Love Knows No Boundaries?

 

                Every afternoon, after finishing up my work at Preston Taylor Ministries, I walk Dejoria and Juqua home. Dejoria and Juqua are in kindergarten and attend school at one of the metro schools in west Nashville. Dejoria is covered from head to toe in brightly colored accessories. She wears her neon, polka dotted socks pulled up to her knees, which compete for attention with her bejeweled, light up sneakers, that ignite with light and color each time her foot hits the pavement. As we walk a few blocks down the sidewalk to her home in the government housing neighborhood, we talk about the light that is being reflected on the clouds, the weather and how Juqua walks too slow. Dejoria clasps on to my hand, the moment that we step foot out of the door of the after school program and onto the sidewalk, that is typically decorated with litter; we slowly walk hand in hand sharing stories of the day. Juqua clasping on to my other hand, he is shy and introverted inside the community of his peers but loud and expressive as we venture down the concrete path; he tugs at my arm as soon as we reach a plot of grass on a hill that he can roll down. This moment, that I have briefly described, is most days, the best part of my day. It is in this way of being alive that I embrace the words that Neva spoke in Faces At The Bottom Of The Well by Derrick Bell, “True love knows no boundaries of race and politics.” (76)

Much of the focus of Derrick Bell’s text can be concluded from these words that he shared, “I’m convinced that racism is a permanent part of the American landscape.”(92). Preston Taylor Ministries, where I am employed part-time; I believe was founded on a hope to provide experiences for young people that will support them while they negotiate the difficult environment that they were born into. All of the children that attend the after-school program live in the housing projects in the same neighborhood and are African American children. I cannot help but wonder what kinds of difficulties they are meeting each day of their lives. Most of the children that attend “PTM,” begin the program when they are in kindergarten and finish when they are leaving the fifth grade. So, many of them are immersed in this faith-based ministry for six years of their lives, which is potentially just a brief piece of their childhood. I am a reading tutor/teacher, so I spend a lot of time with the children in a small group or one on one setting. I find my mind wondering off, while I am listening to their sweet voices; will this place mean something to them as they go on to middle and high school, will this experience mean something to them when someone talks down to them and degrades them, will these relationships mean something to them when they go out into the world to battle all the unfathomable circumstances that their beautiful black skin will grant them? When will they come to the same realization as Bell; “Despite our best efforts to control or eliminate it, oppression on the basis of race returns time after time--- in different guises, but it always returns. That all the formal or aspirational structure in the world can’t mask the racial reality of the last three centuries.” (97)

Bell strangely meets Erika, with WCBS, in the middle of nowhere, in the woods. She gives him a dissertation on the theory of racial realism. A vital theme within her theory was that, lastly, African Americans, in order to cope with this realization that racism was permanent are to in “fulfillment,” “despite the lack of linear progress,” find a “satisfaction in the struggle itself.” (98)  Words of wisdom from the white blonde lawyer toting a gun around in the woods, which we hope does not make a habit of accidentally shooting bullets at logs in which African American professors are resting against, when not fighting civil rights issues. How will African American people realistically find peace in accepting struggle from perpetual racism? If this is the place that we are going to come to with this social justice issue, does this mean that we should treat all others in the same way?

As I grip onto the delicate, cold hands of Dejoria and Juqua as we make our way thru the different colored town houses, I can not wrap my mind around the idea of accepting racism. I hope that my time in lecture this week will help me to see a perspective of Bell’s text that I was unable to see through my white lens. I need more hope and better answers to offer the life that feeds the pulse of these hands that I hold onto each day that fill me with immeasurable love and peace that knows no boundaries. I am interested in exploring how the message of the gospel is understood in the new light that accepts and acknowledges oppression of the flesh. What does the faith journey of a people that are perpetually oppressed and offered worldly hopelessness really look and feel like?

 

 

Bibliography

 

Bell, Derrick. Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York. Basic Books. 1992.

Preach Your Witness

“How shall we sing God’s song in a foreign land? How shall we sing God’s song on alien soil? As people of faith we wrestle with this question as we attempt to be faithful witnesses in the midst of the issues of our day, the issues that often make us feel and live as though we are in a strange land.

