Civil rights issues

Catholisism and the Civil Rights Movements

 * source http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1086
 * Most of Alabama's white Catholics shared white southerners' racism and initially opposed the goals of the movement.
 * Catholic teaching clearly opposed racial discrimination, however, and after the mid-1960s there was little official sympathy for segregation
 * It took the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights to draw the Church from the margins into the mainstream of the movement.
 * After the Civil War, the Alabama Catholic Church abided by the demands of state-sanctioned segregation, even as it sought to meet the spiritual needs of the state's African American Catholics. As a result, the Church built separate parishes, schools, and hospitals and invited members of religious orders (most notably the Society of Saint Edmund and the Society of Saint Joseph) to work exclusively with African Americans. This practice reinforced segregation, but it also provided spiritual care and nurtured a separate community identity among African Americans. The resulting black Catholic subculture would become one foundation for later civil rights activism, especially in Mobile and Selma.
 * State laws and local ordinances may have demanded separate facilities, but Catholic Church–related activities were not strictly segregated. Blacks and whites occasionally participated in religious functions together. They attended the same parish at times, even if African Americans often sat apart from whites and received communion after white parishioners.
 * Despite these internal arrangements, Archbishop Thomas J. Toolen forbade priests to challenge publicly the state's segregation laws or participate in demonstrations.
 * For example, in the early 1960s, Father Albert Foley, Jesuit professor of sociology at Spring Hill College, worked with Mobile Mayor Joseph Langan (himself a Catholic) to broker an agreement that would desegregate Mobile's downtown businesses. Langan eased Toolen's mind about Foley's involvement, but on more than one other occasion Toolen tried to have Foley re-assigned out of the diocese.
 * Indeed, in 1958 the American Catholic bishops issued a statement condemning segregation and calling for racial justice.
 * Privately, Archbishop Toolen concurred in that opinion, but he still insisted that change take place gradually.
 * He denounced the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in which four young African American girls were killed. That same year, he permitted auxiliary bishop Joseph Durick to join with 10 other Birmingham-area Protestant and Jewish clergymen in a statement that acknowledged some hostility toward court-ordered school desegregation but counseled that their followers should avoid conflict and go along with the decision.
 * Within the Diocese of Mobile, the civil rights movement complicated relationships between white and black Catholics. In 1963 an African American Mobile man tried to attend mass at a white parish in Orrville. Members of the parish refused him entry, forcing him to drive 15 miles to the nearest African American parish in Selma. Prior to the civil rights era, he might have been allowed to attend the Orrville service, but by 1963 race relations were too volatile for white Alabamians to deviate from the community's racial status quo. The man complained to the archbishop, who threatened to close the small church if parishioners ever again denied a fellow Catholic—white or black—the right to attend mass. White parishioners, stunned at the archbishop's reaction, agreed to comply.

Ku Klux Klan

 * http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk
 * The Ku Klux Klan is a racist, anti-Semitic movement with a commitment to extreme violence to achieve its goals of racial segregation and white supremacy.
 * After a period of relative quiet, Ku Klux Klan activity has spiked noticeably upwards in 2006, as Klan groups have attempted to exploit fears in America over gay marriage, perceived “assaults” on Christianity, crime and especially immigration.
 * Criminal Activity: The Klan has a relatively high association with criminal activity, ranging from hate crimes to acts of domestic terrorism.
 * Ideology: White supremacist ideology not far from that of neo-Nazis, although it tends to be more Christian-oriented and to stress nativism.
 * Affiliations: National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations, Christian Identity groups
 * Subsequent incarnations of the Klan, which typically emerged in times of rapid social change, added more categories to its enemies list, including Jews, Catholics (less so after the 1970s), homosexuals, and different groups of immigrants.

Christian Identity Groups

 * Background: A racist and anti-Semitic religious sect whose adherents believe that white people of European descent are the descendants of the "Lost Tribes" of ancient Israel.
 * Ideology: Anti-Semitic, racist, anti-government, conspiratorial
 * Christian Identity is a religious ideology popular in extreme right-wing circles. Adherents believe that whites of European descent can be traced back to the "Lost Tribes of Israel." Many consider Jews to be the Satanic offspring of Eve and the Serpent, while non-whites are "mud peoples" created before Adam and Eve. Its virulent racist and anti-Semitic beliefs are usually accompanied by extreme anti-government sentiments. Despite its small size, Christian Identity influences virtually all white supremacist and extreme anti-government movements. It has also informed criminal behavior ranging from hate crimes to acts of terrorism.
 * Christian Identity's origins can be traced back to the nineteenth century in Great Britain, where a small circle of religious thinkers advanced the idea, known as British-Israelism or Anglo-Israelism, that modern Europeans were biologically descended from the ancient Israelites of the Old Testament-specifically, from the "Lost Tribes" scattered by invasions of Hittites, Assyrians and Babylonians. The Lost Tribes had purportedly made their way to Europe, and from them descended the modern European nationalities.
 * The key figure in the transformation of British-Israelism into what was increasingly called "Christian Identity" was Wesley Swift (1913-1970), a former Methodist minister from Southern California. In the 1940s, Swift started his own church, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian.
 * Other previous creations, not endowed with the divine likeness, were the forerunners of all the nonwhite peoples of the Earth, the "mud peoples," who had no soul.
 * Other previous creations, not endowed with the divine likeness, were the forerunners of all the nonwhite peoples of the Earth, the "mud peoples," who had no soul.

