The ultimate power of prophetic ministry is that the words spoken by the prophets do not never disappear. Their words have so much truth that they cannot be erased or forgotten. People may choose to ignore them for any number of reasons, but the words they speak stick regardless of the social times in which we find ourselves.
The late Dr. Walter Brueggemann, in his book The Prophetic Imagination, wrote, “It is the aim of every totalitarian effort to stop the language of newness, and we are now learning that where such language stops, we find our humanness diminished.”
He wrote those words in 1978, but they struck me as something to think about as we work to identify the ingredients in the kettle of theological soup that is challenging us now. We are seeing in real time what it looks like as the people in power work to “stop the language of newness” that has been evolving over the past 50 years due to landmark legislation, but the seeds of which were planted hundreds of years ago as the country decided to build a government on a cracked foundation.
The founders were not interested in “language of newness.” Yes, they wrote magnificent documents, filled with words that stirred the souls of those who heard them. But behind those words were mindsets that wanted people to understand they had a “place” in society, and that the “liberty and freedom” that was written about did not and would never apply to them.
As enslaved Africans heard those words, their souls jumped. Though they were treated abysmally, not allowed to grieve the loss of their homes and their families, their spirits, fed by the language of newness that they heard, propelled them forward. For them, the language of newness did not stop, and therefore, their humanness was never diminished.
But it is a fact that what we are seeing now is at least partially happening because there was too much newness, too much power and release from traditional beliefs and practices that allowed wealthy white men a measure of comfort that they never intended others to share. Their wealth was created by those whom they oppressed, and they needed for that to remain intact.
The spirits of people, however, yearn to be free. People yearn to be able to use their intellect and their creativity, and thus will not “stay put” because they cannot. Totalitarian efforts always cause chaos, but they can never, and have never, killed the human need to be free, fed during periodic spurts of time where they hear and ingest the language of newness.
We sit now in a maelstrom of anger and insecurity that has haunted the wealthy and powerful for years. The language of newness that has kept the oppressed on a battlefield has offended them. The oppressed have not cowered as they have been encouraged or forced to do. They (we) have been knocked down but have forever gotten back up. The language of newness that we have heard from those who speak to us on God’s behalf is a spiritual nutrient that has attached itself to our very beings and cannot, once ingested, be taken away.
The people in power do not understand this phenomenon. They are creating a new “language of newness,” but because their language seeks to diminish, and not increase the dignity, worth, and appreciation for all humanity, it will fail. People will be free, regardless of the pushback they receive and endure. Their language of newness comes from them and depends on their survival to endure, while the language of newness that Brueggemann speaks of is fed to us by the very breath of God.
The challenge before us is not to give too much credence to what the oppressors are saying, though being fully aware of what they are saying. Knowing what they are saying will direct our prayers, and calm our spirits – and make us available to the presence of our God, the God about whom we learned in Sunday School and from our parents, the God who told us to love our neighbors, the God who has walked and talked with us “through many dangers, toils and snares.”
The oppressors of today claim that God is behind and in support of what they are doing. They want us to absorb that language. What they might call the language of newness, we must recognize as a language of deception. We need to understand what they are saying and why, but we cannot align with them. We know that all people matter. Black and brown people, women, immigrants, the elderly, the poor, children, the differently abled, non-cis gender persons – all matter. God loves all of us. That is the language of newness we have been receiving for the last 50 years (and before that). We have to remember that though oppressors have tried to keep us enslaved to an ideology created by hatred and bigotry, we have learned, through the years, to reject their efforts. Their language of newness is not ours.
May we ask God for the strength to continue to reject their language of the newness they want, and to instead lean on the power we receive from the momentum of memory that reminds us that God has our backs and has always had our backs. We will get through this, relying on the language of newness that will come from this experience that will remind us that, at the end of the day, it is God who is in control, and not a group of people who have made God their tool to justify their behavior.
God will be with us “at break of day.” That is a truth we cannot forget, especially now.
Amen and amen.
