Racism in America

“To Take a Stand for the Sake of the Gospel in our Time”
A Fall Series on Racism in America: What Presbyterians Can Learn from the Confession of Belhar

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The Truth Needs Witnesses
When our son was seven years old, he burst through the back door of the house, his faced flushed, hands trembling, looking like he was about to cry.  He went to his room and slammed the door.  As a father, I was alarmed and made a move to follow, but before I bounded up the stairs in pursuit, his brother burst through the back door with all the excitement of a kid whose team had just scored a goal.  “Guess what, dad?  Josh just told the big boys!  He really told ‘em!”

It didn’t take long for the story to come tumbling out.  The kids were playing outside as they usually did on Saturday afternoons.  There were always skirmishes to manage, and often cuts and bruises to tend from kickball and lopsided soccer games played across the handful of neighborhood backyards—none of which were fenced in.

The band of kids ranged from first through sixth grade, and this afternoon, they’d turned their attention from kickball to bullying.  Seems the big boys had hatched a plan to lead the group down the street to pick on a boy who didn’t hang out with them.  He was a loner, disinterested in what interested them—skinny, aloof, and wore thick glasses.

Josh, seven years old, listened to their plan, then told them, “No, that’s mean,” and walked away. With curses and ridicule following him, he walked with as much dignity as he could muster before bolting for our back door.

After a few minutes, my son let me into his bedroom. “Josh,” I told him after putting my arm around him, “that took lots of courage.  It must have been very hard.  I want you and your brother to remember something about this moment.  There’s only one thing as important in this world than the truth, and that’s someone who will stand up for it.  And the truth is, no one deserves to be bullied.  Ever.  I’m very proud of you—both of you for not going along with the big boys.”

It’s not easy to walk a path that confronts injustice.  It’s not easy to refuse to participate in prejudice and discrimination.  It takes work to awaken ourselves and our society to the inherent dignity of all persons, regardless of race, class, ethnicity, gender or anything else that might differentiate us from others.  It takes courage to actively put ourselves on the line for the truth that God has no favorites but that all people have the same right to life, liberty, and happiness.

Despite our allegiance to these truths that are core to Christian faith, Christians have too often participated in prejudice and discrimination.  We have failed to stand up for these truths.  American Christians have a long history of blind complicity to the evils of racism, stemming from the slave trade that so brutally shaped our nation’s early life.

Confessing the Truth
South Africa is another nation where Christian faith too often promoted rather than dismantled racism . . . until recently.  In 1982 the “colored” Dutch Reformed Mission Church of South Africa adopted a draft of a new confession of faith that empowered the church to stand up and say “No!” in no uncertain terms to the political/social system of racial segregation, discrimination, and bloody oppression called “apartheid” that is part of South Africa’s Christian legacy.  They took that stand over 125 years after the infamous decision by the Cape Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church (1857) to separate believers at the Communion Table on practical and racial grounds.  During the past three decades, the Belhar Confession has found increasing acceptance around the world, not only as a protest against racism wherever it is found, but as a rallying banner for the church as Christians seek to find ways to stand up and embody the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of racial and ethic discrimination and violence, as well as other emerging global issues like gender relations, the environment, economic injustice, and the HIV/AIDS crisis.

This past year, 172 regional presbyteries of our church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), voted to add the Confession of Belhar to our Book of Confessions—which is one of two volumes that make up the Constitution of our church. The final step will be a vote at the 222nd General Assembly meeting June 18–25, 2016 in Portland, Oregon.  For a video introduction to the Confession of Belhar, click here.  And if you’re interested in a longer introduction, click here: it’s a video lecture by the acclaimed South African Reformed theologian the Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak.

I joyfully anticipate Belhar’s adoption as a major Confession of our church. This means that it will be placed alongside documents like the Nicene Creed (4th century), the Heidelberg Confession (16th century), and the Barmen Declaration (a 20th century protest against Nazism in Germany).  Belhar will help guide our understanding of the Bible and what it means to live the gospel today with respect to racism and other forms of discrimination and abuse of creation.

