"THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT"

 “THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT”

This has been quite a month in my vacation and Covid-filled absence from the weekly blog.  Caroline and I are both recovering from Covid, but we only had “milder” symptoms like a bad cold.  As I return to blogging, I am aware of how relevant the 14th Amendment is in our current political climate.  So, I am revising and reprising one of my blogs from 2018 on the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment.  This week’s blog is on the continuing power, relevance and struggle over the 14th Amendment.  Next week’s blog will be on the 14th Amendment, the Dobbs decision, and Donald Trump.

    July 28 marks the 154th anniversary of the  adoption of the 14th amendment to the Constitution.  It was ratified on July 9, 1868, and on July 29, Secretary of State William Seward declared that it was officially ratified and now part of the Constitution.  

This amendment is one of the most litigated of the parts of the Constitution because it did four important things.  First, it established the right of citizens to due process in relationship to the government.  Second, it provided equal protection to all citizens.  Third, it established the idea of “birthright” of citizenship – if you are born “here” in USA or our territories, you are automatically an American citizen.  Fourth, it indicated for the first time that state and local governments were subject to these first three steps.  

This 14th Amendment has had a difficult time in American history.    Even while it was being ratified, white Southerners were working to undercut it, and indeed we did undercut it through a reign of terror and legislative manipulation.  It would take almost 100 years before it would gain even a minimal force of law through the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65.   In a terrible but not surprising decision in 2013, the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by taking out its “special” enforcement status for those states whose history indicated an unwillingness to adhere to the 14th Amendment.  It should be no surprise that decision (Shelby v. U.S.) came out of the state of Alabama, a state as Martin Luther King, Jr., said in his 1963 speech: “with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.”

This struggle over the 14th Amendment is so great because, in many ways, it is the crux on which the American experiment  and indeed the idea of constitutional government hinges – it always seems to be hanging in the balance.  Do we believe in the idea of equality or not?  Our history says “no,” for the most part, but the 14th Amendment is among our better angels, urging us to say “yes.”  Many of our leaders have understood the importance and the meaning of this Amendment.  Thurgood Marshall was one who understood it, and he put it this way in his Bicentennial speech in 1987:  “While the Union survived the Civil War, the Constitution did not.  In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality, the 14th Amendment….guaranteeing equal protection of the laws.”

Marshall correctly understood that the intent of the Constitution in its beginning was to keep power in the hands of white men of property, and so there was no mention of the full humanity of women or of people of African descent or Native Americans.  Yet, the idea of equality was so powerful and so electric, that the white men of property could not confine it to themselves.  Women heard their names called.  African-Americans heard their names called.  Native Americans heard their names called.  Latinx Americans heard their names called.  Asian-Americans heard their names called.  Poor people heard their names called.  LGBTQ people heard their names called.  The power of the 14th Amendment is to speak to all of us:  the power of the idea of equality is calling to us all.  That is one of the great things that we should remember as we celebrate this powerful amendment to the Constitution.

  It is not just progressives who have understood the meaning of this 14th Amendment.  Regressives have understood it too.  That’s why the fight over the 14th Amendment continues.  Those who speak of being “originalists” over the authority of the Constitution are seeking to take us back to the days of the origins of the Constitution, when white men of property were seen as those entitled to power.   There is a lot of talk these days about the changing demographics in America, with young people and people of color becoming the majority in the USA sooner than many of us realize.   Some progressives have hopes in this demographic change, and I have hopes too.  Yet, we should realize that old white men (and women, it seems, since the majority of them voted for Trump) will not yield this power easily, if we yield it at all.  Limits on voting rights, purging voter rolls, overt gerrymandering – all designed to take us back to the original Constitution.  And, now the Supreme Court seems to taking a hard turn towards this regressive status, so perhaps a Dred Scott decision or a Plessy decision awaits us in the near future.

