Tried With Fire

Cranford is one my favorite novels. It's a charming work set in a small town in England in the 19th century and contains all the ingredients an Anglophile like me could possibly want. But in addition, the author, Elizabeth Gaskell , paints an accurate picture of the class system that was entrenched in society. Perhaps that is why I love her character Captain Brown because he defied those conventions. He had to make do on a very limited income but was unashamed and kind to all people regardless of their class. He helped a poor woman carry her meal from the communal bakehouse to her home and did not apologize for this act, even though the Cranford gentry thought he committed a grave social faux pas. Given the influence of the past, I can't help but wonder if we inherited some of those same classist ideas. We ape our betters by trying to keep up with the Joneses. We pretend we live in a world where everyone is middle class and no one we know (especially not us!) is living from p...

The following quotes are from  Heal Us, Emmanuel: A Call for Racial Reconciliation, Representation, and Unity in the Church , which contains contributions from various pastors in the PCA. I started reading this in earnest over the weekend and could not put it down. I don't agree with everything, but there is much that I do. Regardless, this book is thought-provoking and uncovers assumptions and unconscious privilege that the Christian majority culture  (white culture)   may be bringing to the table. There is more that I could write particularly in how those assumptions trickle down in application for women, but it will have to wait. My day job is calling me. You may disagree completely that there is any privilege whatsoever in play. Fair enough. My intent is not to point the finger but to  encourage you to listen to a side you may not have considered before. Above all, my motive is for the peace and healing of the Bride of Christ. I told them I was an elder o...

This has been a time of raising my own awareness. You would have to be living under a rock to not realize that America is becoming an increasingly divided nation over the issues of race, class, and immigration. Reading Divided by Race , at the recommendation of an African American brother, was eye-opening. Here you have professing believers who have almost opposite assessments of racial issues within the American church. Why do we think so differently? What produced these two wide trajectories? Then came the racial incident involving Michael Luo, deputy metro editor of The New York Times. Now it was much closer to home because, after hearing his story and many others that poured forth, these were my people. Their stories are very much like mine. So to gain more understanding, I began to read and listen. The first book was The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee. This was a fascinating book and quite a feat given its scope. I had no idea that Asian immigrants first came to Cen...

I finished listening to White Trash: The 400-Year-Old-History of Class in America by LSU history professor, Nancy Isenberg. If you believe that America is a classless society founded on the principle of equal opportunity for all, this book will burst that bubble. The following quote from the epilogue jumped out at me because it accurately assesses, in my opinion, how politicians have manipulated different sectors in society including the "Christian vote."  Moved by the need for control, for an unchallenged top tier, the power elite in American history has thrived by placating the vulnerable and creating for them a false sense of identification - denying real class differences whenever possible. pg. 313. I also highly recommend this Pass the Mic podcast with Andy Crouch, author and executive editor of Christianity Today. His take on the dynamics of the 2016 election, politics, and the treatment of the vulnerable is spot on. Now when "class inequality" is...