by UrbanFaith Staff | Jan 27, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
c. 2014 Religion News Service
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan (Photo Credit: AP/Richard Drew)
(RNS) In the last month, many Westerners watched in horror as Uganda, and then Nigeria, enacted laws that are brutally repressive to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The fate of a bill passed by the Ugandan parliament remains uncertain after President Yoweri Museveni refused to sign it, but news reports from Nigeria indicate that there have been mass arrests of gay men following President Goodluck Jonathan’s signing of the National Assembly’s anti-gay bill.
World leaders, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, have expressed their dismay. Many Christian leaders around the world, regrettably, have been largely unwilling to criticize Christian leaders in Africa who cheered the passage of these punitive laws.
The Anglican primates of Uganda and Nigeria enthusiastically support anti-gay legislation in their countries. I, like them, am a member of the Anglican Communion, a worldwide body of more than 80 million Christians. I am troubled and saddened that fellow Anglicans could support legislation that fails to recognize that every human being is created in the image of God.
Western Christians cannot ignore the homophobia of these church officials or the peril in which they place Ugandan and Nigerian LGBT people. The legacy of colonial-era Christian missionaries and infusions of cash from modern-day American conservatives have helped to create it.
Twice in the last three years, I have traveled to Africa to meet with biblical scholars, grass-roots activists and church officials at consultations about the Bible and sexuality. These brave leaders have taught me that there is no getting around the Bible when searching for the origins of the homophobia that is rampant in many African cultures. What’s more, Europeans and North Americans bear much of the historical responsibility for this sad state of affairs. As Zimbabwean biblical scholar Masiiwa Ragies Gunda has written, it is “far-fetched to look beyond the activities of Western missionaries” when considering the role of the Bible in Africa.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western missionaries, fired with fervor to save souls in what they called “the dark continent,” sought to translate the Bible into indigenous languages so that converts could hear the Word of God, with special emphasis on the passages that urged hard work and submission. We know the result: as former President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya reportedly said, “When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
Along with the Bible, Western missionaries also bequeathed to Africans a literal understanding of how to read it. Today, that literalism continues to encourage fundamentalist interpretation of difficult passages like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Although many scholars in Africa now understand that these passages are properly read in context of the ancient cultures that produced them, people can still fuel grass-roots homophobia by appropriating a handful of biblical texts that seem to vilify gay people.
As a result, Christians who publicly advocate for more historically accurate biblical interpretations and more generous treatment of LGBT people can find themselves jobless, homeless and in grave danger.
The situation is not hopeless. Across Christian Africa, tools like contextual Bible study, developed in post-apartheid South Africa, provide new ways to read the Bible and what it has to say about sexuality and other central issues in the lives of African Christians. These new readings of old texts encourage Christians to accept LGBT people as God’s children.
Even so, progressive African Christians are fighting an uphill battle. The voices of strident homophobic leaders in Africa have been amplified by large infusions of money from American right-wing culture warriors such as Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., who has bankrolled homophobia on both sides of the Atlantic and helped make common cause between right-wing American Anglican splinter groups and the Anglican churches of Nigeria and Uganda.
Western Christians cannot fix the homophobia that is currently gripping Nigeria, Uganda, or other African countries. We can, however, stand in solidarity with progressive Africans and support their efforts to teach new ways of interpreting the Bible and understanding sexuality. When we see human rights abuses, we can speak out. And most of all, we can acknowledge with humility that we bear our share of the responsibility for this tragic legacy of empire and insist on repudiating contemporary efforts to expand its reach.
(The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings is the president of the Episcopal Church’s lay and clergy House of Deputies and is a member of the worldwide Anglican Consultative Council. She is a founding steering committee member of the Chicago Consultation.)
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Jan 23, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
c. 2014 Religion News Service
A Sudanese Christian woman carries a across. Sudanese Christians have faced increased hostility since 2011, when the country split into two. (Photo Credit: Fredrick Nzwili)
(RNS) For Christians living in predominantly Muslim Sudan, travel restrictions are making life more difficult each day, a Roman Catholic cardinal said.
Sudanese Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir Wako highlighted the challenges at a Catholic Bishops Conference in Juba, the Republic of South Sudan’s capital. His auxiliary bishop could not attend the Jan. 21-30 meeting because his passport was seized by security agents, along with those of eight priests.
