PEACE CORPS 1964
After graduating from college in 1963, I was convinced by another speaker that I chanced to hear that I should delay attending seminary for a couple of years and joined the Peace Corps. I was sent to Arequipa, Peru. I remember picking up the local newspaper and scanning it to see what was happening in the world. There on the front page was a large picture showing Bull Connor sending his attack dogs to challenge a civil rights march. What struck me was that my country, which was supposed to represent justice and equality, was displaying their inability as a nation to guarantee those rights for its own citizens. The Peace Corps was supposed to display through our volunteer service in other countries our compassion for the less fortunate and our willingness to reach out and help the less fortunate. Yet even as we offered ourselves in service, there were officials in our own country making a mockery of our commitment to justice and equality.
SIXTY YEARS LATER
Again, I was made aware that the issue of racism could distort and destroy any message of hope and justice that we had to offer the world. Almost sixty years later, and even more blatantly with the instant communication across the INTERNET, our behavior is so loud that people around the world can’t hear what we are saying. It is never too late and certainly urgent that the church learn to face the racial distortion of the best we have too offer.
