Bob Jones Builds a Wall
MORGAN PARKER
When I first learned about myself, the African American, I was made to believe that the origin of my species began here on American soil, tilled by my enslaved ancestors, blah blah blah. I was invented here on this land, already owned, already assigned a specific function; a contained and delineated place. I was a fairly recent phenomenon, an advancement of science and global commerce. There were Africans, there were Americans (Caucasians?), and there was me. Hanging on the arm of a mystifying subgroup, unwelcome and unchosen.
White people taught me all this stuff, by the way, at my white Christian school, where everyone had so much respect for African Americans and everything weâve been through as a people. Delivered to these great United States from the darkness of Africa, where we lived in huts and bathed in buckets of river water and did not know about the Gospel. We are the story of a very brave people, just like people in the Bible. Iâm not âreallyâ like people in the Bible, this is very clear, because the people in the Bible are white, and my illustrated Bibles and textbooks are filled with pictures to prove this. But these long-suffering peopleâslavesâthatâs where it all started for me. Iâm not African; thatâs a whole different people we donât know about. I am an Americanâbut not exactly. African American. I hate the way they say it. I hate the way I come with an asterisk.
Decades later, I am still trying to unlearn and reeducate myself. I am still trying to untangle a heavy and long-held belief that I do not deserve love. That I do not belong anywhere; that my presence is always an interruption; that I am a stain, an unwelcome splotch of ink or blood on crisp white bedsheets.
Until 1971, Bob Jones University, a private Christian school in Greenville, South Carolina, refused to admit African American students. The universityâs God-fearing leader, Bob Jones Jr., zealously honored his fatherâs vision for a campus free of any secular, atheist, earthly, or liberal influenceâfrom the New International Bible, to the teaching of evolution, to racial integration.
There is so much for me to say about how the prevalence of religious beliefs supporting institutional practices like these have wriggled their way into my consciousness; how over the years, my interactions with white Christians have twisted and injured the way I see myself and my place in this country. There is even more to say about how people like Bob Jones Jr. think, and how institutions like his operate so resolutely; how devout religious leaders derive from the teachings of the Bible such ugly and cruel conclusions. They all have so much to sayâto preachâabout me and my place in this country. On Easter Sunday 1960, Bob Jones Jr. delivered a very-special-episode sermon over the Bob Jones University radio airwaves, and subsequently published it for sale at the Bob Jones University bookstore under the title Is Segregation Scriptural?
The title of the sermon is not really a question, yet a question mark dangles, taking the joke too far. At a bar in Washington, DC, a white couple next to me touches each otherâs thighs, gregariously filling space with their conversation and echoing laughter. I tell myself that their display, like a stock photo in a picture frame, is not meant to taunt me or remind me of my otherness. My otherness is of course in the joke of my aloneness. (Why canât I get that hymn out of my head, out of my body?) I hear the man remark to his companion, âIt all makes sense now.â
Thatâs how I feel reading Is Segregation Scriptural? Thatâs how I feel sitting alone, hunched over several plates of appetizers, flirtatious couples orbiting my lonely dark planet. It is very clear to me what I am allowed to expect and want from my American life, and too easily, I follow the rules. I do not trespass. Maybe because I hate myself, but maybe because I know I am hated. In Washington, DC, right now, in February 2019, a national emergency has been declared, and the emergency concerns borders. It all makes sense now.
As a product of white evangelical educationâalbeit among the so-called progressiveness of Southern California, as opposed to the deeply embedded racism of South Carolina, and a solid thirty years after Bob Jonesâs Easter sermonâI know what is and isnât scriptural, and I know how to argue in Bob Jonesâs dialect. Itâs the same rhetoric I encountered in chapels and classrooms where I sat, befuddled, terrified, and ashamed, as youth group leaders or pale Bible teachers presented rigorously fabricated interpretations of scripture. There are some slick acrobatics involved in using biblical text to prove your doctrine, bending the world to your vision of it until other points of view vanish. A kind of speaking that creates truth from scratch, without question. This is what it says, and who can argue with Godâs words? This impassioned genre of speech, this art of war, is well suited for fundamentalist evangelical white Christians and people like me, who are bullheaded. Therefore, Iâm calling bullshit on Bob Jonesâs whole platform.
