Greetings from Brazil! Rosalee and I have been following this exchange closely even if from afar -- or à distância. A few of our friends in the U.S. -- including Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Ángel Gallardo (who has lived at both Simple Way and Rutba House), and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz -- are or have been part of New Monastic communities. In addition, our local church in the U.S. is Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, a historically African-American congregation. From our friends and mentors there, we began to learn about race and racial reconciliaton.
All this to say: Even though we write from afar, we write because we find ourselves a part of this conversation. Here are a couple of our observations:
1)Why this conversation needs to be happening. There is no "gracious and hopeful invitation to public dialogue" about Christian community and race in Brazil. On the one hand, there is no New Monastic movement here, but there are base Christian communities and other vibrant examples of comunidade. On the other, the race question is more slippery, in large part due to the fact that belief in the "myth of racial democracy" (as it is called here) is still popularly affirmed. But all our Afro-Brazilian friends are quick to point out that Brazil, too, suffers deeply from its own racial wounds. (If there is any doubt, consider that (1) of the roughly 10 million Africans who were enslaved during the colonial slave trade, around a half million were taken to the U.S., and around 4 million were brought to Brazil; and (2) recent estimates indicate that 31 million Brazilians live below the poverty line. Of those 31 million, 80 percent are of African descent.) Yet given that harsh reality, there is still no serious public conversation about race within the Brazilian church.
Recently, we participated in a forum at a church in Salvador that is part of the government-sponsored campaign called "Program Against Institutional Racism." We found out afterward that this was the first time such a forum had taken place in a church in Salvador -- where the population is between 80 to 90 percent black. Race is being talked about, but, unfortunately, almost all of the prophets are found outside of the Christian community.
So, first of all, we are encouraged by this conversation as it challenges us in Brazil to embody New Monasticism's Mark #4: "Lament for Racial Divisions Within the Church and Our Communities Combined with the Active Pursuit of a Just Reconciliation."
2)What submission might look like. These conversations reminded us of a scene from Ken Burns' documentary, Jazz. There's an interview with Ossie Davis in which he, an African-American, describes how Benny Goodman, who was white, crossed the colorline to learn jazz in Harlem:
"I think Benny Goodman was the man who stood "outside" and was attracted to something he heard "inside" and came inside himself, and saw what was going on and picked up the nearest thing and joined it. He experienced in his own person the "true welcome" that's at the root of jazz. For him to cross the threshold was easy, because jazz made it easy." (Jazz, disc 2,"Swing, Pure Pleasure," Title 3, Chapter 7)
Benny Goodman went to them and learned their cultural forms, yet he didn't submit to the African-American jazz community. Instead he took their riffs, and their songs, and became one of the biggest bandleaders of all time.
The point -- the connection between this scene and this conversation -- is this: It's one thing to relocate (Mark #1), to cross over, to receive the "true welcome," and to learn from our neighbors. But the real question is about submission (Mark #5). How do we build a "collective witness" that moves from Mark #4 to Mark #5: "Humble Submission to Christ's Body, the Church." If white privilege, dominance, and male leadership have been recognized as problems, what would submission look like here?
As we read it, Jason and Vonetta, Eliacin, and Gabriel don't question whether white guys can be in the band. But they raise another question: What would it look like to be in the band without leading it?
We look forward to hearing more from this "jam session." Who knows, maybe we'll even hear a little samba.
Sam (native Tarheel) andRosalee (Brazilian-American) Ewell live in Brazil with their three kids, James, Isabella, and Katharine. Sam is a theological educator/networker with School for Conversion-Latin America and local pastor at Igreja Batista Catuaí (and a late convert to soccer). Rosalee also works as a theological educator and writer, primarily through her work with the Comité Bíblico Latinoamericano.
I've been following the recent online conversation about racial reconciliation and the New Monastics rather closely. Why? Because it is a conversation whose time has come. I honestly believe that much good work is being done in regard to engaging the mosaic of Christians about issues of poverty, race, privilege, and voice. That said, in the words of James Weldon Johnson, "Stony the road we trod."
Some time ago, I blogged about a mosaic revival happening in the United States. I would add that this mosaic revival has been happening all over the world for some time. By mosaic revival I mean a Christlike movement across race, gender, culture, and economics where we all come to the table as equals, as children of God. I think that this revival in many of the movements (it is not limited to these but I am responding to a particular conversation) such as the New Monastics, Sojourners, and the Emergent Church is in an embryonic but promising state. Many congregations, denominations, and para-church organizations can learn from this fledgling conversation, including the groups to which I belong. Visions of the "peaceable realm" (Isaiah 11) or the multiethnic, multiracial multitude of the book of Revelation (Revelation 7:9) are still a work in progress.
What does this mosaic revival imply for me as a Latino pastor of an urban multicultural congregation, the New Monastics, Sojourners, the Emergent Church, and denominations that still do not have diversity represented in leadership? Here are some of my thoughts desde otra voz (from another voice):
Internal Critique: First, that the critique of empire and power that I, the New Monastics, Sojourners, and Emergent Church make of the church and leaders in all spheres of life must continually be turned inwardly. This critique must be true of any movement. Entitlement and privilege is not just something others clutch. We too must confess where we have sought to be the principal and only protagonists. Pride is ubiquitous and subtle. The teachings of Jesus and the writings of Desmond Tutu, Reinhold Niebuhr (Moral Man and Immoral Society), and the book of Proverbs are helpful here.
Conversation: We must maintain the dialogue and stay at the table even when we disagree. The world needs followers of Jesus committed to loving one another through their differences, be they ideological, cultural, generational, etc.
Confession: There must be a continual confession of the privilege of platform and influence and where we have used that influence to exclude others.
Promoting and Highlighting Diversity: The writings, tours, blogs, books, and particularly leadership on board and executive positions should intentionally highlight diversity. We seek inclusion not simply for diversity's sake but because it is a model of the way of Jesus and the Realm of heaven. This is beyond a token representation, where we have a Latino(a), women's, Asian, African-American caucus, etc. speak to and from their particularity or only on issues that we think are particular to them (immigration, racial justice, women's rights). Diverse leadership (this should neither exclude nor privilege white males) should be at the center of decision making processes. White, black, brown, red all have something to contribute to the Christian story. Mosaic leadership can speak to many global issues such as genocide in Darfur, just war, poverty, human trafficking, environmentalism, a consistent ethic of life, etc. Perhaps instead of having racial-ethnic minorities join already-begun initiatives, we should join mosaic initiatives as a sign of solidarity and support. All established leadership should endeavor to use their platform to promote an emerging mosaic leadership. Moreover, one group need not always be at the forefront.
A Historical-Contextual Perspective: This is no small point. Often in the public presentations, books, and conferences of these aforementioned movements, they are presented as something new going on. (I don't think this is intentional.) I have been on college campuses and multiple emerging leaders' gatherings where many well-intentioned next-generation Christian leaders see these movements as if something new is happening. This dangerous omission often makes many indigenous grassroots workers feel like there is some type of cultural capital being cashed in at the expense of lifelong indigenous Christian leadership. Present-day movements should continue to clearly tie and partner, when possible, with the legacy of the black church, the Latin-American and Latino(a) grassroots communities, abolitionists, faithful women's movements, the South African church, etc., around the world. Also the New Monastics, Emergent Church, etc., could learn and partner with the work of storefront Pentecostal and indigenous congregations who have lived and worked in economically challenging contexts for some time. Some of these leaders and pastors did not choose to relocate; they were born, raised, and chose to stay in these contexts.
Persistence: Continue to work. Despite our shortcomings and critiques, we must continue to do the work of Christ and allow room for growth. Critique is neither for rousing guilt or surrender but for seeking a better way. We must all continue our work. Not speaking or acting is not an option. In the words of Antonio Machado, "Caminante no hay camino se hace camino al andar."
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb's Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a Sojourners board member.
Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for him. He tells this story inNo Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King.
Why did you decline the Kings' offer to work as an associate minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1966?
The movement had shifted very dramatically in those five years between 1961 and '66. Black power had come into force. In 1961, I was welcomed by the church and the black community. In 1966, I was treated more skeptically. As an example, my wife helped a group of people build sort of a head-start school, which was going to open in the summertime. The day before it was supposed to open in 1966, the school was burned to the ground. It just felt to me that it was a difficult time to be there. Also, it also felt to me that probably that particular position should be taken by a black person and not by a white person. So, I went down there for the summer of '66 and declined the permanent offer.
What memories do you have of the day Martin Luther King Jr. was shot?
BREWSTER: That was a devastating day for me and for the country. I was going to a seminar that I was leading at Cornell when I heard it on the radio. I just parked my car and began to cry. I went in to the seminar but couldn't really do anything. We just reflected and sat around and talked. I had the sense like so many people that this was the end of an era. We wouldn't see the likes of it again in our lives. So, I remember that day very well.
Explain what happened when Daddy King came to preach at Cornell in 1979.
BREWSTER: When I invited him to Cornell, he preached to our little congregation and began to talk about losing Dr. King and then losing his second son, A.D., and then finally losing his wife, who was killed in the church by a black man. He felt that in the middle of losing all of that, he would not lose his gratitude. He could still imagine God taking more away from him. Then he stopped and said, "Brewster is like a son to me." That completely amazed me because I had no idea of how I might have affected him. When I was down at Ebenezer and living with him, I was 24 years old. Basically, I was a young man. Looking back on it, I was extremely young and probably didn't realize this incredible opportunity that was just right in front of me. I realized the impact he was having on me, but I had no idea of the impact I was having on him. That just didn't compute in my mind. Looking back on it, I could see that I was probably the first white person who ever had lived in this house and had gotten that close to him. I never really talked to him about it but perhaps I was the first white person that he could really sit down and talk to and trust that way.
Becky Garrison is one of the many people interviewed in the documentary The Ordinary Radicals.
Las Caras Lindas de mi Gente Negra, Son un desfile de melaza en flor, Que cuando pasan frente a mi se alegra, De su negrura todo el corazón
-Tite Curet Alonso
I was delighted to be asked to participate in this conversation, even though I am not a leader or spokesperson for the New Monastic movement. I am using the term New Monasticism (as the group that is inspired by The School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism) for the sake of common understanding because that is the concept that has been used in this conversation so far, even though I believe New Monasticism is varied and larger than just the 12 marks and the popular idea of what New Monasticism is.
Like Jason and Vonetta, my family is interracial and multiethnic. I am a Puerto Rican of brown skin. My wife is white, born and raised in the state of Washington. We have two kids and a third growing in "mamí's belly," as my daughter would say. My kids are growing as hyphenated people, with a rich racial and ethnic heritage as Irish, white, Taino/Arawakan, brown, African, Potowatomi, Welsh, Spanish, black, German,Puerto Rican, mestizo, and USA American. My children are growing also in one of the few countries that ignores and often violently negates the reality of people's multiple racial and ethnic identities. This does not happen only in the political/social services arena, but it is pervasive in all aspects of our lives -- including our churches and our "movements." En donde quiera se cuecen habas.
For me and mine (my family, community, friends) this conversation is not just another topic of the many we can choose from; this conversation is part of our core beings. Because of this I want to invest time and energy in conversations and relationships that will generate mutual transformation and growth. As a good friend told me recently, "blog conversations are a good start on a small front -- but the real work is ahead of us."
I am joyful to read Shane's and Jonathan's responses of how they are perceiving and working with the issue of racial reconciliation, healing, and full embrace in their private lives and in the life of their communities. I am also glad at their honesty in considering those points as only baby steps. Realizing that we are only crawling is a necessary action in order to see that we still have a lot of maturing to do. Andando, andando que la Virgen nos va ayudando.
What Vonetta and Jason have done with their provocative blog post is to help shed light on the homogeneous white and male expression in New Monasticism and beyond. By that I mean how "natural" it seems that most of the perceived leadership of this movement is white and male. I am certain there are women and men of color alongside. People of color are often considered strong companions and wise counselors, but often in hierarchies of power, people of color are behind the scenes -- not in the spotlight. Part of the luxury of oblivious white privilege is that it is normal to have people of color around, while for the most part being oblivious that they are systematically assigned a place on the sidelines. It is not by chance that it is hard to find people of color as prominent figures in spreading the vibes of New Monasticism through books, conferences, and new media. This also true of many other new emerging expressions of contemporary Christianity.
This predominantly white expression of New Monasticism is not a personal thing; it is part of a larger system of social categories, social identity and perception. New Monastics, white and of color, are not above or beyond the psychology that structures our racial and social identity and consciousness. Nor do we live in a vacuum where we are not affected -- positively or negatively -- by these structures. So this conversation is not about just individuals, but about bigger dominant systems of oppression. That said, it does get personal sometimes -- and not by choice. The unearned privilege that comes with being white may not be something people choose or take. The advantage is given by the system of social categorization, but the realization that some might benefit from a social construct while others are marginalized is a tough pill to swallow.
People in the spotlight and those who are socially perceived as leaders have lots of responsibility to speak out loud about these evil structures that thrive on silence. It is not enough to speak when asked and stay silent the rest of the time. To not speak of the issue is to give the perception that there is no issue.
If there is no challenge to the practices that -- intentionally or not -- support and preserve the marginalization of people of color, then we are accomplices in a self-perpetuating system of domination and oppression, while at the same time pulverizing efforts of racial healing, reconciliation, and full embrace. I am very glad Jason and Vonetta started making a loud enough noise about this subject that now it is part of a public open discussion.
Perhaps we need to work to a broader understanding of the formation of racial identity and systems of oppression and privilege. Perhaps we need to come to terms with the fact that while some have the option to move to the abandoned places of the empire, there are even more desolate places in hearts and minds and that are in dire need of liberation and redemption.
I do have some other things to say, but I was asked to write only a blog post, not a dissertation. Maybe there is more to come later.
Somos la melaza que ríe, Somos la melaza que llora, Somos la melaza que ama, Y en cada beso, Es conmovedora
-Titet Curet Alonso
Eliacín Rosario-Cruz serves as community catalyst and cultivator with Mustard Seed Associates. He and his family are part of The Mustard Seed House -- an intergenerational Christian intentional community in Seattle, where they eat, play, work, garden, pray, and conspire for a new reality.
Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for him. He tells this story inNo Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King.
What truth was there in your mother's friend's comment that if you went to Ebenezer, you'd never be a bishop?
She felt that working with Dr. King would risk the alienation of many white people that I would later work for, and this was true in part. As I later reflected on it, in a certain sense she was kind of prophetic because once you're involved in such a dynamic way of being the church, it's hard to fit totally into the structure of the church that is often against that kind of dynamic ministry. After having experienced a church like Ebenezer, it would be hard to enter a structure so perfectly and always within the box.
In what ways did this summer influence your plans for ministry when you returned to Union Theological Seminary?
BREWSTER: I came into the presence of Rev. King Sr. and Dr. King and all of the people there, who are really struggling for justice and looking for a larger way of loving humanity. So, I came back to the seminary with this great powerful sense of justice that we really have to struggle for love and freedom across the board, and maybe go into the streets and march and talk and so on. It opened me up to a much larger sense of justice as well as the cost of bringing this about. This was hard work and putting your life on the line, putting your body in harm's way. This was learning how to love your enemy, when I was trained to not have any enemies. So, this really brought me into many different ways of trying to live out the gospel.
How was your prayer life changed after this summer?
BREWSTER: I came out of seminary as an Episcopalian worshipping in the Book of Common Prayer. Most of the time, I would read my prayers and sometimes I would write them and craft them out carefully. But the first Sunday I was at Ebenezer, Daddy King asked me to pray right on the spot in front of the whole congregation. It terrified me because I was used to a much more formal way of praying. Fortunately, I fell back on a formula I had learned at seminary: A-C-T-S -- adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. I pinned a lot of my prayers on those four words until I began to pray more actually and easily.
[to be continued...]
Becky Garrison is one of the many people interviewed in the documentary The Ordinary Radicals.
Most of the speeches at the Democratic National Convention were politically predictable; the same was true on the first night of the Republican National Convention. Sarah Palin's speech tonight will be worth watching, considering all the attention her nomination has received, and of course John McCain's acceptance speech on Thursday night will be very important, just as Barack Obama's was in Denver.
But one thing looked very different on the first night of the Republican Convention from the first night of the Democratic Convention: the diversity of the audience. Having seen the racial diversity of the delegates gathered in Denver, it was striking to see a sea of white faces on the first big night of activity in St. Paul. While 13 percent of the Republican delegates are minorities, only 36 are African American -- about 1.5 percent of the total delegates, down from 7 percent in 2004. One-third are women, also down from 2004. Last week at the Democratic Convention, the delegates were a record 25 percent African American, along with 12 percent Latino, 5 percent Asian-American, and 5 percent American Indian. Half were women.
As I've said before, committed Christians will be voting both ways in the upcoming election, and while we should have a vigorous discussion about how we each apply our faith to the imperfect choices of politics, we should also fully respect the different conclusions that Christians will come to. Good Christians will be voting for both Republicans and Democrats this year, and many independently-minded Christian voters may be voting for both, depending on the candidates, the offices, and the issues.
But we all should affirm the central importance of racial reconciliation in the life of the church, to racial diversity in our parties and political processes, and to the inclusion of all Americans in our political discourse. Christians should exemplify that commitment to both racial and gender diversity in their respective parties. As Christians on both sides of the aisle have appropriately said, the Democrats should be commended for nominating the first African American for the office of president of the United States, and, similarly, Christians on the Democratic side of the aisle should applaud the selection of a woman by the Republican Party as their nominee for vice president. Those choices for diversity can be praised without necessarily voting for either candidate. Both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin should be evaluated on the basis of their records, ideas, and leadership
But we Christians should be the ones working hardest for diversity all across our society -- including in our political parties, which both have a long way to go.
Jason and Vonetta Storbakken have extended a gracious and hopeful invitation to public dialogue about reconciliation's challenge for New Monasticism. I'd like to say in public what I've already said to them privately: Thank you. I'm grateful not only that they have named an issue that we need to continue to grapple with, but that they have modeled the power of God to move us beyond race to a new identity in Jesus Christ.
It is no secret that many New Monastics come from places of so-called privilege in the white churches that have dominated American Christianity. Disappointed by the ways our whiteness kept us from Jesus, we relocated ourselves to black and Latino neighborhoods to learn from people who knew the power of God at the margins of society. We came to learn community from our neighbors and to know Christ more fully across the dividing walls of hostility that Ephesians says God has already destroyed.
The good news is that we have not been disappointed. Eliacin Rosario-Cruz is exactly right: New Monasticism needs the life and spirit that minorities bring because it is a more complete expression of what the kingdom is. The testimony I have to share with other white Christians is that we can be set free from a history of colonial control and condescending service. We can find new life by submitting ourselves to the traditions and wisdom of minority churches. In my experience, this is possible only because of the radical love of God that is extended by people whom white Christianity has historically ignored and abused.
But this only makes the Storbakkens' central question all the more pressing: "What are the reasons for the membership [of New Monastic communities] to remain so homogenous?" That we come from segregated churches is not surprising. The problem is that these radical communities seem to remain so homogenous.
Where, then, is the church that God is gathering beyond the color line? The last thing a white guy like me needs to offer is an answer to a question like that. But for the sake of this conversation (which I hope others will join), let me offer a few observations:
1) Reconciliation is happening in minority churches. In the historically black neighborhood where I live, our communal houses were started by white folks and continue to be dominated by them. Our local church, however, was started by black folks and continues to invite all of us into a journey of liberation from the power of race and transformation into new life. Our community feels a greater need to be part of the community at our local church than to sell our neighbors on New Monasticism.
