The Strange Case of Jena, LA (Updated)

UPDATE 17 June 2009

The legal case has been resolved.

Original Post 17 August 2007

Two things.

1) There is a growing movement associated with a website called Reformed Blacks of America. I don’t know much about the group or its theology (the sub-heading mentions a “progressive understanding of Reformed theology.” I don’t know if “progressive” as used there means “socially progressive” or “theologically progressive” or what exactly).

2. On the RBA site there is a disturbing story from Jena, LA that harkens back to the bad old days of Jim Crow (legally enforced racial segregation) laws, of social ugliness, violence, morons in white hoods, and racist cops hosing down protesters. One strange aspect of this story is that a check of Google News shows little coverage of this episode outside the “black” press and a few local TV stations. This story is the sort of thing that fits the template for the media elites. There’s a Foxnews story here, but a search of the NT Times turns up nothing. The Shreveport, LA paper has an opinion piece here.

The story seems to be that after an initial, approved, act of peaceful protest by some black students, (white) students retaliated by hanging nooses over a tree. In that context (the deep south) such an act was not just a prank, it was a threat. It wasn’t that long ago that such nooses would not have remained empty. Then things got worse. White kids are alleged to have threatened black kids and at least one black kid is accused of attacking a white kid. Protests over the charges and verdict have followed.

The folks at RBA have a point. Racism still exists, but not just in Jena and (you knew it was coming) it is Calvinists who have the explanation and the remedy. The root of racism is sin. As a social phenomenon it is highly complicated with roots running deep in everyone’s consciousness and sub-consciousness. America has, as they way, “a past.” Still, for all the social complication attending to it, the root cause is sin. It’s just sinful to denigrate a person or group because of race and the ugly, unspoken, secret in Reformed circles is that there are actively racist groups who use Reformed words and slogans and bring shame on the movement. I’m not going to name them here, but you can find them if you will. Some lame brains have even defended the “peculiar institution” of American chattel slavery as beneficial. Fine. I’ll take their families for slaves – my front yard is a mess and it needs work and I don’t want to spend the money to have it re-done.

Oh, they don’t like that idea? Why not? I thought it was a beneficial thing? Oh, I see, its only beneficial when WE do it to THEM. So that’s how it works? What if we had trained pastors and planted indigenous churches on the coast of Africa rather than participating in the slave trade?

Anyway, I’m guessing that a good number of the folk in Jena go to church. Maybe those kids who hung the nooses over the tree will be in church this Lord’s Day? Maybe the principal, who didn’t take it seriously, will be too? Maybe a lot of folks involved will be in church. This is a beginning of the solution, but not if we tell ourselves that all is fine and it’s “those” people who are the problem.

The remedy is manifold. 1) We need to know the greatness of our sin and misery. Of course we’re racist. We’re also murderers, rapists, idolaters, and thieves. 2) We need to turn to grace. God justifies racists and murderers by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone — who died for racists and thieves. 3) We need to add racism to the list of gross sins of which we all need to repent. I grew up in racially mixed schools and I know from personal experience that racism runs deep in all sorts of groups and places, but it ought not to be in Christ’s church. As complicated as our pasts are– we did steal people and haul them to this country, subjugate them violently, free them reluctantly, and continue to oppress them legally, socially, and economically for more than a century after–grace is more powerful than race and history. If Jews, who had been taught to regard Gentiles as “dogs,” were expected to accept Gentiles into Christian congregations, to sit at table with them, to eat Christ’s body together, to share the same baptismal water, then that must be our paradigm in Reformed Churches too.

The good news is that there are positive signs. There are multi-ethnic churches being planted in Orange County, CA and elsewhere. The old saying is still true, however, that 11AM on Sunday is the most racially divided hour in America. We have a long way to go, but in Christ there is no Jew, no Gentile etc. He broke down the barrier in his body.

