Chapters 22-Epilogue: Milestones and a Look Ahead

Let Justice Roll Down concludes with Dr. Perkins’ renewed vision for reconciliation between Blacks and Whites and the ongoing saga of community development ministry in Mississippi.  It’s interesting to me that the story concludes in 1975 (LJRD was originally published in 1976), when so much of the work for which Dr. Perkins is known took place after that time.  A few Perkins historical highlights in the interim:

1982

·         With Justice for All published, introducing the 3 Rs of Christian Community Development.

·         Perkins establishes the Harambee Christian Family Center ministry in Pasadena, California.

1989

·         Christian Community Development Association established.  Perkins is a founding member.

1993

·         Beyond Charity published.

1996

·         Perkins moves back to Jackson, Mississippi.

2002

·         Dr. Eaton and Tali Hairston visit the Perkins Foundation in Jackson with a group of SPU students.  This encounter initiates the development of SPU’s Perkins Center.  (Read that story here).  

2004

·         John Perkins Center established at SPU.

2007

·         SPU Campus Ministries is reorganized; Latreia, UI and SPRINT officially join the Perkins Center.

One quote caught my attention this week:

“To develop the Christian community as a group which could show love within itself and to the world would be creating a new entity that was more than the sum of the individual Christians.  The community’s existence itself, as a structure, would open up so many new channels of strength and witness” (208).

It’s neat when individuals rise up as heroes and accomplish great things.  It’s even greater when a community works together for transformation, internally and in the world around them.  I hope we can be that kind of community this year – one that does great things in our world, but is also dedicated to real, transformative relationships with Jesus and each other.  There are fun times ahead!

What do you think?

What do you hope to leave as your legacy this June?

What benchmarks might we set for ourselves to measure our progress toward being the kind of transforming community Perkins talks about in the quote above?

Chapters 20-21: Measuring Success

I'm a day late in posting because yesterday we got a new couch for the JPC lobby!

But now it's time for Chapters 20-21.

Chapters 20-21 recount the legal battle that followed Dr. Perkins’ arrest and beating.  The discriminatory attitude of the Mississippi court system is shockingly obvious here, but in the end Perkins is able to count the experience as a victory, if only a partial one.

Perkins’ commentary on our understanding of justice and the need to stand for what’s really right caught my attention:

“Whether we admit it or not, our reading of biblical ethics is colored by our perception of the world around us.  If we think that there are only a few ‘bad guys’ such as burglars and murderers, and that all the given political, legal and economic structures around us are basically okay, then we are bound to read our Bibles in a certain way. … If sin can exist at every level of government, an in every human institution, then also the call to biblical justice in every corner of society must be sounded by those who claim a God of Justice as their Lord” (195).

The challenge to live as a counter-cultural example, humbly confronting injustice wherever it is found, is an important and difficult one.  It’s a role that calls us to be self-aware and willing to address our own issues, as well as unafraid to question tradition, groupthink and business as usual. 

In the coming year of leadership there may be points at which you feel like you’ve made one step forward only to be pushed back or confronted by another challenge. It’ll be important for us to identify ways in which success is measurable.  Sometimes success can be measured numerically: the number of volunteers at your project or the volume of fundraising for SPRINT trips.  At other times, success is evident in impact on individuals or even in incremental changes, as John Perkins saw in his justice-failed trial outcome.  What do you think?

How will you judge success or failure in the coming year?

Chapters 18-19: Finding Hope Amid Violence

Chapters 18-19 are hard to talk about.  You’ll notice that even when John Perkins speaks at SPU, the majority of his conversation isn’t around what happened in these chapters.  In these chapters we see the worst of human hatred and a conscious choice to forgive rather than give in to the dehumanizing desire to seek revenge. 

As he describes being beaten by White police officers, Perkins makes a profound statement that I have overlooked in several times I’ve read LJRD:

“And I can’t forget their faces, so twisted with hate.  It was like looking at white-faced demons.  Hate did that to them.

