Against Mission Drift

by Phil Johnson

've been retired from blogging for nearly four years now, and I almost forgot how to get back in here. Very few things (or people) could have persuaded me to come back.

But I do sincerely love Thabiti Anyabwile, and after I poked at him in a Tweet, he directed some comments at his blog to me. He deserves a reply. So I'm back today for one post, and one post only. I'm not wishing to prolong a controversy. I strongly agree with the gist of Thabiti's remarks in the video excerpts I posted early Thursday morning. One of the logical corollaries of that excellent 2010 T4G message is that if brothers in Christ find themselves engaging in a prolonged, bitter controversy over something extraneous to the gospel, they have clearly gone off-message.

Moreover, as Thabiti rightly said in 2010, "The gospel addresses this irreducible minimum: that individuals must repent and believe" in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. To view Christian ministry in terms of "'winning the culture, engaging the culture, changing the culture' as ambiguous as it is, the language itself signifies that mission drift is already under way." All I really want to do is re-emphasize and reaffirm that point, which he made.

Also, full disclosure: I have a son who is a police officer who currently works nights in one of the most dangerous precincts of Los Angeles. My concerns about Thabiti's mission drift are undoubtedly magnified by my conviction that some of the rhetoric peppering his Twitter feed over the past two years aids and encourages a movement whose influence has put my son's life at significantly greater risk. Based on how the media, millennials, and most Internet forums have handled the issues of racism and police work, it seems fair to assume that the sector of society where my son must live and work is far more openly hostile to cops than to young black men, and Thabiti's post-Ferguson rhetoric hasn't helped. Thabiti and friends are not going to diminish the very real problem of racism or remedy the cancer of corrupt or criminal cops by portraying law enforcement itself as an evil institution and automatically assuming every police shooting is unjust. If anything, such rhetoric has widened a wedge in the church that (by Thabiti's own admission) should not be there at all.

Anyway here are a few of my thoughts in response to Thabiti's post. I'll reply to him directly:



Dear brother,

Thanks for your gracious feedback and your willingness to have this exchange with me. Without getting into a lengthy debate (which I'm sure would be unprofitable for both of us), I want to underscore just a few vital points in reply to your Thursday blogpost:

1. I'm no doctor. I'm not a veterinarian. I've never even swept the floors at CVS. I recently removed my own stitches, but I don't think that qualifies me to be called "Dr." Dr. Phil is a totally different guy, in every way you can possibly imagine. The only thing I have in common with him is our first name and our home town.
   
2. I'm not sure why you began your post by suggesting my Thursday morning Tweet was prompted by some mention of the word justice from you. I said nothing whatsoever about justice (which I strongly advocate, without excluding criminal justice). Nor did I say anything about social justice (which strikes me as one of those terms like agitator, having a controversial history and carrying a significant load of baggage). What actually did goad me to post excerpts from my favorite Anyabwile message was your tweet on Wednesday recommending an avowed socialist, secularist, and ardent supporter of abortion as the most suitable candidate for African American voters.
   
3. You write, "If I understand this correctly, I’m the one now suffering 'mission drift,' one swept so powerfully to the left that the Bible and gospel have lost its center in my ministry." Yes. That's precisely what I allege, using your excellent 2010 description of how we can tell "that mission drift is already under way."
   
4. I do realize, of course, that "'justice' and justice in [all] its [true] 'social' implications are biblical terms and ideas." Again, your use of the word "justice" had nothing to do with what or why I posted that video excerpt. But since you bring it up, let me make the point that Genesis 9:6; Romans 13:4; 2 Thessalonians 3:10; and Matthew 26:52 are just as surely tenets of biblical justice as Proverbs 31:8-9 and Jeremiah 5:28. The movement you have aligned yourself with has (to borrow your words) "a curious way of ignoring those texts and any application of them."
   
5. Trigger warning: In this paragraph I will defend some politically incorrect terminology. Regarding the word agitator, you are correct that I was totally unaware that this word brought to mind racist connotations for anyone. I think you should investigate the actual history of the word, or easier yet, Google it alongside the word "communist." You'll find its dominant polemical use in the 20th century was to describe fomenters of left-wing political passions. (The Russians even invented a very useful term, agitprop, combining "agitate" and "propaganda" to describe the literature and systems by which Soviet Communist officials disseminated their views.) Anyway, if certain black leaders have commonly been labeled "agitators," I suspect it has rather more to do with their political opinions than with their race. And in any case, let me assure you that my use of this term had nothing whatsoever to do with race and everything to do with the Tweet you posted Wednesday (and its follow-ups), which understandably gave the impression to many who follow your Twitter feed that you are now stumping for Bernie Sanders. (Apologies to anyone who may think the verb "stump" is a microaggression against amputees. I don't mean it that way.)
   
   
   
6. You have repeatedly declared your support for #BlackLivesMatter (and the protests they have organized). But you have done this in a way that systematically blurs a crucial distinction between the slogan and the movement that goes by that name.
   
