Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 4

This is the concluding part of this article except for a short reading list I will post next.

Black Nationalism:

There is a long history of Black Nationalistic movements. One that is often referred to in African American history began in Jamaica in 1914 and was founded by Marcus Garvey. 'The Universal Negro Improvement Association' became a large and important movement among African Americans in the United States.19 Garvey's movement gave many African Americans a sense of dignity and hope. While Garvey pushed for equality for African Americans, his main goal was to free Africa from all other nations and establish it as a nation for all African peoples including those living in the United States. Garvey wrote:

"I asked, `Where is the black man's Government?' “Where is his King and his kingdom?' `Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?' I could not find them, and then I declared, `I will help to make them.'"20

Garvey was a separatist, to be precise, he felt that there should be neither intermarriage nor intermingling of the races. And he was eccentric to say the least. He agreed to interview and be interviewed by the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

One of his reasons was that he felt the KKK was behind the United States Government. Another reason was he felt that he and the Grand Wizard held the same view points about their own people's needs. In a speech he stated:

"So you realize that the Universal Negro Improvement Association is carrying out just what the Ku Klux Klan is carrying out-the purity of the white race down South-and we are going to carry out the purity of the black race not only down South, but all through the world."21

A sad part of the history of Garvey is his extreme views on race and nationalism. But it is a lesson and should be noted. The Editor of Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, Bob Blaisdell, writes:

"His [Garvey's] hard, long-standing, and narrow adherence to, and belief in, nationalism now led him to identify and sympathize with such European tyrants as Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, and Nazi leader Adolph Hitler, of Germany. In March 1934, in Garvey's magazine, The Black Man, he recommended that his readers peruse Mein Kampf, expressing his hope that one day the black race would produce its own Hitler: “Hitler has a lesson to teach and he is teaching it well.' To a long-time U.N.I.A. supporter in 1937, Garvey boasted, `We were the first Fascists. We had disciplined men, women and children in training for the liberation of Africa. The black masses saw that in this extreme nationalism lay their only hope and readily supported it. Mussolini copied fascism from me, but the Negro reactionaries sabotaged it".22

Strangely, Garvey, who fought with compassion for his own people's equality, failed to grasp the essential evil and destructiveness of any kind of racism. The problem continues.

Many Black Nationalists, not unlike the white Neo-Nazi movement leaders, believe they are at war with the United States government. They view any prisoner connected to such groups as the Black Panthers as political prisoners. Likewise much of their rhetoric is fed by conspiracy theories. For instance, one theory is that the United States government used the Mafia as spies during the Second World War. Therefore after the war the government, allowed the Mafia free rein in the ghettos to sell drugs to young black men.23

These views become scary when they blend with the Black Nationalist's concepts of homeland and black unity. They believe they must work toward a united Africa and/or for an independent nation within the United States for those who live in Diaspora.

In the sixties, the push for an independent land for African Americans within the United States was part of the call for reparations within a document entitled the “Black Manifesto.” The document was directed toward Churches and Synagogues at the Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit in 1969. The Black Manifesto among other quests asked for five-hundred million dollars from the mainline religious bodies for the African American community. James Forman, at one time the executive director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, wrote and presented the preamble to the Black Manifesto at the conference. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Professor and Presbyterian Pastor in his book, Black Religion and Black Radicalism writes of the presentation:

"The preamble was a caustic indictment of black accommodation and white racism. It called for the identification of black America with Africa and the repudiation of capitalism and imperialism. `We are dedicated,' said Forman, `to building a socialist society inside the United States …led by Black people …concerned about the total humanity of the world.' He broadly hinted at the seizure of state power and guerrilla warfare and declared the control of the conference was being justly seized by virtue of `revolutionary right.'"24

And indeed, some groups that are nationalistic are willing to turn to violence in order to procure their demands. For instance, a contemporary black nationalist organization, the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement, states on their web site, “we are building a network of Black/New Afrikan activists and organizers committed to the protracted struggle for the liberation of the New Afrikan Nation - By Any Means Necessary!"25

They also have as their goal a nation within the United States; referring to a part of their movement known as New Afrikan Independence Movement, they write:

“The NAIM, is part of the Black liberation Movement in North Amerikka [a supposedly African way of spelling America] that wants independent Black Nation on land in north amerikka. The land identified by the New Afrikan Independence Movement is primarily known as South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as other areas of what is now called the Black-Belt South, where Afrikan people are in the majority or have a historical/economical/socio-cultural relationship to.”26

But now the water gets very murky and troubling. There are under-currents of connections that exist between some Radical Afrocentric Churches, Black Liberation Theologians and Black Nationalist groups such as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the Nation of Islam.

