Tag Archives: Civil Rights

Wesleyan Accent ~ In Their Words: When Pastors Face Prejudice

Note from the Editor: This reprinted post reflects a few of the many experiences encountered by some of our Wesleyan Methodist clergy in North America. Today as we appreciate the legacy of Dr. King’s work, we also commit ourselves to continue to pursue justice. It is a gift to honor their voices today.

A note about the following reflections from Black and Hispanic clergy:

These accounts have been given by denominational leaders, academics, and clergy from across Wesleyan Methodist denominations.

As a white editor, I have been keenly conscious of the weight of holding these testimonies with care and respect. Content has been edited for length. As much as possible, editorial work has been extremely light in order to stay out of the way and allow the words and accounts to speak for themselves.

Ministry is not easy and white pastors have many stories of difficult parishioners or hard seasons. These accounts illustrate the unique individual histories of minority pastors – and the unique challenges they continue to face on top of regular ministry demands.

Elizabeth Glass Turner

Editor, A Wesleyan Accent

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“It took me some time to share these reflections because in recalling these experiences, it was like pulling the Band-Aid off the wound. Some wounds never really heal because another one plops on top of it. They just become scar tissue that irritates us under the skin.” – a contributor

Have you ever been called a racial epithet? If so, what were the circumstances?

Rev. Dr. Joy Moore, UMC: I have often described my youth and young adulthood as living in a gap in history, a period of promise somewhere between my 5th and 12th birthdays as I experienced life under the protection of my parents. It would be the summer after my freshman year of high school when I would be confronted with my racial status. A friend and I had volunteered to work in a Catholic program for impoverished inner-city youth in Milwaukee.  One day, as we walked back to where we were staying, a few younger boys rode around us on their bikes shouting at us. My friend was visibly shaken by their taunts. I, with a newly attained teenage defiance, questioned the pre-teens as to whom they were referring. My friend stared with incredulity at my apparent unawareness that their characterization referenced us. But my simple question dispersed the bikers as quickly as their name-calling dispersed my innocence. It was the first time a white person had addressed me as “nigger”…

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais, UMC: I was called a nigger while pulling out of the parking lot of a grocery store. Another motorist almost cut me off as I drove down the lot and I honked my horn. The passenger rolled his window down and hurled the slur at me, laughed and topped it off by flipping his middle finger at me. I was stunned and frozen for a few minutes, but I recovered and composed myself quickly and drove on away. The car was full of white boys and I wasn’t sure what else they might do.

Rev. Edgar Bazan, UMC: What is said with a simple scowl sometimes is even more powerful than words. There have been a few times when I experienced rejection because I am Hispanic and have an accent when I speak. Even though I am very confident of myself, it hurts to feel rejected because of who I am. What am I supposed to do, bleach my skin? Is my worth devalued because I moved to live in a different geographical area? Of course not, we know this if we are decent people. I know people that have been deeply hurt not just by looks but by actual hate-filled and ignorant racial slurs. It hurts me: things like, “wet-back, go back to your country, speak English, you are not American,” and so on.

 

Have you ever been physically or verbally harassed because of your race or ethnicity? If so, what were the circumstances?

Rev. Marlan Branch, AME: While living in Glencoe, IL, my dad was actually on the news because he worked in Evanston and would have to drive home late every day to Glencoe. He would get pulled over by the police at least twice a week once he reached the white neighborhood.

One time my friend and I were walking to his gymnastics practice on the North Shore. He was one year older than me and was black too. Here we were, two black boys – me in 7th grade and he in 8th grade. The police stopped us, searched his bag and our persons because we “fit the description.” Apparently there had been some robberies in the area.

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: I’ll speak from the point of being harassed in an academic setting and in a corporate setting. When I was an undergraduate, studying journalism, one of my professors said, “you dress so cute all the time. It’s like you’re white. You even wear your hair like a white girl. I don’t even wear nice clothes like that. And for the life of me I can’t figure out how you’re doing that because you’re not white. I’ve decided that I don’t like you.” Imagine my frustration, anger and disbelief that a professor, someone who is entrusted to present a fair and balanced environment in higher education, (instructing the class in balanced news coverage of all things) actually told me those words outright. She then used her white privilege to begin failing me in class. I ultimately passed the class but my work suffered because she intentionally always found fault with anything that I wrote.

During my career working as a communications director for a major national non-profit, I encountered harassment from a peer when I was promoted from a director position to a regional vice president position. The peer, who was in my same position (just in a different market) verbalized that the only reason that I was promoted is because I am black and that another team member, who had been at the company longer, should have been given that position. She said that I took that team member’s spot. Both team members were white. The working relationship became strained.

Rev. Dr. Joy Moore: Only by giving attention to history did I become aware that the announcement of the right to vote was not my achievement but a delayed right granted to United States citizens of my race. It would require a similar benefit of hindsight to learn that my father’s refusal to stop when we travelled was neither stinginess nor stubbornness in response to my naïve pleas for a bathroom. Rather, his concern was safeguarding his young family from humiliations levied as refusal of service. Because of this, I never heard the restaurant owner who told my parents if they came around to the back, he would make an exception to serve us since our family was fairer skinned. I didn’t yet comprehend the rest areas we frequented as we drove south were only for “colored.”

Later, when shopping alone back in Chicago, caught off-guard one afternoon, I stopped in a drug store to make an emergency purchase. Just as I picked up the package and turned toward the checkout counter, the Middle Eastern shop owner accosted me with an accusation of shoplifting.  Publicly, my person and purse was searched, displaying for all to see my wallet and the cash I was carrying while drawing attention to the lone item in my possession, a box of sanitary napkins. That afternoon I perceived the difference between humiliation and indignity, and the contrasting response each fuels in me. The former, shame; the latter, animosity.

The public elementary school education I received in segregated Chicago more than prepared me for private secondary education. So there would be no humiliation when I was again accused of wrongdoing during my freshman year of college. Upon reading my final paper for a sociology class, a male professor accused me of plagiarism, insisting, “no black student from Chicago could write like this.”

As the white sociology professor attempted to accuse my writing skills, the white English professor challenged the premise of my argument. Avoiding any stereotypes of African Americans, she enumerated the evidence of Asian mathematical acumen, the fiery tempers of redheads and simple-minded blondes. Knowing I had taken college-level English classes in high school, her dispute with my paper focused on its argument: nurture has more to do with development than nature.

Rev. Otis T. McMillan, AMEZ: I have been pulled over by two Moore county sheriffs, with their hands on their guns, with no explanation. They saw my sign on the back window and my clergy collar, they let me go.

Barbara and I were pulled over on NC 87 by a North Carolina Highway Patrolman, who said I was going a little fast. When I asked, “how fast was I traveling?” he said, “do you want the warning or do you want a ticket?”

 

For you personally, as an individual, what was the most painful experience you’ve had related to your race or ethnicity?

Rev. Yvette Blair Lavallais: The first time that I really began to understand that my race and skin color was considered “less than” is when I was in the first grade. My family had moved to a neighborhood that was slowly becoming diverse as more Black families began to call the area home. A little girl in my class named Ruthie, who played hopscotch with me and my other friends, was a little blonde-haired girl who spoke softly and wore her hair in a choppy pixie-cut. We had become fast friends and always played together at recess. I didn’t know it at the time, but Ruthie’s mother was disgusted that her daughter had made friends with a black girl. On a particular day that the mom rode her bicycle to pick up Ruthie, she instructed Ruthie to tell me that she was taking Ruthie out of our school and moving her somewhere else. When Ruthie related the news to me, these were the words that this little six-year-old girl struggled and stammered to say, being very careful to try not to tell me the exact words: “My mom says that I can’t play with you anymore because you’re black and we can’t be friends. I won’t be coming back to this school either.”

That very afternoon, my mother and I had a long talk about that quick yet painful moment. She explained to me that some people are just filled with hatred and that there will be people like that who exist in the world. To this day, I still remember that because it ultimately began to shape my experiences as a little black girl growing up in a society where parents didn’t bite their tongues to express how they felt about the way God had made me. And that I needed to know that being in this black skin was a reason not to be friends with me.

The other defining moment is when I was in junior high school. It was open house night and I was helping my math teacher set up her room. Her daughter, who was about eight years old, walked up to me, stood up in a chair and came face to face with me. She looked me right in the eyes and said, “I don’t like you because you’re black and I don’t like black people.” I was stunned but not so naïve to think that my teacher’s daughter uttering those words could possibly have just happened. Once more, my mom and I had a conversation about this occurrence.

