Mennonite Church USA statement on racial injustice

[Dan Z]

This is a good statement Jim - thanks for posting it. I can affirm it...with one caution:

...we encourage you to stand in solidarity with communities of color, walk alongside them and, indeed, be led by them.

If "being led by them" means deferring to the experience and wisdom and pain of our black brothers and sisters in Christ as they help us move forward toward justice with clearer more equitable vision, then this is where I want to be. If "being led by them" mean deferring to the moral insights of humanistic organized leftist political organizations, then we've put our third-way commitments at risk.

By the way, here is a similar statement from my friends at Rosedale Bible College:

We are Kingdom workers, and our work is Kingdom work.

The biblical promise of God’s Kingdom come in its glory and completion in Revelation 7 is a promise of true equality and diversity. Scripture depicts people of all tribes and tongues worshipping together before the throne of God. As God’s people, our calling is to begin living out this Kingdom vision right now.

The events and turmoil of recent weeks have prompted us to search ourselves and to consult with our black brothers and sisters in Christ, to see if we have been properly concerned and active in pursuing this piece of God’s vision for His Kingdom.

We conclude that we have not.

We have begun to lay out plans, in consultation with black pastors and leaders in our faith community, to better reflect God’s Kingdom and to do justly within the framework of our evangelical Anabaptist faith.

We are convicted that it is our duty not only to model the diversity of the Bride of Christ, but also to mourn with those who mourn, as they are mourning.

We mourn, today, with our black alumni, students, faculty, staff and community members who have been wounded by injustice. We grieve injustice in our society and our own inattention to it. We commit ourselves to pursuing a more complete reflection of God’s vision for His Kingdom. We do so for Christ’s glory, for His Kingdom, and as His people.

I appreciate the third-way spiritual/Kingdom focus of the RBC statement, and that it looks first to keeping it's own house in order. While it affirms diversity and racial reconciliation, I wish it had also recognized the ugly history of systemic white supremacy that has been so foundational in this country, and acknowledged the fact that the unjust echos of this history reverberate in our society to this day - and need to be faced.

[temporal1]

.. If "being led by them" means deferring to the experience and wisdom and pain of our black brothers and sisters in Christ as they help us move forward toward justice with clearer more equitable vision, then this is where I want to be.

If "being led by them" mean deferring to the moral insights of humanistic organized leftist political organizations, then we've put our third-way commitments at risk.

By the way, here is a similar statement from my friends at Rosedale Bible College:

i appreciate what you, and Rosedale, are saying, until the last paragraph, which i believe inadvertently leads to and feeds the organized political bloc you want to avoid. it reflects complete refusal to acknowledge black voices that strongly disagree with the bloc. i’m not sure why you would do that, but you are consistent.

i’m most bothered that it appears such statements are being promoted as “absolutes” and required mantras for education, business, churches .. forced absolutely by the bloc.

in history, such things do not end well.

[Josh]

CPT better hurry over to CHOP/CHAZ. They just had their second condition. Victim is in critical condition in the hospital.

Or maybe MHS would be a better fit, to build an ER in CHOP/CHAZ with a trauma ward.

[temporal1]

CPT better hurry over to CHOP/CHAZ. They just had their second condition. Victim is in critical condition in the hospital.
Or maybe MHS would be a better fit, to build an ER in CHOP/CHAZ with a trauma ward.

i hope and pray many young peoples’ eyes will be opened to the error of trusting and following political blocs. i’m sure the Holy Spirit is at work. some lessons come the hard way. i’ve had my share.

[slaveofone]

I appreciate the thoughtful statement from Mennonite Church, USA

I appreciate this as well. Thanks for posting it!

As a person of the cross, I stand with the crucified. I mourn with those who mourn and, if need be, I will be crucified with them.

LORD, let us your people listen to the leading of your Spirit and renounce our allegiances to systems of violence, oppression, and dehumanization.

[Robert]

I wonder if they ever made a statement about this.

The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.

I doubt it.

[Szdfan]

I wonder if they ever made a statement about this.

