In 1940, John Moody McCaleb left a land and a people he had grown to love, never to return, for the winds of war were blowing strong. After his life’s work in Japan had ended, he moved to Los Angeles, CA, where he taught at George Pepperdine College. Not far from that campus, Japanese Americans, unlike German and Italian Americans, were herded into internment camps, such as Santa Anita Racetrack. Those interned including a young Christian, named Michio Nagai, who later taught at Pepperdine. Had people listened to the hymn McCaleb wrote twenty years earlier, and understood its powerful implications, that dark internment chapter may never have been written.
McCaleb wrote in the first stanza:
Of one the Lord has made the race,
Thro’ one has come the fall;
Where sin has gone must go His grace;
The Gospel is for all.
Refrain:
The blessed Gospel is for all,
The Gospel is for all;
Where sin has gone must go His grace:
The Gospel is for all.
Evangelism, not war, tells us of our equality before God.
In my last blog, I mentioned the connection of the great evangelistic movements of the 18th century, with slavery. A PBS web page on religion and slavery, quotes historian, David Blight, saying:
...There had never been anything like it. Here's a meeting of 3,000 people out in a field, blacks and whites together, listening to a preacher who says, “Here in my message is a new life for you, here's a new chance for you. Here's a God who had your interest at heart. Here's a God who may deliver you.”
Later, the article says this:
The revivalists generally did not challenge slavery, but they preached to everyone, regardless of race. The Methodists and the Baptists, in particular, welcomed converts from the black and white working population. Fearing the Christian message of spiritual equality, slave owners initially resisted evangelicals preaching to their bondpeople, but as the revival movement spread, a few even came to consider it their Christian duty to teach their slaves about the Bible.
If more had seen it their Christian duty to free their slaves as Paul strongly encouraged Philemon to do to Onesimus, because they were brothers in Christ, spiritually, and in every meaningful way, equal, the darkest chapter of our national story may have been far less bleak.
Responding with obedient faith to the Good News, not only tells us that we are saved; it tells us that we are one. This was not an easy lesson for the early church to learn, but it’s a lesson the New Testament insists we do learn. How do we tell one for whom Jesus died that they are worthless, or even worth less? We just don’t! How do we tell one filled with the Holy Spirit that they cannot employ the gifts He has given them? We dare not!
Is there hierarchy within the church? Yes. Jesus is Lord and we are His people. He is the Head, and we are His Body. Is there a hierarchy beyond this? There is leadership that is based on love and gifts, not on race, class, or gender (Galatians 3:28). We follow our shepherds as they follow the Great Shepherd. They are not above us, but one with us. We listen to our evangelists as far as they are faithful to the Evangel (Good News).
Do we want a more equal society? The first and greatest thing we can do is share the Gospel, knowing that the Gospel is for All, and it makes us one.
Tim Kelley
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1 https://hymnstudiesblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/quotthe-gospel-is-for-allquot/
2 This is quite personal to me. Michio, was one of the finest Old Testament professors I ever had. At Pepperdine, McCaleb must have lit a fire under a student named Elmer Prout. In August 1958, Elmer baptized me into Christ and soon thereafter boarded a ship going to Japan to follow in McCaleb’s footsteps. His influence for good in my life has been incalculable. Another missionary to Japan, who blessed me greatly, was Charles Melton. Finally, a fellow college mate, Marlin Ray, spent the rest of his life serving and loving the Japanese. His wife, Jeanne, also a college mate, is still near Ibaraki, where McCaleb founded Ibaraki Christian College.
3 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr2.html
4 Ibid.