Transcript
JOHNSON: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm deeply grateful for this opportunity to share with you at a very crucial hour in our experience and in the life of our nation, and I hope that what I have written, though brief, is sufficiently provocative to engage your thinking
and your further deliberation and expression so that we might have the benefit of sharing rather than simply my vocalizing a personal point of view. When I chose to address these remarks to those who stand behind with the stuff, I did not have in mind
any who are content to recite yesterday's clichés, or to recount its victories. Rather, I was concerned for those for whom the incarnation is the pivotal event, and who -- though they despair of ever fully apprehending Christ -- bulldoggedly and unashamedly insist that he is normative
for all meaning. For I hold that once anyone has been empowered by Christ to say, "From now on we regard no one from a human point of view," that person has crossed over the boundary of prudence into the Father's country of spontaneity and creation:
that country in which a settled ancient goes forth as an adventurer, a barren old woman bears a son, and a scheming brother not only obtains the birthright, but fulfills its highest expectation. Similarly, into that country where five loaves
and two fishes aptly feed 5,000; Jairus's daughter and Lazarus, though dead, live again; and tired, frustrated fishermen, merely by launching out a little further into the deep take a draught of fist too large for their boat to carry. Such is the radical difference of
life there, that whether it is recorded in the Old Testament, the New, or in the "Now" Testament of contemporary experience, He who holds no office, commands no armies, wins no wars, ratifies no peace, dispenses no patronage, but comes
from the most despised loins and is mocked by 350 years for obscurity, becomes the moral leader of the world and His country's first private citizen, and who, though His name is king, does not embarrass even garbage men with His companionship. Hence, now is not
the time for us who dwell in the Father's country to become weary, to slack in an iota in our efforts for racial justice, reconciliation between East and West, or accept the predicament of the poor, rather, as never before, we must life our voices, walk our streets,
petition our magistrates, importune our congressmen, share our wealth, risk our institutional security, and intercede with our God to help us find our brother where he lives, that through our manifest concern and imprudent conduct,
we may embolden him to trust us to lead him into his Father's presence. Anything less belies our faith and scandalizes his humanity. Nevertheless, the issue is not our faith, as precious as we regard it, and as important as it is for our wellbeing. The issue is our
brother's humanity. This is why all talk of whether God is dead or not is immaterial, just as talk of ecclesiastical relationships -- that is, church vis-a-vis church -- miss the mark, unless a new humanism is proclaimed and supported
by the projected structure. The old humanitarianism that allowed white Christians to condescend to and patronize non-Christians, or black, brown, and yellow Christians, and to make them the objects of charity according to their preference is passé. Today, all men either stand on the level-ground
around the cross, or they dig in for long warfare, ready to destroy one another with napalm, Molotov cocktail, or undisguised hate. Superficial distinctions of whether a person considers himself or his brother the citizen of a developed or an undeveloped country are beside the point. We are cosmopolites,
whether vicariously by watching an astronaut circle space on the television screen, or experientially by living and fighting in a faraway rice country. If not intellectually, emotionally, at least, the accustomed walls of nationality, class, and race have been thrown down and we are free to
explore each other's difference and rejoice in each other's courage. This is what the youth -- this generation's own children at Columbia and Harvard; in Paris and Czechoslovakia -- are saying loud and clear, and woe unto any who are two deaf to hear. It will make no difference a generation
hence why we withheld our support of them. Neither loyalty to the university, nor the church, nor whiteness, nor property values, nor law and order, nor gradualism will excuse our stupidity. A new world is aborning, and we are either new men in Christ with the courage to welcome
and hasten its birth and growth, or we are the dead, left to bury their dead behind masks of pleasant but ineffectual face-saving. This is the time which Reinhold Niebuhr rightly described as "between the times," and what Paul Tillich calls "Kairos," and no one shall escape its judgement. The judgement does not
condemn yesterday. It takes history seriously and properly avoids imposing today's content upon yesterday's data. Life did not hold the same options for our fathers as it does for us. They lived when instantaneous communication and transcontinental travel, automated industry and systems of analysis were not. Neither
