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.

Casting Out Demons

Because it is Spring I have had a sudden impulsive urge to clean out the snow room and the closets, and get rid of stuff I don't want.

It started off really easy. I walked out onto our front porch took a look around and decided I didn't want any of the junk that had piled up all winter. In one fell swoop I got rid of a whole rat-nest of unwanted stuff. No qualms, easy as pie. I was a man on a mission.

Of course, the junk I was getting rid of was all Gabby's. (How do one year olds already have junk anyway?)

After doing the do on Gabby's junk I decided to take a look at my own. I pulled out an old tie I haven't worn since 7th grade or so. And then I found a couple of winter coats people had shoveled off on me. They made it sound like they were looking after me - "You're a Vermonter now, afterall, you need to stay warm" - but the truth is they were just looking for an easy goodbye. Kind of like finding a nice home for the puppy who keeps eating petunias. One of the coats bordered on the ridiculous. It was a kind of long, buckskin, muff-collared, Buffalo Bill meets Macy Gray, trench. In order to pull off wearing this in public you have to sport either a six-shooter or an afro. I sport neither, so saying goodbye was pretty easy.

But then last night I was digging through my closet and I pulled out this little urban hipster jacket I bought from Gap a few years back. I thought to myself, "Ryon you have not worn this coat in at least four years. You need to give it away." And then, suddenly my belly and my shoulders began to tingle. Another voice appeared. "But it's still a good coat. And when the weather is right you might still wear it. In fact, you could wear it tomorrow, it's going to be so nice."

I think I get it. That coat represents something to me. It represents some part of me that hasn't died yet. Some part of me that still wants to walk aimlessly around 48th and 8th, smoking cigarettes and reciting Dylan lyrics. And that little tingle in my belly was that part of me saying, "No, please, I'm not ready to go yet." If I may be so bold as to use Biblical language, it was a demon in search of a body. A demon that screamed at me like legion. "Please," he begged, "don't send me off into the abyss."

This morning I cast that demon out. I threw him over a yellow metal cliff. I heard him him from outside. He was drowning in a sea of old ladies' sweaters and old men's flannel. They'll soon be buried together in a place called Goodwill.

And I feel clean.

With Amplification

The deacons at my church gave me some feedback the other day with a performance evaluation. All was well. I especially appreciated a very personal and encouraging letter. It's good to be in this together. What Paul called "partners in the Gospel."

One thing I want to share though. In the section where my preaching was evaluated there was a comment that said, "occasionally, with amplification." Nice euphemism, ladies and gents.

In my defense:

"What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, shout from the rooftops."

Change of Heart?

My former Baptist Studies professor and friend Curtis Freeman has an interesting article in the Journal of Southern Religion about former pastor of First Baptist Church Dallas, Texas W.A. Criswell's 1968 flip flop on this issue of racial segregation. Freeman questions the sincerity of Criswell's change, and argues that politically "pragmatic concessions" were no less instrumental in the reversal than was true religious conversion.

A few thoughts:

1. Given the public examination of Barack Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial statements I thought it was interesting to read how the most famous member of First Baptist Dallas responded to his own pastor's racially-charged rhetoric. Criswell told a crowd at the 1956 South Carolina evangelism conference, “Why the NAACP has got those East Texans on the run so much that they dare not pronounce the word chigger any longer. It has to be cheegro.” Billy Graham distanced himself from his pastor's comments saying, “My Pastor and I have never seen eye to eye on the race question.” Interesting.

2. Freeman shares how conservative Baptist theologian Russell Moore believes that what fundamentally changed race relations in the South was not theological liberalism but rather the troubled conscience of conservative evangelical Christianity. Moore is quoted as saying, “It is to our own shame that we ignored our own doctrines to advance racial pride. And it is to our further shame that, in so many cases, we needed theological liberals to remind us of what we said we believed.” I think Moore is absolutely right in that there had to be at some point a critical mass of conservatives who finally saw the light. But that doesn't necessarily mean the conservative Southern establishment should be credited with ending segregation. It only means it should be acknowledged for no longer being hypocritical. It is those who had the courage to call the South out in its hypocrisy that deserve to be called prophets.

3. And most important, Criswell's change of heart. When, I have to wonder, are we ever truly converted? I think of Peter. He had a vision from God. As clear as day, nothing and no one was to be unclean. And then while in the midst of the dream there was a knock downstairs and the Gentiles appeared. This was not something he could doubt. No mere coincidence. But, Peter wavered. For a long time he went back and forth depending on who he was with and how hot the kitchen heat was. And yet, we remember him today as the one who cracked the vessel.

