In Fond Memory of Mrs. King

 Coretta Scott King died fifteen years ago today, on January 30, 2006. Thirty-five years ago, we at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan had the privilege of having Mrs. King on our campus and in our city. I am writing this in fond memory of Mrs. King. 

Coretta Scott King in 2003

Coretta Scott

In central Alabama on April 27, 1927, Obadiah (“Obie”) and Bernice Scott became parents of a baby girl whom they maned Coretta. Just two and a half years later the Great Depression began, and life was hard for many Americans and especially for a Black family in Alabama.

As a young girl, Coretta started tending the family garden, and by the age of ten she was working in the cotton fields. When she was 12, though, she enrolled as a seventh grader in Lincoln School in Marion,  ten miles from home. She graduated from high school in 1945, the top student in her class.

After graduating in 1951 from Antioch College in Ohio, Coretta continued her studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Kings in 1964

It was in Boston that Coretta met Martin Luther King, Jr., who was usually called M.L., and they married in June 1953. (Currently, Boston is moving forward with a major effort commemorating the Kings with a large 22-foot-high monument of intertwined bronze arms.) 

In the fall of 1954, Coretta and M.L. moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. A year later their first child, Yolanda, was born. Three more children were added to the King family, the last two being born in Atlanta in 1961 and 1963.

M.L.’s involvement in the civil rights movement led to the bombing of the King home in 1956, the year between the birth of Yolanda and MLK, III.

Widow Coretta Scott King

After years of anxiety about what might happen to M.L. and/or to her family, her worst fears were realized on that April 1968 evening in Memphis when MLK was fatally shot.

It was, of course, a time of great grief for her and her family, but also for the nation, except for the bigots and racists who had long railed against King and his clarion calls for equality for “colored people.”

After M.L.’s assassination, Mrs. King took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality in the U.S. Among other things, in 1968 she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, commonly known as The King Center,” which now hosts over one million visitors a year.

In 1985, Seinan Gakuin, the school system that included the university where I was a full-time faculty member, began to consider who to invite as a prominent speaker for the school’s 70^th anniversary to be held in May 1986.

As a member of the planning committee, I suggested we try to get Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa to be our speaker, and some preliminary contacts were made in that regard. But then someone came up with the idea of inviting Mrs. King. I thought that was a brilliant suggestion.

Mrs. King accepted our invitation. So, she came to Fukuoka City, spoke at Seinan Gakuin’s 70^th anniversary service, and also gave an address at a rented hall downtown. There were around 4,000 people who attended that gala event.

I was also one of a small group of Seinan people who hosted Mrs. King to a dinner one of the evenings she was in our city, and I was impressed by what a warm, genuine person she was.

Among the many university students I taught, many had negative views of Christianity partly because of the racism they knew was deeply rooted in the United States, even though it was, they thought, a Christian nation.

Mrs. King’s talks at Seinan Gakuin and in downtown Fukuoka City, widely covered by the press, were warmly received, and her unassuming Christian witness was highly beneficial to those of us serving as Christian missionaries in Japan.

So, today I am fondly remembering Coretta Scott King and thanking God for her lifelong commitment to peace and social justice.

A Notable Nomination: Haaland for Secretary of the Interior

The first two Native American women ever were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. One was Sharice Davids of Kansas City, from the 3^rd congressional district of Kansas.* The other was Deb Haaland of New Mexico.

Now, Rep. Haaland is poised to become a member of President Biden’s Cabinet. 

Who is Deb Haaland?

Debra Anne Haaland was born in Arizona 60 years ago last month. She is an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, a Native American people group who has lived on the land that is now the state of New Mexico since the 1200s.

Haaland identifies herself as a 35th-generation New Mexican, her mother being a Native American woman. Her father, however, is a Norwegian American.

(It’s interesting how Haaland is Native American because her mother was, but Obama was never considered White even though his mother was.)

