Black histories are essential to navigating today’s politics
John M. Perkins was a pioneer of Christian community work. His books, and the works of rights leaders like him, speak to today’s wars.
The six years Brenda and I lived in Lansing, Michigan, were bookended by two training courses. Each, in their own way, helped me find a footing in that strange country. And now, as the world is full of confusion, I find the lessons I learned then more valuable than ever.
The first course was in Hamtramck, a Yemeni-Bangladeshi-Polish town in the Detroit area; the second was hosted by the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship (CICW) in affluent Grand Rapids.
The Hamtramck course, “Training for Conflict Transformation Trainers,” was led in 2015 by Daniel Buttry, an American Baptist minister. Dan’s wife Sharon is also a minister and a social worker. Together, they set an unforgettable example of Christian life and engagement and gave me confidence that American Christians could handle whatever their own country threw at them. I also learned songs and skills to remember, such as how to prep for and have a “power talk” with your local representative (or MP). You can just do that. Isn’t that wonderful?
‘Lift every voice’
The CICW seminar, directed by Danjuma Gibson and John Witvliet, focused on African American spiritual autobiography. It came with a stack of books to read. As a critique of white slaveholder Christianity, Frederick Douglass is unforgettable but the most moving account was of Ida Wells-Barnett, born into slavery in 1860, who became a journalist exposing lynchings in the southern states. We also learned the famous hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the African American national anthem. Now that the “land of the free” is not so free anymore, and the brave are ordered to commit war crimes – to bomb a bridge, say – by their president, this anthem seems far more inspiring than the official one.
Dan and Sharon Buttry had been deeply influenced by John M. Perkins, the recently deceased African American civil rights leader from Mississippi and pioneer of Christian community work. Perkins believed in “relocation, reconciliation, redistribution”: the Church should move in where there is need, build reconciled communities and sensitize people to the need for redistribution of wealth to meet everyone’s needs.
Essential histories
Perkins wrote several books. In Let Justice Roll Down, he tells without bitterness the events that shaped his life: the murder of his older brother, a returning World War II veteran, by a white police officer; his own move back from California to segregated and exploitative Mississippi, prompted by his faith; and the night he was almost beaten to death in a local jail. Mississippi’s justice system did nothing, and the federal system failed to respond. White hierarchies prevailed.
Reading Perkins’ memoir has made me believe even more strongly that the history of African Americans is vitally important to our time, even for our understanding of ongoing wars.
It helped me see how the U.S. is an unworkable democracy: it is too open to abuse by vested interests at the state level. But Perkins also shows how faith can help. The Buttrys have shown that too, and so have the good people at Calvin University’s CICW. By putting faith into practice with data, training courses, stories, songs, books and intellectual reflection, we can still get a hold on the crises of our time and, who knows, maybe even “let justice roll down.”
