He who has been so long rejected must now be embraced

Reading The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and RCL PR22A

It’s been a hectic week, and I found my mind still working out the implications of last week’s post. I wondered if maybe I should not try to write a new post. But I remembered that this is a camino. One walks as far as one can. If I need to “walk” a shorter distance this week, that’s okay.

I was able to read James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time.” It was published in 1963. Two convergences held my attention as I read: one was about history, the other was about the gospel reading in this week’s Revised Common Lectionary.

First, the history. In May of 1963, after the book was published, Time Magazine put Baldwin on the cover and ran an article entitled “The Root of the Negro Problem.”  Four months later, on Sunday, September 15, white men bombed Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church killing four young black girls.

Second, I kept hearing a passage from Matthew’s gospel.

The Fire Next Time consists of two essays. The first was a letter which Baldwin wrote to his nephew. He said:

“You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being…  [T]he details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.“

The Fire Next Time, Vintage International Books, 1993. Kindle edition at 7-8.  Emphasis added.

In the second essay Baldwin argued that the success or failure of the American experiment depended upon its willingness or refusal to deal with its racist past and present.

“[I]f we persist in thinking of ourselves as [a white nation], we condemn ourselves… to sterility and decay, whereas if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements, and transform them. The price of this transformation is the unconditional freedom of the Negro; it is not too much to say that he, who has been so long rejected, must now be embraced, and at no matter what psychic or social risk. He is the key figure in this country, and the America future is precisely as bright or as dark as his.”

The Fire Next Time, Vintage International Books, 1993 Kindle edition at 94.

And the gospel passage I kept hearing was this:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Matthew 21:42

White theology: helping white people stop running

Reading “Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian” by James H. Cone

In his memoir, James Cone remembers reading a James Baldwin passage to his graduate students. It was a text which, as Cone said, made us (Black Americans), “mad at what white people did to our grandparents and continue to do to us today. When I read that passage… the black students, staring at the white students in their midst, found it difficult to restrain their anger and seemed ready to fight, while the white students, heads down, grew silent and ready to bolt the room.”[2]

I know those feelings: head down, silent, ready to bolt. They are feelings white people often have. And we flee from cities to suburbs and then to gated communities. We get guns. We ban books and shut down history classes. We want to avoid being called to account for the crimes committed by our forebearers – the crimes that established the power, wealth and privilege that eases our lives.

Last week I was wondering what the task of white theology might be. Now, I think the task may be to help white people stop running from the guilt we fear. As Resmaa Menakem (My Grandmother’s Hands) would say, we need to “metabolize” our guilt, to transform it. First, honestly see our complicity in the sin of racism – personal and systemic, but then undertake a repentance that will lead to “newness of life.” (BCP 393) For that, you might think that Christianity would have something we could just pull off the shelf. Evidently, not yet.

Cone quotes James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time:

“People who cannot suffer can never grow up… ”

It is a difficult thing, even a suffering thing to be seen or heard in our sinfulness, diminishment, fear or weakness. If we cannot bear it, we cannot grow up. And we probably cannot bear it alone. Probably the only way to bear it is to share it, and let the suffering become a bridge and connection to other people. That connectedness – Baldwin again – opens up a world in which suffering is borne, and there is survival, joy and hope. Newness of life. A worthy task for white people and white theology.

[1] In Memoriam: Dr. James Hal Cone, Union Theological Seminary, NYC. 2018.

[2] Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody:The Making of a Black Theologian, James H. Cone, Orbis Books, Kindle edition at 162.

Photo by Lucas Favre on Unsplash