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| The Questions to Consider | ||
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| Comments - recorded by Larry Fisk | ||
| Session 5 is entitled “Skin-Deep: The Power of Grace to Penetrate Racism”.
It begins with the subsection title “The Only Hope for Hatred” and asks
group participants to name groups of people living in hatred of one another
and what hope there might be in healing such conflicts. It may be important
to assert at the outset that Philip Yancey is quite forthright in declaring
his past experience as an active member of a racist congregation in America’s
deep south. Yancey’s experience of racism, therefore, is one of whites
versus blacks prior to and during the Civil Rights’ Movement in America. See Yancey’s Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church. See also the website archive of our own study of this book. His change of heart is gradual and yet dramatic, not dissimilar to that of Bishop John Spong who also had to fight against his southern anti-black religious culture. See also ABC Compass interview with John Spong, and his Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality. These two men come out at very different ends of the theological spectrum but their theologies carry within them the struggle to overcome both ugly racial prejudice and homophobic hatred. Additional references to their two stories: Zondervan Publishing's excellent Bio site for Phillip Yancey. Whosoever Magazines Review of Spong - Standing for Integrity, Love and Equality It may be important to say at the outset, therefore, that Yancey’s view of race is circumscribed by his exposure to it in the American South and may not register as clearly both the larger understanding of what constitutes hatred between peoples, nor does it always illuminate the economic-political exploitation which is regularly at the heart of the hatred between different groups of people. See Sojourner's Magazine interview with Yancey "Sex, Liews, and Life on the Evangelical Edge" Yancey acknowledges these difficult realities by commenting: “Some of the most intolerant people I know are Christians, I mean, I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true.” The opening video segment tells the story of a meeting between Elie Wiesel (Jewish holocaust survivor) and Francois Mauriac (famous French Catholic novelist). Wiesel arranges to see Mauriac in the hopes of soliciting his help in getting published. In the course of conversation Wiesel is wearied by Mauriac’s constant references to the importance of Jesus in his life. Wiesel in anger attempts to depart from Mauriac’s apartment with the anguished complaint that it was the Christians of Germany who put to death the millions of Jews, including his own close relatives. Mauriac urges Wiesel to return, and then listens quietly, his eyes full of tears. He, Mauriac, had not fully understood. It was, perhaps, Mauriac’s genuine and spontaneous sorrowful and apologetic identification with Wiesel which allowed for, as Yancey asserts, an opportunity: “to see that although Christians may build walls between races and people, the real Jesus tears down the walls.” Mauriac later encouraged Wiesel to write his painful story and assisted him in getting it published, even writing a foreword to his first book. In this video story Yancey is not talking about racism as skin-colour. If anything, the hatreds result from cultural/economic and religious differences. Recent studies, by the way, seem to indicate that skin-colour is exclusively the result of the human body’s capacity for protecting itself from ultra-violet rays. Nina Jablonski has conducted one of the most thorough examinations of human evolution in terms of skin colour. The Wiesel/Mauriac confrontation is a Jewish/Christian one. The story of the Good Samaritan is similarly not a matter of skin colour but of cultural and “tribal” differences and antagonisms. The point of the story is to say clearly what constitutes neighbourliness. In the view of Ivan Illich (The Corruption of Christianity: Ivan Illich on Gospel, Church and Society.) the Good Samaritan is the very embodiment of freedom to act as we choose. It is unprecedented in Jewish culture. It may well be unprecedented in human history. Jesus is illustrating the celebration of voluntarily acting in freedom, the realm of ebullient grace and buoyant forgiveness. Illich traces the fate of the Christian gospel over the past two thousand years. He speaks as a Christian who believes that through Jesus of Nazareth, something gloriously new came into the world: the possibility of knowing and loving God in the flesh. But along with this came a new and unprecedented danger—making this spontaneous appreciation of grace and friendship into a set of doctrines, required beliefs and acceptable institutional practices separate from individual acts of Grace and love. Returning to the “race” relations of America, Patricia Raybon (author of My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love and Forgiveness reminds us via the Good Samaritan story that: “Race Relations is about human relations”. Raybon’s experiences of discrimination are overcome by a fourteen year old girl who acts spontaneously in caring for her as a person as did the Samaritan and the robbed-stripped Jew in the ditch. In the former case it is a matter of sitting with her on a school bus. The experience of Patricia Raybon was echoed by many of our Wednesday night participants—the significance as a starting point of “one on one” opportunities of caring and overcoming prejudicial attitudes and beliefs. In cases of long-standing discrimination says Raybon, “When you forgive you rediscover the humanity of the other person. But even better, when you forgive you rediscover the humanity in yourself.” She also believes that “godly help” is essential in this seemingly “unnatural” practice. Small group discussions centred on various approaches to the issue of racism. These approaches seemed indicative of the actions around the wounded Jew in the Good Samaritan story. The legal pundits would debate and discuss the matter; the robbers engaged in exploitation; the religious leaders of the day avoided responsibility by whatever rationalization; the innkeeper might be content with economic gain, but the Good Samaritan acted out of love. This collection of attitudes concludes with the statement “To Jesus, all of them and all of us were worth dying for”—the attitude of self-sacrifice. The two small discussion groups had some difficulty with this last position particularly with Yancey’s assertion that for peaceful opposition, forgiveness and reconciliation “Jesus, the Son of the living God, [is] the only hope for accomplishing these three things”. We do know of peoples in different religious and non-religious circles who act in these ways with hope. Mahatma Gandhi may be the most obvious example but he is joined by tens of thousands in different cultures and religions who act in a manner in keeping with “the Holy Spirit”. The concluding section of this evening’s session examined the story of a Divinity School graduate whose civil rights’ allies were more likely to be “agnostics, socialists and a few devout Northerners” than they were to be ”good Christians”. The crux of the story is that when the graduate student’s friend is shot and killed a pesky “renegade newspaper editor” demands to hear the “Christian Message” given that the editor believed the bible-thumping racist congregations were the enemy. The response: “We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway”. When the student Will Campbell is later pressed he finds that both his friend and his killer must be judged “bastards” and both are loved by God. The experience causes Will Campbell to become “an apostle to the rednecks”—to minister to the Klansmen and racists, a place where few sought to minister. Session 5 concluded by examining Romans 3:21-24 which emphasizes the reality of God’s Kingdom (realm, polity, social system, culture) as both here and heaven. Its realization is not by some act of our own, be it right action or right mental ascent. Rather it is God’s gift to all who live in His Spirit. |
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Oct 2006
