Bullying — some things to think about

You have probably heard about the high-schooler in Massachusetts who was hassled by other girls to a point where she committed suicide in January. Right now, the school itself is on trial for doing virtually nothing to stop it.

I know what you're thinking: Can things be that bad in a school that a student might become at risk of taking his/her own life? You bet they can — as I know from unhappy personal experience.

Over the past couple of years an anti-bullying campaign has run public service announcements on television. When I learned what their definition of bullying was, I realized that I had been a victim of such off-and-on for 15 years, in various places — one of them a Christian academy, the last place where you might think it would occur. (I'm not going to waste time and space detailing specific incidents, only telling you that it affects me even today.) What's more, in my case one of the bullies was my own father.

Now, you can respond to bullying in two ways: You can become a bully in your own right or you can use your experience to take the side of those who have similarly suffered. Generally, I've chosen the second option, which has led me into some strange alliances because I was willing to stand up for the underdog.

I grew up in a household where Dad harbored deep resentment toward the white race, and much of the African-American culture in the 1970s maintained similar feelings. However, in those days my chief tormentors were themselves black and virtually all of the people who "had my back" were white, so not only were most of my childhood friends white but I also began to react to anti-white rhetoric. That unnerved my parents, who thought I was trying to run away from my heritage; however, it was simply a matter of emotional safety. During my teenage years the issue of "gay rights" became a hot topic and I saw homosexuals as specifically being unfairly targeted; as a result, as a young Christian I even considered becoming a gay-rights activist. (This is not to say that I have ever condoned homosexual behavior or believed it's morally OK — I simply saw gays as scapegoats.) In fact, in my 20s other Christians — and I mean leaders — picked on me, and at least twice they tried to freeze me out of a fellowship.

Today, most of the bullying I see comes from the political right, especially when it comes to the "culture war." When I returned to Pittsburgh from a year in Atlanta I noticed a campaign to rid the nations of corrupting influences — the media, "liberals," the government — and that if we elected the "right" (pun intended) people to office God would bless our nation. (A lot of groups raised a ton of money doing that.)

However, when I consider the life of Jesus, I saw a man who actually chose to be around the outcasts of His day — tax collectors (considered traitors), prostitutes, women, Gentiles, the poor. See, those people had no status in Jewish society and the "high and mighty" looked down upon them; indeed, there was a "health-and-wealth" gospel which suggested that adherence to God's Word would lead to riches and status. The "super-rabbi" who turned out to be God in the flesh turned that convention on its head, which is why the priests, leaders and Pharisees hated His guts.

This is why I see the "religious right," as much as it tries to paint itself as defending our "Christian culture," as sabotaging our witness instead. I stopped subscribing to most Christian media long ago because of its propensity for blaming outsiders. Going further, I've gotten into more than a few arguments with people who constantly attack President Obama because he doesn't govern according to their worldview. I see today's "tea-party" movement as trying to intimidate those who don't agree with its myopic agenda.

Yes, I consider all of that "bullying" — and I for one won't put up with it anymore. I would think that the serious Christian, following the example of our LORD, would run to the side of the wounded. But when you're too worried about your own status to do real ministry to the "last, least and lost," the Gospel itself becomes "last, least and lost." It comes down to the "Golden Rule" — "Do to others as you would have them do to you."

Evangelical, Reformed ... and progressive?

When in 1998, after over 20 years away, I temporarily returned to my childhood church where I first heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one of the now-deceased elders immediately extended the "right hand of fellowship." "We know what you believe," he said.

I wish I had thought to say then, "You taught me well."

Indeed, I'm certainly grateful for that background. Even though my current church doesn't subscribe to Reformed theology and I have no plans to leave, I've always considered myself such. The sovereignty of God, irresistible grace and other core doctrines of what is commonly called "Calvinism" just make the most sense to me even after studying other schools of thought.