7. I don't know of any Christians anywhere who (in your words) "can’t seem to bring themselves to even utter the phrase [or] to say publicly, in principle, 'Black lives matter.'" Together with all my Christian brothers and sisters, I affirm emphatically that Black lives do matter—including the lives of unborn black infants. Many of us also want to stress that #BlueLivesMatter, too. And though loud voices in the BlackLivesMatter movement have already dismissed this as a racist slogan: All lives matter. We must make that confession together as well, because it is an essential tenet of biblical justice. Every human soul is precious—and each one will give account to God. That's why the gospel matters more than any injustice that might be committed against us as believers. And Christians who link arms with angry pagans in civic protests that threaten to become riots are actually behaving unjustly, by the biblical standard. Those seem like necessary conclusions of the premises you set forth in that 2010 message.
   
8. Furthermore, what the organization calling itself BlackLivesMatter.com has done with that slogan is a gross corruption of the biblical concept of social justice. Specifically, their angry rhetoric and efforts to portray all law enforcement officers as emblems of institutionalized injustice puts every policeman (regardless of ethnicity) at greater risk.
   
9. You famously stated: "It’s tragic that the country’s biggest sin is racism and the Church’s biggest omission is racial justice." I don't think either part of that statement is true. Perhaps the country's most talked-about sin is racism. There are at least a hundred churches in my town, and on any given Sunday if you could sample them all, you'll hear countless lectures on prosperity, relationships, social ills, politics, or the latest charismatic prophecies—almost anything except Scripture. You're far more likely to hear a lecture on the evils of racism than a clear exposition of some biblical text. So I'd say the greatest omission in the church is clear and accurate teaching of the Word of God. But more to the point: in a nation where millions of unborn infants are slaughtered annually, it seems pretty clear to me that the worst sin against blacks in America isn't racism per se, but the murders of countless unarmed black babies. Statistics suggest that twice as many blacks are killed by abortion as by all other causes combined. I know you are opposed to abortion, Thabiti, and you've even compared it to the sin of slavery. When you originally wrote that "the country’s biggest sin is racism," I dismissed that rhetoric as hyperbole. But your recent comments in the context of this year's election do give the clear impression that for you, abortion simply doesn't rise to the same level of urgency as racism. You seem to be moving steadily that way since you began to get pushback after your comments in the wake of the Ferguson riots and your continued defense of the "Hands up, don't shoot" myth. It does seem to me that your moral scales have become imbalanced.
   
10. Finally, given the subject matter that consumes your blogposts and Tweets nowadays, I don't know how you can seriously claim there has been no shift in your thinking or teaching since 2010's T4G message.

I wholeheartedly agree with the comments I posted from Thabiti 2.010. If that seems like I'm taking a "shot" at you, forget me and just listen to what you yourself were saying in 2008-2010.

Collateral reading from Todd Pruitt on the blurring of lines between "Black lives do matter,: and #BlackLivesMatter: Black Lives Matter or black lives matter?

 

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Top Ten Pyro Posts of 2014

by Dan Phillips

It was a good year for Pyro, thank the Lord. Reports of our death were premature. Our traffic just about doubled over 2013, which is not too shabby for some "middle-aged white Reformed guys."

Lists! Everyone's doing it and it looks like fun. So I asked Frank, and he was kind (and smart) enough to figure out which were our top ten posts of 2014. Actually, he figured out the top 100, but I'm only listing the ten!

Note: these aren't necessarily the top ten written in 2014, though the second, third, fourth, fifth... well, some are.

Here you go:

1. Pornographic divination. Really terrific post by Phil from 2011; really upset a lot of people; really prescient. Pity it wasn't heeded more robustly.
2. John Piper and Mark Driscoll: Lessons Not Learned? Hated by the Top Men's egoguard, but others found value in it.
3. Seven revelations of Ferguson. Finding preventative answers in the Gospel and God's Word, not in endless fuelling of bitterness, resentment, self-pity, statism, and career victimism. Yet Bryan Loritts says (white) evangelicals are silent on such matters, and no one challenges him. Ditto Frank Turk's powerful posts on the subject.
4. Truth worth dying for? Anyone? Bueller? Today, anyway? About the vital nature of truth, and the airy chatty indifference of professed leaders in dealing with truths for which our theological forefathers actually and literally died.
5. Some here, some there —” September 12, 2014 (special #TGCBlockedParty edition). More fun than Bibley types should be allowed to have. Yet have it, we did.
6. A. W. Pink: glorifying God by disobeying Him? This one continues to gather a trickle of angry attempted comments. Invariably they reflect no interaction with the post's contents, and can be reduced to "But he's A. W. Pink! He was a great man, because: books! How dare you! You're guilty of horrible sins!"
   