A land that is hostile and forbidding. A land that is deadly. A land in which the prejudices of a few can become the law of the land, a land in which the dignity of all persons has conditions put on it so that some of us need not apply for justice or mercy.

How is it in this strange land you and I are called to sing God’s song in the midst of the world’s evils and hatreds and prejudices and violence? Can we sing this song by becoming disillusioned and cynical? Can we sing this song by engaging in ritualistic dances? Can we sing this song by escaping into a simple place in time by seeking easy answers?

 You have to know where you want to be, you have to live your life standing on the promises, you must live in a radical hope that never excepts someone else’s definition of wholeness particularly if they are the only ones benefitting from it. She believed that you live your story and sing your song and remain steadfast in your faith and preach your witness and God will take care of the rest.”

Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes

 

Over the weekend, I read an article in The New York Times, From the Streets to the ‘World’s Best Mom,’ on the subject of sex trafficking. The woman whom the article was written about is in recovery from drug abuse and prostitution and she lives here in Nashville. The article begins with the woman that is being interviewed referencing that her mother, who was an addict, had taught her about oral sex when she was six years old. The woman being interviewed said she ran away from home at age fourteen and this was when she started working as a prostitute for a pimp. She said, “that she would be dead by now if it weren’t for a remarkable initiative by the Rev. Becca Stevens, the Episcopal priest at Vanderbilt University here, to help women escape trafficking and prostitution.” Rev. Stevens founded a residential rehabilitation program for women, Magdalene and Thistle Farms, that were or are suffering from drug abuse and have a history of prostitution. The article goes on to say, “Rev. Stevens herself had been abused as a girl — by a family friend in her church, beginning when she was 6 years old — and she shared with so many trafficked women the feelings of vulnerability, injustice and anger that go with having been molested.”  “Sex trafficking is one of the most severe human rights violations in America today. In some cases, it amounts to a modern form of slavery. One reason we as a society don’t try harder to uproot it is that it seems hopeless.”

In plenty good room, Marcia Y. Riggs explores sexual-gender ethics. She analyzes the stories of men and women as gender social groups within the church as a community or social institution.(10) Riggs states, “It is my contention, however, that when African American women and men are in complicity with sexual-gender injustice in the church, the church betrays its moral vision and corrupts both its internal moral life and its witness in the larger society.”(97)  Within the collection of writings, Riggs introduces the case of Anita Hill and Clearance Thomas. She explains how it is “a significant, public example of how African American sexual-gender relations can do the social reproductive work of sustaining white racist-patriarchal-capitalism while perpetrating sexual-gender oppressive ideas within the African American community is the case of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas.”(54) Riggs cited examples of words and phrases that Thomas used in his case against Hill that brought the focus back to race instead of the sexual harassment, that he was being accused of. “Here was the crux of the matter for African Americans: A black woman betrayed the race by publicly accusing a black man of sexual impropriety. In a white racist society, even if Thomas had done what Hill said, Hill should not have spoken of it in mixed racial company.” (59)

If Hill were to have remained silent about her experience with Thomas then her silence would have condoned the potential injustice that had been acted upon her. Where then, is a safe and appropriate place for African American women to tell their stories, use voices of integrity without feeling like they are contributing to white oppression? So, not only are African American women being socially oppressed by white people but then they are also oppressed with the pressure to be silent so as to protect their race from further scrutiny.  

Going back to plenty good room, Riggs concludes that, “although there are traditional or status-quo sexual-gender roles deriving from the sexual gender morality, these roles can be changed because (1) the roles are learned – historically specific and relative and (2) persons are moral beings (have the capacity to be intentional) who can challenge and resist traditional roles and expectations. Transforming the sexual-gender relations of African American women and men in the church will thus be accomplished through moral education that effects counter socialization.”(100)

A ministry that I would like to learn more about is that of women’s prison ministry. In the article, I referenced at the beginning of this reflection, from the New York Times, the woman that was interviewed, having graduated her recovery program is now dedicating some of her time to prison ministry. In the article, she talks about meeting a teenage prostitute in prison, who claims, that it was visits from this woman that gave her the hope and motivation to think about a life outside of prostitution.

 

Works Cited:

Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes, Songs of Zion, St Augustine’s Chapel, October 13, 2013.

