SDPC Co-chair and Co-founding Trustee, Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III was awarded the 2022 Dr. Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice Trailblazer Award at the recent Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly, June 29, 2022.
Delivering the keynote speech, Dr. Haynes responded to a conservative California preacher and theologian who is leading conservative Christians to fight against social justice advocacy as a “non-biblical” and heretical practice. Dr. Haynes outlined the ministry of Jesus as being a ministry of social justice and declared he was a heretic, in the name of Jesus!
On Jan. 8, 2022, the Mail & Guardian(whose masthead asserts that it is “Africa’s Best Read” newspaper) published an opinion column by Lindiwe Sisulu titled “Whose Law Is It Anyway?” that has sparked a deep conversation in South Africa.
I learned of it from my friend Allan Boesak during one of our weekly conversations about faith and justice. After I read Sisulu’s piece, I shared it with other justice-minded public theologians in the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference with this statement: “This is a must read!”
Sisulu’s parents, Walter and Albertina Sisulu, were leading figures with Nelson Mandela in the African National Congress movement that resisted the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. Their daughter’s opinion column shows she inherited her parents’ zeal for justice.
A dose of truth
“Whose Law Is It Anyway?” bristles with truth about economic reparation, a subject the beneficiaries of colonization always try to avoid. Consider the following excerpt:
Let’s not fool ourselves and one another: the primary motivation for the evils of colonialism was and still is economic. It is organized crime; the robbery of other people’s land and resources; the exploitation and despiteful use of their labor. It is also about the reduction of these people to mass consumers and exclusion from the ownership of the factors of production and wealth creation.
But it seems today we have legitimized wrongdoing under the umbrella of the rule of law. Many years down the line Africans manage poverty while others manage wealth. When we talk about transformation, it is just a buzzword? When we talk about reconciliation, what we don’t hear is economic reconciliation.
Lindiwe Sisulu
Sisulu is unapologetically critical of colonized-thinking Black judges, other politicians and business leaders for their collective failure to demand economic reparation for centuries of legalized land theft and wage theft in South Africa.
Because she is a member of the ANC’s executive committee, has been a member of the South African Parliament since 1994, and currently serves as minister of tourism for South Africa, her objections to the failure by Black judges, other politicians and business leaders to demand economic reparation have drawn criticism from some in South Africa, including some supporters of the current political administration. However, her critique of the so-called “reconciliation process” is praised by other people in South Africa who realize that the 1994 Constitution that purported to end apartheid was woefully flawed.
Her critique of the well-worn phrase “rule of law” is correct. Like Martin Luther King Jr. did in his Letter from Birmingham Jail written to white religious leaders who criticized King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for its role in supporting nonviolent civil disobedience to Jim Crow laws, Sisulu correctly declares that there is a difference between legality and justice.
Slavery was practiced, supported and defended under “the rule of law.”
Robbery of land and labor of indigenous people was upheld under “the rule of law.”
Women were denied the right to vote under “the rule of law.”
Minister Sisulu and other people who insist that descendants of indigenous and enslaved people whose land and labor were stolen by colonizers deserve economic reparation are vilified as opponents of “the rule of law” by white defenders of manifest destiny, self-proclaimed religious conservatives and colonized-minded Black and indigenous leaders.
They are vilified because colonizers and their lackeys always have referred to “the rule of law” to avoid demands for economic reparations as part of the overall claim for racial justice. However, Minister Sisulu’s views are in line with those of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, Nicole Hannah-Jones, Kimberle Crenshaw, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Poor People’s Campaign, Palestinians, and other Black and indigenous people around the world who have demanded economic reparations for legalized robbery, fraud and other oppression.
In denial of racism’s influence on legal system
I am a Black judge and pastor who was born, reared and educated in the American South during the final years of the Jim Crow era. I have lived most of my life in the American South since that time. The American South is where I obtained my law degree, my law license, practiced law, was licensed and ordained as a minister in the religion of Jesus, and where my wife and I raised our sons. My personal and professional experience and knowledge of history lead me to agree with what Minister Sisulu has observed about “the rule of law.”Most Americans are in denial about white supremacy, racism and their pervasive influence on the legal system, society, economics, notions of government, religion and understanding of culture. Michael Eric Dyson described this denial tendency and its effect on racial equity in his introduction to Black Mutiny: The Revolt on the Schooner Amistad, by William Owens, as follows:
Wendell Griffen
It is not overstating the case to suggest that, when it comes to race, we are living in the United States of Amnesia. America cannot solve its race problem because it cannot afford to remember what it has been through, or more accurately, what it has made its Black citizens endure: the horrible, cowardly, vicious legacy of racial domination stoked by religious belief and judicial mandate. The willed forgetfulness of our racial past continues to trap us. … It appears easier for most whites, and for many Blacks, to reenact a pantomime of social civility through comfortable gestures of racial reconciliation than it is to tell each other the truth of the colossal breach of humane behavior and democratic practice that slavery represented.