were surplus people as commonplace as they are today in the complex metropolitan centers or deserted rural districts. This makes the situation essentially different and confronts us, not alone with new challenges, but with new obligations as well. What to do is clear. We must renounce
most if not all of our simplicities, and forcefully acknowledge that we are collective men, and that very little if any choice remains for us to act on individual preference. Super government, mass recreation, increased density of population, automation of industry,
underemployment and unemployment of millions have eliminated the possibility of further propounding an individual ethic with validity. What is needed is a collective ethic rooted in the Old Testament's consciousness of a people -- not with the exclusiveness of the priestly tradition, of course, but with the
universal one of the eighth century prophets. The formulation is not as clear as the direction, but I leave that formulation on the desk of you who are systematic theologians. There are, however, myriad obstacles. We cannot capitulate to crass materialism, either
dialectical or natural, neither can we try to play God and be satisfied with an idealism that glosses over real power struggles. Reconciliation is not a prerequisite to, but consequence of genuine confrontation, and is only possible when both sides have in a real sense been made aware of the other's claims
to legitimacy, and each other's capacity to mobilize men and resources to undo them if some appreciable accommodation is not made. It is dishonesty toward and demeaning of an adversary to expect him to surrender his advocacy of a specific cause by holding out to him the palm
branch of reconciliation as though you have no vested interest in the victory of yours. God alone reconciles. He is the one who makes the living water spring from the rock. We stand before it on the dry land, with faith in His capacity,
not ours. Indeed, we err grievously when we presume either that we can remove the rock, or so fanaticize the desert that it becomes fertile soil. Just such a rock and hard place surrounds us with James Forman. There are those who would eliminate him with a court injunction, and if
need be imprisonment, and others who would tell us that the church is fully capable of settling black-white relations aright without such demands as he has made, if only it is left to follow its own leadership and to determine its own style. Three hundred and fifty years of Christian mission to Africa's sons on this continent
do not validate those assumptions. On the contrary, they make it indisputably clear that without the troubling of Israel, old and new, there is no prospect of either dignity or equity for the black man in America. The churches, like all other American institutions, have
flourished by exploiting the black man's political helplessness, his economic insecurity, and his social unacceptance. This doesn't mean that the churches have never ministered compassionately to him. The record clearly reveals that they have, from time to time. But it has always been at their discretion
or convenience, never in terms of the intensity of the hurt he felt or the patience he exhausted. Either you or I may have stated the rationale differently, and even have set other priorities than the Black Manifesto, but we are not making the agenda alone.
Forman and his associates drew it. Not without our help, to be sure. The steaming black ghettos of every major American city, Martin Luther King Jr.'s defeat in Cicero, James Meredith's injury doing his freedom walk in Mississippi, the snail-like
pace of desegregation of public schools across the land since 1954, the white backlash of Berry Goldwater's candidacy, the election of a conservative, Republican president, the prolonged war in Vietnam, and the disproportionate use of black troops in that war, have each contributed an
item. What we are engaged with is an escalation of frustration. If this society had taken the NAACP and the Urban League seriously, there would have been no Martin Luther King Jr. If we had taken non-violent, civil disobedience seriously, there would have been no Malcolm X.
If we had taken boisterous protests seriously, there would have been no Watts riot. If we had taken Watts seriously, there would have been no Stokely Carmichael's exclusiveness. If we had taken black power seriously, there would have been no national black economic development conference. Each stage has dictated
the next, and each voice has become more strident. It requires little if any imagination to affirm what the Kerner Report detailed: our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate, and unequal. Shall we continue on this toboggan, or dare to take
Forman seriously and have the grace to trust God to reverse the course?
MODERATOR: We're ready for questions. He wants to make first an observation, than a question.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: [Dr. Adams?], I'd like to [perhaps?] speak [with you?] make comments regarding reparation.
MODERATOR: The question was, "Would the speaker make comments regarding reparations.