So, let us give thanks for those who worked so hard for this amendment and others to follow.  Take time this week to read the 14th Amendment – our very lives as a nation may depend on our ability to believe and to live it.  Then, while you still can, make sure that you are registered to vote and that all your friends, neighbors and colleagues are registered to vote – these November elections will tell us if we are moving with the 14th Amendment or against it.  

"A PROPHET FOR OUR TIME"

 “A PROPHET FOR OUR TIME”

In my abbreviated blog this week, I want to remind everyone that tomorrow (Saturday, July 16) is the 160th anniversary of one of the great American prophets, Ida B. Wells-Barnett.  In many ways, hers is the American story of possibility and hard work:  she was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, but by the time of her death, she was one of the most famous people in America.  In many ways, her story is the American story racism and sexism:  because she was a Black woman, her witness was deeply resisted and almost forgotten in history.  Yet, thanks to the efforts of her daughter Alfreda Duster and now her great-grandchildren Michelle and Dan Duster, Ida B. Wells is having her moment in history, as her powerful witness is remembered and celebrated.

Wells fought her way into the American consciousness, and she kept fighting until she passed in 1931.  Although she was a “race” woman, she was just as strongly a crusader for women’s rights, for an end to war, and for justice for all, no matter one’s class status.  Though she was anti-war, she did not espouse non-violence as a way of life.  She told all Black families to keep a Winchester rifle in their homes so that they could protect themselves in case white folks came for them.  Indeed, in one of the many times that her life was threatened, she proclaimed that they might get her, but she would take as many of the attackers as she could with her into death.

She grew up in the chaos of Reconstruction, but she heard from her parents and from her culture and church that her primary definition was “child of God.”  This belief carried her through the tidal wave of white supremacy and racism that swept away Reconstruction and that re-established neo-slavery.  Her strong and insightful and persistent voice makes her such a vital prophet for our time, as we tremble on the precipice of a tsunami of white, male supremacy seeking to reassert itself.  Her life and witness are a powerful tool for us in our time.

If you want to know more about Ida B. Wells, see the award-winning book that Dr. Catherine Meeks and I co-authored:  “Passionate for Justice:  Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Time.”  Her great granddaughter Michelle Duster also has a fine book about her and about her witness for both racial and gender justice: “Ida B the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells.”  There is also a much longer bio of her by Paula Giddings entitled “Ida: A Sword Among Lions.”  Or, in the modern age, just “google” her, and you will find all kinds of information.

So, please, tomorrow raise a glass to Ida B. Wells – give thanks for her life and witness. May her spirit speak forth now in our time of need, giving us courage and determination and vision.

"JUNETEENTH AND THE MEANING OF AMERICA"

 “JUNETEENTH AND THE MEANING OF AMERICA”

Juneteenth begins a two week period in our history when we can now consider two powerful forces in America:  the idea of equality, and the idea of slavery/white supremacy.  These two ideas are not compatible with one another, but they continue to co-exist in the history of the USA.  The tradition is that Frederick Douglass never spoke about equality and justice on July 4, because he saw July 4 celebrations as a mockery as long as people were enslaved in America.  In his famous and powerful speech about Independence Day in 1852 in Rochester, he said these words:  “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer:  a day that reveals to {him}, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which {he} is the constant victim.”

Douglass finds the essence of the struggle in the tension between the idea of equality and the idea of slavery/white supremacy.  How can we celebrate the idea of equality while still holding onto the idea of white supremacy?  Douglass and others knew well how those of us classified as “white”  do it:  we deepen and refine the idea of race and racism.  How could we believe in equality and still hold people in enslavement?  We developed the idea of “white supremacy,” the idea that people of color, and especially those classified as “Black,” were not full human beings in the same way that those classified as “white” were.  The idea of equality, then, does not apply to those classified as “non-white.”  Jefferson and most of the other “founding” fathers did not believe that those classified as “Black” and “Native Americans” were equal human beings.  It was this belief that led them to hold human beings as slaves and to kill and remove Indigenous people from their lands.

