I remember a Wednesday night when I was just a boy in Greenville, South Carolina.

My mother came home from a Wednesday night business meeting at church with, I can't remember whether she was crying or not but she was

there was this mixture of anger and grief on her face. Can't remember quite how old I was either or why I wasn't there, but I must have been that young.

She had been the only person who had stood up to oppose a motion that black people would not be permitted to come

to our church. And the motion passed easily anyway. A few years later my sister got married in that church and we invited

a black family to come to the wedding and who had been longtime friends and when they

entered the church they were told to go in the balcony which was just as bare as that balcony

is right there.

And my mother with great indignation insisted that they sit with the other guests down below.

A few years later, I can't remember how many I was a teenager this time, I can remember we had a party over to our house of young couples in the church.

And I can remember how one of the young men bragged about being a member of the Ku Klux Klan and belittled the black race.

Now that was a large city Baptist church and it was shot through with racism.

And by racism I mean disrespectful, belittling, and sometimes violent attitudes towards people of another race.

And that's a phenomenon that is utterly contradictory to the spirit and the commands of our Lord Jesus.

He said, for example, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,

pray for those who abuse you.

He extol the Samaritan who took the time to help a needy Jew. He praised and justified a man who said, God be merciful to me a sinner when he was reviled, Peter said he did not revile in return when he was threatened or when he suffered he did not threatened but handed over to him who judges justly.

I shudder to think how many people in the Bible belt are going to hear Jesus say on the judgment day, I never knew

you. Depart from me, you church members who do evil.

Today, there are in the northern woods of Alabama covered by Kudzu Vines, military camps of the Ku Klux Klan

secretly training and equipping with automatic weapons, their white members for the anticipated race war,

the invisible empire knights of the KK, threaten and abuse blacks this day throughout the South and of course it's not restricted

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