I don't know exactly where in the curriculum it should emerge, but somewhere in the education of every last Christian school student Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" should be required reading. For starters, it's literature, it's history, and it's theology. It's also current events.
I never read it until I was a teacher, never taught it until I was a teaching assistant at the university, where it was part of standard 101 curriculum. Those classrooms were diverse--in race and age, in ability and fealty. The "Letter" is not bitter, but it's anguished. If you've never read it, you should. (Here's an abridged version; it's available all over on the web).
King didn't pen the letter for the ages, only for white, moderate Christians who opposed his doing what he could to break segregation; it's for white, moderate Christians who didn't want him messing with the way things were, preaching and marching and sitting in, creating a mess.
I'm not altogether sure where my father got the language, but he used to call King "an agitator," one of those angry people who made things miserable for good people. My dad thought agitators were communists, and so was MLK, constantly mouthing off about blacks. Dad was sure King had a red streak in him--either that or he knew and collaborated with men and women who did.
King believed he was doing the Lord's work, and when he found himself at odds with the Christian church, he let them know. That's the substance of "Letter from the Birmingham Jail."
Jamar Tisby's The Color of Comprimise has a place in the tradition of King's "Letter." Like the prophetic note King sent to white pastors, Tisby's study outlines the relationships the church has taken toward racial justice in America. If you're white, reading The Color of Comprimise is no fun, because that history has little to commend it. White Christians have consistently been sitting on their hands. Worse, often as not, they've led the opposition to racial justice in America.
In our polarized society, Tisby has been getting a significant hearing in evangelical circles. The Color of Comprimise is a rarity for Zondervan, the publisher. If there are any Christian bookstores left (most have closed), Tisby's study of the church and race would almost certainly not be out front of the register. It's not about winning souls for Jesus; it's about doing the hard work of reconciliation. It notes our failures, and they are legion.
Our President doesn't believe in reading. If it can't be put on a flat screen, it simply doesn't exist. He wouldn't like it if he tried. But then, he doesn't believe in history either, believes Frederick Douglas is still around.
Thus, it seems, his most loyal local supporters, proud conservatives, have screamed outrage because Dordt College will host Tisby later this week. Give the man a podium and mike and an audience, they say, and he'll trumpet his heresies to impressionable youth. Can you imagine? Tisby believes we need to think about reparations. Tisby claims Christian believers should do more to further the cause of racial justice in America when those people have perfectly good bootstraps. Tisby thinks our inaction aids and abets the cause of the KKK.
Only rarely are Isaiah and Jeremiah "fun books." Mostly they're baroque indictments of God's people wandering off, finding their delight in a dance with other gods. Here and there the light shines, but mostly when you wander in the desert of the prophets, you can't help getting weary. Prophetic literature does just that, and King's "Letter" and Tisby's Color of Comprimise do too. It's not cat videos or Minecraft, nor is it Billy Graham.
And he's right. The Color of Comprimise is not unique. Others have told the story he retells. What's new is his arguments getting a place at small, Christian colleges like Dordt and Covenant. What's unusual is him saying what he does in places no one else has.
This week, he'll stand on the very stage where candidate Donald Trump, in January of 2016, repeated the prophetic line no one has ever forgotten: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters."
Tisby will have a different message, and I think that's a good, good thing.
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