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p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv6537209822 #yiv6537209822templateBody .yiv6537209822mcnTextContent, #yiv6537209822 #yiv6537209822templateBody .yiv6537209822mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv6537209822 #yiv6537209822templateFooter .yiv6537209822mcnTextContent, #yiv6537209822 #yiv6537209822templateFooter .yiv6537209822mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A White Man Makes the Case for Reparations, Part III | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer November 19, 2020 “If… African Americans will not be compensated for the massive wrongs and social injuries inflicted upon them by their government, during and after slavery, then there is no chance that America can solve its racial problems.” Randall Robinson, The Debt, p. 204. I enter this quote at the beginning of my final installment of my call to reparations because I want to make one thing clear: while reparations is about righting a wrong, it is also about healing a wounded nation. That wound is the source of great pain not just for African descendant people. It is also the source of great pain for the descendants of European colonialists who perpetrated one of the Earth’s most viscous, effective, and persistent evils. Too many whites argue that slavery is a thing of the past for which present day whites are not responsible. In the previous two essays, I tried to debunk that myth. It is the cause of so much pain today for black and white Americans. In the book Black Rage, we find this: “Americans characteristically are unwilling to think about the past. We are a future-oriented nation, and facing backward is an impediment to progress. Although these attitudes may propel us to the moon, they are deficient when human conflict needs resolution.” (William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs, Black Rage, p. 23) I have been arguing that reparations is, at its core, a call to repair the damage – to seek pathways to resolving a particular human conflict that has opened deep and festering wounds. What abolition and emancipation and civil rights in the hands of well-meaning whites have done is what the prophet Jeremiah spoke about in is 6th chapter: we have cried “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. We have healed the wound of God’s people lightly. What white America often fails to see is that reparations IS the pathway to healing the racial division and, as Robinson says, the only way to “solve its racial problems.” It is the pathway to resolving this enormous human conflict. It is not enough to work hard as whites to assuage our guilt. That is the pathway to crying peace when there is no peace; to healing a wound lightly – enough to stanch the bleeding, but not enough to heal the wound. I have long said that whites in general, and the white church in particular, remain the most instantiated and greatest impediment yet to full racial equity. Without doubt, the greatest stumbling block to full white participation in repairing the damage is their love affair with both wealth and access to wealth. Whites will march. Whites will sing: “We shall overcome;” or “Lift every voice,” or “This land is my land.” Whites will get arrested, seeing this as demonstration of their bona fides, a trophy that demonstrates their commitment to the cause and their willingness to suffer for a couple hours or an overnight stay. Some have even died, entering the struggle with the awareness that there will be a price to pay. What whites have yet to do is sit at the table and talk about how to redistribute wealth and legislate pathways to wealth that do not favor them. This is the point at which white, liberal freedom-riders get off the bus and say, “I have nothing left to give.” They will spend their life telling the story of their commitment, their struggle, their sacrifice. They will cheer the election of a black president and feel some sense of both pride and satisfaction that their sacrifice helped make this happen and heal the wound. But it is a wound healed lightly – and the peace they claim to have created is no peace at all. Donald Trump and the post-Obama world we live in belies the claim that peace has come and that white contributions to racial equity have healed the wound. In the introduction to his landmark book The Possessive Investment in Whiteness,” George Lipsitz says that both public policy and private prejudice have created what he calls “a possessive investment in whiteness.” His very next sentence is the theme statement for his entire book, and really the most definitive and concise explanation for why America is the way it is: “Whiteness has a cash value.” “Whiteness is a delusion, a cultural fiction…. Whiteness is, however, a social fact, an identity created and continued with all-too-real consequences for the distribution of wealth, prestige, and opportunity.” (Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, p.vii) So this is a call to white America to fully heal the wound. Not just the black wound, but the wound that black and white both suffer from together, and that no attachment to wealth will heal. Reparations is the pathway to full healing, to resolving this human conflict, to solving our racial problem. What does that look like? Better minds than mine have wrestled with that and fallen short of the mark. Nonetheless, there are specific recommendations I am willing to make right now. First, let’s talk about HR 40. Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas’ 18th Congressional District has taken up the mantle given to her when John Conyer’s retired. She brought the bill to Congress asking for a commission to be created to study a meaningful pathway to reparations. John Conyers first introduced this bill in 1993, and it has yet to even leave committee, much less make it to the floor for a vote, much less win a majority and be passed on to the Senate for approval, much less be signed into law by the President. This is not a bill calling for reparations, but the creation of a commission to study what reparations would look like. If and when white advocates got behind this and demanded that their legislators support it, vote for it, and pass it, it would make it through and the first small step towards healing would occur. Well, white America? Will we do that? Can we do that? If we will not do even that, it is hard to imagine that we are an ally in the cause of racial equity and racial healing. Aside from supporting and passing HR 40, there are other and more tangible things whites can do or consider right now. As I think about this, there are three places of accumulated or accumulating wealth that can be taxed to support reparations: annual income of white households, accumulated current wealth of white households, and money transferred at death through inheritance. What if every white American were taxed $25 a year for ten years to create a fund for reparations? Or think even bigger. What if for ten years there was a 1% tax assessed to every white American who files for taxes? According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, the buying power of white Americans in 2018 was $6.5 trillion dollars. 1% of that is $65 billion a year. Do that for ten years. The average white household currently has more than seven times the accumulated wealth in liquidity than the average black household: $130,000 per white household; $19,000 per black household (this is from the 2018 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau). How much of that can be transferred over the next ten years in the cause of repairing the damage? One of the greatest inhibitors to equal access to wealth is inheritance law. Serious thought should be given to taxing any money that is passed from one white family member to another. A 10% tax charged to all white-inherited wealth for ten years would help alleviate the gap that has accrued from white wealth that has stayed in the family for generations – much of that accrued at a time when blacks were either enslaved, deprived of equal or any education, red-zoned out of housing districts where wealth could be invested in real estate that grew in value, or either deprived of jobs or given lower salaries because of their race. Up to $11.4 million per person of inherited wealth can be exempted from taxes in 2019, and double that if it is a married couple, since that is per person. It is estimated that in the next 20 years, boomers will inherit $68 trillion. How much of that would it make sense to set aside from taxes that could support reparations? Another source of possible funding for reparations would be church properties. What if every white church that closed from this point forward earmarked the proceeds (or a portion of those) from the dissolution of their assets for reparations? The Christian Century magazine estimates that 3,700 churches a year close – or about 1%. Let’s estimate on the conservative side that their remaining property and assets average $1 million. That’s $3.7 billion a year that we could earmark for reparations, or at least some healthy portion of that. The Black Manifesto, quoted in a previous installment, asked for the funds from the white transfer of wealth to go to ten different empowerment opportunities for black families. They were: - The establishment of a Southern Land Bank for blacks who want to establish cooperative farms. - The establishment of four major black-owned and operated publishing and printing industries in the US. - The establishment of black-owned and operated media conglomerates in major cities across the US. - The establishment of a research skill center to research the problems unique to black Americans. - Establishment of a training center for community organizing, photography, filmmaking, TV production, etc. - The support of all welfare agencies that serve black families and the organization and training of all welfare recipients. - The establishment of a National Black Labor Strike and Defense Fund. - The establishment of the International Black Appeal (IBA) for building black owned businesses in the US and Africa. - The establishment of a Black University. - The allocation of funds or planning the budget to implement the demands stated in the Manifesto. This is not offered here as the perfect plan, but to suggest that Funds be set up for and administered by black community leaders that support the ongoing development and propagation of black America. This is not a blueprint. Let’s not get bogged down right now in discussion about whether these particular taxing mechanisms or program developments are the pathway forward. It is only offered here to suggest that we can at least imagine A pathway forward. The question is not CAN whites do this, but WILL whites do it. On the one hand, putting specific recommendations like this on paper risks spending all our time arguing about whether or not these ideas will, can, or should work. On the other hand, NOT putting something on paper keeps this too ethereal and only repeats the mantra we have always heard: it just can’t be done. Well, it can be done. In previous installments on this subject I presented my argument about why it should be done, and this time I simply wanted to show that it CAN be done. Whites need to know there is no pathway through this that comes without pain and sacrifice. Yes, whites have