Ethics for the 21st Century

Revisiting Emmett Till

2011-02-18T11:04:00.000-08:00

Though I have long been familiar with the story of Emmett Till and his murder, I am once again deeply moved in revisiting it this morning. Thanks to my dear friend Stephanie Ahn Mathis for sharing this video with me. It is to our shame if we put this story out in the recycling with the rest of our "no longer usable" refuse.

The real travesty in the Emmett Till case (and so many like it) is not that a boy was murdered, but that people of otherwise unquestionable faith did not speak out in horror at the way that child was treated even before a hand was laid on him by “good” Christian people. So they condemn their own faith and profane the name of their sacred Master by their silence. And by their unwillingness to acknowledge what a sin called racism has done to the cause of Christ and his Great Commission over the past half century since Emmett Till’s murder the year I was born.

What stresses me most is the attitude of Christians for whom their faith apparently had nothing to say in contradiction to those attitudes - and in this what was considered the heart of a Christian nation. It is Christians and their church, particularly the American, white and evangelical church we are talking about. Yet for all the changes in this truly great nation, white evangelical Christians have said little of their role in this story and many others like it. The whole Jim Crow era, the whole aversion and violent opposition to the Civil Rights movement, not to speak of the antebellum age, could not have happened without the entrenched involvement of Christians and the American church.

People today say all this is in the past (meaning “drop it!”), but the only way to put it in the past ("under the blood," theologically speaking) is to repent of it. And where, tell me, is evidence of that repentance? Ignoring and forgetting are not signs of repentance, at least not in the evangelical churches with which I am familiar. Nor can we say that others (meaning non-believers or at least non-evangelicals) are guilty of the same. Since when do we stand before our Judge and point a finger at others as our alibi? In fact, the Book we claim to follow says judgment begins at the house of faith.

I truly thank God for the fact that in large part (if not entirely), we as a so-called Christian nation have left the old ways. But if I slap you hard on the face and then stop slapping you, is that enough of a “sorry” in your book? I sincerely doubt it – and I have no intention of actually testing my theory, because I know it will not be enough. So, just the fact that this travesty of justice might not (emphasis on “might not”) be possible in our contemporary America is not sufficient evidence of repentance accomplished.

Moreover, where is our shame that the voices calling us to repentance have mostly had to come from outside of the white evangelical community? Some will respond with evidence of a johnny-come-lately and seemingly token repentance. Sincere may be those handfuls of examples, and I in no way question their sincerity, but are we not also to apologize for such tardy and minimalist responses to such grave sins? And are we not to acknowledge that these few cases can in no way speak for the vast remainder who have yet to repent? For representative repentance, biblically appropriate as it is, does not make up for lack thereof otherwise.

There is much, much more that can and should be repented of, the murder of unborn innocents being the ever-present example. But in our lack of repentance (and I use the word “our,” for I do not excuse myself from my own community of faith), there is to be found the seeds of our own present undoings. If we wail at the world we now find ourselves in, it is only we who brought it about that are to blame. If America is losing its “Christianness” as so many believers protest, it was only ours to lose, for the threat to our own private Christendom was not from without in the lands of Communism and Islam or whatever terror du jour we might conjure up, but only in ourselves when we fail to heed our own Master’s words to love our neighbors as ourselves.

That threat to our faith was not and has never been someone or something else, but has always been when we refuse to turn to God and repent of our ways. There are other sins worthy of repentance, to be sure. Yet racism, whether directed toward African-Americans or Native Americans or Asian-Americans or – and the list goes wearily on – yes, racism tops the list of unrepented tasks when it comes to the American church.

We do not yet understand how much this beam in our own eye has affected our vision of the present, how much it distorts our politics, our polity and our prayers. For to have unresolved issues with our brothers and sisters at the altar is to make that altar of no effect in all the other realms of life.

And so I look at this video of Emmitt Till and weep, not for Emmitt or his mother long gone on to their rewards. No, I weep for those of us who remain, not merely in the land of the living, but also in the land of the unrepentant, people who have no discernment of their right hand from their left and so who continue to wander in darkness, the morally blind following the morally blind.

I give thanks to God that some liberals and pagans in our far-off nation’s capital, or so it is said, had the foresight to condemn us to a Black History month in perpetuity if for no other reason than to keep the finger of God pointed at us for our hardened hearts, until at the least we shall repent and discover Martin Luther King’s vision of being free at last. Until the hour we realize that today’s challenges are attached to the roots of yesterday’s buried, unresolved sins.

