Racism

Review: The Anti-Greed Gospel

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Cover image of "The Anti-Greed Gospel" by Malcolm Foley

The Anti-Greed Gospel, Malcolm Foley. Brazos Press (ISBN: 9781587436307) 2025.

Summary: Argues that greed is the root of racism and calls the church to economic solidarity, anti-violence, and truth-telling.

We often think that hate and ignorance are at the root of racism. And certainly we can come up with examples of hate and ignorance. But Malcolm Foley argues in The Anti-Greed Gospel that the love of money is the root of the evil of racism. He shows how racism both arose and persisted after the abolition of slavery for economic reasons. The effort to subject one people by another was first and foremost about economic advantage.

Foley introduces his argument through showing that economic reasons (coveting) led to breaking other commands of God including bearing false witness, theft, and murder. He shows how unfettered capitalism and racism are intertwined in the economic growth of our nation through slavery. Then in post-reconstruction America, he traces the rise of lynching as a tool of economic subjugation. He argues that the tendrils of greed that eventuate in lynching undermined the witness of Christians like Francis Grimke and Atticus Haygood. The former eventually embraced violent resistance; the latter a kind of cynical paternalism. By contrast, he offers the example of Ida B. Wells, whose truth-telling exposed the roots of racialized greed and whose resistance sought justice through legal means.

The example of Wells provides the transition to the second part of Foley’s argument. He explores what the church can do. First, he argues for economic solidarity between Christians across racial lines such that we strive toward the Acts ideal of “no needy among us.” Then he contends for love rather than violence as we seek remedies for greed. For example, love resists practices like property appraisals that keep people in poverty. Love also opposes wars, which often rely upon minorities disproportionately to fight the battles while draining resources from domestic programs. Thirdly, he argues for prophetic truth-telling amid the culture of racial lies. Finally, he stresses the importance of creativity as we cast vision for a kingdom that is not of this world.

First for one criticism. Indisputably, in the American context, greed found expression through a form of racist capitalism. But I would argue that greed is an evil that finds expression in every economic system. In every economic system we can see classes or racial groups who are exploited for the economic gain of others. What this demonstrates is that Foley’s thesis that racism is rooted in greed has cross-cultural validity. I wonder if the association of “racialized capitalism” throughout the book weakens the focus on the root cause of greed.

That said, Foley’s thesis helps explain the persistence of racism. It also clarifies both the danger to the church of the “tendrils” of greed upon its life and the way it addresses racism. It is more than just relationships across racial lines. Whether society follows or not, finding ways to express economic solidarity, practice loving resistance, and engage in prophetic truth telling are more substantive alternatives than saying “let’s be friends.” It also seems to me that the challenge of creativity is to transcend our polarities and political binaries while not losing contact with earthly realities. We need to cast alternative visions people understand and find compelling.

Malcolm Foley is a young leader who is a scholar-pastor, and well-positioned to implement the recommendations he makes in this book. I look forward to hearing more from him!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Plundered

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Cover image of 'Plundered" by David W. Swanson

Plundered: The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Injustice, David W. Swanson. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514007747) 2024.

Summary: The tangled roots of racial and environmental injustice. Traces exploitation and oppression of people and land to a common root of greed.

The basic premise of this book is that systemic racism and environmental destruction stem from a common root. Specifically, greed, and its outworking in theft, in the eyes of David T., Swanson, are the sources of what he sees as two intertwined ills. Often, those subject to racial injustice also suffer from depredations on the environment. The point of this book is not to argue what are disputed ideas in some quarters nor to propose policies for society as a whole. Instead, Swanson asks how churches might engage in caretaking of both people who have suffered injustice and the land they inhabit, often in urban settings.

Swanson comes uniquely qualified to address these questions. After training as an outdoor educator, Swanson experienced a call to establish a church on the South Side of Chicago, New Community Covenant Church, where he has lived with his family and worked the past fourteen years. The book reflects his own efforts to love and care for the people and place of the South Side of Chicago, specifically the Bronzeville neighborhood.

Before addressing his key insight, Swanson begins with the gift of creation, weaving biblical narrative and insights of Indigenous Christians into his sabbath day walks by Lake Michigan near the Center of Science and Industry, through the woodlands, canals, and lagoons of what was the site of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. From here, he considers our vocation, which he describes as priestly caretakers. As priests, we both bless the Creator and the creation. As caretakers, we seek the flourishing of all God’s creation, recognizing that our flourishing depends upon it.

