How John Lewis’s faith, compassion, and vision of justice can guide us through today’s challenges with hope and humanity.
Articulated Insight – “News, Race and Culture in the Information Age”
I’ve been thinking a lot about the late John Lewis, the civil rights icon and former congressman from Georgia who died almost five years ago. John had many lessons that could help us to keep our hearts and heads in a helpful place. Here are three I think we need right now:
Lewis’s belief in the black church as a communal safety zone
In his riveting memoir, John Lewis grew up in a context of love and some-bodiness in 1940’s Alabama. He recalled his childhood as rich, safe, and small. His family, friends and church and church community provided him a kind shield from the toxic racism in the South. His family didn’t feel poor, but made the best of their circumstances through their faith, family and friends.
Lewis mentioned the black church was a refuge for keeping and maintaining his humanity. Lewis reflected that church was a joy. “That was a sweet inspiration” (Walking With The Wind, p. 21) In other words, Lewis was saturated in the caresses, hugs, and discipline of the black church that has sustained black people since stepping onto North America in 1619.
The black church birthed leaders who made a difference in the shaping of the American experiment. Reflecting on the black church, historian Henry Louis Gates proudly remarked, “no pillar of the African American community has been more central to its history, identity, and social justice vision than the black church…a symbolic space where Black people, enslaved and free, could nurture the hopes for a better today and a much better tomorrow….calling America to its higher self in times of testing and trial” (Henry Louis Gates, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, p. 1-2)
Lewis’s compassion for the marginalized
Lewis recalled his husbandry of chickens gave him a heart for the outcast and signaled his future as a preacher. His Grandma Bessie gave him the job of taking care of his chickens and bringing the eggs into the house for dinner after church on Sunday. He loved those chickens to the point that he had to preach the hell out of them. Lewis observed, “those chickens were forsaken by everyone else, that drew me to them. From the first day I was given charge of those chickens I felt as if I had been trusted to care for God’s chosen creatures…It was not a struggle at all. It was something I wanted to do” (WWTW, p. 24,26)
Lewis took his compassion for the marginalized into the streets where he was beaten on bridges and in front of lunch counters in the South. Lewis remembered the unnamed men and women who never appeared in the newspapers or on network TV. He felt his calling as a preacher was to recognize their humanity and contributions wherever he traveled, even in the hall of power in Washington and beyond.
While sitting on the floor of Congress, Lewis never stopped fighting for justice and freedom against those who sought to ignore or silence the voices of the marginalized. Lewis kept his heart opened wide for the unheard and unseen people who he remembered from his days in Alabama.
Lewis’s commitment to see the image of God in everyone
If there was a southern poster child of racism during the Civil Rights movement, it would be Alabama governor George Wallace. Wallace gladly took the job where he proudly remarked his state was the “cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland” (Jon Meacham, Soul of the America, p. 219) He stood before adoring crowd and uttered, “I’m gonna’ make race the basis of politics in this state…I’m gonna’ make it the basis of politics in this country (Ibid, p. 219) Wallace weaponized and spread the racial carcinogens of myths because he knew it worked.
Lewis believed and trusted the non-violence resistance he heard from Dr. King and others during his training in Nashville. The gospel taught that everyone was made in the image of God. Lewis was reminded that dehumanization had a long track record of not bringing about social change that lasted. Taking observations from Gandhi and King, Lewis heard about the beloved community that God declared everyone was imprinted with the face of God if we slow down and see them through different lenses. Humanizing people, even one’s enemy, was the first step of social change. Lewis said the beloved community concept “was eye-opening stuff to me, learning that the feelings I’d had as a boy, the exhaustion and unfairness that I witnessed growing up in Alabama, the awful segregation that surrounded Nashville….was nothing new. IT was mind-blowing to learn that the tension between what was right and what was wrong that had torn at me since I was old enough to think had a historical context, that people of all cultures and all ages had the struggle with the same issues…the beauty was that these ideas applied to real life” (WWTW, 79)
Lewis became the face of humanizing black people in the face of torrent hatred and scorn in the South. While Wallace reflected the face of rage. Lewis chose to see his enemy as not an enemy, but a child made in the image of God who had lost his way. Even an enemy can become a citizen in the beloved community of God.
Let Lewis’ wisdom take root in your heart and head where it can help you and I re-imagine the role we play can make a difference in the world right now.
