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[choir singing] >> journey through a white and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. This message is an abridgment of Dr. Thielman's keynote address to the Voice of Calvary Jubilee.

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The scripture reading is from Psalm 139. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, thou art there.

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If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Let only darkness cover me and the light about me be night," even the darkness

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is not dark to thee, for night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with thee. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

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May the same God who inspired these words illumine our hearts that we might understand them. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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Three years ago, I received an invitation from the steering committee of the Jubilee celebration of the Voice of Calvary, a black ministry in Mendenhall and Jackson, Mississippi, inviting me to be the keynote speaker for their Jubilee celebration to be held this last July.

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I accepted the invitation with enthusiasm because the Voice of Calvary ministry is generally recognized as the most significant black ministry in this country today. They were kind enough in their invitation to suggest to me exactly what they would like me to speak about, and one of the topics they specifically addressed to me was this.

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Will you please look at the situation which exists between the white and black races in our land, and would you labor specifically to think of this question from your own white perspective? That started me on a journey of thought and prayer and research.

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The fruits of that journey I shared with them in Mississippi, and tonight in far briefer form on this National Race Relations Sunday, I would like to share these thoughts with you. The passage of Scripture which guided and illumined my heart I have just read in your

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hearing. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." This is a very interesting passage of Scripture.

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It has within it three words which rarely appear anywhere else in Holy Writ, and it has one word which is a hapoxlegomena, that is, a word which appears only here and nowhere else in Scripture. Translated very literally, the passage would read, "See through me, O God; judge the

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extent of my caring; see if there is that in me which causes pain; lead me in your way, the right way, the everlasting way." As I have given myself to this topic, I feel that I have been searched by God. I feel that he has seen through me.

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I feel that I am judged, and I feel that the way has been pointed. Let me begin my journey by reminding you that in the year 1865, the first black preacher to ever address the Congress of the United States, a man by the name of Henry Garnett, said in his words to the Congress, "We ask no special favors, but we plead for justice.

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We scorn unmanly dependents, but in the name of God we demand the right to live and labor and enjoy the fruits of our toil." It has been my conviction until the last months that we as a people have gradually been moving toward the fulfillment of this goal expressed by Garnett over a hundred years ago.

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I think the first thing that happened that led me to think this might not be so was the tragedy in Jonestown. You will remember how a pilgrim group of people from our nation went to Guyana, and there carved out a piece of jungle and established their own society.

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And you will remember especially, I am sure, the tragedy with which that experiment came to an end. Nine hundred people dead. That's one out of every thousand citizens of Cleveland, Ohio.

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That's one half the population of Plains, Georgia. That's forty times the number of people who were killed in the My Lai massacre. Sixty tons of human flesh rotting under a tropical sun. Now as we have analyzed the causes of this tragedy, many things have come to the fore.

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The demonic psychosis of the Reverend Jim Jones, the murder of Congressman Ryan, the presence of drugs and other occult practices within the group. All of these things were certainly present. But among those things discovered by the people searching out this hideous event is a number

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of writings which were left by people who were part of that experiment. And repeatedly in these writings, this thought is expressed. If I have to go back to the United States, I would rather die. When I first read that, it shocked me.

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To think that some would be born and reared within the confines of our own nation and would go out of this nation to another place and then would prefer death to return was a shocking thing for me to consider. It started me on the trail of wondering how there could be people in our society so utterly

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turned off to it that they preferred what happened there to what happens here. Now I know that in my ignorance of the state of black affairs in this country, and I say this with some defensiveness, that I was not alone. CBS conducted a survey two years ago and found that two-thirds of America's citizens felt

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that the situation of our black citizens was vastly improved. And a survey was taken across the nation just a year ago in which thousands of our citizens were asked to list what they considered to be the major social problems of our society in order of priority, and they ranked racial problems 31st on their list.

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Many then believe that the racial situation in our country is significantly improving, but that is not the case. Let me marshal just a few examples. Take the area of housing.

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development has released a report in which they have demonstrated quite conclusively that fully 70 percent for the applications of housing submitted by blacks in this country are discriminated against at one point or another in the application process.

