Learning From The Past: What History Teaches Us About Standing Up to Injustice

Well, here we are. We find ourselves on the other side of yet another election cycle here in this country. Many are heart broken while others are elated with the results. There have been those who have avoided me or not spoken to me in a while that finally found the motivation now they have what they want. This helps me to understand why the Jesus of the Gospels had an inner circle. As my friends Rev. Lawrence Rodgers and Anthony Powell have said in the past, “some will be on those sour grapes when things are not going their way.”

Many have weighed in about this subject. Here are some of my thoughts. When I look at what is going on in America and what is going into effect in the next few months, I see scenes from the Old Testament Texts. The Justice of the Prophets will not be practiced by the Empire. Religious Leaders are revealing themselves to be wolves in sheep clothing and that they are dangerous to the Kingdom of God because of their selfish agendas and their insatiable lust for proximity to power and Whiteness. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read my previous blog post entitled, “Reckoning With Whiteness.”

Religious leaders should be helping their congregations to understand their neighbors instead of ignoring the potential of the proposed promises. “Church Folks” should probably do some self reflection for preaching and teaching eternal damnation and then seeking to convince others that morality does not matter in the case of power. Proponents of chaos should probably accept the fact that there will be many who will follow the lead of the Ancestors named Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego. They will choose the fiery furnace of ridicule before they will bow to empIrical forces who will gaslight them and lie on them just like Caiaphas did in the 1st Century.  

People will reject Christian Nationalism because they have read the problems that nationalism caused among leaders of the 1st Century followers of the Way. People will leave Evangelical Philosophies. This is not an exodus from the Creator of the Universe but it is an abandonment of the created American idea of the oppressive patriarchal idolatrous god that has ruled our churches for centuries.

Some leaders will lose influence because they will be afraid to call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade. Mr. Preacha Man, it is hard to preach and teach about morality when you tried to convince me that what I have watched, heard, and experienced from your god is of the Divine Creator. Women will be empowered to live to their full God given potential because they are tired of your Whiteness influenced hermeneutic. While there will be a strong push for America to look like some of the churches of my youth, the work of the Kingdom will be done by those who the religious masses call heathens. There will be many who will be called anti-American because they will reject the rhetoric and actions of what is to come.

James Baldwin said, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

The Poet Regie Gibson has a quote that speaks to how many of us think in this country. He said, “I think our problem as Americans is that we actually hate history, so we can’t really connect the dots. What we love is nostalgia.” 

Let’s be honest. There has not been a separation of Church and State for years here in America. We have seen the results of what Christian Nationalism does to a country. History teaches us that it is not pretty. America has tried its hand at Christian Nationalism in the past. But those of us who merely exist without doing research or rejecting history would not know this. We know these time periods as Chattel Slavery, the Trail of Tears, Japanese Internment Camps, Jim and Jane Crow, and the more recent rhetoric of suspicion of anyone who is non American Christian. America had never been a Christian Nation based upon the teachings of the Jesus of the Gospels. However, it has been a bastion for Whiteness that is clothed in the false created idolatrous image of a Jesus who loved D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, who looks like Cesare Borgia, thinks like movie characters played by the Duke, who makes money like Enron, and treats women like Commander Fred Waterford.

However, as for me and my house, we will continue to educate. I will provoke thought with my blog posts and future podcasts because people need an avenue to the Spirit of God. I will continue to do what I do. I leave you with the quote below:

History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals.

I attest to this: the world is not white; it never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank.

James Baldwin