A MALICIOUS SPECTACLE OF MORAL, POLITICAL, AND HUMANITARIAN EVIL

I am, like many others, vexed about the partial shutdown of the federal government.  The following essay that is published by Baptist News Global is an attempt to express my perspective.  I invite you to ponder and share it with others.

https://baptistnews.com/article/trumps-shutdown-a-malicious-spectacle-of-moral-political-and-humanitarian-failure/#.XD9prlxKjIU

Trump’s shutdown: a malicious spectacle of moral, political and humanitarian failure

OPINIONWENDELL GRIFFEN  |  JANUARY 16, 2019

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The federal shutdown that politicians and political pundits speculated about more than a month ago is our present reality. Minutes of shutdown turned into hours. Hours of shutdown turned into days. Days of shutdown turned into weeks. Unless things change, weeks of shutdown will turn into months until 2019 will be remembered as the year of the shutdown.

The workers and families affected by the shutdown are terrified hostages. They are terrified about not having income for basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, childcare and transportation. They are terrified about being helpless. They are not terrified because the United States has been attacked by a foreign adversary. Their dreadful and senseless suffering is caused by a domestic actor.

President Donald Trump intentionally laid siege to parts of the federal government because of his delusion that a wall along the southern border of the United States will stop desperate immigrants from seeking asylum in this society from the violence of war, cruelty and hopelessness in their homelands. Federal workers and their families, along with many others whose work is related to government contracts, are suffering because Trump decided to shutter federal agencies rather than endorse bipartisan legislative solutions for funding and reopening the government while leaving deliberations on his wall to another day.

The rest of us know that our American neighbors are suffering. We know that public safety is threatened. And we know the shutdown is a massive and creeping spectacle of moral, political and humanitarian failure perpetuated by a homegrown threat to our neighbors and national security.

“The shutdown is a massive and creeping spectacle of moral, political and humanitarian failure.”

The shutdown is the longest in U.S. history, but timing, not duration, is the most profound feature that makes it historic. As Bill Leonard observed in a recent commentary for Baptist News Global, the first ship delivered African slaves to this country in August of 1619 – 400 years ago this year. Trump’s counselors and cheerleaders appear unable or unwilling to recognize that defrauding workers in 2019 is the latest instance of the slavery, wage theft and other abuse of workers that American society has excused, rationalized and even legalized for the past four centuries. The delusion created by free market fundamentalism, racism, white supremacy, white religious nationalism and xenophobia was the seminal, immoral force that led to the birth of the United States. That seminal force eventually produced the Civil War, the deadliest armed conflict in U.S. history, when more than 600,000 lives were lost.

No foreign power threatens the 800,000 workers furloughed or forced to work without pay because of Trump’s demand for a monument to his racism and xenophobia. Our neighbors are not threatened by a hurricane, earthquake, drought or other natural calamity. Instead, the fate and futures of our neighbors, the security of our nation and the legitimacy of our claim to be a force for morality in the world has been taken hostage by an autocratic president (cheered and enabled by political and religious sycophants) who has demonstrated a lifelong penchant for immorality and inhumanity.

Trump’s weaponized shutdown is its own form of domestic terrorism. The shutdown has besieged the lives, fortunes and hopes of people in our country the same way an armed terrorist would control the lives, fortunes and hopes of hostages.

“Trump’s weaponized shutdown is its own form of domestic terrorism.”

It is tempting to believe that time will tell how and when politicians in the U.S. Senate show they love God and their neighbors enough to condemn the federal shutdown and its unnecessary pain as a malicious stunt by a narcissistic maniac, demand that Trump abandon his border wall delusion, and end the terror our neighbors suffer from the shutdown. But we should resist the temptation to believe “time will tell.”

In his prophetic Letter from Birmingham City Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. declared that this temptation stems from “the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills…. [H]uman progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability…[but] comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of [people] willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation” (emphasis mine).