Then, Swanson explores what we have actually done. We have so refashioned creation, resulting in mass extinctions and changing weather patterns. Scientists contend we have entered a new era in Earth’s existence, the Anthropocene. We have pursued extractive and exploitative policies not only with the creation but with ethnic minorities, the Black and Brown peoples of our country. As a result, these people often suffer the worst effects of our environmental depredations in what is called environmental racism. As Christians, we have often been complicit. Real healing can only begin with repentance, leading to repair, reconciliation, and renewal.

Part of how this happens, Swanson contends, is through our detachment from our place. We often do not know where our water, food, energy, clothing, and other necessities come from. And so we often can be oblivious to the exploitative and extractive practices implicit in our existence. But there is hope and the last two chapters in part one begin exploring what priestly caretaking under Christ’s redemptive work might look like in our communities, from gardens, to welcome of newcomers, to fighting for the quality of local schools.

All this comes in the first part, under the heading “tangled roots.” The second part is headed ” becoming naturalized.” Instead of detachment, Swanson considers what it means to become indigenous to a place. Swanson urges three practices to nurture our relationship with our place and its people. Instead of detachment, we nurture belonging, listening to and learning about our community. Instead of unceasing exploitation, we sabbath, resting both ourselves and the rest of creation and practicing generosity. Finally, in place of greed, we nurture virtue–prudence, justice, courage, temperance, faith, hope, and love.

Priestly caretaking is not idealistic utopianism. Rather it is a form of “long obedience in the same direction. Swanson writes:

“Caretaking in the ruins of industrialized extraction and exploitation is a generational commitment. Who can say how long it will take for a racialized people centered on Jesus and pursuing repair together to find that creation has re-exerted its formational power over them? How long will it take for a people who’ve been severed from the earth to learn to walk humbly and gently among their creaturely neighbors? There is no program for this, no curriculum or metrics. There is only the good and slow work of learning together how to exist as a blessing and a gift.”

What I appreciate about this book is that it doesn’t try to do too much. It doesn’t propose macro solutions for racism or environmental problems. Swanson does for urban communities what Wendell Berry does for rural farming communities. Both focus on care for people with names and their place. We can’t seek restoration everywhere if we don’t practice it somewhere. Swanson invites us to begin where we are to engage the long, slow work of community caretaking.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: How Ableism Fuels Racism

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How Ableism Fuels Racism, Lamar Hardwick. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2024.

Summary: An argument that ableism is an important lens through which to understand racism, because both create a hierarchy of superior and inferior bodies.

Lamar Hardwick is a pastor who lives at the intersection of racism and ableism as a Black pastor on the autism spectrum. Also, at the time of the writing, he is under treatment for a recurrence of cancer, with the attendant bodily disabilities this brings. As he has reflected on his own experienced, read scripture and researched American history, he is convinced that ableism not only fuels discriminatory treatment of the disabled but also racial discrimination. The connection is the idealizing of certain bodies as fit and superior. In the American experience, this has particularly centered on White bodies, especially male bodies.

Hardwick focuses on Judges 17: 1-6, in which a young man, Micah, steals a large sum of money in gold from his mother, then under threat of curse confesses his sin. Instead of punishment, his mother takes the gold and has it made into an idol for the household. When a Levite comes through, Micah persuades him to become his priest. From this incident, Hardwick discerns three stages of ableism: images, idols, and institutions. Instead of facing sin, we honor what we should grieve, make it an object of central concern, an idol, and then create institutions to support our idolatry.

Hardwick traces how this was done in the early settlement of the U.S., subjugating women and indigenous people, and importing slaves, considering them inferior human beings. Slavery was even defended as a blessing for the inferior slave! He traces ways churches supported this form of ableism, and have continued to do so, pleading for and receiving exemption from the ADA legislation of 1990.

He cites a statement of John Piper’s that equated disability with ugliness and how our idolatry of superior bodies upholds certain White and ableist ideals of beauty. I was reminded of a conversation at a social gathering where someone remarked on the attractiveness of Michelle Obama only to be confronted by a yuck face from one of the other (White) women.

He offers a particularly personal discussion of ableism, racism, and healthcare in terms of access, differences in listening to reported symptoms, and quality of care. He also discusses how ableism fuels racism in the church, and the important role Black churches have been in offering a refuge from ableist and racist treatment and in many ways have led the way in disability inclusion.

One of the most thought-provoking chapters focused on the disabled God. The resurrected Jesus still bears the wounds of the crucifixion, and in this, God is glorified. This contrasts with ableist versions of Jesus, blonde, blue-eyed, ripped and aggressive.

