Race, Prejudice, And Power In The Church (2 Responses)

Response 1

Rev. Theodore Moore

“When whole groups benefit from collective harm done to others, those same groups must take responsibility as perpetrators.”

What appears to be an easy solution or “fix” is entangled with many misconceptions that have been perpetuated by racism.  In my life time, the only time I remember hearing a group publically take responsibility for the harm done by slavery was the service at St. Peter’s in Perth Amboy, spearheaded by Mother Deborah Piggins.  It was a moving and memorable example of taking responsibility as perpetrators of the injustice of burying slaves without the benefit of a name, date of birth and death.  In addition, the recognition of this institutionalized racism, sanctioned by the church in the past, underscores the need to actively search and identify additional historical as well as current examples of racially based injustices. 

What concerns me is the failure to recognize a present day system of mass incarceration that is causing collective harm to people of color.  The implementation of another form of a racial caste system is essentially taking the identities, potential and voting privileges away from people of color in a systematic way. The foundation for this system seems to be based on a racially based change in the severity of the penalties and sentences for violation of drug laws of this country.   The systematic removal of young Black and Latino males from society and the development of an underprivileged “caste system” have been achieved through the construction of penal institutions and sentencing of young Blacks and Latinos.  This has been accomplished in part by increasing the penalty for the use and possession of crack cocaine (used predominately by people of color) and decreasing the penalties for the use of cocaine (used predominately by whites).  Meanwhile our tax money has funded the expansion of private penal institutions to house the staggering increase of Blacks and Latinos arrested under these laws.  We need to recognize this injustice as well as the corruption that has accompanied this perpetuation of a modern day racial caste system.  These penal institutions exist mostly in rural and suburban areas. These suburban communities have benefitted by adding the prison population to the total census thereby increasing congressional representation.  There appears to be very little if any outcry against this injustice.  Read “The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander” for details.

“Race is a false and misleading social construct without basis in science or theology.  The idea of race was invented by sixteenth-century Europeans, imported by seventeenth-century American colonialists, constitutionalized by our eighteenth-century American forefathers, and perpetuated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a tool to measure human worth and distribute power and privilege. In the twenty-first century the results remain an unbearable weight over a divided society.”

Why are we continually forced to use this system to categorize people?  There is no justification for the continued use of this “racial classification” without a scientific or theological reason.  One section of applications for employment, loans and other legal documents continues to require information on racial background.  We all belong to the human race.  The continuation of this unscientific classification does little but provide a method of continued discrimination in hiring, loan approvals and housing.

“Even the Bible has been racialized… For centuries, the Bible was used to define and defend racism. The use of biblical foundations to justify racial classifications continues to be accepted today.  Understanding how the Bible has been wrongly racialized and used as a tool of racism is one of the most important steps in understanding and eliminating racism in the church.”

Slave owners, politicians and church leaders invented a race-based Bible that identified white people as the true people of God and all other people as something less than the people of God.  Fantasy stories were invented to authenticate the hoax, including the belief that Noah’s son Ham, who was condemned because of sexual sins, was a black African.  These fantasies have been perpetuated by both Black and White.  In the Black community one of the fantasy stories used to counteract the perpetuation of a white Jesus described the Saviors hair texture as woolly suggesting that Jesus was Black.  The Bible does not suggest or mention what His hair texture may have been.  These false concepts have been handed down from generation to generation by both Black and White designed to authenticate white supremacy and maintain a racial caste system.








Response 2

Rev. Joan Fleming             

Do white Christians truly have a deeply rooted “collective” consciousness that privileges our own kind and “disenfranchises” people of color?  We certainly hate to think so, but in many Sunday School rooms today pictures of a white Jesus still decorate the walls—and imprint a false image of our Lord in children’s subconscious.  Author Joseph Barndt would point to this as but one symptom of the deeply ingrained assumptions that have guided and controlled the Church’s thought and action since that first Anglican celebration of Holy Communion on Virginia’s shore in 1607.  Today, we still have “black” and “white” congregations, a living legacy of race, prejudice and power that brings the assumptions of the past distressingly into the present.

