Monthly Archives: May 2014

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May 27, 2014

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Reading for Reconciliation

Today’s guest post is written by Bobby Valentine. Bobby is a minister currently serving God in Arizona. He is also a scholar who has co-authored several books in the field of church history and practice. Bobby writes a popular Bible study blog that I encourage you to check out: http://stonedcampbelldisciple.com/

Unlike previous reading lists posted on this blog Bobby’s list isn’t directly related to church ministry. However, I believe this list serves as a great example of how dialogue and inquest lead to transformation.

 

I grew up in north Alabama. My family’s roots come thru Florida and New York though.  My family was and is open to many things on a “personal” level regarding race.  But I did not know anything. I still do not but I am learning.  It was during my ministry in New Orleans that I came face to face with the matter of race as something beyond my imagination to comprehend.  This was a rather difficult discovery and one that I resented to be honest. But some folks actually helped open my eyes in a gentle but firm way.  This was 1995ish when I was challenged by a fellow by the name of Robert Birt to read Before the Mayflower … it was the beginning of a long journey.  Talking about race, I have learned, is an explosive issue for many.  It is a subject filled with defensiveness at the mere mention of it. But there is in fact a “history” and that history … like the history of our family of origin … has profound and not so subtle influence on every aspect of our lives in America.

As a Christian, I am certain that we have an obligation to move beyond our own personal experience and be God’s leaven in our world.  This redemptive MISSIONAL task is not easy.  The church has an obligation to deal with this and preachers and elders have one as well.  With that in mind I share the following list of books and movies that have helped me move out of my comfort zone.  Preachers often avoid the subject like the plague.  It is so much easier and safer to preach about something as profoundly relevant as instrumental music (!) … Yes I am being sarcastic but I cannot help myself.

Remember I am a White Italian Boy from Alabama. I make no pretense to being a scholar in this area.  These are just resources that have helped me in my own ministry as I try to live the Gospel of Reconciliation.  There is nothing on this list I have not read.  I began keeping this list in 1996 and have updated it on my pc thru the years.  I share it with you my friends and lovers of God’s shalom and grace …

Books

Lerone Bennett Jr, Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (in many editions).  Bennett’s book is a classic and it was the beginning point for me.  It was the first book I read as noted above.  It immediately let me know there is way more to American history than I ever figured.  Bennett eloquently chronicles and interprets the African American experience in the USA. His book can help us get a grasp on the proud moments and the valleys of blacks in America.  This is a great book to begin your own journey of thinking and learning.

Edward J. Blume & Paul Harvey, The Color Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America.  What color was Jesus? It has mattered to many people through the years.  And how we have conceived him has impacted Christian practice and social ethics. We travel from slave huts to Hollywood in this excellent and compelling book.  Jesus has been hijacked for many an agenda in the racial sage of America.

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65; At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68.   These three volumes by Branch are the most extensive material on the struggles that wracked America in that long decade or so from Rosa Parks to the death of Martin Luther King Jr.  How American changed in those years!  My own question was after reading these breathtaking volumes was … Lord have mercy on your church and so how can we move forward.  These are great books.  They are not small but they are easy to read.  Branch is a great writer. Branch won Pulitzers for his work.

James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power.  This was my introduction to Cone. Cone makes me squirm.  He is in your face and he rubbed me raw I confess.  I cannot tell you how many times I threw that book down.  He made me mad and I think he wanted to! However I am glad I read it and I am better for it.  He helped me understand something of anger and that I should be angry about how some things have been and remain.  Do we use the Gospel and religion as a cloak to hide our complicity in racism?

James Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: Dream or Nightmare. Cone’s style in this work is considerably different than in BT&BP. He is not dispassionate (not sure he is capable of that) but not as fiery.  But was America in the experience of these premier black leaders? How far apart are their visions of what we are and what we are to be.  This is a good book.

Tony Evans, Getting to Know One Another.  It is always good to see an Evangelical write about the subject of racial reconciliation.  Evans has great respect for the Bible and he walks a fine line of not trying to radically offend white folks he is writing too.  This is a good books to give to the highly sensitive but he will actually convict us if we let him.  The Bible is not silent on this matter.

Michael Casey, Saddlebags, City Streets & CyberSpace: A History of Preaching in Churches of Christ.  This book is not on race relations per se.  But Casey includes an insightful chapter on African American preaching among “us” as represented by Marshall Keeble especially.  How did Keeble address the issue and did he at all?  Casey suggests that Keeble used “coded” language that said something to Whites and another thing to Blacks.  It reminds me of the movie “White Men Can’t Jump” when Wesley Snipes says to Woody Harrelson’s character “YOU CAN’T HEAR JIMI!!”  Its true … sometimes we do not have ears to hear.  Good material on G. P. Bowser and R. N. Hogan too.