7. The most offensive verse in the Bible. This actually is our most popular post, ever, if I'm reading the stats right. It's been used by Dr. Georgia Purdom of AIG, reprinted, and noised about. Even some whose official position is that we don't exist in any significant way noted it, which is nice. For my part, it just feeds my slow-coming conclusion that I can never predict a post's impact. This one just bubbled up and was easy to write, and quickly written. Other posts that I was sure would have a far greater impact fizzled with a muted pop. Thank God for the uses others have made of it.
8. Of leprechauns, mermaids, and "loving homosexual couples." Biblically cutting through the gooey squish of modern religious thought.
9. Answering Todd Friel about the emblematic charismatic Michael Brown. 
10. Pyromaniacs: Some here, some there — September 5, 2014. Not sure why; maybe it was The Elitists' Crisis Management System flowchart?

Thank you all for reading. We appreciate you, and we're looking forward to meeting some of you in person for the first time in a few weeks!

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Some Here, Some There — December 26, 2014

by Dan Phillips

Historically, the day after a major holiday (such as, oh, I don't know... Christmas?) is a dead one at the blog. But hey, you clicked through, I hate sad and disappointed readers, so: it may be short, but it is an SHST, and it is just for you!

• A day late in telling you, but our family appreciated Kevin DeYoung's Do You Know Who He Was? on Christmas Day.
• On Christmas: when I was a boy, and not even a Christian boy, I remember that Christmas-time would bring all sorts of respectful nods to Christ in the culture. The comics (then called "the funny pages"), TV, all over. Then as I grew and the culture shifted, I noted that the Christ-hating Los Angeles Times would always try to warm the holiday season by scraping the bottom of the moldy wooden barrels of academia, to find some PhD to tell us about how this or that aspect of Christian faith was ludicrous hooey.

Wow. This guy really, really hates Christians—and the jolly @Newsweek elves gave him a megaphone (http://t.co/LGMEqltO8G).
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 24, 2014

• Newsweek follows in this hallowed tradition. This year, their love-bouquet to Christ and His bride was The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin, by one Kurt Eichenwald. It's a genuinely vitriolic hit-piece with zero redeeming value.

Pitch-session at @Newsweek— NW: Whatcha got? Writer: I just really hate Christians NW: Who doesn't? Go for it! Not like they'll kill anyone
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 25, 2014

• Not only that, but it's got some pretty adorable chestnuts.

All you need to know abt @Newsweek editorial process: no editor caught it whn a writer calld Bart Ehrman a "groundbreaking biblical scholar"
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 24, 2014

• Michael Kruger has begun a solid response you'll want to note.
• But did you know this, I'm wondering. Who owns Newsweek, these days? Check out these articles. According to CT's reporting, Newsweek reportedly has some kind of relationship to controversial Korean pastor David Jang, rumored to be seen as the second coming of Christ by followers.
• Interesting, eh? Now to something different.
• It's on the Huffington Post, so it isn't overtly Christian or Biblical — but there's a lot of common sense in these 36 lessons learned after 36 years of marriage. More replete with real-world sagacity than some things I've heard from Christian "family experts."

@JohnPiper Shouldn't it have been "Brothers, we are not saved, let alone pastors, let alone professionals"?
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 23, 2014

• There are those who mock even raising an eyebrow over Piper's apparently collegial reference to the Pope. This makes me wonder, not for the first time, what our leaders today do think is worth fighting over. For one thing, apparently it's worth fighting over not fighting, since that's what they like to squawk about. They don't mock, ridicule, sneer at, isolate, and attempt to marginalize those who are purveying damnable heresies, or those who are compromising core doctrines. But those who do promote sound, biblical Gospel over against false teaching and false teachers? Oh, it's open season on them.

BONUS: Ed Stetzer-inspired addition to the #GospelCoalitionColoringBook dedicated to #the15. pic.twitter.com/vqaX95n5Ne
— Jesse Light (@ReformedintheQT) December 26, 2014

• As an exercise in empathy, I try to imagine myself reading some Mormon or Jehovah's Witness leader saying how they really need to flood the world with their version of the gospel. And I try — seriously, I do — to imagine myself Tweeting, "In other words, we need to tilt the world with the Gospel!" You know, use it as a tie-in with my book-title, and in effect linking to their words. I try, I say... and it's just not happening for me.
• And factor in: if I already had my own massive instant-promotion machinery and legions of adoring, I-can-do-no-wrong fans...? Now I'm feeling like...

• Now to funner things.
• Re-reading Warfield's masterful statement on the presence and presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the NT, I realized not all will have read it, and thought it worth sharing with you.
• Over at Cripplegate, Jesse Johnson reviews Max McLean's stage version of C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Sounds like a great experience.
• That book, if I may digress, is one of these books that are (A) eminently profitable if you read it with a mind to "get" the points Lewis was set on making, (B) very troubling if your stance is OH MY GOSH! THIS IS LEWIS' SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY AND IT'S TERRIBLE!!!1! Though he often noted he was no theologian and did not write as such, he did obviously touch on a lot. Sometimes he was muddled, sometimes downright bad, and sometimes absolutely amazingly wonderful. If you know how to eat a fish, you should be able to read Lewis with profit.
• Douglas Wilson's post Racial Animosity is so, so good. So much better than so many of the vaunted posts on Ferguson, Garner, and the whole lot. It's the bottom-line truth of the matter. It should have been shared and tweeted broadly, more broadly than those which could be seen as fostering bitterness, resentment, hopelessness and anger. Was it?
• In the spirit of the Peanuts/25 Or Six To Four video, if you haven't seen this, you must. It's absolutely brilliant, and buckets of fun:

I'll update through noon TX time if anything else strikes me. God bless!