According to Freeman in 1972 Criswell reflected on his 1968 public endorsement of integregation and admitted it was not at the time whole hearted. “My soul and attitude may not have changed, but my public statements did,” Criswell said. So, I wonder to myself right now, What is change? His soul and attitude did not change, but his public statements did. That was not nothing. In fact, I think it was very significant. It was the way we all change usually I think. Piecemeal. Bit-by-bit at their appointed times.

And we are still changing . . .

King's Last Speech

Martin Luther King, Jr. preached his last sermon 40 years ago today. By the end of the next day he would be dead.

If you have never seen or heard or read it, you need to watch this clip. The clip is short, real short, but incredibly powerful. Eerily powerful.

Watch it. Listen to the words. Let them get into your bones. And let them give those bones life.

We ain't seen the Promised Land yet.

But we will.

Practicing our Faith

I want to share with you a brief audio clip from Andy Root's work with the Faithful Practices Project at Princeton Theological Seminary.

In his work Root reflects upon relational youth ministry and makes a distinction between "instrumental" relationships between ministers and young people which are always in the end about something else other than the relationship (a come to Jesus talk) and the kind of relational ministry which embodies the Gospel in its substantive practices (like showing up after a kid's parent has just been sent to the pokie).

The difference is not one uses words and the other doesn't (for as Paul says, how can they know if they haven't heard). Rather, the distinction is between doing something that gets us into a place to do what we really want to do versus doing something all along the way. What I mean by this is practice - something constitutively embedded within our encounters with each other that both points toward and is the Kingdom of God.

In other words (and this is for the grown ups) it ain't about getting people to the 10:30 service. Instead, its about the substance of our encounters with each other as we live out our lives together - including the substance of the worshiping we do together at 10:30.

When I say substance I mean the "What is" of the relationship between and among us. Another way of saying that is "character".

And we certainly have a few of those running around . . .

The Boys of LHS Part VI

I grew up relatively well off. We weren't rich but we definitely weren't poor either. Bottom line, we had a pool.

The pool was, of course, not enough. And neither was the Chevy stepside with the 350 under the hood. And neither was making the Varsity football team my sophomore year. It was all good. Cool. Exactly what I wanted, but not enough.

[Young Life enters stage right with Gospel in mouth]: "In every of us, there is a God-shaped vacuum. And it can be filled by nothing and no one else but God."

It was a classic example of Maslow's Hierachy. I had all my physical needs met, but I still needed spiritual actualization. Jesus brought that. It was the Gospel truth.

When I started doing ministry with the boys of LHS I simply assumed the Maslovian framework. It was good for me and so it must be good for them. But there was one nuance. Whereas my physical needs had been met, that wasn't necessarily the case with the boys of LHS. So I started doing things. With the aid of Lubbock Young Life I was able to help them out with money for a burger. And maybe some money for shoes. We picked up most of their cost for camp. I was earning the right to be heard.

But here is the thing that I am wrestling with. Doesn't it seem a little silly to and self-defeating to take a kid and give something to him or her only to then turn around and say, "And by the way, that thing I just gave you - it ain't what you're really looking for. What you're looking for can't be met with a burger or new shoes or a trip to camp. You've got a God-shaped hole in your heart and . . ."

Suddenly I'm wondering. Maybe the Gospel wasn't just the message at the end of all that "earning the right to be heard" medium. Maybe the Gospel was wrapped up in the medium itself. Maybe the Gospel was the time we shared together over a burger - even when I got USED by them just like the patronizing white boy would. "Price, take us out to Burger King, Price," one kid used to say over and over.

What I'm getting at is the idea that maybe the Gospel isn't really the cherry on top of Maslow's Hierarchy, but is instead, some kind of fabulous relationship with God and each other that breaks forth across all of life, cutting across the false and dualistic distinctions between physical and spiritual needs.

Maybe I'm saying that the Gospel is really the inbreaking of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God into everything - from the shoes on up.

Maybe.

Ontologically Speaking

Yesterday I was sitting with a group of pastors I gather with weekly to study and reflect upon our upcoming Sunday sermons. At the end of our discussion about Jesus and Thomas and the meaning of bodily resurrection things turned to politics. Everyone began bantering about the 2008 presidential election. Being that my tummy was beginning to growl I saw the drift into presidential politics as my curtain call. I stood up and said something like, "Well, all I know is none of these three candidates is our savior."