Nicholas Kristof, “From the Streets to the ‘World’s Best Mom,’” New York Times, October 12, 2013.

Marcia Y. Riggs, plenty good room, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003.

Truth Telling

About two years ago, I was living in South Alabama working for an Episcopal Camp and Conference Center. One of my very best friends came to visit me while I was living there and was excited about doing some fishing in the estuary, Weeks Bay that the camp rests upon. My friend that I speak of is a Korean man, who grew up in Tennessee, but his parents grew up in North and South Korea. He is familiar with the social climate in our country and the south in particular. My friend and his family grew up experiencing the effects of racism in Memphis, Tennessee. While he was visiting, he made plans with one of my coworkers at the camp to meet one morning before sunrise to do a little trout fishing. He lives in a big city and works a high stress job so for him the idea of watching the sunrise on the end of a pier in south Alabama in the crisp fall air sounded like a dream. So, on the way from my house to the camp, he stopped at a gas station to grab some breakfast. As he perused the selection of high calorie options waiting under the heat lamp, he politely asked the gas station employee a question about the menu. The employee responded, “You and your people need to leave our country.” My friend responded with a choice of words that are not appropriate for sharing in this context.

When he shared with me what happened, I was overcome with emotion. Initially I was enraged, I wanted to take action, to hop into my car and drive to the gas station. My friend begged me not to go, he was concerned about my safety if I were to walk in and confront the employee in the state of mind that I was in. From that point on I have never supported that business again. I happened to run into the oil representative for that particular gas station and mentioned something to her about it. I may have also shared the interaction with some of my closest friends who then also did not support that business. All of my efforts to bring down this gas station were futile and more importantly the man that made the hateful racial comment to my friend probably still goes to bed at night with the same disdain for persons of the Asian race. After being overcome with anger to the man that degraded my friend in this way, I then felt deeply sad that he was made to feel this way. Just thinking about the pain that experiences similar to this one cause him made my insides turn and I soon felt angry again. I blamed myself for not going with him, for not being there to protect him. Why did I think that the presence of my whiteness would negotiate the hatred in the atmosphere? I felt responsible for bringing him into that social atmosphere. I know that he will never forget the words that were said to him that day, the words that have already been spoken and not yet spoken; that hatred may be what he feels when someone asks him about the time that he spent with me in south Alabama. In “Notes of a Native Son,” James Baldwin wrote, “The man does not remember the hand that struck him, the darkness that frightened him, as a child; nevertheless, the hand and the darkness remain with him, indivisible from himself forever, part of the passion that drives him whenever he thinks to take flight.” (30)

 This personal story and reflection on relationship and experience in my life is important because it is the closest to racism and oppression that I have ever been. My friend that I speak about is not African American but he lived and lives through similar experiences of oppression and hatred that surround him every day. He is the first of my closest friends, which I watched struggle because of his race and because of the way people did and did not treat him in the world around him. Suffering becomes more real when you love and walk next to the person that is despaired and clinging to any glimpse of hope. My friend used to always say that what he loved about me and part of what brought us to be so close was the fact that when I meet a person of any race and gender that I usually assume there is going to be a goodness about the person and I have a hope that I will be able to see God’s presence within each person. He shared with me that he meets a new person and he assumes that that person is going to let him down or disappoint him in some way and until proven otherwise he would rather not be bothered by making polite conversation with a stranger that will just prove to him that his minimal efforts have been a waste of his time. He assumes that he cannot trust most and that everyone at some point will let him down. Very much so similar to the story that James Baldwin tells of his experience in the restaurant when the waitress would not serve him, my friend at some point realized that his real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred in his own heart. (99)

