Rocks, Martin & Psalm 62

Rocks & Martin

In February 1968, the prospect of death looming large in his life, Martin Luther King, Jr took a sabbath with Ralph Abernathy in Acapulco, Mexico. Around 3 am, Abernathy awoke to find that King was not in his bed. Frightened, he went into the living area of their hotel suite and discovered that King was on the balcony in his pajamas, staring into the darkness at the ocean.

Abernathy approached King, "Martin, what are you doing out here this time of the night? What is bothering you?" With his eyes still fixed on the ocean and his ears tuned to the roar of the waves, King whispered, "You see that rock out there?" "Oh, sure I see it," Abernathy replied.  "How long to you think its been there?" King asked. "I don't know. I guess centuries and centuries. I guess God put it there."

"Well, what I am thinking about?" King said softly while Abernathy remained silent. And King began to sing, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me; let me hide myself in thee." In his hour of trial and darkness and waves crashing in on him, King could only think about trusting in God. Only God could provide him with the peace he so desperately needed. So when he saw that rock it reminded him of the powerful words of the Psalms put to music by Augustus Toplady in 1776.  Singing the song brought a little shalom in the storm. 

A basic element in the Psalms is their expression of continual, total and exclusive trust in God alone. God is the problem. But God is the solution. The element of trust dominates our text for meditation, Psalm 62. This theme is present in many others too such as Pss 4, 16, 27 and 131.  Yet for me Ps 62 stands out.  It is expresses the firm hope in God's ability to enable his faithful ones to become "more than conquerors."

God ALONE is Trustworthy (62.1-7)

Psalm 62 is easily divided into two major parts: 1) the first eight verses are the psalmists expession of trust in God and 2) verses 9-12 are the psalmist's "homily" to the gathered people of God to trust in Yahweh as well.

"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation 
comes from him.
He alone is my Rock and my Salvation; he is my Fortress, I will never be
shaken" (vv. 1-2)

In the midst of the turbulence of 1968, Dr. King found that the only way for him to find shalom was to imagine himself secure in the "Rock of Ages" so our psalmist does the same. God is the sources of all peace and security. These are not words that are spoken naively or rashly.  The psalmist has meditated on his well-being and realizes that all is evanescent except God. God alone is the ground of stability in his life - the Prophet of Justice learned this through real tribulation, just as the psalmist did.

Notice the metaphors the psalmist uses to talk of his God, "my Rock, my Salvation, my Fortress." All of these are images of confidence, strength and security. The ancient Hebrews, unlike the Greeks, did not talk about God in mere abstraction. They talked about God in concrete, observable and vivid ways. They also talked about God in highly personal terms. He is not someone way "out there" who may or may not know that we (and me) are around.  He is not just concerned with the corporate people of God. He is concerned with me.  He is MY rock! He is MY salvation! he is MY fortress! Therefore I shall not be moved. What Yahweh has done in the past for the whole of Israel by redeeming them from slavery he does in our own lives as members of the covenantal family.  

"How long will you assault a man? Would all of you throw him down -- this leaning wall, this tottering fence?
They fully intend to topple him from his lofty place; they take delight in lies.
With their mouths they bless, but in their hearts they curse." (vv. 3-4)

Here we finally get a window into the crises of the psalmist. It is a struggle we all face sooner or later.  People - family, friends, brothers and sisters - people are friendly to our face.  They pretend to be concerned with our well being.  They act the friend.  But they honestly would like nothing more than to see us fail! To see us stumble! And they would actively take part in our ruin! That kind of "persecution" is many times as painful as public ridicule precisely because these folks were imagined to be family or friends. Sometimes they are just simply our enemy.  The psalmist bemoans the fact that they assail him with their double tongued behavior.  They bless him verbally but curse him in their heart.  Sound familiar?? Sadly this takes place in God's Family even yet!

It is interesting to note that even though the Lord is his mighty fortress, physical and verbal attacks are nonetheless undeniable real and quite painful.  Being the Lord's servant does not makes us immune to suffering and injustice in this fallen age (cf. 2 Tim. 3.12).  We might even argue that it heightens it.  Look at Jesus, the purest of Servants of the Lord.  Did he not suffer the very things the people of God confess and lament in Psalm 62? God was His rock. God was His salvation. God was His fortress.  And he still died on that ignominious Tree for the likes of you and me.

"Find rest, O my soul, in GOD ALONE; my hope comes from him.
HE ALONE is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honor depend upon God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge"
(vv. 5-7)

In these verses, our psalmist engages in what we call today "self-talk." There is no denying, and the Bible does not deny, that the fallen world is tough to live in. But God is with us. Our minstrel recalls fundamental concepts for our own peace and security.  Do not put trust in ourselves or others.  Real "manliness" does not come from bulging biceps, fearlessness in the face of enemy bullets, or perseverance, nor in our intellectual capacity or imagined doctrinal precision.  This is in stark contrast of the "world" which claims that a "real man" depends on no one and nothing except himself!  Yet this psalmist (David??) declares that his hope is in God ALONE. It is  not in himself.  It is not in his mighty men. It is not even in his ability to pray or worship correctly. It is in Yahweh. Here is the key to being hidden in the Rock of Ages.

The Singer's faith in God is moving and very challenging.  Because the Lord is our salvation, we can remain steadfast in our obedience.  We will not be shaken. Yet it some how all depends upon God. He alone can provide the way out of the dreadful situations we find ourselves entrapped in. 

The word "salvation" is a multifaceted word in the Scriptures. Sometimes it means deliverance from Sin, from enemies, or even death.  All of these are dimensions of the biblical doctrine and we need to not think one is more "Spiritual" than the other.  These dimensions are all embraced by Jesus and they should be by us.  But in Ps 62 "salvation" means deliverance from the situation that has ensnared the psalmist.  It is a real crises.  This understanding of "salvation" is important to us in our contemporary situation too.  Many folks have lost a conception of what "Sin" is (including Christians), but we all know what it means to have an aimless or miserable life! We know of lives that seem to be devoid of purpose and meaning.  When Christ died on the Cross it was not merely to save us from Sin, though he did do that. According to the apostle Peter, Christ redeemed us from "the EMPTY WAY OF LIFE handed down to you from your forefathers" (1 Pt 1.18).  This is incredibly Good News. Our God is a God of salvation.  Salvation that impacts and transforms the here and now of life and not just when we die.  Our God desires the fullest of lives possible.  Our psalmist embraces these truths with gusto.  So should we.

But the psalmist stresses that a good life is from God. It is his grace.  Without God life has no meaning or purpose. We are nothing without Him.  He testifies "my honor depends on God." My stature is nothing outside of the Lord.  I might as well have never existed, for human honor and worth derive form the Creator God.

Don't Trust in Humans (62.8-12)

"Trust in him at all times, O people, pour out your hearts to him, for God is 
our refuge.
Lowborn men are but a breath [lit. 'vapor'], the highborn are but a lie; if 
weighed on a balance, they are nothing; together they are only a
breath [lit. 'vapor'].
Do not trust in extortion or take pride in stolen goods; though your riches 
increase, do not set your heart on them" (vv. 8-10)

Our psalmist now becomes the teacher of the Gathered People of God.  He addresses them rather than himself.  He exhorts us to trust in, to have faith in, God at all times for he alone is our refuge. We should "pour out our hearts to him." This is a call to prayer! A call to dependence rather than independence! When we feel assailed we seek instinctively our "refuge."

What the psalmist wants, perhaps, more than all else is not to fall into the trap of trusting in fallen humans And that includes ourselves. The description of humanity in vv 9-10 is in stark contrast to the description of God in vv 5-7.  God is permanent and unshakable, he is a Rock.  He is reliable so he is my Salvation.  He is strong as a Fortress that cannot be breached.  Yet humanity whether a poor pauper or a rich bureaucrat is a wisp, a vapor, and "a lie."  Vivid imagery captures the human dilemma here. Our teacher says if you take both the rich and the poor and put them in one pan of a balance scale and nothing in the other pan they would fly up because "nothing" would weigh more than them combined.  We cannot trust in humanity for our security and stability or our peace.  We will find no rest there.  Those who have done so have learned, as the psalmist has, that humanity will always let us down.  God will never desert us.  He is faithful.  That is the Good News of Psalm 62.

The Bible is full of exhortations not to trust in humanity.  Paul in Romans 3.10-18 creates a collage of citations from the Hebrew Bible saying it is the gospel truth ...

"There is no one righteous, not even one there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of shalom they do not know there is no fear of God before their eyes."

Not a pretty picture of humanity painted by Paul. Humans are liars and untrustworthy.  Only God is faithful so put it all in him.  Our singing teacher reminds us that money and power are common sources of human trust for safety and security too.  But he warns that trusting in apparent might rather than in the right.

Two Things to Take to the Bank (62.11-12)

"One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard: that you, O God, are
strong and that you, O LORD are loving. 
Surely you will reward each person according to what he has done."

The psalm employs a Hebrew idiom, "One thing ... two things" which simply means "repeatedly," or "over and over and over and over." The psalmist closes his song to the church by sharing the testimony of all who have walked with God, he is Strong and he is Loving! These are two things that are certain as reality itself.  God is Strong!  God is Loving!! You can hang your life on these two truths.  You can live your life even in the darkness holding onto these fundamental truths.  They are more than "truths" they are simply reality.  "This I have heard, this I know ... "This is the basis of his faith in God delivering him from the straits he is in.  God has the power and God has the motivation to do it.

Because God has the power and the motivation to right the wrongs of this fallen world - he will do just that.  One day God will judge each man and woman.  He will measure our deeds. The very deeds of evil by you, me, everyone ... the whispers, the lies, the double-mindedness God will bring out.  This is in fact ground for praise in the psalm.  It is not the psalmist's place to exact vengence on his enemies.  God will take care of that on that Day. And he will do it perfectly.  This is why Christians look forward to the Day of Christ's appearing. All will be set right. The ones who have put their faith in his faithfulness will be rescued by the angels of God and will greet the King.  Trust in God. If we have shalom and peace in our lives we must give God control.

So I concluded these musings on this amazing text with a call to simply rest in God.  In Good times.  In Bad times.  We like Martin Luther King, Jesus, and the psalmist before them can lift our voices and sing, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me; let me hide myself in Thee!"

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Stories of Grace, Stories of Forgiveness: Frederick Douglass Affirms the Humanity of a Slaveholder

Frederick Douglass is one of the greatest Americans to have ever lived. Far greater than Malcolm X. Greater still than Martin Luther King Jr. His name should roll off our tongues with the ease of George Washington, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps even faster than the latter two. I place him in that elite category of Founding Fathers: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. They go together like Moses, Aaron and Miriam.

Douglass' story is sadly not one that is told as frequently and deeply as it should. We have much to learn from this man among men. He wrote his story three times in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; My Bondage and My Freedom; and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. In 1991 William S. McFeely published an extensive Pulitzer winning biography titled simply Frederick Douglass.

Colonel Lloyd

Born in about 1818 (Douglass was not sure the exact date) to a slave who had been used for the lustful gratification of the the "master" of the plantation. This was not exactly an unusual thing to occur in slavery. Douglass would eventually become the slave of Colonel Edward Lloyd who owned three to four hundred slaves in Maryland. He would be sent off to Lloyd's son in law, Thomas Auld from whom he escaped in 1838.

Sixty-three years after his escape from human bondage on an early June morning in 1881 the world had changed greatly.  The slavery Douglass knew as a young man was gone.  The nation had been bloodied by Civil War. Douglas was known internationally and was a powerful moral force in the United States. On that morning the former fugitive slave, now Marshall of Washington D.C, was aboard a cutter heading up the Wye River off Chesapeake Bay. His mind could not have but recalled the landscape he had written about in his 1845 Narrative. Suddenly Douglass caught "the stately chimneys of the grand old mansion." The mansion of none other than Colonel Lloyd. Writing in his 1893 Life and Times, "I had left there a slave and returned a freeman; I had left there unknown to the outside world, and returned well known."

