02 - Charlie Dates - The Most Segregated Hour in America

grace and peace be multiplied to each of you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ let me rush to express my sincere appreciation to pastor Rufus Smith dr. Russell Moore dr. Don Carson all the others who are responsible for my being here with you today while confined here in the Birmingham jail I came across your recent statement calling my present activities unwise and untimely seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas if I sought to answer all the criticisms that come across my desk my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day and I would have no time for constructive work but since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth I want to answer your statement and what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham since you have been influenced by the view which argues against outsiders coming in I am in Birmingham because injustice is here just as the prophets of the eighth century BC left their villages and carried their thus saith the Lord far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the greco-roman world so am i compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my hometown like Paul I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid war over injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny what ever affects one directly affects all indirectly you deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham but your statement I am sorry to say fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about these demonstrations I'm sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that merely deals with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes it is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative in his own handwriting on the margins of a folded newspaper behind the bars of a Birmingham jail the Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. stated in no uncertain terms that the problems of race injustice and segregation in America is a church problem he argued that the problem was not with the extremist groups of Klansmen and citizens councils but with the white Christian moderate with white people of good genuine will who were hesitant to press against the clear issues of injustice that crippled black and brown people many of whom were Christian it was white pastors who while preaching the gospel denied its power to the disinherited was predominantly white southern church pastors who further marginalized black and brown people by leveraging their collective rebellion against the ethics of the gospel in the cities where they preached and in this the Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. detected a strange dichotomy between the message of Jesus Christ and the practice of his church in America and though this is a hard historical truth it needs to be proclaimed to you by a chocolate man like me and it needs to be said to you in love by choosing to conform to the world Christians have created a segregated Church the history of racism in the American church has been hiding in plain sight the consequences of not confronting racism and removing the systems of injustice has led to decades-long patterns of theological arrogance and sociological privilege that have kept us separated listen friends our society suffers from de jure and de facto segregation that is to say that segregation has not evolved only from the private practices and preferences of individual men so much it has been constructed by laws and policies and insofar as it depended on your forefathers and now on you and by you I mean kind-hearted genuine well-intentioned white Christians the white evangelical church in America has done very little to change de jure segregation and our society has gone in one direction and the church has strangely followed it should be that as the church lives out a kind of Ephesians 2 refusal to participate in de jure or de facto segregation we would see a changing society but to be sure today's segregated brand of American evangelicalism is yet largely unrepentant of the sin of segregation there are of course some notable exceptions I mean he did just leave the stage and take half of what I had to say just just as there are some notable white Christian leaders who marched with dr. King fought alongside dr. King white pastors who lost their churches who were estranged from the fellowship of friends and family all because they believed that all people were made in the image and the likeness of God men like dr. Glenn Stassen at fuller seminary and Reverend James Hester Hargett of Los Angeles and notable others but some 50 years later the sting of white evangelical isms compliance with racial segregation is still felt in the curriculums of her affluent theological seminaries it still reverberates over the airwaves of her radio stations and podcast it still dominates the editorial boards of her major publishing houses or what's left of them my argument today is that dr. King's ministry is a documented witness that God raised up a preacher to call the church to its unified roots by casting down the barriers that kept black people vulnerable to abuse subjected to poverty victims of criminalization and despair while at the same time deconstructing the societal ideas that made white people feel superior advance as though they were a cut above black people and few there were who listened and now 50 years later with documented proof that there has been no progress for african-americans in the area of home ownership unemployment and incarceration instead of naming racism injustice and rebranded segregation for what it is in the biblical vernacular of unrighteousness and sin this segregated brand of evangelicalism seems unready and unwilling filed divorce papers with white privilege and systemic injustice