is that there are passages of Scripture that warn against punishing the son for the sins of the father. For example, “The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son” (Ezek. 18:20, cf. Jer. 31:30; 2 Kings 14:6). But, on the other hand, there are passages that say, “The Lord . . . [visits] the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s chil - dren, to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex. 34:6–7). The reasons these two passages are not a contradiction is that when God visits the sins of the fathers on a following generation, it happens because that generation becomes sinful like their fathers. They are real sinners. That’s why God says in Exodus 20:5, “I the Lord . . . [visit] the iniq - uity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me .” We are not told how the fathers’ sins become the children’s sins. But what we are told is that when the father’s sins are visited on the children, it is because the children are really sinful. That is the form in which the fathers’ sins are visited. Therefore, all judgment is really deserved by the person who is punished. Moreover, the spread of condemnation from one generation to the next can be broken. Leviticus 26:40–42 reminds us, “If they confess their Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 264 7/19/11 10:54 AM 265 APPENDIX FOUR iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers . . . if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob.” This is because of the precious words of Exodus 34:6–7, which are made possible finally because of the death of Christ, “The Lord , the Lord , a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping stead - fast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” When Waltke says that Ham’s son Canaan inherits his father’s moral decadence, he points to the fact that any punishments that will come upon Canaan for Ham’s sin will be really deserved. There are mysteries in how sin moves from one generation to the next, but what we know from Scripture is that those who are punished by God deserve the pun - ishment because of their own sin. Thus the Jewish scholar Umberto Cassuto says of the descendants of Ham’s son Canaan, “The Canaanites were to suffer the curse and the bondage not because of the sins of Ham, but because they themselves acted like Ham, because of their own transgressions, which resembled those attributed to Ham in this allegory.” 4 Cassuto, I think, goes too far in saying “not because of the sins of Ham.” But he is right to say, “but because they themselves acted like Ham.” Mysterious as it is, both are true. CANAAN WAS NOT THE FATHER OF AFRICA So in sum, Ham had four sons, according to Genesis 10:6 ( nasb ): “The sons of Ham were Cush and Mizraim and Put and Canaan.” Broadly speaking, Cush was probably the ancestor of the peoples of Ethiopia; Mizraim was the ancestor of the Egyptians; and Put was the ancestor of the peoples of northern Africa, the Libyans. But Canaan is the one son of the four who is not the ancestor of African peoples. According to Genesis 10:15–18 ( nasb ), the descendants of Canaan were inhabitants of the land that took his name. “And Canaan became the father of Sidon, his first-born, and Heth and the Jebusite and the Amorite and the Girgashite and the Hivite and the Arkite and the Sinite and the Arvadite and the Zemarite and the Hamathite.” All those peoples were the inhabitants of Canaan and its vicinity, not Africa. Thus the pre - diction of Noah came true when the Canaanite nations were driven out or subjugated by the Israelites because of their wickedness (Deut. 9:4–5). Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 265 7/19/11 10:54 AM 266 APPENDIX FOUR AN UNWARRANTED SUPPOSITION Nevertheless, a stream of interpretation continues to find in this text an explanation and even warrant for the slavery of Africans in history. For example, C. F. Keil stretches the curse on Canaan to cover all of Ham’s heirs like this: Although this curse was expressly pronounced upon Canaan alone, the fact that Ham had no share in Noah’s blessing, either for himself or his other sons [Gen. 9:26–27], was a sufficient proof that his whole family was included by implication in the curse, even if it was to fall chiefly upon Canaan. And history confirms the supposition. The Canaanites were partly exterminated, and partly subjected to the lowest form of slavery, by the Israelites, who belonged to the family of Shem. . . . The remainder of the Hamitic tribes either shared the same fate, or still sigh, like the negroes, for example, and other African tribes, beneath the yoke of the most crushing slavery. 5 From what we have seen, this “supposition” of Keil is not warranted. The text focuses our attention on Canaan, not on the other sons of Ham, and the history of Israel in the conquest of the Promised Land (the land of Canaan) shows how relevant this focus was. 2) Noah’s Curse Is Not about Individuals Second, the predicted curse of Noah does not dictate how God’s people should treat individual Canaanites—or any other group. For example, five chapters later, in Genesis 14:18, Abraham, the descendant of Seth, meets a native Canaanite named Melchizedek, who was a righteous man and “priest of God Most High” and who blessed Abraham. Abraham gave him a tenth of his spoils. So not even the fact that God ordains to bring judgment on evil nations dictates for us how we are to treat individuals in those nations. Our treatment of others is based not on what God’s sovereign provi - dence designs but on what God’s moral law commands and what the gospel of Jesus implies. For example, even though God’s providence designed that Jesus be betrayed, that does not give a warrant to anyone to betray him: “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 266 7/19/11 10:54 AM 267 APPENDIX FOUR Son of Man is betrayed!” (Matt. 26:24). So God may destine a group of people, like the Canaanites, to experience idolatry and judgment, but that does not warrant anyone to commit idolatry or entice anyone to idolatry. The fact that the Canaanites were appointed for subjugation does not justify any man to subjugate them. Whether that is permitted or commanded will depend on other factors. Divine providence does not define human duty. 6 3) God Plans Redemption for All Nations In Genesis 12, God sets in motion a great plan of redemption for all the nations to rescue them from this and every other curse of sin and judg - ment. He calls Abram from all the nations and makes a covenant with him and promises, “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you a ll the families of the earth shall be blessed” ( nasb ). The phrase “all the families of the earth” includes the Canaanite families. So what we see is that, with Abraham, God is setting in motion a plan of redemption that overturns every curse for everyone who receives the blessing of Abraham, namely, the forgiveness and acceptance of God that comes through Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:13–14). This implies for us, therefore, that every human being is seen pri - marily not as destined by providence for slavery or freedom but as offered by God the hope of full membership in God’s family. “But to all who did receive him [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). The question we bring as Christians is not , “Are you a Canaanite and therefore subservient to me?” but, “Are you a believer and therefore brother to me?” And if the answer is, “I do not believe on Jesus,” then our response is, “I pray that you will one day believe. Until then, or until you die, I will love you, if necessary as my enemy, as Jesus commanded (Matt. 5:43–44). I will pray for you to be saved and become my brother in Christ (Rom. 10:1). And I will warn you that if you spurn God’s grace in Jesus Christ, you will one day be brought forcefully into subjection to King Jesus and all his people. I pray that, instead, you will be part of that people. It would be my joy.” Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 267 7/19/11 10:54 AM 268 NOTES A NOTE TO THE READER ON RACE AND RACISM 1. W. E. B. Du Bois, “To the Nations of the World,” Great Speeches by African Ameri - cans , ed. James Daley (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2006), 85. 2. “Committee on Mission to North America, Pastoral Letter on Racism, Approved at the March 2004 MNA Committee Meeting as the Committee’s Recommendation to the Thir - ty-Second General Assembly.” http://www.pca-mna.org/churchplanting/PDFs/RacismPaper - Final%20Version%2004-09-04.pdf. INTRODUCTION TO PART 1 1. Baby boomers are most commonly defined as the generation born from January 1946 to the end of 1964. The name comes from the population boom that happened when the troops came home after World War II. I was born January 11, 1946. 2. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 101. 3. Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King Jr. (New York: Penguin, 1982), 222. 4. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail , with an introduction by Paul Chaim Schenck (n.p., n.d.), 8–9. I have added paragraph breaks to what was originally one paragraph, but nothing has been omitted. The Letter may be found on many Internet web - sites by simply entering the title in a search engine; e.g., one site, accessed on March 19, 2010, is http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf. 5. Letter , 14 (paragraph break added). 6. Letter , 17. CHAPTER 1: MY STORY 1. Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), ix . 2. Ibid., x . 3. Ibid. 4. I take the term from Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). 5. Marshall Frady, Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 82. 6. We have tried to verify this from church records, but have been told that the church was not keeping minutes at this time. So this fact is based on my memory rather than con - firmed documentation. 7. Silence concerning my father at this point is not to conceal anything. It is one of the facts of my upbringing that my father, as a traveling evangelist, was away from home so much that I seldom talked to him about such things. I assume he and my mother stood together. And, of course, neither was free from the marks of sinful culture and sinful hearts. 8. John Piper, The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in Future Grace (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1995), 51–53. 9. I tell the story of my intellectual and spiritual development in the chapter “The Pas - tor as Scholar: A Personal Journey and the Joyful Place of Scholarship,” in The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry , ed. David Mathis and Owen Strachan (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011). Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 268 7/19/11 10:54 AM 269 NOTES pp. 36 – 54 10. This syllabus of readings was simply loose-bound sheets, which, to my knowledge, was never published. It sits in front of me with its forty-two-year-old yellowed pages. The quote is from page iv . The sections were titled, by way of example, “Racial Prejudice in the Form of Physical Brutality”; “Racial Prejudice in the Form of Personal Indignities”; “Racial Prejudice and the Death of Incentive”; “Racial Prejudice and the Irrational”; “Racial Preju - dice and the Black Woman”; “The Black Response to Racial Prejudice”; “Racial Prejudice and the White Psyche.” 11. Lewis Smedes, Love within Limits: A Realist’s View of 1 Corinthians 13 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979). 12. The Minneapolis Planning Department, http://www.urbanventures.org/demo.pdf (accessed March 21, 2009). CHAPTER 2: THE GOSPEL I LOVE 1. “‘Greeks and Barbarians’ represent the totality of the peoples of the nations, apart from the Jews. Centuries earlier when Greeks first heard the stammered guttural speech of foreigners, sounding as it did to them as ‘bar bar bar,’ they called such people bararoi , ‘bar - barians.’ In time, however, because of the spread of Greek philosophy, literature and science among other peoples ‘Greek’ also came to mean ‘wise’ or ‘cultured’ and ‘barbarian’ to mean the ‘ignorant’ or ‘uneducated.’” Paul Barnett, Romans: The Revelation of God’s Righteous - ness (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2003), 35–36. 2. “Harder Than Anyone Can Imagine,” a Christianity Today forum responding to the book edited by Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim, United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Christianity Today , April 2005, 41. 3. Ibid., 37, 40. 4. “Evangelicals and Racism: The Lausanne II Press Conference,” Transformation , January 1990, 29. 5. Quoted by Glen Kehrein and Raleigh Washington, in Breaking Down Walls: A Mod - el for Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), 110. 6. David Michael, “A Double-Breasted Suit and Racial Reconciliation,” unpublished position paper, January 17, 1994. The mentors he was referring to were Glen Kehrein and Raleigh Washington, Breaking Down Walls ; Chris Rice and Spencer Perkins, More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993); and William Pannell, The Coming Race Wars: A Cry for Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1993). CHAPTER 3: GLOBAL SHIFTING AND THE NEW FACE OF THE CHURCH 1. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/012496. html (accessed March 19, 2010). 2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/sep/03/race.world (accessed March 24, 2009). 3. http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/06000.html (accessed March 24, 2009). 4. The statistics are based on figures from the year 2000. http://www.prb.org/Educa - tors/TeachersGuides/HumanPopulation/Urbanization.aspx (accessed March 24, 2009). 5. The City View Report may be ordered at http://www.cityvisiontc.org/shtml/cityview. shtml (accessed March 24, 2009). 6. I transcribed this from John Mayer’s video at http://cityvisiontc.org/jam_video_short/ streaming.shtml (accessed March 24, 2009). John Mayer sent a personal e-mail to some friends on October 15, 2008, and commented, “Today’s StarTribune article in the South Metro Section for Wed. October 15 states that the Burnsville School district is now 38 [per - cent] non-White. Just two years ago I noted to you all that this number was at 29 [percent] and so has gone up by 9 [percent] in just two years. . . . We even have two mosques now as well as other ethnic/religious worship sites.” Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 269 7/19/11 10:54 AM 270 NOTES pp. 54 – 66 7. See esp. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, rev. and updated, 2007); and The New Faces of Christian - ity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 8. Dana L. Robert, “Shifting Southward: Global Christianity Since 1945,” Interna- tional Bulletin of Missionary Research , 24.2 (April 2000): 50. 