“Christians in the two countries are facing difficulties,” Wako told the gathering. “We (bishops) must focus on serious matters and come up with strong messages.”
Catholics and other Christians survived serious persecution during the Sudanese civil war (1983-2005), between the Khartoum-based Islamic government and rebels in the mainly Christian south.
In 2011, the country split in two, with the south becoming the Republic of South Sudan. Since then the Christian minority in the north has faced growing violence, harassment and discrimination, including reports of priests being interrogated and having their visas denied.
The government of Sudan recognizes only six priests out of about 40 as citizens of the country. The rest it considers citizens of the Republic of South Sudan, and there are fears continued harassment may force most of them to quit working in the north.
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by Chandra White-Cummings, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | Jan 21, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
In Part 1 of this series, I shared my thoughts and review of Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church, Edward Gilbreath’s newly-released book, described by him as an “extended reflection on Martin Luther King, Jr., Birmingham, and the church.”[1]
After reading Birmingham Revolution, I was eager to know more from Ed. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to talk with him about his book and questions it raises for all Americans as we press into the lingering obstacles we face to make our society a more just and reconciled one. I have known Ed for six years, so this interview held special meaning for me. Working closely with him during his tenure as the former founding editor of Urban Faith was a pleasure and privilege. He is now the Executive Director of Strategic Communication for The Evangelical Covenant Church denomination in Chicago. Our conversation covered a wide range of topics and issues. I spoke with Ed about several provocative issues implicated by his book. Anger, white power and privilege, cultural honesty and self-examination? Yes, we went there. While we spoke easily as two colleagues and now friends, we also approached our dialogue soberly, feeling the intensity of the times and the urgency of the task before us.
This excerpt from our discussion was edited for clarity and conversational flow.
Chandra White-Cummings: In the prologue you [talk] about [the] concept of ‘personal whiteness’ that W.E.B. DuBois described, the idea that whiteness can be owned as an asset and as a point of identity. You comment that as [whites] learned to exert that power to their advantage, things began to happen. Today, what are some ways they use power to their advantage?
Edward Gilbreath: Today and I think historically it’s a circumstantial thing that people of European descent began to recognize certain associations with their skin color and they began to make those connections. It’s more a [matter of] legacy….If you trace [it] back over time you could see that a lot of them benefitted, even the United States itself benefitted from the privileges that were ascribed to those of a particular race: whether it be ownership of slaves that did work [or] the economic development of slavery that led to the [building] of wealth for various families and institutions. So that legacy continues in ways that many people don’t even realize. People [today] weren’t around for that and you can’t blame them. They weren’t personally responsible for certain things but they’re still benefitting from them and have the privilege.
So, how do we see it exerted today? I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional; I think it’s just people living into a legacy, a heritage of privilege. The trick today is being able to step outside of that and to make the connections between how I am enjoying the position I’m in today and how that’s related to history and things that happened in the past. This doesn’t make people guilty of anything but it does mean maybe I need to be more responsible and hold myself in some way accountable for how I use the privilege I have. And as a Christian then what does that mean for me? What’s the responsible use of that privilege and that power? I don’t want to accuse anyone or point fingers and say [anyone] is being racist and is exerting white privilege, but I would think that all of us in different ways could step back and practice the role of a historian to make connections between what we have today and what it took for that to happen. And that’s not just white people, that’s also African Americans.
CWC: [In Chapter 4 you mention] conversations you’ve had with Randy Woodley (a Keetoowah Cherokee pastor, teacher, and activist) about the “spirituality of risk and doing.” I was captivated by that phrase…because there are two aspects to it: there’s risk but there’s also specific things that need to get done. It also shows that there is a spiritual component to taking risks; it’s not just about suffering social or political consequences. What risks do you think black Christians need to take [in the areas of racial justice and reconciliation]?
EG: Wow that’s a really good question. One thing that comes to mind is when you see someone like Bill Cosby who, over the years, has earned the right to speak his mind… But when you see him make a statement about the need for African Americans to be a little more self-critical and to take more personal responsibility, and challenging us on some of the things that may be detrimental to our uplift, a lot of folks turn on him because he would dare “blame” black people for their problems… I’m speaking generally here, but [it seems] we don’t want to put our dirty laundry on display and criticize some of the things we’re doing that are hurting [us]. So we need to be more honest with ourselves.
