Kirk Franklin — speaking out

Kirk Franklin apparently has struck a nerve.

Three years ago, when he received a Dove Award from the Gospel Music Association the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which televised the show, edited out the gospel singer’s references to fellow African-Americans who died at the hands of the police. He made a similar statement this year which the network also excised; as a result, he said he would boycott future shows and, if memory serves me correctly, the TBN unless the situation was rectified. Though he said he was speaking only for himself, a number of other artists are now following suit.

That may sound like a small thing and perhaps can be justified by a possible “no-politics” stance by TBN, but I’m sure that the network would allow for an anti-abortion speech.

The bigger issue, however, is that much of evangelicalism couldn’t care less about concerns facing the African-American community; indeed, they’re almost never addressed in Christian media, which strikes me as, at best, insensitive. (One exception was a group of black pastors who addressed them during an episode of “Focus on the Family” last year.) Late last year a story in the New York Times depicted an African-American woman in Fort Worth, Texas, who had left the largely-white megachurch where she had been worshiping for similar reasons.

I would suggest that the failure of much of the church in dealing with such issues is helping to maintain the racial divide that has always existed but that hopefully had begun to close in the 1990s with the Promise Keepers. “I don’t see any racial divide,” you might say.

Exactly. Because too many of us have lived fairly insular lives and thus don’t have any idea how those outside our immediate community live.

It’s also why few blacks participate in the culture war despite our general agreement with its goals. Probably most of us oppose abortion and are suspicious of gay rights, but those issues aren’t literally costing us our lives.

That’s due to a lack — perhaps more accurately, a rejection — of a social-justice theology in evangelicalism, which ironically isolates it from the greater society in part because it’s wrongly labeled “socialist.” Basically, since we often don’t have a bead on what others have to deal with we can’t empathize with them. (Ironically, we’re often the first to complain about “persecution” when the issue is touchiness, even a touch of narcissism.)

As things stand now, I don’t see them getting any better. Somehow we need to be willing to identify with brothers and sisters “of color,” otherwise the Kirk Franklins of the world — and in the church — might end up railing against us. And that’s bad for our Christian witness.

By another name — why we African-Americans can’t ‘forget’ slavery

We African-Americans are often admonished, generally by those on the political right, to forget our roots in slavery and merely focus on the future. This has become more of an issue due to a small but growing movement toward monetary reparations for those of us descended from slaves.

But there’s a reason we can’t forget those days: Our very names.

Have you noticed that the vast majority of surnames in the African-American community have their origin in the British Isles? (Mine is Irish.) There’s a reason for that — when we were brought here from western Africa we had our cultures, customs and languages stripped from us, so we ended up taking what was “given” to us. Not for nothing did the former Malcolm Little, the Nation of Islam leader, replace his last name with an X. (And recall that early in the TV miniseries “Roots,” protagonist Kunta Kinté had his African name literally beaten out of him, the master forcing him to adopt “Toby.”)

What that means in practice is that we don’t have an “old country,” similar to the Southern Europeans, primarily Italians and Slavs who of course were mostly Roman Catholic, who arrived on these shores after the Civil War ended. And while they usually did embrace American ideals, they were never forced to abandon their respective cultures the way we were — and still are. That discrimination often manifests itself in employment, with surveys showing that résumés with African-sounding names receive fewer job interviews, let alone offers.

In other words, while it's OK for some people to remember their history, ours is considered taboo. It shouldn't be — just consider our names.

In good Jewish fashion ...

Over the past few years I’ve been treated to some of the Jewish cultural roots of the Christian faith. In one episode the Pharisees asked Jesus the question about from where He got His authority, and He threw a question back at them, “Did John’s baptism [referring to His cousin, John the Baptist] come from heaven or from men?” Because they knew they’d be trapped if they answered either way, they answered, “We don’t know.” Jesus thus refused to answer their question.

Because, I later learned, in that culture the answer to His question led to the answer to theirs, and they knew they would be embarrassed.

In that spirit, if anyone were to ask me why I hate President Trump, of whom I've certainly been critical, I would respond, “Why do you hate Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party?” It would be interesting to see the responses — if folks would answer, “We really don’t hate them; we just disagree with them,” I would say, “Well, then what’s wrong with disagreeing with Trump?” If they say, “Well, they’re trying to destroy the country,” I’d respond, “That’s what I believe he’s doing.” And the discussion would go, hopefully civilly, from there.

Now, as I write the president is in serious trouble legally and politically and is likely to be impeached as a result. My point, however, is that, in many cases, his supporters, by not addressing his attitudes and behavior, don’t appreciate that they’re contributing to the division of this country, and even the church if they’re Christians, along ideological lines.

