Stolen bodies working stolen land

“You’re not entitled to benefit from your own murderous act.” 1^st Kings 21:19

Who in their right mind supports reparations for slavery? Who believes decisions made 400 years ago should require us to pay reparations? What kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinks like that?

That would be God. Awkward, huh?

God said, "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings…behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.”
God drafted Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand their freedom. Long story short, Pharaoh reluctantly agreed, but not before forcing God’s hand.

By ordering the deaths of the first-born children of Egypt, God knew the people would finally demand their leader free the slaves. That cataclysmic Biblical event resonates with the American Civil War, which took the lives of so many of the first born (and second and third born) of both sides before the South let go of its grip on slaves.

After informing Moses of the God-awful plan, God says it will cause Pharaoh to “drive you out from here.” In the third chapter of Exodus, God told Moses the slaves would “not go away empty handed.” God ordered the slaves to “ask” the Egyptian people for their “ornaments of silver and gold.” Thus, they stripped the Egyptians.

After 400 years of enslavement, these slaves were free. And as God decreed, they did not leave empty handed. Where do you think they got the gold they used to craft the Golden Calf? The gold and silver weren’t gifts, but what Matthew Henry’s Biblical Commentary called “back wages.” Others call it plunder. In his book “God: A Biography,” Jack Miles writes, “The Israelites are not to be blamed for engaging in this plunder. It was God’s idea.”
It was reparations.

Reparations were God’s way of restoring justice. The first chapter of Exodus tells us of the injustices that demanded balancing. “The Egyptians put the Israelites to work at crushing labor, and they made their lives bitter with hard work with mortar and bricks and every work in the field, all their crushing work that they performed. Egyptians were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.”

God not only heard the cries from the slaves, God also witnessed how the Egyptian people, their country, and their economy benefited from the suffering they visited on the slaves. A nation can afford to build magnificent cities when it doesn’t have to pay wages to the builders. The Hebrew Bible says that is exactly what the slaves did for the Egyptians. 

Slaves did the same for the United States. 

One historian described the economic benefits. “Slavery was so profitable, it sprouted more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. With cash crops of tobacco, cotton and sugarcane, America’s southern states became the economic engine of the burgeoning nation. 

“If the Confederacy had been a separate nation, it would have ranked as the fourth richest in the world at the start of the Civil War.” https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-economy

The “must-read” New York Times study, “The 1619 Project,” documents “the vast material wealth” created by slaves, which “helped turn a poor, fledgling nation into a financial colossus.”

Add the land stolen from Native Peoples. “Stolen bodies working stolen land,” is Colson Whitehead’s description in “The Underground Railroad.” America was built on slave labor, stolen land, and the destruction of African and Native cultures. We took their past, present and future, using them to create the wealth that continues to benefit all of us more than 150 years after slavery ended.

How do we atone? God’s plan for Egypt’s atonement for enslaving the Hebrews? Plunder Egypt. Today’s debate over reparations doesn’t ask as much. It asks only for an honest inquiry into what justice would look like if white Americans paid their fair debt.

Some preachers are guilty of scriptural abuse

Each Monday at Bibles and Beer, we study scripture, acknowledging that around the table there are at least a dozen different translations of the Bible. We first consider any differences in the words chosen by various translators. Many times, the differences are meaningless. In a surprising number of instances, they are substantial enough to alter the meaning of the text.

This is the story of such an instance.

In “Forging a Sacred Weapon: How the Bible Became Anti-Gay,” Ed Oxford and Kathy Baldock trace the history of how the word “homosexual” found itself in the Bible and how words intended to refer to sexually abusing little boys became a condemnation of responsible, consensual sex between adults. (See forgeonline.org March 29, 2019).

Their research began with a review of older translations in many languages. The 1611 King James Version of Leviticus 20:13 says, “If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.” Before that, however, there was Martin Luther’s 1534 German translation.

Luther used the word “Knabenschander.” Knaben means “boy.” Schander means “to molest.” The verse actually says it’s an abomination to sexually abuse little boys.

David Hart Bentley, described by colleagues as “a brilliant scholar with a mastery of Greek,”

recently published an extraordinary translation of the New Testament. Believing most translations are contaminated by personal agenda and bias, i.e. the translator’s own “theological or moral principles,” Hart strives to translate the Greek into words the authors would have used. 

Historians document that in the ancient world it was not uncommon for powerful men to sexually abuse young boys. It makes sense that 1^st century biblical writers would have been concerned, not with loving, consensual relationships between two adults but with pederasty, which explains why Paul’s laundry list of people whose sins will keep them out of heaven included the Greek word “arsenokoitai” in 1^st Corinthians 6:9-10.

The KJV says they are fornicators, idolators, adulterers, the effeminate, people who abuse themselves “with mankind,” thieves, coveters, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners. Both the Modern Language (1969) and Living Bible (1971) translations add “homosexuals” to the list of the doomed.

However, Hart says translations choosing to deploy the word “homosexuals” are wrong. “Arsenokoitai,” does not mean “homosexuals,” Hart says, but most likely spoke of a powerful man’s “exploitation of young male slaves.”