Methodist

 * http://christianity.about.com/od/devotionals/a/Methodist.htm

Baptist

 * Olivet Baptist Church -- Chicago

This church has the distinction of being the oldest, and once the largest, African American Baptist congregation in the Windy City. The church played a major role in the Great Migration of the early to mid-1900’s, when blacks moved from racially segregated southern states in droves. The church is credited for providing jobs and housing for blacks who chose to relocate. Last year, the church celebrated it’s 161st anniversary. (View church’s website)


 * First Baptist Church -- Montgomery, AL

The church was once pastored by civil rights activist Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, and became associated with the Montgomery bus boycott and Freedom ride of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The church was located just a few blocks from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Abernathy’s close friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached and helped plan the bus boycott. In 1961, First Baptist was the site of a siege. An angry white mob had surrounded the church and threatened to burn it down, while Freedom riders and other worshippers were trapped inside.


 * First Baptist Church -- Montgomery, AL

The church was once pastored by civil rights activist Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, and became associated with the Montgomery bus boycott and Freedom ride of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The church was located just a few blocks from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Abernathy’s close friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached and helped plan the bus boycott. In 1961, First Baptist was the site of a siege. An angry white mob had surrounded the church and threatened to burn it down, while Freedom riders and other worshippers were trapped inside.


 * Ebenezer Baptist Church -- Atlanta

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father led the church’s activism efforts before the son joined as co-pastor. In the 1960’s, the church grew to fame after King’s successful demonstrations caught the world’s attention. Post Dr. King, the church has instituted several community-oriented programs addressing the needs of its metropolitan congregation. (View church’s website)


 * Sixteenth Street Baptist Church -- Birmingham, AL

The site of a 1963 racially-motivated bombing that killed four young girls and injured nearly two dozen more, this church was visited by many prominent black thinkers and activist figures. It’s said that reactions to the bombings forced then President Lyndon Johnson to seriously consider the Civil Rights Act, which was signed into law the following year. Reverends Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King, Jr. were frequent speakers at the church. (View church’s website)

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JENNIFER LUDDEN, host:

There's some additional background to this story of two Southern Baptist churches, one black and one white, merging. Slavery had split the Baptist church between North and South in 1845, but a century and a half later, in 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a formal apology for its earlier support of slavery and segregation.

Here's Richard Land, a former head of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, summarizing that historic shift.

Mr. RICHARD LAND (Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission): Well, it says that slavery played a role in the formation of the convention and that too often we had not acted to promote racial equality, and we apologize for that. We lament that. We grieve over that and we repent of it and we ask for the forgiveness of our African-American brothers and sisters.

LUDDEN: The plea also asked forgiveness for Southern Baptists having failed to support the civil rights movement. At the time of the apology, before a meeting of 25,000 Southern Baptist delegates, Reverend Gary Frost of Ohio delivered this response.

Reverend GARY FROST: On behalf of my black brothers and sisters, we accept your apology and we extend to you our forgiveness in the name of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Ephesians Chapter 4, Verses 31 and 32, say let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind, one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you.

Because of Jesus Christ our lord and savior and his great love toward us, we extend that same love, forgiveness, grace and mercy towards you. We pray that the genuineness of your repentance will be reflected in your attitudes and in your actions. We forgive you, for Christ's sake, amen.

LUDDEN: That was Reverend Gary Frost of Ohio, accepting the Southern Baptist Convention's 1995 apology for racism.

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http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/default.asp

Since its organization in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has grown to over 16 million members who worship in more than 45,000 churches in the United States. Southern Baptists sponsor about 5,000 missionaries serving the United States and its territories, Canada, and the Caribbean, as well as sponsoring more than 5,000 foreign missionaries in 153 nations of the world.

Tower of Babel
http://smoorns.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/the-tower-of-babel-culture-racism-and-oppression/

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but there are a number of biblical passages that I struggle with and even some that I find alarming. The story of the Tower of Babel was one of those that I didn’t fully get.

