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Nooses and evangelical race consciousness
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Nooses in Jena, Louisiana, nooses at Columbia University in New York City, and their lingering ancillary protests, reveal that America has yet to recover from centuries of racial tension. Even worse is the fact that American Christianity has little credibility in pointing to the church as a model of social progress in the area of race.
In 1958 Martin Luther King once said, “Unfortunately, most of the major denominations still practice segregation in local churches, hospitals, schools, and other church institutions. It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Is this still true today?
Brutal honesty confesses that not much has changed in evangelicalism since 1958. Sunday morning is segregated, yes, but so is every other day in the lives of most Christians. At 6:00 pm we retreat back to our racially homogenous marriages, families, neighborhoods, and the like, only to reintegrate for work, entertainment, or commerce. Our Sunday associations represent nothing less than those relationships we choose to enjoy throughout the week.
America confuses institutional diversity with relational diversity. The races tolerate each other at work or school because our private lives are designed for affinity associations, “people like me.” Many Christian parents say, “We’re not racist” until their blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter starts dating a man of Mexican descent, or even worse for some, a black family discovers that their Ivy-league son is courting a white female classmate.
Good complaints are made about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton but where are the evangelical leaders, of all races, publicly demanding airtime and offering an alternative vision when conflict arises? We should have no expectations that American culture will advance in her race consciousness until the church embodies the implications of our common anthropology expressed in the Gospel lived out in local community life.
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Reporters? choice
It is amazing how people believe in imaginary things. For example, money is an imaginary thing. Try eating a dollar bill sometime when there’s nothing to eat in the house.
Well, that’s not real money some people say. Gold is real money.
Take a bite out of your Krugerrand when you’re starving. Much tastier.
Race on the other hand, is real. Really.
I have seen studies of institutions as to race. The least segregated organizations (withthe greatest harmony) are the military and churches (evangelical and RC).
I don’t happen to have the citaions handy.
We should have no expectations that American culture will advance in her race consciousness until the church embodies the implications of our common anthropology expressed in the Gospel lived out in local community life.
Sounds great, Dr. Bradley, but what does that look like? Nobody wants to be the first white/black person in a black/white church. Is that the church’s fault? If a white, suburban church opens the doors to everyone, but no black people show up, is that church racist? If that same church plans an outreach in a black neighborhood, they’re accused of pandering, which is racism of a different shade.
So, what would you have those evangelical leaders say on their demanded airtime?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a church explicitly stating (on sign or notice) no black/white people allowed. That would be segregation.
Segregation requires that there be a policy or act to deliberately exclude or include only certain race(s). Churches generally don’t segregate. If I want to worship with a mostly black church, I don’t think they’d have a problem with it. Nor have I had a problem with blacks visiting my church. So, no. It is NOT true today.
Regarding your picture, I can’t believe you posted a noose! I feel threatened!
I see World’s own Al Sharpton wannabe is at it again. World should be ashamed of itself for giving this man a platform. Shortly after the black stripper claimed to have been raped by three white guys at Duke, and after everyone at the party said nothing happened, and some of the alleged rapists even provided proof that they were nowhere near the house at the time of the alleged rape, Bradley wrote a column demanding that someone on the team be “a hero” and come forward and “tell the truth” and “tell what really happened”. In other words, some of the team were rapists, and everyone on the team was a liar helping to cover up rape. He has never apologized, even more than a year later. And World thinks a man who does this kind of thing deserves his own column at WOTW?
And he just keep it up here.
n 1958 Martin Luther King once said, “Unfortunately, most of the major denominations still practice segregation in local churches, hospitals, schools, and other church institutions. It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Is this still true today?
Brutal honesty confesses that not much has changed in evangelicalism since 1958. Sunday morning is segregated, yes, but so is every other day in the lives of most Christians.
Sunday morning is segregated? Where does this guy live? I’ve attended scores of churches in my life, and I’ve never been to one that was all white, or didn’t have at least one interracial couple. In every medium or large city, there are hundreds of churches, and almost all of them, especially the bigger ones, have racially diverse congregations.