Our First Steps of Confession
As a way to introduce us to this new Confession and to explore how to live out its important vision at a time of such racial tension in America, I’ll preach the gospel from the Bible and the Confession of Belhar on three consecutive Sundays in October.  On October 11 the sermon is entitled, “To Take a Stand”, followed by “For the Sake of the Gospel” on October 18, and “In Our Time” on October 25.  These sermons will explore the three main themes of the Confession: unity, reconciliation, and justice.  During these three weeks, many in our congregation will participate in small group conversations exploring the meaning of the Confession, its witness to the gospel, and its challenge to our individual lives and the life of our congregation.  I hope you’ll consider being part of a group.  We will publicize the names of group facilitators and their locations around Davis and elsewhere so that you can join these sixty- to ninety-minute conversations at a time and place that works for you.  You don’t have to always attend the same group for the three sessions, but can drop in whichever group fits your schedule.  The study guide is the same for all groups. Click here for the website information on these groups.

Davis Community Church (Davis, California) understands itself to be an agent of God’s justice in the world.  We know that the gospel calls us to be a people of peace.  We’re often willing to stand up for God’s truth in the face of injustice—we offer help to the homeless, we help feed the hungry, we confront climate change with green habits, we advocate for immigration reform, push for wiser forms of gun control, and so on.  But the violence of this past year, so often racially motivated, has made us aware of at least two things: 1. we cannot stand idly by, and 2. we do not know what to do.  The privilege so many of us enjoy because of our racial and economic status blinds us to the realities so many American face.  What’s more, many of us live within an island of economic privilege.  The city of Davis, despite its relatively progressive social values, nevertheless remains shaped by the advantages of upper middle-class whiteness.  Events this past year have exposed many of us to the truth that we’ve been largely unaware of how easy it is for us to enjoy the advantages of race, ethnicity, education, and access to jobs, while many outside of Davis, and even inside this city struggle.

It’s time for us to realize that we will no longer participate, even blindly, in the bullying of other Americans, or anyone living on this planet.  It’s time for us to “take a stand for the sake of the gospel in our time”.  What form that stand takes will come clear to us and we worship and study and talk together.

Let us join together in this important season of prayer, listening, self-examination, and action.

Going Deeper
For those interested in going deeper, here are a few suggested books:

• The Invention of Wings by bestselling author Sue Monk Kidd.  A novel that confronts not only the issues of racism but also the limits often placed on women.

• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, a New York Times #1 Bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  This novel explores the effects of Nazi racism on individual human lives and the light of those not only caught up in it but who try to rise above it.

• Between the World and Me. Prize winning author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, writes this trim book for his son, a searing and powerful testimony about what it’s like to be raised black in America today.

• Neither Calendar Nor Clock: Perspectives on the Belhar Confession.  For readers who like theological study, this book by South African theologian, Piet Naude, works though the historical context of the Confession, its theological core, and implications not only for the fight against racism, but also the way the Confession addresses numerous other global issues like gender relations, economic injustice, and the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Personal Reflection Questions
And for those who wish to do some personal exploration of racism, here are some key questions to help each of us grow in our awareness of our own experience of racial privilege or prejudice:

1. How has the history of America’s predominately white culture and white privilege shaped my life?
2. If I identify as essentially a white American, how aware am I of the ways I benefit from that privilege—that is, what have I gained largely because of the color of my skin?  Even if I’ve fought my way, overcoming great odds to educate myself and acquire wealth, how might that struggle have been even more difficult if I’d not been white?
3. If I don’t identify as white racially, have I nevertheless found a way to benefit from the advantages given to white Americans?
4. If I’ve not found a way to benefit from the advantages of the dominant white culture, in what ways have I found myself excluded from some (or many) of those advantages because of the color of my skin and because of my family’s origin?

How difference can bring couples together

Why is it we so often look for similarities between us when it's the differences that matter.

Last Saturday, I performed the wedding for a couple and as part of my meditation on marriage urged them to remain curious about each other.  Curiosity, I told them, will keep the flame of your love alive.  You'll be tempted to shave off the sharp edges of difference, those angularities you'll be tempted to want to soften in exchange for what you have in common.  But it's the differences that electrify (and, of course, create boat loads of consternation).  

I've too often found myself frustrated and annoyed by the things my beloved does so differently.  There's a part of me that would like her to me more like me.  

Am I crazy?

It's her radical difference that first enthralled me, and still does when I step back as see her as the mystery she is.