… [W]e should all equally be on the hook for the areas that God has given us to be accountable for. But I think there’s a mindset that will keep black folks stuck or paralyzed in an “us vs them” racism mentality [rather than] what does it look like if we decide to be purveyors of grace, being able to step aside and recognize some of the blind spots that some folks in the white community and the white church have but not let that put us in a spot where we allow ourselves to use that against them.
… I don’t look at our history as being something that always condemns us to being victims but in some ways it empowers us to be more grace-filled, more empowered to love others with greater knowledge of the fallenness [of human beings]. I think there’s risk involved in that…really taking the gospel seriously and living that out. If we do that, sometimes it might look like we’re letting people off the hook, or we’re [not] properly demonstrate[ing] whatever righteous indignation we should be showing. You can have a burning call and desire for justice while still being faithful to the call of loving your neighbor. That’s the trick, balancing [the two]. The tendency is to go one way or the other, either operating mostly out of anger or in another direction but what does it look like to balance those things? To me, that’s the spiritual risk in many ways.
[Speaking of anger…]
CWC: I know you hope that by reading the book people will see King in a different way and not romanticize him so much, and that we would get a more comprehensive view of him as an integrated human being; not just the I-have-a-dream icon. …I never considered him to be angry yet you show that he did carry some anger. You identify as one source of his anger people’s failure to really listen to what he was saying. I wonder a couple things. First, what do you think [black Christians] should do with our anger? Second, do you think the source of our anger today is the same reason [for King’s] anger back then?
EG: Dr. King was all about a redemptive approach and a constructive anger. Even as we’re being driven by a righteous indignation in pursuit of true justice, [we shouldn’t] allow that indignation or anger to become an end in itself, which I think sometimes happens today. Are we allowing it to drive us to build relationships or bridges with those who might traditionally be considered our opponents? [Are we] finding ways to humanize [them]…? [A]re we working in the community, volunteering to serve, doing things that may be of benefit? [T]he anger should drive us to get involved, to make a difference. We can be involved to build relationships, to reverse that anger, to drive us to something greater and redemptive.
For [many] I think anger today comes from a place of hopelessness and despair that is satisfied dwelling within that anger. Dr. King’s anger propelled him to move forward, but for some I think it’s become a pastime or a hobby just to dwell on the ways that racism exists today. For [people like that], they’re satisfied with being angry and leaving it there. But for Dr. King [the focus] wasn’t just pointing at racism, but [being] challenged to move forward. Whether it’s reaching across the racial divide or putting ourselves on the line to demand change in a specific arena. So it wasn’t just about being mad at the system, but it was about changing that system and about doing it in a redemptive way: by loving your neighbor through nonviolent means. There’s a role for being angry but it needs to drive us to something redemptive, and I’m not sure that’s [always] the case.
CW: I believe the Christian community hasn’t clearly articulated what we think reconciliation should look like among [Christians of different ethnicities]. It doesn’t seem that we’ve identified it in actionable or measurable terms. Dr. King and his colleagues had readily identifiable issues they were dealing with: discrimination in public accommodations, discrimination in housing, voting rights, etc. Do you think we have a clearly expressed vision of what reconciliation looks like?
EG: For the purposes of this book, I was thinking of it in terms of Dr. King’s beloved community. The beloved community described a society defined by justice, peace, and harmony that came through nonviolent means. There’s a sense that the pursuit of the beloved community—racial reconciliation in modern terms—is an ongoing activity. Part of the problem we’ve had over the last twenty years or so is that we’ve set out to pursue it as if there’s [an] end point [and once] we reach it, we’re done. [W]hat defines it is how we interact with our brothers and our sisters within church and within society. [Do we] see each other as real people and not as props for a particular ideology or political perspective or the stereotypes we associate with race? Are we able to move past [what] the world tells us we should believe about each other and see each other as people created in the image of God? We have to wrestle with getting along with our fellow man. The commitment is to loving the person beyond the labels and beyond [what’s] attached to them by the world. That’s work. There won’t always be agreement but yet the underlying commitment is to unity and to reconciliation. It’s always going to be hard; it’s always going to be a struggle. Are [we] ready to wrestle…to do what it takes to love our brother and sister, [to move] beyond the issues of race, culture, and politics? Are [we] ready to sign up for that?