How would the family of Colonel Lloyd receive Douglass? How would Douglass act toward this family who had grow rich off the oppressed? How can the slave and the former oppressors come together? Is it possible for redemption to take place? Is it possible for reconciliation to be a reality in the face of the the grossest evil? The greatness of Douglass tells us that yes it can be done. Those committed to God's good news for his fractured creation can indeed voice the blessed word, yes! it is possible! That is our word to the world bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. 

Howard Lloyd, the great grandson of the colonel, greeted the elderly Douglass with as "hearty a welcome as we could have wished." Saying his father was away on business, Howard offered to escort Frederick Douglass around the palatial grounds. Testifying to the powerful memories that flooded his mind he writes, "I found the buildings, which gave it the appearance of a village, nearly all standing, and I was astonished to find that I had carried their appearance so accurately in my mind for so many years."

In a detail that is possibly overlooked but fraught with meaning for Douglass he saw the old room off the kitchen where he had slept in a bag. Only the dirt floor had disappeared under wooden planks. This room was Douglass' introduction to the barbarity of slavery. From that room he had witnessed "Aunt Esther" with "wrists firmly tied" above her head. The top of her body stripped bare as she was whipped by Colonel Lloyd till she bled profusely on the ground below. He cries of mercy indelibly etched into his young mind for eternity. Of it, Douglass wrote in his Narrative "I shall never forget it whilist I remember anything." But now Douglass was standing in that same room of bitter memories with Howard Lloyd.

Howard took Douglass next to the family cemetery. As they enter the grounds Howard offers Frederick a "bouquet of flowers and evergreens from different graves around us."  Douglass is so moved by the gesture that he would bring it back to his home in Washington and preserve them as a testimony that grace can exist even in the most horrid of places. What memories and thoughts passed through the old orator's mind as he stood over the grave of his former tormentor we do not know. But in that moment he forgave both him and his family.

After the walk through the garden of tombstones Lloyd took Frederick into the mansion itself and onto the verandah. Here the former slave whose flesh bore testimony to the whip was now at ease in the old master's chair and receiving the greatest of courtesy from the family that he had excoriated as examples of the horrid evil of slavery.  And they where! Yet forgiveness was able to allow the victim and victimizer to fellowship in shalom as a testimony of the possibilities of God's vision.

What does forgiveness look like? Douglass narrates for us a beautiful picture of what true and costly reconciliation looks like.  Forgiveness looks like Douglass and Howard standing over the grave of the Colonel and recognizing in one another a genuine fragility of humanity. No more and no less.

Captain Auld

Frederick Douglass relates another tale of forgiveness in his Life and Times.  Sadly, McFreely's excellent biography barely touches on either of these powerful episodes. The example of Douglass makes no sense in a secularist worldview.  Douglass was adamant that the USA could not afford to forget the horror of slavery.  To do so would invite the resurrection of tyranny.  He was a prophet because tyranny was revived because the horror of slavery minimized (as in Gone with the Wind a pure apologetic for the Old South). Even today most Americans simply do not realize that the legacy of slavery is around us each and every day.

However, Douglass was for forgiveness. He showed us, white and black, how we can still embrace the humanity of those around us. Douglass tells us that he received an invitation from old Captain Auld (Lloyd's son-in-law and a former master) who was now dying and confined to bed. The fiery orator was stunned by the invitation.

"To me, Captain Auld had sustained the relation of master - a relation which I held in extremest abhorence ... He had struck down my personality, had subjected me to his will, had me property of my body and soul ... I, on my part, had traveled through the length and breadth of this country and of England holding up this conduct of his ... to the reprobation of all men who would hear my words."

He could have easily refused to go. Most of us probably would have been among those who counseled against it. But Douglass agreed to visit Captain Auld. But why? "He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact or in spirit, and I regarded him as I did myself, a victim of the circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom" (my emphasis).

When Douglass entered the elderly man's room they "addressed each other simultaneously, he calling me 'Marshal Douglass' and I, as I had always called him, 'Captain Auld.'"  Just as he had been moved by Howard's symbolic gift of flowers - a gesture of letting old hate die - so now Douglass is moved to the core of his being that his old master called him "Marshal."  The greatness of this apostle of liberty is on display as he responded to Auld in pure grace. "Hearing myself called by him 'Marshall Douglass,' I instantly broke up the formal nature of the meeting by saying, 'not Marshal, but Frederick to you as formerly."

Anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear recognizes immediately the risk Douglass is taking here. Risk to his own personhood. He risks his personal dignity.  He invites his former master to address him in familiar terms, terms closely tied to his former identity. So dangerously close to - boy! He is taking a political risk here with his black constituency.  But the former slave was more concerned in modeling the way forward to an America that was paralyzed by bigotry.  He allowed himself to be vulnerable even to Captain Auld because he saw that Auld was the victim of prejudice himself. Douglass gave him forgiveness. His forgiveness allowed him to see a person rather than simply a slaveholder.

As the visit came to a close Douglass relates,

"We shook hands cordially and he, having been long stricken with palsy, shed tears as men thus deeply afflicted will do when excited by any deep emotion. The sight of him ... his tremulous hands constantly in motion, and all the circumstances of his condition affected me deeply, and for a time chocked my voice and made me speechless."

The greatest orator in American history is speechless!

The scene is incredibly powerful. I believe that the former slave rendered mute by the trembling tears of his former master is intended to move us in the same way. Douglass in no way forgot slavery. He in no way forgot evil. He forgave a man who committed evil. His gift of the grace of forgiveness affirmed the humanity of even Auld. This kind of behavior does not make sense in our world but Douglass knew that such behavior was the only hope for the future.The spirit of forgiveness is the Spirit of Life.

Forgiveness, Gift of Grace

How I wish we knew more about such giants as Frederick Douglass. He has words to say to America about race relations today.  He has words to say to the rich and the poor. He has words to say to anyone who has been wronged, seriously wronged, by another human being.  We can learn what genuine "righteous indignation" looks like in his immortal "What to the American Slave is Fourth of July?" We can learn from him the passion of simply wanting to have an education.  What a lesson that is for today's abysmally apathetic moms, dads and kids on education. We can learn from him the danger of collective amnesia. But we can also learn from him that even the grossest offenders and the weakest of victims can in fact forgive one another.  Justice is not simply about evening the score (ohhh that is what the world believes justice is). Justice bears fruit in shalom and reconciliation. This is a message that even Christians need to hear. Perhaps Christians most of all!

The stories of grace and forgiveness that Frederick Douglass models exhibit three biblical truths regarding the notion of forgiveness as it is put into practice.

1) Douglass rediscovered the humanity of the person who hurt him. As we practice the Spiritual gift of forgiveness we likewise must discover or rediscover the fallen, defaced and even broken humanity in the person who has wronged us. This is often a difficult and painful process because our own fallenness will want to defend our reasons for denying the essential humanity of the person who has grossly wronged us.  This is why the picture of Douglass over the grave of Colonel Lloyd is so gripping.

2) Douglass surrendered his right to get even with the tyrants. This is fundamental to biblical forgiveness. Douglass did not deny the pain, the suffering, nor the barbarism of slavery.  That is in fact the very evil needing to be forgiven. No, forgiveness affirms the bitter reality that the wrong has in fact been committed. Rather in forgiveness we choose, in light of rediscovering his or her humanity and the greater light of the cross of Jesus Christ, to give up the right of revenge. Douglass could have easily exacted retribution upon Captain Auld but instead became his equal. I am as speechless as Douglass was himself.

3) Douglass decided, this was a conscious decision, to revise his feelings toward the persons who had gravely wronged him. His feelings regarding slavery and bigotry did not change one iota nor should they.  What he changed was his feelings toward human beings.  Colonel Lloyd was a victim of a prejudiced upbringing and society.  Auld was a tragic figure himself. Frederick Douglass in light of the grace of forgiveness changed his feelings toward them.

Maybe the United States should put Frederick Douglass on the ten dollar bill rather than Alexander Hamilton. He deserves it far more. His is a great story.  Near the end of his life, one of the images he wanted us not to forget, was that even slaveholders and former slaves could come to see in one another the image of God and extend the most profound of blessings upon one another - the gift of forgiveness. At no time is a human being more like God than when they give the gift of forgiveness.

Who does not need forgiveness.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" - Jesus of Nazareth

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Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Bible & America, #2

"Reading the Bible with the eyes of the poor is a different thing than reading the it with a full belly. If it is read in the light of the experience and hopes of the oppressed, the Bible's revolutionary themes - promise, exodus, resurrection and spirit - come alive." (Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit)

An "Event"

The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin (UTC) was significant. Theodore Parker, the famous Boston preacher, called it a "world event." And it was! Harriet Beecher Stowe had been contributing chapters of the book in the abolitionist newspaper The National Era throughout 1851-52 and the public was eating it up. When printed, the book was immediately (no international copyright laws back then) published in three Paris newspapers simultaneously. It's first print run was sold out in a few days. The book was quickly translated into thirty-seven languages.  It produced countless conversions to Christianity, such as the dying German poet Heinrich Heine.  It mobilized waning anti-slavery zeal of the day.

UTC  was also cursed by thousands. It was banned in southern states and caused a riot among students at the University of Virgina where it was burned publicly.  It was branded "pulp fiction." Conservatives labeled Stowe a "revolutionary" and an advocate of "higher lawism" (fancy words for civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law). UTC was even branded forthrightly as a "pernicious book of sin."

Whatever one may say of the book, with one hundred and fifty years of hindsight, it cannot be said the book was neutral or conservative. Reading the book is a moral experience. I've never had to put Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn down (love them both) because they moved me so deeply in my inner being but I have Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Indeed I read recently from one English literature professor arguing that UTC should replace Twain in our prescribed canon of reading in high school. It has my vote. 

The Bible, How is It to be Used? Uncle Tom's Cabin's Answer

Harriet Beecher Stowe was brilliant.  She has not always been recognized as such by secular, white male, historical scholarship since WW II.  Much of this scholarship has been astoundingly biblically illiterate, incredibly uniformed on how religion and American culture were intertwined through the Civil War, and even (ironically) prejudiced against her and UTC. This trend has significantly reversed in the last fifteen years most significantly with the publication of David Reynolds tour de force Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America. Stowe read widely knowing such theological heavy weights as Schleiermacher and Feuerbach and was fans of the writers of the Romantic Movement. Her husband, Calvin, wrote her confessing how he misses their late night scholarly "discourses in sheets." He wrote of his longing to have her with him because he,

"wants to got to bed & talk about Tholuck, Dannecker, Jean Paul, Frederick William ... There is not a soul that I can say a word to about any of these matters, and I begin to find out, (what I knew very well before) that you are the most intelligent and agreeable woman in the whole circle of my acquaintance." [1]

Among the things that disturbed Stowe was the use of the Bible by Christians to justify slavery.   By 1852 there were plenty of biblical apologists for slavery and racism among United States Christians, North and South. This apparent biblical endorsement of slavery had a pacifying affect upon the anti-slavery temper that was building in the 1830s and was steadily loosing ground throughout the 1840s. For Stowe this was a serious misuse of the Word of God.  Her questions generated in the narrative properly force hermenutical questions upon us too. Near the end of her book she makes a direct appeal to the reader (not the only time she does so in the book) that gives a window into what she thinks the reader should do even if some of the technical aspects of the biblical text are in question.

"But what can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do, - they can see to tit that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?"

The "sympathies of Christ." Whatever one does about slavery, Stowe demands that the Christian side with Crucified One. This is her angle of attack against the biblical apologists of slavery and she weaves this in through her characters in the novel.  I want to look at a few of these characters as they express Stowe's criticism of the use of the Bible.

