Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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In June 2005, the U.S. Senate issued a public apology for the failure of that legislative body to pass a law against lynching. Between 1882 and 1968, 4,743 people were lynched in the United States, three-quarters of whom were African American. A serious attempt to bring the perpetrators to justice occurred in less than one percent of the cases.
The apology was a bipartisan resolution introduced by Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and Virginia Senator George Allen. More than eighty senators added their names as co-sponsors. Speaking before the voice vote, Landrieu said, “There may be no other injustice in American history for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility.”
Landrieu’s comment was not overstated. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Senate had a shameful history of actually blocking efforts to end lynchings. Seven U.S. presidents asked Congress to enact legislation to stop lynchings. Of the two hundred anti-lynching bills introduced in the twentieth century, the House passed three of them between 1920 and 1940; but the Senate passed none. Not one of the bills became law. None of the present Senators is personally guilty in this regard, yet their action showed that they felt a need to accept responsibility on a group level.
There was a time, however, when people were not as clear about how far personal blame extended. In the Old Testament era, guilt was often splashed from actual perpetrators onto their descendants, who had done nothing wrong. That was a matter that the prophet Ezekiel felt called to clear up.