2)Listening to neighbors means changing our ideas about community. While we came to our neighborhood with the best of intentions, we've seen that we get things wrong. The Storbakkens are right: We must affirm affirmative action in New Monastic community, welcoming whoever might come. In our experience, though, we've also had to re-evaluate what were inviting people into. Are our meals the sort of meals that neighbors would want to eat with us? Is our Bible study a place where neighbors can share their spiritual gifts? We haven't figured all of these things out, but I know that we've made some changes for every authentic relationship we've built across dividing lines.
3) We are caught between two conversations. Ninety-nine percent of my neighbors and fellow church members have never heard the term New Monasticism. I doubt they need the term. Yet I've written a book about New Monasticism. I talk to churches and denominational leaders about it all the time because I believe that mainstream Christianity needs to imagine a different future.
Any dialogue about reconciliation and New Monasticism needs to take both of these conversations into consideration. One way New Monasticism has failed is that guys like me have tried to communicate the gospel that we've learned from our neighbors without asking for our neighbors' help. An African-American mentor pointed out to me how white people enjoy listening to me talk about the experience of black people, but they don't actually listen to black folks. Indeed, we do need to hand the mic over to indigenous community leaders.
But I also notice that when black friends speak with me or in my place, white audiences often assume my friends are speaking primarily for other black Christians, and not to the church as a whole. So-called black theology and black preaching can be affirmed as good for them without being taken seriously as true for all of us. So maybe it's not enough to just hand the mic over. Maybe we have to stand together, joining our voices in witness to the truth that we confess we can only know together.
Thats why I'm so grateful for the Storbakkens. Not only are they pursuing community across the dividing lines that this world writes on us. They're joining their voices to speak to the whole church about what it means to receive God's gift of reconciliation and become its ministers in the world. Yes, we need dialogue. More than that, though, we need a way of life that is good news for all people and a gospel that we can proclaim together. I hope all our conversation leads us toward that.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line.
In addition to the steps mentioned in my previous post, I also wanted to share some things that go beyond our local community to the broader New Monastic movement and my role in it. As I said before, I don't want to give any impression that we've figured this out, or to boast "look at all I'm doing!" It certainly has been difficult and not without much sweat, tears, and mistakes. But here goes:
Countering whiteness. We have currently initiated several projects to work against the homogeneity of "the movement." Every month we host a gathering on radical discipleship (for four days) that is limited to around 20 folks to insure diversity (old/young, male/female, ethnicity, denominational). This means that we have to limit the number of white folks (and end up saying no to about 20 for each white participant who comes). We also have different communities hosting every month to give exposure to the many beautiful, diverse forms community takes, and we have been especially excited to celebrate communities led by people of color.
Affirmative Action. As a speaker, I regularly turn down speaking engagements that do not have women or people of color in the lineup, and I let the organizers know why. I believe that every critique I give comes with the responsibility to try and suggest alternatives, so I also recommend women and people of color who are dynamic communicators to speak in my stead. I give priority to events organized by people of color and speak regularly at events such as Urban Youth Workers, CCDA, Pentecostals for Peace, etc., and I find these are a great place to listen and learn (not just speak).
Economics. All speaking events we organize are free or on a "suggested donation" basis so as not to exclude anyone for financial reasons. We give away all proceeds of my books and resources, prioritizing "local revolutions" -- groups living among and led by folks in poverty (such as Coalition of Immokalee Workers, homeless coalitions, etc.).
Politics. Our communities tend to be fairly peculiar in how we engage the political scene. Traditionally, we often resonate with the history of Christian anarchism and movements like the Anabaptists. We have also become very aware that there is a great degree of "privilege" that accompanies decisions like principled non-voting. We wrestle with this in Jesus for President, but many of us have also taken steps to submit our political voice to people of color or undocumented folks here in the U.S. A friend in the NAACP has said, "Affirmative action for white folks in the election is asking black folks who they should vote for." So many of our communities are doing exactly that.
All this is still certainly not enough -- but God is good to fill the gaps and work through the cracks of our feeble attempts to be faithful. So, again, I want to thank Vonetta and Jason for being the catalyst for reflection, and to cause me to take the pulse on where we are in the "active pursuit of a just reconciliation," to celebrate the steps we have made, and to insist that it is not enough. I guess that is why we begin with "lament." I leave today for a one-month sabbatical, but I eagerly look forward to hearing what others have to say in this conversation and will now "pass the mic" to others.
Vonetta and Jason, first I want you to know that I am deeply grateful for the conversation you've invited and stirred with our private conversations and now your blog post. I take all critique very seriously, and pray and reflect on it. Probably the most personally painful lament and failure of our communities is around race and reconciliation; we are at times paralyzed by the deep history and slimy elusiveness of racial injustice and so-called "privilege." We've been trying for 10 years to figure this out. Several years ago, my mentor and friend John Perkins was at the house, and I poured out my dissatisfaction with how white the movement was. He said to me: "Teach what you know ... and it may be white folks who listen. And learn what you don't know, be a good listener." I've tried to do that, and yet it often just doesn't feel like enough. I am working on a book with John right now (his idea) about the importance of being a good follower -- as there are many books on leadership but very few on "followership" -- and as a white male, that is something we need to learn.
I want to share more publically a few things that I have shared with you in our private conversations -- though I hesitate to do so as it could come across as defensively flaunting all the "progress" we have made. That is by no means the case. I find our pursuit of reconciliation has been riddled with failure and setbacks, and a paralysis of imagination. I share this not as a boastful discrediting of your critique, but rather as a sign that I deeply honor your thoughts and invite your constructive ideas on how we can do things better.
Submit to leadership of color. For the past 10 years, I have been submitted to John Perkins, as a teacher and mentor. I have told him to tell me when to speak and when to shut up. For The Simple Way, the chair of our board is an African American (from Philly), a close friend and brother (and also married to one of my former housemates). He's my boss.
Submit to neighborhood leadership. I see myself as a learner and listener to the indigenous leadership in my neighborhood. Families on our block (even the block captain) have persistently asked me to be a block captain, but I have not assumed (or presumed) such a role, as this is a very clear way I want to continue to be led by elders in and from my neighborhood. Neighborhood renewal, as we say at CCDA, takes "remainers, returners, and relocators" -- all working together.
Submit to local pastors and congregations. We deliberately join the local neighborhood congregations, rather than start our own services or programs. Every long-term member of TSW joins a local congregation (such as Iglesia del Barrio around the corner from us). This has distinguished us from many other folks who identify with the Emerging Church (and put us at odds sometimes), as we say, "The inner city doesn't need more 'churches' -- it needs A CHURCH, so join the body there already at work."
Media Savvy. There are many journalists who want to do stories on "New Monasticism" or "The Simple Way," and we have become very sensitive to the dangers of this. Usually they want to portray the relocating white folks like myself as saints, saviors, and sacrificial heroes moving into a poor neighborhood. This is garbageand incredibly hurtful to the dignity of our neighbors. We try to be "as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves." We do not allow cameras in the neighborhood. For instance, a network has wanted to do a story for two years now, and I have insisted that we will only do the story with them if it is in our New Jerusalem community (40 people here in Philly), which is composed of and led by 90 percent people of color. The producer has insisted that they do it at our Potter Street Community (the original house, mostly white, where I live). So we will not do the story.
Rethinking Language. A few years into our little experiment in community, we found that much of our language was riddled with privilege and whiteness. For instance, traditional monasticism and the Franciscan love of "Blessed Poverty" and "Vows of Poverty" did not go over well with our homeless friends! We have studied and reflected on this, and articulate a "Theology of Enough" that is in much of my writing and in the core values statement of our community, summed up well in the Proverbs mantra: "Give me neither poverty nor riches ... in my poverty I may be forced to steal, and in my riches I may forget my God." So we have rethought the traditional vows and even our language around monasticism (this is not the primary language I use in my neighborhood or even in my speaking for what we do).
There are lots of other personal decisions people have made in light of the hunger for racial justice and reconciliation. In our communities folks have married across race and adopted kids from the neighborhood -- all little signs of much thought and deliberation. Later I'll share some steps I've taken that go beyond our local community in my role as a speaker.
Yesterday morning, I started what would become an historic day with my favorite historian. As a young man, Vincent Harding was part of the inner circle of the southern freedom movement with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and later became one of the civil rights movement's best chroniclers and interpreters. Vincent has also been a mentor and trusted friend to me and to Sojourners for many years.
Vincent Harding was there at the Democratic Convention in 1964 when the party refused to seat the delegation from the Mississippi Freedom Party, and was close to its leader, famed civil rights activist Fanny Lou Hamer. When he told me that he would be there again this very night, at Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, to witness the acceptance speech of the first African American to be nominated by any party for the presidency of the United States, he had tears in his eyes. Reflecting on the fact that this day was also the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s most remembered "I Have A Dream" speech, at the historic 1963 March on Washington, was almost too much to believe for both of us.
"When it comes to being a multiracial democracy," Vincent said to me, "We are still a developing country." He went on to suggest that “this would be a real opportunity for a new conversation between white people over these next 69 days.” I wondered how many white Americans are ready to evaluate this young man, Barack Obama, in the way that King had hoped his children would one day be in that famous speech 45 years ago, "Not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” along with Obama’s policy ideas and capacity for leadership.
All the news reports have described well the unforgettable scene with 85,000 people under a clear and warm Colorado sky. There have been only a few other times in my life where I felt like I was actually witnessing history -- such as the inauguration of Nelson Mandela to be the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
But the many impressive speeches, spectacular entertainment, and eye-popping display of fireworks were all overshadowed by the speech. I’ve heard many of Barack Obama’s speeches, from his keynote at the 2004 Democratic Convention, to his address on religion and public life at our Call to Renewal (now Sojourners) conference in 2006, to many of his primary orations. But, as was almost universally recognized by the media commentators, this speech took Barack Obama’s message and campaign to another level. He was inspiring, as he has often been during this presidential campaign, but he also defined his meaning of the “change” he is calling for, more than he ever had before, so voters could either agree or disagree with his vision and policy plans.
Obama made it clear that he was ready and willing to debate John McCain, and yet he also made it clear that he would do so without attacking the character of his opponent. And while he challenged McCain’s record of ideas and leadership, Obama said his opponent was worthy of gratitude and respect from all Americans because of his service and sacrifices for the country. The sincere applause from the huge Democratic audience to Barack Obama's genuine recognition of McCain's patriotism was a high point of the night. I am hoping now to see that kind of applause to the recognition of Barack Obama’s remarkable American story and patriotism at the Republican Convention next week in St. Paul, where I will also be present. For his part, McCain offered a gracious comment on Barack Obama's night in Denver. He said, "Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America. Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations. How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight, Senator, job well done."
Indeed, almost every one of the network analysts, across the political spectrum, said Obama’s speech last night was a job well done. David Gergen, a political veteran of both Republican and Democratic administrations and many campaigns and conventions, called Obama’s speech a “masterpiece.” Some of the cable talking heads seemed almost moved to tears, while others wasted no time in deconstructing and dissenting from the content of Obama’s address (all along predictable political lines), but almost no one disagreed that we had just seen a moment of magnificent American political oratory.
It was the kind of speech that could help the American people decide whether they agree or disagree with what Barack Obama proposes for America. My hope is that John McCain will also be evaluated on the clarity of his message and vision.
Once again, the personal story of Barack Obama also came through to a nation eager to evaluate his character, judgment, and leadership. And the picture of the Obama family afterward, on the stage with wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha, provided a hopeful and heartwarming image of what family can be in a nation where so many of our families are unraveling. Both Obama’s ideas and character were very evident last night and throughout convention week, perhaps more so than at any time in this campaign.
Now John McCain has the opportunity to do the same thing next week. My next blog post will be from St. Paul, Minnesota.
In August 2006, before having ever heard the term "new monasticism," my husband, Jason, and I founded Radical Living, an intentional community in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. When I (Vonetta) was 12 years old, I emigrated from Guyana to Bed-Stuy, one of the poorest and most violent neighborhoods in New York City. I witnessed firsthand urban decay -- and renewal -- as well as the devastating effects of the crack epidemic.
Some of our neighbors, many of whom I have known since I was young, have been afflicted by drug addiction and poverty. They are not merely the nameless, faceless people you might read about or pass on the street. They are living souls made in the image of God. When a person applies for membership at Radical Living we explain that we want to live in community with people who desire to invest in the lives of their neighbors, regardless of their position in society. We are not interested in living with "tourists" who want to "experience the ghetto."
My husband and I are an interracial couple with a baby daughter, and it is important to us that our community, regardless of the predominant culture around us, is centered in Jesus and reflective of the diversity of the kingdom of God. Although our community -- 17 people who live in three houses around one block -- is blessed with diversity, we have a lot of work to do with regard to racial reconciliation. There are African Americans, Asians, immigrants, and first-generation Americans, and more than half our community are white folks. Although not as representative of our neighborhood as we could be, due to the rainbow of voices in our community we regularly discuss the role of minorities in the New Monastic movement. It is also due to these voices that we know how much work we have to do.
The key players in New Monasticism have made important strides in raising awareness of issues pertinent to disenfranchised members of our society, yet these leaders often make some of the same mistakes as their conservative counterparts. One of the 12 marks of New Monasticism is the "lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities, combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation." Although most do "lament" the racial divisions in our society, one is hard-pressed to find a leader in New Monasticism who is not a middle-class white male. However, the problem is not with their class, color, or gender, but that there has yet to be an "active pursuit" of reconciliation realized within the myriad of intentional communities that have sprouted across the U.S. And after some good private conversations with some those leaders, we agreed to open a public dialogue about this issue because by their very natures both this conversation and this movement aren't just about a handful of leaders. It's about every member of every community who needs to actively seek reconciliation.
Another of the 12 marks is to relocate "to the abandoned places of Empire." New Monastics have done this quite well. But sadly, years -- and sometimes decades -- after an intentional community has been planted in a minority neighborhood, the community's membership continues to remain predominantly (if not exclusively) white. What are the reasons for the membership to remain so homogenous? One thing is for certain: The idea of "us and them" is perpetuated when an intentional community does not actively seek to diversify its membership.
New Monastic communities need to be redemptive communities where all, regardless of ethnicity, national identity, or economic status, are invited to participate in the communal rhythm of Christian living. As Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, a friend and fellow communitarian, recently said, "The current wave of New Monasticism needs the life and spirit that minorities bring because it is a more complete expression of what the kingdom is, not the other way around."
The current generation of progressive Christians has done amazing work in broadening the social agenda among evangelicals, but now it's time that we trust what our hearts and minds believe and actively pursue the reconciliation we talk about. The next step, rather than being a voice for the "voiceless," is to hand the mic over to indigenous community leaders and ask them to facilitate the conversation so that we might grow and deepen in relationship with one another and with God.
Every one of us in this movement needs to plead with God to make us ministers of reconciliation. We must pray for eyes to see the structural racism perpetuated by unjust policies and a shared history of colonialism and slavery. Some of us will need to repent of inaction and empty rhetoric. Others simply need to heed what the Lord is already speaking. All of us will need to affirm affirmative action in our communal houses, and actively pursue reconciliation.
We are hopeful that the New Monastic movement will be a diverse, Christ-centered, Spirit-led movement. And if all of us in this conversation will extend transparency, grace, and love to one another, we will surely disable the structural racism that has infected the church for far too long. And then we will be able to truly proclaim Jubilee!
I have been watching the Democratic National Convention this week, and I think when Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech tonight it is going to be an important historic moment. This is not to tell you who to vote for. That's up to you. But I can't help but anticipate watching a person of color stand in the place he will tonight. I don't advocate voting for him (or not) because he is a black man, but it sure is encouraging to see history unfold. The amount of anguish that comes with being a black leader is overwhelming sometimes, and this is life-giving. This could be a moment of real possibility for the healing of our nation and an opportunity for people to come together.
I recommend that you watch, and that you watch with a person of color. And if you are a person of color, I recommend that you watch with a white person. Let's live out what the world is looking for so deeply. Caution: If you watch it with me or any other black friends, there might be crying involved. I was near tears this morning just thinking about it.
Leroy Barber is president of Mission Year, a national urban initiative introducing 18 to 29-year-olds to missional and communal living in city centers for one year of their lives. He is also the pastor of Community Fellowships Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) confirmed that players' memberships would be suspended if they don't learn to speak English and pass an oral evaluation.
Yuck.
In reality, many believed it was inevitable because there are so many South Korean women (45) now on the LPGA tour, and truth be told, they're simply kicking some serious butt. On any given tournament, it's not surprising to see half of the leader board peppered with the names of Korean golfers. And while I know that there are 121 foreign players on the LPGA, this was indirectly aimed at the Korean golfers -- as evidenced by the "mandatory" meeting South Korean golfers had to attend recently.
The LPGA is a private association so they have the right to make certain policies, but suspending memberships isn't the answer. It's a double bogey.
The LPGA is an association that prides itself as being the premier women's golf tour in the world -- and rightfully so. This is why it attracts the greatest female golf players in the world. And as long as these international players meet the high LPGA "golfing standards," it doesn't seem right that they also have to pass a language exam.
But, wait -- according to LPGA officials, the international players were hurting the marketability, and thus the bottom-line Benjamins, of the LPGA.
Now, I'm not naïve. I understand this thing called the Benjamins, the mighty dollar, the bottom line, and the economics. So having said that, I fully agree and understand that players ought to learn and attempt to speak a certain level of English and assist in helping "market" the LPGA. But making it mandatory? Suspending their memberships, and thus their livelihoods?
When you make it mandatory, it stinks of the whole "colonialism" junk so many have complained about from Western powers: "Fit in or else."
Let me put it another way. What if the LPGA started a new policy where a weight limit was imposed on female golfers because LPGA officials complained that heavier golfers can't be marketed -- thus hurting the economics of the LPGA. Wouldn't we all raise a stink?
This reminds me of when the National Basketball Association (NBA) came down on some of its players several years ago because they didn't dress a certain way. It was a general policy, but it also seemed to be indirectly aimed at the younger black players.
So, we want you to be a part of the NBA -- we'll use you to market the NBA, we'll use you to elevate the game and competition, we'll use you to sell tickets, but we don't want you to look too black. Wear a suit. Take off the chains. Loosen the cornrows. Easy on the tattoos. Blah blah blah.
The LPGA will require its member golfers to learn and speak English and will suspend their membership if they don't comply.
The new requirement, first reported by Golfweek on its Web site, was communicated to the tour's growing South Korean membership in a mandatory meeting at the Safeway Classic in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 20. Connie Wilson, the LPGA's vice president of communications, confirmed the new policy to ESPN.com.
Players were told by LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens that by the end of 2009, all players who have been on the tour for two years must pass an oral evaluation of their English skills or face a membership suspension. A written explanation of the policy was not given to players, according to the report.
Eugene Cho, a second-generation Korean-American, is the founder and lead pastor of Quest Church in Seattle, and the executive director of Q Cafe, an innovative nonprofit neighborhood café and music venue. He and his wife are also launching a grassroots humanitarian organization to fight global poverty. You can stalk him at his blog eugenecho.wordpress.com.
