Social Justice - DrBobTerry.com

Changing a Nation

Bob Terry January 25, 2019

By 1961 the nation had been in the troughs of the civil rights struggle for six years. In truth, the nation had struggled with civil rights since its founding, but the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott started an unprecedented chapter in this on-going struggle.

On April 19, 1961, Martin Luther King stood behind the pulpit in Alumni Chapel of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, to deliver the J.B. Gay Lectures on Christian Ethics. Southern Seminary was the oldest and most prestigious seminary sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. Much of King’s work the past six years had been centered in places where Southern Baptists formed the largest religious group. It is an understatement to say many Baptists were not pleased with him.

King’s appearance caused a stir among some at the seminary. A few dignitaries invited by other seminary departments to participate in the lecture series withdrew after hearing of King’s participation. But the faculty and administration would not back down. They stood with Henlee Barnett, the seminary’s most distinguished Christian ethicist, who had nominated King for the lectureship.

So on April 19, the nation’s leading civil rights advocate stood to address the leaders of Southern Baptists’ most distinguished educational institution at a time when tensions about civil rights were about to erupt across the nation and especially in the South.

King did not back down either. In clear and unmistakable words he declared,

“Segregation is a moral evil which no Christian can accept. The church must make it clear that if we are to be true witnesses of Jesus Christ, we can no longer give our allegiance to a system of segregation.”

He called segregation more than a political issue. It was a moral issue, he said. “Since the church has a moral responsibility of being the moral guardian of society, then it cannot evade its responsibility in this very tense period…” he declared.

Listen to the audio tape of that address and you will hear previews of themes made famous in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the Capitol Mall in August 1963. You will hear King utter that famous line “Let justice roll down like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” The quote is from Amos 5:24, a fact King acknowledged in his seminary address.

In 1961 and, more famously, in 1963 King used the Bible to lay the foundation for his moral crusade against segregation and Jim Crow laws. He fought for the Voting Rights Act based on the Bible’s teaching that in Christ there is no Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female (Galatians 3:28). For the Apostle Paul, that teaching was so important he made the same point again in Colossians 3:11.

King crusaded in behalf of the poor, the hungry, the disposed of, because that is what Jesus followers do. Christians demonstrate their Lord’s compassion through such acts and they offer a hand up by working for a society that cares for “the least of these.”

King’s appearance at Southern Seminary created a firestorm for the seminary.

Baptist bodies passed resolutions condemning the school for inviting King whom many labeled a trouble maker. Some stopped supporting Southern Seminary through the Cooperative Program – the primary financial support channel of the denomination. Donors canceled pledges. One church wrote Barnett, who initiated the King invitation, attacking him with such viciousness that Barnett looked up the church’s Cooperative Program giving and calculated the amount of money that eventually found its way to Southern Seminary. He then figured what portion of that money went toward his salary. With that information, he sent the church the amount of their money that went toward his salary – four cents.

Today Southern Baptist seminaries teach that King is a “Christian Hero” according to a January 18, 2019 press release from Baptist Press, a news outlet for Southern Baptists. The release quoted Jason Duesing, provost for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, saying, “I classify him (King) as one of seven chief theologians in the Baptist tradition.”

Leroy Gainey, who teaches education leadership at Gateway Seminary in California, said, “At least during my lifetime, there is no greater Christian or Baptist leader that I can see than Martin Luther King.”

It takes the eyes of history to see how the appraisal of Martin Luther King by Baptists in the South has changed over the years. And history shows that some once prominent leaders who used tortured reasoning and twisted theology to oppose equality and civil rights for all have faded into oblivion.

What has not changed is the church’s commission to be “the moral conscience of the nation” as King said in 1961. That is what Jesus followers do. They demonstrate God’s compassion for all and they work for a society that does the same.

Every time one prays the Lord’s Prayer, every time we say “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we affirm that mission. The prayer is not for “pie in the sky by and by.” It is for now.

King unapologetically used Bible teachings to influence national policies and to change a nation. So should we.

Dr. Bobby S. (Bob) Terry serves as an Advisor to the President of Samford University for Faith Networks. A native of Alabama, Dr. Terry holds degrees from Mississippi College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was involved in state Baptist papers for more than 50 years beginning in 1968 and retiring at the end of 2018 from The Alabama Baptist newspaper after serving for more than 23 years as it’s President and Editor.

Follow him on Twitter at @drbobterry.

To contact Bob Terry, email [email protected].

Featured image from SBTS.edu.