Haaland was 28 when she started college at the University of New Mexico, and she gave birth to a daughter, Somáh, four days after graduation in May 1994.

As a single mother, Haaland was sometimes dependent on food stamps. Still, she went on to law school and earned her J.D. in Indian law from University of New Mexico School of Law in 2006.

Haaland’s rise to political power began when she was elected to a two-year term as the chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico in April 2015.

To What Was Deb Haaland Nominated?

On Dec. 17, President-elect Biden announced that he was nominating Haaland as the next Secretary of the Interior. As such she would be the first Native American to serve in the President’s Cabinet.

Secretary of the Interior isn’t a particularly ostentatious position, but it is an important one. According to this website, the Department of Interior (DoI) is

a federal executive department of the U.S. government. It is responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources, and the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, territorial affairs, and insular areas of the United States, as well as programs related to historic preservation. . . . The department was created on March 3, 1849.

Seal of the DoI

Why Is Deb Haaland’s Nomination Notable?

The infamous Indian Removal Act was promulgated in 1830 and especially from then until the “Indian wars” ended in December 1890 (as I wrote about in my Dec. 26 blog post), there were sixty years of repeated cruel treatment of the Native peoples in U.S. territory.

Moreover, most Native Americans did not or could not become U.S. citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act was signed into law in 1924. And even after that, it was not until 1957 that Native Americans were allowed to vote in all states.

While things are better for Native Americans now than they were 130 years ago or 97 years ago, many of those who want to maintain their ethnic identity still have to face discrimination and “second-class” citizenship.

So, after all these years, it is notable that Biden chose a Native American, who is a sitting U.S. Representative, to be the new Secretary of the Interior, responsible for “the administration of programs relating to Native Americans.”

In addition, since environmental issues are a major concern of the new administration, Haaland, consistent with her Native American heritage, is a strong advocate for environmental justice—and has been openly criticized for that by Representative Pete Stauber (R-Minn.).

I hope Rep. Haaland’s confirmation as Secretary of the DoI will be smooth and that she will do well as a member of the Cabinet.

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* The church June and I are members of is in that district, and Rep. Davids (b. 1980) was strongly supported by most of our fellow church members in the 2018 election and in 2020, when she was re-elected.

Hopes for the Biden Presidency

Barring unforeseen events, at noon today, January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden will be sworn in as the 46^th President of the United States. My first hope for the Biden presidency is that it will, indeed, begin with an inauguration unblemished by violence and bloodshed. 

Here are some of my main hopes for the Biden presidency.  

* Bringing the covid-19 pandemic under control

The first daunting challenge the Biden administration faces is the ongoing and even worsening covid-19 pandemic. There have now been over 400,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. Bringing this tragic disease under control must be a top priority for the new President and his administration.

On Jan. 14, Biden announced a massive, $1.9 trillion plan for combatting the pandemic and the economic problems caused by it. Dubbed the “American Rescue Plan,” that bold proposal was soon panned by some GOP politicians and will face much opposition. But I truly hope the Biden administration’s anti-covid efforts will be successful.

* Working to combat global warming

My first blog post of 2020 was about climate change, which I contended was the greatest challenge of the new decade. The last four years have seen a significant weakening of the government’s efforts to confront the global warming crisis.

The new President needs to lead the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement, as he has promised to do. He also needs to restore many of the EPA regulations gutted by the Trump administration. This work is not for his own political benefit in the coming four years, but for the benefit of future generations.

* Supporting control of nuclear weapons

In addition to rejoining the Iran nuclear deal, the Biden administration needs to show support for the U.N.’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which goes into effect just two days from now, on January 22.

The U.S. and the other nations with nuclear weapons have not yet signed the TPNW. But in addition to global warming, the widespread presence of nuclear weapons in the world poses a serious threat to the well-being of all people now and in the future. I hope that will change during the Biden presidency.