After the Civil War, this idea was revived and deepened even further in order to repudiate the outcome of the Civil War (and to deny the value of the 700,000+ lives lost in that War) and in order to re-establish “slavery by another name,” to use Doug Blackmon’s powerful phrase.  This idea of white supremacy retains its power today, as we have seen in the rise of the Party of Trump, dedicated to the idea that white males should be in charge of everything, not because we are greedy and insecure, but because God and nature made us that way.  Those of us classified as “white” are watching the demographics, and we are aware that the time of plurality is not far away in the future, the time when there will be no majority racial classification in USA.  We are willing to support a despot like Trump because he is telling us what we want to hear:  those classified as “white” should always be in charge, especially white males.  This fear of the demographics is driving the Big Lie of the stolen 2020 election, voter suppression acts, censorship on “critical race theory,” anti-immigrant work, and the soon-to-be evisceration of Roe v. Wade.

We have had several tipping points in our history in this struggle between equality and white supremacy.  We saw it in the rise of the abolitionist movement in the 1840’s, in the tumultuous decade of the 1850’s that led to the Civil War.  We saw it in Reconstruction when the idea of equality seemed to be gaining strength.  We saw it in the development of the counter-revolution which pushed the Big Lie of the “Lost Cause,” an idea that pummeled the idea of equality.  We saw it in the 1890’s, when political power combined with violence to re-establish the priority of white supremacy.  We saw it in the 1940’s and 1950’s, when Black veterans returning from World War II were determined not to go back to neo-slavery.  We saw it in the 1960’s, as equality once again gained strength, and slavery was finally ended in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Juneteenth acts as a counterpoint to the strong tendency towards white supremacy in our history.  It reminds us all of the power of the idea of equality, an idea that is rooted in struggle.  Even so with Juneteenth, now a federal holiday that reminds us that it took over two years for the news of freedom to reach those held in slavery in Texas.  

Since the Supreme Court hollowed out that Voting Rights Act in in its Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013, we are once again back in that same struggle between equality and white supremacy.  The idea of equality is powerful - many different groups - who were intended to be subservient by the system of race developed in USA – have heard and believed that the idea of equality applied to them also.  We are now at that tipping point again in the struggle between equality and white supremacy.  As we celebrate both Juneteenth and July 4, let us remember the tension between them.  Indeed, in the years to come, let us set aside the two weeks between these two national holidays to be in dialogue on the struggle between these two powerful ideas in American history.  May the profound vision of equality – a vision so frightening that its very authors immediately repudiated it in American history – may this vision go to our own core as individuals and as a nation, and may we live out its creed for all of us.

"CIVIL WAR - WILDCAT GROWL"

“CIVIL WAR – WILDCAT GROWL” 

“All along the watchtower

Princes kept the view

While all the women came and went

Barefoot servants, too

While, outside in the cold distance

A wildcat did growl

Two riders were approaching

And the wind began to howl”

Bob Dylan wrote this song in 1966, and then Jimi Hendrix took it over, but I still like Dylan’s version.  It seems appropriate for the times in which we live – the wildcat is growling and the wind is howling.

I had intended to pause the series on the possibility of a modern civil war, but provocative comments in response to the series and the opening of the January 6 Congressional hearings have compelled me to continue it for this week.  The hearings are revealing a concerted right wing effort to take over the government by throwing out the results of the 2020 presidential election and installing Donald Trump as president in 2021 and perhaps for life.  With President Biden’s ratings dropping and dropping, it is not hard to envision a scenario with the Trump Republicans winning both the House and the Senate in this fall’s elections. Then Trump would run again for President in 2024 and in winning, would give the right wing complete control of the mechanism of the federal government.  Whether Trump runs again or not in 2024, the autocracy of Trumpism is now central to the Republican party, and whoever wins the Republican nomination will be steeped in it, and will, I think, be favored to win in 2024.

Here are some powerful comments from our friend and colleague, the Rev. Dr. Greta Reed, now retired in Florida.  These are from an email exchange in regard to my two previous blogs on Civil War.

