In his classic meditation on the spirituals, Deep River, Howard Thurman, made a profound observation about the role of Christian slaves in the nation's history. "By some amazing but vastly creative spiritual insight the slave undertook the redemption of a religion that the master had profaned in his midst."
To profane something sacred is to desecrate it, to treat it with irreverence or contempt. The slaveholder's profaned Christianity by racism, which degrades the sacrality of human persons, and by materialism, which values things over people and so effaces the image of God in which they are created. Contrary to the religion of those Americans who believed that Christianity and slavery were compatible, the slaves bore witness, sometimes with their blood, to the truth of the gospel: that the law of love contradicted slavery and the racism upon which it was built.
Today, we fail to understand how radical this gospel was. But black Christians of the late 18th century were among the earliest to make the case that slavery and Christianity were not only contradictory but that Christianity demanded the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. American slaves were the paradigm, the test case, the key witnesses to the truth that Christian community extends to all peoples, all races, and that it extends fully, not partially, depending upon the color of a person's skin. So segregated pews, segregated graveyards, ministers of the gospel participating in the slave trade, the refusal of southern churches to recognize the permanence of slave marriages, their toleration of laws that forbade slaves to learn to read the very Bible that stood at the heart of American Christianity -- all these deformations of Christianity slaves challenged.
They also challenged the nation to live up to the religious principles upon which it was founded: principles of equality grounded in the inalienable rights bestowed by the Creator. Preceding the Revolution, slaves pointed out the failure of Americans to fully understand the principles they claimed constituted their identity as a nation. As early as 1774 slaves in Massachusetts sent a petition to the governor: "We have in common with all other men a naturel right to our freedoms without Being deprived of them by our fellow men as we are a freeborn Pepel and have never forfeited this Blessing by aney compact or agreement whatever. But we were unjustly dragged by the cruel hand of power from our dearest frinds and sum of us stolen from the bosoms of our tender Parents ... and Brought hither to be made slaves for Life in a Christian land."
Note the reference to "the cruel hand of power." Slaves appreciated, through direct experience, the corruption of principles, of common decency, of basic humanity, that comes from wielding unchecked power, over other human beings. They realized the brutalizing effect of power upon those who hold it and upon those who suffer from its use. They stood as witnesses to the deep antipathy between Christianity and oppression. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God; blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled." If the beatitudes delineate the character of the Christian community, the slaves represented so many bibles reminding a guilty nation of its failure to live up to this model. Indeed, slave Christians stood in prophetic condemnation of the nation's original sin, in the midst of the massive denial and the obstinate pride that prompted white people to think of America as the Promised Land and the Redeemer Nation despite the existence of slavery. No, the slaves said, America isn't the New Israel; she's the Old Egypt. By witnessing to the failure of American Christianity, the slaves called Americans to conversion, to the possibility of redemption, and offered a model of a different interpretation of Christian life.
In particular, slaves revealed that Americans had a deeply flawed understanding of what it meant to be chosen by God. To be chosen does not bring preeminence, elevation and glory in this world, as most 19th-century Americans expected. Indeed, as slave Christians well knew, to be chosen by God brings humiliation, suffering and rejection. Choseness, as revealed in the life of Jesus, led to a cross. The lives of his disciples have been signed with that cross. To be chosen means joining company with those who suffer, the outcast, the poor and the wretched of the earth. Choseness requires entering the mystery of suffering. This was (and remains) a profoundly Christian condemnation of the nation's dominant idea of American choseness. African-American Christians believed they were chosen because their history fit the pattern of redemption revealed in the Bible. In weakness lies strength, in loss, gain, in death, life.
When Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman visited Gandhi in the 1930s, he asked them to sing for him the old spiritual "Where you there when they crucified my Lord," which he felt got at "the root of the experience of the entire human race under the spread of the healing wings of suffering." What Gandhi, and many others around the world, recognized in the spirituals that came out of slave suffering was the authenticity (what James Baldwin called "the matchless authority") that comes, that can only come from suffering. Suffering stripped slaves of illusions. It revealed the bare fact of the human person's total dependence upon God. "Trustin' in the Lord," not in oneself or in other men became their watchword. Life, indeed every breath, is grounded in God. Poverty and poverty of spirit revealed the God-shaped emptiness at the core of the person.
