We mourn the killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging not far from his home in Brunswick, Georgia.
Last week, conservative columnist David French put together a good rundown of key facts known so far.
Years of living in the South Side of Chicago have forced me to think about what I might do in a range possible street confrontations with people meaning me harm. So there are certainly scenarios in which I could see someone aggressively surprising me with a gun at very close range, and if neither running away nor surrendering my wallet seemed like realistic ways to extricate myself from the threat, then trying to wrest the gun away may seem like the best option.
For many, news of this killing of the unarmed Arbery—after two white men chose to get their guns, pursue him, and initiate a confrontation—is not seen as an isolated event. It is rather deeply experienced as a fundamentally unnerving latest example of a wider pattern seen in numerous shooting deaths in recent years of unarmed black men in America.
We Americans with white skin need to be more aware of how common experiences that we take for granted as carefree activities – such as going out shopping or jogging – are too often experienced very differently by especially many of our African American male neighbors. With so many bad stories of mistreatment, including many less extreme cases that don’t make the news, the anxieties about what others might do, and even decisions to sometimes avoid going into certain public spaces altogether, are understandable. To not face such anxieties, threats, and risk calculations is a significant privilege only some Americans enjoy, and this is fundamentally unfair.
Christians, who serve the God in whose image ALL people are equally created, should be the first to declare that this is not okay.
Of course, there is a much wider context of American history. As French notes, “When white men grab guns and mount up to pursue and seize an unarmed black man in the street, they stand in the shoes of lynch mobs past.”
The suffering from racism deeply impacts much of the body of Christ. Especially when some of us enjoy privileges unfairly denied to many of our brothers and sisters, Scripture is clear that we have a gospel duty to suffer together with those in the church who suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26).
I am not so naïvely hopeful in the capacities of sinful humanity to think that we can completely “eradicate” any category of sin before Christ’s return. But it remains important to work to move our surrounding society to the point where young African-American men have no more reason to fear for their safety while peacefully jogging than anyone else, and to make our churches shine forth as models of racial inclusion and equality. Biblical mandates to bear one another’s burdens within the church and to more widely love our neighbors as ourselves demand that we do no less.
As the United Methodist Church prepares for a major separation, some who expect to end up in the more theologically orthodox denomination are excited at the prospect of not having any denominational agencies, which in our current denomination were established to coordinate how United Methodists address everything from social concerns to missions to higher education.
One friend in the renewal movement recently expressed his hope that the emerging evangelical Methodist denomination would have no need of such organized effort to address social concerns beyond local congregations, because congregations themselves would do such great jobs of embodying social holiness.
Perhaps no one has done more over the years than IRD/UMAction to protest the wrong ways in which our liberal denominational bureaucracy has addressed social concerns. We have previously advocated completely abolishing our denomination’s apportionment-funded, D.C.-based General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), believing that that agency had become so hopelessly corrupted that it would be better to start over than try slow piecemeal reforms.
The coming separation offers an exciting opportunity to start over.
But now we orthodox United Methodists will be tempted by risks of over-correcting in reaction against our bad experiences with the UMC’s liberal hierarchy.
The reality is that the details of how congregations can positively influences in their communities in promoting God’s love for ALL people, born and unborn, of every race, ethnicity, and nationality can be rather challenging and complex.
Remaining a connectional denomination, rather than a loose confederacy of self-centered independent congregations, provides invaluable opportunities for us to pool our resources, learn, and work together as the body of Christ. And there is an important need in church life, with plenty of biblical precedent (just read the epistles) for all of us being open to hearing constructive, loving challenges for some of the unhelpful blind spots that exist in every congregation and individual.
When done right, a denominationally organized Christian social witness program, in some form to be determined, can help our congregations be more effective in their ministries and their witness to a watching world in terms of how they address such clear Christian social concerns as racism.
The hope that if congregations “just preach the Gospel,” then people will be converted, filled with the fruits of the spirit, and such social problems as racism will simply take care of themselves is at some level appealing. But the global historical record must give us pause.