Rev. Marlan Branch: I have had the fortunate opportunity to live and grow up in many different places. I’ve lived in the Deep South, the west side of Chicago, Glencoe (IL) where I and one other black girl were the only black kids in our grade from 6th to 8th grade, and Evanston (IL) which is a conglomerate of every demographic of people.

While in middle school I had to take a music class. I didn’t realize it then, but every class period the teacher would send me to a room by myself to “practice” and she would never come and teach me the music like the rest of the class.

I was the only little black kid in the class.

 

For you as an individual, what is the most common misconception you encounter about your race and identity?

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: The leading one is that we are all thieves and looking for an opportunity to steal something. I surmised that to be true on the day that I was stopped by a police officer. I was driving my brand-new SUV that I had saved up the down payment for and purchased. It was in my name. I was in downtown Dallas and had just pulled off from a “red to green light” when the patrol car came up behind me. The officer asked me whose car was this because it couldn’t possibly be mine. He told me that it was too expensive of a car for me to be driving. When I showed him my license, registration, and papers, he was puzzled that the SUV actually belonged to me. I didn’t get a ticket, but I did get a reality check that once more being a black person driving a nice vehicle was “suspicious.”

Another misconception is that black women have the “black angry woman” syndrome. I was warned about this during one of my experiences in the ordination candidacy process in The United Methodist Church. I was told by a lay and a clergy person, “you’re very articulate for a black woman. You’d make a good associate pastor almost anywhere in this conference. Just make sure you don’t do like some of the other black clergy women we have and become known as the black angry woman.”

There is a misconception that black people don’t speak the King’s English, that we can’t make a complete sentence. When we shatter that perception, there is visible shock and surprise often accompanied by, “how did you learn to speak to eloquently?”

Do you estimate that the Church in general or local congregations specifically are more, less, or the same amount of welcoming than interactions in general society? Do you worship in a diverse congregation or one where you are a majority or a minority?

Rev. Edgar Bazan: In general, churches are places where one experiences hospitality and acceptance. As new guests or visitors, we typically get a warm welcome. We are encouraged to join the church, which is great. But once we do and have spent time as insiders, we realize that to share power with someone that has a different heritage or race is not always as welcoming. I am troubled when I hear of a white church with a Hispanic ministry because typically they are “those people” or are the “Hispanic pastor congregation.”

Worshiping as a minority of non-white heritage means by default that we are not going to be in positions of power or influence unless we prove ourselves to be worthy. Yes, churches are typically healthier places than secular ones when it comes to race, but being welcoming is just a fraction of what it means to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: I am serving in what the United Methodist Church calls a “cross-racial appointment,” meaning that I am a non-white pastor serving a predominantly white congregation. My experiences so far have been positive. Both congregations have been welcoming and have shown love and hospitality toward me. An elderly man shared with me that when he heard I was coming to the church he was a bit apprehensive. He was already getting adjusted to having a woman pastor and now they were sending another woman, a black one this time. He followed it by telling me that this was a first for him in 50 years of being a member and after getting to know me, he was glad that I was here. On another occasion, a woman in her 70’s walked up to me after the worship celebration, grasped my hands and told me “I am proud to call you my pastor.” That was a shocking yet beautiful moment for me.

I preached a difficult message the Sunday following the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the five Dallas law enforcement officers. A member told me about her experience of being 10 years old in Birmingham when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in 1963 and four black girls lost their lives. She shared, “imagine in 2016 that the Holy Spirit would come in the form of a black woman pastor and preach to this congregation.” That too was a beautiful moment. I don’t know how this registers on the race barometer compared to society in general, but it is a refreshing start.

Rev. Dr. Joy Moore: The neighborhood congregation where I attended was affiliated with the predominately white National Council of Community Churches. Conferences and area collaborations afforded exposure to Christians who were of a variety of cultures other than my own. It seemed, from this limited experience, that the church was the best place to strive for and demonstrate unity across racial barriers.

But a decade into ministry, I was assigned a congregation where five women worked incessantly to remove me from ministry. Bold to place their fabrications and misrepresentations into writing, these women informed the bishop they would “not allow me a success.” Contrary to the affirmation of the majority of the 200-member congregation, these women drafted a letter in response to the cabinet’s inquiry whether my being the first woman of color to serve the congregation might have any bearing on their opinion. About 30 persons signed the letter – most who no longer attended the church or had even lived in the state during the entire span of my life. Their response: “How dare you call us racist!” A member of the cabinet informed me that had I not had a reputation born of a decade of service in that conference, my ministry indeed would have ended on the strength of their accusations.

 

What experience do you most wish someone different than yourself could experience for themselves in order to better understand the reality of your life?

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: To walk into a store and have a white sales associate follow you around, point you in the direction of the clearance rack and ask you what are you looking to steal. To be the only black person having lunch with a group of white colleagues and having your order taken last and your food brought out last. To go on your third interview for a public relations position and be told, “you are so impressive, you would do well in this role but you don’t look the part because these jobs are usually reserved for blonde-haired girls.” To step into an elevator and watch as a white woman clutches her purse because she believes you might be a pick-pocketer. To be told in a work setting that it’s highly unusual to be black and to be this smart.

 

How does it feel to be the only person of color in a predominantly Caucasian conference room, congregation, school, or meeting?

Rev. Edgar Bazan: A good friend of mine that was an associate pastor many years in a predominantly white church shared with me one occasion: while in the church office a member of the church came in to visit and greeted everyone else except him. Without addressing him in any way, this individual said to the secretary, “when did we get a new custodian?” My good friend was Hispanic and this individual was white. I have had similar experiences in which I needed to do more in order to prove my position or credentials because I am Hispanic.

 

What gestures, actions or attitudes from others have you found to be most meaningful and healing?

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: I have colleagues in the North Texas Conference, Central Conference and Texas Conference who are intentional when it comes to creating environments of diversity. They are very much aware of the imbalance of black and brown representation in the pulpit and in leadership roles within the Conferences, inviting us to be participants in programs and to serve in other areas that have historically been unopen to us.

Beyond the church setting, I have white friends and colleagues whom I interact with regularly and catch up with over coffee. Some of these friends are the same ones who have responded right away in my seasons of joy and sorrow. Their presence, willingness to listen, their empathetic ear and rise to action are all helpful and meaningful.

Closing reflections:

“I wish I had known back then what I know now.”

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“The victories of the Civil Rights Movement seemed to make possible a bridge across the gap such that persons might comprehend that human capacity for intelligence, morality, and character were not divinely meted out during creation to certain continents of the globe. The gap in history seems to be again widening. The brief period of promise somewhere between my 5th and 12th birthdays closed around history repeating itself as I experience what my parents tried to protect me from.

 I’m old enough that my first experience of racism is not nearly as defining as my current experiences. Then, I was taught to expect what I am experiencing. But I had role models who were respected, if only by our community. Today, with instant access to every random opinion or public accusation, the volume of the disrespect is as visual as the bodies hanging from trees when my parents were young. It will be more difficult to call forth a beloved community with 21st century claims for recovering the America of the 1950s, especially if black and brown bodies experience that recovery with 19th century violence.

The caution to “mind the gap” on London’s Underground is not to fall into it. It serves as a reminder of the gap’s presence and a summons to avoid it. Those who claim their identity by race, gender, nation, political party, economic or marital status are reminded to be aware of the gap created by these associations. Avoid excluding others as they exclude you. Instead, be mindful of the little things still sought to be achieved by each generation: human dignity, respect, and recognition that the world for which Christ died includes the descendants of persons not born in Europe. Those who claim to be followers of Jesus are summoned to practice the community someone dared ask God to create.”

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“What is behind our words, what is deep in our hearts, that which makes us assume that just because an individual is of a certain race means that he or she can only aspire to limited options for personal development is in fact what is at the core of our race challenges. And this has to do with our lack of love for ourselves. If we could love ourselves with compassion and have self-awareness of our needs and suffering, we would be able to relate to others and treat them in the way we would like to be treated. But this is a rare sight. We are prevalently narcissistic in so many ways, that we don’t have a heart to go a mile in someone’s else’s shoes, let alone a second mile. Because I am the minority, I have learned to relate to those that are usually marginalized. So, when I am in a meeting where I am minority, for example, I am more sensitive to welcome and include those that are not noticed by the predominant group. I have suffered exclusion, and I don’t want anyone to be relegated to such experiences.”

