What Are We Waiting For? Part 2

Here is the second part of the sermon, continued from the previous post.

What Are We Waiting For?
Part 2

Romans 8:12-25

Paul wrote in verse 19 that all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. He goes on to say that creation groans in labor pains for redemption, for the renewal of creation, the new creation that God has already set in motion in the redeeming work of Jesus. All of creation groans. We try to make our way in life by using fossil fuels, but the system of manufacturing and consumption spins out of control until the world’s climate starts to be changed, pollution affects our air and waterways, and finally competition over limited supplies of fuel drives gasoline prices higher and higher. Creation groans in labor pains for redemption.

The two young men long for a world in which people treat one another well; they long for it without hope that it can really happen. The people across the Middle East and Africa long for rulers who will not sacrifice the lives of the people of the land in order to hold on to their power. They long for the powerful nations of the world to stop playing power games over their resources and lives. All creation groans for the children of God to be revealed. The poor people of this country long for their leaders to invest in people’s health and lives rather than more and more weapons. Creation is groaning all around us. The children of the world long for the opportunity to eat, learn, be healthy, and grow up to have families and homes, rather than being forced to work in sweatshops, to wander as refugees, or to be kidnapped to become child soldiers or part of the modern slave trade. All creation groans, longing for redemption.

Two Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to visit a former Duke Divinity student who is a pastor at a small town on the north side of Burlington, Vermont. Driving down through Vermont, along Lake Champlain and across the three large islands in the northern part of the lake, I had the privilege of seeing another piece of the beauty of God’s creation. This week in Kentucky a group of professors I was meeting with hiked up into the mountains to see a natural stone arch formed by the power of waters which once flowed where now there is a deep gorge and a thick forest. We don’t have to look very far beyond our parking lot at Mt. Level to see the great variety and complexity of the vegetation, animals, and landscape that make up the earth on which we are blessed to live.

Maybe if I could just step outside, get out of the rat race, and look at the beautiful countryside, I might be able to convince myself that things are just fine in the world and that nothing remains to be redeemed. But even in the midst of this beauty, I suspect you could tell me why what seems to be beautiful and complete falls short of perfection. Divisions among people because of skin color, social status, and economic opportunities no doubt affect the lives of people in Vermont just as they do in North Carolina. Economic and political decisions made in Washington, D. C., Beijing, Moscow, London, New Delhi, Jerusalem, and Teheran play a role in how many refugees are compelled to seek asylum or a new start. Offshore outsourcing of industry has turned the economy of places like North Carolina, Kentucky, and Vermont upside down, as factories close and jobs go away. Creation groans for our redemption.

Yes, all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. Who are these children of God? What will we see in their revealing? What are we waiting for? First we should note that they are joint-heirs with Christ. They have been adopted through a new birth into the very family of God. They are God’s children. Previously they were orphans, living without love or hope, with no purpose or meaning, nothing in which to place their faith. But having been adopted, now they are heirs of all that God has given in creation. They are a new race of God’s children, acknowledging with Paul in Athens that God has made all nations of people of one blood. They are joined to Christ as the beloved of God, and they are joined to Christ in the mission of God’s love. They have received the Spirit of God that sets them free.

Why is the gift of the Spirit a gift of freedom? Having been joined to Christ and the Spirit, the children of God can set aside their fears of what the powers of the world might do to them. They can give up their fears of people who are different from them. They are free to live and love with the kind of self-giving commitment Jesus had. They can give up their own privileges for the sake of others as Jesus did. With their lives joined to Christ and the Spirit, nothing can destroy them. They can even risk their livelihood and their lives, knowing that God will be with them in life or in death. The whole of creation awaits the revealing of the children of God, a people who like Jesus are willing to suffer if they must to see God’s demands for justice carried out. They know that the blessings they receive from God are not for hoarding but for sharing. I think I would like to know that kind of person. I’d really like to have that kind of person live in my neighborhood. I’d be eager to meet a group of people who lived that way.

I hate to say it, but when I read about church people, I don’t always see people like this. When I talk to church people, I don’t always hear about the risks they are taking for the poor and marginalized, the beloved of Christ. Too often, so much attention and effort goes into managing the organization that the church forgets about being God’s plan to display the character and nature of God in the world. We may be the only image of Jesus that people ever see, so we don’t want to be out of focus and blurry.

Paul teaches us in Romans and elsewhere that the community of people who live God’s way are the very definition of the glory of God. He says that as we grow in grace, as we grow in our Christian lives, as we grow as God’s people, we will be transformed from one degree of glory to another. In this way, it will be as if we see the glory of God in a mirror. Did you get that? The glory of God is something Paul says we should see in the mirror, not because God is satisfied with us to stay stuck where we were on the day of our baptism, but because God will walk this road of life with us to change us to be more and more in the image of the true humanity revealed in Jesus Christ.

Jesus, our joint-heir, is the measure and standard of our humanity. He is the firstborn of many brothers and sisters who bear a family resemblance. Joined to him in baptism, we commit ourselves to become like him in his humility, his generosity, his faithfulness, his gentleness, his peacefulness, his patience, his kindness, his meekness, his hunger for justice, his purity of heart. People who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God are the very purpose God had for creation, the true image of God in humanity, the revealing of the glory of God. This is why all creation groans, longing for the glory of God to be revealed in the children of God.

So on the day of your baptism, you probably could not see all that God intends for you to be. Even years later, we see our failures and our shortcomings. We have far to go to take hold of that for which God has taken hold of us. So we press on toward the high calling. We run with perseverance the race set before us because of the glory that is being revealed to us and in us. We hope in Christ, for Christ is the hope of glory. With patience, we await that for which we have hoped, a creation which measures up to the goodness, beauty, and justice God has intended from before the foundation of the world.

What Are We Waiting For? Part 1

I've been sitting on this sermon for a while, reworking it a couple of times. Here is the first part of it.

What Are We Waiting For?
Part 1

Romans 8:12-25

Just before we perform baptisms here at Mt. Level, Pastor Turner calls for and receives a public confession of faith from those who have come to be joined to Christ. In the joy of that moment of confession, he usually turns to the rest of the congregation and asks us whether we who are present remember our baptisms. That is not such a hard memory for Baptists to dredge up, and the question encourages us to look back upon our lives so far following Jesus.

Some of those present have a rush of joy as they start to remember how their lives have changed over the years from that day they entered the waters of baptism. A few have in mind the harmful ways of living that God’s grace has helped them leave behind. Others have in mind the ways they have learned to trust God and walk in faith. Someone may remember the joy of growing to know the ways of God and finding a direction or purpose for living. Someone else may relive the joy that comes from having become God’s instrument and living in a way that serves and builds up other people.

Looking back on what has happened to us, we practice what Jim McClendon called one of the remembering signs of the church. We remember what has died with Christ, what has been buried with Christ, how our lives have been raised to walk in the ways of Christ, how we share in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Remembering helps us to join with the newly baptized in this community act of the church, this shared event of baptism that unites us to Christ and to one another.

A while back there was a very good feature film called Tender Mercies, starring Robert Duvall. It is the story of a middle-aged country singer whose life hit bottom through egotism, selfishness, anger, and alcoholism. The troubled character’s life had declined and dissipated to the point that he was drifting from place to place, ruining whatever remaining friendships he had. In the story, he ends up at an isolated Texas roadside motel and gas station, and that’s where his redemption begins. Struggling to get sober, he finds his way into a Baptist church, receives the good news of God’s love, and starts to learn the joy of giving of himself for others. Eventually, he is baptized, along with another character in the story, a young boy. In their conversation after the baptismal service, the question is asked, “Do you feel any different?” The answer, which probably comes as no surprise to folks like us, is, “Not yet.” Feel any different? Not yet.

So on the one hand, at Mt. Level we can look back on the years since our baptisms with joy in seeing how God’s work in our lives has unfolded. Yet on the other hand, the movie’s question reminds us how at the beginning of the process, we could not immediately see what God was up to in our lives. Today’s text reminds us, right at the end of the passage, that we were saved in hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. When we can see something already, we don’t have to hope for it. We already have it. But that is not how so many things work. Some things we have now, and others require waiting with hope.

When we entered the waters of baptism, we reached a great milestone in our pilgrimage toward the Reign of God. The hopeful act of baptism marked our commitment to place our trust in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. It depends on what situation you were in at that time just what the hope was. Maybe you did not see your way out of the traps of sin that were unraveling your life. You had determined to unite yourself to Christ to gain the strength to lay aside the weights and besetting sins in your life. Since you had been unable to turn your life around on your own, accepting baptism demonstrated your hope for a different life that was as yet unseen.

