The Christian Ghetto

Wikepedia gives the following definition of 'ghetto':

A ghetto is an area where people from a specific racial or ethnic background live as a group in seclusion, voluntarily or involuntarily. The word was originally used to refer to the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, where Jews were required to live. The corresponding German term was Judengasse. In Moroccan Arabic, ghettos were called mellah. The term came into widespread use during World War II to refer to Nazi ghettos.

The term is now commonly used to refer to any poverty-stricken urban area. In the U.S., "rural ghetto" is used to describe mobile home parks, farm labor housing tracts, and Indian reservations. Urban neighborhoods where Hispanic immigrants settled in the late 20th century (called barrios) are said to be comparable to ghettos, because most immigrants form a culturally isolated enclave and may choose to remain there or associate with their own group.

"Ghetto" is also used figuratively to indicate geographic areas with a concentration of any type of person (e.g. gay ghetto, student ghetto) or for non-geographic categories (e.g. "sci fi ghetto")

When I speak of “Christian Ghetto” I am not speaking of physical geography but social relationships. For example, rather than playing a song with a Christian message over a popular, mainstream, radio station, it gets played over “Christian radio”. Rather than have a television program in which the characters live with Christian values we put our show on “Christian TV”. Likewise we have the “Christian press” with books sold in “Christian book stores. Growing up in southeast Texas people of African American ancestry lived in “nigger town”. Often times those areas were fine areas but white people didn't go there and “colored people” were not allowed to live anywhere else.

Today, racial groups won't stand for such separatist treatment but most Christians appear to prefer it.

For several years in the late 1980's and early 1990.s I was privileged to pastor a man named Bob Briner who wrote a book published by Zondervan titled Roaring Lambs. Roaring Lambs now is a web site, a speakers encouragement group. To learn more about Bob Briner see:

http://www.cftexcellence.net/bob_briner.html

Read the online article to see the widespread impact of Roaring Lambs. Here I want to encourage all of you who are Christians to simply be Christians where you live and work. There is pressure on Christians to keep our opinions to ourselves, to not impact society. The statement “separation of church and state” simply means that the American Government will not have an established state religion (as do many European countries). It DOES not mean that the Church should be silent about government policy or actions. It would appear that the constitutional amendment guaranteeing “freedom of speech” would make plain to everyone that Christian citizens have the right to speak about any and every thing.