Derrick Bell,
Derrick Bell, one of the first legal scholars associated with Critical Race Theory, was equally honest in his contribution to the Introduction to Black Mutiny.
The distinctions between slavery, segregation and current era of quasi-opportunity are real, but the paradoxes built on white dominance and Black subordination are recognizable in each era.
Those Blacks and whites who challenge the racial status quo are seldom hailed as heroes in their own time. Their words and actions are too threatening to what is to allow either those they oppose or those they would help to comprehend when those bold individuals proclaim what might be.
In all times, the law is the handmaiden of those in power. Only in extraordinary circumstances will courts and legislatures break with this traditional role and reach out to the dispossessed, usually in ways that benefit those without power in small ways and in the short run. In large ways and in the long run, the seemingly remedial actions of law stabilize and legitimate even when, as is often the case, the powerful are most active in their opposition to these modest reforms.
‘Willed forgetfulness’
Michael Eric Dyson’s observation about the “willed forgetfulness of our racial past” that enables most white people and many Black people” to “reenact a pantomime of social civility through comfortable gestures of racial reconciliation,” and Derrick Bell’s observation that “Blacks and whites who challenge the racial status quo are seldom hailed as heroes in their own time,” are as true now as when they were made in 1997.
Michael Eric Dyson
That explains why right-wing politicians, religious figures, journalists, neo-fundamental capitalist colonizers and imperialists, and white supremacists are trying to stop teaching, learning, writing and discourse about the history of racial injustice, including Critical Race Theory, in colleges, universities and otherwise.
On another level, “willed forgetfulness” and outright hostility to truthful observations about the economic debt owed to descendants of indigenous and formerly enslaved Africans are at the heart of recent attacks on historically Black colleges and universities throughout the United States, including bomb threats made to three such institutions in Arkansas where I live.
Black people in the United States and indigenous people in South Africa and elsewhere always have known that the long pattern of domestic terrorism against our communities, places of learning and worship, our burial places and our historical sites is a basic aspect of white supremacy and domination. The Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol showed the world the ugly truth about white hypocrisy concerning “the rule of law” that Black people, including those who study, teach and work in HCBUs, have known for generations.
Agents of pacification
At the same time, the descendants of indigenous and formerly enslaved Africans who asserted our inherent rights of dignity, equality and freedom from oppression always have recognized how white colonizers and their descendants used Black lackeys as agents of pacification. In the early years of the last century, Booker T. Washington served that purpose. At the end of the last century and currently, judges such as Justice Clarence Thomas and religious figures such as Tony Evans serve that purpose.
“No provision was made in the U.S. Constitution — or in any other law — to repay the formerly enslaved persons or any of their descendants for 246 years of forced labor carried out under ‘the rule of law.’”
However, no provision was made in the U.S. Constitution — or in any other law — to repay the formerly enslaved persons or any of their descendants for 246 years of forced labor carried out under “the rule of law.” The formerly enslaved population was given no land, no property, no money and nothing else as restitution for deprivations they had been forced to endure under the “rule of law.” The nation that enacted a Homestead Act in 1862 and settled white farmers on free frontier land taken from indigenous people gave no land to formerly enslaved Black people.
Abraham Lincoln’s role
The “rule of law” hypocrisy goes further.
On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, a law that called for $1 million in reparations to be paid for emancipated Africans who had been enslaved in the District of Columbia — but the money was to go to the white people who enslaved them, worked them without pay and kept the proceeds from their work. I have found no proof that the emancipated Africans received a penny. The District of Columbia Emancipation Act also included up to $100,000 to resettle formerly enslaved persons — but the resettlement was to be in Haiti and Liberia, not in the United States.
Under “the rule of law,” millions of formerly enslaved people were left homeless, landless and penniless by the society that sanctioned their enslavement for 246 years. As if that plight were not sufficiently woeful, the people who enslaved them were restored to land on which the formerly enslaved had toiled and produced wealth.