It was a pious statement that no respectable Christian could disagree with. But I have to confess there was more than just pretty talk about Jesus in my words. What I was really saying is that all three of these candidates, Clinton, McCain, and Obama, share something that our savior never had - a will to presidential power.

Then this morning I moused over to Ethicsdaily.com and read Miguel De La Torre's scathing critique of these three. In his article "What Do Obama, Clinton and McCain All Have In Common?" De La Torre says that there is no substantive difference between any of the three respective candidates because they each are each operating under a philosophical framework which is in the end classist.

But the really interesting, and I think fundamentally incorrect, thing De La Torre says about the candidates is that they are each "ontologically white males."

Excuse me?

Two things.

First, if in 2008 we can now speak of ontologies of gender and race in such a way as they are completely severed from both sex, race, color, and ethnicity, then I want to suggest that we should not speak about them at all because they have essentially lost all natural meaning.

Secondly, if we can now play so fast and lose with gender and race, then why is the white male exceptional? Why is the white male reserved as the cipher for "pro-empire" "global neoliberalism"?

Apparently the more things change, the more they stay the same.

earth as it is in heaven

My friend and former teacher Mike Broadway has just responded to my post about Rev. Jeremiah Wright on his own blog earth as it is in heaven.

The truest thing I can say about Mike is that he is a real Christian. He has been a living witness to what Christ has done to destroy the barrier between the races for several decades now. He and Chris Rice have taught me how to speak about race as white men.

So here's the quote I want to share with you. It says everything I feel and describes what I am coming to realize is one of my most important callings in this Gospel life:

[Ryon] and I find ourselves in an unusual situation for white baptist ministers. We get called on to be mediators of black life for whites who wonder, marvel, and puzzle about race. We know we are not up to the task.

Mike goes on to desribe the impossibility of the task.

Here also is Mike's full reflection.

Funny Stuff

As the pastor of a small church I felt in on the joke.

As a pastor who loves coffee I felt like the butt of the joke.

As a pastor in the 21st century I felt like whatever is being said here ought to be discussed.



Thanks to reallivepreacher and Caffeinated Thoughts for the spot.

What's Up with Barack's Pastor?: An Easter Meditation

I was up talking on the phone with my dad until 12:15 am on Wednesday morning. We talked about father son things — cars, the weather, and our predictions for the NCAAs. Then, about half way through, the conversation turned serious. Dad asked, “So what’s up with Barack’s pastor?”

Dad was asking me because I am a minister and married to a black woman. He thought maybe I might have some special insight into why Sen. Obama would consider a polarizing preacher like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright a sound spiritual mentor. I could hear the earnestness in Dad’s voice. He is in a new place. Since he now has a black daughter-in-law and a biracial grandchild he knows that he now has something at stake when race moves from the periphery into the center of public dialogue, as it now has in the 2008 presidential campaign. For Dad the questions being raised are more important and more personal than ever.

He isn’t alone. For the first time in our nation’s history we may very well see a black person elected to the Oval Office. That has white people all across America asking the same thing my dad is asking. What’s up with Barack’s pastor?
The religious left (including Rev. Wright himself) has defended Rev. Wright’s preaching by locating it within the prophetic black rhetorical tradition. They argue that whites standing outside the culture and ethos of the black community — and especially the black church — simply cannot understand the sociology at work in the black pulpit and should, therefore, refrain from criticizing it. Certainly Rev. Wright’s jeremiadic voice does belong inside a long and venerable tradition of black preachers speaking from and for people on the margins. But the idea that words coming out of this prophetic place are somehow beyond critique is flat wrong and ought to be exposed for what it really is — nothing more than a sociologically dressed up version of, “It’s a black thing . . . you wouldn’t understand.”

On the other side is the response not being offered in any of America’s newspapers but certainly present at many of its dinner tables. This response is only one word, but that one word says a lot about where we are with race in 2008. “Figures.” A lot of whites hear the charged rhetoric coming from Rev. Wright’s pulpit and they receive it as confirmation of all their suspicions about black people, Barack Obama included. In other words, “I totally understand . . . it’s a black thing.”

Well, it is most certainly a black thing. And it is a white thing also. Out of their very divergent historical experiences blacks and whites tend to read and interpret history differently. A case in point: Thomas Jefferson. Whites see Jefferson as a great hero and champion of democracy. Blacks, on the other hand, often see Jefferson as a man who never could quite shake the mindset of a master in order to live up to his ideals. Jefferson is an excellent case study, but I want to suggest that at the heart of this whole thing are divergent and in some ways mutually exclusive interpretations of another historical figure: Jesus. That’s right, I’m suggesting this whole thing is a Christological problem. In other words, it’s a black thing and it’s a white thing, but it is also most definitely a Jesus thing.