Perhaps you were a child who was recognizing longings you could not completely understand. It was a longing for something more of life that had been kindled by hearing the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the church and singing the songs of faith. You had come to recognize the love of God revealed in Jesus. You knew that Jesus loved you, and you knew that the church people loved you. So you were ready to say that you would walk hand-in-hand with the ones who had pointed you toward this love and this way of living. You were living in hope of what you could become in the hands of God, but you did not see it yet. It was part of the mystery of the life that God was already unfolding in you.

Whatever our situation at the time of our baptism, it is a time in which we do not yet see the full results of what we hope God’s grace will do in us. We are saved in hope, and we hope for what we do not see. God is not finished blessing when we climb out of the waters of baptism. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of humanity all that Christ has for us. As Jeremiah told Israel, God has plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give us a future and a hope. As Paul wrote in chapter 5 of this same letter to the Romans, hope does not disappoint. As he wrote to the Philippian church, God who began a good work in you will bring it to its completion.

A couple of weeks ago our family was at the gathering of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. One evening in particular took us out of the ordinary events of the group. After an evening worship service, we walked down to a public area by the St. Lawrence River, in the town of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, a suburb of Montreal, Quebec. That night, a sixteen-year-old girl named Maggie was baptized.

It was a moment of great joy for her and for those of us who had watched her growing up in the faith. It was an opportunity for us to dwell in the hope of what God would continue to do in her life, in the lives of other young people present, in the lives of the old folks present, and in the work for justice and peace that many of them are doing in the name of Jesus. After she came up out of the water, one of the men started singing one of the good old songs, “Down by the Riverside,” a baptismal song. We come to the waters of baptism and lay down all the things from our lives, good and bad, so that we may offer ourselves to be remade and renewed by God. On that evening we joined in raising our voices to promise that we would lay down our burdens, we would lay down our swords and shields, and we would study war no more. A few of the town’s residents gathered to hear and see our witness, perhaps a bit puzzled by this crowd of people having church outside at the edge of the main business district.

Among the observers were two young men of about twenty years of age. When they saw us gathering, they made their way to get a view of the action. They heard us singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” and one asked in a loud voice, “Don’t these people know that God doesn’t exist?” They may have considered disrupting the observance, but instead became more than a little intrigued with what was happening. They conversed with several people over the next twenty minutes, sometimes intent on trying to get us to make some harsh or judgmental statement which would confirm their idea that Christians are hateful people who hold on to ideas that don’t make any sense. Apparently that part of their expectations went unfulfilled. Instead, they got a chance to see that there are Baptists who don’t fit their stereotypes of vengeful, unquestioning people with no compassion for anyone who does not agree with their ideas.

Both of the young men asked questions about how they could get their baptisms, performed on them as infants, reversed. They wanted to be unbaptized. They could see no reason to find hope in their baptism or in the church. One said he was an atheist and a nihilist, a person who does not believe there is a god nor that there is any purpose to the existence of the world or human beings. He said he thought we were more like biological machines.

As far as they could see it, there was no hope revealed through the church or baptism. Too much wrong in the world stood in the way. We did not hear detailed stories of their personal pains and hurts, but it is very likely that part of their disdain toward the church comes from direct experiences with Christians failing to live up to the name. But there is no point in my trying to psychoanalyze them. Whatever the cause, one can observe that they were not ready to hope in what is unseen. Too much of what they do see—the history of Christian failures to stand for peace and justice, the suffering of the hungry, Christians they have known who displayed hatred and bigotry, Christians unwilling to respect the questions these young men have about the possibility of faith—yes, too much that they see in the world leads them to despair rather than to hope.

I wish I could tell this as a story that would wrap everything up neatly in a storybook ending, with the young men seeing the light of faith and asking how to follow Jesus themselves. That’s not how it ended up. When most of the crowd had walked back to the campus, they called me aside to talk for another ten or fifteen minutes. I tried to respect their questions and resentments. They spoke to me with respect. I suggested some things they may not have thought about. They were willing to reconsider some of their assumptions about Christians. In the end, they were thankful for the conversation, and they acknowledged that all Christians don’t fit the stereotypes they had built up. They were surprised and seemed to be pleased to meet Christians who longed for the world to be better in some of the same ways that they longed for. The questions they asked and the challenges they made definitely revealed that they longed for a better world, whether or not they had much hope to see it.

Continued in next post . . .

Just Peacemaking

Just peacemaking is the name for the body of work and writing by Glen Stassen, as well as an approach to peace and justice shared by many others with whom Glen has worked over recent decades. Recently Daniel Schweissing wrote an interesting post about his own interest in the just peacemaking paradigm. He links to more extensive writing by Michael Westmoreland-White discussing the principles of just peacemaking. I encourage you, as I am, to take some time to learn more about this important intellectual project and witness to Christian ethics.

Mexico City Olympics and U. S. Civil Rights

In 1968, the Olympics were held in Mexico City. One event many people remember was the medal ceremony for the 200 meter runners. Two African Americans, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists and looked down away from the flag. The Olympic Committee was so angry, they were sent home and stripped of their medals. You can read about this story in blog posts by Duane Shank and Jerrod McKenna. Keep following the links, and you will learn even more. It is an intriguing sequence of events in a year of great turmoil and change.

I was struck as I read the statements and watched the video clips. I was 10 years old when these Olympics took place, and I remember the protest clearly. It was the first widely televised Olympics, and the first time I was paying attention. I remember a getting a feeling that the protest was inappropriate. Listening to some of the criticisms in the online clips, I was reminded of the vocal criticisms of Smith and Carlos.

White folks who have sought to come to grips with their formation in a racialized world have learned that even when they have made progress, they still can be surprised to discover uncritical responses embedded in their racialized historical memories. I found myself looking at these events with the eyes of a 10-year-old who had been taught not to hold racial hatred but who was confused by the intersection of racial injustice, sports, politics, and patriotism. My initial memory of the events brought back the judgment that these young men should have found another way, another time, and another place to express their political views.

For decades I have been critical of the devotion shown to the U. S. flag, freely referring to it as idolatry. Moreover, I have been intensely engaged in issues of race intellectually and personally for over a decade. It would seem that I would have thought through Mexico City by now, but I guess my attention never settled on it long enough to think through my earlier reactions. This time, as I read about the political context in the U. S., the International Olympic Committee, and Mexico, I was awakened to a whole new way of looking at Smith and Carlos. As I learned of their deliberate acts of protest, it made complete sense.

Whatever I've learned, there is always more. I look forward to the opportunity to watch the new documentary about these events, Salute!, and to looking at Tommie Smith's book Silent Gesture.

Barbara Lee Interview

"Barbara Lee Speaks for Me," was the slogan used by many who agreed with her opposition to going to war in Afghanistan. As the lone opposing vote, she gained a reputation beyond her local congressional district in Oakland, CA, where she is a member of Allen Temple Baptist Church. Here is a recent interview she did with the news organization Truthout.

Chicago in July

I spent a few days in Chicago this week. The first two days were full-time family time with Naomi and Lydia, my daughters (seen here mugging for the camera at the church Community Day). We went to museums, the aquarium, the Taste of Chicago festival, and the Sears Tower. On Saturday night, we attended the hip-hop worship at Lawndale Community Church, called "The House."

The rest of the time, I attended the Ekklesia Project annual Gathering at DePaul University North Campus. I was pleased to see friends I had not visited with for some time: James Lewis, Phil Kenneson, Andrew Adam, Trecy Lysaught, Mike Budde, Steve Long, Kyle Childress, and Rodney Sadler. And that is just naming the professional theologians and not all of the church leaders. I presented a paper entitled, "Racialized Ecclesiology, Catholicity, and Oneness," based on work I am doing currently on the relationship of race, in particular whiteness, to theology. Some parts of what I presented has appeared in this blog earlier.

One of the highlights of the meeting was sharing discussions with Craig Wong, Glen Kehrein, and a variety of other folks, concerning ways that the Ekklesia Project and the Christian Community Development Association might fine common cause.

Scalia's Judicial Activism

Scalia's Judicial Activism

For all of his railing against judges who make law as opposed to his strict constructionist view of exegeting the meaning and intent of the text, Justice Scalia has shown that he is equally capable of making law today. He overthrew the tradition of second amendment jurisprudence by endorsing the National Rifle Association's view of the constitution. His opinion creates an individual right to own a gun.

