REPENTANCE, RECONCILIATION, AND BAPTISTS—
RE-IMAGINING AND EMBRACING THE SUBVERSIVE GOSPEL OF
JESUS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
©Wendell
Griffen, 2015
2015 T. B.
MASTON LECTURE
LOGDSON SEMINARY
HARDIN-SIMMONS
UNIVERSITY
ABILENE, TEXAS
MARCH 24, 2015
Spirit of the
Living God, fall fresh on me,
Spirit of the
Living God, fall fresh on me.
Break me, melt
me, mold me, fill me.
Spirit of the
Living God, fall fresh on me.[1]
Dean
Williford, learned faculty, faithful staff members, and aspiring students of
the learning community known as Logsdon Seminary, reverend clergy and laity,
sisters and brothers.
I dare not open this final submission
in the two-part lecture series you have graciously allowed me to present
without expressing my gratitude for the invitation you extended and the
hospitality you have lavished on me.
I was born September 23, 1952, and grew
up in rural southwest Arkansas. That history
places me in the last generation of black people with firsthand experience of
the version of racial apartheid in the United States known as Jim Crow
segregation. My now transcended parents
and the other elders who nurtured my faith as I grew up in the Harrison Chapel Baptist
Church of Antoine, Arkansas constantly told me and other children of our
community that God would open doors and make a way. They knew they could not spare us from the
bitter taste and gnawing wounds of racism.
But they lived with and inspired in us a hope stronger than the oppression
that threatened to wound and kill our bodies, enslave our minds, and cripple
our spirits. Your invitation and
hospitality confirms that hope. Thank
you for confirming the hope Daddy, Momma, and my childhood elders faithfully affirmed
and inspired me to claim as my own.
Today I will speak about Repentance,
Reconciliation, and Baptists—Re-Imagining and Embracing the Subversive Gospel
of Jesus in the 21st Century.
I intend to offer suggestions for Baptist engagement—denominationally,
academically, congregationally, and personally, concerning social ethics
drawing on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for a “radical revolution of
values. And I will suggest that
re-imagining and embracing the gospel of Jesus in this “subversive” way,
Baptist followers of Jesus will be inspired and empowered to confront racism,
sexism, classism, imperialism, militarism, and techno-centrism. While I recognize these are prevalent and
entrenched causes of oppression today, I will conclude by affirming agreement
with South African theologian Allan Aubrey Boesak, my dear friend and brother,
and “dare” to “speak of hope.”[2]
A year to the day before he was
assassinated Martin Luther King, a Baptist pastor, publicly defined the war in
Vietnam as a civil rights issue on April 4, 1967 in an address titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence to a meeting of
Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam at Riverside Church in New York
City. In doing so, Dr. King uttered the
following prescient statement.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a
far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering
reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy-and laymen-concerned
committees for the next generation. … In 1957 a sensitive American official
overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a
world revolution. … I am convinced that
if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must
undergo a radical revolution of values.
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented"
society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets
of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon
cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present
policies. On the one hand we are called
to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial
act. One day we must come to see that
the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be
constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin
to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which
produces beggars needs restructuring. A
true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of
poverty and wealth. With righteous
indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the
West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to
take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the
countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed
gentry of Latin America and say:
"This is not just." … A
true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not
just." This business of burning
human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and
widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally
humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically
handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom,
justice and love. A nation that
continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on
programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful
nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish,
to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will
take precedence over the pursuit of war.
There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with
bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.[3]
Public reaction to King's message was
swift and hostile. A number of editorial
writers attacked him for connecting Vietnam to the civil rights movement. The New
York Times issued an editorial claiming that King had damaged the peace
movement as well as the civil rights movement.
Life magazine assailed the
speech as "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio
Hanoi." The Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American publication, charged King
with "tragically misleading" black people. And at the White House, President Lyndon
Johnson was quoted as saying, "What is that goddamned nigger preacher
doing to me? We gave him the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, we gave him the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we gave him the
War on Poverty. What more does he
want?"[4]
Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee exactly one
year after he delivered the speech written by Dr. Vincent Harding, a black
historian and trusted friend. Despite
the hostile reaction to the speech, Martin King and Vincent Harding never disavowed
it. But Dr. Harding, who passed away
last year, always believed the speech was the reason King was murdered. “It was precisely one year to the day after
this speech that that bullet which had been chasing him for a long time finally
caught up with him,” Dr. Harding said in a 2010 interview. “And I am convinced
that that bullet had something to do with that speech. And over the years,
that’s been quite a struggle for me.”[5]
Nine years after his death Dr. King was
posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by another Baptist from
Georgia, President Jimmy Carter. A
federal holiday has been established to honor his birthday. His statue has been placed in Washington, DC. Numerous cities and towns have re-named major
traffic arteries for him in the United States, and he is revered throughout the
world as one of the most prophetic souls of the twentieth century, if not the
modern era. When President Barack Obama took
the oath of office to begin his second term, he placed his hand on a Bible that
belonged to Dr. King and alluded to him during his inaugural address.
