BAPTIST MENDACITY ABOUT MISSIONS THIS WEEK IN DALLAS, TEXAS

©Wendell Griffen, 2018

Justice Is A Verb!

June 12, 2018

This week the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship convene, separately, for their annual meetings in Dallas, Texas.  SBC and CBF constituents will – separately - sing, pray, preach, hold hands, and talk about God’s love for the world.  Separately, leaders of both groups will profess commitment to the Great Commission Jesus issued to his followers to make disciples. This week in Dallas, Texas the largest white Baptist bodies in the United States will put on the latest demonstration of their mendacity about love and justice.  Both groups will behave as if religious ceremony, religious entertainment, and marketing schemes can undo or make up for systemic, deliberate, and sacralized bigotry, discrimination, and practiced disregard for victims of systemic injustice.    

The Southern Baptist Convention meets this week on the heels of revelations about sacralized misogyny in SBC seminaries led by Dr. Paige Patterson.  Dr. Patterson has denied treating women and girls unfairly.  However, credible evidence that he condoned, enabled, and/or openly endorsed sexist, abusive, and otherwise misogynistic treatment of women as leader of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary led to his recent dismissal as President of Southwestern. 

The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 by white Baptists who were determined to permit slave owners to be appointed as foreign missionaries.  Southern Baptists sang, preached, prayed, held hands, and talked about God’s love for the world while insisting that owning other humans and treating them like breeding stock was consistent with God’s love and the religion of Jesus.  Southern Baptists supported racial segregation.  Southern Baptists opposed and criticized the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders.  Southern Baptists continue to deny women opportunities for pastoral leadership.  The revelations surrounding Paige Patterson are merely the latest episode in Southern Baptist sacralized bigotry and discrimination perpetrated in the name of the Great Commission of Jesus.

White Baptists displeased with fundamentalism, power politics, and sacralized hostility to women in ministry formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1990.  At the Convocation of the Baptist Fellowship in Atlanta, Georgia on May 9, 1991, Cooperative Baptists adopted a document titled “An Address to the Public,” considered the founding document of that body.  Early in that document one finds this sentence:  “Being Baptist should ensure that no one is ever excluded who confesses, ‘Jesus is Lord (Philippians 2:11).’”  Yet in 2000, nine years later, Cooperative Baptists adopted a hiring policy that banned employment of persons who are lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. 

Two years ago, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship launched its Illumination Project during its annual meeting at Greensboro, North Carolina.  While the Illumination Project was purportedly created to give constituents a process aimed at reaching consensus about contentious issues, one thing was clear from the outset.  The Illumination Project was contrived to game dialogue and policy about the discriminatory hiring policy.  After an eighteen month period of “listening sessions,” in February of this year the CBF Governing Board replaced the discriminatory hiring policy that totally banned employment of LGBTQ persons with a policy accompanied by an “implementation procedure” which bans married LGBTQ followers of Jesus from employment as mission field personnel and several leadership positions.  

I serve as pastor of New Millennium Church, an inter-racial welcoming and affirming congregation in Little Rock, Arkansas that has been affiliated with CBF since its formation in May 2009.  Each year since 2009, persons from New Millennium have attended and participated in annual CBF General Assembly gatherings. 

However, I and others from New Millennium Church will not attend the 2018 General Assembly in Dallas.  We refuse to engage in a charade whereby claims about professed devotion to the Great Commission of Jesus and buzz words such as “big tent” and “denomi-network” are used by CBF to justify excluding married LGBTQ Baptists from mission field and other employment opportunities. 

This week, Southern Baptists and Cooperative Baptists will sing, pray, preach, hold hands, and engage in other ceremonial acts two years after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida.  They will engage in religious preening three years after the Emmanuel A.M.E. church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina.  As the residents of Flint, Michigan continue suffering the toxic consequences of the evil that has them purchasing unleaded fuel for automobiles while being poisoned by leaded water, Southern Baptists and Cooperative Baptists will profess commitment to the Great Commission of Jesus but say and do nothing to demonstrate the compassion of God for them.   

