A Distressing History

I am taking a class on American Church History.

It isn't pretty.

Currently I am reading a documentary witness on African American Religious History. The people who went to church on Sundays were the same ones who held slaves and treated them brutally during the week. When the church should have stood against this injustice, they found reasons to support it. It makes my heart break for the injustices committed by those who professed an all-covering grace and freedom in Christ, yet acted with such hostility and inhumanity.

So this is my question.

What injustices is the church, maybe unknowingly, letting happen today? What do we do during the week that is not compatible with what we preach on Sundays? Are we justifying things we do or support when really, if we look at the Scriptures we profess, are not justified?

It is food for thought.
Because our prayer and hope in studying history is that we do not repeat it.

"They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors." -Frederick Douglass 1845

Comments

  1. ...and then at other times one really needs to shout...amen...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Endings and Beginnings

Always Stuck In an Airport

Faith Within Suffering