Black History is Our History: The Savior Who Crosses the Track

Introduction

Today, we are going to begin a candid discussion on race and Christianity in a series I’m calling, Black History is Our History. I have been very skeptical about discussing the issue and relevance of race in these kinds of settings, because much of what should be said is often misunderstood and used as a way to stir division. However, we are commanded in Scripture to look into and defend against false ideologies, which may lead us away from the hope of the gospel. One of the goals of Christianity is to bring unity and reconciliation to what would otherwise be divided groups by basing our identity on the humanity of Jesus’s Christ. Therefore, the topic we will consider over the next few weeks is not an attack on any particular person or institution, but rather a consideration of those things that have caused many people to lose hope and faith in Jesus Christ.

Let’s be clear: Since slavery, injustice of any kind, prejudice, and racism are all consequences of sin, these topics must be addressed with the powerful proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is therefore, a theological topic which must be addressed with biblical truth.

For the last few weeks, I have been sharing with you the reality of God’s blessings on earth as it is in heaven. My desire is not to present some social gospel or materialistic hope that replaces the spiritual essence of God’s gift to all men. Rather, my aim was to identify the biblical evidence that demonstrates how God’s people always looked for His material blessings on earth as a means of declaring His presence and involvement in the very creation He has made. The testimony of the people of God was and yet remains, “God with us.” That, though Israel’s God may not be seen or humanly felt, He is always present and active in the affairs of mankind. Seemingly the only way of demonstrating this is by tangible experiences that prove Israel’s God fights for her and rewards her in ways visible and measurable. I have gone to great lengths to prove this point, not intentionally, but by the provocation of the Lord. And as we begin this first week in Black History month, I believe I now see why. It is imperative that we accept these evidences as a means of God showing how He desires to dwell with all people and not just some.

Have you ever wondered: why does God bless some people? Why are some people afforded the lifestyle of comfort and abundance while others aren’t? And why are those who are offered such comfortable, albeit Christian and modest lives, never look like me? Why do most of the African Americans I know struggle and hustle through life, barely making it?

After pondering these questions, I discovered the issue is not only a cultural one, but a theological one. There are many layers of history to show how African Americans have been theologically and psychologically convinced that there life is to be one lived inferior to all people. And that, therefore, is the life that one must look forward to—only to inherit something far greater in the life after. Meanwhile, those who suggest such a life to African Americans live a life a comfort now and anticipate a life lived in eternity with the Father. In other words, they have their heaven now and over there!

Such a life seems impossible to the African American, he has been convinced that his unnecessary and unbiblical suffering is attached to his piety, and to be pious means to be inferior. Let it be known—there is a difference between modesty, humility and inferiority. My only desire today is to convince you that we are entitled and deserving of the abundant life (John 10:10) God promised us long ago through Christ Jesus. Yet, we must first overcome the notion that such inferiority is God’s will and our Christian expression of piety. We must get rid of the idea God desires us to be slave to anything or anyone besides Him.

Robert Lewis Dabney, a presbyterian minister and educator born in the 1820s wrote several letters justifying the slavery of black people. In a letter he wrote,

…in considering these supposed evils of slavery, we must remember that the real evil is the presence of three millions of half-civilized foreigners among us; and of this gigantic evil, domestic slavery is the potent and blessed cure. This foreign and semi-barbarous population was placed here by no agency of ours. The cupidity of the forefathers of American and British abolitionists placed it here, against our earnest remonstrances, and left us to find the remedy for its presence. It would have been a curse that would have paralyzed the industry, corrupted the morals, and crushed the development of any nation, thus to have an ignorant, pagan, lazy, uncivilized people intermixed with us, and spread abroad like the frogs of Egypt. The remedy is slavery. And let us ask, what has slavery done to rescue the South and the Africans in these portentous cir­cumstances? It has civilized and christianized the Africans, and has made them, in the view of all who are practically acquainted with their condition, the most comfortable pea­santry in the world. It has produced a paucity of crimes, riots and mobs, that far surpasses the ‘‘land of steady habits,” the boasted North; as is proved by the statistics of crime.— It has rendered political convulsions in our own borders impossible. It has developed a magnificent agriculture, which in spite of the burden of unequal legislation, has enabled the South to maintain a proportionate increase with its gigantic rival. A reference to the statistics of the religious denomi­nations of the country shows that slavery has made about a half a million, one in every six of these pagan savages, a pro­fessor of Christianity. The whole number of converted pa­gans, now church members, connected with the mission churches of the Protestant world, is supposed to be about 191,000, a goodly and encouraging number indeed. But compare these converted pagans with the 500,000 converts from the pagan Africans among us, and we see that through the civilizing agency of domestic slavery, the much-slandered christianity of the South has done far more for the salvation of heathen men than all the religious enterprise of Protestant christendom! And this is, no doubt, but the dawn of the brighter day, which the benevolent affection of the masters will light up around the black population, if they are not interfered with by the schemes of a frantic fanaticism (“Letter 10”).