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All of the Remedies

by The late Frank Turk

After last week, the person reading this blog without an agenda (that is: without any built-in qualms against this blog) ought to be able to go and do likewise because they have been given all the rudimentary instructions the Bible gives someone who has the Gospel for dealing with something like racism.  But let's face it: not many come here under those terms.  Many come here looking for a reason to say, "yeah, but ..." or "no."

I'm here to help.

Let's imagine someone who has listened to the audio linked in this post, and then read all the fundamental non-biblical literature posted here and here to get a picture of what a semi-secular view of the problem is, and then waded through the muddled and simplistic things written here and here and here.  That person, after a week of rumination on these things, then says, "Frank, I just don't get it.  I mean: sure.  Theology, right.  But what is it that I am supposed to -do- if that's what I believe.  I mean: some other bloggers and authors have told me I should invite people to dinner rather than think about the problems of dignity or of competing consciousnesses  in the face of cruelty and dehumanization.  I completely understand how to invite somebody to dinner.  I do not understand all the big words you have used.  And to be honest: I think you don't either.  I think the problem is you hide behind the big words to avoid real people, and that I think it's a lot more helpful to tell me to invite people to dinner than it is to read W.E.B. DuBois from the turn of the last century and imagine that this is still the problem of black people today.  What's the actual 'to-do' item if all the things you have posted on and around your hiatus are true?"

My initial response to this way of approaching what I wrote is to think that this hypothetical person needs to graduate from the 6th grade.  From my perspective, I know a lot of 6th graders (all homeschooled, so that might be the problem and the solution) who could follow my instructions and get at least an "E" for effort.  However, because we live in an age when people demand instructions and then don't follow them anyway, I'll elaborate.

The first error my posts seek to foil is the error of saying, "If you are a White person you should ... but if you are a Black person, you should rather ..."  If there is a solution to racism, it is the same solution to both sides because while the problem may manifest different symptoms on both sides, at the end of the drama we should still be able to agree that what we really want is what MLK wanted -- "[that] little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  For that to happen, whoever you are, you personally need to behave in such a way that shows you clearly want to be judged by your own character, and you must judge others only by their character and not (for example) by their job or their neighborhood.  If you cannot agree to this, you are not about to implement the Gospel solution -- you are about to implement someone else's solution.  The "to do" there is to do unto others as you would have them do to you.  I know it's a cliche and may sound trite, but it is still a red-letter Jesus saying.

The second error my posts seek to foil is the one where we think that somehow some opportunities are beneath us.  In a sane world, I should have to append that sentiment with the clause "or above us (as in, out of our reach)," but the problem we have is that we think the only opportunities worth striving for are the ones which cause us to be Oprah or Bill Gates -- and the truth is that there are ample opportunities still for those who are willing to start where everyone really starts in order to get someplace worth arriving toward.  For example, if you want a career in Logistics (note: a career, like most people have, not to own all trucks), you could start by driving a truck -- and making about $40K your first year.  Given that your living expenses driving a truck over the road are pretty low (you usually live in the truck), that's a pretty decent wage -- and after doing that for 5 years, you could have saved enough to go to college and get a degree in logistics -- after which you have 5 years experience and a degree and no debt.

My point being: nobody dreams of being a truck driver -- but in a world where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, there is not merely nothing wrong with being a truck driver: it is actually a credit for you to do that in order to achieve something greater.  If you refuse to take that route (or one like it) in order to get where you think you want to go, that is not the fault of other people: that is part of the content of your character.  Seeing opportunities in the short term as beneath you is your problem, not the problem of someone else who, for example, worked summers and nights to pay for his college degree, and then worked from the bottom toward the "up".  If you see an opportunity like that as beneath you, you are your own enemy.  The "to do" there is to do the things everyone is expected to do to move from being without any skills to being skilled labor who gets skilled labor wages. Do not think too highly of yourself, as it says someplace in an ancient letter.

The third error my posts seek to expose and desiccate is the problem of false guilt -- either the false guilty we seek to impose on others by counting them as an ingredient in a statistical pie or the false guilt one might be willing to accept in order to honor someone else's identity crisis.  There is only one kind of guilt: actual responsibility for a crime or for doing something bad or wrong.  Everything else masquerading as guilt is actually a lie told to gain an advantage over you.  Put another way, the method for dismantling the problem of double-consciousness is not to create the same for others.  The right solution is to see that the aboriginal problem is a falsehood imposed by others and unfortunately accepted by those who bear it -- and it must be rejected by both to kill it dead.  If that is the solution of one sort of double-consciousness, it is the solution for them all.  That is actually the high plane of dignity and discipline, the place where we are not degenerating into either physical violence or moral injustice.  And the funny part of this is that if we are doing this actively, we won't have to ask ourselves about who we have invited to dinner lately -- because those we are inviting are those we have met, travelling on the same path we expect to be travelling on.  The "to do" here turns out to be to put away bitterness, anger, wrath and malice.