JOHNSON: Ordinarily, reparation associates the cause with the penalty of defeat: you pay them because you are defeated. There is a sense, of course, I think that the analogy can be repressed, but there isn't defeat in our society -- a very critical and grave and manifest defeat.
I'd prefer, however, to think of it then, in this instance, as restitution, and as legitimately a proffered penance, which as a church or as church rightly should pay in the light of our complicity and
our derived benefits from a society in which discrimination and proscription and segregation are systemic, and in which racism is very prevalent. I would talk further with you [on the subject?].
Yes?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: Last night, we heard a message from the [Mr. Sullivan?] of the OIC, and there's been some conversation since among people from various presbyteries and synods in regard to using monies that the synods and presbyteries have for investment in black enterprise of various kinds. I was wondering if the presbytery of New York has freed up any such money, either on the basis of loans or grants, and what types of businesses they might be
able to invest them in.
MODERATOR: Did you all hear the question? The question is basically whether the presbytery of New York has been able to free up funds for economic investment of the sort that was discussed by the representative of Mr. Sullivan last night at OIC and the other things.
JOHNSON: The answer to the question is, the presbytery of New York has done very little. It did free up $125,000 in such investments as of last May -- not May '69 but '68. It has invested this money in negro banks, which in turn have invested it in businesses in Harlem and in Queens. Furthermore, the presbytery has committed
itself and instructed its budget and finance committee to make available one million dollars for further implementation of the kind of concern and investments that you have spoken about in developing its program models in the area of housing, economic development, recreation, and
community welfare.
MODERATOR: Other questions? Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Well, my [spring out?] pressure raised as I [considered?] reparations, or [is that?] another item?
JOHNSON: I think that's another item. These are things that the presbytery is doing voluntarily -- I never heard of paying reparations voluntarily -- and supposedly under the impulse and the initiative of our own Christian persuasion and sensitivity. What is involved, I believe, in the principle of reparations is that a concept of demand,
and if that's what -- this is the stumbling block. This is where Christians -- not only of Presbyterian persuasion, but of other persuasions -- are disposed to use the figure that [we do nothing that we want or we'll do nothing with a gun at our heads?]. The unfortunate feature of that argument is that
this allows us the luxury of determining the tempo by which change shall be effected, and assumes that we have such a purity of motive and the clarity of vision and the profundity of understanding
that if we're simply left to our own devices, we need no external pressure to do that which is satisfactory. There's a bigger issue, however, than that, and it is whether or not the churches can share power,
whether they have a perception of the crisis and of the desperate predicament of the black man and the brown man in our society and in our culture that they can voluntarily -- however propelled --
share power. It's like Sidney Cartman says in "The Tale of Two Cities" when he was asked did he fall down the steps? He said, "No sir. I was kicked to the top of the steps, I fell down of my own free will and volition." Now, if Forman and the others have kicked us to the top of the steps and we want to fall down of our own free will and volition, that in
itself is considerable, and I think more than justification for having been kicked to the top. But the underlying question is whether we have within the fellowship of the Christian church sufficient conviction of the seriousness of our situation and of the
propriety of the black and brown and other minority people's desperation to share power, because what is being asked is not the natural and ready response of [synods?].
What is being asked is a deliberate and responsible response to a condition that is beyond endurance and patience and which unless it is met, as I tried to indicate
in my little statement, will further escalate the frustration, and portend -- not more and more vocalizing, but more and more polarizing, and ultimately,
locking us in with mortal combat between the black and the white man in American society.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: What [Dr. Johnson?] and his Christian strategy -- I guess there was a series of remarks in one sentence of your magnificent paper which spell out to a political approach an social approach, etc., [relative dollar?] being [twenty billion?] in America, [we told of?] all community
chest being [rattled and drained?] and church contributions of a similar amount, is the answer for Christian [laymen?] then to be totally involved politically and socially and economically and in other ways and otherwise, but what is the role of the church in this and, if you could put yourself in the position of being a pastor in an affluent suburban church,
what would be your strategy?
