June 14, 2005
Senate Apologizes For Lynchings: And the church?
The Senate issued an apology Monday night to the victims of America's lynching-- 4,743 people killed between 1882 and 1968, three out of four of them black--for not acting against the violence. James Cameron, a 91-year-old lynching survivor lived to retell his story and was present for the announcemnt. In 1930, he and two others were taken from an Indiana jail accused of rape and murder. The mob hanged the two young men but spared Cameron when someone in the crowd demanded that the 16-year-old was not involved. "I was saved by a miracle," said Cameron, now 91. People were "hollering for my blood," he recalled, "when a voice said, 'Take this boy back."'
Where was the church? That's too bad that there weren't any Christians living in any of those places where lynchings occurred during those years to protest and fight against this stuff.
Posted by anthony at June 14, 2005 10:02 AM | TrackBackI can't really apologize for the church, if I could though, I would. I hope that isn't a cop-out.
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 14, 2005 10:22 AMJQ, thanks. . .nope, not a cop-out
Posted by: Anthony at June 15, 2005 07:41 AMShould Christians that are descendants of lynchers apologize to the descendants of the lynched?
I think such a move would be an act of sentimentality. Such a history cannot be "fixed". Its already happened. But what can we do?...the church that is?
I think one thing we can do is talk about how lynching has shaped our current context. And possibly we can have the very difficult discussion as to why we are still having this conversation.
Ant S.
Posted by: Anthony at June 20, 2005 07:06 PMAnd hopefully the other conversation about how Christianity does not provide the moral compass that many Christians assume it does. That there is possibly no direct correlation between religion and accepted morality of a later time period (what was acceptable becomes unacceptable, and vice versa) and so all we can say is that Christianity promotes a narrow Christian morality that may very well be deemed backward and harmful by later generations of Chritians. My point? We need to stop talking about questions of morality by talking about religion, any religion. Especially in the context of the world today.
Posted by: Tony at January 6, 2006 01:11 PM