I am re-posting this piece in honor of the 50th anniversary of Ms. Hamer’s celebrated speech to the credentials committee of the Democratic Convention in 1964. AGB
“If the freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?” Fannie Lou Hamer
The summer of 1964 was a watershed moment for the civil right movement and for America. Never before had black and white Americans worked together with such common purpose. And yet, by the end of August, black civil rights leaders were vowing never to work with white people again. Meanwhile, white civil rights activists realized they didn’t have a home in either of the major political parties.
The voting rights movement had been building momentum in Mississippi since the Freedom Rides of 1961. The work was dangerous, beatings were commonplace and martyrs were plentiful. What better way to win protection and attention than to issue a call to idealistic young white people from across America to come to Mississippi for the summer of 1964? John Kennedy had been assassinated half a year earlier and a still-grieving nation was desperate for healing.
Across the southern states, only 40% of eligible African Americans were registered to vote; in Mississippi it was 6.4%. As we have seen, civic leaders in the Magnolia State were determined to keep Negroes out of the courthouse. For the most part, they were successful. To outsiders this looked like blatant injustice, but the good people of Mississippi felt they were simply preserving a cherished way of life. Throughout the spring and early summer the young people kept coming, just as they had at the high water mark of the Freedom Ride movement. They were young, idealistic, dedicated and often remarkably naive. Fannie Lou Hamer had to take the white girls aside and explain why it was a bad idea to be seen in public with a young black male–no matter how good looking and entertaining he might be. (more…)
Dan Page, the St. Louis police officer who famously pushed CNN anchor Don Lemon, has been relieved of duty. Pushing Lemon in front of a national television audience had nothing to do with it. It was Page’s bizarre speech, delivered in April of 2012 to the “Oath Keepers” of St. Louis and Lake Charles, a group that describes itself as “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Here are a few highlights from Page’s screed:
“Policemen are very cynical. I know I am. I hate everybody. I’m into diversity. I kill everybody.”
“We have no business passing hate crime laws. None. Because we’re setting aside a group of people special. We got a Supreme Court out of control with laws on sodomy.” (Page then refers to the “four sodomites” sitting on the Supreme Court.)
Page says he left the army because he refused to serve under “that illegal alien who claims to be our president.”
John Belmar, the St. Louis County police chief, has suspended Mr. Page pending an internal investigation and psychiatric evaluation. “(I) apologize to the community and anybody who is offended by these remarks,” Belmar said, “and understand from me that he … does not represent the rank-and-file of the St. Louis County Police Department.”
Dan Page and CNN anchor Don Lemon
I doubt Dan Page reflects mainstream opinion within the police department or the military. (more…)
Ann Coulter wrote an offensive column suggesting that Christian missionaries who work in third world countries like Liberia are driven by narcissism. They are too gutless to fight the culture war in America, she asserts, so the “slink off” to Africa. If they contract the Ebola virus as a consequence of their cowardice they deserve to die.
Like everything Coulter writes, the post was designed to spark outrage in all right-thinking people. “Just look what that terrible woman is saying now,” liberals shriek as they race to their computers to spread the word on Facebook.
Soon thousands of outraged right-thinkers are telling the world that Ann Coulter is the worst human being on the planet.
The script is straight out of the old World Wrestling Federation. It’s Cassius Clay taunting Sonny Liston so the white rubes would pay to see him get knocked out. (more…)
Although you would never know it from listening to American preaching, Jesus linked poverty with the kingdom of God and affluence with sin.
The text of the first sermon Jesus preached was taken from Isaiah 61:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable (Jubilee) year of the Lord
(Luke 4)
Notice that all the recipients of kingdom blessing are poor, afflicted, marginalized people.
The last sermon Jesus preached prior to his arrest and crucifixion linked kingdom participation with practical ministry to the poor and dispossessed. Kingdom people feel the pain of a hurting world and respond with creative acts of mercy that clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, and provide justice for the oppressed. (Matthew 25)
Jesus was about feeling the pain of the world and responding with acts of mercy. Feeling pain that doesn’t belong to you (empathy) and healing action are part of the same kingdom dynamic. What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
The American marriage between free market capitalism and American evangelical piety makes Jesus impossible. His words are inconvenient at best and heretical at worst. We want to love Jesus and ascribe to an onward-and-upward, God-wants-to-succeed, greed is good ethic. We want God and mammon; Jesus and the blessings of capitalism.
