Marburg Revisited: more essays in honor of Albert Pero

Currents in Theology and Mission, August, 2004 by Ralph W. Klein

I first visited Marburg, Germany, about twenty-five years ago. I was a tourist then, but now my wife and I have come back for a six-month sabbatical, and we daily climb up and down the hills of this old medieval town, the home of the oldest Lutheran university in the world and the site where Protestantism experienced one of its largest schisms. Each day I sit in the theological library that is within a stone's throw of the castle where Luther and Zwingli battled it out--and split from one another--nearly five centuries ago. As luck would have it, I lectured in Zurich, Switzerland, last week and saw there a huge statue of Zwingli near his home, a home which he left two years after Marburg to die in battle for the faith.

Some years ago North American colleagues reflected on the religious history of this town in a book titled Marburg Revisited. As I have been pondering what to say about Pete Pero in this editorial, I have wondered what he would have said if he had been up there in the castle, with Martin and Huldrych, for the gospel's side, for humanity's side, for God's side. What would Pete bring to the table, leave on the table, or take from the table? The following essays suggest some possible answers. My hope is that Pete might provide his own answer to that question in the future.

Mark P. Bangert provides an extensive history of the origins and characteristics of Gospel music, noting its roots in African, African American, and revivalist circles. He also names and offers perspectives on some of the problems perceived in this music. Theological assumptions behind the texts can be troublesome when conversion is overemphasized or double predestination lurks in the background. The entertainment value of Gospel music is at once its strength and a potential weakness, especially when Gospel music is exploited for commercial gain today. Bodily involvement in this music and related worship may at times imply romantic notions of the "primitive" being better or more natural, and use of Gospel music has at times been used as a litmus test for determining how committed persons are to anti-racism. Finally he explores the "ring shout" for its potential in articulating the gospel and a wholistic ecclesiology in a powerful way. The ring is well suited to express and even "enact" Christian eucharistic assembly.

Kathleen D. Billman describes Pete Pero as a person called to a world house. He has always tried to articulate the African American Lutheran contribution to the world house and to contend (not just intellectually but with his very life) that African American Christianity has always had a "world house" dimension. Pete has taught generations of students that ministry is not just about keeping house but about engaging the brokenness of the world. As Walter Brueggemann has reminded us, "To divide things up into the pastoral and the prophetic is to betray both." Pete's witness is a reminder that lament and hope are not opposites but, rather, presuppose each other. LSTC is all the richer for having had and in many ways still having Pete Pero among us.

Philip Hefner offers an interpretation of the nonviolent movements of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and focuses on five areas: clarifying the terms passive resistance, nonviolent resistance, and militant nonviolence; militant nonviolence as a process of double conversion; militant nonviolence as a process of spiritual transformation; the larger human significance of militant nonviolence; and militant nonviolence as a process of love and altruism. Gandhi and King both wrote that militant nonviolence is the response of strong men and women, not weak ones; nonviolence is not for cowards. Double conversion refers to the conversion of the militant nonviolent confronter to trust in the one who is confronted. This takes the risk that the opponent will undergo a conversion that will enable him or her to respond in a reciprocal trust. Hefner follows the theories of Gandhi and King in their confrontations with oppression and then turns to an exploration of the terms altruism and love. For King nonviolent resistance emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulating ideal. Today, violence is at the center of our attention as an American nation. It has never been clearer that Gandhi and King were right in their judgment that violence is not eradicated by counterviolence.

Ralph W. Klein cuts a cross section through the sixty-five chapters of the Books of Chronicles and asks particularly about the Chronicler's knowledge of Africa and Africans and how Africans related to and interacted with Israel in the Books of Chronicles. The land of Israel has strong ties with Africa in Chronicles. The genealogies in 1 Chronicles 1-9 show the Chronicler's openness to marriage with outsiders, and Solomon is praised by neighboring royalty, Huram of Tyre and the queen of Sheba, both of whom are connected in one way or another with Ham/Africa. Shishak of Egypt and Zerah the Cushite/Ethiopian figure prominently in the story line of Chronicles. The Chronicler turns the African Pharaoh Neco into a prophet. Neco warns Josiah that God had commanded him to hurry toward Mesopotamia and that Josiah should therefore cease from opposing Neco or he would be destroyed. Naturally we would like to know more about the relationship of Israel to Africa and Africans in the fourth century B.C.E. The Chronicler needed information about Africa and Africans to tell his story about Israel completely. As Pete Pero has demonstrated many times, no one can tell the story of Lutheranism credibly either without including Africans and African Americans in the account.