Search: Reconciliation & Culture

Hollenweger, W. The songs of the blacks. From Hollenweger, W. (1974). Pentecost between black and white, pp. 22-24. Belfast, Ireland: Christian Journals Ltd.

OVERVIEW

ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF NEGRO SPIRITUALS

The author, Professor of Missions at the University of Birmingham, England, provides the following summary of various conflicting and overlapping opinions:

• The spiritual has been seen as a misinterpreted hymn of the white church. (G.P. Jackson)
• The spiritual should be seen as a ‘confession of faith’ of the black church. (S. Lauchli and Th. Lehmann)
• The spiritual is the "clearest exponent of the Negro’s real self." (H.W. Odum)
• The spiritual can be interpreted as an oral document of events in the history of the American Negro. (M.M. Fisher)
• The spiritual was a protest against social injustice. (J. Lovell)
• The spiritual was an adaptation of African songs. (H.E. Krehbiel and Du Bois)
• Spirituals were songs originating in the white revival movement. (B.T. Washington)
• Spirituals were the musical creations of black bards like "singing Johnson" and "Ma White." (J.W. Johnson)
• Spirituals represent a blending of American and European melodies with African rhythm. (E.M. von Horbostel).

INFLUENCE: MUSICAL PRODUCTS OF SPIRITUALS

Hollenweger says that though their history may be somewhat obscure, their effects upon music trends are clear. They produced or had a profound influence on

• Different styles of jazz, including the Blues.
• Music in white Pentecostal churches—taking black style and changing and adapting to white style.
• Spontaneous gospel music arising from Pentecostal and some black Baptists churches.
• Attempts to adapt spirituals to European and American traditional church music.

Debate has risen in regards to this fourth category. Is it ever appropriate to use the spiritual in a non-Black church service?

MEMORY OF BLACK PAST

Hardly controversial is the fact that spirituals in some way ensure the memory of an oral African American culture. James Cone, in "Black Spirituals: A Theological Interpretation," Theology Today, 29(1), April 1972, pp. 54-69 [see also his The Spirituals and The Blues, 1972], says of Negro spirituals:

The divine liberation of the oppressed from slavery is the central theological concept in the black spirituals. These songs show that black slaves did not believe that human servitude was reconcilable with their African past and their knowledge of the…gospel. They did not believe that God created Africans to be the slaves of Europeans. Accordingly they sang of a God who was involved in their history—their history—making right what whites have made wrong...And if ‘de God dat lived in Moses’ time is jes’ de same today’, then God will vindicate the suffering of the righteous blacks and punish the unrighteous whites for their wrongdoings.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How have you enjoyed spirituals, if you have, and how much have you understood their nature and origin?
2. Which of the eight explanations of the origins of spirituals seems most adequate to you?
3. Do you think Cone goes too far in his interpretation of Negro spirituals?
4. Do you think that "Follow the Drinking Gourd" might have meant following the Little Dipper and North Star to freedom, or that "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" could have had anything to do with the underground railroad?
5. What do you see as the place of these spirituals in black churches today? In white churches or places of worship?
6. Where do we go from here? Is there need for greater knowledge and instruction about music and experiences of African Americans? Is there still work to be done in the relationships of blacks and whites?

IMPLICATIONS

• Music is one of the great influences in a young person’s life, and should be a universal means of communication among us all. Our musical tastes, just like the spectrum of our relationships, need to be stretched. We are enriched when our appreciation of our own and other cultures includes an interest in the music of others and times past.
• The sentimentalizing of spirituals merely for the purpose musical variety would seem to do injustice to this powerful musical tradition.
• One of the many functions of music is a prophetic one; it would seem that spirituals both comforted and challenged its original singers. It is too bad that those who should have been confronted by powerful messages took so long to notice and understand.

Dean Borgman cCYS

Marshall, J. Jr. & Wheeler, L. (1996). Street soldier: One man’s struggle to save a generation—one life at a time. New York: Delacorte Press.

OVERVIEW

Joe Marshall is well known through national television documentaries, speaking, consulting, and his own radio talk show. Born in St. Louis, Joe grew up in South Central L.A. In Los Angeles, he attended Catholic Loyola High School, where he first experienced serious racism personally. Something in his strong home and his nature drove him to stand against violence, even when drawn into fights he could not avoid. His choice of college was based on figuring that there would be many blacks at the University of San Francisco, because its basketball team was all black. Realizing his mistake, he joined a black Omega Psi Phi fraternity at San Jose State University some fifty miles away. Back at USF he organized the first Black Students’ Union, despite resistance from the administration. That responsibility created his strong sense of African American identity and pride.