Yet the veneration of Dr. King has not
included any significant or serious effort by U.S. policymakers, social
commentators, and moral leaders—including Baptist clergy, laity, associations,
denominations, and educational institutions—to embrace the "radical
revolution of values" King called for in A Time to Break Silence. The
"giant triplets" of racism, militarism, and materialism have not been
confronted. The U.S. currently devotes
more of its budget on national defense and homeland security than on educating
children, fighting disease, feeding the hungry and alleviating poverty.
We may never learn the true financial
cost of the tragic military misadventure known as the war in Iraq. As the tenth anniversary of the war in Iraq
approached Reuters reported on a study by a team of academicians which tallied
the cost of the war at $1.7 trillion, a figure that did not include $490
billion owed to Iraqi war veterans for disability benefits. The study projected that expenses related to
the war in Iraq could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades.[6]
At the same time U.S. leaders—including
Baptist and other religious leaders—are venerating King's memory they have ignored
or rejected his call for the United States to use its wealth and prestige to
lead the world in a radical revolution of values that rejects war as the
preferred means of resolving differences.
President Barack Obama could not have been guided by the vision of the
Baptist preacher whose Bible he used for his second inauguration. Although President Obama could not persuade
U.S. officials and global allies to embrace a military response to Syria the
way President George W. Bush did concerning Iraq, U.S. militarism continues to
cast an ominous cloud over the world and hinder efforts to address glaring
problems at home.
Jonathan Tran's 2012 essay about the war
policies of the Obama administration reminds us that President Obama has
articulated what Tran termed "a theology of war."[7] It is more than sadly ironic that the first
African-American to hold the office of President of the United States currently
oversees a policy of killing American citizens by using armed drones. The militarism King criticized is also
evident in the virulent response by President Obama and other U.S. leaders to
the disclosures by Edward Snowden that the U.S. engaged in wholesale spying on
American citizens and others throughout the world—including the leaders of
nations considered its allies.
Forty-four years after Dr. King was
murdered by a gunman the nation witnessed the massacre of twenty children and
six adult staff members of Sandy Hook Elementary School in New Town,
Connecticut by a gunman who had already killed his mother and later killed
himself. The militarism that drives U.S.
global policy seems to have turned on our own children. The response to the Sandy Hook massacre has
not been, however, to confront the giant of militarism. Firearm manufacturers and their lobbyists,
like defense contractors and their lobbyists, now hold more influence than ever
before.
Sadly, devotion to corporate
profit-making continues to hamstring efforts to make our society and the world
safe. Thus, militarism has joined forces
with materialism so much that American schools run the serious risk of becoming
fortresses. We somehow are blind to the stark
moral and ethical contradiction of singing Let
There Be Peace on Earth while arming school teachers and cheering people
who openly brandish handguns.
The moral and ethical disconnect
between the rhetoric used to venerate Dr. King and the persistence of
entrenched racism in American life continues to afflict us. Policymakers refuse to acknowledge the plain
truth that the "law and order," and "war on drugs" mantra used
by every U.S. president since Lyndon Johnson has actually produced the mass
incarceration of millions of people who are disproportionately persons of
color. Thanks to the not always covert
racism of “law and order” and “war on drugs” enthusiasts, more black people are
politically and socially disenfranchised in the United States in 2015 than were
enslaved in 1850, ten years before the Civil War began, a fact Professor
Michelle Alexander has forcefully presented in her 2010 book titled The New
Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age
of Color-Blindness.[8]
Oppressive law enforcement policies that
gave rise to civil unrest during Dr. King's lifetime still operate against
people who are black and brown. Six years
after President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder became the first black
persons to hold their respective offices, the terrorism of racial profiling is as
prevalent today as when Dr. King was assassinated, if not more so.
Insensitivity to the insidious racism
that poisoned the United States when Dr. King was killed has not changed. Trayvon Martin,[9]
Oscar Grant,[10]
and Amadou Diallo,[11]
like Martin Luther King, Jr., were black men shot to death by people who
claimed the moral and legal right to take their lives. The racism and militarism Dr. King deplored
in 1967 were major factors in causing the August 9, 2014 death of Michael
Brown, Jr., an 18-year old un-armed black teenager shot to death by Darren
Wilson, formerly of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department. That racism and militarism also accounted for
the killing of Eric Garner, who was choked to death on July 23, 2014 by Daniel
Pantaleo while other New York Police Department officers pressed their knees on
Garner’s torso despite his repeated statement “I can’t breathe!” Plainly, the United States has not become more
informed about or responsive to racial injustice since Dr. King died. We have simply militarized the injustice in
brazen ways.
