In Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, John Piper gives us a sober, challenging read which should shake some of us out of our lethargy, when it comes to racial harmony. Piper brings up his own past, of growing up in a segregated south where the conservative Church turned a blind eye to the black man’s struggle. He exposes his own racism, and labors to show how Scripture and specifically the gospel of Christ, cuts at the root of racism.
Piper is known for his rational thought and his Calvinism. While admitting that Calvinists have historically fared poorly if judged on racial concerns, he nevertheless builds a pretty strong case that each of the Calvinistic doctrinal points should lead toward a greater solidarity between races. None of us are favored because of our own actions, our race shouldn’t determine our fate, what’s more is that Jesus Christ died specifically to redeem men and women of every race. A multicolored and multi-ethnic throng surrounds the throne of the Lamb in Revelation 5. And that should be our goal, to make heaven’s will a reality here on earth.
Along the way, Piper discusses practical aspects for how to implement a culture that aims for racial harmony, and he counters numerous objections. He delves into a cultural analysis too of structural racism and white guilt, among other topics. I found some of the appendices most helpful. One was a detailed discussion of the curse of Ham, which has long been a fundamentalist rationale for rigid racial segregation and separation. Another appendix shared some of the vision and policy statements of Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist.
This book is accessible, and personal. It is also informative and provocative. I believe it is very helpful and may have a lasting impact on the church at large. This topic is worth thinking through and praying long and hard about, and John Piper is just the man to help us on this journey. His prayers and his struggles bleed through the pages of this weighty little book. I hope that people of all colors will pick up this book and see the vision for the multi-ethnic church that Christ died for. We all can learn from the wisdom in these pages. I highly recommend this book.
For some excerpts from this book which I shared already here on my blog, click here.
Disclaimer: This book was provided by Crossway Books. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.
About Book Briefs: Book Briefs are book notes, or short-form book reviews. They are my informed evaluation of a book, but stop short of being a full-length book review.
I came across this quote in reading through Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, John Piper’s most recent book (Crossway, 2011). You can tell that Piper has thought about this more than just this little quote says. This resonates with me due to my experience in hard-nosed fundamentalism. But it’s not just fundamentalists, who can tend to think this way. Read the quote below and let me know what you think. This could be fodder for a healthy conversation.
Apathy is passionless living. It is sitting in front of the television night anfter night and living your life from one moment of entertainment to the next. It is the inability to be shocked into action by the steady-state lostness and suffering of the world. It is the emptiness that comes from thinking of godliness as the avoidance of doing bad things instead of the aggressive pursuit of doing good things.
If that were God’s intention for the godliness of his people, why would Paul say, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12)? People who stay at home and watch clean videos don’t get persecuted. Godliness must mean something more public, more aggressively good.
In fact, the aim of the gospel is the creation of people who are passionate for doing good rather than settling for the passionless avoidance of evil. “[Christ] gave himself for us… to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). The gospel produces people who are created for good works (Eph. 2:10), and have a reputation for good works (1 Tim. 5:10), and are rich in good works (1 Tim. 6:18), and present a model of good works (Titus 2:7), and devote themselves to good works (Titus 3:8, 14), and stir each other up to good works (Heb. 10:24). (pg. 101, emphasis added)
Piper goes on to stress being fervent and zealous in good works, but the point I wanted to hone in on is called out in bold emphasis above. Too often, conservative Christians rest in the fact that they are avoiding bad works. They can pride themselves in “watching clean videos,” not using foul language and etc. The old adage was something along these lines: Christians “don’t drink, don’t chew, and don’t go with those who do.” But merely being decent people is not what true godliness entails. We should take thought to what we are doing, not merely what we are not doing.
This Martin Luther King Day, I thought it would be appropriate to offer an excerpt from John Piper’s new book on race that I have been reading. The book is entitled, Bloodlines: Race, Cross and the Christian (Crossway, 2011).
In the introduction to the book, Piper quotes from Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” because this letter “provides a window on the mid-twentieth century world of black Americans.” For those of us who didn’t live through the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement, this excerpt should help us better appreciate the significance of MLK day. I also hope it serves to make us all the more aware of the deceitful sin of racism and ever more resolved to root it out of our lives and our families, communities, and churches.