JOHNSON: Never had that opportunity, but I'll try to speak vicariously. I think the strategy, of course, is the awareness -- begins with the awareness -- of the fact that we've got to politicize our love. That is, we've got to put it in the arena
of decision and of struggle and strain, and even bravery. And there is that real possibility. I think the second thin, of course, is that we've got to be committed to a sustained involvement with
the disfranchised and disinherited and desperate people, and this does not mean "on the basis of our definition of 'enough.'"
It means, "until [very?] grievances are addressed." The problem within our own -- and I take it, most of us are Presbyterians -- the problem within our own fellowship and our own communion at the present time is that we still have the delusion
that we are the ones to say "This far, and no further;" that we're in the driver's seat. Now, I think this is a delusion. If I were a pastor in a rich, suburban church, I'd hammer away at the kind of dialoguing
and engagement with my people, not necessarily from the pulpit, but wherever I got opportunity -- in their homes, in meetings, in community activities, in political organizations, in the whole spectrum of associations which I had in that city, where they could talk back
at me, and not feel themselves captives or the victims of my protected position behind a desk in a sanctuary. This is where I would really work hard so that no one would be able to dismiss it either as homiletical extravagance, or
ministerial deference, or protection, but where they would have to face me as a man, and I face them as men and as women. I think this would be my first and most sustained effort. The second would be to try to abstract from that
congregation a nucleus of men and women who were equally concerned -- not necessarily that they agreed with me, but whose integrity and whose commitment was at least obvious, and I'd sit down with them, and say, "Let us take counsel one with another as to who we should devise and
design a strategy that will be respectful of your judgement, and respectful of mine," and if I were still in that suburban church -- and I might not be, as you well know -- but if I were still in that suburban church, then it seems to me that I would
try to get them to some motion, some public act or statement that would give, not only each other, but the community, a witness that this is the kind of posture and position that we are occupying
and presuming, and that then we'd expect, and we'd really need each other then, because the likelihood is that we would find hostilities that were quite latent, and obscure, and then our Christian belonging to one another would come alive. Now,
it seems to me, it's only in the third stage that I would try programizing, that I would have that as a distinct goal.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: You know, I come from a part the country where this manifesto is called "blackmail," and this sort of thing, and I find a great number of negroes who are not in harmony with this. Would you elaborate concerning the general consensus or acceptance of this "Black Manifesto" by black people themselves?
JOHNSON: [As I would distinguish?] between negroes and blacks -- and I don't mean that facetiously, I mean it sincerely. The negro was acculturated and developed to assume and appropriate
white, middle-class values and characteristics and to exploit those opportunities for association with white that his exhibiting those characteristics provided. And I distinguish also
between a negro and an "Uncle Tom." But the negro is a respectable person, in my judgement. What is new -- and this is relatively new -- is the consciousness of a black, and derives from the whole movement of Martin Luther King,
which affirmed that black is beautiful, and it is beautiful to be black. And that's new. Negros never believed that. They had no experience, no validations to believe that. There was nothing about the stereotype
into which they were pressed and their references that would enable them to believe that. They were taught and nurtured and encouraged to believe that black is to be escaped! We used to have a [faith group?] within our black society
that was all negro -- "White is right, brown stick around, black stand back." And every black man has heard that reference, and weaned on that from our mother's breast. But this is different. Now there is the assertion that black is beautiful, and it is beautiful to be
black. And these persons of that persuasion see the Black Manifesto as confirming their dignity, and this is why they can love a pimp like Malcolm X, you see? All of the moral
and spiritual inclinations of our beings would turn us from that man. You know, let's face it -- this is a [number runner?], a whoremonger, a threatened murderer, certainly a jailbird,
and I don't know what else! I hope I've said enough. But we love him! [We definitely?] love him! I preached at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York a few months ago, and I was telling that congregation how much Malcolm X meant to us, and why we can love him in the face of all
of this, and this is because we no longer regard any man from a human point of view. We see a miracle. And we love King, of course, but we can love Stokley, and we can love Jim Forman, and
we can believe that for such a time of this, they come into the kingdom. Now this is hard to us. This is hard to us. And it shocks the sensitivities of those who are black Christians just as much as it shocks the sensitivities of those of you who are white Christians.