All see civilization emerging out of Africa. Likewise they see all concepts of a monotheistic God, as in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, emerging out of Africa's indigenousness religions. All three groups insist that all African people are ethnically inter-connected and therefore should be referred to as Africans or Africans in Diaspora. They work together on the same projects, few denouncing the other's racism or heresy. They honor as well as give and accept awards from each other irrespective of the racism and violence promoted by their separate organizations. And most of them believe that Evangelical, orthodox and/or Reformed Christianity is a white religion and alien to their own black faith.

The King and His Kingdom: God's Gift

White Americans have sinned in their racism and their disregard for African Americans. White Christians have sinned in their failure, in the past and today, to denounce slavery and discrimination. African Americans, like Israel before them, have sinned in their disregard for the biblical Lord who has been with them in all of their sorrows and despair. They have also sinned by turning to the same kind of racism that white America has been infected with for so long. But the two kneel before the same Lord. They are one body. They must be one body. “Now you are Christ's body and individually members of it.” (1 Cor 12:27)

And unlike Garvey who sought for a king and a kingdom for his people, this one body the Church, black, white and every ethnicity from every tribe on earth have a King and a Kingdom. Neither African American Christians nor white Christians can atone for all of these sins but they have a Redeemer, the work of redemption was His. It is now done. The Church needs to gather at that cross making common cause, in the faith, with one another and with Him, the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ.

And they sang a new song, saying,
Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” (Rev. 5:9-10)

19 Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, Editor Bob Blaisdell, “Introduction,” (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications: 2004), iii-v.

20 “The Negro's Greatest Enemy,” Current History Magazine, September 1923, found in, Ibid, 3.

21 “Hon. Marcus Garvey Tells of Interview with the Ku Klux Klan: The Ku Klux Klan is the invisible government of the United States of America.” Liberty Hall, New York City July 9, 1922, found in Ibid, 81.

22 Ibid, “Introduction,” x, Editors footnotes, The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Volume 7. 580-581. & J. A. Rogers, World's Great Men of Color (1947) quoted by Tony Martin in Race First, 60., “Garvey's most fervent admirers have not been able to explain away these deplorable alliances and sentiments.”

23 For all of this information read, “A brief History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle,” by Sundiata Acoli at http://www.prisonactivist.org/pubs/brief-hist-naps.html" http://www.prisonactivist.org/pubs/brief-hist-naps.html.

24 Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, tenth printing, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books 2006), 235; See also “A Black Manifesto,” Time 1969, at, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902585,00.html.

25 See http://mxgm.org/web/about-mxgm/putting-in-work.html.

26 See http://mxgm.org/web/programs-initiatives/why-we-say-free-the-land.html.

27 See “Activist James Forman being remembered as change agent for the Church” PNS, http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2005/05026.htm.

Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 3

In this third part, once again notice that numbering for endnotes begins with the first posting.

Black Liberation Theology:

Radical Afrocentric Christianity is often a part of Black Liberation Theology. The two movements generally agree that the Hebrew Bible and biblical faith are rooted in black culture and black history. Sometimes this is explained in a very radical and rather anti-Semitic manner such as in the works of Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, the author of We The Black Jews: Witness to the `White Jewish Race' Myth.12

Often, it is, instead, slanted in a different, but still racist and heretical way, in the more academic works of such authors as Dwight N. Hopkins and James H.Cone who are mentioned in the first posting.

