"STATE OF THE UNION: LAST GASP OR HEADWIND?"

“STATE OF THE UNION: LAST GASP OR HEADWIND?”

            About this time 56 years ago, on January 14, 1963, George Wallace gave his inaugural address as governor of Alabama, after being elected in the fall of 1962.  It is the speech in which he touted the racist history and the present status of white supremacy in the South, using the infamous words “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”  Although he would later make a symbolic stand in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the entrance of Autherine Lucy,     an African-American student who wanted to attend her state university, he did not recognize the winds of change that would blow through the state in 1963.  The Birmingham Campaign awaited, along with MLK’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” and the powerful August March on Washington was already in the discussion stages.  Wallace did not realize that he was part of the last gasp of that breath of the counter-revolution to the civil rights movement that was revitalized in Montgomery and in Greensboro.  In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson would end neo-slavery, commonly called “segregation,” when he signed the Voting Rights Act.

            That law and others sent white Southerners scurrying to the Republican party, in order to start another counter-revolution, a movement which continues today.  I thought of this history as I listened to Donald Trump’s short speech on Friday, saying that he would sign a bill to re-open the federal government, after he had forced it to close for the longest period in American history.  I’ve wondered many times, and I wonder today – is Trump part of the last gasp of this current version of the white supremacist counter-revolution, the final part of the tsunami that began with Nixon’s Southern strategy, continued through the Reagan movement, and strengthened through the Cheney/Bush presidency?   Or, is the headwind leading us back to the 1890’s, where white supremacy regained its footing all through the country?  

         I wrote a couple of weeks ago about “the new generation” in DC, people of color and progressives elected to the House last fall.  I am hoping that Trump is the last gasp, but I am also aware of American history and how deeply racism and sexism and materialism are woven into our marrow.  Many of us thought that it had been stopped with the election of Barack Obama in 2008.  Yet, it has roared back again in the election of Donald Trump as President.  It is a reminder that we will likely never eradicate the tsunamis of race and gender and class in American society.  They are like the tectonic plates underneath the surface, always moving and shifting and seeking to re-align things back to favor white, male supremacy.  Yet we must always be working to re-align the configurations of power to favor justice and equity and compassion.

            This will be a big year in determining which way the current energy goes.  Even if we did not know it already, the Trump administration has revealed to us the way that rich people live and move and have their being – the ordinary rules of equity do not apply to them.  Colluding with the Russians did not seen like “collusion” to them because those rules did not apply to them.  Added to that revelation is the re-energizing of the marginalization of African-Americans and Latinx-Americans.  That trend will continue unless there is strong opposition to it, just as Speaker Pelosi demonstrated strong resistance to Trump’s taking the government hostage over the Halliburton (or some corporation like that) border wall.  The Mueller Report will obviously be an important part of this year, as well as the development of a Republican challenger to Trump (Romney? Flake? Corker? Hogan? Ryan? Others?)    Speaker Pelosi seems to be the equal, if not superior, to Trump in using power, so that will be very interesting.

            All days and all years are crossroads, but this year seems especially so. Last Gasp for white, male supremacy for awhile?  Or Headwind for a new tsunami of oppression?  How we reflect on this year at this time in 2020 will depend a lot on our energy and work in 2019.  Let us be about our business – to do justice, love compassion, walk humbly.

"Doubting MLK"

Doubting MLK During a Strike in Memphis

Reprint from The Atlantic Online

A retired Presbyterian pastor looks back on 1968, when he participated in the civil-rights struggle but hadn’t yet embraced the principles of nonviolence.

Jan 13, 2018

I was a senior in college in 1968 at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), when the garbage workers strike in Memphis came to the public eye.  I joined other Southwestern students who were part of that strike.  That movement was part of a continuing shift for me in my own consciousness, as I began to change from a white person raised in the segregated South to a white person who gradually began to see how captive I was to the power of race.

            I had been taught racism by really decent white people in my hometown on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta – my family, my church, my teachers.  I believed that white people were superior, and that black people would never be our peers or equals.  If at times my experience seemed to teach otherwise, I was like Thomas Jefferson in his writings on “Notes on Virginia.”  Though he agonized over the ideas of equality and slavery,  he indicated that he could not find evidence of the equality of people of African heritage. 

            Education was one of my paths out of this total captivity to race.  Though most of my public school teachers were believers in race, one of my English teachers, a Jewish woman in our small Arkansas town, suggested that I read Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” about apartheid in South Africa.  I read it, and in it I met my first black person.  Oh yes, I had seen many black people in my youth, but I had not considered any of them to be a person as I was.

            My college years began to expand my horizons, and I began to hang out with the first black students at Southwestern.   In my junior year, I was one of the leaders of demonstrations that helped to close down a restaurant that refused to serve one of my black friends.   As 1968 began, I joined other white and black young people around the country who had begun to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. and his way of nonviolence were not only irrelevant, but were counterproductive and even dangerous.   Though I was not yet swayed by H. Rap Brown’s emphasis on the fundamental nature of violence in American life, it seemed to be the only way that justice might come for people of African heritage.  

