Response 1
Rev. Martin Gutwein
Recently there was a wedding in our congregation. The bride was an African-American woman from south Jersey. The bridegroom was a white man from central Pennsylvania. Throughout the celebration families and friends moved about and related to each other freely, easily, and joyfully. There were African-Americans and whites, Asians and Latinos. Some, like the bride and groom, were devout Christians, others merely nominal. At least two family groupings were obviously Muslim. On surveying the whole assembly the thought frequently passed through my head, “Why can’t every celebration of the ‘Marriage Supper of the Lamb’ be like this?” The answer is simple - racism.
Forty years ago as a Peace Corps teacher in the West Indies one of my teenaged students asked me this question, “Please, sir. How come there are people in your country lighter skinned than you and they call them black?” The simple answer to that question was again racism. In America - whether we want it or not - we are assigned a race. If any portion of your ancestry is known to be of a non-white race, you are assigned to that category automatically. Nowadays, many mixed race people are determined to maintain a dual identity, but the usual result is that even well meaning people simply assign them to a new category - “mixed race.” We are a race-based society. We have been that since the invention and evolution of racism some five hundred years ago.
In the second chapter of Becoming an Anti-Racist Church Joe Barndt goes back to the history of the Church before the development of racism. He postulates a dual personality, which became especially noticeable after the Emperor Constantine legitimized the Christian Movement. Perhaps it was a natural and unwitting attempt to follow St. Paul’s practice of being “all thing to all people,” but the Church began, not only to speak the truth to power, but to consort with it. The result was the entwining of the Church and its message with the corridors of power. Barndt names this “the Rulers’ Church.” As I’m sure Barndt knows, but did not expressly say, this tendency/temptation goes well back into the history of Israel, the ancient People of God.
The story of the Rulers’ Church is not the whole story. The biblical Message - the Message of Jesus - always comes down on the side of the “orphan and widow.” Within the Christian Movement there were always strong voices and actions on the side of justice and mercy. These voices may have been muted in the corridors of power. They may have been strongest in the humbler segments of society, but they were always present. Barndt names this “the Peoples’ Church.”
It’s not easy to pick apart the two tendencies within the Christian Movement, however tempting it might be to label “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys.” What we can say is that during the period of exploration, conquest and colonization, both of the personalities of the Church played a part - and continue to do so today. The Church consorts with power. The Church resists injustice. Both sentences describe us - in part.
In a race-based society like ours the “rulers” and “people” can more often than not be identified along color lines. My city is one of the poorest in America. It is 90% people of color. Churches all too frequently display the dual personality described by Barndt, with the result that they are segregated. It is, of course, easier, more pleasant, comfortable, and rewarding (especially financially) to relate to the rulers, and so we do. The “people” present us with insoluble problems and frequently put us at odds with the structures of power. The presence of American style racism complicates the Church’s facing up to its dual personality and confidently addressing the need for justice, mercy, and a voice for our modern day “orphans and widows.”
Noreen Duncan
I am a successful post-colonialist. This summer I vacationed with women of different ages who are all alumnae of my Anglican school in the Caribbean and others like it – proud that we can still sing school songs, “non-nobis domine,” proud descendents of long lines of post- colonials, proud members of the Ruler’s Church! Barndt reminds us that “The world today is defined and divided by the fruits of colonialism.” I am a hybrid mango tree, an excellent colonial student. It is painful for me to acknowledge that my Christian practices are primarily those of the Ruler’s Church, the colonial conquerors’ church, not the Church that “identifies more with people on the lower end of the economic spectrum, with people whose lives are given over to serving society with little choice or reward,” the People’s Church.
There is some little comfort in learning that the two churches are not always at odds and that there is not always a hard line between the two ways of being a Christian, Ruler’s Church and People’s Church. However, it is important for me to fully understand that it has been the People’s church “[that] quietly provided the spiritual strength that [my] oppressed and suffering [ancestors] needed to survive.”
“European churches in colonial territories throughout the world carried out the ecclesiastical function of thanking God for blessing colonial enterprises with success, security, and material possessions.” My Anglican schooling, my family history, my own life choices have placed me squarely and until now confidently in the Ruler’s Church. I am praying that I can be accepted into the Church that identifies with the poor and the way of the cross, the Church that knows the “power and inspiration of the anti-racist gospel.”
