A Better Cure Than Abortion

An opinion on William Bennett's remark on blacks, abortion and crime...

A Better Cure Than Abortion
By William Raspberry
The Washington Post
Monday, October 10, 2005

"You know by now what William Bennett said: "You could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." What you may not have figured out is what your reaction to his statement should be. You could demand that the former education secretary and drug "czar" apologize, be fired by the radio station on which he made the remark and be ridden out of town on a rail. You could say: "What a wonderful solution to crime. Let's do it -- oops, I forgot, I'm opposed to abortion."

You could call for an end to the hypocrisy, noting that Bennett made crystal clear -- even as he was delivering his awful words -- that he was not recommending any such "impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible" action, only making a rhetorical point on quite another matter. You could challenge the underlying premise that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of the nation's crime -- which is what the Justice Policy Institute is trying to do. Jason Ziedenberg, the institute's executive director, has been making a number of points: among them that blacks are more likely than whites to end up in prison for the same offenses and that, holding constant such factors as education, employment and family structure, blacks are no more criminally disposed than whites.

Or you could tell a story.

I'd like to tell a story. Some years ago, South Africa's game managers had to figure out what to do about the elephant herd at Kruger National Park. The herd was growing well beyond the ability of the park to sustain it. The two-phase solution: transport some of the herd to the Pilanesberg game park and kill off some of those that were too big to transport. And so they did. A dozen years later, several of the transported young males (now teenagers) started attacking Pilanesberg's herd of white rhinos, an endangered species. They used their trunks to throw sticks at the rhinos, chased them over long hours and great distances, and stomped to death a tenth of the herd -- all for no discernible reason.

Park managers decided they had no choice but to kill some of the worst juvenile offenders. They had killed five of them when someone came up with another bright idea: Bring in some of the mature males from Kruger -- there was by then the technology to transport the larger animals -- and hope that the bigger, stronger males could bring the adolescents under control.To the delight of the park officials, it worked. The big bulls, quickly establishing the natural hierarchy, became the dominant sexual partners of the females, and the reduction in sexual activity among the juveniles lowered their soaring testosterone levels and reduced their violent behavior.

The new discipline, it turned out, was not just a matter of size intimidation. The young bulls actually started following the Big Daddies around, enjoying the association with the adults, yielding to their authority and learning from them proper elephant conduct. The assaults on the white rhinos ended abruptly. There's no more point in denying Bennett's implication that black youngsters are more likely than their white counterparts to commit crimes than in denying the dismaying behavior of those adolescent elephants.

Here's the point: For reasons arguably as benign as those that led to the tragedy of Pilanesberg, America's black inner cities have been denuded of their adult men. It started, in my memory, in the 1960s with the enforcement of the man-in-the-house rule, whereby welfare payments were cut off if investigators could establish that an adult able-bodied male (whether or not he was employed) lived in the household. And the de-manizing went completely out of control with the introduction of absurdly long and mandatory sentences for crack cocaine offenses and the implementation of such judge-proof policies as the three-strikes-and-you're-out rule.

The result is that huge numbers of black men are being taken out of their communities -- overwhelmingly for nonviolent offenses -- and the effect of their absence is at least as powerful as with the South African elephants. Except now we know. Social scientists across the political spectrum tell us that father absence is a stronger predictor of criminal behavior than family income, education -- or (Bill Bennett, take note) race.

And while individual youngsters can manage life without father reasonably well in many cases, few are able to come unscathed through fatherless communities . Americans are right to be worried about crime. But we'd better learn from the elephants' tale and take care that the cure doesn't exacerbate the very problem we're trying to solve."

Evangelicals Tilting Left?

The following article, Evangelicals Tilting Left?, was in this morning's edition of The Orlando Sentinel. It shares some interesting history on the involvement of evangelicals in issues of social justice and provides an interesting challenge as the Campus Ministry moves forward with "Good News/Good Deeds" proclamation of the gospel.  Here's a highlight from David Stienmetz's piece:

Unlike most African-American evangelicals, who are politically liberal and form a core constituency of the Democratic Party, white evangelicals, especially in the South, have a more complex relationship to their Democratic past. Some changed their voting habits, but not their registration, while others eventually bolted. After trying to woo them back, many discouraged Democratic politicians concluded that the cause was hopeless. Evangelical is a synonym for right-wing.

The situation on the ground, however, is a good deal more confused. In addition to evangelicals who are convinced Republicans (like George W. Bush) or equally convinced Democrats (like Jimmy Carter), there is a third group harder to describe. Rick Warren, pastor of the 45,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., calls them "reluctant Republicans."

"Reluctant Republicans" are evangelicals who find no welcome in the Democratic Party for pro-life people like them. They are therefore Republicans by default. Yet on a wide range of social issues, these evangelicals hold positions that often find a more natural base of support among Democrats.

"Reluctant Republicans" worry about racial reconciliation in America (starting with but not limited to the churches), about global warming and stewardship of the natural resources of the planet, about the AIDS pandemic (especially in Africa) and the growing problem of AIDS orphans, about world hunger and the breathtaking poverty in which the majority of the world's population lives.

Evangelicals who want to take action on these issues have slowly realized that theological orthodoxy is not at odds with social reform, but demands it. The gospel is about justice as well as about mercy. The old dichotomy that for so long divided a personal gospel from a social one was false from the start and corrupt in its implementation.

Which means that it may be time for non-evangelicals to abandon some cherished assumptions about evangelicals as monolithically right-wing. Evangelicals are too large and diverse and changing a group to be safely reckoned in any party's hip pocket.

To read the complete article click here.

The Influence of Culture on Ministry

Last night I watched a program on PBS dealing with the O.J. Simpson trial. It's now been ten years since that trial ended, but what it revealed to us about race in America cannot be forgotten. It sometimes takes incidents like the Simpson verdict or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to remind us that not all Americans view things the same way. Why is it that most African Americans cheered the O.J. verdict, while most white Americans were disgusted? Why do many African Americans feel that the slow response in New Orleans has to do with race, while many white people think that race has nothing to do with it?

Whether we personally feel that O.J. was guilty or not or whether race played a role in the slow response to Katrina is not the most pressing question for us. We need to realize that the perspective of the white, evangelical community do not always coincide with those in the black community. The question for those of us that are white and are seeking to reach out to those in the black community is this: Are we willing to set aside our personal viewpoints that don't necessarily come from Scriptures in order to reach the lost?

Our views on hip-hop, George W. Bush, affirmative action, the police, capitalism, etc. may be very different than the lost people we're seeking to reach. Will we stay true to the gospel message that Jesus lived, died, was buried and rose again so that we could have eternal life? Or will we insist on ostracizing the lost because of our political preferences or our views of the American justice system? This is one of the unique challenges of ministering cross-culturally in the United States. We were born here. We have lived here most (if not, all) or lives and we bring with us very strong opinions on this country and how things should be done and how people should act.

When I go as a missionary to a country like Albania, I'm pretty indifferent to Albanian people and their culture. I really don't know much about them one way or another. I learn as I go. However....when I'm a white American ministering to black Americans, I'm not coming in with a clean slate. I carry past experiences, prejudices, stereotypes, and an array of fears. And, oftentimes, the people I'm seeking to reach also carry experiences, prejudices, stereotypes, and an array of fears with them.

I guess what we have to ask ourselves is if we're going to ask the lost to overcome their fears in order to hear the gospel or if I'm going to trust God to overcome my fears so that they can hear it?