            I jumped into the garbage strike, going on marches, seeking to organize and educate others.  I was part of group of students who went to churches on Sunday mornings, standing up to interrupt worship to shout “Support the garbage strike.”  We would usually be escorted out of worship, but a few people were sympathetic.   I retired from the ministry in 2017, and I have often wondered what I would have done as a worship leader, if such interruptions had come in my time.  Fortunately, none ever did, and I’d like to think that it was because Oakhurst Presbyterian was such a progressive church, but I know that the issue remains in my heart.

            Many of us felt that there was a possibility of victory in the garbage strike, and when Dr. King agreed to come to Memphis to support the strike, we had ambivalent feelings.  It seemed to us that he was only trying to capture the headlines, and the organizing seemed to be going well without him.   When his first march was organized, it ended in violence, as black youth and police clashed.  Dr. King seemed stunned that the black youth did not hold him and his principle of nonviolence in high esteem, and he was returning to Memphis in early April of 1968 to organize a bigger march that he intended to stay nonviolent.   I had an opportunity to go to Mason Temple to hear what would be his last sermon on April 3, but to my eternal regret, my lack of respect for him and my cynicism kept me from attending.

            I was working in the college library on the evening of April 4, and when my shift ended a little after 6 PM, I was walking out of the library, and one of my black student friends came up to me to say, in anger and in disgust, that Dr. King had been shot and would likely not live.  He then asked me:  “Some of my friends are organizing for the revolutionary fight.  We want to buy guns.  Can you lend me some money to help buy guns?”  I was stunned by his revelation and by his question, and I did not know how to respond.  I have racked my brain, but I cannot remember whether I gave him any money or not.  I was a relatively poor student, and I did not have money to spare anyway. 

            Violence followed in Memphis and throughout the country – the great apostle of nonviolence was gunned down by white people, and it seemed like all hope was lost.  I remember the National Guard armored cars riding up and down the streets in Memphis, and I remember feeling lost and forlorn.  That feeling was strengthened by the assassination of Robert Kennedy two months later and by the violence of the police at the Democratic convention in that summer, followed by the election of Richard Nixon as president that fall.

            I have thought over these events many times since then, and I have gained great respect for Dr. King over the years – I wish that I had known then what I know now!  Though it is greatly diminished, the power of race remains in me.  And, though I understand the impulse and sometimes the agency of violence, I am firmly committed to the principle of nonviolent resistance which Dr. King developed so well.   The continuing struggle for equality for black people, for women, for immigrants, for LGBTQ people reminds me that this struggle is ongoing in American history.  I don’t know if 2018 will be similar to 1968 or not, but I do know that in all of our work, the two forces of love and justice must be kept in proper tension.  As James Cone indicated in his fine book on Dr. King and Malcolm X,  King began with love and moved towards justice, while Malcolm X began with justice and moved towards love.  Both of those must be present if we are to build and sustain movements and communities dedicated to equity and justice.

"A NEW GENERATION"

“A NEW GENERATION”

            Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress, caused quite a stir last week at a MoveOn event.  She indicated that she planned to be part of a movement to impeach Donald Trump.  She used profane language to describe the Trumpster that shocked many people.  For many folk, her language was more difficult than the call for impeachment. 

            It is indicative that a new generation of leaders are coming into Congress, and I recalled a generational moment like this with my children.  When they were new teenagers, we were watching some macho movie on TV, and the protagonist called the bad guy a “melon farmer.”  I asked David and Susan what he was talking about, and they were genuinely shocked.  “Dad, don’t you know that ‘melon farmer’ is a censored word for the other m-f word?”  I was at first surprised that they even knew the “m-f” word, but then I remembered my own childhood, when at age six I knew all the cuss words, even if I didn’t know what they really meant.  I replied that while I sometimes thought in the “m-f” language, I never spoke it, so it was outside my perceptual field.   They told me that there was a new generation coming, and that I had better get accustomed to it.  Little did I know that cable was coming and that the “m-f” word would be used a lot on TV.

            I do not like the “m-f” word, but whatever one thinks about Congresswoman Tlaib’s use of it, her determination to take back the American government is a signal that there is a new group of representatives in Congress.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most publicized, but there is a significant group of newly-elected Congresspeople who are not only dedicated to impeaching Donald Trump, but are also dedicated to reconstructing American society in order to better develop justice and equity in our midst.  On one level, it reminds me of the energy that John F. Kennedy brought to the Presidency when he was elected in 1960.   I could not vote in that election because I was in the 9^th grade, but if I had been able to do so, I would have voted for Richard Nixon.  I was still deeply held in the captivity of racism and sexism and militarism, and though there were signs breaking out of changes to come (like Brown v. Board and the Montgomery Bus Boycott), I was still longing for the white men’s context to be retained 100%. 

