Extreme Protests 2: Racism as "Corporate Evil"

Thanks to those who responded through Facebook to my article, "Extreme Protests: A Monumental Opportunity."  What follows is my response, intended particularly for my friends, Stu Zaharek and Necia Fanton Bishop from whom I have learned.  I also thank my friend and former colleague, Mark Gathany for his comment and important reference to a message by Pastor Tim Keller, referenced below.

Perhaps like those who have responded, I am asking myself what kind of response a review of human history ought to evoke in me as a sinner saved by the grace and challenged to live as a Christ-follower. As such, let me add a few thoughts that reflect what I am learning from this discussion. 

There is much about world history and American history that we can be thankful for (even be “proud of”) and from which we can all learn.  But, there is much in our history that reveals the acts of sinful individuals expressed in every generation through systemic corruption and evil.  I tried to address this in my original article when I wrote:

Dismantling of a monument to Gen. Robert E. Lee 

Some of the protesters have the false hope of producing atonement, a “perfect oneness and unity,” that only God can provide.  Perhaps they believe that if they can only get all human pride, hate, and bigotry out on the public square, including all names, symbols, and monuments they associate with them, they can somehow make atonement.  Yet even well meaning efforts to rectify a history of human sin and depravity are an affront to a Holy God.  When people refuse to repent and bow before the Cross of Christ, everything else in human history becomes an unbearable weight.  What can wash away my sin?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus. 

What I was not able to see clearly in this context seems more clear to me after hearing the message of Pastor Tim Keller, which Mark Gathany added to our discussion.  It is entitled, “Racism and Corporate Evil: A White Guy’s Perspective.”

By applying Tim Keller’s message to American history we can see that although the Founders made a noble effort to launch “the American experiment” based heavily on Judeo-Christian theism, they did not include in the U.S. Constitution the abolition of slavery. They chose not to eradicate this “corporate evil” that had fastened its hold on American morality and culture.  Yet, there was considerable anguish of soul among prominent men and women on both sides of the slavery issue, and also a sense of helplessness when they considered the immensity of the tangled web that the institution of slavery had woven, nationally and internationally.  Tim Stafford, Senior Writer for Christianity Today Magazine, has written,  “Slavery was important to the economy, both North and South.   Americans North and South also profoundly feared freeing millions of slaves. Most Americans were frankly racist; they believed Africans to be not only inferior but also dangerous if not strictly controlled.”

Most people in both the North and South wore cotton near their hearts and were therefore directly or indirectly complicit in support of slavery—what Pastor Tim Keller considers an example of “corporate evil.”  But not all Americans felt the sweat of the Negro slave against their skin when they "put on cotton."  It took the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800’s to sharpen the national conscience in regard to the evil of racism and human slavery. In spite of spiritual awakening, many people of faith in the North and South feared that Abolition was so controversial that it would tear their churches apart.  Therefore, I believe God especially prepared men in both the North and South; and among both Whites and Blacks—e.g. Lincoln and Douglass; Stowe and Tubman--who would stand in the gap in their time to lead both churches and our nation toward repentance and confession of sin, and to call for repentance and willingness to address "corporate sin."

It has been helpful for me to revisit the sin of racism and what should be done with historic monuments. Necia presented a graph of monument-building from 1870 to 1980 which has been attributed to the rise and fall of efforts to intimidate Black Americans.  Even though we know that correlation does not prove cause-and-effect, it is likely that at least some of the construction was done with intimidation in mind. However, I believe some monument construction was an expression of a nation trying find solace and reconciliation through the memory of some people and places in an otherwise painful history.  Whatever the motives of monument building, if we acknowledge the significant role of systemic or corporate sin in the history of slavery, we may also realize that truly addressing racial reconciliation requires a much deeper national effort than either erecting or destroying monuments.

Newton's life: Example of Repentance and Forgiveness

As a nation, and as individuals, we have a choice.  We can either continue our pattern of bantering back and forth, or we can recognize that racism is an expression of individual and corporate sin from which we must repent.  The prayer of Daniel (Daniel 9), referenced by Tim Keller, conveys the sincere, repentant heart of the Prophet Daniel who identified himself with the “corporate evil” embedded within the nation Israel.  Today, I believe God would have us begin anew by asking Him to give us the contrite, repentant spirit of Daniel—praying for God’s Spirit to shine the light of His Word on our individual lives and give us willingness to confess our sins; then, to recommit to love and obey God; and, love our neighbor, spouse, family, church, community, and those in authority over us.  As James wrote (5: 17),

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. 

Greater and more lasting progress than erecting or destroying monuments must begin in quiet communion with the God of HIS-story, and the God of our eternal future.  I believe this claim is consistent with what Abraham Lincoln came to realize; namely, that racism and its expression through the corporate evil of a slave-based economy must be owned and payed for by both the North and the South. If this is true, then our only hope as a nation is to own up to and confess to the fact that we are all part of the systemic, corporate evil of racism, and other evils such as malice, envy, and greed; all of which can only be abolished by the blood of Christ's cross.

The following are Lincoln's words, spoken toward the end of his second inaugural address only a few days before his own death by an assassin's bullet:

Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.  If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.