God's Call To Become An Anti-Racist Church

Response 1

Rene John

“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us;

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun. Let us march on till victory is won.”(LEVAS)

From days of old singing was not just a way to past time, it was a way to share what was on our minds. Our ancestors sang songs which expressed their hope for the future. One such song continues to be Lift Every Voice and Sing.

In this spiritual is expressed our past, present and future. Joseph Barndt stated that  “in shaping an anti-racist church the first and most important task is to give birth to an anti-racist Christian identity.” He continued “as with any birth, this includes a long period of pregnancy and gestation that is risked-filled, often painful, and has many potentially dangerous complications. And likewise, as in any other birthing process, when it is completed, the exciting and joyful celebration of the newborn will far outweigh the agony of the delivery.”

The Rev. Canon Petero Sabune at the African evensong for Sudan Darfur on October 30, 2011 reminded us that the birth is just the beginning. Much work remains to be done, and we cannot even dream of abandoning what we have worked so hard to bring to fruition.

The Rt. Rev. George Councell reminded us at the beginning of the 2011 Anti-Racism conference “we are just becoming.” Using as a reference Luther’s Understanding of Becoming Christians. Our history is long and our story can be told from so many different perspectives. Ruth Councell and Corinne Peters tell the story on canvas, in their wonderful exhibit ‘Overcoming Racism.’ It is the story of Jews, Hispanics, American Indians, Blacks, and Asians. The story of Delores Huerta, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, migrant farm workers and many more.

Joseph Barndt reminds us that “the pathway we have been following to ending racism leads directly to the doors of our home churches, to face our congregations at their segregated Sunday morning worship services.” He also reminded us that it is not just about “outreach” but rather it begins with “inreach” into the center of our sanctuaries.”

How can we be about the business of building the beloved community? Anti-racism is also however not about doing, but about being. At Trinity Cathedral where I serve as Dean we are working hard at being the beloved community. The congregation is comprised of a healthy representation mixed races and nationalities, living in communion with God and each other.

Barndt has prescribed six steps to achieve identity change and becoming an Anti-Racist Church:

“Building a common analysis: Programs of anti-racism training are instituted throughout the church, resulting in  a common analysis of systemic racism and a growing understanding of racism as a barrier of effective diversity.

Undoing internalized socialization: A consciousness of internalized racial oppression and white power and privilege emerges within the church, along with an increasing commitment to eliminate inherent white advantage.

Learning accountability to communities of color: Cross-racial relationships are deepened and white people begin to develop accountability to communities of color.

Auditing and evaluation: The analysis is applied to all levels of the church through auditing and evaluation.

Reaching a critical mass: A critical mass of old and new church leadership and membership claims an anti-racist identity and a vision of an anti-racist institution.

Institutionalizing the anti-racist identity: A transition to stage five is initiated by a formal decision to institutionalize an anti-racist identity within the institution’s identity documents and throughout the structures and culture of the institution.”

I would like to end with another popular spiritual.

“We shall overcome,

we shall overcome,

we shall overcome some day

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,

We shall overcome some day.” (LEVAS)

We shall overcome some day and live in peace because God is on our side and we are not afraid. Or are we?

Cultural Racism & The Multicultural Church

Response 1

Rev. Valerie L. Balling

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

Barndt uses Paul’s appeal to the church in Galatia as the basis of his argument of how to overcome “cultural racism” through the radical unity and inclusion offered to us through Jesus Christ.  Earlier in the chapter, he warns again the dangers of the “melting pot” mentality that has dominated our American secular culture through the 1980s. (As a Gen Xer, I clearly remember a School House Rock episode about “The Great American Melting Pot.”)  There is an unspoken similarity between these two positions since they both appeal to the ideal of unity, through either discounting or ignoring differences or subjugating them with the more dominant culture.

