Listening to Perkins ramble is like sitting under a cool waterfall on a blistering hot day. I'd heard of John M. Perkins for years, read his Let Justice Roll Down ages ago, but had never heard him in person until recently. Just shy of being 80, he has led a long life as a Believer and a Civil Rights Activist.
Representing the Oregon Center for Christian Values, I attended a forum sponsored by Multnomah University's "New Wine, New Wineskins" where Perkins was one of the featured guests. The topic was something along the lines of justice and microenterprise, two concerns of great interest to me. But I was really there just to listen to Perkins.
"The American church has lost its prophetic witness," he started as if winding up a baseball pitch on a muggy Mississippi day. "We who are people of Christian faith are so fragmented. The world has wrapped us up into little ideological bundles. So many pieces cannot make a collective witness." Moreover, he added, there is a lot of bad ideology going around and the bad ideology consolidates hate. With this bad ideology, you don't have to hate an individual, just have to hate a group.
Perkins is glad we are starting to welcome justice back into the church. That's what Jesus intended, that the church become a catalyst by which he could speak through them, and in Perkins' understanding that is what is the meaning of the signs and wonders that shall follow them. I think about the signs in speaking truth, love and justice to the powers of this world, the wonders of seeing people freed from political, economic, cultural, relational and spiritual bondage.
I watch Perkins slowly shift back and forth in his seat, less uncomfortable with the chair than stirred by inner thoughts and passions. The issue of justice is at once collective and individual. He quotes Booker T. Washington who said, "Let your bucket down wherever you find yourself." But if anything his sense of justice is deeply rooted in his faith and in the Word, not in mere pragmatism or secular theory.
Perkins' voice begins to rise in volume. He's sitting down and he's no longer young, but the preacher is oozing out in him. "Kadesh-barnea," he says. The way he carefully pronounces the place name "Kadesh-barnea," it is as if he is handling an ancient artifact, a priceless family heirloom.
"Kadesh-barnea." He may be addressing a room full of preachers and professors, but he's really talking to no one in particular, only intoning a name that conjures meaning and context for him – and he assumes for his listeners. He continues. God equipped the people over about a two year period to prepare them to go into the Promised Land and they got to Kadesh-barnea. "The greatest failure in the Bible…" His voice trails off as if images were projecting before his eyes, mesmorizing him into silence, as if that failure were being played out again in that conference room. You can see a generation of Israelites dying off right there on that hotel carpet.
"Don't receive God's Grace in vain."
"They came back the second time [to Kadesh-barnea]. We [I assume he means America or the Church today] have failed like the nation of Israel has failed. We are at Kadesh-barnea the second time. God is molding a new group of people – a post-racist group of people." You sense that there is a lot of meaning and depth between each period and the start of the next sentence.
Suddenly Perkins jabs with his verbal right hook. "The poor white cracker has nothing but his meth and sex. No Jesse Jackson. No Al Sharpton. He doesn't even have the Pentecostal Church because it has gotten rich."
Eventually he winds down and the next (young, Caucasian) panelist speaks more succinctly. Has good things to say. The conversation opens into Q&A. Humble thinkers and doers rise to raise a point or pose a question. Some of the Puppies (Pompous Upwardly Pushing Professionals) speak out as well.
"Justice is a stewardship issue … an economic issue." I don't recall the question that gets Perkins rolling again. God called mankind to subdue the earth. Jesus. Luke 4:18-19. Good news to the poor. Like reading from Cliff notes, Perkins reels off Scriptural high points. "Matthew 25 – did we do it?" He's referring to the sheep and the goats. The Old Testament Jubilee set the poor free. That's the wholistic approach. Jesus came proclaiming healing and salvation.
Perkins responds to a question from a participant who has noted two streams of thought in Perkin's reflections: poverty eradication and evangelism. The man wants to address the former for a moment, but Perkins doesn't let him go there. "This reflects a dichotomy. That's a theological misuse." You can't separate them.
There's another theme that runs through much of Perkins life and writings. Community. "We need to decide how high we want to go on the economic ladder." We need to create community and not worry about going up the ladder. His focus is on how we treat others when he says we are to pay people a living wage and not a minimum wage and my mind goes to so many people who live in my area who cannot keep body, soul and family together on minimum wage. I know I can't.
"We can't leave mad capitalism mad – it's drunk!" He verbally punches the air with that last word. This former share cropper is no socialist. "Capitalism is the best production method in the world. But it needs help. Without checks and balances, our system is getting drunk. Legislators are becoming lobbyists and inside traders."
His concern is not just about politics. He's speaking to a room full of pastors, professors and non-profit heads. He's afraid of the way we raise money these days, that we might have shut off the prophetic voice. You can't raise money and then speak truth to those who gave you that money. You have to see that your source is God.
We (meaning humanity) have always suffered from greed. But now that suffering from greed that has led to addiction. What's the solution? It's back to values. Life is not in what you possess, but is in people.
The theme of the conference is on owning the pond together. Perkins retells the familiar line. "Give people a fish and you'll feed them for a day. Teach people how to fish and you'll feed them for a lifetime.
"It's a lie!" His tone has punched the air again, drawn blood. "Who eats the fish depends on who owns the pond." The Church has to come up with collective action, has to teach the people and help them get control of some of the resources. Otherwise this poverty will turn people into terrorists if we don't do something about it. The terrorists now are those who are rich and disillusioned with their parents. He's alluding to the Detroit terrorist from Nigeria who had planned to blow up that passenger plane. The next wave, he says, will be those who feel trapped and no way out, who, I assume he means, can't get near the water to stick in their fishing pole. I understand in some small way. I know what it is like to hunt for work and not find it, to be in depression and unable to hold down a job that could cover the cost of raising a family. "The pond has a fence around it."
He returns to his thoughts about community. The solution is in community. The modern church is so weak because it is a commuter church with no place. It is a place, alright, a place of worship, not of community. The ideal is to plant churches with a parish concept. We live in community in parish. But we today do not live in community. We are commuters who live as individuals.
Perkins is winding down this two-hour session, the first in a weekend of conference. Later the same day he will address a multiracial reconciliation service as Portland attempts to find healing after several fatal shootings by police, including the one most recently of a mentally disturbed and unarmed man.
"I'm not talking about the church conquering the secular world," he concludes. "We should live at peace with all people. Becoming the prophetic voice to society."