We have not confronted or corralled the giant triplets of
militarism, materialism, and racism. Rather,
we have added sexism (including homophobia), classism, and techno-centrism to
the mix. The triplets are sextuplets now!
The
painful truth is that political, commercial, and even religious leaders are
comfortable bestowing platitudes on Dr. King's life and ministry while actively
and deliberately disregarding his warnings and call for repentance. Our leaders play on (some would say pimp) Dr.
King's moral authority for their own benefit at every opportunity. However, they question the relevancy of his
teachings and warnings for our time.
Such contradictory behavior amounts to what I have called
“re-assassination” of Dr. King. King’s
ministry and message is being re-murdered by drone warfare, NSA surveillance, a
militarized law enforcement culture, and our support for regimes that use
military force to oppress minority populations in this society and elsewhere in
the world (militarism), and by the half-truths and outright falsehoods uttered to
defend those actions.
Dr.
King is re-murdered by fiscal policies that promote the corporate interests of
investment bankers over the lives and fortunes of workers, homeowners,
retirees, and needy people (materialism).
King's
dedication to attack and eliminate the causes of systemic poverty is currently
being re-assassinated by policies that widen the glaring income inequality
between the super-wealthy and the poor (classism).
King's
righteous indignation against injustice is murdered by proponents of the
so-called "prosperity gospel" and those who use religion as a weapon to
deny civil rights to people who are homosexuals, poor, immigrants, women, or
otherwise vulnerable (racism and sexism).
King’s
call for a radical revolution of values is murdered when we profess to honor
his memory while bowing to the techno-centrism responsible for poisoning
community aquifers through fracking for natural gas.
When
we honestly assesses the mood and conduct of U.S. leaders and the public at
large—including Baptist and other religious leaders—since Dr. King was
assassinated in Memphis, it becomes clear that we have not chosen to embrace
the "radical revolution of values" Dr. King articulated. We have not weakened the giant triplets of
racism, militarism, and materialism. We
have nourished, bred, and multiplied them.
Religious leaders such as Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. who have
followed Dr. King's model of prophetic criticism and congregational leadership have
been rejected and condemned in much the same way President Johnson responded to
Dr. King.
Dr.
King was correct when he observed, "America, the richest and most powerful
nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish,
to prevent us from reordering our priorities…" Sadly, we seem unable to realize that by
rejecting his call to reorder our values and priorities—in other words to
engage in the Biblical imperative of repentance—we not only
"re-assassinate" King. By
rejecting his values while pretending to venerate King as our greatest prophet
we are destroying ourselves and risk
forfeiting any moral authority we claim as agents for peace, justice, and truth
in the world. Sooner or later, those who
feed a death wish find a way to destroy themselves.
Baptists
have a moral and ethical obligation to re-imagine and embrace the subversive
gospel of Jesus Christ in the prophetic way King did. Our pastors and Christian educators must lead
the way. Our congregations,
associations, state conventions, and other fellowships must lovingly and
honestly embrace our calling from God to be prophetic agents of divine love,
truth, and justice about the wickedness of racism, sexism, materialism,
classism, militarism, and techno-centrism.
I am periodically moved to re-visit
Ezekiel 2:1-7 and be reminded what God has called me to be and do. I invite you to also ponder our ministry
efforts as scholars, students, pastors, denominational leaders from that
perspective.
He said to me: “O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will
speak with you.” And when he spoke to
me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to
me. He said to me, “Mortal, I am sending
you to the people of Israel, a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me;
they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the
LORD God.’ Whether they hear or refuse
to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been
a prophet among them. And you,
mortal, do not be afraid of them, and do not be afraid of their words, though
briars and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions; do not be afraid
of their words, and do not be dismayed by their looks, for they are a
rebellious house. You shall speak my
words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear; for they are a rebellious
house.”
The
issue now is whether we will be prophets of God’s love, truth, and justice to
the “rebellious house” where racism, sexism, materialism, militarism, classism,
and techno-centrism rule with oppressive force.
Are the men and women who answer to the name of Jesus prophets calling
“the rebellious house” to repentance?
Are we, like King, pleading with our society and world to embrace “a
radical revolution of values” away from what now are giant sextuplets of
injustice? Are we nurturing this
prophetic consciousness and determination in congregations, associations, and
other Baptist fellowships? Or are we
unwilling to take up the prophetic cross of Jesus Christ because we’re afraid
doing so means we must somehow suffer and die?
We have been sent to a “rebellious
house” to be prophets for God, not counselors to or cheerleaders for the
principalities and powers responsible for sextuplets of racism, sexism,
materialism, militarism, classism, and techno-centrism.
We are called by God to be prophets to
the “rebellious house” of principalities and powers that believe in profit regardless
to the cost to the creation or the health and safety of workers and
communities.