Unlike Bradley, there are people who actually study these things and consequently now what they’re talking about. One of them has been much in the news the past few months. He’s Harvard professor Robert Putnam, and he wrote the famous book about the loss of civic engagement in America, Bowling Alone. Putnam has been making a rigorous study of diversity for over 20 years, interviewing thousands and thousands of people. Some of his finding about diversity are startling; he says that diversity leads to mistrust in a community, even among people of the same ethnic group, and also leads to a withdrawal from the community. People go out less, talk to their neighbors less, become less likely to vote for tax funding of civic projects,etc. But he also said that evangelical churches represent one of two profoundly successful examples of widespread diversity (the other being the military):
http://tinyurl.com/2pj45q
And then there’s this whopper:
Nooses in Jena, Louisiana, nooses at Columbia University in New York City, and their lingering ancillary protests, reveal that America has yet to recover from centuries of racial tension.
They, of course, reveal no such thing. No one has been arrested in the Columbia incident, and judging by the very high number of similar “hate crimes” that turned out to be hoaxes, the possibility that the professor, who has milked the publicity for all it’s worth, planted the noose herself. An extremely high number of hate crimes turn out to be self inflicted. Here’s a recent cross burning incident that was self inflicted.
http://tinyurl.com/yuab3q
Remember this one? It happened at a Christian college. Someone sent letters with racial slurs threatening to kill black students. Guess who did it? A black student, who was not happy to be there, and wanted her parents to think it was a racist and dangerous place.
http://tinyurl.com/2tu9ay
And remember the uproar at Claremont college a few years back when a Jewish professor found her tires slashed and a swastika and “Kike Whore” spray painted on her car? Police and campus officials talked about how the perps would be spending a very long time in jail. Until it turned out that Professor Dunn had done the damage to her car herself.
http://www.isteve.com/Hate_Hoax.htm
And there are hundreds of other stories like that over the past decade. There’s one somewhere in America almost every week, it sometimes seems. So the noose at Columbia reveals nothing about racism in America. It may turn out to, but there’s a real good chance that it will say a lot more about how some people will do anything for attention. Especially since Columbia at first refused to turn over the surveillance tapes.
And Jena? Surely Bradley got that one right, and the noose in the tree at Jena reveals the hideous racism that still lingers in parts of America, right? No. Once again, he’s simply spouting off without having a clue as to what he’s talking about.
The local DA investigated it and said it had nothing to do with race. Of course, since he’s white, he was accused of a coverup.
So he asked a black federal prosecutor to investigate. He did, and came to the same conclusion. The noose hanging at Jena had nothing to do with race. Nothing. Of course, becaues he’s black, he was denounced as an Uncle Tom, by people who share Sharpton’s and Bradley’s disdain for the facts.
But the fact is that the Jena noose had nothing to do with race whatsoever. It turns out that it was an inside joke between members of the school rodeo team. (Yes, some schools in the South and West have rodeo teams.) It seems they’d all watched Lonesome Dove on TV the night before, and one of the main scenes was the lynching of some cattle rustlers (all of whom were white in the movie). So a few guys on the team, who knew that the others had watched the show, put the noose in the tree as a reference to cattle rustlers and Lonesome Dove.
And that’s all there was to it.
http://tinyurl.com/ywxj9k
But what do facts matter to people like Al Sharpton and Anthony Bradley?
I see World’s own Al Sharpton wannabe is at it again. World should be ashamed of itself for giving this man a platform. Shortly after the black stripper claimed to have been raped by three white guys at Duke, and after everyone at the party said nothing happened, and some of the alleged rapists even provided proof that they were nowhere near the house at the time of the alleged rape, Bradley wrote a column demanding that someone on the team be “a hero” and come forward and “tell the truth” and “tell what really happened”. In other words, some of the team were rapists, and everyone on the team was a liar helping to cover up rape. He has never apologized, even more than a year later. And World thinks a man who does this kind of thing deserves his own column at WOTW?
And he just keep it up here.
n 1958 Martin Luther King once said, “Unfortunately, most of the major denominations still practice segregation in local churches, hospitals, schools, and other church institutions. It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Is this still true today?
Brutal honesty confesses that not much has changed in evangelicalism since 1958. Sunday morning is segregated, yes, but so is every other day in the lives of most Christians.
Sunday morning is segregated? Where does this guy live? I’ve attended scores of churches in my life, and I’ve never been to one that was all white, or didn’t have at least one interracial couple. In every medium or large city, there are hundreds of churches, and almost all of them, especially the bigger ones, have racially diverse congregations.