Esther Perel , internationally acclaimed marriage and family therapist and intimacy guru, first helped me really get a handle on how important it is to celebrate our differences and remain curious and intrigued by the other.  Her teaching helped me put to rest that nearly incurable effort to refashion Patty in my image.  Perel's work on sexuality, attraction, and attachment is marvelously helpful, a needed antidote to the drabness that comes when we try to reshape our partners; the result is, they lose the brilliance that first attracted us (and could keep the flame of intrigue and desire alive).  See Perel's work here.  

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Mary Oliver (right) with Molly Malone Cook (1925–2005) at the couple's home in Provincetown, Massachusetts

And then, this week comes this lovely post about Mary Oliver, America's poetic voice, by the incredible wise young woman who writes a weekly column I'd hate to live without: Brain Pickings.

About Mary Oliver . . . and relationships . . . Maria Popova writes:

"'For one human being to love another,' Rilke wrote, 'that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation.' And yet the work of love too often leaves us feeling profoundly unprepared, nowhere more so than when lovers confront the abyss of daily differences between them. But rather than a fault line where the relationship fractures, that gulf can be the source of deeper communion – that's what beloved poet Mary Oliver(b. September 10, 1935) suggests in a portion of her wholly wonderful Long Life: Essays and Other Writings (public library). Reflecting on the enduring love she shared with her soul mate – the photographer Molly Malone Cook, for whom she later wrote one of the most moving elegies of all time – Oliver considers the gift of differences." 

Read more from Brain Pickings here.

Enter Grace now

A moving mandala and visual journey done in collaboration with Richard Rudd and Theo Brama. Take 13 minutes to sit down, turn up the speakers (or put on headphones), turn down the lights and soak in the beauty of Grace. 

Soundtrack available at – https://entheois.bandcamp.com/album/living-wisdom-vol-1-2

Healing Racism: How we can move beyond the gates of white privilege

I am white, and I'm a man.  And I’ve worked for decades within several black communities, leading undoing racism workshops, fighting city governments, and facing the KKK when I was a pastor in western Pennsylvania. 

But the truth is, when the day is over, I could always retreat into my own safe ghetto of male, white-skinned privilege.  

The Rev. Philip King Sr., the now deceased black activist and pastor of the First Baptist Church in Farrell, Pennsylvania once challenged me saying, “Look, you can ignore it, you can run from it, but you can’t hide it.  Brother, for Christ’s sake, you’ve got to use your privilege until we all share a piece of it.”

In the wake of Wednesday’s newest murderous assault on black America, I’ve been moved by the appeals from black Americans for white America to step up and step out, to realize we’ve got to show up for the work that’s before us.  Alisha Lola Jones said in a Facebook post: “It is open season on black folk in their own churches, neighborhoods and homes.  If you love me and mine, fight for me.  My life is on the line.”  

Gawd, that hurts to read—especially from the safety I enjoy sitting here in front of my MacBook Pro and from within the privilege of the predominately upper-middle class white community where I’m now living.

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The Rev. Denise Anderson, a black Presbyterian pastor, says “Many of you have been on it for some time now, working in solidarity with people of color. You have been in the trenches from the beginning (or your beginning). I don't discount you, but I also caution you to not be self-congratulatory. . . . Whether you got in the game early or late, it's important to simply get in the game at all. But, if I may use an idiom that we often say, ‘It's five o'clock somewhere.’ Some of us are long overdue for our break, while others have yet to clock in.  Your shift is upon you. Kindly report to work.”

Alisha and Denise, I’m starting to get the sense of urgency.  And I’m sorry it’s taken so long.  Lives have been lost, and we’re all worse of because of the delay.

To draw an allusion from the Gospel text from this Sunday's lectionary reading (Mark 4.35-31: Jesus’ calming of the storm), I feel like there’s a dangerous storm swirling around us and the Body of Christ is asleep in the boat.  It’s time to wake up and dare to confront the storm with the peace, the shalom, of God.

As a white guy who has too long enjoyed and only modestly used the privilege that’s mine by a sheer accident of biology, I’m certainly worried that white America, and particularly, white Christians will go on sleeping.  But how can we wake up and really change things?

It’s not our guilt or anger or sense of duty that we need most—though guilt and anger and duty are important factors in getting us moving.