I recently had the privilege of interviewing the Rev. Maxie Dunnam about, among other things, his experience in Mississippi in the early 1960s of facing fierce opposition to faithful, Bible-believing pastors in our denomination “just preaching the gospel”—including about how the gospel related to the racial crisis his people were going through then.
In the Next Methodism, we must learn from our tradition’s mistakes of the past and be diligent to avoid repeating them. In the area of Christian social witness, there are a many such mistakes: the political partisanship, the left-wing extremism, the lack of biblical and theological grounding, the aloofness from United Methodists in the pews, the arrogant lack of limits to the range of detailed and debatable causes for which “church and society” officials have misused the church’s names and resources, and many more.
Yet after our denominational separation, we will still live in a fallen world, and love for our neighbors will not allow us to ignore clear injustices causing great human suffering.
We should not be silent about the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. And more generally, we must not be silent about confronting the sin of racism.
Comment by Eternity Matters on May 15, 2020 at 10:38 am
I’m usually on board with you all, but this is just virtue signaling. If those guys committed murder then conservatives are on board with the death penalty for him – which means that we take the crime *more* seriously than the Leftists.
And where are your editorials about how black-on-white violence crimes and murders are more than 10 times the inverse?
Evil is evil. Don’t just pick one politically correct side on which to pontificate just because the media has picked this one murder out of thousands to fixate on for ratings and conservative-bashing.
The real racists support abortion, which slaughters black children at a rate 3 times that of whites.
Comment by JR on May 15, 2020 at 3:57 pm
Approving of the death penalty = being more serious about crime?
Virtue signalling indeed.
Counterpoint, approving of the death penalty also means not believing in redemption for the perpetrator.
Comment by John Smith on May 16, 2020 at 11:06 am
Or accepting redemption cannot be accomplished by man?
Comment by Eternity Matters on May 18, 2020 at 2:21 pm
Bad logic. Anti-capital punishment people didn’t think that CP was more severe, they wouldn’t protest it!
Of course I believe in redemption. I do prison ministry and have shared the gospel with and encouraged countless felons, including murderers. But on your logic, the murders they committed were even greater crimes because they may have taken away the opportunities for their victims to repent. So the murderers not only took away their physical lives but perhaps their eternal lives!
Of course, I don’t use your logic, because I know that if anyone’s name is in the book of life he’ll repent before dying.
Comment by JR on May 18, 2020 at 3:40 pm
“Of course, I don’t use your logic, because I know that if anyone’s name is in the book of life he’ll repent before dying.”
So you don’t believe in free will?
Back to the CP discussion – I’m actually not a full ‘anti-capital-punishment’ believer, but capital punishment is very anti-Jesus. Heck, you can’t exactly turn the other cheek to someone with the intent to kill.
And that’s okay, but you sure can’t be firmly in the CP camp and claim to hold the moral high ground here. It’s one thing to kill someone in the course of battle, and another thing to kill someone intentionally when they are not a threat – even if actual ‘rehabilitation’ isn’t possible (which is different from redemption).
“But on your logic, the murders they committed were even greater crimes because they may have taken away the opportunities for their victims to repent.” Interesting attempt to twist my words. A murderer rarely knows the true sins his victim would be accountable for, yet we would know at least one great sin for a capital punishment candidate. So no, not the same.
Comment by Eternity Matters on May 19, 2020 at 7:31 pm
What a word-weasel you are.
Fact: On your reasoning, if CP would really take away a person’s eternal life because they “only” had 10 years after the murder to consider Jesus, then their crime not only took a person’s physical life but perhaps their ETERNAL life. So the murder is much, much more serious based on YOUR account.
Of course I have the moral high ground. I agree with Jesus, who affirmed the OT and authorized the NT. Capital punishment was God’s idea, and He gave the guidelines for it. If someone wants to claim we aren’t following the guidelines then that is their ONLY possible argument. All the rest are nonsense.
And if you vote for Democrats, then you support those who want “capital punishment” to the child’s first breath (although they are completely innocent) and you want us to have to pay for it. If that’s a case, you are just another Molech-worshiping ghoul.