As Baptist theologian Molly T. Marshall has noted, prophetic people – not time – will determine when and how the federal shutdown ends with its malicious spectacle of massive and creeping moral, political and humanitarian impotence. God and our suffering neighbors are not watching clocks and calendars. God and our suffering neighbors are watching, waiting and yearning for determined and courageous people of prophetic character.

Are they watching and waiting for us?

A MESSAGE TO WHITE RELIGIONISTS ABOUT RACIAL RECONCILIATION

Last week Baptist News Global published an essay I wrote.  I hope you'll take a few minutes to read and ponder it.  Here's a link to it in case you'd like to share it with others.

https://baptistnews.com/article/white-baptists-and-racial-reconciliation-theres-a-difference-between-lament-and-repentance/#.XDRnb1xKjIX.

White Baptists and racial reconciliation: there’s a difference between lament and repentance

OPINIONWENDELL GRIFFEN  |  JANUARY 3, 2019

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Last month Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), the oldest and most prestigious theological institution affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention – the largest Baptist body in the United States – issued a document titled “Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.” The 71-page report is a concise history written by current and former SBTS faculty members about how racism, slavery and other aspects of racial injustice were accepted, practiced, excused, championed and otherwise tolerated from the seminary’s founding in 1859 through the civil rights era of the mid-1960s.

Reactions have been mixed, as one might expect. A sense of the varied responses to the report is apparent from news accounts such as “Slavery and racism reports stirs media flurry” (Baptist Press), “Report laments history of slavery and racism at SBC seminary” (Baptist News Global) and “Southern Baptist seminary confronts history of slaveholding and deep racism” (NPR). BNG also published an opinion article by university professor Susan Shaw, “The irony of a Southern Baptist seminary’s report on slavery and racism,” and a related commentary by Bill Leonard, “American racism, 1619-2019: exorcism of this demon is needed – now.”

My immediate reaction after reading the report was that SBTS appears more interested in – and hopes to be commended for – detailing its sinfulness about racial justice than repenting from it. Like others, I noticed how the report conveniently and inexcusably fails to include the last half century of racism practiced by school’s faculty, trustees and other stakeholders. Surely the distinguished authors of the report could have included details of that injustice if they intended to produce an honest and complete history.

“The report conveniently and inexcusably fails to include the last half century of racism practiced by school’s faculty, trustees and other stakeholders.”

However, doing so would have required them to speak truth to and about people who have wielded power at and over SBTS during its more recent past, and currently.  Whatever the authors of the report and current SBTS President Albert Mohler may think otherwise, some people (myself included) know the difference between a full confession and an announcement that deliberately omits mention of the most recent instances of racism, white supremacy and white religious nationalism practiced and perpetrated at and by SBTS.

Furthermore, not a sentence can be found by Mohler (who commissioned the report and wrote its introduction) or anyone else among the seminary’s power structure indicating that SBTS is committed to doing anything to repair the harms of white supremacy and racism. Surely, leaders of the oldest and most prestigious of the Southern Baptist seminaries know that repentance involves much more than mere remorse (lament).

Remorsefulness alone is a far cry from repairing damage done by conduct that harms others. We should hope SBTS faculty make that clear to students studying the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) and the doctrine of sin (harmartiology). Regardless whether that happens, the rest of us know the big difference between remorse (regret about sinfulness) and repentance (changing from sinful ways and thinking to righteous ways and thinking). Remorsefulness, however sincerely and openly expressed, does not require a commitment to change. That is why the refusal of the report’s authors to include the last half century of the seminary’s endorsement of racism, white supremacy and white religious nationalism should not be ignored or excused.

We should also not ignore or excuse the seminary’s refusal to commit to engage in reparations and restitution for more than 150 years of systemic racial injustice practiced, preached and taught under the guise of preparing people for careers in pastoral ministry, religious education, missions and theological study as followers of Jesus. A robber who will not at least promise to make reparations does not deserve credit for publishing an announcement about having engaged in a career of robbery.

