The Hallel Report

Tavis Smiley (http://www.tavistalks.com/)podcasts highlights of his late night interview talk show on PBS (http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200704/20070406.html#). I was catching up on old shows I had missed when I ran across this interview with CUNY (http://portal.cuny.edu/portal/site/cuny/index.jsp?front_door=true) Professor of History and author James Oakes. Oakes just published a New book, The Radical and the Republican (http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Republican-Frederick-Douglass-Antislavery/dp/0393061949/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-3908666-5559025?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186068788&sr=1-1), an account of the often strained relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas. Two points brought up in the interview were particularly remarkable to me. First, Dr, Oakes, who is an expert in the field of American Slavery told Tavis that he studies slavery because he is so interested in the ideas of human rights, liberty, ant freedom. He said that slavery was just freedom turned upside down. He suggested that Slave Codes (http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/slavelaw.htm)of the Antebellum South were just aa inversion of the Bill of Rights (http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm). Secondly, it was also posited that there is always a tension between reformers and politicians. One thing about it politicians survive, but reformers die young. How about as the pastor of a church I have to hold close both tendencies, I have to be a politician to navigate all the tradition and entrenched social structure. But at the same time I have to be a reformer, because a church that operates at the status quo will not meet the challenge that God has set forth for it to serve. Check out the book, check out Tavis.

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