Today, I would like to direct your attention to John Fea’s overview of American white evangelicalism’s history of entanglement with racism. Fea is Professor of American History at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 2002. His current book is Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, June 2018).
Here is the basic outline of Fea’s points in his blog post:
One: Fea begins with the missionary efforts of white churches in the South to help quell the threat they feared from black slave uprisings.
Two: Next, Southern ministers developed a biblical and theological defense of slavery based on what they saw as a literal, commonsense reading of the Bible.
Three: “Evangelicals thought that the South’s social order, and its identity as a Christian culture worthy of God’s blessing, was grounded in a proper reading of the Bible.” Thus, the Civil War was characterized as a battle between the faithful Christian slaveholders and the atheistic, progressive thinkers introducing modern concepts of freedom and rights for slaves.
Four: Southern evangelicals also feared the mixing of the races as the means by which the “white republic” might be overthrown.
Five: The Union victory and subsequent Constitutional amendments granting rights to blacks only reinforced Southern evangelical racism. Fea finds a classic example in the opposition to ordaining freedmen in the Southern Presbyterian Church.
Six: Northern fundamentalists did little to confront racism and failed to see how their approach to the Bible actually reinforced it. He also gives examples from the Tulsa Race Massacre (1921), the worst incident of racial violence in U.S. history, of how white ministers put the blame on black agitators and called for more law and order in its wake.
Seven: In the mid-20th century, evangelicals had a mixed record when it came to racial issues. But they were not particularly involved in the Civil Rights movement, and in fact, used it as a way of beginning to criticize what they saw as a more active federal government.
Eight: “This relationship between race and evangelical opposition to ‘big government’ intervention into state and local affairs is best illustrated in the evangelical response to two Supreme Court cases. Green v. Connally(1972)… [and] Bob Jones v. United States.”
Nine: “Historian Randall Balmer contends that it was this fear of big-government interference as it related to desegregation of institutions like Bob Jones University and Falwell’s own Liberty Academy that prompted the formation of the Christian Right.”
Ten: Fast forward to 2017, when evangelical leaders such as Robert Jeffress who implicitly and explicitly approved President Trump’s statements of moral equivalency between white supremicists and those marching against racial inequality in Charlottesville.
One thing John Fea doesn’t mention, but which I think merits attention, is how the election and presidency of Barack Obama, a black man, mobilized and hardened the white evangelical and conservative communities against what they see as the evils of the “the Left.” Discomfort with Obama’s race can hardly be a coincidental factor in the backlash that became Trumpism. Whereas some of us saw the election of a black man as a happy confirmation of true American ideals and a sign of genuine progress, many saw it as something close to the final straw in an uprising to dismantle white America.
Fea concludes his brief but suggestive overview with this admonition:
It is time that white evangelicals take a hard look at its past and stop trying to “Make America Great Again.” It is time, as theologian Jurgen Moltmann once said, to “waken the dead and piece together what has been broken.” The operate word is reconciliation, not “renew,” “restore” or “reclaim.”
On Racism, Apartheid, and the demons within (Part 2) By Klasie Kraalogies
Police confronting protesting youths, Soweto, 1976.Apartheid police crackdown on protests against the system, 1980’s.
We are not born racist. But, as we are molded by family, religion, culture and society, one can almost state that in most cases, racism is absorbed along with our sugary breakfast cereal. In my own case, I was much more exposed to non-segregated environments. From early on (9 years onwards) I went to church in a majority black church, listened to black preachers, sang choruses in multiple languages. My parents were missionaries in the then Northern Rhodesia, later Zambia, before my birth, and had a much more open attitude than most.
But I also attended school in the “Christian National Education” system. We were taught some non-colonial history and were taught basic Sepedi. Of course nothing in the history class was said about the Nazi-connections I discussed in Part 1, nor of the struggle against apartheid. All the enemies of the state were ‘evil Communists’’. It did help that the ANC was in an Alliance with Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions) and the South African Communist Party. It also helped that our young men went off to the borders to keep out the communists – even if a lot of that border was between “Southwest Africa” (now Namibia) and Angola. There they were fighting SWAPO (Southwest African People’s Organisation) and their Angolan and Cuban allies, while supporting the Angolan UNITA rebels under Jonas Savimbi.
South African troops in Angola during Operation Smokeshell (1980).
The picture was complete. Continuing apartheid was made easy by using the argument that dismantling it would give the opportunity for the Communists to take over. The government of P.W Botha (1978-1989) came up with the evocative terminology – “The Total Onslaught”. The world was against us, liberals, and communists who all hate God. Like all totalitarianisms, simple yet powerful ideas can keep the machinations of the State running. And so, every Wednesday in High School, we donned military style uniforms, raised the flag, practiced marching, sang a patriotic song or two. That is what good Christian boys and girls did – prepare for war against the evil world, under the banner of apartheid.
A weekly scene from my school days.