Rather than commend Mohler and the authors of the study, we should remind them what John the Baptist said about the need to “bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). An incomplete report that expressed remorse about systemic racism, white supremacy and white religious nationalism at SBTS is not good fruit “worthy of repentance.” Neither is the refusal to attempt to quantify and repair harm done through racial injustice over the course of the school’s history.

What then should SBTS do? If we can trust what John the Baptist said to the crowds he addressed, the answer involves at least two obligations.

First, the seminary must change from being self-righteous and self-serving about its wealth and prestige. That would be consistent with what John the Baptist said about whoever had two coats being obligated to share with anyone who had none, and that whoever had food being obligated to share with anyone who had none (Luke 3:11).

“Surely, leaders of the oldest and most prestigious of the Southern Baptist seminaries know that repentance involves much more than mere remorse (lament).”

Repentance will require the seminary’s leaders and other stakeholders to do much more than admit a history of racism, white supremacy and white religious nationalism. SBTS must – in obedience to what John the Baptist said as well as the example of the tax collector from Jericho named Zachaeus who Jesus confronted (Luke 19:5-9) – pledge to give up the ill-gotten wealth it gained and now enjoys in part because of that wicked history. It is telling that Mohler hasn’t shown any sign that he even considered doing that, let alone that he urged the seminary’s trustees to do it.

Second, SBTS must start using its power to produce justice, rather than using it to maintain longstanding systems of injustice. John the Baptist told soldiers and tax collectors to stop using official authority for personal benefit. For SBTS, that should involve rejecting the slaveholder theology and hermeneutic and heresies of white supremacy, white religious nationalism, materialism, patriarchy, sexism (including homophobia and misogyny), imperialism, militarism, techno-centrism and xenophobia.

Imagine what the Holy Spirit might accomplish if instead this prominent seminary spent the next 150 years intentionally preparing people for ministry careers based on the gospel of liberation and justice!

None of this can be done in the echo chamber of the SBC. After all, the seminary’s racism, white supremacy and white religious nationalism are part of the original sin of the SBC, and have always been endorsed and extolled (directly or indirectly) by SBC congregations, pastors, mission workers and religious educators (at SBTS and the other SBC-affiliated seminaries). SBTS needs to hear from and be led by followers of Jesus who are not SBC-affiliated, not white supremacists, not patriarchal and not religious nationalists.

I suggest that Mohler and other SBC leaders seek help and guidance from a number of respected and reputable sources. One starting point could be Vanderbilt University Divinity School, including Dean Emile Towne, the Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative, and Forrest Harris, director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on the African American Church at the divinity school and president of American Baptist College in Nashville. Even closer to home, Mohler might drive a few miles across Louisville to seek prophetic insight and guidance about reparations and restitution from Kevin Cosby, a black SBTS alumnus and president of Simmons College, whose ministry is a shining example of what the Holy Spirit will accomplish when followers of Jesus reject slaveholder theology, hermeneutic and ethics.

“SBTS must start using its power to produce justice, rather than using it to maintain longstanding systems of injustice.”

Alert readers will notice that I have not mentioned reconciliation. That is an intentional omission. White religionists and others seem blind to the truth that reconciliation is impossible without repentance, and that repentance is impossible concerning racial injustice (including racism, slavery, white supremacy and white religious nationalism) without reparations and restitution. Until Mohler, SBTS, the SBC and other white Baptists “bear fruits worthy of repentance,” their appeals for racial reconciliation are “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1), and worth “nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2-3).

So, despite the publicity surrounding Southern Seminary’s recent report, the words of a Stevie Wonder song seem to apply:  “You haven’t done ‘nothin.’”

The authors of the report, Mohler and other SBC leaders need to know why followers of Jesus who reject slaveholder theology, hermeneutic and ethics are not impressed. And they need to be reminded to “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” I don’t expect they will respond favorably to that input. As my father often said, “that would be too much like right.”

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