January-February 1998
Breaking the Color Barrier
by Susan Stewart and Keith Stump
Growing up black in southern Mississippi, John Perkins knows a life of harsh economic realities, ruthless poverty and blatant injustice. With only a fifth grade education, Perkins has founded numerous ministries, including Voice of Calvary Ministries in Jackson, Mississippi and Harambee Christian Center in Pasadena, California.
For over 30 years, Perkins' ministry has combined community development and social action with evangelism. Perkins calls it "wholistic" community development -- whole people within the whole church taking the whole gospel on a whole mission to the whole world.
John Dawson, a native New Zealander, moved to Los Angeles, California, in an effort to promote reconciliation in one of America's most troubled cities. The answers to racial strife he has forged while living in a multi-ethnic neighborhood have made him a respected leader among Native Americans, Asians, African-Americans and Latinos. Author of the best-selling books, Taking Our Cities for God and Healing America's Wounds, Dawson is also the founder of Youth With a Mission-Los Angeles and the International Reconciliation Coalition, dedicated to healing wounds between people groups and elements of society.
Plain Truth: Polls have shown that most Christians feel they have no racial animosity in their hearts. What should a Christian magazine say to its Christian readers about racial reconciliation when many of its readers may not feel its an issue?
John Dawson: Very few believers espouse a racist ideology. But that doesn't mean we don't need to come out of a great deal of ignorance and denial about the behaviors and attitudes we have -- often at an unconscious level -- that contribute to the perpetuation of the nation's wounds.
I often ask those people questions like these: "Will you hire cross-culturally for your business -- not because of government policy but because of your values?"
"Will you cultivate relationships outside of your comfort zone?"
"Will you refrain from judging everybody in a group because of the violation of some members of that group?"
These kinds of questions really become the proof of whether we are acting out Christ's mandate to be ministers of reconciliation. We must move to an intentional, proactive position as people living out the message of Christ, which brings cleansing and healing in relationships, corporately and personally. I think it's very important for me, as a white person, to speak to fellow whites about that.
John Perkins: The purpose of the gospel is to bring peace, and the way to peace is through reconciliation. We are to be a new creation, a witness in society, a chosen generation. As Christians, we must participate in carrying the message of God's love to the world.
That central biblical message is that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, and that He has given His church the stewardship of that ministry of reconciliation.
I never owned slaves, and I didn't dispossess any Native Americans. Why do I need to apologize? Some would say that it's an empty gesture to apologize for something they didn't do.
Perkins: I don't think it's an empty gesture. The Scriptures mandate that if we hear that our brother has something against us, then we are to leave our gift at the altar and go be reconciled. Confession before God and before people breaks the cycle of racism.
Dawson: In the Bible, you have the instruction that no one is to be punished for what someone else did. God doesn't put on you guilt by association. But the Bible also talks about iniquitous patterns having implications and judgment down to the third and fourth generation.
Those scriptures are not contradictory. God is simply observing the implications of sin to our corporate entity, our society. It affects people.
And so, while God is not saying to me as a white believer that the guilt of my ancestors is upon me, God is saying that I am a beneficiary of their unjust actions, and that I may carry attitudes from the past, and that there's a degree to which His favor cannot rest upon me and my children because there has never been confession or repentance.
So, when I look at the corporate identity I'm part of, I find that God is looking for someone to deal with the sin. He's not putting it on me in an accusatory sense. He's not convicting me of it in the same way that I was convicted of my personal sin and came to Jesus as Savior. But He is coming to me as one of the redeemed, and saying, "Will you volunteer?"
God is looking for intercessors to voluntarily take initiative, to "stand in the gap" as it says in Ezekiel 22:30.
So when somebody says, "Don't put that on me," I say, "God doesn't put that on you! You don't have to go. But God is asking, 'Is there somebody who will stand in the gap?'"
Is saying "I'm sorry" to those who have been wronged enough?
Dawson: There are four elements -- four criteria -- that are intrinsically woven together. All must be present, or it isn't enough.
First of all, we must have confession -- stating the truth, acknowledging the unjust or hurtful actions of myself or my racial group toward other persons or categories of persons.