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Charlottesville: Do They Really Not See?

Today is the day after. The day after a young black man got beat up in a parking garage, the scene caught by a quick photojournalist (I can’t imagine how sore he is). The day after a stunned mom learned from reporters that her son had been arrested for plowing his car into a crowd of pedestrians (she was in complete shock). The day after someone drove up to deliver a death notification to the family of Heather Heyer (I’m sorry to inform you…).  

In 2016 a high school student had petitioned Charlottesville City Council to remove a Confederate statue. A city councilmember was also suggesting the removal. Heated debate ensued. 

A year earlier, a Caucasian young man named Dylann Roof had entered a Bible study at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, opening fire on the black Christians gathered there, later confessing to police that they were so welcoming he almost changed his mind, but in the end, he did what he went there to do, killing nine people. His motive, he said, was to start a race war. His website displayed his values, showing Roof with white supremacist symbols and the Confederate flag. 

In the wake of the deaths of the Charleston nine, which included the pastor of Mother Emanuel AME Church, cities and states began discussing the role of Confederate imagery on city, county, state property. Somehow the Civil War came to dominate daily discussion. In February, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the statue. A lawsuit quickly followed, so for the time being it remains. However, in June the Council renamed Lee Park, one of the locations that regularly popped up in ongoing news updates yesterday, calling it Emancipation Park instead. 

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Today a friend sent me a message. It had been a long day on social media. While pastors, churches and denominations crafted powerful statements condemning white supremacy, it was dismaying to see some of the reactions from people who genuinely do not see racism as a major ongoing problem in the United States. Who lump in violent counter-protesters with peaceful clergy. Who believe counter-protesters just shouldn’t have been there in the first place. 

“Do they really not see what we do? Or are they ignoring Christ’s teachings or somehow think they don’t apply in this instance?” 

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Faith easily gets mixed with culture, wherever and whenever Christian faith exists. Sometimes – particularly for people who grow up in the church – faith grows up alongside culture in ways that tangle and diverge, until it’s difficult to tell what is distinctly Christian and what is a cultural value. A Christian growing up in the Pacific Northwest may automatically assume that air quality is a basic concern for people of faith. A Catholic Christian growing up in South America may have folk religion tied closely with the images of saints propped on a table. A Christian missionary may assume an African man with four wives should divorce three of them – until the missionary discovers that this has pushed three women into prostitution. Then, the missionary says, when you become a Christian, keep your wives – but don’t add more.  

Values come from many places, often automatically translated in culture without ever questioning them. Sometimes, our values come from places other than our faith. 

Where do your most deeply held values come from? 

Everyone holds values they aren’t even aware of holding until at some point, whether you’re eight or 80, they’re called into question. You may not be able to explain where they came from or why they matter to you. Sometimes marriage brings these questions to the fore: of course we’ll go visit family, we’ll just put it on a credit card, seeing family is paramount. Really? Of course we’ll never use the credit card, family is important but staying out of debt is paramount.  

I may say that your faith should shape your values, not the other way around. And I do believe your Christian faith should shape all your other values. 

The question is, what are your other values? Equality? Patriotism? Pacifism? Justice? There are many ways that the Body of Christ lives out our calling to be like Jesus, but as individuals and faith communities, we must examine what values we hold that we don’t even know we’re holding. 

Some pastors and professors I know refuse to ever allow an American flag to be displayed in worship space. Some Christians I know would say, but of course an American flag should be in worship space. Aren’t you grateful for your country? Don’t you take pride in being a patriot? Aren’t you thankful for the sacrifices of people in uniform? 

But the reason some pastors and professors I know refuse to ever allow an American flag to be displayed in worship space is because of a principle springing from a vivid example: some Lutheran churches in WWII Germany allowed swastikas to be spread over their weekly communion tables. The Body of Christ, broken for you, covered with a Nazi emblem. And so they say, of course no flag representing any nation should be front and center in a Christian worship space, visually equating the rightness of that country with the centrality of Christ on the cross. Do you agree with everything your nation does? Do you want Christians in other countries mixing their nationalism with their practice of faith? Should pastors ever place their vocation and calling in subjection to a government that may turn against them? 

This one example shows the difficulties in what is known as contextualization. In other words, what, culturally, do we couch our faith in, what values do we equate with our faith, that we don’t even realize are cultural and not unique to the way of Jesus Christ?

And what we must, must ask Christians in America right now is, are you willing to put any loyalty to any group above Jesus Christ? No statue is worth taking a life over – right? No political allegiance is worth alienating people made in the image of God – right? No Confederate heritage is worth making two helicopter pilots work for public safety, only to die in a tragic crash – right?  

In fact, Christians are to value other people extravagantly. Not just their lives – most “nice” people don’t want to see a young woman die. We’re also to, “look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others.” 

A statue may not cause me pain, but what if it shows something as normal that ought not to be – the old goal of perpetuating a culture in which humans were bought and sold as slaves? What if it portrays a person willing to preside over a culture in which the economy was dependent upon slavery? What if it communicates – “your great-great-grandma was brought here chained up, she was owned by other people, and that’s what you deserve to be, too – a person with no worth other than what I’m willing to pay. And now you’re just an inconvenient reminder of an embarrassing part of our past.” 

Where do your values come from? 

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Growing up, I usually experienced kindness from the people in my town. At church, at the library, the humans around me were white. But I loved Sesame Street, and Luis, and Maria, and Gordon. My little town was surrounded by farms, and I didn’t know why there weren’t people like Gordon down my street. Apparently they had settled somewhere else. Maybe they didn’t like farming. 

Even as a child, I had heard that a town far down the highway (ten miles was far to me) had, at some unknown eon before I was born, been a place where racists lived. A lot of people who looked like Gordon knew it wasn’t safe to go through there.  

Once, a visiting evangelist and his wife from the Caribbean came to my church with their children. My mom showed particular respect to them. Their dark skin gleamed in the sanctuary light. The evangelist’s wife played the piano beautifully – a goal of my little childhood heart. I admired her. Be especially nice, my mom said. They have probably been through a lot. 

Mom also got a bit grim when the summer camp meeting had the “color choir” from Indianapolis come to sing. I liked the “color choir,” the music, the difference. She seemed to think it was less than nice to ask them to come as performers for one evening when no one talked to them much after the service. I wished they would come every night. 

A couple of years ago a professor friend shared a resource listing historic sundown towns that Black Americans knew to avoid when traveling (“don’t come through here after sundown or you’ll be in danger”).  

My childhood town was one of them.  

The place where I had grown up was a place people like my beloved Gordon had had to avoid. 

Do we really not see? Or do we just not want to? 

What shapes your values? What do you skip your eyes over, ignore, glance away from? What do you need to see? 

Featured image via Aaron Burden on Unsplash.

Wesleyan Accent ~ In Their Words: When Pastors Face Prejudice

A note about the following reflections from Black and Hispanic clergy:

These accounts have been given by denominational leaders, academics and clergy from across Wesleyan Methodist denominations.

As a white editor, I have been keenly conscious of the weight of holding these testimonies with care and respect. Content has been edited for length. As much as possible, editorial work has been extremely light in order to stay out of the way and allow the words and accounts to speak for themselves.

Ministry is not easy and white pastors have many stories of difficult parishioners or hard seasons. These accounts illustrate the unique individual histories of minority pastors – and the unique challenges they continue to face on top of regular ministry demands.

Elizabeth Glass Turner

Editor, A Wesleyan Accent

**********

 

“It took me some time to share these reflections because in recalling these experiences, it was like pulling the Band-Aid off the wound. Some wounds never really heal because another one plops on top of it. They just become scar tissue that irritates us under the skin.” – a contributor

 

Have you ever been called a racial epithet? If so, what were the circumstances?

Rev. Dr. Joy Moore, UMC: I have often described my youth and young adulthood as living in a gap in history, a period of promise somewhere between my 5th and 12th birthdays as I experienced life under the protection of my parents. It would be the summer after my freshman year of high school when I would be confronted with my racial status. A friend and I had volunteered to work in a Catholic program for impoverished inner-city youth in Milwaukee.  One day, as we walked back to where we were staying, a few younger boys rode around us on their bikes shouting at us. My friend was visibly shaken by their taunts. I, with a newly attained teenage defiance, questioned the pre-teens as to whom they were referring. My friend stared with incredulity at my apparent unawareness that their characterization referenced us. But my simple question dispersed the bikers as quickly as their name-calling dispersed my innocence. It was the first time a white person had addressed me as “nigger”…

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais, UMC: I was called a nigger while pulling out of the parking lot of a grocery store. Another motorist almost cut me off as I drove down the lot and I honked my horn. The passenger rolled his window down and hurled the slur at me, laughed and topped it off by flipping his middle finger at me. I was stunned and frozen for a few minutes, but I recovered and composed myself quickly and drove on away. The car was full of white boys and I wasn’t sure what else they might do.

