Ku Klux Klan

UnFlagging Jesus

~ philipamerson

UnFLAGging Jesus

I once was joined for lunch by two friends. One was head of a theological school. Our conversation was amicable enough. Although the seminary president took up much of our visit promoting a wide array of initiatives focused on leadership. Future pastors, chaplains, counselors and social service providers were being trained to be leaders! It appeared an effort to impress the other friend at the table — John McKnight. 

John is one of the founders of the Asset Based Community Development approach to community organizing, (often abbreviated as ABCD).  A primary assumption of ABCD is that good leaders start by listening to others and discovering gifts, passions, assumptions and assets. After lunch as we were saying our “good-byes,” John took the hand of the seminary president and kindly offered, “Maybe we should focus a little more on connector-ship and a little less on leadership.” 

Connector-ship! That’s a missing ingredient in so much of human exchange. Universities, businesses, denominations and governments spend tens of millions of dollars and valuable personnel time training for leadership. This is not without merit and benefit. Still if one begins with a belief that energy and initiatives all flow from a top-down direction, a needed element for change is missing. Too often, there is the assumption that if the leader just has the right idea, program, language, skill set or practices, success will inevitably follow. McKnight, understands and teaches that human connection is a critical initial step in developing effective institutions and civil communities.

Don’t start identifying the needs of others you plan to fix without listening. First, listen to find the gifts, the capacities, the assets that folks already possess. Secondly, find that inner moral compass that must continually be developed throughout life by study, seeking fact-based reality, and interacting responsibly with others. This is a more enduring pathway forward.  

I know a remarkable corporate leader who upon arriving at a troubled firm, went to folks on the picket line, the hourly workers, not just upper management and he listened. A follower of Jesus, he continued in prayer, study and worship. Leadership meant connector-ship, listening, learning and finding a moral compass. Shortly thereafter, he gathered the employees in the parking lot. Taking a copy of the company’s unfair policies and procedures manual, he dropped it into the flames of a barrel used those standing in the cold. It was not a concession; it was a modeling of connection. Hard work followed.  He was saying, “We are listening, let’s talk.”

Recently I wrote a piece titled “Jesus Wrapped in a Flag.” Today’s Christian Nationalism promotes a fraudulent version of Christianity, and profoundly flawed revision of American History.  Lovett Weems offered a set of counter recommendations titled Leading Amidst Christian Nationalism.  While helpful, these are overly cautious words and appeared to assume there is only one paradigm for congregational life. It is a soft version of the very American Civil Religion that the author critiques. It is more of a starting point than a guide.

I thought of all the congregations and courageous religious leaders who are doing much more. They listen and share the hard truths discovered in their study and prayers about our responsibilities as Christians. They offer a more robust response to the profound dangers and misinformation widely dispensed by White Christian Nationalism and American Catholic Integralism.

The American church, Protestant and Catholic, needs to remove the American Flag from the shoulders of Jesus. It doesn’t belong there; never has. If U.S. policies and practices aren’t held under the judgement of the Gospel, why be a Christian at all?  Why not just pledge primary allegiance to anything our nation does and forget Jesus?  Just diminish our discipleship. 

Some U.S. “leaders” have done just that. Congresswoman Laureen Boebert said, “Jesus didn’t have enough AR-15 rifles to keep the government from killing him.”  What? Jesus is remolded into a grievance filled, revenge seeking and bully. What does the congresswoman do with the Sermon on the Mount, the words, “Love your enemies” or in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Nevertheless, thy will be done”?  The paradox, of course, as Reinhold Niebuhr argued, while international ethics are messy, they begin with morality in human expression.

The witness of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, isn’t limited to the foolish, mean-spirited and ill-informed theologies of some in congress these days. Jesus of scripture says “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.[iv]” 

The witness of Jesus is UnFlagging!  It is persistent – enduring. It calls leaders to leave their C-Suite offices and learn from the folks in the parking lot.  It calls on congregations to speak with and learn from folks not in the pews on Sunday.

In the mid-1980s my family lived in a low-wealth neighborhood in Evansville, Indiana. One fall, fear gripped neighbors as vicious rapes were reported. The assailant was said to be African American in our multiracial community. Soon we learned the Ku Klux Klan was sending patrols to protect our white citizens, especially the women.  What should our small core-city ministry do? How might we offer a safe alternative to this violation and the hate-based response?

Someone suggested we talk with Will Campbell. Mississippi born, Baptist minister, graduate of Yale Divinity School, author, and Civil Rights advocate, Will was known for friendships with a wide range of people, including members of the Ku Klux Klan. Will took this dwelling together stuff seriously!

I called and left phone messages for Will. It took a few days, and he returned my call. Hearing of our situation, he said, “First thing you need to say to the Klan is “no, your activities are not welcome.'” That sounded good to me — We had already done that. Then, Will, stumped me, surprised me. He asked, “What are their names?” 

NAMES?  “What do you mean?” I responded, “Whose names? Our neighbors?”  “No.” Will said, thinking I would already know the Klansmen. Their names.  I confessed that I didn’t know any of those folks.  He said, “Well, then, what the hell you been doing?  Who are they?”  Interesting, our need to limit where repentance, reconciliation and renewal might occur. Perhaps some changes, some weaving of new relationships could happen in my own life, not only in the lives of Klan members. Might there be a bridging to new relationship, even there? A renewal larger than my imagining?

