Bound Together: A Long Struggle For Justice

Two of our children began school in NW Baltimore where each was the only white child in her class. They were the minority students, but knew full acceptance in their elementary school. I believe our family’s positive experience with minority status was related to the fact that the civil rights movement we know in the US came out of the African American Southern church. Since it is February (Black History month), I’m thinking about this movement and wondering what insights it holds for us Brethren today.

Webster defines civil rights (assume USA) as rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially those guaranteed by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution and subsequent acts of Congress. Our understanding of these rights is rooted in the thinking of founders like Thomas Jefferson who, in 1774 said, ”A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature and not as the gift of their magistrate.” A much higher standard that the laws of nature is the vision Jesus gave us of God’s kingdom, and it was this Biblical vision, thankfully, that inspired the Civil Rights movement we know best.

The Southern Black Church was the powerful community from which came the movement to resist the dehumanization of segregation. The value that each person is a child of God gave many the strength, courage, and discipline needed for the long struggle for justice. The value of returning good for evil and thus maintaining the moral high ground led to creative actions that showed the world the raw inequities of segregation. And the understanding that the Struggle was not “against flesh and blood, but principalities” helped shape the value that the fate of oppressor and oppressed were irrevocably bound. That leaders and membership were seeped in Christian scripture and faith gave opportunity for the Church (and others) to make a powerful testimony in the marketplace to Jesus’ love and power.

What can this example teach us: We are Brethren, steeped in scripture. All around us are civil rights issues of concern: immigration, extraordinary rendition, regular prison conditions, increasing gap between rich and poor, health care, etc. Unlike those in the Southern Black Church, most of us are not victims of human rights abuse, not even close to the abuse, so we can easily turn away from these concerns. But many of us believe our prosperity or downfall is bound together with that of “the least of these”, don’t we? We have the insights down to our core that “Jesus loves me” and “Jesus loves all the children of the world”. Surely these understandings motivate us to be disciplined and stay engaged with, rather than tuning out, the injustices around us. There is no formula for dealing with the overwhelming concerns of our world, but by prayer and faith, we can affirm our God still knows the way through wilderness. We have to follow.
Joan Huston, Mt. Wilson CoB