Rev. Edgar Bazan, UMC: What is said with a simple scowl sometimes is even more powerful than words. There have been a few times when I experienced rejection because I am Hispanic and have an accent when I speak. Even though I am very confident of myself, it hurts to feel rejected because of who I am. What am I supposed to do, bleach my skin? Is my worth devalued because I moved to live in a different geographical area? Of course not, we know this if we are decent people. I know people that have been deeply hurt not just by looks but by actual hate-filled and ignorant racial slurs. It hurts me: things like, “wet-back, go back to your country, speak English, you are not American,” and so on.

 

Have you ever been physically or verbally harassed because of your race or ethnicity? If so, what were the circumstances?

Rev. Marlan Branch, AME: While living in Glencoe, IL, my dad was actually on the news because he worked in Evanston and would have to drive home late every day to Glencoe. He would get pulled over by the police at least twice a week once he reached the white neighborhood.

One time my friend and I were walking to his gymnastics practice on the North Shore. He was one year older than me and was black too. Here we were, two black boys – me in 7th grade and he in 8th grade. The police stopped us, searched his bag and our persons because we “fit the description.” Apparently there had been some robberies in the area.

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: I’ll speak from the point of being harassed in an academic setting and in a corporate setting. When I was an undergraduate, studying journalism, one of my professors said, “you dress so cute all the time. It’s like you’re white. You even wear your hair like a white girl. I don’t even wear nice clothes like that. And for the life of me I can’t figure out how you’re doing that because you’re not white. I’ve decided that I don’t like you.” Imagine my frustration, anger and disbelief that a professor, someone who is entrusted to present a fair and balanced environment in higher education, (instructing the class in balanced news coverage of all things) actually told me those words outright. She then used her white privilege to begin failing me in class. I ultimately passed the class but my work suffered because she intentionally always found fault with anything that I wrote.

During my career working as a communications director for a major national non-profit, I encountered harassment from a peer when I was promoted from a director position to a regional vice president position. The peer, who was in my same position (just in a different market) verbalized that the only reason that I was promoted is because I am black and that another team member, who had been at the company longer, should have been given that position. She said that I took that team member’s spot. Both team members were white. The working relationship became strained.

Rev. Dr. Joy Moore: Only by giving attention to history did I become aware that the announcement of the right to vote was not my achievement but a delayed right granted to United States citizens of my race. It would require a similar benefit of hindsight to learn that my father’s refusal to stop when we travelled was neither stinginess nor stubbornness in response to my naïve pleas for a bathroom. Rather, his concern was safeguarding his young family from humiliations levied as refusal of service. Because of this, I never heard the restaurant owner who told my parents if they came around to the back, he would make an exception to serve us since our family was fairer skinned. I didn’t yet comprehend the rest areas we frequented as we drove south were only for “colored.”

Later, when shopping alone back in Chicago, caught off-guard one afternoon, I stopped in a drug store to make an emergency purchase. Just as I picked up the package and turned toward the checkout counter, the Middle Eastern shop owner accosted me with an accusation of shoplifting.  Publicly, my person and purse was searched, displaying for all to see my wallet and the cash I was carrying while drawing attention to the lone item in my possession, a box of sanitary napkins. That afternoon I perceived the difference between humiliation and indignity, and the contrasting response each fuels in me. The former, shame; the latter, animosity.

The public elementary school education I received in segregated Chicago more than prepared me for private secondary education. So there would be no humiliation when I was again accused of wrongdoing during my freshman year of college. Upon reading my final paper for a sociology class, a male professor accused me of plagiarism, insisting, “no black student from Chicago could write like this.”

As the white sociology professor attempted to accuse my writing skills, the white English professor challenged the premise of my argument. Avoiding any stereotypes of African Americans, she enumerated the evidence of Asian mathematical acumen, the fiery tempers of redheads and simple-minded blondes. Knowing I had taken college-level English classes in high school, her dispute with my paper focused on its argument: nurture has more to do with development than nature.

Rev. Otis T. McMillan, AMEZ: I have been pulled over by two Moore county sheriffs, with their hands on their guns, with no explanation. They saw my sign on the back window and my clergy collar, they let me go.

Barbara and I were pulled over on NC 87 by a North Carolina Highway Patrolman, who said I was going a little fast. When I asked, “how fast was I traveling?” he said, “do you want the warning or do you want a ticket?”

 

For your personally, as an individual, what was the most painful experience you’ve had related to your race or ethnicity?

Rev. Yvette Blair Lavallais: The first time that I really began to understand that my race and skin color was considered “less than” is when I was in the first grade. My family had moved to a neighborhood that was slowly becoming diverse as more Black families began to call the area home. A little girl in my class named Ruthie, who played hopscotch with me and my other friends, was a little blonde-haired girl who spoke softly and wore her hair in a choppy pixie-cut. We had become fast friends and always played together at recess. I didn’t know it at the time, but Ruthie’s mother was disgusted that her daughter had made friends with a black girl. On a particular day that the mom rode her bicycle to pick up Ruthie, she instructed Ruthie to tell me that she was taking Ruthie out of our school and moving her somewhere else. When Ruthie related the news to me, these were the words that this little six-year-old girl struggled and stammered to say, being very careful to try not to tell me the exact words: “My mom says that I can’t play with you anymore because you’re black and we can’t be friends. I won’t be coming back to this school either.”

That very afternoon, my mother and I had a long talk about that quick yet painful moment. She explained to me that some people are just filled with hatred and that there will be people like that who exist in the world. To this day, I still remember that because it ultimately began to shape my experiences as a little black girl growing up in a society where parents didn’t bite their tongues to express how they felt about the way God had made me. And that I needed to know being in this black skin was a reason not to be friends with me.

The other defining moment is when I was in junior high school. It was open house night and I was helping my math teacher set up her room. Her daughter, who was about eight years old, walked up to me, stood up in a chair and came face to face with me. She looked me right in the eyes and said “I don’t like you because you’re black and I don’t like black people.” I was stunned but not so naïve to think that my teacher’s daughter uttering those words could possibly have just happened. Once more, my mom and I had a conversation about this occurrence.

Rev. Marlan Branch: I have had the fortunate opportunity to live and grow up in many different places. I’ve lived in the Deep South, the west side of Chicago, Glencoe (IL) where I and one other black girl were the only black kids in our grade from 6th to 8th grade, and Evanston (IL) which is a conglomerate of every demographic of people.

While in middle school I had to take a music class. I didn’t realize it then, but every class period the teacher would send me to a room by myself to “practice” and she would never come and teach me the music like the rest of the class.

I was the only little black kid in the class.

 

For you as an individual, what is the most common misconception you encounter about your race and identity?

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: The leading one is that we are all thieves and looking for an opportunity to steal something. I surmised that to be true on the day that I was stopped by a police officer. I was driving my brand-new SUV that I had saved up the down payment for and purchased. It was in my name. I was in downtown Dallas and had just pulled off from a “red to green light” when the patrol car came up behind me. The officer asked me whose car was this because it couldn’t possibly be mine. He told me that it was too expensive of a car for me to be driving. When I showed him my license, registration and papers, he was puzzled that the SUV actually belonged to me. I didn’t get a ticket, but I did get a reality check that once more being a black person driving a nice vehicle was “suspicious.”

Another misconception is that black women have the “black angry woman” syndrome. I was warned about this during one of my experiences in the ordination candidacy process in The United Methodist Church. I was told by a lay and a clergy person, “you’re very articulate for a black woman. You’d make a good associate pastor almost anywhere in this conference. Just make sure you don’t do like some of the other black clergy women we have and become known as the black angry woman.”

There is a misconception that black people don’t speak the King’s English, that we can’t make a complete sentence. When we shatter that perception, there is visible shock and surprise often accompanied by, “how did you learn to speak to eloquently?”

 

Do you estimate that the Church in general or local congregations specifically are more, less, or the same amount of welcoming than interactions in general society? Do you worship in a diverse congregation or one where you are a majority or a minority?

Rev. Edgar Bazan: In general, churches are places where one experiences hospitality and acceptance. As new guests or visitors we typically get a warm welcome. We are encouraged to join the church, which is great. But once we do and have spent time as insiders, we realize that to share power with someone that has a different heritage or race is not always as welcoming. I am troubled when I hear of a white church with a Hispanic ministry because typically they are “those people” or are the “Hispanic pastor congregation.”

Worshiping as a minority of non-white heritage means by default that we are not going to be in positions of power or influence unless we prove ourselves to be worthy. Yes, churches are typically healthier places than secular ones when it comes to race, but being welcoming is just a fraction of what it means to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: I am serving in what the United Methodist Church calls a “cross-racial appointment,” meaning that I am a non-white pastor serving at a predominantly white congregation. My experiences so far have been positive. Both congregations have been welcoming and have shown love and hospitality toward me. An elderly man shared with me that when he heard I was coming to the church he was a bit apprehensive. He was already getting adjusted to having a woman pastor and now they were sending another woman, a black one this time. He followed it by telling me that this was a first for him in 50 years of being a member and after getting to know me, he was glad that I was here. On another occasion a woman in her 70’s walked up to me after the worship celebration, grasped my hands and told me “I am proud to call you my pastor.” That was a shocking yet beautiful moment for me.

I preached a difficult message the Sunday following the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and the five Dallas law enforcement officers. A member told me about her experience of being 10 years old in Birmingham when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in 1963 and four black girls lost their lives. She shared, “imagine in 2016 that the Holy Spirit would come in the form of a black woman pastor and preach to this congregation.” That too was a beautiful moment. I don’t know how this registers on the race barometer compared to society in general, but it is a refreshing start.

Rev. Dr. Joy Moore: The neighborhood congregation where I attended was affiliated with the predominately white National Council of Community Churches. Conferences and area collaborations afforded exposure to Christians who were of a variety of cultures other than my own. It seemed, from this limited experience, that the church was the best place to strive for and demonstrate unity across racial barriers.

But a decade into ministry, I was assigned a congregation where five women worked incessantly to remove me from ministry. Bold to place their fabrications and misrepresentations into writing, these women informed the bishop they would “not allow me a success.” Contrary to the affirmation of the majority of the 200-member congregation, these women drafted a letter in response to the cabinet’s inquiry whether my being the first woman of color to serve the congregation might have any bearing on their opinion. About 30 persons signed the letter – most who no longer attended the church or had even lived in the state during the entire span of my life. Their response: “How dare you call us racist!” A member of the cabinet informed me that had I not had a reputation born of a decade of service in that conference, my ministry indeed would have ended on the strength of their accusations.

 

What experience do you most wish someone different than yourself could experience for themselves in order to better understand the reality of your life?

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: To walk into a store and have a white sales associate follow you around, point you in the direction of the clearance rack and ask you what are you looking to steal. To be the only black person having lunch with a group of white colleagues and having your order taken last and your food brought out last. To go on your third interview for a public relations position and be told “you are so impressive, you would do well in this role but you don’t look the part because these jobs are usually reserved for blonde-haired girls.” To step into an elevator and watch as a white woman clutches her purse because she believes you might be a pick-pocketer. To be told in a work setting that it’s highly unusual to be black and to be this smart.

 

How does it feel to be the only person of color in a predominantly Caucasian conference room, congregation, school, or meeting?

Rev. Edgar Bazan: A good friend mine that was an associate pastor many years in a predominantly white church shared with me one occasion: while in the church office a member of the church came in to visit and greeted everyone else except him. Without addressing him in any way, this individual said to the secretary, “when did we get a new custodian?” My good friend was Hispanic and this individual was white. I have had similar experiences in which I needed to do more in order to prove my position or credentials because I am Hispanic.

 

What gestures, actions or attitudes from others have you found to be most meaningful and healing?

Rev. Yvette Blair-Lavallais: I have colleagues in the North Texas Conference, Central Conference and Texas Conference who are intentional when it comes to creating environments of diversity. They are very much aware of the imbalance of black and brown representation in the pulpit and in leadership roles within the Conferences, inviting us to be participants in programs and to serve in other areas that have historically been unopen to us.

Beyond the church setting, I have white friends and colleagues whom I interact with regularly and catch up with over coffee. Some of these friends are the same ones who have responded right away in my seasons of joy and sorrow. Their presence, willingness to listen, their empathetic ear and rise to action are all helpful and meaningful.

 

Closing reflections:

“I wish I had known back then what I know now.”

 **********

“The victories of the Civil Rights Movement seemed to make possible a bridge across the gap such that persons might comprehend that human capacity for intelligence, morality, and character were not divinely meted out during creation to certain continents of the globe. The gap in history seems to be again widening. The brief period of promise somewhere between my 5th and 12th birthdays closed around history repeating itself as I experience what my parents tried to protect me from.

 I’m old enough that my first experience of racism is not nearly as defining as my current experiences. Then, I was taught to expect what I am experiencing. But I had role models who were respected, if only by our community. Today, with instant access to every random opinion or public accusation, the volume of the disrespect is as visual as the bodies hanging from trees when my parents were young. It will be more difficult to call forth a beloved community with 21st century claims for recovering the America of the 1950s, especially if black and brown bodies experience that recovery with 19th century violence.

The caution to “mind the gap” on London’s Underground is not to fall into it. It serves as a reminder of the gap’s presence and a summons to avoid it. Those who claim their identity by race, gender, nation, political party, economic or marital status are reminded to be aware of the gap created by these associations. Avoid excluding others as they exclude you. Instead, be mindful of the little things still sought to be achieved by each generation: human dignity, respect, and recognition that the world for which Christ died includes the descendants of persons not born in Europe. Those who claim to be followers of Jesus are summoned to practice the community someone dared ask God to create.”

 **********

“What is behind our words, what is deep in our hearts, that which makes us assume that just because an individual is of a certain race means that he or she can only aspire to limited options for personal development is in fact what is at the core of our race challenges. And this has to do with our lack of love for ourselves. If we could love ourselves with compassion and have self-awareness of our needs and suffering, we would be able to relate to others and treat them in the way we would like to be treated. But this is a rare sight. We are prevalently narcissistic in so many ways, that we don’t have a heart to go a mile in someone’s else’s shoes, let alone a second mile. Because I am the minority, I have learned to relate to those that are usually marginalized. So, when I am in meeting where I am minority, for example, I am more sensitive to welcome and include those that are not noticed by the predominant group. I have suffered exclusion, and I don’t want anyone to be relegated to such experiences.”

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Lisa Yebuah: Race as a Gospel Issue

Wesleyan Accent is privileged to share these words from Rev. Lisa Yebuah, expressed in a Seedbed Seven Minute Seminary segment called, “Race as a Gospel Issue.” Her story will challenge and encourage you as you live out your baptismal identity.

Kelcy Steele ~ Prayer, Protest & Protection: The Grace of a Lost Art

Government authorities like police officers are public servants. They are supposed to be frightening only to those who are bad and do wrong. They are supposed to hold no terror for those who are not bad and have done no wrong. Much of the time, they do exactly what they are supposed to do, and for this we can be grateful.

But they are armed. And the weapons they carry can easily kill people. This means that police officers must be trained to be extraordinarily disciplined in their perceptions of situations and people, and extraordinarily restrained in their use of deadly force. Otherwise the power they have to protect the innocent becomes a power to destroy the innocent. Otherwise their power to keep order becomes a power that creates disorder. Otherwise the sight of a police car in one’s rearview mirror becomes a fear that one will not survive the encounter — a fear that Black people in America know all too well.

Our lives should be informed and marked by prayer. Our God desires us to seek him and pray to him. When we pray with confidence to the Sovereign King, we bring glory to him and joy to his heart. We want to be, always, a prayerful people and a prayerful church.

People should not have to be afraid of dying during routine traffic stops. This is horrifying and outrageous.

The late Philando Castile did not find it to be the case the other night near St. Paul, Minnesota. The late Alton Sterling did not find it to be the case two days before in Baton Rouge. These black men were shot by white police officers, two of 123 black Americans shot by police so far in 2016, out of a total of 506 nationwide.

The question is, what is the role of the church?

Our first call is to prayer; then, our second call is to peaceful protest, to cry loud and spare not.