“I actually agree with you that the most likely scenario is to take over the government (by creating chaos at voting places, tilting the election, etc.)

But if THIS were to lead to many people like us taking to the streets, we would be met (I'm afraid) with violence not only of police and National Guard, but quite possibly by these armed right wing extremists.  It's a profoundly sad time--a national psychosis, sustained by silos of misinformation and deliberate manipulation.

    So interesting (if sad and horrifying both) to hear the hard-line Republicans placing their Second Amendment rights over the lives of children. (I would think parents have some rights regarding the protection of their children from wanton violence.) But more than that, the complete lack of empathy. but that's what extremism does: we develop a religious belief in our orthodoxy (e.g., the principle that no one can interfere with my right to bear arms) and nothing else matters. This is Putin's orthodoxy in invading Ukraine: some 18th or 19th century Romanticism about Mother Russia, "justifying" his violence in destroying every living thing in Ukraine in order to take it over.”

Greta makes a compelling case for what the future may hold for all of us in this country.  She also emphasized in other comments that any future civil war will be not be so much geographical as it will be spiritual and psychological.  In other words, the coming conflict will not be between the South and the North but between political factions, with urban areas being the most divided.  As in “Parable of the Sower,” the violence will grow in all areas, and in response the federal government (driven by autocratic Republicans) will crush dissent and establish a repressive order, reminiscent of Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

This is grim stuff, and while I have often entertained this possibility in my mind, for the first time in my life, I can feel it in my gut.  Something’s coming, and unlike the wind of Mary Poppins, this is a wildcat growl, and seems to be a distinct possibility in my lifetime, just like our having reached the tipping point in climate change. But, as with climate change, there are things that we can do to mitigate the coming storms.  

As I have indicated before, voting in this year’s primaries and elections is essential.  There is no way around this.  Although there have been plenty of laws passed to repress the vote already, there is still some possibility of stopping even more repression by voting in the 2022 elections.  If moderates and progressives lose in this year and in 2024, these may be the last legitimate elections for the foreseeable future.  So, do this – register yourself to vote, and find at least 10 other people who are not registered to vote, and get them to register.  

The sinister winds are strong, however, so we must all find other places to be active for justice and for equity.  Organizing, showing up at council and commission meetings, protesting in the streets, contacting legislators – all of these and more are necessities at this point, if we are to avoid the autocracy that seems to be coming.  The wildcat is growling, and the wind is howling.

 

'CIVIL WAR - PART TWO"

“CIVIL WAR – PART TWO”

I’ve gotten a lot of good and provocative responses to last week’s blog on the possibility of another civil war in America.  The violence has only increased since then, so I’m wondering, wondering, wondering.  The first thought is that these next six months will tell us a lot about our future.  Will the Trumpist Republicans allow significant gun law reform?  The assault weapons ban was lifted during the George W. Bush presidency, and it has been mayhem ever since.  I am not hopeful that the Republicans will do anything significant – they might make the sale of body armor illegal to civilians, or they may allow a limit on the number of bullets available in a clip, but I do not see them going any further, if indeed they go that far.

Such action or inaction will be the first marker of the future.  To continue to allow assault weapons in the hands of civilians will proclaim the willingness and the desire to allow civilians to wreak havoc on society, even encouraging attacks on community institutions like schools and places of worship.  At this point, this scenario seems grim.

    The second marker will be the elections this fall, which now turn out to be omens for the future.  If the Trumpist Republicans win the House and the Senate in the fall, we are in deep trouble, because they are controlled by a vision of dominating white, male supremacy.  The moderates will still control the Presidency, but that may fall in 2024 also.  If the white supremacists win this fall, there will be no significant reform legislation passed in the next years.  Political races in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other states will tell us a lot about the prospects for 2024, with governor and Senate races pointing towards the future.  There is still hope in this area, because voter turnout is key.  I am assuming that all people who read this blog are registered to vote and will vote.  I am asking you to pursue ten people who are not registered to vote and get them registered to vote.  It means an active working on our part to do this.  Then, make sure that people vote in the fall – it is as simple and as important as that.

