The Preacher King

This fall, my alma mater, is hosting one of the more exciting conferences in the U.S. I'm working on a film right now for this conference. Make plans to attend. David Fleer is using his gift, once again, to bring men and women of all different stripes to study and challenge each other. This event is for ministers, pastors, and scholars alike.

I wrote this review in preparation for the conference. It's a bit long. If you are a reader (and nerd), enjoy.



Review of Richard Lischer’s The Preacher King
ISBN 978-0-511132-3

Richard Lischer, scholar and professor at Duke Divinity, supplies both the student of history and local pastor a wonderful gift with his work, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Word that Moved America. Combining history, theology, New Testament scholarship, politics, and narrative criticism as very few can—Lischer paints a detailed yet complete picture of the life and legacy of one of America’s great religious leaders.

I suggest Richard Lischer’s Preacher King in preparation for the 2008 Lipscomb Preaching Conference for two reasons. First, Lischer has the rare ability to capture the tension and ethos of 1960’s America. The Civil Right Era has become a source of nostalgia for some. Lischer refuses to buy into this hype-machine by closely immersing himself back into the world of those who marched in Selma, Montgomery, and Memphis. “Despite the enforced intimacy of the races, a rigid caste system, buttressed by dozens of local statutes, forbade blacks and whites to acknowledge the life they in fact held in common. A local statute went so far as to bar whites and blacks from playing cards, dice, checkers, or dominoes together. Restrooms and drinking fountains were clearly marked. By law, a white person and a Negro could not share a taxi. The segregation of restaurants and public transportation was carried out with a routine cruelty that left the black citizens of Montgomery, like those of most southern cities, humiliated and burning with resentment.” You will find an absence of over-sentimentalized anecdotes and conversations: Lischer understands all too well how the stakes were during this tumultuous period in American history.

Second, Lischer paints a nuanced portrait of Dr. King as the Civil Right’s Moses-figure. Lischer pays close attention to Dr. King’s ethos, rhetorical skill, knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, historical context, intellectual heroes, as well as his intense personal connection to the African-American church. Unlike some depictions, Lischer avoids the pitfalls of depicting King a secular humanitarian or as a mere social insurrectionist with an axe to grind. Rather, Lischer clearly demonstrates the manner in which Dr. King sees his own life as a holy improvisation, living out the dangerous love of Jesus in marches, prisons, restaurant sit-ins, and church bombings. With racism (Pharaoh) pressing in, Jim Crow government laws forming insurmountable walls on all sides (Red Sea), King (Moses) led his people to the other side. Dr. King prepared the people for what God was going to do next (Canaan) though he himself, like Moses, would not experience the land “flowing with milk and honey.” Lischer presents Dr. King for what he was: a young black Baptist preacher-prophet who named, exposed, and in his death, unmasked the systemic powers of darkness. This book will prepare you to re-imagine the God who liberates (all) his people from oppression and domination.

Kierkegaard and the NCAA Tourney

The Luke-Acts course I’m teaching this semester had to wrestle with this little ditty tonight from Soren Kierkegaard, whom scholars and preachers love to quote, “ . . . sermons should not be preached in churches. It harms Christianity in a high degree and alters its very nature, that it brought into artistic remoteness from reality, instead of being heard in the midst of real life, and that precisely for the sake of conflict (the collision). For all this talk about quiet, about quiet places and quiet hours, as the right element of Christianity, is absurd. So then sermons should not be preached in churches but in the street, in the midst of life, of the reality of daily life, weekday life.”

Is Kierkegaard right?

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Kansas/Carolina
Kansas
Duke/Texas
Duke
Kansas over Duke

Is Josh right?

Speaking Jesus (Out of Both Sides of Your Mouth)

Part of the focus of my doctoral studies at Columbia deals with the way language shapes reality, truth, and experience. Much of my reading so far explores this topic in relation to White and African-American Communities.

For instance, students are taught in Communication 101, that the first rule of public speaking is to know your audience. The second rule, then, is to speak in a way your audience can understand without compromising your material, and objective.

I find this fascinating. It takes great skill to communicate to a white affluent church as well as a road rally in Cass Park, Detroit. It takes intentional reflection and practice to walk into a public high school and effectively speak as it does to conduct a funeral for a family of first generation Americans. I recently did a funeral for a young man whose entire family comprised of artists. I had to figure out how to communicate in a way that spoke the truth of God’s mercy and justice to them . . . not to the accountants and engineers in the room.

Our world has changed. It isn’t that our world is changing for the world has come to us. Every nation, tribe, race, culture can be found all around us. If we are serious about being people who speak a word of grace, we’d better pay attention to the ones we are speaking with.

We must be able to speak to/with people according in a matter than connects and sparks the imagination. This doesn’t mean one is being “fake”—quite the opposite. To speak to people in a way that allows them access to what you are saying authenticates their story, experience, and plight. It is affirming and honorable.

There is biblical precedent for this. Paul once wrote, “Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings.”

Jesus had an amazing ability to communiate to the elite (Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees) as well as the ones who found themselves on the fringe (parables and personal accounts shared with sinners, tax collectors, sick, diseased, and divorced).

If you are interested in this discussion (which, by the way, relates to teachers, loan officers, insurance salespersons, nurses, lawyers, doctors, as well as ministers) Henry Mitchell has written a fine essay entitled, “Black English”—it’s been used in reading and communication textbooks all over the United States.