It is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Day of Remembrance 2021. As I reflect on the last 12 days, the Capitol insurrection and news since then, on the last 16 years and the descent from hope and change to fear and regression, I am thinking about the interrelatedness of all creation. King talked about our connections, about one’s success or failure being directly tied to the community’s. I am thinking of race relations and the white nationalist terrorism of January 6. I am thinking of Ahmaud Arbery and so many others.
I have rarely suffered the indignations of my queerness or my Jewish ancestry in any comparable measure to the strife endured by King and Black people in America. Yet the anger I feel at this latest manifestation of white rage and white supremacy is clearly a boiling over of my simmering rage about injustice and bigotry, in many forms, from years of disenchantment. So many of King’s oft-quoted admonitions urging us toward racial reconciliation are clearly rooted in Scripture. I admit my own rootedness in those sacred texts.
I want to scour my holy texts for words about revenge and the wrath of God—so I can find religious justification for my rage and the costly penalties I want inflicted on those who were involved. AND, I also want to be tempered by the words of mercy and reconciliation I know I will find there as well because I believe in a God of reconciling grace and mercy. I want to be both a zealot on the battlefield for justice armed with every sword of righteousness I can carry. Nevertheless, I want to be a gracious responder full of love and mercy and offering the transformative power of forgiveness. I want to shake the dust from my feet on any ground where homegrown terrorists have trod. And I want to reach into the miry clay that holds them and pull them to safety. In short, I want truth and consequences; and, I want a path that repairs the breach.
I believe that the repair can only come with honest engagement about our history, our very real entrapment in the sin of racism, and with the confrontation of the evil of white privilege that suppresses all others. The selective choices of biblical texts cited by the divide and conquer fear-mongers and racial terrorists are pieces of our Judeo-Christian history of superiority, of being favored by God, of being chosen over and above all others. A fuller reading of the Bible reveals a rejection of that kind of thinking. Rev. Dr. King helps us hear that still, small voice. He joined the voices of prophets calling us to deep and truthful examination of injustice.
We may think racism, poverty, and militarism are modern troubles. Reading with open eyes and ears, the Biblical prophets can be seen and heard denouncing the impoverishment of the many and the enrichment of the few. Disciples living in a shared economy where none had need is the ideal. The prophets highlight that being called to service is not the same as being chosen for a special dispensation of dominance. Jesus notes that the greatest are the last, that the doers of his word are those who serve others. Regarding the military, Scripture details battles won and lost, and often sanctions success as God-directed and defeat as the result of human sin. But the second evil act of Scripture is a killing and it is judged and condemned with banishment, removal from the community, not to mention a great commandment not to kill. The greatest act of violence in Christian history, the execution of Jesus by the power of the military state of Rome, was preceded by Jesus chastising the use of the sword by his disciple, and declaring that he could indeed call forth an army, but rejecting it in favor of a better, more godly way. He claimed peacemakers would be the true children of God. He declared that we should love those we call enemy.
Such common wealth, kinship, and pacifist biblical passages may not be as numerous as the wars for land, but they must be considered with the weight of scriptural authority they carry. Therefore Christians, most particularly white Christians, must confront our role in the evil that threatens to destroy us all. White Christian faith, in America, draws upon the Jewish ontology of being created and preferred by the one, true God. Christian evangelicalism uses this chosen people narrative to enhance white superiority and uses the promised land politics regarding Israel for the purposes of end-time hopes for an Armageddon when only whites will be saved. Yes, all non-Christ-confessing Jews will be wiped out according to evangelical end-time theologies of salvation.
White Christianity needs a reformation.
Or maybe, it should just die.
If we are to move from revenge to reformation, we white people need to let go of “our” religion and rightness, of all the ways faith proclaims a divine blessing on white dominance as a birthright.
Let’s start with art. If a church owns 10 paintings of white Jesus, remove nine and replace them with the works of other artists depicting Jesus in other skin. (Or use non-white Jesus in your Powerpoint sermon illustrations.) If a song is good enough for Black History Month, sing it more than once a year. If a pulpit exchange on MLK weekend is the way you cross cultures with a non-white congregation, how about rebudgeting and hiring a new non-white staff member? Then regularly hear what that preacher teaches, recognizing any defensiveness you feel means truth is marching on. If your education curriculum is only written by white denominational leadership, read something from the best-seller list by non-white authors. These are easy steps, symbols really, that might precede, and perhaps, spark deeper discussions.
Such discussions might begin with being honest about our political and economic structures. Does your preschool cost too much for the black families working hourly jobs in your neighborhood? Do your kids go to a private school on a legally codified redirection of your property taxes that allows Christian schools to provide scholarships, which actually go back to your child, not the black kid in the public housing and the school you rejected? Do you have an American flag in the sanctuary but tell your pastor not to preach politics?
I am aware that calls for peace and unity are the end goal. That time will come after truth and accountability are manifesting. Rebirth, resurrection, can only come after death. White Christian theology must die. And white Christians are the ones who must reject it, stop providing CPR to it, let its impurity burn in the fiery hell we have created, so that God might raise up a true faith, a house of prayer for all peoples.
Maybe then King’s dream, the same one his God inspired in the prophets long ago, will come to fruition.
bevfriedlander 