Unlike Bradley, there are people who actually study these things and consequently now what they’re talking about. One of them has been much in the news the past few months. He’s Harvard professor Robert Putnam, and he wrote the famous book about the loss of civic engagement in America, Bowling Alone. Putnam has been making a rigorous study of diversity for over 20 years, interviewing thousands and thousands of people. Some of his finding about diversity are startling; he says that diversity leads to mistrust in a community, even among people of the same ethnic group, and also leads to a withdrawal from the community. People go out less, talk to their neighbors less, become less likely to vote for tax funding of civic projects,etc. But he also said that evangelical churches represent one of two profoundly successful examples of widespread diversity (the other being the military):
http://tinyurl.com/2pj45q
So much for Bradley’s “brutal honesty” that not much has changed since 1958.
And then there’s this whopper:
Nooses in Jena, Louisiana, nooses at Columbia University in New York City, and their lingering ancillary protests, reveal that America has yet to recover from centuries of racial tension.
They, of course, reveal no such thing. No one has been arrested in the Columbia incident, and judging by the very high number of similar “hate crimes” that turned out to be hoaxes, the possibility that the professor, who has milked the publicity for all it’s worth, planted the noose herself. An extremely high number of hate crimes turn out to be self inflicted. Here’s a recent cross burning incident that was self inflicted.
http://tinyurl.com/yuab3q
Remember this one? It happened at a Christian college. Someone sent letters with racial slurs threatening to kill black students. Guess who did it? A black student, who was not happy to be there, and wanted her parents to think it was a racist and dangerous place.
http://tinyurl.com/2tu9ay
And remember the uproar at Claremont college a few years back when a Jewish professor found her tires slashed and a swastika and “K*ke Wh*re” spray painted on her car? Police and campus officials talked about how the perps would be spending a very long time in jail. Until it turned out that Professor Dunn had done the damage to her car herself.
http://www.isteve.com/Hate_Hoax.htm
And there are hundreds of other stories like that over the past decade. There’s one somewhere in America almost every week, it sometimes seems. So the noose at Columbia reveals nothing about racism in America. It may turn out to, but there’s a real good chance that it will say a lot more about how some people will do anything for attention. Especially since Columbia at first refused to turn over the surveillance tapes.
And Jena? Surely Bradley got that one right, and the noose in the tree at Jena reveals the hideous racism that still lingers in parts of America, right? No. Once again, he’s simply spouting off without having a clue as to what he’s talking about.
The local DA investigated it and said it had nothing to do with race. Of course, since he’s white, he was accused of a coverup.
So he asked a black federal prosecutor to investigate. He did, and came to the same conclusion. The noose hanging at Jena had nothing to do with race. Nothing. Of course, becaues he’s black, he was denounced as an Uncle Tom, by people who share Sharpton’s and Bradley’s disdain for the facts.
But the fact is that the Jena noose had nothing to do with race whatsoever. It turns out that it was an inside joke between members of the school rodeo team. (Yes, some schools in the South and West have rodeo teams.) It seems they’d all watched Lonesome Dove on TV the night before, and one of the main scenes was the lynching of some cattle rustlers (all of whom were white in the movie). So a few guys on the team, who knew that the others had watched the show, put the noose in the tree as a reference to cattle rustlers and Lonesome Dove.
And that’s all there was to it.
http://tinyurl.com/ywxj9k
But what do facts matter to people like Al Sharpton and Anthony Bradley?
n 1958 Martin Luther King once said, “Unfortunately, most of the major denominations still practice segregation in local churches, hospitals, schools, and other church institutions. It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Is this still true today?
Brutal honesty confesses that not much has changed in evangelicalism since 1958
Really? I’ve lived in lots of cities, and attended lots of churches, and not one of them was all white, and most of them had one or more interracial couples. Drive by any big church in any big city, and you’ll see that lots has changed since 1958. But don’t take my word for it; there are some people who actually study these things and actually know what they’re talking about before lecturing others. One of them is Harvard prof Robert Putnam, who has spent 20 years, and interviewed thousands and thousands of people, in the course of studying diversity. The results of his study were in the news recently, and they’re the exact opposite of what Bradley claims here:
http://tinyurl.com/2pj45q
So much for Bradley’s “brutal honesty” that regarding integrated churches “not much has changed” since 1958.
And then there’s this whopper:
Nooses in Jena, Louisiana, nooses at Columbia University in New York City, and their lingering ancillary protests, reveal that America has yet to recover from centuries of racial tension.
