This is one I've been waiting for: Bible Girl's take on the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Bible Girl is Julie Lyons, until recently the editor of the Dallas Observer, and a Pentecostal who has for years worshiped in a black church. Her piece is powerful. Excerpts from her column:
Throughout his life -- he lived to 95 -- [influential black pastor and son of freed slaves the Rev. Charles H.] Mason never betrayed bitterness toward white people, or rich people or any of those groups of men who oppressed his largely poor congregants in real and wicked ways. Mason had tapped into a reality that transcended the bigotry of his time: This Jesus Christ he followed gave him the supernatural strength -- the grace -- to love his enemies. And enemies there were.This, I know, is what is so frustrating to many black Christians and to the Reverend Wright, whose incendiary comments about race have rocked the Obama campaign: that white America’s churches neglect to acknowledge their own sordid past in perpetrating and prolonging racial hatreds. That they have indeed been the enemy on many occasions, churning out racist rationalizations for slavery and failing to defend their black brothers in the eras of Jim Crow and civil rights. That some, such as the revered commentator of the original, unsanitized Scofield Reference Bible, went so far as to twist the Scriptures to gin up justifications for treating blacks as inferiors.
Even today, white evangelicals display only a tepid interest in bridging the divide between black and white. The Word of God teaches that we know what is right, and it is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly before our God. I’ve always found it interesting that the Scriptures command us to do justice: thinking nice thoughts about justice evidently won’t cut it with God.
A recent study has shown that white Americans fail to appreciate the difference in perceptions about racial justice. White Americans with Forrest Gump-like obliviousness insist that ours is generally a fair and just society; black Americans see differently.
Reverend Wright, pastor of the largely black Trinity United Church of Christ in the South Side of Chicago, has pointed out these disparities from the pulpit in bitter and angry verbiage. He has mixed in conspiracy theories -- that, for example, the white American powers that be concocted AIDS to destroy the black race. For that I will not demonize him; like the white preachers who pushed away from Mason to help found the Assemblies of God, he is simply a man who’s failed to rise above his time.
And the truth is, bigotry against whites is often deemed an acceptable bigotry among blacks, a reasonable response to jacked-up times.
It is the extraordinary believer who refuses prejudice in any form, who simply calls a hater a hater.
But I have known men and women like this, who understand the eternal truth of the Christian faith that God is love. Prejudice, to them, is a form of hate. The Scriptures speak in uncompromising terms about men who hate their brothers: They are murderers, and they have no place in the Kingdom of God.
Bible Girl goes on to report what her two best friends, black Evangelicals, said when she asked them why they don't hate. There is something in this column for every single reader of this blog, whatever their color, to think about.
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Thank you, Rod, and special thanks to Julie. The punch line is resonating with me, and I think that it offers an answer for the Christians who have participated in or who have read the several threads on this blog on the subject of Pastor Wright. The Christian answer to the vexing dilemma of race, compellingly chronicled by Rebbecca in some of her posts, as well as by others, is not the absence of "hate" (e.g. "I'm not prejudiced"; "I never use the n-word"; and so forth). It is the affirmative act of giving love. Or perhaps more accurately stated, affirmative acts (plural) of giving love, a commitment to the day to day discipline of giving love. It is no small thing to train oneself to refrain from hate, but it is insufficient. The absence of hate does not break down barriers. It leaves them standing -- for others to build on. The mere absence of hate leaves us too easily poised to judge, without knowledge and without engagement. I write these words humbly, because this is a task and challenge at which I too often fail. Mere refraining from hate does not so the seeds of change. It does not reverse the remnant evil that the discussion over Pastor Wright has caused many of us to re-encounter. The absence of hate is a safer posture to maintain, but ultimately it cannot effect change. Affirmative acts of love have effected change; they continue to effect change. That is the message of the Sermon on the Mount and the Way of the Cross.
Julie's column is the best reflection I've yet read on this subject. Thank you, Rod, for linking to it.
Richard
It is the extraordinary believer who refuses prejudice in any form, who simply calls a hater a hater.
I'm having a little trouble with this idea. When I'm at my spiritual best, and I see someone hating, I'm unable to look at the person and reduce them to a label. "Well, that person's just a hater." It seems lazy. It shows a lack of curiosity. It seems to lack a willingness to try to put yourself into the other person's shoes and understand where they're coming from. Really, it's not very loving.
I can understand why conservatives like to pick at Rev Wright and reduce his life and thoughts and being to a label. He's a hater and God's Kingdom isn't the place for him. I feel that way about Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, and those conservative ministers who have been know to spew hatred. But I would never claim to be extraordinary in any way as I called those people haters.
Frank Schaeffer has interesting comments on the reaction of the right wing to Wright, in light of how many white evangelical pastors preach weekly that our country is Sodom for tolerating gays and under God's judgment for abortion. He suggests that Wright's comments are less inflammatory.
blog.beliefnet.com/reformedchicksblabbing/?WT.mc_id=HOMEBLOGS
To Charles 'I spend every night at this bar and here is what the guys said tonight' Cosimano; Raising a glass back at cha quoting you in your above post: "And he thinks we care".
As for me, I have several very white male friends in their 30s who are drunk every night and have no real career future and blame everyone under the sun and moon for their own failure to advance in life. The fact that they drink like fish and many smoke until everything within 50 inches smells like a slab of baby backs has nothing to do with their dead end position in life. It's got to be the (you said last night they freely use N-words and epithets) 'others' who are responsible.
My friends who tell me this call themselves "the true minority"; the white male. Yep, as Jon Stewart said on the Daily Show; they are the minority. White males. I mean,, up til now every single president in the history of this nation has BEEN a white male, but hey: "we have a right to feel like a persecuted minority!!!!!" And then, they drink to that and stumble home.
Mike Huckabee on Obama:
... I think that, you know, Obama has handled this about as well as anybody could. And I agree, it’s a very historic speech. ... And I thought he handled it very, very well.
On the Rev. Wright:
... One other thing I think we've got to remember: As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would, too. I probably would, too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/huckabee-defend.html
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