In affirmation of an article written by Michael Brown (Townhall, 8/12/18) arguing that we do
have a responsibility to criticize the President, one evangelical concurred:
·
But that fact is not a license to sin, nor does
that fact excuse us from the responsibility to speak out against evil. Because Trump has (so far) been good for a
few issues we care about, we nonetheless have a responsibility to call sin
“sin.” We praise him when we can, but we
criticize him when we must – not rationalize his actions.
In principle, I concur completely. However, I must admit
that I am somewhat hesitant about entering into this highly unbalanced volume
of verbiage clearly intended to destroy the President. This reminds me of a
discussion I recently had with a highly respected Black Evangelical. He was in
the process of writing a book about the collusion of the southern White Church
with segregation. It also seemed that he was choosing the worst examples of
this.
When I expressed my hesitation about his venture, he
responded, “Why not; It’s the truth.” He certainly knew more about the topic
than I. However, I raised the issue of balance. After all, two people could write
a biography of George Washington. One could make him look like a scoundrel, and
the other as a saint, depending upon their selection from the many details of
Washington’s life. This is what I was concerned about here.
To highlight this problem, I cited the participation of thousands
of White Evangelicals during the Reconstruction that had followed the Civil
War, something about which we hardly ever hear anything. Retired Professor of History and Black Church
Studies and author of “Black Preaching,”
Henry H. Mitchell, had admitted that he had written to raise the esteem of his
Black people. Nevertheless, Mitchell also has some good things to say about the
White Church and their role in Reconstruction:
- After the South was opened up to the missionaries, under protection of military occupation, the Protestant churches of the North launched a veritable crusade to bring literacy to the huge host of the newly freed. (Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings, 142)
- I was stunned to see whole pages of names of people who had been sent south to do mission work. There were hundreds of these names, in tiny print, on page after page. (142)
- Regardless of paternalism and hazards to African American self-esteem, it was this huge crew of volunteer and minimally paid instructors, of not just Baptist but all denominations, who laid the foundation for all the secondary and college work reported in the pages that follow. There may have been only a log cabin church to teach in at first; it may have been by firelight, but these volunteers taught their very hearts out. There simply isn’t room to begin to cover the host of primary reading classes that were begun in churches and elsewhere soon after the Union troops took over. (142-43)
- There were, of course, some educated African Americans from the North hastening south to lift their sisters and brothers. But this vast number of newly freed African Americans required this white host at the outset… The first Southern generation of locally educated African American instructors was first trained in schools planted by white missionaries. (143)
The unbalanced media has left this part out of their
narrative. Instead, it seems committed to unearthing every injustice that had
been perpetrated against our Black brethren, I think to their detriment.
Nevertheless, there is a place to criticize the White
Church, but inflammatory unbalanced reporting seems to be winning out.
Nevertheless, I think that there is also a place for us evangelicals to
criticize the President, but carefully.
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