9. Philip Jenkins, “Believing in the Global South,” First Things , December 2006, 13. 10. Ibid., 12. 11. Ibid. 12. Robert, “Shifting Southward,” 53. CHAPTER 4: WHY THIS BOOK GIVES PROMINENCE TO BLACK-WHITE RELATIONSHIPS 1. You can read profiles of 16,306 ethnolinguistic people groups online at the Joshua Project website: http://www.joshuaproject.net/index.php. 2. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 205. 3. Ibid., 204. 4. Ibid. 5. There is, in fact, significant debate as to whether Lincoln was a racist. Thomas L. Krannawitter defends Lincoln, arguing that public words like the ones I have cited here are a reflection of political realism in view of public opinion, not personal conviction. “However much one might lament or loathe public opinion, those who hope to bring about political change in America cannot ignore it. Lincoln concluded that ‘we cannot, then, make [blacks] equals’ precisely because he understood all too well the racial opinions of the vast majority of whites in America. . . . Rather than evincing racism . . . Lincoln’s position demonstrates a prudential concern for the formation of public opinion, public policy, and the rule of law.” Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 33. Perhaps. I suspect, however, that when all is said and done, Lincoln will be seen—like every other great leader, except one—to be a flawed man, even in regard to his views of race. 6. Juan Williams, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It (New York: Crown, 2006). 7. Ibid., 94. 8. Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint, Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors (Nashville: Nelson, 2007). 9. Michael Eric Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? (New York: Basic Civitas, 2005). 10. Ibid., 5. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Cosby and Poussaint, Come On People , 1–2. 14. Ibid., 8–9. 15. Williams, Enough , 121. For some of the raunchier lyrics, you can see pp. 127, 132. One of the milder lines (p. 132): “Can you control your ho? . . . Listen you’ve got to put that bitch in her place, even if it is slapping her in her face.” 16. Ibid., 134. 17. Of course, not all rap is corrupt, and increasingly Christians are redeeming the genre for powerful Christian witness. 18. Williams, Enough, 135. 19. Ibid., 145. 20. Ibid., 135. 21. Not that there were no black leaders involved. “Black corporate captains have taken their pound of flesh, too. Robert Johnson’s Black Entertainment Television (before it Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 270 7/19/11 10:54 AM 271 NOTES pp. 66 – 73 was sold to Viacom) made its money with rap videos that relied heavily on half-naked black women and gangster violence.” Ibid., 136. 22. Ibid., 127. 23. David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). 24. Ibid., 59 (paragraph breaks added). CHAPTER 5: PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SYSTEMIC INTERVENTION 1. Camille Cosby, “America Taught My Son’s Killer to Hate African-Americans,” USA Today , July 8, 1998, 15A. Ennis was shot to death while changing a flat tire on Interstate 495 in Los Angeles. 2. Quoted in Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Na - tion, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 9. 3. On the twentieth anniversary of the 1967 riots in Detroit, Shelby Steele observed: “A comparison of the city then and now showed a decline in the quality of life. Residents feel less safe, drug trafficking is far worse, crimes by blacks against blacks are more frequent, housing remains substandard, and the teenage pregnancy rate has skyrocketed. Twenty years of de - cline in demoralization, even as opportunities for blacks to better themselves have increased. This paradox is not peculiar to Detroit. By many measures, the majority of blacks—those not yet in the middle class—are further behind whites today than before the victories of the civil rights movement.” Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), 15. 4. “Today it is fashionable among blacks to say that integration was a failure, which is to imply that our true strength is in separatism. Today you can witness blacks everywhere enforcing on themselves the very separatism and community that segregation so recently imposed—like churches, civil rights confabs that are far more social than political, ‘State of Black America’ gatherings as if we still share a singular destiny, black professional associa - tions by the hundreds, black student associations of every variety, or even a Congressional Black Caucus, not to mention black caucuses in many state legislatures. Now in the prom - ised land of freedom we reach for the lost Eden of separatism.” Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins , 2006), 26. 5. Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White , 10. 6. “The percentage of blacks in middle class occupations did not top 10 percent until 1960, whereas the white middle class constituted more than 20 percent of the total white population as early as 1910. . . . The United States experienced unprecedented economic growth and prosperity after 1950 up until the early 1970s. The coincidence of this growth with the Civil Rights Movement created a large swelling of the black middle class. Between 1980 and 1990, the percentage of blacks in middle class occupations grew from 39.6 per - cent to 44.9 percent.” Mary Pattillo-McCoy, “Middle Class, Yet Black: A Review Essay,” http://www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/prba/perspectives/fall1999/mpattillo.pdf (accessed March 26, 2009). 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American (accessed 3-26-09). 8. Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White , 10. 9. Richard John Neuhaus, “Counting by Race,” First Things , February 1996, 78. 10. Michael Eric Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? (New York: Basic Civitas, 2005), 5. 11. Among academics, the solutions related to “personal responsibility” are frequently viewed in more corporate terms as “cultural” factors. See, e.g., William Julius Wilson, More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009); and Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), 227–69. 12. Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right? , 13. 13. Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint, Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors (Nashville: Nelson, 2007), 9. Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 271 7/19/11 10:54 AM 272 NOTES pp. 74 – 78 14. Lawrence M. Mead, Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Free Press, 1986), viii . 15. How to Make Black America Better: Leading African Americans Speak Out , comp. and ed. Tavis Smiley (New York: Anchor, 2001), 75–77. 16. Obama, Audacity of Hope , 244, 248. 17. Elijah Anderson, Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 25. 18. Orlando Patterson, “A Poverty of the Mind” in the New York Times , March 25, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/opinion/26patterson.html?_r=1. 19. Wilson, More than Just Race , 22–23. 20. Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right? , xiii . 21. Ibid., 6. 22. Ibid., 7. 23. Ibid., 10. 24. Ibid., 8. 25. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 26. Perhaps the most common way of defining the term evangelical is to focus on the four traits laid out by David Bebbington in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 1–17; and in The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 23–40; and reaffirmed by Mark Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 19. The four traits are: (1) an emphasis on the necessity of conversion; (2) an emphasis on the Bible as inspired, true, and authoritative in all it addresses; (3) a focus on the death of Jesus as essential in atoning for sin and acceptance with God; and (4) a call for all Christians, both lay people and clergy, to rise to action in spreading the gospel and doing good works. 27. By way of definition, they say that the racialized society is “a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relation - ships . . . a society that allocates differential economic, political, social, and even psychologi - cal rewards to groups along racial lines; lines that are socially constructed.” Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith , 7. 28. Ibid., 75. 29. Ibid., 132. 30. Ibid., 90. 31. Ibid., 132. 32. Clarence Thomas, Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son, A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). 33. Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals (San Francisco: Encounter, 2005); Race and Culture: A World View (New York: Basic Books, 1995). 34. Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990); A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Free - dom in America (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998); White Guilt . 35. John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (New York: Free Press, 2000); Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America (New York: Go - tham, 2005). 36. Ward Connerly, Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000). 37. Dinesh D’Souza, The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1995). I know that D’Souza is not African American. He was born in Mumbai in 1961 and came to the US first in 1978. I include him here for convenience as a nonwhite spokesman of this viewpoint. 38. Steele, A Dream Deferred , 15–16. 39. Williams, Enough , 105. 40. Ibid., 228. Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 272 7/19/11 10:54 AM 273 NOTES pp. 79 – 103 41. Steele, A Dream Deferred , 18. 42. Ibid., 113. 43. Steele, The Content of Our Character , 117. 44. Ibid., 112. 45. Ibid., 113. 46. Ibid., 121. 47. Ibid., 116. 48. Ibid., 118. 49. Ibid. 50. John H. McWhorter, “What’s Holding Blacks Back?” The City Journal , vol. 11 (Winter 2001): 6. 51. Quoted in Williams, Enough , 105. Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in 2001, “As crazy as this sounds, recent surveys of young Black kids reveal a distressing pattern. Far too many say that succeeding is ‘white,’ education is ‘white,’ aspiring and dream are ‘white,’ believing that you can make it is ‘white.’ Had any of us said this sort of thing when we were growing up, our families and friends would have checked us into a mental institution.” Smiley, How to Make Black America Better , 75. 52. Williams, Enough , 91–92 (paragraph breaks added). 53. Ibid., 96. 54. Katherine Kerstine, “Teach Character to Cut Racial Gap in School Results,” Star- Tribune , February 22, 2007, B1. 55. Steele, The Content of Our Character , 125. 56. Quoted in Neuhaus, “Counting by Race,” 76. CHAPTER 6: THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL AND THE ROOTS OF RACIAL STRIFE 1. Juan Williams, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It (New York: Crown, 2006), 215. 2. Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), 43–44. 3. Shelby Steele, A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998), 91. 4. Richard John Neuhaus, “Counting by Race,” First Things , February 1996, 78. 5. Here is one expression of the gospel as Neuhaus spoke it. Ten years after his conver - sion, he wrote in his book Death on a Friday Afternoon (New York: Basic Books, 2000): “When I come before the judgment throne, I will plead the promise of God in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I will not plead any work that I have done, although I will thank God that he has enabled me to do some good. I will plead no merits other than the merits of Christ, knowing that the merits of Mary and the saints are all from him; and for their company, their example, and their prayers throughout my earthly life I will give everlasting thanks. I will not plead that I had faith, for sometimes I was unsure of my faith, and in any event that would be to turn faith into a meritorious work of my own. I will not plead that I held the correct understanding of “justification by faith alone,” although I will thank God that he led me to know ever more fully the great truth that much misunderstood formulation was intended to protect. Whatever little growth in holiness I have experienced, whatever strength I have received from the company of the saints, whatever understanding I have attained of God and his ways—these and all other gifts I have received I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry to that heavenly kingdom, I will, with Dysmas, look to Christ and Christ alone. Then I hope to hear him say, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise,’ as I hope with all my being—because, although looking to him alone, I am not alone—he will say to all” (70). 6. Later that year welfare reform in America took a remarkable turn in the direction Neuhaus was pleading. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 273 7/19/11 10:54 AM 274 NOTES pp. 103 – 33 Act was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract with America, and signed into law by Bill Clinton on August 22, 1996. 7. It has been a decade and a half since Neuhaus wrote, but he would, no doubt, still be concerned today about disparity between black graduation rates and white ones. The New York City Department of Education reported that for 2008, the gap in the high school gradu - ation rate between white and black students was 20.1 percentage points, with 51.4 percent of black students in the class of 2008 graduating in four years. Cited February 8, 2011, at http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2008-2009/20090622_grad_ rates.htm. In my city of Minneapolis, in 2008 there was a graduation rate of 87.31 percent of white students but only 68.48 for blacks. 8. Neuhaus, “Counting by Race,” n.p. 9. William Wilberforce, A Practical View of Christianity , ed. Kevin Charles Belmonte (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996). 10. Ibid., 182. 11. Ibid., 198. 12. Ibid., 167. 13. Ibid., 66. 14. Ibid., 64. 15. Ibid., 166. INTRODUCTION TO PART 2 1. Timothy George and Robert Smith, A Mighty Long Journey: Reflections on Racial Reconciliation (Nashville: Broadman, 2000). The title is taken from an African American chant (p. 7): It’s a mighty long journey, But I’m on my way; It’s a mighty long journey, But I’m on my way. 2. Edited by Kevin Charles Belmonte (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996). 3. Ibid, 79, emphasis added. 