This acknowledgment must be followed not just by saying "I'm sorry" but also by repentance. Repentance is turning from unloving to loving actions -- in our economic choices, our social interactions, and so on. God's standard is pure, fervent love.
Then there's reconciliation which is expressing and receiving forgiveness and pursuing intimate fellowship with previous enemies. That's more than just words.
Lastly, there's restitution -- attempting to restore that which has been damaged or destroyed, and seeking justice wherever we have power to act individually, or where we have power in the electoral system to influence those who speak for us in government.
We must identify the wounds of a city or a nation -- the things from the past and the things from the present that still aggravate and divide relationships today -- and then use these biblical tools of confession, repentance, reconciliation and restitution. That's a mandate for believers.
If an apology is less than that, then perhaps it is a cheap thing to be despised.
What about the other side of the coin -- forgiveness on the part of the offended?
Perkins: I can tell you from my personal experience that there is a kind of deceptively good feeling associated with being a victim and being able to say: "It's their fault. They're wrong -- I'm right."
But then I read the Bible where it says, "Unless you can forgive those who sin against you, how do you expect your heavenly Father to forgive you?" And I saw that I had to forgive those who had brutalized me. I began to see that my own future happiness and progress would depend on my ability to forgive.
As I began to go through that process of forgiving others, I began to feel the freedom to be free and to really want to reach those people who had brutalized me and to reach those people who were different from me. The person who can forgive ends up with an advantage because he is free to interact with others. Most of our problems today have to do with our inability to forgive.
We, as black people today, also need to ask God to forgive us -- even though we were victimized -- for the attitude we still sometimes hold against whites. Then we will be free.
A lot of our lack of progress and economic development has to do with that. We sort of walk around as perpetual victims in life.
As a people, we must take more responsibility for our neighborhoods and our communities and put together those enterprises that will provide the goods and services in our neighborhoods.
Most people who attend reconciliation events aren't the ones with major racial prejudices. How can we make inroads in the general population?
Dawson: Initially, you have to start with the leaders and with organizing what we call "catalyst events," where confession takes place. It might be a group of people, black and white, who go down to an old slave auction site and pray together.
Then you have to work toward the physical follow-through, the "bridge-building" efforts. The bridge-building efforts will basically last the rest of your life. Doing good works together, among the poor and needy. It becomes a point of bonding. The greatest gift God gives is the gift of relationships.
Perkins: I think that doing some "grace act" is when reconciliation really takes place. Doing something concrete together is the way to break down racial barriers -- getting out there and actually doing something that brings you into contact and gets a dialogue started.
I recently read an article written by a Habitat for Humanity volunteer. He told about a garbage man and a Fortune 500 businessman -- the president of a company -- who worked on a Habitat project together. They got to know each other, but the Fortune 500 man didn't know the black man was a garbage collector.
Then the next week this garbage collector picked up the garbage at this guy's house, and he came out, and when the black man saw him, he just reached out and embraced him. And the white guy embraced him, too, because they had something in common that they had been working on together.
Previously, the Fortune 500 man had seen that person picking up his garbage all the time, but he was sort of an "unperson." But once they had worked together, a relationship developed, and they were both enriched by it.
If, as you've both written, racism is a spiritual problem that is only going to be dealt with effectively by the transforming love of Christ, how can reconciliation and harmony be achieved in a secular nation that is basically religiously uninterested?
Perkins: That's the reason some kind of act of involvement is so necessary. One of the weaknesses of our evangelical faith is that we have separated good works from our faith. Faith is evidenced by works. You are to believe something, and you are to do something. We must be involved.
You're still going to find some people who think that all you need to do is to tell people the gospel. They believe you don't have to engage in social action because if you teach the word of God, then all those things will come about naturally. I don't think they will come about naturally. We can't just speak the word of God; we must live it out.
Dawson: God holds the community of the redeemed accountable to be the agent of healing and cleansing in the land. One of the main ways we lift up Jesus is by demonstrating in the internal life of the community of faith -- which is very diverse in ethnicity and in class -- that we have pulled off what is impossible in the exterior community. And that is, that we in the church are reconciled to one another and reconciled to God.
