Opposing abortion across racial lines

Rick Hogaboam pointed out a series of posts by Thabiti Anyabwile that reacted Brian Kemper’s defense of comparing abortion to slavery and the Holocaust.  Kemper believes that we must make the comparison because of the horrible reality of abortion that parallels slavery and the Holocaust and the denial of personhood that has taken place in defense of all three.  He believes that people take offense to these comparisons because “we have elevated what they consider to be a blob of tissue to personhood status.”

Rick posted a good quote from the first three posts.  Anyabwile’s consideration of this issue spanned four posts:

• Reacting specifically to Kemper’s article
• Suggestions for a white man addressing a black audience about abortion
• How he might do the same thing as himself addressing a black audience
• An evaluation of John Piper’s well-known advocacy for the unborn, especially in the context of Piper’s exhortations to bridge the racial divides among Christians (includes a sermon video on abortion and racism)
  

I wanted to focus on his first post, and you can read his others for his opinions on those topics.  Here are Anyabwile’s central objections to Kemper’s article:

Okay, the argument is basically fine.  But read Mr. Kemper’s opinion piece and tell me how many times he seems to deeply affirm the human pain and suffering African Americans endured in slavery.  He seems quite aware of the Jewish holocaust, referring to monuments and observances dedicated to never forgetting that human tragedy.  But how many such monuments and museums exist in honor of African people treated as chattel?  How many institutions work to ensure there is a deep, abiding recollection of those centuries of torture?  Not many.  Kemper certainly doesn’t mention many.  Now, here’s why some of us say “how dare you?”  Without demonstrating any genuine empathy, any continuing affirmation of the humanity of African people, the comparison simply seems to lack authenticity, familiarity, and empathy.  It merely sounds expedient.  Those who use the argument don’t really sound like they care about black people as such, but only about exploiting the pain of black people as a political expedient….

There’s one more element to this I’d like to highlight.  When I say, “How dare you make this comparison?” I’m also identifying someone who hasn’t shown up to support a lot of other causes I care about.  Not only have you not shown up to support, you really haven’t shown up to dialogue, understand, or persuade.  Most of your political and social positions lie across the river from my own, and though you own a boat you’ve never tried to row across.  Now you show up saying how much I ought to support your cause.  And you tell me how much this cause ought to mean to me, how I ought to care about the death of black babies.  You tell me this as if I don’t already care about the death of black babies.  But when I talk about the death of black babies due to crime, or poverty, or drugs, or slow death from a sub-par education, you tell me that’s my problem.  When you do that, you seem to care more about your political issue than you care about my black life.  You need to know that’s how we see you.  Your comparison reminds us of all of this.

So, yes, how dare you compare abortion to slavery?!  I love you.  But I’m afraid you don’t love me… at least not long enough to hear how your comparison affects me.  I’m in the trenches with you–at least I want to be–but the shrapnel from your rapid fire makes it hard for me to fire with you.

I think that these two objections both deserve attention.  From everything that I know, Anyabwile is first and foremost an evangelical Christian who doesn’t have a vested interest in racial politics and doesn’t subscribe to Afrocentric theology.  He wants to proclaim the gospel to all people, and knows that God is creating a new, multiracial people in Christ.  If he is right about how many black Christians will react to Kemper’s defense, then what he is pointing to is a fundamental mistrust and disconnect between white and black Christians.  I think that’s largely the case in American Christianity today; white and black Christians have such separate institutions and cultures that we often don’t register on each other’s radar.  Anyabwile’s thoughts here highlight the perils of white tonedeafness, but I think that both circles share some of the blame.

I also want to note something in Anyabwile’s article that I’m not so sure about.  We may not have monuments and museums about slavery, but I think that our educational system and the public presentation of history do pretty well with making people aware of slavery and the civil rights movement.  I think that it’s necessary sometimes to point out that America didn’t invent slavery, but that societies across history have had different forms of it.  This is not, of course, meant as a justification, but context is important.  We’ve got a long way to go in having a really just society or even agreeing exactly what that would look like here.  But to me this criticism, while it is surely sincere, does not describe the cultural reality.