Augustine St. Clare of New Orleans: Social Location & Vested Interests

Augustine, the father of Eva, is a complex character.  Augustine is married to Marie who "always made a point to be pious on Sundays."  Yet Augustine refused to attend church no matter how much his wife pleaded. Stowe tells her bigoted Christian readers that one of the greatest Christian thinkers in history was an African named Augustine  "Bishop of Carthage" and that not only he but most bishops were "men of color."  Augustine St. Clare however becomes her instrument to critique not only the church but the "clergy."  The unbelieving, slave owning, Augustine does not think the Bible actually justifies slavery.  When Marie and cousin Ophelia corner him on the matter he "goes off" on the ladies.  Slavery is controlled by economics and the hermeneutics of the clergy is put in service of justifying oppression.  I quote at length

"The short of the matter is, cousin, ... on this abstract question of slavery there can, as I think, be but one opinion. Planters who have money to make by it, - clergymen, who have planters to please, - politicians, who want to rule by it, - may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press nature and the Bible, and nobody knows what else into the service ..."

But should slavery adversely affect the price of cotton, Augustine says

"Well suppose that something should bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What a flood of light would pour into the church, all at once, and how immediately it would be discovered that everything in the Bible and reason went the other way!"

Stowe, through Augustine, pins the vested interest that drives the justification of slavery.  The real motivation was not exegesis and certainly not the "sympathies of Christ" but power and economic interest.

"If I was to say anything on this slavery matter, I would say out, fair and square, 'We're in for it; we've got'em, and we mean to keep'em, - it's for our convenience and our interest;' for that's the long and short of it,' that's just what the whole of what ll this sanctified stuff amounts to, after all; and I think that will be intelligible to everybody, everywhere."[2]

Looking back it is easy to see that Augustine (Stowe) was dead on in this critique.  In the Stone-Campbell Movement one who defended slavery was James Shannon.  Shannon was ne of the most educated men of the movement.  He was president of Bacon College (the first college in the SCM) and later the University of Missouri.  In 1844 he addressed the student body of Bacon College on The Philosophy of Slavery, As Identified with the Philosophy of Human Happiness. This was later published in a booklet in 1849 and went through several editions.  Shannon offered a myriad of interpretations in support of slavery as essential to "human happiness."  In his criticism of the abolition movement he freely uses the economic dimension.  Abolitionists were guilty of breaking the tenth commandment "thou shalt not covet." "Hence, the advocates of Emancipation without compensation to the owners, are involved in the deep guilt ... of violating the tenth commandment and exciting others to a similar violation." [3] Slave holders are entitled to their "property" regardless of any claim by abolitionists.  Stowe sees this argument for what it is ... vested interest and power play ... but Shannon would have denied that. Are we blind to our own vested interest and how that shapes our hermeneutic?

George Harris, Eliza's Husband: Spirit of Humanity & Fellowship

George is a powerful character we even meet him before Tom in the narrative. He is intelligent (taught himself to read). He is creative.  He is militant.  His was separated from his wife, Eliza, and baby son. He and Eliza's exodus to the north is the opposite mirror for Tom's descent further south. Doubt plays a significant role in his character.  Stowe believed that God, especially through Christ, was on the side of the sufferer.  She described him as "God the Omnipotent, the Creator, the Destroyer, is suffering himself to be detained in weak human hands, and controlled by the passionate earnestness of human desire ... He whose touch could annihilate, can yet be held by your infant hand--can be swayed by your prayer."

It is this suffering, caring Creator, that is so difficult for the oppressed slave - in George - has difficulty in believing.  During the journey George meets Mr. Wilson a law and order man. Mr. Wilson attempts to use the Bible to support the Fugitive Slave telling George it is his Christian duty to return. He told him how Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon.  Yet the angry fugitive will have none of it.

"Don't quote the Bible at me that way, Mr. Wilson, ... don't! for my wife is a Christian, and I mean to be, if I ever get to where I can; but to quote Bible to a fellow in my circumstances, is enouch to make him give it up altogether. I appeal to God Almighty; - I'm willing to go with the case to Him, and ask Him if I do wrong to seek my freedom."

Mr. Wilson admonishes George to trust in God and his laws (which in this case would mean obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law). But George fires back at his antagonist: "IS there a God to trust in? ... There's a God for you, but is there any for us? [i.e. black slaves]"

George is reunited with his beloved wife (not legally married because they are slaves) and his son Harry in a Quaker community in Ohio. The Quaker's were on the outside of the orthodox religious establishment in America so these folks have a similar function as the non-believing Augustine. Through these unrepentant breakers of the Fugitive Slave Law George learns the true meaning of Christian faith.  Stretching all social bounds of the time, Stowe has George and Eliza sit down and eat at white person's table ... in a white person's home. As Jesus affirmed the human worth and dignity of social outcasts in the Gospels so George is moved deeply that a person accords him actual human dignity. The Quaker Simeon Halliday tells George that God actually bestows upon us goods for the purpose of being generous and merciful.  George is astonished that this man would risk going to jail to help him and his escaping family. Simeon and George read Psalm 73 together and it soothes his soul and the flame of faith begins to flicker in George.  Stowe says of this psalm that the words might sound like pious bosh from a self-indulgent exhorter but "coming from one who daily and calmly risked fine and imprisonment for the cause of God and man, they had a weight that could not but be felt ..."  Simeon demonstrated the sympathies of Christ. George rejected the use of the Bible as a prop for injustice. At the Table we are all equal ...

Uncle Tom: The Man of Sorrows

One of the "ah ha" moments for the followers of stereotypes is that Tom, as Stowe narrates him, was anything but an "Uncle Tom." He is introduced to us a "large, broad chested, powerfully made man." The "air" around him is "self-respecting and dignified." He is literate (it was against the law in many southern states for a slave to learn to read).  Tom is strong and stands his ground.  He sacrifices his personal needs for the sake of other slaves and refuses to disobey his conscience.  He is a principled man ... a serious stab at the ugly stereotypes of black men of the day.  He will not cooperate with evil and will not bring harm to others.

Tom is truly a Christ figure in the book. Tom is the ultimate embodiment of the true meaning of the Christian faith and the Bible in particular. As Tom is ripped from his wife (not a legal marriage again), sold down river to almost certain death we hear the pathos of the slaves come through with power in Stowe's imagery. The Mississippi is imagined to be the river carrying the lamentations of the slaves to the - absent - God. Would that "the tears of the oppressed, the sighs of the helpless, the bitter prayers of poor, ignorant hearts to an unknown God - unknown, unseen and silent, but who will yet 'come out of his place to save all the poor of the earth!"

Tom arrives at his new "owner," Simon Legree.  Legree is Tom's third owner in the narrative, each spans the kind of slave owners Stowe believed to be in the South.  It is easy to hate Legree. Legree is an inhumane tyrant.  But Stowe does not want us to hate Legree rather she invites us to pity him. He is the end result of the system of dehumanization of slavery upon the slave holders! He pales in comparison to Tom. He retains the brute power of force but is emasculated by the real power of Tom's presence. The more Simon rails at, and abuses, Tom the truth of what he is is revealed. Tom reads the Bible to the other slaves on Legree's plantation. An important text was Matthew 11.28, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But the slaves cannot believe that God "is around" for "God never visits these parts." Stowe quote Ecclesiastes 4.1-2 to embody the darkness of Legree's place.

"Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed--with no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive ..." (NRSV)

Cassy, Legree's sex slave, laments to Tom - the Lord "isn't here! there's nothing here, but sin and long, long despair!" Truly Tom has arrived in hell.

To Legree Tom was a trouble maker precisely because he was such a powerful man. "Had not this man braved him, - steadily, powerfully, resistlessly, [sic]- ever since he bought him." This made Legree fear and hate Tom. Legree attacks Tom's faith saying "I'm your church now!" Legree succumbs to the irrational fear of the oppressor (echoes of Exodus 1.12) in his fear of Tom's mighty personality. When Tom refuses to flog another slave Simon he has Tom whipped nearly to death. After the whipping Tom says to Simon,

"I'll give ye all the work of my hands, all my time, all my strength; but my soul I won't give up to mortal man. I will hold to the Lord and put his commands before all, - die or live; you may be sure on't. Mas'r Legree, I an't a grain afeard to die. I'd soon as die as not. Ye may whip me, starve me, burn me, - it'll only send me sooner where I want to go."

Sambo and Quimbo, slave overseers bought off with alcohol and sexual favors, finish the cruel torture of Tom. Yet in the book Tom forgives them and they break down: 'O, Tom! do tell us who is JESUS, anyhow?"  Sambo and Quimbo are victims of the system of evil too. Tom's forgiveness simply enrages Legree. His anger boils as he realizes that "his power over his bond thrall was gone."  Simon Legree literally beats Tom to death in an incredibly moving narrative. 

Tom is the Christ who willingly endures great suffering for others. As Tom nears death he reads of the Passion of Jesus. Soon "a vision rose before him of One crowned with thorns, buffeted and bleeding." Like Jesus he forgives his enemies and loves them. Tom is the embodiment of the sympathies of Christ.

Far from being an "Uncle Tom" the Tom that Stowe narrates was incredibly challenging and offensive to white Christians of her day.  And he is still a powerful figure when read today.  Tom is the model of nonviolent resistance found in Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks.  Just how threatening Tom was we will see in our next blog.

In Worship at the Lord's Table

Harriet Beecher Stowe believed that God had moved her to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. While there were antecedents in her life for the contents of the book it was not until February 1851 that she began the novel.  While visiting Brunswick, Maine she attended the First Parish Church.  As she was taking the bread and wine she reflected upon the cross of Jesus. She says that she at that moment had a "vision that was blown into my mind as by the rushing of a mighty wind." The vision given her at the Lord's Table was of an old slave being whipped to death by two fellow slaves who were under the control of a white man.  Stowe was so disturbed by her vision that she began to write UTC and felt the entire time as if the words were from another source. The story of Tom's death in the novel is clearly the literary version of her vision. For her a visit to Calvary at the Table led her to another Calvary ... not the one of Christ but an American Calvary of slavery.  At the Table, in worship, she was moved to identify powerfully with the hated and oppressed nobodies in the United States ... the slaves. Worship changes lives - just ask Harriet.

Final Hermeneutical Thoughts

Stowe saw powerfully and clearly that God takes a side. Her frustration with the church and Christians in general because of their complicity in injustice reached a breaking point. We have only scratched the surface of how she explores biblical themes and how they might look in the eyes of the oppressed. Through her novel she forces us to ask potent questions.  Is it a legitimate reading of Scripture that endorses something blatantly contrary to the values and mission of Christ? She forces us to ask of ourselves ... are we so enmeshed in the machinery that our exegesis and theology always supports us in our own agenda? She forces us to ask does the fact that we have money or power control how we read the Bible and determine what is or is not righteousness? Again she saw that God does takes sides.  She saw this because she looked through the eyes of the slave.  Reading from that location is not always easy.

One powerful narrative that slaves in the South routinely gravitated to was that of the Exodus. There interest in the Exodus was not historical or critical but it was gripping.  They saw something that whites like James Shannon did not ... God took sides. If we look briefly at the Exodus we see four things that are theologically significant and call for response by God's People:

1) A struggle between the powerful and the weak is going on
2) God hears the cries of the weak and is fully aware of the situation of the weak
3) God is not neutral in this struggle between the powerful and the weak
4) God calls his people to join in the struggle for the weak  [4]

If this actually true then how should that affect our Bible reading? and more importantly our living in this world? Harriet Beecher Stowe believed it meant shelving self-interest and engage in the risky business of altering the status quo ... I think we can learn a lot from this small but powerful lady.

NOTES:

1] Quoted in Patricia R. Hill, "Uncle Tom's Cabin as a Religious Text," a paper delivered at the June 2007 Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Web of Culture conference sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.  Pages are not numbered but on my print copy see p. 4.