While obviously Paul’s argument is more appealing, the rub is that I experience life as a white American woman, which is something I cannot change. In fact, it is beneficially for all of us to understand how we experience the incarnation rather than deny it.  It is how we live and move and have our being, and it allows us the opportunity to recognize when there is injustice based on such factors AND TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

There is nothing wrong with me being a white American woman.  Nor is there anything wrong with my counterpart being a black Caribbean woman.  Both of our experiences are authentic and should be valued equally.  However, we are part of a church organization that was (and for the most part still is) shaped by its ethnically white, English roots.  So how do function within an inherently racist system and honor cultural diversity with integrity?

First, I think we need to accept that we cannot be something we are not.  As much as I love gospel spirituals, I will never be an African American whose ancestors were slaves.  I will never be able to sing those hymns with the same depth of feeling and authenticity, but I rejoice when we use them in our liturgy, allowing the Spirit to move us to a place beyond guilt to reconciliation.

Second, I use my authentic experience as a white woman to recognize the privileges that I have and use it to the benefit of others to express their authentic selves.  I do not believe that we are called to adopt practices that are inauthentic to our experience. That can have the tragic effect of making the practice a mockery.  I can, however, get out of the way and experience an authentic practice, such as presenting the offering in a celebration of dance or even having someone shout “Amen” during a sermon (wouldn’t that be awesome!).

Perhaps I do not have enough imagination to picture what Barndt’s “Multicultural Church” will look like.  I love the Episcopal Church, and I love it so much that I don’t want it to get in its own way of becoming obsolete in a diverse world.  However, cultural diversity needs to be authentic and not an assumed a mantel of practices because it is the “right” thing to do.   That does not mean holding on to tradition just for the sake of tradition, nor does it mean getting rid of a practice just because it is from the dominant culture.  With integrity, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, dedication and time, we can and should develop a tradition that bears witness to all of our diversity and unity within Jesus Christ.

Institutionalized Racism In The Church

Rev. Elizabeth Eddy

Barndt has planted a seed in my mind, and it ‘s growing a clear example of the truism that we all affect each other.  Barndt believes that as Christian churches developed, despite creating unique internal structures, the people who created the institutions were themselves unconsciously shaped by cultural values of those times, and created churches which institutionalized those values. 

In the West, political power was exercised largely by men, who increasingly identified themselves as “white”, with the intent to perpetuate their power. The Christian ideal of Love, exercised on behalf of everyone, was distorted.   Unconsciously Christian churches became power-based institutions with  a “white male Mediterranean/European” identity.  (“Might makes right” contended Thrasymachus in Plato’s “Republic”.)

Barndt wants to dismantle racism,  among the many other abuses created by power-based institutionalization. He suggests that our nation’s progress toward this goal may be stagnating, and he believes that the goal cannot be reached until the attitudes which foster institutional racism are transformed.

However politely, gently and logically one may try to state the case – as Barndt certainly does – the core transformation now needed in the church is to become consciously aware of this identity which has developed, “white-male-European-power” organization, and consciously choose to become instead a multi-racial multi-cultural love-based entity which exists to serve all needy people.  When the church no longer serves unconsciously according to the interests of power, its organizational structure will have a different “feel” to it.  It may create new structures of governance, to express Christian values more clearly.

Brandt emphasizes that transformation of the church is necessary in order to complete the transformation of society as a whole into anti-racism.  Transformation of the church is also necessary to live our call and commitment as Christians.    

In the human mind and heart, conscience and self-consciousness are subtle energies, and in them false perceptions struggle to perpetuate themselves, instead of allowing Truth and Love to grow.  When individuals release themselves from bondage to power-conceived ideals, the church can transform. Then, institutions in society can also be transformed, and racism (sexism, genderism, ageism and the like) will no longer rule, because Love and Truth suffice to Serve.

