drive, she got three calls from Ms. Cook, pressuring her to resign. Ms. Cook said that Glenn Beck was going to run the tape that evening of what she’d said on that tape, and finally, asked pull over to the side of the road and offer her resignation.
Then, to add insult to injury, Ben Jealous, on behalf of the NAACP, denounced this woman.
My question is, why didn’t the government and Jealous look into the entire statement and speech Sherrod made before they threw her on the chopping block? Sherrod said that she promised her father, the night he was murdered by a Klansman, that she would not leave the South and that she would do all she could to end racism, in her own little way. She said she decided to turn the pain of knowing her father had been murdered for no other reason than he was hated by some whites … that she would turn this negative into a positive.
Someone should have looked into the depth of this story before they threw Sherrod under the bus.
All of us who are African American have felt the discomfort of feeling looked down upon by some white person just because of our color. We have known the difficulty of doing right when we have felt like not doing it. I think I heard her say that though on the day she met with Mr. Spooner she didn’t do all she could on that day, she eventually relented to her sense of right in the eyes of God, and helped that man save his farm.
Oh, the story needs to be opened and told. The Tea Party and Right Wingers who dug this up as a sort of trump card following the dispute between the Tea Party and NAACP got her fired. How many real cases of discrimination have gone ignored? How many white government workers have not done all they can to help black farmers.
Oh, by the way. Ms. Sherrod made the statement 24 years ago, and she wasn’t working for the government at the time.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Lessons in Black History - Teachers Take a Stand
The year was 1965, and Lyndon B. Johnson had just been elected to his first full term as president of the United States. His inauguration was spectacular; an estimated 1.2 million people gathered on the Washington Mall, which was 60 times more people who had watched John F. Kennedy become president.
The war in Vietnam was a sore reality, already cutting into the legacy that LBJ would leave, even while another part of his legacy was the passage of the Civil Rights Bill into law. Although fiercely opposed, there was in America a sense of a passage traveled; people said then, as they said after Barack Obama was elected president, that the race problems of America had ended because of the bill’s passage.
People said that even as citizens and civil rights volunteers worked in the South to get black people the right to vote. The resistance to black voter registration was stubborn, unfair and violent…and persistent. People in the South objected to “outsiders” telling them what to do and how to run their states. White violence against black people trying to register was rampant and largely supported by white law enforcement officers and courts, presided over by racist judges.
In Selma, Alabama that year, African American schoolteachers decided to take a stand. Many of their young students had faced angry police officers and dogs, been burned with cattle prods, and gone to jail, fighting for the right of “grown folks” to vote. The teachers resolved that they had to support their students and the cause.
And so they arrived at Clark Elementary School, dressed in their Sunday best, according to author Taylor Branch, and marched, two by two, from the school toward the voting registrar’s office. Their action was a bold move, for not only did they face certain violence, they could have lost their jobs as well. Branch states that most of them owed their very jobs to white politicians. Nevertheless, they were moved to march, and march they did.
It was January 22 at 3:24 p.m. The teachers arrived at the registrar’s office to be told by the president of the school board that the office was closed. He also said that the teachers’ written requests to be allowed to register after classes were done had been denied. They were advised to leave.
The group’s leader, a Rev. F.D. Reese, asked if one or two teachers could be allowed to walk past the closed voting registrar’s office as a sign of their resolve to get the right to vote, but his request made the sheriff angry. Sheriff Jim Clark ordered the teachers off the premises, then proceeded to launch into them, nightstick flailing. He succeeded in shoving the teachers down the stairs, causing many to fall onto the sidewalk.
The teachers gathered themselves up and ascended the stairs two more times, only to pushed down the stairs both times. They defied authorities; 95 percent of the African American schoolteachers of Selma were represented in this march, and police knew they’d have a hard time if all were arrested. Finally, Andrew Young appeared and called the march to a halt; the teachers got back into their double line and marched back to Clark Elementary School.
The action garnered huge support for the teachers from the youth, who, up to this point, had scorned their apparent reluctance to “get involved.” And all of this happened while up north, people said the passage of the Civil Rights Bill into law had showed that America’s race problems had ended.
