Who Lynched Willie Earle? by Willimon William H.;

Author:Willimon, William H.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Published: 2017-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Only then are we are free to tell the truth of our captivity: “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory” (Rom 3:23), and “There is no righteous person, not even one” (Rom 3:10).

What white congregations need is not blame but recognition, honest admission. William Stringfellow told white social activists that if they wanted to do something “practical” to work the reconciliation of the races they could “weep. First, care enough to weep.”42 As Jeremiah demonstrated to Israel, the first prophetic move is tears. People in power put a happy face on present arrangements and extol Incarnation as a sign that God is pleased as punch with us, just as we are.

Christians are free not to be happy with the status quo. In weeping and godly sorrow, we let go of our tight, defensive grip on the present and begin to dream a new future.

Martin Luther King, in writing to the good, white liberals of Birmingham, noted that early Christians gladly suffered for their beliefs and their witness disturbed people in power. Today the church is a flaccid voice, a defender of the establishment and preserver of the status quo. Sadly, the power structure of Birmingham is consoled rather than disturbed by the church.43

In lament for our history in white and black we show that we are taking the first steps to fulfilling Paul’s injunction: “Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature” (Rom 12:2).

In reading this book you join with me in lament, then move beyond tears to transformation and obedience to God’s will. All this is from God, leading to lives that do not contradict God, allowing ourselves to be loved by the one who first loved us.

In an Advent sermon on Matthew 1:1-17, Drew Martin confessed the sin of his family in South Carolina as a call to confession in his small-town South Carolina congregation:

Whether or not my ancestors were in fact racist was not [a thought] that I had ever seriously pondered. I claimed that they were not racist without even thinking about it. I grew up in a very inter-racial school district and took it for granted that racism was wrong. My great-great Grandfather fought for the Confederacy. . . . I had always been proud of this, because my family was proud of it, and I never thought about a potential conflict with my modern views on the topic of race.44

Martin relates how a conversation with an African American colleague (a woman who dared to question his assertion that “my family wasn’t racist”) forced him “to reflect . . . there is no indication that my family was ever involved in the abolition movement or the civil rights movement, [therefore] the likelihood is that at least by today’s standards they were racist. I don’t know whether any of my family ever owned slaves, but if they didn’t most likely it was because as far as I can tell no one in my family has ever had any money.

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