Captive Christians In A Captive Church (2 Responses)

Response 1

Rev. Renee McKenzie-Hayward

While Saint Paul may rejoice in his captivity to the gospel of Jesus Christ, Joseph Barndt in the chapter Captive Christians in a Captive Church claims that the captivity experienced by the contemporary church is nothing about which to rejoice.  To the extent we emulate Paul as captives to the gospel we live out this captivity imprisoned inside the towering walls of captivity to racism.  Captivity to the gospel is perfect freedom.  Captivity to racism is perfect sin.  One gives us a choice.  The other does not. 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.  Luke 4:18-19

Liberation theologians often read these words from Jesus as is they were a clarion call to action to reclaim the transformative power of the gospel to shape society and the church.  This scripture is used by us to critique them.  Barndt in this powerful chapter effectively argues that the church because of racism operates not from a place of strength but from super- and self-imposed blindness that allows us to be complicit in our own captivity.  Barndt’s message while addressed to white people will certainly finds resonance among people of color (POC).

Most POC, especially Black people, live everyday knowing the cost of racism and experiencing the impact of its power to imprison.  We feel and know the power of racism in the church and blindness to it is not just a commodity of white people.   It is easier to be a Black person in the institutionalized church that is beset by individual acts of racism as opposed to being a black in the church in which racism is collectively or corporately endorsed.  In the first I must contend with the odd individual who is opposed to my presence; in the other I must contend with the entire system which stands in opposition to me.  The first gives room for hope while the second seems virtually insurmountable.  Barndt’s comparative discussion of sin as intentional rebellion and sin as captivity is right on the mark.  Black people will find it much easier to be Black in a church of individual white racists than in a church that is itself racist.  It is easier for us if we are blind to this truth.  It is also easier for the church.  The great lie of racism is the theological assumption that we have to choose between understanding racism as intentional rebellion or captivity to sin.  Barndt correctly suggests that this is a both/and rather than an either/or.

It would seem that the Anglican ethos of via media would situate The Episcopal Church to easily move outside of the constraints of binary either/or thinking.  Via media is itself being held captive in racisms prison.  Freedom of choice becomes an illusion.  And justice struggles to find a foothold in our reality.  Yet we march forward into the brave new world as if we really have choice regarding whether or not racism shapes and informs our personal and corporate Christian identity.    The only choice we have is the choice or ignoring or addressing; a choice of blindness or of sight.  But then again, maybe this is also not a choice.  If we can lift the veil of racism to see and hear the gospel unfiltered and unfettered even this illusion of choice disappears.

Response 2

Heath Pearson

As an aspiring liberation theologian I am tempted to wax poetic about one of Barndt’s numerous insights. However, it may be more helpful to tell a story.

A few years back, I watched a documentary done by a group of social scientists that radically altered my conception of our racialized system. A study was conducted using thousands of children, ages 5-7. The researchers were exploring race through/in persons in the early stages of identity formation.

The children were given a piece of paper with six realistic-cartoon faces—the face with the “lightest” skin on the left, getting progressively darker with each face, finally, to the face with the “darkest” skin on the right. The children were then asked a series of questions: Which child is smartest? Which child is most beautiful? Which child does the teacher like best? Which child do you want to be friends with? Which child misbehaves in class? Which child do you want to look like?

These represent only a handful of the many questions asked. By the end, though, watching a beautiful little girl of color pointing to the face with the “lightest” skin as what/who she wants to look like, who she thinks is most beautiful, and who the teacher likes best, you are struck with the somber reality of our racialized system. And this response (lightness is beautiful, smart, and preferred while darkness is dumb, ugly, and despised), among thousands of children, did not deviate across the gender/racial board.

As Barndt says in the opening pages of this chapter: through a complex multi-generational identity-shaping socialization process, we were assigned at birth to a collective racial group and were taught to participate in society according to our particular racial identity and role. Some experienced the socializing process of “internalization of inferiority,” while others experienced the “internalization of superiority.”

These inviolable systems have imprisoned us, as Barndt rightly claims.

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.