The war in Vietnam was a sore reality, already cutting into the legacy that LBJ would leave, even while another part of his legacy was the passage of the Civil Rights Bill into law. Although fiercely opposed, there was in America a sense of a passage traveled; people said then, as they said after Barack Obama was elected president, that the race problems of America had ended because of the bill’s passage.
People said that even as citizens and civil rights volunteers worked in the South to get black people the right to vote. The resistance to black voter registration was stubborn, unfair and violent…and persistent. People in the South objected to “outsiders” telling them what to do and how to run their states. White violence against black people trying to register was rampant and largely supported by white law enforcement officers and courts, presided over by racist judges.
In Selma, Alabama that year, African American schoolteachers decided to take a stand. Many of their young students had faced angry police officers and dogs, been burned with cattle prods, and gone to jail, fighting for the right of “grown folks” to vote. The teachers resolved that they had to support their students and the cause.
And so they arrived at Clark Elementary School, dressed in their Sunday best, according to author Taylor Branch, and marched, two by two, from the school toward the voting registrar’s office. Their action was a bold move, for not only did they face certain violence, they could have lost their jobs as well. Branch states that most of them owed their very jobs to white politicians. Nevertheless, they were moved to march, and march they did.
It was January 22 at 3:24 p.m. The teachers arrived at the registrar’s office to be told by the president of the school board that the office was closed. He also said that the teachers’ written requests to be allowed to register after classes were done had been denied. They were advised to leave.
The group’s leader, a Rev. F.D. Reese, asked if one or two teachers could be allowed to walk past the closed voting registrar’s office as a sign of their resolve to get the right to vote, but his request made the sheriff angry. Sheriff Jim Clark ordered the teachers off the premises, then proceeded to launch into them, nightstick flailing. He succeeded in shoving the teachers down the stairs, causing many to fall onto the sidewalk.
The teachers gathered themselves up and ascended the stairs two more times, only to pushed down the stairs both times. They defied authorities; 95 percent of the African American schoolteachers of Selma were represented in this march, and police knew they’d have a hard time if all were arrested. Finally, Andrew Young appeared and called the march to a halt; the teachers got back into their double line and marched back to Clark Elementary School.
The action garnered huge support for the teachers from the youth, who, up to this point, had scorned their apparent reluctance to “get involved.” And all of this happened while up north, people said the passage of the Civil Rights Bill into law had showed that America’s race problems had ended.
Tea Party Racism a Reality
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its 101st convention this week in Kansas City and presented a resolution asking the Tea Party to condemn its “rampant racism.”
Ben Jealous, president of this country’s oldest civil rights organization, said that the Tea Party has “dedicated racists and ultra nationalists” in its ranks, people who make no bones about not liking black people in general and President Obama in particular.
Mr. Jealous said that the aim of the Tea Party is to push the country back to pre-civil rights era conditions, but Mark Williams, speaking for the Tea Party, said it is the Obama administration that is seeking to do just that.
Huh?
Mr. Williams said that the president’s policies, including health care reform, threaten the human and civil rights of all Americans, including black people. He said that Mr. Obama has created policies that “have emasculated the black family.”
Huh?
Which black families is he talking about?
In fact, how many American families, period, is he talking about?
The facts have shown that though Americans pay more for health care than any nation in the world, we have the worst health care. We have a system based on profit for insurance companies, which has been at the expense of “the American people.”
All groups of people, from all ethnicities and economic classes, have suffered because our health care system is and has been more concerned with profit margins over the health and well being of American citizens.
When little children, black, white, and otherwise, are dying of infections garnered from a bad tooth that could not be treated because a parent didn’t have health care, something is morally wrong with the extant system. When people with cancer cannot get treatment because they do not have and cannot afford health care, something is wrong. When a family has to send a child overseas because he or she has a chronic illness, needs health insurance, isn’t working, but couldn’t get health care anyway because of his or her pre-existing condition, something is wrong.
WHO is it that’s been emasculated by Mr. Obama’s policies?