After spending time in our African American Social Ethics course work, listening to the dialogue in our class and reading the weekly text assignments; I am in the beginning stages of identifying that my friend is who he is because of the circumstances that he has been born into. “The conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American be he/she legally or actually Black or White.”(xx) I catch myself being much more aware of the color line. In a guest lecture series, I attended here at Vanderbilt the Theologian projected the image of a white Christ on the big screen in Benton Chapel and it made me aware of the African Americans, Latinos and Asians that were sitting in the pews as guests and I felt the tension but this time I was participating in it. I was aware of the presence of the black mechanics quietly laboring for their low-income wages underneath the cars at my mechanic’s garage when I dropped my car off this week, they seemed surprised when I greeted them. I noticed that there was only one African American woman on my church retreat over the weekend. At the after school program that I work at, the community of children are all African American and it is very seldom that within a whole library of books I find a book with black characters. Growing up, my best friend’s white family, attended a black church for worship on Sundays and on many occasions I got to go with them; I have recently found myself wondering what the people in that congregation really thought of their white family making themselves welcome in their congregation. I worked for a church here in Nashville a few years ago and became good friends with two of my African American coworkers. I only recall seeing them once at a parishioner’s home for a gathering outside of the church but each year when it came time for the youth group to have its open mic fundraiser, my black coworkers were always begged to sing and dance at the event. They were honored for the work they did for the church and as a resource.

The author, James Baldwin, in “Notes of a Native Son,” writes, “Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization.”(26) The reality is that raw truth will never survive in a society or a relationship in which an entire race of people are struggling for identity. The oppressors that have determined this struggle themselves and in their role will never be whole either. I do believe that there is hope. I’m not saying that the gradual change in my perspective, presence and new awareness are making me a better person or that I will never contribute to being a part of the problem as the white race or that my efforts will end racism but I do think that through my experience there is hope. A hope that I will share with others, that could change the way that I see and interact with African American persons for the rest of my life. There has to be some kind of hope in changing the way that people think. But once we begin to make an effort to control our thoughts, then God’s love rushes in.

 

I would like to spend time learning about how to daily live into reconciliation? How do I make sure not to treat African Americans people as a resource? How do I respond to something that I have contributed to? Through this text, there is an acknowledgment that it would be pretty much impossible to change our society’s social climate. I can start by changing the way that I think about and see people. I can share with friends and family my new perspective of thinking and learning about African American people. It’s hard not to want to say, “Just tell me what I need to do.” Maybe this is my white guilt speaking? If I have been part of a community of life that does not acknowledge racism as a problem, then I need to take the steps to identify this, claim the injustices that I have been a part of or silently condoned.  I know that I will need help in identifying experiences in the past that have been a part of this unjust social atmosphere. I acknowledge that I cannot do it on my own because my perspective of the world and life is seen through the context of a white lens and beating heart that is housed in a body protected by a white exterior.

 
Bibliography:

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012.

 

Silent Grace

               In the film, The Great Debaters, the Debate team from Wiley College was on their way, the evening prior, driving in the night looking for the place they planned to stay the evening when they drove up on an African American man being lynched. There was a mob of white people, surrounding their victim hanging over a fire. Someone from the crowd shines a light on the windshield of the car that the debate team was in and see them in the car. Everyone in the mob begins running towards their car. They struggle to turn the car around while being surrounded but thankfully they get away. When Mr. Tolsen and the debate team safely arrive to the house they will be staying in, Henry Lowe gets out of the car and walks away. In the middle of the night he arrives back to the house intoxicated and James Farmer meets him on the front porch to escort him into their room. This is a point in the movie where young James Farmer’s innocents is compromised for the realities of the brutalities that Black people are exposed to during this time period in Texas. Here is a short dialogue from this critical scene in The Great Debaters.

James: “You think you are the only one hurting.”

Henry: “You are never going to forget what you saw out there. Getting hanged is the easiest part of it.”

James: “What do you think he did?”

Henry: “He didn’t have to do nothing. In Texas they lynch negroes.”

James: “It doesn’t matter how good we are, this is all useless. We’re just a bunch of negroes debating each other on subjects that we all agree on.”

Henry: “Don’t talk like that.”

James: “Why”

Henry: “Because you can’t, not you.”

 I identify, what I believe to be, some similarities between the characters of James Farmer and Black woman author, Zora Neal Hurston, whom is heavily focused upon in the text that I am reflecting on, Black Womanist Ethics.