But you know, I couldn’t hate back.  When I was 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” (165).

Miroslav Volf, a theologian who lived through the early 1990s violence in Yugoslavia, writes that violence and oppression damage both the oppressed and the oppressor.  “Just as the oppressed must be liberated from the suffering caused by oppression, so the oppressors must be liberated from the injustice committed through oppression” (Exclusion and Embrace, 23). Oppression seeks to place oneself at the center, excluding and harming those it can separate as “other.”  On the other hand, Volf writes, reconciling relationships place Jesus at the center and understand ourselves and others in relationship to him.  In the process of reconciliation oppressors must repent of their desire to harm and degrade those they have sought to exclude, and victims must forgive and repent even of their anger in order to avoid seeking the opportunity to react and become the oppressors.  It’s tough stuff.

“Though victims may not be able to prevent hate from springing to life, for their own sake they can and must refuse to give it nourishment and strive to weed it out.  If victims do not repent today they will become perpetrators tomorrow who, in their self-deceit, will seek to exculpate their misdeeds on account of their own victimization” (Volf, 117).

Perkins writes that White oppressors look for someone over whom to maintain authority in an effort to feel a sense of power: “You see, there is a kind of white person who has nothing going for him in life except his whiteness and racism.  And too often this kind of person goes out and joins the police force or the Highway Patrol.  It gives him a chance to make himself feel important by brutalizing a black” (176). 

This power dynamic is illustrated in violent ways, but also in subtle, paternalistic ways in other situations.  Eitehr way, the oppressor seeks to maintain power in order to keep himself at the center and define others in relation to his self-centeredness.

Violence and this type of depraved mindset are hard to understand, but sadly, some of this attitude persists even today.  In the news last week JPC teaching fellow Max Hunter ran across this article about a group of white young people in Mississippi who beat, then murdered, a black man.  The report is somewhat graphic – a sad reminder of how ugly hate really is.  http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/crime/2011/08/05/griffin.mississippi.hate.crime.cnn

In all of this, I think the key ideas to keep in mind are our natural tendency to exclude, separate and even oppress others in order to pursue our own self-centeredness.  When we put Christ in his rightful place, at the center, we learn to see ourselves and others in right relation, and there’s hope for reconciliation.

What is your response to these quotes from Perkins and Volf?

What are some ways we might tell the story of reconciliation on campus in ways that would draw people in, help us repent and refocus, then move forward with hope?

Chapters 16-17: Vision and Public Action

As I read these chapters I’m reminded of two recent but quite different public revolutions: Tahrir Square in Egypt this Spring, and the riots we’ve watched in London this past week.  Though there were elements of collective action and individual opportunism in each, what sticks in my mind are the neighborhood groups that banded together to keep the revolution on track and protect individuals and property in Egypt.  In London we’ve seen images of protestors shouting at the government while running off with merchandise grabbed from a storefront.  Both actions have a feeling of “We’ve had enough,” but one has vision and direction, while the other degenerates into chaos.

(BTW, did you hear about the guy in London who was arrested for looting after he Tweeted a picture of himself and the stuff he’d stolen?  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/london_police_to_arrest_tweeting_looters.php)

As the drama unfolded in Mendenhall (back to Chapters 16-17), Perkins remembers that while the community needed to stand up for itself, it was important that the community act in ways that would bring about long-term transformation.

“Even as I warned our people that we could only hurt ourselves seeking revenge, I reminded them that we could also hurt ourselves – and our children as well, if we simply caved in and did nothing” (142).

When given the opportunity, Perkins uses the platform created by his position to call for changes that would benefit the entire Black community in Mendenhall (149).  It’s vision that motivates Perkins to focus beyond his particular situation (“Let me go,” or “Follow proper protocol for arrests”) to address the larger issues in the community (street conditions, employment, government representation, etc.).  Instead of seizing the opportunity to release pent-up rage, the community joins Perkins’ call by enacting the boycott and organizing marches.  The good of the whole keeps the actions of the individual in check and on track.