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19 comments

  1. Can I give a hearty “Amen” to your post, Dr. Clark, on “The Strange Case of Jena”? Thank you for what you said. I have been amazed–and not a little concerned–at some of the “soft” racism I see in some Reformed circles which masquerade under an idealism of Southern ante-bellum society which never existed. It amounts to historical revisionism–something for which we Christians should be ashamed.

  2. I have as much white guilt, fear and loathing of our past as the next Caucasian-American. And, yes, against more optimistic views of human nature, Calvinism demands that we are all naturally racists; it’s just that some of us manage it better (or worse) than others. And, true, “in Christ there is no Jew, no Gentile etc.,” and “11AM on Sunday is the most racially divided hour in America,” and if it isn’t it certainly should be.

    But I wonder. If “we need to add racism to the list of gross sins of which we all need to repent,” what is wrong with adding something like the Belhar Confession to the list of things we all need to confess? How is saying it is “sinful to denigrate a person or group because of race” different from the logic that gives us “hate-crime” laws? Just as it would see to be unlawful to harm another person, regardless of his/her race, etc., full stop, isn’t it a sin to denigrate another human being, full stop? I guess I’m wondering what the difference between 21st century American mores (the kind I myself possess) and the righteousness demanded of God by those he has justified. Are they analogous, or is there a wider chasm between ideology and theology?

  3. I have as much white guilt, fear and loathing of our past as the next Caucasian-American.

    Why?

    • Some may be able to transcend it, but I am weak, Walt, and a product of my time–sorry. But the statement was more to anticipate a charge of racism for asking the questions I did. The questions were to actually wonder if we smuggle 21st century American mores into what it means to pursue holiness.

  4. The Jena 6 didn’t get airplay? More than the Duke Lacrosse case? (Oops, as soon as it was determined that Duke was a hoax, it kind of dropped out of sight.) Jason Whitlock and Steve Sailer both have alternate views on Jena and to kill two birds with one stone, Whitlock is a black sportswriter, both a politically correct color and occupation.

    Basically there were a bunch of black athlete/bad actors with previous and subsequent records that beat the dickens out of some white kid just because. The noose thing three months earlier really wasn’t it.

    Yes, I understand racism is a sin and calvinists have the answer (even though the S.Pres. slave holders were calvinists . . . ) Speaking of racism though, how about the Knoxville Horror or the Wichita Massacre? Kind of like James Byrd, but not Ken Tillery; Matthew Shephard, but not Jesse Derkhising? But don’t take my word for it. Check out Larry Elder.

    IOW a good rule of thumb these days is, if those two racial opportunists and arsonists, Jesse and Al show up it could be racism, but it’s definitely not “white” racism. And seeing’s how both the Duke and the Dauphin of Contemporary Racial Harmony did make an appearance in Jena, ergo it follows that . . . . somebody got played.

    Call me whatever, but I ain’t buying. Racism is not reformed, as in: Neither white OR black racism is reformed.

    • I’m with Bob. If there are going to be rules, they have to apply to everyone equally.

      I understand blacks have suffered a historical injustice in this country. The problem is, you have to go back to the Fall to begin righting those injustices. It’s simply not a thing that could be done. Moreover, if we’re to start talking about modern-day racial grievances, whites could justifiably start organizations that bring attention to the black-on-white crime rates (which are 10 times higher than the reverse), preferences in hiring, schooling, and everything else.

      This “Reformed” Blacks of America group appears to be some sort of ethnic chauvinism group that speaks without all the facts in hand. Some white kid got beat nearly half-to-death in Jena, like those poor white girls in Long Beach got beat by a black mob back in 2006 on Halloween. Where is their sympathy for them? (The defendants, btw, escaped with wrist slaps. The girls have had multiple surgeries to put their faces back together). If they truly believe racism is a problem, then they need to condemn it on both sides, not just when whites do it.

      I’ve also noticed that this group is after Tim Keller for racism. Apparently, his church doesn’t have enough Asian elders or something. In SoCal, there are PCA churches that are almost entirely Korean to the point that even other Asians don’t feel comfortable attending. Where’s the beef there? At the university I attended, there was a Campus Crusade for Christ and a Korean Campus Crusade for Christ.