* Working for a society with greater economic and racial equality

There is much that needs to be done to overcome the societal structures that favor wealthy people at the expense of the middle class and those struggling in poverty and that favor white people to the disadvantage of people of color.

The USAmerican goal has long been “liberty and justice for all.” ‘For all” means all individuals living in this country regardless of gender, race, economic status, political ideology, or religious background. I strongly hope the new administration will, indeed, lead the nation closer toward reaching this goal.

* Restoring political bipartisanship to the Capitol

In order to fulfill these hopes, there needs to be much greater bipartisanship among elected U.S. politicians. For especially the last twelve years there has been far too much polarization and lack of politicians seeking the common good.

I certainly hope President Biden can cultivate the cooperation needed for there to be good governance.

Much more needs to be said about each of the above hopes, and these are just a few of many other hopes I have for the Biden presidency.

Please note that these are not “political” hopes in support of one political party. They are hopes for the benefit of the American people and for the wider world.

What hopes do you have for the Biden presidency in place of or in addition to the matters I have listed above?

Speaking Truth to Power: Remembering Two Elijahs

Not many people are named Elijah. This article is about two of the only three Elijahs I have heard of, but they were two men with a similar defining characteristic: they spoke truth to power.

Remembering Prophet Elijah (9^th Century BCE)

The Old Testament prophet Elijah has long been one of my favorite biblical characters. I remember studying hard to learn more about Elijah and then leading a Bible study about him 65 years ago—yes, in the summer of 1956 when I was a college student.

Elijah was a prophet during the reign of the wicked King Ahab, the seventh king of Israel, and his infamous wife Jezebel, who was, well, a jezebel (= “an impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained woman”; Merriam-Webster).

According to 1 Kings 18:17 in the Old Testament, “When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, ‘Is it you, you troubler of Israel?’ Elijah was a “troubler” because he spoke out in criticism of the evil king and his notorious wife.

Jonathan Sacks, the noted British Rabbi who died last November, published an article titled “Elijah and the prophetic truth of the ‘still, small voice’.” He stated, “Elijah was one of the greatest of the prophets, a man of justice unafraid to confront kings, condemn corruption and speak truth to power.”  

That’s what the Old Testament prophets did. It was only the false prophets who cozied up to kings.

A century before Elijah, the prophet Nathan stood before powerful King David, guilty of adultery and instigating murder, and declared, “Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:7, KJV).

That Old Testament story is the basis of journalist Maina Mwaura’s January 9^th piece titled, “At the Capitol, evangelicals’ ‘Thou art the man’ moment.”

Remembering Representative Elijah Cummings (1951~2019)

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born 92 years ago today, but as I have posted blog articles about him previously (first on Jan. 11, 2010), I am writing now about an outstanding African American man who was born three days after King’s 22^nd birthday.

Following his birth on January 18, 1951, Robert and Ruth Cummings named their new son Elijah, after the Old Testament prophet.

The Baltimore Magazine unsurprisingly told in a 2014 article how Cummings remembered “running home from church on Sundays to listen to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches” on the radio.

From age 45 on, Cummings served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 23 years until his death in October 2019. Monday would have been his 70^th birthday. 

On the day of his death, Phil Murphy, the governor of Maryland, tweeted, “A model of dignity and strength, Elijah Cummings' upbringing in a segregated Baltimore led him on a lifelong mission to promote justice, to always speak truth to power, and to ensure a fair shake for every American.”

In February 2020, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s hearing room in the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, D.C., was renamed the Elijah E. Cummings Room in honor of the late Baltimore congressman.

At that dedication ceremony, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Cummings “used his gavel to speak truth to power for our nation.”

If last week’s tragic events had happened two years ago, Rep. Elijah would most likely have been a key politician speaking truth to power—and the misuse of power by the President.

Cummings would, no doubt, have joined with Rep. Jamie Raskin, who wrote the resolution calling on VP Pence to invoke the 25^th Amendment to remove DJT from office.

