Urbana Archive
I tribute my 1950-70s mentors, Tom Skinner
, Bill Parnell, Stan Long, Columbus Salley and others. They challenged and influenced my growth and development at a critical time in history. Their was a prevailing movement in the 60s and 70s to reject the white man's religion and embrace the radical black revolution. These men taught me (us) to embrace our Christianity, black identity, and the radical black movement without compromise (Chisto-centric). We were titled "young turks) then. The 1970 University of Illinois for the 9th Urbana Student Mission Convention, Tom Skinner sums up the character, the rhetoric and movement of God amongst the Movement of Black Christian Movement circa 1970s. The Tom Skinner speech transcript is listed below , or listen to the audio recording. The impact is much more apparent on the recording than on the transcript.
In 1970, I attended the University of Illinois for the 9th Urbana Student Mission Convention. A group of us (Soul Liberation and Youth for Liberation) left fom harlem to Urbana by bus. It was the 1970 - A Turning Point in Urbana's History. However, it was a turning point in my Music Ministry and Life. I was a former member (Soul Liberation I) of the "worship band from his revivals, Soul Liberation." We did not know it was a worship band then.
Youth for Liberation was formed around that time.
Tom skinner preached liberation "evangelical Christians must become is infiltrators, fifth columnists in Satan's world for the purpose of preaching liberation to an oppressed people."
My parents Rupert and Elsie Bingham were involved in the "movement". My father was on the first board of Tom Skinner crusades. he served as printer of the Tom Skinner tracts, material, brochures and song books. My father also accompanied Tom Skinner on his British Guiana missionary crusade journey. My mother was a Tom Skinner crusade pianist in the New York crusades. My sister and I (Andrea) joined Soul Liberation I. John Skinner (1960s young evangelist) my running buddy and college roommate married my sister Andrea. We ( Bingham siblings) folded and printed thousands and thousands of Tom Skinner materials at our house. We also attended most of the Tom Skinner events. I met Dennis Adams (Kings College) at a Billy Graham crusade (circa 1970s) picket and protest rally in front of Madison Square Garden. We protested Billy Graham's association with Richard Nixon. Dennis's parents and my parents attended the same church in their childhood. It was providence that Dennis and I meet by happenstance, in front of Madison Square Garden almost 20 years later.
Notably, we were able to embrace our Christianity and the radical black movement without compromise.
African Americans in World Missions1970 - A Turning Point in Urbana's History
In December 1970, over twelve thousand students, pastors and missionaries decended on the University of Illinois for the 9th Urbana Student Mission Convention.
The air was ripe for change. For years, African-American students in InterVarsity Chapters around the country had been experiencing racism - usually unnoticed by the whites, and usually unchallenged. At the same time, God was usingthe Black Power movement to teach African-American Christians to view themselves as full humans,but precious few white Christians were listening.
Black Evangelicals in the late sixties were feeling the heat from their nationalist friends for subscribing to the "white man's religion," yet remained outsiders to White Evangelical circles.
In the months preceding the 1970 convention, the word got out that the Urbana leadership was making an effort to change. Tom Skinner, a Black evangelist from New York City, had signed on as a guest speaker, with the worship band from his revivals, Soul Liberation. So it was that several hundred Black students showed up in Urbana, Illinois in December 1970.
Click here to read the Skinner speech, or listen to the audio recording. The impact is much more apparent on the recording than on the transcript.
http://www.urbana.org/feat.aamission.u70.cfm
The U.S. Racial Crisis and World Evangelism (Urbana 70)Part 1 of 2
by Tom Skinner
Listen to the audio from Tom's talk at Urbana.
below is the first half; for size reasons we have put the halves on different pages. Click here to view the second half.
Any understanding of world evangelism and racism in our country must begin with an understanding of the historyof racism. To understand why we are inthe middle of a revolution in our time, to come to grips with what the black revolution is all about and to understand what the nature of racism in our society is, I must take you back approximately 350 years, to when the early ships landed in this country - in approximately 1619.
On those ships were approximately forty black people. Notable among them was a couple known as Isabel and Antony, who started the first black family on American soil in 1624. You see, one year before the Mayflower, 150 years before the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence was ever signed, black people had settled this country and were an integral part of this society.
Between the years of 1619 and 1660 there was relatively no race problem in our country. Our country had what was known as indentured servanthood. An indentured servant was a person who, coming from the Old World, could not afford to pay his passage to the New World, was brought out by someone of means. He came to this country and worked for that individual for seven years, something like Jacob did for his father-in-law. At the end of that time he was set free to develop his own life.
Now keep in mind in that context: Those people who in the name of God seek to say that America was founded on godly principles and that our country was started by God-fearing people deeply committed to the truths of God's Word must reexamine that idea, in light of the fact that the jails of England were emptied in order to bring people to this country to settle it.
The state of Georgia is a classic example of the kind of people who settled America. Georgia was first settled by prisoners from England whom the English wanted to get off their hands. The English sold them to wealthy people for whom they worked here for seven years and finally were set free to develop their own lives. So, if you have any illusions that America was founded on godly principles, reexamine them.
We must also understand that between 1619 and 1660, black and white people worked together. Black and white people were indentured servants, Black and white people owned indentured servants. Black and white people lived together, ate together,slept together, fought each other, killed each other, sued each other, married each other, tookeach other to court,murdered each other and pretty well lived together with each other.
But, in 1660, there arose a tremendous problem: that is, white indentured servants tended to run away. It was very difficult to recapture those white indentured servants because they could easily assimilate into the majority society. When black people ran away, it was very easy to recapture them because of their high degree of visibility. It was therefore decreed in 1660 that only black indentured servants would be used. And by 1702 slavery became a permanent way of life in American society.