      The bottom line is, if we’re going to try to weed out racism in the church, it’s got to stop being about getting whitey and more about applying equal standards for everyone – that is, if we truly think ethnic chauvinism is a Bad Thing. Otherwise, whites should be allowed to do it too.

      But the statement was more to anticipate a charge of racism for asking the questions I did.

      Go look in the mirror. If you’re skin’s white, you’re not going to beat the charge. How does that song by Minor Threat go, again?

      • The bottom line is, if we’re going to try to weed out racism in the church, it’s got to stop being about getting whitey and more about applying equal standards for everyone…

        Walt, this is ssssoooort of what I’m driving at. All you seem to be suggesting is more “traditions of men” to counter “traditions of men.”

        First, racism will never be “weeded out” because, like I said, we’re all denigraters of other human beings (the modern morality uses the term “racists”), distinguished only by those who manage it better or worse than others. (It’s like the way all men are pigs, some just manage their inner little piggie better than others.) Second, the only great leveller is the unfettered gospel. It isn’t “applying equal standards for everyone.” How is your suggestion really any different from egalitarianism? How is saying it is “sinful to denigrate a person or group because of race” different from the logic that gives us “hate-crime” laws, which I would assume you find odious.

        In other words, why is it a problem to employ “politically correct” logic in the world but it all of as sudden becomes ok in the church?

  5. Second, the only great leveller is the unfettered gospel. It isn’t “applying equal standards for everyone.” How is your suggestion really any different from egalitarianism?

    Zrim,

    As usual, we’re talking past one another. This time, we’re agreeing.

    For starters, I believe the Gospel proposes a sort of egalitarianism. All I was pointing out is that whenever we hear about racism in the American church, it’s invariably whitey to blame. I can point to several personal examples of nonwhite racism against whites in the church, so if there’s to be a standard of condemning racism, it has to be equally applied.

    As an observation, I’ll note that it’s often assumed that since whites are in the majority in this country, it’s ok to pin everything on them. The reality is much more nuanced. Whites aren’t the majority in California – they’re a large minority. They’re also not a majority in most major cities in this country – they’re a large minority. And in the world, whites are a definite minority as Europeans and European North Americans compose only about 10% of the world population. Majority or minority doesn’t make “right” or “wrong,” so it needs to cease as a moral standard or as a basis upon which one race can claim a grievance against another, which is what I so commonly see used by these ethnic chauvinism/racial agitation groups like RBA. For example, this article talks about the disparity in sentencing for crack vs. cocaine sentences. The grievance is that more minorities are winding up in jail than whites. We know (as Larry Elder has pointed out on numerous occasions), that the Congressional Black Caucus itself was instrumental in getting the 1986 anti-drug legislation passed that made crack sentences so stiff. The conclusion of the article goes on to thank colorofchange.org for promoting “reform” of crack laws. “Color of Change’s” goal is stated in part:

    ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice. Our goal is to empower our members—Black Americans and our allies—to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone.

    I see organizations like this only promoting divisiveness in the church.

    • Walt,

      As usual, we’re talking past one another. This time, we’re agreeing.

      This may be the difference between one who thinks pious Mulims make fantastic neighbors (me) and one who thinks they’re about to eat our firstborns. But, yes, we agree that political correctness is bad. Where we split is in thinking that more political correctness is the answer. Neo-conservatism is to conservatism what neo-calvinism is to confessionalism.

  6. This may be the difference between one who thinks pious Mulims make fantastic neighbors (me) and one who thinks they’re about to eat our firstborns.

    I actually don’t believe this. Many of them are very friendly. But see how friendly they still are when you tell the truth about their prophet. See how friendly they are when you try to evangelize them. You just might get to see Mr. Hyde.

    You’re in Michigan, correct? Dearborn has earned the name ‘Dearbornistan’ for a reason. RSC posted a link about Arab Christians being muzzled there last week. Sam Shamoun, the Christian Arab brother who runs Answering Islam is from that area and has been threatened numerous times.

