Tom Skinner Urbana 1970

https://youtu.be/bvKQx4ycTmA 

Tom Skinner Was Not The Evangelical Radical You’re Looking For

By Jesse Curtis

Originally published April 15, 2019

The black evangelist Tom Skinner has often been portrayed as a kind of radical figure who challenged white evangelicals to confront racism. His speech at the 1970 Urbana Conference is particularly famous (that is, famous in the small world of black evangelical history).

It seems to me this reputation glosses over significant changes over time and evolution in Skinner’s thought. When he burst on the scene in 1966, he was a more complicated figure than the radical image implies. His views in 1970 should not be retroactively applied to the 1966-1968 period. Here’s an excerpt from an in-progress draft of a dissertation chapter:

Skinner represented a new kind of bridge figure between white evangelicalism and African Americans. It had long been the case, as Bob Harrison complained, that black Christians were encouraged to minister among their own people and steer clear of challenging white entitlement to spiritual authority. But white evangelicals did not imagine Skinner’s evangelistic crusades through the traditional parameters of segregated ministries. In fact, when Skinner came to town for a crusade, local white evangelical college students were encouraged to help out. Simply by supporting Skinner they were doing something meaningful about the nation’s racial troubles. He was less an outcast from white evangelicalism, as Harrison had sometimes felt himself to be in the 40s and 50s, and more an ambassador. Said Christianity Today, “Skinner has created a great deal of interest among evangelicals who worry vaguely that they might be missing the boat.”[1] In this project Skinner’s blackness was crucial and revealing of the ways the civil rights movement had upset racial norms in evangelicalism. Bob Harrison’s blackness had made him an outsider. Skinner’s blackness enabled him to act as a liminal figure, a provisional insider in two religio-racial communities at once. By the summer of 1967, Christianity Today was telling its readers that Skinner deserved their “fullest support.”[2]

Skinner was not afraid to make white evangelicals uncomfortable. They were “almost totally irresponsible” in their avoidance of their black brethren, and it was only the pressures of the civil rights movement that had belatedly stirred them from their complacency. He blasted white evangelicals who piously intoned that “Jesus was the answer” while refusing to get involved in the problem. Skinner believed Jesus was the answer too. But he had skin in the game, and he expected other evangelicals to join him. Yet it was precisely this supplicatory undertone that made Skinner’s criticisms manageable. For all the discomfort his words could cause, he did not doubt that white evangelicals had the correct theology on the point that mattered most, and he asked them to help him bring their theology to the ghetto. Christianity Today approvingly noted that Skinner “plays down social insurgence in his sermons because he feels that reform may take ‘sixty years’ but that regeneration through Christ can help now.”[3] To put it baldly, converted Negroes were not rioting Negroes.

Remarkably, Skinner’s criticisms of white evangelicals were tame compared to his open contempt for the black church. He described most black churches as bastions of excessive emotionalism and spiritual immaturity, led by ministers given over to sexual immorality and hypocrisy.[4] As a result, he claimed, “There is hardly any Christian witness in the ghetto.”[5] There’s little reason to suppose Skinner’s hostility toward the black church was anything but sincere, but it also proved useful. It flattered white evangelical assumptions of religio-racial superiority….

[1] “The Gospel with Candor,” Christianity Today, October 14, 1966, 53-54.

[2] “Summer of Racial Discontent,” Christianity Today, July 21, 1967, 27

[3] “The Gospel with Candor,” Christianity Today, October 14, 1966, 53-54.

[4] Skinner, Black and Free, 45-53.

[5] Skinner, Black and Free, 32.

Is God’s Love Conditional?

I value this serious devotion, for there’s major clarification of our traditional theological doctrines.

 By John Piper

[God] gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (James 4:6–8)

James teaches us that there is a precious experience of “more grace” and God “drawing near” to us.  Surely this is a wonderful experience — more grace and a special nearness of God. But I ask: is this experience of the love of God unconditional? No. It is not. It is conditional on our humbling ourselves and our drawing near to God. God “gives [more] grace to the humble... Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

There are precious experiences of the love of God that require that we fight pride, seek humility, and cherish the nearness of God.  Those are the conditions. Of course, the conditions themselves are the work of God in us.  But they are no less conditions we fulfill.

If this is true, I fear that the unqualified, biblically careless reassurances today that God’s love is all unconditional may stop people from doing the very things the Bible says they need to do in order to enjoy all the peace that they so desperately crave.  In trying to give peace through “unconditionality” we may be cutting people off from the very remedy the Bible prescribes.

To be sure, let us proclaim, loud and clear, that the divine love of election, and the divine love of Christ’s death, and the divine love of our regeneration — our new birth — are all absolutely unconditional.  And let us declare untiringly the good news that our justification is based on the worth of Christ’s obedience and sacrifice, not ours (Romans 5:19, “as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”).