Now, let us understand that slavery was upheld by three sectors of society. First, it was upheld by the political system, secondly by the economic system and thirdly by the religious system.
It was upheld by the economic system because slavery was economically feasible. A good, healthy male slave could be bought for $600; a healthy female for $300. You made them be cohabit and, within several years, you could breed a prosperous brood of slaves.
What is upheld by the economic system is generally upheld by the political system in our country, because you must keep in mind that politics and economics in our country are synonymous. They are parallel to each other. What happens in the economic world affects the political world. If you check out the state of politics in our country previous to the 1968 election, you will notice that when Richard Nixon was nominated at the Republican convention, the Dow Jones industrial average went up eleven points. The day before the election, when the polls showed that Mr. Humphrey was narrowing his margin on Mr. Nixon, the stock market reacted by backtracking. Things that happen in the political world affect the economic world.
You must keep in mind that in our country a mere 1% of the total population controls the entire economic system. One percent of all the companies in our country produce 70% of all the wealth. One percent of all the people in our country have 46% of all the outstanding cash. And no matter what they tell you about people's capitalism in our country, that everyone can have a piece of American society, it really boils down to the fact that 90% of all outstanding common stockin this country is controlled by 5% of all the stockholders. It is those 5% who make the political decisions. It is those people who, in the smoke-filled rooms of political conventions, nominate whom they want and at election time issue two of them to us to decide which one we like.
But the third sector that upheld slavery was the religious system. Numerous churches and denominations preached that slavery was a divine institution ordained by God. There were those who quoted a verse in the book of Genesis where Noah is supposed to have gone to bed drunk one night. He was also naked. His son Canaan comes in and mocks his nakedness. The following morning, when Noah discovers what his son has done, he curses his son.
A group of ad hoc biblical dispensationalists argue that Canaan was a descendant of Ham and the word Ham means black; therefore, God has cursed all black people and relegated them to conditions of servitude. And, incidentally, I can name to you right now at least five Christian colleges and at least a dozen Bible institutions in this country that still teach that in their classrooms today.
During slavery, the slavemaster allowed no marriages. There were only temporary arrangements, and they were usually pronounced with the words, "Do you promise to stay together until death or distance do you part?"
Rather, the slavemaster developed what was known as the "stud system," in which a healthy male slave was forced to cohabit with a healthy female slave in order for her to bear healthy slave children. When the woman became pregnant, the male was moved to other quarters to do the same thing. And within the course of ten years he could have brought into the world a hundred children, never being allowed to father any of them. Very few children went around the plantation saying "Mommy" or "Daddy" because they did not know who they were.
Now keep in mind that numbers of slavemasters were also Christians. These same slavemasters - many of them deacons and elders in their own local churches - would have never tolerated sexual immorality in their own church, but found no difficulty in putting a black slave woman and a black slave man together under immoral conditions for the purpose of breeding slaves to maintain the economic system.
Slavery finally came toan end with the declaration that slaves were free - the Emancipation Proclamation. But keep inmind that all the Emancipation Proclamation said was thathe was no longer a slave. The proclamation never defined him as a man. It simply said, "He is not a slave."
Between the years of 1865 and 1877, the society then turned to the former slave and said, "Now that you are free, you are to settle down, become the husband of one wife, the father of your own children, and you are to assimilate into American cultural society." And they expected this former slave to undo in one night what he had been taught to do another way for 250 years. And the amazing part about it was that he began to do it.
Between 1865 and 1877, numerous black people were elected to state legislatures - in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and Louisiana. A black man was governor of the State of Louisiana in that period. The speakers of the house and the state legislatures in 1876 in South Carolina and Florida were black. Black Politicians controlled numerous state legislatures throughout the South. Scores of them were elected to the United States Senate and Congress, and they began to make a tremendous upsurge in political power.
But by 1877, there developed cries from certain sectors of society, which said: "This former slave is moving too far too fast. He has only been free for twelve years. Does he expect to have all of his marbles in twelve years? These people must learn that these things take time. They must learn to be patient. They cannot have everything at once."
Now that was 93 years ago. When was the last time you heard that statement? In 1877, the United States presidential election was thrown into the House of Representatives. Mr. Hayes, in order to be elected, entered into a compromise with Southern politicians in which he promised that, if elected, he would withdraw troops from the South, end Reconstruction and allow white people to deal with black people in their own way. It is ironic that that compromise was put in black and white and signed and sealed in the Alexander Hotel in Washington, D.C., which at that time was owned and operated by black men.
In 1877 Mr. Hayes was elected. Troops were withdrawn from the South and white political leaders began to deal with black people in their own way. And from 1877 to almost the present, there was a wave of lynchings and murders and drownings and disappearancesof black people unequalled in the history of the Western world. Black people were lynched by the thousands, their homes burned, their women raped, their children beaten. They could not go to court or fight the issues. A black man was looked upon as property and not as a human being. He could be put to death for looking at a person too long, for being too familiar with a white person or wanting to do dumb illegal things like vote.
In 1914 World War I came, and the black man put on an American uniform and went off to defend America as "the land of the free and the home of the Boston Braves." As a result, he became stationed in the armed services in the northern metropolitan cities - Chicago, New York, Philadelphia - and word began to trickle back to the South (where 90% of the black population then lived) that if black people would migrate north they would find greater economic opportunity and social justice.
1 comment:
Phil thank you for publishing and making available this important snipit from history.
since i was there and both influenced and participated in those goings on. in a significant way.
i was once again re- engergized and encouraged and challenged by this world changing Address
I've met many over the years whose lives have been dramatically altered because of that Sermon.
Its been many years since i've listened to it and reflected on it's impact
thanks for including Me in the narrative.
Henry Greenidge
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