by Steve | Jan 31, 2013 | Front Page News, Uncategorized
By George Mitrovich
Good News, May/June 2005
Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, recently received posthumously the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor. The presentation of the Gold Medal to Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow, took place at a 90-minute ceremony on March 2, 2005 in the great rotunda of the United States Capitol.
President Bush, House Speaker Denny Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, House and Senate Democratic Leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and the Gold Medal legislation’s principal co-sponsors, Senator John Kerry and Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts participated in the moving and memorable ceremony, as did the Reverend Jessie Jackson.
Jackie Robinson was a baseball player and a Hall of Fame player. But the Gold Medal isn’t given for athletic achievement—Robinson was a four-sports star at UCLA, and some believe baseball was not his best sport—but in recognition of one’s achievements as a human being. Mark this down, and keep it always in mind—Jack Roosevelt Robinson was, by any measure, a very special human being.
In becoming the first black man to play in the major leagues, Robinson encountered racism in its vilest manifestations—racial taunts and slurs, insults on the playing field and off, character assassination, death threats, and anything else the wicked among us in mid-twentieth century America could throw at him. But despite the evil of such provocations he somehow found a way to rise above his tormentors, to literally turn the other cheek and demonstrate that however great his athletic skills, his qualities as a human being were infinitely greater.
In this story is another story—not about a baseball player, but a story about a man and his faith. It is a story seldom mentioned in the secular press. This is that story:
When the time approached for Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Dodgers to sign Robinson, he had several difficult decisions to make. First, should he sign a black player? And if he did, what were the consequences? Second, did Robinson have the talent to play in the big leagues? But it was the last decision that was the most important, as it concerned Robinson’s personal qualities. Was he tough enough in the best sense to confront the certain racial turmoil he would face?
Rickey was a man of exceptional intelligence and ability. He was known throughout baseball as “the Mahatma” for his great wisdom (more than any other person he was responsible for creating baseball’s farm system, key factors in his success with the St. Louis Cardinals and later with the Dodgers in Brooklyn).
The assurance Rickey sought as to Robinson’s character was found in Jackie’s boyhood, growing up in Pasadena, California (he was born in Cairo, Georgia, the son of share croppers, and the grandson of slaves). In his youth Jackie came under the influence of a young minister in Pasadena. His name was Karl Everitt Downs, the 25-year old pastor at Scott Methodist Church where Jackie’s mother, Mallie, worshipped.
The story of Downs and Robinson is brilliantly told in Arnold Rampersad’s biography Jackie Robinson (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).
Rampersad, dean of the humanities department at Stanford University, writes that Downs went looking for Robinson. He found a group of Jackie’s friends loitering on a street corner. He asked for Robinson, but no one answered. He left a message, “Tell him I want to see him at junior church.” Sometime later, Rampersad writes, “Jack delivered himself to the church and began a relationship that lasted only a few years, but changed the course of his life.”
Rampersad continues the story: “To Downs, Robinson evidently was someone special who had to be rescued from himself (Jackie had had some run-ins with the Pasadena police) and the traps of Jim Crow.” One of Jackie’s friends said, “I’m not sure what would have happened to Jack if he had never met Reverend Downs.”
“Downs led Jack back to Christ,” the author writes. “Under the minister’s influence, Jack not only returned to church, but also saw its true significance for the first time; he started to teach Sunday school. After punishing football games on Saturday, Jack admitted, he yearned to sleep late: ‘But no matter how terrible I felt, I had to get up. It was impossible to shirk duty when Karl Downs was involved….Karl Downs had the ability to communicate with you spiritually,’ Jack declared, ‘and at the same time he was fun to be with. He participated with us in our sports. Most importantly, he knew how to listen. Often when I was deeply concerned about personal crises, I went to him.’
“Downs became a conduit through which Mallie’s message of religion and hope finally flowed into Jack’s consciousness and was fully accepted there….Faith in God then began to register in him as both a mysterious force, beyond his comprehension, and as a pragmatic way to negotiate the world. A measure of emotional and spiritual poise such as he had never known at last entered his life.”
Robinson himself would say, “I had a lot of faith in God….There’s nothing like faith in God to help a fellow who gets booted around once in a while.”
The influence of his mother, Mallie, and his pastor, Karl Downs, would forever affect the way Jackie Robinson lived his life, how he saw other people, and how he coped with discrimination. He had been taught that he was a child of God, and no one and no challenge, however brutal and dehumanizing, could take that away from him.