They, of course, reveal no such thing. No one has been arrested in the Columbia incident, and judging by the very high number of similar “hate crimes” that turned out to be hoaxes, the possibility that the professor, who has milked the publicity for all it’s worth, planted the noose herself cannot be dismissed out of hand. An extremely high number of hate crimes turn out to be self inflicted. In Anoka, Minnesota a few weeks ago a black man was arrested for staging a cross burning in his yard to get sympathy and money.
Remember this one? It happened at a Christian college, Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL. Someone sent letters with racial slurs threatening to kill black students. Guess who did it? A black student, Alicia Hardin, who was not happy to be there, and wanted her parents to think it was a racist and dangerous place.
And remember the uproar at Claremont college a few years back when a Jewish professor found her tires slashed and a swastika and “K*ke Wh*re” spray painted on her car? Police and campus officials talked about how the perps would be spending a very long time in jail. Until it turned out that Professor Dunn had done the damage to her car herself.
You can put the names and other info into Google and read all about these cases. I would post links, but my comments keep getting rejected, and I assume it’s because there’s too many linke.
And there are hundreds of other stories like that over the past decade. There’s one somewhere in America almost every week, it sometimes seems. So the noose at Columbia reveals nothing about racism in America. It may turn out to, but there’s a real good chance that it will say nothing about racism at all, and a whole lot about how some people will do anything for attention. Especially since Columbia at first refused to turn over the surveillance tapes.
And Jena? Surely Bradley got that one right, and the noose in the tree at Jena reveals the hideous racism that still lingers in parts of America, right? No. Once again, he’s simply spouting off without having a clue as to what he’s talking about.
The local DA investigated it and said it had nothing to do with race. Of course, since he’s white, he was accused of a coverup.
So he asked a black federal prosecutor to investigate. He did, and came to the same conclusion. The noose hanging at Jena had nothing to do with race. Nothing. Of course, becaues he’s black, he was denounced as an Uncle Tom, by people who share Sharpton’s and Bradley’s disdain for the facts.
But the fact is that the Jena noose had nothing to do with race whatsoever. It turns out that it was an inside joke between members of the school rodeo team. (Yes, some schools in the South and West have rodeo teams.) It seems they’d all watched Lonesome Dove on TV the night before, and one of the main scenes was the lynching of some cattle rustlers (all of whom were white in the movie). So a few guys on the team, who knew that the others had watched the show, put the noose in the tree as a reference to cattle rustlers and Lonesome Dove.
And that’s all there was to it.
http://tinyurl.com/ywxj9k
But what do facts matter to people like Al Sharpton and Anthony Bradley?
From where I sit, one of the issues re. the church and race is the broad denominational preferences of various races and ethnicities.
When we attended a Calvary Chapel (approx. 1988-1996), we had plenty of black, Hispanic and mixed-race members. I’d say, in rough proportion to their numbers in Phoenix — but I could be wrong.
When our theological convictions took a decidedly Reformed turn a couple of years later — well, you just don’t see many black folks attending Presbyterian churches. (Not in Phoenix, anyway.) I’m certain, however, that blacks would be warmly welcomed at our present church. (And we do have a small number of Hispanics as well.)
So it seems to me that our Sunday fellowship is more based on commonness of doctrine and theology, not skin color.
Just my two cents …
Night train, are you serious?
Fatal flaw in your argument, you said, “Drive by any big church in any big city.”
How about this, drive by any big church in any major suburb” and you’ll see all black churches and all white churches. Take a visit to Atlanta on a Sunday sometime.
Frank, take a look at the North Georgia United Methodist churches. They are still divided by race even though they share the same theology (especially in the Atlanta area). How would you account for this?
I’ve been to Atlanta plenty of times, and there are lots and lots of integrated churches there. The same goes for suburbs of ATL, and other big cities.
And apparently you didn’t notice where I said don’t take my word for it, and then quoted the man who’s spent more time studying diversity than anyone else in the world. And he says evangelical churches are wonderful integration success stories.
Byron, I agree that I misspoke when I said “drive by any church in any big city”. I should have said drive by most churches in any big city. Including ATL.
Anyway, the point is not that anyone is claiming that every church in America is fully integrated. We’re not, and it would be foolish to expect such a thing. Blacks are only about 13% of the population, and they’re concentrated in the South and larger cities. Hispanics make up about 15%, and they’re concentrated in the South, Southwest, and larger cities. Believe it or not, there are hundreds if not thousands of towns in America which are virtually all white, thus making it impossible for the churches in them to be integrated. But as Putnam’s study makes clear, integration is by and large a reality in evanglical churches, where it’s physically possible. Is this to deny that some churches in diverse areas are still all white or all black? No, but why should people tell black people that they’re not really worshiping Jesus unless they’re sitting next to white people, and vice versa? People choose churches for lots of different reasons, and in my years of studying the Bible I don’t recall any place where Jesus said that if your church doesn’t reflect the racial demographics of you area then it’s not a true Christian church.