I suspect that many would disagree with my judgment that Scalia is making law. He has cited a history of laws and opinions that favor an individual right to possess a gun, and he has shown that certain previous opinions do not exclude an individual right to own a gun, even if they did not endorse it. Since it was lacking in the law, Scalia saw fit to make it law by this opinion, rather than leaving it to states and localities to make laws appropriate to their situations. He says it is only logical that the individual right is intended. That is certainly so if you are already convinced that the individual right is entailed in the amendment.

Racialized Ecclesiology, Apostolicity, Catholicity, Oneness

Some thoughts on "Racialized Ecclesiology, Oneness, and Catholicity"

During the couple of weeks that I did not post anything, I was still writing. Here is a piece of another argument I am working on.

Many discussions of ecclesiology find their way to the four traditional marks of the church contained in the Nicene Creed. Although they are far from a comprehensive guide to ecclesiology, these four marks open the conversation toward a range of shortcomings when applied to contemporary churches. The church in the contemporary United States is far from the church that the gospel calls into being. In an age questioning the inherited assumptions of Christendom, one mark has captured much theological attention. There is fruitful conversation from many quarters of the church concerning a renewed call to holiness. The perspectives on holiness are wide-ranging, and the possibilities for common work are plentiful.

On the other hand, the least agreement may persist on the mark of apostolicity, as illustrated in recent remarks promulgated by the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, reiterating one version of the disputed mark of apostolicity. Clarifying Catholic dogma in light of contemporary impulses toward ecumenicity, this statement classifies what sorts of churches are true churches, which ones are deficient, and which ones do not qualify as churches at all. This definition rooted in a certain view of apostolicity assigns a large portion of what many would call the church, which encompasses about a third of people in communities who call themselves Christian, to the category of separated ecclesial communities not deserving the name church. These groups lacking proper apostolic pedigree include those James Wm. McClendon has called baptist with a lower-case “b.”

This division over apostolicity highlights the even more prominent shortcomings of the church with references to the terms “one” and “catholic.” One still hears the occasional excesses of residual Reformation rancor which call the Roman Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon.” Much new interest in the oneness and catholicity of the church has emerged among Protestants and Catholics since Vatican II. Much of its momentum among Protestants is rooted in regrets for the great damage done to the cause of Christ by the divisiveness of the Reformation and by the subsequent accommodation of Protestantism to modernity. Consequently, many have sought a solution to the errors of Protestantism in a reappropriation of an earlier tradition less tainted by the mercenary and mercantile impulses of modernity. There is much to be gained from this effort, and it has borne much fruit.

What sometimes fails to appear in this process is the full scope of the contemporary scandal of catholicity and oneness. A great deal of effort by European American Protestants has been exerted toward rapprochement with Roman Catholicism. For the most part, it remains a conversation among Europeans, their ancestors, and their descendents. Thus, it seems to characterize the wound against the oneness and catholicity of the churches as one between feuding Europeans or between America and Europe. There is no denying that this grave wound’s roots stretch to an argument started five centuries ago between northern and southern Europeans. Yet, the intra-European argument’s subsequent history, and perhaps its deeper roots are intertwined with the rise of European imperialism and the resulting era of European world domination. Consequently, much of the division of the churches also appears in the form of racially and ethnically divided churches. Even the Roman Catholic Church, with its worldwide hierarchy of bishops who symbolize the catholicity and oneness of the church, must admit the imperial and colonial relationship that continues to characterize their center and periphery.

Race cannot be relegated to the margins of theological discourse as if it were unrelated to doctrine. Race oppression and division is not merely a moral failure by people with correct doctrine, but it is an eschatology, an anthropology, a ktisiology, a doctrine of God, an ontology, a soteriology, a Christology, and an ecclesiology. As an ecclesiology, it rejects the catholicity and oneness of the church. Both Protestantism and Catholicism need healing from this wound. Categorically, the baptists need healing.

Some steps along the path to healing come from rigorous analysis and hard thinking about the ways that modern imaginations, indeed the weight of centuries of Christian theology, have been colonized by racial reasoning. Race is often positioned as “the Black problem” or “the Asian problem,” when these are merely the derivatives of the original sin of racism. At its core, race is “the white problem.” Instead of puzzling over how the church (code for “the white church”) can adjust itself to accommodate the difference of blackness, U. S. churches must turn their attention to why and in what ways they have adjusted their theologies to construct the difference of whiteness.

Reception of Black Theologies 4

Inadequate Responses of White Theologians to Black Theology

Here I am discussing possible responses to black theologies from another angle, particularly from the point of view of white theologians who avoid polemic against black theologies and seek to understand themselves as appreciative of the contributions of black theologies. Part 4.

Having discussed some ways in which black theology can be positionized by assumed normative theology, it will also be worthwhile to reflect on certain inadequate responses taken by white theologians to black theology.

A. A first response would be to nit-pick. Looking for every inadequacy, some theologians seek to discredit black theology on the basis of the flaws in the arguments of various theologians. Of course, all theologians are susceptible to flawed theologizing. In the face of black theology’s harsh critique of white theologies, a defensive reaction is not surprising. Yet answering a cogent critique by a counter-critique is an inadequate response, especially when one ignores the central arguments in order to challenge peripheral arguments. It makes a Bible reader think about the story of the speck in the other's eye versus the beam in one's own eye. Obviously, there could be no justification to claim that black theologies are flawless or beyond criticism; however, their substantive criticisms of modern theology demand a more constructive engagement than mere counterattack. It is too often an evasive measure.

B. Others, including many of my teachers, responded to black theology by acknowledging its importance, then declining to engage its agenda. A common sort of reason for this response was that black theologians spoke for a community of which the white theologian has little or no direct knowledge. Sometimes a noble premise helped to justify the lack of engagement: black theology is a subject matter that I dare not address because of my limitations, so it should be left to black theologians to do that work. They say that they would not presume to describe the theological perspective of blacks having not experienced the oppression blacks have experienced. Invisible in these arguments seems to be the assumption that the critical challenges of black theology do not raise systemic problems for theology as it is being conducted in white institutions. A side affect of declining to engage is the fostering of schismatic theological paths and methodological ghettos.

C. Another response is to hear and believe the critique, but deflect it elsewhere. Too often, convinced of our own intellectual responsibility, theologians receive the critical arguments of black theology as if they are directed toward others. This is not unlike the response of many contemporary persons who resent black anger toward the U. S. and its continuing racialized social structure. It is a common mantra among contemporary whites that they know slavery is wrong and have never owned slaves. “Don’t put that on me” is their response.

Luis Rivera spoke to the NABPR/CTS meeting a number of years ago about an experience he had at a conference at a prominent midwestern U. S. evangelical protestant university. He had been invited to speak on his outstanding work published in English under the title, A Violent Evangelism. As he prepared to speak, many conference attendees had approached him with effusive praise about the critical theological analysis he had done concerning late medieval Catholicism and the conquest of the Americas. The more conversations he had, the more uncomfortable he became. He began to believe he was being applauded not for his critique of European colonial theologies broadly, but specifically for his critique of Roman Catholic colonial theologies. The protestant evangelicals attending the conference were looking forward to a roasting of the catholics that would reinforce their sense of rightness. So he changed his topic when he got to the podium, and announced that he thought the conference would be better served to hear a parallel critique of protestant imperial colonial theology.

D. Others white theologians have been glad to engage in the academic repartee of critical theologies such as black theology. This armchair approach is compatible with the multicultural model, and it tempts academic theologians to one of our most besetting sins. We gain insight into important critical ideas which demand revolutionary practice, we learn to speak eloquently about them, we make pointed statements and knowing gestures, but our professional and ecclesial practice remain unchanged.

Reception of Black Theologies 3

Denying the Dogmatic Significance of Black Theologies: Racism in Churches as Merely Moral Failure

Here I'm offering a view on the dogmatic significance of black theologies. Part 3.

4. A fourth perspective is both appreciative and ultimately puzzled by black theology. From this perspective of normative theology, black theology speaks up about the moral failure of the church, and it does so eloquently by drawing on theological tradition. However, the problem is a moral failure, not a dogmatic issue. Dogmatic or doctrinal theology is not implicated in the critique brought by black theology, from this point of view. Whites are fully capable of continuing to theologize in their traditions without need for reform or revolution.

Let me discuss this last perspective a bit more. It assumes that the normative theology that white theologians and ministers do in white institutions is largely on track. They can continue to do systematic theology dependent on Thomas, Calvin, Edwards, and others without the need to apply a historical, systemic, and structural critique of the traditions that flow through the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries during which churches and theologians helped to construct and validate the globalization of race consciousness and white supremacy. Somehow, Christian dogmatic theology emerged undamaged by its coexistence and collaboration in the Era of European World Domination.

Moreover, this perspective denies a primary methodological claim of Jim McClendon concerning the relationship of ethics and doctrine. Ethics is not the afterthought or the second moment derived from the first moment of dogmatics. The divisions of systematic theology usually called doctrine and ethics are both fully theological, thoroughly interrelated, and mutually dependent on one another. For that reason, he said that he could have put either ethics or doctrine first in a three volume structure for systematic theology, for each makes its proper claim. A theology grounded in practices cannot ultimately separate an intellectual moment from a moment of action in theological reflection.

On a less grand scale, but no less insightful, John Perkins describes his growing awareness of the doctrinal problematic of race. In his interactions with white evangelicals, and perhaps especially white Baptists in the South, he became increasingly aware of the depth of their spiritual devotion to a Jesus and a God who also sanctioned white supremacy as an article of faith. On paper, their theological statements of faith seemed to be orthodox, yet something must have gone terribly wrong for so many in churches to have been formed into a racialized theology. More than failure to do what they knew to be right was at work. The sheriff’s deputies who beat him nearly to death did so out of a deeply rooted, theologically sanctioned vision of sin, salvation, and Jesus Christ.

To be continued . . .

Reception of Black Theologies 2

Responses to Black Theology from the Perspective of White Theology as the Assumed Norm

Here I am doing more analysis on how black theologies have been received. Part 2.

Responses to Black theology have been varied, and the external (and sometimes internal) responses are to a great extent framed within the naturalized position of white theology as the assumed norm.

1. From that vantage point, it would be no surprise that many white theologians responded to what Cone and others were doing by declaring it simply not Christian theology. On any given day at your institution or mine, if the topic of Black theology enters the conversation, someone is very likely to say, “I just think theology should be for everyone. I don’t think of theology or Jesus as for just some people. It should be universal. That’s why I can’t go along with black theology.” In so doing, the mask of neutrality and the invisibility of whiteness are reinforced in the name of universals which have been defined by European imperial ambition and racial hierarchies.

2. However, many theologians have come in the past forty years to recognize some level of value in the black theology movement.

2.1 The least appreciative of such positions can be characterized by an experience of one of my Shaw colleagues who was studying theological ethics at a prominent northeastern U. S. university about three decades ago. During advisement concerning his research with a prominent white professor, he was told something like the following, “I hope you are not thinking of doing that black theology. That is over with, and there is no need to keep saying the same thing.” From this point of view, Black theology brought a noteworthy critique to normative theology. It’s critique has been made, and acknowledged by those who are intelligent, and it need not be repeated. It was a necessary critique, and it is complete. This position can be combined with some of the ones which follow.

2.2 Similar to the necessary and complete position, but slightly more appreciative, is a view that sees black theology as a dialectical moment. Shaped by a quasi-hegelian imagination, this view would say that black theology identified an inherent contradiction in theologies shaped by European culture and thought. Much of what black theology offered--its insistence on theology as contextual, its recognition of a flesh and blood Jewish Jesus who took sides with the poor and suffered at the hands of the political elite, its enlarging of the community in which theological hermeneutics must take place, and so on—have been accepted by much of the mainstream of normative theologies. Therefore, if not already, at least in the foreseeable future, black theology will have played out its moment and significance, and there will be no more need for it.

3. A third perspective could be associated with terms like diversity or multiculturalism. In this perspective, the more universal theology, the normative theology, extends its tent to include many different perspectives so that we can learn from them all. Christian theology can take many forms, and it is good for each form to have expression. Black theology, in this sense, is a kind of boutique theology. It is an interesting diversion for those who do normative theology. It is a case to be examined for how theology can be reinterpreted by giving free reign to integrate a different culture with normative theology.

3.1 From an appreciative direction, this perspective might see black theology as one more square in a patchwork quilt of theologies. Perhaps black theology is by now a familiar quilt square, so it gets a little less attention than more recent creative and provocative squares added to the theological quilt.

3.1.1 Some who are appreciative and concerned with orthodoxy would seek to engage black theology in dialogue for the sake of mutual edification, but with little permanent significance for the traditional forms of theological reflection.

3.1.2 Others who are appreciative but consider orthodoxy passé would see black theology as another element in the post-modern play of ideas which can help humanity forge a creative adventure into the future, although it may largely be irrelevant to the kind of theologizing whites are doing.

3.2 Less appreciative, yet accommodating, would be the view that black theology, in its limitations as a seemingly tribal theology, exhibits deficiencies which make it inappropriate as the core of a program of theological study. It can be paraded and observed as a distinctive and critical voice with some lasting value, but its deficiency is especially in its focus on a minority tradition rather than on universals. This position combines elements of multiculturalism with the view that black theology's critique is necessary and complete.

To be continued . . .

Reception of Black Theologies 1

Black Theology: A New Word, a Critical Project, and a Consolidation of Tradition

As I continue to work on the issue of whiteness in relation to theology, I am putting a few pieces of analysis on this site for response. Part 1.

In one sense, Black theology broke onto the scene as something new, an innovation in the late 1960s. Black theology offered a new word in the academy. Certainly, there were echoes and resonances of this new theology in other settings and with other names, such as the Latin American liberation theologies identified with Gustavo Gutierrez, the self-identified liberation theology of John Howard Yoder’s Politics of Jesus, and somewhat later, womanist theologies which sought to advance the insights of black theology and feminist theology with a more thoroughgoing liberationist method.

In a second sense, Black theology represented a critical project in theology. Having recognized the intransigence of so-called Christian institutions in confronting hierarchies of privilege and disadvantage grounded in race, Black theologians like James Cone began to put forth a Barthian “No” to the status quo of theological production.

Third, and perhaps most important, Black theologies consolidated in academic terms the preached, lived theological perspective of a community of people whose faith offered a vision of the world that bore witness to the divine denial of human systems of domination and divine faithfulness and love toward the oppressed and marginalized. These three impulses help to identify the black theology movement according to its purpose and emergence.

To be continued . . .

Fair Trade

Fair trade organizations continue to expand their influence, and a report this week said that 70% of people surveyed in the UK were familiar with the fair trade mark which appears on products like coffee, chocolate, tea, etc. Although in 2006, fair trade constituted 0.01% of overall world trade, in some commodities it has grown to over 5%. In addition, from 2006 to 2007, the total volume of fairly traded goods doubled. Based on 2006 figures, approximately 1.5 million people gain a livelihood through fair trade enterprises, and another 5 million people benefit from community development projects related to fair trade.

Some of the major organizations which promote fair trade are the Fair Trade Federation, Transfair, Fairtrade Foundation (UK), CRS Fair Trade (Catholic Relief Services), Oxfam, Lutheran World Relief, Global Exchange, and Fair Trade Resources Network. The forerunner of these large organizations was the work of Mennonites, Church of the Brethren's SERRV International, and other committed people who sought ways to make a better life for the poor in all parts of the world.

The reason I am writing about this subject today is that I read a very interesting and encouraging article from the Washington Post about a growing fair trade coffee enterprise led by women in Rwanda. This is the kind of work that can make an enormous difference, far beyond the charitable relief work that seems to be all our middle class imaginations can conceive about our relationship with the poor. In Raleigh and Durham, a number of fair trade organizations operate in wholesale and retail businesses. These include coffee suppliers like Larry's Beans and Counter Culture Coffee. One World Market in Durham and Ten Thousand Villages in Raleigh offer a wide range of fairly traded goods.

Learn about the fair trade revolution (not to be confused with "free trade" which usually means freedom for large corporations to exploit people all over the world) by checking these links above. You can contribute to community development by buying fairly traded goods, and many of these goods are things that you already are buying. To learn how to find a variety of fairly traded items and how well the stores and companies you buy from treat their workers, check out Responsible Shopper.

Can Anyone Listen to Jeremiah Wright?

I was listening to a reading of Acts 6:8-7:8, the story of the arrest of Stephen. It struck me that certain elements of this story are echoed in the recent public ridicule of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I am not saying it is an allegory with one-to-one correspondence of events. Certainly Wright has not been arrested, and he has not been executed. I'm not one to apply the term "crucifixion" to any kind of attack on a preacher--that is poor biblical interpretation, the wrong way to apply the identification of the disciple with Jesus.

Yet it still strikes me that there are similarities in the stories.

First, it was a concerted effort to discredit him. They took the opportunity to attack him by instigating people to distort what he had said. By doing this, they stirred up the people and various leaders to challenge him for claims that he did not make. I have for some time considered that the "high priests" of the religion of American consumer culture are the news anchors. They are the public face of the production of culture, of the propaganda machine of the military-industrial-entertainment complex. In the preaching of Jeremiah Wright, they saw an opportunity to stir people up. They knew they had a commodity that would sell, so they strategically used their resources to make the attack.

Second, they distorted his message. They said he spoke blasphemy against Moses and God. The attack on Jeremiah Wright, with modern technological sophistication, used video clips to make Wright's preaching into something it was not. No more nefarious example is the clip from a sermon in which he contrasted the blessing and the curse which God spoke through the prophets. It is a biblical message. It is applicable to all earthly principalities, thrones, dominions, and authorities that depart from the divinely ordered path. But they claim Wright is too harsh on America, that he is spouting hate toward America.

Third, they accused him of attacking the national icons, God, the law, and the house of worship. Wright's words of judgment on the U. S. imperial habits of violence and exploitation were taken as offense toward the god of national exceptionalism. The U. S., as the chosen people of god, is supposed by many chauvinists to be the true bearer of god's purposes in the world. Even many of those who would balk at such a claim, would still hold the U. S., its flag, its president, and its mythology of goodness in high esteem and despise those who would criticize their nation. These people do not understand biblical faith, so they refuse to accept that Wright was proclaiming a biblical message. Instead, they distort it to be an attack on all that is good about America.

Fourth, as Stephen begins to answer the charges, he goes back in history to talk about key events of the past in which God's work has been evident. But they don't like his account of history. Wright's critics say that he is still angry about events hundreds of years in the past. They say he should leave the past in the past and look at the present. They cry that the evils of the past are not our fault and irrelevant to today. But Wright insists that in looking at the past we understand the present better. Slavery has been outlawed, but its legacy remains. Saying it's over does not make that legacy disappear automatically.

Fifth, the story Stephen tells begins by talking about Abraham sojourning away from his home to a land where he has no possession. Then he goes on to talk about a people who become enslaved and mistreated for centuries. And he reminds them that God promised judgment on the nation who enslaved them. Now it is not the same story as that of Africans kidnapped, transported, and enslaved on a continent expropriated by Europeans. But there are similarities, and the recognition of God's judgment on a nation is very clear.

If there were to be an honest, listening conversation about the value of Jeremiah Wright's message to the contemporary U. S. society, then reflection on the Stephen story might offer a few insights into how an outspoken prophet from a minority group can be manipulated and ostracized.

Today our fair state of North Carolina is participating in a ritual of democratic governance through primary elections. I have been especially caught up in this election season for several reasons.

First, my church is part of a community organizing group called Durham CAN, and we are engaged with mostly local issues relating to poverty, youth, health, and other matters of quality of life in Durham. We held one of our most successful Delegate's Assemblies this past Sunday at the site of one of our newest member congregations, First Presbyterian Church. Our organizations showed up in strength, more candidates than we had expected showed up to interact with us, and the agenda went off as planned. We found candidates very eager to support our proposals concerning assistance to the elderly and disabled, job training for ex-offenders, and health department disease tracking.

We got a good report from Duke University that they have extended their policy of paying a livable wage to their own employees, extended to certain restaurant vendor workers a year ago a year ago, to include workers at 100% of vendors who do business with the university, and that by November all vendors will also offer health benefits comparable to the University's health benefits for workers. Duke is to be commended for its commitment to its workers. Durham CAN can claim some credit for making the livable wage a key issue of discussion in Durham. Before Duke made this policy official, already Durham CAN had helped to bring about its adoption by Durham County Government, Durham City Government, and Durham Public Schools.

At the assembly, I had my moment in the sun as I spoke about Durham CAN's relationships with similar groups: Charlotte HELP, Winston-Salem CHANGE, Orange County Organizing Committee, and North Carolina Latino Coalition. We operate together under the name North Carolina United Power. Our work together on issues affecting all our communities gives us reason to need relationships with the Governor, Lt. Governor, other statewide officials, and representatives in the NC Legislature. In the past we have also worked with member of the US Congress.

At this assembly, two candidates for Governor and two for Lt. Governor came at our invitation to publicly agree to meet with us and to make their case for why we should vote for them. My job was to ask them a question about agreeing to a future meeting and to tell them how long they would be allowed to speak. For a few minutes, I was able to tell these statewide officials where to stand and when to talk. It was a heady feeling, like being "King for a Day." The TV coverage, for some reason, was more interested in what the candidates had to say than in my speech or instructions, but you can see me for less than a second, standing in the elevated pulpit to the left of the screen, in a black suit.

Second, I have been very interested in this primary election because of the candidacy of Barack Obama. He has been a community organizer in the past, doing work similar to the work we do in Durham CAN. The way of organizing his campaign has demonstrated this experience, working to bring together everyday people to have their say. Moreover, his connection with Trinity United Church of Christ, a church with a strong record of community service and transformation, has piqued my interest. I've been writing here about Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright in recent weeks. Not all of the campaigning and campaign coverage has treated the racial politics of the U. S. with honesty and integrity, and I would hope that more people would be willing to put a mature conversation about race on the table, as Sen. Obama has said well in his Philadelphia address. So today I was pleased to have the opportunity to cast a vote for Sen. Obama in my precinct.

I have been accused for several rounds of recent elections of "wasting" my vote for president. Overall, I see little difference between the Republicats and the Demicans. Neither is committed to the ends and means of a politics that would pay attention to the convictions I hold dear. I have voted for Ross Perot (for a change), Jimmy Carter (a write-in on the basis of his life of service), and such. But I might be able to vote for one of the parties this Fall, if some of the commitments to health care, better international relations, a restructured economy, and grassroots participation continue to be on the agenda. Not only Obama has offered some of these good ideas. We'll see what today brings, and what the campaigns and ballots offer in November.

Commenting on Jeremiah Wright has for the past few days become the national pastime. I was checking in on a web site I have followed lately, Real Clear Politics, and looking at some of the comments. Almost no one is able to listen to Jeremiah Wright sympathetically. The majority of writers are most concerned about the horse race for the presidency, and Wright's effect on that race is all they want to examine.

There are those who can't understand that a preacher might not be measuring his or her remarks by the winds of politics, might not be holding back or pushing forward positions that would help or hurt a candidate. They simply talk about how Wright intended to further or hinder the campaign of this or that candidate, but especially Obama. Wright has tried hard to disabuse them of this notion that he plans his speeches, especially for a minister's conference or a church meeting, around their effect on this or that candidate.

Other writers care little about what Wright might or might not have intended. To them, Wright represents a version of blackness that "America" (meaning an assumed normative white America) cannot stomach. Robert Novak makes such a remark.

Obama's danger is being perceived by white voters as representing a hostile separate culture.

He then refers to conversations he had with two African American commentators. Armstrong Williams, labeled a conservative by Novak, said,

"It is not unusual to hear in many black churches the same language that Rev. Wright is being criticized for."

I think that anyone who has attended a meeting such as the Proctor Conference, sponsors of the event Wright was attending in Washington, DC, or a Ministers' Conference at Hampton, Shaw, or any number of other events, would find that this kind of preaching and conversation is not an aberration.

On the other hand, Juan Williams of NPR and Fox told Novak,

"Not at all," he replied. "It's ridiculous. I never have heard that in church."

I know that there are black preachers who do not take up issues of poverty, war, violence, oppression, and white supremacy in a prophetic way. But to say that he has never heard Wright's kind of preaching in church stretches credibility.

Juan Williams's remarks on Fox after the National Press Club question and answer session showed this same incredulity at Wright's comments. Juan Williams accused him of handling the whole occasion wrong by talking about liberation and transformation as if they were so much fluff. Williams acts as if they were irrelevant to explaining Wright's context. Theology is irrelevant. He was frustrated that the press had to "wait" for the questions and answers to hear about the sound bites they have been fixated on, even though they are guilty of not doing their own due diligence to get to the bottom of the story by listening to the full sermons. Juan Williams seems to think that Wright owed both Obama and the Press a very different speech which would have tied everything up neatly and calmed everyone's nerves. The Juan Williams comments can be heard as the last few minutes of part six of the video here.

From a Fox News editor, John Moody, a short paragraph in the midst of his personal tirade displays far more than he intended. He is puzzled about the claimed invisibility of the black church. Offended by Wright, he insists he is not a racist. He says that the mostly white church he attends does not talk about the problems of "whites." He thinks that by not identifying whiteness, he has risen above it to universals. He ups the ante by referring to "souls" as the concern of God, and asking whether souls have color. (I'll set aside the pop theology of disembodied souls, part of a mind-body dualism that helped to institutionalized African slavery long ago.) Yet his so-called universals give him no framework in which to understand what Wright has said and the people his word represent. Maybe they are not so universal, but instead a projection of white identity.

What reality is that, reverend? How is reality visible or invisible? Is it a different reality from my church? Who says so? God? Or just you? What the heck, to be polite, are you talking about?

The main point here seems to be that Moody does not understand what Wright, and probably many blacks, are talking about. He does not know their lives. He does not know the history.

Why is it so bad to talk in public about the wrongs of history and their effects today? James Evans talks about the way that so many people believe that "the past could be scuttled." Wright and others have a responsibility to criticize the wrongs they see around them and to analyze their historical roots. If we are so uncomfortable with our common history that we have to deny it, we will never be able to make progress in overcoming its continuing deleterious effects. As it stands, the untreated infection is killing our children's future.

I have had a generally good impression of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright since I first looked at some of his writing about six years ago. We have been on the same program at the Shaw University Divinity School Minister's Conference, and he was complimentary concerning my remarks. I have known more than one person who told me of Wright's influence on her or his ministry.

I was impressed to learn of Barack Obama's membership in Wright's church and his conversion to Christian faith in part under Wright's influence. This connection caused me to look more seriously at Obama's candidacy in those early days when a dozen or more people were running for president. Although I understand Obama's continuing statements to distance himself from his former pastor, I regret that he is doing it.

When Wright became the object of infotainment programming and talking heads a while back, I listened to some brief selections from his sermons on YouTube. I have to say that I found nothing troubling in what I heard. I quickly concluded that the sermon in which God's damnation was stated sounded very much like the prophetic writings of the Bible which Wright clearly indicated that he was imitating. In Jesus' teachings, he pronounced "woes" upon various cities for seemingly lesser offenses than Wright was detailing concerning the United States.

Any Bible reader knows that the Hebrew prophets' words are often much more X-rated than anything Wright had to say. If people are taking offense at Jeremiah Wright's sermons, then they would take offense at the Bible and prophetic preaching from any source. If perhaps there is a more obvious use of biblical precedent in shaping black prophetic preaching than white church-going people are currently accustomed to hearing, then what we are observing is more a rejection of their own past by white churches than a shockingly intensive level of conviction on the part of black churches.

As for the observation about "chickens coming home to roost," it is a common saying. Wright's sermon refers to a former ambassador who uses this phrase, once used by Malcolm X (which led to his censure by and eventual departure from the Nation of Islam), to describe the conditions under which attacks were made upon the United States. Nothing about the saying excuses the vicious acts of terror. Yet as an observation about how "what goes around, comes around," it could not be more accurate about the results of U. S. aggression and economic exploitation across the world. According to Voice of America, more than $24 billion of military products were supplied to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries by the U. S. this past year. As Ched Myers has said, the United States is addicted to violence. The litany of U. S. military adventurism and terroristic policies is long and tragic, costing the lives of Native Americans, kidnapped Africans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Guatemalans, Granadans, Haitians, Filipinos, protesting college students, and on and on. Relying on violence leads to violence. Martin Luther King, Jr., said it in 1958 this way

force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe.

Although his word was "begets," it still means the same as "chickens coming home to roost." And King was a harsh critic of the U. S. and its foreign policy. He said

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

And also,

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.

These words brought great criticism and abuse on Dr. King. Nowadays we like to treat him as a teddy bear, cute and cuddly. But he was a prophetic preacher who castigated the U. S. for its violence, oppression, and war. Having forgotten the way he was hated in his time, a new generation has found another preacher to castigate.

A final matter from his speeches has to do with the comments about the HIV virus. I do not believe that it is a manufactured virus designed to kill blacks or any other group. However, as Wright said, he does not put this sort of strategy of intentional infection beyond the realm of possibility for the United States. Many people now know of the intentional infliction of suffering on blacks during the Tuskeegee syphilis study. Fewer are aware of the persistent tactic of the U. S. government's giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native American villages in order to kill the inhabitants. Wright cites the contradictory and hypocritical policy of the U. S. toward Iraqi use of biological weapons when the U. S. is the supplier of those very weapons to Iraq.

To top this all off, the document "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century," raises the spectre of a new type of biological weapon that selectively kills people according to their genes. In other words, weapons that can select people according to their ethnicity. Israel and Apartheid South Africa are reputed to have done research on this kind of weapon to use against their enemies in ethnic warfare. Now they find an exploratory endorsement in a document which lists Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz as contributors, for an organization that names Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Weigel, Elliott Abrams, William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Norman Podhoretz, and others as endorsers. On page 60 it says the following.

And advanced forms of biological warfarethat can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.

Is the U. S. government capable of such an act? Yes. Do I think the HIV virus is a creation of the government? No, but I can see why someone might be suspicious.

Jeremiah Wright is speaking up in a prophetic voice. I am thankful for his courage to say what he is saying.

LEARNING TO READ, part 2
Luke 18:1-8

Who we read with makes all the difference. By now I hope you realize why it is important to tell you about my Southern Baptist upbringing. I learned to read the Bible among middle-class whites. They saw some of what the Bible says, but missed many other things. I am focusing on Luke 18 because it played a pivotal role in my experience of reading in community. For instance, I don’t know that I ever saw verse 8 as an integral part of the rhetorical structure of the parable in my early training and even into adulthood, so I probably never gave it much thought until many years later.

My attention was first drawn to this verse during one of the most difficult periods of my life as a follower of Jesus. I was a leader in an integrated, predominately white Baptist congregation, but there were rumblings of racial unrest. An older generation of church members was unhappy with the results of desegregation in their church. It was a time in which I found myself questioning whether most, or even any, congregations or denominations in contemporary society and culture had any right to claim the name church. The pastor, in an effort to get the church to go deeper in our discipleship, had urged us to form study groups and follow a widely used curriculum for church renewal.

In the midst of that study, I came across Luke 18:8, and it struck me as the question of the age. I was reading in community with whites and blacks, but the overwhelming division of U. S. churches by race and ethnicity was challenging my previous understanding of the Bible. The question haunted me. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faithfulness on the earth?” What if Jesus comes looking for me? Will Jesus find faithfulness? Will my church be showing its faith in a way that is recognizable?

Learning to read also requires letting the context in which we read enlighten the text. I knew that following Jesus and living a life shaped by the way of Jesus, being disciples, was what churches are called to do. As I tried to compare that with the scandal of white supremacy, with the wound of racism, I found that my settled and secure beliefs about the church were being shaken. Ultimately, I found myself, along with others, seeking for God in exile from that congregation, wandering in a wilderness of longing. I knew better than to look for a perfect church. I was just hoping to find one where power brokers did not seem hell-bent on denying the gospel.

It was a few months later when I was sitting in Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, as a new member, that I heard this passage in Luke 18 brought up along the way in a sermon. I was eager to reflect on it further, and once again the Holy Spirit shed new light on the scripture. As I sat in a congregation of mostly African Americans, my white body in proximity to their black bodies, my family and cultural heritage laid out alongside theirs, I heard this story in a whole new light.

I perceived that for African American Bible readers, it was no surprise to encounter the character of an unjust judge who has no fear of God and no respect for anyone. I, of course, had watched video footage of the rigged system of injustice that protected white assassins from being convicted of murder during the Civil Rights Movement. I had read Ida Wells’s accounts of lynch law and the precarious existence of blacks who might seek to improve their economic condition when the legal system was not set up for their good. But for the first time, I was learning to read the Bible with that history as my own history, too. It was no longer a separate set of events, unrelated to the Bible.

Moreover, the entire parable began to take clearer shape as addressing the nature of prayer. In light of reading in community, it becomes clear that the parable is not primarily a message for consumers in a consumer society who consume God and want God to help them consume more stuff. While one aspect of the parable’s message may be that we are encouraged to keep on praying, the core emphasis seems more on clarifying what sort of God it is to whom we are praying. God is not like this judge. The judge is at best an antihero—he plays a role in something good happening, despite his obvious flaws. Or perhaps the judge is merely a villain. Jesus tells the disciples who are listening to pay attention to the contrast. God is not anything like that judge. So if a sorry old reprobate judge like that can be persuaded to do something right, what do you think you could expect from a good and loving God? So don’t lose heart. Keep the faith. Pray on. And be faithful to what God has called you to do.

Moreover, it is not just any kind of praying that the parable is concerned with. It is not about whether I can get a bigger house or a fancier car. It is not about whether I get my picture in the paper or my name gets called out for recognition in public meetings. It is about justice.
The other character is not a widow by chance. Jesus was concerned about how women were being treated by the so-called righteous religious folk of his day. Widows might have no protectors, and they had very few ways to make a living that were acceptable and respectable. They deserved better, and the law had some provisions which could help them. But from a position of social isolation and weakness, they might not be treated humanely. Perhaps no one would even bother to listen. The unjust judge was probably a recognizable character to the people gathered around Jesus that day in Philadelphia, Mississippi, or Orange County, California, or Jena, Louisiana, or Durham, North Carolina, on his journey to Jerusalem.

I had learned long before, as a ministerial student, that Luke’s gospel is reputed to be concerned for the equal place of women before God and in the church. Now in this parable, one more example of that is clear. The judge does not respect anyone. God, on the other hand, loves even the lowly and marginalized. The judge just wants the widow to leave him alone. God wants the widow to have life abundant. The judge acts for expediency and personal comfort. God acts for justice.

A Christian education curriculum that neglects the liberating justice of God toward women is a curriculum that has not learned to read the Bible. Don’t be timid about confronting the systems through which structures of gender have been abused in the service of power. God is with us when we seek to discern the Spirit’s leadership. We say, “Yes,” to the work of God in the lives of women in our churches. We say, “Yes,” to the work of God in the lives of men in our churches. We say, “Yes,” to the new ways in which God will work to reshape women and men to be humble co-workers for justice and mercy in proclaiming the Reign of God.

So the prayers that we must always pray without fainting are prayers for justice. We must pray for justice for the poor. We must pray for justice for the prisoner. We must pray for justice for the worker, justice for the violated, justice for the outcast, justice for the widow and orphan. But they must not be empty prayers or prayers of mere obligation and observance. They must be prayers of opening ourselves to God’s work in our lives. The result of such prayers is to be our faithful ministry to the poor, to the prisoner, to the worker, to the violated, to the outcast, and to the widow and orphan.

We will become the instruments of God to answer those who cry out day and night. We will become the instruments of God to help them without delay. We will be the instruments to quickly grant justice to them.

Learning to read the Bible means learning to pray as God would have us pray. Yes, learning to read the Bible means learning to perform the scriptures. Put them in action. Yes, act them out. Don’t just soak up the teaching—live the teaching. Perform the scriptures. Don’t be mere hearers of the word. Be doers of the word. Love in deed and truth. Love one another. Let love be genuine, so that when the Son of Man comes, it will not be hard to find faithfulness on the earth.

LEARNING TO READ, part 1
Luke 18:1-8

From the earliest age, I was taught to sing, “Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.” We sang about God’s love for us, our love for God, and obeying God by loving others. A great deal of the gospel came through those songs. We sang them at home, and we sang them at church. We listened to Bible stories and learned to say short quotations from the Bible, such as “God is Love,” or “Love one another,” or “Honor your father and mother.” We sang songs about Bible characters and stories. “Only a boy named David . . . ,” but he was used by God to save the sheep and the people. “Round the walls of Jericho” the people walked, and when they shouted, “the walls fell down.” “Zaccheaus was a wee, little man,” but Jesus found him and went to his house. “A helper I will be,” “Praise God all ye little children,” and “I like to go to church” were songs that helped to shape our developing moral vision. “Love one another. Love one another. This is the happy way. . . .”

Another thing I learned from Southern Baptists as I grew older was that the main message of faith was for people to have Jesus in our hearts. We called it accepting Jesus as Savior. This core teaching was a partial articulation of the gospel message. Sometimes we got glimpses of the fullness of the gospel. But mostly we were too focused on the afterlife, and not enough focused on what the message of God’s Kingdom might mean for changing the world we live in. It was a mostly individualistic message about making peace with one’s situation and being assured of eternity with God. It put a heavy emphasis on being happy because God is with us. God could work in our lives to help us do what is right, to help us with emotional struggles, and to help us do our best. We were confident that with faith in God and with striving our best, there would be a reasonable expectation of success in life.

It was the age of the Cold War, when the nuclear arms race was at a frenzied pace. Everything that happened in the world was judged by its relation to the worldwide struggle between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies. People in this country had to be careful what we thought and said. Any questioning of the goodness and rightness of the American way was automatically judged to be a sign of the influence of godless communism. We were told about, even intimidated into believing that the order of things in the USA was for the good of us all. Of course, you know by looking at me and by the history of the Southern Baptists, that we found this more believable because we were white, and for the most part, the deck was stacked in our favor.

So it is no surprise that when I read or listened to the parable at the beginning of Luke 18, I thought that judge, the one Jesus calls “the unjust judge,” was an anomaly, the rare case. I knew that police officers could give you a ticket for speeding, and for that reason they might be feared, but for the most part, I was satisfied to believe that law enforcement and the judicial system were to be trusted. Therefore, the parable seemed to me to be an odd way of talking about prayer. To my teen-aged and young adult mind, it seemed to be saying to keep on praying for something even if it seems like God is saying, “No,” to the prayer. Just like the sorry old judge in the story finally came through, God might come through, too, after a while.

I’ll admit, it was pretty weak theology, but then again, most of the theology of prayer that I hear in Bible study and preaching is pretty weak, if not completely off base. When we treat prayer as some kind of input-output machine, a time to beg for our wish list, a visit to the great heavenly Wal-Mart, a test of our positive thinking skill, we are about as far from Christian faith as we can be. But since that was and still is the popular view of prayer in many churches, it’s not surprising that I did not stop to think very hard about this story. Keep on praying. Keep on praying. It is an important basic truth. What this interpretation leaves out is reflection on how to pray. Learning to read the Bible in larger segments than one verse or a few isolated verses is the skill that I still needed to acquire.

The reason I am telling a story about my upbringing is to demonstrate that, for better or for worse, we learn to read scripture in community. Before I even knew how to read at all, I had already learned what the Bible says. “Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.” How did the Bible tell me? It was not by my looking at a page and reading John 3:16. It was not because I had studied the sentence structures and narrative structures of biblical texts. The Bible was telling me through the people who had taught me about it. The Bible was telling me through the people who had known Jesus’ love for a long time, through hard times and good times. By the time I learned to decipher letters and words on a page, I had already learned to read the Bible as a love letter from God to humanity. This basic message of the love of God, manifest for us in the life, work, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and poured out in our lives by the Holy Spirit, stands at the heart of what almost all churches teach about the Christian faith. When churches are doing what they are called to do, children learn that they live in a world created, sustained, and loved by God. And many of us learned to read the Bible that way when we were very young.

Of course, reading abilities and reading subject matter change as we grow. Much of what we need to know can be learned in kindergarten, but those basic truths have to be enlarged, expanded, and enriched as our mental and emotional capacities grow. New experiences, whether joyful or hurtful, may prepare us to read with greater maturity. Yet as we keep reading, we cannot lean only on our own understanding. We must acknowledge God. Acknowledging God means recognizing that God is at work in the world. God is before us and behind us, above us and below us, within and without. Jonathan Edwards said that the Christian stance toward God and God’s creation is “consent.” As the gospel song puts it, it is to “say, ‘Yes,” to God. “I’ll say, ‘Yes, Lord. Yes,’ to your will and to your way.” I consent to your presence in all that I encounter.

Don’t go running ahead of me there. I did not say that everything I encounter is the will of God. Everything may happen for a reason, but not every reason is from God. When a bullet penetrates the head of a nineteen-year-old, it happened for a reason. It happened because someone else’s passions were out of control, or because someone had become so hardened to life and love that it just seemed like the thing to do. It happened for a reason. It happened because all the hope had been squeezed out of a family or community and life had become hell on earth. It happened because of selfishness, greed, revenge, or ambition. It happened for a reason, but not God’s reason. A bullet taking a life is not God’s time. Recognizing and proclaiming that God hates murder is saying “Yes” to God. Saying “Yes” to God is to recognize that in any situation, God is present. Even in the tragedy of a life cut short, God has not deserted us. Saying, “yes” to God is recognizing the handiwork of God, the image of God, in the killed and the killer. But I’ve gone astray from the topic at hand. Let’s get back to learning to read.