Why did Rickey find those experiences of the young Jackie so persuasive? Branch Rickey was also a Methodist. Not just a Methodist, but, according to Rampersad, “a dedicated, Bible-loving Christian who refused to attend games on Sunday.” His full name was Wesley Branch Rickey. He was a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University—and the influence of the Methodist Church was a great factor in his life.
In Rampersad’s chapter on Jackie’s signing with the Dodgers—“A Monarch in the Negro Leagues (1944-1946)”—he tells the dramatic story of a meeting that took place in the late summer of 1945. The meeting was held on the fourth floor of an office building at 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn. In that meeting were Branch Rickey and a Dodger scout by the name of Clyde Sukeforth, who had been following Robinson with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues.
This is what Rampersad wrote: “Rickey made clear that Jack’s ability to run, throw, and hit was only one part of the challenge. Could he stand up to the physical, verbal, and psychological abuse that was bound to come? ‘I know you’re a good ball player,’ Rickey barked. ‘What I don’t know is whether you have the guts?’
“Jack started to answer hotly in defense of his manhood, when Rickey explained, ‘I’m looking for a ball player with guts enough not to fight back.’
“Caught up now in the drama, Rickey stripped off his coat and enacted out a variety of parts that portrayed examples of an offended Jim Crow. Now he was a white hotel clerk rudely refusing Jack accommodations; now a supercilious white waiter in a restaurant; now a brutish railroad conductor, he became a foul-mouthed opponent, Jack recalled, talking about ‘my race, my parents, in language that was almost unendurable.’ Now he was a vengeful base runner, vindictive spikes flashing in the sun, sliding into Jack’s black flesh—‘How do you like that, nigger boy?’ At one point he swung his pudgy fist at Jack’s head. Above all, he insisted, Jack could not strike back. He could not explode in righteous indignation; only then would this experiment be likely to succeed, and other black men would follow in Robinson’s footsteps.
“Turning the other cheek, Rickey would have him remember, was not proverbial wisdom, but the law of the New Testament. As one Methodist believer to another, Rickey offered Jack an English translation of Giovanni Papini’s Life of Christ and pointed to a passage quoting the words of Jesus—what Papini called ‘the most stupefying of His revolutionary teachings’: ‘Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right check, turn to him the other also. And if a man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.’”
Many years later the Houston Chronicle told its readers a wonderful story about the two men fated to change baseball and race relations in America:
“Before Rickey’s death in 1965 at age 83, he sent a telegram to Robinson, who by that time was retired from baseball and involved in the Civil Rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr.
“Wheelchair bound and suffering from a heart condition, Rickey apologized to Robinson for not joining him at the march on Selma, Alabama.
“Robinson responded with a letter that read, in part: ‘Mr. Rickey, things have been very rewarding for me. But had it not been for you, nothing would be possible. Even though I don’t write to you much, you are always on my mind. We feel so very close to you and I am sure you know our love and admiration is sincere and dedicated. Please take care of yourself.’”
Through his on-the-field skills as a player and his off-the-field personal attributes, Jackie Robinson became an enduring symbol to black men and women across America—creating hope, raising their expectations, giving them faith that maybe, just maybe, the promise of American democracy that all men are created equal might become something more than words on a historic document. Eloquent words, yes; lovely words, yes; ennobling words, yes; but absent their reality that in the everyday lives of black Americans, they would remain that and nothing more—mere words.
And thus the presentation of the Gold Medal was given to remind all Americans of the significance of Jackie Robinson, to affirm his place as an individual who changed, not just a sport, the game of baseball, but more importantly the social and political dynamic of our nation’s life—and change it for the better. Indeed, with the exception of Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson was probably the most important black man in twentieth century America.
No one has made this point more convincingly than Buck O’Neil, chairman of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. O’Neil, whose own story as a black player has brought him national acclaim—he was the star of Ken Burns’ award winning baseball series on PBS—has pointed out that before President Truman desegregated the military, before the bus boycott in Birmingham, before the civil rights marches in the South, before Rosa Parks, before Brown v. Board of Education, and before anyone had ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr., there was Jackie Robinson.
Dr. King himself eloquently said of Jackie, “Back in the days when integration wasn’t fashionable, he understood the trauma and humiliation and the loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of Freedom. He was a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.”
“The word for Jackie Robinson is ‘unconquerable,’” Red Smith, the great sports writer would say. “He would not be defeated. Not by the other team and not by life.”
But the story of Robinson and the Congressional Gold Medal is incomplete and woefully inadequate absent the following fact: There is no small irony that the Gold Medal honor began, not in the legislative halls of Congress in Washington, but at 4 Yawkey Way in Boston, at Fenway Park, the legendary home of the Red Sox.