Tag: Christianity
The Guilty Verdict: Bittersweet
The verdict is in; the former president has been found guilty of all 34 counts levied against him in the New York “hush money” trial.
I am glad for the guilty verdict, but my soul is not quieted. I am glad because this man has successfully eluded legal sanctions for his behavior over the years if what has been written about him is true, and has finally been held accountable. That is justice.
But my soul is uneasy. I find no comfort in the verdict because, in listening to this man, I have grown more disappointed in and disenchanted with the American system of government. The people in power have made a mockery of “the law” and the concept of “law and order.” They have supported disinformation and participated in the dissemination of disinformation. Although they talk about the United States Constitution, they are hell-bent, it seems, on dismantling and destroying it.
And if anyone was looking for a voice of morality to come from the church, more specifically the “Christians,” I am sure they are as disappointed as I am. The church – most especially white Evangelicals, but not exclusively so – has not only been silent when one would have thought it would speak up, but it has been painfully complicit in spreading the word that this man is the answer to the woes of our country. They see him as a savior, this man who is now a convicted felon, and many still plan to vote for him.
Their version and conception of Jesus have led them to believe that the former president has been picked by God to lead this nation. (https://apnews.com/article/trump-christian-evangelicals-conservatives-2024-election-43f25118c133170c77786daf316821c3#)
Even as I write that sentence, I shiver. I wonder how anyone who has read the story of Jesus can possibly believe that what the former president is doing is something of which Jesus would approve. How can anyone, who declares that he/she lives by the Bible, support what this man is doing? (https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/10/27/house-speaker-mike-johnson-evangelical/)
His followers do not care that he was accused of all that he was accused of in the hush money trial, and they are furious that he has been found guilty of those charges. They have made him the ultimate victim and they are not backing down or away. They are not concerned that he wants to be a dictator; in fact, many say that democracy has to end.
If he is re-elected, democracy will end and many will be happy.
We have all been “indoctrinated” with the American story – that this is a land where there is “liberty and justice for all,” that our system supports “one man, one vote,” and that this is the greatest experiment in democratic government that has ever been created.
But it is just that – indoctrination. There has never been “liberty and justice for all” because that was not the vision of the country’s founders. This country was conceived and designed to favor wealthy white men. Those in that group never believed that, according to Thomas Jefferson, “all men are created equal.” Jefferson’s lofty words placed him at odds with the wealthy, white men who had all the power and wanted to keep it, which was ironic because Jefferson never mean “all” men to include men who were not white. People of color were certainly not even considered when Jefferson wrote those words.
This country was all about money and power, from its beginning. The politicians and the clergypersons knew it. The state and the church leaned on and depended on each other for verification of their policies and ideologies. Jefferson’s words were not a consideration.
The church and its leaders fully bought into the idea that God created this country – or led them to create this country – to make it easier for men to make money. The politicians did not have to worry about opposition from the church! The beliefs of the two institutions became mortally intertwined, so that even today, religious leaders say and teach things like “Free market capitalism is God’s blueprint for growing a nation’s economy.”( https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/us-republicans-and-fallacy-biblical-capitalism). These religious leaders have aligned the church with the state – despite the fervent declaration that the U.S. Constitution demands a separation between the two. The church has always needed the government and the government has likewise always needed the church to support and increase the wealth of the nation. Jesus’ name is used, but Jesus’ commandments are not practiced. Too many Christians have a Christianity in which Jesus is absent.
The core of this nation – which was cracked from the beginning – was never strong enough to support the pillars of hypocrisy that made up its foundation. The power brokers were never satisfied with the “all people are created equal” narrative, and whenever it seemed that equity was creeping into the society, the more they used their power to squash it. (https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/10) https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/wilmington-massacre-2/) They never lost their belief that their whiteness and their money gave them carte blanche to do what they wanted with the lives of the people on whose labor they depended for their wealth.