That said, I have never subscribed to the conservative ideology that often is considered part and parcel of the Reformed faith. Even when I read the Scriptures as a child I could see justifications for a more progressive interpretation of social and political issues, but I never brought them up because the atmosphere I grew up in the 1970s wasn't conducive to such partisanship.

Anyway, we need to remember that all theology is ultimately man-made. If that sounds like an insult, consider that fallible man, despite the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, still doesn't -- indeed, cannot have that much of a handle on Who God is. As I said earlier, I personally believe Reformed theology to be the best, most comprehensive explanation of Scripture; however, it does come with some historical baggage often ignored by its apologists.

We Protestants recognize the Reformation as a watershed moment in recapturing the original witness of the early church. The trouble was that it has as much to do with power politics as anything else, especially since the Roman Catholic Church in those days was itself in practice also a political entity; thus, that's where the battle was often fought. Even nations that had become Protestant maintained official churches. (This was even the case in what is now the United States; all but one state of the original 13 had a government-recognized sect, and "freedom of worship" as we understand it was a novel concept.)

French theologian John Calvin was the first to introduce "separation of church and state," which meant that the church should operate completely free of political constraints. However, Calvin also introduced the concept of "theonomy," which means that a nation should be governed by Old Testament law and believed -- wrongly, in my estimation -- that the state had the mandate to enforce it. Moreover, the Calvinist mentality of that day meant a destruction of the nobility which, as you could imagine, wouldn't go over too well in the Europe of that day; as a result, Calvinists ended up being run out of most countries.

That's where I part company with my theological heritage. The early church was an insurgent movement that didn't have and never sought political authority; rather, it focused on not simply teaching but also living the Kingdom of God in a culture that was clearly hostile. That made it more able to challenge the status quo, whether passively or actively. When faith becomes part of the "establishment," which conservatism seeks by definition, it almost always becomes watered down to become acceptable to its surroundings but in the process sacrificing the power to change lives. It's no accident, then that the European church is all but dead and the American church is by contrast more vibrant but still struggling; meanwhile, the Holy Spirit seems to have caught fire in much of the Third World where Christianity doesn't have that much hold on institutions there. (I mean, when you have political and economic power, what good is the power of the Spirit?)

So what does this have to do with a "progressive" ideology? Well, consider the immortal words of our LORD, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." That is, if he is suffering from some wrong it should be challenged -- even in the political realm if necessary. And that is where the controversy begins.

My deepest shame as a Reformed Christian surrounded the fight over apartheid in South Africa, which was implemented in 1948, codifying into law what had been custom for centuries -- and the folks who did this were, for the most part, Reformed (in fact, it seemed that the more theologically conservative they were the more committed to the system). The primary justification for that stance had to do with a fear of Communism, which I understand; however, I posit that it was a fear of change were apartheid abolished, which of course it was in the early 1990s. I don't think it was a coincidence that, in the book "Nelson Mandela: In His Own Words," a collection of his speeches, the former political prisoner and first post-apartheid president, who I understand grew up Methodist, gave props to every religious group except the Reformed.

As much as I appreciate theology, I realize that it just can't stay there; at the judgment Jesus is going to ask us not how much we know but what we did with the truth He gave us -- and especially how we used it to make this world resemble His Kingdom. The Christian Gospel, after all, isn't about the "afterlife" so much but what God wants to do here to bring a sense of "shalom" before He returns. In other words, theology is something to be lived, not just studied.

The final frontier

I have mentioned in other entries that during services on the Sunday after last year's general election, the pastor of my interracial evangelical church had all of us African-Americans stand and then instructed the rest of the congregation lay hands on us, saying that "a spiritual stronghold has been broken."

He did that because he knew he had a politically divided congregation, with most of the whites likely supporting John McCain for president that year, indeed, two weeks previously he preached against such division during the campaign. (This is an evangelical church, after all, and polls indicated that 70 percent of white evangelicals nationally backed the Republican candidate.) By contrast, 95 percent of African-Americans, regardless of faith affiliation, supported Barack Obama.