On July 29, 2008, history was made in the United States House of Representatives – well, kinda. Last week, the House formally apologized for slavery, Jim Crow, and for the racist social consequences that have followed. Never before has the U.S. government publicly apologized for the social institution that reduced Africans to chattel. On one hand, I was humbled, not by the apology, but by the tremendous sacrifice that led to it. To be in a moment where the U.S. House of Representatives publicly apologizes for slavery is certainly a testament to some level of social progress. And because any and all societal progress that black people have experienced is due mostly to the courage, perseverance, and radical love of everyday black folk, this progress should certainly be acknowledged. So I want to preface the remainder of this piece by paying homage to those who have paved the way.
Nonetheless, social progress notwithstanding, my initial reaction sounded something like this: “Really, an apology?!” As I sat with my thoughts, I was filled with an amalgam of emotions. I found it humorous (in a laugh-to-keep-from-crying kind of way), insulting (when considered vis-à-vis the racist realities that still dominate black and brown American life), and angering (at this juncture in our history, is this really all there is to our government’s analysis of America’s race problem?). An excerpt from Cornel West’s Race Matters will help to contextualize my thoughts:
Black people in the United States differ from all other modern people owing to the unprecedented levels of unregulated and unrestrained violence directed at them. No other people have been taught to hate themselves – psychic violence – reinforced by the powers of state and civic coercion – physical violence – for the primary purpose of controlling their minds and exploiting their labor for nearly four hundred years.
Some people, however, might posit that I’m being unfair, or at least a little harsh. What if the apology was sincere? What if there was real penitence present? As Christians, are we not called to forgive, “Not seven, but seventy times seven?”
I affirm the need to forgive. However, in this situation it is even more vital to remember the meaning of repentance. The Greek word for repent is “metanoia” and it means to change one’s mind or purpose. The U.S. government, regardless of any apology, cannot be properly forgiven because it has not undergone a sincere “metanoia.” For this apology to yield any meaningful sincerity, it must be reinforced by real, concrete action. A great starting point would be to cease building prisons in lieu of quality schools. This would contribute not only to the reconstruction of black families, but all poor families ravaged by our corrupt legal system. Sadly, this act of sincere repentance (and it is only one of many possibilities) will probably not happen, mainly because of a nagging feeling I had when I first heard of the apology. I had this strange feeling that the apology came with the House members sitting down, so as to protect their wallets. Real American repentance for racism is going to cost us, not just sentiment but also money, and a lot of it. That said, now let’s see how sincerely repentant our government is.
Ben Sanders III received his Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and is a Ph.D. student at the Iliff School of Theology and the University of Denver. His interests include liberation theologies, and the study of the theological and ethical implications of black religion, race, and racialization.
American churches are still segregated, and it is the way most of us—regardless of our race—would like to keep it. At least, so suggests the recent online CNN article titled, “Why Americans Prefer Their Segregated Sundays." Curtiss DeYoung, professor of Reconciliation Studies at Bethel University, is quoted in this article as saying that only about 5 percent of American churches are racially integrated and half of those churches are moving in the direction of becoming all-black or all-white.
In his book United by Faith, DeYoung and his co-authors Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim, argue that when churches can be integrated they should. The reality of residential racial segregation presents a real and sometimes insurmountable hurdle to church integration. However, as inner-city gentrification becomes more of an established part of city life, there is a question about the church’s role in creating stable environments for integration, instead of merely transitional integrated bodies created by the market economy.
As Christians, we all agree that we should want racial integration in all facets of our lives, and, in particular, in our worshipping communities—right? Although the inexcusable sin of white racism still persists and is a major hindrance to church integration, John Blake insightfully reports what might be the most compelling example of why churches should remain segregated—the black church. Established as the result of white racism, the black church formed out of necessity. Historically referred to as the “Invisible Institution,” the black church flourished at the margins and gave its parishioners empowerment through leadership, dignity through shared cultural experiences, and hope through powerful and prophetic preaching. As Blake mentions, the black church still gives its attendees a “break” or a place of retreat from the wear and tear of present-day racism. Similar assets can be found in Asian, Latino, and Native American churches.
It is with this appreciation and recognition, however, that I reveal all of my biases. As a white Christian I have been abundantly and exceedingly blessed to have worshipped in two racially integrated church bodies. Words fail to express how these churches have shaped and transformed my understanding of God and my humble place in this world. For the people of color who have worshipped with me I know that it has sometimes come at a significant cost to them and invaluable benefit to me.
Ultimately, I agree with the authors of United by Faith because I believe that the biblical case for an integrated church is virtually airtight, and the witness it provides to a violent and bigoted world cannot be overstated. Still, the formula for the success of such churches remains persistently and frustratingly elusive.
It does leave me with one final thought. At the beginning of Blake’s article he recounts the fears expressed by black congregants whose church was experiencing an influx of white members. Their fear was that these new white members would take over, rendering its current members disempowered. I sympathize with this fear as it exposes what might be the greatest challenge to whites who want to lead on church integration – if you want to lead you are probably going to have to learn how to follow and serve. We progressive types may even have to learn the radical implications of terms we do not often use, like “submission." Yet this is the way of Christ modeled through his earthly incarnation.
Sondra Shepley is the speaking events manager for Sojourners.
Jarrod McKenna's post on the 1968 Olympics witness/protest brought back memories of that event, and the impression it made on me. And there is a sequel to the story.
On October 3, 2006, Peter Norman died from a heart attack. John Carlos had this reaction: "Peter was a piece of my life. When I got the call, it knocked the wind out of me. I was his brother. He was my brother. That's all you have to know." Tommie Smith added, "It took inner power to do what he did, inner soul power. ... He was a man of solid beliefs, that's how I will remember Peter -- he was a humanitarian and a man of his word."
Over the years, the three men had stayed in touch with each other. Though stripped of their medals and criticized by the U.S. media, Carlos and Smith had returned home as heroes to the black community, while Peter Norman faced ostracism and hostility in Australia for his role in the protest.
Smith and Carlos traveled to Melbourne and were pallbearers at Norman's funeral. They also spoke about their friend there:
Smith described Norman as "a man who believed right could never be wrong" and told Norman's family: "Peter Norman's legacy is a rock. Stand on that rock." Smith concluded: "Peter shall always be my friend. The spirit shall prevail."
Carlos spoke of the hatred they knew would be directed at them. "Not every young white individual would have the gumption, the nerve, the backbone, to stand there. ... Go and tell your kids the story of Peter Norman."
The film McKenna notes, Salute, was directed by Norman's nephew Matt. This spring, Australia's Qantas airlines announced that the film will be shown on all flights to Beijing beginning in late July. The same news story also reported that:
Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred said despite an International Olympic Committee rule prohibiting any form of protest at the Games, Australian team guidelines had been redrafted to permit freedom of expression.
"The team will be able to express a point of view on human rights, Tibet and any other issue in media interviews and, for the first time ever, in blogs,'' he said.
A stand for human rights in the spirit of Peter Norman, John Carlos, and Tommie Smith will be needed in this year's Olympics. The Washington Post reported on Saturday:
The Olympic Games have become the occasion for a broad crackdown against dissidents, gadflies and malcontents this summer. Although human rights activists say they have no accurate estimate of how many people have been imprisoned, they believe the figure to be in the thousands. ... The repressive atmosphere has intensified in part because senior Communist Party officials seem to be just as determined to prevent embarrassing protests -- which could be televised -- as they are to avert terrorist attacks during the Olympics.
As you watch the Olympics this August, remember and tell your kids the story of Peter Norman, John Carlos, and Tommie Smith.
Duane Shank is issues and policy advisor at Sojourners.
"God Is Love," inscribed on the tracksuit of the athlete who would become the second-fastest man alive, is what first caught the attention of Australian Olympic official Ray Weinberg in the early '60s. But it wouldn't be until Peter Norman participated in an act of holy mischief for human rights (which became known as the "Black Power Salute" of the '68 Mexico games) that this Australian would so publicly put 1 John 4:8 into practice with his African-American brothers.
Life magazine said it was one of the most influential images of the 20th century. Two African Americans and one white Australian took to the winner's dais and, motivated by their shared faith, all wore Olympic Project for Human Rights buttons while the black Americans raised their fists.
Gold medal-winner Tommie Smith and bronze medal-winner John Carlos approached Peter Norman after the race. They asked if the Australian believed in God, if he believed in human rights, and if he would join their witness. Norman explained to Carlos and Smith that he had been raised in the Salvation Army, where service to Christ was never separated from service to the poor and the hurting, that he understood the importance of their cause, and that he would be honored to join them.
Gold medal-winner Dr. Tommie Smith, in his book Silent Gesture, explains the symbols of their prophetic actions that call back to the faithful creativity and holy mischief of Hosea, Jeremiah, Amos, and Jesus himself in confronting the unredeemed "Powers":
Olympic Project for Human Rights button. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated earlier that year. With that sentiment in mind, all three men wore Olympic Project for Human Rights buttons connecting the struggle of African Americans to those everywhere suffering for human rights.
No shoes. What is often missed is that both American athletes took to the podium with no shoes as a prophetic sign of the poverty and suffering of black people.
Black gloves. The gloves were not simply about people power (though certainly not less than that), but also about the cry for freedom to the God who hears and acts on the cries of the oppressed. Be it in Egypt many centuries ago or in China today.
Bowed heads. Smith writes that the bowed heads was a sign of prayer. The kind of dangerous prayer that longs for God's reign of justice, peace, and joy "on earth as it is in heaven."
The actions of all three men cost them dearly. As documented in Matt Norman's brilliant new film, Salute, Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked out of the athletes' village, suspended and banned from the Olympics. For the Australian Peter Norman, participating in the organised action cost him his athletic career and he was not chosen for the next Olympics despite being one of the fastest men in the world.
Just as Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life earlier in 1968, so these three men lived out the costly truth of the cross. As Dr. King put it,
There are some who still find the cross a stumbling block, others consider it foolishness, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto social and individual salvation.
As the Olympic Games in China draw closer let us remember the witness of these courageous athletes, what it cost them, and how important it is that we cheer on our athletes. Not simply cheer them on in their sporting events, but also in taking what often are unpopular Christ-like actions that prophetically call for the end of injustice. In doing so they witness to another world being possible. A world that reflects the verse that Peter Norman would wear on his tracksuits, that "God is Love" and that in Jesus this love has started to "flood the earth like the waters cover the seas."
I'm still "down under" -- wrapping up my book tour in Australia. The news from the U.S. reminds me of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s first act on the day after his swearing in as prime minister. In a moving speech, he delivered a speech of apology to the aboriginal people.
Tuesday, for the first time, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an official apology for slavery and segregation. Over the past few years, five southern states have apologized, but efforts in Congress had failed. Congress has issued apologies before, to Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893. In 2005, the Senate apologized for failing to pass anti-lynching laws. But never for slavery.
It is appropriate, because ultimately it was government policies that were both complicit in and directly responsible for this great inhumanity and injustice. Nobody alive in America today participated in slavery, many have no ancestors who did, and large numbers of families came to this land only after slavery was officially abolished -- but all white Americans have benefited from the poisonous legacy of slavery and discrimination.
Whereas a genuine apology is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation;
Whereas an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront the ghosts of their past;
Whereas it is important for this country, which legally recognized slavery through its Constitution and its laws, to make a formal apology for slavery and for its successor, Jim Crow, so that it can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all of its citizens: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) acknowledges that slavery is incompatible with the basic founding principles recognized in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal;
(2) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow;
(3) apologizes to African Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow; and
(4) expresses its commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African Americans under slavery and Jim Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the future.
I hope the Senate will quickly pass a parallel resolution and that President Bush will publicly endorse it. It would be an important day in U.S. history.
The Fourth of July is always a weird holiday for me. It's not that I don't enjoy the nostalgia, picnics, barbeque, fireworks, and romanticizing of history--I do--yet as a student of history I can't help but be reminded of the July 5, 1852, speech of Frederick Douglass, given at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY. If you haven't, you should read it: "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." This was a full 10 years and then some before Emancipation. Though I do not mourn in the same way or for the same reasons, I feel I owe Douglass's proud patriotism some homage. So I remember in (mostly) quiet yet hopeful ambivalence. January 1, (1863) is much more straightforward for me.
Exactly one week prior to the Fourth this year (not by accident, I'm sure), the largest segmented survey of African-Americans ever conducted was released by the research firm Yankelovich. The study was commissioned by Radio One, the largest radio broadcasting company primarily targeting African Americans in the U.S. USA Today was given the first opportunity to review it.
I am always amazed at how serendipitously life tends to sync up with what I am currently reading. On the very day Black America Today was released to the public, I coincidentally began reading Dark Matter, an anthology of speculative fiction. I was floored by the incisiveness of the following statement found in the introduction:
In his 1953 collection of cultural criticism, Shadow and Act, Ralph Ellison cautioned readers not to stumble
'over that ironic obstacle which lies in the path of anyone who would fashion a theory of American Negro culture while ignoring the intricate network of connections which binds Negroes to the larger society. To do so is to attempt a delicate brain surgery with a switch-blade. And it is possible that any viable theory of Negro American culture obligates us to fashion a more adequate theory of American culture as a whole.'
This became the lens through which I processed the Radio One survey in the shadow of Independence Weekend. I'm not left with a cohesive image, but rather a disjointed vision cracked by nagging questions.
Of course, Radio One's interest is profit driven. They want to better target their primary demographic and sell more ad space. Nonetheless, the study will be marketed as the most comprehensive glimpse to date of the landscape of Black America--a kind of declaration of commercial independence. But is such a positivistic claim a good thing? The hope is that the Black community will cease to be seen/discussed/engaged as a monolith. A monolithic view of all things of color is not new in the West. Anything not Western has been considered "Third World." (By the way, who is Second World?) In much the same way, Westerners view/discuss/engage Africa as a country, rather than a complex pseudo-boundaried, multi-national, post-colonial continent.
The Radio One study is reportedly meant to demonstrate "the power of the Black community--as thinkers, activists, consumers and citizens"--and to reflect its "texture and diversity . . . which often gets lost in mainstream portrayals of Black Americans." It's supposed to provide empirical data for product, service and strategy differentiation. Still I can't help but wonder how many might read it as final justification for their prejudices, or as a sort of vindication for seeing themselves (or the ones unlike themselves who have won their approval) as differentiated from "those people." How many might see the findings of the survey as a reason to fear the rising tide of "minority" influence? On the other hand, how many will simply disregard its findings as irrelevant and of no significance (as they would treat the thoughts of Douglass and Ellison)?
It probably won't occur to many that not all (or even a majority) of the 39 million Black folk in the nation received a survey (I never got one). Nor was there likely a fill-in-the-blank answer option that read, "How might your answer vary if we weren't trying to force you into these narrow, easily tabulated categories?" Is it just because we've learned to write our numbers just so, that we now have confidence to believe that 3,400 people (ranging in age from 13 to 74) are an adequate and representative sampling of 39 million?
Don't get me wrong. In a wiki-world, I believe every group has the right to tell their own story, which, undoubtedly, Radio One sees itself facilitating. However, how many will now believe they know mine?
I once read somewhere that Martin Luther King Jr.'s critique of the Black Power movement was not that what it demanded was wrong, but rather that it chose such a narrow, self-interested path at the very moment that the Black struggle in America was being embraced globally as the quintessential human struggle. King's gripping analysis rings in my ears, leaving me with the hope that people glean from the survey not the story of just one group of people, but how that collection of stories gives range and depth of tone to a broader American story which in turn constitutes only one (prayerfully) harmonic part in the chorus of humanity. I hope it reminds us of the importance of all (heretofore marginalized, overlooked, disregarded, discounted) people. I hope it teaches us how to see ourselves in each other.
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, purveyor of sustainability and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, works and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
As a former North Carolinian, I have very mixed feelings regarding the death of Senator Jesse Helms. When my late grandfather Roy B. Clogston was the athletic director of NC State from 1948-69, he became good friends with Helms. At that time, Helms was the general manager of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, and they worked on the contracts to televise NC State basketball games. So, he remembered Helms fondly and often contributed to his campaign. While I never met Helms, I learned from my grandfather that even Helms possessed a soft side.
I didn't realize the full extent of Helms' impact until I moved to New York City after graduating from college. As soon as people found out I was a North Carolinian, I would brace myself for the inevitable barrage of questions as though I was somehow responsible personally for Helms' hooey. At the time, I was a member of the New York Young Republicans, so everyone thought that meant I supported all Republicans, including Jesse. No way. No how. Even when he would make a valid point, his vitriol and venom made me cringe. No wonder New Yorkers thought we were all hicks and hillbillies. My embarrassment that my home state continued to support Helms culminated in '90 when the Harvey Gantt v. Jesse Helms campaign as managed by Dick Morris set a new low in racist campaign ads. From that moment forward, I vowed never to support any candidate who would hire Morris. Hence, I shook my head in disbelief when those who campaigned against Helms were silent during Morris' management of Bill Clinton's '96 re-election campaign.
My prayers are with those who like my grandfather had fond memories of Helms and are mourning the loss of their loved one. But I pray that his passing marks the end of an era in political history that we choose not to repeat.
Addendum: And yes, I celebrate Helms' joining forces with Bono to fight AIDS in Africa. Throughout his long career, I found myself in agreement with him on several occasions. However, even if we were on the same side of an issue ideologically, I had to distance myself from Helms due to his inflammatory rhetoric.
Becky Garrison will be featured in the upcoming documentary The Ordinary Radicals, which will be released in September 2008.
Slavery in the United States did not end in a night or even a year or decade. Even now, long past slavery's demise, the twin poisons of racism and class oppression echo as terrible reverberations from our forefathers' horrific acceptance and perpetuation of brutal violence against their fellow humans. The whips and chains are gone, but the hatred and violence too often well up while inequitable social policies ensure the longevity of poverty for certain classes of people. Even after 150 years, we in the U.S. have a long road ahead in the abolition of racism and class oppression.
I begin with the U.S. because the timeline of our own struggle means everything when examining the hopes of India's Dalits. Yes, India is changing, but how quickly can a nation change social mindsets that have endured for well over 2,500 years, longer than any known form of human oppression? How do we even begin to dislodge a system ...
Read the full entry »
In the shadow of India's economic miracle lies a people often deemed untouchable, largely impoverished, and seemingly invisible. Bubbling beneath the shimmering image of a new India is a cauldron of inequality, caste-based subordination, and religious tension that could boil over into even greater civil strife and violence. At the center of these forces lies the Dalit struggle. While Dalit rights are often denied and hopes are crushed, growing political, economic, and spiritual empowerment is fueling a movement for liberation. The emancipation of the Dalits could serve as the key to securing India's nonsectarian, democratic future. However, this future collides with the ancient system of castes, which still confers profound benefits or burdens upon Indians simply because of their birth names.
For more than 3,000 years, the caste system has divided Indian society into four distinct classes, or varnas. Outside this system are the Dalits, who according to caste are not considered part of human society and are therefore less than fully human. While untouchability was outlawed in the 1950 Constitution and atrocities against Dalits are prohibited through the 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act, a lack of political will and widespread corruption at all levels makes the law all but obsolete. Untouchability remains particularly acute in the rural areas of India, where 70 percent of the population still resides. While a great deal has changed in the sprawling and more tolerant cities, in rural areas people's entire lives are circumscribed by a caste identity that suffocates their dignity and segregates their lives.
The Dalit population approximates that of the entire United States. Imagine the U.S. population living in a perpetual state of discrimination and marginalization. This should strike a familiar chord with our own recent history with Jim Crow segregation. According to Joseph D'souza, president of the Dalit Freedom Network and All India Christian Council, the government has outlawed the symptoms of untouchability but ignores the actual disease of caste that still relegates nearly 250 million people to an apartheid-like existence. Comparing the Dalit struggle to a system of apartheid may seem like hyperbole. However, the entrenched system of caste systematically subordinates a large segment of Indian society.