Why the Red Sox? A very good question, one that has puzzled many people, since the Red Sox did not sign their first black player until 1959, twelve years after Robinson broke into the major leagues. Moreover, in 1945, the franchise failed to sign Robinson following a tryout at Fenway (a tryout Robinson later deemed a sham). The team also took a pass on Willie Mays. After watching Willie play ball in Alabama, one Red Sox scout actually wrote that Mays “couldn’t hit a curve ball.” The great Mays would total 3,283 hits and 660 home runs in his major league career. Not bad for a guy who “couldn’t hit a curve ball.” Roger Kahn, who wrote arguably the best book ever about sports, The Boys of Summer, the story of the Dodgers in Brooklyn, has said that had the Red Sox signed Robinson and Mays no one would ever have heard of the “Curse of the Bambino.” And Kahn might have added, there would not have been an 86-year wait between World Championship teams for diehard Red Sox fans (a redundancy if ever there was one).
The answer as to why the Red Sox is found in the team’s new ownership — principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner, and president Larry Luechino. Wanting to change the culture of an organization perceived by many as racist, the ownership group, under Dr. Charles Steinberg, the team’s vice president for public affairs, decided to do two things: first, institute an annual birthday tribute to Jackie Robinson at Fenway Park and, second, ask Senator Kerry and Representative Neal to introduce the Gold Medal legislation. For a professional sports team to own up to its troubled past where blacks and issues of race are concerned, as the Red Sox have, is a rare occurrence—and for that courageous act of contrition and public penitence the organization is due the nation’s thanks.
The first Congressional Gold Medal was given to George Washington. Now one belongs to Jackie Robinson. One of these men was the father of our country, the other an athlete who tore down signs that read, “Whites only.” You can’t explain our history as a nation without understanding something about George Washington; neither can you explain it now without understanding something about Jackie Robinson. In a land that strives to exemplify both freedom and equality, they are forever bound as equals—recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal.
Thirty-three years after Jackie died, the Gold Medal ceremony took place in the Capitol of the United States; in a place some have called, “The Cathedral of Democracy.” It was a lovely day for America. The dream lives on.
George Mitrovich, a member of First United Methodist Church in San Diego and active in Wesleyan renewal efforts, is president of The City Club of San Diego and The Denver Forum, two leading American public forums. For more than two years he played a key role in working with the Boston Red Sox, Congress, and the White House to obtain for Jackie Robinson the Congressional Gold Medal. The Family of Jackie Robinson has thanked him for his efforts and for having initiated the process that led to the presentation of the honor.
by Steve | Jan 29, 2013 | Front Page News, Uncategorized
NEWS RELEASE
Good News, an orthodox renewal and reform ministry within The United Methodist Church, is expanding its work in the area of church revitalization.
The Rev. Dr. John Southwick has become the new Director of Research, Networking, and Resources for Good News. Dr. Southwick brings with him a background in research and pastoral ministry that will enhance his work in helping to foster renewal in United Methodist congregations.
“We are excited to have John Southwick join our staff at this pivotal moment in our church’s history,” said the Rev. Rob Renfroe, president and publisher of Good News. “His work will enable us to make an even greater positive contribution to the spiritual renewal of our denomination.”
Prior to his joining Good News, Dr. Southwick was the Director of Research at the General Board of Global Ministries for the last 14 years. In that capacity, he analyzed trends in culture, ministry, demographics, and ministry practices to help lead United Methodist churches toward renewal and revitalization. He will continue this work with Good News.
Southwick will make his research services available through monthly reports disseminated broadly to the church. He will also be available to work with individual congregations, districts, and annual conferences that would like to have his analysis applied specifically to their situation.
In addition to regular reports on trends and analysis, Southwick will head up a new Wesley21 web ministry that will serve as a clearinghouse of recommended resources for local church use, such as sermons, books, articles, and programs that are consistent with historic United Methodist doctrine and are proven effective in local church ministry settings.
“We believe most small and middle-sized United Methodist congregations do not have the means to create their own programs like large churches do,” observes the Rev. Thomas A. Lambrecht, vice president of Good News. “They are looking for resources that are effective in helping churches and individuals grow spiritually — resources they can trust. John Southwick’s leadership in this area will help us meet this need.”
The Wesley21 web site is expected to become operational in February.
Southwick is a graduate of Iliff School of Theology and received his doctor of ministry degree from Fuller Seminary. He is a member of the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference. Prior to joining the General Board of Global Ministries, he served for ten years in full-time pastoral ministry. Southwick continues to pastor part-time at a small congregation near his home near Spokane, Washington. John and his wife, Patricia, are the parents of three grown children and two grandchildren.