I've been heartened with the serious efforts that have been made over the past couple of decades toward racial reconciliation among evangelicals -- the Promise Keepers started it all, of course, and some denominations and parachurch groups have made serious strides toward such harmony. However, we have yet to address the ideological differences that still exist, and until that's done we will not achieve it.

Because, bottom line, the issue is one of worldview.

When I became a Christian in 1979, the conservative movement in general and "religious right" in particular was just kicking into gear, with its primary target being government, especially the Feds. The complaint was that it had overstepped its constitutional authority by passing laws and using tax money for purposes it didn't agree with, most notably "Great Society" programs that benefited the poor. More to the point, however, conservatives demonstrated an assumption that authority, whether cultural, social or political, was their right.

African-Americans, on the other hand, historically have had different issues. Most identify with the civil-rights movement, which used the Federal government, including court decisions and legal remedies, to obtain justice (because state and local authorities opposed their efforts). And they -- we -- didn't have the same access to the power structure; thus, it had to be done through moral appeals.

Sadly, in part for that reason, the civil-rights movement eventually pitted one set of Christians against another set of Christians. Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1955 was just a local pastor in Montgomery, Ala., was later denounced as a Communist, and the resentment among white conservatives became so strong toward the national Democratic Party for supporting civil rights that in 1966 the Republican Party, practically non-existent in the South then but already leaning to the right nationally, saw an opening and began running candidates there.

That's the reason that you almost never see African-Americans on Christian TV or hear them on Christian radio; when you do it's in support of the "approved" viewpoint that doesn't accurately reflect the overall views of the black community -- which generally aren't right-wing. I find very interesting that conservatives talk about reaching out to the black community but simply to put a "black face" -- and yes, you can take that as a pun -- on policies and attitudes most blacks just don't accept.

Talk-show blowhard Rush Limbaugh said that, after Obama won that high percentage of the black vote, his color was the primary reason that African-Americans voted for him. Nonsense -- had McCain been black and Obama white, blacks (even evangelicals) would still have voted for Obama, overwhelmingly, or turned out for Hillary Clinton in virtually identical numbers had she won the Democratic nomination. And I'm sure you noticed that the anti-Obama "tea party" movement that got started in April is virtually all-white -- think that's a coincidence? African-Americans just don't have the fear of government that white conservatives do.

For there to be true reconciliation between black and white evangelical Christians, whites have to understand the views and histories of their black brothers and sisters and not believe that they have the last word when it comes to social and political involvement. (For what its worth, African-Americans already understand the conservative view and have rejected it; it's up to the conservatives to find out why.)

A message to my conservative friends

Those of you who subscribe to a conservative ideological agenda and have tangled with me over the years probably consider me unnecessarily argumentative and unwilling to back down. I'm sure you look at me funny and think, "How can someone who calls himself a Christian believe what he does? Doesn't he believe in Christian unity? Doesn't he understand that we're only fighting for Biblical values?"

Well, there's a specific reason why I get in people's faces. Aside from my basic disagreements with the conservative agenda, mentioned elsewhere on this blog, there's another issue: My upbringing -- more specifically, my earthly father.

You see, I was raised by a man with no real moral center and who believed that life was about meeting his needs, refusing to deal with folks wouldn't feed his ego and convinced he was always right. Deeply resentful toward people whom he feel wronged him, he subscribed to the wisdom of the world, that you should make as much money as you can as soon as you can regardless of any calling or spiritual commitment and whom you hurt in the process -- in short, he was, in practice, a Marxist who subscribed to the Machiavellian principle "the ends justify the means." When I first heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a pre-teen it was certainly a distinctive message from what I was hearing at home. And when I did respond just before graduating from high school nearly 30 years ago, it was for that reason: I wanted something different from what I realized was the nonsense I grew up with.