(Raskin, b. 1962, currently is the U.S. Representative from Maryland’s 8^th District, where both of my sons live; Cummings served that state’s 7^th District.)

In 2018, the year before he died, Cummings said, “I’m going to try and make people realize that in order to live the life they are living, they need to have democracy, and it’s being threatened.”

Little did he know then how much U.S. democracy was going to be threatened on January 6, 2021.

How important it was/is for people like him and the Old Testament prophet Elijah—and all of us in our own place of influence—to speak truth to power!

Hawley with Blood on His Hands

This is not the blog article I intended to post on January 10, but little did I know when I made my Jan. 5 post, partly about the end of the election season in the U.S., that it was going to end so violently.

Hawley, the Embarrassing Missouri Senator

In that Jan. 5 post I wrote, “Embarrassingly for many of us Missourians, last Wednesday Sen. Josh Hawley announced his intention to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, which will lead to hours of debate tomorrow on what should be merely a routine matter.”

On Jan. 6, Hawley (b. 12/31/79) not only persisted in calling the presidential election into question, even after the insurrectionist mob stormed the Capitol, he cheered that mob on as DJT had done in his inflammatory speech at the “Save America” rally earlier in the day.

Here is the photo of Hawley taken early on Wednesday afternoon by Francis Chung, a photojournalist for E&E News:  

As Katie Bernard wrote for the Kansas City Star this morning, this image “seemed to crystallize Hawley’s week-long role as the face of the Electoral College challenge to Biden—and the chaos it unleashed.”

Again, this is highly embarrassing to many of us Missourians—and adds to our ongoing and deep disappointment that he defeated Claire McCaskill, the highly qualified incumbent, in the 2018 senatorial election.

Hawley, the Outspoken Evangelical Christian

Senator Hawley is also an embarrassment for those of us who identify as Christians—as is much of the conservative evangelicalism with which he has long associated.

As John Fea, a university professor and prolific blogger,  pointed out yesterday, “The U.S. Senators who objected to the Electoral College results were almost all evangelicals.”

Described as “a conservative, evangelical Presbyterian,” for many years Josh Hawley has been clear in his support of the issues most important to the Christian Right: a strong advocate for “religious freedom” and strong in his opposition to abortion and gay rights.

Back in 2015 at the beginning of his campaign to become the Attorney General of Missouri, he was lauded by Don Hinkle, the editor of The Pathway, Missouri’s conservative Southern Baptist newspaper.

As Hinkle pointed out, Hawley had worked on the Becket legal team that “won two of the most important religious liberty cases of our time.” One of those was the highly publicized Hobby Lobby case refusing to include abortion drugs in the insurance provided for their employees.

Hawley has also taught at Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a program seeking to train (conservative) Christian lawyers. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled that organization “an extremist group.”

 Blackstone is an arm of Alliance Defending Freedom, which SPLC has designated as a hate group since 2016. That is largely because the “freedom” they defend is the freedom to discriminate against LGBTQ people and to block legal abortion activities.

Hawley, the Co-instigator of Sedition

It seems manifestly obvious that DJT instigated the insurrection of January 6. But more than anyone else, Hawley was the leading co-instigator.

On the afternoon of that fateful day, the editorial board of the Kansas City Star declared, “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol other than one Joshua David Hawley.”

The headline for that editorial unequivocally stated their assessment of Hawley’s involvement in the chaos at the Capitol: “Assault on democracy: Sen. Josh Hawley has blood on his hands in Capitol coup attempt.”

Accordingly, Heather Cox Richardson wrote yesterday, Hawley “watched his star plummet today.” Former Senator John Danforth (R-MO), his key mentor, said supporting Hawley was the “worst mistake of my life.”*

In addition, one of Hawley’s major donors called him “an anti-democracy populist” who provoked the riots. And Simon & Schuster canceled Hawley’s new book contract.