Jesus said He would be seen, and He would be understood to be the Messiah, if we were in unity. Now, that wasn't just a hymn-singing unity of monocultural services on a Sunday morning. It was the reflected unity of the body of Christ as it appears in a given city or a given nation or a given culture.
The circular reasoning that says, "Well, the pagans are going to be racists anyway, therefore we should just withdraw and give up" is in contrast to our mandate to lift up Christ and disciple nations. We can disciple them by becoming such a dynamic model of alternative community that the question raised is: "Who is their God?"
And there is another question raised, and that is: "They are fulfilled. There is something attractive there. There is water there that I'm thirsty for."
Is it hypocritical for Christians to carry this message of reconciliation when there is rampant sectarian strife within the body of Christ?
Dawson: That's been our great disqualification. Historically, we have been part of the problem rather than part of the answer. But, in the last 30 years, we have seen the unfolding of an amazing affection and respect between denominations. In terms of church history, it's an amazing thing. So, we are now becoming a visible contrast to the society around us. Particularly when it comes to African-American and white American.
Perkins: The unbelieving world is watching. People need to see Christians who reach across those sectarian barriers that discredit our claim that Jesus is the answer. We need to reflect our oneness. Jesus prayed that we might be one.
The real work of the Spirit of God as it functions within our midst is to build a unity of the body so that we can develop to that maturity, so that we can become one. We've got to acknowledge that we've been cut off from each other by denominations and administrations, and look for ways to emphasize and strengthen our oneness.
Does the controversial principle of affirmative action aggravate racial animosities or contribute to the solution?
Perkins: I think you've got to make some kind of adjustment so that those who have been neglected can have appropriate opportunities. I think the ideal of affirmative action is good. I think we are going to live to see that it was good for our nation. It has been good economically. It has been good for bridging this gap.
On the other hand, I think that we as blacks have got to work harder to release this dependency. We have to remove the mentality of dependency. We must not let affirmative action hold us back from taking creative responsibility for our own destiny.
Dawson: The primary responsibility of bringing healing and justice isn't really put on those in government first. The primary mandate is put on all of us before God.
It is a tragedy that this whole arena of healing the land has slipped into debate about what the federal government should do, or what the state governments should do. It is a point of shame for the body of Christ, because if we had been behaving the way we should have, according to the heart of Jesus, at the level of individual action, this would be a moot question.
So, while I see the role of government through law trying to deal with issues of the heart as being fundamentally inept and the wrong tool to do the job, if it's the only tool, I see that God will use it as part of His justice.
How would you assess the current state of race relations, and prospects for the future?
Perkins: I think the possibility of a racial conflict in this country is very real if reconciliation efforts do not work.
I am enthusiastic over the opportunity and the privilege to be a part of doing God's will of fostering reconciliation.
But I see the possibility of a major ethnic conflict in this country. We've got to find ways to avoid it. We have to help people find solutions.
Dawson: If you don't have the atonement, if you don't have the community of faith, if you don't have the modeling of reconciliation on the part of believers, then you have a dangerous thing in the land.
I believe that God will continue to allow us to be troubled by things like the Rodney King incident. These incidents will not go away until we -- the redeemed, the household of faith -- stand in the gap and perform the priestly act of intercession.
And so, I sense an urgency that we deal with the foundational things in order to get on with fulfilling the redemptive purpose for America as a whole.
