In the late fall of 1967 I was in the process of completing my first year of college. Just before Christmas of that year – along with the rest of the members of the Mount Union College Choir (now The University of Mount Union) – I was a part of a concert tour through the southern states that included several large church venues along the gulf side of Florida.
Like a great many college choirs on tour, after our concerts we often stayed in the homes of host families.
One night I became involved with my host family for the evening in a discussion on race. My host family, with shocked surprise, had observed that – in their words – “colored people” were a part of our group.
As we spoke, the issue of inclusion of blacks in the choir along with the greater civil rights movement, became a topic. At one rather loud point, one of the host family members made this statement: “the country would be a lot better off and less violent if all colored people were like those people in our town. Here, they know their place!”
It was a most uncomfortable evening. Coming face to face with church people who were so confident, comfortable and convinced of their perspective on the place of fellow citizens of color in this country…a place which was not to be shared with whites, a place of lawful, ordered segregation and greatly diminished opportunity.
Over a half century has passed since that evening. The discussion still haunts me.
I am haunted with regret for what I did not say. I regret that my manners for respecting overnight bed and breakfast hosts did not outweigh the visceral disgust I felt for their self-righteous, racial prejudice.
I am haunted and sickened by the memory that until that evening on the tour it never occurred to me that the black members of our choir would have had to have special accommodation arrangements made to avoid any “incidents.”
I am haunted by the fact that I sat silent in the face of such racism – a racism which just assumed that as a white kid I shared my hosts’ views. I am haunted that my hosts were leading church members. I am haunted that in so many ways then I did not know better. I am haunted by the fact that in too many unrecognized ways I did not know differently.
Over 50 years have passed and our collective lives are haunted by unaddressed, un-confronted, unredeemed racism. Racism is still very much alive, thriving, and even effectively used as a political tool for electoral advantage.
In our time, it is more than disgusting that systemic, white privilege is championed by some seeking and/or retaining elected, public office. It is an outrageous blasphemy that the racism used for political advantage by candidates is both endorsed and promoted by those who see Jesus as a lily-white champion of Caucasian America.
It is more than disgusting that a great many silent, white voices have enabled literal and societal knees to be kept on the throats of people of color.
It is more than disgusting that the affirmation Black Lives Matter cannot be heard by many of us whites for the meaning it carries. We cannot hear the chant and affirmation that Black Lives Matter understanding the phrase as the truth that for far too long black lives did not matter nearly as much as the lives of those born white. Black Lives Matter is a demand for equality in ALL THE PLACES available for occupancy in the life of this nation.
There is a foundational, biblical principle and revelatory experience which occurred several thousand years PRIOR to the birth of Jesus that too many self-styled, “successful” American evangelical preacher types do not want you to know.
It is a foundational, core belief that we cannot allow the evangelical hysterics who propose to know God’s vision and purpose better than anyone else to continue to hide under their theological nonsense of entitled privilege. Those of us who understand the biblical witness far differently, cannot let the leadership of the religious right of culture-captured, American civil religion to keep any one of us in a mannered, respectful or religiously intimidated, bullied silence.
PLEASE!! NOW HEAR THIS:
One of the greatest revelations of God that the Hebrew/Christian biblical witness expresses is this: WHEN WE ACKNOWLEDGE WHO CREATED US, WHEN WE COME TO EXPERIENCE WHO IT IS TO WHOM WE BELONG, THERE IS NO PLACE WE CANNOT SHARE; THERE IS NO PLACE WHERE WE ARE KEPT IN PLACE BY THE COLOR OF OUR SKIN OR ANY OTHER CRITERIA.
What if Sarah, Miriam, Esther, Rahab, Rachel, Deborah, Zipporah, Ruth, or Mary Magdala – just to mention a few women of different ethnicity, tribe and religious perspective – had “known their place” and stayed in it? What if Moses had stayed in a place of privilege and centuries later Jesus had only envisioned leadership in the Brotherhood of Carpenters?
Since God has created us, God has taught us – not to know our place but – that God has made a place in our lives. Therefore, each one of us is a sanctuary of the most holy.
ABSOLUTELY, BLACK LIVES MATTER. God has taken up residence in the spiritual DNA of human life which God created. Skin color and race is certainly a moon cast shadow of importance in relation to whom we all belong. We all share the same spiritual source. When will it be that we truly bless the ties that bind our hearts in a divine fellowship?
Instead of waving a bible wrongly interpreted, and too often tragically applied, all of us need to live out the Word implanted on our hearts. Such a spiritual awareness and practice drives out what haunts us and moves us all to a better, more loving, and infinitely more just…PLACE.
I WANT TO BE IN THAT PLACE AND DO ALL I CAN TO AFFIRM AND PROMOTE IT.