2] All quotes from The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, eds Henry Louis Gates Jr & Hollis Robbins (W. W. Norton, 2006).

3] James Shannon, The Philosophy of Slavery, As Identified with the Philosophy of Human Happiness, An Essay (A. G. Hodges & Co., 1849), 13.

4] For a very readable source on hearing the Bible from another location, and that looks at specific texts and works through them see Robert McAfee Brown Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (Westminster/John Knox 1984).  See pp. 33-48 on listening to the Exodus.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Bible & America #1

I hate to admit that in 1990 if some one had mentioned "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to me, the only reference to come to my mind would have been the hair band Warrant.  To be sure it was a different sort of song for a metal band - no drugs and no sex. The song was something of an allegory. To this day I can still sing the lyrics.  The song opens ...

"Just for the record let's get the story straight.
Me and Uncle Tom were fishing it was getting pretty late.
Out on a cypress limb above the "Wishin' Well."
Where they say it got no bottom, say it take you down to hell!

Over in the bushes and off to the right.
Come two men talkin' in the pale moon light.
Sheriff John Brady and Deputy Hedge,
Haulin' two limp bodies down to the water's edge.

I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cabin, oh yeah.
I know a secret that I just can't tell."

Three years out of high school, and nearly the same number of college years under my belt, I was stunningly ignorant of not just "American" history but black American history. I knew nothing of the stories of Mickey Schwerner, James Chancey and Andy Goodman, [1] and many more Civil Rights works and Freedom Riders that were murdered either by, or with the help of, law enforcement.  But in 1990 Uncle Tom's Cabin was simply a great rock song to jam to on the way down the highway.  In 1995 I learned there was a book by Harriet Beecher Stowe by this title and read it for the first time in response to a black friend who told me my world was to white. Since then I revisited the book in 2001 and again at the end of 2012.  Being far more mature and knowledgeable in 2012 my reading was considerably richer.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly is possibly the quintessential American novel and without a doubt the most influential book outside the Bible to ever hit the shelves in America. Historian David Reynolds states baldly in his history of the lives and after lives of UTC, Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America, "No book in American history molded public opinion more powerfully than Uncle Tom's Cabin" (p.xi). It was by far the runaway best seller of the 19th century but unlike the contemporary Da Vinci Code it changed the world.

When  Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in December 1862 he is quoted as having said "Is this the little woman who made this great war?" [2]. Harriet was born into what became a large, prominent and reforming family in America.  Some one said of Lyman Beecher, Harriet's father, on his seventy-ninth birthday that he was "The father of more brains than any man in America" [3]. Among her famous siblings were Henry Ward Beecher.  Unlike some other famous families the Beechers were not fabulously rich (Harriet lived in poverty until after Uncle Tom was published) rather they were famous because they rocked the American boat. 

Harriet married Calvin Stowe in 1836.  Calvin, whose first wife died of cholera, was Professor of Greek at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati.  Calvin was fluent in seven languages, had a good sense of humor and encouraged his wife's writing abilities.

Stowe embraced an abolitionist position over time.  Her father, Lyman Beecher, was anti-slavery but considered abolitionism to be extreme.  Before Lyman moved to Cincinnati one of his parishioners was William Loyd Garrison who emerged as a radical abolitionist. Garrison and the elder Beecher had a falling out over what Lyman believed was the former's extremism. The elder preacher focused upon what he thought were the real sins of the day "rum, Sabbath-breaking, Catholicism, and gambling." [4] He exhorted Garrison on slavery, "you can't reason that way! You must take into account what is expedient as well as what is right." For his part the editor of the Liberator became convinced that the Christian church, the American government and the Constitution had been corrupted to the core by the slave interest.  Harriet moved far beyond her father on slavery and the issue of race period.  She met with Garrison, and though reticent about his heretical reputation came to appreciate him greatly as an ally and friend.  She said that no one could "know him and not love him--love him personally, love him for his earnestness and his faithfulness."  But she did ask him "Mr. Garrison, are you a Christian?" [5]

What pushed Stowe beyond her father and into the abolitionist fold? Scholars point to a number of reasons.  The underground railroad passed, almost literally, by her front door step.  She and her husband Calvin were confronted with the reality of fugitive slaves when they learned that a girl in their employ was in fact a runaway slave.  Her husband Calvin, and her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, helped the girl escape via the Underground Railroad through a friend John Van Zandt (who shows up in UTC as John Van Trompe).

Second major source of antipathy for slavery as a system per se in Stowe was the pervasive sexual exploitation of female slaves by white "masters." This exploitation was common in two ways: 1) the sexual gratification of white males and 2) forcing females to become "breeders."  Many female slaves were forced to have sexual relations with various men in order to "breed" a fresh crop of slaves to work or sell.  Eliza Buck, a young "mulatto girl" and fugitive slave, came to the Stowe household in Cincinnati. She was the offspring of an illicit encounter between her former master and her slave mother.  She too became the victim of repeated rapes by the same man. Eliza told Stowe of being sold down in Louisiana and then to Kentucky.  Harriet had also met Lewis Garrard Clarke, an escaped slave so light he could pass for white. Clarke's family had been broken apart and variously sold, his sister being sent to New Orleans as a sex slave. Clarke's sister was befriended by a Frenchman who purchased her freedom. Harriet brings this secret "privilege" of the white slave owner out in full view in UTC. She was disgusted by it. The havoc of slavery on families ... indeed in most southern states marriage was illegal for blacks ... was an abomination to God. Stowe illuminates powerfully the family bond among slaves whether legal or not.

Another source of Stowe's growing hatred of slavery was the violence used by those who protected the system.  James Birney a family friend was a former slave owner who emancipated his slaves. He began what he believed was a mild and moderate voice for the emancipation cause, The Philanthropist. But on July 30, 1836 a mob estimated to be about 4000 strong, surrounded Birney's Cincinnati office, smashed his press and threw it in the Ohio. The mob then proceeded to pillage streets with the houses of free blacks.  Birney just escaped with his life.[6] The next year however, Elijah P. Lovejoy, a special friend, was attacked and murdered by a mob of proslavery advocates.

Finally Stowe became a reader of slave narratives. The stories of Josiah Henson, Henry Bibb, Lewis Clarke, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and others. These heroic tales revealed to her people, not animals, with a thirst for liberty, capacity for learning and critical thinking, and above all the capability of pride in being God's creation. Stowe came to embrace the humanity of the African slave.

Harriet Beecher Stowe became convinced that Christianity and slavery was absolutely incompatible. In Uncle Tom's Cabin she unsparingly exposed the toll that slavery took upon both blacks and whites who, surprisingly, are bound by a common humanity.  For her the responsibility of slavery lie with both Southerners and Northerners who made economic profit off it. Slavery was more than a personal evil but a systemic evil that must be atoned for.  Indeed slavery was America's Calvary ... the beaten and dying slave was the American Christ.  That was Tom!

Wrapping up Part One ... Factoids to Whet the Appetite

Two of the most frequent responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin are:  1) the surprise that Tom was no "Uncle Tom" and 2) just how profoundly "religious" the work is.  The stereotype of "uncle Tom" as weak, servile, and passive is the work of a massive subversion of the book. Not only is Tom incredibly strong but George Harris (another major character) is a Malcolm X kind of man. When I think of Tom now I think of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr ... brave and willing to suffer on behalf of others. This is no trait of a weak and cowardly person. 

Stowe was an inspiration to both Leo Tolstoy (who thought UTC was a brilliant novel and I would say he was a qualified critic) and Vladimir Lenin who held UTC was his favorite novel from childhood [7]. Translated into 37 languages, used as a Sunday School text, adapted into countless "Tom" plays ... UTC remained a powerful and subversive force even when it was forgotten by many. 

More to come ...

Notes:

1] See the classic by  William Bradford Huie, 3 Lives for Mississippi with an Intro by Martin Luther King, Jr (New American Library, 1964, reprinted several times)

2] Daniel Vallaro discusses this remark and its authenticity at length in "Lincoln, Stowe, and the 'Little Woman/Great War' Story: The Making and Breaking of a Great American Anecdote," in Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (Winter 2009) at www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/30.1/vollaro.html#FOOT54

3] Quoted in Debby Applegate's Pulitzer Prize winning biography, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Three Leaves Press 2006), 264.

4] David Walker, free black and fellow Bostonian, castigates white Christian preachers for condemning these very evils and yet turning a blind eye to slavery.  "The preachers and people of the United States form societies against Free Masonry, Sabbath breaking, Sabbath mails, Infidelity, &c. &c. But the fountain head [i.e. slavery] compared with which, all those other evils are comparatively nothing, and from the bloody and murderous head of which they receive no trifling support, is hardly noticed by Americans." David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. Peter P. Hinks, (Penn State Press 2000), 44.  Walker and his Appeal had a profound impact upon Garrison.

5] Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Loyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (St. Martins Press 1998), 417-424, quotes from p. 421.

6] David S. Reynolds, Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America (W. W. Norton 2011), 93-94.

7] ibid., 175

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A Black Intellectual Writes to Thomas Jefferson

The Colors of Liberty

On July 4, 1776 explosive words from Thomas Jefferson captured the hearts of men and women, white and black, in the British Colonies in America.  Those words read, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These words set the world ablaze not only with war but with a new way of looking at humanity.  The "Age of Liberty" though was not exactly as it appeared to be however.

Following the Revolutionary War, from 1783-1800, many of the Patriots lead a full blown retreat from the implications of the famous words above.  The seventeen years following the war have been termed by the provocative work by Larry Tise as "the American Counter-Revolution."  In fact Thomas Jefferson, who always retained the rhetoric of the pursuit of individual rights is deemed as "the most radical counterrevolutionary" of them all [1]!

Jefferson had published, in 1785, his Notes on Virginia that attained near canonical status among slave holding Americans. When Jefferson won the most contentious election in American history it was because of the "federal ratio" - that is the Three-Fifths Clause in the Constitution giving southern slave states a greater number votes in the Electoral College (Jefferson lost the popular vote).  Future president John Quincy Adams wrote of the election of Jefferson, "The election of Mr. Jefferson to the presidency was, upon sectional feelings, the triumph of the South over the North - of the slave representation over the purely free" [2]. The Notes changed the way Americans thought and talked about liberty, freedom, equality and the rights of humans. Now even with the Revolution fresh in mind there was no vision that could bind all humans together within the United States.  For Thomas Jefferson black folks were constitutionally inferior, morally bankrupt, and unfit for social equality with whites. They may be good for sexual exploitation however [3]. 

Thomas Jefferson's new doctrine reads rather clearly in his Notes, "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of the body and mind." Liberty was colored even for the writer of the Declaration of Independence.

A "Black" Enlightenment

If Thomas Jefferson did not believe his own words they inspired folks on the other side of the colored liberty line. The period saw African Americans breaking out of the stifling limits and bigotry in significant ways.  Phillis Wheatley dazzled white readers with her poetry. Olaudah Equiano became a world traveler and a crusader for black liberty. One man who emerged from the shadows was Benjamin Banneker.

By 1791 Banneker had become a well known celebrity of sorts.  Banneker was a free black tobacco farmer in Maryland. He was in many ways he was the counter part of his white name sake Benjamin Franklin. He was born and raised in destitution. Both were self-taught. Both loved mathematical puzzles. Both were fascinated by nature, patterns of weather, and astronomy. Both enjoyed the challenge of creating almanacs. Both, it would seem, were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Banneker's first almanac was rejected because the publisher did not believe a black man was capable of performing the mathematics required for one. Yet when his almanac was published for 1792 that it was a "COMPLETE and ACCURATE EPHEMERIS for the year 1792" and had been

"calculated by a a Sable Descendant of Africa, who, by this Specimen of Ingenuity, evinces, to Demonstration, that mental Powers and Endowments are not the exclusive Excellence of white People, but that they Rays of Science may alike illumine the Minds of Men of every Clime, (however they may differ in the Colour of the Skin) particularly those whom Tyrant-Custom hath too long taught us to depreciated as a Race inferior in intellectual Capacity."