4. John Pollock, Wilberforce (London: Constable, 1977), 69. CHAPTER 9: RANSOMED FOR GOD FROM EVERY TRIBE 1. It is of special relevance here to point out three African American pastors whose lives total 130 years of faithfulness to Christ in the context of loving the Reformed Faith: Lem - uel Haynes (1753–1833), Daniel A. Payne (1811–1893), and Francis Grimké (1850–1937). Thabiti Anyabwile introduces them to us: “They were puritans. They committed themselves to sound theology in the pulpit, theologically informed practice in the church, and theologi - cally reformed living in the world.” Anyabwile’s book is full of surprises and treasures for those who know little about this stream of black history. The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three African American Pastors (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 15. For the story of what has happened in African American theology since the time of Haynes, Payne, and Grimke, see Thabiti Anyabwile, The Decline of African American Theology: From Bibli - cal Faith to Cultural Captivity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007). 2. Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths about Calvinism: Recovering the Breadth of the Re - formed Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 247, 268. 3. See this thought expanded in the conclusion of this book with the help of Mark Noll’s God and Race in American Politics: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni - versity Press, 2008). 4. Anthony Carter, On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African- American Christian Experience (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003). 5. Anthony Carter, ed., Glory Road: The Journeys of 10 African Americans into Re - formed Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009). 6. John Piper, Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ (Whea - ton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 48–49. Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 274 7/19/11 10:54 AM 275 NOTES pp. 136 – 79 7. See John Piper, “I Will Not Give My Glory to Another: Preaching the Fullness of Definite Atonement,” in From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Bib - lical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective (tentative title), ed. David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, forthcoming). 8. Millard Erickson then says, “This is the view of all Arminians.” Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1983), 829; emphasis added. 9. For a compelling and clear exegetical defense of the position I am building on here, see John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955), 59–75. 10. For more on world missions, see John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Su - premacy of God in Missions , 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010). 11. For my effort to show the biblical extent of the meaning of these terms, see Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! , 212–15. 12. The implication that God designed the cross and its fruit for his own glory is an expression of one of the greatest themes in all the Bible—God’s passion for his glory and how such a passion is a great act of love toward us. I have tried to explore this biblical theme in John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998); and John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000). 13. For a much fuller explanation and biblical confirmation of the doctrine of uncondi - tional election, see John Piper, “The Pleasure of God in Election,” in The Pleasures of God, 121–56. CHAPTER 10: EVERY PEOPLE JUSTIFIED THE SAME WAY 1. The most helpful effort to conceptualize the Trinity that I have found is Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards , vol. 21: Discourse on the Trinity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 109–44. 2. F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954), 357. 3. I love to recommend the book from which these two words, accomplished and ap- plied , first entered my vocabulary: John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984). CHAPTER 11: DYING WITH CHRIST FOR THE SAKE OF CHRIST-EXALTING DIVERSITY 1. I have tried to unpack some of the depth and glory of the miracle of conversion in Finally Alive: What Happens When We Are Born Again (Fearn, Ross-Shire, Scotland: Chris - tian Focus, 2009). 2. See chap. 9, n. 10. CHAPTER 12: LIVING IN SYNC WITH GOSPEL FREEDOM 1. I have tried to lay out the wider biblical basis for understanding justification this way in two books: John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002); and The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007). 2. This issue is so significant that Timothy George devotes an entire essay to it called “The Sin of Inhospitality,” in Timothy George and Robert Smith Jr., A Mighty Long Journey (Nashville: Broadman, 2000), 141–49. 3. Quoted in Chris Rice and Spencer Perkins, More Than Equals (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 190. 4. Ibid., 190–91; emphasis added. 5. Dwight Perry, ed., Building Unity in the Church of the New Millennium (Chicago: Moody, 2002). 6. Ibid., 20. Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 275 7/19/11 10:54 AM 276 NOTES pp. 194 – 207 CHAPTER 14: WHY IS IT WORTH THE DEATH OF HIS SON? 1. I have tried to give the foundation for this claim in several places. See John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, 25th Anniversary Reference Edition (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2011), 313–26; John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000), 25–120; John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003), 21–29; John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998). 2. For an extended exploration and explanation of the meaning of the relevant terms for nation and people and Gentile in the New Testament, see John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! , chap. 5, “The Supremacy of God among ‘All the Nations.’” 3. What follows is adapted from John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! , 3rd ed., 221–24. 4. F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954), 357–58. CHAPTER 15: INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE 1. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 12. 2. At http://www.lovingday.org/map.htm (accessed March 17, 2009), you can do a state-by-state study of which states had anti-miscegenation laws and when they were over - turned. 3. Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 275. 4. http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1966/1966_395/ (accessed March 12, 2009). For the history of the Loving case and interracial marriage in America, see Peter Wallenstein, Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law: An American History (New York: Palagrave Macmillan, 2002); Phyl Newbeck, Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers: Inter - racial Marriage Bans and the Case of Richard and Mildred Loving (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004); Renee C. Romano, Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 5. http://www.lovingday.org/courtroom.htm (accessed March 17, 2009). 6. Ibid. The 1912 South Carolina Criminal Code, Section 385, reads: “Sec. 385. Misce - genation—Punishment for—Penalty for Performing Ceremony.