What I am saying is that Bradley’s assertion that “not much has changed” since 1958 is so far away from the truth that I can’t believe WOTW published it. It’s beyond ludicrous. it’s asinine.
Integration and association are two different things. Integration is a policy or act in the opposite direction of segregation. Association is a matter of people freely associating with others of like mind. Just because you have an all white or all black church doesn’t mean you have segregation. Also, I wouldn’t want to see the government or church forcing something through integration that should occur naturally through freedom of association.
A policy of integration implies there is something wrong with racially homogeneous associations. Such a policy would be, by this implication, racist.
You really lost me here, Random. How does it follow that because gold is not edible that it’s therefore imaginary?
That being said, a church of the wealthy should go out of their way to associate with those in need. Perhaps that is one way a church executes a policy of integration that is mandated in scripture.
Where Random goes wrong is that gold actually has value as a substance that is relatively rare and has many special uses. A piece of paper does not. A federal reserve piece of paper only has value because the government says it does. That doesn’t mean it’s imaginary.
You are entirely correct, wiglaf (16).
I will email you all the gold I own as an attachment to pay my fine for posting false information about value. Watch your email carefully and open all attachments you get immediately.
They are kind of heavy, though. I hope you have enough RAM to handle it. :/
I have a much better idea, Random. Just set up an account at e-gold.com and I’ll give you instructions on transferring your gold to my account.
I have an even better idea, Random. Why not just explain why you think gold is imaginary because it’s inedible? For bonus points, explain how you’re supposed to pick up gold and try to take a bite of it if it doesn’t actually exist.
Night Train - Thanks, Putnam’s study is one of the main ones I was thinking of.
Your welcome, KRM. I always prefer facts to fantasy, and I remember it being big news when Putnam’s study came out a few months ago that evangelical churches were, along with the military, the most racially integrated institutions in America. You can imagine my surprise at seeing WOTW let Bradley paint a radically dishonest portrait of evangelicals, and claim that they’re pretty much just as racially segregated as they were 50 years ago. It’s incredible that anyone would spout garbage like that. It’s even more incredible that they’d do it only a few months after Putnam’s exhaustively researched study of diversity came out. Of course, Bradley’s the same man who accused the entire Duke Lacrosse team of lying to cover up a brutal gang rape by team members, even after it was pretty obvious the charges were bogus, and has never apologize, more than a year after his libelous column.
I just can’t figure out why WOTW thinks such a man deserves a column on here.
Anthony Bradley
You make many sweeping stroking statements, which you MIGHT observe from a few, but when you speak for the whole country (US) and the acceptance of Church within any group of people, Asian, Black, White, Jewish, etc and you come up with these racist remarks, You my friend are fueling the flames of segregation -
I’ve been to so many different Churches I can’t count them all, but I CAN tell you that I have seen, and witnessed since I was a SMALL CHILD all the mixed races within the Churches I have attended -
Your words divide people instead of bringing them together - I’ve had friends of every single different color, and I’ve enjoyed them coming to my home, and so have my family - My family isn’t so different from any other family at an Evangelical Church -
You can dangle this picture of a noose, as you have done with this article, but its INSULTING to those of us who love our brothers and sisters in Christ, (no matter what COLOR they are) and who try to take the Word of God around the world - You might try discarding that EXTRA, EXTRA, CUSTOM WIDE BRUSH of yours that SWEEPS across your blank page, and then pens the very words which bring about dissention, and EXCHANGE it for some LOVE, for those who worship next to you, and pray for the continent from which you might come from, or at least your ancestors -
Well, here in Atlanta, the Mother Church (First Baptist - Dr. Stanley) abandoned downtown because the surrounding neighborhood was black and their congregation was nearly all white. So rather than integrate, they picked up and moved to a wealthy, all-white suburb. Rather than become an urban church, they took the money and ran.
I’m afraid that Bryon does have a point. The mega churches in Atlanta are almost exclusively (though not completely) of one race. Chapel Hill Harvester was an exception, but they are nearly dead now from a sex scandal. Very few SBC or UMC churches are integrated.
