When will we learn? - Part 1 (Florida shooting)

When will we learn? – Part 1

According to the recordings of the emergency 911 call center, it was dark and raining when an armed neighborhood watch volunteer fired one shot that killed Trayvon Martin.  There are so many problems with what happened in Sanford, Florida that it is difficult to know where to start.

Fear: From all accounts there were two people who were gripped with fear that dark night – the late Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.  Trayvon seems to have been afraid because someone was following him as he walked from a convenience store to a home he was visiting.  George Zimmerman was afraid because Trayvon was carrying a bag of candy, a bottle of iced tea and put his hand in his waist band.  And, in addition, Trayvon was wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

Why were Trayvon and George afraid of each other?  We will never know exactly why Trayvon was afraid. But, from the recordings, it sounds as if George Zimmerman had stereotyped Trayvon as a criminal threat.  George knew Trayvon was black and wearing a hooded sweatshirt and he decided Trayvon was a criminal.

Difference: Discussion of fear leads to the reality of the differences between people.  We are all created different from everyone else.  Families may have DNA similarities, but the scientists say that even identical twins have small differences.  We can either embrace our differences or fear them.  I have always said the world would be a very boring place if everyone was alike – homogenized.

It was the late Rev. Mac Charles Jones, pastor of St. Stephen’s Baptist Church in Kansas City who said that integration should be fruit salad, not potato salad.  When we make potato salad the resulting food is all one color and texture.  But when we make fruit salad, the original fruits retain the color, texture and essence of taste.  Each fruit contributes unique properties that make the whole better than the sum on the parts.

Deadly force:  The use of deadly force is an overarching element in the death of Trayvon Martin.  George Zimmerman is a neighborhood watch volunteer, not a trained law enforcement officer.  The “911” tape indicated that the trained “911” dispatcher instructed George Zimmer NOT to follow Trayvon Martin.  The instruction – “We don’t need you to do that.” – may not have been definitive enough, but George Zimmerman’s disregard of the instruction demonstrates his untrained status.

The volunteer, armed with a handgun then confronted Trayvon Martin and fired one fatal shot.  There have been several news reports that state Trayvon was suspended from school at the time of his death or that he assaulted George Zimmerman.  Even if the statements are true, a bag of candy and a bottle of iced tea are no match for a handgun.

It was Abraham Lincoln who said:

"It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says 'you toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle." [Lincoln-Douglas debates, 15 October 1858]

Lincoln, when he spoke of democracy, said,

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

Who is responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin?  George Zimmerman pulled the trigger.  But the responsibility goes much further.  More in part 2 of this post, “When will we learn?”

Dr. Ron Patton, H.R.

It all begins in the pulpit – Part 4 – Fear (of response from the congregation)

It all begins in the pulpit – Part 4 – Fear (of response from the congregation)

“Can I come over and talk with you this evening?” was the question from the member of the Session (Ruling Board in the Presbyterian Church).  My response was: “Sure.” 

It was August or September of 1968 and I was newly ordained serving my first church in rural Indiana.  Even though I had been their pastor for only a few months, I knew the congregation fairly well.  I had been supplying their pulpit from McCormick Seminary during the Fall of 1967 and the Spring of 1968.  These two extended periods of pulpit supply led to being called to serve this church of some 125 people in a town of 500.

One other note of background: The Spring of 1968 was turbulent in Chicago.  Racial tensions were already high and with the death of Dr. Martin Luther King those tensions exploded into massive riots.  Billows of black smoke rose from the Westside of Chicago as buildings and cars went up in flames.  The Chicago Police would remove nametags and badges, means of individual identification, and then sweep down streets arresting anyone on the street.

McCormick Seminary students and faculty, against the orders of the administration, suspended classes in order to minister in the riot-torn city.  Along with one of my professors, I visited the Cook County Jail to bail innocent people out of jail.  We used funds donated by the McCormick Community.  The families of the innocent persons may have had the money, but they waited days to even begin the process of posting bail.  Their problem: they were black.  My professor and I are white and in suit and tie, the jail officials gave us immediate attention.  In reflection, the jailers probably thought we were lawyers.