Tom Dent, Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement.  This is probably one of the better introductions to this turbulent period for a White Italian Alabama boy.  It was a good read.  It is filled with human interest stories.  Reading this book originally in 1998 I recall saying to myself, “ive been there! and I didn’t know that!”  This along with Bennett is a good “entre” into the waters.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.  I have long championed the agenda of recognizing FD as one of the Founding Fathers of America.  This book is small, heroic and disturbing.  Some folks have idealized visions of slavery and nothing is worse than perpetuating these images than Gone with the Wind (a book I have come to despise).  The defining moment in FD’s life was when he was 19 or 20 he refused to submit to a beating and he fought back.  It was his declaration of independence. His fiery passion for liberty and justice fill his narrative. This book should be required reading in high school.

Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation & Reconstruction.  Foner is one of the foremost scholars on the Reconstruction period.  This lively work draws from newspapers, sermons, corporate advertisements, art, even the circus! It scattered among it brief “Visual Essays” because seeing a pictures are worth a thousand words and these are worth millions.  The story that we share is the tragedy of willfully selling out for the sake of filthy lucre a race of people that brought Reconstruction to an end.  And there are PLENTY of MYTHS about reconstruction that need to be burst.  Great book.

David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  Garrow won a Pulitzer for this magnificent work.  It is marked by great prose, depth of understanding, and showing the continuing relevance of King and his legacy.

Fred D. Gray, Bus Ride to Justice: Autobiography of Fred Gray.  I first read Gray’s book in the late 1990s and a revised edition has since come out.  Gray is the quite “giant slayer” of the Civil Rights Movement.  Born and raised in Jim Crow Montgomery, he pursued a silent promise to “destroy all things segregated!” He defended Rosa Parks, orchestrated the Bus Protest of 1956, was MLK Jr’s attorney, he desegregated Alabama’s schools, the 1965 Selma march, the landmark Gomillion v. Lightfoot Supreme Court case and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study attorney.  Gray is a testimony of a man’s CHRISTIAN commitment to the Gospel of reconciliation and how one poor man defeated the system.  He is deeply committed to Christian education and a preacher of the Gospel.  He was one of Marshall Keeble’s “boys” … and preacher for the Tuskegee Church of Christ.

Martin Luther King, Jr, Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is as powerful to read as he is to listen to. His passion for both peace and justice is contagious.  The importance of reading King is self evident in my opinion.  Nothing else needs to be said.

Malcolm X (with Alex Haley), The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  Reading Malcolm reminded me – yet again – how different some people’s experiences have been from mine.  What I got out of Malcolm is not only a sense of the deep seated nearly subliminal anger that exists in many quarters of the USA.  Malcolm helps me understand “why this is so.”  The second thing I get from Malcolm is how dangerous racism, and the inevitable injustice that comes with it, is to Christian faith and its witness.  Racism leads folks to declare Christianity a white man’s religion and this is why Malcolm embraces Islam.  Must read book.

Deirdre Mullane, editor, Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing. This is an outstanding resource that I came across in the late 1990s.  It contains selections from slaves and freedman.  It has speeches by Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, W.E.B. DuBois.  It contains government documents that will shock you. It has poetry and prose.  Truly a wide ranging and good resource.

Thomas Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind.  It is one of the biggest mistakes of the American mind – both white and black – to imagine Christianity as a EUROPEAN religion.  This is not the case.  Oden argues with deft command of the primary sources that in the first 1000 years of Christian history that the religion of Jesus was African and not European.  Many of the first commentaries and schools were established and written in Africa not Europe.  The rise of monasticism that played such a huge role in Christianity rose in Africa not Europe.  Some of the first decisions regarding the canon of Scripture were made in Africa not Europe.  This is a vastly important work for both white Christians and black Christians.  Get it and devour it.  Oden btw is one of the worlds leading Patristic scholars.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  I recall hearing the derogatory term “Uncle Tom” thrown around growing up.  I had no understanding of what it meant though.  I have read UTC at least three times since 1995 and each time it has been a different book.  I was stunned first of all how compelling the work actually is. I learned the book is about far more than Uncle Tom and I learned that Uncle Tom is radically different than the stereotype I had encountered.  Tom is actually a powerful character in the book and far from a weakling. But there are slaves that would choose death willingly over slavery in the book.  There is discussion of biblical interpretation in the book.  It is no small wonder the book was burned on the campus of the University of Virgina when it was published and that it was banned in all the states that would become part of the Confederacy.  This is the book that saved the dying abolitionist movement and it was the most widely read book in America (after the Bible) in the 19th century.  It has a much going for it being the quintessential American novel as Tom Sawyer.  You should read it.

Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth.  Truth does for women what Frederick Douglass did for the men.  Douglass was legendary for his eloquence but Truth has nearly prophetic gifts for speech.  She speaks not simply about racial justice but gender too.  Am I not a woman she asked once!? I was impoverished as a White Italian Alabama Boy before having her in my life.

Richard Wright, Native Son.  Wright is a great novelist but I just did not like his book.  The first time I read Native Son I actually hated it. It was so depressing.  It had communists in it.  I did not understand it.  I had no way of actually understanding what was going on in the book. The book released way back in 1940 reflects the inner hell of a black man of the time.  Something of this appear again in the Autobiography of Malcolm X. But as I have grown and matured and have gone thru some pretty interesting life experiences Native Son has a different feel to it.  Wright forces his readers to deal with the demons living inside at least one victim of Jim Crow.

Richard Wright, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.  This small book was actually published earlier than Native Son but I did not read it until 2000.  I was interested in Wright because I was living in Mississippi and the work is set in MS.  It is an introduction to a world that I, as a white boy, was totally clueless to.  Reading this helps me see that there really have been two Americas … if not more.  Read this book if you dare.

Maryanne Vollars, The Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evars, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith and the Haunting of the New South.  I read this book in 1996.  It won the National Book Award and was turned into a movie that I invited several folks at the church i was preaching at to go see.  It is set in the same area I lived.  It is a riveting account of the struggles for liberty and justice and righteousness in Mississippi. The White Citizens Council, the Sovereignty Commission, the “reign of terror” in the lives of people. This is a compelling book and a window into our common story.

Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery.  This is a classic from the man from Tuskegee.  His struggle for freedom, dignity, the struggle for education.  It is good to read BTW and W.E.B. DuBois because it shows us that “black people” are no more monolithic than “white people.”  We have these stereo types that just because a person is “black” that they think so and so when there has been as much diversity of thought among “them” as there has been among “us.”   That is confirmation that we are all just … PEOPLE!!

Films

There are numerous films/movies that have helped me move from an intellectual engagement with this issue to an emotional one.  Movies are powerful media that can be used to effect change within us if we are open to them.  I am not commenting on these movies as a movie critic, historian or any thing else.  I am commenting on them as a White Italian Alabama boy and the effect they had upon me.  Not all had the same impact upon me.  But each has opened my eyes and my heart to something of our shared story here in America.  I will simply list the title and who made it or starred in it.  I have never forgotten any of these films … some folks are so fixed on their like or dislike of certain actor they can not open their minds to the film … dont be like that …

  • Mississippi Burning (Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman)
  • The Ghosts of Mississippi (Alec Baldwin & Whoopi Goldberg)
  • White Man’s Burden (John Travolta & Harry Bellafonte) movie engages in brilliant “role reversal” to powerful effect
  • A Time to Kill (Samuel L. Jackson)
  • Roots (adaptation of Alex Haley’s epic)
  • Rosewood (true story of the massacre of a black community in Florida)
  • Amistad (a Stephen Spielberg film)
  • Buffalo Soldiers (Danny Glover)
  • Tuskegee Airmen (story of Benjamin O. Davis Jr)
  • The Color Purple (Oprah Winfrey)
  • When We Were Colored
  • Planet of the Apes (a brilliant parable about race relationship in America without people even knowing it (see http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/PlanetoftheApes/racial2.htm )
  • To Kill a Mockingbird (classic based on Harper Lee’s novel)
  • Spike Lee routinely deals with the black experience in America.  Films such as “Four Little Girls” and “Malcolm X.”
  • The Butler (Forest Whitaker)

This list does not even attempt to be comprehensive of either books or films.  Rather these are materials that since the mid 1990s have had an impact on me.  They have made me more sensitive to things than before.  They have changed my preaching and hopefully my living.  Part of learning to love is learning about your neighbor.   I am not nearly as defensive as I used to be on this matter … now I just pray and pray for God’s new creation to be a reality in his church.

 

Do you have some suggested reading that you’ve found helpful as you navigate different cultures that you can add to this list?

 

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May 21, 2014

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Color Brave not Blind

This week a friend shared a TED talk with me that captured my attention. Mellody Hobson raises the issue of race because as she looks around the boardrooms of corporate America she sees a glaring absence of minority representation. Consider this statement, “Of the Fortune 250, there are only seven CEOs that are minorities, and of the thousands of publicly traded companies today, thousands, only two are chaired by black women, and you’re looking at one of them.”