The Tea Party is not made up exclusively of racist people, but there are enough of them, people so racist that some felt it OK to spit on black legislators some months ago, and who compare Mr. Obama to Hitler …there are enough of them to taint the entire party, in my opinion. For Mr. Williams to state that the Obama’s policies “emasculate” the black family reeks of arrogance, ignorance and racism as well. What black families does he know which have been hurt by the prospect of having access to health care?
I hope that the Tea Party crashes and burns. I hope that its racism hits enough people who are at least embarrassed to be associated with a group which feels to be a euphemism for the Ku Klux Klan. These people are riled up and have lots of energy; I hope that voices of reason, stronger than the so-called “Coffee Parties,” rile up and push back, until the Tea Party is pushed into the Boston Harbor, ever to remain drowned in and because of its own racism, arrogance and ignorance.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
Ben Jealous, president of this country’s oldest civil rights organization, said that the Tea Party has “dedicated racists and ultra nationalists” in its ranks, people who make no bones about not liking black people in general and President Obama in particular.
Mr. Jealous said that the aim of the Tea Party is to push the country back to pre-civil rights era conditions, but Mark Williams, speaking for the Tea Party, said it is the Obama administration that is seeking to do just that.
Huh?
Mr. Williams said that the president’s policies, including health care reform, threaten the human and civil rights of all Americans, including black people. He said that Mr. Obama has created policies that “have emasculated the black family.”
Huh?
Which black families is he talking about?
In fact, how many American families, period, is he talking about?
The facts have shown that though Americans pay more for health care than any nation in the world, we have the worst health care. We have a system based on profit for insurance companies, which has been at the expense of “the American people.”
All groups of people, from all ethnicities and economic classes, have suffered because our health care system is and has been more concerned with profit margins over the health and well being of American citizens.
When little children, black, white, and otherwise, are dying of infections garnered from a bad tooth that could not be treated because a parent didn’t have health care, something is morally wrong with the extant system. When people with cancer cannot get treatment because they do not have and cannot afford health care, something is wrong. When a family has to send a child overseas because he or she has a chronic illness, needs health insurance, isn’t working, but couldn’t get health care anyway because of his or her pre-existing condition, something is wrong.
WHO is it that’s been emasculated by Mr. Obama’s policies?
The Tea Party is not made up exclusively of racist people, but there are enough of them, people so racist that some felt it OK to spit on black legislators some months ago, and who compare Mr. Obama to Hitler …there are enough of them to taint the entire party, in my opinion. For Mr. Williams to state that the Obama’s policies “emasculate” the black family reeks of arrogance, ignorance and racism as well. What black families does he know which have been hurt by the prospect of having access to health care?
I hope that the Tea Party crashes and burns. I hope that its racism hits enough people who are at least embarrassed to be associated with a group which feels to be a euphemism for the Ku Klux Klan. These people are riled up and have lots of energy; I hope that voices of reason, stronger than the so-called “Coffee Parties,” rile up and push back, until the Tea Party is pushed into the Boston Harbor, ever to remain drowned in and because of its own racism, arrogance and ignorance.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
I Happen to be a Christian
Lessons in Black History
“I Happen to be a Christian”
The greatest strength of the Civil Rights movement was its insistence on non-violence. Using the Gospels as his guide, Dr. King and his organization spent hours teaching African Americans how to resist violent altercations with opponents of civil rights, relying on the “turn the other cheek” directive given by Jesus.