—It shall be unlawful for any white man to intermarry with any woman of either the Indian or negro races, or any mulatto, mestizo, or half-breed, or for any white woman to intermarry with any person other than a white man, or for any mulatto, half-breed, Indian, negro or mestizo to intermarry with a white woman; and any such marriage, or attempted marriage, shall be utterly null and void and of none effect; and any person who shall violate this Section, or any one of the provisions thereof, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not less than five hundred dollars, or imprisonment not less than twelve months, or both, in the discretion of the Court.” 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Even with the new legal status of interracial marriage since 1967 in all the states, the number of interracial couples is a small percentage. The census tells us that in 1990 there were 242,000 black-and-white married couples, which is double the number of those in 1980 and up 375 percent since 1960. However, that is still only 2.2 percent of the married popula - tion. Richard John Neuhaus, “Counting by Race,” First Things , February 1996, 76. 10. Cited in “Interracial Relationships, Introduction,” http://www.enotes.com/interra - cial-relationships-article/ (accessed March 17, 2009). 11. Ibid. 12. “Committee on Mission to North America, Pastoral Letter on Racism, approved at the March 2004 MNA Committee Meeting as the Committee’s Recommendation to the Thir - ty-Second General Assembly,” http://www.pca-mna.org/churchplanting/PDFs/RacismPaper - Final%20Version%2004-09-04.pdf. 13. Kidd, The Forging of Races , 271. Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 276 7/19/11 10:54 AM 277 NOTES pp. 208 – 21 14. Quoted in Kidd, The Forging of Races , 271. This quote, of course, has evolutionary assumptions, but the point is that, in spite of these assumptions, the unity of the human race in one human ancestor is viewed as true—however that one ancestor came to be—whether as the end of billions of years of chance, or the direct creation of God, which is what I think the Bible teaches and what is true. 15. For more on Ruth, her surprising marriage to Boaz, and her place in the Messianic line of Jesus, see John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010). 16. “So what theological conclusions should we draw? I would suggest that interracial intermarriage is strongly affirmed by Scripture. Marrying unbelievers, on the other hand, is strongly prohibited. The criteria for approving or disapproving of our children’s selected spouses should be based on their faith in Christ and not at all on the color of their skin. This theological affirmation should have profound implications for the church today.” J. Daniel Hays, “A Biblical Perspective on Interracial Marriage,” in Criswell Theological Re - view , (Spring 2009): 22; emphasis original. Also available at http://criswell.files.wordpress. com/2009/03/ctrhaysformatted1.pdf. 17. See 194–95 earlier in the book on why differences give God more glory. 18. J. Daniel Hays, From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 71. Some have suggested, on the other hand that this woman really might be Moses’s first wife, Zipporah the Midianite, and that the term Cushite might have been a slur against her. See Ronald Allen, “Numbers,” in Genesis, Exo - dus, Leviticus, Numbers , The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 2, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), 797. “It is possible that Moses’ wife, Zipporah, is intended by this phrase (see Exod. 2:15–22). If so, then her foreign ancestry is attacked rhetorically by exaggeration.” If this is so, the argument developed here would still be valid in its essence. 19. Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary , Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity, 1981), 111. Similarly, “Miriam’s ques - tioning of the Cushite origin of Moses’ wife was but a smokescreen for her central concern.” R. Dennis Cole, Numbers , The New American Commentary, vol. 3b (Nashville: Broadman, 2000), 200. 20. In fact, the word black in the Bible never refers to sin or moral evil. “Though your sins are like scarlet , they shall be as white as snow” (Isa. 1:18). 21. J. Daniel Hays comes to the same conclusion: “The common cultural ban on in - termarriage lies at the heart of the racial division in the church. White Christians who say that they are not prejudiced but who vehemently oppose interracial marriages are not be - ing honest. They are still prejudiced, and I would suggest that they are out of line with the biblical teaching on this subject. In addition, this theology applies not only to black/white interracial marriages, but equally to intermarriages between any two ethnic groups within the church throughout the world, especially in those regions where the church has inherited strong interracial animosities from the culture at large.” “A Biblical Perspective on Interracial Marriage,” 23. 22. You could see this thinking at work all over the country fifty years ago. For example, a leading Alabama attorney said in 1946, “Education causes the Negro to seek political equality because political equality leads to social equality and social equality leads to intermarriage.” Quoted in Thernstrom and Thernstrom, America in Black and White , 39. CHAPTER 16: PROBABILITY, PREJUDICE, AND CHRIST 1. Andreas Köstenberger, John , Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 81. 2. Available at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stereotypical; emphasis added. 3. For more on Matthew 16:2–4 and its implications for the life of the mind, see John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 60–63. Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 277 7/19/11 10:54 AM 278 NOTES pp. 222 – 37 4. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 82. 5. I assume that Jesus’s generalizations about the Pharisees (Matthew 23) and Paul’s generalization about the Cretans (Titus 1:12) are not sinful because they did have such regard and did appreciate the exceptions. CONCLUSION 1. Mark Noll, God and Race in American Politics: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 2008. 2. Ibid., 1. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 177–78 (ellipses original). 5. Ibid., 179–80 (paragraph breaks added). 6. Ibid., 180–81. 7. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt, 1955), 207. “. . . the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that what - ever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.” 8. Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 5–6. 9. Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), 20. APPENDIX 1 1. “Thus,” the World Christian Encyclopedia continues, “mankind or the human race today consists of a single surviving species, Homo Sapiens, and 5 surviving subspecies or races or racial stocks: . . . Australoid, Capoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid.” World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World AD 1900–2000 , ed. David Barrett (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 107. 2. I am indebted to Alex Kirk for his research and insights in helping me clarify and document the issues in this chapter. If I have made any poor judgments, they are my own, not his. 3. Eloise Hiebert Meneses, “Science and the Myth of Biological Race,” in This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian , ed. Robert J. Priest and Alvaro Nieves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 34. 