{"id":460,"date":"2014-08-29T11:53:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T11:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/08\/cheap-peace.html"},"modified":"2014-08-29T11:53:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T11:53:00","slug":"cheap-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/08\/cheap-peace.html","title":{"rendered":"Cheap Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
People are already calling for rest in Ferguson. People are demanding calm and peace. Yet, there has been no justice. There has been no repentance for the crimes committed against young black men and women when they are murdered by police officers every 28 hours in this country.<\/span><\/div>\n
Civil Rights leader Ella Baker prophetically asserted, \u201cUntil the killing of Black men, Black mothers\u2019 sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a White mother\u2019s son\u2014we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.\u201d Baker unequivocally calls for this nation to work towards justice. I interpret her statement as an argument against \u201ccheap peace.\u201d When I speak of cheap peace, I refer to a temporary calm that comes from sweeping the hard truths of injustice underneath our societal rug so that such hard truths are out of sight and out of mind. It is a peace that is cheap because it costs us nothing. It bypasses the hard work that comes with truth telling and correcting deep systemic injustices. When there are calls for cheap peace, one must ask, \u201cFor whose benefit?\u201d Does avoiding hard truths help to protect the marginalized and suffering or does it protect an abusive and oppressive system? Justice is the prerequisite upon which peace, reconciliation, and healing must be built. Without truth telling and justice, we seek a cheap peace, which is temporary and false. Faith communities must avoid seeking a cheap peace in Ferguson until we have challenged and eradicated the racist systems that cause violence and darkness in this country.<\/span><\/div>\n
Martin Luther King reminds us of the danger of settling for cheap peace. King\u2019s \u201cLetter From a Birmingham Jail\u201d can be interpreted as a theological manifesto attacking calls for cheap peace. In this letter, King responds to his critics, who called his leadership against segregation laws in Birmingham \u201cunwise and untimely.\u201d His critics denounced his leadership of the demonstrations he led in Birmingham, arguing that such activities promoted unrest and violence instead of peace and healing. King responds to his critics by expressing his regret that they did not \u201cexpress a similar concern for the conditions that brought about demonstrations.\u201d He further states that a social analysis that focuses on effects without grappling with underlying causes is a superficial analysis. For King, the underlying cause for protests against racial injustice in America is always and already tied to inequitable and uncaring systems that subjugate Blacks to second-class citizenship. A responsible theology involves critical social analysis of the dehumanizing root causes of perceived an\/or real social effects (any anger or rage that manifests among oppressed groups) in order to inaugurate justice in response to degrading causes and conditions.<\/span><\/div>\n
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People are already calling for rest in Ferguson. People are demanding calm and peace. Yet, there has been no justice. There has been no repentance for the crimes committed against young black men and women when they are murdered by police officers every 28 hours in this country. Civil Rights leader Ella Baker prophetically asserted, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCheap Peace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"People are already calling for rest in Ferguson. People are demanding calm and peace. Yet, there has been no justice. 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