It gives the impression of a God who “toys” with people if they start to get proud. As if in some way he was threatened by what they were trying to do. God…threatened? This just didn’t sit right with the God I think I know a bit about. Does he really toy with us like some child bully?

So it was with refreshing delight that I came across the book Return to Babel. It’s a book that seeks to give global perspectives on stories from the Bible. In it they cover a number of biblical passages from a south american, african and asian point of view.

It’s the south american perspective on the story that intrigued me.

From background research, the writer has come to the conclusion that the Tower was built in the place that would become Babylon. It was a place of slavery and oppression. Immigrants who came to this place (voluntary or not) were forced to speak the language of Babylon and all of its customs. They had to forget their culture, their heritage. Everything that made them, them. They were now Babylonians. This gives a very different interpretation of the story.

God. then, was not just judging the Babylonian rules because of their pride. He was also judging them for their oppression. By “coming down” and destroying the Tower, God gave the people back their own language that they had forgotten how to speak. They no longer had to be Babylonians. They could be who they were meant to be. They were allowed to go back to their own nations and start their heritage and culture again. God’s act then was one of freedom from oppression.

It’s a refreshing thought. So often I look around my church and see people who all dress the same, act the same. God is saying, we don’t need to be like everyone else. That’s not the point. What links us is our humanity, not our beliefs, our prejudices.

This also has profound implications for foreign and immigration policies and the idea of being “British”. What does that mean? Does it mean that we should all be forced to look the same, speak the same, act the same? Or should being British be known as being accepting of all cultures and creeds. Not forcing our beliefs on to others but accepting everyone for what they are?

Isn’t that what jesus was trying to get at in the first place?

New Crusade Church (note, website is highly predjudice)
http://newchristiancrusadechurch.com/sermons/sermon3.htm

THE BIBLE COMMANDS SEGREGATION

by Dr. Bertrand Comparet

In the Bible, God repeatedly warns us against any mixing of races ... and especially against intermarriage and mongrelization. Some of this has been overlooked because of imperfect translations out of the Hebrew and Greek languages in which the Bible was written. Let us examine some of these passages, carefully noting the exact meaning of the words used in the original tongues.

From the very beginning, the commandment not to permit mongrelization is strongly emphasized. For example: EXODUS 33:16 "So shall we he separated, and all of Thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth." LEVITICUS 20:24 "I am the Lord thy God, which have separated you from other people."

JOSHUA 23:12-13 "..if ye do in any wise go back and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them and they unto you: know for a certainty that they shall he snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish off from this good land which the Lord your God has given you. "

DEUTERONOMY 7:3 "NEITHER SHALT THOU MAKE MARRIAGES WITH THEM: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son."

Many warnings are given in the Bible not to mate with "the stranger." But the Hebrew words translated "stranger" in these verses are "ZUWR", "NEKAR", and "NOKRI...and each one means a person of DIFFERENT RACE FROM OURS.

(There are other Hebrew words "ger" and "toshab"... meaning persons who are aliens only in a political sense, but of our race.) The warning against race mixing is always against those "strangers" who are, ZUWR, NEKAR or NOKRI. For example: PROVERBS 23:27 "For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange ZUWRI woman is a narrow pit."

The reason for the warning is clear: MONGRELIZATION IS THE WORSE FORM OF "GENOCIDE". If you kill 99% of a race; but leave the other l% pure-blooded, they will in time restore the race; but when you mongrelize them, you have destroyed that race eternally. Once mixed with the Black or Yellow Races, the White Race would be totally and forever destroyed. Hence, God has forbidden it.

PSALM 144:11-12 "Rid me and deliver me from the hand of strange [NEKAR] children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood: That OUR SONS may be as plants grown up in their youth, that OUR DAUGHTERS may he as the polished cornices of a palace. "

JEREMIAH 2:21, 25 "Yet I planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed. HOW, THEN, ART THOU TURNED INTO THE DEGENERATE PLANT OF A STRANGE "ZUWR" VINF UNTO?, ME? * * Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst There is no hope: no: for I HAVE LOVED STRANGERS (ZUWR)) AND AFTER THEM WILL I GO."

HOSEA 5:6-7 "They shall go with their flocks and their herds to seek the Lord, but they shall not find Him: He hath withdrawn Himself from them. THEY HAVE DEALT TREACHEROUSLY AGAINST THE LORD: FOR THEY HAVE BEGOTTEN STRANGE (ZUWR) CHILDREN.

NOAH WAS SAVED BECAUSE HE WAS PURE BLOODED, WHILE THOSE AROUND HIM WERE MONGRELIZED. Genesis 6:2, 4-5 record the forbidden mixing of races, and the evil results thereof. But of Noah, Genesis 6:9 "Noah was a just man, and perfect [Hebrewtaw-meem without blemish in his generations [Hebrew 'to-led-aw'....descent, ancestry]. Hence, Noah and his family were saved while the mongrels were wiped out.