Some people thought, however, that Dr. King’s tactics were anti-Christian, and thought that non-violence incited people to attack each other. A conversation that Dr. King had on a flight with a white person went this way:
“A well dressed young passenger across the aisle recognized Dr. King. ‘I happen to be a Christian,’ he repeated several times, asking with a polite edge whether King thought he advocated ‘the same love Jesus taught’ even though King’s methods ‘incited one man against another.’ King replied that nonviolence aimed at a ‘love that is strong so that you love your fellow men enough to lead them to justice.’ He asked whether his questioner thought segregation was Christian. ‘I was anticipating that,’ the passenger warily replied, adding that he was less resolved on the large issue than on his hunch that King’s methods were ‘causing more harm than good.’ King asked what methods the passenger suggested, which eventually elicited an opinion that the new civil rights law was harmful, too, and would ‘just carry on the trend toward federal dictatorship.’ When he expressed his inclination to vote for Goldwater, they lightened the stakes by sparring over presidential election odds until the passenger moved to another seat.” (Taylor Branch, “Pillar of Fire,” p. 410)
White people upset by the thought of black people having civil and voting rights believed that such efforts would turn the United States into a socialist country. Members of the Republican Party, the “party of Lincoln,” began to leave their party and become Democrats, joining the ranks of well established Southern Democrats. To be for the rights of all people was to be “liberal,” and out of line with the principles established by the United States Constitution. Up until the civil rights movement, Republicans had been more aligned behind and in support of “Negro rights,” but it seems that their definition of “rights” was limited and the civil rights act definitely expanded the sphere beyond what most could accept. The federal government became the enemy as it pushed through the civil rights act, and the political ideology of Republicans shifted, representing white people who opposed civil and voting rights, while black people aligned themselves with Democrats, whose leader, President Lyndon Johnson, had pushed the civil rights bill through Congress.
Clearly, the idea of being a “Christian” was seen differently by whites and blacks. Many whites, opposed to rights for black people, said that Jesus himself believed in a stratified, separated, segregated society. The late Sen. Robert Byrd, arguing against passage of the Civil Rights bill, said, “If all men are created equal, how could five of the virgins have been wise and five foolish?” He further said that he had listened to the giants of theology and evangelism and wondered why they had never mentioned race, and, finally, he said that he had searched the scriptures and had found no scriptural basis upon which the Congress was obligated to pass the civil rights legislation.
People happened to be Christian, but clearly, the understanding and interpretation of the Gospels left wiggle room for those who sought Biblical justification.
“I Happen to be a Christian”
The greatest strength of the Civil Rights movement was its insistence on non-violence. Using the Gospels as his guide, Dr. King and his organization spent hours teaching African Americans how to resist violent altercations with opponents of civil rights, relying on the “turn the other cheek” directive given by Jesus.
Some people thought, however, that Dr. King’s tactics were anti-Christian, and thought that non-violence incited people to attack each other. A conversation that Dr. King had on a flight with a white person went this way:
“A well dressed young passenger across the aisle recognized Dr. King. ‘I happen to be a Christian,’ he repeated several times, asking with a polite edge whether King thought he advocated ‘the same love Jesus taught’ even though King’s methods ‘incited one man against another.’ King replied that nonviolence aimed at a ‘love that is strong so that you love your fellow men enough to lead them to justice.’ He asked whether his questioner thought segregation was Christian. ‘I was anticipating that,’ the passenger warily replied, adding that he was less resolved on the large issue than on his hunch that King’s methods were ‘causing more harm than good.’ King asked what methods the passenger suggested, which eventually elicited an opinion that the new civil rights law was harmful, too, and would ‘just carry on the trend toward federal dictatorship.’ When he expressed his inclination to vote for Goldwater, they lightened the stakes by sparring over presidential election odds until the passenger moved to another seat.” (Taylor Branch, “Pillar of Fire,” p. 410)
White people upset by the thought of black people having civil and voting rights believed that such efforts would turn the United States into a socialist country. Members of the Republican Party, the “party of Lincoln,” began to leave their party and become Democrats, joining the ranks of well established Southern Democrats. To be for the rights of all people was to be “liberal,” and out of line with the principles established by the United States Constitution. Up until the civil rights movement, Republicans had been more aligned behind and in support of “Negro rights,” but it seems that their definition of “rights” was limited and the civil rights act definitely expanded the sphere beyond what most could accept. The federal government became the enemy as it pushed through the civil rights act, and the political ideology of Republicans shifted, representing white people who opposed civil and voting rights, while black people aligned themselves with Democrats, whose leader, President Lyndon Johnson, had pushed the civil rights bill through Congress.