The connection between faith, ethnicity and political domination was secure. Yet there were voices from within the ranks of the privileged. One of the important ones was Beyers Naude, theologian and erstwhile Broederbond member who started questioning the status quo after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre.
Sharpeville Massacre, 1960.
The Sharpeville massacre happened because police got trigger happy during a peaceful protest. The death toll was 69. Beyers Naude, who was a provincial Synod moderator for the NG Kerk resigned from the church and the Broederbond, and then spent more than two decades as a pariah. A significant amount of that time was also spent under house arrest.
Then the heart of the alliance started to crumble. In 1986 the NG Kerk, the leading Dutch Reformed denomination in South Africa, turned around and said that religious apartheid was wrong, opening its doors to all races. And in 1989 the church went further – and declared apartheid a sin (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-14-me-500-story.html ). As an aside, much of this change was brough about by the actions of one man – Johann Heyns, who was viewed by some as a dangerous liberal. In 1982 he shocked many by saying that apartheid is not necessarily the will of God. In 1986 he became moderator of the church and the changes noted above started in earnest. Then in 1994 he was assassinated by persons unknown, although strong clues pointed towards the radical Afrikaner right wing.
Johan Heyns: Reformer who was assassinated in 1994.
Less than 11 months later, the dismantling of apartheid began in earnest.
Mandela celebrating the dawn of the new South Africa in 1994. The last white leader with the first Black leader of the country.
I am not covering the much more significant struggle by the anti-apartheid movement within and without South Africa. Of the immense role played by Mandela, the heroes of the struggle, of Archbishop Tutu, and the Black consciousness leaders like the martyred Steve Biko, much has been written by people more qualified than me. They sacrificed much, and the real credit belongs to them. However, since this essay is on racism within, it makes sense to look at apartheid, racism and the internal struggle from within the bosom of racism so-to-speak. From the vantagepoint of the “perpetrator class”, and the internal collapse.
During this time I was in High School. The “communist objection” started crumbling with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. The church my folks attended swivelled in became deeply enmeshed in Culture War thinking, struggles against sex education, abortion, and towards a theocratic solution. The drug replacing the fear of communism was a drive towards a theocratic state. We went on marches, held banners, signed petitions – yet it was so strange that all these other matters could rile up the “faithful”, but the horrors of racism made no-one bat an eyelid. So, it was no surprise that within this environment there were very noticeable things, such as the lack of multiracial families in the church. That, in the end of the day co-religionists only occasionally visited across the colour line. Close friends were almost always of the same colour. This was explained by calling on cultural differences, for instance. Though the real reason was always skin colour. In private, many of the white folks would make comments indicating that they still viewed their Black brothers and sisters as the other. Some of this was race, a lot of it was class. But the intersectionality I noted in Part 1 pretty much ruled the day. The culture war hides injustices. It is what it is designed to do.
So how does one break that down? It is now two decades since I left that church, and nearly a decade since I left religion altogether. But the issue is not religion, present or absent. The issue is us and them. The issue is recognising the thought patterns engrained from childhood. The little behaviours. The “Micro-agressions”. The simple assumptions. Recognize them– and then go to war with them. Educate yourself. Slam the intolerance you find in yourself. Not in the name of being enlightened, or modern, or whatever – but in the name of defeating the wrong. It is easy to make a confession, or like those ridiculous folks a week or two ago that went and “rejected their white privilege”. What nonsense. You cannot reject privilege given to you from outside. However, you can find the source of that thinking and behaviour in yourself – and throttle it. Otherwise you become a hypocrite like the church members I grew up with – some of whom made great outward sacrifice, but inward the stench of racism did not go away.
The reality though is that this is likely going to be a lifelong struggle, especially for us who live in transitional generations. Maybe in a few centuries things like this will be largely something of the past. Maybe.
Matthew Pevarnik, a writer for BioLogos, has a June 10th article entitled “Walking by Faith and Wearing a Mask”. Matt is an assistant professor of Physics at Regent University (PhD, University of California, Irvine). He notes that Scriptures that exhort us to “walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7) and that faith is being sure of something that we do not see (Hebrews 11:1), have special meaning to him because as a biophysicist he regularly deals with particles and structures that cannot be seen by the unaided human eye.
Why does the Bible tell us to believe in the unseen? Because we can have confidence that the one telling us that he loves us and cares about us and is working all things for our good is the same God who created all things and rules over all that he created. In other words, we can trust and know that God is working because of the assurance that we have in Scripture, even though we can’t see him. Matt says:
This kind of faith in an unseen reality is similar to my approach to my biophysics research. I can have a lot of confidence in things that I can’t see with my unaided senses by collecting various pieces of evidence. I can test how large the nanometer-sized channel is by measuring the transport of chloride ions through the channel. I can measure the size of particles through the resistive pulse method. But at the end of the day, I still can’t see one of my nanopores nor any changes I try to make to its surface chemistry. All I can do is perform the various measurements that give me the confidence that I really am seeing the unseen.
