Black. . .but

Under the rules of apartheid white Afrikaners were to be totally set apart from all other races in every aspect of daily life. Blacks, therefore, could not work or travel in white areas without government approval. When Desmond Tutu was elected Archbishop of Cape Town he was offered a special dispensation. He could legally live in the archbishop's home in the white section of Cape Town as - and this was a legal term - an "honorary white".

Tutu refused. Instead of living legally as an honorary white person, he instead chose to live illegally as a black person, daring the South African authorities to do something about it.

While honorary whiteness is not a legally sanctioned status here in America, I know first hand that it still exists in many people's minds. Back in Durham I was talking to an old white man about how we felt we were called to be reconcilers. I was treading carefully and trying to invite him into our story because I knew he had a problem with black people. "Oh, Irie," he said, "she's not really black." I thought, "My man, I hope you never tell her that."

The statement is revealing. Black people like Irie simply could not exist in this man's world. She could not even have the dignity to be a "credit to her race." She had to be another race altogether.

But I'm not going to cast stones. I remember when I first started dating I would be talking to friends back home and telling them something like, "Well, I'm seeing this girl and she's black, but she's smart." Later on I noticed my mom doing it too. "I saw Billy's mom at the grocery store and I told her that you had met someone special and that she is black but she's very pretty."

Why the "but"?

Two things.

The first is a charitable, yet I think true, reading. My mom and I both knew what people were going to think and we wanted to have them hear us out. If I were to unpack the sentence we were saying, "She's black but hear me out because she's not what I know is already in your head."

The second reading is less charible, but no less true. Something visceral in us was saying, "She's black, but she's an exception."

We're learning to name that. To confess it and call it the demon that it is.

And I'm also learning to say, "My wife, Irie, she's black.

"She's black and. . ."

Untraining Racial Profiling in VT

Sunday's Burlington Free Press ran an opinion piece by me about a pilot project in our community aimed at combatting racial profiling.

I think there is tremendous potential for good gains with this project. It will help officers develop the third eye.

For those of you in other parts of the country, this could be something for your local and state law enforcement to consider.

Here's the link to the article:

My Turn: Helping good cops be better

Truth Telling: The Church's gift to the State

Over these past few weeks I've been reading and learning a lot about the South African Council of Churches (SACC) role in what can only be described as the miracle of South Africa. What has amazed and inspired me the most is the church's ability to look Caesar in the eye and tell him the truth. "You are not God; your reign will not last forever."

Throughout the ages the great heroes of our faith have stood witness to the truth before the thrones of this world. Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall to King Belshazzar and told him he would die because he trusted in the gods of silver and gold. John the Baptist spoke courageously when he told Herod it was not right for him to have his brother's wife. Paul prophesied to his centurion captor about "danger and much heavy loss" if the ship they were on continued to sail.

As a church we have by and large lost that prophetic voice. These days we are much more likely to chaplain the State than we are to speak truth to it.

Why? Because speaking truth is a fearful and lonely enterprise and only the most courageous of people ever do it.

When I graduated from Duke Divinity School Rev. Dr. Peter Storey delivered the commencement address. Storey had previously served as president of the SACC and was close friend and confidant of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In 1980 the two were the targets of an unsuccessful assasination attempt.

In his commencement address Storey (left) talked about the pastor who was driving down the highway when his cell phone rang. It was his wife. "Honey, be careful," she said, "there is a madman out there on the highway going the wrong way." "It's worse than that," the pastor told his wife, "there are hundreds of madmen going the wrong way."

To stand up to Caesar and tell the truth about war and peace and race and religion puts us in the line of a lot of oncoming traffic. But it is the right way to go. And the State desperately needs us to do it.

Who else would? It's been the Church's gift to the State from the very beginning. And it is still our gift.

So, with a little encouragement for us all, I'll close by sharing something Desmond Tutu wrote to Caesar about the Church at the height of the apartheid era:

The SACC is a Council of Churches, not a private organization. The Church has been in existence for nearly 2000 years. Tyrants and others have acted against Christians during thsoe years. They have arrested them, they have killed them, they have proscribed the faith. Those tyrants belong now to the flotsam and jetsam of forgotten history-and the Church of God remains, an agent of justice, of peace, of love and reconciliation. If they take the SACC and the Churches on, let them know they are taking on the Church of Jesus Christ.