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And that same CBS survey that I referred to just a moment ago showed that one-third of America's white citizens would not want a black family living in their neighborhood, regardless of the economic or educational level of that family. Or look at the question of employment.

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The employment situation among American blacks is worse today than it was in the time of the Depression. It's three times worse than it was ten years ago. Unemployment is twice as bad for the blacks as it is for the whites.

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Fifty-seven percent of the black young men and women in America are unemployed tonight, and 70 percent of those people have their high school diploma. This is leading many of them to turn to what sociologists call survival crime. They steal in order to get something to eat.

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And when they are apprehended, this, of course, goes on their record and makes it much more difficult for them to find subsequent employment. Or look at the economic situation. There has been no significant increase in the black economy in America for the last

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seven years. The median income of a white family in America has doubled in that same length of time. Or look at the situation in terms of health. High blood pressure is the principal disease amongst American blacks, almost 12 times more

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frequently encountered than it is among whites. Now for a long time we thought the root of this high blood pressure was genetic, but the new Harburg studies at the University of Michigan have demonstrated that it is principally because of stress.

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The black person living in the ghetto, unable to escape from it, having no opportunity to experience a vacation, having very few doctors and limited medical facilities available, being pushed on every side by the ugly circumstances which surround him or her, in the midst of this, tremendous inner tensions are developed.

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And serious, oft times fatal, high blood pressure is the result. And lest this seem removed, let me point out to you that even on America's campuses the situation of the black person is in some disarray. The Chronicle on Higher Education reported just three weeks ago that Harvard University

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has reported that there is an attempt there to organize a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Purdue University reports that a group of students wearing white sheets burned a cross on the lawn of a black fraternity. A similar event occurred at Williams College, and at Cornell University, the black student

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center is being regularly pelted with rocks, and many black students are being jostled and abused by white students. This is the situation as it is. It was summed for me when I learned the story of Northeast High School in Philadelphia.

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Northeast High School, up until 1950, was one of the most prominent high schools in that city. It had an excellent academic and athletic record. Then a great number of blacks began to move into the area serviced by that school, and

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the usual white flight occurred. And as it did, the level of the community went down so that by 1957 it was decided to build a new high school in a nearby all-white suburb. This was done.

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When the new school was built, the name of the old school, Northeast High School, was taken and given to the new school. With it went the colors, the traditions, the trophies, the alumni records, the treasury, everything that had been part of Northeast High School, went to the new school.

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All teachers were given the opportunity to work in either school, and two-thirds of them moved to the new high school. The old high school was given a new name. It was called Edison High School.

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The black students who went to that high school inherited a school without tradition, an old and deteriorating building. But it has not kept those students from achieving at least one record in the history of these days.

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There is one thing for which Edison High School is known above and beyond every other high school in the United States. More of its students and recent graduates died in Vietnam than from any other high school in the nation.

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Now if you were to ask the politicians or the parents or the students who moved or the teachers who shifted, if you were to ask any of them to what they attribute a situation like this, such deprivation and then such sacrifice, I think they would answer almost to a man.

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This is just the way things are. And they'd be exactly right. For in spite of what many of us have chosen to believe, the situation of the black citizen in America is this bad.

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This is the way things are. And as the Lord God has searched my heart and known me, he has pointed me to a recognition of this. Now it's been a source of deep distress to me that I was so insensitive to the situation

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up till this time. And I began to ask myself why this is so. Inadequate reporting by the media, the camouflaging of the situation by various political elements, a lot of things have contributed to my being deluded.

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But I isolated one thing which I think is particularly appropriate to bring into this pulpit tonight. See, I've become convinced that my Presbyterian Reformed theology helped to delude me in this regard.

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Indeed, I've come to the conclusion that I believe that my theological orthodoxy has led me into a kind of moral heresy. Let me illustrate what I mean. Take a very simple thing like love.