In Hopkins' book, Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, he explains that all cultures are given by God as a spark within and therefore he does not insist on “some movement to bring God to the side of a narrow nationalist cultural self-glorification. Nor is it the hubris of privileging one branch of human kind (that is, the black race) over another (the white race.)”13 And yet, writing further he states:

"The image of God in the black poor is the deeply entrenched Spirit that God's grace gave black folk at creation and that, now through generation after generation, exists by nature.
In addition, this Spirit within summons the black marginalized sectors of society to further liberate their captivity to false white normativity (sic) by claiming biblical indicators and pointers of black presence in the Bible itself. Biblical passages refer to Jesus with hair like wool and skin of bronze color. In fact, the only white people in the Christian Scriptures during the time of Jesus' birth are the European Roman exploiters and colonizers. Not only was Jesus not white, Jesus was from African and Asian ancestry.

Moreover, prior to debates about Jesus' ancestry, arguments continue to surface about the Garden of Eden being located in Northeast Africa. The implication suggests that even in the mythos of the creation narrative, Eve and Adam were Africans. Though the Spirit of liberation dwells in all people, no matter how much it might be submerged and surrounded by one's effort to turn away from it and thereby from God, God, in one sense, projected God's African-Asian image into the first human creation. When God said let us make human beings in our own image and created the first human beings in Africa, on a logical level, God was an African who reflected the divine self into human beings on the African continent."14

Likewise, but in a much more strident manner, writing about God's redemptive dealings with humanity, Cone states:

"For white people, God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people; and if they are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God's presence on earth. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches. They want God without blackness, Christ without obedience, love without death. What they fail to realize is that in America, God's revelation on earth has always been black, red, or some other shocking shade, but never white." 15

A horrific progression to this is that Cone wrote, Black Theology & Black Power, using Karl Barth as his guiding theologian. He quotes him incessantly. But, Cone in his thought's about God's revelation displaced Barth's theology. His idea that African Americans “are a manifestation of God's presence on earth” is without question anti-Barth. He later retracted his use of Barth in his preface to the 1989 reprint, writing:

"Barth's assertion of the Word of God in opposition to natural theology in the context of Germany during the 1930's may have been useful. But the same theological methodology cannot be applied to the cultural history of African Americans or to Africans and Asians on their continents. …

As in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom.”16

Both of the quotes by Hopkins and Cone are racist, heretical and explainable in the context of liberation theology. Liberation Theology began in South American and was a liberal but compassionate focus on the poor and oppressed in South American. It began among Catholic theologians who attempted to locate the revelation of Jesus Christ in the presence of the poor as a means of combating some oppressive governments.

Marxism was a part of the mix as a way of contextualizing the theology, changing the system and attempting to avoid relativism. That is to say, one looked within the society or culture to arrive at both the definition of sin and the presence of God. But, one begins with one's own awareness or suspicions, not with Scriptures. Sin was generally found anchored to the political system with some support in the community, God was found within the oppressed.

God is now manifested in any culture deemed oppressed. In fact according to some, culture is the bearer of God's revelation. On the web site of one Afrocentric Presbyterian Church, within their Credo, are the words "We beleive (sic) that human cultures are the containers of Divine Self -Revelation and that as such, the culture of every human being is to be respected.”

Yes, clearly, cultures are to be respected but even more clearly cultures are not the containers of God's revelation. When God's truth is revealed in some other way then through Jesus Christ alone as he is revealed in the Old and New Testaments, biblical Christianity begins to lose its way.

It happened in Germany during the Romantic period. Barth refers to this as he points to the “despised eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” while suggesting that the heresy of his own day was nothing new.17 Liberation theology began with Christ found in the poor, accordingly, God is now revealed in black culture subsuming all other oppressed people, including LGBTQ under their theology.18

A great peril arises when race, culture or religion (and here I am speaking of false religion) is seen as the true manifestation of God and so is worshiped in one manner or another. When this new manifestation of God speaks its words they will only be human words and often they will be false words and destructive to the Church.

12 Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan, We the Black Jews: Witness to the `White Jewish Race' Myth, Vol. I & II, reprint (Baltimore: Black Classic Press 1993).

13 Hopkins, Down, Up, and Over, 262.

14 Ibid., 263.

15 James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Orbis 1997) 150.

16 Ibid., xii.

17 Karl Barth, Theological Existence To-Day: A Plea for Theological Freedom, (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1933) 53.