Perhaps the bigger problem is the perceptions that white and black Christians have about the other group’s racial attitudes.  Anyabwile thinks that white people aren’t meeting black people in their pain that’s rooted in American history and seems afraid that they don’t care unless they specifically connect with black history.  He even says, “If you have an African American audience with whom you’re using this analogy and you have 30 minutes to win their support, spend the first 20 minutes showing your familiarity with the brutality of suffering and affirming the humanity of the sufferer before you employ the suffering and the sufferer in your cause.  Otherwise, I’m guessing most of your audience is saying, ‘How dare you?!”

On the other hand, I think that white Christians can sometimes be afraid that black people simply want to make them feel guilty about the past.  I can give an example of this.  When I was preparing to go on the Justice Journey in the summer of 2009, a friend from church said that he couldn’t do it, because he wasn’t going to told for a whole week that he should feel guilty.  It seems, although I only have anecdotal evidence at this point, that some white people are afraid that they’re going to be subjected to black indignation and even black rage.  From my experience on the journey, my visits to a few different black churches, and my current involvement in my mostly black church in Kankakee, that doesn’t happen.  I have always felt welcomed and have begun to form good friendships rooted in Christ across racial lines.  Notice, too, that Anyabwile’s comments are not based in rage or the desire to make people feel guilty, but rather in wanting white people to cross a gulf created by the perception that white people don’t care about historical black suffering.

I think that the two perceptions also feed each other.  White people afraid of black indignation can appear uncaring about history, and black people who feel that whites don’t care can appear resentful.

I’m afraid that I’m getting too speculative, so I want to wrap up by saying that we probably need to have some idea of what healing is going to look like.   I hope that at some point black and white Christians will be able to come together without these suspicions.  Right now, it seems like we might need to reverse the attitudes if we want to move toward biblical reconciliation.  Reconciliation will be closer at hand when more white Christians don’t mind exposing themselves to indignation because it’s a part of the cost of healing, and more black Christians explicitly say “slavery and Jim Crow were horrible, but they are in the past — we’re trying to move on in forgiveness.”  Reconciliation would help us to better work together on tackling not only ongoing racism and discrimination (yes, they’re still around), but also abortion.

Racial integration at Willow Creek Community Church

Time magazine ran a story in its Jan. 11, 2010, issue on racial diversity at megachurches.  It focuses on Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, a well-to-do northern suburb of Chicago.  It’s an interesting story as well as an incomplete story.  Bill Hybels, Willow’s pastor, decided to make racial reconciliation and openness to people of all races a part of the church’s agenda, but at the same time Willow hasn’t made progress in having much minority leadership.

Thabiti Anyabwile has some good responses to the article at his blog, asking some important questions:

• Is It Demographics and Probability, or Is It Leadership and Gospel Change?
• What Is the Best Measure of Congregational Diversity?
• Is Diverse Preaching Leadership the Litmus Test?

New Calvinism and holy hip hop

I just finished listening to a 9Marks Audio installment where Mark Dever interview Christian hip hop artists shai linne and Voice.  I’ve heard shai linne’s “Atonement Q&A” before; it’s something like a rap catechism that’s part of his album “The Atonement.”  Shai and Voice are both theologically Reformed, and they view their work as a way to build up the church with “lyrical theology.”  If you’re interested in their explanation of the purpose of their work, the best 15 minutes to listen to are from about 40 minutes in through about 55 minutes in.  They see their artistry as God’s redemption of a sinful medium to be used for his glory.  It’s not intended to replace preaching or congregational music, but instead to do what rap does very effectively: communicate a worldview.  Dever has become a fan and actually says that no other form of music matches the “theological density” of shai linne’s music.

In the last 30 years or so, there have been a lot of Christian “knock-offs” of secular music, clothing, etc.  I think that the “holy hip hop” movement is more original and edifying, although I don’t know for sure yet.  For one opinion, check out Thabiti Anyabwile’s short explanation here.

Adding to the list of great things about the New Calvinist movement is that it’s building relationships between black and white Christians, something that the church desperately needs to do.  The unity of believers across racial lines has long been one of John Piper’s passions, and Desiring God Ministries cooperated with Christian rap laber Reach Records and artist Lecrae last summer.  Thabiti Anyabwile seems to be a leading figure in New Calvinist circles, part of the core group for Together for the Gospel and speaking at one of Dever’s conferences.  Dever’s interview and commendation of shai linne and Voice fits right in with this exciting trend.

I now want to check out two albums from shai: The Atonement and Storiez (a children’s album).