South African Methodist Bishop Peter Story noted that “America’s preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced byus under apartheid. We had obvious evils to engage; you [on the other hand] have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white and blue myth, You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion and caring of most Americans and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.“
























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[i] Weems, Lovett H. Jr. Leading Amidst Christian Nationalism, LEADING IDEAS, Lewis Center for Church Leadership, June 25, 2024).

[ii] Matthew 5:43-48.

[iii] Luke 22:42

[iv] Matthew 11:28-30.

[v] Storey, Peter, Sojourners Magazine, Oct. 18, 2006.

Fortnight – Day13: All Saints

~ philipamerson ~ 1 Comment

Fortnight – Day13: All Saints

All Saints Day 2020 arrives two days ahead of the Presidential Election. We remember lives well lived — and others lived not so well. We consider the fraying of our national identity and the evident threats to our commonweal. Mortality lurks as a backdrop on the nation’s theatrical stage this year. I think of the friends who have died. Many wonderful folks. There are 230,000 others in the United States and 1.2 million around the world who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic since February. We know only a handful of their names or life stories. Still, this is ALL SAINTS DAY.

The New York Times today (11/1/2020) carried an opinion piece entitled “Obituaries for the The American Dream 1931-2020.” It was inspired by Lizania Cruz, a Dominican artist and museum curator, who asked other artists When and How The American Dream Died For You? The Times opened the question to a wider audience and invited readers to respond.

One of the original responses was from, Marsha McDonald who wrote: “The American Dream died for me when I realized how many of my fellow Americans valued selfishness over community, power over justice, prejudice over generosity, demagoguery over science. For me, the 2020 pandemic is very real, but also a metaphor. How sick our national soul is! The old dream should pass away. Isn’t it time for us to dream new dreams, better dreams, that include us all?“

Since All Saints Sunday 2019, I have spent countless hours looking into the history of Methodism and the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana.** This research led to libraries, books and articles, old newspapers along with dozens of conversations and email exchanges. There are mysteries yet to be solved. Even so, I have sadly learned more of the broad swath of racism and religious bigotry that infected (and still infects) the church. At the same time my research uncovered the lives and witness of dozens of remarkable persons of faith in the early 20th Century who opposed the Klan and worked against this corruption of the Gospel and human dignity. In their day, these women and men dreamed “new dreams, better dreams, that included us all.”

If I were I to write my letter as a part of an Obituary for the American Dream today it would be a rolling set of dates — times of death, trauma and despair — and times of hoped for rebirth. Scores of times, a refrain, recurring rhythms of loss and return. Times when the dream died – along with Dr. King or the Kennedy brothers in the 1960s, or the twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, or the treacheries of hunger, violence, betrayal and death witnessed while working in impoverished settings filled with saintly people in the U.S. and Latin America, and on and on and on. THEN – times when hope was rekindled.

Shortly after the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963 author Morris West wrote an appreciation titled “Good Pope John” for Life Magazine in which he wondered: “Will they canonize him and make him, officially, a saint in the calendar?  In a way, I hope not… I want to remember him for what he was — a loving man, a simple priest, a good pastor and a builder of bridges across which we poor devils may one day hope to scramble across to salvation.” In 2014, Pope John XXIII was canonized — so much for the wishes of Mr. West.

I don’t know that any one American Dream should be canonized. In truth all of our best dreams will end up in some graveyard of good intentions. In fundamental ways, our society and culture are flawed and destined to continuing corruptions — as are all human political and institutional designs. Our hope is not in finding the perfect president, or political ideology or government program. In truth, there is no “draining of the swamp”; instead we require an honest assessment of the human dilemma and self-critical response — where better oversight and care of all of our swampy places is required — social and personal. The future is not yet clear, even so I join in cautious hope.

I pray that Jon Meachem is correct in offering that: “In our finest hours…the soul of the country manifests itself in an inclination to open our arms rather than to clench our fists; to look out rather than to turn inward; to accept rather than to reject. In so doing, America has grown ever stronger, confident that the choice of light over dark is the means by which we pursue progress.” (The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels)

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Thomas Merton wrote: “What makes the saints saints is a clarity of compassion that can find good in the most terrible criminals. It delivers them from the burden of judging others, condemning others. It teaches them to bring the good out of others by compassion, mercy and pardon. We become saints not by conviction that we are better than sinners but by the realization that we are one of them, and that all together we need the mercy of God.” (Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation, p 57)

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Ordinary Saints, Malcolm Guite

The ordinary saints, the ones we know, 
Our too-familiar family and friends, 
When shall we see them? 
Who can truly show 
Whilst still rough-hewn, 
the God who shapes our ends? 
Who will unveil the presence, glimpse the gold 
That is and always was our common ground, 
Stretch out a finger, feel, along the fold 
To find the flaw, to touch and search that wound 
From which the light we never noticed fell 
Into our lives? 
Remember how we turned 
To look at them, and they looked back? 
That full- -eyed love unselved us, and we turned around, 
Unready for the wrench and reach of grace. 
But one day we will see them face to face.

(Malcolm Guite, From Plough, March 22, 2018)

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**[My interest was in part linked to my appreciation for the research by retired Indiana University Professor James Madison, whose book The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland arrived in September 2020. Madison rightly argues that the Klan was made up by more than the “hillbillies and Great Unteachables” as some claimed. Klan membership extended into the ranks of community and church leaders. My interest, of course, was given more urgency by the tragic murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the past year.]