And now the counter-intuitive teaching of Jesus is being confirmed by brain science?
If you are building your world on the rock-hard words of Jesus, none of this will come as a surprise, but what’s the takeaway?
Jesus taught that affluent people (that’s me, and it’s probably you) can’t enter God’s merciful kingdom unless we rewire our brains. As we climb the social ladder, the harder our task becomes. Not only will we not feel the pain of less fortunate people, we will not want to feel their pain.
Moreover, we will find ourselves surrounded by people who propound clever theories to explain why helping poor people only creates dependency. These arguments are sleazy, silly and self-serving, but, reinforced by prominent pulpiteers, pundits and politicians, they sound like common sense. Stay too long in this echo chamber and Jesus is the one who sounds silly. Eventually, we can’t hear him at all. We still talk about loving Jesus, but we are worshiping a word, not a person.
So, what’s the alternative?
The first step is to take Jesus at his word, even if that word runs counter to the messages screaming from the smart phone, computer and television screens that shape our thinking.
Secondly, we must find a circle of like-minded disciples who share our desire to take Jesus at his word. If you don’t have such a circle, create one from scratch (I realize that this can be socially awkward, but your salvation depends on it).
There is good news. Mounting evidence suggests that American Christianity, evangelical, mainline and Roman Catholic, is beginning to feel the deep contradiction between Jesus and American common sense. People who take the Bible seriously can’t lie to themselves forever.
America can’t be an honest broker in the Middle East until we celebrate the full humanity of all God’s children.
By Alan Bean
As the body count mounts in Gaza, accusations of biased coverage, and corresponding denials, are piling up in America. Desperate to appear unbiased, mainline media outlets in the United States are working hard to provide equal time to both sides. As a result, “we stand with Israel” propaganda competes with evening news footage of mangled Palestinian children. The debate is being controlled by one-sided commentary that ignores the legitimate demands of both Israelis and Palestinians.
The deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is mired in regional history. Unfortunately, Palestinians and Israelis preach irreconcilable versions of this history and few Western correspondents know enough to adjudicate the conflicting claims. Besides, why should the evening news bother with the detritus of yesteryear when there’s such wonderful footage of Hamas rockets, bombed out buildings, and grieving mothers?
I won’t attempt an exhaustive history of the Middle East in the 20th century, but will confine myself to three issues. First, the claim that the Palestinians of Gaza can’t be taken seriously because they embrace Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel. Secondly, how a virulent strain of near-universal Antisemitism made the creation of the modern state of Israel necessary. Finally, why America can’t serve as an honest broker in the middle east until “we stand with Israel” rhetoric is shelved in favor of a more cumbersome but more gracious slogan: “we stand with Israel and we stand with the Palestinians too.” (more…)
A few years ago,Michelle Alexander reminded me of a curious fact. English translations of the Bible almost always translate the Greek word for justice, δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosune) as “righteousness” instead of justice. This is curious for two reasons.
First, in classical Greek–Plato’s Republic for instance–δικαιοσύνη is almost always translated into English as “justice”.
Second, Romance languages (Italian, Spanish etc.), lacking the word “righteousness” (from the German “recht”), unwaveringly translate δικαιοσύνη as “justice” simply for lack of an alternative.
So, how do we explain the preference for “rightousness” over “justice” in English translations?
For some background, check out Fred Clark’s helpful post on the subject, On justice vs. ‘righteousness’in which he shares Yale professor Nicholas Wolterstorff’s answer to the “why” question. Here’s the heart of the discussion (my emphasis):
It goes almost without saying that the meaning and connotations of “righteousness” are very different in present-day idiomatic English from those of “justice.” “Righteousness” names primarily if not exclusively a certain trait of personal character. … The word in present-day idiomatic English carries a negative connotation. In everyday speech one seldom any more describes someone as righteous; if one does, the suggestion is that he is self-righteous. “Justice,” by contrast, refers to an interpersonal situation; justice is present when persons are related to each other in a certain way.
… When one takes in hand a list of all the occurrences of dik-stem words in the Greek New Testament, and then opens up almost any English translation of the New Testament and reads in one sitting all the translations of these words, a certain pattern emerges: unless the notion of legal judgment is so prominent in the context as virtually to force a translation in terms of justice, the translators will prefer to speak of righteousness.
