WHO WILL STIR RENAISSANCE OF INTERRACIAL UNDERSTANDING?

Maybe the just-passed commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday put me over the edge. Or maybe it is all the mean-spirited vitriol spewed about the Battle Flag. Or maybe it is this former political radical having recently turned 50, not yet having put behind him the iridescent dreams of “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding.” My mom would say in her picturesque folk-Yiddish, es grizhet mir in boich – it has my stomach in knots:

Another year passes, and the gap of understanding and common cause among the races, locally and nationally, grows wider. Worse, the impetus to do anything about it, from any corner, grows increasingly vague and lethargic.

Once there was a time that we talked and resolved and accomplished together. Even when we did not want to talk, we forced ourselves to talk. It did not emerge from political processes; they merely confirmed the will of the everyday folk when that will became politically irresistible. We cannot expect politicians to be statesmen, much less prophets, right, left, or anyplace in between.

Whom then shall we expect?

One image should be emblematic: I am fixated on that now famous image of Dr. Martin Luther King locked arm-in-arm with rabbis, ministers, and priests of every imaginable ethnicity and denomination, marching together for social justice and human decency. They shared fully in the nobility of their mission as they shared fully in the jeers and spittle of their detractors.

That was the key then, as it must become the key today: The only – repeat, only – force sufficiently potent to awaken a renaissance in interracial understanding is our pulpits and the passion they can stir among the everyday folk toward altruism, enduring values, and prophetic action. The extent to which that is happening here or anywhere is laudable. The extent to which it is not is blasphemous.

I harbor no delusions. Differences are daunting, and the waxy buildup of mutual distrust and tarnished dreams among the races seems impenetrable. Nor do I believe that “generic religion” is the antidote. I do believe, however, that God sends the same message to lots of different mailboxes. I also believe that within the message is found sufficient common ground and divine imperative to build bridges where secular and political processes are impotent.

What is the common ground that religion can forge a renewed understanding?

All religion begins with an understanding of oppression and persecution. Slaves in Egypt. Passion on the Cross. Martyrdom of saints. Slaves in America. Persecution of the Baha’i. Jim Crow. Holocaust. Apartheid. There must be an innate empathy and common vocabulary among peoples whose histories emerge from enslavement, exile, massacres, subversion of family ties, severance of cultural identity, scapegoat-ism, disenfranchisement. Shouting matches of “who’s had it worse” are not merely counterproductive; they trivialize the common origin that spawned us.

Persecution must teach us to be more, not less, humane and compassionate. A persecuted people may learn from its persecution either callous cynicism or intense compassion. The Bible of Moses and Jesus exhorts time and again that the ultimate lesson of bondage is to be humane to the stranger in our midst. The exhortation has become an essential tenet of all religious teaching. Elie Wiesel’s years in Nazi death camps taught him to champion the rights of all who are persecuted. Dr. King and disciples could speak of the African American struggle for self-determination only in the larger context of justice for the entire world’s oppressed.

Oppression is overcome through an amalgam of faith and initiative. All faith communities share the understanding that faith and determination are totally interrelated, not mutually exclusive. Religion has consistently taught its adherents not to wait helplessly until God redeemed us from our woes. Yet, religion has never maintained that solely human devices can accomplish the transition from oppression to freedom. We of religious conviction share an abiding common belief that God and humankind must enter a full partnership if the world is to be set aright.

Equality comes through empowerment. Religion is about pulling one’s own weight. The pursuit of happiness may be an inalienable right, but happiness itself is an eternal struggle. Yes, religion is about charity. Bit it is even more about self-determination that comes from real enfranchisement that enables all people to shape a common destiny – educational tools, political influence, and economic vitality that bring real empowerment, not continued dependency and subservience.

Family and heritage are central to our destiny. Religious teaching is single-minded: Family is the wellspring from which the health of all our other endeavors must emanate. Oppressors have always known that the surest way to demoralize their subjects was to subvert family ties. Likewise, all religions admonish that the integrity of our families is the single most important determinant as to whether a people will flourish or disintegrate. We also learn that our respective heritages are the primary source of moral guidance, personal identity, dignity, and self-respect. Gone are the days that demanded renunciation of one’s heritage to conform to the social mainstream. Our unique, yet commonly-grounded, heritages are, hands down, the most humanizing and ennobling forces at our disposal.

The cynic would say that we could just as easily identify five or ten points on which our various faiths are at absolute odds. Let us harbor no illusions: Any number of important issues can in an instant pull the races opposite directions. Nonetheless, if we review the values, experiences, ideals, aspirations, and imperatives that are at the core of all religious heritages, we realize that profound, substantive principles go directly to the soul of interracial understanding and cooperation.

Now, who is prepared to step up to the plate and let our common religious values prevail over our lethargy and differences? Downtown, tall-steeple ministers? Suburban mega-church pastors? Two rabbis who serve the entire Upstate? Black? White? Yellow? Red?

Do not wait for the politicians. Do not wait for committees and commissions. The pulpit and its inhabitants alone have the power and the potency to stir the renaissance. Let anyone among us who has the prophetic zeal find ground for dialogue and renewed purpose right here in Greenville. How much good might we accomplish?

I have this picture of Dr. King and God’s servants of so many callings and backgrounds walking onward to an uncertain, but ever brighter, future with united determination. Let me show it to you sometime. Maybe it will inspire you, as it does me, to find the renewed conviction to march forward together again, arm-in-arm, as it should be.