The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

  THESE PEOPLE NEED RE-INTRODUCTION TO JESUS ©Wendell Griffen, 2021   Recently, Baptist News Global reported that two prominent white Southern Baptist pastors from Texas – Steve Swofford (pastor of First Baptist Church of Rockwall, Texas) and Tom Buck (pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas) – openly called U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris “Jezebel,” a label long recognized as a racist slur against Black women ( https://baptistnews.com/article/a-second-sbc-pastor-in-texas-called-vice-president-kamala-harris-jezebel/#.YBTxR-hKi8V ).      Both men lead churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). I have found no published account that any other white SBC leader has criticized them for slurring Harris, a Black woman of South Asian and Jamaican ancestry. Swofford is a member of the executive committee for the SBC.   Ronnie Floyd is President and CEO of the SBC, and head of the executive committee.   I have found no report that Floyd has publicly crit

  WHITE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND DISMANTLING SYSTEMIC RACISM ©Wendell Griffen, 2021   White followers of Jesus are the main obstacles to overcoming white religious nationalism, white supremacy, and racial injustice in the United States.  This is not a pleasant reality.  However, the US would not be in such pathetic shape if white people who claim to be followers of Jesus would admit truths about the injustices committed against indigenous, black, Latino, and Asian people, admit the history of white religious complicity in those injustices, and then commit to remedy the harms associated with those injustices.   White people who claimed to follow Jesus stole access to land and water and massacred indigenous people.   White people who claimed to follow Jesus financed, operated, legalized, sacralized, and enriched themselves by enslaving Africans.   White people who claimed to follow Jesus invaded the Republic of Texas and waged war against Mexico – where

  THE RESULT OF REJECTING DR. KING’S DREAM ©Wendell Griffen, 2021     Donald Trump’s presidency will end with the United States leading the world in the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic.   He will leave Washington, DC as more federal troops are in Washington than at any other time since the Civil War, and after his extremist followers stormed the US Capitol and threatened the US government, a result that had not been tried since the British Army invaded Washington during the War of 1812.     Trump’s tenure as the 45 th President of the United States will forever be despised.   History will forever show him to be the first (and hopefully only) President to be impeached twice.   Time will tell whether Republican members of the U.S. Senate have enough honesty and integrity left to convict him after they enabled and excused Trump’s white supremacist, misogynist, xenophobic, and classist bigotry, and disrespect for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution du

  WE MUST ADMIT THE TRUTH ©Wendell Griffen, 2021               It is time for the United States to confront truth white people have tried to avoid.   White supremacy and religious nationalism dominate US notions of democracy.     This truth is not new.     The United States was organized by wealthy white men to be run by wealthy white men for the convenience, benefit, and enrichment of wealthy white men.   Those wealthy white men did not intend for women to vote.   They did not intend for Black people to be free.   They did not intend for indigenous people to live in peace on their ancestral land.   They did not intend for unwealthy white people to vote, own land, or be treated as equals.     Eventually, wealthy white men extended the voting franchise to unwealthy white men.   That added to the false sense of superiority unwealthy white men felt over indigenous and African people and over women.     White girls were socialized to marry, sexually serve white men,

  Hard Truth About Hateful Faith and Our Endangered World ©Wendell Griffen, 2021   “You can’t handle the truth!”   People familiar with the 1992 motion picture A Few Good Men recall that angry retort shouted by Colonel Nathan Jessep (played by actor Jack Nicholson) in response to the “I want the truth!” cross-examination demand from Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise) during the dramatic finale of that movie.   Whether you can handle it or not, I’m going to share some hard truth that people need to face given the January 6, 2021 insurrection and coup attempt by pro-Trump extremists who invaded the US Capitol, an action that claimed the lives of five (5) persons thus far and injuries to many others.  Buckle up. In 2016 Donald John Trump was elected President of the United States as the candidate of the Republican Party after receiving overwhelming support from a voting bloc known as “conservative evangelical Christians.”   Although those voters have claimed for decades