               In Katie G. Cannon’s literary work, Black Womanist Ethics, she dives into articulating a relationship between ethics and faith. She explains that her religious mission was seeking to make sense of the relationship between the Christian doctrines within the Black Church to the “suffering, oppression and exploitation of Black people in the society.”(1) “How could Christians who were white, flatly and openly, refuse to treat as fellow human beings Christians who had African Ancestry?”(1) The focus of Cannon’s writing was to demonstrate the ways that Black women “live out a moral wisdom” that is not accepted by the white, male focused society. (4). The author navigates the reader with this focus in mind, through-out chapters with themes such as, Black women’s history, moral situations of the Black woman, Black woman’s literary traditions, the virtues within the Black community and life as a Black woman depicted by a Black woman writer, Zora Neale Hurston and “the correlation between the action-norms formulated within the existing framework of the Black religious heritage and the continuing social matrix in which Black people find themselves as moral agents.”(9)

               In chapter one Cannon depicts for us, in an effort to articulate the historical context, the Black woman as the “work-ox” and the “brood-sow.” The black woman was responsible for the all the domestic jobs within the home, labor in the field, catering to the needs of white women and children and then taking care of her own family, if and when she got home. Cannon referenced that Black women were viewed as objects of the slave master, through which Black women were constantly a victim of “white male sexual assault.”(37) I believe that rape and sexual violence represent the very heart of evil, sin, brutality and darkness in our world. Black women experienced utterly brutal, unimaginable suffering; the violence that Black women endured is inconceivable to me. Their lives were filled with horrors and somehow they still possessed a strength to continue to live through it all with steadfast faith and hope that someday they would be delivered, set free from the abuse of their bodies and souls. I believe that these women endured the worst conditions life has to offer a human and that in that very raw state of being alive that God had to be with them and in them in order for them to survive. Zora Neal Hurston offered a message of hope; she wrote, “ for all of us who lived the misery of being made to be something other than what we were; for all of us living who picked cotton and bore children unwanted and still find ourselves in strange fields and lying on cold beds, there are changes still due and coming.”(145)

               What I found to be so beautiful about Zora Neale Hurston’s life was that she dedicated her life and incredible gift of writing to a steadfast hope that she would impact the way that people viewed Black people and Black women specifically. She wrote, “I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges with the boundaries.”(147) Zora Neale Hurston sought to make an impact on the way that white people thought about African Americans. “Hurston was trekking through the South collecting the Black classics in music, art, dance and literature with hopes of eventually correcting dominant misconception about the quality of life in the Black context.”(108) In a lot of Hurston’s literary works she creates characters that practice a “quiet grace,” these women and men “overturn the normative moral structure of the oppressing society” in a search for truth.(127) I believe that many of the characters that she created were a reflection of who she was and who she wanted to be.

               While I was reading about Zora Neale Hurston in, Black Womanist Ethics, I identified a similarity in the innocence and passion possessed by Zora and character, James Farmer, in The Great Debaters. James Farmer grew up in an educated, protected home with a father that was a professor at Wiley College. James attended college at a young age and was the youngest member of the debate team. Zora grew up in an entirely African American community, in which her father was the Mayor. Cannon makes connections that because of Zora’s isolation of growing up in a Black community, this strong and rare context could be much of the spring that fed her innocents and dedication to change. In the scene that was referenced at the beginning of this reflection, James Farmer’s innocents is compromised for realities of the hatred and oppression of black people. Later in Zora Neale Hurston’s life there is this life-changing moment, in which she is being accused of sexually abusing a child. After this experience, in Zora’s writing you can sense her hopelessness for the first time in Cannon’s text. This was the point in her life where she felt like change was not possible and that maybe all her efforts were futile, just like James when he said, “it doesn’t matter how good we are, this is all useless.”

               Sexual violence and rape is pervasive in our world, country and community. I would like to know more about the ways in which women have been empowered and prepared to fight against sexual violence. I hope to learn more about Magdalene and Thistle Farms, a non-profit empowering and rehabilitating women who were previously drug abusers and prostitutes, founded here in Nashville by a Vanderbilt Episcopal Chaplin.

 

Bibliography:

Cannon, Katie G. Black Womanist Ethics. Scholars Press, 1988.