I’m not saying there are no minorities in white churches, because there are.
Here’s the run-down on churches:
1. Most churches are nearly all of one race, with a few minorities sprinkled in.
2. Some churches are all of one race.
3. A few churches (primarily mega churches of the evangelical variety) are integrated. That skewers the survey results that make it appear as if we’re a nation of integrated churches. We’re not.
Nearly all churches would not be overtly discriminatory and would welcome anyone. But in reality, people do segregate on Sunday morning. I acknowledge that there has been a concerted effort on the part of some evangelical churches in particular to become integrated. I think the Charismatic churches kind of led the way.
I don’t think we should be too hard on churches though. They reflect the society around them.
3. A few churches (primarily mega churches of the evangelical variety) are integrated. That skewers the survey results that make it appear as if we’re a nation of integrated churches. We’re not.
With all due respect, Anlir, I think I’ll stick with Dr. Putnam’s exhaustive research rather than your personal impressions. He and his associates did extensive polling on this very subject, as well as visiting many, many churches across the country. 53% of evangelicals report attending a church that is entirely or almost entirely composed of people of the same race.
In other words, 47% of evangelicals attend churches that are not entirely or almost entirely all the same race.
So, unless Putnam is way off, and there’s no reason whatsoever to believe he is, pretty much half of all American evangelicals attend churches that are multiracial. It’s simply not the case that it’s a few integrated mega churches that are skewering the results.
And when you take into account the large numbers of communities which still exist in America which have little or no racial diversity, that 47% figure means that a very high percentage of churches in multiracial areas are integrated.
Stanley was (or is) a TV preacher. Almost all TV preachers are frauds, based on the track record. I’m not surprised that he fled downtown because of blacks, and I’ll bet the the whole time they were planning and executing the move to the suburbs he was preaching against racism. Preachers, especially TV preachers, are often like that.
Well, the venerable black columnist Stanley Crouch has weighed in on the Columbia U noose incident, and lo and behold, he agrees with me that it’s impossible to draw any conclusions from what little we know so far, especially given the ugly history of hate crime hoaxes in America.
If you want to read an intelligent piece of writing about the Columbia U noose incident, here’s the URL.
http://tinyurl.com/32jokd
Here’s some more common sense/wisdom from Richard Roeper on hate crime hysteria.
http://tinyurl.com/2yotru
Night Train– Having read Bradley’s acton.org column of April 26, 2006, I agree with you that an apology is due.
I’m no evangelical leader, but I’ll do what Dr. Bradley recommends in this post: Dr. Bradley, I encourage you to stop seeing racism behind every tree and hanging from every branch. I’m offering an “alternative vision,” which is that the problem of racism is quietly receeding in American churches. As you can see on this thread, even White Guilt is fading.
In your Duke article, you called for one of the players to “do the right thing” and confess a crime that never happened. In a followup article, you noted the charges were dropped, but went on to say “Without full disclosure the media was [sic] left with a credibility conundrum and many of us, myself included, jumped to conclusions. Was it unreasonable, however, to believe that the type of men who would hire a stripper would also be capable of sexual assault?” Really, Dr. Bradley? Everyone who buys a camera is a pornographer?
Unless you apologize, you’re just another racial huckster.
Good points, Stubob. I hadn’t realized that about Dr. Bradley. Perhaps he’ll have the guts to admit he was wrong beyond the admission that he “jumped to conclusions” in the Duke case. It seems to me, most men are “capable” of sexual assault. As Christians, we understand why we don’t do all the things we are capable of doing.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees what Bradley’s up to. It’s clear he’s trying to make a name for himself as a sort of evangelical Al Sharpton. Judging from his blog, he was having a pretty easy time of it up to now. Virtually no one ever called him on his blaming white racism for all sorts of things, many of them innocuous, and many of them having nothing to do with real racism. The White Guilt Syndrome is in full effect on his blog, and apparently in the circles he travels in. But as Stubob points out, it looks as if the broader evangelical world is no longer buying into the White Guilt Syndrome, if the reaction on here is any indication. Of course, I’m not a Christian, but most of my friends and relatives are, and I get sick and tired of hearing about how hateful they are from liberals in the media. And then to have to hear it from a professing Christian minister is just too much. It’s clear who the racist is here, Bradley. Go look in the mirror if you’re wondering who’s guilty of racism.