    I’ve personally witnessed the Council of American Islamic Relations organize a defamation campaign against an Irvine city council member for pointing out that it had ties to terrorists (which is absolutely true). There is persecution of Jews at UC Irvine and UCLA by Muslims that I’ve witnessed first hand.

    Also, I don’t think any of our Pakistani or Sudanese brothers are singing the praises of Muslim neighbors at this point, either. In fact, there’s jihad going on against Christians in every corner of the earth. The fact that you’ve experienced none first hand doesn’t mean you should make light of the situation. For many Christians, having Muslim neighbors means frequent severe waves of persecution. Ask the Copts, for example. I don’t think they’d appreciate your scoffing and moral equivalence.

    Aside from all that, the Qur’an (especially 9:5 and 9:29) is understood by all 4 schools of Sunni jurisprudence and both schools of Shia jurisprudence to mandate warfare against non-believers for the spread of religion. Don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself.

    But, yes, we agree that political correctness is bad. Where we split is in thinking that more political correctness is the answer. Neo-conservatism is to conservatism what neo-calvinism is to confessionalism.

    I don’t know what this means.

  7. Walt,

    “But, yes, we agree that political correctness is bad. Where we split is in thinking that more political correctness is the answer. Neo-conservatism is to conservatism what neo-calvinism is to confessionalism.”

    I don’t know what this means.

    It means Jack McCoy beats Jack Bauer. Like really bad, too.

    Persecution comes from the hands of sinners both inside and outside the church, not just from certain kinds of false religionists.

    I dread the transformers of Little Geneva (where I am) way more than I fear the Muslims of Dearborn. Like way more, too.

  8. Good comment, Walt. It’s not about majority/minority, but equality before the law. While Doug Wilson did print an apology for Southern slaveholders if we are going to talk about racism of the white reformed variety, it’s kind of old news.

    And while I think the reformed faith is the best summary of Scripture and the gospel available, the only real antidote to racial idolatry, Geo. Orwell said it’s always hardest to see what’s under our nose. What nobody wants to mention is that the politically correct version of Ralph Ellison’s Rinehart now occupying the White House only spent 20 recent yrs. in the black version of a KKK church. If a white candidate had done something similar, the mainstream media would have trampled on itself to go out and buy a gun to shoot him, gun control or no, if they hadn’t hung him first. With a noose.

    True, Jeremiah Wright’s version of black liberation theology is not as bad as Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam which teaches that the white man was created 6,000 years ago by an evil black scientist named Yacub. Cone’s theology only teaches that the white man is the root of the black man’s problem – not original sin – which reformed theology teaches effects all men of every color as blood descendants of Adam who sinned in the Garden. But Jeremiah did give Louis sort of a ‘well done thou good and faithful servant’ award recently. Oh Happy Day! Would that we were talking about the Edwin Hawkins Gospel Singers, but we’re not. After all, original sin is the reason why the founding fathers believed in the separation of powers, contra the centralization of them in the executive branch that prevails today.

    IOW copping Walter Williams’ phrase, I say all the racism jazz is just more ‘boo bait for the bubbas’. Keep ’em distracted while the govt. pulps the constitution, much more the ten commandments, if not the natural law and turns it all into toilet paper. (Not that the zeks ever get any in the gulags.) Hyperinflation not only preceded the three great western atheistic totalitarian socialist revolutions of the modern post enlightenment world; the French, the Russian Bolshevik and the German Nazi, its chaos and destabilization prepared their way.

    But the present socialist economic policy of the USA as called for by Obama, Geithner, Goldman, Sachs and Congress would not only make Mugabe in Zimbawe proud, it too is hyperinflationary. After a fashion, you might even call it a perfect storm. With the previous Republican version of the Stalinist personality cult of the Great Leader, it was merely unpatriotic to criticize the GL. Now that the Democratic version has begun, it might also be racist hate speech.

    Again, call me whatever, but from Jena to Jeremiah, I ain’t buying any of it. The reformed faith is the only inoculation against the perennial and contemporary idolatries of race and political tyranny.

