Faith, Context and Blindness

The other night my 8 year old son was reading his “Pathway Reader” a really effective book published by the Anabaptists for the purpose of teaching reading to younger children. My wife, being a professional educator and a reading specialist, chose these books simply because their approach to teaching reading is excellent. We use them in addition to what our kids are learning at school and between them and my wife’s hard work, my sons are both reading at least three years ahead of their grade level. Yes, I’m proud of that…

But I digress…

My son was reading the 8th grade book, which includes a great deal of Christian history and specifically Anabaptist history which, as you may know, is full of stories of martyrdom at the hands of other Christians in Europe back in the 16th and 17th Centuries. He said to me, “Dad, I thought Martin Luther was saved!” I said that he was… or is.

“Why do you ask?” I asked.

He was reading about how there was organized Protestant persecution of the Anabaptists (from an Anabaptist perspective, obviously) and Martin Luther was not being painted in a very positive light.

It raised a very poignant question: How could Christians kill other Christians? Was one group not really saved? Were they both good illustrations of why religion is a problem? Was it an issue of blindness or blind spots? It reminded me of my own, similar questions regarding the execution by drowning of Felix Manz at the hands of Ulrich Zwingli…

I considered Zwingli a great reformer and almost certainly regenerate. And then I read my Christian History book. But does his role in the death of another Christian negate all he did for the Kingdom? Maybe it does…

This very paradigm brings me to today’s post. Essentially, if a Christian or someone else from history who was famous for great things is found to have done something we now see is horrible, do we dismiss that person completely? Does the bad not only outweigh the good as far as our historical assessment, but does it cancel it out completely?

I thought of this in relation to another historical figure of enormous proportion – Stonewall Jackson. Considered a hero by many, both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line, Jackson owned slaves. White people cannot fathom how painful it is for African-Americans to sit in school and hear about heroes like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, etc. knowing that these men, on their best day, saw Black people as less than human and as mere property.

So do we discard these men – the Founding Fathers? Do we discard men like Jackson, who by all accounts was a devout Christian?

Consider these accounts:

"Stonewall" Jackson (1824-1863)

Both in faith and in battle, he would not be moved.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/memorial/features/33h034.html
Thomas Jonathan Jackson was as thorough a Christian as he was a soldier. One writer described him: "He lives by the New Testament and fights by the Old." Orphaned at age 6, Jackson grew up poor and uneducated in foster homes. He entered West Point near the bottom of his class, but he graduated seventeenth. The second lieutenant then served in the Mexican-American war. Following the war, while Jackson was in the occupation force, his superior challenged him to study Christianity. He did, all the while struggling with intestinal problems. He wrote his sister that his digestive problems "were decreed by Heaven's sovereign, as a punishment for my offenses against his Holy Laws and have probably been the instrument of turning me from the path of eternal death, to that of everlasting life." He was baptized at age 25.

Five years later, his young wife and unborn child died, which devastated him but ultimately strengthened his faith. He remarried, and his second wife, Mary Anna Morrison, lived until 1915. Though baptized an Episcopalian, Jackson became a Presbyterian, and he was a noted tither to his home church. The Jackson family held prayers at seven A.M., and even servants were required to attend. Jackson never waited for anyone, not even his wife, to begin prayers. Following breakfast, Jackson would leave for his teaching duties at Virginia Military Institute (where his students called him "Tom Fool Jackson"). Jackson would return home for Bible study, which he did using a commentary.

Jackson believed that slavery was ordained of God. Strict but kind with his own slaves, he asked his wife to teach two slave boys to read. He even organized a Sabbath school for African-Americans in Lexington and taught a class for five or six years. "My Heavenly Father has condescended to use me as an instrument in getting up a large Sabbath school for the Negroes here," he wrote. "He has greatly blessed it."

In April 1861, Jackson prayed with his wife and his cadets, and then left for Richmond to assume his command. At the Battle of Manassas in July 1861, he took a green infantry brigade and turned the tide of the battle. During the fighting, Brigadier General Barnard E. Bee instructed his men: "There stands Jackson like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians!" The name stuck, and "Stonewall" Jackson soon became Lee's right arm in battle. He daringly moved large numbers of men quickly (some say too recklessly). In one sixty-day period, his troops marched over six hundred miles and fought five major battles and numerous skirmishes.