But let us also declare the biblical truth that the fullest and sweetest experiences of the grace of God and the nearness of God will be enjoyed by those who daily humble themselves and draw near to God.

The Purpose of Prosperity

 By John Piper

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. (Ephesians 4:28).  There are three levels of how to live with material things: (1) you can steal to get them; (2) or you can work to get them; (3) or you can work to get in order to give.

Too many professing Christians live on level two. We glorify work over against stealing and mooching, and feel we have acted virtuously if we have spurned stealing and mooching, and given ourselves to an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. That’s not a bad thing. Work is better than stealing and mooching. But that’s not what the apostle calls us to.

Almost all the forces of our culture urge us to live on level two: work to get. But the Bible pushes us relentlessly to level three: work to get to give. “God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). Why does God bless us with abundance? So we can have enough to live on, and then use the rest for all manner of good works that alleviate spiritual and physical misery — temporal and eternal suffering. Enough for us; abundance for others.

The issue is not how much a person makes. Big industry and big salaries are a fact of our times, and they are not necessarily evil. The evil is in being deceived into thinking that a large salary must be accompanied by a lavish lifestyle.

God has made us to be conduits of his grace. The danger is in thinking the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn’t. Copper will do. Copper can carry unbelievable riches to others. And in the very process of that giving we enjoy the greatest blessing (Acts 20:35).

Plan for Prayer

By John Piper

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. . . . These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:7–8, 11)

Prayer pursues joy in fruitful fellowship with Jesus, knowing that God is glorified when we bear fruit in answer to prayer. Why do God’s children so often fail to have consistent habits of happy, fruitful prayer?

Unless I’m badly mistaken, one of the reasons is not so much that we don’t want to, but that we don’t plan to.

If you want to take a four-week vacation, you don’t just get up one summer morning and say, “Hey, let’s go today!” You won’t have anything ready. You won’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned.

But that is how many of us treat prayer. We get up day after day and realize that significant times of prayer should be a part of our life, but nothing is ready.

We don’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned. No time. No place. No procedure. And we all know that the opposite of planning is not a wonderful flow of deep, spontaneous experiences in prayer. The opposite of planning is the same old rut.

If you don’t plan a vacation, you will probably stay at home and watch TV. The natural, unplanned flow of spiritual life sinks to the lowest ebb of vitality. There is a race to be run and a fight to be fought. If you want renewal in your life of prayer, you must plan to see it.

Therefore, my simple exhortation is this: Let us take time this very day to rethink our priorities and how prayer fits in. Make some new resolve. Try some new venture with God. Set a time. Set a place. Choose a portion of Scripture to guide you.

Don’t be tyrannized by the press of busy days. We all need mid-course corrections. Make this a day of turning to prayer — for the glory of God and for the fullness of your joy.

Supplementary: https://youtu.be/N9I7mmpOaPU

 

God Heals By Humbling

 by John Piper

“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.” (Isaiah 57:18–19)

In spite of the severity of man’s disease of rebellion and willfulness, God will heal. How will he heal? Isaiah 57:15 says that God dwells with the crushed and humble. Yet the people of Isaiah 57:17 are not humble. They are brazenly pursuing their own proud way. So, what will a healing be?

It can only be one thing. God will heal them by humbling them. He will cure the patient by crushing his pride. If only the crushed and humble enjoy God’s fellowship (Isaiah 57:15), and if Israel’s sickness is a proud and willful rebellion (Isaiah 57:17), and if God promises to heal them (Isaiah 57:18), then his healing must be humbling and his cure must be a crushed spirit.

Isn’t this Isaiah’s way of prophesying what Jeremiah called the new covenant and the gift of a new heart? He said, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. . . . I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31, 33).

Isaiah and Jeremiah both see a time coming when a sick, disobedient, hard-hearted people will be supernaturally changed. Isaiah speaks of healing. Jeremiah speaks of writing the law on their hearts. And Ezekiel puts it like this: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).

So the healing of Isaiah 57:18 is a major heart transplant — the old hardened, proud, willful heart of stone is taken out, and a new soft, tender heart is put in, which is easily humbled and crushed by the memory of sin and the sin that remains. 

This is a heart that the lofty One whose name is Holy will dwell with forever.

America’s Racial Crisis is a Result of the Failure of the Church to Deal with Racism

The evangelical church needs to speak up where it has been silent on injustice and racism.

By Tony Evans

Jun 15, 2020

This column is part of Dallas Morning News’ ongoing opinion commentary on faith, called Living Our Faith.

