Hebrew Reparations
“If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew manor a Hebrew woman is sold to you and works for you six years, in the seventh year you shall set that person free. And when you send a male slave out from you a free person, you shall not send him out empty-handed. Provide liberally out of your flock, your threshing floor, and your wine press, thous giving. To him. Some of the bounty with which the Lord your god has blessed you.” (Deuteronomy 15:12-14)
I am using this text in Deuteronomy to talk about reparations. In studying the text, I understand that it does not fit perfectly; the language is sexist and slaves in Israel were usually working off an acquired debt. When in time that debt was satisfied, the slave was released back into society, to resume life. The scripture reads, “you shall not send [them] out empty-handed.” The idea is that someone who has been working to pay off a debt, who has not received any income, needs something to assist them in life after bondage. Don't let them go away with nothing, the text implies and yet.
Over two hundred and fifty years of working for no income. When after being stolen from your home you are released, you are released with nothing. This is the story of the descendants of Africans. They were enslaved in this country to be cheap/free labor; to be clear were not working off a debt. The idea was to bring Africans to build and plant — to be perpetual slaves.
Brought from Africa these Africans were thought to be less than human. Their skin color made them, in the minds of those with white skin, inferior. Stolen Africans and their descendants were treated as beast of burden or breeders to increase the workforce. Less than full personhood was even written into this nation’s constitution.
These persons of African descendant were instrumental in the building of a nation. Descendants of Africans built the White House and many other houses; the descendants of Africans tilled the soil, planted rice, cotton and tobacco. These crops created wealth for plantation owners; yet, when the owners of Africans were forced to release them from bondage, many Christian masters released them with nothing.
There was an empty promise of 40 acres and a mule; the only people who got paid at the end of slavery where the slave masters who were paid because they suffered a loss. They were paid because they were no longer able to keep human beings as property. General Sherman who purposed the forty acres and a mule, never saw it implemented.
The scripture text says, “you shall not send [them] out empty-handed.” Give them something so that they can build a life.
Instead, what happened after slavery was those who worked plantations continued to work plantations. Now they were sharecroppers. This kept the descendants of Africans in a different sort of slavery. This was indeed a debt slavery. My great grandmother and my grandmother Bettie Ann, even for a time, my mother, picked tobacco and cotton in the South. They were never able to work ‘hard enough’ to create or accumulate enough to leave to the next generation.
Pastors who have gotten the prerequisite education, to preach the good news of God, have not be able to work, ‘hard enough’ to accumulate decent pensions. This is because of the disparities many pastors of African Descent experience in calls, pay and availability. We are still being treated as less than.
Because of this there are so many African Americans in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) who have had inadequate salaries as full-time pastors. They also have debt from education.
Personally speaking, I am 61 years old; I have been a pastor for over twenty years and still have $67,000 in student loan debt. I have been fortunate; I have had four calls in this church with only one that was an under paid call. I have a decent pension; yet many of my colleagues do not.
This country needs a system of reparations, and if not the country, at least the church might lead by example. Perhaps the ELCA might provide pastors of African Descendant, money for school, pension funds that help them retire, reparations so that the playing field is level. The scripture tells us “you shall not send [them] out empty-handed.”