Forty-four years ago, on March 7th, Alabama state troopers and a sheriff's posse broke up a march by civil rights demonstrators from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Also known as Bloody Sunday because the troopers and posse attacked the 600 marchers with billy clubs and tear gas, it was the first of three March marches that are hallmarks in the U.S. civil rights movement. The second March was attempted two days later. The third march, begun on March 21st and lasting for five days completed the 54-mile journey. For the majority of the seminarians I teach now, these marches and the civil rights movement in general are the stuff of history. For me, they are memories. This presents a challenge for my teaching because I am now in the position of not being able to draw on my students' recollections about events of the 1960s (as well as the 70s as most are born post 1980) so that we can blend their experience with the ethical theories we are exploring in the books and films we use to develop more faithful moral decision-making abilities. Instead, I find that my students bring little historical awareness of our history as a nation and the role that the churches have played in that history. In short, we are bad historians and this is a problematic place to be as people of faith. It means that we are cut off from what it means to be a people of history that spans for centuries and has much to teach us for the present day and the ways in which we must be working for a better future. Our histories, religious and secular, should be part of the faith tool kit we have at our disposal as we sort through our options for how we live our lives and the values we pass on to the generations coming behind us.
Because we often do not have this history at our disposal to draw on because we do not know it, I often hear students ask: "Who will be our next great leader?" They are often drawing on the models of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks -- the two civil rights movement protesters they know best. When I suggest that the people they are looking for staring back at them in the mirror each morning, I often hear a collective gulp in the room before we begin to explore what this may mean for them and their ministries. Most, I am happy to say, are willing to take up the challenge as we begin to talk about the historical resources we have for them to draw on. Often, I suggest that they begin with the Bible and not treat it as much as a moral rule book, but more as a testament of faith and faithlessness that we can draw on and learn from as we see that folks have been trying to figure out how to live their lives in response to God's call to us for a mighty long time. We, then, are standing in a long line of folks working out what discipleship -- the living out of our faith -- must mean for this time and place with a strong eye to future and the foundation we are laying for it with what we do now. My students are earnest and they want to make the world a better place. So we work on faith strategies, large and small (but particularly the small because it is in the persistent faithful actions we do each day that wears away injustice at its foundations), that can help bring in the new day dawning they are trying to visualize even as they are building it.
We sort through the strategies of protest used historically and I challenge them to begin to look at new modes of protest for today. The world has changed and continues to change rapidly. Many of the social institutions like the press have changed in significant ways and how we get our information has dramatically changed now that there are very few private acts we can do that will not end up in some public stage that ranges from gossip to billboards to the internet. I wonder how the liberal and progressive church responds to these new realities as well. How well are these churches and others across the theological spectrum letting our members and attendees know about the history of the denominations we are in and the role that individual church has had in it? To our peril, we can become so focused on mission and social injustices that we fail to teach folks the reason why we are so concerned about this world and how our historical faith statements compel us to act. One of the important lessons I learned growing up in Durham and Southern Pines, North Carolina is that faith should be founded on spirituality and social witness and relying on only one side of that equation makes us listing Christians and ultimately not very faithful. My grandmother would then remind me that there is a big difference between acting pious and being faithful. That lesson stuck and it is the one that we need as our watchword if we want to forge and effective and faithful progressive Christian witness for today.
Eddie Glaude, Jr., Ph.D.: Remembering 'Bloody Sunday' the Day After
There is nothing easy about remembering Selma.
Yes, they believed in freedom, equality and liberty
None of which you'll find in the Bible.
If anything, the civil rights activists founded a BETTER form of Christianity which ignored the backward parts of the Bible.
As an academician, Obama should know that the connections between the past and present must always be made...because young people are not aware firsthand about the struggles so many died for doesn't mean they cannot get the consequences of bigotry and racism today. We understood the struggles generations before us endured, they can too, and must.
Remember civil rights demonstrators from Selma were Christian.
Forget that the Police who beat up the demonstrators were Christian.and
Forget that Slave owners were Christian with slave owning mandated as a biblical right.
Remember that any faithful moral decision-making abilities are Christian.
Forget that the ten commandments are immoral instructions that need tossed out of society.
Forget the number of wars and atrocities done because of or on behalf of the Christian religion.
Forget that we are moral despite religion, not because of it.
Remember that a number of past great scientists were Christian.
Forget that the Christians destroyed all secular education when they gained political power.
Forget that Christians still want "flood-geology" and "creation-science" taught in schools despite these stupidities being totally disproved by even the most casual objective observations.
Nice of Christians to accept credit for anything good.
They are Ego centered enough to think the master of the universe looks after them personally.
Violence at a legalization rally? "Drugs cause violence"
Violence at a nuclear peace rally? "Peace causes violence"
Causal relationships- humans don't innately understand these things, our brains are not scientific naturally. The ignorant are the ones that think that what they observe is fact. The bible was written by people that had no understanding of the scientific method, and is followed by those that still don't.
And yes, it is interesting how some people can so easily and self-righteously justify their hate and bigotry of all things or all people religious.
A good person, religious or not, should minimize hate and bigotry, and maximize tolerance and understanding.
No IQ score, no religious, atheist, agnostic, or political philosophy justifies the maltreatment of a race, sex, or religion, lack of religion.
And whose to say which interpretation is wrong?
I guess a funny footnote here would be that my dad was a black teenager in Arkansas during the civil rights era. And my mom was a white girl from a Catholic family in Michigan who burned bras and dresses and generally raised all **** with convention. It's pretty remarkable how the circumstances of your birth can make you so much more socially aware.
I'm not afraid. I'm looking forward to the day when universal access to instant information will signal the death knell to superstition.
That time can't come fast enough.
Yes, I'm sure the vast majority of them were.
But what they did shows what people can overcome with a strong will, determination and bravery!
There was no supernatural intervention ... THEY deserve all the credit for what they did ... not a supernatural being that they believed in ... those who opposed and oppressed them believed in the same supernatural being.
I'm guessing your tongue was firmly planted in your cheek when you wrote that!
These slaves and serfs created a strictly egalitarian society, which valued freedom, disliked hierarchy and this was a revolutionary society-building enterprise and the true message in the bible from these ancient Israelites.
See also "The Gospel According to Lilith" where these very same points are made in historical fiction form.
Progressives have allowed the right to hijack the progressive messages in the bible. We need to take that document back.
How about if all of us just come to the determination that treating one's fellow human being with respect and dignity is all that is necessary. Why do we need gods to cajole or coerce us in to behaving rationally and kindly?
What say you???
I'll even take it a step further: After 200+ years, America has finally elected its first black President,; yet he dare not be black, because America will then reject him. How crazy is that?
What you are suggesting is akin to let's not discuss the Civil War or the Vietnam War because those were significant events in which our country did not shine.
I found this well-researched doctoral dissertation by Gregory Nelson Hite, entitled:
"The Hottest Places in Hell: The Catholic Church and Civil Rights
in Selma, Alabama, 1937-1965"
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/etd/diss/ArtsSci/ReligiousStudies/2002/Hite/TheHottestPlacesinHell.pdf
The dissertation finds, as one would have expected, that the majority of church goers and their leaders disapproved or even hated the protests (or protesters). There was little support for a rapid granting of civil rights from white religious leaders, and there was some amount of disagreement as to how to achieve it among black pastors. However, there were many people, both white and black, willing to risk their lives in pursuit of equality for all. One of the those was Fr. Maurice Ouellette. He struggled to obey his bishop while still helping the movement. You can read more about him in this cnn article;
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/07/selma.march.anniversary/index.html