The voting rights guaranteed to formerly enslaved Black men became worthless when state after state passed laws that mocked their emancipation. One day after the 13th Amendment was ratified — which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime — South Carolina enacted a law that required Black “servants” to enter into labor contracts with white “masters,” to work from dawn to dusk and to maintain a “polite” demeanor. Violation of that law — by failing to enter into such a “contract” or by failure to maintain the required demeanor — subjected the “servants” to criminal sanctions that could result, upon conviction, in the loss of voting rights and return to involuntary servitude. The “rule of law” made a mockery of the 13th Amendment.
This history is a fraction of the harms, injuries and indignities inflicted upon formerly enslaved Black people according to “the rule of law” in the United States. Perversely, it is never mentioned when economists, politicians, lawyers, judges and religious leaders discuss wealth inequity in my country. Instead, white capitalists and their Black sycophants blatantly question the industry and innovativeness of people whose marginalized ancestors designed cities, revolutionized the arts, developed life-saving medical procedures and invented machines that transformed life in countless ways.
The shameless “rule of law” hypocrisy goes still further. Formerly enslaved Africans in the United States were defrauded of voting rights by various devices. I cherish to this day the 1963 receipt for poll taxes paid by my parents and recall the names and faces of Black people in my rural southwest Arkansas community who picked cotton to make enough money to pay the taxes so our elders could vote. Now, the descendants of those elders are openly disenfranchised by voter suppression schemes.
Red Summer of 1919
Three generations after the U.S. Civil War ended, a season of racial violence occurred in the United States that historians term the Red Summer of 1919. White mobs terrorized and murdered Black neighborhoods at will and without fear of prosecution. The Red Summer concluded in Arkansas, my home state, near the rural community of Elaine in southeast Arkansas, when hundreds of Black men, women and children were massacred by a white mob and federal troops (who traveled from Little Rock aboard a troop train accompanied by Gov. Charles Brough) over the course of several days beginning on Oct. 1, 1919.
No white person was arrested for or charged with committing any of the murders, planning the massacre or participating in it. Land, livestock and farm implements that belonged to the massacred people and their terrorized survivors were not restored to their descendants.
The Elaine Race Massacre of 1919 transformed a community of industrious, enterprising and upwardly mobile Black people who owned some of the most fertile land in Arkansas into some of most impoverished people in the United States. This happened in my home state under “the rule of law.”
To this day, the descendants of the massacred, plundered and terrorized people have not received restitution or reparation. It speaks volumes about the moral and cultural competence of “rule of law” cheerleaders when a travesty of this magnitude has not been addressed by white lawyers, judges, legal scholars, legislators, prosecutors, governors, religious leaders, columnists or other influential leaders from Arkansas (including former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton).
It’s hard to see progress
That is why Minister Sisulu’s opinion column resonated with me. In the same way the 1994 South African Constitution did not provide for reparations or restitution for woes suffered by Black South Africans because of apartheid, the U.S. Constitution, which deliberately gave a bonus representation to slaveholding states equal to three-fifths of the number of their disenfranchised enslaved Africans, never has contained a provision for reparations or restitution to descendants of enslaved Africans.
Instead, descendants of enslaved Africans are accused of being “unqualified” affirmative action contenders for public office and private enterprise. Notice how President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to fill the pending vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court caused by the upcoming retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer is criticized by people who are beneficiaries of centuries of white male privilege concerning judicial service.
A generation ago, Randall Robinson wrote about what the United States owes Africans and African Americans for the damage Black people suffered and continue to suffer because of centuries of slavery, segregation and discrimination perpetrated under “the rule of law.” After quoting the long-settled legal principle that a party wronged by unjust acts is entitled to recompense so the wrongdoer is not unjustly enriched, Robinson wrote:
Only in the case of Black people have the claims, the claimants, the crime, the law, the precedents, the awful contemporary social consequences all been roundly ignored. The thinking must be that the case that cannot be substantively answered is best not acknowledged at all. Hence, the United States government and white society generally have opted to deal with this debt by forgetting that it is owed. The crime — 246 years of an enterprise murderous both of a people and their culture — is so unprecedentedly massive that it would require some form of collective insanity not to see it and its living victims.
But still many, if not most, whites cannot or will not see it (a behavior that is accommodated by all too many uncomplaining Blacks). … America accepts responsibility for little that goes wrong in the world, least of all the contemporary plight of Black Americans. And until America can be made to do so, it is hard to see how we can progress significantly in our race relations.
Thank God for these voices
I thank God for Randall Robinson, Derrick Bell, Michael Eric Dyson, Nicole Hannah Jones, Kimberle Crenshaw, Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and others who refuse to allow the massive debt owed Africans and African Americans to be disregarded and disallowed by the “willed forgetfulness” and “collective insanity” rationalized by reliance on “the rule of law.”