Returning Good for EvilWhen John Perkins was 16-years-old, he watched his big brother, a decorated veteran of World War II, die at the hands of a Mississippi marshall. The cause of death? Two shots to the stomach. The reason? Talking too loudly in the back-alley, "colored-man's" entrance to a movie theater. The real reason? He was black. John Perkins will forever remember that day like it was yesterday. Growing Up in Mississippi Born the son of a sharecropper in south-central Mississippi in 1930, Perkins grew up with a grandmother, some aunts and a few uncles. They made money bootlegging and gambling after working from sunup to sundown in someone else's cotton fields. Able to attend a makeshift school during the three months the cotton fields were frozen over, Perkins made it through fifth grade before leaving for California, a golden land of opportunity, in early 1947. In California, Perkins' self-driven nature and his desire to make a place for himself in a prejudiced world brought him and his growing family a new level of success. In California, he tasted what the South hadn't offered -- a world of security, prosperity and accomplishment. But the material things he possessed weren't enough to fill the hole inside him. And he didn't trust what some called the white man's opiate, religion, to fill it either. After all, the Perkins had never been a religious family. John Perkins grew up believing that the Christian faith was intended to pacify inferior people. In his opinion, Christianity had made his people cowards, keeping them humble in an unjust, white-dominated system. Never once had he heard a white Christian speak out against the way blacks were treated in the South. But in the spring of 1957, at the prodding of his young son, Spencer, Perkins joined an adult Bible study class on the life of the apostle Paul. Perkins discovered that, like himself, Paul had great drive and motivation. Yet Paul was not driven to prove himself through money and success. In Galatians 2:20, Paul spoke specifically to Perkins: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Perkins came to understand that Paul's motivation was Christ alone and that Jesus could fill his life completely. He thought, "If the holy God loved me that much to give himself for me, then I should lay hold of this God." So, on a Sunday morning in 1957, at Bethlehem Church of Christ Holiness, in Pasadena, California, Perkins accepted Christ as his personal Savior. Along with that acceptance and repentance came the conviction that God wanted something more from him beyond a comfortable living in California. Perkins felt the calling to return to the darkness of the deep South. Mississippi. Perkins reminisces in the book He's My Brother: "He wanted me to preach the Word to people who thought, as I once had, that Christianity was 'a white man's religion.' He wanted me to follow Christ, who said that He had been sent 'to preach the gospel to the poorto heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord' (see Luke 4:18-19)." Into the Fire On June 6, 1960, the Perkins family, which now included five children, left their 12-room, 2 1/2-bath house in Los Angeles and headed for the economic barrenness of New Hebron, Mississippi. Perkins at first taught Bible classes in local schools and a junior college, but he wanted more. He wanted his own ministry and Bible institute, a place to spread the Word and care for the flock. And in 1962, with the purchase of some small back lots in Mendenhall, Mississippi, the Voice of Calvary ministry began construction. Perkins knew that if his idea of combining evangelism with economic development was to succeed, he would need complete faith in God. There was no money and no fancy brochures, but there were many critics. With each step forward for Voice of Calvary came an additional struggle. The persecution of African-Americans in the South increased through the '60s, even among the white Christian churches. Perkins felt a perpetual sadness watching a religion that didn't sharpen the parishioners' sense of justice while it talked about the love of Christ. To him, Christian responsibility and economic responsibility were not two different things. They were pieces of the same pie. As his ministry began to make an impact on the black economy and as he began to encourage voter registration among African-Americans, Perkins' life was repeatedly threatened. Cars would drive by his house at night, threatening phone calls would wake his wife and family. But his supporters rallied together, putting a guard around his house from dusk to dawn to ensure his family peaceful sleep. The Brandon Jail Incident Then, in February 1970, something happened to alter Perkins' life forever. After an illegal arrest on Dec. 23, 1969 (no charges had been made, but Perkins and a white friend from California had been kept in jail overnight), Perkins recommended that Christmas shopping in Mendenhall be boycotted. The black community rallied together and picketed stores until the white man could no longer turn a deaf ear to their cries for economic equality. They heard it where it hurt most -- their pocketbooks, during the busiest shopping season of the year. The boycott continued through February. Each Saturday, leaders of the black community would start at Voice of Calvary and walk down Main Street chanting, "Do right, white man, do right." The most terrible thing Perkins remembers about the marches wasn't the shotguns, gas masks and billy clubs lining the street. It was the fact that so many of the people who tolerated discrimination and unlawful business practices called themselves Christians. He writes in Let Justice Roll Down, "The question on my mind and on the minds of most black people to whom we preached was whether or not