Chatrooms and Classifieds

Sounded intriguing didn't it?

Below is an article I wrote intending it to be published in our local newspaper, the Burlington Free Press. Apparently it didn't make the cut. So it ended up here, where all my stuff that doesn't make the cut ends up.


Two stories. Both involving the Free Press. Each revealing the difficulties we as a community face when it comes to talking about race, religion, and other matters of contention.

I am the pastor of the United Church of Colchester. Right now we are in the search for a new church musician and we chose to advertise in the classifieds section of both the Free Press and another local paper. The ad we came up with was (I thought) a fairly simple one:

Organist and/or pianist. United Church of Colchester. 9-12 choir members. Thursday night practice. Christian faith preferred.

Both newspapers said they would be happy to run the ad, but would have to remove "Christian faith preferred" in order to conform to their Classifieds policies. One of the ad reps I spoke with said the statement was "discriminatory" and could get the paper and our church in "a lot of trouble."

The second story comes from a recent Free Press story about the absence of any black teachers in the Burlington School District, and the district's efforts to recruit more teachers of color. Response to that article in the paper's online "Storychat" was heated enough to force the Free Press to close down the online forum. I remember that when a Free Press editorial called for increased teacher diversity last fall things got pretty animated also. One person in the chat room went so far as to label the district's employment of a full-time diversity coordinator "tax payer rape." Things must have gotten even more heated this time to warrant shutting down the conversation.

At the heart of both these stories is a question over affirmative action. More specifically, it is a question about how to best take affirmative action to ensure we do not discriminate on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, physical disability, or sexual preference in our hiring practices.

I am not very hopeful that we, in our varied religious and political convictions, are going to come up with an interpretation that will satisfy everyone. I am a little more hopeful, however, that most will agree that the United Church of Colchester ought to be able to state publicly that faith is a central and bona fide consideration for us. As I told one of the ad reps I discussed the matter with, "We are a church, after all."

But in any case, I think the two stories illustrate how difficult it is to have a public conversation about competing values today. The way between stultifying political correctness and stultifying acerbic is a narrow one. When we run aground on charged terms like "discriminatory" and "tax payer rape" how are we to go on? The only option is to shut down the chat room.

As Vermonters we are better than that. We should show it by agreeing to conduct our public discourse in a more civil way, and give those on the other side of our debates something that is sorely lacking these days — grace.

Donnas

An interesting article ran today in the Times about the complex issues one Portland neighborhood is dealing with as it faces racial gentrification.

A lot of yuppies find the uber-hipness of America's urban landscapes to be a real draw. They want affordable and walkable communities where they can know their neighbors. And they want those neighbors to be diverse.

And that's the irony, because the more highly coveted neighborhoods are, the more expensive they become. And, inevitably, the less diverse they become also.

That's what is happening in Portland.

And it's happening here in Winooski too. And the Old North End of Burlington also.

But that's not why I'm blogging about it. I'm blogging about it because of what the Times reported one of the white Portland residents recently asked in a citizens' forum. Joan Laufer, a new resident in the neighborhood, stood up and asked the black people in the meeting what they would like for her to call them - black or African-Americans?

"People," one black woman up front said. And then, from the back, an even more human word. A name. "Donna."

That's what it is going to take. We're going to have to go beyond knowing people as black or white or latino or whatever. We need to know them as Donna.

A few years back, when I was living in Durham, NC, a group of ladies from one of the white churches in town and a group of ladies from one of the black churches started getting together to pray and talk candidly about race and the "Broad Street Divide" that separated their communities. The churches sat only a few blocks apart from each other on either side of Broad Street, but sat were worlds apart in just about every other way. The women from those churches decided to bring the worlds together.

Six years later something profound has happened. The black church is no longer only a black church any more. It's a New Testament church now, as Sunday after Sunday its pews are filled with both black and white faces. And the white church has changed too. This past Lent, 26 members from their congregation journeyed on a "Lenten Pilgrimage Of Pain and Hope" into Durham's inner-city. Imagine that. Twenty-six people dared to cross divides of race, class, and comfort in the name of the Jesus who is destroying those divides.