We need our own identification with the plight of the suffering, the vulnerable, the oppressed.  To allude to the Gospel story again: that we’re all in this boat together, and that, frankly, there’s no way to sit this storm out; it’s banging against the hull of everyone’s boat.   

Last year, when I was still a pastor in Fresno, I sat with a group white and black leaders of Christian and Jewish communities.  We were working on voter rights in California and our facilitator led us through the voting rights history in America.  As we read the various legislative acts throughout America’s history, I began to sob; I was confronted with how routinely and brazenly voting rights were denied to everyone else—women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans, gays, the mentally ill, the disabled—everyone else but me, and white, privileged men like me.  We’ve always had the vote and made darn sure we kept our power; anyone who’s threatened white, male power, we simply exempted from the vote.   

I went home, aware that something had opened up for me; my tears were a sign that this was somehow deeply personal.  This story of injustice had connected with something within my own human experience.  Completely apart from the agenda of the facilitator, the exercise awakened me to feelings and memories of my own experience of violence—victimized as a child, powerless and unable to defend myself.  I also came to realize how, for safety’s sake, I often retreat as an adult from conflict because when I was a child, conflict led to violence.  Other people, with different wounds, live out their experience differently; their pain and fear and unresolved anger make them aggressive not passive.  But both passivity and aggression are expressions of deep inner wounds, storms that rage often unabated for decades.  For me, until that memory, long buried, was awakened through and encounter with the pain of others, I was captive to my own fear, my passivity—even more, I remained a prisoner to the ghetto of privilege that I could always retreat to and keep myself “safe”. 

You don’t have to have experienced violence to identify with the suffering of others.  Who among us doesn’t know some kind of shame, some injury that continues to wound us?

It’s this wounded aspect of our humanity that can connect us with the plight of others—or not.  If we don’t face it and embrace it, we’ll pull back from the suffering of others and try to shelter ourselves from their pain.  White folk, and those who share their privilege, will slip inside our gated communities and wait for the storm to pass.  

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. lamented the failure of the white church, and especially his white clergy colleagues to come to his aid and support the nonviolent strategies that, frankly, needed more bodies, and more privileged ones at that, to participate if the movement was going to bend the will of the nation.  

“I came to Birmingham,” he wrote, “with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.”

Too long have I kept myself at arm’s distance from the struggle of black America for justice.  Too long I modestly entered the fray, always able to retreat again into my privileged place as a white man.  The “deep moral concern” King was trying to raise from Birmingham, a concern the Rev. Denise Anderson is trying to raise today, only stood me on my feet when I finally made contact with my own vulnerable humanity.  

Most white men will never feel the monstrous inequality and injustice felt nearly universally by black Americans.  Nor do we dare to speak with anything but the most chastened humility about the outrage and fear they must feel by these recent events.  But when white men become acquainted with our own sorrows and suffering, things can change.  We can begin to understand.  And from the far edge of understanding we can enter the struggle, no longer standing idly by, no longer retreating into our places of privilege while the specter of racism assaults our common humanity.

How to be a/effective

When you awaken to your spiritual life you enter the fullness of life--a fullness that's not outside you, but inside you and all around you. And you'll find that you're not hiding yourself away in some interior cul de sac, avoiding the demands of daily obligations and roles. Spirituality is not navel-gazing; it involves you in the whole.   

           image by John Ragai

The heart is the abode of God . . . not exclusively, of course. The whole earth is full of the glory of God. But our bodies, our beings, our lives are a shrine. And when the light of God shines from within us, all things around us are affected.

The Butterfly Effect, or the ripple effect a single butterfly's wing movements on the whole cosmos, is now common science. It shouldn't surprise us then to hear St. Seraphim of Sarov say, "Acquire inner peace, and thousands around you will find their salvation." It's one thing to hear such words coming from a monk. It's quite another to hear them coming from someone like Dag Hammarskjold, General Secretary of the United Nations (1953-1961), and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1961).

Hammarskjold said, "Understand through the stillness. Act out of the stillness. Conquer in the stillness."

This was spoken by someone deeply involved in global politics and who lived a very busy and demanding life.

"Acquire inner peace." St. Seraphim of Sarov

"Act out of the stillness." Dag Hammarskjold

"The Reign of God is within you." Jesus

From this inner stillness, our outer actions acquire a power that affects not only our lives but those around us.