The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.

I doubt it.

It’s also not true. This is debunked white supremacist propaganda. Here’s an article from three years ago —

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/us/i ... ticleShare

Historians say the idea of Irish slaves is based on a misreading of history and that the distortion is often politically motivated. Far-right memes have taken off online and are used as racist barbs against African-Americans. “The Irish were slaves, too,” the memes often say. “We got over it, so why can’t you?”

A small group of Irish and American scholars has spent years pushing back on the false history. In 2016, 82 Irish scholars and writers signed an open letter denouncing the Irish slave myth and asking publications to stop mentioning it. Some complied, removing or revising articles that referenced the false claims, but the letter’s impact was limited.

The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound, according to Matthew Reilly, an archaeologist who studies Barbados. Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human. Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time, usually about seven years, in exchange for passage to the colonies. They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants.

Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves, Mr. Hogan said. That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to modern-day human trafficking. But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it.

The memes often have common elements: the false claim that Irish people were enslaved in America or the Caribbean after the 1649 British invasion of Ireland led by Oliver Cromwell; the false claim that Irish slaves were cheaper and treated worse than African slaves; the false claim that Irish women were forcibly “bred” with black men.

Some of them are easy to disprove. Many of the memes use photographs, including of Jewish Holocaust victims or 20th century child laborers, to illustrate events they claim happened in the 17th century, long before the invention of photography. Many reference a nonexistent 1625 proclamation by King James II, who was not born until 1633.

[Robert]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude

An indentured servant or indentured laborer is an employee (indenturee) within a system of unfree labor who is bound by a signed or forced contract (indenture) to work without pay for the owner of the indenture for a period of time. The contract often lets the employer sell the labor of an indenturee to a third party. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit (such as transportation to a new place), or to meet a legal obligation, such as debt bondage. On completion of the contract, indentured servants were given their freedom, and occasionally plots of land. Indentured servitude was often brutal, with a high percentage[vague] of servants dying prior to the expiration of their indentures. In many countries, systems of indentured labor have now been outlawed, and are banned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a form of slavery.

Sounds like systematic slavery to me.

[Robert]

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/librar ... aves-10927

In 1641, Ireland's population was 1,466,000 and in 1652, 616,000. According to Sir William Petty, 850,000 were wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship and banishment during the Confederation War 1641-1652. At the end of the war, vast numbers of Irish men, women and children were forcibly transported to the American colonies by the English government.(7) These people were rounded up like cattle, and, as Prendergast reports on Thurloe's State Papers(8) (Pub. London, 1742), "In clearing the ground for the adventurers and soldiers (the English capitalists of that day)... To be transported to Barbados and the English plantations in America.

All writers on the 17th century American colonies are in agreement that the treatment of white servants or white slaves in English colonies was cruel to the extreme, worse than that of black slaves; that inhuman treatment was the norm, that torture (and branding FT, fugitive traitor, on the forehead) was the punishment for attempted escape. Dunn stated: "Servants were punished by whipping, strung up by the hands and matches lighted between their fingers, beaten over the head until blood ran," --all this on the slightest provocation.(30) Ligon, an eyewitness in Barbados from 1647-1650 said, "Truly, I have seen cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another."

[Szdfan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude

An indentured servant or indentured laborer is an employee (indenturee) within a system of unfree labor who is bound by a signed or forced contract (indenture) to work without pay for the owner of the indenture for a period of time. The contract often lets the employer sell the labor of an indenturee to a third party. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit (such as transportation to a new place), or to meet a legal obligation, such as debt bondage. On completion of the contract, indentured servants were given their freedom, and occasionally plots of land. Indentured servitude was often brutal, with a high percentage[vague] of servants dying prior to the expiration of their indentures. In many countries, systems of indentured labor have now been outlawed, and are banned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a form of slavery.

Sounds like systematic slavery to me.

Indentured servitude was horrible, but it wasn’t slavery.

I’ve seen this post on FB. It’s white supremacist propaganda. It’s deflection.