Pondering the Birth/Death of Jesus, the Slave

During the Christmas season, we sing/hear many hymns/carols. In the New Testament, though, there are few hymns. Philippians 2:6~11 is most likely one of those hymns, and there Jesus is referred to as a doulos, the Greek word for slave.

“The Christ Hymn”

The words of Philippians 2:6~11 are often called “the Christ Hymn,” and they are a significant summary of the nature of Jesus Christ’s existence. Verses 6~8 emphasize Jesus’ humiliation and verses 9~11 highlight his exultation.

Even though most English versions of the Bible translate the word doulos (in v. 7) as servant, its primary meaning is slave. And Jesus, the slave, ends up being crucified, which according to Black theologian James Cone is the equivalent of slaves and, later, their descendants during the Jim Crow years being lynched.

Those of us who grew up in evangelical churches, and those who are evangelicals today, see the first three verses mainly as linked to Jesus’ death on the cross as the means of providing atonement for sinful human beings.

Be that as it may, Jesus was crucified as a common criminal by the usual Roman means of capital punishment. Moreover, the Jews of Jesus’ day knew that the Hebrew Bible states that “anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23).

The last half of “the Christ hymn” emphasizes the inexplicable exaltation of the crucified Jesus. Certainly, both Jesus’ humiliation and his exaltation must be recognized and affirmed. Most of us, though, perhaps fail to grasp the full impact of the ignominy of Jesus’ being “lynched” as a dissident slave.

“The Gospel according to Mary Brown”

In July, a youngish blogger in California posted a long and thought-provoking blog article titled “The Cross and The Lynching Tree by Dr. James Cone.”

On pages 6-7 of his post, the blogger introduces W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The Gospel According to Mary Brown” and provides this link to the “Xmas 1919” issue of The Crisis magazine with, scrolling down, to Du Bois’s brief three-page story.  

Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 and long served as the founding editor of The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP.**

In that 101-years-ago issue of The Crisis, Du Bois took the conventional Jesus story and brought it to his Black readers living in the Jim Crow South. He replaced Jesus with Joshua, a black baby born to a single mother (Mary Brown) sharecropping in the rural South.

That re-telling of the narrative about Jesus was consistent with a central point Du Bois had made in his The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and other essays. He condemned “white religion” as an “utter failure.”

As Cone points out in his book mentioned above, for Du Bois, true Christianity is defined by “the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and the Golden Rule.” But, Du Bois emphasized, “the white church’s treatment of blacks was “sadly at variance with this doctrine” (Cone, pp. 103-4).

As we celebrate Christmas this year—in ways far different from usual because of the covid-19 pandemic—let’s celebrate not only the birth of Jesus as the Savior but also the one who came “to liberate the oppressed” (Luke 4:18, CEB).

In Du Bois’s story of Joshua, “the White Folk” were offended by what he said. They complained, “What do you mean by this talk about all being brothers—do you mean social equality?”

And they also said to Joshua, in Du Bois’s words, “What do you mean by saying God is you-all’s father—is God a nigger?"

These White Folk finally brought Joshua before a judge from the North—but he “washed his hands of the whole matter.” The White crowd then seized Joshua and lynched him.

Since in our land today 100 years later there are still problems of discrimination and oppression because of race and/or class, perhaps this is the “Christmas story” we need to hear and to ponder this week. What do you think?

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** My 9/15/18 blog post was written in honor of Du Bois (1868~1963).

Celebrating the NAACP

It was 110 years ago this month that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. As my contribution to Black History Month, I am posting this article in celebration of the NAACP and its meritorious contributions to the improvement of the status of people of color in U.S. society.

(Through the years I have written about several of the people mentioned in this article; the hyperlinked names are links to blog articles about those persons.)

The Beginning of the NAACP

The NAACP gives February 12, 1909, as the date marking their founding. That date, not by accident, was the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. (The name was not officially adopted until the following year.) 

Prior to the formation of the NAACP, W.E.B. Dubois had organized the Niagara Movement (a civil rights group you can read about here). He then became one of the co-founders of the NAACP and from 1910 to 1934 was the founding editor of “The Crisis,” the organization’s official publication.

In his editorial for the first edition of The Crisis (Nov. 1910; see here), Du Bois wrote, “The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested to-day toward colored people.”

Other than Du Bois, the main early leaders of the NAACP, such as William English Walling and Mary White Ovington, were not “colored people.” The first African-American to hold a high leadership position was James Weldon Johnson, who served as Executive Secretary from 1920 to 1931.

Historical Highlights of the NAACP

The history of their first 100 years is highlighted in the large (456 pages and weighing over four pounds!) and nicely done book NAACP: Celebrating a Century (2009). Here are just a few highlights gleaned from that book.

** The NAACP organized protests against the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, which glorified the KKK.

** By 1919, their tenth anniversary, the NAACP had 90,000 members, and “The Crisis” had a circulation of 100,000.

** Their 14^th Annual Conference, in 1923, was held in Kansas City, and over 550 delegates journeyed to Leavenworth Federal Prison to visit black inmates.

** The NAACP helped convince President Truman in 1948 to issue Executive Order No. 9980, prohibiting racial discrimination in federal military service.

** Largely due to the work of Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s top attorney from 1938 to 1961, the “Brown v. Board of Education” Supreme Court decision legally desegregated America’s public schools.

The NAACP Today

According to their current website, “The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.”

Their website also links (here) to a 2/1/19 article titled “28 Ways to Celebrate Black History Month.” No. 6 was “Become a member of a Black organization.” Last year I became a member of the NAACP for the first time, and I am happy to be a supporter of this significant organization.

In the Foreword of the NAACP book mentioned above, then Board Chairman Julian Bond wrote, “We hope you will feel called to join this one-hundred-year-old crusade for justice by joining the NAACP. . . . anyone who shares our values is more than welcome” (p. 7).

Perhaps not many of you will decide to join the NAACP, but at the very least I hope you will celebrate their 110 years of existence by acknowledging their many significant accomplishments since 1909 and by actively joining in the ongoing struggle to eliminate race-based discrimination in our nation.