In all of this there’s evidence of tension between blacks who were willing to stand up to the oppressive system under which they struggled and others who had found a stable place within the White-dominated society:

“The officials kept up their efforts to hurry me out of jail.  Of course, the quickest way, dropping charges, was out of the question as they saw it.  So they sent up some blacks to urge me to come out – blacks they through might be willing to forget injustice in the name of ‘cooperation.’  But as each one came up I would convince them of what we were doing.  All understood, except for one or two who were so sold-out to the system that they couldn’t think for themselves anyway” (148).

I’m interested to think about where I might have landed in this situation.  So, question, with no judgment or right/wrong answers:

Which character in these chapters do you think might best represent the way you’d have acted in this situation?

Chapters 14-15: Cooperatives, Empowerment, Voice

In Chapters 14-15 John Perkins dives into the challenging and sometimes divisive work of community organizing, helping those in the community who had been oppressed find means of self-expression.  As we’ve seen several times so far in LJRD, many in the church didn’t understand the need for this type of work, even considering it outside the scope of the Gospel.  Perkins, however, holds empowerment and the Gospel as complementary, even mutually-necessary, ideas.

This quote caught my attention:

“In situations of inequality or oppression, the oppressed group must take a stand somewhere, sometime.  For until the people take that stand, there is no development possible for them.  Yet when they take that stand in the face of clear injustice, an oppressed people are once again humanized.  And they then become capable of a level of development – spiritual, economic, social or other – not psychologically possible for a people still in a passive, dependent state” (120).

Unless people grasp their own ability to effect change on their own situation, they’ll remain helpless.  Effective community development helps people access the ability to take charge of their own change.  A few years after LJRD, Perkins wrote in Beyond Charity:

“To believe in indigenous leadership development is to believe in the inherent dignity of the people who need developing.  If you don’t believe that they can eventually lead themselves then you must believe that they are somehow inferior to you.  This type of attitude manifests itself in relationships that are patronizing, self-gratifying, and dependent” (Beyond Charity, 73).

One more idea from Paulo Freire, the guy who gave us the “Praxis” idea for which this blog is named:

“Authentic liberation – the process of humanization – is not another deposit to be made in men.  Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 79).

In summary, it’s important for community developers to equip the people around them to act in ways that bring positive change.  Without the ability to choose for themselves, take their own responsibility and lead, people remain oppressed and little of value results.

Now I’ll ask you questions, including one that focuses on me as your advisor:

What contributes to effective community empowerment?  What disempowers communities or individuals?

How have you witnessed empowerment or disempowerment? 

What will make this year an opportunity for empowerment and growth for you?  What support or freedom do you need from me and JPC staff?

How will you let me know when to suggest and when to set you free?  (This is me saying in advance that I want to work with you, not over you…)

Chapters 12-13: Avoiding Burnout and Finding Our Place

This week’s chapters focus on the challenges Christians faced in finding their space in the struggle between segregation and Civil Rights.  Aligning convictions and practice, particularly in the face of opposition, is strenuous work, as evidenced by Dr. Odenwald’s story.  This chapter reminds me of the importance of support networks.  Because we’re following Jesus into our work we’re never alone. However, it’s crucial to also have a network of caring, like-minded people around us to sustain us through challenging times.  That’s where the relationships in your core teams come in, I think.

These chapters also contain a challenging critique of the Church’s role in the struggle for Civil Rights.  A few notable quotes:

“Finding financial support to attack hunger and economic ills wasn’t so easy.  But we could always get Bibles” (98).

“One of the greatest tragedies of the civil rights movement is that evangelicals surrendered their leadership in the movement by default to those with either a bankrupt theology or no theology at all, simply because the vast majority of Bible-believing Christians ignored a great and crucial opportunity in history for genuine ethical action.  The evangelical church – whose basic theology is the same as mine – had not gone on to preach the whole gospel.