In other words, we need to think critically about what we believe and not simply be reactive.

A "mandate from heaven"?

It appears that the so-called Cyrus anointing of President Donald Trump, if it ever existed at all, is wearing off.

Last week, after he ordered American military to pull out of Syria, in effect no longer supporting ethnic Kurds that had been our allies in Turkey and  likely leading to their slaughter by Turkish forces there, Pat Robertson, the host if CBN’s “700 Club,” complained that he had gone against a “mandate from heaven.” (That Trump has business dealings, specifically Trump Towers, in Turkey probably didn’t occur to Robertson.)

I’ve long argued elsewhere that Trump is and always been no friend to the Gospel or the Christian faith and simply threw us some bones so that we would vote for him. Whether you like it or not, he’s a politician — if anything, more so than any president before him because he clearly has no scruples or overall vision for the United States of America.

And now he’s going against the “dispensationalist” crowd that voted for him almost unanimously. It remains to be seen whether it will still support him after this latest stunt, which would fly in the face of its version of Biblical prophecy — because if it doesn’t he’s pretty much through.

A tale of two impeachments

Last week conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens tried to draw parallels between the 1999 impeachment of President Bill Clinton and the almost-certain upcoming impeachment of President Donald Trump. The problem is, of course, that the two situations are as different as night and day — conservatives complain that the Democrats are trying to overturn the 2016 presidental election when they themselves tried to overturn the 1992 and 1996 elections.

Understanding the difference, and there actually is one, between the modus operandi of the conservatives who tried to get rid of Clinton for getting elected in the first place and the “liberals” who merely want the stain of a Trump presidency removed is paramount here.

One action about which people would like to forget, if they ever knew, was that in July 1992 conservative activists took the unprecedented step of filing suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. to force Clinton off the ballot. Three years later the original “right-wing conspiracy” surrounding the late right-wing Pittsburgh financier Richard Mellon Scaife’s financial support of media, including his own Tribune-Review, engaging in the smear campaign was exposed by CBS's “60 Minutes,” in the Times and on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And the night that Clinton was reelected anti-tax activist Grover Norquist vowed to have Clinton taken out.

Nothing like that has ever happened against Trump on the political left or in the Democratic Party, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Indeed, only recently has Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi even raised the specter of impeachment; in her heart she probably wanted to do so as much as anyone but was smart to wait until as much evidence as possible was gathered. And now that more of Trump’s malfeasance is being exposed, to say nothing of his ignorance and incompetence, a larger percentage of Americans is coming around.

As things stand now, it’s unlikely that the Senate would remove Trump — after all, the Republican Party still controls it and voters would revolt if GOP-affiliated senators voted to find him guilty (to be fair, impeachment is more of a political rather than legal process). But this isn’t tit-for-tat in that, since you tried to remove our guy, we’ll try to remove yours. The “left” isn’t anywhere near as bloodthirsty as the right; if anything, the “left” is reacting to the bloodthirstiness of the right — you can take bullying for only so long before you begin to react. That’s what we’re seeing now.

The hypocrisy of Franklin Graham

Recently evangelist Franklin Graham called for Christians to pray for President Trump — not that he governs well and according to consistent Christian principles but that he not be removed from office through impeachment for his various misdeeds.

If I have my facts correct, however, he was not so charitable toward Bill Clinton 20 years ago when he was impeached for far, far less than of what Trump is being accused.

And therein lies the hypocrisy for me. Graham thus is being overtly partisan in his call to prayer — and for that reason God isn’t obliged to honor it.

I sometimes wonder just how much such people believe in the sovereignty of God. I’m not joking about that because believing that the fate of the Republic hinges on the fortunes of whomever is in office comes across as a hint of atheism.

“We want a country safe for Christians,” you might say. The problem is that this world, let alone this country, isn’t safe for Christians, so praying for our hegemony in fact might very well be a trick of the devil. If that sounds crazy, consider that he has just one thing on his agenda: To keep people from trusting God through Jesus Christ, and he’ll use the faith or even the Scriptures, which he knows better than any of us, to do it.

I say this because, although at this juncture it’s pretty unlikely, suppose Trump is actually removed from power? Will that mean that God has failed? That’s what it sounds like, with James Dobson saying after Clinton was acquitted that Americans didn’t understand the "nature of evil."

But only if a Democrat who was set up commits an immoral act, correct?

That’s why I’m not at all impressed with Graham’s “prayer” — it assumes that God will act a certain way but doesn’t allow Him to be God. Part of the power of prayer of course is aligning the person/people praying with His will, and I don’t think that’s the case here.