There is no institution to which to turn for help. The church, for the most part, has been compromised; church leaders who might speak up are silent; others are boldly in support of the former president and his policies. This impotent church is not new; Dr. King wrote of it in the 60s. (https://www.interfaithamerica.org/article/martin-luther-king-jr-s-hard-words-for-white-christians/)
The US Supreme Court – and many of the federal courts – have been compromised. Despite the cry against having “activist judges” the GOP/MAGA people are hell-bent on getting activist judges on the bench and those already on the bench are reducing the capacity of those in need of justice to trust the courts.
Without genuine Christianity – i.e., a religion that knows and practices the precepts of Jesus, without a society that believes in the worth of all people, without protection from the courts and law enforcement, including judges who rule against those who fight for equality liberty, and justice for everyone, America is in a dangerous place. The MAGA supporters want a man who has shown us who he is – and his supporters are all right with that. If those who believe in justice, equality, and fairness for all do not step up, the man found guilty yesterday on 34 counts will continue to walk in the arrogance of his whiteness and wealth, and mow down the possibility of there ever being “liberty and justice for all” in this country. There has never been, but this man will cement the pillars of injustice that have long characterized our government.
I hope people realize what is at stake and will do the work to make sure this convicted felon and any felon who comes after him will never step foot again in the White House. And I hope people who believe in the precepts of the Christ will take this existential threat seriously and work as they never have before to honor and respect the ways Jesus taught us to build community.
If we do not, we will reap a horrific harvest.
A candid observation…
Pledging Allegiance to a Flag that Has Not Pledged Allegiance to You
In 1965, author James Baldwin debated Conservative writer and political commentator William F. Buckley at Cambridge University. The event took place not long after Baldwin, residing in France, had recuperated from an illness that had sapped him of his strength, but he was well enough in February of that year to make the trip to Cambridge University and face Buckley.
The subject that they were to debate was “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” Baldwin went first, and he spoke with a quiet fire, clarity, and passion in a way that seemed to hold the roomful of students spellbound. He had no notes. He merely spoke. His words were riveting and biting at the same time; he shared the raw truth about being Black in America and that experience, in all of its fullness, did not require notes or a script to make his points.
He said many things in that speech that hit hard but his description of what it was like to grow up Black in America was particularly powerful. He said that it was a unique experience to realize as a child “that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance… has not pledged allegiance to you,” to be shocked to discover that “although you are rooting for Gary Cooper “ as he kills Indians, the Indians are you.”
I found myself wishing that I could have seen Buckley’s face as Baldwin spoke. The truth he was sharing was as raw as it was painful. Baldwin continued. “I picked the cotton …under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing!’
We can all remember saying the pledge, putting our hands over our hearts and pledging fealty to this country and therefore to its flag. I realized that in my own mind we all pledge allegiance to a country and its government that has not pledged allegiance to us. The flag is a symbol of a country whose leaders have felt little compunction over the course of its life to create policies that respect the full humanity of all who live here.
I can remember, as a child who sang in a district choir in Detroit singing “pro-America” songs. I still remember the lyrics of one:
I love the United States of America!
I love the way we all live without fear!
I like to vote for my choice, speak my mind, raise my voice
Yes, L like it here!
I like the United States of America
I am thankful each day of the year!
For I can do as I please ‘cause I’m free as the breeze,
Yes, I like it here!
I like to climb to the top of a mountain so high
Lift my head to the sky
And say how grateful am I
For the the way that I’m working, and helping and giving
And doing the things I hold dear!
Yes, I like it! I like it!
I like it here!
All of us in that integrated choir sang our hearts out – with all of our songs – but there was a special and unique energy that I can remember when we sang the songs about “our country.” We sang the songs. We pledged allegiance to the flag. And we believed that this country was a safe place that afforded liberty and justice to everyone.
I didn’t know – nor did my choirmates know – that this was a country that denied rights and equality to many who love it. I had not witnessed the evidence of racial, ethnic, class, and religious bigotry. I did not know about buses that made Black people sit in the back, neighborhoods that were manipulated to be all white or all Black, and I did not know that Black people who had served in this country’s wars did not earn a place in the line for benefits for veterans once they returned home. I had no idea that Black soldiers were too often lynched – while still in uniform – when they returned from those wars. They were fighting for their country, but it was not enough to dissolve the curse of racism that was baked into the foundation of this country.