After college, Joe Marshall began teaching at San Francisco’s Woodrow Wilson High School:

When my daksiki and I showed up at Woodrow Wilson in the fall of 1969, my mission—my purpose in life at that moment—was to impart the knowledge I had gained to the high school seniors of my civics, U.S. history, and black history classes, many of whom looked older than their skinny hustling teacher.

I not only looked young and was young (twenty-two): I taught young. In civics, for instance, the assigned topic was communism, but I disregarded that and focused on issues that I thought imminent high school graduates needed to be informed about—marriage, raising a family, employment, current events, and the like. At night I opened a book on the Watts riot and read aloud into a tape recorder, which I played in class the next day as I made my rounds of the room. I also spent a good portion of my negligible paycheck to buy books that I thought the kids ought to know about, such as Before the Mayflower and Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness.

I practically lived at that school, devoting most of my extra-curricular time to the BSU. We had fundraisers, dances, barbecues, plays, and assorted ‘days of consciousness,’ such as one dedicated to all the black girls at Woodrow Wilson (we game each of them a black balloon filled with helium; I can still picture the black could we created that afternoon when the girls released their balloons at three o’clock) and an African festival, for which the students built tribal huts in the schoolyard. (pp. 33-34)

Black pride was raised through instruction and experiences such as peaceful protests—and whites learned important lessons as well. Gradually, however, Marshall watched more and more promising students falling to gangs, drugs, and crime.

One of the finest boys I taught had trouble staying awake during class becausse he didn’t have a home. He held a job in order to feed himself, and the only place he could sleep at night, when he got off work, was his aunt’s basement. Years later, I ran into him during a visit to the San Bruno Jail, where he was doing time for selling drugs.

I can’t count the times I’ve been fooled by kids whom I presumed to be free from the snares of street life. One of my favorite students at Apos was a quiet, sweet twelve-year-old girl names Shirley Brown, who had an equally cute and well-mannered older sister, Vanessa, who was fourteen. At lunchtime one day, I was talking to another teacher about the Brown girls and happened to mention how nice they both were. He looked at me curiously for a moment and said, ‘You know they’re prostitutes, don’t you?’ I didn’t believe it until he offered to take me to MacArthur Avenue in Oakland., where they worked. I declined the invitation. When later I started asking around about the girls, fishing for information on how I might get them off the streets, I was advised that if I interfered, I would have to content with their pimp. Afterward, when I looked at Shirley or Vanessa sitting so attentively in my math classes, I often wondered if they knew what I knew. I could only assume that they did. (p. 37)

As I grimly watched the kids of San Francisco slipping away one by one, it was furthermore obvious that the situation was not restricted to my city and school district. The same things were happening at an even more alarming pace back in South Central… (p. 38)

Neither the justice nor educational system seemed willing to confront the challenge of these students who were falling by the way. By the 1980s, he felt compelled to jump over these ineffective systems and co-found the Omega Boys Club, based on the belief that inner-city young people want something more than the streets but don’t know the way out. From a small basement community center, some 600 kids have moved out of gang-banging and drug dealing. Some have joined his small but strong army of street soldiers (street workers), and more than 140 young people have gone on to colleges around the country.

Listening to the stories of homies espcially after the escalation of violence that took place after the release of the movie, "Colors," is chilling. These are heart-wrenching personal stories, and they involve bitter disappointments for the street soldiers trying to reclaim lives and turn them in a positive direction. Joe Marshall is a man of courage, and there are challenging confrontations between him and his homies here.

Joe Marshall is host of a gutsy radio talk show, "Street Soldiers," that challenges gangs and street life with prospects of a life that is not dead end. This book includes letters from listeners touched by the radio show.

Marshall’s program highlights "three crucial steps to freedom" (from the destructive ways of the streets):

• Acknowledging the problem, which is a matter of identifying the behavior that has placed them at risk.
• Coming to grips with the anger, fear, and pain that’s behind their behavior.
• Adopting a new way of doing things; that is, new rules for living.

