The latest issue of the 9 Marks eJournal looks at the issues surrounding race in the Church. There are several articles that are well worth reading there, but my favourite is a colourful email exchange between Thabiti Anyabwile and Jonathan Leeman where they discuss the merits of Earth, Wind and Fire, what it feels like to be black, peaches, blueberries and much more!
Also this week on Reformation 21's blog, Wesminster's Professor of Historical Theology and Church History, Carl Trueman offers several criticisms of 19th century theologians Dabney and Thornwell, suggesting that the former's support for antebellum slavery is problematic. The 'Rob Lowe' character he refers to in the post is Covenant Seminary Professor Sean Lucas who offers his own response to Carl's post here.
If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way – who would like to have a set of associations with blacks that are as positive as those that you have with whites – it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires you to change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk with a member of a minority, you aren’t betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort.
–Malcolm Gladwell, Blink (2005), p. 97
I found this quote on the blog Fire and Knowledge written by Josh Sowin. Mr. Sowin often posts thought-provoking quotations from his reading, but this one hit home because of something that happened here in the old homeschool today.
My conversation with eight year old daughter who is just beginning to love reading:
Betsy-Bee: What should I read now? I finished that other book.
Me: Did you finish -------------- (insert title of a book that I checked out of the library about a girl who makes friends with a boy in her class after much difficulty and misunderstanding)?
Betsy-Bee: No, I didn't like that book.
Me: Why not?
Betsy-Bee: I don't want to read any books about black people. I don't like black people.
Me: Why not?
Betsy-Bee: Black people don't look good.
Yes, we had a further discussion of why this attitude was wrong, how would she feel about people who said they didn't like people with red hair, etc. But really the solution is more exposure to people who are different from her. Since we live in major (mostly white) suburbia and go to a mostly white church, this is a difficult proposition.
Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence located at the University of Rochester, NY, said some things about Jewish people in the Washington Post's On Faith column last month that have just about everybody steaming. His piece closed with this:
Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this [befriending enemies] is an alien concept. You [Israelis] don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.
He also said:
Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience -- a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of how a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends...But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.
Many thanks to Joe Carter for linking to an article at Touchstone magazine on channelling the Messiah as opposed to any other spirit or guru who might promise heaven, either in the here-and-now or the world to come. Otherwise, I might have missed it.
As usual, I am going to quote way too much of it in order to talk about it, but oh well. You'll still go read the whole thing, I know. But first, a question: How many "preachers fit Jesus into a preexisting storyline"? Preachers who do
not call upon their hearers to find themselves in the storyline of the crucified, buried, and resurrected Jesus[?] For them, Jesus is a mascot, just for different agendas, none of which will last a minute past the Judgment Seat.
Author Russell D. Moore goes on,
There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barrabas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah. (emphasis added)
Although I don't watch The View at all, apparently I can't avoid the show, since it produces news-capturing controversy on a regular basis. This time, it is riding the coattails of Jesse Jackson's curious "accidental" (?) negative remarks about Barack Obama, using the n-word. On The View, hostesses Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd defend the use of the n-word, but only among blacks and only those blacks that supposedly know what they're doing with that word. In other words, dirty rappers may or may not fall into that category. Hm. Conversely, no white folk (or any other color) should ever find themselves uttering such a word, because then it becomes an blatant racial slur. The condemnation that follows such an utterance then should be swift and severe. I see. Now you see:
(Credit: YouTube user speakmymind01 for the video post)
What if I should behave the same with racial words used for Asians by more blacks than whites that have ever run across my path? In my lifetime, it was a black child older than I that ever harassed me physically. Should I hold that against all blacks? Should I say then that no black person can use certain words but make an exception for myself and others of my own racial grouping? That isn't just ridiculous, it is repugnant.
There indeed are two worlds. Apparently, Elisabeth Hasselbeck (and I) live in the one that wants to bring unity and compassion to our existence. Whoopi lives in the world that doesn't. Whoopi doesn't just bring attention to racial disparity, she wallows in it. In a society that is sincerely trying to move beyond skin color as a measure of one's personhood and value, Whoopi and Jesse Jackson mean to drag as many as they can to the depths of their anger and refuse to let the nation heal. We cannot have a dawn of a new day if civil rights activists insist on shooting out the sun.
I summon the spirit of Rodney King that begs you to let us all get along. Clean up your mouth. Let go of the nastiness.