Making a Miracle

On Sunday morning, I arrived and walked into the Chapel just in time for the processional hymn to begin. My messenger bag made a loud thump on the wooden pew as I hurried to settle in; I had planned to go to the library following the service. I secured my coffee mug, that I had snuck in, in the corner at the end of the pew and picked up my bulletin and began to sing along. I noticed as the Priests slowly made their way down the aisle of the church, that there was a guest priest walking along side of the Chaplin and associate Priest. I concluded just by watching the guest, that he was beaming with joy and his face was lit up, he seemed very loving, approachable, he carried himself with an abundance of peace and selflessness. Once the procession arrived at the altar, I noticed that he was dressed different than the other two priests and wondered what occasion would have him wear the puffy white blouse and brightly colored vest. This guest was Bishop Curry, he is an African American Episcopal Bishop from the diocese of North Carolina, he had been invited by the chapel to come meet the community and preach.

                The Bishop was given the difficult task of preaching a sermon on the scripture found in the book of Luke 16: 1-13, The Parable of the Dishonest Manager. The focus of his sermon was that God is in the business of “taking a mess and making a miracle.” When the Bishop summarized the parable, he compared the rich man and manager in the story to the white slave owner and African American slave in our country’s history. The manager in Luke’s parable would have been considered a slave to the rich man within that culture and time. He talked about the socio economic atmosphere of our country during the time of slavery. How the rich continued to get richer and the poor continued to get poorer. The Bishop compared the debt of the manager and the rich man’s debtors to the inescapable debts that permeated the African American race. He explained, that Jesus’ commending of the manager for redistributing the debts owed by his debtors in the favor of the manager was an exaltation and  Jesus praised him for his creativity. The rich man’s manager had figured out a way to be liberated of his debt. “God will liberate the weak from the injustice of the strong.” (27)  

“When Israel was in Egypt’ land,

Let my people go;

Oppressed so hard they could not stand,

Let my people go;

Go down Moses, ‘way down in Egypt’s land.

Tell ole Pharaoh

Let my people go.”

 Some of these Old Testament stories of people bound in slavery in Egypt are some of the first stories that the African American slaves learned about in America and these stories acted as seeds of new beginnings of the black Christian faith. (44,Paris) The manager from Luke’s parable had taken the mess that he was in and made a miracle. Bishop Curry also made reference to the tales of Br’er Rabbit. James H. Cone wrote that, “the tales of Br’er Rabbit and his triumphs over the stronger animals actually expressed black slaves’ conscious hopes and dreams of overcoming the slave masters themselves.” (56)

 In the book, “God of the Oppressed,” the author, James H. Cone paints the pages with descriptions and a contrasting of ways that black and white people think about God. (14) The thesis for his book states, "that one’s social and historical context decides not only the questions we address to God but also the mode or form of the answers given to the questions.” (14) Through his writing he describes how he is met with much opposition from white and black theologians. Cone introduces us to black theology and the liberation that came from the relationship and devotion by the African American to the heart of black theology, Jesus Christ. He walks us through some core characteristics of the black church; black prayer, humor, the Blues, spirituals and gospel songs, preaching, listening and emotionality.

One of the arguments against black theology that sought to undermine its central claim was that, “if God is liberating blacks from oppression, why then are they still oppressed?” I believe this question leads us into the heart of the metaethical problem. Cone answers this question by saying, “there is no answer to the problem of theodicy! Faith is born out of suffering, and suffering is faith’s most powerful contradiction. This is the Christian dilemma. The only meaningful Christian response is to resist unjust suffering and to accept the painful consequence of that resistance.”(x) I believe that the dichotomy that theodicy produces to be fascinating. If faith to some degree with certain people is produced through struggle and suffering then “we” must put the time in to explore the sources of people’s suffering. Cone articulates that with Jesus at the heart of black theology, we must ask, “What has Africa to do with Jerusalem, and what difference does Jesus make for African people oppressed in North American? “ (15) Jesus and the resurrection are the ultimate symbols of hope. Life’s hardships produce the desire and necessity for faith, while the resurrections that black Christians experience and identify each day, give them the strength to persevere and the steadfast hope to know that Jesus Christ is here among us.