The name "Dalit" means "broken" or "ground down." Approximately 25 percent of India's vast population is Dalit. To this day, people from higher castes refuse to marry Dalits; they are relegated to occupations that are considered degrading; most caste Hindus will not eat or drink with Dalits; and the majority of bonded laborers and sexual slaves in India are Dalit. Caste is part of a Hindu belief that people inherit their stations in life based on the sins and good deeds of past lives. Despite signs of economic mobility, Dalits are often the victims of dehumanizing acts of violence and humiliation designed to keep them in their place. As I learned more about the mounting crisis of AIDS in India, it is the Dalits who are most prone to be living with HIV and most likely to die a painful death from the disease.
I first heard about the Dalit struggle at the World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Discrimination in 2001. A large contingent of Dalit activists were present in full force. Their message was that the entrenched caste system in Southeast Asia was equivalent to racism and that their voices could no longer be silenced. Unfortunately, their voices were drowned by so many other oppressed voices vying for global attention, and by the controversy around the pulling out of the U.S. delegation.
It took another six years for the Dalit struggle to capture my conscience. In a presentation about the modern-day system of slavery, Gary Haugen, director of the International Justice Mission, based in Washington, D.C., described India as the worst abuser of human trafficking in the world. During a series of meetings over the past year, Rev. Sam Paul, national secretary of public affairs for the All India Christian Council, and Dr. Joseph D'souza have brought the Dalit struggle even closer to home, asking Sojourners to become engaged in the international Dalit freedom movement.
A year later I find myself in the crucible of the Dalit struggle, spending a week with the Dalit Freedom Network and the All India Christian Council, visiting one of the provinces in India that is hardest hit by Christian persecution and Dalit oppression. In many parts of India, the Dalit struggle intersects directly with the issue of religious freedom, as nearly 70 percent of Christians in India are Dalit. While Christians constitute a small minority in India, 2 to 3 percent of the population still translates into roughly 30 million people. Many Dalits and tribal caste people converted to Christianity in order to escape religiously sanctioned inferiority within Hinduism, drawn to a new identity and equality in Christ. However, many in India cling to the notion that India is a Hindu nation and that to be Indian is to be Hindu. Dalit Christians are thus twice-oppressed, once as the outcasts, and then again as members of an often-despised faith. This series will explore the Dalit struggle based on my experiences over the past week through what has felt like a baptism by fire. I hope and pray that you will join me in learning more about this modern system of apartheid.
When the historic legislative milestone of the Voting Rights Act finally passed in 1965, I was still a young teenager. Until then, black people in America didn’t have the right to vote. And until the Civil Rights Act passed the previous year in 1964, black Americans had to drink from separate drinking fountains, eat at separate lunch counters, ride at the back of buses, and watch movies only from the balconies of theaters. Then there was all the violence. I remember a civil rights worker from my hometown of Detroit, named Viola Liuzzo, who traveled to the South in order to help black people win the right to vote for the first time. She was murdered for doing so.
I was still in the U.K. on a book tour Tuesday night, just having finished speaking to a forum at the British Parliament with ministers from all three parties about the relationship between faith and politics. Then I stayed up until 4 a.m. to watch Barack Obama claim the nomination of the Democratic Party for president of the United States. It was my birthday the next day, and I recalled those days when the relationship between faith and politics for many black and a few white Christians was that if you stood up for civil rights -- especially the right to vote for black Americans -- it could get you killed. So I was not only blurry-eyed but also more than a little teary-eyed as I watched a young black man announce that he was ready to run for president of the United States, and for most of America to assume that he had a chance to win.
Race was the issue that led to my own confrontation with the church that raised me. It was my “converting issue,” though the conversion led me out of the white church of my childhood, not into the church. A church elder bluntly told me one night that “Christianity has nothing to do with racism. That’s political and our faith is personal.” I was only about 15, but it was the night I think I left, in my head and my heart. And a couple years later, I was gone all together.
The little evangelical church that my parents had started and that was my second home was simply wrong about race -- completely wrong. Race was the issue that fundamentally shaped my early social conscience. What I saw in Detroit and in the country I had grown up to love seemed fundamentally wrong. I learned there were two Detroits and two Americas, one white and one black. And it seemed contrary to the religion my family had taught me to treat people in a fundamentally different way because of the color of their skin. But the church didn’t agree and we parted company for most of my student years, with me only coming back to faith after a fresh encounter with the radical gospel of the New Testament. I came back with the realization that God is indeed personal, but never private, and exploring what that means has shaped the rest of my life.
So watching Obama, a black man, win the nomination of a major party for the presidency brought back a virtual flood of memories and feelings. That Barack is a friend of 10 years made it all the more personal. This morning I heard several interviews on NPR with black Americans about their response to Obama’s nomination. One older woman said, “A black man running for president, did you hear what just I said? A black man running for president of the United States ….” She just kept repeating the words, and succinctly captured my own personal feelings.
Yes, it is truly historic, and the U.K. newspaper headlines captured that sentiment as did papers around the world. Nothing could change the image of America around the world more than this. But it is more than historic; it is very personal for many of my generation. A new generation just sees this as natural -- he’s an inspirational leader who happens to be black, which matters little to them. But for my generation -- I’m dating myself now -- this is a transformational moment, one we didn't think would come in our lifetimes. Race was the issue that changed us, shaped us, determined our path, and even defined the meaning of our faith. Now a black man is running for president of the United States. Amazing grace.
When I first decided to spend this semester of my college career in Washington, D.C., I did not expect to work for the Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) campaign here at Sojourners. Sadly, I must admit that though I am Latina and the daughter of immigrants, immigration did not make my long list of worthy causes to fight for. Like many, I was ignorant about the plight of immigrants, and mistakenly saw deportation or enforcement-only policies as ideal solutions. Through her dedication, patience, and passion, Patty Kupfer, the CCIR campaign coordinator, taught me to embrace the struggle of the millions of undocumented immigrants and understand the complexities of a broken immigration system.
In these past months, I have seen appalling cases of how immigrants are blamed for the societal ills that afflict us. The scare tactics of anti-immigrant groups have been successful at instilling anti-Latino sentiment among the American populace. The media has painted a gruesome picture of Latinos, and made us all culpable.
Perhaps the worst example I've seen is the idea that undocumented immigrants are wholly responsible for lowering the wages of low-skilled and poor African Americans. In one particular briefing I attended, the low wages and high unemployment rates of poor African Americans were correlated with Latino immigration.
These scholars based their findings on research and data sets, but it left me questioning their motives and analysis. This "research" paves the way for the scapegoating of the other. Are Latinos and African Americans not working toward the same goal - that is, overcoming structural forces that prohibit social advancement? Thus, why are we not working together? My mind cannot conceive how powerful it would be - both spiritually and socially - if Latinos and African-American communities united around immigration. Instead of concentrating our powers against one another, we must unite. We will remain powerless or disempowered until we are able to fight alongside one another.
Currently, immigration is the hot issue and is therefore being used to widen the gap between these two groups of people who share a common history, struggle, and legacy. Why do we fight each other for the crumbs? The entire time I sat during this briefing, I wanted to scream, "Those brown people you condemn are my people, and we are not the root cause of poverty." As seekers of truth and justice, we must acknowledge that massive deportation will not solve some poverty or its root causes.
Let us stop finding scapegoats for complex issues and instead seek unity. Power is in the hands of those who want to make us believe lies about ourselves and others. We must begin to unite around issues like immigration. Imagine how powerful it would be if Latinos and African Americans, two of the largest minority groups in the U.S., would challenge the broken systems that afflict us both. Let us find common ground and redirect our energies toward the real struggles that will truly empower our communities.
Carolyn Delossantos is a junior at Gordon College. She just completed a semester internship at Sojourners.
Over the last several days, I watched Rev. Jeremiah Wright in discussions of faith, theology, history, and culture on television. The three-plus hours I devoted to PBS and CNN amounted to some of the most sophisticated and thoughtful programming on American culture and racial issues that any news station has offered in recent years. And, for those who really listened to Rev. Wright, he moved from being a political liability in the current presidential campaign to demonstrating why he is one of the nation's most compelling spokespersons of the African-American community and of progressive Christianity.
On Friday, Bill Moyers interviewed Wright in an hour-long conversation. (Watch it here.) On Sunday, Wright preached at an NAACP fundraiser in Detroit that attracted 10,000 people. (Watch parts 1 [intro], 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.) Finally, on Monday morning, Wright addressed a packed National Press Club in Washington, D.C. However different the venues, a surprisingly common thread wound through all three speeches -- that a realistic understanding of history forms the spiritual basis of hope and healing.
In the Moyers interview, Wright admitted that one of the major influences on his ministry was the august historian Martin E. Marty of the University of Chicago (a white Lutheran and a true gentleman scholar), who challenged his students to relate the "faith preached in our churches" to the "world in which our church members leave at the benediction." He then quoted African-American historian Carter G. Woodson, saying that black Americans had been—and one can argue, by inference, Anglo-Americans as well—"miseducated."
I suspect that both Woodson and Marty share the perception that Americans suffer from "miseducation" regarding history. This "miseducation" means looking to the glorious parts of history and not to its despair, of having an incomplete picture—only a "piece of the story"—regarding the past. Bad history leaves out the bits that make us cringe, doubt ourselves, or question our morality. Leaving out the uncomfortable parts may reinforce cherished views, but it lacks the power of internal critique or self-correction.
Realistic history includes the good and the amoral, the profound and the profane. It gives us the ability to understand the fullness of human experience and learn from mistakes and sin. A robust vision of the past, Wright stated, enables Christians "not to leave that world and pretend that we are now in some sort of fantasy land, as Martin Marty called it, but to serve a God who comes into history on the side of the oppressed."
The God of history is also, as Wright reminded his audience on Sunday, "a God of diversity." In his NAACP address, he recited a history of "difference," and how we denigrated those who are different. But God, he insisted, wants us to change—indeed, God is changing us—to live in such a way that "different does not mean deficient." Wright exhorted us to celebrate God-given diversity of race, color, language, music, and culture that makes humanity beautiful.
In his final address, Wright essentially delivered a church history lecture in which he traced the prophetic tradition of African-American history as a tradition of "liberation, transformation, and reconciliation." Several times, he clearly stated that a realistic view of history opens the possibility of healing the social order.
In recent events, some Americans dismissed Wright as deficient because he is not white and did not adhere to the norms of polite discourse. They used fear of difference as a political tool to divide people. This weekend, Wright rejected divisiveness as he explained his African-American heritage while recognizing the good in Anglo-European religion. He invited everyone—with all of our differences—into a shared mission of Jesus' liberating love. With humor and wit, along with courage and authenticity, Wright stood up for good history and the God of history.
At my house, the home of a white family who worships in a decorous Episcopal church, we found ourselves moved by Wright's trinity of talks on Christian history. We might not agree with everything he has said. But we do not have to. We are different. We will not see things in the same way. We do not have the same experience or the same history. We have things in our past that make us proud. Our ancestors have done things of which we are ashamed. We can learn from history. We can be friends with people who are different than us.
Most important, however, we who are different are loved by the same God. History reminds us that we can make a better world together. Change is going to come.
Diana Butler Bass (www.dianabutlerbass.com) holds a Ph.D. in church history from Duke University and the author of six books, including Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperOne, 2006).
It was only a short year ago that "shock jock" Don Imus chose to refer to the accomplished women playing in the NCAA Basketball Finals as "nappy-headed hoes," later billing the match-up for his listeners as the "jiggaboos" versus the "wannabes." Imus' disrespect came as little surprise. He had a long history of slur and slander against Blacks, Africans, Asians, Latinos, Jews, Arabs, women, homosexuals, the poor, and just about anyone he considered unlike himself. And he had been paid handsomely to be so. The absurd brevity of his time spent off the air is perhaps only surpassed by the financial profitability of his return.
But the story that a middle-aged white man of means in the U.S. showed himself to be (or made his living as a) racist and sexist is not news to me. He is not the first, nor will he be the last. Not that what he did was not news-worthy, but his misogynistic or otherwise bigoted views seemed almost beside the point to me.
The thing that captured my attention regarding the Imus coverage the first half of April 2007 was the power dynamic. You see, power matters, and Imus had plenty of it, which he used unrepentantly to pummel with impunity the dispossessed, disenfranchised, or otherwise already marginalized. Don Imus, who is now with ABC, at the time had a nationally syndicated CBS radio show that was simulcast on MSNBC (how much money was he making?), which NPR reporter David Folkenflik further characterized as attracting "an educated, affluent audience." Most interesting to me, again, was not that this was the case; however, I was floored by the sheer number of "educated, affluent" folks who unreservedly championed Imus' "right" to do what he had been doing. It was as if the unapologetically privileged got together and declared, "How dare you have a problem with us continuing to exercise our privilege at your expense? This is the way it's supposed to be. Haven't you gotten the repeated memos?"
They said it was a First Amendment issue, to which my only response can be: Neither hate, discrimination, nor any other form of exclusionary practice or language is a First Amendment issue. Freedom of speech does not guarantee one the right to be heard.Hate does not deserve a publicly facilitated audience (e.g. radio and television air waves), and those who resource it privately deserve whatever nonviolent (particularly financial) backlash they get.
Then came the story of Seung Hui Cho. The Western world cried out in horror at the massacre Cho perpetrated on VA Tech's campus—"the single largest act of recorded handgun violence on U.S. soil in American history" (the qualifiers "recorded handgun violence" and "on U.S. soil" are important because they help to conceal our selective recollection and shocking history of violence, particularly that which has involved what we would call "state-sponsored terrorism" if it were directed at us from the outside).
And we wept. And so should we weep again in the upcoming weeks, but not just for Cho's victims. We should weep for Cho and others like him, who are victims as well ... of the Imuses of the world.
Seung Hui Cho's multimedia manifesto read like the diary of an oppressed who had finally been transformed to embody the rationale and methodologies of his oppressors. Having bought their propaganda, psychological abuse and mental illness demanded that, rather than joining them, he beat them with a ferocity commensurate to his own pain. What Cho and others like him fail to realize is that neither the methodology nor rationale of the oppressor is just, thus it is doomed to fail - immediately for the less powerful and inevitably for the more powerful. Though I confess to loving the whole V for Vendetta fantasy of striking a crippling blow to the imperial system on behalf of the oppressed while somehow avoiding harm to any innocents, that's all it is: fantasy.
Don't misunderstand: I am in no way defending, justifying, or excusing what Seung Hui Cho did April16, 2007. I just believe we need a good dose of "whole truth and nothing but the truth" as we try him again this year in the court of public opinion. In so doing, I hope we see the need to indict ourselves as well.
If you're struggling to connect the dots, consider this quote from one of Cho's high school and college classmates, Chris Davids, as reported on npr.org:
In an English class during high school, a teacher threatened Cho with a failing grade for participation unless he read aloud as the other students had. Cho [a Korean immigrant] started to read in a strange voice that sounded 'like he had something in his mouth,' Davids said.
'As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, "Go back to China!"
Imuses behave as if their privilege (power and prerogative) entitles them to further marginalize and/or humiliate anyone they so desire. Well, you might say, "Crowding someone out—pushing him to the margins—doesn't give him the right to lash out." Sure. Yet I ask along with Langston Hughes, "What happens to a dream deferred"—dreams of belonging and significance, security and prosperity, dreams of equity? How do we critique his or her means of survival (those with less power and prerogative) without also critiquing our own (those with more)?
I'm reminded of the closing scenes of Malcolm X, the movie, in which a series of persons from all over the globe (ending with Nelson Mandela) stand up and declare, "I'm Malcolm X!" It seemed to spawn a whole genre of "I wanna be like ______" commercials. We are so quick to associate ourselves with the best and the brightest. Perhaps it would be cathartic to own our demons as well, by declaring, "I too am Don Imus!"
What I'm afraid will happen instead is that we will disassociate ourselves from both Imus and Cho, choosing to see ourselves as the unwitting victims of both, much like one VA Tech affiliate quoted by NPR:
In a lot of ways it makes it better to know he's just a crazy person. That is just completely not our university's fault. This has nothing to do with anyone else. This is just his issue.
Such self-congratulations will only lead us blindly back into the thoughtless patterns of behavior that inspire this kind of violence. The only hope I see in overcoming this vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence is to abandon and subvert the rationale and methodology of anyone, any institution, or any system that seeks to justify or legitimize gain at the expense of others as a valid means to an end.
But wait a minute ... wasn't abandoning and subverting the dominant power structures the way of Jesus? Well, at least we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he was trying to move the country to take on the moral issue of economic injustice. And, for the first time in many years, the remembrances of King's death (this one the 40th anniversary) urged the nation to do the same. Usually the nation's anniversary celebrations freeze-frame King as the nation's greatest civil rights leader whose famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was the extent of his message. Later calls for economic justice and the beginnings of a Poor People's Campaign are often ignored, not to mention the controversial connection King made between poverty and war in his opposition to the Vietnam War and his confrontation of the "triplets" of "poverty, racism, and militarism."
But last Friday was different and much more hopeful to our mission here at Sojourners of putting poverty on the agenda of this election year.
Barack Obama, speaking in Fort Wayne, Indiana, made the direct connection between memorializing King and taking up the mantle of his Poor People's campaign, and fighting for the cause of economic justice for those who have been left behind. The New York Times reported that Obama focused on King's presence in Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers and the continuing need for economic justice:
The reason Dr. King was in Memphis the day he was shot, Mr. Obama told the crowd of about 2,000 people, had to do as much with economics, in the form of wages and income, as with race. "It was a struggle for economic justice, for the opportunity that should be available to people of all races and all walks of life," he said. "Because Dr. King understood that the struggle for economic justice and the struggle for racial justice were really one, that each was part of a larger struggle for freedom, for dignity and for humanity."
King's son, Martin Luther King III, has called for a cabinet-level "poverty czar," and, to her credit, Hillary Clinton supported that goal in her speech in Memphis, according to the New York Times:
Mrs. Clinton gave her support to an idea long advocated by the King family, a cabinet position that she said would be "solely and fully devoted to ending poverty as we know it, that will focus the attention of our nation on this issue and never let it go." Mrs. Clinton added: "No more excuses, no more whining, but instead a concerted effort."
John McCain was also in Memphis, speaking at the National Civil Rights Museum (in what was the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was shot.) McCain linked the anniversary to human rights, reports the Associated Press:
McCain said King "was called an agitator, a troublemaker, a malcontent, and a disturber of the peace. These are often the terms applied to men and women of conscience who will not endure cruelty, nor abide injustice. We hear them to this day -- in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, Tibet, Iran and other lands -- directed at every brave soul who dares to disturb the peace of tyrants."
Human rights does continue to be a major issue, and the nation's poverty rate has not significantly improved in the 40 years since King's death. The national minimum wage has actually lost ground, with the 1968 rate worth $9.71 in 2008 dollars compared to $5.85 today. Many voices seem ready now to make that an urgent moral concern and commitment. Let us hope, pray, and work that it may be so.
Civil rights, Vietnam, Dr. King, Memphis — these are historic landmarks. Even so, this year is a watershed. Because Dr. King lived only 39 years, from now on, he will be gone longer than he lived among us. Two generations have come of age since Memphis.
This does not mean that our understanding is accurate or complete. A certain amount of gloss and mythology is inevitable for great figures, whether they be George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, Honest Abe splitting a rail or Dr. King preaching a dream of equal citizenship in 1963. Far beyond that, however, we have encased Dr. King and his era in pervasive myth, false to our heritage and dangerous to our future. We have distorted our entire political culture to avoid the lessons of Martin Luther King's era.