There is only one real problem in God’s church these days, and that is the prayer life of the Church. We could enumerate many other problems that face God’s people.

In a praying church, there is great grace in the lives of God’s people.

Acts 4:33 says, “Much grace was upon them all”; the word “grace” is the operative word here. It means “Christ-likeness,” and was seen in four ways:

  1. There was the grace of unity (verse 32).
  2. There was the grace of renunciation (verse 32).
  3. There was the grace of fellowship (verse 32).
  4. There was the grace of liberality (verses 34-35).

Will you do your part, God helping you, to make your church a praying church that will impact our community?

Maybe I can help you by framing it this way.

What you’ll witness when you watch us pray as the people of God is men and women who are well aware of their imperfections. We are well aware of our hypocrisies. We are well aware of our shortcomings, yet we earnestly and completely believe that God hears us and wants to hear from us, and that when we pray, it pleases the heart of God. When we consider the God of the Bible, he is unlike any earthly father ever.

“Why Alton Sterling and Philando Castile Might Reject a Beloved Biblical Passage.” Religion News Service. N.p., 07 July 2016. Web. 08 July 2016.

Steve Beard ~ Take My Hand: The Gospel and the Blues

The first of several pivotal scenes in the film “Selma” occurs when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. makes a late night phone call to gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. The undeniable weight of what lay ahead for King and the civil rights movement was heavy on his soul. In quiet desperation, King (played masterfully by David Oyelowo) awakens the gospel music legend with the phone call and simply says, “I need to hear the Lord’s voice.”

Mahalia Jackson (played by Ledisi Young) breaks the stillness of the night with an impromptu and stemwinding plea in her housecoat and slippers:

“Precious Lord, take my hand / Lead me on, let me stand / I am tired, I am weak, I am worn / Through the storm, through the night / Lead me on to the light / Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.”

This iconic scene in the film was indicative of King’s dependence upon spiritual strength, Jackson’s healing voice, and the Savior’s nail-scarred hands.

“Precious Lord” was King’s supplication, his way of reaching out for the hem of the garment. It was his last request only moments before his voice of eloquence was forever silenced on April 4, 1968, with a .30-06 bullet. King had just asked Chicago saxophonist Ben Branch to play the song at the rally later that night in Memphis.

As a farewell to her civil rights compatriot, Jackson sang “Precious Lord” at King’s funeral. This would be the last of innumerable times they would share the same stage. Whenever King requested it, Jackson was willing to lend her voice for the cause – despite the death threats. As the granddaughter of slaves, Jackson sang the gospel classic “I’ve Been ‘Buked, and I’ve Been Scorned” right before King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington D.C. Jackson is credited for steering King off his prepared text by shouting from behind the podium, “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”

Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) was the undisputed queen of gospel music. She incurred the wrath from some church folks who resented the way she unveiled the power of gospel music outside the sanctuary in secular venues.

Others thought that her soaring style, hand-clapping, and foot-stomping borrowed too much from the blues and jazz singers of vaudeville, the sin bins, and the juke joints.

Despite heavy-handed pressure, Jackson never compromised on her personal vow to only sing gospel music. “Blues are the songs of despair,” she said. “Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what’s wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you’ve got nothing to rest on.”

No one understood the spiritual chasm between blues and gospel more profoundly than did Thomas A. Dorsey (1899-1993), the songwriter of “Precious Lord” and the legendary father of gospel music. For more than a decade, Dorsey was also known for writing bawdy blues under the alias “Georgia Tom.” As the prodigal son of a church organist mother and a father who was a Baptist minister, Dorsey’s double life embodied a very real spiritual warfare.

“My soul was a deluge of divine rapture,” said Dorsey after hearing spirit-filled music at a revival. Not long after that, however, Dorsey was playing piano as Georgia Tom for blues legends Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Tampa Red.

Two severe and lengthy bouts with what he dubbed as “unsteadiness” incapacitated him from playing music and caused him to tailspin into depression. His mother told him to give up the blues and get back into the good graces of the Lord. But every time he would lurch in a righteous direction, it seemed as if the blues would lure him back. The war for his soul raged back and forth for many years.

After a miraculous divine encounter and prophecy at a church service, Dorsey made a heartfelt commitment to focus on gospel. A remarkable professional collaboration between Dorsey and Jackson began shortly thereafter.

In 1932, things would change forever for Dorsey. He had become the choir director of the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago and was selling his songs to mass choirs. As he was preparing for a gospel concert in St. Louis, he received a telegram instructing him to immediately return home. By the time he arrived, his young wife Nettie had died giving birth to the couple’s son. Two days later, the baby also died.

Dorsey was crushed, despondent, and trampled underfoot. Social critic Stanley Crouch once observed that the New Testament contains perhaps the greatest blues line of all time — “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”

It was in the forsakenness of that hour that Dorsey chipped away at the piano and wrote, “Precious Lord, take my hand …” In the sorrow of the desolation and flood of his loss, the song that inspired Dr. King was the dove that Dorsey released in search of dry land, the flight of hope. It was his blues: “I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.” It was his gospel: “Lead me on, let me stand.”

“If a woman has lost a man, a man has lost a woman, his feeling reacts to the blues, he feels like expressing it,” Dorsey told his biographer Michael W. Harris in The Rise of Gospel Blues (Oxford). “The same thing acts for a gospel song. Now you’re not singing blues; you’re singing gospel, good news song, singing about the Creator; but it’s the same feeling, a grasping of the heart.”

For Dorsey, life was both gospel and blues. He had seen it in the juke joints and the sanctuaries. “It gets low-down. Now what we call low-down in blues doesn’t mean that it’s dirty or bad or something like that,” Dorsey said. “It gets down into the individual to set him on fire, dig him up…”

“Precious Lord” became a universally beloved song because it grasped the heart. You can hear how it inspired King, energized Jackson, and bandaged up Dorsey. It enabled King to weave a civil rights message to a white audience over the growling police dogs, shouted racial slurs, and the segregated lunch counters. It empowered Jackson to take traditional gospel music to locations beyond the choir loft and to audiences beyond the black church. It inspired Dorsey to blend the juke joint blues with the Sunday morning hope of gospel.

It was both Good Friday heartbreak and Easter Sunday jubilation – somewhere right there in the grit and toil of life.

 

Reprinted with permission.

“Selma” and the Embodiment of Discipleship

A week before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day my wife and I went to go see the film Selma. This inspirational movie focuses on the non-violent protests of Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), and others in the small town of Selma, Alabama. It particularly highlights the march from Selma to Montgomery, a momentous turning point in the Civil Rights movement. The movie made a lasting impression on me for all sorts of reasons, yet one especially stood out above the rest, and can be summarized by the old adage, “actions speak louder than words.”

Black and white photo of state troopers facing peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a persuasive, powerful orator. But it wasn’t so much his words that made an impact, though no doubt they were extremely influential. No, what really turned heads, what really got the ball rolling, what pressured President Lyndon B. Johnson (according to the film) to act weren’t so much King’s words, but his actions. He and others embodied the very message that they proclaimed through various acts of non-violent protests.

What if Christians were more intentional in embodying the very message we proclaim? To some, placing more emphasis on “actions” or “works” quickly prompts uneasy “works righteousness” comments. But weren’t we created for good works, as noted in Ephesians 2:10?

Sometimes we live more like dualists, placing priority on cognitive assent (beliefs and doctrines) over praxis. I’m not downplaying the significance of the mind in the Christian life: in fact, I think it’s very essential for transformation through the “renewing of the mind.” Nonetheless, more is involved in transformation than merely thinking all the right things (cf. James K.A. Smith’s “Cultural Liturgies” project).

As I dive more into the Gospels, and even in the epistles of the New Testament, I realize that the call to discipleship involves at the bare minimum the summons to presence and practice (see especially Mark 3:13-15 and Suzanne Watts Henderson’s “Christology and Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark”). We’re called to be with Jesus and practice what he does. As inhabitants of the Crucified Lord, we are to be imitators, who reenact Jesus’ ways.

But we are usually quick to pinpoint the launching pad of discipleship with conversion, especially when one can articulate the (soterian) gospel. Everything leads up to this decision, this cognitive assent. Everything prior was merely preparatory. You hear the testimonies in churches all the time: “I grew up in the church, but was only going through the motions: I was there every Sunday and Wednesday, participated in a small group, read my Bible from time to time, went on mission trips, but then I got it when I realized…” It’s as if going to church, participating in a small group, reading one’s Bible, and participating on mission trips weren’t viewed as legitimate, because this person couldn’t lucidly vocalize what most believers deem a confession of faith.