when an aspiring pastor trains at a Bible School or seminary that has a professed high view of Scripture and the righteously high view of Christ cannot register for a homiletics course that trains his or her ear beyond the rhythms of legendary white men when he cannot find contextualization in his counseling classes or learn of African church fathers who gave birth to trusted exegetical practices and clarification for Christian doctrine when he has left to graduate without knowing the names of some of America's brightest church men like Gardner Taylor sandy rein William Augustus Jones or clay Evans y'all one more men who fought for justice not in lieu of the gospel but because of the gospel we can sense at been Jellicle isms unread eNOS to tear away from the perks of segregation and slowness to prepare future leaders for a truly unified Church not just our seminaries what shall we say about our churches how is it that 50 years later we still have wealthy white churches thriving on the margins of our big cities while struggling poor black and brown churches languish in the city surely they worship the same Jesus surely many of the cardinal doctrines of biblical theology are shared between them so what is it that keeps us separate could it be that in the matters of race and segregation the church simply mirrors the world rather than demonstrating a prophetic witness of the Beloved Community how are we still here fifty years later I want to suggest to you that maybe part of the reason we're still here 50 years later is that we have perhaps unconsciously made an assumption that sound doctrine and personal conversion are sufficient to solve the ills of our world we are wrong to presume that the proper parsing of verbs and biblical ideas is in itself enough to hurdle the long night of racism and injustice I want to be clear to say this I don't want y'all to say I'm not a gospel preacher I contend not with the notion that sound doctrine is critical it is absolutely necessary and fundamental to the work of the church in the world I simply want to suggest that some Bible preaching and some Bible believing preachers may have inadvertently made a distinction within orthodoxy that the Bible itself does not recognize the Bible recognizes no significant distinction between personal orthodoxy and corporate ortho practices to be a person of Orthodox faith is to at the same time be a person of right action toward one's fellow man and by the way this is not political it's biblical perhaps the greatest prophetic voice available to the nation in 2018 is not a conservative news pundit or a pop music star with the social conscience or a legendary civil rights revolutionary the most prophetic and relevant voice available to the nation today is a gospel preacher who understands the implication of the gospel to be both to the human soul and to the society that traps the human spirit that to get the gospel right is to somehow move beyond the preservation of right doctrine to the place where we apply that right doctrine through the church's influence in the world around her to somehow make public the profession of her faith in other words families broken sisters vulnerable populations made at risk by systems of injustice and broken communities almost hopeless by the perennial growth of achievement gaps and wealth disparities they all need to see a church a church that demonstrates how right doctrine functions outside of the walls of the church I want to say that this is not a call to party platform politics we've seen enough of that and we recognize an individual's freedom of choice but we more forthrightly recognize that the Christian has an obligation to call out wickedness where it exists to challenge systems of injustice where they reign and to love mercy and and justice on a corporate societal level this is what whatever you call him this is what the Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. understood and declared and I want to propose that Martin King's vision of racial harmony was a vision of justice for all people of equal access and opportunity not a church where black people simply assimilate to white culture his vision for racial harmony cannot be and should not be reduced to a kind of cotton candy multi-ethnic community something that's sweet to the taste but it's void of substance his vision of racial harmony was a society where justice prevailed a community where all persons were dignified because they were made in the image of God a society where the church is not silent about injustice because her Lord is the God of righteousness and in this way King most clearly understood justice not to be a social construct but that justice is a biblical theological an idea his sermons and his public speeches have overtones with Layton references to the Old Testament prophets to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul I'm filling my help I need to calm down I did see this Hammond b3 organ and I'm wondering does anybody know how to work it in just a few minutes while some Christians misunderstand why we celebrate dr. King and others use their ignominious labels to discredit dr. King or worse to justify their rejection of his ministry Martin King seemed to have a better grasp on public practical theology the command to love neighbor more than his ardent critics who claimed theological orthodoxy in his message Paul's letter to the American church King urged us to always be sure that in our struggle against evil we and I quote struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter he said as you press on for justice be sure to move with dignity and discipline using only the weapon of love let no man pull you so low as to hate him and in your struggle for justice look your oppressor in the eye and let him know that you're not attempting to defeat him or humiliate him or even to pay