James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain, in a passage redolent with allusions to scripture, the spirituals and gospel music, eloquently captures the paradoxical history of suffering and triumph of slaves and their descendants. The novel focuses on one day in the life of John Grimes, a black adolescent in Harlem, who seeks to escape the squalid tenements, the racial oppression and desperate poverty of his people. On his 14th birthday John is cast down upon the dusty floor of a storefront sanctified church, "astonished under the power of God." There he experiences the rebirth of a conversion experience. In his trance he confronts an army of people and is engulfed by a company of the suffering. Struggling to flee, he realizes there is no escape. And suddenly their suffering becomes a sound, a sound John not only recognizes but internalizes:
And now in his moaning ... he heard it in himself -- it rose from his ... cracked-open heart. It was a sound of rage and weeping which filled the grave ... rage that had no language, weeping with no voice -- which yet spoke now to John's startled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest patience, and the longest night; of the deepest water, the strongest chains, the most cruel lash ... and most bloody, unspeakable sudden death. Yes the body in the fire, the body on the tree.He struggles to flee, but there is no escape. He must go through this suffering of his peoples past to viscerally experience the paradox that it is precisely these wretched who are the chosen ones of God.
No power could hold this army back, no water disperse them, no fire consume them. One day they would compel the earth to heave upward, and surrender the waiting dead. They sang where the darkness gathered, where the lion waited, where the fire cried and where the blood ran down ... No, the fire could not hurt them, and yes, the lion's jaws were stopped; the serpent was not their master, the grave was not their resting-place, the earth was not their home. Job bore them witness and Abraham was their father. Moses had elected to suffer with them ... Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had gone before them into the fire, their grief had been sung by David, and Jeremiah had wept for them. Ezekiel had prophesied upon them, these scattered bones, these slain, and, in the fullness of time, the prophet, John, had come out of the wilderness, crying that the promise was for them. They were encompassed with a very cloud of witnesses ... And they looked unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of their faith, running with patience the race He had set before them; they endured the cross, and they despised the shame, and waited to join Him one day, in glory, at the right hand of the Father.
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Is not slavery the greatest example of theft. If you "own" someone, do you not steal his freedom, his control over his life, his ability to earn a living, in many cases his loved ones, his children? Did the writers of the Old and New Testaments not realize this? Of course they did, but they were hypocrites and didn't want to offend those who had the wealth and power to own slaves. It's the same that goes on in the GOP today. They talk about "what's best for the country", but they know well that since Reagan and his "government is not the solution, but the problem" the government has made it easier for the rich and harder for the poor to survive. These same hypocrites are afraid to offend the super rich, so they go along with the charade. How can anyone be a Christian and a Republican in this country? The two are totally incompatible.
The degradation began long before, and spread from there. It was acceptable, even God sanctioned (Patriarchal). It began as gender bias, from narcission (?), but bias seems to weak a word to describe the "emnity" that existed.
And interesting study below, from Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728121329.htm
Interestingly, I see the story of Adam & Eve writ large in society. Eve states that the snake deceived her. What the snake accomplished initially was slandering woman to others, first male (?) then other females, and in the process, deceived Eve into believing she was less then, that she deserved her fate. There is no presumption of innocence in the story (part of the deception is that there is). There is a presumption of guilt and that presumption is cast onto all others. Original sin?
Eve is forced to prove herself, innocence, goodness, as is Adam. Women are forced into slavery.
The slavery being to redeem themselves and men, through men, and religion, or the government in a secular atheist society. If she's good, then by default he's good and by default the religion is good.
Women become the slaves of men and men become the slaves of the patriarch to maintain the story as is, thus redeeming God/religion.
A short time ago I would have ignored your article. I grew up proud of Confederate ancestors, ashamed of my Yankee one. But, I've been a Christian since I was 9 and following Jesus leads me to sometimes read articles with which I think I may disagree.
This article is one of the most amazing, inspiring articles I can remember. I find in it a way to understand how faithful Christian slaves, formerly owned by "Christian" men, could live joyful Christian lives. They lead us to know that the way of Jesus is not one of power, but one of sacrifice and suffering, leading not to an earthly "Kingdom", but to a cross. To follow Jesus is to embrace the Aniwim, the poor in spirit. - Carlin Brooks
It is indeed marvelous that notwithstanding tribulation, in Jesus is the solution (John 16:33).