Don't indulge yourself with the notion that we don't have emotional and traumatic problem with all this. We do! But there's an inexplicable awareness of selfhood that we had not had before,
and now we can distinguish between the values that we were previously developed within. My mother and father left Charleston, South Carolina when my father was 17, my mother 19, and when I went to Greenwood, Mississippi to demonstrate
for voter registration, my mother said, "You know, we never gave you a college and seminary education for you to be a damned fool!" I mean it sincerely! My mother's a great woman, just loads of guts. But she thought that was sheer nonsense, and it was inordinate,
and it was identifying with those who had no ambition and little industry and less achievement. I don't know what she would say if she were looking at this. I think she'd say the same thing, though. She was a negro, kind of a worthwhile one. But this is where we separate the boys
from the men and the girls from the women.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 6: Would you be a white minister again vicariously and what would you say to church officers who say to you, "Why should we pay anything?" and secondly, "I do not feel guilty, why should I?" What would you to officers who express these views one way or another about [petition?].
JOHNSON: Well, I'd like to answer the first part of it. If they say, "I do not feel guilty," I think I'd say, "You are indescribably calloused." I don't see how any white person cannot feel guilty! I just can't even comprehend it! I've read American History very carefully,
and I've seen American society rape the brown and the black and the yellow and the red man through the pages of that history. I've studied in sophisticated and expert ability through all of it. And if he doesn't feel any guilt,
he's either -- I want to be careful now, and say what Paul Tillich said about Germans who felt no disturbance with the rise of Hitler. He said, "They either are so mesmerized with [play?], or so dumb,
or insensitive, that they have no guilt." Well, that's the problem that every white minister would have to struggle with -- and every black minister would have to struggle with -- with any white person who said they didn't feel guilty. Or every Christian would have to struggle with, with any white person who said they didn't feel guilty.
You see, if you take history seriously, then you did not come de novo at the date of your birth, and you -- in the lines of Wordsworth -- "You came trailing clouds of glory from God who is your home." And you also came trailing clouds of shadow from Adam who is your father.
So I have difficulty with that question. But the second question is more significant, and that is, what would I say to the person who says, "I owe them nothing?" I think what I would do if I were a suburban pastor, I'd say, "Can I have the privilege
of spending an afternoon with you for a car ride? I'll come any time you say -- Saturday, Sunday, Friday afternoon. I'll go in the morning, if that's your choice, or I'll go late at night. But if you'll let me have three hours of your time, I'd deeply appreciate it. We'll ride -- we won't stay in your house, or in mine, or in the church study -- we'll just ride."
And then we'll go out and we'll look at the booming, burgeoning development of the suburbs, and we'll look at the [bankman?] institutions. And we'll look at the factories. And we'll look at the -- if we're in the area -- where there are mechanized farms, we'll look at them. And we'll look at the little ticky-tack houses.
And we'll look at the nice, imposing church steeples, and the exquisite universities. And we'll look at the supermarket. And I'll say, "Why do you think we've got all that, and they don't have anything? Do you think God loves them more He does us? Or do you just think we're brighter?"
And I'd take my leave from there, because he's wrong either way, so I can give him his own choice of weapons. And I'd ask him to try to explain the disparity between the blacks on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, and with [the room instead of?] behind the vice president's window.
And on the twentieth floor of the high-rise apartment, instead of in the hovel. And I'd test these things out with that brother or sister, and see where they came up.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 7: Dr. Johnson, I'm quite happy to have some of my prejudices rearranged. I want to say that I have studied black (inaudible), that I am in sympathy with doing everything that needs to be done, I think should be done, I think, negroes in the United States. I have some serious questions.
