by Don Haymes
In the times of his need, God calls the prophets, raising them up to bear his testimony. So it is here.
By 1960 even the most culturally blinded of administrators in academic institutions of the Churches of Christ can read The Handwriting on the Wall. Court decisions and legislation will force them to abandon all regulations or policies that restrict enrollment and employment on the basis of race. In the past they have often rested these strictures on "the law of the land," but now "the law of the land" has been pulled out from under them. In a climate deeply polarized by a mass movement for freedom and a counter-movement of "massive resistance," these academic administrators must find a way to justify the course they must take. They hope, above all, to avoid open conflict with financial supporters and the loss of white enrollment. They have no plans to seek out or encourage black students to enroll, but they know that they can no longer reject "qualified" applicants. They must avoid litigation and loss of federal subsidies, while retaining the support of a core constituency not known heretofore for enlightenment on questions of social justice.
By 1960 Carl Spain is a rising star of the Abilene Christian College faculty, an associate professor of Bible and religious education, completing his doctoral studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary after earning a Bachelor of Divinity from Southern Methodist. He is also minister of the Hillcrest Church of Christ in the new housing development north of the campus, across the Albany Highway.
By 1960 the Abilene Christian College Bible Lectureship has become a central forum--perhaps the central forum--for the definition and expression of intellectual consensus and ecclesiological orthodoxy among Churches of Christ. Marshall Keeble's appearance here 10 years earlier has certified him as the statesman representing black Churches of Christ, but Keeble's parables will not meet the needs of this hour. R. N. Hogan speaks all too plainly, but he will not be invited here to say what he has to say. It is Carl Spain who will come to wear the prophet's mantle in this forum.
Spain's assigned topic would not alarm many of his potential auditors and readers in 1960, and indeed most of this lengthy address is quite predictable. National Socialism, Marxism, and existentialism come in for a thorough drubbing, as do the Jewish polemicist Joseph Klausner and, of course, that set of attitudes and behaviors summed up under the label "worldliness." But somewhere in the middle, between Rabbi Klausner and the existentialists, under the rubric "Modern Naturalism," Spain's rhetoric ceases to be impersonal and academic and becomes, for a few moments, deeply personal and powerfully prophetic. This is territory that Spain, "a son of the South," knows well at first hand; it is a message that he has certainly longed to deliver, a prophetic witness.
Spain devotes a paragraph to Behaviorism and then launches an attack on what he calls "Political Naturalism": Marx, Lenin, Nietzsche--familiar targets in this time and this place. And then, an intake of breath, and the Spirit begins to move.
Spain's lecture has been completed and committed to print for months. It is certain that the powers that be in Abilene know what he will say. Did they ask him to say it? That is a question for historical investigation. Until now, they have neither desired nor permitted such a statement in this forum. This moment is what a New Testament writer might call to pleroma ton kairon, a moment when altruism and self-interest come together, a moment when a prophet may speak and be heard in his own country.
What right have we to talk about the two faces of Khrushchev, when we guard the ballot boxes with guns and pass laws that deny native Americans the right to vote on the basis of their color and social background. Like Khrushchev, many Americans just don't agree with Jesus about His moral code. The ethics of Jesus are foolish to many church goers.
I shall never forget how Christ was crucified by "His own" in a southern community where I grew up. A few law-abiding, humble-hearted Negroes wanted to attend a service of the church of Christ. They had listened to me preach on the radio. These souls didn't know anything about an organization for the advancement of colored people. They traded with my beloved step-father, who seemed to be interested in their souls. They loved him like a mongrel dog would love a man who fed him and spoke kindly to him when he was accustomed to being cursed and kicked. [215] When our colored friends timidly asked if they could attend a service of the white folks and learn more about the church of Christ, I made the mistake of telling them that they would be more than welcome. And they trusted me. They came in timidly and took the seats that were as far back as they could get and still be inside. I shall never forget the agony on their faces when white Christians made it very plain to them that they were out of place and glared at them like a Jew would have looked upon a "Samaritan dog." The Negroes left the assembly of the saints. It seemed that the saints couldn't pray or sing just right as long as there were "niggers" in the church house.
A few years later, the Negroes of the community got to hear the gospel from a man of their own race. But the Lord didn't seem to understand about the white folks' problem, or if He did, He didn't seem to care. And the gospel seed that a white man had sown in the Negro heart was watered to life by a Negro preacher. And the Lord gave the increase, but He didn't time it just right. He forgot that the poor Negro folks who were to be baptized didn't have anything but a tent, and the white folks had the only available baptistry. So, in the excitement of becoming the white folks' brothers and sisters in the Lord, the happy preacher didn't see anything wrong about asking if they could come over and use the baptistry.
The Lord had moved in the hearts of a few white Christians in such a powerful way that they said that their Negro friends would be more than welcome. But the blueblooded members of the Royal Order of the Master Race, including many members of the church of Christ, the Baptist, the Methodist, and Presbyterians protested violently. [216] They preferred death to such a fate as this. Before the baptismal service was over, police came to put a stop to it. Just like the Communists broke up services in Warsaw, Poland, last year. The local paper took up the fight in good old "Democratic" style. Police patrolled the area around the church building. The Lord's church was branded as a communist front organization where whites and Negroes socialized as brothers. The community systematically boycotted the business establishments of some of the Christians for months, nearly causing them to go bankrupt.
I grew up in that community. I saw firsthand the kind of social paranoia that caused the Jews to hate Jesus and nail Him to a tree.
There is little to be gained by preaching against the immoral actions of Communists, unless we as Christians are willing to repent of our own idolatry and murder. The word of the Lord identifies covetousness with idolatry, and hate with murder. We have so defined "moral" and "immoral" in our modern times that a covetous idolater and hateful murderer can go to church and be in full fellowship because he doesn't smoke, chew, drink, or dance. These latter things we ought not to do, but we need to expand the borders of our moral realm and condemn certain areas that have been condoned.
In correcting social evils, we must resort to the educational approach before we attempt legislation. we must preach righteousness and educate in a Christian way before any legislation will be effective. Education without legislation is usually more effective than legislation without education. But when people insist on using the Bible to support an un-Christian system of ethics, one can [217] expect that social revolution will follow, with its usual attending evils. God forbid that churches of Christ, and schools operated by Christians, shall be the last stronghold of refuge for socially sick people who have Nazi illusions about the Master Race. Political naturalism, in the cloak of the Christian priesthood, must not be the ethical code in the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
I feel certain that Jesus would say: "Ye hypocrits![sic] You say that you are the only true Christians, and make up the only true church, and have the only Christian schools. Yet, you drive one of your own preachers to denominational schools where he can get credit for his work and refuse to let him take Bible for credit in your own school because the color of his skin is dark!"
Our moral attitudes are so mixed up that we use the story of Philemon and Onesimus to justify refusing a Negro admission to study Bible in our graduate school of Bible.
A Methodist college will admit our own Negro preacher brethren and give them credit for their work. Baptist colleges in Texas will do as much. Our State universities will admit them. There is no law of our State or nation that will censor us. The Bible does not rule against it. Why are we afraid? The integrated schools of San Angelo, Texas, ninety miles from Abilene, are rated at the top of our nation. Are we moral cowards on this issue? There are people with money who will back us in our last ditch stand for white supremacy in a world of pigmented people. God forbid that we shall be the last stronghold among religious schools where the politico-economic philosophy of naturalism determines our moral conduct.
We fear the mythical character named Jim Crow more [218] than we reverence Jesus Christ. In the name of "discretion" we make un-Christian and un-American rules like some states do in the name of "State's Rights." To complacent Jews who boasted that they alone were acceptable to God, Jesus said: "Outwardly you are like whited sepulchers, but inwardly you are full of dead men's bones." Let this be a warning to any people who say they are the only Christians in the world. The surest way to seal the doom of this nation is for the only Christians to be the only ones with un-Christian attitudes.
The Pharisees of Jesus' day had developed a code of morals by which they could safely parade their piety before men. They reduced morality to certain matters like tithing mint, anise, and cummin, and "omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith" (Matthew 23:23). They became blind guides that strained at gnats and swallowed camels (Matthew 23:24).
Some say it is the church, not the school, that must lead out in such matters. We have just said that education is the best approach to the solution of any problem. Our only excuse for existing as institutions of Christian education is to make better citizens of the kingdom of Christ and better citizens for service in a free society.
We reject even our own preachers, and refuse them credit for their work in Bible, on the grounds that we do not have separate facilities for them to sleep and eat. If that is the only issue, then why reject someone who doesn't ask that we provide a place for him to eat or sleep?
Brethren, we are not recommending revolutionary legislation. We are merely suggesting that we offer Christian [219] education to all Americans without respect of persons. If the problem is one of room and board, then let us consider that we have no problem if we do not have to provide room and board.
There are moments that live in memory. This is one of them. This impassioned plea of an enlightened, outraged Southern moderate is, as he himself says, hardly "revolutionary"-- yet it seemed so then, and so it was received.
In February 1960 i had just returned to Abilene from one semester at Harding, wounded by my academic disaster and sickened by the disillusioning dissonance of the social and political climate that George Benson and his henchmen had fostered. i was now confirmed as a "cynic" in Ambrose Bierce's definition: "one who see things as they are and not as they ought to be; hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision."
At the Harding College Lectureship in the fall of 1959, i had sat down to hear Marshall Keeble, only to hear George Benson introduce him as "one of the great preachers of the Brotherhood." Marshall Keeble was the only black person in a huge auditorium. He was there to raise money for one of Dr. Benson's favorite charities--African missions. It was the only time i ever saw Marshall Keeble. i never heard him. On that occasion, surrounded by white folks primed to laugh at a cartoon, i got up and got out of there . . . and kept on goin'.
i remember entering Sewell Auditorium on a sunny February afternoon, and finding one of the few seats left at the rear. i cannot remember why i chose to be there. Lectureship disrupted classes, and LeMoine may have told his freshmen New Testament students to attend this lecture. i do recall a tension and excitement i had never before witnessed at Lectureship. i remember my surprise and disbelief at what i heard, and i most especially remember that i heard from all over the auditorium, echoing like thunder, a four-letter word: "Amen!" i saw, a few rows ahead of me and to the right, J. Willie Treat, standing and shouting--shouting!--"Amen!"
i left the auditorium that afternoon, walked to the Students' Exchange, . . . and bought the Lectureship book. i have it yet; i have it in front of me--the first of the texts that i acquired for this collection.
May God have mercy.
dhaymes, his mark +