That outcome can sound like some sort of attractional model of like-attracts-like, but it is not a merely-pragmatic and merely-convenient approach.  What has happened as we will have implemented all of the remedies -- among which, most importantly, is the Gospel -- we will find ourselves in love with things the world does not love, and attracted to people the world did not expect us to love, and in close friendship and unity with people who now share not just some socio-economic goals but an eternal goal.  The defeat of racism comes from defeating the root cause of sin in the world, and that doesn't start with a culture war: it starts with our personal war on sin when we are faced with our own hearts changed by the Gospel.

If that does not help you, you're looking for the wrong answers.  You're looking for an explanation in the wrong terms.

The comments are open.

Post Script: I have received  a note from a trusted source that this post in particular, but this series in general, has sounded angry.  For example, if someone cannot understand how to do what is explained in the previous post, saying their ability to give it the ol' college try is actually not up to par for the 6th grade in this post is insulting.

Here's my concession to that criticism: everyone isn't always wrong.  It's possible that there are many mature and serious people who have never thought about the implications of putting off the old self because one has been raised with Christ.  How many of them are Christians I leave for the reader to discern.

For the rest, I make no apologies for being angry at the kinds of objections these posts deal with, and the reasons for those objections.

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The Jesus Part

by The late Frank Turk

What you never expected here is more than one post on something topical, but this subject is, frankly, one where a lot of people become unhinged in order to even consider it -- that is, first they become unhinged, and then they consider it.

I have actually already explained the reasons why -- and some of you (the faithful few, the ones who missed me while I was on hiatus) understood what I had to say.  Two weeks ago, it was the necessary idea that you had better deal with actual human beings in your approach and not exploding watermelons (or some other iteration of 3/5th of a person) -- you have to deal with the people who are actually involved in a way that you can demonstrate you know they have been injured in some way.  It's a topic I have dealt with before, but because we always forget it I have dealt with it again.

Last week, I exposed you to our common dirty little secret -- which is that we love to have enemies.  We love to hear other people run down our enemies, and to think that somehow we are not our own worst enemies in all situations.  It's actually the other side of the coin of dehumanizing other people -- it gives us the means to not only think less of what happened to them, but to insidiously think more of ourselves, to think more of our way of seeing the  problem and our cost of doing business with them.

But if we find ourselves realizing that the other guy is actually a human being and in the larger scheme of things -- that is, God's scheme of things, the way things run right now until Christ returns -- the person whose motives we ought to question first is not the other guy but you personally, now what?  I mean: what would be different in Ferguson, MO, if that was the way people were reacting instead of the way they have actually reacted?  And when do we get to the Jesus part?

Well, I fooled you.  I've been back for weeks now, and I fooled you because that's who I really am, and frankly that's who you really are.  You forget the basics of the Christian faith all the time, and sometimes you even find yourself rejecting them in spite of being as reformed and protestant and evangelical and biblical as possible.  This here is the Jesus part.

Look: The Jesus part reads like this when Paul tells it:

Put to death ... what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

"Oh Frank," some of you are warning.  "Oh Frank Frank Frank.  You have mistaken the Gospel for the Law, Frank.  You have swapped the indicative and the imperative, Frank.  Chris Rosebrough is going to podcast you, Frank.  You should have stayed on Hiatus."

Well, hogwash. The Gospel is not merely what Christ has done, but what Christ has done for us.  Jesus is not a metaphysical performance artist or merely a spectacle: Jesus is a Savior.  Jesus does something to us and for us which, if it is real, changes us in the world.

Yes, that's right: I said, "if it is real."  What Jesus did is not real if it doesn't result in something here where we can see it.  That's what's hidden in the ellipse in the quote from Col 3, above: that world-affirming word "THEREFORE."

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 

THEREFORE: ...

See: the Jesus part is not merely that He did something, but that it is done for us and it changes us and it makes something so true that when we set our minds on it and its final reward, THEREFORE this world changes for us.  We change in this world.

Just imagine a Savior who does something
and then nobody is actually saved, nobody
is moved or changed in status or position.
What kind of "savior" is that?

So the first piece of the Gospel which overcomes racism is that what Jesus has done solves the problems of culture by putting to death what is earthly about you.  In the idiom of W.E.B.DuBois, the Gospel ends the question of whether or not any man can impose a double consciousness on another, or whether any man ought to accept it as he recons himself.  All false consciousnesses are defeated by Christ.  All anger, wrath, slander, and obscene talk must be put away before him.  All evil desires.

And the one in whom this must be true first -- if it is true -- is not the other guy.  You are not waiting for the other guy's salvation and then sanctification before you start glancing at your moral shortcomings.  You personally (you say) will appear with Him in Glory because you have died and are hidden away with Christ in God.