…man cannot create justice by human manipulation alone.  But at the same time, the Church, by so-called ‘spiritual’ manipulation alone, cannot effect justice” (99).

“In terms of social justice, evangelicals just didn’t have a team on the field” (111).

“…Does the gospel – that is, the gospel as we presently preach it – does it have within itself the power to deal with racial attitudes?  ... If evangelism is truly on the side of God and His love, then it should never allow itself to look like it’s on the side of a bigot-producing system” (112-113).

All too often, it seems, the Church has been content to focus on the me-and-Jesus portion of Reconciliation, without addressing the me-and-you aspect.  Maybe it’s lack of awareness, unwillingness to change our attitudes, or fear of creating controversy, but many in the Church tend to shy away from opportunities to take action in pursuit of justice that reflects God’s Kingdom values.  There’s a lot more on this idea in Richard Stearns’ The Hole In Our Gospel, which some of you might have read last year during the Embracing the (W)hole Gospel conference on campus.

Questions for you:

Burnout is a serious issue in college and ministry, probably even more so when you combine the two.  What are some ways you’ll seek to be sustained through this year?  What can we as a team do to support and encourage each other?

If you grew up in the Church, did you see more examples of social justice engagement or avoidance?  In what ways?

What might motivate believers to become engaged in social justice issues?

Should we be concerned about a “slippery slope” toward a social gospel that isn’t Biblical?  What safeguards might help us avoid the slippery slope?

What's in your Ipod?

I'm a big music fan; I think there's a lot you can learn about a person by knowing what they're listening to.  So,

What are you listening to this summer?

Vision, Calling and Relocation

Perkins’ understanding of inequities and needs in Mississippi lead him to return to the community from which he and Vera Mae had come, to help the community develop.  In these chapters we see Perkins’ call to ministry, both in vision for the work God was leading him to and the family’s challenge to understand and respond to that call, as well as the need for the Relocation principle, being in it with the people.

A few quotes jumped out at me this week:

The need: Equality in education.

“Of course, a root problem is that Mississippi has always been one of the poorer states in per capita income.  So it naturally has had less money overall for everything, including education.  With that kind of cash scarcity there never seemed to be enough money to provide a good education for everybody who wanted one” (89).

For more on the idea that there isn’t enough to go around, see Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, written in 1991, including a chapter on Camden, New Jersey, where we’ll send a group of volunteers this Christmas Break.  After researching urban, diverse America schools, Kozol concludes that the fear of upper-class, majority culture families is that their kids will suffer if they have to “give up” their advantages in order to provide equal, adequate education for all.  It’s a challenging argument.

Vision for ministry.

“You see, I knew that if the Bible I was teaching could ever really do something there, it would have to be a visible truth.  I knew that if I only had students, even lots of students, the whole thing could drift away like many other ‘religious’ programs.  I knew that I had to develop fellow workers, not just Bible club students” (pg. 93-94).

Relocation: The importance of being with the people.

“My work as a Bible teacher and pastor didn’t just lean on whatever skills I had in class teaching; just as important was letting people know I was also involved with the needs of their daily lives.  Our income, our life-style, our needs and problems matched a lot of these people’s concerns; we could live among them more like friends helping friends than like well-off outsiders coming to do good” (92).

For more on Relocation, as well as the other 7 big ideas of Christian Community Development, check out www.ccda.org/philosophy.

What about you?

Have you witnessed other examples of people responding to God-given vision by planting themselves in a particular community?  Tell us about that.

What needs do you recognize in the ministry you’ll serve with in the coming year?

Relocation is a tricky endeavor for college students, who tend to be rooted to a campus and have constraints on their time.  What steps will you take this year to get close to the work you’re doing, in pursuit of the Relocation principle?

