The Segregated Hour

A Layman's Guide to the History of Black Liberation Theology

Lucas

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274876
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

On March 18, 2008, as Barack Obama rose to the stage in Philadelphia, political commentators were on pins and needles over how he was going to address the fiery sermons of his long-time friend and mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. With an eye toward a more perfect union, the soon-to-be president offered his initial thoughts on the current state of race relations in America. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. Soon after the Civil Rights Movement came to an end, James Cone had been the first to write of this old truism when he introduced the world to something he called Black Liberation Theology. Centuries of slavery, discrimination, and violence had stained the canvas of America's racial divide, but laws now required the immediate and full integration of public life. For those still angered by past and present oppression, there was only one place of refuge where the government would not intrude: the black church. Cone became their primary theologian.Rarely seen in small towns and rural fellowships, black liberation has been relegated to the inner city neighborhoods where the poor reach out for anyone who will give them hope for a better tomorrow. Whether the preachers of liberation have been truly held accountable for the accuracy of their message is the subject of great controversy, but there can be no productive dialogue over such matters until those who would cast judgment first acknowledge the honest and often tragic history that has created this most segregated hour of American life.

1

Anything But Civil

Soon after the sun rose on the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln left a room of grown men in tears. Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, had been by his side through the night, and following Lincoln’s dying breath, Stanton paused before rising to say what everyone in the room had already concluded: “Now he belongs to the Ages.”1 Sorrow seemed to engulf the country, regardless of locality. The bloodiest fighting in American history had taken such a toll on the Union and Confederate soldiers that few took any pleasure in the death of their president. Just six days earlier, a worn and muddy General Robert E. Lee had entered Appomattox Courthouse to stand before General Ulysses S. Grant and offer the full surrender of his Southern armies. Grant would recall their encounter with sadness:

I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us.2

The “cause” that Grant spoke of is frequently debated among historians, but generally accepted by modern Americans. Most believe that the Civil War was a war to end slavery. But slavery was not the primary cause for a war between the states. Shortly after the votes had been tallied in favor of President-elect Lincoln in November of 1860, prominent figures in South Carolina gathered together in a “secession convention,” where they agreed to remove their state from the Union by December 20. As other states followed, President Buchanan was “paralyzed” by the divisive actions of his countrymen.3 The limbo of a lame duck president allowed seven states to remove themselves from the United States of America before Lincoln arrived in Washington to do anything about it. Restoring the Union was, without question, Lincoln’s foremost objective in going to war.

President Lincoln saw the immoral nature of American slavery and wanted nothing more than to see it removed from the nation he loved, but he was a man of law. The new president knew that ending slavery would require the federal government to interfere with a constitutional privilege—the right of the states to govern themselves in the manner of their own choosing without the imposition of a higher body. Immorality was not sufficient grounds for ending slavery. Lincoln was incredibly cautious about setting any precedent for dictating moral behavior from the White House.

As Lincoln and the Union debated how best to restore the country, slaves were seen as a crutch to the Southern economy that, if emancipated, would create a ripple effect in the war. Rather than ending slavery based on moral outrage, the federal government did so as a strategic maneuver. They resolved to end slavery as a means for restoring the Union. “If the rebels did not stop fighting and return to the Union by January 1, 1863, the president would free ‘thenceforward and forever’ all slaves in the rebel states.”4

The end of slavery in rebel states, however, was not a forbidding of slavery everywhere. This would require congressional action—an amendment to the Constitution. Two years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect, both the House of Representatives and the Senate approved legislation that would officially outlaw slavery in the whole of the United States. And on February 1, 1865, the president signed a “Joint Resolution submitting the proposed 13th Amendment to the states.”5

With just twenty-seven amendments passed in the history of the U.S., none has been more difficult to sell to the American people than the thirteenth. Members of Congress who pushed it through Washington channels had little opposition, and almost every opponent of abolition was now serving in the Confederacy, thus making Congress a mostly northern institution. But in order to pass, it still had to face the states.

The Congress . . . shall propose Amendments to this Constitution . . . which . . . shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States.6

More than 30 percent of the nation’s thirty-six states were officially aligned with the Confederacy, a body whose infrastructure demanded slavery as the basis of its economic success. Passing an amendment abolishing slavery everywhere would require a heavy hand of persuasion in the South by a federal government rooted in the philosophy of northern lawmakers. This was a tall order for a nation still at war.

For years slavery had been justified among southern divines (pastors and bishops) through an interpretation of Genesis 9 that assumed far more than the text would either literally or figuratively allow.

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”7

Known today as racial prophecy, a belief was born among slave owners that this was a text separating white men from black men, making the latter more apt for labor and the former more fit to lead. Shem, in the text, was to become the “servant of servants” to his brothers and the generations that would follow. This is a tough passage to process for most Christians, regardless of any slave-based implications. But the separation of Ham from his brothers was a national divide rather than a racial one.

These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.8

Still, many of these southern “divines” would cite the Old Testament “to show that the Israelites, including Abraham and other favored patriarchs, held slaves without drawing God’s censure. They cited the New Testament to demonstrate that neither Jesus nor the apostles ever preached against slavery and used the Noahic curse to provide a racial justification for the specific enslavement of blacks.”9 The Reverend James A. Lyon of Columbus, Mississippi, himself a slave owner, declared from the pulpit, “As to the lawfulness of the institution slavery in itself considered, disconnected from its abuses, we scarcely deem it necessary to discuss it.”10 With the racial argument based on obscure passages in the Old Testament, the New Testament became sufficient grounds for demanding the obedience of a slave without his own individual right.

Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.11

Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.12

Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again.13

To tamper with the traditionally Christian view on American slavery in the South was to negotiate a new balance between Scripture and the sacred rights of man embraced in the words of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

C...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Anything But Civil
• Chapter 2: The First Movement for Civil Rights
• Chapter 3: Poor Man Out
• Chapter 4: Depression of the Darker Brother
• Chapter 5: Malcolm and Martin
• Chapter 6: The War on Poverty
• Chapter 7: The Fight for Black Power
• Chapter 8: Between Heaven and Earth
• Chapter 9: The Most Segregated Hour
• Chapter 10: Faith, Work, and Politics as Usual
• Conclusion
• Bibliography