1/18/15. A PROPHET OF HOPE, AND A PRACTITIONER OF RECONCILIATION

Since tomorrow is our national Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, I thought I might introduce to some of my readers another incredibly significant civil rights figure who has influenced so many of us. This is not in any way an attempt to diminish the awesome impact that Dr. King has had on our society. King was a child of a very significant clergy family in Atlanta, and a ‘Morehouse (college) Man.’ He had the gift of an eloquent tongue with which he became a huge prophet of hope in a segregated society that many of this present generation cannot even imagine.

I am a white guy and I grew up in this segregated South, and it all seemed so normal to us. It was only when I was ordained into the Presbyterian Church’s pastoral ministry the same summer as the SCOTUS’s ‘Brown-vs-the Board of Education decision (1954), that my eyes began to become opened to the huge injustices that were present. In a sense, Dr. King and I were almost of the same generation, but on different sides of the racial divide. Dr. King was our prophet of hope, and he gave hope to so many.

But forty years ago there emerged into my life another civil rights leader by the name of John M. Perkins, and John Perkins and his wife Vera Mae–she is indispensable to his story–have been much more formative in my life as dear friends, as models, and as practitioners of reconciliation between the races. John, unlike Dr. King, is the child of Mississippi sharecroppers, and (as he describes himself) a “third-grade dropout.” John suffered all of the indignities and deprivations and injustices that racism in Mississippi could provide. His army veteran brother was shot and killed by deputy sheriffs for no apparent reason, so John escaped and fled to Southern California where he became a moderately successful businessman, and raised a family.

But then … John met Jesus Christ. Jesus invaded John’s life, and Jesus became his passion. But John also saw that Jesus came not to condemn but to reconcile, and that same Jesus sent John back to his own people in Mississippi to preach reconciliation, to do economic community development, and to be a transformational force in that very complex racial darkness that was so omnipresent there. When he engaged in voter registration, he was almost beaten to death by the police, … but, amazingly, John was not bitter. He wondered how his white captors could be so angry. But his ministry was to be a practitioner of reconciliation, and he was true to his calling.

Skip down a few years and the State of Mississippi declared a John M. Perkins Day in his honor. He had, in the intervening years, made a large number of disciples who incarnated the same principles: 1) Preach reconciliation; 2) Relocate into the areas of greatest need, live with the folk and learn from them, and develop just communities; and 3) Redistribute resources in the form of shared skills and economic resources. When he had accomplished this in Mississippi he moved back to South-Central Pasadena, California and did the same thing there, and that city declared a John M. Perkins day in his honor. He has honorary doctorates. He has been a guest of the White House. But mostly he is just a marvelous and modest practitioner of what he teaches. He doesn’t yell: “Racism” though he knows it and has experienced it more than most. He is fruitful (gentle but tough) practitioner of reconciliation.

There is a self-effacing humility about John that refuses a lot of self-promotion, but the beneficiaries of his life and teachings and practice have established a foundation in his name, and two major universities have whole schools to teach his reconciling principles. It is worth reading his account in his book: Let Justice Roll Down. There are many other books about him, but that’s a good start. So while we celebrate Dr. King as a prophet of hope, I would like to celebrate another pair of civil rights heroes, John M Perkins, and his wife Vera Mae, as practitioners of reconciliation, who have so modeled for me the love and reconciliation of Jesus Christ.