He then relates how the other day he was at a church service of about 40 people and realized he was he only one wearing a mask. Matt says:
One person came up to me and asked me if I was afraid, to which I promptly replied that I wasn’t. Upon further reflection, I realized that I don’t wear a face mask out of fear, but I wear it out of faith. Funny enough, a few days after attending that church service, I started having shortness of breath and upper respiratory pain (COVID-19 test ended up being negative). Still, I am glad that I wore a mask even when I had no symptoms for the sake of those around me.
One poll found that at least half of Americans are wearing masks in public and a Huffpost poll taken in May found:
There are still significant partisan and demographic divides, but they’re not so pronounced as to leave the two parties diametrically opposed. Rather, the gap is a matter of degrees, with a broad majority of Democrats and a more modest majority of Republicans offering support for masks and rejecting the idea that wearing them is a pointless practice or a sign of weakness.
Well, that seems to be mostly good news, except I am concerned that too many of the Republican contrarians are evangelicals who are like the church people Matt cited above who think wearing a mask is a lack of faith and is giving into fear. Matt points out that with any new virus there is a lot of uncertainty and conflicting narratives. He points out there is also a growing list of retracted COVID-19 papers.
Nevertheless, despite the uncertainty, there are certain things that scientists have learned about COVID-19, including:
Infected people who never have symptoms (asymptomatic) and infected people who are not showing symptoms yet (presymptomatic) can spread the virus to others.
Respiratory droplets containing the virus are exhaled from infected individuals when they cough, sneeze, sing, talk, and breathe, this is a major way the virus spreads to others.
Face masks reduce the amount of respiratory droplets that circulate in the air and infect other people.
The fact that asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals can “unseeingly” spread the virus to others is, in itself, an excellent reason to wear a face mask “by faith.” Matt says that it is part of our Christian duty to “love our neighbors” to not unknowingly spread a disease to them. Part of a Christian walk by faith includes times of “light momentary affliction” (1 Cor. 4:17-18) which would certainly include any inconvenience or discomfort we might have by wearing a mask. Matt cites “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. -Philippians 2:4” which I believe is a valid application of the Scripture passage as he goes on to note:
While I am not personally in an at-risk category, I don’t wear the face mask for me. I wear it for the 13 million Americans over 65 that live in multigenerational households who can’t just “cocoon away” while the rest of the population gets herd immunity, or for those that have or live with those asthma, chronic heart disease, diabetes, cancer diagnosed in the last year, hematological malignancies like leukemia and lymphoma, or had an organ transplant and more. What if my wearing a mask could have saved the life of a single mother of six who beat breast cancer? Scripture testifies to God’s special compassion for those that are the most vulnerable, for the poor or widows, or the foreigner in the land, and this is a small way that we look out for them, or metaphorically “leave our grain for the fatherless, the widow and the foreigner” (Deuteronomy 24:19).
Of course, I am in complete agreement with Matt here. I think most of here at Imonk would also be in agreement. I am posting this in the (vain) hope that any contrarian might take a second look at their position and reconsider, especially if they profess Christ, that it would be a loving act of faith to wear a mask in their public outings. Please… please… I’ll let Matt have the last word:
For God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. -2 Timothy 1:7
This is not a time to be afraid, but a time to confidently put our trust in what science has learned about God’s creation. It is a time to be examples and blessings to our community, as one West Virginia church spent Easter making masks and other personal protective equipment for healthcare providers. And even when it is uncomfortable, I ask myself at the end of the day, would I be okay if I accidentally got a third of my church sick with several people dying due to my “comfort” and my “allergies?” Wearing a face mask is a great way to love your neighbor as yourself and to set an example for others to follow, even if you have to use a little faith.
“My own heart let me more have pity on.” By Frederick Buechner
I certainly am always at war one way or another with myself, and some of them are wars I must fight to try to slay the demons, to kill the dragon, to lay the ghost to rest. But there are other wars you fight with yourself that are really not worth fighting at all. The war to make yourself be more, do more than you have it in you really to do or to be. I think of that wonderful line from one of the poems of my beloved Gerard Manley Hopkins where he says, “My own heart let me more have pity on.” My own heart let me more have pity on. That’s a lovely phrase. Be merciful to yourself, stop fighting yourself quite so much. Maybe what you are asking of yourself, what you’re driving yourself to do or to be, what you put a gun to your own back to make yourself do, is something at this point you needn’t have to think about doing.
not looking back. Photo by Nic Redhead at Flickr. Creative Commons License
Tuesday with Michael Spencer No Regrets (from 2009, edited)
Young folks in ministry. Adults living in regret. This is for you….
There was a time, in the last decade, that I constantly and painfully struggled with regrets about various choices I’d made in my life.
I regretted not finishing doctoral studies. (I made it 37 hours in and never finished the paper.)