When Baldwin said that we pledge allegiance to a flag that has “not pledged allegiance to you,” I felt myself take a small gasp. I had never thought of the plight of so many people here for whom that sentence holds true. It is such a simple truth, but we don’t often think of it that way, with those words. It is a jarring truth.
When Baldwin finished his side of the debate, the roomful of students – a group that looked to be all male and all white – stood on their feet and applauded for what seemed like 3-5 minutes. When Buckley took the podium, he opened by commenting of Baldwin’s “British accent,” suggesting that it was probably fake – but nobody responded. He made his points, not nearly as eloquent as had Baldwin, concluding, of course, that the American Dream was not created on the backs of Black people. When the camera panned to Baldwin’s face to catch his reaction, it was clear that he understood that Buckley did not have a clue as to what he had presented. Buckley received a polite round of applause when he was done – and he lost the debate: 184 votes to Baldwin’s 544.
The people who are in this moment fighting to dismantle the government are those to whom the country pledged allegiance. I don’t understand how one can call oneself a patriot while working to take one’s country down, but I do know this: This country has never pledged allegiance to the masses of Americans who need policies that help them. It has pledged allegiance, however, to those who have money, who make money, and who will continue to make money for themselves. All who are ignored or passed over will still be expected to pledge allegiance to the country that has not and will not pledge allegiance to them. Those who have been pledged the least will be those who fight the hardest to save what rights they have; those who have never worried about having rights as American citizens will continue to bulldoze over them and not realize the truth of Fannie Lou Hamer’s words, “Until all of us are free, none of us are free.” Many people will find out the hard way that the American Dream has been created at the expense of the Negro, as Baldwin said, but at the expense of every person who has done back-breaking work of building this country.
Has Whiteness Eroded the souls of white people?
Has Whiteness Eroded the Souls of White People?
I have for some time wondered if white people lost their souls as they have historically held onto, embraced, and zealously guarded their whiteness and the privileges their whiteness has afforded them.
It will never make sense to me how any people – white or otherwise – could possibly believe that chattel slavery was compatible with Christianity, as Robert P. Jones notes in his book White Too Long.
Jones writes, “The Christian denomination in which I grew up was founded on the proposition that chattel slavery could flourish alongside the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its founders believed this arrangement was not just possible but divinely mandated.”
Divinely mandated? That teaching floors me. How in the world can anyone who has read the Gospels walk away thinking like that? It is totally irrational and indicative of ignorance – or perhaps rejection – of the words of Jesus the Christ, whose ministry became as powerful as it was because he paid attention to, cared about, and ministered to “the least of these.”
But being white seems to have moved the Gospels and the words of Jesus to the periphery, if not all the way out, of the faith that Jesus taught. So many white folks have believed in and cherished their whiteness more than they have believed in and cherished the lessons of the Christ. Too many believe that it was God who made them superior and working on that premise, they have not worried about how they treat non-white people. Black people, many believe, were made to be subservient to white people, and, they are not really human and definitely not really American. They are – we are – objects to be owned and controlled by those commissioned by God and with the money and power to do it.
I heard an interesting portion of an interview with John Henry Faulk, a white Southerner from Texas who fought McCarthyism and eventually fought against racism.. He says he told this enslaved man that he was a “different” kind of white man who believed in “giving” Black people the right to vote, and the right to go to school– the same rights enjoyed by white people.
Faulk says in the interview that the man looked at him kind of sadly, almost with pity, before speaking and saying, “You still got the disease, honey. I know you think you’re cured, but you’re not cured.”
“You can’t give me the right to be a human, being I was born with it. You can keep me from having it,” he continued, “if you’ve got the police and all the jobs on your side, but you can’t give it to me. I was born with it just like you was (sic).”