MONGRELIZATION IS THE SIN FOR WHICH SODOM AND GOMORRAH WERE DESTROYED!

JUDE 7 "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving, themselves over to fornication, and GOING AFTER STRANGE FLESH are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire."

Those who seek to force integration in the schools and churches are now beginning to admit that their real purpose is to bring about RACIAL INTERMARRIAGE. They have even deceived certain well-meaning but ignorant clergymen into helping them. Even without intermarriage, JUST ALLOWING NEGROES INTO THE WHITE CHURCHES IS DISOBEDIENCE TO GOD. Do you say, "I didn't see that in my Bible?" That is only because mis-translation conceals it from you. No doubt, you were puzzled when you read the following: DEUTERONOMY 23:2 "A bastard shall not enter into the Congregation of the Lord: even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the Congregation of the Lord."

You wondered at this, because an illegitimate child is not to blame for the sins of its parents; and why should the penalty extend for ten generations? They might all be legitimately born.

But the Hebrew word mistranslated "bastard" is the word "MAMZER": It means a MIXTURE, A HALF-BREED OR MONGREL. It has nothing to do with whether a child's parents were married, but it refers to THE FORBIDDEN INTERMIXTURE OF RACES. THAT IS WHY THE PENALTY EXTENDS FOR TEN GENERATIONS: and it shows how seriously God treats this sin. It is true that the mulatto child is not to blame for his parents sins: BUT HE IS STILL A MULATTO. The first generation would be half-breed; the second would have at least a quarter of the dark blood; the third at least 1/8; the fourth, 1/16; and so on. IN THE TENTH GENERATION, THE NEGRO BLOOD MAY BE AS SMALL AS ONE PART IN 1,024 .... YET GOD HIMSELF SAYS THAT THIS IS TOO MUCH TO BE ALLOWED TO "ENTER INTO THE CONGREGATION OF THE LORD."

If you admit that YOUR measure those qualities which God so carefully implanted in the White Race to carry out certain purposes which He has assigned to them. Recognition that God, Himself, made the races different does not imply hatred or contempt for any of them: difference has its purposes, which must be respected. I do not expect the family cat to sing like a canary, nor the canary to keel) mice out of the kitchen; if I went quail hunting, I would not expect a horse to point quail for me, neither would I try to saddle and ride the best hunting dog in the world. All the family pets are equally loved, and neither is despised because he can't do what some other does; but each has his own purpose, and trying to mix them up or interbreed them can only harm them.

I know that there are many people to whom these facts are new. There are also many who have learned the evil lesson that they can get more money or more political popularity by violating these laws of God than by obeying them Some of you may not like to be reminded of these things. But remember, I did not write the Bible: God wrote it, through His prophets: and commandments are always right. FOR OUR OWN GOOD, FOR THE VERY SURVIVAL OF OUR WHITE RACE UPON THE EARTH, AND THAT WE MAY FACE OUR GOD WITH A BETTER CONSCIENCE, WE HAD BETTER OBEY THESE LAWS OF GOD.

Gandhi
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/mahatma-gandhis-lightguided-martin-luther-king-jr-88581.html


 * On March 10, we will mark another milestone moment in King’s public ministry and personal journey. On that day, 54 years ago, he returned from a monthlong journey to India where he rededicated himself to the nonviolent struggle for justice to which the leader of our nation’s independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, gave his life.
 * King carried forward Gandhi’s commitments — and Indians enthusiastically embraced King’s campaigns — because both shared common values, common strategies and common struggles. While each leader’s life was cut short by violence, both these prophets of peace still have much to teach a world plagued by war, terrorism, discrimination and divisiveness.

Jim Crow
http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/who.htm

These words are from the song, "Jim Crow," as it appeared in sheet music written by Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice. Rice, a struggling "actor" (he did short solo skits between play scenes) at the Park Theater in New York, happened upon a black person singing the above song -- some accounts say it was an old black slave who walked with difficulty, others say it was a ragged black stable boy. Whether modeled on an old man or a young boy we will never know, but we know that in 1828 Rice appeared on stage as "Jim Crow" -- an exaggerated, highly stereotypical black character.

http://pigeonproject.com/2007/10/29/mahatma-gandhi-1893%E2%80%931914-civil-rights-movement-in-south-africa/ (gandhi)

http://www.astrology.com/libra-sun-sign-zodiac-signs/2-d-d-66946 (libra)

http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/black-muslims.html (black muslims)

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=c4N4GwhuXYUC&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=yahiya+emerick+the+idiot%27s+guide+to+Islam+tower+of+babel#v=onepage&q=&f=false

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