18 Black Liberation theology is not alone in using their theology to pull in all other problems. For instance feminist ideology subsumes all other perceived oppression under its concepts. For instance the pollution of the environment is seen as a way of oppressing women because it is felt that nature and women are alike in some of their characteristics.

Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 2

This is the second part of "Radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black Liberation Theology & Black Nationalism: Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community." Please note that I have continued on with the same numbered end noting.

Afrocentric Christianity

Afrocentric Christianity has partly emerged because of the racists attitudes of Western scholars since the Enlightenment. Many scholars, including anthropologists, during the Enlightenment until the middle of the twentieth century believed the religions of Africa were simplistic and primitive. Along side of this they insisted that Africa was an inconsequential continent.

Various scholars have refuted such ideas. Edwin M. Yamauchi, Professor of History emeritus at Miami University, Ohio, in his book Africa and the Bible, pinpoints those guilty of maligning the peoples of Africa. He names several, including David Hume, George Hegel, and C. G. Seligman “who applied social Darwinism to African ethnography, formulated the `Hamitic hypothesis,' which held that Caucasian Hamities, including the Egyptians, created everything of value in Africa.”6 This was an attempt by Seligman to insist that only light skinned peoples contributed to civilization in Africa.

Another scholar, Thomas C. Oden, recently retired Professor of Theology at The Theological School of Drew University, in his book How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity, writes of the greatness of early African Christianity. He concludes that early Christianity in Africa has been, at least partly, discounted by religious scholars because they simply, in their modernity, rejected ancient Christianity.

He writes of the “young Africa,” stating that “It is at once a very youthful survivor of wearisome modernity, and a most ancient, early, and, in that sense, young expression of both early Christianity and ancient Africa.” 7 Thus the Church of the centuries was shaped in its beginning by the early Church Fathers and Mothers of Africa.

African scholars, both American and others, have written extensively on the culture and religions of Africa in a successful project that disproves many of the caricatures of African religion.8

One important book is by a Pastor and Professor at the University of Bern, John S Mbiti. His book is African Religions and Philosophy. Another is The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a common Moral Discourse, by Peter J. Paris, Professor of Social Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary. All of this scholarship feeds into the attempt by some African American Christians to return to their religious and cultural roots.

Radical Afrocentric Christianity: The divide among various Afrocentric Churches comes in the context of religion which for some passes over into racism and heresy. That is, some look back to indigenousness African religions, mixing them with their Christianity. They then lift up their culture beside a weakened and distorted Christianity. Those who have began syncretizing other religions with Christianity or including culture as a means of God's revelation I am referring to in this paper as radical Afrocentric Christians.

An example of this is one Presbyterian Afrocentric Pastor who has suggested naming the biblical God using African names such as “'Amen' `RA' and `Olodumare.'” He states that such naming would be acceptable since the African views of a high God are like the biblical view of God.9 But the gods he has named, while they may indeed have some common traits with the biblical God, such as omnipresence and omniscience, are neither Triune nor redemptive. In fact writing of the religions of Africa, John S Mbiti points out that none of them offer redemption in their belief system. He writes:

"This remains the most serious cul-de-sac in the otherwise rich thought and sensitive religious feeling of our peoples. It is perhaps here then, that we find the greatest weakness and poverty of our traditional religions compared to world religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism. These traditional religions cannot but remain tribal and nationalistic, since they do not offer for mankind at large, a way of `escape', a message of`redemption' (however that might be conceived).10"

One must quickly add, it is only Jesus Christ dying on the cross, God coming to us in flesh and offering himself up in sacrifice, that is truly redemptive. The God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the truly redemptive God. It is the Incarnation and the redemption of Jesus Christ which sets Christianity apart from all other religions

Non-radical Afrocentric Christianity: On the other hand, other Afrocentric Churches and Christians are simply seeking roots in their own ethnic cultures. For instance, they attempt to re-value African cultural norms by focusing on the community and family rather than the individual. They incorporate African dress, music and even rites of passage that are grounded in African culture.