And the name of one of the key women who six years ago was a part of that group of women from the two churche who decided to meet and pray?

That's right. Donna.

A Progressive Christian Conudrum

In the wake of the latest tragedies in China and Myanmar I've been thinking about the challenge an escalation in global disasters present to non-fundamentalist Christians.

For a long time now a lot of progressive Christians have been insisting that there has not been an increase in earthquakes, famines, floods, etc. The argument was that global disasters were always prevalent and so, the argument went, we shouldn't point to a spate of earthquakes, wars, famines, etc. as signs that the Apocalypse is imminent. The way I experienced the conversation, typically someone - usually the conservative in the room - would point to some natural or manmade disaster and say that the world was obviously getting worse. Then - usually by the progressive in the room - the rebuff would come. The progressive would make a statement about earthquakes and famines and other terrible things always having been occuring, but our awareness of them, through the advent of mass communication, being the thing that changed.

But now, it seems that a lot of environmental and humanitarian organizations are arguing that global climate change is increasing both the frequency and magnitude of global disasters. And a lot of progressive Christians are agreeing.

What's a progressive Christian to do?

I don't think any Christians should ever give up on the idea that Jesus is coming back imminently. I think progressive Christians did so as a knee-jerk, fear-induced reaction to a particularly virulent kind of Apocalypticism that thinks that Jesus is coming back soon so we shouldn't worry about global issues like climate change, or deforestation, or debt relief for developing countries. We should just get people saved.

No. We should get people saved AND we should worry about all these global issues because, you guessed it, JESUS IS COMIMG BACK.

And the arrival may be imminent.

Blogging and Pastoring

I've caught some grief for not blogging lately. One person emailed me to say my blog "kinda sucks" these days.

As I debated whether or not to get back on the computer today I realized how good it would feel for me to write and tell you all how missed I am. I realized how good it would feel to lead right off with the opening sentence I crafted "I've caught some grief for not blogging lately," as if it had said "I've caught a lot of grief for not blogging lately." But the truth is the only grief I have caught has come from the one person who emailed to say my blog "kinda sucks".

Maybe the most important book I ever read was Henri Nouwen's little book In the Name of Jesus. It is a reflection on the tempations Jesus endured in the wilderness, which Nouwen says are the temptations to be relevant. That is, the temptations to create, perform, and produce so well that we become, in our own minds, singularly indispensable. It is embarrassingly incriminating that in the last year I have written for a publication named - you guessed it - Relevant Magazine.

Blogging has this great way of distorting just how important we really are. We put these words together and they sound good, and sometimes they move us, and then we send them out there and we think, "That's gonna mean something to somebody." We are a lot like those astronomers and what not who beam out Frank Sinatra or the Declaration of Independence into the nethers of space. We'll never know, but it sure is nice to think this might matter to someone in some galaxy far far away.

But closer to home, here in Colchester, with my parishioners, I know things matter. I know I matter. But I don't matter like I wish I mattered or dream I matter on my blog (when it doesn't suck). I matter in the way that the spring birds outside my window matter. I don't know their names. I don't know what their personalities are like. If one were to come and replace another I never would no the difference. But if one were not to come and replace another I certainly would know. I would know through absence. And that absence would be a great heaviness.

I was on the phone with one of the ladies from the church yesterday. She told me, "I want you to know I pray for you every day. I pray for you because you are our leader."

I'm not relevant, in the sense of being special or irreplaceable. I'm relevant because, for these people, I am here. Present. Set apart to have a little time off to go and be near to those who are sick and hurting and disbelieving. Set apart to hold their hand for a little while why they cry.

I know that if I were to leave, I would not be missed. But my hands would.

And that's the difference between blogging and pastoring.

Typical Whiteboy Talk

How else except by becoming a Negro could a white man hope to learn the truth?

John Howard Griffin

Black Like Me

In my response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy What's Up With Barack's Pastor? I said that blacks and whites read Jesus differently. I then went on to explain what I saw as the differences.

I confess that my comments were grossly stereotyped. In fact, it was precisely that kind of grossly-stereotyped statement that got Barack Obama in hot water when he referred to his own grandmother as "a typical white person" who has sometimes visceral reactions to people of other (darker?) races.