            Even though I was opposed to JFK’s election as president, I was astonished by his inaugural speech in 1961.  Many things struck me in that speech, but this phrase has come back to me in these days:  “Let the word go forth from this time and place….that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…”  JFK was more “white male oriented” and conservative than I thought, but his election was part of the calling forth of  a new generation.  Indeed, it took his life, but the forces that were unleashed would fundamentally change American society, as people classified as “black,” as women, as poor people, as gay and lesbian people, and others began to hear that the basic phrase of the American vision applied to them also:  “all {men} are created equal.”

            And, to paraphrase another American president, we are now in a struggle to see if that proposition of equality can long endure.  Donald Trump and his base hope that it cannot endure – indeed, he wants the federal government shut down because it gives him a feeling of having dictatorial powers.  Yet, a new generation has been called forth, led by Barack and Michelle Obama, and now bearing fruit in all these new folk in Congress.  2019 will be a very interesting year, as the investigations of Trump and his ilk begin to report out, and as the struggle for the idea of equality deepens and hardens.

            We give thanks for this new generation, and we hope that they will provide breakthroughs similar to those we saw in the 1960’s.  No guarantees, though – we’ve seen many of those breakthroughs weakened by SCOTUS, which seems poised like the SCOTUS of the 1850’s.  JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK and many others all were assassinated in this struggle.  The resistance to equality is deeply rooted in American history.  So, it is up to us to find our place in this new generation, to help maintain the power of the idea of equality, and to deepen its reach and its meaning.  Let us find our voice in this volatile and exciting time.

"SWEET LITTLE JESUS BOY?"

“SWEET LITTLE JESUS BOY?”

            I remember hearing Christine Callier sing the lead part to “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” at Christmas early on in our time at Oakhurst.   It is a powerful song, and I thought that it surely came out of the African-American tradition.   I learned, however, that it was written in 1934 by a white man, Robert MacGimsey, from Pineville, Louisiana.  He grew up in the time of neo-slavery, and he experienced music in many genres, and he tried to learn and preserve African-American folk music from the South.

            Though the words are moving, the title sticks with me:  “Sweet Little Jesus Boy.”  It is a metaphor for the evolution of Christmas from a counter-cultural gathering to a sentimental way to sell products.  The meaning of the baby in the manger has become mainly a sweet story, and we have the opportunity to feel good about ourselves and about life before we box it all up and put it away for another year.  The Biblical accounts are much different though, none more so than Matthew’s account of the Magi coming to see the revelation of God in Matthew 2.  This event is called Epiphany, and last week I looked at Luke’s version of the Epiphany, which we in the West celebrated yesterday on January 6.  While Luke’s version has a hint about the struggle that is to come in relation to “sweet little Jesus boy,” Matthew’s account is much more harsh and explicit. 

            We are familiar with the first part of the narrative in Matthew 2, where the Magi follow a star and come to Jerusalem to King Herod’s palace to inquire about the one born to be ruler of the Jews.  Since that is Herod’s current title, he is not especially pleased to hear this news.   His advisers discern that the baby was born in Bethlehem, and he sends the Magi there, telling them that he wants to come and worship this sweet little baby also.   The Magi find the baby and bring him gifts, and it is a sweet and powerful scene – Gentiles coming to worship the one born to rule the Jews.

            The lectionary reading for Epiphany ends the passage at this point, because the rest is horrible.  The Magi do not return to Herod because they are warned in a dream to go home by another way.    Herod is planning to kill this sweet little Jesus boy, and he sends his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the baby boys there.  Joseph, who has adopted this baby boy as his own, discerns the times, and he takes his family to Egypt as refugees to escape the political violence.  Yet, Matthew’s account tells us that Herod’s soldiers do kill all the baby boys of Bethlehem, and it is horrific.  Matthew tells us that there is loud lamenting, “Rachel weeping for her children, for they are no more.”

            Sweet little Jesus boy indeed.  Perhaps it should be “Dangerous little Jesus boy,” for the two versions of the Epiphany both indicate that the world will be exceedingly threatened by this baby born to an unwed mother, born on the streets, his family fleeing for their lives as refugees in Egypt.  It is as if this story came right out of today’s headlines, with the federal government shut down because the Trumpster and his base want a wall to keep out people like Jesus and Maria and Jose.  Herod sending his soldiers to Yemen to destroy the babies of that country.  The drones sent from USA and other places to kill all over the Middle East.  Our president acting like the petulant and narcissistic King Herod on so many levels.

            So, perhaps “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” should be retitled “Dangerous Little Jesus Boy.”  Yet, some of the words to that song, that I heard Christine Callier sing,

do envelop this radical and dangerous part of the Christmas story:  

“The world treat You mean, Lord;

Treat me mean, too.

But that’s how things is down here,

We didn’t know it was You.”

            So, as we wrap up this Christmas season, let us remember this sweet and terrible and dangerous story.  This is not a story to be taken down, put into the boxes and stored in the attic or closet until next Christmas season.  This is a story that tells us that God’s coming among us in this baby is both life-changing and dangerous at all times, but especially in these times.  Let us look for his star in the night skies.