Some African Americans, who are not Afrocentric, nonetheless suggest ways the black experience can enhance the whole Church, both black and white. Anthony J. Carter, who is a Reformed Christian, reaches back to biblical themes rather than indigenousness Africa religions. He sees that the early and contemporary African American Christians bring to the whole American Church a great gift, that is, its knowledge of how to be the Church in the midst of suffering. In Carter's book, Being Black and Reformed, he writes:

"If the predominantly white church in America desires to know the reality of a providential relationship with God in the midst of oppression as repeatedly demonstrated with ancient Israel, she need only plumb the depths of the rich heritage of her darker brothers and sisters. There she will not only find the most illustrative analogy of ancient Israel, but also find a people who have struggled with the pain of oppression and often tyrannical forms of discrimination and yet have joyfully witnessed the sustaining hand of God.11"

6 Edwin M. Yamauchi, Africa and the Bible, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2004), 206-207.

7 Thomas C. Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity,(Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press 2007), 30-31.

8 See, “Peter J. Paris, The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1995); John S Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, reprint, (Heinemann 2006); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made, (New York: Vintage Books 1974); Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, third edition (New York: Orbis Books 2006).

9 In E-mail on file.

10 Mbiti, African Religions, 96-97.

11 Carter, On Being Black and Reformed, 84.

Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 1

I stated in my last posting that I would post my article, "Radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black Liberation Theology & Black Nationalism: Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community" in parts for my next several postings. I feel the article is relevant for the discussion on the Belhar Confession in all manner of ways. One may understand from this article that all are sinners in need of a Savior. Also one can begin to understand how one kind of evil, white racism, breeds another kind of evil, black racism. We are all guilty and so we need to bring discernment to the task ahead.

Radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black Liberation Theology & Black Nationalism:
Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community

"I grew up in a very racist family. My mother wished for an African American cook, my father would have thrown the food away if her wish had come true. We argued about their racism though out my teenage years. Teen age rebellion? Perhaps. More than likely it was my constant reading which included stories about the Quakers and the Underground Railroad. It was also friends, the Bible and my teenage conversion to Christ.

But the truth is I am still arguing. I have been writing articles on racism for almost twenty years. My first articles about racism were on the white Neo-Nazi groups called “Identity.” The last article was on some white pagan groups called Ásatrú and Odinist. Those groups worship the gods and goddesses of old European tribes including Odin and Thor. I wrote of the pagan groups, “The factor that either, makes them racists, or gives them the potential for racism, is their insistence on religion as a genetic development as well as an intrinsic part of the human essence.”1

In fact one recent piece of hate mail I received from an Ásatrú member stated, “The word `hate' in your context is clearly an attempt to distort perception and imply some kind of guilt at the very idea of unity among Native Europeans … You would have to be living in a cave not to see that most ethnic groups unit, (sic) march, organize, for the purpose of strength, preservation of culture, religion, heritage, borders etc....” The writer goes on to write about genetics and religion and how all of civilization is due to the European peoples.

But the movement I am now writing about is different; it is about African Americans who are also either racists or potential racists. It is also about a theology that is, as one African American Reformed Christian states, “little more than a mirror of much of the racist white theology against which it posited itself.”2 The movement is theological, cultural and political and is a combination of Black liberation theology, radical Afrocentric Christianity and various kinds of Black Nationalism.

The movement affects both white and African American believers. This is true because those African Americans who hold to an orthodox and biblical faith are being categorized under the title white.3 So most of what I write about this particular movement's antagonistic attitudes toward biblical and orthodox Christianity applies in just the same manner to orthodox and reformed African American Christians.

These three movements, black liberation theology, radical Afrocentric Christianity and Black Nationalism are fed by many streams. Emotionally they are fed by anger over past wrongs, terrible wrongs.4 But they are also fed by different theological, religious and political movements. For instance when reading Dwight N. Hopkins, Associate Professor of Theology at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, one finds a combination of liberation theology and either/or both process theology and `new thought.' The first type of theology follows the writings of Professor James H. Cone, the father of black liberation theology, the latter follows the early twentieth century founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Mosiah Garvey. 5

I will look at what I have defined as radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black liberation theology and Black Nationalism showing how they overlap and work together. Above all, my main focus will deal with the problem of grounding Christian theology and God's revelation in either culture, `religion' and/or race. I also want to recommend several helpful books and articles on this subject."

1See The NeoPagan Movement and Racism http://www.naminggrace.org/id59.htm Taken from, Watchman Expositor, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2001.