Blacks and whites read Jesus differently. Rev. Wright is black and his congregation is largely (and unashamedly) black. So when he reads about Jesus he reads about a man of color born into and killed by the cruel forces of a racist empire. That’s true and ought to be preached.

When most white Americans, like my dad, think of Jesus they think of the man who died an atoning death for their individual sins. Jesus was a great Jewish leader whose teachings show us how to live morally exemplary lives. That’s true and ought to be preached also.

It is difficult, however, to see why a religious teacher concerned primarily with making nice guys out of meanies would have raised the eyebrows of the powers that be. I just can’t buy that. On the other hand, it is equally difficult to believe that a radical revolutionary bent liberating his people from oppression by any means necessary would have gone to the cross without putting up a fight.

Perhaps it is more than just ironic that this whole debate would surface just before Easter. Two-thousand years after his death we are still asking what the early witnesses of Jesus’ ministry asked. “Who is this man?”

Who this man is to us still matters.

And, in 2008, who this man is to others matters more than ever also.

Katrina Relief Urban Project Part II

Intervarsity is partnering with a local church in St. Bernard's Parish that housed us and coordinated all of our work. Adullam Christian Fellowship is a storefront church founded in 1996 by Pastor Randy Millet and his wife Jill. It is definitely not the kind of church I would usually want to attend. But it was definitely the kind of church I needed to attend last week. Again, I said the word "powerful" keeps coming to mind and that is what I see at Adullam - a power-filled ministry.

If you have ever seen the movie The Apostle with Robert Duvall then you might have a clue as to the kind of preacher and pastor Pastor Randy is. I can't really say that Pastor Randy had a sermon prepared the Sunday we attended his church. But I can say that he had a word from God. That is to say, he preached.

He preached life into what is otherwise a dead community. St. Bernard's was washed completely away by Katrina and Adullam Christian Fellowship lost 9 out of 10 of its membership to displacement after the storm. (In fact, Pastor Randy's mother-in-law was one of the ones who lost their lives in one of those nursing homes.) But I gotta say that Pastor Randy is literally preaching St. Bernard's back into existence. What were once dead bones are now alive again and that little church is becoming an incubator for the Gospel, not only in the New Orleans, but across the world. Mark it down.

So what did I learn? Pastor Randy runs with folks like Benny Hinn and a bunch of other church movers like that. Not the kind of guy I would have chosen to bring a bunch of skeptical college students out to see. I was thinking, "O man, I'm gonna have to do a lot of explaining." But man, there was something very very real about what was going on in worship and I looked up and about half the students who came with us were dancing in the aisles by the end of the service. And those who weren't dancing basically said, "Hey, it wasn't me, but I really appreciated being a part of it all."

St. Bernard's Parish ain't gonna come back to life by boring exegesis. But it is gonna come back - it is coming back - by the proclamation of a Jesus who is alive and wants dead bones to dance.

Katrina Relief Urban Project Part I

I rolled in from my trip to New Orleans early Sunday morning. When I talk about the trip the word that keeps coming out is "powerful." God is doing powerful things in New Orleans. And God is doing powerful things in the lives of the 150 or so college students who I went down there with. I would even say God is doing something powerful in my own life as a result of this trip.

Being that it is Holy Week and I have three services to prep for I am not going to try and put all my reflections into one single narrative form. I just don't have it in me.

But I do want to share a few key points. I'll do this in a series so as to give us all a break.

First, the devastation. It has been nearly three years since Katrina hit and most of the 9th Ward and St. Bernard's Parish, where we served, still look like they did two or three months after the storm. Most of the debris has been moved and most houses have by now been gutted, but very few have been repaired. It looks like a neutron bomb exploded, leaving something like 50,000 hulled out homes.

Those among our group of 150 or so who had been down to help with relief before said it was somewhat disheartening to return for a second or third time and see so little progress. The initial waves of volunteers who responded early on have substantially diminished since 2005. Ergo, so has the rate of progress.

One image from all this was particularly poignant. Most buildings still have the numbers spray painted on them right after the storm. There is the date and time that the building was searched, along with how many animals were found dead. At the bottom very prominently is the number of dead people found inside. All the buildings I saw had zero as that final number. I suspect most buildings where dead were found have by now been either repainted or completely demolished.

So now when you walk by you just see block after block of zeroes. None dead inside; but no one alive.