Ed’s right; it’s time to live the gospel in an authentic and transformative way. In the prophetic tradition of Dr. King, he calls us to shed the shackles of cultural conformity and become bold extremists for justice and love.
[1] Edward Gilbreath, Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church, (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2013), 167
by UrbanFaith.com | Jan 17, 2014 | Feature, Headline News, MLK |
c. 2014 Religion News Service
(RNS) The nation will mark the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday (Jan. 20) with speeches, prayers and volunteer service.
But for decades, retired United Methodist Bishop Woodie W. White has marked the holiday in a more personal way: He writes a “birthday letter” to the civil rights leader who was killed in 1968.
“It was a way to get kind of a year’s assessment on what the nation was accomplishing and not accomplishing in the area of race,” said White, a bishop-in-residence at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology for the last decade.
“I did it because, frankly, I needed to have perspective. I needed to not get discouraged, and I needed it to be affirming of progress in race which had taken place over the course of a year.”
White started the custom in 1976, when he chose to write a letter to King instead of giving a traditional speech to the Human Rights Commission in Howard County, Md. He continued writing on and off while he served as the first head of the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Religion and Race. Since 1985, he’s written the letters annually, and they’re now published by United Methodist News Service.
White’s letter updates King on the latest strides in race relations while also acknowledging “a hard residue of racism that just won’t seem to die.” He admitted in his most recent letter to being discouraged by mass incarceration and the “lack of outrage” about legislation that has disenfranchised black voters.
“While we are yet flawed by those among us who hold to racial bigotry and intolerance, they no longer define us as a nation or a people!” White wrote in his 2014 edition.
White, 78, and King were not close friends, but they met in the 1960s when White was a Detroit minister and King made annual visits to the city to preach a sermon during Lent.
In 1963, White was among the more than 100,000 who took part in the Detroit “Walk to Freedom” march, where King gave a trial run of his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two months later, White was in a larger crowd at the March on Washington.
“He began to speak and I said, ‘This sounds familiar,’’’ the bishop recalled. “It was a different context. It was almost like hearing it anew, or for the first time.”
Now, White communicates with King by letter, even though his missives will never be answered.
“The one thing every letter tries to say is that we are light-years ahead in the area of race than we were when Dr. King was alive,” said White. “If he could make an overall assessment, he would not believe how far we’ve come as a nation.”
White’s writing reflects lingering tensions in race relations, rejoicing at the scope of interracial relations and decrying the fatal shooting of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
“We have more and more people of different races relating to each other, working in offices together, neighbors,” White said. “At the same time, we have schools that are more segregated, for instance, than they were in 1954.”
The letters also have personal touches, with references to his friend and civil rights activist Joseph Lowery and the deaths of Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela. He marveled at the two elections of President Obama, but criticized how the appointments of former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell were “not so appropriately recognized.”
Bettie W. Story edited White’s columns when he served as a bishop in Illinois. His “Dear Martin” letters were published in a church newspaper and gained a national audience after she recommended them to The United Methodist Reporter.
Illinois Methodists, both black and white, appreciated the annual dispatches, which encouraged them to pay tribute to King, she said.
“The bishop made it easier for them to do something within their own local churches,” recalled Story, 80. “They would reprint the letter in their church newsletters.”
White speaks from personal experience when he tells King how far race relations have come. As a Detroit pastor, he visited a white Methodist church in Jackson, Miss., in the 1960s and was arrested and fined $1,000 for “disturbing divine worship” and $1,000 for trespassing. Decades later, as a bishop, he was invited to speak and join in a potluck luncheon at that same church, which is now one of the most integrated in the city.
White often closes his letter with a variation on the words of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome’’ as a final tribute to King in what has become an annual thank-you note to a man who many never got to thank before his 1968 assassination.
“It’s important for current generations to be aware that we have not overcome racism, we’ve not overcome prejudice,” White said. “It’s like sin: We’re always a sinner no matter how good you think you are, that we’re always striving to be better.”