Marian Wright Edelman, President of The Children’s Defense Fund, describes this book, "The stories here will wrench your soul and Joe Marshall’s life will warm your heart. You’ll cry from the pain, and the promise, in this book." Denzel Washington’s comment is simply: "Joe Marshall’s Street Soldier is a revelation!" Spike Lee says, "As much as the Million Man March was an impressive vision of the power of many, Joe Marshall serves as an inspiring reminder of the power of one. Every black man in America should read this book, and then do something." This book is a challenge to every one of us to contribute something toward shaping the future of a generation at risk.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What most impressed you in reading this article? Do you plan to read this book?
2. Is it possible for an individual, a program, a church to take back the streets? If not, why not? If so, how so?
3. Could you use the three crucial steps to freedom in your relationships and counseling of young people? What, if anything, would you add?
4. How could you use this book in your work, teaching, or training?

IMPLICATIONS

1. "Of the black men between ages twenty-five and thirty-four who have dropped out of high school, 75% are in prison or on parole or probation." This fact alone should be enough to let us know that all of us as a society must act effectively.
2. We must study books and programs with measurable success in this area.
3. To Joe Marshall’s strong programs and fine book should be added other available resources needed by urban programs and workers. The Youthworkers’ Encyclopedia is a rich and growing resource for such work and study.

Cobbey, N. (1992, July). Racism Report Calls Task Formidable (Editorial and letters to the editor). Episcopal Life

.

OVERVIEW

(Download Racism Report overview as a PDF)

In July of 1991, The General Convention of the Episcopal Church

called its delegates to complete a 66-question survey as an institutional audit to determine the extent of racism in the Church. Of 104,808 in attendance, 1,588 responded.

Several patterns emerged in the findings of this survey:

• Blacks and Native Americans say they experience the highest degree of alienation and disrespect from the Episcopal Church.
• Ordained members more than lay members perceive difficulties with racial and ethnic issues, see more opportunities for change, and report more efforts to facilitate change.
• Bishops tend to see more need for change than clergy and lay members, although the difference is not great.
• People from the Northeast and Far West see more need for change on matters of race and ethnicity than people from the South and Southwest.
•  

• Women tend to see more reasons for changes in race and ethnic relations than men, but men report actually taking more action to reduce racism than women do.

At the Convention, Lennox Joseph, chief executive of the consulting NTL Institute

, offered an initial interpretation of the results. He declared that the audit showed "a clear pattern of institutional racism" as well as "a mandate that the church move forward" in its attempts to confront racism.

Joseph further noted five areas of institutional racism in the Episcopal Church: resource allocation, leadership, interpersonal communications, status, and mission.

Seven recommendations were presented for dioceses and the Convention by its consultants:

• Acknowledge and respect resistance to change as a natural human part of the process.
• Communicate a vision of acceptance of complexity of one’s own ethnic group and others.
• With consultants, design a process to address and resolve differences between lay and ordained members about the centrality of changing racial and ethnic relations.
• Bring lay and ordained members of different racial and ethnic groups together to work through differences.
• Acknowledge the inevitability of stress and deal with it, avoiding condemnation, denial, and suppression.
• Encourage local units to use the audit only after a group of lay and ordained members receives training in race relations and uses of the audit.
•  

• Administer the audit at future General Conventions.

By July 1992, The Diocese of New Jersey had conducted an institutional racism audit, and sixteen other dioceses were in the process of preparing one.

The editors of the paper took the consultants to task for their report ("Clear Advice Clouded by Hazy Language"):

Given its importance, it’s disturbing the report took 11 months to complete.

Racism in the church is a vital issue and major changes are necessary. But this report is too bound up with statistics, scientific method and jargon. Rather than risk turning people off, the authors should have supplemented their advice on HOW to proceed with some no-nonsense suggestions on WHERE to go from here.

Two letters in this issue of Episcopal Life show the diversity of opinion in the Episcopal Church today:

I resent the self-flagellating tone of your June issue suggesting that the church and Episcopalians somehow bear a share of responsibility for recent events in Los Angeles.

Responsible, tax-paying, voting Episcopalians should pressure the authorities to act with more dispatch, vigor and decisiveness to put down such disorders firmly and quickly using whatever force is necessary, and insist that Washington stop giving the impression that looters, arsonists and rioters will be rewarded by being handed another welfare check.—James Bailey, Parker, New York

This mindless indirect support of illegal immigration (on the part of the Church) is, or was, an activity fostering the primary cause of the riots.

In effect, the U.S. is no longer a melting pot but a dumping ground for people who adulterate our society, cheapen our goals and who, unfortunately, do not have the background to understand nor appreciate a system of free enterprise and democracy.

