Today as I write these words people are gathering on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that took place 50 years ago. At that event, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The
words of that speech along with the events of that day have been
whitewashed (pun intended) in our collective memory so that we forget
the turmoil of that time, the stakes involved in that movement and the
sacrifices made to fight virulent racism in our country. MLK's
words did not magically make the United States a better country; less
than three weeks later four girls were killed while attending Sunday
School when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in Birmingham, AL. I
heard one scholar state the civil rights leaders understood that the
more victories they achieved the more the white racist mind would be
driven to violence in order to stop them.
Perhaps a way in to remembering the risks taken on by the Civil Rights leaders is found in re-reading King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail. It
was written in April of 1963 four months before the March on Washington
after King was arrested for leading a non-violent action in Birmingham. Before
that action, white religious leaders published a letter denouncing the
tactics of outsiders provoking violent retaliation in Birmingham and
urging Blacks and Whites to negotiate and let the courts work out the
issues surrounding segregation. The religious leaders
included a Catholic bishop and auxiliary bishop, a prominent rabbi, two
Methodist bishops, an Episcopal bishop, the Presbyterian moderator of
Alabama and the pastor of First Baptist Church in Birmingham. These men were not violent racists but rather men who claimed to not like segregation. They wished to move slowly in changing the system of repression.
This
powerful writing became a living document to me rather than a piece of
history when I was in graduate school at Emory University. I
was a TA at Candler School of Theology, a Methodist divinity school
that is a part of Emory, when one of my African American students
pointed out to me some ornate paintings of Methodist bishops that hung
on a classroom wall. I had given them little thought, but
he pointed out to me that two of the giant oil paintings were the
Methodist bishops King addressed in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. One
of those bishops was a trustee at Emory until his death, while the
other remained an adjunct faculty member until only a few years earlier. The latter maintained in his autobiography that the letter by King was a "publicity stunt." The men who had urged the slow change of segregation without ever bearing any of its oppression are not long gone from us.
In
a spiritual sense, the moderate white church has not left us at all but
remains a living reality among us giving lip service to social change
but refusing to bear the pain of its tardiness or hear the cries of
those who suffer from its slow pace. The comforts of peace
and security for myself trump the cries of pain from others in terms of
racial justice, immigration reform, fighting poverty, standing against
sexism, fighting for LGBT rights and so many other areas. As
I re-read King's jail letter, I am once again reminded of my complicity
in insulting calls for moderation by a Christianity that has more often
than not lost its soul. Here are a few excerpts that were painful for me to re-read:
"History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily."
"An unjust law is a code inflicted on a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating. . ."
"I
must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely
disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the
regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his
stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku
Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order"
than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of
tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who
constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot
agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically
believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives
by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to
wait for a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people
of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from
people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than
outright rejection.
"Actually,
we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of
tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is
already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and
dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered
up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of
air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its
exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of
national opinion before it can be cured."
"We
will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words
and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good
people."
"I
felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be
among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents,
refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its
leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and
have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass
windows."
"In
the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic
injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues,
with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many
churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which
makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between
the sacred and the secular."
"But
the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's
church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it
will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be
dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth
century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the
church has turned into outright disgust."
This day, I invite you to re-read King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail and see what strikes you in uncomfortable places.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
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