For those who missed it, this is the MLK message in a nutshell.  I know Dr. King did NOT say anything about Jesus directly in the "I Have a Dream" speech, but he did say, explicitly, "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."  That is: whoever we are, if we are going to defeat the indignity and evil of racism and discrimination, we must go first and meet it with how we have changed.

Therefore: it must be you first if Racism is to be defeated.  It must be you first if there is still an enemy in this world -- because I promise you, it is you first for whom you will be accountable to God when Jesus does return with his winnowing fork and his great Fire.  You will wish it had been you first when he asks you about it, I am sure.

You first, and then my last post on this topic next week.

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The Enemies List

by The Late Frank Turk

So last week I put it to you that before you start talking about race and the Gospel, you better first start talking in ways that humanize this issue or else (to be blunt), shut up.  The reasons seems pretty self-evident to me, but I'm sure there are some who are still wondering why I would come back from hiatus in order to say such an inflammatory and unkind thing.

Hey: that's not the hard part yet.  That's the obvious and easy part.

This next part should also be part of the "easy part" of this topic and discussion, but it's not at all.  In fact, I think that after the problem of being insensitive to the people involved is at least admitted into the discussion, the next impossible error to overcome is the problem of creating enemies.  That is: the ability to take a tragedy and to leverage it to make innocent people into contemptible villains is big business in our nation, and we love it.

Here's how I know that's true: both John Stewart and Bill O'Reilly make a lot of money doing it every day.  Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton would be utterly unknown and penniless if this were not true.  Ann Coulter and Rachael Maddow need each other in a way which borders on criminal conspiracy.  But the only reason it's not actually criminal is simple: we pay them to do it for us.

Look: this one doesn't require a lot of unpacking here.  It doesn't require you to review the tapes or read the weekly columns -- because you are already doing that.  These people are famous because they are polarizing figures who visibly flourish when they are taking their best shots at the other side, and they make tons of money by identifying classes of enemies and calling them out by name.  And we love it - we can't get enough of this opportunistic and execrable form of entertainment.

Last week I reminded you that MLK thought that there were 3 barriers to the political freedom of black in America in 1963, and that we ought to consider that today he would likely add a fourth (desensitizing to violence).  Today I am saying that if MLK is the gold standard of political thinking here, this sort of villianization of people we disagree with actually violates the final objective of MLK's great dream for America, and it's time we started thinking in terms of the strategic end of this conflict rather than in terms of the tactical and economically-profitable short game which allegedly moves the ball along for our side.  Moving the ball out of bounds rather than to the actual goal line isn't strategic: it's sloppy and weak.

But there's a deeper problem with this for those of us who say we are Christians, and that's why I called your attention to W.E.B. DuBois in this space a few weeks ago.  The problem is not that we oppose what we perceive to be evil or unjust and say that something is evil or unjust: it is failing to remember that the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.  It is failing to remember that our goal is not to destroy our enemies with the weapons of this world, but to destroy their sin and the power of death over them with the Gospel.  DuBois, of course, did not really express this the way a white Reformed guy would, but his point is clear: somehow, Black people have a self-perception problem due to the fact that they have a double consciousness -- one which they aspire to, and one which they see as the way the world sees them and treats them.  If DuBois were alive today, I wonder which consciousness he would say is winning out?

If you are a Christian, and you do not come to the table with this in mind when discussing this question, maybe you don't really understand what it means to be an ambassador of reconciliation. An ambassador is one who comes with the primary concern of making friends and allies out of people, not enemies.  In fact: an ambassador will come to Enemies with the express goal of making peace with them -- even if it turns out that the terms of peace are non-negotiable.

Whatever advice it is you think you have to give here, if you really want it to somehow have the Gospel in it, it has to reproach the power of sin and death in the lives of the people you are speaking to -- but not out of a sense of partisan righteousness, or a belief that somehow we are defending civilization.  Reproaching the power of sin and death will certainly make some people see us as enemies.  But we need to not see them as our enemies - because they are not our enemies.  And we must be certain we are treating others in a way which seeks to defeat the power and effects of sin which they have experienced.

You know: when Stephen the deacon declared the Gospel in Jerusalem, and those men there were offended by the Gospel, his final words to them were not, "I knew you filthy haters would do this eventually.  I can't wait to see God take his wrath out on you because you definitely deserve it."  He last words were this: "Lord, do not hold their sins against them!"

A few weeks ago, when I posted MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, you didn't hear him say that anyone who was his enemy deserved death or even infamy: he said specifically that even the worst of his enemies ought to repent for their own good, and that they could be part of a future which was greater than the oppression they carried out in that day.

You need to consider this, if you're wondering how the Gospel and Race are related: if you can make a list of the people who are your enemies in this conflict, you are doing it wrong.  You had better realize that your name needs to go at the top of that list as your own worst enemy, because that's a truth deeply rooted in the meaning of the Gospel -- and it's a truth which ought to make you a little more humble when attempting to build a bunker to protect the things you think you love. After that, you need to rethink the whole conflict from God's perspective.  In Christ, God is reconciling the world -- the world full of those who are His enemies -- to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

You had better humanize this issue before you think you want to talk about it, and you had better decide whether or not you're thinking about this the way God does -- because God is not trying to make anyone his enemy.