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Now our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul and James and those magnificent words we read a few minutes ago from the Epistle of John speak about the centrality of love in God and the centrality that love is to play in us. I went back to the shorter catechism, which is what I learned from as a boy, where I learned

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the tenets of the faith. There eleven attributes to God are named, but love is not among them. In the larger catechism, a very important part of my tradition, twenty-one of the attributes of God are named, but love is not among them.

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The theological foundation on which my faith has been built, the Institutes of John Calvin, hundreds and hundreds of pages, seven pages are given over to the study of love. The man who is most known for the interpretation of the writings of Calvin, Charles Hodge, his commentary, his systematic theology built on Reformed principles, the edition of it

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that I have, a three-volume edition, has 2,352 pages. On only two of them is love discussed. Or take a matter like poverty. Scripture speaks more about poverty than it does any other subject.

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A careful computerized survey of the verses of Scripture shows more than a thousand references to poverty. The only subject to which there are more references is idolatry. Moses gives guidance for the care of the poor.

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The Magnificat, sung by Mary when she learns that she is to bear our Lord, speaks about the ministry to the poor. Christ became incarnate in a manger, identifying with the poor. The first sermon which we have from the lips of Jesus concerns the ministry to the poor.

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The cross was the death of a poor man. The Apostle Paul speaks to the Council of Jerusalem about the poor. James says we are not to honor the rich above the poor. John says if we do not love all of our brothers, rich and poor, and claim to love God, we are

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liars and the truth is not in us. Theology is one of the most significantly developed and spoken to themes in all of the Scripture. But I have discovered that my theology has no poorology.

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I've got an eschatology and an epistemology and an anthropology. I've got a soteriology and an ecclesiology. But I have no poorology. My orthodoxy has been lacking in orthopraxis.

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I've had a God who is very concerned with me personally so that my sexual sins are of interest to him. But my social sins, how I use that which he gives me, the things I don't do and do do with the wealth that is mine.

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About these things, my theology has said very little. The fact of the matter is you cannot save a man's soul by feeding him when he's hungry. But the testimony of Scripture is that you can lose your own soul if in disobedience to Jesus Christ you do not feed the man who is hungry.

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Richard Bubi, a very noted nuclear expert on the West Coast, teaches at Stanford University, has a book called The Human Quest. And in that book he refers to a study which was done of very orthodox, conservative, fundamental believing Christians.

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And the results of the survey showed that these people, I believe quite unconsciously but nonetheless really, were more racially intolerant and insensitive than other groups within our society. Now this is important to me.

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It says to me, a person who has devoted his life to the pursuit of the things of my faith, and I understand faith in Presbyterian and Reformed terms, that one of the reasons I'm insensitive to the hurt in the world about me is the very theological culture and context from which I come.

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And it seems to me that this is brought more tellingly to the fore when one thinks of its opposite. You see, when you do theology, you're not dealing just with the Bible. You are dealing with the Scriptures, but you are coming to the Scriptures out of the culture

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and the circumstances which are your own. The questions which we ask the Bible, for example, are very much rooted in our own cultural experience. We are right now asking the Bible many questions about the place of women in our society.

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And the reason we're doing that right at this time in our history is because of the women's movement and other things that are happening about us. What happens in our society is pushing us toward the questions which we then address to the Word of God written. Our society and culture also affects the way we interpret

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the Scriptures. You are aware, I am sure, that many passages of Scripture are interpreted by people in different ways. Now the hermeneutic, or the manner of interpretation with which a person approaches Scripture is

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oft times influenced, indeed I would say is almost invariably influenced, by the cultural circumstances in which the individual is seeking to approach Scripture. And also, in the applications that we make from Scripture to our own lives, we are very much influenced by our society. The way in which we view the servanthood of Jesus, as

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it is described in Isaiah or in the Gospels, is going to be very much influenced by whether we, for example, are very rich or very poor. This being the case, I was very much captured by the thoughts of Dr. Timothy Smith, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, the man who was our Staley lecturer here on campus

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last spring, who has developed the thesis that much of the glory and the grandeur of contemporary black theology arises out of the terrible cultural suffering which has been there. He points out, for example, that the black theologian's sense of awe and reverence