"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
Slavery is a choice of man, not God. He never condoned it, He just explained the way one should treat another person when you have enslaved that person. God (Jesus) came to a world steeped in sin, and explained God, and His relationship with His Created, man.
That's only half true, the whole truth is that it was also, and equally, built on the backs of white and American Indian slaves. The Chinese suffered egregiously. The whole truth is that blacks, whites and American Indian's owned slaves and they owned slaves from each other. The whole truth is that spouse abuse exists in all groups, which isn't to say that all within a group experience or practice spouse abuse.
Knowing that sets one free of "other" imposed and unjust guilt. What you don't know can hurt you. If death enters the world, it is because one now knows. Once you know, you can begin to make other choices, until then free will did not exist, freedom of conscience did not exist.
If God, as proposed by you, explained how one should treat another person when you enslaved them, then he condoned it.
Perhaps what you are referring to is the verse, "Suffer the little children to come unto me"? Ghandi certainly would have appreciated that verse, given his heritage/religion/philosophy.
Lerone Bennent, in the article I cited, takes the opposite view. He deals with the subject with unmatched integrity and empathy.
http://wwwÂ.libarts.uÂco.edu/hisÂtory/faculÂty/robersoÂn/course/4Â753/ReadinÂgs/1/4753WÂhiteServitÂude.htm
Have you ever wondered what a miracle is? I got to thinking about that. I conclued that what all miracles have in common is joy. The word miracle can be reduced, etymologically to the word smile.
When reduced to the least common demominator, miracles bring joy. Joy was the intention of Jesus if Jesus preformed miracles. He brought, iow's, great joy, and passed it around, shared his joy with others.
Thomas Jefferson created his own bible, and he cut all the miracles out of it.
The closen people of God started doing what other nations they saw were doing, materialisÂm, $$$ lust, worshiping gods, that were NOT gods at all.
My reply!
There is not a people, culture, religion, that does not fall short of God's standard, and man's ideals. The more my hair whiten's the more I realize all governing nucleuses on this earth, have a hair of differenceÂ; all suffocate to a large degree God the Father from the temple of life that dwells within each of us! No need to point fingers at this one and that one - all fall short!
Only from the acceptance of the shed blood of our Savior, a gift from God Almighty; to man (kind) that has shown nothing but clueless indifferenÂce as stewards of this magnificenÂt earth -- are given the opportunitÂy for eternal life on earth under Yahweh's (aka, Jehovah) eternal rule! Hallelujah to that. Thank you God!
Frederick Douglass
If there is no point from which to begin we need to admit it and move on to more attainable goals. I don't mean that to enflame passions, just trying to be realistic.
However, at the garden of Gethsame, in the NT, when the Romans soldiers came for Jesus(pbuh) all his disciples forsook him and fled leaving him at the mercy of the Romans.
Even when Pontous Pilate, the Roman governor, ask the people to choose between a murderer and Jesus. they choose Jesus to be crucified instead of the murderer.
Basically according the NT, his people did not came out en masses to defend their King.
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And the Tea Party and Evangelicals would like to go back to that bit of yore. It is still going on today. Conservatives and religious conservatives, have pretty much profaned Christianity today. So this has not stopped. That the slaves were able to rise above that misery gives them great credit. It is an inspiring story.
Your second question is a silly question until someone can come with verifiable and falsifiable evidence that supports the existence of a god.
As to chosen people. Sorry, I don't buy into any God that chooses "His" people. God, if there is one, is outside his creation. If you believe in a God or being that created this universe, you must accept that everything is then His chosen beings, from the smallest nuclear particle to the whole universe.
At the end of the day, all we have is each other. We have to find a way to live together in peace and harmony. Humans formed societies to survive against the forces of nature and other predators, that should be our guidance.
At the point where suffering comes to seem self-flagellation it somehow doesn't seem entirely sane. I believe the road to character isn't necessarily comfortable but also believe the best of the old school rappers don't rap about staying where they've been.
They tell people it's no more than a lesson.They tell people shake it off, rise up. They tell people don't let anyone put that on you. They tell people make light of it and you'll find that's where spirit is. My soul is very heavy but I'm working on reforming it to be more like spirit.
I guess I also believe that many are called but few are chosen and that there don't need to be many chosen, since they do so much.