SBC constituents are unlikely to confess that the SBC enabled and condoned misogyny and sex discrimination against women.  CBF constituents are unlikely to confess CBF bigotry and discrimination against LGBTQ Baptists.  Both groups are unlikely to say or do anything prophetic about the fact that unarmed black and brown people are routinely slaughtered by law enforcement agencies.  Neither group is likely to say or do anything that approaches being prophetic about the injustice of gentrification.  The harms suffered by victims of SBC and CBF bigotry, misogyny, and discrimination will not be confessed, let alone remedied.  There is no sign that either group will express disappointment, let alone prophetic outrage, about how the people of Puerto Rico have been mistreated and disserved by the Trump Administration since their lives and communities were devastated last year by Hurricane Maria. 

There will be lots of singing, preaching, praying, and hand holding.  Meanwhile, victims of sacralized bigotry and discrimination will be ignored, patronized, blamed, and otherwise trivialized.  To put it plainly, white Baptist mendacity about love and justice will continue without apology, remorse, or any serious effort to begin repentance. 

This week, SBC and CBF constituents will demonstrate separate, albeit common, devotion to their versions of religious empire, while professing love for God, their neighbors, and the creation in a blazing exhibition of sacralized mendacity.  Whatever else that audacious sacralized mendacity may be, it isn’t obeying Jesus. 

Paige Patterson's Misogyny Exposes Pervasive Bigotry and Patriarchy Among White Baptists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/06/01/southern-baptist-seminary-drops-bombshell-why-paige-patterson-was-fired/?utm_term=.3748717e6d6a

I am reminded of Dr. King's powerful statement that the moral arc of the universe sweeps wide, but bends towards justice.

How do victims of Paige Patterson's wickedness achieve re‎parations? Do current leaders of these religious institutions see no similarity between Patterson's reign of misogyny and sexism and the abuse cases involving Catholic priests and vulnerable persons?

Expect some of the leaders to take solace in statutes of limitation which will work to defeat claims dating beyond three to five years. That answers the legal liability question for "stale" - the legal term - claims. It does not address the moral, emotional, physical, and ethical harms ‎inflicted on untold women and girls at the hands of Patterson and any other persons whose similar conduct he may have enabled.

The Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship convene, separately and ironically, later this month in Texas. It will be interesting to observe leaders of both groups try to ignore or play down the crocodiles of longstanding injustices ‎against women and persons of color (SBC) and persons who are LGBTQ (CBF) that the world knows and sees in their respective bathtubs.

Those efforts are doomed to fail. The "nones" - meaning persons who no longer are affiliated with any religion - include a growing influx of former Baptists. SBC and CBF efforts to stop the bleeding by appealing to black and Latino clergy and congregations cannot and will not change what the world already accepts as true about their respective realities: notwithstanding their pietistic rhetoric and pretensions about "inclusion," SBC and CBF are merely different manifestations of white religious nationalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.‎

Civil rights activists‎ share a slogan, "No justice. No peace."  As CBF meets later this month in Dallas on the heels of its Illumination Project exercise to apply pietistic Great Commission makeup on a generation-long history of open bigotry and injustice toward followers of Jesus who are LGBTQ, CBF leaders should ponder that slogan. They should think of the Paige Patterson SBC history. They should think about the longstanding bigotry and injustice CBF has tolerated and continues to empower aganst persons who are LGBTQ. And, CBF leaders should remember what Dr. King said about the moral arc of the universe.

Repentance is a moral and ethical imperative and prerequisite to attaining reconciliation and doing justice. Unfortunately, it appears that the largest predominantly white Baptist bodies in the U.S. lack the capacity to perceive and pursue the urgent imperative of repentance.

That is not "good news" for victims of injustice. 

That is not "good news" for the world.

It is merely the latest manifestation of hatefulness masquerading in the costumes of religion and‎ empire.

ONE YEAR LATER

                                                            ONE YEAR LATER

Justice Is a Verb!