But what if there are pre-converted disciples (see Alan Hirsch’s “Disciplism”)? What if the journey of discipleship doesn’t begin with a confession of faith, but with drawing near to Jesus (via the Church) and participating in his mission? (Consider Wesley’s missionary trip to Georgia before his Aldersgate experience.)

In Mark 3, Jesus called the 12 disciples (later known as the apostles) to be with him and practice what he was doing: preach the gospel (words) and cast out demons (deeds). Had the disciples, at that point, fully gotten it? No. In fact, the real “confession of faith” moment isn’t announced by Peter (the representative) until chapter eight in Caesarea Philippi. Even at this point, Peter and the disciples’ “aha!” moment is short-lived, to put it lightly. (“Get behind me, Satan!” Yikes!) Did they cease being called “disciples?” No! Did they cease following Jesus and doing what he was commanding? No!

In the church today, we delay calling folks “disciples” until they have been converted. Maybe we are too enamored with quick-fix solutions?Maybe we demand instantly gratifying results? Maybe we need to expand our vision of discipleship.

What happens when we expand our vision of discipleship?

1) Evangelism is seen within the context of discipleship, rather than the reverse. This approach is relationally driven, and more fully reflects Jesus’ model. We embody what we believe and show people what it means to follow this Jesus who we proclaim as crucified and risen Lord of the cosmos.

2) If we are going to show people what it means to follow Jesus, we need to know what he was up to. What was he doing? Why? We need to dive deeper into understanding what he was actually doing and why in order to creatively reenact his ways in the 21st century in our respective subcultures.

3) We must adopt a mentality of radical mercy and radical patience. Will there be shortcomings from these pre-converted disciples? You better believe it!

4) Jesus was on the go! Yes, people sought him out, but he also didn’t wait for people to come to him (Mark 1:38). The church has to go out to the marginalized borders of society if we are going to reach others.

What might things look like if we focused more on embodying our beliefs in word and deeds? I think Jesus is more concerned with daily decisions, rather than a one-off articulation of faith (though articulating what one believes is extremely important).

As followers of Jesus we are empowered to embody his ways and bring others along on the Way of Discipleship, which is the Way of the Lord. When we discover how to symbolically reenact his ways, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, we will see heads turns, more decisions being made, and more actions taking place.

Jeff Rudy ~ If Only (Or, the Sermon I Couldn’t Deliver but My Wife Did)

There’s a story behind why I couldn’t stand up to preach…in short, I had a case of vertigo and wasn’t physically capable of standing to deliver my sermon. So at the last minute my wife volunteered to do deliver it for me. She had heard me rehearsing it the night before and fortunately I had a manuscript of what I wanted to share. So she courageously stepped in and delivered this text that I had prepared for the first Sunday in Advent.

The primary Scripture was Isaiah 64:1-9, and I used the Common English Bible, which was crucial to illumine a couple of points that were made in the sermon.

So today begins a new church year as we kick off the season of Advent this morning. I’ve come to cherish Advent more and more as the years go by. It’s not that it is my favorite because it means Christmas is so close, which was likely what I felt growing up, but because, as I see it, Advent is the season that probably gives us the most honest assessment about the way things are in the world. At its best the season of Advent and its relationship to Christmas mirrors that of Lent and its relationship to Easter. Advent, for some time, had seven weeks (not four), and was designed to be a season of repentance, fasting and preparation for the great mass, or worship celebration, for Christmas. But it was and is also a season that prepares us for the second coming of Christ, when all things will be summed up and the new heaven and new earth are joined together at last.

Now, if we can learn to fully appreciate a season of anticipation, of expectation, and waiting and not rush to December 24-25 as we are so prone to do, then we will be able to really allow the sense of aching and hope to linger long enough for us to get genuinely thirsty for the coming of the Lord. For this reason, in recent years I have found myself drawn toward the words of the prophets who so frequently spoke as people in waiting, longing for God’s appearance, during the season of Advent.

Simon and Garfunkel quipped that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sound of silence.” At the beginning of the song, they sang, “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.” Advent meets us in the darkness, in the silence. So do the prophets.

Polish-born Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschel, who lost many family members because of the holocaust, who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. for the civil rights movement in the 1960s, wrote what is in my mind the best summary work of the lives and writings of the prophets. Here are a few of his comments that I thought fit particularly well given the context and content of our passage from the prophet Isaiah from this morning:
• “This is the marvel of a prophet’s work: in his words, the invisible God becomes audible.”
• “Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums. To us a single act of injustice—cheating in business, exploitation of the poor—is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. Their breathless impatience with injustice may strike us as hysteria.”
• “The prophet’s ear is attuned to a cry imperceptible to others. The prophet’s ear perceives the silent sigh.”
• “Instead of cursing the enemy, the prophets condemn their own nation.”
• “The words of the prophet are stern, sour, stinging. But behind his austerity is love and compassion for mankind…he begins with a message of doom; he concludes with a message of hope.”
• “The prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.”

There are many more that are worth quoting, but something Heschel challenges is the notion that has gotten in some of our minds that prophecy has to do with a distant, impersonal, implacable God who serves as judge and who uses these obscure persons to serve as a sort of mouthpiece, which renders the work of the prophet as a mere technical function. Heschel wrote, “The prophet is not a mouthpiece, but a person; not an instrument, but a partner, an associate of God,” and that what is behind the message of the prophets isn’t merely an emotionally detached discussion about justice, but is rather the pathos, or feeling, of God with regard to the events of the world and the behaviors of God’s people. Heschel continued, “it is more accurate to see the prophets as proclaimers of God’s pathos, speaking not for the idea of justice, but for the God of justice, for God’s concern for justice. Divine concern remembered in sympathy is the stuff of which prophecy is made.” Indeed, “God’s role is not spectatorship but involvement…The God of Israel is never impersonal.” If this is true – if God is so concerned with the plight of the people and passionate about the cause of justice and at the same time is all-powerful – then the question that rises to the surface is, what is behind the complaint of Isaiah this morning, “if only…” or “why haven’t you torn open the heavens and come down? All would be settled, mountains would quake, enemies would flee or at least tremble.”

It comes as a cry from a people who have experienced the redeeming power of a God who overtook oppressing enemies to make things right. So where is this God? Heschel said, “in a stricken hour comes the word of the prophet. There is tension between God and [humans]. In the presence of God he takes the part of the people. In the presence of the people he takes the part of God.” So Isaiah reminds God of the former deliverance that the Lord procured for his people. “From ancient times, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any god but you who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.” That was the distinguishing mark of the God of Israel: patience and deliberative involvement in acting for those who wait on God. As far as the prophet could tell, there weren’t any other gods who were patient or longsuffering. And this has been evidenced in cultures throughout history as the greatness of a god was directly related to the greatness of the king and his army. When the people of a god were conquered, that god would disappear and usually the survivors wouldn’t hesitate to wreck the images of the gods in whom they had previously trusted.

So in a stricken hour, will we wait on the Lord? I don’t mean sitting down twiddling our thumbs. Nor did Isaiah. John Oswalt said it well when he wrote, “biblically speaking, ‘to wait’ is to manifest the kind of trust that is willing to commit itself to God over the long haul. It is to continue to believe and expect when all others have given up. It is to believe that it is better for something to happen in God’s time than for it to happen on my initiative in my time.” It is an active type of waiting that seeks to live rightly with relation to God and neighbor.

To get there we have to come to grips with something about ourselves that is really quite difficult, and this is the part no one really enjoys preaching or hearing about. But it’s something that is absolutely necessary and is evidenced in what Isaiah admits about the behaviors and attitudes of the people – sinning and doing wrong, being unclean – to such a degree that all our righteous deeds have become like filthy cloths, or as you heard it read this morning, a menstrual rag.

I didn’t read this version to gross you out, but there is something in this statement that illumines our own brokenness as we approach the God of compassionate mercy and justice. You see “sin” is like a contaminant that infects the whole body and it had become such a problem among the people of God that it infected even those things that we would typically deem as righteous acts. Even those had been contaminated to such a degree that the works weren’t signs of new life coming, but of the lack of conception (hence, “menstrual rag”), because all they do is self-serving and self-enhancing. They’d become a charade of the real thing.