In other words black men were not mere brutish beasts.  Further in 1791 Banneker had been engaged by President George Washington as one of the surveyors and planners for the soon to be capital of the United States. Banneker, a true son of the Enlightenment, was a man who believed that liberty came for those of a different color too. Thomas Jefferson did pass on the Almanac to the Academy of Sciences in Paris as possible evidence that some blacks were capable of science.

A Black Intellectual Writes Thomas Jefferson

On August 19, 1791 a sixty year old Benjamin Banneker sat down to write a short note to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.  As Banneker explains at the end of the letter he initially intended to only send Mr. Jefferson a copy of almanac so he could peruse the contents.   But something moved Banneker to express himself to the supposed Apostle of Human Liberty on the matter of liberty for black people within the United States. It is not without irony in the shadow of Jefferson's Notes that Thomas' Paine's The Right's of Man was published in May of 1791 just a few months prior to Banneker's letter.  Paine's book was endorsed by Thomas Jefferson.  But what did the black intellectual say to the author of the Declaration of Independence and Notes on Virgina?  He opens

"Sir: - I am fully sensible of the greatness of that freedom, which I take with you on the present occasion {Banneker it will be recalled was a free black man}, a liberty which seemed to me scarcely allowable, when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in which you stand, and the almost general prejudice and prepossession which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion."

Banneker mentions how common the notion is that blacks are mere brutes ...

"I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings who have long laboured [sic] under the abuse and censure of the world, that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments."

But Banneker submits his almanac as proof of the mental endowments and human qualities of his race. He tells Jefferson that "we are all of the same family, and stand in the same relation to him [i.e the universal Father]."  Banneker likwise appeals to the "obligations of christianity" [sic]. It is because blacks and whites are part of the same family and "christian" obligation that Jefferson should pursue liberty for all men regardless of color.  He appeals directly to the Revolutionary heritage in his letter to Jefferson. Surely the men of 1776 were no hypocrites.

"Sir, I have long been convinced that if your love for yourselves and for those inesteemable laws, which preserve to you the rights of human nature, was found on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous that every individual thereof, neither could you rest satisfied, short of the most active diffusion of your exertions in order to their promotions from any state of degradation to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men have reduced them. 

Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am of the African race, and in that colour which is natural to them of the deepest dye, and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Being of the universe that I now confess to you that I am not under that state of tyrannical thraldom and inhuman capacity to which to many of my brethren are doomed ..."

Banneker reminds Jefferson of the "powerful effort" of the "British Crown" to reduce the colonists to a "State of Servitude."  At that time Jefferson "clearly saw into the the injustice of a state of slavery."  So clearly did he see that Banneker ironically quotes back to Jefferson those nearly immortal words that filled so many oppressed with a sense of hope.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator [sic] with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Banneker confesses his dismay at how any person could say those words much less write them and justify the existence of slavery and the racism required for the peculiar institution to survive in the atmosphere of the post-Revolutionary War. Banneker forthrightly points out Jefferson's hypocrisy witnessed in his Notes and in his own possession of slaves. 

"Here, sir, was a time in which your tender feelings for yourselves had engaged you thus to declare, you were then impressed with proper ideas of the great valuation of liberty and the free possession of those blessings to which you were entitled by nature; but sir, how pitiable is it to reflect that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at that same time be found guilty of that most criminal act which you professedly detested in others with respect to yourselves."

The black intellectual pleads with Jefferson to become empathetic with black slaves.  Appealing to the the words of a lamenting Job "put your soul in their souls stead."  Thomas Jefferson did not and could not ever do that.

Adding Benjamin Banneker to the "Canon"

The letter of Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson on August 19, 1791 was laden with potential to renew the promise of the American Revolution. Banneker knew that Jefferson symbolically stood at the head of the revolution but also sadly was the man who derailed.  Jefferson went on to become President of the United States on the back of slaves who were not even recognized as a full human and denied even three-fifths representation and his Notes became the water hydrant to quench the fervor for rights for all Americans.

Banneker, an elderly self-educated genius saw through Jefferson and called Jefferson's bluff. This man can serve as a model of what can be every bit as his white counterpart Benjamin Franklin. He did not let his circumstances define him. He had limited "formal" schooling but was a life long disciple in the best sense of the word.  He disciplined himself daily and nightly in the path of knowledge rather than property or wealth. His physical travels were very limited but his mind traveled the entire Creation of God. He broke through the stereotype that black men were ignorant sexual brutes.  He even shows that "elderly" people are not over the hill with nothing to accomplish or contribute - after all he did not publish his first almanac until he was nearly 60 years of age. Facing systemic bigotry on a daily basis he overcame by the power of his God-given and cultivated intellect.  When I read the story of Banneker I am reminded of the startling quote Thomas Chatterton Williams attributes to his father regarding basketball, "If you're going to complete then do your best, son, always do your best, but remember that I really don't care if we ever have another black athlete or entertainer" [4]. The problem is not athletes or entertainers but the stereotype that pigeon holes African-American males in those roles ... they do not define "blackness."  Banneker destroys that image and can show both white folks who still retain a subtler form of Jefferson's blatant racism and at the same time inspire a generation of new intellectuals.  Both black and white.  He is worthy of emulation.

Perhaps Banneker should be in the Canon of American Saints as much - perhaps more - than Thomas Jefferson.  The more I think about it I think Tise was correct, Jefferson was the most radical counterrevolutionary.

Perhaps you do not know much about the great American hero Benjamen Banneker.  If not let me recommend the excellent study by Robert Silverstein and Charles Cerami, Benjamen Banneker: Surveyor, Astronomer, Publisher, Patriot (Wiley, 2002). You will be blessed.

Notes:

1] Larry E. Tise, The American Counter Revolution: A Retreat from Liberty, 1783-1800 (Stackpole Books, 1998), 439-451.

2] The only book length study on the role of the "Three-Fifths" clause in Jefferson's election is the marvelous work by Garry Wills, "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003).  Quote from p. 1.

3] See Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter S. Onuf, eds, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory and Civic Culture (University of Virginia Press, 1999).

4] Thomas Chatterton Williams, Losing My Cool: How A Father's Love and 15, 000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture (Penguin Press, 2010), 34-35.  Emphasis in original.

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James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass

One of the most power speeches in history (in my opinion). Frederick Douglass' "What is the Fourth of July to the American Slave?" ... excerpts here read by James Earl Jones ...

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Africa, Scripture ... and Christian History

"As a historian of the ancient world, I find that many New Testament scholars are confined by tunnel vision to the immediate text, with little awareness of its broader background" (Edwin Yamauchi, Africa and the Bible, p. 161)

Over the last month I have been reading and studying three books that converge on Scripture, Christian history, and Africa. A couple of reasons moved me in this direction for reading: 1) I have had a long interest in the historical setting of Scripture and early Christianity, and 2) because I have been so woefully ignorant of the matter. I have drawn attention to Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian Eunuch, Moses' wife, etc in years past but my recent reading has shown me how much I do not know. But the shadow of Africa looms large and Thomas Oden's How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind; Keith Augustus Burton's The Blessing of Africa; and Edwin Yamauchi's Africa and the Bible have enriched and corrected my vision.

A number of points that these authors make we all already know but they are sort of hidden in plain view. Africa has played a pivotal role not only in biblical history but in the history of Christianity. Scenes from Scripture: the children of Abraham in Africa; Joseph in Africa; Moses in Africa; and Mary, Joseph and Jesus in Africa. According to tradition Mark in Africa, Perpetua in Africa, Tertullian in Africa, Clement in Africa, Athanasius in Africa, and Augustine in Africa.



Perhaps Oden's work, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity, arrested me the most. Oden, a repentant Bultmanian, has been editing the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture for many years. He writes that his views have changed not from some European historical genius (which he calls "European chauvinism" p.23, see pp. 140f) but by wading through the writings of the Church Fathers. His thesis is that Africa defined the Christian mind in the first 500 years or so. As he says, repeatedly, that the flow of thought went from South to North. From Africa to Europe and not the reverse. Just where do we see the legacy of Africa:

+ That the western university was formed in Africa (and Christian scholarship)

+ Christian exegesis was first nurtured in Africa

+ Africa was the setting for the shaping of early Christian dogma

+ that ecumenical decisions of the later church were first shaped in Africa

+ most of the Spiritual disciplines were first practiced in Africa especially through the rise of monasticism

+ neoplatonic philosophy moved from Africa to Europe

+ literary and rhetoric were refined in Africa

African Christians in Byzacena, Carthage, Numidia and Mauretania had been reaching agreement on on many important matters a century prior to the Council of Nicaea. One of these for all intents and purposes gave us our "canon" of the New Testament. Oden's book deserves to be read and digested. Oden believes that contemporary North American and European views on Africa are radically different than those of Ancient Christians. He finds the root of the change in the scholarship of Adolf von Harnack and Walter Bauer. Oden ends his book with a challenge to younger scholars (including African ones) to test his thesis. To learn the languages of Ancient Africa because so much is neglected and untranslated into modern tongues. It is important both to Europeans and Africans that Christianity is not "white" but is in fact a "traditional African religion" with a 2000 year history.



Keith Augustus Burton's The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity is broad in scope which is both its strength and weakness. Burton surveys how the "sons of Ham" are seen in Scripture (and he argues that son of Ham is not synonymous with "black"). He then surveys the growth Christianity in the "lands of Ham" which is much broader than simply modern Africa. One particularly rich section in this work is the Islam and Christianity wrestling in Africa.



Finally Edwin Yamauchi's Africa and the Bible is justly deserving its 2005 Christianity Today Book Award. Yamauchi, a Japanese-American, is an amazing scholar and has earned a reputation since the 1960s as being a person who knows the ancient world better than most of us know our own neighborhood. The bibliography of this book is 45 pages long!! This is THE book on Africa and the Bible. Yamauchi writes as a historian and not simply a biblical scholar (though he is that). He lavishly integrates archeology, ancient sources of all kinds, biblical exegesis and contemporary scholarship. The book is richly illustrated too (a bonus for those that like pictures!). He examines the "Curse of Ham" in its ancient setting and how it became the seedbed of racism. Most interesting to me, because I knew nothing of it, is the chapter on "Rome and Meroe." This is of course important for understanding Acts 8. This valuable work ends with a survey and critique of "Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation" to which Yamauchi sees vital contributions as well as serious flaws.

I am a better Bible student with a deeper awareness of "our" African roots for reading these books. But I think if I were going to spend money on these books again to give away I would begin with Oden and Yamauchi. In fact I believe that works like these can help us see vast new vistas ... even where (and when!) we may disagree. Africa has indeed played a larger role in our heritage than I was ever aware of. Its like getting a new pair of glasses.

Tolle lege,
Bobby V

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Social Concerns in Churches of Christ: Trends Since the King Years, 1950-2000

A Word about this essay. Social Concerns was originally written during the Summer of 2000 while I lived in Grenada, MS. In making it available on the web I have edited it only slightly so it does not carry the research up to 2010. But I have continued to grow and learn. The essay is historical in orientation though not without theological perspective. I do not claim to be exhaustive on this matter (in fact I plan on posting a few more papers of equal length here on Stoned-Campbell Disciple blog). Interestingly enough, as side note, I was dismissed from the church I worked with not long after I finished it. That was the first great trial of the Valentine family. But I have great memories of the "three Amigos" Jonathan Moore (of Christian Life Church); Ernest Hargrove (AME Church); and myself.