The Farm Bill and the Bible

Bob Terry September 3, 2018

One of the major pieces of legislation approved by the Congress of the United States this year was the Farm Bill. Every five years Congress is supposed to reauthorize the Farm Bill, which subsidizes agriculture production in the United States and funds various food assistance programs.

The debate over the Farm Bill was acrimonious. The bitterness over the bill which has a $876 billion price tag over 10 years was not over support prices for corn, cotton, soybeans and the rest. It was over nutrition programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps, school lunches and other social safety net programs.

Statistics indicate 42 million Americans now live below the poverty line and rely on SNAP to help purchase food. The majority of recipients are women with children. The next largest percentage is the elderly.

At the root of the rancorous disagreement is whether the government should provide a social safety net for the poor and disabled of the nation. If so, what kind of safety net it should be? If not, who should take that responsibility—the church perhaps?

The disagreement provides an opportunity to look at the Bible to see what God’s Word says about the roles individuals and society as a whole have in caring for the least of these.

Christians frequently tell the story of God’s providential care of Joseph in Egypt. Less frequently do Christians reflect on the way God used government to gather, store and distribute food during the years of plenty and want.

Only government had the resources to address the seven years of famine that stretched beyond Egypt to surrounding areas. It was because of government programs that Egypt weathered the crisis and that others like the House of Jacob could find food to survive the severe famine.

A one-time event? Perhaps. But before the Hebrews became a people, God established guidelines indicating community responsibility for caring for the poor and needy.

Leviticus 19:9-10 introduces the practice of gleaning. The Hebrews were instructed not to harvest every corner of their fields or gather the fallen fruit of their vineyards. Deuteronomy 24:19-20 expands that principle to olive trees where trying to get a second harvest from the trees was forbidden.

The grain, the grapes and the olives were all left for the widow, the orphan, the needy, the stranger and the alien.

Additionally, every third year each family was instructed to contribute a tithe of their produce to the Levites “because (they) have no portion or inheritance among you.” This tithe, in addition to the regular tithe, was to be used by the Levite, the alien, the orphan, the widow and the needy “who are in your town” (Deuteronomy 14:22-29).

Deuteronomy 15:1 declares, “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a remission of debts.” Creditors were instructed to forgive the debt of a fellow Hebrew. Exodus 21 explains that one who has sold himself into slavery was to be released at the end of seven years.

After seven Sabbath years, the principle of debt forgiveness was extended. Every 50 years, called the Year of Jubilee, all land was returned to its original owner no matter how many times it had been bought and sold (Leviticus 25:8).

Laws laid down by the Bible concerning working conditions, wages, a sliding economic scale for sacrifices, equal justice for the rich, poor and the alien, plus much more.

Instructions given by God to the community did not lessen the responsibilities of individual members of society to care for the poor. Many of Israel’s prophets pleaded with rulers and citizens alike to care for the poor and needy.

Isaiah said, “Learn to do good. Seek justice. Reprove the ruthless. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Jeremiah 22:16 quotes God as saying, “He pled the cause of the afflicted and needy. Then it was well. Is not that what it means to know me?” Zechariah 7:10 adds, “Do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor. And do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.”

In Jesus day all the Old Testament rules guiding the community’s care for the poor and needy were still in place. He spoke against none of them but emphasized the importance of individual action adding to what the community provided.

In Luke 10 Jesus held up the model of the Good Samaritan. In Luke 11:41 He commended “giving that which is within to charity.” Luke 12:32-33 shows Jesus urging His “little flock” to give to charity which He calls an “unfailing treasure in heaven.”

Perhaps it is because the Bible so clearly teaches that Christians are to care for the poor and needy that historians conclude that Christians were the first group to care about individuals beyond their family or tribe. Christians have always been at the forefront of ministries such as education, healthcare, hunger relief, prison reform, child labor and caring for the poor, the widow and the orphan.

Christians have sacrificed themselves in personal service, and Christians have sought to establish policies and practices that helped the community offer care and relief.

Recently a media outlet reported a poll indicating 80 percent of Americans opposed cutting Medicaid, 78 percent opposed cutting Social Security disability insurance and 66 percent opposed cutting food stamps.

Some say the results indicate the strong self-reliant spirit of America is failing.

Others point to the Bible and conclude the results show the church has helped people realize that care for the poor and needy is the responsibility of the community as well as of individuals.

Personally, I believe Christians are called to contend for what the Bible teaches. That means impacting public policy as well as in their individual lives.