The year is 1866. Thomas Coleman, a black man and former slave, living in SLC, Utah, committed the crime of walking with a white woman. The white woman’s family and friends, angered by this violation of social convention, slit Coleman’s throat and castrated him and dumped his body in a public place. They pinned a note to his chest that said, “Notice to all n*****s! Take warning!! Leave white women alone!!!”
Bartow, Florida. 1901. Fred Rochelle, a 16-year-old black boy is accused of allegedly murdering a white woman. Before a trial can be held, a mob of 100 men dragged Fred from a jail cell and carried him to the scene of the crime. There, he was chained to a barrel, doused with kerosene, and lit on fire, and was burned alive for 15 minutes. It was so popular that a train from a neighboring community was arranged so that spectators could attend the “barbecue.”
I could continue for literal volumes of accounts of extrajudicial lynchings that have taken place in the United States. It’s a part of our history that we forget at our peril. The brutal violence we have committed and, worse, justified, is nauseating. We are not a peaceful people. Despite our national and civic aspirations, we continue to commit atrocious acts of violence at home and abroad.
I do want to stay with our history of lynching for a minute. In every case of lynching, the people who committed the violence weren’t roving mobs looking for random people to kill and mutilate. To depict them that way lets them off the hook. Quite to the contrary, these people were otherwise civil and polite members of society. And most importantly, we can conclude that most of them were good, church-going Christian people.
In a place like Salt Lake City, Utah in the mid-19th century, everyone was Mormon. These were, ostensibly, people who believed in Jesus Christ. They read the bible. Hell, they liked the bible so much that they even wrote a sequel. Yet, they were able to accommodate an ethos that permitted brutal violence against another human being with impunity. Add to this that their experience had been one of victimization across the country, from upstate New York, through the Midwest, all the way to Utah. Violence tends to replicate itself in cycles. The abused tend to abuse.
Bartow, Florida had flourishing churches from the date of its founding up to the present day. This was not some godless expanse inhabited by savages. In the early 20th century, these people were attending church on Sundays and were even hosting traveling evangelists. In 1919, Billy Sunday, the arch-evangelist, thumped his bible at a crowd of 8000 souls in the city of Bartow.
There was something in the relationship the people of SLC and Bartow had with their churches that permitted them to be observant Christians on Sunday and lynch someone during the week. Think about that; their Christian faith could accommodate racism and inhumane violence. Those hundreds of people committed (and permitted) these atrocities and went to church the following Sunday and sang songs about Jesus.
So, when I hear that politicians and preachers want to impose Christian values upon our government institutions, it gives me no comfort or confidence that hate will not prevail and cause the atrocities of the Jim Crow to arise again.
It is possible to have Jesus in your heart while burning a black boy alive. Invoking Jesus’ name and waving a bible about no more makes you a Christian than swimming makes you a fish. If human history is any example, being a Christian isn’t exactly reliable protection against violent atrocities.
What we do matters. How we act matters.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is teaching his disciples after washing their feet. He gives them a new commandment: “…that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This is the only thing Jesus, the rabbi, added to Torah. Just one, single new commandment. “Love one another.” No qualifications or exceptions. I submit to you, whether you are a Christian or not, this is what turns around our society and quenches the fires of division that light the way to violence. We can discuss what loving each other looks like. But if we can begin with that one goal, I think there is hope.
Some people are hard to love. You know that as well as I do. We all have a shit list, right? A list full of people who make us feel some kind of way, like we want to squash them. Like we want to do violence. My list grows, seemingly by the day.
Imposing the bible on our culture and government misses the point of the bible entirely. What the bible tells us, from the beginning to the end, is that humans are just the worst and that, no matter the governing scheme, we’re going to utterly fuck our societies up. The pages of history are littered with the ruins of theocracies that collapsed on themselves because people can’t handle power. That’s what all that “last shall be first, first shall be last” stuff Jesus taught was all about. You can’t punch someone when you’re hugging them. Humility is an antidote to violence and it’s in woefully short supply. I’m running low, but I’m looking for more.