I regretted staying in youth ministry so long. (13 years full time, then back for 18 years where I am after 4 years as a pastor.)
I regretted staying in Kentucky. (I had opportunities to go to Oxford, Mississippi and to Texas, but followed my hillbilly instincts.)
I regretted that so many of my friends were pastors of First Baptist Churches and I never got close. (The cost of not getting that Dr. degree.)
I regretted a bunch of stuff I can’t talk about. (You don’t want to know.)
Sometimes, I’ve honestly regretted staying at one ministry in the mountains of Appalachia for most of two decades. There was a time I was constantly called to do speaking and seminars, but almost from the day I came here those opportunities stopped. Say what you want, when you’re in the mountains of southeast Kentucky, you’re off the radar. It can be very disorienting.
I’ve spent a lot of time — too much — regretting all kinds of aspects of life in ministry. You’d have to be there to understand that struggle, but it’s a hard calling and I’m not ashamed that it was hard for me.
I made a lot of mistakes as a husband and a dad. I’ve spent a lot of time regretting them. (In God’s grace, my marriage and kids are wonderful.)
Recently, I’ve regretted the time I spent as a Calvinist (still struggle with that) and even the entire fact that I wound up in full-time ministry at all. (It wasn’t my fault, but full-time public school teaching combined with ministry as I had opportunity was a better fit. But in the church where I grew up, the only thing they knew to tell us 16 year olds was “be preachers.”)
I regretted the lack of friendships we’ve found wherever we’ve been, seemingly no matter how hard we tried. (Still one of life’s big mysteries and a sad aspect of ministry.)
There have been a lot of regrets involving the church home we never quite found as a family. (Denise and my kids have all found churches. My home is with the homeless.)
I was a tortured soul for many of those years and those regrets poisoned my experience of the goodness of God. If I could have seen it at the time, I would have confessed that I’d made ministry my entire life and set expectations in ministry that would always leave me disappointed.
A good counselor could have shown me the footprints of all this regret, stalking me for many years. I brought childish, self-centered attitudes into adult life, ministry and marriage that constantly tried to prop up my own insecurities and deficiencies with various aspects of success in ministry. I tried to fill up empty places with “success” as a minister. That’s a real wall to hit, and I’ve hit it repeatedly.
Where am I now? I’m at a much different place. I would never claim that I’ve moved beyond the swamp of regret, but I’ve learned some things that are bearing much helpful fruit.
I have never found it satisfying to simply do the Calvinistic thing and talk about God ordaining everything. I need to understand how this has all worked and not worked for me. I can see clearer now, and what I see is that God is helping us to be persons, not success stories. His goal is that we be loved, not well liked — a la Willie Lohman — or well known.
A healthy Christian person must find a place where they can be themselves, and that place won’t be identical to our definition of “success.” Even if we succeed, the experiences that bring make us who we really are won’t be found in the spotlight of success. They will be found in God’s version of our wilderness.
That place may be a nursing home, or a tiny college, or a farm or a forgotten mission to the poor. It may be in another universe from the latest conference or well known ministry. It may have no potential for anything but small acts done with great love. If that is so, you should embrace it as your place. Yours, and a gift to you.
God has placed me in a life where the soil for growing a good and useful spirituality is plentiful. There is the rich soil of community and relationships, and there is the occasional fertilizer of human failures and disappointment. In this soil, I will grow. I will not be an object to be seen and heard. I will be a person, growing into a human image of the God we know in Jesus.
As an older man considering my place, I can see the value in my life of having predictability, schedule, structure and place. I can see why I need some of the simple things that guide and nurture my life that many “successful” pastors never find. These things can’t be found anywhere, but they can be found where I am.
There is a place and time to read the Psalms. There is a place and time to pray. There are people to love and to tell about Jesus. There is good work and comraderie, even if all is not perfect. There is labor and a mutual acceptance of pain. There is help, rejoicing and the grace of seeing the old and leading the young. There is family, time and room to breath. I know see these gifts in ways I did not before. I see them in such a way that many of my previous regrets are unappealing to me.
I do not understand why God has left me in youth and student work so long, but it’s apparent that my passion for and emphasis on Jesus and the Gospel isn’t found very many places in the evangelicalism my students know and experience. I am a communicator, and though I feel some weariness in my bones after preaching and teaching for hours, I am still certain this is why I am in this world and at this place: to communicate Jesus and his Gospel in a time of chaos and static.
It appears that this has been my assignment and the point has not been to have my name on a conference program, but to preach regularly to hundreds of students who don’t know Christ, and to do so in the mountains and to do so for years. My place isn’t telling someone how to do ministry, but to stand in front of kids and actually teach the scriptures. I still feel guilty that I am so old, but I know that I have gifts and opportunities that are rarely found together. So this is my place.
I don’t have to always be happy. I need the love of God not the happiness of men. I can grow to see the two coming together, but not if I dictate how they will both come to me. I have the privilege of embracing a calling and the road that is before me. I am not going to talk about the Kingdom or missional living. I am going to live in the Kingdom and practice missional living.