Book Review: Divided by Faith, by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America is a historical and sociological study of white evangelical attitudes toward white-black relations.  I found it fascinating.  I should also try to read some reviews by trained sociologists who may be able to offer some insight into their research methods.

Emerson and Smith state that America is a racialized society in which “race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships” (7, emphasis in original).  They define racism sociologically, in that it does not have to be intentional; instead, it is an inequality in power that disadvantages one group or another.  One interesting example of this is that more educated whites tend to have fewer prejudices against black people, but at the same time tend to take actions that increase racialization because they are able to pursue higher-quality schools and neighborhoods that tend to be predominantly white.  Thus they are actually more segregated from African Americans.  They also quote another study that argues that racializing practices are becoming more hidden and institutionalized rather than direct and expressed in the language of race (9).

Helping a preacher preach

Two weeks ago, my fiancée and I went to a Missionary Baptist Church in Kankakee, Illinois, where I live and work.  I’ve been to predominantly black churches before, but this time I heard something that I had not before: the pastor of the church and the guest preacher both talked a bit about the role of the listeners in a preacher’s performance.  It’s something that one can see in the black church, but I had never heard it discussed specifically before.

When the pastor gave a lengthy introduction to Dr. William H. Copeland, one of the most prominent figures in Kankakee’s black community, he encouraged the congregation to get involved.  He said something like, “Preaching isn’t just the pulpit, it’s also the pew.  When you ‘Amen,’ you can help a preacher preach.”  He also exhorted the congregation to do no less for their guest than they would for another preacher.

For me, one of the most visually striking things about the African-American Christian tradition is the image of the preacher at the pulpit flanked by one or more other preachers urging him on.  When Dr. Copeland came to the pulpit, he talked about the need for other preachers, seated behind him and on either side, to support him as well.  He joked that there are some “jackleg preachers” that sit up front with their legs crossed and flipping through a Bible rather than voicing their support for their colleague at the pulpit, and told us to let him know if any of the four up there with him were doing that.  Dr. Copeland preached about hell with the story of Lazarus and the rich man as his text, beginning softly and building up to a passionate conclusion and gospel invitation.

The music was tremendous, with a medium-sized choir accompanied by an organ and drum set.  I don’t want to be a white person who idealizes the black church, or feels that he has to be ashamed that white Protestantism is too low key and therefore not “spiritual” enough.  I mean, really, if I hear one more white person sheepishly call his congregation “the frozen chosen” because they don’t clap their hands, I might go nuts.  But I have loved the few experiences that I have had in black churches, and I do hope that God’s people in this country and around the world can find more ways to worship together and learn from each other’s traditions.  All of God’s people are going to be worshipping together forever, so why not start now?

Book Review: Douglas Wilson, “Black and Tan”

While looking at Doug Wilson’s blog one day, I happened to notice that he wrote a book on slavery and culture wars.  Black and Tan: Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America seemed to be a great book to pair with America’s God, since both books discuss 19th-century American Christianity.

The story of this book begins in the 1990s when Wilson and his fellow Presbyterian minister Steve Wilkins wrote a pamphlet called “Southern Slavery as It Was.”  Controversy erupted when they argued that the abuses of Southern slavery were exaggerated.

Black and Tan reiterates the main points of that pamphlet and discusses the controversy that resulted from it.  The central points might be listed as follows:

• The Bible does allow for slavery within certain guidelines, although as the gospel does its work within nations, slavery will be abolished because the institution of slavery is against the logic of the gospel
• Racism and the slave trade are roundly condemned by the Bible
• Slavery was abolished in the United States in a radical and unbiblical way rather than that gradual way that it should have been if the gospel had done its work in American culture
• The Civil War empowered the federal government in such a way that it overthrew the truly federal system of government that the Constitution provided for, and this empowerment of humanistic instead of Christian values (which he compares to the French Revolution) paved the way for the current culture wars over abortion and gay marriage by, for example, giving the Supreme Court the power to overturn all states’ abortion laws

This blog post by Wilson also gives a good insight into his purposes.

Police talk about racial profiling

Jeff Goldberg recently linked to a 1999 article that he wrote about racial profiling when the Henry Louis Gates case was in the public eye.  The article is 10 years old, but it’s got some good conversations that explore the attitudes of both white and black police on this topic.  It’s a long article but worth a read if you’re interested in this topic.  Goldberg does well in understanding the complexities at work in these cases, and doesn’t simply write off any of the cops that he interviews.

