SOME THOUGHTS ON CHRISTIANITY AND ITS INFLUENCE IN AMERICA

Judeo-Christian influences clearly helped to shape American and European democracies.

Regardless of whether one is an atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Jew, or a Christian, people who live the United States of America have long enjoyed the benefits of liberty and freedom, self-government and rights of conscience because of the ideas developed from the Bible, not apart from it.

From the Founders and so many other historical accounts throughout American history, it was understood that the ideas of freedom and liberty were built upon, supported by, and not in conflict with the Judeo-Christian influence in this country.

Teleological ideas about the true nature of man. Theological ideas about God. Natural law, moral law, liberty, rights of conscience.

Even certain ideas that shaped the concepts of a democratically elected Constitutional Representative Republic and 3 equal branches of Government were influenced by studying the Hebrew commonwealth in the Scriptures. Even the deist Jefferson acknowledged its influence.

However, there has never been and never will be a theocratic civil government in the United States of America, because of the influence of the Christian religion, because of its ideas concerning God, Man and Government.

Did individual practitioners use and misuse their faith for unjust purposes? Did entire denominations down through our history do the same? Sadly, yes.

Slavery is but one example where churches and entire denominations twisted and misinterpreted scripture to justify this unjust and inhumane practice. Many remained silent when their consciences told them otherwise. Many churchmen and women were complicit themselves, and preachers often justified it in their pulpits. Had churches in slave-holding states awakened earlier to what they knew in their hearts to be wrong and immoral, and what the Christian religion clearly condemned, and had they had a greater influence in these slave-holding states, we may never have had to fight a costly civil war. However, it was not Christianity, but their complicity that fostered this evil.

England abolished slavery without a civil war. Because of men like Wilberforce and Newton, who were devout Christian men of faith. Newton, an often drunk captain of a slave-cargo ship, penned the words to ‘Amazing Grace’, after he was converted and joined Wilberforce and others to pressure and persuade lawmakers in England to abolish slavery.

However, it was a 2nd Great Awakening in churches in the Northern States in this country, that spread through the preaching of the likes of Charles Finney (founder of Oberlin College) and others, that directly impacted the growing abolitionist movements and helped to awaken the conscience of the nation that eventually led to the abolishment of slavery. Here it was the right practice of true Christianity that led to the abolishment of slavery

Study carefully the abolitionist movements, the underground railroad, etc. Those who were at the forefront were deeply devout men and women of the Christian faith. Many railed like the Hebrew prophets of old as they cried out for justice.

Study Lincoln. While he was not a member of one particular church or denomination, they always had a seat reserved for him at the Presbyterian Church in downtown Springfield, Illinois. He was deeply influenced by the Christian religion. So was Frederick Douglass.

There is so much history in this country of the many positive effects that true Christianity has had on society that one hardly knows where to begin.

Education (Harvard, Yale etc. were all founded by and upon the influences of the Christian religion), Arts, Commerce, Business and Finance (the origin of our bankruptcy laws came from the influence of the Hebrew Old Testament and the “Year of Jubilee”, where people struggling under the burdens of debt were periodically required to be let go), Medicine and medical care, government, law both civil and criminal, our courts, all were influenced to large extent by the Judeo-Christian ideas of man and government...man and society.

While these were not the only ideas or influences in the development of Western democracy, Christianity had the most profound and greatest impact in producing the freest and most just society in the history of mankind.

Furthermore, none of these influences and ideas ever lead to anything even close to a “theocracy” and they never will.

Animus against Christianity is horribly misguided and misplaced. For in attacking Christianity and burning Bibles, as was recently done by protesters, people are attacking the very foundations that led to the freest and most just society ever known.

Those who would attack the Bible and Christianity, falsely accusing both as oppressive, are terribly misguided.

They fail to understand that there are very few if any Christian churches or denominations throughout the world who teach that Old Testament laws that were specifically directed to the emerging nation of Israel ought to be reinstated and adopted by the civil governments, both here in the United States and other democracies throughout the world.

That does not mean, however, that the laws adopted by any nation or its people cannot reflect certain intrinsic "values" reflected in both the Old and New Testaments which are entirely consistent with natural law, decency, liberty and common sense if a government and its people choose to do so.

True Christianity is about liberty. It is about freedom. Liberty and freedom with and for a purpose. A purpose dedicated to the love and service of God and mankind.

However, liberty and freedom must have a moral foundation that transcends and transforms us. If not, we will descend into and become a slave of our own making, appetites and desires.

Liberty is one of mankind’s most precious gifts, however it cannot and should not be liberty and freedom “from” and should and always be liberty and freedom “for.” Otherwise it turns into utilitarianism, or a type of “libertarianism,” that atomizes individuals, creating a society with ever-weaker social bonds and that will inevitably turn into license and lawlessness.