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for God probably has its genesis in the fact that he recognizes God as sovereign and yet has also recognized the terrible suffering of his people. And in trying to reconcile these two things, that God is in charge of everything and yet this suffering exists for him and his people in the world, he has, as it were, moved to an awe and reverence before

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the mystery of God's sovereignty, why he chooses to do what he chooses to do, why he chooses not to do the things that he does not do. Or another example advanced by Dr. Smith, the vibrant moral stream which is a part of black theology. He traces to the very earliest days of black preaching in America, where,

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for example, it was argued that the reason slavery was improper was because a man couldn't practice the Ten Commandments while being a slave, or it was exceedingly difficult for him to fulfill our Lord's command to love while he was a slave. The whole idea of the solidarity of humanity, which is so fundamental to black theology, arises out of the common

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suffering which was theirs. We in our tradition emphasize the individual and the freedom of the individual, but the black, drawn together, pushed in upon himself because of the suffering that he knew in our culture and in our society, he developed a sense of the individual's partnership with the group. And that's still very basic to black thinking. It's no accident that back

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in 1793, when a yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia, the group that organized and went out and carried out an active ministry of service in that city was the black community. Maybe, you see, you can't really understand what it is to be a slave of Jesus Christ until you've been a slave to another man, or until you can know that your father and mother or

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grandmother and grandfather were slaves to other men. I've discovered that the approach of my white theology is essentially scholastic, while the approach of the black theologian is deeply existential. So I have a great respect for theology that comes out of the black context. What I'm saying to you is that in the journey of this white man's mind, as I have cried

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out to God to lead me in the way everlasting, I've discovered that many times the hand that takes my hand and teaches me is a black hand. So where am I today? Well, very quickly, three thoughts and I'm done. First of all, I've become convinced in my own heart that it's virtually impossible for whites to help blacks

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in America. There is such a vast gulf between the black and white cultures. There is so much antipathy. Whenever the white reaches out to the black, almost invariably he insists that the black be grateful, that he keep his distance, that he not make any unjust demands, and that he give him a receipt. And that kind of attitude is dehumanizing and patronizing.

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One finds it in the conservative who insists on law and order—not justice, but law and order. One finds it in the liberal who advances a token black or two and holds out to the black man the dream of possibilities, always retaining to himself, of course, the ability to control that dream. I'm suggesting that there is such an incipient racism in our society

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that it's impossible for us to help the black man or the black woman. The most recent studies in prejudice have shown us that prejudice appears essentially to be a sociological phenomenon. It's the way in which a group distinguishes itself from other groups. The non-rich white middle class in America, for example, distinguishes

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itself, at least according to the most recent studies, in terms of the wealthy whites above it—that's the goal toward which they aspire—and the poorer whites and even poorer blacks below it as a group. That's the group on which it looks down. And those who have examined this concept say that a group needs to have something toward

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which it's shooting and something that it has already surpassed, something to which it sees itself as being superior. And they understand prejudice in our society today as being made of that kind of thinking. If that's true, then I can see no possibility of whites reaching out to help blacks. It will be patronizing and unaccepted.

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The second thing to which I've come in my own thought is that integration has largely been a failure in America and probably will be for many years to come. In the few places in which integration has succeeded, it has succeeded essentially because black people have become white people. You see, to a white person, you're not right until you act like

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a white, whether you're black or not. You've got to act properly, and acting properly is acting white. Malcolm X says in his autobiography that the greatest sin of the white man was to believe in the inferiority of the black man and then to convince the black man that that belief

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was true. So until a black man talks like a white man and handles money like a white man and meets scheduled appointments and thinks of time and the calendar in the same way as a white man, he's inferior. I suggest to you that the black culture is every bit as rich as our own, and that if we take 24 million blacks and mix them in with 200 million whites

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and we do it in such a way that we try to make black-white a very rich culture, the black culture will disappear, and that must not happen. We need to remember, and blacks need to remember, that Phyllis Wheatley, a black woman, was the most distinguished poet of the Revolutionary War, that Ben Bonniker, a black man, was one