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On Tuesday, April 16, King was shown a copy of the Birmingham News, which contained a letter from eight Christian and Jewish clergyman of Alabama (all white), criticizing King for his demonstration. In response, King wrote what has come to be called “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and which one biographer described as “the most eloquent and learned expression of the goals and philosophy of the nonviolent movement ever written.”
We need to hear the power and insight with which King spoke to my generation in the sixties–enraging thousands and inspiring thousands. The white clergy had all said he should be more patient, wait, and not demonstrate. He wrote:
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;
…when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she’s told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;
…when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging sings reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “Nigger,” your middle name becomes “Boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”;
…when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”
To the charge that he was an extremist, he responded like this:
Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you”? Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”? Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus”?
Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God”? And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “Thus this nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
And finally he delivered a powerful call to the church, which rings as true today as it did in 1963:
There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society…. But the judgment of God is upon the church [today] as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20th century.
That is Martin Luther King’s prophetic voice ringing out of the Birmingham jail in 1963. [pg. 25-27]
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For more on John Piper’s book watch the book trailer, the full 18 minute documentary video, or view the links below. To read King’s entire “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” click here for the letter in .pdf format.
For over 75 years, a small, independent newspaper has been the face of fundamentalism in America. John R. Rice founded The Sword of the Lord in 1934 and continued to manage the paper until his death in 1980. After Rice’s death the fundamentalist movement fragmented and the paper has lessened in influence, although it still represents an old-fashioned, fundamentalist faith.
In a new book released this week, one of John R. Rice’s grandsons, Andrew Himes, takes up his pen to tell the story of fundamentalism from an insider’s perspective. Himes grew up within a leading fundamentalist family in the hey day of American fundamentalism. His book The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family includes personal encounters with several big names widely known even outside of fundamentalism. Himes tells a story his mom related of Billy Graham moving a piano in their home when he was a sophomore at Wheaton College. On the occasion of John R. Rice’s death, Himes himeself attended the funeral and ate a meal afterward with Jerry Falwell, then just embarking on his dream of establishing the Moral Majority, soon to be known as the Religious Right.
Himes traces the roots of the Rice family back to the Revolutionary war, and interweaves personal accounts of his ancestors’ lives with an account of the historical background of fundamentalism. He explores the sociological elements of the Scots-Irish people and the Southern mindset during and after the Civil War. His family ended up in Texas where the Civil War lived on as the great lost cause. Himes also details the beginnings of American evangelicalism and the influence of the 18th century revivals on fundamentalism.
The book is more intriguing when John R. Rice comes on the scene and we hear of his mentor, J. Frank Norris. When William Jennings Bryan died suddenly after the conclusion of the Scopes trial, J. Frank Norris picked up the mantle of the leadership of the fundamentalist movement. Norris’ fights with the Southern Baptist Convention eventually included his young protege, who followed Norris out of the SBC. Himes traces the career of John R. Rice from his early days of evangelistic crusades in various towns in Texas to his national prominence as a leader in fundamentalism and even a member of the National Association of Evangelicals. Rice’s early days included numerous revival crusades in small towns throughout the South. It seems he often built a tabernacle for the meetings, and a few months later would leave behind a new Fundamentalist Baptist Church (they always had the same name), unaffiliated with the any convention. Rice eventually took to radio and various newspapers to help expand his reach. He moved to Wheaton soon after he broke with Norris (who seemed to get jealous of John R. Rice’s influence). Rice then became a mentor for Billy Graham, and the tale of Rice’s painful parting with Graham is told from Rice’s vantage point. We then learn of Rice’s conflict with Bob Jones in the 1970s.
The history itself is fascinating and the book is well documented. But Himes’ personal tale remains an enigma for most of the book. Has he lost his faith completely? What is his ultimate assessment of fundamentalism now? Why is he writing this book? These and other questions will fill the mind of any reader who views fundamentalism favorably — as standing for the truths of Scripture even if they may have gone awry in some respects. Himes seems to misunderstand much of what fundamentalism was about, particularly when with respect to theology. In the chapter on “The Fundamentals” he says: “However, before the end of the 18th century, few Christian theologians had claimed that the Bible as a whole was without internal contradictions, or textual and factual errors.” This is just not the case, as D.A. Carson and others have demonstrated. He also errs when in the same chapter he states that the “oldest extant texts of the Old and New Testaments were Greek manuscripts dating from the fourth century…”. We have numerous manuscripts that date earlier than this and we have Hebrew OT scrolls going back to 100 years before Christ.
Throughout the book, a critique is leveled at Rice himself, to an extent, and to fundamentalism in general. Himes points out the narrowness of fundamentalism, and the political aspirations the movement harbored. The issue of race, and the notoriety of the Ku Klux Klan which early fundamentalist leaders tolerated, is the biggest critique on the movement. The race issue plays a big role in the book. Particularly poignant is the description of the Sherman Riot in north Texas, where George Hughes, a black man, was murdered by an angry mob, who also destroyed most of the town’s black businesses. One year after that 1930 riot, John R. Rice came to town with his evangelistic crusade. He preached on a lot of sins but failed to bring up the bloody riot. Himes gives some explanation for why Rice failed to confront the topic of race in the chapter entitled “The Jim Crow Challenge”. First, he claims it would have been a deviation from Rice’s primary motivation of saving souls. Second, he “could not possibly offer a critique of racial oppression in the white South without destroying his own ministry and undercutting his movement’s support for The Sword of the Lord. Even if he had been opposed to racial injustice, his Texas audience was not.” Himes does share one family story where Rice was indignant that a southern establishment wouldn’t serve a black friend of his some ice cream. Rice was a product of his time, but it is a sad fact that fundamentalism as a whole turned a blind eye to the civil rights movement.
The fundamentalist inclination toward separation began to spiral out of control toward the end of Rice’s life. It got to the point where John R. Rice saw the need to stand up for a less strident fundamentalism. Himes shares the account of Rice’s last address at a Sword conference in August of 1980. Rice’s text was John 10:16, and he spoke of the other sheep that Christ has. In the chapter “Jesus Has Other Sheep”, Himes quotes Rice at some length from that sermon. I excerpt that quote below because it helps show where Himes is heading with his book.
Do you love the people of God who don’t see things like you do? How about Billy Graham? I love Billy Graham. I pray for him every day…. I read recently that Pope John XXIII wrote out a wonderful meditation, and he said, “Lord, I’m that prodigal son who said he wanted to come home from the hog farm to his father.” He said, “Lord, I’m that publican in the temple who prayed, Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.” And my heart went out to him and I said, “Amen!” When I get to Heaven I’m going to put my arm around him! Would you be glad to see someone saved who doesn’t agree with you?… In John chapter 13, Jesus said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” Of course, Jesus meant you and your little buddy, didn’t he? No he didn’t! He meant the rest of ’em too. If you’re going to love like a Christian, you’ve got to love everybody Jesus loves….
The ironic twist to this sermon is that Rice had planned to end his message by having the audience sing Bill Gaither’s song, “The Family of God”. The lyrics start with, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.” Curtis Hutson who was Rice’s successor, made sure that didn’t happen.
At the conclusion of the book, Himes describes a meeting with his uncles and aunts where he asked them about fundamentalism. He was surprised when they didn’t claim to be fundamentalists. One of his aunts said it this way, “You know, those people who claim to be ‘fundamentalist’ nowadays wouldn’t want to be associated with us, either! They’re what Daddy (John R. Rice) would have called, ‘ultra-fundamentalists,’ arrogant and self-righteous, very sure of themselves.” Himes singles out “the lack of Christian love for others” by those claiming to be fundamentalists, as being the key reason why John R. Rice’s children eschew the fundamentalist label.