I thank God that Lindiwe Sisulu refuses to allow reliance on “the rule of law” to silence the rightful claim of South Africans to the reparation owed for the land, labor and other wealth stolen from them for centuries.
And I thank God for Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Cone, Jeremiah Wright Jr., Allan Boesak and other prophetic religious and secular leaders who proclaim a festering inconvenient truth.
Without reparations for racial injustice, there is no reason to talk about racial reconciliation, let alone imagine that it is likely to happen. Reconciliation talk only serves the status quo interests of people who now benefit from centuries of white supremacy, domination and land theft, labor theft and state sanctioned thuggery, and who shamelessly assert the right to continue doing so.
“Without reparations for racial injustice, there is no reason to talk about racial reconciliation, let alone imagine that it is likely to happen.”
The “rule of law” is a white supremacist sham. Victims of the colossal crimes committed with impunity in South Africa, the U.S. and elsewhere thanks to that sham should reject “reconciliation” appeals manufactured to enable, protect and continue that criminality in perpetuity.
We should demand reparatory justice. Shame on us if we won’t and don’t.
Wendell Griffen is an Arkansas circuit judge and pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Ark.
America’s Conscience: Moral Bankruptcy and Communal Decay
By Jamar Boyd
For if the disinherited get such a new center as patriotism, for instance — liberty within the framework of a sense of country or nation, then the aim of not being killed is swallowed up by a larger and more transcendent goal. Above all else the disinherited must not have any stake in the social order; they must be made to feel that they are alien, that it is a great boon to be allowed to remain alive, not be exterminated. This was the psychology of the Nazis; it grew out of their theory of the state and the place given the Hebrew people in their ideology. Such is also the attitude of the Ku Klux Klan towards Negroes. — Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
The poignant and timeless words of Howard Thurman seamlessly speak to the present dilemma of the disinherited within America who sit in the tension, terror and tragedy of a nation that consistently fails the “folk.”
“Folk,” those who are at the margins, exist in the gaps, are discarded in the valleys and left to survive on their own methods absent of communal or governmental intervention. Those bearing ailments, disabilities, possessing financial lack and material insufficiency, yet clinging to an internal disposition of survival while all the world around them decays. Those who sense there is no righteous indignation for their sustainability and progression.
This is the dilemma presently intensified within a United States Senate unable, and unwilling, to pass voter rights protections amid democratic decay as morale continues to decrease. Such is the state of America’s conscience marred in moral bankruptcy and communal decay.
This nation’s foundation, one claimed to be built upon communal concepts of justice and liberty for all, has long needed deconstructing and reconstitution. Institutional apathy, capitalistic abuse and white hegemonic fear exuded in displacement tactics have caused us to arrive at this present hour. An hour that is witnessing the American project hang in the balance as the folk are seen as disposable commodities and viewed as replaceable — irredeemable — cattle on the farm of American disenfranchisement and plains of fertile white fragility.
This is the same fragility that would lead the Senate to pass a bill granting the Congressional Gold Medal to Emmett Till and Mamie Till yet possessing no gumption to deem the acts of Jan. 6, 2021, as domestic terrorism.
This is the same fragility that sees no issue changing the filibuster rules under a Republican president to secure Supreme Court judges yet exasperates claims of “process” when the people are centered.
This is the same fragility that claimed sorrow and grief at the passing of Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John R. Lewis yet lacks the gall to ensure folks, Black folks, are seen as equal.
This is the same fragility evidenced in the words of Mitch McConnell from the Senate floor declaring, “If my colleague tries to break the Senate to silence those millions of Americans, we will make their voices heard in this chamber in ways that are more inconvenient for the majority and this White House than what anybody has seen in living memory.”
McConnell’s statement is a clear commitment to block the rights of some for the sake of retaining power. This is not an American anomaly, instead it’s the honest state of American consciousness.
There was living, and evidenced, angst and anger with the Trump administration coupled with undeniable agony toward our democratic affairs and nation’s republic. Manifested through a summer, in 2020, where Black bodies hung and lay in the streets as strange fruit only for thoughts and prayers to be uttered. All while a pandemic ravaged the homes, communities and lives of the disinherited whose existence is viewed no different than Henrietta Lacks. Black and brown bodies were deemed absent of patriotism and only worthy of death.
“This is the same fragility that sees no issue changing the filibuster rules under a Republican president to secure Supreme Court judges yet exasperates claims of ‘process’ when the people are centered.”
