"God
presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the 'gods'; How
long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the
poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the
hand of the wicked (Psalm 82:1-8)."
An important question
as we face the new elections: "Why do so many Asians, Blacks, Latinos,
poor whites (Tea Party variety), recent immigrants, etc. embrace the
conservative social agenda when their groups suffer the most from it?”
It is very true that a great division exists in the Christian Churches
of America. There are those churches that represent the so-called
"mainline" majority. These fervently believe in what they call the
"progressive agenda" and social justice, as long as it is "comfortable"
i. e., does not jeopardize its place in and the place of its
constituents as beneficiaries and itself as a primary institution of
racial capitalism and white supremacy.
On the other side,
contrary to pronouncements of university and seminary professors, the
conservative-evangelical church movement (and older fundamentalist
movement) did not die with the Scopes trial or with the late William
Jennings Bryan. They have made a remarkable comeback. While many such
groups began as conservative caucuses and schisms from mainline
Protestant (Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Religion and
Democracy-IRD) and Roman Catholic denominations (EWTN) and religious
orders, they have connections to the largest and fastest growing
religious groups in America.
Their command of the Internet,
Television and Radio is unparalleled. They have left the National and
World Council of Churches "reeling on the ropes." They don't really care
if United Methodists, Disciples, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Christian
Science, Protestant Episcopalians, Unitarian Universalists, Roman
Catholics, Reform Jews and Sunni Muslims adopt progressive legislation
and liberalize their rules, because they know they eclipsed these groups
numerically more than 25 years ago.
The Maranatha
Fellowships, Faith Centers, Bible Centers, etc include attendance
numbers in the thousands compared to the faithful average attendance of
45-60 in most mainline churches. Their fellowships and centers and
churches are filled with youth and young adults while mainline churches
are having multiple funerals and mass defections of youth and young
adults. They know that churches whose center is "human beings" don't fly
because human beings fail themselves and each other most of the time.
The worship of human beings is a dull runner up to the awe and majesty
of the almighty sovereign God and his Christ or his prophet. Sadly,
because most of the pastors who lead these churches are trained in
reactionary fundamentalist Bible colleges and seminaries with explicit
right-wing agendas, they actively promote the same to their
congregations.
These schools seem to have exchanged the truth
of God for American patriotism and have exchanged the powerful biblical
critique against all principalities and powers of this world for a
conservative, even reactionary social agenda that has little resemblance
to anything in the Bible or the Koran. Yet because this camp gives "lip
service" to the orthodox faith, many in the margins who would not do so
otherwise, follow them and too often accept their right-wing social
agenda uncritically.
People in the margins are suspicious of
"social progressives" (SPs) and liberals. First there is the issue of
paternalism. Because many SPs tend to be better educated than their
conservative counterparts, that is to say have had the privilege of
attending the private schools and universities and divinity schools
where they can focus on the ideas of their peers and their antecedents
without having to worry about training for "a good job" or "a secure
position" or getting a business venture financed, they tend to be more
idealistic, utopian and to ignore the bread and butter issues that
affect the working poor.
A good case in point is the recent
decision by the California Supreme Court to allow employees to decide
whether or not they will take a lunch break. While labor laws suggest
that an employee take a lunch break after 4.5 hours of work, the
justices decided that it is an abridgment of freedom to force workers to
take a lunch break. Some prefer to work through lunch and garner the
overtime or simply finish their work and then return home. The liberal
NPR commentator I listened to on this issue "moaned over her microphone"
and worried aloud whether "these immigrant, new arrival and marginal
workers had the good sense to know when to stop and to take care of
themselves."
This is typical paternalism that black and poor
and new immigrant people experience from the liberal SP community. It
always seems to think that it "knows what is best" for people in the
margins even though many in its ranks have never done anything more
taxing to earn a living than carry a picket sign. The complaint was
filed by rank and file marginal workers who objected to being forced by
their employers to take a lunch break, often with the employer
penalizing those who did not take lunch by not paying them for working
through lunch.
Secondly the cultural and ideological arrogance
of the SPs and liberals against what marginal people believe is one
major reason why marginal people have little use for what they/we are
saying. Most of us in the margins believe that Zen is bastardized when
it is used as a mantra for "peace" in the absence of justice or
financial and social success through "mindfulness."
We in the
margins believe that Taoists writings were not meant to be reified for
the good of efficient business practices, that the Bible is the inspired
Word of God from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 and that spirituality
is not just "feeling good about oneself and one's community,” but having
the ability to critique the same while crusading against injustice. It
appears to many on the margins that SPs missed Jesus' words, "Physician
heal thyself."