2 Anthony J. C. Carter, On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African-American Christian Experience, Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing 2003) 16.

3 For instance, see Asa G. Hilliard III, African Power: Affirming African Indigenous Socialization in the Face of Culture Wars,” (Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing Company 2002), 4.

4 One excellent article dealing with both the horrible treatment of both slaves and contemporary African Americans is, “Bringing the Reformation to the African-American Church: An Interview with Pastor Ken Jones,” in Modern Reformation, “Grace Over Race,” Vol 17 #1 Jan/Feb 2008.

5 See, Thabiti M. Anyabwile, The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity, (Downers Grove: IVP Academic 2007), 78-79. For statements that sound like new thought in Dwight N. Hopkins works see Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2000) For instance, “This divine nature or image of God (or imago dei) has been dormant or subject to attacks on all sides, both internal and external, spiritual and material. Jesus comes as a process of action and dynamism and literally re-turns the poor to the path of their full potential.” (226)

The Belhar Confession & God's final revelation

The Committee listing for the Belhar Confession has been posted on Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow’s blog. Special Committee on the Belhar Confession includes at least one Pastor whose theology combines liberation theology with Afrocentric Christianity. Afrocentric Christianity can mean living out the Christian faith by simply including the customs and culture of Africa, or it may be a radical syncretism of African religions with Christianity.

I have written about both types of Afrocentric Christianity in my article, “Radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black Liberation Theology & Black Nationalism Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community.”

After writing more about the Belhar Confession I will post the above article on my blog in three or four parts.

I am returning to this subject because the view of culture as revelation and the biblical view of revelation are in total opposition. And those opposites, in my mind, are connected to the understanding of Belhar.

Reverend Dr. Max Lomax a member of the Committee believes “that human cultures are the containers of Divine Self –Revelation.” Not only does the credo on his’ Churches web site state this but also in an e-mail to me last year he affirmed and clarified that statement:

“Cultures are containers of the Divine Self because God's self-revelation occurs within the context of culture. Historically speaking human groups have already been formed, tacit social and political agreements have already been made, and people have already agreed upon common defining characteristics by the time they are settled enough to reflect on the nature of their existence. Another way of saying this is that historically people have moved beyond the survival, hunting-gathering, protecting way of being to developing more sustainable, settled, sedentary life-styles and patterns before the God question is even raised in any systematic way. In that sense then, Cultures are the containers of the Divine Self. The genius of God is that God can reveal God's Self and speak meaning into cultures regardless of their unique characteristics. I think human beings have problems with the way those who are different from them talk about and worship God because it is culturally unfamiliar.”

This is important because one of the issues stressed in Belhar is on the unity of the Church. And unity is more important to this particular confession then the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is, rather than connecting unity to the Church’s faithfulness to Christ as Lord, faithfulness is achieved because of unity.

Lordship is thus pushed to the margins of the Confession. God’s revelation is realized in the unity or agreement among the people of the Church community.

Unity has become more important than faithfulness to Christ. I have stated in another place, because of the problem of racism in South Africa “the emphasis was on unity and the sinfulness of the absolutizing of ‘natural diversity’ and the ‘separation of people.’ Anything “which explicitly or implicitly” maintained “that descent or any other human or social factor should be a consideration in determining membership of the Church” was rejected in the Belhar Confession. (Emphasis mine).”

As I have written In a Review of Horizons on the Voices of Orthodox Women’s web site, “With Belhar the Church would listen to the voices of those in their church community rather than the voice of Christ. Therefore “all” absolutizing might be denied on the grounds of Christian unity. In the American mainline churches when the argument for the ordination of self-affirming gays and lesbians is based on an understanding that heterosexuality is an absolutizing of sexual standards the Belhar Confession is unacceptable and incomplete.

And in fact just recently one of the fathers of the Belhar Confession attempted to use it to gain acceptance of the ordination of practicing gays and lesbians. The Banner, the magazine published by the Christian Reformed Church in North America, reports that “Allan Boesak, a church leader and former anti-apartheid activist, presented a lengthy report on homosexual members to his church, the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa, at its general synod Oct. 2 (2008). He dramatically insisted that the church’s Belhar Confession demands the defense of the full rights of gay members.”

