Divisive Dynamics

...He has not let the rise of resegregation in the South or the failure of desegregation in the North turn him into a gloomy old man...

...What they too often got was a long political maelstrom over complex busing plans...

...He reminds us of the movement's strong religious base...

...And yet . every time I try to grasp exactly how "a beloved community'' might work, every time I try to understand how a fractious nation like the United States might come to experience a human reconciliation of this sort, I feel as if I am demanding an empirical answer for an article of faith...

...The end is the creation of the beloved community...

...As Marsh puts it, the story of the beloved community shows us how "the defenders of such endangered values as tolerance, reason, humanity, generosity, and justice enter into an alliance and comradeship with Christians...

...It was a multitude of educated, white, middle-class Republicans who nursed a sense of grievance that ran deep and cold and bitter...

...This crowd was the opposite of a beloved community...

...They hated the idea of homosexual marriage...

...It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends...

...Never mind...

...That transcendent vision would make the suffering bearable for many civil rights warriors as the struggle ground on through the 1950s and '60s...

...While the notion of a beloved community may have pushed yesterday's civil rights workers to astonishing heights, I'm afraid that dream—always a little fuzzy and a mite grandiose—winds up profoundly lost in a contemporary nation that has ardently embraced a hard new politics of meanness and recrimination...

...And they sounded the traditional plea to let God return to the classroom...

...But how...

...I think so...

...And Republicans have gained political ground in part by drawing political districts in ways that have packed black citizens into uniracial election areas, thus ensuring the dominance of white Republicans in other areas...

...Please...

...White conservatives who continue to oppose civil rights have considerable wealth and power, and in many areas they are using it effectively," he concedes...

...But what practical application could this brand of religious idealism possibly have in today's unforgiving political climate...

...They fumed that Senate Democrats—in a typical ungodly move—might try to block the appointment of an antiabortion justice to the Supreme Court...

...He is able to appreciate on its own ragged terms the dramatic, if unfinished, civil rights revolution that swept over this nation in the last half century...

...Well, he once said, "the kingdom of heaven is like a yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough...

...It won't be the kind of society Martin Luther King and John Lewis dreamed about...

...Instead, it will arrive as a hard-eyed political bargain, a sly balance of mutual self-interests and grubby compromises as population trends ebb and flow and attitudes change to suit the moment...

...And he is not waiting for a cosmic social reconciliation...

...King's ambitions went far beyond that goal...

...The Passion of My Times: An Advocate's Fifty-Year Journey in the Civil Rights Movement By William L.Taylor Carroll & Graf...

...In Cobb County, where we were gathered to hear Frist that day, the local school board was embroiled in a Federal court fight over its decision to put stickers on biology textbooks warning students that evolution is "a theory, not a fact...

...But what does Jordan mean by "kingdom...

...Over time, as demographic change brings more diversity to the nation, the South and other areas of the country are likely to grow more progressive in seeking to serve the needs of all citizens.' I hope Taylor is right about that, because I think this scenario is about as close as we will ever get to establishing a beloved community in America...

...Intensely unpopular among the local folks, Koinonia nonetheless became a refuge in the 1960s for stressed-out civil rights workers and a prototype for what a beloved community might look like...

...Reviewed by Joseph Dolman Editorial writer and columnist, "Newsday" IN late 1956, the triumphant leader of the Montgomery bus boycott spelled out his ultimate vision for social change...

...It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men...

...A civil rights lawyer for more than 50 years, he has a marvelous ability to keep his gains and losses in perspective...

...There would be no place for revenge in this new world of social justice...

...Granted, a beloved community can work here and there within small groups of idealists...

...What Northern schools needed more than anything was not some ideal racial mix but ample funding and decent instruction...

...In the words of John Lewis, in those days the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the nonviolent campaign that lay ahead would create a "redemptive society" that could heal social wounds...

...Jordan saw it like this: "If the barriers that divide man and cause wars, race conflict, economic competition, class struggles, [and] labor disputes are ever to be broken down, they must be broken down in small groups of people living side by side, who plan consciously and deliberately to find a way wherein they can all contribute to the kingdom according to their respective abilities...

...Meaning, I think: If enough people preach—and live—the true social gospel of Jesus Christ, then slowly the walls that divide Americans will begin to tumble as a divine energy seeps into our consciousness...

...Some of his passions are open to question...

...They were dead serious about all of this, and—as the November 2 election proved—they have amassed some impressive political power...

...His chapter on King's Alabama years is stirring and honest and insightful...

...With the benefit of hindsight, were liberals mistaken to place so much emphasis on Northern school desegregation...

...He points to several modest examples of this synergy persisting— against formidable odds—into the current age...

...Here is what he has to say about the almost solid Republican South: "The conservative South today is still aproduct of embedded racial attitudes, but it also reflects industrial and postindustrial growth that continues to thrive on cheap labor...

...The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption," he proclaimed...

...He devotes a chapter to Koinonia Farm, a religious, interracial, collectivist enterprise founded in 1942 by Clarence Jordan in rural Georgia...

...Although Taylor was never the most famous name of the civil rights era, he seems to have been around for all the big fights—as an NAACP Legal Defense Fund staffer, as an investigator for the U.S...

...We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization," he told his audience...

...In the rush of success that King and his followers tasted as the Montgomery boycott came to an end, anything might have seemed possible...

...The folks around me made no secret of their Christian fervor...

...That's what Koinonia is all about...

...251pp...

...There is a civil rights baseline, Taylor maintains—put into law in the 1980s—"beyond which retreat will not occur...

...And while African-Americans would enjoy a solid guarantee of racial equality in this brand-new universe...

...Marsh works hard to show what the concept is all about...

...It is this type of understanding . . . that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age...

...But they are essentially engaged in a defensive effort to retain unearned white privilege...

...While the struggle against injustice in its many forms is likely to continue for many years, I believe that the apostles of white privilege will never reclaim the control they once had...

...In the face of all this, William L. Taylor's memoir, The Passion of My Times, comes as a welcome relief...

...These systems were segregated not by law but by housing patterns—among myriad other factors...

...described the world he wanted to build...

...Commission on Civil Rights, as a founder of the Center for National Policy Review, and so on...

...Could anyone "inject a new dimension of love" into the veins of this civilization, as King had hoped to do nearly 50 years ago...

...Charles Marsh, a University of Virginia religion professor, attempts to explain the concept in his latest book, The Beloved Community...

...As the 2004 Presidential campaign roared into its final phase, I found myself in a ritzy white Atlanta suburb—not far from the Congressional district John Lewis now represents—waiting amid an impassioned Republican throng for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to take the podium and preach the gospel according to George W. Bush...

...Marsh hears the music, but I'm afraid I do not...

...The problem is, the defenders of these endangered values look like a woefully puny strike force to me...

...And maybe this won't be so bad...

...It can't be done...

...It won't be founded on principles of Christian love...

...The many years he has devoted to civil rights have brought him not just wisdom but a fine sense of proportion...

...In a talk to the Montgomery Improvement Association, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr...

...The real joy in this book comes from the personal views Taylor gives us of old civil rights lions like Thurgood Marshall, and behind-the-scenes strategy sessions from the 1957 Little Rock school desegregation case to the 1987 Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork...