Fred Clark has done an audacious thing.  He has picked a fight with Mark Noll, perhaps the most celebrated church historian in America.  You will have to read Fred’s essay yourself, but here is the conclusion:

Of course slavery was “biblical” and of course opposition to slavery was “unbiblical.” That was what those words mean. That was the whole point of declaring that American Christians should think of themselves as a biblical civilization rather than a Christian one.

All of which is why the dominant narrative in historical and theological discussion of pre-1865 American Christian “debates” about slavery get the whole thing backwards and upside-down. I love Mark Noll’s The Civil War as Theological Crisis. You should read it. It’s a terrific, incisive, engaging book full of profound questions and insights. But it also gets the core of its argument backwards and upside-down.

The perverse part of that argument and that narrative is this: It asserts that pre-1865 “biblical” Christians approved of slavery because of the way they read their Bibles. That’s not true. That’s the opposite of what is true. Pre-1865 “biblical” Christians read their Bibles the way they did because they approved of slavery.

Read Clark’s essay, listen to Noll’s lecture, and tell us what you think.  I think Clark’s right, and, considering that Noll is a leading authority on American religious history, that is surprising.  But Clark cut his scholarly teeth in an age when questions of self-interest, power and money bulked large in American scholarship while Knoll is the product of an age in which it was still assumed that the folks who shaped American civilization, though sometimes short-sighted, were well-intentioned Christians.

Here’s the thing.  Christianity, and the prophetic Judaism from which it sprang, emerged in a context of oppression.  The word, whether from Isaiah, Jeremiah or Jesus, was preached to a people on the losing side of the power equation.  If the folks who controlled the money, the politics, and the weaponry were resisted openly (whether we are talking about the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks or the Romans) they would always win.  And yet, miraculously, the God who created heaven and earth was on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor.

This simple assumption lies at the heart of Jesus’ teaching, which is why people who identify with power (white Americans, for instance) have a hard time making any sense of Jesus’ teaching.  So we claim Jesus as savior while trying to cover up the fact that we disagree with virtually every thing he said.

By Alan Bean

George Marsden is an evangelical Christian who is deeply troubled by the current state of American evangelicalism.  But in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment the celebrated historian turns his attention to the failed quest for an American religious consensus in the 1950s, the halcyon days of liberal American Protestantism.

Marsden came of age in the 1950s, emerging from the womb of conservative evangelicalism, graduating from ultra-conservative Westminster Theological Seminary in the 1960s, then studying church history at an aggressively secular Yale university.  This cultural trajectory allows Marsden to consider American religion from both sides of the culture war.  He is telling his own story.

Marsden calls himself an “Augustinian Christian” and freely admits that this identity shapes his perspective.  He longs for an America where his own tradition has a place at the public policy table without excluding other voices, religious and secular.

The American liberal establishment appeared to be thriving in the late 1950s, Marsden reminds us, but within a decade the churches of the old American Protestant mainline were in utter disarray.  In his extensive introduction, Marsden lays out the skeleton of his thesis:

My argument, in brief, is that the culture wars broke out and persisted in part because the dominant principles of the American heritage did not adequately provide for how to deal with substantive religious differences as they relate to the public domain.  The American paradigm for relating religion to public life was an unusual blend of enlightenment and Protestant ideals.  In some ways it was the model of inclusivism and religious freedom.  But because it also fostered an informal Protestant establishment, or privileges for mainstream Protestants in public life, there were always those who were less privileged, who were excluded or discriminated against–such as Catholics, Jews, people of other world faiths, or those in smaller sectarian groups . . . My contribution is to point to an alternative paradigm for thinking about the varieties of religious outlooks in the public sphere and the roles they play within that sphere.

From the beginning, Marsden believes, America has been “shaped by an alliance between enlightenment rationality and Protestant religion.”  Religion, though socially prominent, has played a secondary or supplemental role “even as most of the business, politics, learning, literature, and arts of the nation were conducted on essentially secular grounds.”

In other words, when you flipped through the New York Times, listened to the NBC nightly news on the radio (or, increasingly, on television), or took in a movie in 1950s America, religion, if mentioned at all, appeared as a footnote to an essentially secular narrative. (more…)

Guest Post by the Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

On April 19, 1961, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a stirring sermon in a most unlikely place. Though not his most famous address, Dr. King’s words to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary or simply Southern Seminary pushed the audience to do more to accomplish racial justice. Delivered to the flagship theological institution of the flagship denomination of Southern Culture, Dr. King would never again give another address like this.

The Southern Baptist Convention originated from a desire amongst Southern Baptists to keep their slaves and Jesus too. For many of the early years, Southern Seminary reflected the staunch racist and segregationist attitudes of Southern Baptists. After many years of secret and segregated courses, Garland Offutt became the first African-American graduate of Southern Seminary in 1943. By 1947, Southern Seminary was fully integrated. To put this in perspective, Duke Divinity School did not integrate until 1961 and Candler School of Theology at Emory University did not integrate until 1965. Who would have thought that the flagship seminary of Southern Baptists led the way amongst major theological institutions in the South on race?

In December of 1960, Dr. Henlee Barnett secured an invitation for Dr. King to deliver the Julian Brown Gay Lecture from the Guest Lectureship Committee. Knowing that the invitation would be controversial, Southern Seminary President Duke McCall told the committee, “Boys, it is your call, but you do realize you are going to cost us hundreds of thousands dollars if you proceed.” Dr. Barnette replied, “If so, it will be money well spent.” Dr. King accepted the invitation and responded with a title, “The Church on the Frontier of Racial Tensions.” By the time April arrived, there were security concerns and controversy brewing throughout the Southern Baptist Convention.

Arriving with a full police escort, Dr. King was greeted by professors Henlee Barnett, Nolan P. Howington, Willis Bennett, Wayne Ward and James Leo Garrett. Dr. Ward remembered Dr. King being deeply reflective. The group stopped to take a picture that still hangs on the wall of my office. When Dr. King climbed into the pulpit, an overflow crowd of 1500 people greeted him. Former student Rev. Charles Worthy remembered, “The mood was absolutely electrifying.”

The Dr. King that is heard at the beginning of his address to Southern Seminary is not the same Dr. King that was later remembered as one of the greatest orators ever. Stumbling over his words, Dr. King is clearly nervous. However, once he got in the flow, Dr. King never turned back. Speaking about the role of the church, Dr. King pushed the gathered to “…develop a world perspective.” Speaking about race relations, Dr. King declared that racial injustice is “…diametrically opposed to the underlying philosophy of Christianity.” Speaking about economic injustice, Dr. King declared that people must, “…learn to live like Jesus.” Pushing the congregation out the door, Dr. King declared, the gathered must be “…maladjusted to the evils of this age.” The only African-American seminary student in attendance at the time, Dr. Emmanuel McCall remembered, “It was powerful…I felt like the direction of many lives were altered that day.” Though controversy did cause Southern Seminary to lose money, I have to agree with Dr. Barnette that it was money well spent.

In 2008, close to fifty years after Dr. King’s sermon, I was a student struggling at a radically different Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Following denominational conflict, Southern Seminary became one of the most fundamentalist theological institutions in the nation. Due to some radical changes I experienced, I dramatically changed my perspective on a number of issues of social justice. When I was searching for direction and didn’t have many places to go, I discovered the story of Dr. King’s sermon. Realizing that there was a way to follow Jesus beyond the narrowness and bigotry I had known, I started following the advice contained in Dr. King’s sermon and began working to develop a world perspective that equipped me to fight against injustice and be maladjusted to the evils of this age. Presently, I work as the Minister of Social Justice for the social justice ministry of the Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ, the largest LGBT church in the world. Without the courage of the earlier professors from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the witness of Dr. King, I doubt I would be here. I pray that maladjustment to injustice continues to spread.

Amen.

I was pleased to participate in an all-day summit on community policing after Ferguson, January 15 in Arlington.  As the Dallas Morning News article below suggests, this event brought together all four of the African American congressional delegation from Texas.  Some of my remarks are summarized in Sarah Mervosh’s article.

Alan Bean

Texas’ black U.S. House members join session on averting another Ferguson

By SARAH MERVOSH

Staff Writer

It’s not every day — or even every year — that Texas’ black U.S. representatives get together outside of Washington.

But they made a point to do so Thursday, united by an issue deeply relevant to them and their constituents: relations between police and communities of color in the wake of the controversial officer-involved shootings in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City.

“It was important for all of us to do this,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, who noted that they typically meet in their home state only every other year for the Democratic State Convention. “It shows just how important this issue is.”

Veasey and his North Texas counterpart, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, co-hosted panel discussions about Dallas-Fort Worth’s own race-relations problems and what can be done to prevent a similar tragedy from happening here. Reps. Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee, both Democrats from Houston, came to town for the event.

Speaking to several dozen people at the University of Texas at Arlington, the panelists — mixed in race and life experiences — illustrated the way trust in police splits down the color line.

Friends of Justice executive director Alan Bean, who is white, recalled a time when he was driving on a low-traffic road with a friend, who was a minority. The friend asked him to slow down, asking how many times Bean had been pulled over. Five times in his life, Bean said, all for speeding.

Bean turned the question back on his friend: “How many times have you been pulled over?” The friend replied: “I stopped counting at 30.”

“We just don’t come to these situations with the same perspective lens,” Bean said Thursday, encouraging more conversations between minorities and law enforcement officers to facilitate understanding.

Read full article here.  The local ABC affiliate’s story is here.

By Alan Bean

I learned about the season of Epiphany from the book of Daily Office Bible readings I stole from the Episcopalians some thirty years ago.  First, I wondered why the advent readings focused on the end of the world; then I wondered why Matthew’s Magi stories didn’t show up until after Christmas.

In my Baptist upbringing, the three wise men were right there, with the shepherds and all, at the stable in Bethlehem.   (more…)

By Alan Bean

My inbox doesn’t always give me anything worth reading, but today was an exception.

First, you will want to read this interview with David Oyelowo, the British actor who plays Martin Luther King Jr. in the new film Selma.  I haven’t seen the film, but I have kept abreast of all the criticism from LBJ fans, and I listened yesterday to a delightful conversation between Terry Gross (Fresh Air) and director Ava DuVernay that explains why it has taken half a century for Hollywood to tackle MLK.  The interview with Oyelowo explains why, perhaps for the first time, a major film portrays authentic spirituality.  All of the major actors were either professing Christians or they had grown up in the Black Church and understood the context.  In other words, this isn’t a film made by secular white people who don’t understand genuine Christianity.

Secondly, there is this disturbing post from Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, inspired by the surprising discovery that the more financially secure Americans become, the more they despise and “envy” poor people.  The study shows, Clark believes, that rich people have come what they pretended to be:

So the wealthy didn’t start out as genuinely ignorant, dumb and dull. They started out just pretending that’s what they were.  Alas, though, as Kurt Vonnegut warned us, “we must be careful about what we pretend to be,” because we become what we pretend to be.  And after decades of pretending to be stupid, it seems that a majority of the wealthiest Americans are no longer merely pretending.

Finally, there is this post from The Boekstool asking why we don’t call misguided Christians who perform violent acts “Christian terrorists”.  An excellent question.  What is it like to grow up Muslim in America?  It ain’t easy, that’s for sure.

Enjoy!

IN THE VISIONS OF THE NIGHT
December 12, 1993

Alan Bean

In the visions of the night
I saw this earth
Lost among the silent stars
I saw this earth lost among the stars.
No established date of birth;
No estimated time of arrival.
In the visions of the night
I saw this earth
Lost among the stars.

In the visions of the night
I saw this earth
Numbering her battle scars
I saw this earth
Numbering her scars.
No sword of retribution;
No tears of absolution.
In the visions of the night
I saw this earth
Numbering her scars.

In the visions of the night
I saw this earth
Cradling a mother’s child
I saw this earth
Cradling a child.
Lost among the silent stars;
Mid the noise of battle,
In the visions of the night
I saw this earth
Cradling a child.