Having lived through the Chicago Riots in the Spring of 1968, it was no surprise when, during the Democratic National Convention, Mayor Richard J. Dailey’s police once again removed their identification and plowed into demonstrators in Lincoln Park.  A week or two after the Convention Riots, this lectionary preacher felt the scriptures speaking out against the violence as we had seen in Chicago. 

The problem was that one of the leaders in the rural church I was serving had been an alternate delegate to the convention and said the police brutality never took place.  She was there, she said, and on the buses between the hotel and the convention venue, she had seen none of the violence.  As I remember, she claimed the news media reporting the violence had probably staged the event or fabricated the story to discredit the National Democratic Party that was under the firm control of Mayor Dailey.

And so the church Elder sat down in the living room of the manse and said: “I know that the Book of Order (governing rules of the Presbyterian Church) does not allow me to say this, but there are some church leaders who do not want you to reference events such as the Convention Riots in your sermons.”

I thanked the Elder for his visit and agreed with him, that in the Presbyterian Church, the content of the sermon is one of the five areas of worship that are at the sole discretion of the preacher.  I did not cease then, nor have I ever feared the congregation when I believe the Scripture needs to speak through the pulpit on critical issues.  And as a lectionary preacher, I hope and pray that I have avoided the danger of using the pulpit as a personal “soap box.”

The controversy in 1968 was not the last time I received negative input from the congregation about a sermon.  There were some who took issue when I raised doubts about the integrity of television preacher Jim Bakker before he was indicted for mail fraud in 1988.  Another time was when, in speaking against racial and sexual discrimination, I asked: “If we are all created in the image of God, then what must God look like?  I don’t know.  If I could describe God, then that god would be too small.  My God is much greater than that.”

If the preacher honestly believes the Scriptures and the Spirit are speaking, then there should be no fear of congregation, community or government.  The Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, President of the College of New Jersey (Princeton University today), preached against King George and the British Parliament in May of 1776.  The Rev. John Rankin, Presbyterian abolitionist preacher in Ripley, Ohio, is said to have carried a pistol into the pulpit because the slavers had placed a bounty of several thousand dollars on his head.  Read the fearless words of Dr. Martin Luther King the night before he was assassinated.

None of us, I hope, seek to be martyrs.  But no preacher should fear when they are truly preaching the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

--Dr. Ron Patton, H.R.  

CNN wasn't there...Creationism - Religion or science?

CNN wasn’t there…

and neither was David Coppedge.  I heard of David Coppedge on National Public Radio this morning (March 12, 2012) and I was amazed and amused at the same time.

A little background: David Coppedge is a scientist/engineer who was working on the Cassini mission to Saturn at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California.  The JPL is operated by Caltech and is well known for the operation of many of the United States explorations into space.  Recently JPL reported that the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has reached the edge of our sun’s heliosphere – the region influenced by the sun’s magnetic field.  They do not know when – a few months or years – Voyager 1 will cross the boundary and enter interstellar space.

In April 2010, David Coppedge was dismissed by JPL as a part of budget cutting caused by a reduction in the California State budget.  David Coppedge has sued JPL claiming that he was dismissed because of his religious views – which he shared freely with his co-workers to the point where they complained of harassment.

What are Coppedge’s religious beliefs?  He is a creationist, claiming that because of the complexity of all that we know, there must be one intelligent creator.  Creationists turn to the Bible to prove their “science” citing the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis as their “proof.”  The creationists begin their argument with these words from Genesis:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,.

However, there is the second creation story from Genesis that begins:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground--then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

And then there is the creation story from the Book of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

In 2000 when I ran for the Kansas State Board of Education, because the creationists – or intelligent design theorists – were working hard to have creation theory taught in high school science classes along with evolution theory.  They argued that creationism is as much a science as evolution theory is with equal, if not more credibility than evolution theory.  I received 39,000 votes, but lost because of my political affiliation –Democratic Party.

In the year 2000, creationists such as David Coppedge, argued that creationism was science.  A dozen years later, David Coppedge and his lawyers are arguing that he was dismissed from JPL because of his religious beliefs – creationism.

It is time that this charade be ended.  Evolution theory is science, not religion.  Creationism is religion, not science.  In reality, no one can say, for sure, how everything we know came into being. CNN wasn’t there with cameras and reporters.

A challenging book to read that explores reality is David Eagleman’s Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlife.

--Dr. Ron Patton, H.R.