I can relax and accept that God has been at work in all of this for his glory and my usefulness and joy. I have no regrets unless I want to be God.
In the end, this out of the way corner of the world is the place where I want to be found. When God wants me to go elsewhere, I’ll gladly go, especially if it’s near a ballpark, but in the meantime I’m not ashamed or regretful of the path the loving hand of God has given to me.
I am wasting far less of my mind and heart on regret. I’m finding that the wisdom of the spiritual life is not found in evangelical success and notoriety, but in coming to know who I am in the place and calling God has for me. My influence will be no less and no greater, in God’s Kingdom, here in the mountains than it would be anyplace on earth. In the end, it’s my privilege to belong to Christ and to use my gifts as he gives opportunity.
My Dad came home from the hospital on Friday! The pharmacist delivered his medicines late that evening and commented “Jim has more lives than a cat!” It was his ninth major abdominal surgery in about the same number of years. Thank you for all your prayers.
As I was thinking about what to write tonight (and whether to write tonight), I started reminiscing of some of the meaningful times I have spent with my Dad.
When I was three years old, he took me into Stoplog Lake in the Kawartha Highlands. In the 1960s it was very primitive country, with deep cold lakes and rocky cliffs scoured out by glaciers retreating after the last ice age. It would take us about 6 hours of canoeing and portaging to reach our campsite. Our route would take us from the top right corner of the map down to the bottom left.
The travelling could get a little tricky at times.
In my younger years he had a little 2 horsepower motor that he jury-rigged on to the canoe to make the travel a little easier. Some of my fondest memories were established at that lake.
We typically went in the middle of July when the blueberries were at their finest. What fun we had exploring…
cliff jumping…
fishing…
and playing in the natural Jacuzzi and waterfall created by the stream that entered the lake. Tang crystals always made the lake water taste better! It was always cool to start a night howl, and hear the Eastern Coyotes (we called them Brush Wolves) take up the echo. On occasion we would spread our sleeping bags under the stars, and watch the Milky Way explode into glory above us.
Even though we usually camped on an island, our food was always stored up in a tree to minimize the chance of an encounter with bears.
In the morning it was amazing to watch the mist rise over the lake as the sun was rising.
And oh what fishing. Quite often we would go an entire week on the lake without seeing another soul, and the lake was pristine fishing territory. Our last time in, the four fishermen caught (and mostly released) 200 bass in two days!
It was there that I learned to bake “bread on a stick” over the low coals of a campfire.
On our way home we would stop for a swim at “Burleigh Falls” which was always a highlight.
There are no bad memories of camping with Dad, but they are certainly powerful ones.
I don’t have a lot of pictures of that time with Dad, or at least not ones that I could put my hands on quickly.
But, in the in-between years, I created some very similar powerful memories with my kids and their friends. We did a few different trips, but Stoplog Lake was always their favourite and we returned to it a number of times. The pictures I have included are of my recent trips into the area with my own kids, but looking at them sure brings the memories flooding back.
My last time into Stoplog Lake with Dad he slipped and fell and cracked his elbow. It was me who had to take the lead and the load in portaging the canoe and paddling us back to civilization. He reminded me of that story this past weekend. And really, it is a picture of where we are at now. When I was younger, he would always be taking the lead, and setting the pace. Now it is my turn to return the favour.
As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome. Oh, and if you might be interested in a very inexpensive Canadian wilderness experience let me know in the comments. I still have a trip or two left in me and we might be able to arrange something post Covid-19.
We buried my last uncle yesterday. I am now bereft of uncles and aunts; our small family tree has been trimmed back to an even tinier size.
My uncle was a Marine, a decorated Korean War veteran, Purple Heart and Bronze Star. When he returned home, he devoted himself to studying and became a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, marrying my aunt along the way. They moved from our hometown to another small Illinois town downstate, where he bought a practice and served the community for almost forty years. My aunt and uncle had two children, two boys who were companions and playmates when our families traveled back to converge in our hometown of Dixon, Illinois.
At home, they kept a menagerie of animals and pets. I remember some raccoons from a childhood trip to visit them, and his granddaughter told me about a squirrel they rescued and which became rather domesticated, as well as a lion that passed through at one point. People knew him as “Doc” around town and I’ve met people here in Indianapolis who spoke highly of him when they lived in that town for the way he cared for their farm animals and pets.
He was also quite a character who loved adventure. He had his pilot’s license. He raced midget cars. He took far-off fishing excursions. He played as hard as he worked.
After he retired, he devoted himself to volunteer work, serving in various roles in the community, including Habitat for Humanity. I understand he always wanted the challenging jobs when helping them, the ones high up on the ladder. He also helped out at the local food pantry and served on various boards. My cousin, who helped manage his finances in his final years, said that he had a large stack of receipts every month from charitable enterprises he supported financially.