him back for the injustice that he has heaped upon you but let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as for yourself let him know that the festering sore of segregation debilitates the white man as well as the Negro with this attitude you will be able to keep your struggle on high Christian standards that method friends is not only distinctively Christian but the notion of justice there is distinctively a biblical idea that is to say that King lived instinctively what you and i articulate biblically it is something that he understood practically that you and I pronounce theologically that that is this very idea righteousness is the root of justice and justice is the offspring of righteousness now I'm no deep biblical scholar but I did study with some and let me humble II submit to you my observation from the scripture and propose to you the biblical foundation for Kings fight against injustice in the name of Jesus Christ the New Testament in the original language has words for righteousness and justice that share a room they are a kind of cognate cousin they work in the same semantic domain often in fact at times they are interchangeable the implication is that the notion of righteousness is related to justice this is what makes the claim of the gospel so scandalous it is that we who are sinners are now through the shed blood of Jesus Christ made righteous before God and have peace with God we have been justified that is righteousness has been credited to our sin depleted accounts at the cross God got justice and we got righteousness so now in the church we who are righteous ought to be found fighting for justice throughout the scripture the notions of righteousness and justice are not to be separated so why have we no church ought to be found declaring something righteous that is not just how is it that for so long American Christianity has had its finger on parsing the language of righteousness but its feet far from fighting injustice and now today we are witnessing the emergence of a new generation of Americans that are fascinated with justice but they haven't met the author of righteousness they are trying to get justice on the streets apart from understanding righteousness taught in our churches and they will never find it and at the same time we have a church or at least some segments of it met not yours that are preaching righteousness but will not fight for justice both of those are insufficient both are incomplete neither represent the full scope of God's call upon us and while I cannot speak for all black America I do have the mic today and I'm on good historical grounds to propose to y'all that that this is what has frustrated many black churches with our white evangelical brothers and sisters those of you who have a firm grasp on orthodoxy who understand the finer tenets of the gospel who launch coalition's who sustain commissions and who produce curriculum and lobby with Congress we have expected you to be our greatest allies in the struggle against injustice we wanted you to tell your churches and your congregations that God was never pleased with segregation and the systems that segregation have created we wanted you to use your influence with your governors and your politicians to end the long night of systemic injustice 'as we want it y'all to cry about the public school to Prison Pipeline we wanted you to see that states like Illinois spend more money on mass incarceration than they do education that the prison industrial complex is a wicked big business swallowing black men and brown bullets that mass incarceration has been created to create a permanent second-class citizen reef of black and brown people and we wanted you to shout it from your pulpit we want you to tell your city fathers that contract leasing redline and neighborhood improvement laws intended to keep us living in segregated quarters was offensive to God and that you wouldn't stand for it but the strength of the Lord Jesus Christ we wanted Shaw to unflinchingly denounce the politics of fear and the outright racism that elected Playboy's while denouncing a black man who was loyal to his wife all his years in office and took care of his kids and did not disgrace America we want to Jah to preach a gospel that was bigger than the clandestine provincial and colonial miss reads that told slaves to obey their masters as if Paul intended American slavery to be ordained by God shame on you that went for you man I'm sorry I just came out I'm trying to get it out we have wanted you to come to Memphis but to say in your coming that the Reverend Martin Luther King jr. came to Memphis and was slain in Memphis because a poor black garbage collector was killed not by his truck but by a racist mayor Henry Loeb who would not pay black garbage workers the same way that they'd pay white ones and that that same economic injustice still lives today but instead of finding allies in the fight for justice on the grounds of righteousness we have encountered antagonist instead of understanding our play we have been met with demands to justify our sentiments instead of you coming to our churches moving in our neighborhoods serving under our pastors leveraging your privilege we have had to move into your churches read your theological heroes march under your banner and keep silent in your pews when Trayvon Martin was killed Mike Brown was murdered and laQuan McDonald was shot down with 16 bullets and instead of being able to be are expressive or contemplative selves in your churches we have had to sit down and make you comfortable we have had to learn all about you in seminary but you ain't never had to learn about us I'm trying to say friends if Martin King would say to us these things ought not be he saw in our coming together a prophetic witness that Jesus Christ was America's only hope he decried the ethnic