John M. Perkins

Recently Rachel and I had the opportunity to see Dr. John M. Perkins speak at South Highland Presbyterian Church.  Perkins was born to a family of black sharecroppers in rural Mississippi.  After his brother was shot by a sheriff, Perkins realized he needed to get out of Mississippi and headed to California.  In California, he became a Christian and soon realized he was being called back to Mississippi in the heat of the civil rights movement.  There he has labored for years, fighting for civil rights and community development.  He has played an integral role in Christian Community Development Association.

Now in his ninth decade, Dr. Perkins remains vibrant and sharp.  His message was particularly challenging in his charges of how we have shaped Christianity to fit within our culture.  I am a white southern Christian, he is black southern Christian.  We use our faith to support our -isms: capitalism, communism, socialism.  We pick and choose what scriptures we need to endorse our political party.  In the words of Jesus, this should not be so!  Dr. Perkins calls us to Christianity first and foremost.

I wrestle with this: how can I engage my culture in a redemptive but a-political way?  So many political issues are tied to the gospel.  How do I stand for for these issues without attaching myself to the machinery around them?  Currently Rachel and I are reading through Ched Meyer's Binding the Strong Man in a book group.  Meyers argues that the gospel is absolutely political in nature.  We are called to challenge American imperialism, to advocate for the poor, to fight for a consistent ethic of the sanctity of life, and to stand (and ultimately die) with the oppressed.  Meyers shows how Jesus's fight was not only spiritual in nature, but also political.  My immediate inclination is to attach myself to a political system that advocates for these issues.  But Perkins pushes back, as politics will inevitably tempt me to mistake my politics for my faith.  Apparently fleshing this out is a bit more difficult than I hoped it would be.