With that said, next week we will start getting to the items which are not as rudimentary and crude as these have been.  It will not be for the faint of heart.

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Doing That to Some BODY

by The Late Frank Turk

Hello.

So after I announced that I would be returning from Hiatus, things happened that no one was looking for or could foresee -- and it turns out that one of them was this:

Would love to hear thoughts on race & the gospel from @Frank_Turk @BibChr @Phil_Johnson_
— Darrin Patrick (@darrinpatrick) August 25, 2014

I've had lunch with Darrin Patrick.  Frankly, there are only one or two things in 15 years I have ever seen him do which I would raise an eyebrow to, and I see him as a faithful brother, a leader who smells like the sheep he is serving, and a "friend" in the theological, Blogological and Internetilogocal senses of the word.  He's a loving father, a devoted husband and pastor, and he's the kind of guy Acts29 aspires to produce and nurture.

I like Darrin Patrick.

So for the next few weeks, I'm going to say a few things for the sake of encouraging others on this topic.  I think there's a larger question involved here which I have written about and linked to over and over again since I originally wrote it in 2008.  Clever readers of this blog will see that this post is really a version of that post.

For my money and time, this is only one place to start this discussion.

When Martin Luther King Jr. told us in 1962 that (in his words) "the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination ... on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity," he did not foresee something that is evident today which I am certain would have been on his list of crippling, enslaving, and isolating barriers to freedom.

I think that all of us, as a culture, are utterly desensitized to violence -- particularly, the brutality of gun violence.  It's funny for the comic book guy to have to explain this to you, but maybe I'm the only one who really gets this.  The only people that I know who are actually re-sensitized to it are my friends who have served in the military under fire in hot war zones.  For the rest of us, gun violence is something that we use for entertainment.  We watch the Expendibles, and we play Call of Duty, and maybe we hunt once in a while.  Watching the way men use bullets has somehow translated for us from an unthinkably-final act made necessary only by the worst-intended and least-explicable sorts of aggression into a kind of dramatic device.

You know: Captain America's shield (which is not a gun) is a dramatic device.  There is nothing in the whole (real) world which can do everything that it does -- and the one thing it does most of all is define who has the upper hand.  When Cap has his shield, he has the upper hand and is nearly invincible; when someone else has it, it is a visual cue that Cap is no longer in control.  When someone else carries a fake version of the shield, they are either trying to pay homage or to trade in Cap's rep.

My point being this: somehow we see gun violence exactly like Cap's shield when we try to think about gun violence in this country -- that is, somehow it is only a dramatic device to be used as a rhetorical flourish or a way to advance a plot development, but not the sort of thing which frankly leaves at least one person on the pavement bleeding out painfully in the last minutes of life, and the other changed forever - usually for the worse.

Here's how I know this.  This video exists on YouTube:



I picked that one rather than a rap video only because the dehumanization of the shooter and the target is here so obvious.  Seriously now: the point of it is to make the idea of a bullet which generates shrapnel a thing of beauty and art -- in order to create the idea that this is a kind of dramatic device and not a weapon which anyone can use to spill someone's guts out all over the street or all over a room.  But what we're actually considering in this video is doing that to some BODY for any reason whatsoever.

My point in saying that is not to go on to some pacifistic rant about taking guns away from everyone. I'm not interested in those sorts of comments from other people at all.  The problem really is not that there are so many guns and bullets.  I'm already on record plenty about that.  The problem I am underscoring here is that somehow when we talk about the times when guns are at the center of a controversy, we often speak -- on both sides, mind you -- as if we are talking about exploding watermelons instead of husbands and sons who are on both sides of the barrel.

Look: the first best thing to do if we open up a "theological" or "gospel" discussion about "racism" here is to begin with the obvious first step.  We have to humanize this discussion before we try to theologize the discussion.  Some people will tell you this has it backwards, but those are also people who have never successfully spoken to another human being about anything ever. If we don't humanize the discussion right away when we are discussing the topic of racism -- especially the charge of racism in a police shooting -- what we are actually doing is minimizing the real human toll of events (like the one everyone is so sincere and troubled about in the last few weeks) on real people for the sake of the drama rather than the sake of getting our minds and souls right.  If we are minimizing the human toll, high-brow sounding language about "gospel" and "theology" is forgetting one of its two foundational categories for presenting themselves to anyone about anything.

We don't have to convince God racism is wrong.  We also don't have to convince anyone that God thinks racism is wrong.  The point of trying to talk about theology and racism really turns out to be a discussion about whether or not we are talking about and talking to people who are not worse sinners than ourselves in order to show how God's solution for sinners applies to the situation in question.  You can't do that if they hear you say, in effect, that gun violence is justified because it's done to sinners.