There was living, and evidenced, angst and anger with the Trump administration coupled with undeniable agony toward our democratic affairs and nation’s republic. Manifested through a summer, in 2020, where Black bodies hung and lay in the streets as strange fruit only for thoughts and prayers to be uttered. All while a pandemic ravaged the homes, communities and lives of the disinherited whose existence is viewed no different than Henrietta Lacks. Black and brown bodies were deemed absent of patriotism and only worthy of death.
Consequently, we arrive at this point of apathy as the minority struggles to find hope and help amid a government that has failed collectively. Jeremiah Wright Jr. in his 2003 sermon “Confusing God and Government,” highlighted such: “And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed.
Denial, deception and delusion enable a state of ill existence to become, and remain, normative. These practices must be replaced with a communal and reconstituted democracy built by and for the people, where the folks are not discarded. Where the aim of not being killed is swallowed up by a larger and more transcendent goal.
However, if this nation is to change for the good of the folk, a larger and more transcendent goal must be imagined, sketched and actualized. This goal must not center on American exceptionalism, imperialism, militarism, supremacy or xenophobia but be directly confronted by the truthfulness of its failures.
We must be honest about this nation’s failures, commitment to abandon the vulnerable and unwillingness to reconstitute for the sake of all, forcing the folks to erect a more divine goal. We need a goal larger than amplifying American wins and losses, addressing white hegemonic fear amid massive demographic shifts, and skating the surface of inter-generational terror.
If America’s consciousness is to contain a morality of righteous indignation and communal ingenuity, the attitude of Congress and the nation toward and commitment to the disenfranchised must change — or the country we’ve known will be no more. Without such, the disinherited remain external to this nation’s construct and priorities and alien to the prospect of life.
Jamar A. Boyd II serves as senior manager for organizational impact with the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference.
Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker
Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker The General Secretary and the Board of Trustees of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc, an organization that resources over 2,000 African American congregations across the country, today assailed the decision of the Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the keynote speaker for the King birthday observance. (Read full article) Huckabee is slated to give his remarks at an invitation-only event at the Governor’s Mansion on January 17. “This decision shows a flagrant disregard for Dr. King’s values and total disrespect of the work that Dr. King did in the name of civil and human rights for African Americans in this country and the world,” said the Rev. Dr. Iva E. Carruthers, the General Secretary. “Only those whose interests it serves to misappropriate Dr. King’s message and engage in revisionist history at this time in U.S. history, would favor this type of event with Mike Huckabee as the speaker. It is a further insult to the demand for justice that one that calls itself the “King Commission” would endorse and allow this,” she continued. “The event is being paid for by taxpayers, which makes the affront even more egregious,” said the Honorable Rev. Wendell Griffen, of Little Rock, AK and SDPC trustee who recently wrote that the policies being passed and carried out represent a “re-assassination” of Dr. King.
“Sooner or later, those who feed a death wish find a way to destroy themselves. Over the course of the past three generations, we have watched and heard the death rattle of the society that rejected Martin Luther King Jr. during his lifetime, killed him, and has re-assassinated him since the day he died.,” Griffen wrote. “Now that the State of Arkansas has proudly announced its intention to “re-assassinate King” by having an un-reconstructed Southern Baptist preacher and right-wing politician named Mike Huckabee deliver a “keynote address” on the King holiday at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion at the invitation of the state agency that bears King’s name, we should be clear what its conduct means,” he said. “A society that behaves this way has gone beyond a death rattle. It is already morally and ethically dead,” Griffen concluded. Mike Huckabee has a history of speaking and working against the gains made by African Americans and others in this country. The former governor has
Members of the Board of Trustees of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) have joined with other faith leaders on a hunger strike to advocate for the passage of voting rights legislation on a Federal level to mitigate new, oppressive legislation in several states.
The hunger strike was organized and launched by the Rev. Stephen Green, chair of Faith for Black Lives.
SDPC trustees, Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas; Rev. Traci Blackmon, associate general minister, Justice and Local Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ; and the Rev. Willie Francois III, pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville, New Jersey, have joined the protest which began January 6, 2022, the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Insurrection, and which is to end January 17, 2022, the day the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to be celebrated across the country. Read full article
Rev. Francois said, in a local news article, “We put our bodies on the line for this nation. It’s a way of waging a nonviolent love revolution,” he said.