My uncle was a strongly opinionated and plain spoken man, especially when it came to politics. He once made the newspaper for putting up some anti-Democratic signs in his yard that people had defaced or stolen. I’m told that his Republican views and his opinions about bad drivers were the two things you could always count on him voicing. However, I was heartened that one of the people who spoke at the service yesterday was a card-playing buddy who is just as staunch a Democrat, and that they always got along well.
It was moving to me to stand in that small town cemetery yesterday and talk about someone who represented my own small town roots so well. I remarked about how, when you stand in a graveyard like that, you remain surrounded by your community — the resting places of your neighbors, friends, schoolmates, co-workers, and acquaintances emanate memories and connections that have formed the tapestry of your life.
Driving to the service, I passed through a tiny little farm village with a few cross streets on the edge of the cornfields. A little league baseball game was being played in the middle of town on a diamond built right in the midst of white clapboard houses and yards, their screen doors opened to let in the morning breeze. A runner was rounding the bases as a small group of fans cheered.
And at that moment, I had a smile and a tear for my uncle and those like him.
The biblical faith says creation is of enormous importance because God created it. He made it, he sustains it, he speaks in it, he moves in it. He sent the Christ into it, who walked on it, who got sick from it, who ate on it, who wanted a job on it, who preached on it, who loved on it, who died on it. It is of enormous importance. Pay attention to it. It is crucial. Souls are lost and souls are saved in this world; therefore live, watch, pay attention to it as if your life depended on it because, of course, your life does depend upon it. It seems to me almost before the Bible says anything else, it is saying that—how important it is to be alive and to pay attention to being alive, pay attention to each other, pay attention to God as he moves and as he speaks. Pay attention to where life or God has tried to take you.
The prophets were also saying to pay attention, especially to history. Pay attention especially to what’s going on in the headlines, with Amos, for instance, thundering out, Pay attention to the way the rich exploit the poor, to the way there are people living off the fat of the land in air-conditioned bedrooms and more to eat than they can handle while there are other people who are starving to death, who are sleeping in the streets of New York and San Antonio and God knows where in bags and cardboard boxes. Pay attention to that, says Amos, because God is speaking a terrible word through that, of judgment and of wrath, and of hope, in a way. Or the prophet Isaiah, who says, Watch the foreign policy of the nation, read those headlines, the powers in the north are coming to punish Israel for her running off after foreign gods every chance she has, and so on.
These prophetic voices continue, of course, and sometimes history itself becomes prophetic. I remember watching those students holding demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and there was a period when the students were being gentle, and the soldiers were being gentle, nobody was shooting, and nobody was shouting, and something so precious was starting, was trying to happen. I thought I could hardly watch without tears in my eyes. And then, of course, the shooting did start, and the tanks rolled in, and the bodies fell, and some were arrested, and here history itself was saying, Pay attention to what’s happening because these are the prophetic words being spoken to you on your television screen about the kingdom at hand.
On Racism, Apartheid and the Demons Within (Part 1) By Klasie Kraalogies
(Before I start, let me state this: I am addressing racism as the issue I, and most people of European origin are familiar with, and rightly accused of. I am not speaking of other racisms. Those certainly exist, and are nefarious, but it is not the topic under consideration here.)
Tuesday 19 August 1856: The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (New South Wales)
It might seem strange that I would begin this article from a New South Wales newspaper from nearly a century earlier, and not with the horrors following the 1948 General election in South Africa.
The Master and Servants Act was created by the British Colonial government, and was enacted in various stages across the Empire, whose influence even extended into US lawmaking. It was an act designed to empower employers against workers. The difference was of course, that in the colonies, and in particular South Africa, the abundance of cheap, non-white labour led to the intersection of class and race, which would create unique modes of discrimination.
Those who have studied the plight of workers in the Victorian age will recognize phrases such as “the great unwashed” coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (English playwright and Secretary of State for the Colonies 1858-1859). Thus, class, colour, and the concept of “cleanliness” all became associated with one another. An example from my own past – a high school teacher, whose subjects were African languages and history, told us how he had hosted a Black academic in his garden (not home), but that he carefully marked the cups the man used so that afterwards he could dispose of them.
This illustrates the racist view that people of another race are somehow unclean.
In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Bill was passed; however, it was only enforced in 1834, and even then, the emancipated slaves became ‘apprentices’ to their previous masters. It was only four years later in 1838 when the British administration outlawed slave apprenticeship. Yet, even with these acts and bills, slavery did not end – it just took on forms through being codified into laws. This is what systemic racism is.
After the horrors of the Boer War, intense efforts by the British colonial authorities (in the now four colonies of South Africa), were put in place to eliminate the Afrikaans language and create a single white national establishment. These efforts failed and entrenched a bitter hatred in many of the Imperial Authority. After the creation of the Union of South Africa, Afrikaner politicians rose to the top quickly. Various racial laws were enacted by a people feeling themselves besieged by the Empire, and yet building on the legal framework set there by that same Empire.