Less than a year later I saw my first deviation -- the following January, while a student at Georgia Tech, in an independent evangelical church in an Atlanta suburb I attended with other students. The pastor before then had been recuperating from major surgery and had been out of the pulpit for several months; when he returned he started preaching conservative politics from the pulpit, especially against the Soviet Union, and punctuating each point with Hebrews 12:29, "[F]or our 'God is a consuming fire.'" At that time the church publicized an anti-Equal Rights Amendment rally (I was an ERA supporter) and improperly endorsed then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan (consider when this was and who was in office at the time). My spirit became uneasy because this didn't sound like the Christ I had pledged to follow, but it would take just one visit to a downtown church just off campus, where I ended up staying, to understand just what the problem was.

You see, there was no love in the first church -- for Christ, people or God's creation. It was all about fear about losing privileges, power, position -- the very opposite of Jesus' good news to me. And looking back now, the second church was warm and nurturing, while the first church was kind of cold. Just like my household.

Dad also had considerable racial resentment as well; I can't tell you how many times he used to refer to the "white man" -- of course, in a negative fashion -- which also began to turn me off. Granted, there were historical injustices perpetrated on African-Americans and I would later learn the specifics; however, growing up I had become an admirer of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- whom Dad didn't care for -- who decided to choose a different path, and I later became an early advocate of racial reconciliation in the evangelical church. (Oh, those two churches in Atlanta were white.)

That said, I would eventually learn that the ideological right has had its own issues with race and racism that it has never faced. In an interview with the New Yorker, Pat Buchanan, than an aide to President Nixon (whose whole political career was based on resentment), related a 1971 memo in which he recommended, among other things, that "bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country ... We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention" because doing so could help to "cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

Reagan, however, would bring that to a whole new level, as he would ride some of those anti-black resentments all the way to the White House. Indifferent to the civil-rights movement and dismissive of King, during his 1976 campaign he referred to "welfare queens driving Cadillacs" and kicked off his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Miss., near where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, stating that he favored "states' rights" (read: "I would have opposed desegregation"). In fact, his "big government" shtick actually had a racist tinge to it, as guess who was perceived as benefiting from it? That pandering to racists might explain his endorsement from a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia, saying that "the Republican platform could have been written by a Klansman." That's why I'm not a Republican.

But I digress. Anyway, in August of 1983 Mom, fed up with Dad's tyranny and fatigued by fruitless attempts to change the situation, decided to leave the marriage. Dad tried desperately to get her back but wouldn't change his outlook or way of dealing with things, so Mom filed for divorce, which was finalized in January of 1985. (She would later marry a more solid, stable man I referred to in another entry.) But even then he refused to humble himself and admit his failings; he remained resentful toward her to his death in 1993 from complications of his alcoholism.

What's the conservative analogy? Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

According to David Brock's book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," conservative activists went so far as to file suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. in 1992 to have Clinton removed from the ballot -- because they knew he would probably win. And all during his presidency the political right, especially its media, hounded him, sabotaging his program and spreading unsubstantiated rumors about his corruption. Eight years later, after having failed to knock off Bill, they decided they needed to sabotage his wife, Sen. Hillary, then the junior U.S. senator from New York, on her road to the White House; a number of folks I talked to said that they would cross over to the Democratic primary to support Obama to keep her out. It never occurred to them that Obama would himself become a viable candidate.

There's a saying, however, that "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Two years ago the Washington Times published a story with the false assertion that Obama had attended a radical Muslim seminary in Indonesia, and a number of people also filed suit to have Obama removed because of questions about his citizenship -- again, because they knew he could win. It was the political equivalent of getting back at a rival for "stealing his girl" -- never mind that she willingly left with him.

And there's still considerable resentment over Obama's victory -- I chided a man at dinner a couple of months ago for blaming the media for trashing vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the campaign; he became angry when I told him that she didn't need their help. There's also a Facebook group called "Nobama in '12" -- they're not even going to give him a chance?