Christian theologian and writer Mel White agree. White says using “arsenokoital” is a condemnation of “married men who hired hairless young boys (malakois) for sexual pleasure.”

Log on to https://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/6-9.htm and you’ll find that while many translations include “homosexuals,” there are many others that do not. It is, therefore, distressing when preachers get to pick and choose from a variety of translations to support a sermon condemning anyone.

A case in point are the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and subsequent New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

David (last name undisclosed), a young, gay seminarian, read the RSV, noting translators used the term “homosexual.” He knew an accurate translation conflicted with that word. David wrote the publisher, offering a linguistic analysis arguing the word “homosexual” was inaccurate. Dr. Luther Weigle, head of the RSV translation team, thoroughly reviewed the matter and informed David he was correct. 

Weigle’s team made a different choice the next time around. “Homosexual” does not appear in the New Revised Standard Version.

Instead, it used the term “sodomites,” which Jewish scholars say refers to the violent rapes at Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, not consensual sex between two adults.

These letters are in the Weigle collection of Yale University’s archives. An essay on this piece of Biblical history is at http://canyonwalkerconnections.com/forging-a-sacred-weapon-how-the-bible-became-anti-gay/  

This is not new information to theologically educated preachers. They know. Kathy Baldock spoke of clergy who willingly ignore it. “Knowing how damaging inserting ‘homosexuals’ has become, their lack of academic integrity, curiosity, or a loving desire to ‘get it right, shocked us.”

Before preaching one more sermon about homosexuality, my clergy colleagues should study Oxford, Baldock’s and Hart’s research. Continuing to rely on questionable or just plain wrong interpretations is sinful unto itself.

RE: Romans 1:26-27 https://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2013/10/romans-126-27-a-clobber-passage-that-should-lose-its-wallop/?utm_content=buffer2d8a2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=FBCP-PRX

UW's apology to the Black 14

There’s an art to making a sincere apology. Most are not very good at it. Clueless politicians and disingenuous corporations find themselves in more trouble, making a clumsy attempt saying something like, “I’m sorry if you were offended by my offensive behavior.”

Tom Burman could teach them what a genuine apology sounds like.

Tom Burman was a three-year-old when football coach Lloyd Eaton created a stain on Wyoming that lasted half a century. That stain was ignored for nearly four decades before Tom became UW’s Athletic Director in 2006.

Tom was vaguely aware of the Black 14 incident but not many of the underlying facts. He listened to those who had been around in 1969. Some were uncomfortable with what Eaton did to those 14 young men so long ago.

In a brief interview Burman granted me last week, he said he started thinking about what it must have been like for those black kids. The 60s were intense. Civil rights protests blazed across the country. These student athletes were rightly concerned about the racially-discriminatory policies of the Mormon church.

Indeed, Mormons were concerned enough themselves that those policies were reformed a few years after these 14 lost their college careers for raising the subject to their authoritarian coach.

For merely asking to be heard, they were kicked off the team, losing scholarships and other opportunities while being ridiculed by teammates, much of the UW fan base, and many of Wyoming’s political leaders.

The more UW’s new AD learned, the more convicted he became. The University had to make it right.

In 2016, Tom learned the University of Central Florida was hosting these former Wyoming football players in a ceremony honoring civil rights heroes. He traveled to Florida to meet them. Nearly half of the 14 attended the ceremony and were pleasantly surprised that someone from UW had made the trip.

On the long flight home, Tom made up his mind. UW needed to re-establish a relationship with the Black 14. Tom started making regular contact with them. It wasn’t long before there were monthly conference calls and frank conversations. The University had a lot of work to do to establish trust between the school and these men. Tom Burman was determined to make that happen.

And he did. Gradually. Mel Hamilton, Tony McGee, and John Griffin were among the first to come to believe the AD’s sincerity. Their confidence caused others to believe. They were invited to a 2018 basketball game at the Arena Auditorium. Well-founded concerns about whether Wyoming folks would welcome them quickly disappeared when the crowd gave them a standing ovation as they stood courtside. That opened the door to what happened this month.

The surviving members of the Black 14 spent several days on campus. They held a panel discussion, visited classrooms teaching young students about their history, a plaque honoring them was unveiled, and they were celebrated during halftime at the UW-Idaho game.

It was a Friday night dinner where Burman read an apology that should be archived alongside some of the most important papers in the history of the Equality State.

Standing before most of the surviving members of the Black 14, Burman read a letter signed by him and former UW president Laurie Nichols. They called the story of the 1969 incident “heart-wrenching,” and spoke of how important it is that UW reflect on it. Burman acknowledged these young men had been deprived of a college experience that should have been “one of the best of a young person’s life.”

Burman applauded them for “rising above” what happened to lead productive lives, while remaining “faithful to your convictions.”

Burman asked, “Please accept this sincere apology from the University of Wyoming for the unfair way you were treated and for the hardships that treatment caused you.”

The moment gave meaning to UW’s slogan, “What the world needs is more Cowboys.” What the world really needs is more Cowboys like Tom Burman and the members of the legendary Black 14.