Dr. Haynes, one of the co-chairs of the SDPC Board of Trustees, stated, “We have those in leadership – in Texas government – who have in their ideological DNA the same mindset of those slave masters who denied the humanity of Black people. The same mindset of those individuals who upheld Jim and Jane Crow segregation. …Gov. (Greg) Abbot and his Republican cronies have decided to dress up Jim and Jane Crow in a tuxedo of what they call voter integrity, but it’s still Jim and Jane Crow. … You are simply trying to create a problem for voters you don’t want to vote.” Read full article
Rev. Blackmon shared that she has been very introspective about the hunger strike and what it signifies for her. “I’ve joined the hunger strike because I believe escalation is necessary as the voice of my kindred and my descendants is threatened. For me, fasting is a natural escalation and is spiritual warfare. It is once again midnight in the nation, and I actually believe what I preach: something can only be cast out by fasting and prayer.”
Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, general secretary of SDPC, said that the actions of the trustees do not surprise her, “We have a group of trustees who are so deeply committed to the cause of justice that they are willing to experience physical discomfort for the good of all people. They are standing on the wall and in the breach. It is what our trustees do.”
Carruthers remarked that the country is in a precarious place right now, as the future of voting rights for all people – most importantly Black people – hangs in the balance.
“We have all worked too hard, for too long to just sit by,” she commented. “I applaud the trustees for their courage and conviction.”
“…[B]orn with a veil and gifted with second-sight in this American world – a world…which 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 oneself 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 under.”
W.E.B. DU BOIS “OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS”
Howard Thurman remains among the celebrated and elite preachers of twentieth-century renown (1899-1981). Thurman, a prophetic thinker and a self-described mystic, was gifted with second sight; a phenomenon that W.E.B. Dubois once described on the pages of “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in The Souls of Black Folk.
“Thurman the gifted seer prophetically forewarned us about fascism’s content located in the American heart.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.
Thurman was born within the veil of American oppression which may have been the source of his gift of second sight. The gift for Thurman is like an Old Testament Seer. “I am the seer,” Samuel replied. “Go up ahead of me to the high place, for today you are to eat with me, and in the morning, I will send you on your way and will tell you all that is in your heart” (1 Samuel 9:19). Thurman the gifted seer prophetically forewarned us about fascism’s content located in the American heart:
These [Fascist] organizations exploit the active and latent prejudices that the average American has against the non-white races on the one hand and against the Jewish people on the other. They make it possible for a creative rationalization to provide a cloak for group hatreds which can be objectified as true Christianity or true Americanism.
In other words, they provide for a legitimizing of sadistic and demonical impulses of which under normal circumstances they might be ashamed. To appeal to anti-Negro sentiment in many sections, communities and among many groups is a “natural” for the would-be demagogue. It is sure-fire.
The above words are Thurman’s and are included in Peter Eisenstadt’s “Howard Thurman’s ‘Fascist Masquerade’: The Black thinker who saw this coming 75 years ago.” Eisenstadt, also the author of Against The Hounds Of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, points toward the seer of Thurman’s second sight and how Thurman employed his gift to peer into the American heart.
What Thurman saw was a nation leaning toward, and eventually accepting, anti-democratic norms, its embrace of fascism and its sycophantic disciple’s unbridled and unadulterated lust for authoritarianism. Eisenstadt’s article on Thurman is subtitled “At the end of World War II, pioneering religious thinker Howard Thurman saw fascism coming to Christian America.”
“In Peter Eisenstadt’s “Howard Thurman’s ‘Fascist Masquerade’: The Black thinker who saw this coming 75 years ago.” Eisenstadt, also the author of Against The Hounds Of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, points toward the seer of Thurman’s second sight and how Thurman employed his gift to peer into the American heart.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.
“In this new year, we approach the first anniversary of the infamous January 6 terrorist attack on the symbols of democracy.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.
The subtitle underscores what I believe. That is, throughout his career, Thurman performed a spiritual examination of the American Heart:” His examination’s results were accurate. It pointed toward the looming, immoral, and political American dysfunction. Readers, we need only to remember the American terrorist demonstrative act on its symbols of American democratic institutions.
Nearly a year ago, January 6, 2021, the world witnessed the apocalyptic fulfillment of the prophetic Thurman’s warning. The attack on the United States Capitol, the symbol of America’s commitment to democracy and its norms, the symbol of the citadel and fortress that represents America’s commitment to the rule of law was compromised by treasonous confederates, which previously recited, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands one Nation under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
“There is no Martin Luther King, Jr.’s urgency of now.” Joseph Evans analyzes how the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s preaching brought the “living word” and various rhetorical techniques together in ways that helped people understand, and be given hope by, his messages. The author observes that James Baldwin – himself a gifted writer and provocative thinker – considered King to be an “Polished Preacher.”