During the Great Depression, the two main political parties amalgamated in 1934 under Jan Smuts to form the United Party. Prior to the amalgamation there was the National Party under J.B.M Herzog, and the Unionist Party under the leadership of Jan Smuts. Nationalist right-wing members of the National Party objected to the amalgamation and broke away to form the Purified National Party under D.F Malan. During the 1930s, many of these fascist elements formed the pro-Nazi Ossewa Brandwag (OB) which included a paramilitary wing known as the Stormjaers (assault troops). The National Party broke away from the OB in 1942, because of their sabotage tactics. However, the OB got absorbed back into the National Party at the end of the Second World War.
BJ Vorster addressing an OB rally
B.J Vorster, South African Prime Minister from 1968 to 1978, was an OB member who said the following in 1942:
We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism… In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism and in South Africa Christian Nationalism.
His brother, Reverend Koot Vorster addressed a student group in 1940, saying:
Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ shows the way to greatness – the path of South Africa. Hitler gave the Germans a calling. He gave them a fanaticism which causes them to stand back for no one. We must follow this example because only by such holy fanaticism can the Afrikaner nation achieve its calling.
The Prime Minister who followed Vorster, P.W Botha was also an OB member. Some of my readers will remember the two global leaders who unwaveringly supported Botha’s South Africa – Reagan and Thatcher.
In 1948 the National Party defeated the United Party, and Malan became Prime Minister. However, a new element was added to the rise of the right wing – the Afrikaner Broederbond (Brotherhood). Founded in 1918 to advance Afrikaner interests, it was a secret organisation of exclusively male Afrikaner Calvinists. The aforementioned Jan Smuts said that it was a dangerous, cunning, political fascist organisation. What is true is that every single South African leader from Malan to De Klerk (who started dismantling the legal framework of apartheid in 1990) was a Broederbond member. Through government and industry, the Broederbond worked to diminish the power of non-Afrikaners, including intense gerrymandering to keep progressives out.
All through this time, laws on race kept piling up in the law books. This process accelerated after 1948, especially with the infamous Group Areas Act of 1950. This quote from Wikipedia sums it up rather well:
The Act empowered the Governor-General to declare certain geographical areas to be for the exclusive occupation of specific racial groups. In particular the statute identified three such racial groups: whites, coloureds and natives. This authority was exercised on the advice of the Minister of the Interior and the Group Areas Board.
Once an area had been designated for sole occupation by certain racial groups, the proclamation would not become legally effective for at least one year. Once this time had expired, it became a criminal offence to remain in occupation of property in that area with the punishment potentially being a fine and two years’ imprisonment.
The Act also applied to businesses with racial designation being applied on the basis of the individuals who held a controlling interest in the company
(Note that the term “coloureds” refers to multiracial ethnicity created by the state, and included people of multiracial ancestry, Khoisan ancestry, and Malay slave ancestry).
Thus, the economic subjugation of people of colour, first advanced by the Master and Servants Act in 1856 was made complete.
The question is – why the obsession with race? In South Africa nationalism certainly played a role – but truth be told, it made little sense as nearly all white South Africans, such as me, have a portion of non-white ancestry. I personally count Khoisan, Malagasy, Indian (Bengali?) and Chinese ancestry. So why did the initial melting pot disappear so quickly?
Let us first ask two questions:
What is race?
Race is a social construct. Anyone who knows even a little about genetics will realise that. Genes for skin colour have nothing to do with genes for hair texture for instance. While a set of genes might dominate locally due to lack of movement, these are very minor affects. For instance, two Khoisan men living 200 km apart have a more varied DNA than a white Englishman in London, and a Han Chinese in Beijing. Why? Because the latter two groups left Africa as a rather small subset of humanity many thousands of years ago. The Khoisan ancestors did not. It should be understood that although race is a social construct, that does not mean it does not exist. It means it does not exist biologically. It certainly exists politically and sociologically. It is a created category through which suffering was meted out.
When did racism become an issue?
This is an interesting question. Race was not that much of an issue in the Roman Empire. For the Romans, free versus enslaved became the crux of the matter. Free Black Romans did exist – as traders and others. Tacitus tells us that in Nero’s days a great many Roman senators were descended from slaves. The implication here is that ethnic origin was not a major issue. So, when did it become an issue?
An interesting paper by Kubota et al (2012) explains the neuroscience of race points towards our ingroup/outgroup instincts. People from within the group are safe, people from without the group are dangerous. However, in considering this, we are left with the question asking why was race not an issue for the Romans, but a major issue in the British Empire for instance?