The lawlessness and anti-Christian bigotry and hostility that we are now witnessing with greater and greater frequency —continued unabated— is an internal threat to America’s very survival as a country.

Her only hope is a return to true Christianity; a massive revival, renewal and awakening, that restores and rediscovers the very foundations of liberty and decency in this country.

Those committed to the eradication and destruction of Christianity, those who burn Bibles and call for the tearing down and removal of symbols depicting Christ, are in fact committed to the destruction of America whether they fully realize it or not.

THE TYRANNY AND ENSLAVEMENT OF ETHNO-CENTRIC WHITE SECULARISM

A tremendous amount of societal unrest and profound difficulties in the area of race relations can be traced back to the ramifications of the black community continuing to embrace 'secular white evolutionary humanism' applied politically, hereafter referred to as 'secularism:'  A secularism that in many ways is the dominant religion in America today. A secularism whose ideology was developed by predominantly "white elitists" and tragically continues to be embraced even by many Afro-Centric churches throughout America.

Now what do I mean by that?

In a nutshell, an origin of race consistent with God as the creator will always lead to equality, because we are all made in his image. A secularist account of origin of race assumes that in differences within races some are higher on the evolutionary scale than others. Thus if secular evolutionists are racists, they are consistent within that framework.

Applied economically, secularism eventually becomes mercantilism or "materialism" set up to serve the elite or ruling class. Economic development for the benefits of indigenous populations (Native Americans) or those transplanted through the cruel and inhuman acts of slavery (African Americans) were never a consideration or high on white ethno-centric secularists' agenda.

White secularism will always lead to the preoccupation of materialism. As self-gratification through the accumulation of wealth becomes the substitute for spiritual values, often turning into greed as it tries to fill the spiritual emptiness and vacuum left by the practical effects of rejecting a world view were God is viewed as the creator and sustainer of all tribes, nations and races.

Listen carefully to the rhetoric that stirs up so much societal, political and racial tension these days. You will always hear it revolve around the idea that material things are all that matters in defining equality. Furthermore, it is the primary role of any government to give you those material things, whether it is free healthcare, free college tuition, a guaranteed income, guaranteed minimum wages etc. This then becomes the final measure of all worth and value as a human being.

Individuals and groups of peoples set this up as the final standard for determining and judging the worth of other people. This allows for the elite or ruling classes to easily exploit, divide, demonize and manipulate entire people groups for the political purposes of the ruling secular elite.

Let me try and break it down on a more practical level. Many black leaders, ministers, educators and even those elected to local and state offices see the devastating effects of embracing a completely secularist world view. However, they rarely are given a platform to speak or disagree with many of the "progressive ideas" being advanced by a political and cultural philosophy, which originated from predominantly white-ethnocentric-liberal-secular-evolutionary-humanists. Whether it is gay marriage or abortion on demand or other issues of the day, indigenous Afro-centric culture, especially those built around the centrality of the Word of God and tradition, who view God as the creator and sustainer of all life, initially had great difficulty embracing these ideas as progressive advancement. Many still do. Especially ministers and black churches.

The issue of civil rights and equality based solely on race was a no brainier, because it came naturally and flowed from the idea that God created all people, tribes and nations. Therefore all people were equal. Many still have great difficulty with these progressive ideas, however, when they speak up or refuse to embrace these ideas, they are marginalized and treated with disdain.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is a perfect example. Up until the late 70's he spoke out against abortion and homosexual behavior as being immoral and harmful to the black community. However, the political philosophy of the Democratic party he came to be identified with, made it very plain to him, that the progressive ideas had to be fully embraced or he would have no chance for his own political advancement, so he capitulated.

If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had lived, he would have been faced with the same difficulties and choices. In spite of his personal moral lapses, Dr. King was grounded in the Word of God as the primary source and foundation for his leadership to end segregation and advance civil rights, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Prior to his death in 1968, he actually had more success working with white Republican lawmakers, who recognized the immorality and inconsistency of segregation. Many of them would be referred to as conservative today.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by a majority of Republican votes in the U.S. Congress and large numbers also voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. President Johnson eventually came around and signed the civil rights act into law, but not before enormous political pressure and societal unrest persuaded him to do so. Johnson began, and for a long period of his political career, as a racist southern Democrat, as were Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd, who bitterly opposed and worked against these civil rights laws. Some say all that began to change with the Republican nomination of Goldwater in 1964 and his emphasis of  state's rights and his strong opposition to a growing federal bureaucracy. However, one of the most prominently held urban legends of those times was that Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP candidate for president in 1964, was a racist because he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many say this vote of Goldwater marked the start of when “the GOP began to go against civil rights. But Goldwater was actually a strong supporter of civil rights in his home state of Arizona, supporting state initiatives to advance civil rights. He was in fact a member of the NAACP. He opposed the federal law because he believed it to be too broad and a federal bureaucratic intrusion that would have negative consequences on individual states. In my opinion he was wrong for not voting with the majority of his GOP colleagues, however he was not a racist.