©Wendell Griffen, 2018

April 18, 2018

            One year ago I and other members of New Millennium Church took part in a peaceful and reverent Good Friday prayer vigil outside the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion to express our moral and religious opposition to capital punishment and our solidarity with Jesus of Galilee, the leader of our faith who was put to death by crucifixion at the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Palestine.  We remembered that Jesus was a subject of capital punishment.   

On the following Monday (April 17, 2017), the Arkansas Supreme Court permanently banned me from all civil and criminal cases involving capital punishment, the death penalty, or the method of execution in Arkansas.  So last October, I filed a civil rights lawsuit against each member of the Arkansas Supreme Court in federal court. 

In that lawsuit, I challenged the permanent ban issued by the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court as a violation of my First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom to exercise my religion, and my Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law (because I was not given notice nor a hearing before it was imposed).  I also challenged the permanent ban as a violation of my Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law (because it is more severe than punishment imposed to white judges who committed notorious and illegal conduct such as accepting a bribe, drunken and reckless driving, and demanding and accepting sexual favors from defendants in exchange for issuing lenient sentences).  And I challenged the permanent ban because it resulted from conspiracy by the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court and others to deprive me of the powers of my elected office based on animosity against me because I am African-American.   

On April 12, 2018, the federal court ruled that my lawsuit asserts factually plausible claims that the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court violated my rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom to exercise my religion, due process of law, and equal protection under the law.  The federal court also ruled that my lawsuit asserts a factually plausible claim that the permanent ban issued by the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court resulted from an illegal civil conspiracy to deprive me of my right to equal protection under the law.  Now my lawyers will uncover and expose the facts that bear out my legal claims, facts that the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court and others are desperate to hide. 

I am as committed to the rule of law today as I was a year ago, if not more so.  I am as committed to holding and expressing my moral and religious opposition to the death penalty as I was a year ago, if not more so.  That is why I joined other members of New Millennium Church last night (April 17, 2018) in attending another peaceful and reverent vigil and demonstration outside the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion.  Again, I lay on a cot in silent prayer.  Again, I had my Bible.  Again, I wore a button calling for an end to the death penalty. 

Arkansas law makes death by lethal injection one of two alternative punishments for capital murder (the other alternative is life imprisonment without parole).  I followed that law before Good Friday, 2017, and I will follow it whenever my authority to preside over capital cases is restored. I took an oath to follow the law, including laws that I consider objectionable on moral and religious grounds. 

My obligation to follow the law does not compel me to agree with every law.  The First Amendment to the US Constitution  protects my freedom to hold and express moral and religious opposition to the death penalty, including freedom to peacefully and lawfully question the morality of state-sanctioned premeditated and deliberate killing of people who have been convicted for the premeditated and deliberate killing of other persons. 

If a person who has been convicted of premeditated murder is deliberately and premeditatedly killed, we should condemn that killing as murder.  Murder is wrong, even when the state hires people to do it.  Anger and bloodlust are not excuses for the state to commit premeditated murder of people who have committed premeditated murder for an understandable reason.  Two wrongs don’t make anything right.  

That was true a year ago.  

It is true a year later.

DISHONORING DR. KING’S MINISTRY AND MEMORY THRU EULOGY

Justice Is A Verb!

©Wendell Griffen, 2018

http://m.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/apr/04/half-century-later-20180404/

‎

As people across the world commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today, the feature editorial in today's issue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper chose to eulogize Dr. King rather than criticize injustice as he did. The editorial can be found at the link posted ‎above. It focuses on Dr. King's prophetic Letter From Birmingham City Jail response to white moderate religionists in Birmingham who criticized Dr. King's presence and direct nonviolent civil disobedience challenges to racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.  The editorial author chose to use the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination to applaud Dr. King's eloquence and clarity in that letter penned from a jail cell. 

Some observers will consider the editorial a fitting, if not flattering commentary. However, that is neither fair nor fitting to Dr. King's memory and ministry. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not die on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee because he penned the eloquent Letter From Birmingham City Jail in 1963. He was slain because he insisted and persisted in confronting the United States about its flagrant hypocrisy about and damning dedication to injustice. The Democrat-Gazette editorial dodged that subject, as if King's greatest contribution to humanity was being an eloquent scrivener.  Dr. King's death should not be dismissed by flowery words about his eloquence, erudition, and rhetorical competence.  