This can no longer be believed about American Christianity as it has been defined by whites’ protestant traditions. Why? Because there is no outrage against our existential threat to democracy. There has been minimal public resistance from white mainline citizen Christians for justice, a reckoning, and an examination of the American heart.
Plainly stated, many so-called Christians as I have described have failed to demand an exacting justice against American fascism and its fascist acolytes who by blind rote pledge allegiance to a former rogue president who, like Nero, fiddled while Rome burned. This country’s and the world’s citizens wait to see if American jurisprudence will prevail, or will it succumb to what is now obviously an uncourageous American political and moral stalemate.
This book weaves Baldwin’s poetic and fiery words, passion for justice, and admiration of King’s oration into a detailed, thought-provoking examination of the rhythm of determination and transformative power in King’s speaking, writing, and faith. Click below to watch Joseph Evans talk about why he wrote “The Polished King”
It is the stalemate that underscores the straying democracy.
In the meantime, in horror, the world’s citizens, friends and foes watch the hypnotic looping cable news videos that endlessly continue. Among the world’s citizens, we wait for justice and reckoning. There is no Martin Luther King, Jr.’s urgency of now. Therefore, we wait with and as global citizens; we wait to exhale; we wait to breathe. We wait nervously and many prayerfully for justice and at the same time, we continue to witness America’s growing and unimpeded fascist leanings that are spreading and mutating like our strains of COVID viruses.
In this new year, we approach the first anniversary of the infamous January 6 terrorist attack on the symbols of democracy. As a response to newness, perhaps, someone will take notice of Thurman’s gift of second sight and have an urge to be gifted similarly. Still, the seer Thurman forewarned the nation and now the world over 75 years ago that this fascist deluge would soon emerge.
Well, it’s here and we must deal with it straight away and head-on. We must come to terms with the condition of the American heart, like Thurman, and like those before him, and those after him. And we are those after Thurman. We must protest by demanding that action be taken before it’s too late. The assignment is before us: we must spiritually examine the American heart.
Dr. Joseph Evans is the Dean of Morehouse School of Religion. Dr. Evans is the author of “Reconciliation and Reparation Preaching Economic Justice, and The Art of Eloquence: The Sacred Rhetoric of Gardner C. Taylor. (Published in 2021) The Polished King: Living Words of Martin Luther King Jr. is Dr. Evans current title; published by Judson Press January 3, 2022. Dr. Evans contributes ecumenical and social perspectives at ReelUrbanNews.com.
Judge Wendell Griffen on the Graham Evangelistic Association Invitation… So You Will Know
Greetings Proctor Family,
We routinely receive mail at New Millennium Church with invitations to attend conferences, meetings, and so forth. I usually discard it. You never get messages from me about it.
I’m making an exception this time.
I received an invitation to attend “Pastors’ Meetings” on November 11, 2021, 10:30 am at St. John Missionary Baptist Church, Roosevelt and Main, or at 6:00 pm at His Way Ministries, 6724 W. 32d Street. The purpose of the “Pastors’ Meetings” is “to consider a possible future Central Arkansas Will Graham Celebration of Hope.”
The invitation reads:
“Arkansas pastors, church staff members, and community leaders are invited to meet with members of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association team at either of two meetings on November 11, 2021. The purpose of these meetings is to share information about a Will Graham Celebration of Hope and to make a decision about whether or not to move forward with an invitation to Will Graham and the Billy Graham team to come to Central Arkansas.”
I’m sending this message to notify you that I will not attend either meeting, that I will not encourage any other person associated with New Millennium Church to do so, and to explain why I refuse to be associated with any effort to invite Will Graham and the Billy Graham team to come to Central Arkansas.
New Millennium Church was organized in 2009 by prophetic-spirited and activist followers of Jesus. We are unapologetically inclusive, affirming, and embracing of all persons, including our LGBTQAI siblings. As pastor of New Millennium, I have been honored to officiate the marriage of several same-gender-loving couples.
New Millennium is proudly affiliated with the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc., a predominantly Black inter-denominational network of Jesus followers and other faith leaders who believe that same-gender marriages are as sacred as heterosexual marriages, that LGBTQIA children of God are entitled to equality, and that the gospel of Jesus does not uphold bigotry against people based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or other grounds. I serve as a trustee of the Proctor Conference.
New Millennium, to my knowledge, has been the only Black Baptist congregation in Arkansas affiliated with the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB).
I have been blessed by fellowship with the Alliance of Baptists. The Alliance has been welcoming and affirming for years.
I do not agree with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association stance towards LGBTQIA children of God. I refuse to lend my presence to any group that rejects the equality of our LGBTQIA siblings.