The truth is that the GOP has had by far, a greater historical record of advancing civil rights in this country, dating back to Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery, than the Democratic Party’s dismal historical record opposing the end of slavery, Jim Crow and standing in opposition to the enactment of civil rights legislation.

Sadly it is true however, that the GOP has done a horrible job of reaching out to black communities over the last 40 years.

Nevertheless, from the creation of the party, which opposed slavery, to this present day, you cannot find a single plank in the GOP platform that indicates anything otherwise. In fact, it was Republican President Eisenhower who proffered the first civil rights act of 1957, which was watered down by White Southern Democrats.

In our present day, pick your issue: school choice, urban development that emphasizes a truly deregulated free market economy, strong national defense, border security, traditional marriage, opposition to abortion on demand, merit based pay, any disagreement with the philosophy and tactics employed by Black Lives Matter etc.

Any black leader, educator, minister, jurist, police officer, veteran, actor, sports figure or journalist, etc. who dares to question or disagree with the progressive agenda, developed and embraced by white secularists, is ostracized, ridiculed and mocked. Ask yourself when was the last time you saw any black leader giving regular analysis on CNN or MSNBC, who did not fully embrace a white secularist progressive agenda? They have black analysts, but only those who philosophically are in agreement with the progressive agenda, developed by white secularists. (Van Jones currently holds that regular chair over at CNN and any others who appear regularly are all progressives.) They do have analysts who occasionally are critical of the progressive agenda, but they are exclusively white. Black leaders who are critical of the progressive agenda are 'ghettoized' and forced to appear on Fox News.

This is political and ideological racism masquerading as thoughtful journalism.

Will Afro-Americans ever escape the tyranny of enslavement to a political and cultural philosophy of government, developed by and forced upon them by white progressive secularists and so-called black leaders who now see their only personal tickets to paradise through advancing and promoting this progressive agenda?  Maybe. If a vibrant spiritual renewal and revival takes hold throughout Afro-Centric Churches. Maybe. If more courageous black leaders are willing to challenge and repudiate secularism as having any meaningful hope for positive and lasting change.

Maybe.

These are the sad realities of the present times in which we live, but with God all things are still possible.

/NJS

STAND STRONG

Many years ago, in 1971, when I was a freshman at a high school within the metropolitan area of Pittsburgh, PA in the smaller city of Duquesne, two senior student athletes got into a serious fight on a school bus coming back from a track meet.  Word about the fight spread quickly throughout my high school.  "Did you hear about the fight?"  "Who won?"  Everyone seemed to have an opinion or thought they knew the cause of the fight.  Later it was learned that the fight was over a cheerleader, one that both of them had eyes for.  The cheerleader was black.  One of the athletes was white.  The other was black, and in addition to being an outstanding track star, he was also an outstanding football star.  The black cheerleader and the black athlete were known to have dated.  She was also friendly with the white athlete and things were misinterpreted and it went downhill from there.  After the fight was broken up and the athletes disciplined, school officials thought the matter had been dealt with.  How wrong they were!

Now it didn't help that this was three years after the contentious, but absolutely necessary, voting rights act was passed.  Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been tragically assassinated, and there were riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention.  Protests of the Vietnam War were still on passionate display throughout the country.  At some level these events made a lasting mark on all of us, even an awkward husky white teenager who played on the high school football team.

My dad had coached our Little League team, which had nearly as many black players as white, and our home was often the meeting place after practice or a game because my mother would cook meals for the entire team. Some of my fondest memories are the camaraderie we shared, the foolish trouble we got into, the music we all listened to and artlessly attempted to dance to, and the games we played. Oh the games we played!   

Having lived for a time in a housing project, my brothers and I knew about "tough times," but the difficulties we faced weren't racial. They were mostly financial and behavioral. If anything we were all "brothers in the struggle" and formed bonds and friendships, that for many of us still exist to this day. 

Now back to that fight over a cheerleader.

Not satisfied to move on and let it go, some upperclassmen who were influenced, I'm guessing, by the racial, social and political tensions going on in the society at large, continued to fan the flames of racial unrest and somehow managed to turn a fight between two athletes over a cheerleader into a full blown race riot at my local high school.

The flashpoint came one morning when the class bell rang and instead of going to class, white students and black students defiantly walked out of separate exit doors, assembled across from one another in the streets and with fists, sawed off bats and other homemade weapons fought each other, in one of the most disgusting displays of racial unrest my 14 year old eyes and mind ever witnessed. Thankfully no one was killed.  There were a few broken limbs, lacerations and bruises for sure, but no loss of life or critical injuries.