Faulk was deeply impacted by what this formerly enslaved man said – angry at first that his “goodness” was not fully appreciated, but said that the more he thought about it, the more he realized and understood the power and the truth of what had been told to him.. He said he had an epiphany in his understanding of race and racism.
If white people, though, do not have an epiphany, they are unable to see Black people as human beings, capable of feeling hurt and pain, and having needs that all humans have. They cannot understand how spewing racist epithets at little Black children hurts them, or how Black families want justice as do all other human beings. They cannot understand why Black people are angry or frustrated or hurt – or all of those emotions; they do not understand how being told to “wait” for justice is like hearing a fingernail being dragged across a blackboard. They are not willing to admit that Black people have a
right to demand rights afforded to all American citizens; they feel, as did United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney who ruled in the Dred Scott case that there are “no rights of a Black man that a white man is bound to respect.”
They cannot relate to or even believe that the mothers and fathers of Black people murdered by police ache with a pain that cannot be assuaged. They cannot understand why the Black community in Ferguson, Missouri was outraged when, after he was shot by police, Michael Brown was not taken away but instead lay on the asphalt in the middle of the street for four hours, police not allowing his body to be moved. They grow impatient hearing about the atrocities committed against Black people by a white power structure and society that has historically allowed white people to kill Black people and not be held responsible or accountable. They cannot conceive that little Black children notice how their schools are run down and poorly equipped, as compared to the schools their white friends so often attend.
They think Black people whine, are too angry, and are definitely impatient. The frustration of waiting for over 400 years for justice and full American citizenship escapes the understanding of many, too many, white people.
They do not believe that Black people feel pain the same way they do. (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=201128359), and they don’t feel bad about providing lesser medical care to Black patients than they provide to white patients. (https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/09/20/differences-remain-in-heart-attack-treatments-for-black-patients) They don’t have a clue as to how little Black children react to being called racially hateful names, even as some oppose race being talked about because they don’t want their children to feel bad. (https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-why-the-narrative-that-critical-race-theory-makes-white-kids-feel-guilty-is-a-lie/)
I remember wondering about the souls of white people when I saw a video of a little second-grade Black child being handcuffed and taken to a police car for some minor infraction at school. As she was taken to the car, she resisted, screaming, and begging not to be put in the police car. The police ignored her. I wept when I saw the video. How, I wondered, could any adult do that to a second grader? (https://www.gq.com/story/six-year-old-black-girl-arrested-for-a-tantrum)
Maybe that’s when I started wondering if whiteness had erased or eradicated the very souls of white people. I remember briefly thinking about it years ago when I saw pictures of white mothers screaming hate at little Ruby Bridges as she integrated a while elementary school, and I have thought about it a lot since. Back then I thought, “mothers are supposed to be that way with any child.” Today, I think that those who call themselves Christian are not supposed to be so filled with hatred – which they justify – toward people just because they have been filled with lies and painfully incorrect perceptions about who Black people are and what, therefore, they deserve, don’t deserve, feel, and are incapable of feeling.
Sadly, for those who live and think that way, the words and the life of Jesus seem not to matter. And equally as sad is the fact that many of them do not care if that statement is true.
A candid observation …
Look What They’ve Done to Christianity
I wrote before that I get a bad feeling when I hear people say “Christian.”
The Christianity I was taught in Sunday School is nothing like I have seen Christianity being practiced – now or even in history.
I have been singing, for some reason, “Look What They’ve Done to my Song.” The words are sticking with me:
Look what they’ve done to my song, ma
Look at what they’ve done to my song, ma
It was the only thing I could do half right
And it’s turning out all wrong, ma, look
What they’ve done to my song
Those who have been calling themselves “Christian” have for the longest time been assaulting the religion of the Christ. While they brag about being “Christian,” their actions tell of allegiance to a force that has nothing to do with the lessons of Jesus the Christ.
We had grown used to it in primarily white, conservative, evangelical denominations and congregations, but now those who call themselves “Christian” nationalists have come front and center stage.
These people have a religion – i.e., they have a set of beliefs to which they adhere – and they believe in and worship a superhuman controlling power, as those who practice religion must do. But their “superhuman controlling powers are money and power. They believe in the power of individuals, not communities. They believe in a militant and muscular God, a God who apparently supports the “isms” of this world, including racism and sexism, militarism and materialism and extremism. They believe in and support the “phobias” so many people relate to – including Islamophobia, Transphobia and homophobia. The nationalists are not devoid of beliefs and it is important to note that, but though many worship in church buildings and are in “Christian” denominations, their beliefs bear little resemblance to the religion I have come to know as “Christianity.”
To be honest, a study of Christianity shows that it has been far away from the fundamental beliefs taught by Jesus for some time. God the parent and Jesus the son were made to be the proponents of conquest and domination, not liberation, justice, and freedom for all whom God created. The religion of Jesus was about community and relationship building between people who would naturally not communicate with each other, but those values were a minimized component of the religion that evolved from Jesus’ time.
Central to this alternate view of Christianity is the need for violence; this violence has been central to the foundation of Christianity as we know it for thousands of years. The belief is that Christianity was set up as the army of God, sent by God to conquer nations and peoples. Neither the scope nor the depth of the brutality meted out to people seemed to bother those who aligned themselves with the belief that it was God’s will that they dominate all people and all nations. Walter Wink noted that violence “is the first resort in conflicts.” Ironically, he said, “we learned to trust the Bomb to grant us peace.” This violence is good, they believe. It is called “redemptive violence.”
The ideology of this religion (nationalism) of conquest has been damaging and painful to so many people who have flocked to churches looking for a good, kind, accepting, forgiving God. On the contrary, they have found – in the most devout church-going people – hatred, prejudice, judgment, and a belief in the “rightness” of their tendency to tear people down. In their quest for domination, using violence as a means to get it, they are doing God’s will. All of us have received lessons of the oppressor’s religion; all of us, or maybe many of us, grew up singing, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and have not given those lyrics a second thought. As long as the masses of people have not thought about the theology they’ve been taught and the implications of it as well as its contradiction of what Jesus taught, they have practiced their religion with little difficulty. It did not, or has not, bothered them that their practice of religion has turned many people off and away from God and from church. Those who continued to go to churches that adhered to this kind of bigoted, violence-based religion, suffered and struggled with their questions; those who did not believe as they did simply stayed away.
But now there’s a move on for there to be “one religion” for this country – that of the religious nationalists. As they work to erode the rights of nearly everyone, there is little pushback against what they are doing. There is a feeling of self-righteousness as they, for example, push for “prayer” in schools – but what they’re not saying is that it is highly unlikely that the “prayers” of any religion other than that of the nationalists will be acceptable. They have said that there needs to be one religion in this country and that religion is nationalism. (https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/15/politics/michael-flynn-one-religion/index.html)
The religion of Jesus was one that liberated people, one that taught people that God, their creator, wanted them to be free from laws that were unjust and oppressive and one that taught them that they were loved, regardless of who they were, what they had done, or their social class or race. Jesus’ power was what it was because his religion was one that embraced all people, including “the least of these.” His teachings taught that all whom God created were precious in God’s sight and worthy of being treated as such.
But the religion of the nationalists, and actually the Christianity that has historically upheld and practiced bigotry, hatred, racism, sexism, and all other forms of judgment against certain people, contradicts what Jesus taught. Nationalists seek power and control, and they worship capitalism more than they honor and respect God. Their greed cancels out their capacity for grace, and their arrogance makes them unable to have “eyes that see” that Jesus said we should all strive to have.
I cannot see where the Jesus of the Bible would condone the hatred and violence, and the elevation of the former president to the status of a god, more important than the lives of the masses of people in this country and their well-being. They should stop using “Christian” to describe their religion, because in principle and by Jesus’ own tenets, their religion is not what Jesus came to earth to bring.
Better that we are honest and call nationalism what it is: a religion that has as its core beliefs violence, domination, and control. That is not the religion of Jesus the Christ.
© Susan K Smith
Candid Observations 