divisions in our churches and I don't have time to quote the sermon that I have here but in one of his sermons I can hear him say what is this that I hear a white church in America and a Negro church that that on Sunday morning will you stand up to sing all hail the power of Jesus name and dear Lord father of all mankind do you not see that 11:00 a.m. is the most segregated hour of the week so in my last three minutes we'll give you something to answer the question how do we overcome the divisions that make 11:00 a.m. the most segregated hour of the week first let me say we will overcome King told us how it's a biblical command not an option we've got to love one another we don't always have to agree we don't always have to vote the same way we don't always have to like the same kind of food but of necessity we must love one another and this is as hard for me as it is for you John wrote it like this beloved let us love one another for love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God the one who does not love does not know God for god is love by this the love of God was manifested in us that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him in this is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins beloved if God so loved us we also up to loved one another here is John's argument in a sentence lovelessness is godlessness we cannot claim to be in relationship with God if we fail to love one another there's something else here John's assertion is that love has an incarnation 'el and identifying function love has got to be manifested it's got to be put on clear display you can't just talk love in your spoken sentiments you got to demonstrate it and how you treat people every day that this love is revealed through the person and work of Jesus Christ is extended not on the basis of the virtue of the giver I'm sorry on it is extended on the basis of the virtue of the giver not the worthiness of the recipient and John has the audacity to assert that this love is what identifies us as the children of God we are not children of God apart from loving one another our nation desperately needs to see a church that does that love is not only the more excellent way it is also the transforming power that helps us to right the wrongs of our fellow men y'all heard of a man named Zacchaeus ZK Bailey once said Zacchaeus was a wee little man a wee little man was he but he was a tall man of repentance when this chief tax collector made rich not from the hard work of his hands but from the manipulation of his own people when he received salvation he makes a startling pronouncement he actually says that he will give to the poor and restore those he has defrauded the man who hurt and defrauded others is now the same man who can help those he victimized and pilfered the account of Zacchaeus and Luke 19 is a statement about the salvific Ministry of the Son of Man and its effects in the lives of the same we can learn much from Zacchaeus about the kind of evidence that should mark the lives of people who walk with God he recognizes that he has defrauded people and that the poor need the help of the wealthy not must admit as I prepare to leave the stage I'm taken by Zacchaeus his honesty and his desire to restore what he took but I must also admit that this gathering the day has got to do more than apologize we've heard apologies we appreciate the Southern Baptist Convention apologizing in 1995 for its participation in and compliance with slavery and segregation we appreciate that apology for its absence in the civil rights movement but what I want to propose to you as I leave today is we need to move from apology to strategy the same groups of people that hurt entire generations through segregation are the same groups of people that can now end segregation we can fix the problems that we've created an apology is nice but it's time to strategize to figure out how we can ensure fair and equitable housing regardless of one zip code it's time that we concede together of a way to make certain that little brown boys and little black girls can get an excellent education regardless of the property value of the home in which they are raised an apology is nice but we need a strategy that repairs the centuries long lag that slavery created and separated an entire ethnic minority population it's about time that we strategize how we can get some more non-white presidents and professors in our urban Jellicle seminaries you mean to tell me they don't exist nowhere it's about time that we work to eradicate the tolerance of racism in our local churches it's time we strategize how to overcome the systems perpetuate and separate churches from one another and even in that we don't despair because we will overcome how do I know we will overcome you ask how can you be so sure in a world of cynicism and bitterness how do I know we will overcome we shall overcome because the moral arc of the university is long but it bends toward justice we shall overcome because it was for freedom that Christ set us free we shall overcome because though we are perplexed we're not in despair we shall overcome because God is our refuge and Our Strength a very present help in the time of trouble we shall overcome because they hung him high and they stretched him while he bowed his head and for you and me he died we shall overcome because the wall of separation has been torn down into we shall overcome because he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities we shall overcome because one dark try day gave way to one bright Sunday morning we shall overcome because Earl Sunday morning you [Music]

Channel: Jono Brooks

Views: 24,306

Rating: 4.7924151 out of 5

Keywords: TGC, Together for the Gospel, MLK50, 2018 Conference

Id: 9ZT5enPkJA4

Length: 32min 16sec (1936 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 14 2018