Here’s one of the key passages:

Black, black, black, black. It is what Mike Lewis sees. It is what Jeffrey Coates sees. It is tunnel vision. They understand half the equation—blacks commit more of certain types of crimes than whites. But what they don’t understand is, just because blacks commit more crimes than whites doesn’t mean that most blacks commit crimes.

“I see a 16-year-old white boy in a Benz, I think, ‘Damn, that boy’s daddy is rich.’ I see a 16-year-old black, I think, ‘That boy’s slinging drugs,”’ says Robert Richards, a black police sergeant in Baltimore who admits that tunnel vision is a hazard of the job. But like many black cops, he sees nuance where white cops see, well, black and white. “When I start thinking that way, I try to catch myself. If I’m walking down the street and I pass a black male, I realize that, chances are, he’s not a criminal.”

It is, in some respects, nearly impossible to sit in judgment of a Mike Lewis or a Jeffrey Coates. If Coates says he must pull black men out of their cars and search them on traffic stops, well, Coates has been shot at before, and most critics of the Sheriff’s Department have not. But if Coates—and his department, by extension—believe that it is permissible to conduct pretext stops in South Central but impermissible to do so in Santa Clarita, then there’s a problem.

The numbers cops cite to justify aggressive policing in black neighborhoods and on the highways tell only part of the story—an important part, but only part. For one thing, blacks make up only 13 percent of the country’s illicit drug users, but 74 percent of people who are sentenced to prison for drug possession, according to David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and the author of “No Equal Justice.”

Common sense, then, dictates that if the police conducted pretext stops on the campus of U.C.L.A. with the same frequency as they do in South Central, a lot of whites would be arrested for drug possession, too.

Of course, this doesn’t happen, because no white community is going to let the police throw a net over its children.

Doug Wilson on race relations in the Church

From his book Black and Tan: Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America:

God’s perceptive will (what he requires of people in covenant with Him), summons us to a vision of the Church that is gloriously international.  This is not a Johnny-come-lately liberal vision with a Christian vocabulary sprinkled on top.  The ethnic tensions between Jews and Gentiles, and their resolution in Christ, are what a good portion of the New Testament is about. (28)

and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America

American hermeneutics and slavery

After chronicling the Americanization of Calvinist and Methodist theology, Mark Noll in America’s God turns to American biblical hermeneutics, the way that Americans read the Bible, in Chapters 18-20.  Noll argues that the American approach to Scripture in this period also came from both their Protestant heritage and their revolutionary/early national circumstances.  Noll has argued that republican government and commonsense moral ideas replaced the traditional authorities that held sway in the colonies, and that society was becoming increasingly democratic.  Evangelicalism often followed these trends even as it created what Noll calls “a formidable Christian civilization” (437) out of the former colonies, displaying a willingness and sometimes even a preference to work in the wide-open marketplace of religious choices, offering a view of human nature that owed quite a bit to Scottish Enlightenment ideas, and expressing theology in language drawn from Enlightenment and republican ideas.

Combined Book Review: Evangelism, Racial Reconciliation, and Community Development in Mississippi

• John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down (1976)
• John Perkins, With Justice for All (1982)
• Dolphus Weary, I Ain’t Comin’ Back (1990, 1997)

On June 15, I’m heading down Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee with members of 9 different Chicagoland churches.  Organized by Willow Creek Community Church, the idea of the “Justice Journey” is to get white and black Christians together to visit prominent sites from the history of the Civil Rights movement and to discuss racial reconciliation in the church.  One of the speakers along the way will be John Perkins, and his autobiography (Let Justice Roll Down) was assigned reading.  Since I had some time, I decided to read two other related books, one by Perkins and another by someone who became part of his ministry, Dolphus Weary.

Let Justice Roll Down is a really powerful story of Perkins’ ministry in Mississippi through the mid-1970s.  He had grown up in rural Mississippi and seen his brother shot and killed by a policeman.  When his family moved to California, he eventually became a Christian in his mid-20s.  As he shared the gospel in the Los Angeles area, he eventually felt called back to Mississippi to spread the gospel and knowledge of the Bible in his native state.  With the early financial support of California churches that included Calvary Bible Church in Burbank, pastored by John MacArthur’s father Jack MacArthur, he returned to Mississippi to begin his work.  He named his ministry Voice of Calvary after MacArthur’s radio broadcast.