As will become evident we stand in need of the healing rain of God's grace upon our church family. I pray for that rain and where I am allowed to will be a conduit of that mercy ... brackets [ ] with numbers in them indicate a corresponding footnote ...

SOCIAL CONCERNS IN CHURCHES OF CHRIST: TRENDS SINCE THE KING YEARS, 1950-2000

Introduction

Claiming to be a people of the Book, Churches of Christ have recognized that scripture reveals widespread concern with social justice. Passages like Deuteronomy 15.11-17; Amos 2.6ff; 5.10-24; Matthew 25 and James 5.1-6 among dozens of others have not been unknown to interpreters in our fellowship. What has not been recognized by many, however, is that these passages bear directly on the mission of God in this world and thus the mission of his people, the church. Does the church have a moral/biblical obligation to address prophetically the evils of the world such as discrimination, work conditions not far removed from slavery, and abject poverty? This paper seeks to explore how Churches of Christ in the mid-20th century to the early 1990s answered these kinds of questions. We will do that by looking at one slice of moral witness: race relations.

Churches of Christ flourished in the post Civil War upper South where the uniting social fabric was the civil "religion" known as the Lost Cause. The Lost Cause had white supremacy as its foundational principle [1]. "Negrophobia" dominated much of the post-Reconstruction southern psyche. The fear of African-Americans is clearly seen in the segregation of the races. "Ole Miss" historian Charles Reagan Wilson, writes that ministers of the South were the guardians of this worldview. In fact "racial heresy was more dangerous to a preacher's reputation than was theological speculation" [2].

In light of the Lost Cause, it is not surprising that many in Churches of Christ resisted an advocacy role for disenfranchised Black Americans. In fact we often find "our" ministers leading the opposite direction. Abilene Christian College president Jesse P. Sewell seemed to grant the Ku Klux Klan legitimacy by accepting contributions from the Klan during chapel [3]. Renowned Texas evangelist, J. D. Tant, lamented trends toward equality in Kansas. He reported in the Gospel Advocate:

Negro equality runs high here. Negroes ride in the same coach, go to the same school, eat at the same table with white people, and sometimes sleep in the beds of their white neighbors; all of which I am glad to say is not tolerated in 'heathen' Texas. [4]

African-American evangelist, Samuel R. Cassius, gives us a window into the prevailing attitudes among restoration churches when he accused them of being inbred with race hatred (for more on Cassius see my blog HERE). He writes with white hot passion about the moral injustice toward his race and the apparent lack of interest among preachers of the old time gospel message. The preachers themselves are:

[F]ull of race prejudice and hatred, inbred by three hundred years of schooling of a purely one-sided nature ... I may arouse passions that will cause my people to be hung, shot and burned under every tree in the South, or I may start a wave of sympathy that will roll over the land which will make such common things as these impossible to occur again [5].

Cassius was correct. The Disciples of Christ had historically been vague on the issue of slavery in theory, and in practice owned more slaves per capita than any other denomination in America [6]. James Shannon, one of the best educated men in the Stone-Campbell Movement, led a fiery defense of the morality of slavery [7]. Alexander Campbell himself, and Walter Scott, were unable to make slavery a moral issue rather than a political evil [8]. In the post Civil War era, Disciples provided many for the "rank and file of the Klan, and their preachers gave it leadership and respectability" [9]. (As an aside we can take pride in men like Pardee Butler for their prophetic ministry in opposing slavery. See my blog Pardee Butler: An Amos on the Family Tree).

Given the social context of Churches of Christ, it is not surprising that we often reflected white Southern values rather than the radically counter cultural values of the Kingdom of God. Rare was the preacher who dared to be guilty, in Wilson's terms, the heresy of promoting racial justice and equality.  So opposed to this heresy was the legendary Texas editor Foy Wallace the he made Jim Crow an essential part of Christianity. Writing about the black evangelist, R. N. Hogan, who stayed in the home of Ira Rice Jr. he said:

Aside from being an infringement of the Jim Crow law, it is a violation of Christianity itself, and of all common decency. Such conduct forfeits the respect of right thinking people, and would be calculated to stir up demonstrations in most any community if it should be generally known [10].

Editor Wallace goes on to attack Hogan as being "too much inclined to mix with the white people and to favor, in attitude, social equality!" Wallace was not finished yet. He turned his editorial guns upon the humble Marshall Keeble and the white women who attended his meetings. He laments:

The manner in which the brethren in some quarters are going in for the negro meetings lead one to wonder whether they are trying to make white folks out of the negroes ... Reliable reports have come to me of white women, members of the church, becoming so animated over a certain colored preacher as to go up to him after a sermon and shake hands with him holding his hand in both of theirs. That kind of thing will turn the head of most white preachers, and sometimes affect their conduct, and anybody ought to know that it makes fools out of the negroes" [11].

The Wallace-Hogan-Keeble episode provides a unique window into the mind of the Churches of Christ near mid-20th century. Not a single voice, that I have found, was to be heard of protest of Wallace's blatant racism. Not a single letter to the editor pointing out the glaring contradiction with "New Testament Christianity." It seems fairly safe to assume that Wallace represented the prevailing attitudes among most of his contemporaries in the South among Churches of Christ.

THE MARTIN LUTHER KING YEARS

On December 1, 1955, a tired Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white individual on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Four days later the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott began on December 5; thus emerged the long and treacherous voyage to Civil Rights (Justice) in America. Martin Luther King, Jr was thrust upon America and the pages of history at the young age of 26!

From the beginning, Churches of Christ were involved in the battle against the degrading moral evil of segregation, even if that was limited to Fred D. Gray (see my blog Fred D. Gray: The Hero Lawyer). Gray defended Parks and organized the Montgomery Improvement Association which then appointed King as their spokesperson [12]. Gray, like King, was deeply motivated by Christian convictions that many of his brethren did not understand or share. Gray testifies how even Marshall Keeble, his mentor, did not understand. "It was difficult for him to understand how one of his former preacher boys would now be standing in courtrooms fighting racial discrimination" [13]. Somehow being concerned with the issues of justice took one away from "kingdom work" and into the dreaded "social gospel." This of course betrays a grave lack of appreciation of the actual kingdom work of Jesus himself.

Other than the work of Fred Gray, however, not much was being done among Churches of Christ expressing social concern in the area of racial justice until the historic speech of Carl Spain in 1960. Spain's speech at ACC, according to William Banowsky was, if judged by the intensity of the reaction to it, "the most spectacular speech ever delivered in Abilene" [14].
Spain sounds almost like Amos:

I feel certain Jesus would say: "Ye hypocrites!" You say you are the only true Christians, and make up the only true church, and have the only Christian schools. Yet, you drive one of your own preachers to denominational schools where he can get credit for his work and refuse to let him take Bible for credit in your own schools because of the color of his skin is dark! ... Are we moral cowards on this issue? There are people with money who will back us in our last ditch stand for white supremacy in a world of pigmented people. God forbid that we shall be the last stronghold among religious schools where the politico-economic philosophy of naturalism determines moral conduct. We fear the mythical character name Jim Crow more than we reverence Jesus Christ. In the name of "discretion" we make un-Christian and un-American rules like some states do in the name of "States Rights.'" [15].

There is no doubt that Spain's speech was electrifying, but contrary to Banowsky's assertion of it "solidifying brotherhood convictions" [16], the moral crisis was far from settled in Churches of Christ.

Silence was the typical response of leaders within the churches. Jimmy Allen, eleven years after Spain's speech, chastised preachers in 1971 for refusing to address the issue of justice. He said:

If our people are not right on this issue, it is because our preachers have not dealt with the matter. Preaching brethren, I am not trying to judge anyone but I wonder how many of us are cowards? Just plain down right cowards! Are we so in love with our positions or so afraid we might offend narrow-minded church leaders that we simply seal our lips ... When are we going to begin to instruct our people along these lines? Is the church of the Lord to be last religious institution in America to speak out for racial justice? [17]

A survey of leading periodicals of the time show Allen to be correct. During the violent years of the late 1950s through the early 1960s virtually nothing is published regarding the massive moral crises facing America and the church. In the Firm Foundation it was apparently the policy of Reuel Lemmons not to publish articles on the subject of racial justice and integration. He writes "we have received scores of articles on the subject of integration, both pro and con. Up until now we have not published any of them" [18]. Lemmons' editorial is insightful because it reveals several key themes. Lemmons denies that addressing "social structures" is the work of the church; he pointed to what he believed were segregation practices in the first century; and finally he flat denied that racism and segregation was a problem was in Churches of Christ. He states "we do not believe that segregation has ever been a problem with the Lord's church" [19].

In the same March 31, 1964 issue of Firm Foundation James Fowler published his views. Fowler argued that New Testament Christians had no interest in "social" reform of slavery or other evils. Indeed Fowler comes close to defending the status quo when he writes:

They did not turn from their primary purpose of preaching Christ to become involved in revolutionary demands and social reforms ... While they were brethren in the church they were still "Master" and "slave" ...

Fowler the suggests the church is not to be involved with the Civil Rights Movement:

[N]either can I find it within the spirit of Christianity to join the church to organized movements whose ends are not always clear, and whose methods and motives are not always above reproach, and whose values in the cause of justice is questioned ..." [20]

Unlike Lemmons and many other white church leaders who denied there was a problem, the Black Churches of Christ brought in the minority report. R. N. Hogan, editor of the Christian Echo, set out the contradiction in bold relief:

It must be agreed that we have the same kind of people in the Church of Christ today. There are the prejudice segregationists in congregations all over the brotherhood whose hearts are filled with hate because of the color of another man's skin" [21].

Andrew Hairston, an African-American minister, attacked head-on the common theme among white church leaders that racial justice was simply a "social" matter and not a matter of the Gospel.

The race issue is no more a social issue and to be divorced from the life and preaching of the true church today than it was when Christ died for the demolition of that wall separating man from man ...

Hairston argues the lack of interest in moral justice is not because it is unbiblical, but because it is a cross the white brethren are not willing to pick up.

There is little doubt that when the complete truth is revealed, the reason for the Church of Christ not speaking out against racial segregation ... will not be because the issue is SOCIAL and is therefore no responsibility of the gospel. It will be because to take as firm a stand on this issue as we have on baptism will cost too much in terms of social and economic reprisal" [22].

Hairston's view could not be more diametrically opposite that of Lemmons and Fowler.

March 7, 1965 was "Bloody Sunday" as Dr. King led a group of peaceful marchers toward the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Fred Gray once again was a key figure in the legal battles in the aftermath of that day representing King, John Lewis and many others [23]. For our purposes the episode highlighted once again the radically divergent views of social concern in Churches of Christ. When Rex Turner, President Alabama Christian College, learned that apparently a some ministers supported King's march and peaceful protest, he condemned them. Martin Luther King was simply seeking to "displace the gospel of Christ with a social gospel ... that has little or no concern with the fundamentals of Christianity." King was simply a "rank modernist" as were any who supported him [24].

Several years went by and there was another "burst" of articles appeared. The death of Marshall Keeble gave Lemmons the opportunity to analyze the current state of the crises. Lemmons contrasted the methods of Keeble and especially Martin Luther King Jr. Eulogizing Keeble, Lemmons said:

He never lead a riot; he never burned a block of buildings; he never marched on Washington. But he marched toward heaven from the day he obeyed the gospel, young in life and following him a great throng of peaceable people ..."

Just as the Firm Foundation editor had previously claimed there was no prejudice among Churches of Christ in 1964, so now he restated his convictions. "If he ever knew there were segregation lines he never indicated it. Indeed, because of his life and work there has been an infinitesimally small amount of racial prejudice in the Churches of Christ" [25].

Lemmons did not go unchallenged in his glowing appraisal of Keeble's experience and racism. Norman Anderson, a black preacher, wrote Lemmons rather pointedly. "I have searched myself deeply, trying to decide if the editorial based upon unbelievable racism on your part, gross ignorance of ... the conditions very much in evidence in the Church, or maybe you were so emotionally upset by the death of Marshall Keeble that you lost sight of reality" [26].