The series "Victims, Lawsuits and Justice" will return next month.

Victims, Lawsuits and Justice – Part V

2011-01-23T12:49:00.001-08:00

This is Part V in a multipart series on ethical issues dealing with sex abuse victims, lawsuits and justice, particularly in settings where the abusers were connected with institutions such as churches or the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).

I began this series in response to a civil court decision awarding millions of dollars in damages to Kerry Lewis for being sexually abused by a scout leader decades before. More recently, the Oregon Supreme Court heard arguments about the possible release of hundreds of files detailing sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts.

The question of appropriate transparency, one that has long raised divergent concerns, arises because such files were introduced in the Lewis lawsuit, and now several media outlets, both local and national, are petitioning for the files to be made public. The files, dating from 1965 to 1985, contain information about accusations of sexual abuse, the names of victims and what the Boy Scouts did or did not do to prevent abuse.

Although Oregon has a relatively generous statute of limitation in such cases, without access to these files, victims have little recourse in pressing for compensation. However, releasing the files raises equally serious concern about privacy for victims.

What responsibility do religious and civic organizations such as the LDS and the BSA have toward victims of sexual abuse when it comes to transparency, confrontation of abusers, restitution, and full assistance in restoration for the victims? Legally, the ground has shifted in recent decades. Yet the question in this series is not what should be legal, but what is the appropriate moral action, something to which we hope our laws will eventually conform.

First, should organizations be liable for past mistakes when organizational changes have already been made? Certainly, the prophetic voices of biblical times held that corporate entities, particularly nations, were to be held, as were individuals, to God’s moral standards. Family units, clans, communities and whole societies were understood to have moral responsibility. Particularly, the prophets of ancient Israel attributed the downfall and destruction of empires to such sins as the abuse of the poor or the ill treatment of the environment. And such an approach to corporate responsibility has remained an ethical tenet throughout the Christian tradition as well.

What happens when organizations, such as the Latter Day Saints or the Boy Scouts, do make appropriate policy changes to conform to updated laws and social perceptions? Should they still be held liable for mistakes made prior to those changes? Again, I am not a lawyer, but I understand that while the law cannot be backdated for criminal offence, damages can still be awarded in civil cases.

However, we are not merely talking about the legal or fiscal responsibility of religious and civic groups, but their moral responsibility. Would, for example, a scout leader tell his charges that because there was no law against being mean to their fellow scouts, they were therefore absolved of responsibility? Of course not. Responsibility, whether individual or corporate, always goes beyond the letter of the law.

What then should happen if organizations and institutions do not hold themselves appropriately accountable? When they absolve themselves of responsibility quite contrary to the very standards they hold their charges?

My understanding of the biblical witness would say that those who speak for God should defend the weak when the powers-that-be do not. It gets complicated, though, when those who speak for God are the same powers-that-be, or when the powers-that-be must become the voice of God to those who should be fulfilling their role as the voice of God.

It could be argued that God alone has the right to impute justice in such situations, but there is a much stronger case to be made from Judeo-Christian thought that society, particularly through human government, is called to carry out God’s justice. Otherwise there would be no concept of just wars or a case for capital punishment. Even those religious traditions which do not agree with just war theory or who oppose capital punishment on moral grounds still hold that man’s laws and courts, imperfect as they may be, are to be agents of God’s justice on earth.

Therefore, when our nation through the courts of the land holds churches and the Boy Scouts accountable for wrongdoing, it is performing its God-given responsibility. Even so, how sad that when churches and scouting organizations fail to own up to past mistakes without the threat of legal action, they fail their changes by not presenting a better example of moral responsibility. The lesson passed on is that if you are not caught, you are not responsible.

To be continued…

Victims, Lawsuits and Justice

2011-01-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

Last year I started a series called "Victims, Lawsuits and Justice," in response to a high-profile suit won by a victim of child sexual abuse involving the Boy Scouts and the Mormon Church. On January 17, I will resume the series. If you missed the earlier segments or would like to review them, click on these links:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

As I prepare to resume this series, a similar case is in the local news, that of a victim who won a suit and as of several years later, still has received none of the awarded damages. In response, his attorneys involved in the original case are being sued. Regardless of whether this case includes Christian organizations, it brings up some of the points raised in Part I: What is our responsibility as believers and as a society to those who have been sexually victimized under the watch of spiritual authority?