If anyone wants to read his Duke column, it’s here.
http://www.acton.org/commentary/commentary_320.php
Stubob and Wiglaf, one thing I’m confused about. You guys call him Dr. Bradley. Why’s that? Last thing I read is that he’s working on a PhD, but doesn’t have one.
My mistake, Night Train. I assumed Stubob knew he had a doctorate. Apparently, he has a BS, Master in Divinity, and is working on his PhD.
I found the last statement of the Acton bio revealing: “His dissertation explores the intersection of black liberation theology and economics.”
I find it incredible that the Acton Institute is willing to support someone who believes justice requires wealth redistribution to blacks because they are black. Perhaps I misunderstand where his thesis is leading. Mr. Bradley can feel free to correct me at any time…
I saw he was an Assistant Professor at Covenant Seminary and assumed he was a PhD. I was wrong, apparently.
Wiglaf — It might be that he writes about the economic harm done to blacks by liberation theology.
Night Train, I am still chewing on your call for an apology.
And, I enjoyed reading your statistics. However, I think they leave a lot open (as all statistics do). Therefore, he is the expert, but perception and reality will always be hard to reconcile - especially in light of people’s sub-conscious and pre-conceived notions of what “diversity” looks like.
Lastly, please be careful of blanket statements about someone like Charles Stanley. I think, especially in context, his church’s move out to the suburbs ought to be discussed. But, calling a man a fraud brings in a lot of integrity, money, and images that, in my opinion, distract from your valid points about the issue being addressed. IN 2007 there are thousands of preachers on TV and to lump them together REALLY distracts from your good points.
Matt, by “TV preachers”, I’m not referring to preachers whose service is televised locally, and that’s it. I’m talking about those who are on cable networks and TV stations all over the country. By no stretch of the imagination are there thousands of them. A hundred? Maybe. Two hundred? I doubt it.
Think Benny Hinn. Jim Bakker. Jimmy Swaggart. Peter Popoff. Robert Tilton. In other words, a very high percentage of them have been frauds. And IIRC, Charles Stanley got divorced about 15 years ago, so he certainly didn’t practice what he preached.
Nighttrain wrote, “It’s clear he’s trying to make a name for himself as a sort of evangelical Al Sharpton.”
Haha, this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. If that’s true then why does he attack Al Sharpton?
http://www.acton.org/commentary/commentary_239.php
WIGLAF, why don’t read the stuff Bradley’s actually written on economics. Isn’t the Acton Institute economically conservative? Find an article by Bradley that promotes wealth redistribution.
This disassociated thread is hilarious. . .
Haha, this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. If that’s true then why does he attack Al Sharpton?
He doesn’t “attack” Al Sharpton by any stretch of the imagination. He lightly criticizes him. He went one heck of a lot easier on Sharpton than he did on 46 innocent white men at Duke.
And if he’s so opposed to Sharpton, why does he keep agreeing with him? On Duke, he agreed with Sharpton. On the Jena fraud, he agreed with Sharpton. No, he didn’t attack Sharpton, and his disagreements with him are more over style than substance.
And that’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen?
Then maybe you should read Bradley’s post above, where he makes the outrageously dishonest and ridiculous claim that when it comes to racial segregation in evangelical churches, “brutal honesty” say that “not much has changed” since 1958. That is not only one of the most dishonest and asinine statements ever put into print anywhere, it’s also despicable.
It’s morally reprehensible.
I want to address Churches moving from a downtown area to a suburb, which has happened many times. It’s true this has taken place, I have witnessed Churches leaving downtown after the church had been there for years.
The reason this takes place so often is;
1. Families who have been involved with the Church move away, perhaps 30 minutes, and hour or longer - It’s difficult with young children and a busy life to continue to drive back and forth twice on Sunday, and then during the week for Wednesday night and children’s activities - Church membership shrinks due to many families moving further away -
2. Downtown areas are not the safe places they once were - Parking is not available as it once was, do to high rise office buildings, etc -
3. Many very large old Churches have been condemned by the City -
You can see by just a short list as to why Churches are forced to move to another location - It’s very sad for the members who have grown up in the church, married and walked down those aisle’s to marry, dedicated their children after they were born, the funerals of their loved ones took place in their Church - However, the Church members have moved further away, and the membership becomes very small, so the decision to move the Church to another location has to be made -
Byron,
I read more of his articles. It appears he does seem work against wealth redistribution for blacks and the poor and work for more freedom in the market and personal responsibility.