The Gospel Advocate issued a special Marshall Keeble memorial edition on July 18, 1968. Just as in Lemmons' eulogy, Karl Pettus contrasted Keeble's approach with the Civil Rights Movement. "He never led a march or demonstration, peaceful or otherwise. He never connected with a riot ... he didn't march for school integration, but he worked and spend himself" in the cause of Christ [27]. The Advocate's approach to the moral crisis seems to have been to ignore it. Not until September of 1968 did the Advocate acknowledge in a half-hearted way the upheaval around the Churches of Christ [28]. B. B. Baxter's article is vague and not until the end is the raging crises even mentioned and then only in a highly individualistic manner.

Several months later Hugo McCord added his dissenting voice against "artificial integration." McCord responded to black Churches of Christ that were perceived as too vocal about the obligations of the church. He argued that the apostles did not preach "that love requires artificial integration, nor do they preach that a congregation is not a New Testament church if it is not integrated" [29]. He writes that though Jesus had immeasurable compassion on the poor that was not his mission! Indeed these black brothers are, according to McCord, slipping dangerously close to the dreaded "social gospel." They

would make the unthinking say that any Christian or any congregation not going all out for the social gospel is hypocritical. Whereas the inspired apostles refused to leave the word of God to serve tables (Acts 6:2), apparently this speaker would make human relief the first order of business [30].

Coming from the opposite point of view, Walter Burch published an article in the spirit of Carl Spain's speech in the Firm Foundation on June 11, 1968. In a country that had been rocked by the assassination of Medgar Evars, the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the slayings of Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andy Goodman in Neoshoba, MS and the brutal beatings of children in Grenada, MS., the Bloody Sunday in Selma, and finally the murder of King himself - Burch wondered aloud where the voice of God's people might be.

Tragically, the most flaming moral issue perhaps in the history of Christianity is evaded, ignored, or shunned with maddening indifference by the Church of Christ -- and generally speaking, without any visible pangs of conscience or remorse or agony expressed by the leadership within the white church. Apparently -- and this is an incredible thought -- no clear cut moral issue or scriptural principle is at stake at this time!

Burch states that the church will get very vocal over a high school dance or the theory of evolution, but "public opposition to racial injustice? No! The camel has been swallowed" [31].

A vanguard responded to Burch. Lemmons himself lead the way in an editorial entitled "The Racial Problem." Lemmons again denies any corporate responsibility, he denies that prejudice is a problem and finally he labels any attempt to work toward justice as the "social gospel."

Much is being said about what part the church should play in racial problems which would indicate that the speakers and writers have swallowed the "social gospel" idea. We repeat that we what we have said before: the church is about to forget its evangelical thrust" [32].

In the same issue B. B. Harding wrote "Articles like the above title by Walter Burch in June 11 disturb me, but not in the right way. One should be provoked to good works, not to wrath or disgust." Moving from his critique of Burch, Harding turned to King who had been killed just a few weeks prior,

To compare King to Jesus or say he didn't make violence as it was already here is foolish. Why did violence always follow his efforts? Jesus Christ didn't die defying the courts or "giving people all the hell he could"; and riots and violence didn't follow him everywhere he went [34].

Ron Goodman also responded to Burch. Far from being a "non-violent leader," King was really a "rabble rouser." He questions Burch "in what city do we find Paul marching the streets with disgruntled Jews, slaves or anyone else? Where are the "passionate sermons" on the subject." Burch is doing nothing more than selling out to "the social gospel" which has always been opposed by sound brethren [35].

The Christian Chronicle, unlike both the Foundation and Advocate, consistently pointed Churches of Christ to the crises around them. The Advocate ignored the death of Martin Luther King and ignored the race relations workshops held in various cities like Atlanta [36]. Denton Crews wrote that many preachers were "scared stiff on the subject." The response of our leaders, Crews opined was "pussyfooting about human relations" and to "beg the problem to go away" [37].

The murder of Martin Luther King Jr provides another interesting barometer of attitudes in Churches of Christ of this period. Frequently reactions, as we have already seen, to King were quite harsh. James D. Bales, of Harding College, wrote a large book exposing King. The work is an apology for right wing politics and contends that King was a pawn of the Communists ... even if he was possibly unaware of it.

Whether King is aware of what he is doing or not, the final outcome would not be changed. His contribution to anarchy within the United States,his cooperation with Communists within the United States, and his efforts to render us defenseless ... all add up to defeat for freedom and victory for communism if he and others like him prevail" [38]

Several articles and letters appeared in the Christian Chronicle following King's murder. African-American Calvin Bowers lamented his loss. He stressed King's Christ-likeness, his love and commitment to non-violence. Bowers echoing Jesus' words in Matthew 25, in contrast to Bales, claimed "he made clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and those in prison major goals in his life" [39]. Two letters however from white women were less than mournful. Mrs. Virgil Todd labeled King a communist [40] while the other accused him of being a violent political preacher [41]. Perhaps most revealing of the letters came from Truman R. Clark. Clark compared Keeble and King and found the latter wanting.

Marshall Keeble was a great man, but one of the main reasons why he was so beloved by our Southern brethren was that he knew how to keep his place. He would never have been so un-scriptural as to teach that brotherhood in Christ should pervade everyday life, in such things as schools, jobs, public restrooms, or -- perish the thought -- calling a black man something other than "boy." [42]

Scott does not give any reason why "brotherhood in Christ" should not change our relationship with people on a daily basis. Keeble was great simply because he "knew his place" in a deeply entrenched cultural church and King apparently did not. For Scott the eschatological reality of a new humanity has no bearing at all on the real day to day world.

The reaction of black leaders among Churches of Christ than those of many of their white brothers and sisters. Eugene Green writing in the Christian Echo had (like Bowers) a very different point of view:

In recent weeks Dr. Martin Luther King was killed, why? Well someone has said it was a sick mind, I say it was a sick society, because all who opposed Dr. King in his non-violent movement was just guilty as the one who fired the shot that killed him.

But let us not forget one thing, killing Dr. King did not kill the cause, if he was wrong in what he was teaching, then there would have been no need to kill him, the cause would have died itself, but if he was right ... we know he was. It might be asked where do I stand, well, I stand with God. Now about riots in the city, it is wrong, but if you treat people like an animal they will act like one. I do not hate my White Brethren, I love them very much, because I know that is the only way for me to see my fathers face in peace [43].

Green's view is radically different than that of Lemmons and Clark. He sees corporate responsibility for the death of King and civil unrest. Green believed that opposition to "the cause" is tantamount to opposition to God himself. The practical division between white and black Churches of Christ is further evidenced by the reaction of some well known preachers to promotion of justice on the part of black churches. John Waddey scolded African American leaders saying they were leaving gospel ground. "Those churches whose preachers have quite preaching the Bible and turned to social and political issues will not long stand." Truly biblical churches will avoid the world of "politics and social reform" [44].

One last voice needs to be noted before our study moves past the King Years. John Allen Chalk, speaker for the Herald of Truth radio program, had attended the race relations workshop in Atlanta and was encouraged to speak out on the subject. As a result Chalk preached his famous (or infamous) series "Three American Revolutions" which lead the way for several other sermons dealing with America's crisis of justice. Chalk forthrightly attacked racism:

Racism in America has defrauded the minority person of his personal dignity; has destroyed his sense of personal worth; has crushed his expectations ... has encouraged destructive futility and rebellion; and has continually confronted him with the "lie" of inferiority. [45]

Chalk adds "Jehovah God is not a racist. The Christianity practiced in the first century, as explained in the New Testament, rejected racism" [46]. The Herald of Truth sermons on race evoked the largest response of any previous lessons on that program [47].

In the King years Churches of Christ pretty much fell in line with the prevailing cultural values of the South. Voices are heard crying in the wilderness from time to time about one the greatest crises of justice in American history. Few, however, could critique the church from the perspective of the kingdom of God. Others simply denied there was a problem to be dealt with and any attempt to do so earned the label "liberal" or "social gospeler" or the charge of attacking the Lord's church. Glen Wallace's comments on the race relations workshop at the Simpson St. Church of Christ in Atlanta during June 1968, perhaps sums up the majority view. Writing in First Century Christian, Wallace charged the workshop with the desire to "RESTRUCTURE the church. They want our pulpits to ring with the social gospel theme. They want the "urban ministry" to become the cry of our day. They are tired of the story of the "old rugged cross" [48]. It simply was not within Wallace's purview that the the "old rugged cross" just might have vital connections with the pervasive theme of justice throughout scripture.

TOWARD THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Following the trauma of the 1960s there were only sporadic attempts to deal with racial issues in brotherhood journals. One article is significant for its negative evaluation of Black Power and affirmative action is Rubel Shelly's in 1980. Shelly addresses the surging racial bigotry following the Iranian hostage crisis. For Shelly, affirmative action is simply equated with his understanding of Black Power which was designed to either hurt or punish white people. "And while there ought to be something which helps achieve the stated goals of socalled affirmative action programs, many of these have degenerated into black tools for punishing and denying whites' [49].

Some writers began to there had been an over reaction to an ill defined and nebulous social gospel. Larry James for example thought this misconception had greatly hurt the church.

Our over reaction to a "social Gospel" of sort (real or imagined, it matters not) has paralyzed the body in many places and has prevented our making the legitimate and necessary response to the real plight of people in need. [50]

In the 1980s and 1990s the new journals IMAGE and Wineskins began to address racial justice from a more holistic doctrine of creation and a deeper grasp of the mission of the church. Contemporary justice issues were dealt with rather than swept under the rug as in the 1960s. When African-American houses of worship were being burned across the South in the early 1990s IMAGE published a piece by Larry James directly confronting the matter [51].

What sort of person would burn a church? The question itself causes my stomach to knot up. Yet since 1995 almost fifty churches have been torched across the South ... Most of these burned church buildings are small, poor, rural African American congregations."

James does not merely point to the problem, he suggests concrete steps that Christians should take to overcome hatred. These steps include honestly evaluating our attitude toward other ethnic groups; taking the time to openly talk and listen on the subject of race with a person of different color; learning to relate to others on their terms; take steps to change our behavior; and finally taking a stand for the gospel truth and teaching our children to love and respect all God's image bearers [52].

In the same issue of IMAGE, Rick Atchley addressed the fallout between African Americans and whites over the O. J. Simpson trial. Atchley believed that the root of the problem was not merely education but reconciliation.

Education alone will never solve the problem. Education has its place -- ignorance does breed prejudice -- but education cannot demand that people get to know one another. Reconciliation requires relationships. And relationships are not built spontaneously, but deliberately. Are we being intentional about racial reconciliation. [53]

Wineskins has addressed the problem of social justice and racism on several occasions. Rubel Shelly argued that Christians must take the lead in the monumental moral issues facing the church today. This, however, Shelly is quick to point out is not selling out to the dreaded social gospel. Rather,

It is an appeal for us to face up to the social implications of the true gospel. We have neither the right nor credibility for offering people a better prospect in the new heaven and earth if we are not actively concerned about justice for them in today's anguish ... The things that are concerns of God will not be neglected by his people. It is a "mark of the church" to teach and practice justice and for its members and to be advocates for the powerless" [54]

John Allen Chalk reflected upon the 1960s stating that though "we got the theology right, and some of us preached it but didn't practice what we preached. And our voices faded with the coming Worldly Church" [55]. Chalk recognized something very few Church of Christ leaders have believed and that is "racism is bigger, stronger, deadlier than any single individual." Therefore racism had to be attacked on both an individual level and an institutional level [56].