The city parish I served as rector prided itself upon its Colonial heritage.  Its fine stone tower pre-dated the Revolution and was claimed as the site where the Declaration of Independence received its third public reading.  Across town, barely a mile away, there is another Episcopal church, much smaller, architecturally undistinguished, and somewhat down-at-heel.  The basement frequently floods.

This is the “black church,” begun as a “mission” of the Colonial parish, its flock still almost entirely people of color—though nowadays mainly of Caribbean origin.

I have often speculated about the cultural context out of which this mission

was born.  The story—from the white side—is that funding was generously made available to black congregants of the older parish in order that they might start their “own” church and be independent.  The story—from the black side—is that the funding was a kind of bribe to get rid of members of color.  Some deeper background to these two stories can be discerned from a couple of sources.

Old Christ Church and Bishop Croes, a parish history written in 1896, contains the following reminiscence:

“In [the] early days of our century, there were still many slaves surviving among us. … [and] to keep the young negro-lads in order while in church, and also to make sure that they came to church, a long, low-seated, high-backed bench was provided for them, which was placed at the foot of the east window, directly underneath the pulpit, and facing the congregation, so that they might be seen of all men.  You may rest assured that, under such unfavorable circumstances for pranks, there was very little sky-larking indulged in by the youthful darkeys.”

St. Alban’s mission was organized a century later, when slavery was a thing of the past, in 1921.  But why, one wonders, just then?  Interestingly, research reveals that in 1923/1924, a new pipe organ was installed in the gallery of the Christ Church sanctuary.  Planning for its installation must have begun right about 1921.  It is an altogether logical deduction that because black members had traditionally been seated in the gallery where, according to the 1896 history, “a number of pews were set aside [for] the grown negroes,” funding a mission church at just that time for the Christ Church members of color may also have had an entirely practical motive—to free up gallery space for the planned new organ. 
           

A people’s “collective consciousness” can retain the deep memory of such covert insults for generations.  For the “perpetrators,” though, amnesia often conveniently obliterates them.                                                           

 

  

Racism And Resisting Racism In The Post-Civil Rights Church (2 Responses)

Response 1

Rev. Gregory Bazilla

I was born in 1962, and I grew up in an affluent township in New Jersey.  My perceptions of the Civil Rights Movement were filtered through my parents (positive) and grandparents (mostly positive).

Though I was baptized, I grew up outside of a church (I was a Sunday School dropout).  My Christian journey began when I was a young adult.  Gradually, my involvement in the ministries of the Church grew into a commitment to the institution of the Episcopal Church.  I studied at a theological seminary, trained as a hospital chaplain, worked as a chaplain in a Trenton hospital, and ministered as a parish priest.

Today I minister to the children of the children of the Civil Rights Era. I serve as a chaplain on the New Brunswick/Piscataway campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, a student population that mirrors some of the demographic trends around ethnicity and immigration in the wider society.  My ministry is primarily with emerging adults (ages 18-30), the segment of the population that is largely absent from the pews on Sunday morning.  Emerging adults generally hold a favorable view of the Christian proclamation that the love of God is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but they don’t see the gospel as making any difference for their daily lives.  Many will quickly point to the church’s failures, hypocrisies, and sin, including the sin of racism (though I suspect many more have not considered the issue of racism in the church in the era of Obama).  Sociologists describe emerging adults as uninterested, uninvolved and lacking commitment to any institutions, including local and denominational churches. (See Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church.)

Given the decline of the institutional church in terms of member involvement, the diminishing dollars available to dioceses and denominations for funding programs, and the other trends that prompt us as a church to think critically, creatively and theologically about our mission and ministries, I wonder whether the programmatic approach to antiracism proposed by Joseph Barndt has a future.  With the insistence that racism has to die--amen!--there is also needs to be the realization that organizational structures and social patterns of church and society are changing, yes, dying a slow, anguished death.

Institutions bring together different generations, help to hold us accountable, and expose us all to new ideas, experiences and perspectives.  I am grateful for the big picture, the large historical canvas painted by Joseph Barndt in his book, for its uncompromising message of antiracism, and the very practical questions he provides for us as we seek to challenge each other to be faithful to our mission as the Church.   Let’s bring these conversations together--antiracism, emerging adults, the need for the institutional church to change--and see what new insights and understandings might open for us, as we learn from each other.  May God give us eyes to see, ears to listen, and hearts to love, and the courage to risk everything for the sake of the gospel.

“Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever.” (Ephesians 3:20,21)

Response 2

Dr. George E. Moore

Assessing racism and resistance in the post-civil rights era requires a look at events shaping our daily lives as a nation and as the church.

•       Joe Wilson - Republican South Carolina yells out “you lie” during President Obama’s speech to congress.

•       Ten (10 )Republican members of Congress co-sponsored bill requiring future presidential candidates provide a copy of their original birth certificate.  A woman waving her own birth certificate, contended Obama was born in Kenya, and shouted out, "I want my country back!". 

•       Alabama's Republican supermajority approved what many consider America's toughest immigration law. Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn upheld the law – including a portion that says schools must check immigration status of children when they enroll, as well as the status of their parents.

•       A Brennan Center for Justice study indicated new laws regarding photo identification requirements for voting, eliminating same day voter registration, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, changing requirements for voter registration drives, reducing early voting days, etc., will make voting harder for over five million people in the 2012 election. The report projects these laws will have a significant impact on minority voters.

•       Occupy Wall Street - an ongoing demonstration protesting socio-economic inequality and corporate greed in America, has now spread to over 80 cities across the country.

Elements of our national leadership, are apparently using the economic downturn to re-institute more overt form of racism; while resistance has again taken to the streets.

The diocese I serve reaffirm its support to ending racism to the national church, yet has instituted no infrastructure to address this sin. Apparently parishioners are unwilling to engage in transformational work. Churches acknowledges it’s present, yet fail to address it’s impact on daily living.

Where we are now is troubling.

Resisting Racism In U.S. Church History (2 Responses)

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.

   

Racism In U.S. Church History (2 Responses)

Response 1

By Rev. Carolyn H. Eklund

Probably the best, most recent example of racism from our country’s history and our diocesan history was the awareness of the unrecorded deaths of slaves who were buried in the graveyard of St. Peter’s parish in Perth Amboy.  One evening in August, the bishop and members of various parishes packed the St. Peter’s nave in recognition of this fact.  We were mindful of the Diocesan warrant to repent of the sin of racism and ask God to reconcile us to each other.  It was a moving service that concluded with a reading of the few names of slaves that had been recorded in the church registry.  We all walked outside to the churchyard where the bishop dedicated a stone that acknowledged the unnamed souls.

As I read Joseph Barndt’s chapter on the history of racism in the United States and in the church I learned how slavery came to be in the United States centuries ago and how many millions of slaves died over those 400 plus years:  As white Europeans came to the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, South America, Central America and North America, the biblical “mandates,” “be fruitful and multiply” and “have dominion over the earth” were used to justify taking land from native people, imposing European Christianity on them and subjugating people into slavery in order to realize a prosperous destiny that included only white people.

I grew up in a racially integrated town, Kansas City, Kansas.  I went to racially integrated public schools.  And yet, I am aware that I am a part of that historical and existing “prosperous destiny” still primarily reserved for white people of this country.

Ten years ago I was called to a racially mixed parish which is my life’s love.  For years now, I have been alert to my “white privilege” and have loved engaging honestly and deeply with my friends from African descent.  Serving on Grace, Plainfield’s annual Black History Month committee has been foundational to my personal journey as I help to bring our church to racial unity and wholeness.

Response 2

Barbara Okamoto Bach

I visited St John’s Church (Montclair) to hear an invited sermon by an attorney who represents slave descendents’ reparations cases.  The forum topic after the liturgy was financial reparations for lasting effects of slavery, but the discussion turned on racism.  Chapter 3 of Barndt’s book makes the same connection -- from slavery and Indian genocide to racism.  He asks us to examine our church’s history.

2006 GC resolution A123 acknowledged that slavery is a sin and the Episcopal Church participated in this sin.  The resolution apologized for the Church’s complicity in supporting slavery, segregation and discrimination and urged each diocese to research its slavery history.  The Dioceses of Newark and New Jersey (one diocese before 1874) research found:

·        U.S. 1790 census counted 11,423 slaves in New Jersey; 1850 census counted 18 slaves (16 older than 60 years), a significant reduction possibly due to 1786 (Constitutional) and 1808 (NJ) bans on further importation of slaves.