Since 1967, Good News has been the leading advocate for biblical orthodoxy and evangelical faith within The United Methodist Church. Its mission is to lead all people within The United Methodist Church to the faithful and vibrant practice of orthodox Wesleyan Christianity. Good News’ office is located in The Woodlands, Texas.
by Steve | Jan 28, 2013 | Front Page News, Uncategorized
By James V. Heidinger II
The Good News family lost a former member of its board of directors, the Rev. Dr. Frank Warden, who died November 14, at his home in Searcy, Arkansas, on his 80th birthday.
Frank was elected to the Good News board in 1974 but had already been involved in Good News’ ministry, helping the Rev. Mike Walker with local arrangements for the First Good News National Convocation in Dallas, Texas, the summer of 1970.
Just recently, his wife, Dorothy, shared with me that the Lord touched Frank and her deeply in a Lay Witness Mission at their church in 1968. At the time, Frank was practicing law with the prestigious Mehaffey, Smith and Williams law firm in Little Rock. He practiced with that firm from 1960 until 1969.
Soon after the Lay Witness weekend, Frank felt called into the ministry and left the law practice in 1969 to attend Perkins School of Theology in Dallas. While a student there, he was on staff at University Park United Methodist Church in Dallas. After graduating from Perkins, he joined the staff of Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, with Dr. Leighton Ferrell. He served there as Minister of Evangelism from 1973 until 1985 in what was then United Methodism’s largest church.
While at Highland Park, Frank had a great teaching ministry, out of which came Trinity Bible Studies. This was one of the first in-depth Bible study programs in the denomination and met a real need for those who had a hunger to do serious Bible study. So Frank developed the study and began to market it while at Highland Park.
During this time, the Rev. Sundo Kim (now Bishop) of the Kwang Lim Methodist Church in Seoul, Korea, visited Highland Park Church. He met Frank and that connection led to Frank’s traveling to Seoul Korea to teach Trinity Bible Studies to thousands of Korean Methodists. After Frank had made three such trips, the study materials were translated into the Korean language, helping open the Scriptures to thousands more Korean Methodists in what is now the largest Methodist Church in the world.
Frank had a dynamic ministry at Highland Park, touching the lives of both adults and students. In 1985, he and Dorothy moved from Dallas to El Paso, Arkansas, where the slower pace of serving two small churches allowed him to continue to market Trinity Bible Studies out of their home. Dorothy recalls that almost every day, UPS trucks would come to their door to pick up orders for study materials which were going all across the country.
Frank’s bishop in Arkansas at the time was Bishop Richard Wilke. Dorothy mentioned that he made a favorable reference to TBS in one of his books. She and Frank believed that the positive response to Trinity helped encourage Bishop Wilke and the UM Publishing House to develop Disciple Bible Study, which has had great acceptance and usage across the church.
My heart is filled with gratitude for Frank, whom I considered a real friend and colleague in renewal. Conversations with Frank were always an encouragement to me. He was a former prosecutor, judge advocate (in the military) and then attorney who brought strong leadership skills, biblical conviction, and unusual courage into his years of ministry. He was bold in his faith and in his desire to see the Word of God taught faithfully in the United Methodist Church.
Trinity has been translated not only into Korean, but also into Spanish, and more recently into Russian. TBS continues to be marketed today by Bristol House, Ltd. Sarah Anderson, Bristol House Chief Operating Officer, said they are re-designing TBS, and also creating video introductions for books of the Bible in both New and Old Testament Survey studies. But the same solid content remains.
The impact of Frank and Dorothy’s lives and ministry continues through TBS. I mention Dorothy intentionally, because as a loving wife, journalist, and dedicated Christian, she was very much a part of Frank’s ministry.
Frank was a real servant of Jesus Christ who ran the race, finished the course, and kept the faith. Many thousands across the United Methodist Church join us in giving thanks for his life of faithful and very fruitful service.
James V. Heidinger II is the president and publisher emeritus of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 25, 2013 | Front Page News, Uncategorized
United Methodist representatives to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) are once again promoting a lopsided and jaundiced view of our denomination’s view of abortion. Staffers Julie Taylor (United Methodist Women) and Amee Paparella (General Board of Church and Society) recently marked the 40th anniversary of the controversial Roe v. Wade decision by bizarrely claiming “we seek to be a voice crying out to prepare the way for the Lord to be bring about a new era of reproductive justice for our families and communities” – a warped apparent reference to John the Baptist. The Bible teaches that John the Baptist leaped in his mother’s womb when he was in the presence of Jesus Christ, who was still in the womb of Mary.