He warned us himself. When he came to the pulpit that Sunday 40 years ago, Dr. King adapted one of his standard sermons, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." From the allegory of Rip Van Winkle, he told of a man who fell asleep before 1776 and awoke 20 years later in a world filled with strange customs and clothes, a whole new vocabulary, and a mystifying preoccupation with the commoner George Washington rather than King George III.
Dr. King pleaded for his audience not to sleep through the world's continuing cries for freedom. When the ancient Hebrews achieved miraculous liberation from Egypt, many yearned to go back. Pharaoh's familiar lash seemed better than the covenant delivered by Moses, and so the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness. It took 40 years to recover their bearings. Dr. King has been gone 40 years now, but we still sleep under Pharaoh. It is time to wake up.
We were never likely to get away with "transcending" race in this election as the early Obama campaign suggested to some. The demons of race in America simply run too deep and were bound to eventually rear their ugly heads. And so they did with the now infamous taped sound bites by Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the furious media response to them. I've said before that the constant replaying of the tapes has become a metaphor for the continual replaying of our old racial tapes in this country. Black anger and frustration because of real grievances, provoking white indignation revealing the lack of white understanding, causing more black frustration and alienation etc; it just goes on and on.
So Barack Obama had to give a major speech on race that he likely hoped not to have to give. But it was an historic statement, offering a deeper vision and hope of our forming "a more perfect union" than we had heard in many decades. After the speech, the ball was again in America's court—in white America's court in particular. Would the nation respond to Obama's hopeful vision, of turning a corner from racial anger and frustration to new opportunity and unity, or would his candidacy be derailed by his pastor's mixture of prophetic black preaching and unfortunate overstatements? While it will likely take weeks and even months to know the final answer to that central question, the first polls taken since Wright tapes and Obama's speech suggest that it has not hurt his candidacy in the ways that some had feared. As the Pew Research Center reported yesterday on its new poll, "the Wright controversy does not appear to have undermined support for Obama's candidacy."
Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding. … That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today.
Because this issue is now about much more than a candidate or an election, but about the issue of race in America, the poll results and the voice of the highest-ranking black official in the country provide a small glimmer of hope that the nation may be ready to try and take a step forward. Obama should be judged, as should any candidate, on the basis of his policy positions and leadership capacity, not because of our old racial tapes.
The recent controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright has initiated a new conversation about race in America. It has done so by making clear to white America what almost every black American knows—that 40 years after the civil rights movement, there are still two Americas. More pointedly for Christians, it is manifestly evident that we have two churches. After the integration of schools, the military, and the workplace, the church remains the single most segregated institution in America.
Across this divide, black Christians necessarily maintain a double consciousness, knowing how to talk to their white brothers and sisters while also keeping alive the distinctive language of the black church. White Christians, however, are taken aback when they hear the "angry" tone and anti-American sentiments of prophetic black preaching. It is hard for us to believe that such rhetoric could be called Christian.
Like any pastor, Rev. Wright has been wrong. (I do not, for example, think it is prophetic to say that whites created the HIV virus.) But we would do well to remember that the same pastor who Barack Obama has distanced himself from also gave him the phrase "the audacity of hope." While it has made for a good book title, its origin in the prophetic tradition of black preaching points us to the peculiar nature of Christian hope.
Apocalyptic hope is one of the distinctive marks of black preaching. We pay lip service to this tradition in our annual Martin Luther King Day services, but we are tempted to water it down. We overlook the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. spent the last year of his life criticizing America's role in the Vietnam War. It is almost never mentioned that on April 4, 1968, just hours before he was assassinated, King phoned Ebeneezer Baptist Church to say that his sermon title for the next Sunday would be "Why America May Go to Hell."
Black anger is not now nor has it ever been absent from prophetic black preaching. Like Jeremiah Wright after him, Martin King preached to a church that knew firsthand the extent of injustice in this nation. Many things have changed in forty years, not the least of which is the fact that a black man is seriously contending for the presidency of the United States. But the black church knows that the wealth disparity between blacks and whites has not changed since 1965. Black Christians in America know that nearly one half of their sons will not finish high school and a third of them will go to prison. Divorced from our black brothers and sisters, most white Christians do not know this reality.
But if we learn to tell the truth about race, what can Christian hope look like? It cannot be the hope of false prophets who say, "'peace, peace' when there is no peace," pretending that blacks and whites do not continue to suffer from a racial wound. But neither can our hope be entirely satisfied with progressive politics that calls us to move forward by getting along. Apocalyptic hope is audacious enough to admit that the problem is deep in all of us and the only solution is a love that comes from beyond us.
In the civil rights movement, no one was angrier about the plight of black people in this country than James Baldwin. His gift with words only served to sharpen his criticism and make his attack on white power more pointed. Yet, it was James Baldwin who wrote in a letter to his nephew, "the really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept [white people] … for these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand."
One great gift of the black church that has been largely overlooked in the case of Rev. Wright is the tradition's ability to hold together apocalyptic criticism with radical love. This is the double miracle of the black church: that after hearing the gospel from their oppressors, black people found liberation in Christ and then loved the so-called Christians who had been their enemies. If the Enlightenment reduced our confidence in a God who performs miracles, the story of the black church alone should be enough to restore it.
What we need to heal the racial wound in America is nothing less than a miracle. Barack Obama cannot fix us, and thank God, he is honest enough to admit it. We Christians would do well to take a cue from his frankness and remember that judgment begins with the house of God. We should have the audacity to hope that racial divisions could be transgressed within the church so that the world might know another way is possible.
Such hope may seem apocalyptic from where we stand, but the resurrection of Jesus is a reminder that the end of all things has already interrupted history. On this side of Easter, we're invited to live a way that wouldn't make sense if miracles don't happen.
Like many (I hope most) people, I was deeply moved and impressed by Senator Obama's speech on race. Almost as interesting as the speech itself have been the responses to it, which usually come in the form of opinions:the speech was good or bad or didn't go far enough or went too far, and so on.
Opinions often don't tell us much about the content of the speech - it's truth, beauty, or goodness - they tell us more about the perspective, bias, fears, hopes, and interests of the commentator. I hope we can go beyond talking about the speech to talking about America and the state of race relations in America. I hope we can go beyond offering old and often utterly predictable opinions and instead, through honest engagement and dialogue about the speech, seek to have our opinions modified and improved and deepened, and perhaps even challenged and changed.
We have many places for people to react and practice opinion-giving and other forms of punditry, but what we seem to lack is space for people to have a more generous and generative kind of intelligent shared reflection and consideration. So I decided it might be worthwhile to offer some commentary on the content of the speech along with questions for conversation so that people could download the text, make copies of it, and read it through together - stimulating potentially constructive dialogue about a truly important subject.
The best case scenario would be for mixed groups to read and discuss the speech together – gathering a group of friends from work or a sports team or a neighborhood or church. Three questions would guide this kind of dialogue: What can we learn about America? What can we learn about people of other races? What can we learn about ourselves?
The goal here is not agreement, but understanding. Each participant has to desire more to understand than to be understood, and more to learn than to teach.
In response to the racially tinged controversial remarks made by his former pastor, Barack Obama's speech on the current state of race and politics in America is one that I believe every American should listen to and/or read. It is with this in mind that I wish to address the specific challenges and hindrances that white progressive Christians, like myself, may encounter in our discussions about this topic, and particularly those that occur across racial lines. It would be easy for progressives to smugly say "tisk, tisk" to the rightwing talk show hosts and pundits that have conflagrated Rev. Wright's most divisive remarks as a way to undermine the most viable black presidential candidate in our nation's history. However, I am not convinced that the Christian peace and justice movement has enough solid ground to stand on to convince America that they have moved much beyond the superficial and politically correct discussions that dominate the discourse. Many of our progressive churches are just as segregated as they were decades ago and our political protests and social activism, though well-intentioned, often fail to mirror the kingdom reality that we hope to see realized in the broader society. To be honest, I'm not sure if any of us white people will ever fully grasp what it means to be a person of color in America. However, this realization should not be a cause for discouragement from engaging in this dialogue, but a reason to pause and reassess our level of commitment and to retain a posture of humility.
Sometimes we've become too much like the eager know-it-all kid at the front of the classroom itching to regurgitate the textbook answers. When our teacher is not impressed by our lack of genuine perceptiveness, we scratch our heads and wonder what we said that was so inadequate. Our book knowledge somehow has made us lose sight that these discussions are not opportunities to reassert an ideology, but an exercise in confession and reconciliation that deals with the emotional and sometimes illogical human heart. Likewise, these discussions are opportunities to move forward in creating real systemic change that reflects the integrity and sincerity of our repentance.
Similarly, understanding the facts of racial injustice in our society does not naturally lend us knowledge of the felt experience of oppression. Unfortunately, I have seen too many white Christians walk away from difficult discussions about race discouraged because they wanted the cut-and-dry, "just the facts ma'am" answers, and instead their black or brown, brother or sister insisted on sharing the emotional scars and deep-seated wounds of their daily lived experience. It is right then for Obama to point out that, "…the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."
It is important, as well, to point out that indignation from a biblical perspective is not in and of itself a sinful or wrong emotion. Jesus and the prophets had harsh words for the religious and political establishments of their day, and most notably, in a fit of rage Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers in the Jewish temple. His explanation: "My house should be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers." Our worship glorifies God, but our segregated worship hours often reflect a specific cultural expression.
The rhetorical style of the "jeremiad"—defined as sermons or prose characterized by lamentation and anger as a response to societal injustices—is considered by many historians as black civic religion's most significant contribution to the American rhetorical tradition. Of course, the word jeremiad has its roots in the name Jeremiah, referring to the biblical prophet. The jeremiad, as a form of both religious and political communication, highlights the role, born out of necessity, that the black church has historically played as a surrogate political institution for the disenfranchised. It may be difficult for white Americans, even progressive white Christians, to recognize or validate a rhetorical style and tradition that has its roots outside of their cultural experience, but has always been a traditional and mainstream expression of the black church. It's a gross stereotype of white progressive Christians, but those who trend toward the organic-buying-acoustic-guitar-playing-bohemian-dressed-new-monastic-urban-missional-emergent-yuppie-with-dark-rimmed-glasses should be aware that even their cultural choices made out of social consciousness are not racially neutral and are certainly not one-size-fits-all.
Finally, we white progressive Christians should realize that this conversation will continue regardless if we choose to participate in it or not. As Obama pointed out, this is a conversation that happens with regularity around the kitchen tables of those who live outside the mainstream of white culture. If our friends who live this reality invite us into this conversation we should make it a priority. To table this discussion for another day, when we have more time or energy is to exercise the white privilege that requires us to only think about race when it convenient. Inviting you to the table to talk about these most difficult and painful experiences is not your right, but a privilege that is sacrificially offered to you for your benefit. We should all be so honored to be invited into the conversation.
Sondra Shepley is the speaking events manager for Sojourners.
So what do we do, my friends, in the face of our undeniably incongruent histories—which give us reason to forever suspect one another, a reason dramatically subverted by the call to embrace one another in the way of Jesus?
I believe Diana Butler Bass, again, shows us a way forward. She made the following comment while participating in a panel discussion at the last American Academy of Religion conference. The original context of her thought was the pursuit of friendship (referred to as "convergence") between post-mainline and post-evangelical Christians, yet it struck me as pertinent to this discussion:
"When I'm in rooms of clergy and theologians ... and we start talking about post-conservatism and post-liberalism ... I always remind them that those 'posts-' come out of a very distinctive historical experience. And those historical experiences are always going to remain part of our identity. They don't just go away because … [we] say we want to be friends. We're going to be standing in our conversations having coffee[, and] I've got Schleiermacher standing with me all the time, not John Stott. If we think about that conversation happening not just here and now but in that larger communion of saints … we are opening up conversational space for people who once killed each other. That is very gentle [work], and you can't just say, 'That never happened!' We're going to be doing this convergence work, but holding onto the things that we love and the things that make us who we are. ... It is a potential, terrible misstep for people who have been schooled in liberal Protestantism to let go of their identity for the sake of one happy, big family. ... We need to be who we really are ... but it doesn't mean we can't form something new together."
Change the context by switching the protestant ideological references to racial and socio-cultural ones and the gist of her argument remains credible. While you may stand with George Washington as the great hero of the American Revolution, I stand with Crispus Attucks. While you may have reconciled with John Brown, Emerson, and William Lloyd Garrison - of whom I am ever appreciative - I also stand just as proudly with Nat Turner, Geronimo, and Harriet Tubman. I stand with Sojourner Truth, while you may celebrate Robert E. Lee. To any conversation, in addition to the aforementioned, I also bring Olaudah Equiano, Marcus Garvey, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Zora Neal Hurston, Vernon Johns, Richard Wright, Stokely Carmichael, Sonya Sanchez, Wallace D. Mohammad, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin , James Baldwin, and many others of varying ideological stripe - and in welcoming me, you welcome them as well.
As a person of color in America, I have been constantly asked to honor, even celebrate, white men and women of historical and contemporary note, over and apart from less-than-honorable, glaring, even odious aspects of their public lives. Isn't it time all saw fit to afford one another the same grace, instead of holding one another completely hostage to our shortcomings? In post-racial hope, can we be that vulnerable with one another?
Even if you totally disagree, please don't make the ridiculous accusation that I am professing bigotry in any form or am aligning my-postmodern/postcolonial/postracial-self with Wright's thoroughly modern (and thus justifiable in that context) theology or politics. However, I must be able to own that I am inextricably bound to him in a common history of what it means to be black in America and that be okay. Perhaps we would not say we are completely ready for such a conversation, but it appears to be the one God is sending us.
Growing up, my Uncle Ralph taught me that you can't expect the unconverted heart to act converted. So I understand when some in the media don't handle this business of differing experiences well: they lack the resources. But we familiar with the way of Jesus can set an example worth emulating. In a brave new wiki-world, the privileged must stop making the ahistorical demand that the under-privileged take a moderate, conciliatory, even deferential posture to all past, present and future acts of disrespect, hostility or excess (and vice versa)—if we are to create something more beautiful, conversant with one another. This is, perhaps, the only way we can move forward together without our demons getting the best of us.
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
It was an amazing day, and, we may look back to conclude it was a historic day. Before Barack Obama's speech yesterday, after the now infamous statements from his former pastor; the issue seemed to be a test of him. But after what may go down as one of the most significant addresses ever given about the history and future of race in America, the issue may now be a test of us. The examination of a candidate was transformed yesterday into an examination of a nation.
A young African American leader, more than four decades ago, told us about his dream for our nation. Yesterday, another young leader, who is also a black man, outlined what it would take to make that dream into a "more perfect union." No political leader has ever delivered such a comprehensive and, I would say, prophetic treatment of race in America.
Every American needs to watch and listen to Barack Obama's speech about the future that the U.S. could have. And I would suggest we watch the speech with our children. After watching, we should ask ourselves, and ask our children, if this is the vision for the U.S. that we and they really want. If it is, we will have moved from an issue over controversial comments to much higher ground. After the constant replaying of the same video tapes (which seems like a metaphor of our recent racial history in America), we listened to an invitation to turn the page and move forward.
We heard the vision of a new generation today, one that understands how injustice does indeed breed frustration and anger, but that to remain stuck in past anger and present frustration can be counter-productive and even self-destructive. We heard a vision characterized not by incendiary recrimination but by the possibility of changing the realities that have kept us stuck in a racial "stalemate" and a mired in a "cynical" and "static" view of America's painful divides. This was a speech that actually posited new hope for opportunity and equality, and even the beginning of the kind of racial reconciliation and unity which few have dared to speak of since the end of the civil rights movement.
We heard a political leader who, as a black man, can also sympathize with white resentment and frustration over racial politics, and who can see both the anger of a black mentor and the racial stereotypes of a white grandmother as both part of him and part of America. The most honest and compelling speech about race in decades could open the promise of a deeper national conversation about our racial past and future than we have had for some time. Obama's speech leaves the choice to us. The issue now is whether we will choose not to allow the angry and frustrating past prevent a more fair and hopeful future; or whether we will be forever bound by that past. To the question of whether race will continue to divide and conquer our hopes for a better America, Barack Obama had his answer, "Not this time." Now we each have to answer the question for ourselves.
This is not just about a candidate now, or a campaign; it is about the country and the choices we have to make about whether we will decide to bind our progress to one another - including those beyond our own tribe. Ask your children what they would have us do.
On a Sunday when Americans flooded houses of worship seeking words of comfort, hope, and healing, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago dared to forgo the singing of "God Bless America." Instead, Senator Barack Obama's pastor claimed the prophetic biblical message of the hour ought to call us to proclaim, "God Damn America."
The words remain jarring and infuriating. Wright's comments seem at best incomplete and untimely. At worst, they imply that God is vindictive, vengeful, and bloodthirsty, even during a time of tragedy--that the judgment of God is appropriately meted out through the tragic deaths of innocent people through terrorist acts of hatred and evil.
On Sept. 15, 2001, Rev. Wright was wrong. His words failed to connect with the pastoral needs of a nation in mourning.
Throughout his career, however, Rev. Wright has been "right" more often than not. He has followed in the traditions of Hebrew Testament prophets, challenging his nation to live up to its own creeds of justice and opportunity for all - including African Americans, other minorities, and the poor.
Wright is in good company. When his provocative language is read alongside the vitriolic words of many Hebrew Testament prophets, Wright's words ring true. The prophets connected their nation's injustice and neglect of the poor with the destruction of Israel, often using vitriolic language. The prophet Amos once described the wealthy women of Samaria as "fat cows." Isaiah referred to once faithful Israel as a prostitute.
Not only are most of Rev. Wright's words biblically correct; they are also historically accurate. The U.S. has participated in many acts of evil. From slavery to Jim Crow segregation, from sexism to the internment of Japanese during World War II, from environmental disasters to the neglect of the poor, America has a record on par with that of Hebrew Testament Israel.
When it comes to foreign policy, the U.S. did financially invest in South Africa during the days of apartheid, used the CIA to enact coups against democratically elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s, and remains the only nation to use nuclear weapons. Perhaps these domestic and foreign policy actions prove that Rev. Wright was right.
But this is only a part of the picture. While the U.S. is far from perfect, the nation has made significant progress regarding rights for minorities and women. The U.S. has often been a force for good in the world, from helping to rebuild Japan and Western Europe after World War II to the vast amounts of private and government funds offered to deal with global crises like the HIV-AIDS and malaria crises in Africa. Rev. Wright was not entirely right.
On March 18, Barack Obama used his speech about race to appropriately distance himself from the most vitriolic of his pastor's rhetoric. He has also removed Rev. Wright from a position on his campaign's spiritual advisory committee.
In the Hebrew Testament, prophets were as a rule not insiders in the royal palace. Jeremiah's words of prophetic judgment became so disruptive to the King threw the prophet into jail. Just over 40 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave up his access to President Lyndon Baines Johnson to prophetically speak out against the war in Vietnam. Put simply, prophets and presidents don't mix.
Thankfully, Senator Obama was careful not to condemn the entire prophetic ministry of Rev. Wright. Our nation desperately needs the prophetic voice he has embodied over decades of public ministry. And no matter who our next president is, he or she would be well served to consider the words of Rev. Wright, for he has been more right than wrong.
Troy Jackson is senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Kentucky. His book Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader (The University Press of Kentucky, 2008) will be available in the fall. Troy is a participant in Sojourners' "Windchangers" grassroots organizing pilot project in Ohio to work on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign.
If properly understood, Senator Barack Obama's remarks yesterday at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, constitute one of the most significant and honest public addresses ever made on America's 400-year struggle with race. Had we heeded DuBois' 1903 prophetic warning, The Souls of Black Folks, it may have found voice in the 20th century. There is a conversation America has, literally in some cases, been dying to have. That conversation is not in favor of any particular presidential candidate. Please don't relegate and dismiss it on those grounds. However, it is unlikely that we would be so inescapably confronted with such issues outside of a person of color experiencing some measure of success in a bid for the highest elected office in the land.
In her post, "Putting Rev. Wright's Preaching in Perspective," Diana Butler Bass implored us to listen better to one another. Now let me suggest something to listen for. The thought is simple, but the lesson is not: Not everyone has experienced America in the same way. And we must lay down the self-absorption that makes us think this doesn't matter, if we are ever to begin to appreciate each other.
Permit me this timely example. If you are not Black, you may not know that the Black church is the theatre in which Blacks have historically exorcised their demons - with the pastor as both theologue and thespian embodying the collective process of redemption for his/her people every week. Initially, church was the one place we could go that we weren't under massa's whip, which is why we relish it. Eventually, it became the center and sustainer of our community. So most of us understand Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a way that may escape others.
Church equaled life for us. Where else could we go to exorcise the demons of injustice and intransigence? Where else could we go to exorcise the marginalization and invalidation, the defeat and depression, the struggle and scorn? Where else could we go when our children asked - as my daughter did while coloring just the other day- if Jesus were brown or white? My answer was that he was born to Jewish parents, people of color, whom we usually refer to as olive-skinned. And her heartrending response at 5-years-old was: "Why can't he be white? In all the pictures, he's white!"
It was in church that we heard the story of a people who were considered least among the nations, scattered and subject to the whims of others. Their story taught us how to survive in exile. We listened close and learned that a healthy nationalism has been the most broadly successful defense against the ravages of imperialism. Thus, it was in the womb of the incontestable sense of ethnic validity given to me by Black liberationists/nationalists like Rev. Wright who were "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian" that I finally found enough courage to reach beyond my own tragic racial history.
From outside the Black experience, you can't legitimately critique this. Western Christianity hadn't been true enough to forestall the savageness of chattel slavery (a peculiar and altogether new institution of bondage in which for the first time in recorded history a people were legally, socially, theologically and scientifically defined as property, a thing, subhuman), let alone genocide, apartheid or discrimination. If an amalgamation of Black pride and Christological hope were the only way those of us who held onto it could remain Christian, so be it.
Notwithstanding, there have been those like King, non-nationalists, who by divine grace cultivated eyes to see and ears to hear glimpses of the kingdom that heretofore had escaped almost all of us. He and those like him caught a glimpse of a post-racial reality in God. (Not a non-racial reality—a well-meaning sociological nonentity—but post-racial: those who have suffered through the crucible of race and come out the other side determined to live beyond race—still in visceral awareness of its worst and unequivocal opposition to even the slightest of its indignities.) You and I could have such eyes and ears and tongues and lips, we're just not practiced enough.
Lest one be tempted to brandish the name of King in vain, as many are apt to do, we must immediately confess that 'post-racial' is a martyrdom posture in a relentlessly racial modern world. Forty or more years of privilege can alter the collective memory of a nation. But I remember. It was not the majority of middle- and upper-class blacks and whites who loved King while he was alive. I remember. He became America's hero only once dead. I remember. King and Shabazz were assassinated only as they moved closer to each other and closer to embodying justice as the birthright of the entire human family. I remember. Robeson was blacklisted and Hughes domesticated in children's literature texts. I remember. DuBois was expatriated and Washington's message appropriated to justify segregation. And I remember Douglass, magnificent Douglass, who up and decided one day "that however long [he] might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when [he] could be a slave in fact" - and vowed to give as good as he got from any person who thought otherwise. (And he did.) With a ferocity and intimidation unmatched by a mere mortal such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Douglass voiced a irresistibly brilliant and no less scathing critique of America that succeeded in having him sent abroad 'in service to his country' at the very time his eloquence and intellect were most sorely needed here. I remember.
So what do we do, my friends, in the face of our undeniably incongruent histories - which give us reason to forever suspect one another, a reason dramatically subverted by the call to embrace one another in the way of Jesus?
[to be continued...]
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
It has simmered throughout this campaign, and now race has exploded into the center of the media debate about the presidential race. Just when a black political leader is calling us all to a new level of responsibility, hope, and unity, the old and divisive rhetoric of race from both blacks and whites is rearing its ugly head to bring down the best chance we have had for years of finally moving forward.
And that is indeed the real issue here. A black man is closer to possibly becoming president than ever before in U.S. history. And this black man is not even running as "a black man," but as a new kind of political leader who believes the country is ready for a new kind of politics. But a new kind of politics and a new face for political leadership is deeply threatening to all the forces that represent the old kind of politics in the U.S. And all the rising focus on race in this election campaign has one purpose and one purpose alone—to stop Barack Obama from becoming president of the United States.
Barack Obama should win or lose his party's nomination or the presidency based on the positions he takes regarding the great issues of our time and his capacity to lead the country and the U.S.'s role in the world. He must not win or lose because of the old politics of race in the U.S. That would be a tragedy for all of us.
The cable news stations and talk radio are playing carefully selected excerpts of the most potentially incendiary statements from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons. Wright is the retiring pastor of Barack Obama and his family's home Trinity Church in Chicago. Obama, while affirming the tremendous work his church has done in his city and around the nation, has condemned the most controversial remarks of his pastor. But the whole controversy points to the enormous gap in understanding between the mainstream black community in the U.S. and the experience of many white Americans. And that is what we are going to have to heal if we are ever to move forward.
Here is what I mean.
There is a deep well of both frustration and anger in the African-American community in the U.S. And those feelings are borne of the concrete experience of real oppression, discrimination, and blocked opportunities that most of America's white citizens take for granted. African Americans across the spectrum of income and success will speak personally to those feelings of frustration and anger, when white people are willing to listen. But usually we are not. In 2008, to still not comprehend or seek to understand the reality of black frustration and anger is to be in a state of white denial - which, very sadly, is where many white Americans are.
The black church pulpit has historically been a place of prophetic truth-telling about the realities that black people experience in their own country. Indeed, the black church has often been the only place where such truths are ever told. And, black preachers have had the pastoral task of nurturing the spirits of people who feel beaten down week after week. Strong and prophetic words from black church pulpits are often a source of comfort and affirmation for black congregations. The truth is that many white Americans would indeed feel uncomfortable with the rhetoric of many black preachers from many black churches all across the country.
But if you look beyond the grainy black-and-white clips of the dashiki-clad Rev. Wright and the angry black male voice (all designed to provoke stereotypes and fear), and actually listen to what his words are saying about the U.S. being run by "rich white people" while blacks have cabs speeding by them, and about the U.S.'s misdeeds around the world, it's hard to disagree with many of the facts presented. It's rather the angry tone of Wright's comments that provides the offense and the controversy.
Ironically, a new generation of black Americans is now eager and ready to move beyond the frustration and anger to a new experience of opportunity and hope. And nobody represents that shift more than Barack Obama. There is a generational shift occurring within the black community itself. This shift is between an older generation that is sometimes perceived to be stuck in the politics of victimization and grievance, and a younger generation that believes that opportunity and progress are now possible—not by ignoring, but by being committed to actually changing the facts of oppression and discrimination.
Barack Obama represents that hope of dealing with the substance of the issues of injustice while at the same time articulating the politics of hope, and even the possibility of racial unity. Obama's attraction to many who are white, especially a new generation, demonstrates the promise of a new racial politics in the U.S. But to be a leader for a new generation of black Americans, Barack Obama had to be firmly rooted in the black church tradition, where the critique of white America, the sustenance of the African-American community, and God's promise for the future are all clearly articulated. That's why he began attending Trinity Church, where he was converted to Jesus Christ in the black liberationist tradition of, among others, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
So it would be a great tragedy if the old rhetoric of black frustration and anger were to now hurt Barack Obama, who has become the best hope of beginning to heal that very frustration and anger. Obama has never chosen to talk about race in the way that Rev. Jeremiah Wright does on the video clips that keep playing, and indeed has never played "the race card" at any time in this election. It's been his opponents that have, especially the right-wing conservative media machine that wants the U.S. to believe he is secretly a Muslim and from a "racist" church.
This most recent controversy over race just demonstrates how enormous the gap still is between whites and blacks in the U.S. - in our experience and our capacity to understand one another. May God help us to heal that divide and truly bless America.
The media frenzy over the remarks of Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, raise critical challenge to the prophetic role and voice of the black church. These "incendiary" remarks have set off a firestorm in the media, exposing the deep divide that exists on Sundays - America's most segregated hour of the week. This controversy serves as a stark reminder that the problem of the color line that still divides the U.S. and its churches. This often misguided debate obscures the rich and necessary prophetic role of the black church. Most coverage fails to capture the competing narratives and self-definitions of the U.S. that coexist depending on one's race and social location. While I'm uncomfortable with some of Dr. Wright's overly provocative rhetoric, and disagree with some of his claims (like his suggestion that AIDS was a creation of the U.S. government), I still vehemently defend the prophetic tradition that Rev. Wright has advanced over the course of 36 years of ministry. I agree with the Rev. Otis Moss III, the new Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, that we do a grave disservice by boiling down over 207,000 minutes of Dr. Wright's preaching into a handful of 30-second sound bites, most taken out of context.
Many may be wondering what I mean by prophetic voice and asking why it is so critical for the full vocation of the church and the health of our democracy. Prophets foretell the future in the name of God, speaking truth to power against injustice while calling us back to God's word and kingdom. According to Obery Hendricks, "prophetic speech is characterized by an overwhelming sense of an encounter with God and a message of moral and political judgment that a prophet feels divinely compelled to proclaim … to change social orders that have stratified inequities of power and privilege and wealth so all can have access to the fullest fruits of life". Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and so many other biblical prophets did not mince words or shy away from controversy. Like these prophets, prophetic preachers are often misunderstood, persecuted, and sometimes even killed for their words. Jesus continues this long and rich tradition when he says in Matthew 23:3, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith." This is also exemplified in the gospel of Luke when he overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple just after riding a donkey into Jerusalem on the Palm Sunday that the church just commemorated.
Arguably, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embodied the best of the black prophetic tradition as one who courageously pronounced judgment against America for the sin of racism and the cancer of Jim Crow segregation. But King also called on America become the beloved community, ensuring that God's demands for dignity and justice and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution were afforded to all Americans. King's life was cut tragically short exactly 40 years ago in April because of his prophetic witness - describing the war in Vietnam as a "demonic suction tube," calling the U.S. "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, and forewarning to striking sanitation workers in Memphis that like Dives in the parable of Lazarus, "America is going to hell if we don't use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children have the basic necessities of life." Our nation is quick to romanticize the Dr. King of Montgomery and Selma, but often ignores the King of Memphis that demanded a living wage, or the King of Riverside Church who declared silence around the Vietnam War as betrayal.
A preacher's job sometimes requires prodding and provoking a congregation, shining a light on some of our most uncomfortable realities and hard-to-accept truths. I find it hard to believe that anyone could attend a church for years and never take issue with at least some of the things that were said by even the most respected and beloved pastor. Black prophetic preaching often criticizes America for its transgressions, contradictions, and hypocrisy, but at its best does this out of a deep and abiding belief in God's justice and love for what America could become if it lived out the full promise of her ideals. When the prophetic tradition holds up a mirror to our nation's misdeeds and imperfections, it stands tall with the biblical prophets of old. This is good company to keep indeed.
Adam Taylor is director of campaigns and organizing for Sojourners.
The current media flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, strikes me as nothing short of strange. Anyone who attends church on a regular basis knows how frequently congregants disagree with their ministers. To sit in a pew is not necessarily assent to a message preached on a particular day. Being a church member is not some sort of mindless cult, where individuals believe every word preached. Rather, being a church member means being part of a community of faith—a gathered people, always diverse and sometimes at odds, who constitute Christ's body in the world.
But the attack on Rev. Wright reveals something beyond ignorance of basic dynamics of Christian community. It demonstrates the level of misunderstanding that still divides white and black Christians in the United States. Many white people find the traditions of African-American preaching offensive, especially when it comes to politics.
I know because I am one of those white people. My first sustained encounter with African-American preaching came in graduate school about twenty years ago. I had been assigned as a teaching assistant to a course in Black Church Studies. The placement surprised me, since I had no background in the subject. But the professor assured me that "anyone with experience teaching American religion" would be able to handle the load.
The subject matter was not, as the professor indicated, difficult. The emotional content, however, was. To prepare, I had to read literally thousands of pages of black preaching and theology covering the entire scope of American history. While the particulars of preaching changed through time, one thing did not. Throughout the entire corpus, black Christian leaders leveled a devastating critique against their white brothers and sisters—accusing white Christians of maintaining "ease in Zion" while allowing black people to suffer injustice and oppression.
Typical of the form used by black preachers is Frederick Douglass' address, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" first delivered on July 5, 1852. The address, a political sermon, forcefully attacks white culture. "Fellow-citizens," Douglass proclaims, "above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wails of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them." He goes on to calls American conduct "hideous and revolting" and accuses white Christians of trampling upon and disregarding both the constitution and the Bible. He concluded his sermon with the words, "For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."
This was very hard to take. I confess: nearly everything I read that semester pained and angered me. But four months of listening to voices that I wanted to reject made me different. I began to hear the power of the critique. I came to appreciate the prophetic nature of black preaching. I recognized that these voices emerged from a very distinct historical experience. And I admired the narrative interplay between the Bible and social justice. Over time, they taught me to hear the Gospel from an angular perspective—the angle of slaves, freed blacks, of those who feared lynching, of those who longed for Africa, those who could not attend good schools. From them, I learned that liberation through Jesus was a powerful thing. And that white Americans really did need to repent when it came to race.
Learning to listen was not easy. It took patience, historical imagination, and lots of complaining to my friends—even my African-American ones. Eventually, I figured out that even if your ancestors had been the oppressors, you can enter into the world of those who had been oppressed with generosity and a heart open to transformation.
As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright's "radical" sermons today, I do not hear the words of a "dangerous" preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique. I hear Frederick Douglass. And, mostly, I hear the Gospel slant—I hear it from an angle that is not natural to me. It is good to hear that slant.
That is not, of course, comfortable for white people. Nor is it easily understood in sound bites. It does not easily fit in a contemporary political campaign. But it is a deep spiritual river in American faith and culture, a river that—as I had to learn—flows from the throne of God.
Diana Butler Bass holds a doctorate in American religion from Duke University. She is the author of six books including Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperOne, 2006).
The 40th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination - April 4, 1968 - will soon be upon us. As I remember Dr. King against the backdrop of this 2008 presidential election cycle, I reflect on what a brilliant political strategist he was. He was able to bring corporations to the point of acquiescence without resorting to violence or bribery. He was able to pass legislation that changed the daily lives of not only blacks but also women, people of faith, and immigrants - without ever being elected to public office or attempting to buy political influence. He was able to garner and leverage the attention of the entire international community on behalf of America's poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised - without ever being appointed to an ambassadorship or other high-profile international post. He was able to remind U.S. citizens what a democracy was and to engender a sense of moral responsibility that, more than 40 years later, challenges us to be the good we want to see in the world. King was a political genius.
With a vision this grand, one would think that the lion's share of King's work would have been on the national and international stage, yet somehow King expected to bring all this about by local, contextual, direct action: organizing to gain political access and self-determination for Blacks, advocating on behalf of unemployed Appalachian whites, striking with sanitation workers. I believe his ability to accomplish each of these things was predicated on a very simple, but profound realization: All politics are identity politics. The question is: whom does one choose to identify with?
We must understand that King didn't identify with whom he did because he had to. King received early admittance into Morehouse College at age 15. He had secured his doctorate by the age of 26. From Boston University, he could have gone any number of places, but he chose to return to the South - the Deep South - the hot-bed of racial tension in America in 1953. This became a habit that he continued to practice all his life. He would position himself in the mist of injustice and turmoil, and though it did not serve him personally, he would stand in solidarity with the marginalized, giving voice to their plight. This was King's identity politics.
Nowadays, when we hear the talking heads in the media discussing identity politics, they talk about groups that share what the privileged like to term "special interests" - Blacks, homosexuals, Muslims, women, the disabled, veterans, immigrants, etc. - as if the interests of these people groups are somehow outside or beyond the mainstream. What is never discussed is that the interests of the already privileged are no less specialized and linked to their identity as well.
Yet King never got caught up into pitting one group's interest against another. He took his cue from Jesus. Jesus consistently chose to identify with those who were oppressed, the captive, the outsider, the poor, the sick, the voiceless. His represented an others-interested politics, an others-interested identity. And his way turns our typical identity politics on its head.
We are admonished daily, at times even from the pulpit, to vote and to seek our own so-called "enlightened" self-interest. Yet I can't recall one story from the biblical narrative in which a situation was improved or resolved by the protagonist attending more carefully to his or her own self-interest.
In his parable of "The Reckoning" (Matt 25:31-46), Jesus tells of those who are rewarded for feeding, clothing, sheltering, and freeing him. They responded to their good fortune with bewilderment: "Lord, when did we ever see you hungry, needy, a stranger, or in prison?" And Jesus announces, "Insomuch as you've done it unto the least of these my brethren, you've done unto me." Even in judgment, Jesus chooses to identify with all of humanity. I can imagine King sitting in his study reading this and saying like a good-ol' Baptist preacher, "If it was good enough for my Jesus, it's good enough for me!"
So in this politically charged season, when race and gender and ideology are, as we have seen already, apt to become weapons in a war for the hearts and minds and hopes and dreams of all U.S. citizens, all politics remain identity politics - but that doesn't mean we have to pit our identity against the identity of another. In the spirit of King - and Jesus before him - we can choose to identify with more than just ourselves. We too can be both privileged and unprivileged, black and white, Asian and Latino, Muslim and Jew, Christian and Pagan, rich and poor, citizen and immigrant, national and international, public and private, veterans and peacemakers, Republican and Democrat, homosexual and unborn, blue collar, white collar, and no collar.
We can know each other's suffering, be acquainted with each other's grief, and work on each other's behalf to heal the hurts that have for too long divided the human family and robbed us of the solidarity that is, perhaps, our only hope of a brighter tomorrow.
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
In the past year, political expediency, xenophobia, and extremism defeated reason, compromise, and reconciliation in the immigration debate. The level of animosity directed towards the immigrant community, particularly the Latino community, stands at an all time high. We cannot stay silent.
The world once again bears witness to the actions taken, not just by our Congress, but by the people of the U.S. Will apathy, nativism, and xenophobia silence the voices of reason, compromise, family values, Judeo-Christian ethos, and border protection? It is time for reasonable U.S. citizens and for the faith community to rise up and clearly state that while we all desire to protect our borders and apply the rule of law, we will not embrace the nativist and discriminatory rhetoric articulated under the guise of border protection. We can stop illegal immigration, protect our borders, protect our values, and simultaneously protect the American dream only if we work within the framework of our Judeo-Christian heritage and repudiate all discriminatory and bigoted threads.
On a personal note, I am a U.S. citizen born in New Jersey; a Generation X-er who never would of believed that in my lifetime I would see the resurrection of bigoted, nativist, and discriminatory elements in our society. We must understand that time is of the essence. The time has come for the U.S., and particularly the U.S. faith community, to comprehend that at the border and in our communities, we have the poor, suffering, seekers, Samaritans, and strangers. Yet, above all, in vast majority, what we have at the borders and in the field, in our cities and in our farms, are our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr. is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an organization of Hispanic evangelicals. Watch his recent conversation with Bill Moyers.
This is part two of my reflections concerning Election 2008 and Generation X, Y, and next. As I said before, this is an exciting time in the national landscape. A revival is taking place that incorporates thousands of younger evangelicals with pioneers in the faith. This is a broad coalition of Moseses and Joshuas and Deborahs, to use biblical language. In my last posting here concerning the election in kaleidoscope, I received some e-mails, phone calls, and postings that demonstrate the need for this conversation.
The question is what does this Mosaic revival reveal? Simply, that we recognize that to promote real movement it will take a broad coalition across racial/ethnic, gender, generational, and denominational lines. Much has been rumored of the tension between black and brown or Asian and black voters. Other tensions have been pointed about differences between female and male voters or young and elderly voters. We're working for a new day. This revival is pleading for people of good will to change the national conversation screen to high-definition.
Let me be clear about some of the challenges to this mosaic in concrete election 2008 terms:
Refusing to vote for Senator McCain because of his age (ageism);
Refusing to vote for Senator Obama because of his race (racism).
Refusing to vote for Senator Clinton because of her gender (sexism).
Refusing to vote for Governors Romney or Huckabee because of their religion (sectarianism).
Voting for them only because of any of these criteria presents its own myopia.
I vote for a candidate based on where they stand on the issues that most closely reflect Jesus' ethic of love of God and creation (this is a very long discussion worth having in another forum). I am hopeful that there is a new and creative conversation surging. In this new conversation, leaders in the Asian, Euro-American, Latino, Native-American, African-American, etc., communities are emphasizing the "ties that bind" and not the walls that separate.
In this new kaleidoscopic way of doing policy perhaps we should think of endorsements in another way. What candidates are endorsing policies that are mindful of this global and U.S. mosaic? In a politics-as-usual model, candidates exploit tensions—perceived or real—among demographics. This really needs to stop. A new kind of conversation seeks creative solutions that take particularity seriously but does away with the politics of animosity. There are signs of hope.
Recently, I've joined an organization called New York Faith and Justice and I've learned something about a new wave of voters. Two of the prominent leaders are an African American Cherokee Chickasaw woman, Lisa Sharon Harper, and a white evangelical man, Peter Heltzel. Lisa and Peter are an example of this emerging mosaic. They welcome my Latino perspective and continually want to be challenged and informed by it. Peter and Lisa are working hard to ensure that issues important to multiple constituencies are at the forefront of our city-wide and national dialogue.
Similarly, I've been working closely with Adam Taylor and Patty Kupfer of Sojourners on immigration reform issues. The conversation between this black man, white woman, and myself are a sign of the mosaic that represents the diversity of the kingdom of God. We don't always agree on everything, but we are committed to mutuality and respect and working on behalf of the beloved community - stated in Revelation 7:9 - "from every tribe, nation, people and language." These are signs of hopefulness that the presidential candidates need to heed. What is critical here is that there is not an attempt to assimilate but rather to keep unity while respecting diversity.
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a Sojourners board member.
When Kevin Rudd was elected prime minister of Australia, I wrote that he was a committed Catholic who was thinking about how to apply Catholic social teaching to public policy. This week, on the day after his swearing in as prime minister, in the first act of his new government, Rudd delivered a speech of apology to the aboriginal people as "Government business, motion number one." [Watch A historic speech]
He began,
I move, That today we honor the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history. The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
Then, to "cheers and tears," he continued
We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities, and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants, and for their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
For Australia's aboriginal people, news reports called it a day for healing:
Aboriginal leaders who gathered in Canberra to hear today's apology have reacted with joy and relief at the long-overdue event. The co-chairwoman of the Stolen Generation Alliance, Christine King, said, "This has been a journey of all our people, so all voices have to be heard, all pain has to be acknowledged, all grief has to be shared and this is the way forward."
And, not being content only with words, the government and the opposition party agreed to form a joint "war cabinet" to develop policies that make the apology real. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Rudd "proposed the following tasks: to provide every indigenous four-year-old in a remote community with early childhood education within five years; to halve the gap between white and black Australia in literacy, numeracy, and literacy within a decade; to halve the infant mortality rates within a generation; and close the life expectancy gap."
I expected Kevin Rudd to be a new kind of political leader who seeks to practice moral politics. His initial act of apology for past wrongs begins to fulfill that hope and is a great start to his new government.
Black and white, we waited like I had waited in the mosh pit for Rage Against the Machine two weeks earlier. Yet the main feature on this day, a day that so many had been waiting for, working for, praying for, was just one word: "Sorry."
Matty is one of the many awesome kids in our neighbourhood who don't mind that we are white and often hang out at our houses. As one kid put it, "it's not shame 'cause youse are different." (It must be the dreads.) Matty likes hip hop and reckons Jesus would love Aussie Rules footy (football). Matty just started his first year at high school and though it was a school day, this 13-year-old excitedly wanted me to pick him up before six in the morning so we could get to the Perth foreshore in time because, as Matty told me, "Mum reckons it's important for us."
I added, "I think it's really important for us wadjelas [white people] as well!"
Crammed at the sides of the thousands of people stacked into the "Music Box" before seven in the morning, the crowd was amazingly civil considering the wait: 200 plus years. The first hour of sun light shone through the gum leaves hitting us as we waited to watch Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd live from Australia's capital. Matty turned to me and said:
"This is history, unna?" ["This has made history, yeah?"]
I heard a number of people, both white and Black, who had been waiting for such a long time, say, "I don't know what to feel." I heard one aboriginal friend put it, "This is a day of celebration!" Yet another friend just down the street said: "I saw it on television and just cried. He's not like most them that are all talk no action. I couldn't stop crying. I just kept thinking of mum and my dad, my cousins. All ripped away from home and family."
She shared later, "things are different now." Somehow wrapped up in this one little word, "sorry," was a new future. This strong aboriginal woman, who I'm proud to call my friend, was saying that in this word a new day is possible for her people and our nation. In this word, grief can now find its energy in change rather than despair. The cries of mothers who have had their babies torn from their arms and stolen from their breast have finally reached the halls of government. And miraculously, government has started to repent from the legacy of racism and colonialism.
Yet Matty's question still hangs in the air: "This is history, unna?"
If we think a couple of speeches is going to solve a history of genocide and colonization or the reality that Indigenous Australians die 17 years earlier on average than the rest the country; or the poverty of remote indigenous communities in one of the richest countries on earth; or the fact that when I go into prisons in Australia I see white systemic sin expressed in black incarceration, my answer to Matty is, "no." A number of years back, the famous indigenous activist "Uncle Kev" Buzzacott told me while we were on a Peace Pilgrimage that, "It's recon-silly-ation if reconciliation talk doesn't come with justice for us."
Yet, if instead, "sorry" is a call to enact real reconciliation which is not seeking to appease one's guilt but seeking to put right the wrong we have done, my answer is, "yes." If "sorry" looks like the healing justice we see in Christ and experience in relationship with God, and have seen in the ministry of peacemakers like Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, and many others, my answer to Matty is, "yes."
By God's grace, maybe the call to action and healing which has started to flow out of Sorry Day can be an icon for the church to hear how the cross and the empowerment of grace is a call to active witness to the ministry of reconciliation that is ours in Christ. I think on Sorry Day I heard afresh from the empty tomb the whisper of the Holy Spirit in the words of a 13-year-old Indigenous boy asking if my life witnessed too:
"This is history unna?"
Jarrod McKenna is seeking to live God's love. He's a co-founder of the Peace Tree Christian Commune serving the marginalized in one of the poorest of areas in his city, and is the founder and creative director of Empowering Peacemakers (EPYC), for which he has received an Australian peace award in his work for peace and (eco)justice.
Without question the 2008 election is a historic time. Much has been said about the momentous nature of this presidential election. A woman, an African American, and a Latino were all trying to make history, albeit on one side of the political aisle. This moment in U.S. history should not be understated. As a Latino evangelical leader, I've been watching this election closely. It's an excellent time to talk about national voting in terms of a kaleidoscope. As a man who grew up in poor urban neighborhood in New Jersey and today pastors a multiethnic congregation in New York, I recognize the fragile nature of these conversations. Despite the complexity of this conversation, this election is an opportune moment to engage this much needed dialogue. The mixed legacy of race relations in the U.S. demands a broader conversation. In the 21st century, where many watch television in high-definition, national politics must be done in technicolor.
Everyone knows there is a Latino boom in the U.S. We are no longer, to paraphrase Black novelist, Ralph Ellison, The Invisible People. By most accounts, Latinos are the nation's fastest growing minority group. About 15 percent of the U.S. population—more than 45 million people—are of Hispanic descent. Although Hispanics are under 10 percent of the U.S. electorate, the Hispanic electorate looms large in several "swing states." According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, Hispanics make up 14 percent of the electorate in Florida, 12 percent in Nevada and Colorado, and 37 percent in New Mexico. There is no mystery to why both parties held Spanish-language debates on Univision. Latinos and Latinas matter.
This Latino(a) demographic boom is not bad news, nor as some might erroneously argue, an ominous sign of an invasion. Still, we cannot ignore the racism that still exists in many communities, Latinos included. Growing up in the "projects" I saw this happen too often. The urban plight often caused Blacks, poor Whites, and Latinos to struggle for resources. Regrettably, there is still a tendency by some in the media, politics, and culture to make the Latino population explosion a menacing sign. My response: scapegoating is not an option. It's time to change the channel to high-definition technicolor and create new solutions. Let's move into a sophisticated conversation that listens to all voices respectfully.
Any candidate that ignores the Latino evangelical electorates is making a serious mistake. Any leader, religious or political, that assumes how Latinos or evangelicals should vote by arguing that one party is the Christian or evangelical party is not speaking the language of the technicolor revival. There is a shift going on among evangelicals, and the more than 8 million Latino evangelicals cannot be easily politically pigeon-holed. Latino evangelicals are seeking an inclusive and broad coalition for social justice that values them at the table. Immigration, HIV/AIDS, issues concerning life, housing, healthcare, genocide, urban ecology, and education are all on their list of priorities. No candidate in 2008 can assume they know how Latino evangelicals will vote.
"Evangelical" and "Latino" need not equal Democrat, Republican, or Independent. This is about a movement that transcends the 2008 election - but will certainly influence it. We seek the beloved community, biblical justice, and the political genius that elevates the national conversation and transcends racial-ethnic divides and partisanship.
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a Sojourners board member.
Lately I keep wishing I was somebody else. Somebody different. Somebody better than me.
Don't worry. I'm not depressed. I am well aware that I have many good qualities and many more good friends. My marriage is strong. My kids are fine. Moreover, I am ever increasingly convinced that the God of love loves me, no matter what I do or don't do.
Unfortunately, none of those things changes the fact that, after nearly 45 years of countless growth opportunities, I remain essentially the same careless, undisciplined fool I've always been. Everybody makes mistakes, of course, but mine are almost always the kind a more thoughtful, more focused person could easily avoid.
On Christmas Eve, on my way to the YMCA with my son Roman, I ran a stop sign and hit a car just a block from my house. The other driver was young and furious and both Roman and I thought we were in real trouble. We might have been, too, if he hadn't recognized me as a friend of his nephews. Even so, I cost my family our $1000 insurance deductible, not to mention the rate hike sure to come when this claim gets added to the massive speeding ticket I got a few months earlier, while Miranda and I were visiting colleges in North Carolina. Because we were late for an appointment. Because I didn't read over the directions the night before. Because I'm an idiot.
I'm not kidding, either. Believe me, there's nothing funny about missing a plane and paying the change fee and getting stranded alone in Honolulu for two days at the end of a 10-day speaking trip, all because you didn't bother to double-check your departure time. Nobody laughs when you leave your son waiting in the rain outside his school because you lost track of time at the office, or blow a valuable new friendship because you didn't even call after you forgot a lunch appointment, or let your wife down for the millionth time because you got so wrapped up in a conversation with somebody else.
If you're wondering why I'm beating myself up this way, well, it's because a few days ago I wasted a bunch of money, too. I got hustled out of it, actually, but only after I carelessly violated just about every urban ministry principle I've taught for the past 20 years. Honestly, the guy who hustled me wasn't half as slick as I was stupid.
It all started when our friend Mark and I, along with a bunch of college kids, rebuilt the porch and cleared out the basement of this old twin house he bought in our neighborhood, where we have our offices, board a few interns, and rent an apartment to a really cool woman we're trying to draw into our fellowship. Anyway, we ended up with a ton of junk in the front yard -- including about 50 old cans of paint -- that needed to go to the local landfill. The next day, as we were sorting it out, a friendly man came by and offered to load it all up and haul it away for a mere $50.
"I'm a strong, Christian man and I need the work," he told me. "I'm not one of these other black guys out here stealing to buy drugs. My cousin owns that truck over there and a buddy of ours has a junkyard on the other side of town. We can do the job right now. It sure would be a blessing if you could trust me to help you out."
I should have said no, of course. In the first place, Mark and I were perfectly capable of hauling the stuff in his truck the next day, as planned. It was going to cost us a lot more than $50 to dispose of it properly, of course, not to mention our time, but we didn't need any help. Moreover, even if we had, we had 10 friends within three blocks who needed the work as much, or more, than this guy. Even so, I hesitated. Looking back, I can see I was afraid.
I didn't want to seem like an untrusting racist. I felt guilty for being so much better off. I didn't want to disappoint this guy - even though I barely knew him. And besides, the deal itself was too good to be true.
So then, before you could say "there's a sucker born every minute," I was off to the ATM for $80 in cash, which I promptly deposited in my new friend's hand, so that he and his cousin could gas up their truck and get some dinner before commencing to work that evening. He pumped my hand and hugged me in gratitude. The job would be finished by the time I got back in the morning, he assured me, but we exchanged cell phone numbers just in case.
You already know the rest of the story.
Why didn't I just tell that guy to come back and work with us the next day? Why didn't I insist on paying with a check, and even then only when the job was done? Why didn't I call to ask my wife what she thought I should do? Why didn't I worry about the probability that our toxic waste would be illegally dumped? Why didn't I recognize the red flags of race talk and Christian talk and trust talk that indicate an urban con job?
The short answer, of course, is that I am a careless, undisciplined fool. But in this case, there's more to it than that. In this case, even after more than 20 years of urban ministry, racial reconsideration, and earnest soul-searching, it is painfully evident that I still have enough unfocused white guilt to make me vulnerable to just about anyone shrewd or desperate enough to work that angle. Living where and how I do these days that could be quite a problem.
I really do want to be better, not only for my neighbors here in Walnut Hills, but even more so for my family and friends. It is perhaps to my credit that I am so adept at confessing and apologizing and winning back people's trust, but it embarrasses me that I've had so many opportunities to practice those skills. I'm tired of saying I'm sorry for the same things - over and over again.
God knows I've changed before. Now God knows I want to change again. And now you know too.
Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks, writes, and blogs www.bartcampolo.com about grace, faith, loving relationships and social justice. Bart is the leader of The Walnut Hills Fellowship www.thewalnuthillsfellowship.org in inner-city Cincinnati. He is also founder of Mission Year www.missionyear.org, which recruits committed young adults to live and work among the poor in inner-city neighborhoods across the USA, and executive director of EAPE, which develops and supports innovative, cost-effective mission projects around the world.
A pastor of a large metropolitan church once sought me out for some advice. He was told by several other people that as far as solving his church growth dilemma, namely, drawing Native Americans to the church, I was the "go to guy." Disregarding whether or not those assumptions were correct, I agreed to have a meeting with him over breakfast the next day. He began our meeting by laying out his failures in attracting a significant First Nations crowd, even though the neighborhood demographics suggested they should have a much larger native constituency. He summed up his case, and then looked at his watch to inform me we had about 10 minutes before he needed to leave. I saved him nine minutes that morning. …
My short answer was simple. I told him to put Native Americans in real leadership positions and he would see the growth he was looking for. His response: "but they are not ready for the responsibility." To most ethnic minorities this retort is very familiar. I perceived that what he really meant was that, "we," (meaning the White majority) "are not ready for them to lead us." And when it comes to healing the old racial divides in the United States, this could be the rub.
With just a few exceptions, this may be especially true among evangelicals. Pick any evangelical college, seminary, church, new movement, etc. and go to their website. Unless it began as a minority institution out of reaction to this problem, you will find very few (and often no) ethnic minorities in key leadership positions. While most of us would like to believe that we have left racism behind in the 20th century, this one test could determine our progress.
And, if there are models out there of Blacks leading Hispanic churches, Native Americans leading White Christian seminaries, Asians leading black colleges or a whole host of other wonderfully multi-hued possibilities—then by all means—let's make them known!
The causes of the problem are historic, deeply imbedded and multi-faceted, but they are not complex. It boils down to trust and humility. In the case of Christians, this trust and humility becomes a weapon in a stance of faith against an evil social construction that has kept us away from "the other" for far too long. We must ask ourselves uncomfortable questions such as, "Is the cross really the great leveler of all humanity? Do I believe the equality that Christ brings to the point of losing my own social/personal controls? Do I believe in the dignity of others enough to prove it by submitting myself to other ethnic/cultural norms and expectations?"
What I am calling for is truly uncomfortable and it will take years to work out - but it is a clear possibility. I am not saying that solving the crisis of multi-ethnic leadership will end all racism. I am saying it is about as practical and as serious a solution as could be enacted in the very near future. I believe actions leading to increased ethnic minority leadership among Whites will not only show good faith in resolving racism, but it will result in greater paradigms of respect and healing than we could imagine. Given the United States' history, such paradigms would resemble what Jesus referred to as the "kingdom of God."
Last week I shared a snapshot of the new monastics. This week I will look at the mosaics. God is doing something new through a new generation of multicultural church planters.
Efrem Smith, who coauthored The Hip-Hop Church, will be keynoting our conference on the theme of Dr. Martin King's vision of "The Beloved Community." By 2060 the United States will become the first Western country in which Europeans will no longer be the dominant demographic group. We will become a richly multicultural society, and Smith will explain how the church can help us welcome this future.
Smith has planted Sanctuary Covenant Church, compelling evidence that God is doing something new through young people from different races and cultures. They are experiencing something of the richness of God's kingdom not only in their worship but in their life together across race and class.
The emerging church movement tends to be very white and male. But Tommy Kyllonen, a multicultural church planter in Florida, states in Un.orthodox: Church. Hip-Hop. Culture that the emerging church is also the young black male in the hood. It is the second-generation Mexican in L.A. and the child of the Chinese immigrant in Houston. The emerging church is the Puerto Rican female on Wall Street.
Smith tells me that urban hip-hop culture isn't just postmodern but also post-institutional, post-soul, and post-civil rights too. I find that multicultural churches, like the best of emerging and missional churches, tend to be more outwardly focused in mission. For example, Smith's church invests more than 50% of their giving in local and global mission.
