Response 1
Rev. Ken Gorman
The fourth chapter of Barndt’s Becoming an Anti-Racist Church is a survey of the church’s struggle to resist racism. There Barndt argues that the church has had two “personalities” from its earliest history with distinctive personality traits that characterized each’s reaction to the issues of injustice and oppression. He uses this description to narrate historically how these two different personality type churches perceived and the degree to which they resisted racism. The two go by the names of the Ruler’s Church and the People’s Church. Reading the chapter was an evocative experience. When I was a youth, I went to a church that was in a segregated community. The community was rigidly conservative, culturally isolated and proud of it. The ethos of the town made anyone of color uncomfortable to go there, live there or even worship there. Growing up in our church in that community I thought we were a People’s Church because, well, our congregation represented our community and we accepted all those who came through our doors. Even the Governor was often the guest at Sunday’s church breakfast. I can remember one Sunday asking the rector if someone interrupted our service and wanted to speak about the hot racial issues (at that time it was reparations) what would he do? He said he would call the police and have them ushered out. I remember that as my first encounter of power and control wielded in the Ruler’s Church, my church. Later I would learn the hard lesson that the Episcopal Church had benefited materially from the slave trade. We were not as much a “People’s Church” as I thought we were. Can churches and individual personalities change their “types”? Barndt later says that it is only after a kairos moment that a church can move into the process of shaping an anti-racist identity. Personalities can change, too, but it usually happens only after a crisis (so says Erik Erikson). It took the seismic effects of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination to finally open the doors of the mainline churches. For me there was a kairos moment, too, when I was shaken. It initiated a process that to this day requires me to acknowledge that this kind of personal transformation is a process that doesn’t end, it goes on and on. “The structures of racism have been in place for over 500 years in New Jersey,” as one other responder has said. There is no instant way to bring racism to an end here in our State, our church, or ourselves. But each of us, from our own kairos moments, has the opportunity to chart a new way by “making a path and walking on it.”
Response 2
Leroy Lyons
“White slave masters taught slaves a twisted and distorted version of the Bible as part of their strategy of dehumanization and pacification.” P.54 Unfortunately, this tragedy, perpetuated by the triumphalistic Ruler’s Church, has been allowed to go unchallenged. The subtlety of this false bible messaging has remained inviolate for the most part; probably for several reasons. In the first place, there is a reticence, on the part of a Christian community, to challenge the ‘word of God’. The bible says and it does say unequivocally, that slaves should be obedient to their masters. What is prescribed as expediency becomes principle. This verse translates into a biblical injunction and the idea is interpreted as a good thing to do. In the second place, and for the most part, until recently, the People’s Church lacked the theological sophistication to think exegetically, and many scriptures went unchallenged. Finally, there was and is this ready acceptance, a brainwashing for the most part, to accept without questioning, what the Ruler’s Church dictates as the reality of the gospel.
Passages of scripture, such as:’ Slaves be obedient to your masters’, fit readily into the convenience of the Ruler’s church, and are accepted with a great deal of scriptural authority as just what the doctor ordered. It is easily swallowed.
Another illustration should prove my point. The letters of the New Testament travelled through posterity and ultimately became part of the canon of Scripture because of their importance and use, not only to the church’s to whom they were directly addressed, but because of the importance of their teaching to the whole Christian community. It is therefore inconceivable to think that the letter to Philemon survived just because it gives instruction to the church on how to deal with thieving runaway slaves. How convenient though was this book to the slave Masters! This thinking played right into their hands; how well does this idea reaffirm the rights claimed by the Fugitive Slave Law!
The book of Philemon is universally understood as the tale of a thieving runaway slave. He was encouraged by Paul to return to his master to be disciplined and restored. Here is the rub: this crass assessment is made on the strength of a minor and abstruse reference in 18. ‘If he has done you any wrong, or is in your debt.’ This is the evidence to prove the point. BUT, let us juxtapose this verse with 15. ‘That you may have him back for good, no longer as a slave, but as more than a slave – as a dear brother, very dear indeed to me, and how much dearer to you, both as a man and a Christian.’ This verse should leave no doubt as to which direction we should look for the meaning of the epistle. This letter is a clear challenge to a grave matter, an institutional crisis – the abolition of slavery in the church.
Abolishing slavery was not merely letting the slave go free, with his 40 acres and a mule, if anything. It was a difficult process that involved both master and slave in an intimate struggle. It was a reconciliation process that led to restoration and wholeness for both the master and the slave. Humanity, as well as spirituality is to be repaired and rebuilt. Onesimus is returning to a very big change, a revolution in that household, for he is returning both as a man and as a Christian. It is not: you go your way and I go mine. Can you imagine the transformation that is to take place between both slave and master!
Our present book is entitled Becoming an Anti Racist Church and our present chapter is Resisting Racism in United States Church History. The question is often asked how much is the racial situation today improving? Are we not looking at the same problem that has undergone a metamorphosis into a subtle and more pernicious creature? Our anti racist struggle is a long way from completion. Is it because we cannot find Philemon? When we do find him, are we deathly afraid of the struggle or to risk the hard work that is needed to accomplish the challenge? Certainly in this struggle, the concepts in the words: reparation, restoration and forgiveness, truth and reconciliation a la S. Africa will have to play their part. The biblical approach to anti racism has to be our thrust. What happened in Philemon’s house grew to affect the whole church and reformed the institution from within and in its quiet and enduring way kept this example for us as it is recorded in the canon of scriptures. In our quiet and enduring way, we must remain the anti-racist church ..… RESISTING.
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