In a helpful post my friend and former professor Mike Broadway noted that he and I, both white, have for whatever reasons entered into this strange world as racial reconcilers. As such, we sometimes feel compelled to translate for white people what black people think. Mike graciously pointed out just how absurd that really is - white people speaking on behalf of black people. I was a little chastened and promised myself to be more careful in public from here on out.

Yet, at the same time, I know that when it's just me and Irie I can say, "Typical black people feel this way," and "Typical white people feel that way," and it is truth. And that, in this highly charged climate of racial politics, is precisely the challenge: public and private discourses.

Of course, these divergent discourses have always been present. There has always been an intra-white language and an intra-black language. These divergent languages developed on the plantation and never fully gone away.

Let me give a case in point. Irie's mom grew up in a conservative Pentecostal home. The Gospel she has heard most of her life is not the hard-edged, politically-charged speech of black liberation. Yet when the whole Rev. Wright thing erupted her surprise was not at his rhetoric - for rhetoric like that has always been present in some aspect in the black community. Rather, the shock for her was that white people heard it. "Oh, no, no, no," she said, "Ya'll not supposed to hear that!"

Ya'll not supposed to hear that because ya'll don't know the language. Ya'll gonna misintepret.

But now we're entering into a new era. We're entering into an era where the language barriers are beginning to be crossed. Mike and I are going back and forth. But more to my point, Barack Obama is. In fact, he was born across the line. His mother was white, and his grandparents were white. Typical white people (typically speaking). And so, (typically speaking) he knows what typical white people typically think. And I bet he talks about it (typically) at home with Michelle all the time.

But there it is again, that private language. He can (typically) talk about it at home, but can't (typically) bring it into the public arena. Or he'll be in big trouble (typically).

Near the end of Black Like Me John Howard Griffin tells about coming back into white America after having temporarily darkened himself and living as a black man in the Deep South. After having been in the black community for something like six weeks he knows what they think. He knows that all the platituding "yes sir" and "no sir" and "us Negros are real happy with our station in life" business was just fear-induced, public speech. It was the exact opposite of how blacks really felt in those pre - civil rights days.

On his first day back into white society he checked himself into a white hotel and was met at the door by a black porter. For six weeks Griffin had been "just a typical Negro" and he now knew how they thought. "[The porter] gave me the smiles, the 'yes, sir - yes, sir.' . . . I felt like saying. 'You're not fooling me,' but now I was back on the other side of the wall."

I'm tired of crossing the wall and then coming back over. I'm ready for the wall to come down.

Old Timers

Yesterday our church hosted a lunch conversation about the history of our church. We invited everyone to bring pictures and other memorabilia to share. Among the really cool things shared:

1. A foot heater. Used in bygone days, the foot heat had a small door that coals could be dropped into. The heater would then be set into the bottom of the sleigh -that's right sleigh - for the ride down to the church. At church you'd get another lump of coal for the return ride.

2. Pew doors. We took the doors off our pews sometime in the 20th century. But one of the pillars of our church and I braved cobwebs, dust, and and who knows what else to retrieve them from the cellar last Wednesday. The pew doors kept the heat in - provided by the foot heater above - and the draft out while parishioners listened to somber sermons from fellas like this unidentified former pastor:


3. A write up about our former pastor Rev. Elgin Bucklin, who led a trip of over a 25 Vermont youths down to Harlem to worship at Abysinnian Baptist Church. This was an extension of Rev. Ritchie Low's (picture below) racial reconciliation project which I wrote about here.

4. Two of our oldest members sat together and shared about their trip with Rev. Low and a few other boys down to Washington to meet President Hoover. That's right, Hoover. Rev. Low took them down to deliver syrup to the president before the Vermont Maple industry got big. Their trip made news in other states - a trip to Washington in 1929 was no small thing - and helped spread the word about Vermont maple. I said I thought our church deserved some of the royalties from all the sales over these last 80 years.

After the old timers had finished reminiscing I paused, walked over and grabbed both of their arms. "Ritchie Low was their pastor," I said, "and I am their pastor." Then I heard someone from another table bring the amen. "That's right," he said.

That's right.