·        Archeological evidence at landed estates show enslavement similar to southern plantations.  A Shrewsbury plantation recorded “60 to 70 negroes” in 1684. 

·        13 % of the 161 active NJ congregations in 1765 were Anglican.  Most churches in the Dioceses of Newark and New Jersey were founded after 1865 (13^th amendment).  Quakers organized and spoke out against slavery; Anglicans largely followed societal pressures, proslavery or silent.

·        Episcopal Bishop Henry Codman Potter (NY) in 1894 described the Christian church as a place where religion “taught all men were brothers, and practiced the opposite.”

·        From 1919 to 1939 at St Peter’s Church (Perth Amboy) Father Nelson provided separate services in the afternoon because black Episcopalians were not allowed to worship in the morning.  Toward repentance and redemption, the Diocese of NJ consecrated slave graves in St Peter’s churchyard (August 10, 2011).

I recently led a seminar for a Social Justice group, addressing the damaging legacy of enslaving black Americans.  A board member who hadn’t known that Thomas Jefferson kept 275 slaves asked,  “Why don’t we learn this in school?”  Twelve U.S. presidents (7 Episcopalians) owned slaves.  Slave owners Jefferson and Washington didn’t mean all men are created equal.  Read the collects for Independence Day (BCP pp. 242 and 258)!

God created all men equal.   It’s time to get it right.  My brown-skinned Latina daughter pledges allegiance with a plaintive question mark:  “. . . one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all?” 

A Tale Of Two Churches (2 Responses)

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.”

 

 

Response 2

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.”

Setting The Biblical Context: Reclaiming an Anti-Racist Gospel (2 Responses)

Response 1

The Reverend Deborah H. Piggins

It is a journey of becoming, this intentional anti-racism walk we are on. It is a journey on that stony road we sing of in Lift Every Voice. And it is a journey toward the freedom Jesus offers us.  We are on this road together, whether we have chosen it or not, and we are all at different points in the journey. None of us has arrived yet. We are not unlike the ancient Israelites, freed from Egypt by Moses, with a little help from Yahweh, and complaining most of the way, yearning to return to slavery where they were fed by their oppressors.  

As with the people who followed Moses, God calls us to journey so that we will be stretched and grow. Can it be that God tests us not so God will know us better (not needed), but so that we will know our selves better and become closer to God? As Moses says to his fellow sojourners, “Remember the long way the Lord your God has led you … to humble you … in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)  Perhaps words like love and justice.

Joe Barndt writes, “everyone is broken and in need of liberation.” He quotes Ephesians (6:12): “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age…” In our brokenness we have created structures that entrap us in a system and culture that oppresses all, even those who enjoy white privilege without even being aware of it. We created those systems and cultures; we can dismantle them. That is our work in our baptismal call to be the hands and feet and voice of Christ on earth.

Response 2

By Kevin Thompson, MPA, DTM

Reading this book begs the reader to ask, why set the biblical context in reclaiming an Anti-Racist Gospel in route to becoming an Anti-Racist Church.  I ask what better place to start?  Regardless of our religious affiliation as followers of Christ, the one thing we all should agree with is that the bible is the word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit through man.  Establishing a biblical context provides a platform, a foundation if you will, and a place that we all can meet in agreement.  Taking a biblical point of reference also allows us to face some questions that will challenge our faith in the bible.

If we believe that the Bible is true then everyone on earth came from one man Adam and one woman Eve who were both God’s creation.  If this is true, and the bible did not note God creating anyone else who is human, then we are all descendants of Adam and Eve.  We are family, everyone together. No one is omitted because of differences in skin, hair, eye color or language.  So if you think about it, the idea of treating someone to be less human and torture or kill them because of these aforementioned differences is a little bazaar.  Is this the way you would treat someone in your family, your child, aunt, uncle, mom or dad?  Of course you said no, but this is what racism validates. 