One more personal note: Just weeks before my parents split I read the wedding announcement of a woman I had desired in high school. That situation, of which I'll spare you the details, was quite acrimonious to say the least, and for quite some time I blamed her for that.

But after Mom left the LORD spoke to me, saying, "Consider your part." You see, He showed me that the dynamics between her and me were similar to my parents' marriage, which I already knew why had failed. Also reeling from the trauma of flunking out of school for the second time, I went into counseling, began attending 12-step recovery programs and fell in with a group of people who helped me get back on my feet. After years of healing I extended her an olive branch and we later apologized to each other; we're still in touch even though we'll never be close friends. (I can honestly say I harbor no bitterness toward her today.)

You see, it was through that experience that God revealed to me the depth of my sin. Because I had already believed in Jesus Christ I knew intellectually that it was already forgiven; that said, sin was still affecting my life in ways I wasn't aware of at the time. Because I've worked through all that in my own life, I see that in others.

My situation reminds me of a rumor I heard about one of my favorite music groups -- I don't know for sure this is true, so I won't identify it -- that had fired a talented newer member for being high on stage. Members of this band, like many others, had previously abused drugs and alcohol but eventually came to their senses and were not about to tolerate something like that again in their presence. In the same way, having dealt with my own issues, I recognize hatred, resentment and bigotry when I see it. So if you want to be that way ... don't do it around me.

Exposed: The myth of the black conservative

One thing the candidacy of Barack Obama has done when it comes to race relations is to begin to put to rest the myth of the black conservative.

That became clear when J.C. Watts Jr., the former quarterback at the University of Oklahoma and in the Canadian Football League who later represented Tulsa in Congress and who was considered a rising star in the Republican Party before leaving official Washington in 2003 and even a possible vice-presidential candidate, told the Associated Press that he was toying with supporting Obama because the GOP was not really reaching out to African-Americans.

If Watts didn't know it before, he knows it now: The Republicans -- or perhaps more accurately, the conservatives who have dominated the party since the early 1980s -- from the start never had any intention of doing so. When he was elevated to the No. 4 position in congressional leadership it was only for the sake of putting a black face on their policies, with the real target white "moderates" possibly put off by the overt racism of Southern conservatives, most of who were former Democrats, that had opposed the civil-rights movement.

The modus operandi was simple -- put feelers out to any African-American who seemed at all amenable to modern conservatism, make an outsize offer to join their "club" and pay him or her handsomely (leading to the somewhat accurate charge of "sellout"). But once they got on board, the conservatives often reverted to their race-baiting ways.

One example was at the American Enterprise Institute, which had hired Glenn Loury and Robert Woodson as fellows on that basis. They decided to leave when AEI fellow Dinesh D'Souza published the controversial book "The End of Racism," which they considered racist in its own right, in 1996.

More importantly, conservatives never talk to, let alone work with, African-American leadership to determine the issues people face and how to address them -- and why would they? Their ultimate goal was always domination and capitulation, not cooperation, and in their view the idea that the conservative approach is "wrong" is, somehow, unthinkable. But that's what the black community has always told the political right, which is why 90 percent usually vote Democratic, with that percentage going up this time around. Too bad conservatives haven't gotten the message.

Recently a number of conservatives have suggested that blacks were being racist for their solid support of Obama. They ignore two issues: 1) Until Hillary Clinton began playing the "race card" during the primary season, the black community actually was split because much of its leadership initially supported her; and 2) The black community historically has never supported conservative candidates of any hue or ethnicity. In other words, it's not race that's the defining issue here -- it's ideology.

That reality puts black conservatives in a difficult spot, to put it mildly. Blacks don't take them seriously and the conservative establishment doesn't respect them even with all the money it pays them. Maybe someday black conservatives will learn that they're simply being played -- and some may already have done so.