No, this is not a problem of racism but a problem of judgment within our federal bureaucracy supported by unthinking groups.
—John L. Burwell, Jackson, Mississippi

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What do you consider to be the main causes of the riots in Los Angeles in the Spring of 1992?
2. What do you think are the differences between personal prejudice and institutional racism?
3. In your opinion, what do you think churches should have said and done in response to those riots?
4. Do you believe racism exists in your Church at an institutional level? If so, to what degree do you consider it is present and how much damage is it doing?
5. Would you recommend that your local church and denomination invest the necessary time and money to undertake an audit of its institutional racism?
6.  

1. Do you think racism is diminishing or growing in the U.S. during the 1990s?

IMPLICATIONS

• A definition of racism, some ways of measuring its existence, the willingness to deal with it, and some sense of the priority of the issue are needed if racism is going to get attention from the Church and society and be discussed profitably.

• Racism was a fashionable topic and issue in many circles during the 1950s and 1960s. The U.S. public tends to tire of problems unresolved in a reasonably short time frame.

1. The riots of 1992 and rap music have brought the issues of prejudice and discrimination to the attention of the American public—especially in the minds of children and young people.

Dean Borgman cCYS

Pannell, W. (1993). The Coming Race Wars? A Cry for Reconciliation

. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

OVERVIEW

(Download Coming Race Wars overview as a PDF)

William Pannell is a professor of preaching and practical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary

in Pasadena, California. Pannell sees the 1992 riots as a warning sign of things to come if we as a country, and as white evangelicals particularly, do not change.

Pannell notes first the resurgence of racial unrest in the nineties, which he attributes to frustration and lack of change. In the fifties and sixties, blacks rallied for change; in the nineties, they rally out of frustration and anger. He points to evidence all around that the black male is still considered (or at least treated as) less than human, and that white Americans, consciously or subconsciously, want to keep America "white": "And as Gary Wills observed in the late sixties ‘Americans do not like to think of their country as being white, but they are careful to keep it that way.’ A great line, and fully applicable to the turf occupied by early-nineties evangelicals." (p. 57) This is Pannell’s main indictment: White Americans (especially evangelicals) operate in a system that vocally desires to be integrated, but subtly wishes to retain its white dominance. This is apparent in the media, in politics, in the growing incidence of violence, and in church and parachurch circles as well.

One reason for racial tension in our country is self-segregation, mostly due to white middle class Americans (and later black middle class Americans as well) fleeing the cities for the safety and comfort of the suburbs. Not only is this division characterized by color, but by class: "Everywhere one looks, modern evangelicalism is becoming increasingly elitist." (p. 114) This separation has forced new dynamics on urban churches, and the black urban church faces a new set of challenges:

• Needs a new style of leadership, less hierarchical.
• Better training for its leadership ("Whence this training will come is a question that ought to challenge theological centers across the land, and especially evangelical seminaries because of their more focused emphasis on evangelicalism." [p. 119])
•  

• Must learn how to appeal to the urban black male, who is largely absent from urban churches.

The final chapter, "Where do we go from here?" spells out the challenges to white evangelicals in response to the current racial crisis: "My [Sam Fullwood III quoted by Pannell] generation...is so disillusioned by the persistent racism that continues to define and limit us that we are abandoning efforts to assimilate into the mainstream of society. I see no end to this trend." (p. 125) Among the suggestions:

• White evangelicals must focus more missionary efforts on this country, in balance with international evangelism.
• The church must be revived.
• More evangelization should be done by the laity.
• Spirituality must strive to inform evangelism and social transformation.
•  

• White evangelicals need to "be reconnected with brothers and sisters downtown." (p. 143)

However, the most pressing need is for friendship: "The fact is that most Americans are people of good will. Most of us really do like other people, even those who are not like us. We prefer that they not be too close, however. We like those people in the abstract, not in the concrete. That is how black people view Koreans; how Koreans view Latinos; how Latinos view anglos; and on and on. Yet, in spite of this peculiar sociology, many Americans will admit to having a friend who is ‘one of them.’ Usually we explain, ‘but he’s different.’ At least it is a beginning. It is a good first step to have friends from these odd tribes, friends whom we often love and admire, who are concrete, who have names." (p. 135-136)

Pannell’s book is written from his heart, and is at times both biting and poignant. It is sure to stir up discussion; this is its strength. Although not everyone will agree with him, Pannell offers concrete steps toward reconciliation, the strongest and most basic of which is to become friends. This is the most powerful combatant we have against racism; the best thing we can do for youth is to let them get to know each other. This can be done informally, by kids on their own, or formally, by maybe collaborating with an area church youth group composed of a different racial background.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

• Pannell has a broad definition of racism; it is both conscious and subconscious. Do you agree with his understanding?