I do not feel that you answered the question of extortion which was raised in regarding [the amount that's told?]. I do not feel that you have answered the question some of us hand in regard to the paper itself being Marxist oriented and anti-church. I do not feel that you answered the question some of us had about blaming the sins of the fathers on their children. I
have a little bit of a feeling that [depending on how you're?] dealing with that, the entire system of slavery was more than the [problem?] of the church. And I'd like for you to speak to these prejudices. At this point, I still reject the manifesto and its demands. I still stand with my church in doing everything that we can to assist people who are in need.
JOHNSON: I appreciate your candidness. To the question of extortion, there's a Detroit grand jury currently being conducted trying to ascertain whether or not the Black Manifesto
is an extortion. I sent the Attorney General of the United States -- who happens to be a Presbyterian -- a telegram yesterday, in which I indicated that the churches did not need that kind of shield from reality. I am not, of course,
sufficiently knowledgeable in the law to say whether this is going to fall under the definition of "extortion." I am, I think, sufficiently familiar with the claims of the Gospel to
understand how God can make even the wrath of men to praise Him. I do not further elaborate on that, though I recognize I have not thoroughly
answered the charge. The second question you raised was the fact that I had not done justice to the history of America, and that the churches were not exclusively involved in that guilt. The Black Manifesto makes no such assertion, that the churches were exclusively involved
in that guilt. It makes the assertion that the churches have been the beneficiaries of the system, as much as other corporate structures in America, and if the statistics are proper, the churches in this country are worth about 301 billion dollars.
Not million -- billion. And that doesn't disclose what the Catholic Church is worth. Now if that statistic -- or any approximation of it -- is near to the fact, 50 million is pittance, 500 million is
pittance. The assumption is not that the churches are the sole offenders. The assumption is that as this country has become increasingly affluent, the property holdings, the capital gains, the dividends, and all the
benefits that accrue to this culture, have accrued to the church, and the church has been the protected agent of this government as much as any of the other corporate structures, and that the distinction made between the holy and the profane is, in this
particular, bogus. Now the Romans will never accept this. They have a principle of collegiality, which enables them to very readily explain the prosperity of the church, and to invest their monies in Catholic charities or some other instrumentality that
bears their particular "imprimatur." But I do not think we are guilty of this kind of false theology. As Calvinists, we do not make this kind of a rigid distinction, though we recognize that these are realities, they interpenetrate each other in our theology
in a way that the Roman Church does not validate or approve. You say I dealt maliciously with history. I fail to concur on that. I don't have to go all the way back to 619
either. Following the Civil War, we went through a period of what was known as "Reconstruction," and that Reconstruction period extend from the time that Mr. Lincoln was assassinated until the inauguration of Rutherford Hays. And then, because we got on with the business of building America, and expanding its industry,
and conquering the West, we copped out on our obligation to the black man as a nation, and we let bygones be bygones. We withdrew the federal troops from the 11 Confederate states, and we readmitted their supposed duly elected representatives into our national legislature, and we made all
kinds of concessions by disfranchising the black man, by terrorizing, intimidating; by introducing granddaddy clauses and literacy tests so that a black man couldn't vote even if he could read the Constitution -- then he had to explain
minute details in a way that any red-necked cracker didn't have to. We've been up against some pretty dastard and deliberate deceptions, and Roger Taney's statement that the black man had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect has been implemented in this country for more than 150 years. In the courts, in the army, in the navy, in purchase of houses, in where he could live, what he could expect in a job, and in a myriad of other ways.
And I plead -- not for the black man -- God knows I don't plead for the black man! I plead for America's soul! That's what I plead for. I plead for the integrity of the Gospel that I love and you love! And it makes it increasingly, if not utterly, impossible to confront black people and brown
people and yellow people with the claims of Jesus Christ, when an Emmett Till at 14 years of age can be murdered in Greenwood, Mississippi because he whistles at a white girl. And when I say murdered, I mean mutilated. And when three civil rights workers can be murdered in Mississippi.