Consider though that for the Romans, the major question was citizen or non-citizen, freeperson or slave. This leads us to the fact that what we view as our inborn reactions, are learned or socially conditioned. Kubota et al refers to this when discussing techniques for change appraisal of perceived outgroup members:
Social psychologists already utilize techniques reminiscent of reappraisal that aim to decrease negative evaluations of outgroup members. Recent neuroeconomic research suggests that a perspective-shifting instruction designed to encourage reappraisal alters the emotional effect of choice outcomes and changes decisions, which appears to utilize an emotion regulation circuitry. It is possible that strategically instructing participants to encourage the reappraisal of an outgroup member may help to reduce the effect of unwanted implicit attitudes on social decisions, such as on legal decisions.
Therefore, we can conclude that a major societal shift caused the explosion of racism in the first place. And that moment brings an answer to my earlier question – why did racism become an issue that led to apartheid?
The age of colonization brought a shift in attitudes – conquered labour was cheap labour. During this time there was the rise of the nation state which aggravated racist attitudes as the ideals surrounding the nation-state require some level of racist ideology as a way to ‘unite’ citizens and hold on to power. Moreover, the mysticism of the nation state utilizes a religious narrative to hold power over its people. This is seen with the Afrikaner Calvinist, the Church of England, the State Church in Germany, as well as in some parts of Eastern Europe, where the church still currently operates as an arm of the state.
To summarize:
Racial attitudes have deep roots in Colonialism and Imperialism
Racial attitudes are taught and not innate
Racial attitudes have a strong economic component, and are thus closely connected with class, gender, and power
The article noted: “that ancient DNA extraction from Dead Sea Scroll fragments made of animal skin is used to determine fragment origin and show unification of scrolls from distinct geological locations, highlighting the potential for genetics to illuminate the history of archaeological objects.” Because most of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) were written on sheepskin, the DNA of the sheep that was used could be used to match scroll fragments. The DNA sequencing would indicate which scroll fragments came from the same animal and by inference, therefore, the same scroll.
RJS notes that an accompanying press release may be more readable: “Dead Sea Scrolls “Puzzle” Pieced Together with DNA Extracted from Animal Skins on Which Scrolls Were Written.” RJS quotes from the press release:
“Almost all the scrolls we sampled were found to be made of sheepskin, … says Prof. Rechavi. “However, two samples were discovered to be made of cowhide, and these happen to belong to two different fragments taken from the Book of Jeremiah. In the past, one of the cow skin-made fragments was thought to belong to the same scroll as another fragment that we found to be made of sheepskin. The mismatch now officially disproves this theory.
“What’s more, cow husbandry requires grass and water, so it is very likely that cowhide was not processed in the desert but was brought to the Qumran caves from another place. This finding bears crucial significance, because the cowhide fragments came from two different copies of the Book of Jeremiah, reflecting different versions of the book, which stray from the biblical text as we know it today.”
Prof. Mizrahi further explains, “… The ancient DNA proves that two copies of Jeremiah, textually different from each other, were brought from outside the Judean Desert. This fact suggests that the concept of scriptural authority — emanating from the perception of biblical texts as a record of the Divine Word — was different in this period from that which dominated after the destruction of the Second Temple. In the formative age of classical Judaism and nascent Christianity, the polemic between Jewish sects and movements was focused on the ‘correct’ interpretation of the text, not its wording or exact linguistic form.”
RJS goes on to state:
Note that Prof. Mizrahi is not arguing for or against the inspiration of the text as the Divine Word, or against its authority. He is suggesting that the data undermines both Christian and Jewish arguments for one single “correct” version of the text. Put differently, although Scripture was valued as the Divine Word, the concept of verbal plenary inspiration was foreign to the time and culture. Texts of Scripture were not preserved and studied with this in mind. Of course, I believe we see evidence for this approach in the New Testament itself, in the ways in which the Old Testament is quoted and used. It doesn’t take fragments of Jeremiah to make the point, although studies like these new DNA studies can help us piece together the past and the texts.
In other words, although Scripture was and is valued as God’s Word to both Christians and Jews, the idea that there is one correct version of the text, miraculously preserved down through history, is further revealed to be a complete fiction. The Jews argued both about interpretation of the sacred writings as well as what constituted those writings. The same was true for the early Christians as they wrestled with what writings should make up the New Testament canon. The actual history of the compilation of what we now call “The Bible” should make us appreciate the deeply human component to its nature as well as its divine province. To me, the Scriptures are truly living and active.
I certainly am always at war one way or another with myself, and some of them are wars I must fight to try to slay the demons, to kill the dragon, to lay the ghost to rest. But there are other wars you fight with yourself that are really not worth fighting at all. The war to make yourself be more, do more than you have it in you really to do or to be. I think of that wonderful line from one of the poems of my beloved Gerard Manley Hopkins where he says, “My own heart let me more have pity on.” My own heart let me more have pity on. That’s a lovely phrase. Be merciful to yourself, stop fighting yourself quite so much. Maybe what you are asking of yourself, what you’re driving yourself to do or to be, what you put a gun to your own back to make yourself do, is something at this point you needn’t have to think about doing.
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