4. “Ethnicity refers to selected cultural and sometimes physical characteristics used to classify people into groups or categories considered to be significantly different from oth - ers.” http://anthro.palomar.edu/ethnicity/ethnic_1.htm (accessed March 23, 2009; emphasis added). 5. Meneses, “Science and the Myth of Biological Race,” 34. 6. “Tellingly, there has been no consensus among race scientists as to the number of races of humanity. The answers range from three to over a hundred races.” Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race Scripture and the Protestant Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 9. 7. Ibid., 3–6. “Scientific observers of race have never been able to agree about the number of different races of humankind, nor about the characteristics that determine such groupings. Such disagreements do not mean that the scientific taxonomy of races is a holy grail which has still to be achieved, but that such a quest is, in fact, a fool’s errand” (10). 8. Ibid., 3. 9. Ibid., 9. 10. Ibid. See also Jenell Williams Paris, “Race: Critical Thinking and Transformative Possibilities,” in Priest and Nieves, This Side of Heaven , 22: “We have seen that race first emerged as a legitimation for colonialism, and developed informally through vocabulary, cultural norms, and legislation. Later, racially minded scientists formalized these cultural understandings, and race categories gained more credibility and authority.” Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 278 7/19/11 10:54 AM 279 NOTES pp. 237 – 52 11. Priest and Nieves write: “Contemporary racial identities diverge fundamentally from biblical ones. The peoples of Scripture did not identify themselves as ‘white’ to be contrasted with those who were ‘black.’ . . . When color language is applied to skin color in Scripture, we find white being associated with diseased skin, black being neutrally descriptive or sometimes descriptive of diseased unhealthy skin, and ‘red’ (translated ‘ruddy’) being the only color term applied positively to the color of people’s skin. Even here, the color is not used as part of group identity. Our own practice of using black and white as core and con - trasting identities for contemporary people has no equivalent in Scripture.” “Conclusion,” This Side of Heaven , 327. 12. See “Appendix 4: What Are the Implications of Noah’s Curse?” for a discussion of how the sons of Noah relate to this question. 13. W. E. B. Du Bois, “To the Nations of the World,” Great Speeches by African Ameri - cans , ed. James Daley (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2006), 85. 14. “Committee on Mission to North America, Pastoral Letter on Racism, approved at the March 2004 MNA Committee Meeting as the Committee’s Recommendation to the Thir - ty-Second General Assembly,” http://www.pca-mna.org/churchplanting/PDFs/RacismPaper - Final%20Version%2004-09-04.pdf. APPENDIX 2 1. Carl Ellis Jr., Free at Last: The Gospel in the African-American Experience (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 266; see also 48. 2. “Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to the Blues knows it is not necessar - ily ‘down’ or ‘depressing’ or sad. It is soulful, without a doubt, and the lyrics are frequently concerned with misfortune and loss, but the Blues is really a complex combination of misery and high spirits. Often the musical accompaniment is joyous and arrogant, in apparent con - tradiction to the unhappiness of the lyrics. This fascinating ambiguity has more than anything else to do with the universal appeal of the Blues.” http://afgen.com/aboutblu.html. 3. One of the great spokesmen in America for traditional Reformed theology was Geer - hardus Vos, who said that the “root idea [of Reformed theology] which served as the key to unlock the rich treasuries of the Scriptures was the preeminence of God’s glory in the consid - eration of all that has been created.” “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos , ed. Richard Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1980), 241–42. 4. Ellis, Free At Last , 23. 5. The term is carefully chosen and defined by Carl Ellis in ibid., 214: “This ugly term is most fitting because of its ugliness, to refer to the negative or unchristian religious practices expressed in the language of Christianity.” 6. Ibid., 154. 7. Ibid., 158. 8. In one of his most creative sections, Ellis compares typical white preaching to clas - sical music and typical black preaching to jazz music: “There are essentially two approaches to music, the formal and the dynamic. We call them classical and jazz . We know what clas - sical music is—the little dots, circles, lines of Beethoven and Brahms that come to life when a conductor stabs the air with a baton. These sounds that fill the air are not the conductor’s or the violinists’. They belong to Beethoven and Brahms. The beauty of a classical piece is found in the mind of the composer, in the music as it is written . Thus the goal of the classical musician is to reproduce as faithfully as possible the sounds the great composers imagined. Only in rare moments and clearly marked cadences do classical musicians improvise. Their main task is not to improvise but to imitate. Jazz is different. The beauty of jazz is found in the soul of the musician and in the music as it is performed . Jazz is improvisational. Just as classical music has developed musical composition into a fine art, jazz has cultivated musical improvisation into a fine art. The notes that fill the air do not belong to a deceased composer; they issue from the vibrant souls of great performers like ‘Diz,’ ‘Bird’ and ‘Lady Day.’” Ibid., 173–74. 9. For a discussion of the senses in which God does indeed make much of us, but only in such a way that enables us to enjoy most fully making much of him, see John Piper, God Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 279 7/19/11 10:54 AM 280 NOTES pp. 260 – 67 Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 147–62. APPENDIX 3 1. Harold Best, Music Through the Eyes of Faith (New York: HarperOne, 1993), 190. APPENDIX 4 1. For extensive studies of the history of this issue, see David M. Goldberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Nelson Ref - erence, 1987), 201. 3. Bruce Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 150. 4. Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1949), 155. I would not say it exactly like this because there is a sense in which the curse is owing to Ham’s sin, but it is not owing to it in a way that diminishes the accountability of the Canaanites for their own sin. C. F. Keil suggests that “the real reason [for why the curse fell on Ham’s son Canaan] must either lie in the fact that Canaan was already walking in the steps of his father’s impiety, or else be sought in the name Canaan , which Noah discerned, through the gift of prophecy, a significant omen ; a supposition decidedly favoured by the analogy of the blessing pronounced upon Japhet, which is also founded upon the name. . . . The meaning of Canaan is ‘the submissive one.’” Biblical Commentary on the Old Testa - ment , vol. 1: The Pentateuch (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 157. 5. Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament , 158. 