Okay, I think I’m done with that analogy for the day. I suspect my email inbox will be filled with many messages from parents letting me know their children will be coming to ask me some questions that came up because of today’s Scripture.

Now let’s get really uncomfortable and see where this passage really addresses the darkness that remains in our world – Ferguson. What is the response of the people of God to the tragic death of Michael Brown and the events that have unfolded there and elsewhere since? Chances are when I simply mentioned the name of the town just now, there were several different internal reactions and emotions among the people in this congregation. Yet let us be honest that while our political ideologies and opinions on this and related problems are various within this church, we are nonetheless a rather affluent congregation comprised primarily of white people.

We also ought to recognize that systemic injustice still exists despite our lofty dreams and naïve ideas that we have somehow arrived at a utopian society where all are equal. It is true that African-American men are more likely, by virtually every measure, to be arrested, sentenced, executed, or murdered than white men. And if that causes us to shrug our shoulders in apathy, then we are not in tune with the God of justice. If we think it’s no big deal, we are tone deaf to the wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr. who wrote from a prison cell that, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If we are numb to the reality of privilege and of the responsibility that comes along with it, then we are a far cry from our movement’s founder John Wesley, whose last letter was written to encourage William Wilberforce to persevere in his cause of championing the abolition of the slave trade in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th century. If we remain apathetic, or even worse hold onto prejudices and fear of others because of the color of their skin, then we will be like the people for whom Isaiah and the prophets wept because they did not call on the name of the God of justice.

If only…if only you would come, God, Emmanuel. The cry of Advent is not merely a preparation for Christmas, it is really the final cry of the New Testament in the Revelation. “Maranatha! Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!” If only you would come; I mean fully and really come all this would be reconciled. No more death, no more need for protests or riots, no more destruction, just the fulfillment of all our hope – a place of eternal shalom!

But as we cry, “Maranatha!” let us at the very least be the people who actively wait. And that involves listening – for God, to our neighbors – for they have a story to tell and experiences to share that are often very different than our own. Are we willing to be clay in the potter’s hands in this season? Take us, mold us, use us.

To close this morning, I want to share with you a blessing adapted from a Benedictine prayer. It’s not any normal blessing, though; it is one that carries with it a challenge to be a prophetic witness in a world that doesn’t often care much for the prophets. So here goes:

May the Spirit bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships so that you will live deep in your heart.
May the Spirit bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people and the earth so that you will work for justice, equity and peace.
May the Spirit bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them.
May the Spirit bless you with foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so that you will do the things which others say cannot be done.

In the name of the Father whose pathos, love and compassion burned hot for the people of God to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with their God; and of the Son, who didn’t consider his privilege as something to use for his own gain but emptied himself to become human and really the lowest of the sorts—a slave; and of the Holy Spirit, who with open arms embraces us and welcomes us into the holy mystery of being the children of God. Amen.

Ohio State students participate in a prayer vigil for Ferguson on November 24th. Photo credit: Jacob Shalkhauser for The Lantern
Ohio State students participate in a prayer vigil for Ferguson on November 24th. Photo credit: Jacob Shalkhauser for The Lantern

Maxie Dunnam ~ Memphis Teacher Residency: A Bold Mission

I believe urban public education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. A person’s zip code should not determine the quality of a child’s educational opportunity. In our urban areas, especially, educational injustice exists along economic and racial lines.

This problem has reached epidemic proportions. Too many children are condemned to substandard educational opportunities based solely on where they live. Justice demands more.

On May 29, I spoke at a welcome dinner for 64 young men and women who have come to Memphis for one of the boldest, most creative responses to this crisis in education and justice. They have come from all over the nation to participate in Memphis Teacher Residency. They will spend a year in “on the front line” education and training, earning a Master’s Degree in Urban Teaching. Upon receiving their degrees, these young men and women will commit to teach in the Memphis public schools for at least three years. Here’s a testimonial video on the residency program:

[vimeo id=”66179350″]

The program is receiving attention and accolades from everywhere. I don’t know anything quite like it in our country. I urge you, check out the website, share the information with young people you know, and challenge them to join us in Memphis to help solve the greatest social justice and civil rights issue in America today. Wouldn’t it be just like God to use Memphis as a proving witness that education for all is possible?

 

Maxie Dunnam ~ Public Confession and Repentance

March 22 was a day of huge importance for my city of Memphis. Like many significant events, I’m afraid it went unnoticed by most. Two churches, Second and Independent Presbyterian, held a public service of confession and repentance.

Few of us would not recognize our need for individual repentance. None of us are without the mark of Adam; what we would do, we do not, and what we would not do, we do. We need repentance and forgiveness.

But this was public, corporate repentance.

Fifty years earlier to the day two young men – Joe Purdy and Jim Bullock – had visited Second Presbyterian together as part of a church visit campaign, called kneel-ins. Before the young men could reach the entrance, a church representative asked Joe, “Are you African?” When he said, “No, I’m American,” he and his white friend were refused entrance. They returned the following Sunday (and the six Sundays after that) with a growing number of friends of both races who stood outside the church in silent protest of the church’s refusal to welcome them. Though few knew it at the time, the men responsible for repelling the visitors were enforcing an explicit policy of segregation adopted by the church’s session in 1957.

In The Last Segregated Hour, Stephen Haynes, a Religious Studies professor at Rhodes College, does a great job of telling the story, including how it is remembered and the ongoing implications.

Independent Presbyterian Church was founded because Second Presbyterian reversed its position denying the Kneel-in Protesters’ presence in the church, and allowed them entrance. Numerous people opposed that decision, left, and founded a separate church (Independent Presbyterian), which had in its constitution the commitment to preserve racial segregation in the church.

Fifty years later, the pastors and leaders of both congregations felt a need to make a corporate response.

Thank God for pastors and lay leaders who recognized that history is important, and when unrecognized and unconfessed, sin poisons the body. We don’t keep secrets, our secrets keep us.

Jim Bullock, one of the students turned away from Second Presbyterian Church fifty years ago, and one of the speakers at the 50th anniversary commemoration service, has written about the event on March 22 for the Presbyterian News Service:

March 22, 2014 is a day I shall not soon forget. When I woke up my stomach was already churning. The rainy weather seemed to bode ill. I made my customary stop at Starbuck’s where I had my customary grande chai latte. But I could not get my stomach to settle down. Hope and fear were churning away in my gut and the words of a colleague – “you know, this thing could go really badly” – echoed in my ears. I arrived half-an-hour early at the location where the day’s events were to take place (typically, I’m at least five minutes late everywhere I go). I walked inside the church and looked around until I found the room where I was to meet several other men for a time of prayer. The prayer time had been my idea, and I was glad I had suggested it. Inside the room were representatives of three local churches – Idlewild, Second and Independent – which have little in common beyond the name “Presbyterian.” In fact, the churches represent different denominations that define themselves largely in opposition to one another. But there we were, praying for reconciliation – among us, and among the people who would come to Second Presbyterian Church that morning to commemorate the traumatic events that had split the church fifty years earlier.

As the prayer time went on, I found myself crying tears of joy. A day we had hoped for, imagined, and dreamed of was finally here. The Spirit seemed to be honoring our vision of a service of truth-telling and reconciliation at the site of one of the South’s most notorious acts of racial exclusion.

Interestingly, the public confession of particular, individual sins has ballooned in the past three or four decades in the plethora of “confessional” self-help groups that have emerged (for alcoholics, over-eaters, drug abusers, sex addicts). Yet, our ability to acknowledge the existence of large-scale, all-permeating corporate sin has dramatically decreased. We have our time of corporate confession in our worship services, but that has become so perfunctory that its purpose and power is blurred. Maybe corporate confession is dulled in meaning because in our preaching and teaching we have dramatized glaring private sins readily recognized and named, while the “hidden” sins of attitude and omission get no attention.

Scripture is full of God’s call for corporate confession and repentance…the recognition of the sins of the nation, the sins of “the whole people of God.” So what happened in that service on March 22 was not only good and redemptive for the soul of those two congregations, it was good for the whole church…perhaps a model for all.

I may be making too much of it, but I think it is also significant that this public service of confession and repentance for racism took place two weeks before our remodeled and expanded Civil Rights Museum is to be reopened in Memphis (April 4). We are dull indeed if we can visit the museum without feeling we are a “people of unclean lips and we live among a people of unclean lips.” (Isaiah 6:5) We need to repent, not only privately, but corporately.