When will America honour its high constitutional ideals, especially that “all are created equal”?

Michael White

 

We address the Christian right in America. They are described as the Evangelicals (Gospel-spreaders, one assumes). They are all proudly “born-again” (renewed, recreated, presumably in the image of Christ). They don’t miss church on Sunday; they talk of Christ incessantly. He is their point of reference and the basis of their ideals. They own Him. They attach themselves, in the main, to the  Republicans. Good, honest people, free from “every semblance of evil”.

The Tea Party claims to advocate their interests and values. They are in short, the elite, literally God’s kingdom here on earth. In the old days they might have been called Scribes and Pharisees, I think; or less charitably, “whitewashed”.

But here is my difficulty.

The last Presidential campaign was one of the most racist, divisive, if sometimes subtle, spectacles we have witnessed in America since the heyday of Jim Crow  and the cross burnings in the yards of “the blacks.”

The Tea Party and the Republicans did not even try to camouflage their true intent this time around. They were overtly racist. It was patently clear for anyone who has eyes to see or ears to hear.

Yet it seems their mission is to divide the American Christian church, by their words and so many of their actions. We must suppose then, that racism comports with the best precepts of the Good Book.

For context, the following is an extract from my book: “Christ Divided”.

“{A most}obnoxious spectacle is the divide between the black church and the white church! It has been cryptically and accurately observed that the most segregated time in America is Sunday morning when everyone is at Church!

Racism is at the core of the black-church/white-church phenomenon. We are comfortable in our people groups and all have an affinity to go where we are comfortable. In some ways the rationale is simple and easily understood; ethnic groups feel they have traditions and ways of expressing their faith that are respectable, and unique to their own history and traditions. But is comfort a legitimate basis for Christian unity? Racial inferiority/superiority is a tradition and like all traditions it dies hard.

Racism is the most persistent and prevalent sin in the world and in the church. For the most part it’s a subtle consciousness that reveals itself in a thousand ways, in attitudes, demeanours, responses, looks and statements. Racism is the last great frontier in human affairs to be overcome and the besetting sin for many. It is the most frightening of sins to the believer and we are required to strive hard to put it aside so that we can get on with the work of the Lord. “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews12:1).

Have some risen above it? Undoubtedly, there are many who have become painfully aware of its poison and strive to lay it to rest in their hearts; many have succeeded. But the church as a body still has to exorcise this evil. God will not countenance it and He will not heed our prayers until we are clean of this stain. We are challenged to renew our minds with some brand new thinking. “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians10:5).”

Now that Obama and his supporters have overcome, can we perhaps anticipate some degree of sincerity and cordiality in the great American debate? Can we begin to see Christianity at work in at least the utterances of  McConnell, Limbaugh, Romney, Cantor, McCain,  Graham, and the rest? Can we hold our collective breaths in hopeful expectation that the winter of racial animus has passed?
I know. A pipedream.

 

An Act of God!

Michael White

I think the irony is lost to the Republican elite, as the Christians they claim to be, that they all derisively blame the disastrous loss of the election on Sandy – admitting that Sandy was an act of God!

If they are true believers, then “act of God” is not merely a term of art; it is a declaration that the Supreme One himself intervened at a critical juncture in human affairs and turned what others intended for bad into good.

That’s what happened when Joseph’s brothers tried to do away with him. God used the evil in their hearts for Joseph’s (and Israel’s) good.

This commentator has absolutely no difficulty accepting the Republican shame-saving excuse that Sandy caused them to lose the elections. Because it tells me that my prayers were answered by a God who is in the habit, still, of intervening in man’s affairs by opening any Red Sea, so that His people may pass through. (Doesn’t red symbolize the republicans?)

In their utter disbelief, they will continue the vain search for explanations and excuses, wilfully ignoring the Christian teaching that the God who sees and knows everything, is the One who sets up leaders and brings them down.

After all the gimmicks and subterfuges the Republican cohort have resorted to over the past four years to destroy Obama, you would think that after their decisive failure at the polls they would stop and take stock of where they now find themselves, and seek to turn over a new leaf. On the contrary they have become as obstinate as Pharoah in pursuing their ambitions. Has God perhaps hardened their hearts for good reason?