We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
An Uneasy History
Although Abraham Lincoln is widely regarded as a tireless champion for the equal rights of African Americans, there are many indications that he held views that we would find shocking today. It’s important to understand the reality of our history to truly appreciate the challenges we face in the area of racial reconciliation today. In her New York Times article entitled A Separate Peace, Kate Masur delves into parts of our history that are sometimes hard to comprehend.
From the article:
Those interested in the history of abolition and racial equality would find few incidents in Lincoln’s presidency as dispiriting as the president’s Aug. 14, 1862, meeting with a delegation of five black men from Washington. It was dispiriting then as well: to the dismay of those hoping the Civil War would lead to full citizenship for African-Americans, Lincoln informed the delegation that “you and we are different races” and proposed that the five men be progenitors of a black colony the government would establish in Chiriquí, a region of what is now Panama.
Image by rodolfo. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Racial Reconciliation
Related Reading
Ferguson, Racism, & the Kingdom
In light of the issues that have arisen in Ferguson, Mo this last week (for more on this click here), we thought we would offer some reflections on this topic from Greg that he wrote several years ago. A version of this piece eventually ended up in Greg’s book Myth of a Christian Religion. ___________________________________ Many…
Podcast: Overflow Episode 3—Mass Incarceration, Racism, and Restorative Justice
Dan interviews Dominique Gilliard about his book Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0375.mp3
Christena Cleveland on Practices for Sociological Imagination
Christena Cleveland recently sat down with Tod Bolsinger (Vice President for Formation and Vocation at Fuller Theological Seminary) to discuss the intersection of privilege and leadership. You can find a series of short videos capturing different aspects of this conversation here. Today we wanted to share one of these videos with you. We hope you’ll take the time to…
Reversing Babel
Several generations after the flood, we read in Gen 11 how humans were still living in one locale and had one common language and culture. Then someone came up with the brilliant idea that they should construct an enormous tower that would reach “to the heavens” in order to make a name for themselves and…
Something Further on Ferguson: I Raise My Hands
Osheta Moore is a friend of ReKnew with a unique Kingdom vision. She is a voice you will want to be listening to. She wrote this sensitive and prophetic piece on her personal response to the death of Michael Brown and the subsequent events in Ferguson called I Raise My Hands: A Prayerful Response to…
A Step Toward Racial Reconciliation
In this sermon clip, Greg, as a representative of a white man in America, asks for forgiveness of people of color for all the harm that white America has done. This is not about disparaging whiteness. This is simply about acknowledging the truth of our heritage so that we can make a way for healing,…