    The third marker is the Supreme Court – all of us dread the SCOTUS decision coming this month on the Mississippi law on a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.  The leaked Alito brief makes this a difficult wait to see whether Roe v. Wade will be completely overturned.  Whether it is completely overturned or not, it seems clear that it will be eviscerated, just as SCOTUS eviscerated the Voting Rights Act in 2013.  Another part of this turning will be whether laws like the state of Missouri limiting  the right of women to travel to other states to receive abortions will be upheld.  This is eerily similar to the Dred and Harriet Scott case out of Missouri in 1857, where they were enslaved.  They had traveled to a “free” state and sought their freedom there.  In that case, SCOTUS said that they were not human beings and had no right to even bring a case before the court.

    Thus, it is hard to tell if there will be a civil war in the USA or not in the near future.  It seems clear that we are on the brink of a wave of repression that is coming soon, if the 2022 elections turn out as they are projected now.  One of the questions is what moderates and those on the left will do in response to the repression that is coming.  Get people registered and mobilized to vote – yes.  Contact legislators and seek to get gun reform passed – yes.  Take to the streets in demonstrations to demand justice and equity – yes.  Taking up guns ourselves to protect those who are oppressed and crushed – that is the question.  It may be that our future will be much closer to what Octavia Butler predicted in her book “Parable of the Sower.” In that book, there was no civil war, but there was violence all around, with bands of marauders roaming and attacking, with political ideology not as important as walled and armed camps protecting smaller groups of people.  

    This seems like a harsh and blunt blog, and I hope that I am making the wrong assumption about the short term future.  Younger people, who have responded to me, often indicate that these crazy days are the last throes of a white, male supremacist culture that is in decline. I am hoping that is true, that the forces of white male supremacy and materialism will yield to the power of equity and justice. I am hoping that moderates and progressives will prevail in the fall elections, but right now I hear Margaret Atwood’s voice calling.  

 

"CIVIL WAR?"

 “CIVIL WAR?”

As I give thanks for those who have served our country, I am remembering a question that still haunts me in relation to the origins of Memorial Day. It began in the midst of the Civil War, to honor those killed in that war.

 Almost a year ago, I was leading a seminar for German students at Helmut Schmidt University at the invitation of my colleague Andreas Holzbauer.  It was part of his course on “White Christianity,” and after I had given my thoughts on white Christianity in the American context, he opened it up for questions from the students.  One of the first questions was “Do you think that there will be a civil war in the United States in the near future?”  This question was raised at the time of the rise of Trumpism in our country, and several students compared it to the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930’s.

I answered at that time, that although I recognized deep divisions in our country,  I did not think that civil war would come anytime soon to the USA.  The events of this last year, especially the slaughter of children in Texas last week, have made me wonder if we are on our way to civil war.  My good friend, Ed Loring, believes that we are already in a civil war, that the moderates and those on the left simply have realized it yet.  Perhaps it is like the 1850’s, when huge events and movements prodded us into the Civil War.  Events like the “Fugitive” Slave Act that was passed in 1850, requiring all free people of any racial classification in any state to cooperate with authorities or slave-masters seeking to recapture those who had escaped slavery.   Looking back, it is easy to tell how dehumanized those people held in slavery were – the law is not called the “Escaped People” Act, but rather the “Fugitive Slave” Act.

Second, the violence seen in Buffalo and Texas last week was the repeat of that in Kansas after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, where Congress allowed the new territories to decide for themselves whether holding people as slaves would be permitted.  It turned into a mini civil war, and John Brown found his vision to end slavery through violence in Kansas.  Third, the SCOTUS decision of 1857 in the Dred and Harriet Scott case, in which the Court decided that those classified as “Black” were not human beings and thus were not entitled to the fundamental human rights of the Constitution.  Fourth there was John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in which he sought to get weapons to begin the violent overthrow of slavery in the USA.  Brown’s raid brought hope to many, but it also sent a chill down the spines of those who held people as slaves.  And, finally, there was the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, a victory which caused  the slavemasters to break from the country, as they sought to keep the ideology of “white supremacy” at the heart of the nation.