Hardwick also considers the world of work and ableist ideas of productivity, what he calls “grind culture.” The question arises of the worth of bodies that cannot meet the demand of the grind, and the different ways bodies of color and disabled bodies participate in the work of creation. He proposes elevating place-making above profit-making as one way to address this.

I thought the major point the author was making to be compelling–that ableism furnishes the energy for racism in the distinction between superior and inferior bodies. At the same time, I wonder if the connection, if not conflation, of the two may mean overlooking the voices of persons with disabilities. Yet Hardwick offers important insights into the idolization and institutionalization of ableism. Most striking, and a field where I think further work is possible is the idea of the disabled God, the God who does not think the “disabilities” of the cross something to be “fixed.” People need not become White or able to be beautiful before God. The personal insights Hardwick adds from his fight with cancer sharpens his critique of ableism, even as it reminds me that to pray for him that the power of the disabled God would shine through his life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: King: A Life

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King: A Life, Jonathan Eig. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Summary: A new biography of King that focuses not only on his civil rights leadership but his personal life and struggles.

The sources for the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life continue to open up as both government records and new private sources become available to researchers. Jonathan Eig, in writing this biography had access to these and offers a portrait of King that not only underscores his greatness but the complexity and humanness of the man. We have the man of peace who would talk with a man who assaulted him, forgive him and refuse to press charges. We learn of a man of courage, who knew his life would likely be ended by an assassin’s bullet. We hear the eloquence of a man who lifted us all by his “dream” and challenged our complacency with the Letter from Birmingham jail. Yet there are also the moral inconsistencies of his plagiarism of portions of his dissertation and his appropriation of material his sermons and his affairs with women and his guilt-ridden struggle with his unfaithfulness.

Other biographies introduce us to all of these. Eig takes us deeper. He explores the powerful influence of his father (also a womanizer) and his attempts to define himself apart from Daddy King, particular when this meant going against the powerful peope who were his father’s friends. Another powerful influence on his life was Coretta. Arguably, she was initially more deeply committed to civil rights than Martin but as the call upon his life became clear, she was fully on board as a partner, despite the restrictions she faced as a woman in the male world of the Black church and civil rights leadership. She endured the imprisonments, the threats on the lives of the family, the modest life they maintained. It seems she may be worthy of a biography in her own right.

Other accounts have discussed J. Edgar Hoover’s animus against King and the surveillance by the FBI that revealed many of King’s sexual affairs. Eig goes deeper into this, particularly his long relationship with Dorothy Cotton. Like David Garrow, he discusses memos of recordings at the Willard Hotel, where King was allegedly on hand as a woman was raped by a Baltimore pastor, Logan Kearse. Eig is more reluctant than Garrow to credit these, recognizing the effort of the FBI to smear King. Both note the recordings themselves remain sealed until 2027. Eig discusses at length the anonymous letter with a compilation of recordings sent to King to induce him to commit suicide. Neither King nor the FBI come out looking good here–King persists in affairs even when he knows he’s being surveiled.

Eig explores deeply King’s relationship with other civil rights leaders. I had never before realized the importance of Ralph Abernathy in King’s life. He was both alter ego and counterbalance–the trusted friend and fellow pastor with whom King could confide, laugh with, and it appears, even carouse with. Eig also develops the tensions that arose, particularly in the years after the March on Washington, a high water mark. King acted intuitively, could raise money but did not have the organizational talents sorely needed in movement leadership. Furthermore, as racist forces doubled down and President Johnson became more engulfed by Vietnam (which King opposed), it became harder for King to persuade those who felt violence was the answer, of its futility.

Eig also develops King’s opposition to the Vietnam war and his courageous stand which he knew would alienate Johnson and others. King recognized how the war would thwart the efforts of Johnson’s Great Society, robbing it of money and focus in the national agenda. He also recognized the disparate proportion of Black young men who were dying.

The book explores King’s struggles with depression, particularly as divisions and resistance developed and his attempts to address northern racism struggled. Some, no doubt was simply exhaustion as King drove himself hard to fulfill his sense of call. While never formally treated, he did consult with a psychiatrist. Mostly, it was his friends, including Abernathy who would pull him away long enough to regain equilibrium.

What Eig also gives us is a man of deep religious faith, who believed his calling was from God, whose trust was that God would carry him through, even in the daily face of death. One particularly senses this in Eig’s accounts of Kin’s last visit to Memphis and his prescient message of the night before.