Himes doesn’t give us exactly where he lands with respect to religion, although he keys in on love as being of primary importance. He concludes the book with what he’s learned from his “post-fundamentalist” family: “Honor truth. Love well. Live your faith.” Wise advice, for sure, but something is lacking. Fundamentalism today is a many-headed, varied movement, but the uniting factor throughout fundamentalism is a passion for the truth of Scripture. There is a simple dedication to the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ that is truly commendable. Evangelical Christianity today shares a common lineage with fundamentalism, and many conservative evangelicals would be described as fundamentalists by the average American. So I’m not too keen on becoming “post-fundamentalist,” if that means shirking a high view of the fundamentals of the faith. I do agree that Christian love and the expansive spirit that John R. Rice exhibited is largely missing in today’s fundamentalism. Himes is right to push us on these points. But the truth of Scripture and the gospel of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, remains an essential “fundamental” in the life of any Christian.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even if at times some of the back-story seemed to take too long to develop. The topic was of great interest to me, and the more I got into the book the more intrigued I became. There are bits and pieces of history that will be new to almost any reader, and the personal stories from the recollection of the Rice family are fascinating. For fundamentalists, this book will challenge your perspective of the history of your movement, but it won’t be a slap in the face. Himes is not out to attack fundamentalists, he is simply sharing his family’s history. His historical account educates and informs those not familiar with the history of fundamentalism, and if anything ugly is uncovered, the fault is not his. Rather than ignoring the past, we can seek to learn from it. May we all redouble our efforts to be always reforming our church practice and our personal lives into greater conformity to the truth of God’s Word.
Disclaimer: This book was provided by the author for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.
Few books or stories in the Bible match the grandeur and evocative power of the Book of Ruth. It may be one of the best stories from a literary perspective, of all time. John Piper has skillfully unpacked the beauty of this literary masterpiece in a beautifully produced work of his own.
A Sweet and Bitter Providence traces the story of Naomi and Ruth through tragedy and despair and on to grace and joy. Before I can even talk about Piper’s writing I have to stop and point out how beautiful and attractive this book is. The sleeve is beautiful enough, with a first rate painting of Ruth from the Bridgman art gallery. Then the hardcover has the same beautiful image on the front with a detailed map of Israel on the back in soft whites and gray. The sleeve contrasts the white and gray with a bold maroon. Such a beautiful packaging will help draw the reader in to the glory of the Book of Ruth.
The book is divided into four chapters that match up with the four chapters in Ruth. Before each chapter the biblical text in the ESV is provided. This allows the book to serve as a devotional alongside the reading of the Biblical book of Ruth. Piper adds an introduction and “final appeals” on either side of the four main chapters.
As the subtitle indicates, several themes are addressed throughout Ruth which have contemporary significance. Piper highlights the sexual chastity and bold assessment of character displayed by Boaz and Ruth (with Naomi). He highlights the racial aspects of a despised and destitute Moabitess’ return to Israel with her Jewish mother-in-law. The predominant focus is on the sovereignty of God clearly seen by the characters in the story as well as the author of Ruth. God is sovereign over both the bitter providential suffering of Naomi, as well as the beautiful and gracious provision of a redeemer and an heir.
Piper doesn’t miss the author’s intentional way of setting the story in the larger framework of canonical history. The book ends by declaring Ruth to be the great-grandmother of David.
The final appeals Piper offers sound like the wise advice of a seasoned man of God. Perhaps listing them here will encourage you to pick up this little book and by it be awakened afresh to the wonder of God’s sovereignty and the glory found in the small book of Ruth.
Piper exhorts us to: 1)Study the Scriptures 2)Pursue Sexual Purity 3)Pursue Mature Manhood and Womanhood 4)Embrace Ethnic Diversity 5)Trust the Sovereignty of God 6)Take the Risks of Love 7)Live and Sing to the Glory of Christ
This little book will do much to infuse your soul with worship to our Lord and Savior. It will also call you to a greater trust and deeper obedience. I recommend it highly.
In Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, John Piper gives us a sober, challenging read which should shake some of us out of our lethargy, when it comes to racial harmony. Piper brings up his own past, of growing up in a segregated south where the conservative Church turned a blind eye to the black man’s struggle. He exposes his own racism, and labors to show how Scripture and specifically the gospel of Christ, cuts at the root of racism.
I came across this quote in reading through 