As I sat with a priest one morning, I brought up the problem of theodicy. She thoughtfully responded that she did not have the answer to our world’s great travesties and sufferings but that she would share with me a story from a book she was reading. She was reading the biography of a holocaust victim. The victim depicted life within a Jewish concentration camp. There was one particularly devastating moment in the book where the writer is witnessing the torture of a child, the child was being hung and the community of people were made to watch the treacherous event. My priest said that the man in the story with a sorrow that is incomprehensible and hopelessness that penetrates down to the bone, leaned over to the woman next to him and said, “where can God be in this place.” The woman responded, “God is there on the platform, God is with the child.”

Going forward, I would love to spend time in a third world country learning about Christian theology through the immersion of a different culture and inter relational experience. Specifically I am interested in researching Christian theology in South America, Latin American Theology. I would like to learn about the development of and sustainability of faith in the context of people living in very urban environments and indigenous people living in the most rural villages in South America.

 

 

Works Cited:

Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. Orbis Books, 1997.

Paris, Peter J. The Spirituality of African Peoples. Fortress Press, 1995.

When We Meet In That Place

In the first chapter of The Spirituality of African Peoples, the author Peter J. Paris, makes reference to W.E.B DuBois, African American scholar, “ DuBois and a host of contemporaries and successors similarly dedicated their professional lives to the goal of repudiating and eradicating every trace of systemic racism in America and around the world.” He clearly states that his purpose for this text is, “to concentrate on the peculiar world views of blacks in order to clarify their common basis for religious and moral discourse.” The ethical principle is, as Paris wrote, “The energizing and unifying power of those values was and is embodied in the thought and practice of African peoples everywhere. That power constitutes the core of African spirituality. The clarification of its character and, along with a plausible explanation of its transmission from the continent to the diaspora, is the first step in understanding the theology."

The argument made against African American scholars by the white American academy, scholars, racists and American Society was that study and representation of the “African” in African American culture was a waste of time and effort. They argued that African Americans had already generated a new life since slavery so it was not necessary to acknowledge and identify them with their African ancestry, languages, cultures, families, religions, tribes, spirits, spirituality, communities, ethics and morals. Paris discovers that, “The Ubiquity of religious consciousness among African peoples constitutes their single most important common characteristic.” What he found to be most profound and common within the African diaspora was that at the heart and soul of who these people were was their unwavering Faith.

How could the African American Christianity be anything but a pillar of strength? Peter did a beautiful job of illuminating the journey of Christianity for the black slave. In the preliminaries of slavery, the African American people rejected the Christian faith of their master’s religion. How could they believe in a God, whose people caused so much suffering, oppression, death and sadness? Christianity was gradually adopted by the black slaves. First, they identified with the Old Testament stories, parables and the covenant that God had made with the Israelites. Then, Paris describes that a pinnacle point for Christianity for the black slave was their introduction to the New Testament writings. The New Testament and story of Jesus Christ was a game changer for African American Christianity. African American Spirituality  merged with their new understanding of Christianity; woven together there was now hope, freedom, liberation, reconciliation, preservation and an authentic gospel.

One of the details that really resonated with me in Paris’ writings was his depiction of the Invisible Church, “this Christian vision was born in slavery, protected in the so-called invisible churches that emerged in the secret meetings of slaves. There was no safer place for the new black Christian congregations to meet than the swamps. He writes, “those secret meetings became the locus for the development of an alternative understanding of the Christian Gospel which the slaves celebrated and proclaimed in many and varied ways.” One of the first things they did during these meetings was to, “ask each other how they feel, the state of their minds.”

In the midst of casual conversation over lunch with another Divinity student, we exchanged casually about events that occurred over the weekend. When I asked her, how her weekend was, she responded in a devastated tone, “well, it was fine until I saw the faces of a couple of my students on the news.” She explained that she volunteers her time at a High School in East Nashville; within the realm of an after-school mentorship program seeking to serve the needs of at-risk, inner city students, most of whom grew up in or around the East Nashville housing projects. She followed up by saying that she saw the faces of two of her students that she had mentored last year on the news; one was being accused of a serious gang-related crime and one for murder, potentially also, gang related. She explained that both young people are bright, ethical, display strong moral, respectful, African American in race and goal-oriented. She identified and expressed her overwhelming heart-break, abundant disappointment, confusion and also, over- arching fear. The fear was fed by and accompanied by questions of, could these accusations be unlawful or false in nature? , what does this mean for their futures? , did they forget that they are beloved children of God? , how could young people with such strong characteristics be affected by gang violence? , I thought that with adequate support, nourishment, shelter, love, education and positive relationships they could overcome the difficult circumstances that they were born into?