Eig covers both familiar ground in this biography as well as take us deeper into the complicated man King was. King’s namesake Martin Luther once stated that “God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.” Eig shows us both a courageous leader and a grievous sinner who would be excoriated for his plagiarism and called out by #MeToo and #ChurchToo for his treatment of women. He also shows us how King’s life offered America a mirror in which to see itself and recognize the deep stain of racism. His vision for non-violence, for justice, and for a reconciled beloved community was a gift that the America of his time sadly rejected. The book reminds us of the truth we are inclined to deny and of the gift that we continue to refuse.

Review: Officer Clemmons

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Officer Clemmons, Dr. François S. Clemmons. New York: Catapult, 2020.

Summary: An autobiographical memoir of Dr. François S. Clemmons, from his earliest years in Alabama, his youth in Youngstown, Ohio through his college years when he accepted that he was gay, his relationship with Fred Rogers, and subsequent performing and teaching career.

Recently in connection with my “Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown” series, I wrote about François Clemmons after discovering that he also grew up in Youngstown. I also learned that he had recently published a memoir, and intrigued as I was, I picked up a copy to learn about this man who worked on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood for twenty-five years, breaking down racial barriers through his very presence.

My article viewed Clemmons as an outside observer. The memoir gave me a sense of what it was like to be François Clemmons from those early childhood years, the years of awakening to his homosexuality, the extraordinary relationship he had with Fred Rogers, and his later career. He begins with his troubled childhood with a violent father. His Great Grandmama Laura Mae protected him, forcibly removing him when his father kidnapped him at gunpoint, shooting the father in the shoulder! It was his Great Grandmama who led the effort to gather enough money to send a group of men, his mother Inez, and himself to the industrial north, to begin a new life away from his violent father. He also writes of his Granddaddy Saul, from whom he learned to sing.

Youngstown was not any better family-wise. Inez, his mother, took up with Warren, who she adored, but who became an abusive step-father to Clemmons. Singing, especially in the city’s churches became an escape and he rapidly gained status, learning to read music, eventually becoming choir director at his church. Even then, he was beginning to realize that he had feelings for his own sex, “tamping” these down, discouraged by both friends and his church’s, and especially his mother’s, beliefs. He also discovers the racism that would put him on a vocational rather than a college track and excluded him from music venues, except for special Blacks-only nights. His ticket out of Youngstown came in the form of a social worker who paid for music lessons from a well-trained choral director and encouraged his application to Oberlin College. He describes the day a high school principal who was part of the Oberlin Alumni Association called him to his office to share the news that he was going to ask the alumni to provide a scholarship to attend Oberlin, which had a very fine conservatory. That support was crucial because, by then, he was living with friends to escape his step-father’s violent temper.

The next part of the memoir recounts Clemmons musical training under the tutelage of Ellen Repp and his acceptance of his homosexuality. Ironically, an effort of his mother and stepfather to “fix” him by taking him to a prostitute led to his taking refuge with the Beechwoods, whose son was gay and who fully accepted both him and François. They would be his home in Youngstown until his graduation. He became involved in civil rights advocacy, meeting Dr. King and learning about Bayard Rustin, a key organizer who was also a gay man. When he met Nick, he experienced deep fulfillment in a relationship with another man.

The final part of the memoir covers the years in Pittsburgh and the development of his singing career in New York. Much focuses on his extraordinary relationship with Fred Rogers, who he first met during his MFA studies at Carnegie Mellon, while singing in the choir at the church Fred and Joanne attended. From the first lunch he had with Fred, he discovered someone who loved him unconditionally. He describes on particular episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood where Rogers ended as he always did, saying, “You make every day a special day by being you, and I like you just the way you are.” Clemmons felt like Fred was looking at him, and asked him, after the show, “Fred, were you talking to me.” Rogers replied, “Yes I was. I have been talking to you for years. You finally heard me today.” While Rogers personally accepted Clemmons homosexuality, he would not permit Clemmons to be publicly out and remain on the show. That just would not have been possible in the 1960’s. Clemmons describes the tension he struggled with between his homosexuality and his recognition of the work he was able to do on the show to change perceptions of Blacks. He admired Rogers support of civil rights, typified by a time when they were on tour in Cincinnati and a music director refused to let Clemmons rehearse. Rogers asked the man to apologize or they would not work with him.

Rogers supported his singing career, including standing with him, supporting him financially, and mentoring him through further racist treatment with the Metropolitan Opera. Eventually Clemmons retired from the show, going on to research and perform the great spirituals in the Black American music tradition, first with the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble, and later, at Middlebury College, where he now makes his home. One of the heartwarming episodes he describes is the opportunity to invite Rogers to Middlebury to receive an honorary degree.