Christianity was a stronger force than racism." The weekly parade drew crowds from Jackson and students from Tougaloo College, adding needed momentum, but also encouraging the white law enforcement to look for more emphatic measures to stop the protests and the boycott. It was on the drive back to Tougaloo College that a van carrying college protesters was pulled over by a Mississippi Highway Patrol car just after crossing the county line. All 19 of the students, white and black, were arrested and taken to the Rankin County Jail in Brandon, a few miles east of Jackson. They were booked on charges ranging from "reckless driving" to "carrying a concealed deadly brick." After booking them, the officers beat the students with blackjacks and billy clubs while escorting them to their cells. When Perkins heard of the arrest, he and two friends immediately set off to post bail. They were driving straight into a trap. When Perkins arrived at the jail, he was greeted by a party of 12 officers, pleased that he had come. As he was escorted into the building the beating began. He was kicked in the kidneys, his back, his head. At least five deputy sheriffs and seven to 12 highway patrolmen met the group inside. The torture continued for the rest of the night. Perkins writes: "Because I was unconscious a lot of the time, I don't remember much about the others. In fact, I don't remember a whole lot about me, except that there was blood all over. And a lot of it was mine." After being beaten unconscious numerous times, having a fork shoved up his nose and down his throat and being forced to mop his own blood off the floor, Perkins was finally taken to a cell. He remembers the faces of the patrolmen: "They were like savages -- like some horror out of the night. And I can't forget their faces, so twisted with hate. But you know, I couldn't hate back. When I saw what hate had done to them, I couldn't hate back. I could only pity them. I didn't ever want hate to do to me what it had already done to those men." He prayed, "Lord, if you will help me get out of this jail tonight, I would really like to preach a gospel that will burn through these racial barriers and make us one." Through the generous support of friends who were willing to post their property as bond, Perkins walked out of jail the next day. By a miracle he had survived. Recovering Faith It took a long time to heal, both emotionally and physically, from the near-death experience. A year later, he underwent surgery removing two thirds of his stomach because of the damage it had sustained. The only justice he ever received in court was the case being dropped. The officers who beat him faced no retribution for their brutal actions. During his recovery, Perkins laid in his hospital bed and thought about hate and power, and the sickness of racism. He also wondered why it was that the churches were the institutions least likely to integrate. He began to feel hopeless about his goal to proclaim the whole gospel -- a gospel of economic equality as well as the talk of love and godliness. He reached a point where he believed there was no real justice in a white world. Then Perkins remembered the white doctor among the staff at the hospital where he was recovering. She met him on a level of humanity that Perkins had not witnessed in all his years in Mississippi. He remembered the white lawyer working on his legal case against the officers involved in the Brandon jail incident. He remembered Doug Huemmer, the white man who was driving the van full of Tougaloo students. He had been beaten along with the black students. Perkins writes: "God was showing me something, telling me something. There were whites who believed in justice. Who lived love. Who shared themselves. Who joined our community." Besides, anyone could hate. That's what kept racism alive. And Perkins wanted to see racism die. He could not allow himself to hate. "An image formed in my mind. The image of the cross -- Christ on the cross. It blotted out everything else in my mind. "This Jesus knew what I had suffered. He understood. And He cared. Because He had experienced it all himself. "I promised Him that I would 'return good for evil,' not evil for evil. And He gave me the love I knew I would need to fulfill His command to me of 'love your enemy.'" Perkins left the hospital with a new conviction of developing a Christian community that did more than just meet together on the weekends for a potluck. A new vocational workshop and gym were added at Voice of Calvary to boost the tutoring program. A cooperative health center was organized to provide health care through community efforts. In 1982, Perkins and his wife, Vera Mae, moved back to California, and started Harambee Christian Center in Pasadena, in an area full of racial tension. He also started publication of Urban Family magazine, offering hope to urban families and communities. Urban Family is now combined with Reconcilers magazine, a magazine of racial healing and community rebuilding. In 1989, Perkins started the Christian Community Development Association. Members of CCDA are dedicated to indigenous economic growth, and all live in the areas where they minister. Perkins writes: "I believe that for Christians to live and work among the poor is the best answer to the plight of our urban poor." In line with his belief, Perkins recently moved back to Mississippi. There he is deeply involved in his community, practicing as he preaches his three R's -- relocation, reconciliation and redistribution. He remains firmly convicted that "as we stand together, black and white, side by side, we will recognize that Christ has one Church, and the love that flows from that truth will ignite the flame that can burn away racism and bigotry." -- Susan Stewart |