sacrificed something in the past, but never enough. Again, we have healed the wound of the people lightly. This wound will heal, but not without great commitment to full reparations. Money isn’t everything, but it is our love of money that is the root of this evil. Only a committed detachment from that, and an accompanying attachment to wealth and race equity will heal a wound white and black Americans have lived with since whites landed on these shores. Let us work hard to discover the day when we can say, “Peace, peace,” and there is peace, when the wound is healed not lightly but wholly. That is the dream, the hope, the expectation. Thanks for listening. ~ Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer Read online here About the Author Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer was granted a Doctoral Degree in White Privilege Studies in 2007 from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH. He also has degrees in Theology and Philosophy. He is the author of two published books, Beyond Resistance: the Institutional Church Meets the Postmodern World and Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right Hijacked Mainstream Religion. He is a recipient of Eden Seminary's "Shalom Award," given by the student body for a lifetime of committed work for peace and justice. John was ordained as a Christian minister in 1988. He currently serves as the 9th General Minister of the United Church of Christ, one of the USA's most progressive faiths, whose vision is "A Just World for All." He is a frequent speaker on the subject of white privilege, and is especially committed to engaging white audiences to come to deeper understandings of the privilege. He is particularly interested in how whites manifest privilege every day and how it impacts people of color, two things whites remain largely either ignorant of or in denial about. He has been devoted to his bride Mimi for over 36 years, and they have parented three children - a composer/musician, an author/painter, and a poet. John and Mimi have two grandchildren they dote on constantly. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Bill I love your writing and your views that embrace compassionate deeds rather than creedal concepts. It seems to me that your message would have a much broader appeal if you opened your invitation to follow your belief paradigm to all comers – not just Christians – and broadened your teaching authority to other sages and ethical and moral teachers beyond Jesus. I think your call and message could be far more inclusive than being restricted to Christians alone. Have you ever addressed a non-Christian audience and broadened your message to accept their way of worshipping God? A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong Dear Bill, Thank you for your letter and suggestion. Yes, I have addressed audiences of other faiths, especially in synagogues, but I have also conducted a dialogue with a rabbi and his congregation in Richmond, Virginia, with a Buddhist monk in China and with a trio of Hindu scholars in India. Every significant contact I have had with other faith traditions has deepened my appreciation for what they are and has broadened my understanding of my own faith. I do not believe that I contribute to the interfaith dialogue by seeking to master a faith tradition other than my own. While I certainly do not think that God is a Christian, I believe the ultimate pathway to religious unity comes through my willingness to go so deeply into Christianity that I escape its limits. Only then can I bring to the interfaith table the pearl of great price that I believe Christianity has to offer. I hope that all religious people of all traditions will be equally dedicated to discovering the essence of holiness that their faith tradition possesses so that they can share with me the essence, the pearl of great price that they have received from their life in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. My goal is to enrich the world with the essence of Christianity even as I am being enriched by the essence of other worship traditions. I hope I never disparage or look down on the way any person journeys into the mystery and wonder of God. I do not want to be against any religion. I want to walk beyond all religions, even my own, in my lifetime quest for the truth of God that all of us can only "see through a glass darkly." ~ Bishop John Shelby Spong November 7, 2007 Read and share online here | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | This week's donation request | | | | | | | | | | Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my people not been attended to? - Jeremiah 8:22 (The Inclusive Bible – Priests for Equality) The world is in need of a balm. The health of its people is not being attended to in a manner that it needs – in a manner that it deserves. Biblically, in a manner that is required. For far too long, we have hoped, wished and prayed for a physician to attend to our health. Biden will not be that physician. He may help in some ways but he cannot heal a nation, or the world, alone. No more so than any U.S. President or world leader can or has. Yet, we continue to seek a savior in spite of the fact that the one who many call “Savior” taught us that we are our savior. We must also admit that much like the cartoon character Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The majority of traditional Christianity has not only sat too idly by as the world has become more sick and more divided, but in many cases it has encouraged the behavior that leads to it. As progressive Christians, we have work to do. Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed it's the only thing that ever has.” Each of us are a part of the balm the world needs. At Progressing Spirit and ProgressiveChristianty.org we provide a variety of resources, encouragement, and perspectives to help insure that we all are a “thoughtful” part of the “committed citizens” of which Margaret Mead spoke. Bringing these resources to you is surprisingly expensive, but we are committed to continue to not only provide them, but to continually improve upon them. To do so, we need your help. Would you consider making a donation to help us continue to provide these much needed resources in times such as these? Together we can be part of the balm that heals and changes the world. Progressing Spirit is part of ProgressiveChristianity.org, a 501(3)c Non-Profit. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part XVII: The Birth of Mark, the First Gospel Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong March 25, 2010 It is difficult to study the gospels accurately unless we step outside the Christian Church as we traditionally experience it today. That may sound like a strange statement, but increasingly I believe it is true. The gospels have been read in liturgical worship for two thousand years. They have provided the texts upon which sermons have been preached in churches under a variety of historical circumstances. Some of these churches were under persecution; some were so established that they participated in the persecution of others. Sermons preached on gospel texts have been heard in churches that lived through the breakup of the Middle Ages, in churches undergoing both the Protestant reformation and the Catholic counter reformation and in churches making their witness in the modern and even the post-modern world. So deeply has the message of these gospels been captured in liturgy, translated through hymns and enshrined in buildings that most of us cannot separate gospel content from cultural artifacts. This deep familiarity must be removed before the original power of the gospels can be recovered. Familiarity does bring both contempt and misunderstanding. What has sometimes been called “gospel truth” sometimes turns out not to be true at all. It is amazing, for example, how people use the Bible to justify their cultural prejudices, totally unaware of their own ignorance. These prejudices are then re-enforced by the assumption that their culturally blended knowledge is actually biblical. Of interest is the fact that most people learn the content of the Christmas story not from reading the Bible, but by watching Christmas pageants over the years. In these pageants, poetic or dramatic license is regularly practiced. People are therefore amazed to discover that only two of the gospels (Matthew and Luke) include birth stories and that these two contradict each other in many places. How many people know, for example, that in the texts of the Bible there are no camels in the story of the wise men, no donkey on which Mary rode to Bethlehem while she is “great with child,” no stable in which Christ was born and no animals that populated that non-existent stable? Moving deeper into the Christian story, there are no “seven last words” spoken by Jesus from the cross. Mark and Matthew record only one saying from the cross and that is what we call “the cry of dereliction:” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Luke omits that saying as far too human to be spoken by “the Son of God,” but then proceeds to add three of his own creation. John then omits all of these previously recorded sayings and creates three totally new ones never heard before. Finally, almost every detail of the Easter story in each of the four gospels is contradicted in the writings of another gospel. The most important thing to embrace, however, is that, in regard to the Bible, the ignorance is so profound that most people do not even know that they do not know. Part of what I am seeking to do in this series on the gospels is to penetrate this culturally imposed fog so that we today might hear the message of each of the four gospel writers in the way each was heard by the first listeners to their words. In order to accomplish this task we first need to dismiss many of the assumptions that we bring to our hearing of these gospel narratives. The first and most important of these is that the gospels are not biographies of Jesus. They are not eyewitness accounts of what Jesus actually did, nor are they tape recordings of the things that Jesus literally said. I shall never forget being on a late night talk show some years ago when on a media tour with the publication of my book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. My host that evening was Tom Snyder, who was operating out of a studio in Burbank, California. As the interview progressed, I suggested that the four gospels in the New Testament were generally dated no earlier than the year 70 CE and no later that the year 100. Tom, a lapsed Roman Catholic, bestirred himself and said, “Now, wait a minute, Bishop! I just got out my short pencil and began to do some figuring. If the gospels were written that late then none of them could have been written by eyewitnesses.” “That is correct, Tom,” I responded. “None of them claims to have been written by an eyewitness except the Fourth Gospel, but no reputable scholar today thinks that John Zebedee actually wrote this book.” John Zebedee was described in the book of Acts (4:13) as an “uneducated man,” while the gospel that bears John’s name is filled with long, complex theological discourses, which require enormous sophistication. Finally, this gospel was written in Greek, not in Aramaic, which was, so far as we know, the only language that John