Anyone can use the Bible to prove anything. Much like a poem, its interpretation may be subjective. Its authors are consistently debated, and either way, long gone, so the text is fair game. Words donât mean the same thing for one person as they do another. Rather than seeking the textâs intention, analyzing it in its historical context, as one would a poem, many preachersâwhom, it should be noted, are not always theological scholars but self-appointed messengersâapproach the text with their personal convictions, politics, and feelings about what constitutes faithfulness, what constitutes right. Words do not always awaken the same fears or the same people.
In the introduction to his book Godâs Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, James Weldon Johnson writes of the great impact of âold-time preachersâ on the âsense of unity and solidarityâ among slaves and their descendants. âIt was the old-time preacher who for generations was the mainspring of hope and inspiration for the Negro in America,â he says, noting that their âpower for good or ill was very great.â Because âthey were the first of the slaves to learn to read, and their reading was confined to the Bible,â the Negro preacherâs brilliance was in the ability to translate and freestyle, such that âa text served mainly as a starting point and often had no relation to the development of the sermon.â
Words are always blooming with possibility. The languages of words and bodies and actions and looking can be the dearest giftâa pathway to empathy and love. At its most beautiful, language is the secret weapon for understanding how we relate, how we make sense of the terms of our weird world. Or it can be another kind of weapon, sharpened in the hands of the stubborn or the extremist or the fear mongering. Words are ductile, delicate, and loaded like that.
We entrust our spiritual leaders as interpreters of a higher and more enlightened powerâwe are swayed by their reasonings, like a poetâs or a presidentâs. It is dangerous to insist that the Bibleâs words are absolute, literal, unflinching, and to manipulate the Bible as a secondary source to back up the claims of the primary source, which, really, can be whatever. What can we learn from the text? is a markedly different question from, Where in the text is my point proven? How might this text transform my understanding of the world? Itâs a departure from, Where does the text align with what I personally believe about the world?
The standpoint of Bob Jonesâs Easter message is particularly American, rooted in his perspective of American life in 1960 South Carolinaâand his alone. His mission isnât to interpret Godâs Word but to convince his constituents, neighbors, and anyone else listening to the radio, that his way of seeing is the right way of seeing. How Jesus might have seen American life in 1960 South Carolina. (Because Bob Jones and God, it seems, share the same mind? I wonder what it feels like to think this about yourself.)
First, Bob is mad. Anger is no vibe to bring to an argument, and certainly not, as he puts it, âone of the most important and timely messages I have ever brought.â I am a woman, so people are always reminding me to leave my emotions out of it, but no one has reminded Bob that emotions compromise your chances of ever being taken seriously; therefore my opponent has entrapped himself in this vulnerable position. Still, before he even begins, heâs already patronizing his listeners: âDo not let anything disturb you. I want you to hear this message through.â
Do not let anything disturb you. A theme is established. It hangs in the air throughout the sermon, in the bedrooms of each supposition. It always comes back to this language. Disturbance, protection. Vigilance. Unrest, peace, purity.