Clearly, the idea of being a “Christian” was seen differently by whites and blacks. Many whites, opposed to rights for black people, said that Jesus himself believed in a stratified, separated, segregated society. The late Sen. Robert Byrd, arguing against passage of the Civil Rights bill, said, “If all men are created equal, how could five of the virgins have been wise and five foolish?” He further said that he had listened to the giants of theology and evangelism and wondered why they had never mentioned race, and, finally, he said that he had searched the scriptures and had found no scriptural basis upon which the Congress was obligated to pass the civil rights legislation.
People happened to be Christian, but clearly, the understanding and interpretation of the Gospels left wiggle room for those who sought Biblical justification.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Come to Worship; Leave to Serve
Things are bad on the Gulf Coast; life there is altered significantly, if not forever, then for a very long time. Individuals and families have lost their livelihood, and bad economic times have just gotten worse because if one group of people are suffering we are all suffering. Stories say that crews are cleaning Gulf Coast beaches 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Efforts to get the oil cleaned up are controlled by the weather, and as hurricane season gears up, making the waters choppy and rough, it looks like a bad situation is going to get worse before it gets better.
But in spite of the Gulf Coast, I keep thinking about Haiti, you know, the poorest nation in the world. I keep thinking about the people living in tents, in shanty towns, really, with no electricity, no toilets, crammed together like sardines, in line to be hit by torrential rains and hurricanes as well.
It is so easy to forget. It is easy, too, to marginalize peoples’ suffering when we have not seen it or experienced it. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other towns on the Gulf Coast, it was absolutely eerie to see the devastation. There is a silence in destruction that is that extreme. Walking through the rubble, it was as though the very earth was crying out for help. If the earth was crying, then the people wailed…
Reports showed that the ripple effects of Katrina were great, and the ripples continue to this day, including deaths, mental disease, job loss, and, of course, loss of property. Teams of people are still going down to New Orleans to help rebuild. Some families are still living in trailers.
Instead of the need to serve getting smaller, it is getting larger. The people on the Gulf Coast need help. The people in Haiti need help, and victims of Katrina may still need help. People in Tennessee impacted by recent floods need help…
Jesus’ command to serve is great. No matter how small we may be, we are still obligated to live the Gospel and to bless others with whatever we can. Today we feed people in our community, and take leftover food to a shelter, and Tuesday we may be taking our hot lunch to a community where there is no recreation center. The deacons are collecting money so that we can build a well in West Africa so that people have clean water. We have begun to “go out” and live the Great Commission.
But with people in Haiti and Tennessee and the Gulf Coast still in need, we have more to do. The first step is praying for the people who are in need; and the second step is to pray for God to show us what we can do, and how, so that we may serve “while it is still day.”
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
But in spite of the Gulf Coast, I keep thinking about Haiti, you know, the poorest nation in the world. I keep thinking about the people living in tents, in shanty towns, really, with no electricity, no toilets, crammed together like sardines, in line to be hit by torrential rains and hurricanes as well.
It is so easy to forget. It is easy, too, to marginalize peoples’ suffering when we have not seen it or experienced it. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other towns on the Gulf Coast, it was absolutely eerie to see the devastation. There is a silence in destruction that is that extreme. Walking through the rubble, it was as though the very earth was crying out for help. If the earth was crying, then the people wailed…
Reports showed that the ripple effects of Katrina were great, and the ripples continue to this day, including deaths, mental disease, job loss, and, of course, loss of property. Teams of people are still going down to New Orleans to help rebuild. Some families are still living in trailers.
Instead of the need to serve getting smaller, it is getting larger. The people on the Gulf Coast need help. The people in Haiti need help, and victims of Katrina may still need help. People in Tennessee impacted by recent floods need help…
Jesus’ command to serve is great. No matter how small we may be, we are still obligated to live the Gospel and to bless others with whatever we can. Today we feed people in our community, and take leftover food to a shelter, and Tuesday we may be taking our hot lunch to a community where there is no recreation center. The deacons are collecting money so that we can build a well in West Africa so that people have clean water. We have begun to “go out” and live the Great Commission.
But with people in Haiti and Tennessee and the Gulf Coast still in need, we have more to do. The first step is praying for the people who are in need; and the second step is to pray for God to show us what we can do, and how, so that we may serve “while it is still day.”
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
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