Rest in peace, faithful warrior

I just learned of the passing this month of John Perkins, a Mississippi church leader and Civil Rights icon who was a friend of my parents.

Born in 1930, John fled Mississippi at 17 after a town marshal murdered his older brother. But he courageously returned in 1960 to start a reconciliation ministry there.

I recall hearing his sometimes harrowing and always inspiring stories over coffee after dinner at our home. In 1969 he tried to bail out protesters who had organized a boycott of White businesses in Simpson County, Mississippi, because of their refusal to hire Blacks.

John told us (and the linked story details) how the cops beat him up, kicking him all over the floor. They cut his hair with dull scissors and stuck a fork up his nose. The torture caused him to suffer a heart attack. Longer term, the experience left him with ulcers, and part of his stomach had to be removed.

And yet he was able to forgive his perpetrators and devote himself to racial reconciliation within the Christian community.

John played a role during a rough time in our family, too. After my brother Jay’s late-teen trouble with the law (he was arrested for burglary), a judge in Longview, Wash., agreed to release him from jail to community service with John’s group.

I can’t resist sharing a story that’s more about my late father than John, but it occurred while we were visiting Voice of Calvary in Jackson with a work group from our Longview, Washington, church when I was in college. VOC was John’s ministry that built housing for the poor and worked with at-risk youth. The first day they had us tear down an old garage to make way for a new building.

At one point I was sent on an errand. As I returned, I had a long perspective on the project. The boarding had been stripped away, and the roof stood on its spindly framing. Dad and other volunteers were swinging sledgehammers. Dust was flying. My little brother Tom, who was 5 or 6, was scurrying around whacking random two-by-fours with a hammer.

The stripped-down framing of the garage started trembling under the blows. The structure wobbled as if an earthquake had hit. It was going down. Everyone scrambled out like ants from an anthill when you flood it with a hose. Dad bounded over and captured Tom in his arms. They got out just as the garage collapsed in a heap of boards and shingling. When the dust cleared, there was Dad, looking as if he’d been hit by a flour bomb, hugging Tom.

The story mentioned above has a good summary of John’s role in the church:

“Doug Huemmer, who spent nights in jail with Perkins in 1969 and 1970, said while Perkins was involved in work some described as civil rights activities, his work should be viewed as in the tradition of the Great Protestant Reformation ministers, such as John Calvin, Martin Luther and George Fox.

“Perkins sought to eliminate racism, corruption and sin in the [W]hite and Black American Protestant Church, Huemmer said. ‘John and I shared the belief that we have a great country, but we have succumbed to a spiritual decadence that is destroying the American character.'”