One of the most radical, and interesting pieces, written during the time covered by this study was Larry James' "Remembering a Martyr: Malcolm X and America's Struggle for Racial Justice" in August 1992. James believes that Malcolm X provides a unique venue for whites to contextualize the "rage, anger and pent up frustration of millions of black Americans who live in the great cities of our nation." By reading Malcolm, white folks can "glimpse the daily roadblocks black people must break through in their attempts to move beyond the despair and hopelessness of poverty and social alienation." Finally, James urges Christians to know Malcolm because his story demonstrates how Christian apathy about justice destroys the impact of the Christ [57].

Fred Gray, who was ignored by the brotherhood papers in the fifties and sixties, has in recent years been rewarded for his faithfulness to the gospel. His story was summarized twice in 1998. Michael Casey stated that not only did Gray try to defeat racism through the court, he did so through his preaching ministry. The two congregations in Tuskegee, Al merged on the first Sunday of November 1974 to become the Tuskegee Church of Christ [58].

Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech was reprinted in Wineskins along with a themed issue on the Civil Rights Movement [59]. Gary Selby reflected on his visit to the Lorraine Hotel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis where King was murdered. Selby was moved to the core of his being. His reflection is worth quoting at length:

Mostly, I felt shame. Shame for what these people felt. Shame for the humiliation and abuse they endured. Shame at being a member of a system -- no, a beneficiary of a system -- which brought such misery upon so many people. I thought about the ways I have participated, knowingly and unknowingly, in this oppression. I thought of pronouncements I have made about matters which I didn't understand. Jokes I have told or laughed at. Conclusion I have reached about others because of their appearance. Being there forced me to admit how quickly I still judge a man "by the color of his skin rather than the character of his heart." I remember my own reluctance to get out of the car when I realized what section of town the Lorraine was in -- a section mostly poor and black. I who have so wanted to be seen as above all that. The museum forced me to see that issue for me -- maybe for all of us -- is not, "Am I prejudiced?" The question is simply, "In what ways?" [60]

CONCLUSION(S)

We began this study by noting the social context of the Lost Cause in which Churches of Christ thrived. The primary tenant of the South was white supremacy as Wilson has shown. In investigating the area of "social concern" with regard to racial justice among Churches of Christ, one quickly learns there simply is not much of it. Churches of Christ were a deeply enmeshed Southern Cultural Church on matters pertaining to race.

Several themes have surfaced throughout this overview. First is the view of Reuel Lemmons there simply is no problem at all. Second is that any engagement in racial justice is a manifestation of the "heresy" Wilson points to ... the dreaded social gospel. Third when solutions were attempted they were highly individualistic and only rarely placed within a larger structural paradigm. Fourth, justice was believed to be neither evangelism or benevolence and thus not part of the mission of the church. Fifth we see pervading the literature a continual failure to grasp how a platonic wedge is driven between the physical and material greatly limiting the power of eschatological ethics to impact the identity of the people of God. Sixth it is deeply apparent that "race" actually factors in whether one believes there is a race problem or not, the divergent perspectives on King make this glaring. Finally there is a marked political conservativism.

Some themes, like the dichotomy between physical and spiritual, seems to be waning. Other themes like the denial that there ever was or is a problem continues. For example the Gospel Advocate recently did a themed issue on "Christian Activism" [61]. There were articles on moral decline in America; the need for Christians in government and Paul's teaching on government. But in these articles there is not a single sentence regarding social justice of any kind.

There have been persistent voices crying out for justice throughout the history of Churches of Christ. They have often been drowned out by the culture around them, they have often been abused and accused of being social gospelers but they have been steadfast. For the bravery of these voices we can be thankful. We can only hope they can continue to help us see the message of Scripture more clearly than ever before.


ENDNOTES

[1] Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), p. 100. Interestingly enough Wilson cites a "Reverend T. B. Latimore" (p. 45) which turns out to be either a misprint or he miscites his source. Latimore is none other than legendary Church of Christ evangelist T. B. Larimore

[2] Ibid., p. 101.

[3] R. O. Kenley, "Ku-Klux-Klan Gifts," Gospel Advocate 64.47 (23 November 1922): 1128.

[4] J. D. Tant, "In Kansas," Gospel Advocate (5 February 1898): 71.

[5] S. R. Cassius, "The Race Problem," Christian Leader (1 October 1901): 12. Ida Wells-Barnett (born into slavery in Holly Springs on July 16, 1862) published her expose of religiously backed lynching in 1895, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, a convenient excerpt is found in Deirdre Mullane, Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing, pp. 395-401.

[6] According to Garrison and DeGroot the Disciples owned 101,000 slaves. The Baptists and Methodists held more in real numbers but not percentage, The Disciples of Christ, p. 468.

[7] See the succinct, though theologically slim, review of Shannon's 1855 speech at the Proslavery Convention in Lexington, Missouri in Barry C. Poyner Bound to Slavery: James Shannon and the Restoration Movement (Star Bible, 1999), pp. 112-118. Fortunately there were those who took strong anti-slavery stances, Pardee Butler; Ovid Butler and others. See Elder Jonas Hartzel's Bible Vindicated: A Series of Essays on American Slavery (Cincinnati: John Boggs, 1858) and the series of discussions in Is Slavery Sinful? Being a Partial Discussions of the Proposition, Slavery is Sinful by Jeremiah Smith (Indianapolis: H. H. Dodd & Co., 1863).

[8] For the dilemma Campbell found himself in see Jesse O. Hale, "Ecclesiastical Politics on a Moral Powder Keg: Alexander Campbell and Slavery in the Millennial Harbinger, 1830-1860," Restoration Quarterly 39.2 (1997): 65-81. Campbell's views on slavery are complex yet he provides a good example of how a person's racial background and social location can indeed filter one's biblical interpretation. See the very insightful article by D. Newell Williams, "Disciples Biblical Interpretation and the Fugitive Slave Law: Ovid Butler vs. Alexander Campbell," Encounter 59.1&2 (1998): 3-22.

[9] Wilson, Baptized in Blood, p. 117. Wilson also cites the role of Baptists and Methodists.

[10] Foy E. Wallace, "Negro Meetings for White People," Bible Banner (March 1941): 7.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Fred D. Gray, Bus Ride to Justice: Changing the System by the System, The Life and Works of Fred Gray (Black Belt Press, 1995), pp. 52, 55-60.

[13] Ibid., p. 257.

[14] William S. Banowsky, The Mirror of a Movement: Churches of Christ as seen through the Abilene Christian College Lectureship (Christian Publishing, 1965), p. 385.

[15] Carl Spain, "Modern Challenges to Christian Morals," in Christian Faith in the Modern World, Abilene Christian College Lectureship (1960), pp. 217-218.

[16] Banowsky, Mirror of a Movement, p. 387.

[17] Jimmy Allen, "Christ, The Prince of Peace," in The American Crisis and Other Sermons (Self-Published, 1971), pp. 101-102. For more on "Jim Crow" see C. Vann Woodward's classic The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Second Revised edition (Oxford University Press, 1966).

[18] Reuel Lemmons, "The Church and Integration," Firm Foundation (31 March 1964): 194.

[19] Ibid.

[20] James F. Fowler, "From the Midst of the Crises," Firm Foundation (31 March 1964): 199. The dates of these articles are significant in that Medgar Evers had been murdered in Mississippi in June of 1963.

[21] R. N. Hogan, "Tradition Versus God's Commandments," Christian Echo (July 1963): 1.

[22] Andrew J. Hairston, "Is the Race Issue Social?" Christian Echo (June 1964): 5.

[23] Fred Gray, Bus Ride to Justice, pp. 221f.

[24] Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Eerdmans, 1996), p. 297.

[25] Reuel Lemmons, "Marshall Keeble," Firm Foundation (14 May 1968): 306.

[26] Quoted in Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, p. 296. Hughes also quotes the letter of Howard White to Lemmons. According to White Keeble was always discriminated against. Never being invited to join luncheons or dinner, his students being ropped off like cattle but Keeble because of his great spirit suffered these indignities in silence.

[27] Karl W. Pettus, "The Memorial to Marshall Keeble," Gospel Advocate (18 July 1968): 449.

[28] See Batsell Barrett Baxter's "The Problem of Prejudice, No. 1," Gospel Advocate (5 September 1968): 561, 566; Part 2 is in Gospel Advocate (3 October 1968): 629.

[29] Hugo McCord, "A Sorry Viewpoint," Gospel Advocate (20 March 1969): 190.

[30] Ibid., 191.

[31] Walter Burch, "Neglecting Weightier Matters," Firm Foundation (11 June 1968): 372.

[32] Reuel Lemmons, "The Racial Problem," Firm Foundation (9 July 1968):: 434.

[34] B. B. Harding, "Neglecting the Weightier Matters," Firm Foundation (9 July 1968): 436.

[35] Ron Goodman, "Afterthoughts on 'Neglecting the Weightier Matters," Firm Foundation (9 July 1968): 437.

[36] The Christian Chronicle seems to have covered these events regularly. The June 14, 1968 Chronicle covers the Dayton workshop and the July 12 has a report on the Atlanta workshop.

[37] Denton Crews, Jr. "Brookline, Massachusetts to the Editor," Christian Chronicle (18 October 1963): 2.

[38] James D. Bales, The Martin Luther King Story (Christian Crusade Publications, 1967), p. 199. In my judgment rare is the book that so grossly misunderstands King and his work. Bales has no conception or appreciation that King was working for freedom. Nor did Bales see that the very system he was seeking to defend against the "Communists" was one of the most oppressive in the world.

[39] Calvin Bowers, "Reflections on the Death of Martin Luther King," Christian Chronicle (19 April 1968): 2.

[40] Mrs. Virgil Todd, Dell City, Oklahoma, to the Editor, Christian Chronicle (10 May 1968): 3

[41] Mrs. Sam R. Hershey, Midland, Texas, to the Editor, Christian Chronicle (10 May 1968): 3.

[42] Truman R. Clark, Villanova, Pennsylvania, to the Editor, Christian Chronicle (14 June 1968): 2.

[43] Eugene Green, "The Trouble with Skin," Christian Echo (July 1968): 5.

[44] John Waddey, "A Plea to My Black Brethren," Christian Echo (February 1970): 2.

[45] John Allen Chalk, Three American Revolutions (Carlton Press, 1970), p. 79.

[46] Ibid., p. 85.

[47] Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, p. 302.

[48] Glen Wallace, "The Atlanta Conference," First Century Christian (October 1968): 3.

[49] Rubel Shelly, "Must I love My Neighbor If He is a Different Color?" Firm Foundation (1 January 1980): 5. For Black Power see James Cone's Black Theology & Black Power (Orbis, Second Printing 1999) and Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998 (Beacon Press, 1999). Cone will, as they say, rock your world and make most of us uncomfortable.

[50] Larry James, "The Church and Good News to the Poor," Firm Foundation (17 October 1978): 666.

[51] Larry James, "Christians Should Lead the Way in Overcoming Hate," IMAGE (Sept/Oct 1996):7

[52] Ibid., p. 8.

[53] Rick Atchley, "Reconciling Differences," IMAGE (Sept/Oct 1996): 23.

[54] Rubel Shelly, "Passion for Justice is a 'Mark of the Church,'" Wineskins (August 1992): 3.

[55] John Allen Chalk, "Racism and the Body of Christ," Wineskins (August 1992): 10.

[56] Ibid., 11.

[57] Larry James, "Remembering A Martyr: Malcolm X and America's Struggle for Racial Justice," Wineskins (August 1992): 24-26.

[58] Michael Casey, "Bus Ride to Justice: The Story of a Faithful Gospel Preacher and Martin Luther King's Lawyer, Fred Gray," Wineskins (July/August 1998): 16.

[59] Martin Luther King, Jr, "I Have a Dream," Wineskins (May/June 1998): 9-10.

[60] Gary Selby, "A Visit to the Lorraine," Wineskins (May/June 1998): 13.

[61] Gospel Advocate (October 1995).

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