This disparity prompted her to take the risk to use the forum of TED talks to discuss the state of race equality in the United States. She speaks to the business community and challenges them not to be complacent and to take whatever small steps they can to provide all people with the same opportunities in life.

Here is her presentation from March 2014.

I appreciate her use of the term “color brave”. It encapsulates several important ideas.

  1. Addressing racial issues still requires courage.
  2. The phrase promotes action. No bravery is required to say nothing.
  3. It challenges the common term, “color blind”.

I’m not going to regurgitate her excellent presentation, but I do believe churches need to adopt this attitude. I believe that color blindness is the predominant attitude toward racial integration in the majority of churches and it results in a lot of white folks standing around together, and a lot of black folks standing around together, and lot of Hispanic folks….

I was also blessed this week to attend a Gospel Meeting at a local black Church of Christ. The visiting speaker was Dr Carl Baccus from the Southside Church of Christ in Los Angeles. Dr Baccus has ministered with this church he planted for the past 58 years.

At one point during his sermon, Dr Baccus paused, looked around and said, “This church is too black.” That’s a “color brave” statement if ever I heard one!!! He then made the point that churches need to serve their communities and therefore look like their communities.

His own church was planted in a predominantly African-American neighbourhood not far from LAX. However, over the years this neigbourhood has transitioned and now is now predominantly Hispanic. Southside Church of Christ responded to this change by hiring a Hispanic minister. They offer a Spanish language worship service and Bible classes as well as bilingual portions of their services.

Dr Baccus also mentioned that more Koreans are moving into the neighbourhood now and the church is considering how this will impact their ministries.

When Dr Baccus said, “This church is too black” he spoke with considerable credibility as someone willing to change the culture of his church in order to reach the lost souls in his community. That’s being “Color Brave”.

What will it take for more church leaders to look their congregation in the eye and say, “We’re too monotone. Let’s do something about it!“

  • I have previously written on the topic of racial colour blindness HERE.
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May 14, 2014

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Book Review

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The History of Race Relations in the Church of Christ

I just finished reading a short book by Daniel Blankeship that I encourage you to read. It’s lengthy title is Race Relations in the Church of Christ During the Civil Rights Movement.

Daniel does a good job of describing the racial tensions endemic within churches of Christ in the 1960’s. The book was first written as a course requirement at Harding School of Theology. As a consequence it is well footnoted and has a helpful bibliography for anyone wanting to study the topic further.

As I read the book I kept asking myself, “How does this historical information impact me now?” The answer I came up with revolves around reconciliation.

The first step in any process of reconciliation requires acknowledging problems. It’s my experience that many churches today want to act as though there is no problem. Many Christians seem quite content to have both black and white churches existing in the same towns all over the country. Blankenship points out the problems with this arrangement,

Many white Christians believed their duty to the black church was to provide them with finances for a building, yet few white Christians desired authentic relationships with their black brethren. Perhaps providing a building to the black Christians was a way of segregating the church in an non-threatening way. Whites could claim to abhor racial prejudice and offer [financial] support to black churches, preachers and schools, even while maintaining segregated colleges in the South and generally ignoring the discrimination against blacks in economics, education, politics and social customs. White churches made sure that their black brothers ans sisters had separate places to worship.

When Christians and whole churches deny that racial tension has ever been a significant issue among Churches of Christ they are incapable of taking the first step toward reconciliation.

Just as our eternal salvation requires repentance for sin so that we can reconcile with God, personal and racial reconciliation also begins with confession and repentance.

In 1999 Abilene Christian University demonstrated what this confession and repentance look like when they publicly apologised to the African-American churches of Christ for the many years in which they excluded black men and women from their student body. (You can read more of this apology HERE.) Lipscomb University in Nashville has also gone through the process of confession and repentance as it builds bridges to the African-American churches in the region. (This process is well described HERE.)

I highlight these universities because, as Blankenship demonstrates, for so long they stood as icons for the racial segregation and discrimination that existed among churches. Their steps to reconcile with the black churches provide an important model for congregations around the country.

I don’t know that each and every congregation must have a special event to apologise to their African-American community for actions taken in the 1960’s. However churches must have enough familiarity with their own history and the history of Churches of Christ in general to acknowledge injustice when appropriate. The “appropriate” time may be in personal conversations, or during decision making processes, or maybe just slipped into a sermon from time to time. Pretending the Churches of Christ have never had any problems between racial groups is simply not an option.

I encourage you to take an hour and read Daniel’s book. It’s a good introduction to the historical issues confronting the church. For $5 how can you go wrong? You can purchase it HERE.
If you’re looking for a more complete study of the topic then Wes Crawford’s book “Shattering the Illusion“, might help you out.