The November 11 meetings will be [were] held in neighborhoods where Black people and Black churches are a majority. I view the meetings as part of the age-old scheme by white evangelical Christians to keep Black followers of Jesus “colonized” by the slaveholder religion Billy Graham preached. Billy Graham rejected pleas from Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor to support the War on Poverty but was proud to support the War in Vietnam. Sixty years later, his grandson, Will Graham, appears to be following in those footsteps and those of Franklin Graham, his father, who proudly supported Donald Trump despite Trump’s bigotry against people of color, people who are LGBTQIA, people who are Muslim, and people who live with their backs against the wall for other reasons.
I do not want to be associated in any way with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I do not want to have New Millennium Church associated with it.
Now you know my position. Now I will discard the invitation.
Hon. Rev. Wendell Griffen
Trustee, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc.
he/him/his
Author, The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (Judson Press, 2017)
Welcome to the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. 2022 Clergy and Lay Leadership Conference Registration!
Our theme, “Envisioning Something New: Can You See It?, affirms God’s recreative power awaiting our proclamation and participation. We know something new is on the horizon and we are challenged to envision and reimagine a new future, ever mindful of God Emmanuel and Gye Nyame!
With our theme in mind, we bring a new format and platform to you in 2022!
SDPC Trustee Board Co-Chair Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III at Texas border
The Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III and Bishop Leah Daughtry, Co-chairs of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC), along with Trustee Rev. Michael McBride visited the US border this week to witness the inhumane treatment of Haitians in the US encampment sites.
Rev. Haynes reported on Thursday that the conditions in the encampment were deplorable and that border officials were reluctant to answer questions about what was going on. But on Friday when Bishop Daughtry and Rev. McBride arrived, there were no migrants on the site. They had all been dispersed in the dead of night.
The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference is asking the question, along with other organizations and faith leaders, “Where are they? Where have you taken them?” “Who is accountable for their past and current situation in the US?”
What the trustees saw and heard was immoral and unacceptable, violations of human dignity and rights under United Nations protocols, and the rapid and sudden disappearance of the migrants brings up even more questions.
The treatment of these human beings has been deplorable. The pictures of a border patrol agent attacking a Haitian with a whip were disgusting but not surprising. Studies from various agencies, including the ACLU, report that border patrol agents in general are among the most violent of all law enforcement officers in this country, but the violence against people of color, especially Black people, is far worse. Their brutal violence against people of color is a part of the legacy of this country.
“This is unconscionable, and we demand that the U.S. government and FEMA immediately address this situation.,” said Rev. Haynes on Thursday. “We are appalled, not only at the condition and treatment of the Haitian people, but also at the current policy in place to deport these Haitians back to the country where they have little opportunity to provide for themselves and their families. Devastated by natural disasters and political chaos, they fled their country headed to other Caribbean countries to find work, but for a number of reasons, have been forced to flee yet again. They flocked to America believing they would find shelter, kindness, and work but instead have been hit by this horrific treatment,” he said, adding “and now they are gone.”
Haynes continued, “We are faith leaders. As such, we believe that we are the keepers of our brothers and sisters. The history of United States’ treatment of immigrants is not a good one, and yet, the treatment being meted out by US Border Patrol agents to the Haitians is some of the worst we have ever seen, especially because of the images of the rank and brutal violence that is being given to these desperate people.”
Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, General Secretary of the SDPC, agreed. “It is unholy that a nation as prosperous as is the US whose historical legacy with Haiti is one of exploitation would turn its back on a people who have escaped political, economic and health turmoil, a 7.2. magnitude earthquake, and a presidential assassination. The U.S. is bound by international asylum protocols, and this is not being evidenced,” she said.
In the book of Hosea in the Hebrew scriptures, the prophet writes as he considers the state of Israel and God’s disappointment with how they have ignored God and goodness, “There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.” As God’s people are treated so poorly, the SDPC believes that no one can claim the presence of God in this situation.
Haynes and the Board of Trustees of the SDPC join in solidarity with other faith leaders to demand that the Biden administration “explain to us and to the American people where these individuals and families have been taken. We need to know they are safe, being treated humanely and are being afforded the legal help that they need,” said Carruthers.
There is a song, said Carruthers, that says “we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” The SDPC network of clergy and lay leaders are tracking and awaiting answers and accountability that demonstrate the US government’s adherence to basic, ethical and equitable standards of behavior towards all at the border. We joined forces to protest LatinX children in cages at the border and we will certainly be vigilante to protect the rights of people of African descent at the border.
Recent Comments