³ “For many days [America] was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law. ⁴ But in their distress they turned to the Lord God of Israel, and they sought Him, and He let them find Him. ⁵ In those times there was no peace to him who went out or to him who came in, for many disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. ⁶ Nation was crushed by nation, and city by city, for God troubled them with every kind of distress. ⁷ But you, be strong and do not lose courage, for there is reward for your work.” (2 Chronicles 15:3-6)

We are in the middle of multiple, simultaneous pandemics. COVID-19 has created a medical pandemic, while recent racially motivated violence has kick-started a cultural pandemic and the devolution of our society. But amid all of this, it is obvious we are in a spiritual pandemic.

We have wandered away from a value system that was established by God for how human beings are to live, act and relate to one another. Across racial and class lines, we have come up with our own standards for how to treat each other, and it has not done us good. It is absolutely clear right now that there needs to be a reset, and this is the time to do it — when it has everyone’s attention at the very same time.

Psalm 89: 14 says that from God’s throne comes righteousness and justice. They are always to be balanced side-by-side.

Righteousness is the moral standard of right and wrong to which God holds people accountable based on His divine standard. Justice is the equitable and impartial application of God’s moral law in society.

God desires and requires his children to juxtapose both in our own daily doings. God wants to protect the life of the unborn in the womb, but He wants to see the justice of life once born, to the tomb. In other words, God wants a whole life agenda and not a term agenda. But unfortunately, all lives aren’t valued the same way in our country right now, and they ought to be, because every person is created in the image of almighty God.

It is now time, on a personal level and a systemic level, that we reverse the course of history that has brought us to this point and that we reverse it on every level. This is a defining moment for us as citizens to decide whether we want to be one nation under God or a divided nation apart from God. If we don’t answer that question right and if we don’t answer it quickly, we won’t be much of a nation at all.

God has four distinct spheres in which life is to be lived, and therefore, there are four areas in which changes need to be made, according to his kingdom agenda. The kingdom agenda is the visible manifestation of the comprehensive rule of God over every area of life.

This change first begins with the individual. We cannot change the nation if we don’t first allow God to change our hearts. We have to develop a heart that cares for our fellow man because they are created in the image of God. Not because they look like us or have what we have, but because they have the stamp of divine creation on them. And that means that you have the responsibility to reach out to somebody different than you, hear from that person, and build a relationship.

The harsh reality, yet one we must face, is that unfortunately, all lives aren’t valued the same way. All lives ought to be, because every person is created in the image of God. We are not to try and change others, if God can’t even change our own hearts. Unity starts with the individual. Each of us plays a part in healing our racial divide.

This individual transformation then must flow into the family as parents transfer these values to their children. We cannot expect people to think differently and act differently if they aren’t hearing differently from their parents, if they are not getting a righteous value system of judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

But this is only the first step; families must then make connections with other families who are different from them and partner together to serve yet another family that is worse-off than theirs. This is where reconciliation happens, not in seminars but in service.

Additionally, the evangelical church needs to speak up where it has been silent on injustice and racism.

The biggest problem in the culture today is the failure of the church. We wouldn’t even have a racial crisis in America if the church had not consistently failed to deal with racism as the severe sin it is. But because the church has historically ignored and downplayed it, the issue still exists. Where the church is called to set an example, we have cowered.

The church must address racial, economic, health care and opportunity inequity, as well as recognize the systems that work against the fair treatment of people. In doing so, they help to create opportunities for all to responsibly take advantage of all that God has blessed us with in this nation. We must further hold people accountable to be responsible for their decision-making.

The church must speak with one voice, because God doesn’t ride the backs of donkeys or elephants. We have one God, one Lord Jesus Christ and one inerrant Word to speak from. And yes, we should protest evil in a righteous way. We should let our voices be heard, but then we must act because if we don’t act, all we did was have a speech. We must implement righteous principles, modeling them through the church, so the world can see what it looks like in the broader society. And we in the body of Christ must collectively call racism what it is: sin. Racism isn’t a bad habit. It isn’t a mistake. It is sin. The answer is not sociology, it’s theology.

And then, finally, we must challenge our civil leaders on all levels of government to be agents of healing and not division and to speak in such a way where unity is reinforced and not divisiveness. We must demand that the words that come out of their mouths and the way they say the words that come out of their mouths, be words of strength and kindness, not vitriol and meanness. Additionally, they should represent God’s standard for how civil government should function.

When those four areas — the individual, the family, the church and the community — begin to operate based on God’s standard, then He can feel comfortable to get back in the midst of us and make us repairers of the breach and healers of the land.

It is time for us to fervently pray and repent of where we fail to do what God says to do, and the way he says do it. We must ask God to realign ourselves under his authority while pursuing a relationship with him so that his word can overrule our ideas, perspectives and agendas.

Until we take seriously God’s word and its application in all the categories of our lives, we won’t see what he can do in turning this mess into a healing miracle — the miracle we’ve all longed for. Remember, if God is your problem, only God is your solution (2 Chronicles 15:3-6).

Tony Evans is senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, president of The Urban Alternative, and an author and evangelical speaker. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.