Zebedee could speak. Stunned, Tom Snyder said, “That is not what the nuns taught me in parochial school!” I enquired as to what they had taught him, and he replied “They said the disciples of Jesus followed him around, writing down everything he said and that this is how we got the gospels!” Amused at how unlearned a grown and rather worldly-wise man could nonetheless be, I asked, “Tom, did the nuns also tell you that the disciples used spiral bound notebooks and ballpoint pens?” At that moment, the dawn of a new realization swept across my host’s face. The facts are that all four of the gospels were written by the second generation and, in the case of the Fourth Gospel, maybe even by the third generation of Christians. The gospels were written in Greek, a language in which neither Jesus nor the disciples were fluent. They were also written with no punctuation and without even being divided into chapters, paragraphs, verses or sentences. In the style of that day they did not even include a space between words, just line after line of letters. At the end of a line on whatever they used for a page there would be no dash to warn the reader that a word was being broken and it would continue on the next line. There were no capital letters. All punctuation, all separation of words, all divisions into verses, paragraphs and chapters would be imposed on these texts hundreds of years later. How much of the Jesus story was known before each gospel was written is hard to determine, but the probability is that for most people the first time they heard a gospel being read was the first time they had heard most of the Jesus stories that they contain. Prior to the writing of the earliest gospel of Mark, all that the people knew about Jesus was whatever had been conveyed in vignettes through preaching and the oral tradition, and the high probability is that the setting for this hearing was in the synagogue at Sabbath day worship. This means that the same story might be used on different occasions with new details added or old details deleted, making our attempt to find historical accuracy in them simply not possible. When one multiplies this fact by a period of 40 to 70 years, the dimension of the problem we face in creating hard history begins to come into view. Perhaps the best we can do is to demonstrate when the various stories about Jesus entered the written tradition. In order to understand how the first gospel, Mark, was initially received, we need to embrace the fact that before Mark wrote, the written details about the crucifixion of Jesus were contained in one line in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “He died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” That is all Paul said, and thus that is all Christians had before the early 70’s. Mark thus introduced such narratives as the account of the last supper on the night before the crucifixion, the story of the Garden of Gethsemane, the account of Judas’ betrayal at midnight, the role of the Sanhedrin in determining Jesus’ guilt, the denial of Peter, the flight of the disciples, the trial before Pilate, the freeing of Barabbas, the torture with the crown of thorns and the story of the thieves crucified with him. None of these details were written prior to Mark. Of the burial of Jesus all that was known in writing before Mark was, again, what Paul had written: “He was buried.” That was it. Mark thus introduced the story of the tomb, the character of Joseph of Arimathea and the various details of his burial. In regard to the story of Easter all that the Christians had in writing before Mark was found, once again, in a brief Pauline narrative: “He rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” Paul goes on to relate that Jesus “appeared” to Cephas, the twelve, 500 brethren at once, James, the apostles and finally to Paul. No detail of any of these appearances, however, was given and even the word “appeared” is open to a variety of meanings. Paul counts himself as one of those to whom the risen Christ “appeared.” Since Paul’s conversion was some one to six years after the crucifixion, an appearance to Paul could hardly have been physical. Please notice that before Mark wrote in the early 70’s, there was also no account of an empty tomb, no angels, no visit of the women and no messenger to announce the resurrection. Mark added these details as the tradition unfolded. There were other things in the Jesus story that Mark appears to have introduced for the first time. Mark is the first person to tell us about the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and the first person to associate the story of Jesus with miracles. The idea that Jesus was a teacher of note or that he taught in parables was still another Markan-introduced theme. When we embrace these things, we begin to understand something of how the Christian faith evolved and how dramatic an event it must have been to have the first gospel appear in the 8th decade of the Christian era. Next week we will begin to put the message of Mark’s gospel into the context of its first-century Jewish world. It looks quite different from the way we read it today, but even if it is a little-known story, I believe we will find it to be a beautiful one. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Walking Together Giving Thanks Through Music 34th Annual Inter-Spiritual Celebration of Gratitude Sunday, November 22nd @ 2:00 PM On Zoom Unique presentations will offer rich expressions of our diversity with chant, movement, music, spoken word, and song. May this gathering warm our hearts and instill hope for our future, “Walking Together in Gratitude”. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |