Introduction by Don Haymes

For five months in 1966, electing to pursue "a firm and vigorous editorial policy" while making an extraordinary effort to report the news unslanted," the editors of the Christian Chronicle appoint three columnists whose opinions appear on the CC editorial page.>

Matt Norvel Young, Sr., is a veteran minister who has become president of Pepperdine College. Dwain Evans is a young evangelist who has earned national recognition by organizing the first of the so-called "Exodus" movements, establishing a congregation of the Churches of Christ in West Islip, Long Island. The third member of this somewhat unlikely and disparate trio--and the first to appear in print--is a minister in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who is making a national reputation as a writer of humor--and not only humor, but humor about the Christian religion, and not only about the Christian religion, but about the Churches of Christ. His name is Gary Freeman.

The three columnists are white males, of course, and all of them were born in the American South; all of them have come to live and work elsewhere. Evans and Freeman are close friends, as they have been since they were classmates in Abilene Christian College. But in temperament, experience, and inclinations these three are vastly dissimilar individuals, and as writers they will appear remarkably unlike. Among them Gary Freeman is truly unique. His like has not been seen since Fletcher Srygley wrote the front page of the Gospel Advocate in the 1890s. Srygley and Thomas R. Burnett had skewered pretense and disemboweled the dubious with truly devastating wit in their time, recalling their contemporary Mark Twain. Freeman has honed his satirical skills under quite different comic mentors, and one can see in his work the influence of Carl Reiner, Stan Freberg, Mad magazine, and Max Shulman.

Gary Freeman is an immensely popular writer among Churches of Christ. R. B. Swet will soon issue a collection of his shorter pieces--most of them written for church bulletins!-- Are You Going to Church More But Enjoying It Less?. Yet this essay is an uncompromisingly uncharacteristic production, a polished but completely heartfelt jeremiad that even R. N. Hogan might envy. There is no indirection, no satire, no comic hyperbole here. Gary Freeman for once says exactly what he means and means exactly what he says. He is spending some capital; it will prove to be an expensive investment.

Christian Chronicle 23 (3 June 1966): 2.

The Sin
of
Mass Hatred

By Gary Freeman

Racial hatred is wrong. It is incontrovertibly, categorically, indisputably wrong. It is, in fact, a sin, and not just any sin at that, but one of the most horrible and inhumane of sins. It is a sin against God, against the human race, and against one's own heart. There is no sane justification for it. It is diametrically opposite to every Christian principle that relates to man's feeling for man.

Consider the teaching of Christ. He said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you should love one another." He said, "By this shall men know you are my disciples if you have love one for another." He said, "The greatest among you shall be your servant." He said, "He that exalts himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted." The Bible says, "How can you say you love God whom you have never seen if you do not love man whom you have seen." James said, "Show no partiality." Peter said, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respector of persons." Jesus washed the disciples feet to demonstrate the kind of humility we should have and he made a hated Samaritan the hero of one of his most memorable parables.

How foreign to the Christian religion is racial hatred! Where Christ teaches love, racists teach hate; where Christ teaches humility, racial hatred teaches arrogance and superiority; where Christ teaches compassion, racists foment contempt for others. Is there any sin known to man more antithetical to the spirit of the Christian religion than mass hatred?

And yet race hatred flourishes in our churches. Not only does it flourish but it is tacitly condoned. Is not this the final irony? What kind of mockery of God is this that we hate our fellowman and hold him in contempt and then seek God's authority for it? What kind of a perverted mind does it take to suppose that God gives his approval to our hate? We are bold to subpoena God to be our false witness.

Is God the God of the white man only? Is He the God of the rich only? Is God so impotent that he finds it expedient to take sides with the powerful in the subjugation of the weak? It is a pathetic thing when man seeks to make over God in the image of man.

Some would have the church be silent on this issue. How can the church be silent and still declare the whole counsel of God? Shall we vacillate, dissemble, be intimidated? Are we required to be silent partners in this malodorous, unchristian attitude? Must we hold the clothes of those who would martyr the world's disenfranchised?

To those of us who claim kinship with Christ we say: shall we who wear His name be the last to recognize the brotherhood of man? Are we of all men the most inflexible, the most hateful, the most spiteful? Was it of us that he said, "You are the light of the world"? Are we instead to be the darkness of the world?

Unchain yourself. Racial prejudice is a weight that no man should have to bear. Refuse to let your heart harbor these inhumane feelings. How blessed and peaceful is that soul where covert animosity does not take refuge! Let the Word of God and the love of God dwell in you richly.

We might think that here Gary Freeman has at last encountered a subject beyond the redemption of laughter. Richard Pryor and Dick Gregory, Redd Foxx and Flip Wilson can laugh at white racism; they laugh at racism through tears--but they are black! Gary Freeman has not lived long enough yet to find humor in the great tragedy of America and the Churches of Christ--but he will. In time one of his most evocative creations, the power-brokering Editor of the Militant Contender, S. T. Allbright, will explain to the fumbling Cletus Kincheloe the facts of life in the True Church (White and Always Right).

What, indeed? But by that time Gary Freeman is out of the ministry and on his way out of the Churches of Christ. Looking back now at this essay, one of the last that Gary Freeman will write in the CC, and reflecting on the consternation that some people might experience in 1966 when they find such fierce eloquence applied not to the psallo argument" but to the sin of "racial hatred," we may also, after 30 years, find cause to smile.

May God have mercy.

dhaymes, his mark +

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