Excerpts from Bishop White’s “Dear Martin” letters, published by United Methodist News Service:
2012
“Perhaps that is the difficulty of navigating race in America as an identified racial minority — that is, the unpredictability of encountering racism in day-to-day living. One must always be prepared. It can manifest itself in so many different places and in so many different forms. In a classroom or office, at a department store counter, in a committee meeting or in a casual conversation, even at the Table of the Lord. One simply never knows.”
2008
“Because my life has been lived in the world of religion and the church, I know this fundamental shift has taken place in the church as well. No longer do clergy justify racist practice or belief based on religion or theology. No sermons are preached today in their name. For the most part, the position of the church is not couched in racism. That would be considered un-Christian.”
2007
“As we celebrate your birth date in 2007, if I were to be asked if race relations in America are better or still a problem, I would have to respond, ‘Yes!’”
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by Jacqueline J. Holness | Jan 16, 2014 | Entertainment, Feature, Headline News |
No doubt about it. In the R&B and Pop music world, 2013 was the year of Beyoncé. From singing/lip-synching the national anthem at the 2013 inauguration of President Obama and delivering a Super Bowl performance so fierce that all the lights went out in the stadium, to releasing her HBO documentary “Life Is But a Dream,” to a record-breaking viewership, dazzling fans worldwide with her “Mrs. Carter Show World Tour” and dropping her visual album “Beyoncé” online in the middle of the night to the delight of her fans in December, Beyonce did that. In fact, her influence has grown so much that the superstar is sparking conversations/controversies in other worlds.
Most recently, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian advocacy group, took notice of Beyoncé. The AFA chastised her for posting an Instagram photo in which she positions herself in front of Jesus in Andy Warhol’s “Last Supper” mural–pictured above. In a statement to The Christian Post, Wildmon said, “Is nothing sacred anymore? This is clearly an act of disrespect towards Jesus Christ, whom Beyoncé covers up with her pose. This had to be done intentionally.”
Instagram users had various reactions. According to a Washington Times article, one user said, “Looks like the Last Supper, instead of Jesus its Beyoncé. Ummm epic fail boo. Jesus Christ is my savior, not you. Besides that, I love Beyoncé, but you will never be God.” Still other users said, “Praise Beyoncé” and donned her “Beysus.”
This controversy is on the heels of an apology Mrs. Carter issued to the families of the seven astronauts who perished in the space shuttle Challenger explosion on Jan. 28, 1986. In a song entitled “XO” a single off her new album, Beyonce used audio heard just before the explosion. At the beginning of the song, the words, “Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction,” spoken by then NASA public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt. Shuttle commander Dick Scobee’s widow June Scobee Rodgers was reportedly “disappointed” with the audio’s use in the song. NASA is also displeased. Billboard reported NASA’s statement to The Hollywood Reporter, “The Challenger accident is an important part of our history, a tragic reminder that space exploration is risky and should never be trivialized.”
In a statement reported by ABC News, Beyoncé said, “My heart goes out to the families of those lost in the Challenger disaster. The song ‘XO’ was recorded with the sincerest intention to help heal those who have lost loved ones and to remind us that unexpected things happen, so love and appreciate every minute that you have with those who mean the most to you.” She was right to apologize to the families lost in the shuttle explosion, as the audio seems melodramatic juxtaposed to the whimsy expressed in the song and the video—the song being about the euphoric feeling of love and the video showing Beyonce and a large entourage traipsing around Brooklyn’s historic amusement park Coney Island. While her heart went out and apologies were issued to those affected by the Challenger disaster, Beyonce issued no apologies to those affected by her actions in Christian community–a community that she claims to be a part of. She referenced Jesus in her HBO documentary “Life Is But a Dream” and thanks Jesus for her blessings, but then she covers Him in a photo and posts it for all her followers to see with no remorse? I’m not judging, but I’m just sayin’.
Feminists have also been in an uproar about Beyoncé’s latest album. Some say she’s the face of modern feminism or the premier feminist for millennials. In her TIME magazine article “Flawless: 5 Lessons in Modern Feminism From Beyoncé,” Eliana Docketerman wrote, “Beyoncé has managed to become the biggest female pop star in the world while cultivating her marriage, her role as a mother, and her sexuality. And in doing so, she’s ushering in a new wave of feminism.”