The memoir concludes with a man who seems to be at peace, having finally found the way to forgiving his two fathers, accepting his own sexuality, championing the distinctive music of his people, and reveling in the love of this most unusual figure in television history, Fred Rogers. The memoir helps us to see how hardwon this peace was, given the racism, the opposition from family and society to his sexuality, and the challenges of making it as a Black in the classical and operatic world. It’s a story of both persevering in a gifted calling, and the difference that a few people who did the right thing–a great grandmother, a social worker, a choral director, a principal, a music professor, and finally, Fred Rogers. In the end, through teaching and through this memoir, Clemmons has turned around to give to others the best of what was entrusted to him.

Review: Strength for the Fight

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Strength for the Fight (Library of Religious Biography), Gary Scott Smith. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2022.

Summary: A biography on this pioneer Hall of Famer who desegregated Major League Baseball, devoted his post-playing years to civil rights activism, all sustained by his active faith.

As a lifelong baseball fan, this is not the first Jackie Robinson biography I’ve read. The one I read when I was a young fan focused on his exploits on the field, his courage and restraint in breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, and how his play contributed to several pennants and a World Series victory. As this book makes clear, Robinson not only needed to be both courageous and self-controlled to face racist treatment, he needed to be good–and he was. He was fast and daring on the base paths, a great fielder, and could deliver hits and bunts in clutch situations. He was a great all-round ballplayer deserving of Hall of Fame status simply on those merits.

This book added to the portrait of Robinson in several ways. Most importantly, it reveals him as a man of deep faith, who like Augustine had a godly mother and his own Ambrose in the form of a Methodist pastor, Karl Downs, who rescued him from gang life in Pasadena. Later, as he faces intense pressure and vitriol, he testifies, “Many nights I get down on my knees and pray for the strength not to fight back.” This and the support of his wife Rachel made all the difference for a proud man whose natural instinct was to fight back. Yet Smith also shows how Rachel went beyond standing by Robinson to pursue her own career as a nurse-therapist and professor.

Gary Scott Smith also fleshes out the vital role Branch Rickey played in Robinson’s life. Smith goes into the Methodist faith the two men shared, a critical factor in Rickey deciding to sign Robinson. Rickey was both a deeply religious man in Smith’s account and a sharp (and parsimonious) baseball entrepreneur. It was Rickey’s counsel he followed in not fighting back against spiking, knockdown pitches, and crude racial insults. When Rickey died in 1965 he said of Rickey: “He talked with me and treated me like a son.” The treatment of Rickey is so interesting that I would love to see Smith follow up this book with a full length biography on Rickey, perhaps as part of this Library of Religious Biography series.

What also distinguishes this book is the account it gives of Robinson’s post-baseball career as a tireless activist for civil rights through newspaper columns that did not hesitate to criticize presidents of either party, through public addresses including messages in hundreds of churches, marching on the front lines in places like Selma. At the same time, Robinson was not a “movement activist.” While honored by the NAACP with its Spingarn award, he did not hesitate to differ with others like Paul Robeson over communism or Dr. King over Vietnam. Some accused him of being an “Uncle Tom” for his relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, motivated by both political and business considerations, and his support in 1960 for Richard Nixon.

Vietnam would contribute to tragedy in Robinson’s life. His son Jackie, Jr. returned with addiction problems but the book makes clear the strains on the father-son relationship between the two. Sadly, just as Jackie, Jr. started to get his life on track as well as his relationship with his father, he died in an auto accident, just a year before Jackson himself passed.

That leads to my one question about this book, that the author doesn’t discuss how such a fine athlete as Robinson died at age 53, just sixteen years after retirement, suffering from diabetes, heart disease, and nearly blind. Others have discussed the disparate impacts of racism on health and the effects of his repressed anger and racial traumas on his health. Pictures of Robinson show him with hair turning white in his last playing years. Robinson bore on his body in many ways, externally and internally, the trauma of racism, and perhaps this might have been further developed in this work.

Smith portrays Robinson’s faith as “muscular,” and apart from those bedside prayers concerned more about moral and social uplift of his people, expressed in his tireless work. Even in his last years, with failing health, he was grateful for God’s blessings. Yet, he was infrequent in church attendance, and Smith notes the evidence of extra-marital affairs. After his first two years, he was more aggressive in defending himself on the field, having fulfilled his agreement with Rickey. Yet there is a thread running through the course of his life, shown by Smith of a faith that sustained and strengthened Robinson. What resulted was some of the most significant civil rights leadership in the twentieth century delivered in the form of a stellar athlete (no one since has stolen home more than the 19 times he did this) and a courageous champion. His faith, courage, and perseverance are worth emulation.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.