Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons / Is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons … / We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes!
—Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Ella’s Song”
Religious historian Dr. Nichole Flores shares the Christian witness of civil rights organizer and strategist Ella Baker, a powerful mentor and champion for young people’s voices and leadership.
This is “Ella’s Song,” inspired by the words and witness of Miss Ella Josephine Baker (1903–1986), a magisterial authority of the civil rights movement and a witness to true human freedom…. “Ella’s Song” announces the existence of those who are often made invisible in our society: black people, poor people, young people, and women…. [It] shines a light on Baker’s belief in freedom and justice, but it also changes the condition of those who sing this song. It changes their hearts. It changes their actions. It becomes their creed….
Her creed is at once deeply democratic and profoundly Christian, leading her to insist that special concern for “the least of these” (Matthew 25) and “lifting up the lowly” (Luke 1) are spiritual priorities as well as social and political ones.
Baker’s most significant work … was with young people. While Baker was a serious young person with an innate maturity—her grandfather called her “Grand Lady” because she was a great conversationalist even as a child—she had a natural sympathy for young people and their causes. As an undergraduate student at Shaw University, Baker led protests for the right of female and male students to walk across campus together and for women to be able to wear silk stockings. She took on these causes … because she saw them as important expression of young people learning to secure and defend their liberty and autonomy…. [Decades later,] she believed that the students [in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] needed space to develop their own voices, their own relationships, and their own agenda….
While Baker supported the students in their efforts, she insisted that the movement was about larger issues than lunch counters; it was about “something much bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized Coke.” [1] True freedom required learning to treat others with dignity and equality … [and] teaching others to love freedom and to do the work required to sustain it. Baker considered human equality to be a divine calling, a state that was good for its own sake. And she offered the students another perspective on their organizing without dousing the flames of the passionate pursuit of their own most important issues and campaigns….
Baker also shows the way forward for those who want to eradicate racism from American society. She shows us that sharing our bounty with our neighbors builds a strong community. She teaches us to love good ideas even when they are new or unfamiliar. She demonstrates that loving our neighbors requires that we listen to their stories. She reveals that humility and self-critique are the friends of courage and power.
| The Idol of Celebrity: The Evangelical Industrial Complex |
 Click Here for AudioRichard Halverson, the former chaplain of the United States Senate, summarized church history this way:“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.”Halverson recognized that a significant portion of American Christianity is shaped by business forces that reward ministries for operating more like corporations than churches, and too often they elevate leaders for their marketplace acumen rather than their spiritual maturity.In earlier church traditions, and some still today, there were ecclesiastical authorities that served as gatekeepers. They guarded pulpits and platforms to ensure only leaders who have been tested and approved are granted access to positions of wide influence. They took seriously the Apostle Paul’s instruction to appoint only mature leaders, not recent converts, with good character and a gentle spirit (1 Timothy 3:1–7). Within the American church, however, there are few overseers to guard the flock against the influence and abuse of ungodly leaders filling our media, bookshelves, and conferences. In the place of a church hierarchy, we’ve built the Evangelical Industrial Complex where we expect publishers, conference directors, and radio producers to protect the flock from wolves. Yet when facing an existential threat to their organizations, managers within the Evangelical Industrial Complex will quickly remember that they were not appointed to shepherd us but to sell to us. And a very large ministry can survive if its leader is an ungodly tyrant. It can survive if people don’t meet or serve Jesus through the ministry’s work. But it cannot survive if customers don’t buy its products or fund its payroll.That’s why the rise and fall of any celebrity pastor is merely a symptom of an underlying malady within much of American Christianity. Why are there now so many celebrity pastors? Because they generate a lot of revenue for the Evangelical Industrial Complex. Why do these pastors fall with such regularity? Because the Evangelical Industrial Complex often uses a business standard rather than a biblical standard when deciding which leaders to promote. DAILY SCRIPTURE 1 PETER 5:1–5 MATTHEW 20:20–28 WEEKLY PRAYER Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Most merciful Savior, increase the faith of your servants, that we may never stray from your truth; our obedience, that we may never swerve from your commandments. Increase your grace in us, that, alive in you, we may fear nothing but you, because nothing is more mighty; love nothing but you, because nothing is more lovable; glory in nothing but you, who is the glory of all the saints; and finally desire nothing but you, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the full and perfect felicity forever. Amen. |