What Hawley did, most probably intending it to greatly enhance his viability as the 2024 Republican candidate for the presidency, may, in stark contrast, have essentially ended his political career.

And perhaps the terrible events at the Capitol on January 6 will mark the beginning of the end of Trumpism and of the conservative evangelical Christian support of a very flawed President.

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* Part of my 11/15/17 blog post was a positive assessment of former Senator Danforth. And here is what Fea posted this morning about Danforth and Hawley.

The End and the Beginning

Today (January 5) is the end of the Christmas season and today and tomorrow mark the end of a long and contentious election season in the U.S. Tomorrow is Epiphany, the beginning of the post-Christmas era, and tomorrow also should be the beginning of the return to normalcy in the U.S.

The End of the Christmas Season

For many people, the celebration of Christmas ends on December 25 and attention is then focused on other things. In some traditions, though, Christmas Day is the beginning of a lengthy celebration and today is the twelfth and last day of Christmas.

In this tradition, Epiphany is celebrated on January 6. The Gospel writer Matthew tells the story of the first gentiles to receive the revelation (epiphany) of Christ. That is the account of the Wise Men of the East who came to revere Jesus, the newborn king. 

In the fifth chapter of his 2019 book Postcards from Babylon (which is being made into a documentary  available for viewing, for a price, on Jan. 21), author Brian Zahnd writes about “the dark side of Christmas,” King Herod’s massacre of the baby boys in Bethlehem.*

Because the Persian magi (magicians) were looking for the new king, “it made sense,” as Zahnd writes, “for them to inquire in the capital city of Jerusalem, but by doing so they unwittingly set in motion terrible events” (p. 68). Herod, the tyrant King of Judea, tried to destroy the new king-to-be.

So, as the celebration of Jesus’ birth ends today on the twelfth day of Christmas, we recognize the epiphany of the Wise Men tomorrow. Epiphany, sometimes called “Three Kings Day,” marks the beginning of the universal appeal of Christianity.

Even though their desire to see the new king triggered cruel action by King Herod, “the baby king escaped the gruesome infanticide ordered by the paranoid king” (Zahnd, p. 72). So, we celebrate Jesus’ escape but grieve over all the “collateral damage” caused by tyrannical King Herod.

Today, people around the world are still compelled to choose whether to follow those known for their love of power, such as Herod and others who aspire to be autocrats, or to follow Jesus, the one whose life and teachings were characterized by the power of love.

The End of the Election Season

The important presidential and congressional elections in the U.S. took place on November 3, but they are not ending until today and tomorrow is the designated day for the final certification of the winner of the presidential election.

The election season ends with voting today for both of Georgia’s U.S. Senators, and seldom have senatorial elections been of greater significance.

Then tomorrow should (finally!) be the end of the presidential election, but never has that formal congressional certification of the electoral college votes been under so much attack.

What should be a routine day tomorrow in Congress is now fraught with uncertainty because as esteemed opinion writer Colbert King of the Washington Post writes, “President Trump, a buffoonish one-term wannabe autocrat, will not accept his election loss.”

King further predicts that tomorrow (Jan. 6) “will be a day of acrimony, probably to Trump’s delight.” As early as Dec. 19, DJT tweeted: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6^th. Be there, will be wild!”

Embarrassingly for many of us Missourians, last Wednesday Sen. Josh Hawley announced his intention to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, which will lead to hours of debate tomorrow on what should be merely a routine matter.

Then on January 2, Sen. Ted Cruz and 10 other GOP senators announced that they would join Hawley in opposing certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

That same day, DJT made a ludicrous, and most likely illegal, telephone call to Georgia election officials asking (demanding?) them to change the voting results in that state.

But tomorrow should, thankfully, end the contentious election season and begin a new day in which the Biden administration will vigorously seek to Build Back Better.

May it be so!

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* That was one of the massacres I wrote about in my 12/26 blog post.