Bill Ayers, a former militant Marxist leader in the Weather Underground, has a curious tattoo of John Brown. Why does a “Godless communist” memorialize Brown, a fiery evangelical Christian and even more unbelievable, a Calvinist?
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Remarkable because modern-day American evangelicals have become a synonym for Donald Trump, who brutally opposed the call for racial justice ignited by years of oppression catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd. A generational zeitgeist igniting an uprising against the authoritarian state which upholds racism through the police.
What if the left is not opposed to Christianity but to evangelicals losing the social gospel? A fire for justice completed upon the Cross, the same faith compelling John Brown to lay down his life for his friends at Harpers Ferry. The militant American abolitionist would later be executed for treason, a spark for the American Civil War.
Brown did not love his life so much as to shrink from death hanging from a gallow. His life was a foretaste of divine glory, a shadow of the Messiah, a compass pointing to Christ. For it was the words of His Messiah, who said in John chapter 15:13,
“Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
John Brown, the radical abolitionist who, unlike the white liberal abolitionist class, saw himself as equal to his Black brethren—fighting with and befriending free Blacks, from intellectuals like Frederick Douglas to the common man, living the principle of radical equality.
It is the difference today, even in the Church and amongst the liberal elite, whose maternalism towards Black people see them as children rather than equals. The difference between the charity of the privileged few taking pity versus a mutual dependence on each other.
Radical equality is the vulnerability of not needing perfect victims to affirm a person's humanity. A charge Black people know well, denying them of their humanity like brother George Floyd butchered by the police. The same liberal tyranny Martin Luther King Jr warned of, civility used to justify the continuous blood of white supremacy suppressing mass uprisings for justice. As written in his Letter from A Birmingham Jail.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”
The George Floyd uprising is not a symbolic gesture but a call to restructure the community from militant policing to social good. Movements from the grassroots, like defunding and abolishing the police, became stained words of mainstream media from CNN to Fox News.
White radicals were portrayed as stealing Black people’s voices as if they needed to be spoken for. Instead, police were empowered and funded more, aided by the liberal call to civility, the opposite of the gospel, through Jesus who came to build an inverse Kingdom of power as described in Luke 1:51-53. The song of praise proclaimed by the blessed Virgin Mary mother of God.
“He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, And exalted the lowlyHe has filled the hungry with good things, And the rich He has sent away empty.”
Over two years and through a Pandemic, the same struggle persists. For the absence of justice for as the activists cry means there will be no peace. Law and order continues to suppress dissent upholding what Martin Luther King Jr. calls a negative peace. A repression of tension unlike positive peace which is the presence of justice.
True friends of Jesus fulfill God's command: to love one another as He has loved us. To love what God loves, justice, and hate sin, which is injustice opposed to God’s Holy nature. Jesus said you are my friends if you do whatever I command you. From the same passage of John chapter 15 where He said there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. The refrain of friendship sung in the classic hymns like What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Sung in pews by Christians who consider themselves friends of Jesus with cold hearts to injustice.
Our sinful nature is central to Christian theology. Especially in the Calvinism of John Brown which teaches that man has no free will corrupted fully by sin. In the Catholic tradition God can not create evil but our sin corrupts our free will to choose evil. Contrasted with the dual nature of Jesus, fully God and fully Man, free from all sin.
Jesus who is equal with God but did not consider it robbery to become man, humbling himself as a bondservant obedient to the point of death upon the cross. Who would befriend us lowly stricken creatures afflicted with sin embracing the Cross—dying via a method of execution preserved by the Roman Empire for the most trivial offense? Jesus bled a sinless man—an invitation to humanity whose sins nailed him to the cross to be his friends.
John Brown predicted that the atonement for what the abolitionist movement considered to be the sin of chattel slavery must too lead to the bleeding of scarlet.
“I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
Blood erasing sins from the Civil War to protestors bleeding in the street mirrors the Lord's redemption of humanity through the ultimate atonement of Christ upon the Cross. As the Lord addressed the Israelites, let His word move the Church to crusade for justice from Isaiah chapter chapter 1:17-18.
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow. “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.”
In the ancient Hebrew culture, the High Priest would sacrifice bulls amongst other livestock without blemish to the Lord. The blood atoning for the people's sins is described in Leviticus chapter 16:15-16.
“Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil, do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat. So he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, for all their sins; and so he shall do for the tabernacle of meeting which remains among them in the midst of their uncleanness”
Limited each year to be renewed the next. An empty tradition that failed to please the Lord as the heart of wicked men grew cold to injustice as Amos shares the Lord’s rebuke from chapter 5:21-24,
“I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies.Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream.”
John Brown like God burned for justice out of love for his brethren, the chained slave. Pointing to Jesus, who said on the Cross in John chapter 19:30, It is finished. His sacrifice would break humanity's chains, the final atonement for sin as described in Colossians 1:19-20.
“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”
