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NY Times Op-Ed: The Astonishing Moral Beauty Of The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth And The Black Church

Paul Caron
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New York Times Op-Ed:  The Astonishing Moral Beauty of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the Black Church, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):

Warren 3The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a pastor in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s, was called by the historian Andrew Manis “one of the least known but most impactful figures in the civil rights movement.” Shuttlesworth was a close friend and colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but nearly his opposite in personality — boisterous, direct and exuberant by nature. In his obituary, The Times contrasted the two men, saying: “Where Dr. King could deliver thunderous oratory and move audiences by his reasoned convictions and faith, Mr. Shuttlesworth was fiery.” He was, the author Diane McWhorter told The Times, “King’s most effective and insistent foil: blunt where King was soothing, driven where King was leisurely, and most important, confrontational where King was conciliatory.” The segregationist commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Bull Connor, saw Shuttlesworth as his nemesis. When asked about chest injuries Shuttlesworth incurred from being sprayed by a fire hose at close range during a peaceful protest, Connor told The Times: “I wish they’d carried him away in a hearse.”

In Manis’s biography of Shuttlesworth, “A Fire You Can’t Put Out,” which I came across last month, there was one story in particular that brought tears to my eyes. On Sept. 9, 1957, the very day President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act and lawyers sought injunctive relief to force Arkansas to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Shuttlesworth organized the integration of Phillips High School in Birmingham, driving his own two children to the school to enroll them.

He was met by a white mob that beat him with baseball bats, chains and brass knuckles. As he was beginning to lose consciousness, Shuttlesworth recounts that “something” said to him: “You can’t die here. Get up. I have a job for you to do.” In the hospital later that day, a reporter asked Shuttlesworth what he was working for in Birmingham. He responded: “For the day when the man who beat me and my family with chains at Phillips High School can sit down with us as a friend.”

Shuttlesworth was resolutely committed to justice. He was, by his own estimate, arrested in peaceful protests some 30 to 40 times. His house was bombed with his whole family inside one Christmas Eve. His church was subjected to three different bombing attempts. He remained until his death in 2011 a man of deep Christian faith who constantly spoke about how the Bible required us to seek systemic change and racial equality. Yet even in his darkest hour he honored and affirmed the humanity and dignity of those who hated him by holding out the possibility of forgiveness, redemption and even friendship.

Shuttlesworth, of course, did not have to show the violent racists who attacked him mercy or kindness. They had shown him none. By any normal standard of justice, they did not deserve it, which is what makes what he did so astounding, so morally beautiful and — especially with the anger over the merciless fatal beating of Tyre Nichols fresh in our minds — practically incomprehensible to me. To be clear, forgiveness doesn’t mean that we do not hold people accountable for their actions. What Shuttlesworth demonstrated that September day wasn’t apathy toward the injustice he faced. He was not excusing the actions of his attackers. Yet in the face of horrific evil, he responded with astounding grace.

Shuttlesworth represents a way of being human that I find staggering. He was utterly shaped by the story of Jesus and sought to love his enemies, even as he clearly and repeatedly agitated to transform the social order. He saw an angry white man with a chain as a person capable of transformation. He railed against the evil of white supremacy but did not grow embittered in his fight against it. Holding justice and mercy together in this way is not natural to any of us and never will be. Loving your enemies is and always has been a radical act.

What Shuttlesworth’s life and the broader story of the Black church in America make clear is that being a person of true humility, conviction, faith and hope — a person attempting to actually follow Jesus — has never been viewed as acceptable. It never made one a “good American” in the eyes of the majority. …

My hope for white people of faith across the political and ideological spectrum is that we’d pay attention to, be challenged by and learn from the Black church in America. In his book “Reading While Black,” the Times Opinion contributing writer Esau McCaulley says that the Black church, even now, continues to be “thrust into the middle of a battle between white progressives and white evangelicals, feeling alienated in different ways from both.” Yet, he says, the Black ecclesial tradition in America continues to offer “a message of hope” that “is not simply a thing of the past; it is living and active.”

Fred Shuttlesworth and the legacy of the Black church remind us that authentic Christian faith is always simultaneously inspiring, perplexing and radically countercultural. It is meant to challenge the conventional wisdom of every society of which it is a part while still calling it to be the best version of itself. It’s easy to freeze people like Shuttlesworth in the stained glass of sainthood, to cease to be shocked by him, as if his response to his moment was required, natural or inevitable. To spend time with Shuttlesworth’s story, however, is to awaken to the strange and astonishing beauty of his moral universe. To understand him, we have to believe him when he says he was simply trying to be faithful to the call of the Christian scriptures. If this is true, then this remarkable way of being human is the duty of all those who claim to be Christians today.

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to the faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Other New York Times op-eds by Tish Harrison Warren:

About the Author

Paul Caron Avatar
Paul Caron
Paul Caron was named Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean of Pepperdine University School of Law on June 1, 2017. Dean Caron joined the Pepperdine faculty in 2013 after serving as the Dorothy and Leonard Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law in the spring semesters of 2010 through 2013. He served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at Pepperdine in 2015-2017. Before coming to Pepperdine, he was Associate Dean of Faculty and Charles Hartsock Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
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