Chapters 8-9: Evangelism, Salvation, Mentoring

In these chapters Perkins commits his life to following Jesus and immediately jumps into the work of ministry and evangelism. In addition to living a changed life and telling people about it, John Perkins' faith also focuses heavily on mentoring.

"Every Tuesday night I sat with my white teacher, Mr. Wayne Leitch. God was taking me step by step. First He showed me black people changed by the gospel. Now He was showing me that it had power even for whites.

"Mr. Leitch didn't hold me back with any rigid ideas of what he thought my abilities ought to be. When he saw what I could handle, he offered to work with me during afternoons as well" (75).

"But I had more than survived. God had let me succeed where these young men had failed. I had a good job, good opportunities. My wife had a good job and all that, too. And here these young men were – in jail, in trouble. Yet God loved these young me no less than he loved me.

"So if God had done all this for me, and if He loved these others no less than He did me, what did all this mean? What did it say to my plans for my "good" Christian life?

"Well, first thing, I saw more clearly that the roots of many of the black man's problems in the ghetto were really the unsolved problems of the South I had left. I couldn't escape a conviction growing up inside of me that God wanted me back in Mississippi, to identify with my people there, and to help them break up the cycle of despair – not by encouraging them to leave, but by showing them new life right where they were" (79).

As you think about your own journey of faith and personal development,

What impact have mentors had on your life?

Have you had the opportunity to mentor others? In what ways?

Incidentally, if you come from a church background where evangelism isn't emphasized, or if it's difficult to explain what it is we do when we "give our lives to Jesus," you might enjoy True Story by James Choung. In narrative form (Yes, it borders on college love story, but it's based in Seattle, so that balances out) Choung outlines a metaphor for Christian conversion that goes beyond the famous Bridge Diagram (http://www.navigators.org/us/resources/illustrations/items/The%20Bridge%20to%20Life) to focus on God's plan for reconciliation and restoration of everything, and believers' role in carrying out that transformation. It's a good read.

Also, maybe you wondered to yourself: "What's a Quonset hut?" (pg. 78) I'm so glad you asked! http://www.google.com/search?q=Quonset&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&prmd=ivnsm&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=bdYMTsacF6vTiAKD24jhDQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CEAQ_AUoAQ&biw=991&bih=684

So how's it going?

Post your updates here!

The Gospel, or not...

In Chapters 6 and 7 Perkins meets a nice girl, finds fulfilling employment, serves his country and loses his father, but 3 out of 4 ain't bad. Most notably, I think, the man many of us now know as a fervent preacher begins his adult life in pursuit of secular dreams with little interest in Christianity.

"I'd been to religious services as a kid, of course, but I never learned that I could have the power of God in my life; a power that would make a difference in me and in my surroundings. The few times I'd been in church, I had sat and watched everybody else getting emotional. Maybe it's because I always look at things economically, but it was hard for me to see how all that shouting and bench turning I saw in black churches was giving people any kind of incentive to develop. …

"And I did not see white Christianity as meaningful either. To me it was part of that whole system that helped dehumanize and destroy black people; that system which identified me as a nigger. So how could the white church really be concerned about me?" (57).

This perspective on Christian faith is evident today, and one that you'll probably encounter in your work with the Perkins Center this year. Many people view Christianity as at best an abstraction, at worst a club that excludes others while insulating its members. In order to explain why it is that we care about the Christian in Christian Community Development, we'll need a good grasp of the Gospel and what difference it makes in individuals' lives and the world around us.

In your experience,

What is the Gospel message?

What is the importance of the Gospel message for our communities today?

How does the Gospel "make a difference in me and my surroundings"?

Systems

Systems, the ways dominant society organizes life, or “the ways things work” tend to function well for some and oppress others.  In 1930s and 40s Mississippi, the sharecropping system provided subsistence-level income for some blacks, while at the same time limiting their upward mobility or empowerment.

“White attitudes made sharecropping a necessity for most blacks.  For, as sharecroppers, we lived the proper role and behaved in the accepted manner.  Sharecroppers weren’t considered dangerous types who might upset the system.  So our family’s status as sharecroppers provided a stability of sorts not always open to independent blacks.