We called by God to be prophets to the “rebellious
house” where capitalism is worshipped above God and the mindset of Walmart is preferred
to the Spirit of Jesus.
Yet,
prophets are not only God’s voices of holy protest to “the rebellious
house.” Prophets are God’s agents of
hope! To borrow from South African
theologian Allan Boesak I now ask if we dare to speak of hope in the face of
the principalities and powers responsible for racism, materialism, militarism,
sexism, classism, and techno-centrism.
Yes! We must dare to speak of Hope even while
engaging in prophetic protest about the systemic causes of injustice and
suffering because of the gospel of Jesus.
We
must dare to speak of Hope, but only while confronting and suffering, with God,
the wounds of racism, materialism, militarism, sexism, classism, and
techno-centrism.
Allan Boesak calls us to dare to speak
of Hope, but only if we speak of Anger and Courage, what Saint Augustine of
Hippo called the beautiful daughters of Hope.
“Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain
the same.”[12]
We must dare to speak of Hope and
struggle and grieve with God against the principalities and powers responsible
for the giant sextuplets.[13]
We must dare to speak of Hope, but not
without prophetically calling our society and the rest of the world to turn
from our addiction to violence and war by embracing peace.[14]
We must dare to speak of Hope,
audaciously, despite the fragility of our faith.[15]
We must dare to speak of Hope and dream,
to borrow from the words of Nelson Mandela, “that there has emerged a cadre of
leaders in my country and region, on my continent and in the world, which will
not allow that any should be denied their freedom, as we were; that any should
be turned into refugees, as we were; that any should be condemned to go hungry,
as we were; that any should be stripped of their human dignity, as we were.[16]
We are prophets called by God to
confront our “rebellious house” with the moral necessity and ethical imperative
of repentance. But we are not doomsayers. We are prophets of the gospel of Jesus, a
gospel that does not stop with Calvary and Good Friday.
We are prophets of the gospel of Jesus,
a gospel that does not pretend to be blind about evil yet will not flinch when
confronting it. We are prophets of
Jesus, the Resurrected One.
We are prophets of Resurrection Hope! We are prophets of Resurrection Joy! We are prophets of the way-making and empire
shaking God! We are prophets of the
extravagantly merciful God! We are
prophets of Hope because God loved us, saved us, and called us through the life
of Jesus Christ.
We are prophets of Hope. Shameless Hope! Audacious Hope! Fragile Hope!
Angry Hope! Courageous Hope! Wounded Hope!
Dreaming Hope!
God has called us. God sends us. God is counting on us to make a prophetic and
hopeful difference in God’s world as followers of Jesus Christ by the power of
the Holy Spirit!
Amen.
[1]
Daniel Iverson (1890-1977), Spirit of the
Living God, African American Heritage Hymnal, #320 (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2001).
[2]
Allan Aubrey Boesak, Dare We Speak of
Hope? Searching for a Language of Life
in Faith and Politics, (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2014).
[3]
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond
Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence is
among the writings of Dr. King compiled by James Melvin Washington and
published under the title A Testament of
Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin
Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1986).
[4]
For reactions to Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence see
http://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/martin-luther-king-jr-beyond-vietnam-a-time-to-break-silence/impact.
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/us/vincent-harding-civil-rights-author-and-associate-of-dr-king-dies-at-82.html?_r=0
[6] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314.
[7]
JONATHAN TRAN, Obama, War, and
Christianity: The Audacity of Hope and
the Violence of Peace (Christian Ethics Today, Spring 2012).
[8]
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim
Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Color-Blindness, (New York: The New Press, 2010).
[9]
Trayvon Martin was a seventeen year-old black male who was shot to death by
George Zimmerman as Martin was returning to his father's residence from a
convenience store in Sanford, Florida the night of February 26, 2012. Zimmerman was acquitted by a jury on the charge
of manslaughter.
[10]
Oscar Grant III was fatally shot in the back at point blank range by Bay Area
Rapid Transit (BART) police officer Johannes Mehserle during the early hours of
New Year’s Day of 2009 in Oakland, California.
Mehserle was eventually convicted by a jury of involuntary manslaughter,
served two years in the Los Angeles County Jail, minus time served.
[11]
Amadou Diallo was a twenty-three year old Guinean immigrant who was shot and
killed by four New York City Police officers who fired 41 bullets, 19 of which
struck Diallo, outside his apartment in the Bronx. All four police officers were later acquitted
of criminal charges related to Diallo's death.
[12] See Allan Boesak, Dare We Speak of Hope?
Chapter 2.
[13] Dare We Speak of Hope? Chapter 3.
[14] Dare We Speak of Hope? Chapter 4.
[15] Dare We Speak of Hope? Chapter 5.
[16] Dare We Speak of Hope? Chapter 6.
