141 years ago the Civil War ended and with it the institution of slavery. After the war the Reconstruction occurred with sometimes unjust results but by 1877 the South was free to re-assert its racially stratified past. Christians, particularly in the Presbyterian tradition, find in these events a great treasure trove of identity and, frankly, excuse making. This was brought to the surface recently through a post on Barlow Farms.
At the 2004 General Assembly of the PCA, the Pastoral Letter on Racism came up for vote and there was profound and heated resistance to it from many southern churches. One of the arguments that was utilized in the attempt to nullify the document was that it would violate the 5th Commandment by dishonoring "our fathers in the faith" which included Thornwell, Dabney, etc. The latter of whom it was said, "often appears as the stern master, happy to acquire a younger servant because he would be "more whip-able."
Dishonoring the fathers? Really? How about the black fathers, are they dishonored too? Black slaves (fathers) sat in the galleries of all those historic PCA churches involuntarily but no one remembers them. Great men of the faith like RL Dabney likely carried on the common practice of burying their slaves in unmarked graves. Acquired, used, forgotten. We do allot of selective forgetting in Southern Presbyterianism.
I was initially ambivalent about the PLR. What does this stuff have to do with a hapa-haole living in Los Angeles I thought. But living in St. Louis, at the crossroads of the PCA, has allowed me to see things differently. It is not pretty. It is becoming clear to me that when the past is not repented of and, particularly, when it is arrogantly upheld as some glorious era, the sins will be repeated in some derivative form. Hiding behind contextual excuses doesn't fly when our kids do it so why should it fly with adults?
In 1945 my family was given several hundred dollars and train tickets to Cleveland, Ohio. This was their recompense for having their property and lives stolen. They had been shipped off to a swampy internment camp in Jerome, Arkansas at the beginning of WWII and were not allowed to return to California because they lacked a sponsor. My wife's family has a similar story. They spent the war in the desert wastelands of Poston, Arizona. When the war ended, the family and traditional structure of the Japanese-American community had been completely destroyed and has never recovered. Yet, I have never heard my relatives complain about it unless pressed. They are almost all non-Christians.
My point is this, often the oppressed stand quietly by while the oppressors have the luxury of writing histories that justify their actions. I say, "enough!" Unlike the secular historian, Christians answer to God who sees all and knows all.