    • Again, call me whatever, but from Jena to Jeremiah, I ain’t buying any of it. The reformed faith is the only inoculation against the perennial and contemporary idolatries of race and political tyranny.

      So, to the extent that it is the most biblically and historically faithful witness to revelation and so can be understood to be short hand for the best expression of true religion on earth (quite agreed, or, as the outbursters say, “Amen”), the Reformed tradition is useful for making the Good Society or meeting the sophisticated felt needs of statecraft and social ethics?

      How is this any different from the presuppositions of Calvinistic New Schoolers like Josiah Strong, who suggests that resident within Calvinism are the seeds to all that westerners hold ideologically dear:

      “Wherever Protestantism went civil liberty followed. The two greatest characteristics of Anglo-Saxons were civil liberty and spiritual Christianity.” Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885).

      Or Presbyterian New Schooler Albert Barnes: “…all just notions of liberty in modern times [were connected with the fundamental principles taught by Presbyterianism].” Presbyterianism: Its Affinities (1863).

      Or early 20th century Liberal Protestantism?

      I’d also be curious to know, in light of your assertion, how does the Reformed tradition “inoculate” sinners from being sinners? Are you saying that sinfulness comes easier by not being Reformed? Isn’t that a form of Reformed narcissism?

  9. Come on Grim. This is babycake/pathetic.

    I might just as well ask you, since Hitler wore pants and you have no affinity for kilts nor a record of arrests for indecent exposure, just exactly what position you plan on holding in an Amerikan version of the 4th Reich?

    You can start in the OT with Daniel. The worship of the true God necessarily ought to preclude the false. Should, but doesn’t always. (After all, you and the CRC both claim to be reformed, right​?) True religion should – but doesn’t always – give the believer the wherewithal to oppose the idolatries of the day – one of which in our day happens to be Leviathan, the great god, the state. As a patron of and advocate for the govt. schools tho, I don’t think they have bothered to inform you. Nor would I expect them to.

    Still I was going to tell Walt not to bother with the posers and reformed narcissists, but I figure he can figure it out himself, so I won’t bother.

    Have a nice day.

    • Bob,

      You’ve lost me. All I asked was what the difference was between your notion that the Reformed tradition solves the world’s (political) ills and the New Schooler’s notion that all that westerner’s hold as right, true and good comes straight from the labratories of the Reformation. I’d ask how both esentially differ from prosperity gospel, but I think you might implode.

  10. Grim,
    “My” notion that Reformed tradition solves the world’s (political) ills? You lost me.
    Don’t implode.
    Please.

    • The reformed faith is the only inoculation against the perennial and contemporary idolatries of race and political tyranny.

      That sounds fairly socially and politically promising and prosperous. But I hold to the Reformed faith and am still pretty racist and idolatrous. Where’s my inoculation? Where’s my victory?

  11. Grim,
    Guess I spoke too soon. Maybe the reformed faith doesn’t work for posers.
    Neither did anybody say you weren’t a sinner – obviously – or anybody that’s reformed wasn’t a sinner either. IOW that’s not the question and you know it.

    The reformed faith is the only inoculation against the perennial and contemporary idolatries of race and political tyranny.

    That sounds fairly socially and politically promising and prosperous.

    Depends on what kind of mindset you come to it with. It’s your statement. Prove it.

    But I hold to the Reformed faith and am still pretty racist and idolatrous. Where’s my inoculation? Where’s my victory?

    Dunno what you hold to, Grim or what you’re looking for. You seem to have a nice tidy job in the govt. school bureaucracy if I am not mistaken. You’re a member of a church, the CRC, which is deconstructing around your head and you seem to listen to too much NPR and have accordingly picked up the same cavalier and smug attitude. IOW from what I can tell, this all a game to you. You don’t really give a flip.
    OK. Whatever. That’s your business.
    But don’t waste my time asking questions you already know the answer to.
    As in please and thank you very much, sir.

    And have a nice day along with ole Robt.K.

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