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May 8, 2014

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The Value of Community

Last week’s post on Donald Sterling was well received. Thank-you to those who took the time to read it and also to those who sent me a private message on the subject.

I wrote that post just a couple of days after the NBA gave Sterling a lifetime suspension from the NBA. I’m happy with my comments and questions. But I appreciate a couple of friends who have written on the topic this week and the perspectives that they present. No one person or article can cover all aspects of any topic and each writer has a style that connects best with different audiences. So I accept my limitations, but look at this for a diverse lineup:

  • I write as an Australian who has spent most of the last 15 years in the US. I now life in upstate New York.
  • Jonathan Storment has white skin, was raised in Arkansas and now preaches for a church in Abilene, Texas.
  • Sean Palmer is an African-American raised in the deep South. He now serves as the Lead Minister at The Vine church in Temple, Texas.

You get enough of my writing on this site, so I want to use this space to highlight some elements of recent articles by Jonathan and Sean.

Jonathan’s article is one of his regular guest posts on Scot McKnight’s blog.  He opens and closes by racist attitudes in his life. The point of his article is that the church has helped him identify this sin and repent of it. Without this outside intervention in his life these attitudes may still remain unacknowledged and festering. Praise God for those in his life who were not too timid to speak truth. Too often we gather around us people who affirm us more than challenge us. While we certainly need affirmation and encouragement a healthy church will also help us identify blind spots in our hearts and lives.

Jonathan used one term that really caught my attention: “Elegant Racism”. While it’s hardly self-explanatory it accurately describes many of our churches today. On the one hand we confess that God loves all people of all races, all ethnicities, all  cultures, and all languages equally. But we take no steps to build bridges to the racial, ethnic, cultural and language groups different from our own. We are “elegantly racist” because we’re so darn polite about not associating with the “others”!

The sad truth is that it’s often easier to love people who aren’t sitting in our living room. It’s easy to be moved about the plight of poor children on the other side of the world and give lots of money to send a missionary so that they can hear the wonderful news of Jesus. It’s much harder to run an after school program for children on the other side of town.

Jonathan’s article is a needed reminder for me. Too often I get to the end of a week and look back on who I ate with and realise they were mostly, or all, white guys aged within 15 years either side of me. If I’m not intentional, elegant racism becomes a tragic part of my life. Who are your friends? Who do you eat with? Who do you go to the movies with? What activities in your life take you outside your cultural comfort level?

Sean’s article points out three ways our Sunday segregation undermine central tenets of the Gospel. First, we make cultural preservation a ministry of the church. Although Romans 16:4 has a puzzling mention of “all the churches of the Gentiles” the first church consistently worked to overwhelm the Jew – Gentile divide. When churches make the preservation of a particular culture part of their mission, we begin diluting the Gospel message.

Second, when our racial traits form a stronger bond than does our submission to Jesus we undermine Jesus’ death. Sean makes this excellent point, “Because we have deluded the scriptures and encased the Bible as a personal, self-help book, we’ve lost its deliberately public calls for social change.” Yes, we can make our faith too personal.

Sean’s third point naturally flows from his second. Not only is our faith too personal, so is our worship. The church is infatuated with worship styles. I’m part of that. I’m a big believer that worship needs to be meaningful to me in order to be meaningful to God. Singing hymns from the 1600’s with words I don’t understand prompts a disinterested attitude that disrespects God. But when we worship as a church we also practice sacrifice. We worship God when we sacrifice some of our preferences so that a sister or brother can express their heart to God.

I’ve recently been challenged to consider my entire Christian walk as one of submission. It’s tough. Ephesians 5:22 is an infamous verse as it instructs wives to submit to their husbands. If I’m asked to read this passage at a wedding I always make sure I read v21 “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This certainly provides a great basis for marriage. What we often overlook is that this passage discusses marriage as a metaphor of Christ and the church (v32). Mutual submission is the basis of harmony within the church.

When I’m unable to worship God because of “style”, I’m also not submitting to my sisters for whom that style has great familiarity and meaning. But if other church members refuse to vary their worship style they’re also refusing to serve those in the church with values different to themselves. God’s model of worship requires submission and sacrifice by everyone, not just the minority.

Summary

I hope my reflections have encouraged you. Most of all, I hope my post encourages you to go and read what these guys have to say. I really appreciate their hearts and the authenticity they bring to the table from their distinct backgrounds. Leave a comment on their blogs and support them as they stick their necks out to challenge the church to represent God’s vision for his kingdom: that the church may be one.