Editorial: Fragmented America needs an infusion of young Will Campbells

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Where is Will Campbell when we need him? In heaven, of course, giving lie to the notion nobody cries on high. For if he is able to look down and see fractured, fragmented America, surely he weeps.

knox newMarv KnoxWill wrote splendid, moving books—mostly about the South and faith, and about humbly and courageously following Jesus in a world where people who wave Jesus’ banner most ferociously usually aren’t his most fervent followers. Brother to a Dragonfly, his family memoir of love and loss and change, was a finalist for the American Book Award in 1978.

Will also gained jocular fame as inspiration for Reverend Will B. Dunn in the Kudzu comic strip penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette.

Will was the kind of writer—and speaker, when he could be coaxed away from his cabin in Mount Juliet, Tenn., to give a talk—who could move folks from laughter, to tears, to laughter and leave them pondering how Jesus would want them to think about their role in this world.

Not only what, but why

Thinking is vital, because it leads to action, Will always insisted. He refused to let people off the hook, pressing them to think critically about the world around them. People who engaged the mind of Will Campbell couldn’t rest in self-satisfaction by lamenting the lousy state of modern life. He always pressed them to consider why things were the way they were.

Will’s own curious, faithful, restless mind—which mirrored his curious, faithful, restless spirit—led him on an incredible journey. It’s a trip America needs to take, whether we start where he started and end where he ended, or begin at his ending and move to his beginning.

Will grew up in far southwestern Mississippi, attended Louisiana College, a Baptist school, before serving as a medic in World War II. Then he graduated from Wake Forest University before studying at Tulane University and Yale Divinity School.

Opposition and threat


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After graduation, he was a pastor in Louisiana for two years, before he became the chaplain at the University of Mississippi. But he only lasted a couple of years, primarily because his advocacy for integration generated fierce opposition and death threats.

Rather than back down, Will expanded his field of service. He became one of the white Protestant leaders in the civil rights movement and committed his life to racial equality. He escorted African-American students who integrated the public schools in Little Rock, Ark., and helped the “Freedom Riders” integrate bus travel in Alabama. He was the only white person in the room where Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference first happened. His obituary in the New York Times features a photo of Will commiserating with civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy in Memphis after Dr. King’s assassination.

In the 1950s and throughout the ’60s, Will campaigned tirelessly and selflessly for civil rights and human dignity. As he turned to writing, he held a mirror up to white America, helping us see the roots and results of our racism. He also stood out as a banner to people of color, particularly African-Americans, proof positive that some white people loved them and stood with them.

But then …

But then Will’s curious mind and sensitive spirit moved him in a different direction. As much as he felt compassion for blacks victimized by racism and Jim Crow laws, he came to empathize with poor whites. He became a de facto chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan.

Will realized power and classism in America exploited the weak and the vulnerable, no matter the color of their skin. He saw how politicians and other power brokers pitted poor whites—against their own interest—to hate and despise poor blacks, with whom they had so much in common.

Will’s consistent Christian spirit caused him to love poor blacks and poor whites in equal measure. And it demanded even deeper sacrifice on his part, because his faithfulness alienated power brokers on either end of the spectrum. In a 1976 oral history prepared by the University of Southern Mississippi, he said: “It’s been a long time since I got a hate letter from the right. Now they come from the left.”

Strong parallels

Will died in 2013 of complications from a stroke he suffered a couple of years before. If only he were with us still. We need him now. Will would see strong parallels between the 1960s South and all of America today. He would recognize how:

The rhetoric of hate distracts poor and even middle-class whites from the root causes of their trouble and focuses their rage on African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants, who also suffer from the same abuses of power and privilege. Hatred distorts reality and labels others as “the enemy,” even when they should be seen as fellow travelers and similar stakeholders.

Fear is an insidious evil that victimizes everyone who gives it credence. Some fear is real and present. Other fear is fabricated. But both cripple. Both blind their victims so they have a hard time seeing solutions.

Greed and classism and lust for power are true dangers to America. They’re much more volatile than skin color, language, religion and national origin.

Religion that reinforces bigotry and blinds adherents from realizing all people are created in God’s image is toxic and leads followers further and further away from true faith.

Jesus wasn’t a Republican or a Democrat, and placing faith in political parties is idolatry, pure and simple.

Will departed for heaven almost four years ago. But America needs a new generation of Will Campbells. Pray for faithful, wise, courageous leaders—clergy and laity alike, from all walks of life, from all races and ethnicities, from both genders—who will stand against hypocrisy, manipulation and abuse of power and who will stand for all God’s children, stamped with the divine imprint.

Follow Marv on Twitter: @marvknox

This editorial was corrected May 4, 2017, to state that Will Campbell grew up in southwestern Mississippi, not the Mississippi Delta.


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