His military prowess earned him the fear of northerners, who regarded him as "a species of demon," "a fallen angel," and "a cold-blooded rascal." But Jackson never forgot where his abilities came from. After Lee commended his performance at Chancellorsville, Stonewall replied: "General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to God." On the battlefield, Stonewall Jackson maintained his devotional life. According to historian John W. Schildt, "His men saw him stumbling and falling over trees and rocks. They almost thought he had too much to drink. That was not the problem. He was praying with his eyes closed while he walked." Following every victory, Jackson ordered his chaplains to hold thanksgiving services. He was known to ride through the camps distributing tracts to his soldiers, and he often took part in his troops' religious meetings. Wrote Henry Kyd Douglas in I Rode with Stonewall: "And when he had reached the place of prayer, lo, the camp was there. Bowed heads, bent knees, hats off, silence! Stonewall Jackson was kneeling to the Lord of Hosts, in prayer for his people!"

Sundays were generally a day of rest. "Deacon Jackson," as his men sometimes called him, hated doing battle on Sunday. Jackson was rigid and stern, and he fought intensely with his subordinates. Some thought he was insane. But despite the way some writers have portrayed him, Jackson was not a fanatic. It's simply that, in one historian's words, his "primary interests" were "Biblical theology and Christian discipleship." Because of this, he could declare: "My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time of my death." After being accidentally shot by his own forces, he died on Sunday, May 10, 1863. "I always wanted to die on a Sunday," he said.

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Jackson
Little as he was known to the white inhabitants of Lexington, Jackson was revered by many of the African-Americans in town, both slaves and free blacks. He was instrumental in the organization in 1855 of Sunday school classes for blacks at the Presbyterian Church. His second wife, Mary Anna Jackson, taught with Jackson, as "he preferred that my labors should be given to the colored children, believing that it was more important and useful to put the strong hand of the Gospel under the ignorant African race, to lift them up." [15]

The pastor, Dr. William Spottswood White, described the relationship between Jackson and his Sunday afternoon students: "In their religious instruction he succeeded wonderfully. His discipline was systematic and firm, but very kind. ... His servants reverenced and loved him, as they would have done a brother or father. ... He was emphatically the black man's friend." He addressed his students by name and they in turn referred to him affectionately as "Marse Major."[16] Jackson's family owned six slaves in the late 1850s. Three (Hetty, Cyrus, and George, a mother and two teenage sons) were received as a wedding present. Another, Albert, requested that Jackson purchase him and allow him to work for his freedom; he was employed as a waiter in one of the Lexington hotels and Jackson rented him to VMI. Amy also requested that Jackson purchase her from a public auction and she served the family as a cook and housekeeper. The sixth, Emma, was a four-year-old orphan with a learning disability, accepted by Jackson from an aged widow and presented to his second wife, Mary Anna, as a welcome-home gift.[17]

After the American Civil War began, he appears to have hired out or sold his slaves. Mary Anna Jackson, in her 1895 memoir, said, "our servants ... without the firm guidance and restraint of their master, the excitement of the times proved so demoralizing to them that he deemed it best for me to provide them with good homes among the permanent residents." [18]

James Robertson wrote about Jackson's view on slavery:[19]
“Jackson neither apologized for nor spoke in favor of the practice of slavery. He probably opposed the institution. Yet in his mind the Creator had sanctioned slavery, and man had no moral right to challenge its existence. The good Christian slaveholder was one who treated his servants fairly and humanely at all times.”

Let me put it another way: A friend of mine was interacting with me on the issue of abortion during the 2008 campaign and indirectly agreed with me that Abortion is genocide. He stated it this way: “Abortion amounts to genocide.” In other words, the abortion doctor or the pro-choice people are not setting out to kill babies, though that is in fact what happens.

I understood his meaning, and he unknowingly helped me clarify my thoughts on Zwingli, Jackson, and other historical figures. They saw themselves as doing something good, even though in fact it was not something good.

The vast majority of abortionists and pro-choice activists really, truly do not see abortion as murder. That’s why it does not help us to call them “pro-death” any more than it does for them to call us “anti-choice” (or misogynists or bigots or whatever else they like to call us). They truly believe a baby is no more that a piece of tissue. They are wrong. So while they are still murderers in the sense that their direct, intentional actions lead to the death of other human beings, they are not murderers in the same way that Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler were.