6. Old Testament scholar John Walton doubts that the curse from Noah’s lips did in fact define God’s plan: “A final observation [that] needs to be made about the nature of the pronouncement [of Noah against Canaan] is that it is not in the same category as prophecy. These pronouncements are never given as a message from God, nor are they presented as re - ceived revelation by the patriarch. In other words, God is under no obligation to fulfill these, and they do not necessarily reflect his will and plan.” John Walton, Genesis , NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 350. But it seems to me, and most com - mentators, that the author of Genesis wants us to see in this curse a real divine intention that will be seen later in Israel’s history. Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 280 7/19/11 10:54 AM 281 affirmative action, 79–80 African Americans: the African American middle class, 72, 271n6; anti-school attitudes of, 80–82; and the black experience in America, 242; current statistics on, 72; and the Reformed faith, 132; self-esteem of, 93 apathy, 101 atonement: definite atonement, 136–42; limited atonement, 136; unlimited atonement, 136 baby boomers, 268n1 Bethlehem Baptist Church, 38; mis- sion statement of, 259; steps of toward intentional ethnic diver- sity (prayer, preparation, probing, preferring), 257–58; what the church has done to help it grow in ethnic diversity and understand- ing and harmony, 260–62 Birmingham, Alabama, 25; as “Bob- mingham,” 25; as “the Johannes- burg of the South,” 25 Black Entertainment Television, 270–71n21 “blood of Christ,” 123–24, 126, 129 Blues, the, 279n2 bridling one’s tongue, 182 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 24, 61 Calvinism, five points of, 131 cause, commitment to, 110–11 Christ: as “all, and in all,” 164–65, 215; Christ’s call to us is not one of comfort, 214; as the Lord of glory, 189–90; and our oneness, 210–11 chronological smugness, 230–31 church, the, 45 civil rights movement, 23, 71 classical music, 279n8 confession, 228–30 covetousness. See greed cross, the, 43, 252–53; as the great leveler of human beings, 139; the incomparable display of glory at the cross, 193–94; living to glorify the aim of the cross, 126–27; reverence for, 199 Dachau, 37 debt owed to sinners, 43–44 depravity, doctrine of, 134–36; im- plications of for racial harmony, 135–36 Detroit, Michigan, 271n3 discernment, 45 diversification, 52–53 diversity, ethnic, 149; blessings that come from biblically grounded ethnic diversity, 257; as forever, 195; how diverse unity is more glorious than the unity of same- ness, 196–97; how diversity cuts ethnic pride and points to grace, 198–99; how diversity of follow- ers points to a greater leader, 198; SUBJECT INDEX Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 281 7/19/11 10:54 AM 282 Subject Index how diversity magnifies the glory of God, 196; how praise from diverse peoples points to deeper beauty, 197; roots of, 154–55 election, unconditional, 142–44; and the severing of the root of racism, 143–44; as taught in the Bible, 143 ethnicity, 18, 239; definition of, 278n4; the term ethnicity, 235; why the term ethnicity is better than race, 235–38 “ethnoburb,” 53–54 ethnocentrism, 115, 250; Jesus’s trumping of, 115–19 ethnolinguistic people groups, 270n1 ethnos (Greek: nation), 140–41, 152 evangelicalism, Bebbington’s traits of, 272n26 faith, 171 Far-out Far East Rickshaw Rally cur- riculum, 45–46 fear, 99–101 fearlessness, 174 generalizing, 217–18; dependence of our life on, 219–20; how it can be horribly mistaken, 220; Jesus’s commending of, 220–21; Jesus’s generalizations about the Pharisees, 278n5; Paul’s general- ization about the Cretans, 278n5. See also probability judgments; stereotyping Global South, demographics of, 54–55 God: belittling of, 186; glory of, 193–94; as the God of all peoples, 152–55; love of, 250–52; as one, 50; as the one true God, 148–49; passion of for his glory, 275n12; sovereignty of, 242, 243; unity and coherence of, 149–50. See also God-centeredness of God God-centeredness of God: in God’s providence over all history, 249–50; in the love of God for his people, 250–52; in our suffer- ing and death with Jesus in this world of sin and pain, 253–55; in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross, 252–53 good heart, indications of, 223 gospel, the, 40, 43, 68; as always rel- evant, 103; and apathy, 101; the center of as the key to structural change, 105–6; and the creation of new people, 83–84; falling in love with the gospel again, 176; and fear, 99–101; and feelings of inferiority and self-doubt, 92–95; and the glory of the grace of God, 194–95; the gospel walk, 172–73; and greed, 95–97; and guilt, 88–89; and hate, 97–99; and hopelessness, 91–92; and the issue of global credibility, 46–47; as neither right-wing nor left-wing, 84–85; not being in step with the gospel, 170; and pride, 90–91; and Satan, 87–88; what is at the heart of the gospel, 171 grace, irresistible, 165–67 greed, 95–97 “Greeks and barbarians,” 269n1 Greenville, South Carolina, 31–33 guilt, 88–89 hate, 97–99 hedonism, Christian, 243–44 hell, 135 hopelessness, 91–92 Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 282 7/19/11 10:54 AM 283 Subject Index human race: and God-willed differ- ences, 208–9; one ancestor of, 206–7, 236 humility, 199 hypocrisy, 134, 174 image of God, 152–53, 187, 206–7 inferiority, feelings of, 92–95 jazz, 279n8 Jews/Gentiles racial divide, 126 justification, 150–52, 171 law of liberty, 179, 184–85 Loving v. Virginia (1967), 203 marriage, between an unbeliever and a believer, 209–10 marriage, interracial, 36–37, 214– 15; criticism of Moses’s interracial marriage disciplined by God, 211–12; opposition to, 204–5, 213–14; statistics on, 276n9 maturity, biblical, 45, 46 “me-ism,” 250 mercy, 189 Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, demographics of, 38, 53 miscegenation, laws against, 203–4, 276n2, 276n6 “mystery of Christ,” 121, 124–25 Noah’s curse, 263–67, 280n4, 280n6 partiality, 183–84, 185; reasons why we should not show partiality, 185–90 perseverance of the saints, 177–79; implication of for racial harmony, 177–79 persevering sacrifice, 231–33 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996), 273–74n6 pluralism, religious, 149 prejudice, 36; the line between probability judgments and sinful prejudice, 222–23; when prob- ability judgments become sinful prejudice, 221–22 pride, 90–91, 186; how diversity cuts ethnic pride and points to grace, 198–99 probability judgments, 219; the line between probability judgments and sinful prejudice, 222–23; when probability judgments be- come sinful prejudice, 221–22 providence, 249–50 race, 18, 239, 278n1; as a continu- ing, painful, and pervasive issue, 71–72; making of into an idol, 46; the term race, 234; why the term ethnicity is better than race, 235–38 racial classification, and interper- sonal relationships, 234–35 racial strategies (structural [or sys- tematic] racism; personal respon- sibility), 73–78 racialization, of America, 76–77, 272n27 racism, 18, 68; the behavior of the racist, 19, 239; and death with Christ, 161–65; definition of, 239; the heart of the racist, 18–19, 239; and the reduction of conver- sion, 160–61; Scripture’s restraint on, 207–8; and the valuing of one race over another, 239–40 rap, 65–66, 270n15, 270n16, 270–71n21 Bloodlines.28521.i03.indd 283 7/19/11 10:54 AM 284 Subject Index reconciliation, 47; horizontal recon- c