Fifty years after Dr. King was murdered, the giant evils of racism, militarism, and capitalist materialism he challenged with increasing alarm and anger during his last years should not be disregarded and discounted by resorting to eulogy. Respect for Dr. King's life and the way he died deserves much more than pleasant words about his skill as a communicator.

Fifty years after April 4, 1968, black, brown, red, and poor white people are routinely being slain by law enforcement agents in the US.  

Immigrants are being mistreated.

Women and girls are being assaulted and subjected to other unfairness.

Voting rights are being undermined.

The air, water, and soil are being poisoned.

US war-making continues 50 years after the assassination of the prophet who courageously insisted that war-making is a human rights issue.

Fifty years after Dr. King was murdered in Memphis, workers are still being exploited in Memphis, Tennessee, Little Rock, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, and elsewhere across the US.

Fifty years after Dr. King was slain, religionists of all stripes are still more interested in civic ceremonies than social justice.

Fifty ‎years after Dr. King's voice was silenced, we should not be deceived when people eulogize Dr. King after they spent the last half century working against social justice.  We should not accept shallow sentimentality as a substitute for societal repentance and a fierce insistence on doing justice.

Dr. King's memory and ministry deserve much more than sentimental eulogies from us.  Justice is a verb, not a platitude.

Wendell Griffen

Author, The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

‎Written from Memphis, TN

Hope Fiercely! Love Boldly!

GOOD FRIDAY, EASTER, AND THE “RE-ASSASSINATION” OF DR. KING

©Wendell Griffen, 2018

Justice Is a Verb!

March 30, 2018

            Good Friday marks the crucifixion/assassination/lynching of Jesus, the Jewish prophet whose ministry of healing and preaching presented the people and powers of 1^st Century Palestine with a radical alternative to imperial religion, commerce, government, and culture.  We do not experience Easter correctly by ignoring, discounting, or deliberately mis-stating this.  This year Good Friday and Easter occur within days of April 4, 2018, the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.  The coincidence is more than ironic. 

Good Friday reminds us that religion, commerce, government, and culture are constantly tempted and threatened by notions of empire, including the myth of sanctified violence.  South African theologian Allan Boesak makes this point in his latest book, Pharaohs on Both Sides of the Blood Red Waters, in the following words.

Empires not only create realities of dominations and subjugation; they also create myths:  of invincibility, endless power, infinite duration, great beneficence, and divine incarnation.  Crucial to all these is what Walter Wink called the “myth of redemptive violence.”  Instead of acknowledging the violence it uses because it is needed for continued domination, subjugation, and exploitation, the empire “enshrines the belief that violence saves, that war makes peace, that might makes right.”  Consequently violence is not only necessary; it is the only thing that “works.” [1]

The sanctioned violence that killed Jesus resulted in the recent slaying of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black father, brother, and grandson, by two Sacramento, California police officers.  Stephon Clark was shot 20 times in the backyard of his grandmother’s home, where he lived until he was slain.  He was given no medical attention for several minutes after he was gunned down.  After being shot 20 times, Stephon Clark was handcuffed, but denied medical attention or assistance.  Stephon Clark was mutilated so much from the gunshot wounds and two autopsy procedures that his family was forced to hold a closed casket funeral service.   

If we do not connect Stephon Clark with Good Friday it is because we are somehow unable or unwilling to detect the similarity between the slaying of Jesus and the slaying of Stephon Clark, Alton Sterling, Philando Castille, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Jr., Amadou Diallo, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Eugene Ellison, and so many other black, brown, and poor white unarmed persons by the armed and militarized agents of political, commercial, religious, and cultural empire.  If we do not connect the assassination of Dr. King with Good Friday, we are not likely to connect the slaughter of Stephon Clark and so many others with Good Friday.  Like Jesus and Dr. King, people like Stephon Clark have been slain after being hounded, spied on, and threatened by armed and militarized agents of political, commercial, cultural, and religious empire. 