Why are they so reluctant to have the New Testament writers speak of primary justice? Why do they prefer that the gospel of Jesus Christ be the good news of the righteousness of God rather than the good news of the justice of God? Why do they prefer that Jesus call his followers to righteousness rather than to justice? I do not know; I will have to leave it to others to answer that question.
Consider the familiar admonition from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.” How would our interpretation of that seminal Jesus-saying change if we were read it the way non-English speakers read it: “Seek first the kingdom of God, and God’s justice”?
The most charitable synonym for “righteous”, as Wolterstorff points out, is “upright”. Or we may refer to the “moral rectitude” of someone we admire. But are upright people persecuted, Wolterstorff asks. In his experience, and in mine, upright people are either admired or ignored. We may find them annoying, but we don’t persecute them. No one is persecuted for keeping the rules.
The reason is obvious. Uprightness refers to being law-abiding, or morally pure. Justice is interpersonal; it refers to the way we interact with other people. In particular, it deals with how the poor and vulnerable are treated by the powerful. Only when δικαιοσύνη is used in a context suggesting the criminal justice system do English translators translate it as “justice”.
In other words, we have no quibble with courts passing sentence on miscreants; but we are uncomfortable with the notion that powerful people must protect the rights of poor and vulnerable people because God insists they must.
A simple suggestion: when you come across the word “righteousness” in an English translation of the New Testament, substitute “justice” and watch things change. “Righteousness” is the rhetoric of the status quo; “justice” is revolutionary.
While politicians apportion blame for the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children arriving at our border, the faith community looks for ways to help.
I over-simplify, of course. We confront a complex tangle of rhetoric and response, and there are plenty of exceptions on both sides of the politician/people divide.
Not all politicians want to send these unaccompanied children back to the chaos and violence that brought them to our border.
Clay Jenkins
A few weeks ago, I heard Dallas County Judge, Clay Jenkins, announce that we would be welcoming at least 2,000 “border children” to our community. Jenkins told the crowd that 85% of these children would be released into the safe keeping of family members as soon as they were processed by immigration officials; but the remaining 15% needed a safe place where they could receive food, shelter and basic services. Last week, I attended a religious gathering hosted by a prominent Baptist mega-church at which Jenkins repeated his message to a room dominated by evangelical Christians.
On both occasions, the audience responded with a mixture of enthusiasm, surprise and relief. If felt so strange to hear a politician speaking from sheer conviction. Jenkins knew his initiative would be controversial, but when his own children asked him what he was going to do about the kids being warehoused at the border, his faith forced the issue. He knew what Jesus would do, and didn’t dare take the opposite position.
Texas State Rep. David Simpson
And then there’s Texas state representative David Simpson, a telegenic Tea Party conservative with a cowboy hat and a smile. Simpson outraged his constituency last week by urging a compassionate response to the border children. “I don’t believe in treating people who’ve crossed the border as a murderer,” Simpson told a town hall gathering dominated by anti-immigrant activists. “I do think there should be a path, a legal path, for naturalization or citizenship. We’re a nation of immigrants.”
Like Clay Jenkins, David Simpson is taking his cue from his religion. He quoted Proverbs 20:28, Deuteronomy 10:18-19 and Leviticus 19:33, passages that call for compassionate treatment of resident aliens, “for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”
Unfortunately, Jenkins and Simpson are bucking the political consensus. The prevailing view is that we should send the children back to their homes without delay even if we have to rescind the 2008 William Wilberforce Act to do it.
The Wilberforce Act passed in the dying days of the George W. Bush administration, thanks to the tireless efforts of an unlikely coalition of conservative and liberal organizations. President Bush welcomed the legislation and it enjoyed the enthusiastic support of evangelical Christians. Immigrant children from Central America were being targeted by human traffickers and backers of the Wilberforce Act wanted the abuse to stop.
Six years later, Washington is on the verge of scrapping the bill. No one anticipated tens of thousands of children fleeing north to escape violent drug gangs in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Why should we care whether the children huddled in our detention centers are being forced into sexual slavery or into the drug trade. Children are children; pain is pain.
Prominent politicians on both sides of the ideological divide are holding their hands over their ears to block the elegant logic of compassion. These kids fled their homes because they feared for their lives and only in America can they be protected. But Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, and both Democratic and Republican candidates for Texas governor want to toss the children back into the fire.