Saying “Yes” to God is learning to listen to God speak through others. Saying “Yes” to God is listening to the Spirit speak through each person as we gather for Bible study and worship. Learning to read the Bible requires us to read in community. God’s great mission of love to the world is far too vast for any one of us to grasp alone. That is why Paul told the Corinthian church to take their time in trying to discern what God would say to them. Let one speak, and all others listen attentively. Then let another speak. Listen to one another, and seek the Spirit’s leading. Reading the Bible well means letting go of our private interpretations so that they can be tested in community. Sometimes the process breaks down, but that only makes it all the more important to keep working on it.

One way to keep working on reading in community is to keep opening our doors to hear what others might have to say. I have spent a good deal of time reflecting on the way that the Open Door Community in Atlanta reads the scriptures. I contacted them about having the opportunity to interview one or more of their leaders about their approach to ministry. They invited me to join them in feeding breakfast to the homeless as a first step. I showed up very early and found quite a few people at work getting breakfast ready. I was given an orientation, then we gathered in a circle to study the Bible. We spent about fifteen minutes looking at a passage, going over the background and a few key points, then we prayed and started serving the meal. After an hour and a half, we had served well over a hundred people. We did the basic cleaning up, then sat down to eat our own breakfast. Over the meal, members of the community, along with some of the homeless persons, and various volunteers, returned to discussing the scripture passage.

Reading the Bible with homeless people shed a new light on it. People who had not lived their lives in the comfort and privilege of the middle class saw details of the scripture that some of us were blind to. The Latin American liberation theologians had also come to recognize this truth as they sought to understand the Bible as they observed the impending demise of the era of European world domination. They saw that reading the Bible with the poor and marginalized masses, created by colonial domination, gave a whole new meaning to the life and work of Jesus. They came to see that this one often depicted as a remote, cosmic monarch had lived as a homeless Jewish man who had no place to lay his head, who hung out with the folks on the margin and at the bottom, and who had good news to give to them.
(Continued.)

I've been doing research on whiteness in relation to theology, and it has led me to a great deal of work being done in educational theory and practice, and of course in sociology. A few theologians have started to tackle the subject, and I'm trying to digest what they are saying. At the heart of Tracy West's discussion in Disruptive Christian Ethics, are three characteristics of white domination and white privilege in U. S. society: a sense of entitlement to social goods, a practice of denial of privilege or domination, and systemic social investment in white privilege. The latter comes in the form of distribution of various goods such as transportation, education, health care, etc., in ways that facilitate their use by whites in contrast to more difficult access to non-whites.

It is a fascinating discussion, and I am not completely sure where it will lead in my theological reflections. In the meantime, I am learning quite a bit.

One of my students, Marcus Croom, pointed me to another blog related to this topic. It is called "Stuff White People Like." Apparently it started in January and has taken off dramatically in popularity, to the point that the blogger already has a book deal.

I read it with some sheepishness and some relief. Certainly I found some of my likes in the list of things white people like. I also found I only matched a portion of the stereotype, closer to 50% than 90%. Take a look. "Whifolks" like me will have some hearty laughs and some uncomfortable ones, too.

Occasionally I get email with a link to a really good short video. This one is about the financial and human costs of the Iraq invasion and occupation. I encourage you to take a look at it. It's called "The Three Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree."

I shopped for the following on my $3 trillion budget.

Heifers for 600,000,000 families through Heifer International
PRICE: $300,000,000,000.00

Two-week peacemaking trip to Israel/Palestine for 3,800,000 US Citizens with Christian Peacemaker Teams
PRICE: $7,980,000,000.00

Intensive Spanish lessons in a Guatemalan language school for 70 million US Citizens, for eight weeks including food, lodging, airfare, and spending money
PRICE: $322,000,000,000.00

10 Years' Salary and Benefits for 2 million school teachers at an annual rate of $70,000
PRICE: $1,400,000,000,000.00

Birkenstock Sandals for 6 billion people, to keep everyone's feet healthy in warm weather
PRICE: $720,000,000,000.00

Front Doors for 1 billion family dwellings through Habitat for Humanity
PRICE: $150,000,000,000.00

Kitchen sinks for 1 billion family dwellings through Habitat for Humanity
PRICE: $100,000,000,000.00

MerleFest 4-day pass with best reserved seating for 3,600 people
PRICE: $810,000.00

2008 Toyota Prius Hybrid car, which I can't afford on my usual budget
PRICE: $22,300.00

Russian-made high-tech Space Toilet, which could come in handy someday
PRICE: $19,000,000.00

Speech Therapy/Coaching for the President, VP, Cabinet and Members of Cabinet Rank, National Security Advisor, and members of Congress (four hours each) so that none of these national leaders will mispronounce the word "nuclear"
PRICE: $167,700.00

TOTAL: $3,000,000,000,000.00

Bruce Gourley pointed me toward comments made recently by Frank (formerly Franky) Schaeffer about the current presidential race. I had a vague awareness that Schaeffer had turned away from his earlier rabid fundamentalism, but did not really know the extent of his conversion. At times like this, I am reminded that my move away from the SBC, which eventually included being institutionally disconnected from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Alliance of Baptists, and the American Baptist Churches as well, is more complete than it seems in my consciousness. I don’t get a whole lot of the grapevine news about the SBC and its kinfolk among fundamentalist movements. My students bring me awareness of some sorts of popular Christian trends, but not much about those folks.

A couple of Schaeffer’s statements seem especially notable. One emphasizes his revised evaluation of fundamentalism in a way that supports much of what Bruce Prescott finds himself battling in Oklahoma and beyond—a pseudo-Christian theocratic movement to reconstitute the U. S. A.

I finally got out of the evangelical movement in 1985 when I belatedly outgrew my fundamentalist background. I wanted to be a writer, not of religious propaganda but of actual books. I also quit because I had slowly woken up to the fact that the religious right I was in bed with -- because my late father Francis Schaeffer was one of their leaders, and in the nepotistic evangelical tradition I followed in his footsteps -- were not conservatives. They were anti-American agitators for a thinly disguised theocracy.

The other remark shows the pathos and crisis of the McCain candidacy in the current atmosphere of Republican Party chaos.

The irony is that the people McCain is appeasing these days in order to "unite" his party, are the same people who in 2000, spread (and believed) the racist nonsense about his black adopted child being illegitimate etc. The people he must suck up to now undid his candidacy then.



The sad truth is that the 2000 election was McCain's moment. The right wing evangelicals (and the Republican establishment) handed the presidency to Bush and the rest is history. Now McCain's moment has past, swept away by a river of needlessly shed blood and by the politics of fear.

Thanks to Bruce Gourley for his attention to these discussions.

I have been trying to respond to the controversy about Jeremiah Wright as a way to get back to posting on this site. However, I find myself so caught up in the details and complexities that everything I have written so far seems to dissipate into academic minutia. I know that no one wants to read that stuff.

So I looked at From the Wilderness, written by my friend Ryon Price. He tells the story of his reflections on this moment of public attention to race and preaching in an interesting way. He and I find ourselves in an unusual situation for white baptist ministers. We get called on to be mediators of black life for whites who wonder, marvel, and puzzle about race. We know we are not up to the task. My black friends describe the situation of being the lone black in a room full of whites and being put in the role of "Spokesperson for All Black People." As you can imagine, it is both an unfair and impossible spot to be in. So you can go ahead and recognize in advance that a white person serving as a surrogate in this role will be another step removed from being able to fulfill the duties and privileges of the office.

Having known of Rev. Wright for some time, I was very interested in the way he was being portrayed in the news. I was a bit upset that he was being treated so harshly. I went to hear his sermon clips, and I could not really find anything to argue with. His language is extravagant. He pushes his arguments to the next logical step, farther than most will. He does not hold back when he believes a wrong must be named. He uses stark images in framing a situation. But accompanying the diatribes was also a description of a loving, reconciling God. I didn't find him to be departing from a biblical perspective.

On the other hand, I think I would not necessarily use the same extravagant language. I would probably not carry an argument so far in certain contexts. I might feel compelled to hold back. My images might not be so stark. I can't help wondering if that is more a shortcoming on my part than a criticism of him.

Whites can understand his position--it is not inscrutable. It is, however, a serious challenge for people to get out of their limited experience and try to think from someone else's perspective. Ryon hits this on the head by denying the "it's a black thang" claim to incommensurability. Communication across group lines, across cultures, across frameworks is not theoretically excluded. It is excluded only practically--do we give it a serious effort. As our mutual friend Willie Jennings said to a group of white baptists, often a desire is missing among whites for cultural intimacy with their black neighbors. Without a longing to know one another and to be reconciled, most whites will simply see Wright as a crackpot or a demon.