Finally, it is important that we realize how Dr. King’s memory, ministry, and message are “re-assassinated” by self-serving political, religious, commercial, and cultural agents of empire. When people gather on April 4 to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of Dr. King’s death, politicians, captains of greed, religious pretenders, and cultural hijackers of all varieties who have spent their careers distancing themselves from or opposing Dr. King’s work of social justice will clamor to be seen, heard, quoted, and considered as disciples of his prophetic devotion to the Beloved Community.

In Arkansas, Governor Asa Hutchinson is scheduled to be the “keynote” speaker for a mid-day gathering at the State Capitol on April 4.  Governor Hutchinson’s official bio states that he is a graduate from the University Of Arkansas School Of Law.  It does not disclose that he graduated from Bob Jones University in South Carolina in 1972, four years after Dr. King was slain. On Easter (April 17, 1960), Bob Jones, Sr. delivered a radio sermon titled, “Is Segregation Scriptural?” which served as the University racial position paper through the ’60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.  Bob Jones University did not enroll Africans or African-Americans until 1971, three years after Dr. King’s death and one year before Governor Hutchinson received his undergraduate degree.  In 1976, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax exemption for Bob Jones University, retroactively to 1970, because the institution practiced racial discrimination.  Governor Hutchinson enrolled in and attended a racially-segregated college four years after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for which Dr. King labored and countless people suffered and died. 

As Administrator of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, Governor Hutchinson led DEA actions that contributed to mass incarceration of persons of color and low-income white persons for non-violent drug offenses, a problem described by Professor Michelle Alexander as “the new Jim Crow.”  And Governor Hutchinson’s “keynote” speaker role on the 50^th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination is more odious because of his past advocacy with the National Rifle Association.  Recall, that Dr. King and his mother were murdered by persons who shot them to death.  Recall that the NRA has led opposition to regulate firearms and has resisted governmental attempts to study the health impact of firearms in the U.S. 

Given this history, Governor Hutchinson’s “keynote” address will amount to “re-assassination” of Dr. King’s memory when the governor pimps Dr. King’s moral authority on the steps of the Arkansas State Capitol on the 50^th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination. 

Remember Jesus, Dr. King, and Stephon Clark, and other victims of state-sanctioned violence on Good Friday.  Remember the names and faces of the racists, militarists, and materialists who have spent the last half-century pimping Dr. King’s name and memory while fighting the causes for which he lived and died.  Then remember the part of the Sermon on the Mount that is rarely quoted, but which speaks with unflinching accuracy on Good Friday, Easter, and any other time.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits.  Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? ...You will know them by their fruits.  (Matthew 7:15-16, New Revised Standard Version). 

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[1] Allan Aubrey Boesak, Pharaohs on Both Sides of the Blood-Red Waters:  Prophetic Critique on Empire-Resistance, Justice, and the Power of the Hopeful Sizwe—A Transatlantic Conversation (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017), pp. 81-82.  

REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND MINISTRY OF REV. BILLY GRAHAM

REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND MINISTRY OF REV. BILLY GRAHAM

©Wendell Griffen, 2018

Justice Is A Verb!

The Reverend Billy Graham moved from life in God among us to life in God beyond us on yesterday at the full age of 99 years.  Known and revered across the world as a congenial preacher of the gospel of Jesus, Reverend Graham’s passing has received the accolades and recollections appropriate for someone who worked so long and was acclaimed by so many.  Having been received by US presidents from both major political parties across the years, it is understandable that Rev. Graham is remembered in news accounts as pastor to presidents.  We should also, however, acknowledge that Rev. Graham was patriarch to his biological family.  As that family engages in the necessary efforts required to honor his life, ministry, and paternal influence, we should include them in our prayers.

Much has been written and said about Rev. Graham’s influence as a religious leader.  More will be said and written in the future about his influence on the evangelical Christian movement.  I have read tributes to Rev. Graham from faithful people I know who embraced the gospel of Jesus during one of his evangelistic crusades.  These people are sincere.  Their reflections are moving. 