This went on for a solid week, regardless of the threats and warnings of suspensions and expulsions being delivered by school administrators. The morning class bell would ring. The entire high school would ignore the bell.  Black and white students would walk out en masse to the streets and commence fighting.  Local police would be called, and after some difficulty they would succeed in breaking up the fights.  After the walkouts and fights were broken up, classes were generally cancelled for the remainder of the day.  

My city and my high school were featured stories on the local Pittsburgh news channels, and some of the racial unrest spread throughout the city.  Finally the school administrators and the local police appealed to the Governor who called in the National Guard. Students were suspended and armed guardsman patrolled the hallways to ensure that no one walked out when the bell rang.  This went on for a few days until we were deemed safe and some sense of normalcy returned. 

We were all impacted and caught up to some degree in this senseless and ugly display. My three younger brothers were still in middle school so they were spared the direct fall-out.  Some parents kept their children home from school. Most however, wouldn't even have thought about skipping school. The daily drama being played out proved too irresistible to just simply ignore.

You may be wondering about the awkward husky white freshman. When the bell rang, did he file out with the rest of the students, or did he go to class?  Did he line up on the side of the street with the friends from his little league team with whom he had spent so much time making great memories, or across from them?  Did he participate in the fights, throw a rock or land a fist?  I wish I could tell you that I went to class and took no part in it.

Like the overwhelming majority of my fellow high school students, when the bell rang, sadly I went along to get along. I went to the side of the street that the older students told me my whiteness had dictated and predetermined. "But, but, but these are my friends, my brothers in the struggle, my neighbors..."  But, but, but didn't matter.  I either got my butt in line or I would suffer the consequences, humiliation and shame.  I struck no one and mostly kept to myself or with a few other freshmen who like me could make little or no sense of what we were all witnessing.

I know many of my friends across the street were feeling the same way.  I could see it in their sad eyes as we looked across at each other.   I know because even years later I have talked with a few of them and they shared the same feelings and regrets that we had allowed things to get that far.

Why did we lack the courage to stand up to those older students?   Why didn’t we at least attempt to be peacemakers and reconcilers? Why didn’t we condemn racism, in all its ugliness and twisted views of humanity? 

If only this man who has had an encounter with the greatest Reconciler of all, who has devoted a significant part of his adult life to healing racial and other wounds, could go back in time and talk some sense into that awkward husky white freshman, what would he tell him?

He would tell him that his first instincts were right. He would tell him not to walk out of class. He would tell him to talk to as many of his classmates as he possibly could, to plead with them to stop.  And if they wouldn't, then go out into the street and stand in the middle, arm in arm with his black friends and white friends and with voices raised in unison, speak peace and healing to his fellow classmates that had become an angry hate filled mob.  But I can't go back in time. I can only deal with the here and now. 

Now, along with many others, I am witnessing protests and demonstrations throughout the country with greater frequency that have and are becoming increasingly physical and turning violent, with everyone looking for someone to blame. I am witnessing candidates for elected office trying desperately to force people to choose sides.  Organizations and organizers foment social and political tension, that even when it results in physical violence, is excused or ignored, as long as it suits their long rang goals and political ambitions. 

I am hearing that high school class bell ring all over again and I am watching so many of my fellow classmates walkout on civility, humanity and common decency, and into the streets.

They are taking sides against one another.  I am watching a society increasingly unable and unwilling to see through the looking glass, to see the other, to see that we all are the other, that there really never was the other and that we all are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper. 

In days of old,  the word of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel: "I looked for someone to stand up for me against all this, to repair the defenses of the city, to take a stand for me and stand in the gap to protect this land so I wouldn’t have to destroy it. I couldn’t find anyone." Ezekiel 22:30  

And I am asking the great Reconciler to give my brothers and sisters and me the strength and courage to go out into the streets, not choosing sides, but arm in arm, with our voices raised in harmony, rejecting all forms of hate and bigotry.  Standing forever, if need be, courageously in the gap. Healing wounds.  Repairing the breach.  

I know that I could never have done it alone in '71 and I cannot do it alone now.  Stand with me.

STILL I WILL

I’m troubled by ghosts from the past
Which for a time were gone but not forgotten
Who now come carrying lash

I’m troubled by the future gates
That I cannot yet see
Destined to walk through

I’m troubled by this lonesome day
Having no one to comfort me in my sorrow

He that tamed me
Yet might slay me

Resurrection’s quest
Forever in my chest
Even entombed
I shall hear His voice
And rejoice
To see Him stand upon the earth

Still I Will
Steel my Will
Strengthen my Heart
For the journey that lies ahead.