It has been a while, but Justin Taylor posted a couple of items that might suggest the Co-Allies are not the best judges of their own attitudes toward race (as suggested in a previous post) or ethnicity. Some may want to read this post as mean-spirited, whose aim is to make the Coalition look bad. Others might say (myself among them) that the Gospel Co-Allies may want to consider better how they come across, in which case this post could be a free piece of advice from an outside consultant about the thorny realm of the politics of identity. I provoke, you decide.
The post in question here refers to the children’s book that Eric Metaxas wrote a few years ago about Squanto, the native American who saved the Pilgrims during the first informal observance of Thanksgiving. Taylor doesn’t say much, but he provides links to the Amazon cite for the book and to a CNN interview with Metaxas from a few years ago.
This is the Amazon book description:
This entertaining and historical story shows that the actual hero of the Thanksgiving was neither white nor Indian, but God. In 1608, English traders came to Massachusetts and captured a 12-year old Indian, Squanto, and sold him into slavery. He was raised by Christians and taught faith in God. Ten years later he was sent home to America. Upon arrival, he learned an epidemic had wiped out his entire village. But God had plans for Squanto. God delivered a Thanksgiving miracle: an English-speaking Indian living in the exact place where the Pilgrims land in a strange new world.
In his interview, Metaxas tells the host that this story was a “beautiful thing,” a “picture of the harmony we had right at the beginning of our history.”
Maybe I’m jaded or simply Reformed, but I am not sure that this story is where you want to go to pull the rabbit out of the hat of “God will and does provide for his people.” Calling it a miracle without addressing the pain and suffering does seem too sunny-side up and it hardly comports with the narratives of the Old Testament. It reminded me of the Sunday school stories I would hear where teachers spared students from the dark side of human suffering or the troubling realities that did not fit with a Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know view of the world. And there is plenty of dark in this story — slavery, European treatment of native Americans, and possibly even racism (if you want to go there). And yet Justin encourages us to view this with the tidy bow of God’s miracle in saving his people? Does it not take a little insensitivity to ignore the brutal treatment of native Americans? Or should not a Christian at least talk about the hidden ways of God? Instead, we get an “inspirational” story that allows us to feel warm about our turkey dinners and the meaning of Thanksgiving.
Here’s a piece of advice to Justin: take this post down before someone who cares about social justice, racism, and the rights of native Americans — at least those outside the genteel and rosy Coalition circles — sees it. (Or at least change the graphics since I am not sure native Americans are supposed to look so European.)
Old Life 
Re: …the Gospel Co-Allies may want to consider better how they come across…
This is off-topic, but sorta not if the WHI is considered a co-ally. Please check out this handy-dandy, adjective laden, crass commercialization of the gospel:
http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2011/11/09/get-liberateed-for-55-ends-today
I can’t stop cringing.
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P.S. Am I the only one who noticed that Christ is missing from this marketing promo? Christ for you – who suffered for you, who kept the law for you, who shed his blood for you, who laid down his life for you, Christ who purchased God’s grace for you – WHO IS THE SOURCE OF ALL GRACE FOR YOU… (eg: where is the content of the gospel = my Savior – battered, bloody, bruised, crucified, and resurrected for me?).
The title of the speakers’ lectures: Graces liberates our City, Grace liberates our Discipleship, Grace liberates us from Idolatry, Grace liberates our Marriage, Grace Liberates our Message, Grace & Pop Culture… Or what about this typical evangelical catch-phrase quote: “I’m convinced that God is summoning us to go deeper, to go “higher up and further back.”
It sounds like a lot of evangelical hype to jazz up and market the gospel and a focus that doesn’t put Christ center stage from whom the river of grace flows to all men. Is grace being marketed? A grace disembodied from it’s source? Is there savlic grace for you apart from Christ?