But my question is, does their understanding of what they’re doing (or lack of it) mitigate how we assess them? The same principle and question apply to people like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and yes, Stonewall Jackson.

If you view the world through the lenses they had, just like if you view abortion through the abortionist’s lens, it helps you see things a bit clearer. Jackson, for instance, grew up in a world where slavery was a way of life and had been for hundreds of years. It was “normal”. In spite of this, he broke the law to teach his slaves to read and to evangelize them. He loved them and they loved him. How should that impact the way we look at him? Slavery and its long-lingering effects have been beyond horrific. Can there be any "buts"?

Think of Zwingli. His convictions were that the Anabaptists were imperiling the souls of innocent children. He was wrong. But if you could stand in his shoes, in a mindset that was just emerging from Medieval thought where everything was absolutely absolute, might you do the same thing? Or at least feel the same way?

Of course, I’m with the Anabaptists. They got it right – the Bible clearly portrays believer’s baptism if it portrays anything, and the Anabaptists were acting on their biblical convictions. They were truly martyrs. But looking through different lenses helps me see how one Christian could kill another, unjustified as it was. They were blinded by culture, bad theology and Medieval thought.

The list could go on… Luther, Thomas Jefferson, some of the Popes. You see what I mean. I feel we cannot dismiss historical figures because we now see certain things so much clearer.

Did they sin? YES! Will they answer to God? God is both just and impartial. They will certainly answer. But my guess is that the righteous Judge will take things into account that we cannot know. We may be surprised at some verdicts that are handed down on that Day.

Q: What do you think of historical figures that are regarded as heroes by many but got some things inexplicably and terribly wrong? Do we dismiss them in our “superior” moral perspective? Do we blindly praise their accolades while ignoring their evil? How do we process this?

Black Men

Living in the city all my life and ministering alongside and among minorities for most of my adult life, I have come face to face with the enormous problems in the Black Community and have had to wrestle, as a White man, with all the questions and implications of where things are and how they got that way. I posted about this some time ago.

I have heard all the theories, seen many attempts to "fix" the problem, engaged in the arguments and debates, and at some small level actually put my hand to the plow for some kind of work toward a solution. Anyone ministering in the city has witnessed the parade of preachers and politicians and social engineers who hurl their efforts, seemingly in vain, at the behemoth of brokenness.

I think we're missing something.

The liberals tend to polarize toward a position that minorities, especially African Americans, are consummate victims. Racism, bigotry, poverty and the lack of education that results from them are the adequate explanation for the current mess. Conservatives polarize to the opposite side: Blacks are making excuses and are completely responsible for their present situation. "If they'd just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, everything would be OK" seems to be much of the conservative mantra.

In real life, it's much more complex than either of those positions. No thinking person can spend an hour in the 'hood and come to any conclusion other than that institutional racism has done devastating damage after 300 years. By the same token, I firmly believe that anyone who is objective cannot deny the role that individual and corporate responsibility play in the overall health of a community, and that these very things have become marginalized in large swaths of the Black Community - by Black people.

With all this in mind, I got this e-mail today. It was birthed in the Black community and contains the seeds, I believe, for real change. See what you think.

The Silent Genocide:Facts about the Devastating Plight of Black Males in America

Only strong, organized, committed and courageous Black parents can stop this genocide. Not the police. Not teachers. Not schools. Not preachers. Not elected officials. Not social service agencies. Join us on Saturday, January 17, 2009, to do the work of Black parents. Celebrate Dr. King's Birthday by doing Dr. King's work!


Facts about the Devastating Plight of
Black Males in America*

Education/Family:
In Chicago, only three out of 100 Black boys earn a college degree by age 25.
In 2006, only 37% of Black males graduated from high school in Chicago (near the U.S. average for Black males); only 19% graduated in Indianapolis and 20% in Detroit.
Just 22 % of Black males who began at a four-year college graduated within six years.
69% of Black children in America cannot read at grade level by the 4th grade, compared with 29% of White 4th-grade children.
The average 17-year-old Black student has the reading and math scores of the average 14- year-old White student.
7% of Black 8th-graders perform math at grade level.
67% of Black children are born out of wedlock.