In addition to this hate-filled conclusion, many other religious and Christian institutions have cowardly stood in favor of racism, prejudice ideologies, and slavery.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with its slave condoning and historical participation in the advocacy of racism by popularizing on the basis of theological and scientific evidence the inferiority of African Americans.

Bob Jones University who publicly prohibited the admission of African Americans and interracial marriage of its students, faculty, and staff.

Charles Parham and the early Pentecostal movement which denounced integration, seating one of its earliest disciples, William Seymour, outside to listen in on the wonders of the Holy Spirit through a window.

It is alarming the things that are written by his professing Christian and man of the cloth. However, the most disappointment concerning these words is that many black people believe it!

Notice the very different position of one of the world’s greatest preachers, Charles Spurgeon in a letter from 1860,

I do from my inmost soul detest slavery anywhere and everywhere, and although I commune at the Lord’s table with men of all creeds, yet with a slaveholder I have no fellowship of any sort or kind. Whenever one has called upon me, I have considered it my duty to express my detestation of his wickedness, and would as soon think of receiving a murderer into my church, or into any sort of friendship, as a manstealer. Nevertheless, as I have preached in London and not in New York, I have very seldom made any allusion to American slavery in my sermons. This accounts for the rumor that I have left out the anti-slavery from my American edition of sermons.This is not true in any measure, for, as far as my memory serves me, I cannot remember that the subject was handled at all in any of my printed sermons beyond a passing allusion, and I have never altered a single sentence in a sermon which has been sent out to my American publishers beyond the mere correction which involved words and not sense. However, if any think me capable of such double dealing, I doubt not that they judge of me by themselves, and from such persons esteem is not desirable. I do not therefore regret the loss of it. I have this much to say to all who respect me in America: I did not want to be blaming you constantly, while there are sins enough in my own country, but I shall not spare your nation in future. I shall remember that my voice echoes beyond the Atlantic, and the crying sin of man stealing people shall not go unrebuked. I did not know that I had been so fully adopted a citizen of your republic, but finding that you allow me to be one of yourselves, I will speak out quite severely enough, and perhaps more sharply than will meet with approbation.

I have not been altogether silent upon the subject, for I have spoken with burning words when the matter has been on hand, but as this has usually been upon the platform, and not from the pulpit, those utterances have not reached the press. I must see that there are some such things in the sermons, if not in England at least in America. Messrs. Sheldon & Co. are ready to publish anything I may have to say on the matter, and I shall also avail myself of the Watchman and Reflector.

Finally, let me add, John Brown is immortal in the memories of the good in England, and in my heart he lives.

Frederick Douglas once wrote,

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.

The point of today’s lesson is to convince you that you are made in the image of God [making you valuable and deserving as anyone else in the world] and granted access into His holy presence to receive the covenant blessings now and in the hereafter.

Propositions Concerning the Black Race

Black people are made in the i,age amd likeness of God. All men, including black men, are made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27).

This means all black people, in their humanity, are reflections of the beauty of God and cannot be diminished to anything less than human.

All men who believe in Jesus Christ, including black men, are a part of the covenant of God and family of God by the blood of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:11-18).

As covenant-family members of the God, we are entitled to certain blessings (Ephesians 3:1-7).

Conclusion: Therefore, the brutal and harsh enslavement recorded in the earliest times of America’s history is anti-Christian and unbiblical.

John 14

Jesus walked through a Samaritan city to demonstrate and bridged a gap that could only be closed by Him.