But the tide is turning. You can feel it. Last week, rallies were organized across the nation to protest the compassionate treatment of the border children. In some localities only a handful of protesters showed up at these events, and in many cities proponents of compassionate immigration reform outnumbered anti-immigration people two or three to one.
And the surprises just keep coming. Glenn Beck, the conservative firebrand, organized a caravan of provisions for the border children a few days ago. Beck feared his followers wouldn’t like the idea (they didn’t), but his heart forced his hand.
George Will
And then there’s the conservative curmudgeon, George Will, telling the Sunday talk shows that America should welcome the border children with open arms.
“We ought to say to these children, ‘Welcome to America, you’re going to go to school and get a job and become Americans. We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 [children] per county. The idea that we can’t assimilate these 8-year-old ‘criminals’ with their teddy bears is preposterous.”
Much of the credit for changing hearts and minds on this issue goes to conservative Christians. Recently, a contingent of Southern Baptist leaders and Roman Catholic bishops toured the overcrowded immigration facilities at the border. Speaking at Parkhills Baptist Church in San Antonio, Russell Moore, the outspoken president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, pared the issue back to its theological core:
“As a follower of Jesus Christ, I recognize the answer to this question is going to be very complex politically and very complex socially. But what is not complex is the truth and reality that every one of these children are created in the image of God, and every one are beloved by God and they matter to God. That means they matter to us.”
The tidal wave of compassion is building deep in the heart of Texas. Cindy Noble Cole, a Dallas nurse, saw televised pictures of frightened children housed in what appeared to be dog kennels. So she filled 50 hygiene boxes for the kids and delivered them to Catholic Charities of Fort Worth. What began as a simple “this is what I’m doing” post on Facebook, quickly blossomed into Operation Matthew 25, a movement that has already sent 500 boxes of hygienic supplies, blankets, activity boxes and school supplies to the border.
I first became aware of Operation Matthew 25 when scores of Facebook friends replaced the usual Glamour shot on their homepage with a little picture that reads, “I stand with refugee children: they are children.”
The folks highlighted above are all over the map politically and theologically, but they understand the elegant logic of Matthew 25: “Inasmuch as you did it unto these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it unto me.”
The growing people/politician divide on this issue is driven by a simple fact: politicians are running on fear; most people, when they’re sane and centered, are running on faith.
Compassion for the stranger and the alien is central to Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious teaching. Jesus opened his public ministry with a quotation from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me, to preach good news to the poor,” and he closed out his public ministry with the parable of the sheep and the goats. In the kingdom of God, Jesus says, many who are first will be last and the last will be first.
Distracted by politics and our ubiquitous culture war, Christians frequently lose sight of this teaching. But then we have all these children on our doorstep, and the words of Jesus come flooding back to us. And when that happens, we do what must be done.
Neither Moore nor the leaders of Hamas have found a way to change circumstances they consider intolerable.
Rev. Moore’s response was to set himself on fire in his home town of Grand Saline, Texas.
Hamas reacts to the seeming omnipotence of the Israeli military by lobbing rockets in the direction of Jewish cities and settlements.
Both actions are deplorable; but I’m not sure I have a viable alternative to offer either Charles Moore or the Palestinians.
Like Jesus and the prophet Jeremiah, Charles Moore experienced the besetting sins of his own people in a horribly visceral way. Most of us shrug off the racism and homophobia infecting our culture with an air of ironic resignation. Sure, it’s disturbing that little towns like Grand Saline are still riddled with racial resentment fifty years after the Civil Rights Act passed Congress, but change is always slow and incremental. And it is truly unfortunate that for centuries our GLBT brothers and sisters were forced into the closet and ridiculed and scorned whenever they dared step out; but we’re making progress, right?
Charles Moore wasn’t wired to think that way. He dreamed of things that never were and asked “why not?” And if he couldn’t understand why sin should prevail with only token opposition, it bothered him in a way that few of us can comprehend.
Perhaps you have been too troubled by the specter of self-immolation to think very deeply about Moore’s motivation. Many have concluded that the United Methodist pastor suffered from depression,but that was clearly not the case. (more…)
By Alan Bean
The summer of 1964 was a watershed moment for the civil right movement and for America. Never before had black and white Americans worked together with such common purpose. And yet, by the end of August, black civil rights leaders were vowing never to work with white people again. Meanwhile, white civil rights activists realized they didn’t have a home in either of the major political parties.
Friends of Justice 