Setting a biblical context provides the opportunity for each of us to pause and ask the question, do I really believe what the Bible says is true.  This is the question that I would like you to ponder in the quietness of your room.  If you are a follower of Jesus Christ and you believe that the words written in the Bible are true, then I believe that you have an obligation to continue to read this book and take an active role in helping your church become an Anti-Racist Church.  We need to treat everyone like they are members of our immediate family and share the love of God with one another.  What do you believe? Please share your comments below.

Introduction: Eleven O'Clock Sunday Morning (2 Responses)

Response 1

The Rev. Martha McKee

This book invites us to “journey toward wholeness” as we become an anti-racist church.  My own journey as an anti-racist began in the 1950s in segregated Houston, Texas.  I spent many evenings with “colored” people at a “drug” store (which sold mostly candy, ice cream and liquor) and met people of color in my home as “ironing ladies” and as friends of my parents.  I spent summers at day camp with very poor, mostly Mexican, children.  Through the brave vision of Presbyterian youth pastors, I worshiped in black churches and heard the stories of my peers who were on other sides of the racial divide in that very Southern city.  The time and place were full of anger and danger in the heat of the Civil Rights era.  It was very clear to me that, despite what we heard about Jesus loving all the little children, most of the adults of my church did not consider all people equal—in God’s eyes or their own.  The disparity between what the church taught and what it lived disturbed me.

Fifty years later, I find myself confronted with Joe Barndt’s introductory chapter about the continued separation of racial groups in our churches.  He rightly observes that:  “…Jesus still needs to schedule separate appearances in red, yellow, brown, black and white churches to bring his precious children into his sight.”   

The structures of racism (and resistance to them) have been in place for over 500 years in New Jersey.  That does not make our task in the Diocese any less urgent.  Jesus was quite clear about who our neighbors are.  We have parishes and missions that have made great progress in becoming antiracist and multicultural.  Many of us have begun to address the fears and challenges of being truly one in Christ.  We still have much to do and learn.  In Barndt’s words, we still need to deal with our “incapacity to act on our own beliefs.”  Anti-racism is not about making white people feel guilty or letting people of color vent.  It is about the kind of restructuring justice that fills the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels.  It is about hope and promise for God’s people that things do not have to stay the same. Anti-racism has been one of my greatest spiritual struggles.  It is also one of the areas where there are rich rewards through the care and compassion of all our brothers and sisters in Christ.  This One Book project gives us a chance to share across the Diocese our reactions to a subject we often avoid.  Please join with Joe Barndt and each of the people of our Diocese to look with God’s eyes on our church, our history and our challenge to confront racism.  We want to hear from you.

Response 2

Terrence W. Rosheuvel

Years ago when South Africa was still in the grip of apartheid, a white South African told me how shocked he was when he came to America and found racially segregated churches.  He was among those who had been willing to go to jail for the right of blacks and whites to worship together in South Africa.  He literally could not understand why in America where there were no apartheid laws to stop interracial worship, people still worshipped in segregated churches.  This South African reminded me of how scandalous racism in the church really is.  He reminded me also of the degree to which we in the U.S. have come to accept this bizarre situation as normal.

Dr. Joe Barndt’s introduction to his book, “Becoming An Anti-Racist Church”, presents a sharp challenge to our acceptance of segregated churches as the norm.  He rightly calls on Christians in America to wake up to the reality of how this situation damages the church.  Fundamentally, the integrity and credibility of the Church and its message are put into serious question when in Barndt’s words, “the Church has a hard time hearing its own message” (p. 3).  Another way to put this is to say the Church preaches one gospel, but in practice, lives by another.

I have often compared the sin of racism to the sin of domestic abuse.  In both cases, a distorted context is created and it affects everything else.  In an abusive relationship, it doesn’t matter how many gifts the abuser gives to the abused, it cannot change or erase the already distorted context.  Similarly, racism distorts who we are as a Church and sets up a distorted context for everything we do.

Joe Barndt is absolutely right when he says anti-racism work is not a sideshow to make the Church politically correct.  It is part of the core mission of the Church.  The Church cannot be the Church while it continues to countenance and tacitly support the injustice of racism.