Rev. Graham should also be remembered for refusing to accommodate racially segregated seating during his evangelistic crusades at a time when Jim Crow segregation was followed due to custom and the force of law.  That fact is noteworthy because it was a drastic departure from the practice of most white religionists in the US South.  Billy Graham Crusades included Ethel Waters singing along with his preaching when few US white congregations would allow black people to worship with them, let alone be featured as soloists.  We should not treat that fact lightly in our reflections about Rev. Graham’s ministry.

During his later ministry, Rev. Graham expressed regret that he had not devoted more attention to social justice in his preaching.  As one Catholic observer pointed out, “Billy Graham was asked once why he preached only personal salvation and not peace and justice. He said that as people become converted, they would be peacemakers and justice-seekers. He was pressed further. How come he’d been converted, and wasn’t more upfront about these things, then? From that day, to his credit, Graham included more of the dimensions of the Good News in his preaching. Following Jesus, we’re called to make visible the Good News, and that means both putting it into words and showing by our lives what it means in terms of justice and love.” http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/themes/peace/reflection/ten-reasons-justice-essential-gospels/.  

If we are to think and speak accurately and honestly about Rev. Graham’s ministry, we must acknowledge that Rev. Graham’s pastoral ministry to presidents and his worldwide fame as an evangelist did not include much, if anything, about justice and peace.  This is not because Rev. Graham was not urged to include social justice in his public ministry.  Indeed, Rev. Graham was prodded to proclaim the gospel of Jesus as more than a religion of personal salvation during a visit from Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor when Dr. Proctor served as special assistant to Sargent Shriver in the federal Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO).  Dr. Proctor succeeded Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. as pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, was personal friend and mentor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was a pastoral neighbor and collaborator with Rev. Gardner C. Taylor, who served as pastor of Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, NY for many years.  Dr. Proctor was also president of North Carolina A & T College when Rev. Jesse Jackson was an undergraduate (and football quarterback), and was president of Virginia Union University when Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. was a seminary student at that school. 

In his book titled My Moral Odyssey (Judson Press, 1989) - which has a foreword written by Bill Moyers - Dr. Proctor recounted something he experienced while serving in the Johnson Administration as President Johnson was trying to garner support for the War on Poverty.   

Once President Lyndon Johnson asked me to visit a widely acclaimed evangelist to solicit his moral support for the war on poverty.  I did, and what a shock!  He lived like royalty and told me that he did not get involved in such things.  He only “preached the gospel.” When I reminded him of what the gospel said in Matthew 25 about feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, visiting prisoners, and taking in strangers, he took refuge in some inane, insipid theological irrelevancies.  Without knowing it, he dismissed Jesus as a “liberal.”  (pp. 134-35, emphasis by Dr. Proctor)

            Dr. Proctor wrote more expansively about this encounter in The Substance of Things Hoped For:  A Memoir of African-American Faith (Putnam, 1995) as follows:

One day Bill Moyers called from the White House and asked me to leave fast, go to the airport, and fly to Charlotte, North Carolina, with Billy Graham.  We were helping a lot of poor mountain people near where he lived, and we wanted his support. 

All through the flight down we talked church, religion, and social change.  When we reached his mountaintop home, we had a delicious lunch and more conversation.  It all settled down to a stalemate:  Dr. Graham felt that his business was to preach the gospel and change the hearts of individuals.  Changed persons would then change society.

I countered with the teachings of Jesus in Chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel, in which he admonished that at the day of judgment we would all be separated into sheep and goats.  One got to be a sheep by feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty and clothing to the naked, visiting those in prison, and taking in the stranger.  The sheep entered into the Master’s joy.  Goats did not do such things and were consigned to a burning hell.

Reverend Graham smiled and said that I was making Jesus into a “liberal.”  It was odd, though, that while he officially avoided political involvement, he often boasted of advising several presidents. (p. 123)

                As a follower and preacher in the religion of Jesus, I join the rest of the world in acknowledging the long and wide preaching ministry of Rev. Billy Graham.  I join the rest of the world in praying for his family in this time of bereavement.  No one should deny that he influenced many people in ways that were personally profound. 