Re. free will: I believe what the Bible says, including John 3:8.
Comment by Eternity Matters on May 19, 2020 at 7:33 pm
“Heck, you can’t exactly turn the other cheek to someone with the intent to kill.”
Ugh. Turning the other cheek was about insults, not attempted murder. On your logic you must let someone beat you to death. Good luck with that.
And the Bible teaches that punishments are deterrents. Again, your problem is with God, not me. Do you even read all the Bible?
And it is also cowardice on your part. “Turning the other cheek” is noble if someone is insulting you. It is the worst form of cowardice when you “turn the other cheek” when someone else is getting killed . . . kind of like you and abortion.
Comment by Marco on May 15, 2020 at 5:11 pm
Thanks for a thoughtful article regarding our civic and religious duty to stand against such racial disparity.
May the schism and the subsequent fallout of the Methodist leviathan be gentle and manageable. And may you and your family be safe from COVID-19.
Namaste’
MarcoPolo
Comment by Morris C Hawkins on May 15, 2020 at 7:11 pm
Why not leave such commentary to CNN. Truth will come out soon without using loaded words and insinuating what you think happened. Whatever the outcome, nobody wins.
Comment by George on May 15, 2020 at 7:14 pm
Yes I agree. We should not be silent about the racism among us or the killing of an unarmed black kid in Georgia. To do so will make us like our UMC Bishops who remain mute when millions of God’s unborn children are slaughtered every year in this country and around the world.
Comment by Rebecca on May 15, 2020 at 9:33 pm
I lived in two black neighborhoods in San Francisco years ago, and graduated high school from a white minority school. And, I remember crimes committed by blacks, including the brutal murder of a white pharmacist and the brutal murder of a Chinese couple with small children who owned a grocery store, and near zero crimes committed by whites, at least not in the same proportion. Some whites may have boosted hubcaps, and of course did drugs and alcohol with related violence…Plus, national crime stats are there for all to see, and show the perps.
The back story on this one show other photos, and past arrest records of the killed, and calls to the police by the white people in the neighborhood before this went down. And, the video seems to show the black guy grabbing the gun and hitting the guy before he was shot. It looked accidental. And David French has a political purpose behind his stance. Never believe the liberal media, including David French and wait for the facts.
Comment by R.L. Murphy on May 16, 2020 at 10:46 am
Our local pastor went on a “White Privilege’ rant, essentially condemning all of us as privileged whites, which we are. Broad paintbrushes cover too much with the wrong paint. The message was dead on arrival to most of us.
Comment by Hope for right on May 18, 2020 at 11:41 am
I haven’t followed this story at all. However, there are some people with much more knowledge of the law and the situation here that are raising serious questions about the popular narrative saying this was a racist attack on a jogger.
May I suggest that the the thing the new church should do is work to make sure ‘justice is done’, whatever that is.
The stridency of the reporting in this case that is even reflected in the article suggest that there is only one interpretation of what has been shown on video. Well, there is other video and other interpretations of what happened there. It is going to be up to a jury to decide what happened there, not outside organizations with axes to grind.
Let us hope and pray that the court system will come to the fair and correct verdict, whatever that verdict is.
Comment by David Mixzon on May 19, 2020 at 5:43 am
If our new church only focused on winning souls, discipline young Christians, and servicing others (the Church of Philadelphia) God would be with us and bless us. So can we just leave all the political correct junk (the Church of Laodicean) to the news media and pompous Elders that spend way to much time, energy, and money encouraging division.
I’m just a simple guy with simple thoughts, let’s just focus on what’s really important, rejoicing in the Holly Spirit.
Comment by Don't close one eye on May 19, 2020 at 10:39 am
David,
You are right and your are wrong. We should be about our work as you say, but we a not currently living in the Roman Empire, a totalitarian state, or a divine-right monarchy. Justice and peace making are an important part of our work and witness, especially since we are the ones who hold power by our ability to vote and elect our government.
Comment by William on May 20, 2020 at 7:42 pm
MLK:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”