There is nothing in the traditional beliefs of
marginal people that prevent us from fighting, working, praying and
hoping that "justice will roll down like water and righteousness like a
mighty stream." The left, SP and liberal community seem to be allergic
to God, and hostile to Jesus (of whom they really do not appear to know
much about at all), to ignore Muhammad completely, willing to modify
Siddhartha and Krishna, and refuse to understand the nuances of the
Jain, the Sikh, the Orthodox view of anything.
In the name of
tolerance, the SPs creed is "We will tolerate a point of view as long as
it does not conflict with our view of tolerating, modifying,
ameliorating and negotiating any truth that stands in the way of our
RECENT contemporary ideological framework." SPs fail to understand that
the ridicule and denigration of another person’s faith is also a
ridicule and denigration of their personhood.
Black people in
America know that GOD was for us and with us when no one, government or
private enterprise, liberal or conservative, enfranchisers or
suffragists, capitalists or socialists, union or free market labor,
Christian, Jew or Atheists--supported us. No progressive, north or
south, from 1492 to 1945 with the exception of Maury Maverick of Texas
and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, stood against the daily genocide and
exclusion of blacks in America. Many churches and synagogues profited
from the slave trade. We wonder why the SPs want justice from Banks,
mortgage companies, city governments and universities while "market
values" in their communities remain high enough to keep US OUT and
“Propositions” that they, their parents and their grandparents voted
for, continue to keep our children out of the schools they now protest.
I recently participated in a night walk in Richmond against gun
violence. There were seven actual residents (out of more than 100) and
persons of color who lived in Richmond who showed up for the action. My
SP sisters and brothers (Western-European ethnic Americans with one
exception) huddled together as a group, barely returned greetings to us,
and went on talking to each other about their great progressive agenda.
It was clear that we Black and Latino(a) sisters and brothers
were "potted plants" in their great drama. Among that group only the
mayor and one city councilman lived in Richmond. For the Next Night
Walk, half as many Richmond residents showed up. As a new resident I
realized that the majority of Richmond residents had enough sense to
know they were not really welcomed or wanted in this great stride to
bring peace and safety to their city.
Black, Brown Red and
Yellow Americans are suspect of those who believe in no God, no entity,
no culture, no idea, no epistemology higher than themselves and their
own slant on life. All of us need what Amos called a "plumbline" to
judge whether or not we are following the will of the universal Source
and Force of Love and Life that brought all existence into being, or
simply shadowing the dictates of our own cultural and social gods.
The Psalmist teaches, "God judges the 'gods'." If there is no God other
than the gods of groups, races and tribes, be they secular, spiritual,
material or ethereal, then we are subject to entities that are bound by
our own limitations, our own journey our own understanding to the
exclusion, negation or disregard of others.
I do not excuse my
sisters and brothers in marginal communities in America. We need to be
more critical of ideas and stop accepting them because some of our
favorite "gospel preachers, evangelists and prosperity gurus" espouse
them.
Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life. The Bible is the
rule of faith and life and love for me. Yet I do not accept as fact that
the Bible teaches against abortion and contraception, that it teaches
that we must support Israel in the shameful walling of Palestinian
people, accept its bulldozing of Palestinian homes and continue to base
this support on our misinterpretation and ignorance of biblical
eschatology.
I do not believe that the teaching of the whole
Bible excludes gays and lesbians and trans-gender people, simply because
in the Books of the Law of Moses, early Israel wanted to distinguish
itself from the cultural and social practices of its neighbors. I do not
accept the idea that America has some special divine destiny that
separates it from and excludes it from the final decree and judgment of
God against all human systems of government. But it is not my intent to
debate any of that in this article.
Why am I being so stringent
about this? Because I grow weary of hearing how "progressive" the
SPs/liberals/leftists are and how "reactionary and conservative" Blacks
and Latinos and Asians and immigrant communities are. This is a false
dichotomy based on ignorance and spending too much time talking to text
books and to each other. It ignores the class-ism, cultural-ism,
ethnocentrism and chauvinism of too many that enjoy the privileges of
white supremacy while giving lip service to the contrary.
The
aforementioned behaviors alienate many would-be allies who long to see
the prophetic words they read in the Bible and the Koran and the
Baghavad Gita and Sanskrit come alive through action in their contexts.
The Devil is indeed a great deceiver and it is time for SPs to flee
self-deception if progressive change is really what is in view.
Want to change the world? Get better acquainted with it and love it as you find it.