Second, Bob is fucking terrified. He knows something terrible looms and threatensâsomething satanic, a word he capitalizes. This has gone too far, Bob thinks. This is an emergency. He hones in on a single word in a single verse in a single chapter in the Book of Acts, Acts 17:26: âAnd [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all faces of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.â âThat says that God Almighty fixed the bounds of their habitation,â Bob Jones reiterates, blasphemously disregarding the rest of the verse and neglecting to analyze the passages surrounding it. âThat is as clear as anything that was ever said.â
Citing anything out of context is completely irresponsible debate etiquette, but Bob Jones introduces the verse apropos of pretty much nothing, only attributing the passage to Paul, whom he considers to be âthe greatest man who ever lived⌠greater than Moses.â I buy this, because in the white evangelical interpretation, Moses is hailed as a sort of Abraham Lincoln, nobly leading slaves to freedom. I donât really understand the Paul thing, though, because what I remember about Paul is that he was once named Saul. In my interpretation, Paul is arguably the Bibleâs greatest example of transformation and progressiveness. Paul signifies and sanctions the godliness of reinventionâhis greatness is in his growth. I would say that Paul is a symbol of the righteousness gained from expansion, from change and course correction. I would say that self-improvement, and a spirited drive to better oneâs community, is one of the most exemplary acts of faith, a heartening display of service. Bob Jones fearfully condemns progression and adaptation as against Godâs intention. Unless it concerns the rehabilitation of the formerly African.
One of the first doctrines I learned from my zealous teachers-slash-missionaries was that the world split between those inside and those on the outsideâa truth made unwaveringly clear as landscapes and demographics transformed on the drive from school to our house. My side of town felt darker, less pure; my familyâs values not stringent or steadfast enough. I feared for us and pitied us. Was it even possible for us to see the world washed in so much warm light? Why couldnât joy and devoutness come more naturally? Was it because we were African American?
What I learned was fear. Every interpretation of scripture was a warning. In every Bible class lesson, every youth pastorâs message, and every memorized Bible verse, I heard or else. The line between good and bad, clear as anything. You are in, or you are out. There was Christian and there was secularâno murky waters, no room for uncertainty, no excuses.
That word: secular. The way my elementary school teachersâ faces contorted angrily as they spat itârailing against Harry Potter, or skirts above the calf, or South Park, or *NSync. The way my friends offered to pray for me and my ongoing struggle to resist temptation, to resist the dangerous allure of the secular world. Do not go outside the lines. That villainized outside world. Everything of it will only doom you to hell.
African American culture, of course, is itself inherently secular. Probably because of the rap music. Probably because of residual influence of our godless African ancestors. If I was going to wrangle myself a spot in heavenâthe black part of town in heavenâI would have to become an entirely different person. I would have to clamp down my impulses to argue and shout and be unique. I would need to stay still, remain quiet and earnestâI would need to prove myself to earn an asterisk on my African American status. This is how I became ânot really black, though.â How could I be, if I was among them?
Much of the groundwork on which Bob Jones builds his message is a bizarre variation on the classic âI have black friendsâ defense, which, it should be noted, is never convincing, and definitely never asked for. He talks at length about a Chinese couple he once met, concluding, âAll right, he is a Chinese. He married a Chinese woman. That is the way God meant it to be.â He says, âChinese people are wonderful people. The Japanese people are ingeniousâthey are wonderful people. The Koreans are wonderful people. The Africans are wonderful people. In many ways, there are no people in the world finer than the colored people who were brought over here in slavery in days gone by.â Of course, Bob preaches again and again, the Bible makes crystal clear the importance of lines between peoples. Itâs what pretty much the whole book is about if youâre looking at it that way. Being led astray. Purity. Disgracing your line. Thatâs what feels as violent to me as a deep slash across my backâthe straight and solid line.
âWhen nations break out of their boundaries, and begin to do things contrary to the purpose of God and the directive will of God,â the preacher gravely reminds, âthey have trouble.â Boundaries and borders and walls and limitations are essential to godlinessâany other ideology is of the secular world.
The boundaries of our habitation include countries of origin (which Bob Jones liberally conflates with race), restaurants, public pools, train cars and buses, and of course, wedding chapels and sexual relations. Build a wall around all these things, all these different kinds of bodies, and âwe will have no trouble.â No threats to Godâs plan. No national or spiritual emergencies.
There is another way to read the Bible, to interpret Godâs will: that what God demands of us is not borders or walls or separatism, but love.