But Beyoncé’s brand of feminism also has its detractors. Julia Sonenshein, contributing editor at theGloss.com who wrote the article Why White Feminists Are Mad At Beyoncé, told theGrio.com that, “White feminists tend to critique Beyoncé first and foremost for the way she uses her sexuality as a tool. White feminists also tend to criticize her attitude towards wealth and materialism, along with her bravado and confidence. While there is certainly room for criticism, and major figures like Beyoncé should be criticized, these particular conversations tend to approach any analysis from a very white point of view, and don’t consider how the themes of sexuality, wealth, and confidence differ across communities.” Although, getting nearly naked at every opportunity is so Josephine Baker...
And top it all off, Mrs. Carter, who is also known as King B, seems to be a good friend of Mrs. Obama, who has provoked the ire of feminists all by herself. In the Politico Magazine article, “Leaning Out: How Michelle Obama Became a Feminist Nightmare,” Michelle Cottle criticized our First Lady for neglecting to address more pressing issues in order to champion gardening, soothe wounded soldiers and read to children.
With Michelle’s Obama 50th party around the corner, Washington Post writer Krissah Thompson speculates that Beyoncé will be in the house. In her article, “Michelle Obama and Beyoncé: Friends and feminists?” Thompson said, “The public statements and choices made by Michelle Obama and Beyoncé represent a specific feminist strain of thinking on women, work and family, students of feminism say, that could rightly be called Beyoncéism.” Some may criticize the First Lady’s admiration of Beyoncé, and I get that. But in a strange way, I think it’s kind of cool that a First Lady would be friends with a (sometimes) controversial superstar. I can’t see former First Lady Laura Bush getting down with Lady Gaga.
As a pop culture enthusiast, there is no doubt that Beyoncé should be lauded for her unstoppable work ethic. I think she offers good if not controversial music.. I even admire her unique brand of feminism. Her life provides a positive image of a successful career, a marriage and motherhood to counteract the increasing acceptance of the baby mama/baby daddy culture. Her example may even have some value for women in the black church who still struggle for equality in leadership.
But as the Instagram user noted, Beyoncé nor King B is my savior and should not be made an idol, and sometimes I believe her fan base falls prey to that temptation. (I’m readying myself for the Beyhive as I type.) Her Instagram photo makes me question her motives, but maybe her motives are as simple as keeping her name in the media. As someone once said, “all publicity is good publicity.” However, I hope Beyoncé, if she truly professes a belief in Jesus Christ, does not make such publicity, which is ill-advised at best and sacrilegious at worst, a habit.
by Chandra White-Cummings, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | Jan 15, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
2013 was brimming with special-year anniversary commemorations. We celebrated events and people that have immeasurably shaped and defined our country and society. Perhaps most notably, the 50-year anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream Speech’ dominated national consciousness by calling to our collective memory an electrifying moment of unity and promise. It’s certainly unquestionable that the Dream speech is worthy of remembrance and celebration. But even before the crowds jammed the streets of downtown D.C. last August, some commentators and activists were suggesting that maybe we focus too much on this one aspect of the civil rights movement, throwing the weight of the entire struggle and all of Dr. King’s contributions onto one oratorical delivery. It’s a valid point. We need to expand our view and explore other critical aspects of the struggle and the man. There was more than D.C.. Montgomery, Atlanta, Albany, Greensboro, and Selma each played prominent roles in the movement’s progression toward equality. And then there’s Birmingham.
Before King ever stepped to the podium in D.C., he was holed up in a dirty jail cell in Birmingham, dubbed “Bombingham” and home to “Dynamite Hill.” In a newly-released book, “Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church,” Ed Gilbreath revisits this pivotal period and location of the movement, and invites us to reflect with him on the titanic clash between recalcitrant segregationists, resolute civil rights activists, and a halting presidential administration that produced a seismic shift in the public’s thinking and lay the groundwork for future victories. We need this book: black America, particularly the black church; politicians and pundits; activists; and white Christians. All of us need to rediscover King as the “provocative prophet of social justice[1]” Gilbreath reveals him to be. The church universal desperately needs to recover the prophetic tradition in which King operated. Gilbreath’s book guides us on a much-needed path to renewed commitment and passion for racial justice and reconciliation provoked by a response to the prophetic call of King, Birmingham, and the God who brought them together to change a nation.