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of the three appointed by Thomas Jefferson to lay out the architectural plan of Washington, that 5,000 blacks fought in the Revolutionary War, that one-sixth of the American Army in the War of 1812 was black, that 200,000 blacks were under arms in the Civil War, and that 22 of them won medals of honor. We all know about George Washington Carver and his peanuts,

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but we need to know about Norbert Rillio and his vacuum pan developed for the sugar industry, or Elijah McCoy and his 58 patents, one of which was the oil drip cup for large engines. We need to learn that the black people invented ice cream and the potato chip and the traffic light and the golf tee and the player piano and the gas mask, and that 25 percent of the

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cavalry that helped to open the American West were black, and that 25 percent of America's cowboys were black. Wouldn't it be a great thing if a little black kid could sit down and watch a horse opera on television and see a black hero? We need to know, as a society, that 24 black men sat in the Congress of the United States before 1900. But if we lose

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black culture by trying to make it white, we will forget all of these things. I suggest, then, that integration, at least as things are now, is not the answer. What is? This brings me to the last thing I would suggest, the last conclusion to which I, in my own hurtful searchings, have come. I believe we have to do everything we can to encourage

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black pride. And this is a political process and a social process and an economic process. Robert LaValle, who is a distinguished black banker in the city of Pittsburgh, tells about attending an economics class at the University of Pittsburgh, taught by a Czechoslovakian refugee, a man who had fled the Communists. The man's method of teaching the class was

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to bring in, every night, a big stack of books which were marked, and he would distribute these to the students, and then the students would read the marked sections and discuss them. And every night, the books that were brought in were different. There was only one book that appeared each and every class, and that one book was the Bible. The Bible

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speaks more about our use of the financial resources which are ours than it does about prayer or about the kingdom of heaven. And we need, it seems to me, to enable the black community to have access to sufficient resources to build its own power and its own pride. I'm not suggesting this in terms of a gift. That would bring me right back to the kind

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of patronizing help which I said I thought was impossible before. I suggest this in terms of an obligation. When the Good Samaritan found a victim in a ditch and helped him, that was generosity. When we find a black man in a ditch, it's because we put him there. And helping him is not generosity; it is responsibility. We need, it seems to me, to think about things

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that are in biblical context, things like an economic floor, things like minimum income. What we need is the Zacchaeus philosophy. Zacchaeus, you will remember, after he was converted, said to Jesus, "Lord, what I have taken from anyone, I will return fourfold." That I think for us is the way everlasting. Let me sum it like this. Two pictures that

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are great favorites of mine hang in reproduction form on the walls of my bedroom. I see them first thing every morning when I arrive. The first is a reproduction of Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, the section where the hand of God is touching the hand of Adam. God is giving life to man. And this speaks to me of how all men are made by God and all men

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are given life by God. The other picture is a reproduction of the great American painter George Bellows' work. The original hangs in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. It's a picture of two boxers, one black man and one white man, engaged in bitter contest. You can tell they've been fighting for quite some time. Their bodies are smeared with blood.

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They look absolutely exhausted, as if they are about to fall to the canvas. And they're surrounded by a leering, jeering mob. And the title of the picture is "Both Members of the Same Club." And what Bellows is saying is that here are two, made and touched and endowed by that hand of God, as Michelangelo shows it to us. Both members of the human

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club fighting and clawing at each other, and trying to drive each other to the canvas. I don't think that's what God intends for his human family. But I also don't think we will be able to gain what he does intend for us as his family, until black and white respect each other. When the black man has gained political and social and economic power, then

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he'll be respected. And we need to make it possible for him to do that. And after respect will come friendship. And after friendship will come peace. A long, long journey. I hope and pray for the end of it, in my own mind, in my own heart, and in this land, which is so very, very dear to me. Let us pray.

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See through us, O God. Judge the extent of our caring. See if there is that in us which causes pain. And lead us in your way, the right way, the way everlasting, for Jesus' sake, for our own sake, for our nation's sake, and for the sake of all the world. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious

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unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love, and to all those whom nobody loves, his peace. [BLANK_AUDIO]