And when I have walked down the street of Greenwood and seen the man on the street who murdered Emmett Till. And when Medgar Evers can be shot, and nobody brought to trial. When four innocent Sunday school children can be bombed
in a church in Birmingham, and then somebody talk about disrupting a service at Riverside Church. How extraneous can we get? And what kind of rationalization enables us to justify or assume an indignation over such things?
Why, black people have had their services disrupted, their churches defamed, their pastors murdered, their children prostituted, their mothers whored, for centuries in this country! And where in the name of God will there be
[a halt?] if those of us who claim and earnestly subscribe to do the will of God don't risk the Marxist dialectical materialism that you and others have found in that peroration known as the manifesto?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 8: I would like to very briefly say about [Peter's question?]. (inaudible) We don't like it when anybody in our church puts our actions, our words in the worst possible light. I've had it happen a few times in my ministry and you have too! I think that if we
join those who try to put the substance of the Black Manifesto in the worst possible light -- call it blackmail, drawing a cry from those who call it blackmail and dismiss and miss the great moral implications of this thing -- I think that we better not call ourselves ministers of Jesus Christ. And I'd like to suggest that
if we all read this thing very carefully and try to understand the underlying things that are there -- and I'd like to suggest that instead of using the word "blackmail" -- which is a nasty word -- that we talk about it in a little bit different terms, and I think we can. You gentlemen went to seminary and took homiletics and speech, and you learned how to put things in a good light. I’m not going to tell you what words to say, I'm just
saying, "Let's see what we can do on this." OK?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: Dr. Johnson, sir, I feel that I -- in some of the other sessions we've had here at Princeton Institute -- that we have been made painfully aware of our guilt. It is true that we have been racists, we have condoned inequities, we have been selfish, the black man has been murdered by the white man, there have been rapes through the years and so forth, but I think, speaking for every one of us here
we do feel guilt. And I don't only feel guilty for myself, I feel guilty for my congregation, because I know there's racism there. I feel guilty for my own family. But sir, there's something that disturbs me a little bit. It seems that in the things that you've said tonight and other sermons and addresses that I've heard here in our own synod from men who are black, some of our fellow black clergymen, that there is
practically no sense of guilt that I can perceive on the part of the black man so that tonight, for instance, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, practically -- by what you said -- came off as saints! Now, I'm aware of my guilt, and more sincerely than I used to, I pray for forgiveness for my trespasses. It would seem to me that there would be a bond of brotherhood -- now maybe I misunderstood what you and others have said -- but it seems to me there would be a bond
of brotherhood if we felt that kneeling beside us at the same altar were our black brethren, perhaps to a much lesser extent, but also praying with us, sincerely, "forgive us our trespasses."
JOHNSON: If I misrepresented Mr. Carmichael and Malcolm X by making them saints, forgive me! My old homiletics professor, Hugh Black used to say when he was Sandy White's associate in St. George's Glasgow,
Sandy White would blacken the saints every Sunday morning, and Hugh Black would whitewash the sinners every Sunday night. Now, I hope I've done a little of each. But let's talk seriously.
Very seriously. What we're talking about is reconciliation in theological categories. And reconciliation presumes a righteousness in one
that is not possessed by the other, but which, by the grace of God, can be a bond between them. You can't presume I have righteousness, and I can't presume you have it, we're not getting any reconciliation, and [I can keep talking?].
There has first to be some purification. There has to be some expiation of guilt. There has to be some humiliation and some dependence,
not upon you nor you upon me, but upon the Righteous One, even God. And when that righteousness which belongs to Him and to Him alone can be ascribed to you or to me, then we can begin to talk about reconciliation.
"Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Could my tears forever flow, could my heart no rest but know, all for sin could not atone: Thou must save, and Thou alone." And that goes for black and white. But let's not settle
for false or cheap grace.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 10: Some of you may wish to speak to Dr. Johnson afterward, but I think we should conclude. May we unite in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father ...
ALL: Who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.