Caught up in the fervor of his South Carolinian perspective, Bob Jones seems to have forgotten that these United States were founded by rebels who broke out of the bounds of their habitation and created a new established order. Borders and oceans were crossed. America, the land of imported races, and yet still one nation under God. Freedom is a dangerously ambitious slogan to apply to a nation, and a hypocritical ideal to apply to a religion.
Which brings us to another horrifying and reckless assertion Bob Jones makes, which I can only interpret as a justification of slavery. This claim happens subtly but confidently. He first pronounces, of course, that slavery was wrong. âBut God overruled,â he reasons. âWhen they came over hereââand I could spend paragraphs on the use of this word came, not to mention the fixation on victims, they, rather than perpetratorsââmany of them did not know about the Bible and did not know about Jesus Christ; but they got converted. Some of the greatest preachers the world has ever known were colored preachers who were converted in slavery days.⌠God Almighty allowed these colored people to be turned here into the South and overruled what happened and then he turned the colored people into wonderful Christian people.â
There you have it: a neat little scriptural justification of American slavery; lemonade out of the single most disgraceful human rights violation America has ever committed, a legacy that will continue to plague our country until its end. That little slip-up.
âDid you colored people ever stop to think where you might have been if that had not happened?â The smugness. The moral superiority. âNow, you colored people listen to me.⌠You might be over there in jungles of Africa today, unsaved.â The motherfucking nerve. That goddamned question mark.
Bob has worked himself into incoherent fury and fight. In all the backflips to loosely connect Jim Crow segregation to one little Bible verse, his sermon has completely lost its way. He darts from warped discussions of war with Japan; to rambling about how the good white people of the South have helped build churches for the good colored people in the South; to a claim that the places in America with the most trouble are the most integrated (New York, CaliforniaâŚ); to shouting out his favorite Chinese people; to, yesâthe reminder that we colored people should be altogether grateful we were brought here, that God allowed us to be. When heâs gotten too far off message, he returns to the word boundaries, to the necessity of restriction and purity and how things were âmeantâ to be. We are allowed to be hereâwith an asterisk.
As do most self-righteous white men who have only ever been granted authority, Bob Jones has absolutely no handle on the concept of subjectivity.
According to Bob, after God adjusted his unflinching and crystal-clear will and âpermitted the slaves to come over to America,â it was us African Americans who didnât follow Godâs willâa baseless accusation that our purpose in being (no, coming) here was âso that the colored people could be the great missionaries to the Africans.â Instead, we settled in. We crossed the borders of our assigned plantations and started having sex with the good white people, trampling the divine order. âThe white people in America would have helped pay their way over there. By the hundreds and hundreds they could have gone back to Africa and got the Africans converted after the slavery days were over.â This is news to me! In all my years of hearing, âGo back to Africa,â I never knew there were checks being waved around.
Could and would are theoretical assumptions, reserved clearly for white slave owners whose sins were forgiven, for whom God graciously amended his will. âWe are having turmoil all over Americaââand you might think Bob Jones refers to the racist crimes of the Jim Crow era, generally considered to be disturbing and satanicâamong them, lynchings, church bombings, and constant violence against wonderful Christian peopleâbut instead, he damns âpropagandistsâ who âslander God Almightyâ by âpreaching pious sermons⌠about rubbing out the line between racesâit makes me sick.â Itâs obvious he refers not only to the aspirations of the entire civil rights movement, all those who âput their own opinion above the word of God,â but specifically Martin Luther King Jr., whose peaceful, gentle, and obedient style evangelicals across the board loveâlike are obsessed with. I remember asking about Malcolm X in an elementary school classroom and quickly being met with horror stories about dangerous, gun-wielding thugs who served only to distract from the ChristianâAmericanâprogress achieved by Dr. King. I mean, come on. I have never met a white Christian who didnât like that guy.
In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges needed to be escorted to her integrated public school by US marshals after receiving death threa...