COMMENTARY: The KKK and a little girl’s prayer

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.) (RNS)-“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength,”wrote David in Psalm 8. I was reminded of this […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.)

(RNS)-“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength,”wrote David in Psalm 8. I was reminded of this truth recently as I listened to the prayer of my 6-year-old daughter.


Jael has recently become concerned about the Ku Klux Klan. After watching black history documentaries that reported the Klan’s legacy of violence against African-Americans, Jael began to pray that God would speak to the hearts of the Klansmen and that their lives might be turned toward him.

I’d like to believe that the roots of Jael’s faith can be found in the godly example set by her preacher-father. But I’m not so sure. As one who has experienced racial violence first-hand, my thoughts on the subject tend to be less than pious.

To be sure, it was only the hand of God that restrained me on that night in 1979. As two white men trapped my girlfriend and me inside my parked car-leaping on the trunk, pounding on the windows and shouting racial epithets-I resisted the opportunity to turn the tables when two black men pulled alongside to assist.

Somehow we survived the incident with only frayed nerves and a slightly damaged car. But though I overcame the temptation to fight fire with fire, prayer for my attackers and the police who did nothing was harder to come by. Thus, when my daughter asked for God’s grace on another group of racists, 17 years later, I could only swallow my revulsion-and nod.

Yet as Black History Month draws to a close, I see in Jael’s prayer an object lesson for our nation. At the heart of the black community’s struggle for racial justice has always been the issue of vengeance versus grace.

By definition, vengeance denotes retaliation and suggests an”eye-for-eye”mentality. It was this kind of thinking that prompted Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael to coin the phrases”by any means necessary”and”black power.”They believed violence was the logical response to those who were violent with them.

And, in truth, it is hard to argue with their thinking. When your father has been lynched, as Malcolm’s was, and you’ve been abused for demanding your freedom, as Carmichael was, retribution begins to sound a lot like justice.


The problem with vengeance, however, is that the reprisals continue to escalate and the bloodlust knows no end. If I had retaliated against my attackers in 1979, the episode might well have ended tragically.

Grace, on the other hand, recognizes the guilt of the other party but commends the offender, as the first epistle of Peter states,”to him who judges righteously.”Once relieved of the need to avenge himself, the individual is now free to love his enemy and, as Jael did, to pray for him.

The Scriptures have much to say about the virtues and benefits of childlike faith. Who would have guessed that racial harmony might be one of them?

MJP END ATCHISON

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