            Yet, as we reflect on Rev. Graham’s ministry in the world and the reception he enjoyed among presidents and other powerful figures in the US and elsewhere, it is fair to point out that Rev. Graham was not involved in the March on Washington in 1963.  Rev. Graham did not openly endorse the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed segregation based on race, sex, religion, and national origin.  Rev. Graham did not support the war on poverty.  He did not oppose the war in Southeast Asia. 

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called for an end to US military involvement in Southeast Asia, Rev. Graham’s strong voice was strangely silent.  As indigenous people in India and Africa were struggling to throw off oppressive colonizers from Europe, Rev. Graham’s powerful voice was strangely silent.  When Africans were being slaughtered and Nelson Mandela was jailed for decades in South Africa, Rev. Graham’s voice was strangely silent.  When Palestinians were being thrown off their ancestral lands by Zionist Jewish settlers and the United Nations was adopting resolutions declaring Jewish settlements illegal, Rev. Graham was silent.

Rev. Graham was silent when the Reagan administration engaged in illegal gun-running by allowing drug cartels to smuggle cocaine into the US and accelerate mass incarceration through the hypocrisy of a war on drugs. He was silent about racial profiling, mass incarceration, violence against women and girls, and people who are LGBTQ.  One searches in vain to find Rev. Graham relating the struggles of working people to the gospel of Jesus, despite the fact that Jesus hailed from a working class family.   

            That strange silence about social justice, more than anything else, may be the most lasting effect of Rev. Graham’s long and wide ministry, for all its otherwise laudable contributions.  Whatever else one may say or think to commend Rev. Graham’s ministry, the recent words of George Will in the Washington Post are indisputably true.  Rev. Graham was “no theologian… Neither was he a prophet.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/billy-graham-was-no-prophet-thats-why-america-loved-him/2018/02/21/398ce31a-1722-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html?utm_term=.4ed7e3d10740.  

For if anything is obvious from the US presidential election of 2016, four out of five people who self-identify as “evangelical Christians” voted for Donald Trump, described in one BBC news article as “a thrice married casino-building businessman.”  As I wrote in The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (Judson Press, 2017): “On November 8, 2016, 81 percent of the people who profess to be evangelical followers of Jesus in the United States refused to proclaim by their votes that God cares about people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, frail, imprisoned, and unwelcomed”  (p. 141). 

            Perhaps their pastors are imitating Rev. Graham, whose understanding of the gospel of Jesus somehow did not move him to challenge US presidents, other powerful people, and the multitudes who attended his evangelistic events to see God in our hungry, thirsty, sick, imprisoned, and immigrant brothers and sisters.  Perhaps that is why people are rejecting the term “evangelical” in their religious identity as followers of Jesus.  This is not comfortable or pleasant to contemplate as we reflect on Rev. Graham’s life and ministry, whether now or at any other time.  Most people prefer to not contemplate it at all, but instead limit their reflections about Rev. Graham to eulogies and platitudes. 

That discomfort and preference, however, does not change the truth we know.  Despite all that Rev. Graham did to proclaim the love of God, the evangelical movement that celebrates his legacy and that he represented is widely – and sadly – identified with and supportive of policies and practices that are racist, sexist, patriarchal, militaristic, imperialistic, homophobic, economically dismissive or oppressive towards workers, poor and otherwise vulnerable and frail people and the creation, and xenophobic.   In that regard, the evangelical movement now lionizes Billy Graham while it pays lip service, at best, to Jesus. 

As we remember Rev. Graham’s ministry to the world, his pastoral relationships with several US presidents, and the enduring effect of his ministry on people who call themselves evangelical Christians, one wonders how different and better the last fifty years might have been if Rev. Billy Graham had joined his voice with that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bill Moyers, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Rev. Gardner Taylor, and Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor.  One wonders as we ponder Rev. Graham’s influence on the people who occupy pulpits, pews, and voting booths.  And one wonders as we think of the issues and people Dr. Samuel Proctor urged Rev. Graham to advocate for and include in his preaching during the day they spent together over fifty years ago.