I hardly see that this thread has been “disassociated” from the post. Seems like most have been on topic regarding race. Clearly, the Duke case presents a racial issue in the media as well, although, Bradley doesn’t appear to explicitly bring race to the Duke case. However, Bradley does appear to be dishonest in both articles and I think that is the issue. It is not a dissociated thread.
Maybe we just go to church in our neighborhoods and if you don’t live in an integrated neighborhood, you don’t go to an integrated church. And the writer who said there is a difference between segregation and free association makes an excellent point. Why do so many of you ascribe evil intent on the part of any church? I, as a white person, go to a Baptist Church that has white, black and hispanic members — but that’s because the area has these three groups living here, just as we have rich, poor and middle class, and super educated and high school or less. Occasionally, I visit my black friend in south Jersey and go to her church and I am the only white person there. We have our faith in common.
Why does the racial makeup of a church matter to you so much? As Frank wrote: “So it seems to me that our Sunday fellowship is more based on commonness of doctrine and theology, not skin color.” I think Frank’s right.
NJLAWYER: thanks for bringing much needed basic clarity. I would add that churches work towards not diversity, but to reach their area well - which ought ot include diversity in many areas. And, as you implied, most churches do this.
Ann Coulter’s column today covers this very topic. I like this line: “I’ll be shocked by a noose appearing on a college campus the day an actual racist does it.”
She catalogs recent campus “hate crimes,” all of which were actually perpetrated by the alleged victims.
Then, apropos this thread, she says, “The one real example of racism on a college campus in recent memory was perpetrated against white men of the Duke lacrosse team.”
Read the rest at anncoulter.net.
This is rich. Now Bradley’s over on his blog talking about how poor pitiful him is being “attacked” over on WOW. He links back to this article and then refers to us collectively as “the usual suspects”, whatever that means. He’s being “attacked” by “the usual suspects”? I never heard of this guy until a few weeks ago. Do a bunch of you folks who’ve commented here have a history of attacking, oops I mean disagreeing, with him on his blog?
I think this guy should probably lay off the Red Bull.
Looking back over this thread, I see dissenting opinions from Frank, krm, and Victoria. Hardly the “usual suspects.”
Wiglaf is pretty new and Night Train, while prolific on this thread, is fairly new, too. No “usual suspects” there, either.
I’ve been around WMB intermittently for years, but I don’t know that I’ve ever taken such strong issue with the initial post before, and I don’t think I’ve even read anything by Bradley before. I’m not really a “usual suspect.”
But, if I were the parent of a Duke lacrosse player, I’d consider Anthony Bradley to be one of the usual suspects.
Race relations improve one relationship at a time. As a doctor whose practice is 60+% black (probably closer to 80, but we don’t keep track of such things) and one who worships in a colorblind church, I find the allegation that “not much has changed in evangelicalism since 1958″ insulting.
Anthony Bradley evidently disagrees. So, I ask again, What would you have us do?
I appreciate, STUBOB, that you remind us - whatever we would have US do - we know what we, by ourselves, need to do…
STUBOB
Please tell me what you mean by:
STUBOB
Please tell me what you mean by:
Thanks!
This is only the beginning. Since Bush put a rightwingnut in the Supreme Court and segregation has been re established, you are going to see lot’s of this kind of stuff. Remember 5 to 4. Blacks know they can’t count on Thomas to defend their interests, even though many consider him an uncle.
*African Methodist Episcopal Churches
I’ll bet you that I can find no fewer than ten of these churches in the town where I live.
Can someone show an example of a European Methodist Episcopal?
*First African Baptist Church- Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Has anyone ever heard of a First Euro-Baptist Church?
*Here is a Brief Summary - “One of the leading African American Catholic churches in America”. Fr. John Calicott and Fr. Robert Miller are the Pastors.
*Here is one even better.
Name one church group that can compare to the 6 million member National Baptist Convention Inc., which is a black organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Baptist_Convention%2C_USA%2C_Inc.
The writer of this piece seems to be engaging in a practice I see all too often.
Its OK for one group to discriminate, but not others.
If I were to attempt to walk through one of these church doors to listen to the service,
I guarantee you, without a doubt, some would get up and walk out.
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
*Here is a Brief Summary - “One of the leading African American Catholic churches in America”. Fr. John Calicott and Fr. Robert Miller are the Pastors.
Actually, that was the Holy Angels Church in Illinois