The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

  THE TIME FOR PIOUS WORDS IS OVER ©Wendell Griffen, 2022   At the end of each message sent from my personal email account is a quote from South African liberation theologian Allan Boesak that I have appropriated for the title of this column. Boesak’s words, “The Time for Pious Words is Over," are part of the title of Chapter 3 of his book, Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid: The Challenge to Prophetic Resistance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Anyone who has read the May 15, 2022 report by Guidepost Solutions, LLC, titled “The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s Response to Sexual Abuse Allegations and an Audit of the Procedures and Actions of the Credentials Committee” ( https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6108172d83d55d3c9db4dd67/t/628a9326312a4216a3c0679d/1653248810253/Guidepost+Solutions+Independent+Investigation+Report.pdf ), should agree with Boesak that “the time for pious words is over.” The Guidepost Solutions report confirmed what SBC sexual abuse vic...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022     On May 14, 2022, an eighteen-year-old white man killed 10 Black people and wounded three others at a TOPS supermarket in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York. He drove more than 200 miles from his home in southern New York to massacre and maim Black people while dressed in body armor and armed with a semi-automatic rifle with a high-capacity magazine. The suspect that law enforcement officers apprehended after that massacre filmed and live-streamed his killing spree. He wrote an online manifesto stating that his motive for killing Black people would be to prevent white people from losing control of the United States. This is a version of what is called “replacement theory.” Let’s be clear. “Replacement theory” is white supremacy in different words. White politicians and media pundits have always tried to dress up their bigotry by using different words. No matter what words they use, the goal of such racist rhetoric is to inc...

  @Wendell Griffen, 2022     Voting for primary elections began May 9 and will end on May 24 across Arkansas. Candidates are making their final appeals to undecided voters. Their campaigns are working to get regular voters to the polls. Campaign ads are broadcast on radio, television, social media, and delivered by mail. Meanwhile, people who oppose democracy are working to discourage, intimidate, and suppress voting by people who are Black, Latinx, LGBTQI+, workers, and the elderly. Those voters are often viewed as preferring candidates who support civil rights, social justice, environmental justice, fair and safe working conditions, and governmental assistance for vulnerable people. Yes, there are people who do not want you to vote if you are not white, cisgender, wealthy, and not likely to support the hateful policies and actions associated with the MAGA agenda. Laws that make it more difficult to vote are not about reducing election fraud. They are about c...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022   In the November 1980 US presidential election, Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter thanks to votes from white conservatives who called themselves evangelical Christians. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Phyliss Schlafly, James Robison, and a host of other white Christian leaders openly embraced Reagan. White Christian leaders denounced Carter, who was then a devout Southern Baptist, and criticized him for being respectful of civil rights, including the rights of non-white persons and women. They denounced Carter, who received the Nobel peace prize for his work negotiating diplomatic talks between the state of Israel and Egypt. They disagreed with Carter, who openly warned the nation about our addiction to fossil fuel and the threat that our addiction posed for the future of the nation and world. What those white Christian leaders wanted, more than anything else, was to elect someone who would appoint federal judges,...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022  This weekend people will attend Christian worship services to observe Good Friday and Easter. What will they hear?    What will they see? What will they do? Some persons will gather to merely observe the colors, lilies, music, and speeches/sermons of a religious pageant about the arrest, trial, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Those persons will attend as spectators. Some persons will gather out of a sense of tradition. Being in a religious service for Easter is part of their annual routine. Some persons will attend the worship services because they were not able to do so for the past two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. People will also attend the worship services because they are followers of Jesus, the dark-skinned Palestinian Jewish rabbi who lived under Roman occupation for his entire life. They will attend to honor the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. These and other reasons will in...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022     In recent days we have witnessed unprecedented evidence of bigotry and violence. Bear with me while I mention some of the more obvious examples. Start with the abuse and disrespect Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson experienced this week from Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was called vile names. Her professional and personal integrity was demeaned. Her character and intelligence were questioned. What Judge Jackson experienced was intentional bigotry. She was the target of premeditated violence from Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, and Charles Grassley. Remember their names. Remember how they treated Judge Jackson. Do not believe them if they eventually make predictably fake excuses, assertions of good faith, and other efforts to downplay their bigotry and violence. Those vicious politicians could not crack Judge Jackson. They could not break her spirit. Through it all, Judge Jacks...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022   I am one of the more than thirty million (30,000,000) descendants of American slavery in this country. Our enslaved ancestors were shipped, sold, robbed, maimed, raped, murdered, and otherwise wronged from 1619, when a Dutch ship named the White Lion arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, until slavery was supposedly ended at the end of the civil war in 1865. That entire pattern of behavior happened openly. It happened officially. It was sacralized by preachers and congregations, carried on as part of daily business, and continued across successive generations. This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of unpaid labor. This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of life theft. This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of rapes, castrations, mutilations, beatings, and murders. This society h...