Compare this upcoming pop evangelical shindig to this snippet from an ordnary Lutheran Sabbath homily:
“The law is there to shut up every mouth, to hold the whole world accountable to God, and by the works of the law – by doing your very best – no human being will ever be justified, that is, declared righteous before God. BUT NOW the righteousness of God (there’s the term Luther was worrying at), now God’s righteousness has been manifested – it showed up – apart from the law! Apart from your doing and not doing! It showed up as God’s gift in Jesus to all who believe. All have sinned, all fall short of God’s glory, and all are justified – declared righteous – by God’s grace as a gift through the redemption that’s in Jesus Christ. God put Him forth before you as your propitiation – the sacrifice that wipes out of your sin and the world – His blood does that. His cross was all about that. And faith trusts that His blood has done the job. Your sin on Him and so gone. His righteousness then on you. God is your justifier. You don’t need to justify yourself. You can’t. But He can. He did when He raised His Son from the dead. It counts for you and for all who believe. No boasting then, no pride. Wiped out by the way faith works. Instead, God declares you righteous – holy, perfect, without sin – by faith, apart from anything you do or don’t do. What a gift! For God’s heart to you!
Ah, the prison opened! Instead of ceaselessly trying and failing to somehow do enough for God to love you, accept you, embrace you; the Gospel gives you free, unearned, even unsought that love, that acceptance, that embrace. You’ve got all you need for time and for eternity from the hand of God. And so, as I said earlier, you’re free then to love your neighbor without the backward glance of how many divine brownie points its earning you. You do it with freedom and abandon so that you can even say: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you?” Faith only looks to Jesus and not to its own doings.”
Again, I ask: Where is Christ in the Liberate Conference promo materials? Is grace located in Christ through faith? Where is the humble ordinary church to provide the means of grace? Why all the hype instead of a homely church with the means of grace? Am I the only one struck by these omissions and wondering if we are looking at a new and improved para-church organization with revival instincts?
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Sorry, Dr. Hart. I apologize. I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t mean to lead this off topic. I’m a cranky curmudgeon about this and let it get to me. Please delete me.
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“Ten years later he was sent home to America. Upon arrival, he learned an epidemic had wiped out his entire village”
Wow. Just wow. Any mention of how the epidemic that wiped out the entire village likely resulted from the exotic diseases delivered by the settlers? Any mention of how, when the Pilgrims were weak and dying and freezing, the Native Americans had pity on them and helped them out, but then when they became more powerful, they used their power to acquire more land and more power, often through exploitation and violence? How they viewed imported diseases eviscerating entire tribes as God wiping the land clean for them? How the settlers would withhold potentially life-saving medicine until the Native Americans agreed to give up large tracts of land? Yes, somehow, in some way, God was indeed mysteriously at work in all of this, and yes, many Natives did hear and receive the gospel as a result of this invasion and conquest, and yes, the Native Americans in some instances killed and brutalized the Europeans(but likely less so than the Europeans did to them), but the picture is much more complex and difficult and in some ways horrific than can or should be conveyed in a sanitized, Sunday-school version. The Bible goes out of its way NOT to lionize its heroes and heroines; in fact, it shows more of their sin than we are comfortable with. Seems like we could learn a thing or two from God aka author of the Bible about the way we portray ours and His work among them.
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Jeffrey, and imagine if anyone said that slavery contributed to the evangelization of African-Americans.
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DG, I also thought it was bad taste for Taylor to make that post. Not that the book itself is wrong or that Thanksgiving should be shunned as claimed by some younger liberals, but I think such material can be divise and unhelpful. Surely, Taylor has other helpful contant he could have posted.
Since your concern is how TGC ‘comes across’ I ask if whether you have considered if your blog content comes across to other Reformed Christians in a negative manner?
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This little episode should go on The Colbert Report. Hilarious picture, perfect God-and-country premise. What a joke.
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DGH:
Why do you hate America and our freedoms?
If the atrocities committed by Puritans in King Philip’s War are wrong, then I don’t know what to believe anymore!
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