As we race into an increasingly multicultural future, all of our largely monocultural churches are going to need to build bridges to the growing numbers of multicultural immigrant and ethnic congregations sharing life and mission. Read more at www.thenewconspirators.com
Tom Sine founded Mustard Seed Associates in 1989. He has worked as a consultant in futures research and planning for numerous nonprofit organizations and speaks at gatherings all over the world with his wife, Christine. His newest book, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, comes out next month. Discover what God is doing through a new generation of risk takers, innovators, and prophets February 28-March 1 in Seattle. Visit: www.thenewconspirators.wordpress.com
Schools in the U.S. have been resegregating themselves at a fast clip for the past 15 years or so, and the racial demographics of some districts are approaching Old South numbers. Why should we care? I can tell you.
I was born in the Philippines and grew up in New Zealand, where 78 percent of the population is of European descent. The rest is mostly foreign-born, recently immigrated, and, in some cases, extremely socially segregated. There were disconcerting (albeit infrequent) experiences with xenophobia and racism: my dad and his South Indian colleague being refused service in a bar during a business trip, my parents whispering quietly in Tagalog with a friend who had his tires slashed and a swastika scrawled over his garage.
Growing up was awkward, difficult, and sometimes painful. I always just chalked it up to being a weird little person, until my family moved to Fremont, California, when I was 10. Only then did I realize how what should have been an idyllic childhood, in a country with more sheep than people, was instead marred by segregation and racism. In Fremont my school was incredibly diverse. I felt a lot of freedom and peace in my own identity once I saw how secure and confident the members of other minority groups were.
When I was 14 my family moved again—to Pleasanton, a suburb only 30 minutes away. The cultural shock was as startling as the move from New Zealand—in reverse. Like New Zealand, 80 percent of Pleasanton's population identifies as white. In my first few weeks at the new school, I remember standing in line for PE behind an Indian kid named Nikhil when he was called a "sand-nigger." I thought to myself, "Are you kidding me?!" I grew even more afraid as no one else in the line stepped in to defend Nik or protest the slur.
I don't count myself as oppressed or downtrodden—one of the good things about going to a majority white school in California is that it pretty much correlates to receiving an excellent public education (once you put all the privileged kids in the same institution, their privilege usually follows them). I made it into University of California-Berkeley straight out of high school, so I guess being called a "chink" once a year was totally worth it.
Here's something I learned at Berkeley: Ever since the initial breakthroughs in the years following Brown v. Board, schools have been tending toward resegregation through redistricting, strategic community planning, and prohibitive housing costs. In some school counties now it's Jim Crow in all but name, and that's a real shame. Diversifying schools gives more minorities the resources to earn their way to college in a less symbolically violent atmosphere. It's going to take effort on all levels – policy, institutions, community, and individual – to reintegrate neighborhoods and schools in a meaningful and lasting way.
Anna Almendrala is the marketing and circulation assistant for Sojourners.
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview John Sayles about his movie Honeydripper, a multilayered and complex account of the birth of rock and roll in the Deep South. Following is an excerpt from our conversation. (The full interview with John Sayles will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Wittenburg Door.)
How would you describe the politics of your films?
My films are politically conscious as opposed to being politically unconscious. Part of who we are is what we live, what we see, and how we define ourselves. And politics is how we define ourselves. As a screenwriter of hire, very often my job is to get rid of all that stuff and just concentrate on the genre because it's thought to be distracting. But when I make a movie and want to talk a bit more honestly about people, you can't leave it out. For example, you can't really talk about the U.S. in the Deep South in 1951 without talking about segregation.
What was the significance of having a revival going on the same night that rock and roll was debuting at the Honeydripper Lounge?
That was a dichotomy that was very common in those little towns, both with white and black people, which was that you had to make a choice between being a sinner and being saved. It was often presented by the preachers as a very black and white choice, whereas there were a lot of people who somehow managed to do a little bit of both. For example, Sam Cooke started as a gospel singer and he caught a lot of flack when he started singing secular music.
What outreach, if any, are you doing to the black historical churches?
We're doing quite a bit actually. I know in Atlanta we're doing a lot with Hands on Atlanta around the Martin Luther King Jr. ceremonies. Danny Glover has a cousin who is the minister of a big church in Atlanta and he's going to work with them to do something. One of the things that we're doing with Honeydripper is we're trying to make its opening in each city an event.
How can the medium of film be a vehicle for social change?
Take race relations for instance. If you look at the history of American film, movies were probably part of the problem for the first 55 years of their existence. Even the comedies had hardly any African Americans in them. Then maybe in the late '50s, there started to be a few movies where African Americans seemed a bit more human. So, I think gradually television and movies are a little bit more part of the solution than part of the problem. It's all a conversation and there are a lot of voices in the conversation. Maybe one movie will be helpful or useful to people knowing a little bit more about each other.
Any suggestions for aspiring filmmakers, who want to make a social change but the dynamics of making movies has changed so much since you got started?
Documentaries are great. You don't need a theatrical release now. Just do your stuff and can get it out on the web.
(Author's note: A book I found that really captured the ethos of the South pre-1964 was Gurdon Brewster's No Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King, an account of his experiences as an intern with Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1961 where he lived with Daddy King. Also, in his book, Boom! Voices of the Sixties, Tom Brokaw offers some intriguing reflections about his encounters with civil rights leaders, including Representatives John Lewis and Julian Bond, Reverend Andrew Young, Tom Turnipseed, and Reverend Thomas Gilmore.)
Mary Nelson just posted on MLK's Riverside speech, but I have some reflections to add. I'll admit that I took a "day off" yesterday instead of a "day on," making a four-day weekend backpacking trip in the Adirondacks with some buddies. But I did participate in some popular education on the van ride home yesterday, observing the occasion by playing two of the three MLK speeches I've been able to find for free online. I skipped ubiquitous and well-known "I Have a Dream" speech. We did listen to his "Mountaintop" speech, given the night before he was assassinated. Though it's more popularly known for the haunting forshadowings of this death—"I may not get there with you ..."—we were struck by its connection of economic to racial justice.
But "Beyond Vietnam" is worth a listen as a history lesson, as a challenge to the more domesticated gloss that gets applied to MLK's legacy every January, and perhaps most importantly as a continuing challenge to society and the church to take seriously the imperative of nonviolence: "We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation." A few passages are familiar to me by now since they're the kind of things that we at Sojourners frequently quote. There's the painfully relevant assertion that:
America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.
And this warning:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
But those passages are primarily political. Listening yesterday, another passage jumped out that I was less familiar with—one that rooted King's nonviolence in his faith, and an important reminder to Christians that allegiances to political movements and divisions must fall beneath our allegiance to Christ:
This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all [people]—for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web editor for Sojourners.
Martin Luther King's sermon at Riverside Church linked the devastating Vietnam war to the struggle over poverty. I began working that year in an under-resourced community and wore a "Bread not Bombs" sweatshirt to anti-war demonstrations. Sadly, not much has changed. The amount spent on the Iraq war (CBO estimate $9 billion a month, up to $1 trillion total), if directed elsewhere, would virtually ensure universal education, universal health care, and affordable housing.
King called for a revolution of values from racism, materialism, and militarism. Little has changed in 40 years for people in my low-income community. Racism still dominates. It is less overt now, but has expanded from divisions of black—white to Latino, Asian, Arab Muslim, and immigrants. Katrina pictures reminded us of how little progress we've made on economic disparity. Economic progress is measured by consumer spending. Environmental issues threaten our future. King ended his speech saying, " Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world."
My Sojourners Sweatshirt says, "HOPE is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change." Despite the evidence, I am strangely hopeful. I see young people wanting a better world, working for candidates, working in community and on environmental issues. I know generous people who share resources and skills to forge new opportunities for jobs. Economist Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus (Creating a World without Poverty) outline specific ways to change the disparities. Now let us dedicate ourselves to the long yet beautiful struggle for a new world.
Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.
A week before Thanksgiving, I spoke in Lake Tahoe for the clergy convocation of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church, a sprawling geography that comprises a wide array of congregations in big cities and small rural towns. The wide variety of clergy reflected that of the churches—the group included many women, persons of color, younger pastors, folks with a spectrum of theological views, and ordained and non-ordained leaders. It was obvious that this group of Methodists was working hard on issues of diversity.
But the most stunning diversity was in the presence of people from around the world, not as mission guests or visiting Methodist dignitaries. Rather, the group included local congregational leaders who hailed from the all the "souths": the South Pacific, South Africa, South Asia, South Korea, South America, and even south Jersey, South Carolina, and southern California. There, on the shores of an alpine lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, gathered the Global South and the emerging community of world Christianity in the form of Methodist clergy.
We spent the day talking about postmodern Christianity and cultural change as related to mainline churches. Early in the conversation, an Indian pastor graciously raised the relevance of postmodern analysis in relation to his community and worldview asking, "Isn't this a western phenomenon?" His questions and their implicit challenges to a western worldview drew the group into a new conversational space. We began to think about cultural change globally—looking at postmodernism and its effects through a prism of worldviews. We did not argue about issues of sexuality; we did not get into a theological fight; we never resorted to ignoring others. We ruminated on God's work in history. We talked about something important—about how the world is changing and why. We listened to and affirmed each other, hospitably opening ourselves to understand and integrate perspectives different from our own. What resulted was, for me, one of the most stimulating intellectual and spiritual days I have experienced in a long time.
I grew up United Methodist in Baltimore in the 1960s. In those years, my childhood church was nearly ripped in two by the Civil Rights Movement. Even the thought of sharing "our" church with African-American Methodists frightened much of my neighborhood to the point of fleeing both the congregation and the city. It would have been impossible to imagine that, some 40 years hence, I would participate in a Methodist community encompassing such a rainbow of ethnicities.
I am sure that good Methodists of the California-Nevada Conference will demur, saying how far they have to go and how imperfectly they practice diversity. But 40 years is a pretty short time to go from a fractured community fearful of race toward the room I experienced at Lake Tahoe. And it demonstrated to me the power of diversity as a Christian practice. If their diversity was merely a "program" of the denomination, it would breed resentment and suspicion. But the level of trust in the room (we even talked about trust) indicated that their diversity went far beyond program—that it is a genuine attempt to enact Christian community in bringing together humankind through Jesus Christ. Their diversity was a practice of faith, an action that Christian people do for the sake of God in the world.
Frankly, the world has never needed the Christian practice of diversity more than it does today. By creating global community in a room on the shores of Lake Tahoe, the Methodists of the California-Nevada Conference provided a hopeful example of what may be possible for the rest of us on a larger scale. It may not be perfect, but I can testify that for one day, we did it. We really acted like Christians—Christians of every imaginable stripe—in the same room, doing important work together. We proved—or maybe discovered—that the only limit to diversity is the love of God.
Diana Butler Bass (www.dianabutlerbass.com) is the author of six books including Christianity for the Rest of Us (Harper One, 2006), just released in paperback. She says she lives in Alexandria, Virginia. But, from her speaking engagement schedule, we think she lives on United Airlines.
New studies managed by the Pew Charitable Trusts show us how far the country still needs to go in achieving economic equality. A major finding is that the while overall incomes are rising, the income gap between African American and white families is also rising.
Incomes have increased among both black and white families in the past three decades - mainly because more women are in the work force. But the increase was greater among whites, according to the study being released Tuesday.
One reason for the growing disparity: Incomes among black men have actually declined in the past three decades, when adjusted for inflation. They were offset only by gains among black women.
Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study - a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.
Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.
Along with the income gap, there is a wealth gap.
Another reason so many middle-class blacks appear to be downwardly mobile is likely the huge wealth gap separating white and black families of similar incomes. For every $10 of wealth a white person has, blacks have $1, studies have found.
After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. next turned his attention to issues of economic justice. Forty years after his death, we still have a long way to go.
Today, Sept. 20, over 10,000 people will converge on Jena, Louisiana, to call for justice for the "Jena 6." Thousands more will hold vigils in cities across America. As reported previously on this blog, it all started on Sept. 1, 2006, when a black student at the high school asked an administrator if he could sit underneath a tree in the courtyard where traditionally only white students sat. The administrator told him that he could sit wherever he wanted. The next morning, there were three nooses hanging in that tree. The school dismissed this hate crime as a prank. When black students protested, the local district attorney threatened that he could take their life away with a "stroke of my pen." Then, white students provoked a series of incidents with black students.
In one altercation, a white graduate of the high school threatened three black students with a shotgun. The black youth wrestled the gun out of his hands, but incredibly were charged with theft of the weapon, ignoring the fact that they were defending themselves! Then, a group of white youth attacked a single black youth at a party -- and the police took no serious action. Finally, a black youth named Mychall Bell struck a white youth who had taunted him with racial slurs, and several of his friends joined the fray. The white youth went to the hospital, but was released that day and went to a party that night. The six black students were charged with attempted murder. After a national outcry, the charges were reduced to conspiracy and battery. This month, a Louisiana court of appeals vacated the charges against Bell, ruling that the prosecutor was wrong to charge him as an adult instead of a juvenile -- but he is still sitting in jail instead of moving forward with his education.
When I was in college, I was part of a faith-based movement called Friends of Justice. We emerged as an interracial alliance after a drug sting that arrested 60 percent of my town's young black men all in one fell swoop. Friends of Justice came together across racial lines to say this wasn't right, and we started praying, singing, and reading the Bible together. Now, Friends of Justice organizes across Texas and Louisiana to fight cases of civil rights violations and prosecutorial misconduct. In January, we got a call from a desperate mother in Jena, Louisiana, and so we sent out our executive director, Alan Bean, to do an investigation. After we generated international media attention, the cause of the Jena 6 attracted support from a host of civil rights organizations and celebrities.
America is shocked by the naked bigotry they see in Jena, Louisiana. Why aren't Jena's white residents equally protective of all their town's children? By only intervening to protect whites, Jena's white establishment bears the responsibility for letting conflict escalate between black and white youth.
It would be tempting to dismiss the Jena story as representing the vestiges of bigotry in small-town Louisiana -- but Jena is America.
Judging from some of the comments I hear from white Americans, many are stuck in an "us vs. them" mentality, where justice becomes a zero-sum-game: "there they go again, breaking the law and then playing the race card to escape responsibility!" Since we don't think of black youth as "our" youth, we resent it when someone stands up for their rights as citizens. It grieves me to say this, but too many white Americans see black youth only as potential threats that must be contained by all available means. Many protest that the problem lies only within "troublemaking black youth" -- rather than our broken criminal justice system.
There is no quick fix for America's distorted moral imagination. We can only move forward as a nation when our hearts and minds are transformed by the gospel. Lord, gives us eyes to see and ears to hear.
Lydia Bean is a founding member of Friends of Justice and a doctoral candidate in sociology at Harvard University. To get involved, you can visit the Friends of Justice blog, make a donation, and sign up for Action Updates. Hear a song about Jena, "Sitting on the Wall," performed by Alan and Lydia Bean at the Pentecost 2007 conference. (Refresh your browser if the song doesn't load correctly.)
Copyright (c) 2006 Beliefnet, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use of this site is subject to Terms
of Service and to our
Privacy Policy.
Constructed by Beliefnet.
Sam (native Tarheel) and Rosalee (Brazilian-American) Ewell live in Brazil with their three kids, James, Isabella, and Katharine. Sam is a theological educator/networker with School for Conversion-Latin America and local pastor at Igreja Batista Catuaí (and a late convert to soccer). Rosalee also works as a theological educator and writer, primarily through her work with the Comité Bíblico Latinoamericano.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
I've been following the recent online conversation about racial reconciliation and the New Monastics rather closely. Why? Because it is a conversation whose time has come. I honestly believe that much good work is being done in regard to engaging the mosaic of Christians about issues of poverty, race, privilege, and voice. That said, in the words of James Weldon Johnson, "Stony the road we trod." 
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb's Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a 
Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for him. He tells this story in 
.
Becky Garrison is one of the many people interviewed in the documentary 
Eliacín Rosario-Cruz serves as community catalyst and cultivator with 
Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for him. He tells this story in 
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line.
Shane Claiborne is the author of 
Jason and Vonetta Storbakken are cofounders of 
Leroy Barber is president of 
Eugene Cho, a second-generation Korean-American, is the founder and lead pastor of 
Ben Sanders III received his Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and is a Ph.D. student at the Iliff School of Theology and the University of Denver. His interests include liberation theologies, and the study of the theological and ethical implications of black religion, race, and racialization.
Sondra Shepley is the speaking events manager for Sojourners.
Jarrod McKenna's 
"God Is Love," inscribed on the tracksuit of the athlete who would become the second-fastest man alive, is what first caught the attention of Australian Olympic official Ray Weinberg in the early '60s. But it wouldn't be until Peter Norman participated in an act of holy mischief for human rights (which became known as the "Black Power Salute" of the '68 Mexico games) that this Australian would so publicly put 1 John 4:8 into practice with his African-American brothers.
As a former North Carolinian, I have very mixed feelings regarding the death of Senator Jesse Helms. When my late grandfather Roy B. Clogston was the athletic director of NC State from 1948-69, he became good friends with Helms. At that time, Helms was the general manager of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, and they worked on the contracts to televise NC State basketball games. So, he remembered Helms fondly and often contributed to his campaign. While I never met Helms, I learned from my grandfather that even Helms possessed a soft side. 
Adam Taylor is the senior political director for 
When I first decided to spend this semester of my college career in 
Carolyn Delossantos is a junior at Gordon College. She just completed a semester internship at Sojourners.
Over the last several days, I watched Rev. Jeremiah Wright in discussions of faith, theology, history, and culture on television. The three-plus hours I devoted to PBS and CNN amounted to some of the most sophisticated and thoughtful programming on American culture and racial issues that any news station has offered in recent years. And, for those who really listened to Rev. Wright, he moved from being a political liability in the current presidential campaign to demonstrating why he is one of the nation's most compelling spokespersons of the African-American community and of progressive Christianity.
Diana Butler Bass (
Brian McLaren (
Troy Jackson is senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Kentucky. His book Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader (The University Press of Kentucky, 2008) will be available in the fall. Troy is a participant in Sojourners' "Windchangers" grassroots organizing pilot project in Ohio to work on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign.
The 40th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination - April 4, 1968 - will soon be upon us. As I remember Dr. King against the backdrop of this 2008 presidential election cycle, I reflect on what a brilliant political strategist he was. He was able to bring corporations to the point of acquiescence without resorting to violence or bribery. He was able to pass legislation that changed the daily lives of not only blacks but also women, people of faith, and immigrants - without ever being elected to public office or attempting to buy political influence. He was able to garner and leverage the attention of the entire international community on behalf of America's poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised - without ever being appointed to an ambassadorship or other high-profile international post. He was able to remind U.S. citizens what a democracy was and to engender a sense of moral responsibility that, more than 40 years later, challenges us to be the good we want to see in the world. King was a political genius. 
In the past year, political expediency, xenophobia, and extremism defeated reason, compromise, and reconciliation in the immigration debate. The level of animosity directed towards the immigrant community, particularly the Latino community, stands at an all time high. We cannot stay silent. 
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr. is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an organization of Hispanic evangelicals. 
Black and white, we waited like I had waited in the mosh pit for Rage Against the Machine two weeks earlier. Yet the main feature on this day, a day that so many had been waiting for, working for, praying for, was just one word: "Sorry."
Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks, writes, and blogs 
Rev. Randy Woodley is a Keetoowah Cherokee Indian teacher, lecturer, poet, activist, pastor and the author of 
Efrem Smith, who coauthored 
Anna Almendrala is the marketing and circulation assistant for Sojourners.
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview John Sayles about his movie 
Mary Nelson is president emeritus of 
Today, Sept. 20, over 10,000 people will converge on Jena, Louisiana, to call for justice for the "Jena 6." Thousands more will hold vigils in cities across America. As 
