Joseph H. Jackson: "The Meaning of the Cross"

The Rev. Joseph H. Jackson would most emphatically disagree with Marshall's conviction that the Gospel prescribes revolution. Jackson, pastor of the big Olivet Baptist Church on Chicage's South Side and perennial president of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc. (he claims 6,000,000 members), is in his mid-60s. But there is more than a generation gap between him and Calvin Marshall. Jackson bitterly opposed Martin Luther King's civil-disobedience campaign, and has so vigorously quashed liberal opposition within his denomination that half a million members (including King) left in 1961 to form the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. He was one of the few black leaders to endorse Richard Nixon (with little effect) in the last election; outspokenly dedicated to "law and order," he won the "Patriot of the Year" award from Ultra-Right-winger Billy James Hargis in 1968.

Jackson earnestly preaches national unity. "The most important thing now," he says, "is to save the nation, in order to save the individual citizen, and the race." Probably few blacks, however, share his opinion that the civil rights struggle is disruptive of that unity. "It was supposed to be a struggle for first-class citizenship, not for getting Whitey," Jackson maintains. "Those who wanted their rights are being sold another bill of goods now. There are Negroes who believe their mission is to destroy America."

Rugged Way. Many of Jackson's notions seem to have been shaped by his rugged background: a Mississippi farm boy, he had to teach himself arithmetic, spelling and reading while leading cows to pasture or doing other chores. He feels that the black churches have had an equally hard struggle. His own convention, he points out, was founded nine decades before the cry for Black Power. "They believed we had an opportunity. They never took the time to keep a white man from preaching. They believed in fair competition. They never asked for reparations. They built their own churches with their own hands and their own money." Now Jackson would like blacks to apply that same initiative to their economic struggle: "We must learn how to organize our capital, harness our earnings and set them to work for us."

Though he is broad-minded in some areas of theology (he is a graduate of liberal Colgate Rochester Divinity School), Jackson has a view of the Negro recalling the old-fashioned suffering servant image from Isaiah. Christianity, he argues, permits protest against unjust laws but not rebellion against civil order. "The difference between Negro Christians and white Christians." says Jackson, "is the meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ. Our forefathers were cross-bearers. They believed in it. You can't build a great church preaching hate, envy, and revenge, and sending the people out on the street after the service mad at the world. No matter how nonviolent, civil disobedience lays the ground for civil hatred and the desire to destroy. They took from the civil rights struggle the religious faith that went with it."

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