Employment/Economics:
In Illinois, 47% of all non-institutionalized Black men do not have a job.
In New York City in 2003, only 51.8% of Black men ages 16 to 64 were employed vs. 75.7% of White men and 65.7% of Latino men.
At comparable educational levels, Black men earn 67% of what White men earn.
White males with a high-school diploma are just as likely to have a job and tend to earn just as much as Black males with college degrees.
Blacks make up only 3.2% of lawyers, 3% of doctors and less than 1% of architects in America. Many of these are Black women.
53% of Black men aged 25 to 34 are either unemployed or earn too little to lift a family of four from poverty.
Nationally, 72% of Black high-school dropouts are unemployed.
Black America lost between $72 billion and $96 billion in the recent mortgage fiasco.
The median net worth of a Black family in America is $6,100 vs. $67,000 for a White family.
White men with prison records receive more offers for entry-level jobs in New York City than Black men with identical records (and White men with a prison record are offered jobs just as often - if not more so - than Black men who have never been arrested).

Incarceration/Crime:
Murders of Black males between the ages of 14- and 17-years old rose by 40% between 2000 and 2007. During the same period, murders committed by Black males between the ages of 14- and 17-years old also rose by 38%.
In 2001, the chances of going to prison were highest among Black males (32.2%) and Hispanic males (17.2%) and lowest among White males (5.9%).
Blacks account for only 12% of the U.S. population, but 44% of all prisoners in the United States.
Blacks, who comprise only 12% of the population and account for about 13% of drug users, constitute 35% of all arrests for drug possession, 55% of all convictions on those charges, and 74% of all those sentenced to prison for possession.
In at least 15 states, Black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates ranging from 20 to 57 times those of White men.
In 2003, 1,172 Black children and teenagers in the United States died from gunfire.
One in nine Black men between the ages of 20- to 34-years old is incarcerated and one in 15 Black men over 18-years old is incarcerated.
More Black children died in Chicago from gunfire in 2008 than Chicago soldiers died in Iraq.
1.46 million Black men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote because of felony convictions.

Only strong, organized, committed and courageous Black parents can stop this genocide. Not the police. Not teachers. Not schools. Not preachers. Not elected officials. Not social service agencies. Join us on Saturday, January 17, 2009, to do the work of Black parents.

Phillip Jackson will speak on these statistics and solutions to these issues on Saturday, JANUARY 17, 2009, on WVON radio on the Kendall Moore Show. You may visit www.WVON.com and click on "Streaming 24/7 WVON" to hear this show at 5:00 pm eastern time, 4:00 pm central time, 3:00 pm mountain time and 2:00 pm pacific time.

* These statistics were compiled from various sources by The Black Star Project. You may email us to request sources at blackstar1000@ameritech.net. To join the movement to save young Black men and to educate Black children, call us at 773.285.9600, email us at blackstar1000@ameritech.net or visit our website at www.blackstarproject.org.

Across the United States, the educational, social and economic outcomes for most Black children are a catastrophe! In the new global educational and economic order, many, if not most, Black American children cannot compete. If ever there were reasons for Black parents to take action, few are more compelling than the ones listed above:
Black parents are responsible for the well-being of Black children. Not the police. Not teachers. Not schools. Not preachers. Not elected officials. Not social service agencies. Black parents must hold the police, teachers, schools, preachers, elected officials, and social service agencies accountable for their actions to support the well-being of Black children.

We will only solve the problems of Black youth to the degree that we create strong, empowered and engaged parents for Black children. Our actions, or inactions, will determine the future of our race. Please join Black parents across America who know that if we are not organized, our children will not be recognized. If we do not speak up, Black children will have no voice. Black parents must advocate as well as educate. We must take responsibility for the education of our children. We will work in our homes, with our families, with our communities, with our schools and with our government to guarantee the proper and successful education of Black children. Passive parental involvement is not enough. Black parents must become active co-managers of our children's destiny. We must become the engineers of their success. We must and will actively participate in every aspect of their lives. Please join the Black Star Project's League of Black Parents and commit to a 90-minute meeting, one day a month, for the sake of your child and the future of our race. By joining the League of Black Parents, you will also join our community PTA chapter so that we can take advantage of existing resources.

Race, Hope and Obama

What I'm about to post may seem a little contradictory in some minds to what I have been saying about Obama so far. Especially if your thinking is primarily non-urban conservative, White and Evangelical in nature.

While I have stated my disappointment with Obama the man in no uncertain terms, I know that his victory has a great deal of good attached to it, and is very meaningful for minorities. It is particularly meaningful for African Americans - even ones who passionately voted for McCain and who oppose the political philosophy of Obama. It should be meaningful to anyone who cares about people or race or the work of Jesus in this world.

This creates a tension that those of us who are conservative must all live in, if we are to be responsible: We celebrate the accomplishment but not the man who accomplished it. We celebrate the historical moment even if the politics involved are abhorrent to us. A personal tension for me is that I really believe it was morally wrong to vote for Obama. I think that such a vote amounts to sanctioning his outspoken advocacy of abortion rights. Yet I feel compelled to stick up for Christians of color who voted for him.

But there is something else we must understand: What this means to those who have historically been disenfranchised. It is simply huge.

The post is from my friend and fellow blogger Shlomo, who is an African-American Jewish Christian. While I may not see things exactly the way he does, he has profound points, and he articulates the heart of so many African-Americans. Something it would pay all of us White Evangelicals to strive to understand.

Shlomo on Race, Hope and Obama

Wednesday, November 05, 2008
B"H
We Have Been Slightly Healed

Even though I don't hold to the notion that President-elect Obama will solve all of our racial ills, I do believe that merely by becoming our nation's next President he has already set in motion a course of events that will aid in our healing. The first level of healing that I believe we will experience is a restoration of hope.

Prior to this election, I don't think that most Afro-Americans actually believed they had a real stake in the American Dream. Surely there was real and sustained progress today in comparison to the horrors of the Jim Crow Era and legalized segregation and social exclusion. Surely there were examples of numerous Blacks who were now rich and famous, but this was not by any means the same Dream which most Americans aspired towards. Only one in ten thousand of the youth on the local basketball courts will make it to the NBA, and even fewer still will land a recording contract and earn fame and riches as a rap artist or a music legend. The American Dream that says, if you work hard and remain dedicated to the principles of self-sacrifice and deferred gratification, then no opportunity or goal shall long remain beyond your grasp. "You can do and be anything you want," is the standard refrain which usually fell on deaf ears.

With Barack Obama's success I believe that the Afro-American imagination has been slightly healed and started back on the path towards restoration and healthy hopefulness. There is a lot more work that remains yet undone. Past hurts and injuries will not simply go away by ignoring them. The prior policy of benign neglect has not been helpful, but rather has strengthened our sense of wounded self esteem and fortified our identity as perpetual victims. When we were faced with not only individual personal attacks, but also a systemic, and therefore institutional, assault via a string of legal decrees, we began to lose hope and our individual and collective psyche was damaged. The most potent aspect of this psychological wounding is known as internalized oppression (the situation where a victim agrees with his/her oppressor and sees himself as of lesser worth or value as a person).

Merely by acknowledging our former state of injury we are affirmed as real persons and thusly a slight healing can begin. In order to progress further we will need to find a means of remedy for the harm inflicted, but our proper starting place lies in facing the past honestly. Barack Obama has repeatedly stated that our national legacy of racial exclusion must be addressed and thus he speaks words of hope to the masses of black and other minorities. The hope is first hinted at by the clear statement that our Nation’s past actions were wrong and therefore need to be acknowledged as such. Such an acknowledgment would give a sense of dignity and worth to black people who were previously regarded as either 3/5 of a person or else mere candidates for chattel slavery (see the US Constitution Article One Section 2 and The Supreme Court Decision in the Dred Scott Case).

The second step on the path to a state of National Health and Wholeness is the forming of new partnerships, not built on the partisan divisions of the past, but rather on the realities of the present. E pluribus Unum – out of many, one (people). Our National unity is presumed as the backbone and foundation of our ideals. Although there are many different ethnic groups represented in our country, we must no longer see ourselves as Red States and Blue States, as White Americans and Black Americans, as Latino, Asian or Native Americans. Instead we must recognize that we are the United States of America. I believe that Barack’s success gives hope and substance to this new/renewed vision of modern America. It’s not the America that has been, but rather the America that should be. I feel that President-elect Obama has created the possibility for our country to have a new and honest conversation about race, and other such divisive issues, and to therefore move forward into the future together, as partners rather than as partisans.

Blessings,
Shlomo

http://www.xanga.com/Ps29v11