The Banner further reported that 'Presenting this report to the synod, Boesak told delegates that the Belhar Confession demands that they move in this way. The Belhar, he said, was never meant to be just an anti-apartheid document, but a document against discrimination of all kinds.' While the synod in Africa rejected the committee’s report, it is unclear how the Confession would be understood among those in the PC(USA) who are pushing for the ordination of self-affirming gays and lesbians. The Declaration of Barmen is a much stronger and more faithful confession for the PC(USA).”

And I will add that Barmen does not posit revelation in culture or community but in God’s final revelation, Jesus Christ, as he is known in Scripture.

Are all the foes of Sion fools?

I have been exploring The Cyber Hymnal for songs some might want to sing at a meeting I am putting together. But then I started playing, looking at all the many hymns and psalms put to music by Isaac Watts. I found this startling question in the first line of one song. "Are all the foes of Sion fools?"

What a great question. With all the political and religious news emerging on the Internet over the last few days these are great lines.

Are all the foes of Sion fools,
Who thus devour her saints?
Do they not know her Savior rules,
And pities her complaints?

They shall be seized with sad surprise;
For God’s revenging arm
Scatters the bones of them that rise
To do His children harm.

In vain the sons of Satan boast
Of armies in array;
When God has first despised their host
They fall an easy prey.

O for a word from Zion’s King,
Her captives to restore!
Jacob with all his tribes shall sing,
And Judah weep no more.

To add to this I just read the posting that Toby Brown has very recently put up, Resting in the God who saves and thought of our great security in Jesus Christ.

I just need to add one more thing and that is one of my favorite quotes from Karl Barth,

"Of course something has to be done; very much so; but most decidedly nothing other than this, viz. that the Church congregations be gathered together again, but aright and anew in fear and great joy, to the Word by means of the Word. All the crying about and over the Church will not deliver the Church. When the Church is a Church she is already delivered. Let persecution be never so severe, it will not affect her! 'Still,' it is said, 'Still, shall the City of God abide, lusty beside her tiny stream.' (Psalm xlvi. 5; Luther's translation.)"

And the greatest of these is love, but the greatest love shown is Christ in his suffering for our sins

In his helpful book on world views, The Universe Next Door, James W. Sire, quotes from John Updike’s “Pigeon Feathers.” Sire is thinking of naturalism and its unending darkness.

“Without warning, David was visited by an exact vision of death; a long hole in the ground, no wider then your body, down which you were drawn while the white faces recede. You try to reach them but your arms are pinned. Shovels pour dirt in your face. There you will be forever, in an upright position, blind and silent, and no one will remember you, and you will never be called. As strata of rock shift, your fingers elongate, and your teeth are distended sideways in a great underground grimace indistinguishable from a strip of chalk. And the earth tumbles on, and the sun expires, an unfaltering darkness reigns where once there were stars.”

I thought of this quote while reading the interesting discussion started at Presbyterian Bloggers by Paul Boal. The posting Jesus, is about different kinds of missions and mission minded people: those intent on good works or those who simply want to talk about Jesus and what it means to be saved.

While I believe that both goals must be undertaken by Christians I understand the good news to be that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that by his resurrection we are united to him and given new life. Alongside the above quote I have to think of Jesus’ words to his followers:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” (John 5:24)

The gift of life in Christ, his forgiveness, the hope of life with him forever is the greatest goal of all mision. The fields are white and ready for this gift.

Of course, good works follow from our transformation in Jesus.

The great, commission, as it is called, is filled not only with the message of salvation for the nations but with the command to obey all that Jesus taught.

“And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying: ‘All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always. Even to the end of the age.’”

So if I as a Christian go on a mission to build houses or heal sick bodies or help the poor plant gardens I must also be ready to proclaim that Jesus died for our sins and calls for repentance from the sinner. I must proclaim that Jesus Christ is truly Lord.

And if I go on a mission to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection, I must also be ready to help broken and hurting people in other ways. I must serve Jesus Christ as Lord by serving others.

But one extremely important point here is that to be a follower of Jesus Christ, to be united to him because of his great salvation, means I can never refuse to proclaim the message of salvation. That is Christ’ calling to all of his people.