“Trying to be an independent black in the postwar South could be risky.  We could have been put out of business if we had tried to go it on our own, totally independent.  That would have been ‘uppity’” (34).

“The storekeeper himself would charge about 25 percent interest, and the boss would add his own charges – sometimes another 20 percent.  The landowner charged interest even though he was not directly loaning the money out of his pocket, because he was the one being billed.  …

“So the sharecropper paid between 35 and 45 percent interest on the crop loan. That interest, plus principal, he had to pay out of his share of the crops.  And his share was only half; the other half belonged to the landowner” (40).

“…since land clearing always began in early February, that meant that school for sharecroppers was only about three months a year: November, December and January.  With such a short school year, there was no such thing as finishing one grade a year; it was more like one grade level every two years or so” (45).

In Chapter 5 Perkins describes two encounters with the economic system: one in which he feels forced to comply and another in which he is able to exert some small amount of resistance. As you think about your own experience today:

What “systems” do you recognize in our society?  Who benefits?  Are some individuals or groups marginalized?

Are the problems we see in society the result of an oppressive “system”?  Individuals’ choices?  Both?

What makes it difficult to restructure these systems?  What are steps we might take in that direction?

Chapters 1-2: Pain and Challenge

John Perkins' story is framed by pain and social injustice.  Though many of us reading this history today find it difficult to imagine a society in which racial discrimination was so blatant and wide-spread, in New Hebron this oppression had become accepted as a way of life by many Whites and Blacks. 

For many Whites, Perkins writes, "Here on Main Street, a quick, almost casual swipe of the nightstick was a standard reminder of who was boss in New Hebron.  So, when in town, blacks had to weigh every word and action.  Young blacks especially, even without any particular grudge, could run afoul of the law in the most ordinary situations" (18-19).

In response, many Blacks, also shaped by the oppressive system, had determined that it might be easier to go along with the system rather than to challenge it.  "But other blacks just didn't want to talk, and it wasn't just a matter of fear.  It's hard to describe, really, but when you've spent your whole lifetime with limited opportunities, spent your whole lifetime being told your place is at the bottom – that entire mixture helps create a low image of yourself.  After awhile, assertiveness or anger or whatever it's called just sort of dries up, like a muscle that never gets used" (23).

In Chapter 2 John meets his father, an important moment for a young person faced with the humiliation of being fatherless.  "You see, that teasing I had talked about – about fathers, I understood it enough even at my age, to call him "Daddy" instead of "Uncle" – the usual term kids had to use for the man they resembled and who occasionally showed up with their mothers" (29).

As you think about the ministry you're involved in, or the communities in which you've served,

What challenges or pain have shaped your own experience?

What pain do you observe in the communities around you?  How have people responded?

How does pain or challenge inform your desire to serve?

Praxis

Hi Friends!

Welcome to the JPC Summer Reading Blog - a tool I hope we'll use to build relationships and plans for next year as we read together through John Perkins' Let Justice Roll Down.  I'll start reading and reflecting next week - I hope you'll join the conversation.

Summer is my time to read a lot, and this week I'm looking at Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  There's a lot in the book, but one big idea that jumped out at me the other day was the idea of Praxis - the interaction of reflection and action.  Without action, our talking is just talk; without reflection, our action is just activism.  When reflection and action come together, praxis, among a bunch of other great things, happens.  It's vital that we do something, while at the same time thinking carefully about waht we're doing and why.

I hope our conversations about Let Justice Roll Down will be a point for praxis.  As you begin to think about the year ahead: leadership, service, action ... let's also think about what we're doing, how we're doing it, and what we're learning as we go. 

We'll get into the discussion of Let Justice Roll Down next week.  For now, here's an easy question - post your thoughts!

What are you most excited for this summer?  What are you least excited about?

Thanks.
Owen.