Are we in that kind of preliminary decade now?  Are we in a prelude to a civil war, a prelude that most of us have not yet recognized?  What are those events in our time that might be harbingers of such a terrible ordeal?  First, there was 9/11 in 2001, in which the mighty power of technology was used in a horrible way against us, reminding us that our military might and our wealth did not exclude us from the repercussions of our worship of racism, materialism, and militarism.  Second, there was the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, the first person categorized as African-American to be elected to that office.  It was a scary blow to the idea of white supremacy, and much of what we have seen since that 2008 election is in reaction to that.  Third, the terrible SCOTUS decision of 2013 (Shelby v. Holder) that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a reaction to the election of Obama, and it has led to the campaign to severely limit voting rights, especially those of Black and Brown people.

Fourth, the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016 was a clear expression of the re-animating force of white supremacy.  In many ways, we were fortunate that Trump is as inept as he is, so that he would be repudiated in 2020.  

    Those who follow him in the Trumpist, white supremacy movement will not be so inept.  And, finally the proliferation of guns and weapons – and our idolatrous belief that they are god – makes me tremble for the future of our country.  Black and Brown people will not be returning to the neo-slavery days of pre-1965, and white people are determined to reassert white supremacy – the mindset of “The White South” is rising.

Will there be a civil war again in the United States?  I am much less certain now than I was a year ago, when I was asked that question.  I’m hoping, hoping, hoping that the forces of justice and equity will yet prevail without the horror of civil war. Yet I also recognize that my classification as “white” means that I am much less aware of the daily violence and oppression faced by Black and Brown people and by women.  I’ll have more to add next week, but I’ll be glad to hear from you on this topic.  In the meantime, if you have not read “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, find it somewhere and read it – written in the late 1980’s, it is the most prescient novel on current American life of which I am aware.  And, if you want to see the violent side, with another Black protagonist, see the “Watchmen” series.  Both works of art take seriously the depth of violence, materialism and racism in American history and American life.  

"PREACHING OPPORTUNITIES"

 “PREACHING OPPORTUNITIES”

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to preach the eulogy for our friend Lorri Mills at Oakhurst Presbyterian last Saturday, May 21.  Lorri died way too early for those of us fortunate enough to call her “friend,” but we were so blessed by her life of service, ministry, generosity and hard work.  If you did not get to see the service, you can link to it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baPyPZ98dnM, or go through Oakhurst Presbyterian's website.  There were powerful comments made by her friends and colleagues, so please watch those – my eulogy begins at about the 40 minute mark.  If you want a written copy of the eulogy, let me know, and I’ll send you one online or in the mail. 

Several people asked me when they could hear me preach again, so here are the next two.  I’ll be preaching at North Decatur Presbyterian Church on Sunday, June 19 at 10 AM.  Come in person, or you can view the worship online through their website.  The lectionary text is Luke 8:26-39, one of my favorite texts in all the Bible.  Join in with us!

Caroline and I will be preaching together at Oakhurst Presbyterian on Sunday, July 17, as part of Oakhurst’s 100th anniversary celebration.  We’ve been asked to reflect on the 1980’s as part of Oakhurst’s history.  We came there in 1983, so we have many stories to tell – air conditioning breaking down, changing the “white” Jesus to the “brown/black Jesus,” developing the Mission Statement, and mostly finding ways for this historic church not only to survive (the Presbytery said that it would fund us only 2 more years when we came) but also to begin to thrive.  Come in person, or check Oakhurst’s website for the livestream.

And, finally, I’ve already advertised about our friend and colleague Zeena Regis preaching this Sunday, May 29 at 10 AM at North Decatur Presbyterian, but plan to come hear a fine preacher then too – in person or online!  See you soon!