The State of Jones

On Monday, I looked at "The Da Vinci Code" as part of Faith in Film class. There is one line in that movie that has stuck with me since the first time I saw it. It happens when professor Lea Teabing says, "Ever since there has been one God, there have been people killing in his name."

Sadly, the history of the church is one of violence. First the violence done to people who first tried to spread the Gospel — just look at the violent ends of the apostles. Then, once the church and Christianity hit the main stream, the violence was done on behalf of spreading the Gospel. Times like the witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Crusades are a black stain on Christianity because they are in opposition to the true Gospel preached by Jesus Christ.

I encountered another such time in our own American history as I read the book "The State of Jones." The book, written by a pair of journalists and telling the true story of a Mississippi man named Newton Knight and his family, was a side of American history and the Civil War I didn't know much about. I was saddened by what I read.

I love studying the Civil War time period. It is one of my interests. But I think there is a tendency today to look at the Civil War period as occurring during a five year period and then seeing our country completely changed when it ended. While that is true to some extent, I think that fails to capture the fact that change came hard to many areas in the south that were consumed by deep-seeded hate and racism, much of it purportedly backed by the Gospel.

"The State of Jones" is about a group of people in Jones County Mississippi that didn't cotton to the Confederacy, instead forming a paramilitary organization that fought to support unionism. The tales of battle, of southern men risking life and limb to protect unionism, was fascinating. But what was more fascinating, and much more disheartening, was the tales of what Mississippi looked like during the post war period.

Many of us know think that once the war ended, the slaves were freed and that was the end of it. That may have been the end of it in the north and in some southern states, but clearly not in Mississippi. Reading tales of the lynchings, beatings, burnings, and murders committed against the oppressed in Jones County was harrowing. And it didn't just last a few months. The book carries the story of Newton Knight and his racially mixed extended family well into the 20th Century, and the stories of hate, segregation, and oppression don't end. Much of it done to keep the "natural order as imposed by God."

America has a dark, violent religious history all its own. Abolishing slavery was a noble idea, but it was never going to be easy. The problem is those in power lost the political will to follow through, leaving those "free" men and women in the south to a fate that was, at times, worse than antebellum slavery. My heart grieved as I read the accounts and considered how people suffered.

We like to think we've come a long way — and in some ways we have. But there is more work to be done. You don't have to look very hard to see hate in this country, sometimes guised as religious fervor. We should all take care to guard our hearts against such a fate. Jesus showed us love — the highest form of love in fact, self-sacrifice. There is no place for hate in the kingdom of God.