We may never know.  We who are followers of Jesus can only strive to embrace and embody a prophetic faith that is much deeper and wider than personal salvation, however much that was valued by Rev. Graham and is emphasized by his evangelical followers.  The religion of Jesus is not only about God saving individual souls.  It is about God saving the world.  Rev. Graham had many opportunities to make that plain to multitudes and by his personal ministry to the powerful and privileged.  Sadly, he refused to do so.

 We should not follow that example.

FOLLOWING JESUS BY LOVING LGBTQ PEOPLE, NOT RELIGIOUS EMPIRE

FOLLOWING JESUS BY LOVING LGBTQ PEOPLE, NOT RELIGIOUS EMPIRE

A Pastoral Response to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Decision to Discriminate in Hiring Decisions Involving Married LGBTQ Followers of Jesus

Justice Is A Verb!

©Wendell Griffen, 2018

I sent the following email message on February 10, 2018 to more than seventy persons in response to a decision by the Governing Board of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to discriminate against married LGBTQ followers of Jesus in hiring persons for missions field personnel and supervisory positions.  Because I serve as pastor of New Millennium Church, a congregation affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) since it was organized in the spring of 2009, I am publishing the email message on my social media platforms.   

Colleagues,

After engaging in an almost two-year process, yesterday the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship adopted a policy that bans married persons who are LGBTQ from being employed as missions ‎field personnel or in supervisory positions. This policy is unjust. It reinforces bigotry towards LGBTQ people. It violates the Great Commandment of Jesus that we love our neighbors as ourselves. As pastor of New Millennium, I denounce the announced policy as unworthy of our support.

I will request that New Millennium meet to discuss the CBF decision. Pat Griffen and I were involved in the CBF co-sponsored Conference on Sexuality and Covenant in 2011 that convened in Decatur, Georgia. Our congregation co-sponsored and hosted a conference in April 2016 titled "Embracing Diversity and Inclusion of LGBTQ Persons in the Black Church." We are in active fellowship with the Church Within A Church Movement, a voluntary association of followers of Jesus committed to LGBTQ equality and inclusion, and Pat Griffen and I were presenters during the 2017 CWACM gathering in Washington, DC.  We are the only Arkansas church in the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB). Our Holy Saturday seder observances intentionally include and reference solidarity with persons who are LGBTQ.  

Plainly, CBF and New Millennium Church disagree about  LGBTQ equality and inclusion. The Illumination Project process and the CBF decision on yesterday proves that CBF does not choose to be, plan to be, or desire to walk with LGBTQ people and with us concerning this love and justice imperative‎. New Millennium Church now must decide whether to keep faith with our affirmation to welcome all persons in God's love, or walk away from our open and unapolgetic solidarity with Jesus and LGBTQ persons for equality and inclusion.

I will not support continued funding or involvement in CBF initiatives. CBF has chosen love of its purses above love of God's LGBTQ people. I am unwilling to follow that path as pastor of New Millennium Church. If our congregation is to keep faith with the love and justice imperatives in the gospel of Jesus, we should not be seduced by claims about following Jesus to carry out the Great Commandments and Great Commission by a body that consciously and proudly celebrates a decision to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital status.

I am sending this message to our congregation, to persons with whom we have fellowship relationships in CBF, to leaders in the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, to local and national leaders in the Church Within A Church Movement, AWAB, and other faith leaders with whom I have been in dialogue and fellowship about LGBTQ equality and inclusion. I do this to make my pastoral position clear. Some people will disagree with or disapprove of my position. No one should be unsure about it.

Please share this message with anyone in our sphere of ministry I may have omitted. I will reprint it on my personal blog and social media platforms, and ask that it be posted to the church website and social media platforms.

‎Sincerely,

Wendell Griffen
Author, The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

Pastor, New Millenium Church

www.newmillenniumchurch.us