When someone shoots someone else in the street, the person who goes down does not go down bloodlessly.  He doesn't get up again.  It's not a routine thing, as if this is what we do instead of our barbershop quartet.  It's not scored to an epic martial theme.  And in many cases, unlike most of the fight scene in a Marvel movie, it's not always white people taking out white people.  It's often more racially complex than that -- for the most part because there is crime in both white and non-white communities which the police must do something about.  The police go to all communities on crime calls because if they didn't, it would also be called (for good reason) a subtle form of racism.  And when someone goes down like that, someone else has done it, and has to live with it because let's face it: he probably didn't get out of bed intending to do something that terminal today.

So if you are asking TeamPyro -- or specifically, me -- to talk about this subject, my first reaction to the request is this: I'm not going to address this topic as if it was some sort of theological/sociological drama in which it's pretty obvious who the good guys and the bad guys are.  This is a topic about how sinners behave in a real world.  I'm also not going to treat it as if this is an abstract subject -- because in this case, abstraction dehumanizes those we are talking about and leads us to presuppositions which are both unwarranted and unhelpful.  That approach is dehumanizing -- and dehumanization is loveless, thoughtless, and godless.  It forces us to treat someone who is a person as if he was not a person, and is not related to other people.  Most importantly, however, I am definitely not going to tell you what you want to hear.  I am warning you before we get to the meat and potatoes here (or even the drinks before dinner) that I am definitely going to offend you because I am absolutely certain of one thing as I start to gather my thoughts on this subject: you (whoever you are, great or small) are part of the problem in this public discussion, and at least some of your perceptions and opinions are wrong.  You are, after all, a sinner.  Our objective in this discussion ought to be to fight against all the sinful inclinations we have toward other people and deal with them first before accusing them of being or doing something we shouldn't have expected in the first place.

The main take-away from today's post, however, needs to be this: every single time a gun is fired at a person in our nation, a brutal act of violence has been done by one human being to another.  A melon is not exploded; a player is not sent to respawn.  More than one human life is ruined in a bloody and irrevocable way. Unless you can accept that premise and work out your own views by accepting that fact, you really have no business in this discussion at all.

More next week.

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In The Name of Human Opportunity

My guess is that if you read this blog, you have never read any W.E.B. DuBois. In fact, I'll bet that if you read this blog, you cannot tell me who this fellow is. Since last week we cited the greatest aspirational speech ever in our nation on the topic of race, I thought it would be perfectly and sincerely vital to look back a little further into the history of Black people in this nation to the man who might be the one who has best explained the world they live in. If I have any concerns about reprinting this here today, it is only that it leap-frogs backwards in time to a place before the height of Black culture in America. But that time would never have existed without DuBois' writings and thoughts.

Before we go there, let me say this as the last breath of my hiatus goes away: anyone asking the fellows at TeamPyro for some insight about theology and racism who have not themselves read DuBois and Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright and James Baldwin and so on (forgive me for listing none of the great voices of Black women) -- please don't lecture me about who I ought to have invited to dinner. Please don't expect me to take you seriously when what you think we ought to do is simply accept that we are ignorant and awful.  We didn't expect that the best we could do to take in the Black experience was to listen to rap music -- as if the White experience could be gleaned from country music.  Some white people have grown up among black people, and wanted to love them, and listened to them as they told us from their best voices what we ought to believe about who they are. We listened then, before most of the users of the internet knew there was a world bigger than their own neighborhood, and we decided early on that our expectations for any person would be the ones we had for ourselves -- namely, to expect the best, forgive honest mistakes and the faults of immaturity, and to do to any person what we would expect to be done to us.

The text below is from the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, copied and pasted from bartleby.com.  I have updated the paragraph breaks for internet readers.

fter the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,—it is the contradiction of double aims.

The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan—on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde—could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people.

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites.

In song and exhortation swelled one refrain -- Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,—suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences:

“Shout, O children!
Shout, you’re free!
For God has bought your liberty!”

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast. In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:

“Take any shape but that,
and my firm nerves Shall never tremble!”

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

...

The bright ideals of the past,—physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,—all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,—all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete,—the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one.

The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever,—the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence,—else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,—the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,—all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack.

We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.

Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?

Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen’s sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers’ fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.

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The High Plane of Dignity and Discipline

On August 28th, 1963, (note: the internet has several sources listing this as 1962, which is wrong.  My apologies for not double-checking) in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the singularly most-important speech on race in the history of this country was given by a man who would die for his convictions.   It was a speech of 881 words, and anyone can read it out loud in about seven and a half minutes.  Think about the kind of simple and power truth that must be to be that brief yet that historically-significant.  In that speech, the right context of history is set, and the right vision for the future is set for all people because of its theology.

Before I say anything about race at this blog (I'm still on hiatus), I think it would be good for anyone asking the writers at this blog what we think about "theology and race" to review those words and take them to heart.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

One hundred years later the Negro is still languishing in the comers of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

We all have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God's children.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted citizenship rights.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

And the marvelous new militarism which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers have evidenced by their presence here today that they have come to realize that their destiny is part of our destiny.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the mount with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the genuine discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, pray together; to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom forever, knowing that we will be free one day.

And I say to you today my friends, let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we're free at last!"

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