1. What do you think of his criticism of white evangelicals? Are whites too elitist? Racist? Separatist? How can whites change? What can you do?

Stowe, H. (1852). . New York, NY: Penguin Books.

OVERVIEW

According to historian Mark Noll

, this novel was a watershed in the anti-slavery movement. Brilliantly written, Stowe evokes an amoral world from which God has apparently removed himself:

Night came on—night calm, unmoved, and glorious, shining down...silent. There was no speech or language, no pitying voice or helping hand, from that distant sky. (p. 210)

Yet, upon further investigation, the text portrays a powerful realism, the horrors of slavery and the twisted sources of its continuation—Christianity’s failure and potential. The novel introduces the reader to a myriad of characters, each rich, and provides profound insight into the American response to the "problem" of slavery. This work is the starting place for questions : What was slavery really like? How did the church function? What were relationships like between slaves and slave owners? And perhaps most importantly, why didn’t the institutional church do something sooner?

The book begins at the plantation of slaveowners Mr. and Mrs. Shelby. One of their slaves is named Tom. Unfortunately, Mr. Shelby has run into terrible debt, and is "forced" into making the difficult decision to sell his friend Tom to a deplorable slave trader named Haley. Included in this sale is a beautiful child named Harry—apart from his mother Eliza. Instead of watching her son be sold, Eliza—a committed Christian—decides to run away. Her powerful escape is one of the most dramatic scenes of the text:

If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be torn from you by a brutal trader, tomorrow moming,—if you had seen the man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had only from twelve o’clock till morning to make good your escape,—how fast could you walk? How many miles could you make in those few brief hours, with the darling at your bosom,—the little sleepy head on your shoulder,—the small, soft arms trustingly holding on to your neck? (p. 105)

This passage is an example of Stowe’s sudden moral challenges. As the text moves along, the voice suddenly switches to second person and calls the reader to examine his or her own actions, feelings, and opinions.

Next, Tom is sold to an avuncular man whose daughter is described as an angel of the Lord. Tom is happy with his new owner, but is inwardly torn and longs to be with his family. Eliza, on the other hand, continues to move toward freedom and is taken to a Quaker settlement in which she in reunited with her husband George. Tom’s new owner, Mr. St. Clare, agrees to grant Tom his freedom upon the death of his daughter, Eva. Unfortunately, St. Clare himself is killed shortly thereafter, and Tom is sold to a horrible new owner, Legree. The allegorical nature of the rest of the text compares Tom’s behavior and temperament to that of Christ. Throughout the text, Tom acts like Jesus and relies on God. Not only does this show the equal respect before God of every individual, but shows the powerful witness of the gospel message. Tom, too, dies a martyr’s death, whose wording and power are impossible to reword.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin has no equal in portraying the harsh realities of the slave world, and the church’s failure to respond, despite the authentic faith of a number of white Christians in the text. The myth of American "freedom" apart from equality is another central theme to the text:

Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man, who sits there, with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eyes,—What is freedom to George Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of the man to be a man, and not a brute; the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from lawless violence. (p. 544).

Stowe offers the world a confrontational book, and calls the church to a holy anger at the institution of slavery.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Does the publication date of this book surprise you? (1852, Almost a decade before the Civil War, 1861-1865.)
2. Why do you think the issue of slavery was so tangled for white Americans? For example, Mrs. Shelby is a committed Christian who hates the slave system, but feels powerless against it.
3. What could the church have done to deal with slavery before the civil war?
4.  

1. Do you think that an institutional form of prejudice is in any way comparable to the slave system? If so, what can the church do now, and what can we learn from the church’s silence as a whole as slavery took root in America?

IMPLICATIONS

• Stowe argues that the American slave system continued primarily because of the church’s failure.

• The immediate implication for us is that we are doing the same thing to our principal minorities today.

• Activism begins with one act, one relationship, one decision to work for change.

1. There is no better text to understand the dynamics of American slavery than Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

T.J. Tomlin cCYS