“Birmingham Revolution,” while it does cover well-worn civil rights territory, doesn’t provide a sweeping tour of King’s life, the Civil Rights Movement, or the Letter From a Birmingham Jail. Rather, Gilbreath’s treatment is focused on the nexus of King’s involvement In the Birmingham campaign portion of the movement and the Letter’s role in articulating King’s feelings and position on the struggle and mission of the campaign and the movement. The scope and boundaries of the book show great discipline and restraint. “Birmingham Revolution” spares us the massive density of other civil-rights-chronicling books like Diane McWhorter’s 701-page Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, or the legendary heft of Taylor Branch’s America in the King Years three-part series, the middle volume of which tops out at 796 pages. Gilbreath’s book is a sleek 207 pages, including the index, acknowledgments, and notes. His tight focus gives the reader a mental and emotional target that facilitates critical thought and reflection.
The first couple of chapters are dense with names, dates, places, and other historical facts. Here, Gilbreath is in historian mode. For example, in chapter one, Birmingham Begins, he: gives a brief history of Birmingham’s founding; provides a biographical sketch of Eugene “Bull” Connor, the reigning police commissioner; references the murder of Emmett Till; describes the crucial role black churches and pastors played by providing spiritual leadership and mobilizing black citizens for action; and gives a colorful personal profile of Fred Shuttlesworth, membership chairman of the Birmingham chapter of the NAACP, and King’s right-hand man in Birmingham. The blunt force of all the history-book type data is softened by Gilbreath’s engaging writing style. Delightfully rich in fiction-esque details, the book sometimes reads like a fictionalized account of actual events. Take this excerpt of an imagined, but plausible, dialogue between King and the eight white clergy whose criticism prompted the Letter From a Birmingham Jail, constructed from snippets of both the clergy’s published statement and King’s Letter[2]:
Birmingham Eight: Dr. King, we appreciate what you were able to accomplish in Montgomery when you lived there, but this is Birmingham. Why are you bringing a group of outsiders to our city? We believe our local white and Negro leadership should work together to solve our city’s problems.
King: Well, as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, I received an invitation from our Alabama affiliate. But even more important, I came to Birmingham because injustice is here.
It seems that one of Gilbreath’s hopes for “Birmingham Revolution” is for people to see King in a three-dimensional way, walking away from the book with an integrated view of him that resists romantic notions and hero worship. Chapter two identifies 14 “key themes and experiences that defined King’s childhood, education, and early life”[3], which help us make valuable connections between who King really was and how that prepared him to step into his place in history. Equally facilitative of that goal is chapter seven, a gripping discussion of the anger King felt, and how he was able to transform that anger into a redemptive force that ignited within him a holy fire that seared the shortsighted critique of him and the movement, and also gave light and clarity to the movement’s followers for the future—this chapter alone really is worth the price of the book.
In the final analysis, the overarching brilliance and value of this book is its subtlety and the way Gilbreath has of suggesting, not preaching. It seems he doesn’t want to preach us happy in celebration of King and the victory of the Birmingham campaign, but to show us how we’re shortchanging ourselves by persisting in a narrow, diluted view of King. He wants to nudge us-firmly-in the direction of a more robust, courageous, and redemptive course of action on the road to racial justice and reconciliation; and to begin to explore the themes we can extrapolate from the text. His “concluding ideas” in the last chapter caused me to deeply consider the state of black leadership today, whether we will ever see another like King, and whether we need to. He leaves us exactly where he himself seems most comfortable: with questions, concepts, and ideas to ponder.
Stay tuned for part two of the “Birmingham Revolution” series which will be published this weekend. I will share my conversation with the author Ed Gilbreath wherein we discussed power and privilege, redemptive anger, and spiritual risk-taking, among other things.
[1] Edward Gilbreath, Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church, (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2013), 93
[2] Gilbreath, Birmingham Revolution, 113.
[3] Gilbreath, Birmingham Revolution, 33-40