As United Methodists, we do not believe that Jesus Christ came to “bring about a new era of reproductive justice.” Instead, Jesus said that the “Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).
Aside from making a mockery of biblical imagery regarding life and death, when will United Methodist personnel in Washington D.C. and New York stop acting like an abortion rights lobby group and begin to tell the whole truth about United Methodism’s position on abortion?
While United Methodism does recognize “tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option of abortion” (Discipline, Para 161J, emphasis added), our nuanced stand does not end there.
An honest portrayal also reports that United Methodism “cannot affirm abortion as an acceptable means of birth control, and we unconditionally reject it as a means of gender selection or eugenics.” (Guttmacher Institute consistently reports that more than 90 percent of all abortions are for birth control reasons. Additionally, studies have shown that more than 90 percent of pregnancies with a diagnosis of Down Syndrome are aborted.)
Furthermore, United Methodism overwhelmingly opposes “late-term abortion known as dilation and extraction (partial-birth abortion)…”
The Taylor/Paparella statement fails to mention any of United Methodism’s opposition to abortion.
There is a great disconnect between the men and women in the pews and pulpits in local UM congregations and the abortion enthusiasts associated with the RCRC, Church and Society, and the Women’s Division. Local congregations will continue to struggle to justify sending apportionments to agencies who fail to tell the whole truth about United Methodism’s stand on abortion.
Why have we never seen the Board of Church and Society address the crisis of utilizing abortion as a means of birth control? Why have we not seen the briefing paper from the Women’s Division addressing the sickening use of abortion for gender selection in the United States and around the globe? Why is there a deafening silence regarding the practice of later-term abortions? Where is the outcry over the abortion of mentally or physically challenged infants?
Instead, United Methodist abortion advocates utilize the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to repeat overused and vacuous slogans such as “keep abortion safe, legal, accessible and rare.” (Their full statement is available on the General Board of Church and Society website HERE.)
Nowhere in the Taylor/Paparella statement is there a hint of the modern-day tragedy of 1.2 million lives lost every year in the U.S. due to abortion or the widespread use of abortion for birth control, gender selection, or eugenics in the world. Where is the equal regard called for in our denominational position, where “we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother and the unborn child” (¶ 161J, emphasis added)? The narrow scope of the Taylor/Paparella statement is out of touch with the mainstream position of The UM Church.
Good News supports efforts to address maternal mortality by providing better “pre-natal services, birthing assistance, and post-natal follow-up.” We support access to contraception in keeping with the individual consciences of women and providers, as well as comprehensive sex education, to reduce unintended pregnancies. However, we firmly believe that the answer to unintended pregnancies and maternal mortality is not increased access to abortion.
Instead, the Church and the broader society need to provide emotional and material support to women with unintended pregnancies. That is why our denominational position says, “The Church shall offer ministries to reduce unintended pregnancies. We commit our Church to continue to provide nurturing ministries to those who terminate a pregnancy, to those in the midst of a crisis pregnancy, and to those who give birth. … The Church and its local congregations and campus ministries should be in the forefront of supporting existing ministries and developing new ministries that help [young adult] women in their communities. … We particularly encourage the Church, the government, and social service agencies to support and facilitate the option of adoption. (See ¶ 161L) We affirm and encourage the Church to assist the ministry of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers that compassionately help women find feasible alternatives to abortion” (¶ 161J).
It appears that RCRC and our United Methodist representatives are not interested in ministries that would reduce the number of abortions. That is why they also call for a “careful analysis of the church’s support for crisis pregnancy centers that may not offer all options of counseling.” From their pro-abortion perspective, such suspicion of crisis pregnancy centers that provide “feasible alternatives to abortion” undermines their call to keep abortion “rare.” Instead, the extremists at RCRC favor no restrictions on abortion, at any time in pregnancy or for any reason.
Good News wants to know when our United Methodist agencies will advocate for the full and balanced position of our church on abortion. It appears that our agency staff persons have greater allegiance to the external coalition of RCRC than they do to our own denomination’s Social Principles. Our church’s membership in RCRC is distorting our advocacy in the church and public arenas. It is past time for our denomination to withdraw its membership from RCRC.
The following statement from Gilbert Hanke, General Secretary of the General Commission of the United Methodist Men, was issued on January 31, 2013. It is a follow-up clarification to a UM News Service story entitled “2 agencies agree with change in Boy Scout ban.”