            That same afternoon, I went to my part- time job at an after school program in West Nashville. The afterschool program is a faith-based ministry, seeking to serve the needs of the children and youth living in the Preston-Taylor housing projects. When I stepped out of my car in the parking lot, I noticed that the children had delayed descending from the steps on the bus. As I got closer, I could see a crowd of children gathered around a space on the sidewalk and another staff member with a look of sheer panic on his face sprinting towards the crowd. By the time I realized it was a fight between two children, he was already there pulling them off of each other. He grabbed one child, while I took the other boy by the hand and we separated them. The boy that I was holding, kept trying to get away from me. When he did escape, the other children surrounding us would hold him; they told him things like, “man just let it go, let’s deal with this in another way.” I am overwhelmed by the fact that in our society, we have third and fourth graders reacting to conflict with violence. I am equally as shocked, that we have elementary students versed in conflict resolution.

The cinder block, windowless building that houses the after school program reminded me of the swamp where the African American slaves gathered for their church meetings. The children come to the youth center to be fed by the Holy Spirit, to be told that no matter your circumstances, no matter what is happening to you out there, you are safe here, you are a part of this community and we are all enduring the life that goes on out there together. Much like the Invisible Church, they break bread, pray, worship and sing together. Then , they go back out into the reality of their worlds, to the reality and possibilities of poverty; growing up with only one parent or maybe one grand parent,  going to bed with an empty stomach,  living in a neighborhood where it’s not safe to play outside, a traditional, less-than adequate education system, violence, drugs, gangs, teenage-pregnancy and truancy. This after school program works to give children the resources that give them courage, strength, reaffirm their self-worth and provides experiences for the growth of self-esteem. Provide hope that will help them sustain the injustices, struggles, suffering and know that, like their African heritage and African American Christianity has already taught them; God is the creator, preserver and liberator!  I see that strength and hope that is at the heart of African American spirituality in our children today. African American spirituality in combination with a committed community that’s aim is to eradicate racism and promote equality and social justice will provide God inspired hope to our young people.

 

 

The Imprisoned Soul

                                            

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois paints “a portrait of black culture,” in his text, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903. He defines the piece by describing its content as a mixture of autobiography, history, social documentary and lastly an anthropological field report. He draws the “gentle” reader in by saying “if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black.” The strokes of this portrait are rich with facts and stories about what emancipation meant to black people, the daily struggles of black peasantry, how slaves were a source of strength to the confederacy as laborers and producers, the Freedmen’s bureau, Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise, the Abolition Movement, the Revolution of 1876, evolution of black schools and Universities in the South, the economic roller coaster,  when “the keynote of the Black Belt was debt”, Emancipation and that “Slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrows, the root of all prejudice.” The welcome that the black race received before even arriving to this country was one of complete disregard for their humanity.

                Slavery is the means for which humanity actively participates in “sheer barbarity” of which “deafens us to the wail of prisoned soul within the veil.” In the Souls of Black Folks, the ethical principle that is not present within the text is the granting of dignity, respect, grace and “boundless justice” from one human being to another. This absence of dignity and respect created a world of cruel suppression and of incredible acts of violence, rape, murder, degradation, disrespect and ultimately for the gains of white American humanity. The metaethical problem illustrated was that human beings used human beings at the expense of their very souls; for power, pleasure, pride, wealth, prosperity, social status and labor. Du Bois illustrates white humanity stripping the souls from the Negro people. White human beings did not regard the Negro person as a “throbbing human soul” or as God’s beloved children. The Negro slaves were brought into our country to serve the needs of the white persons at the expense of their souls and sometimes lives.

                White Americans treated the Negro people in a way that left their brothers and sisters in a place where they could not fathom what truth was, who they were in the bare feet of their own souls, who God created them to be and knowing what was right became intangible. For them, it felt as though pure existence meant that the darkness out weighed the light; when God’s child cannot be himself, because his or her sense of self was taken away by another human being. This quote by Du Bois best describes how the world should and could be; “Sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not their skin.”

The repercussions of the acts of violence against the black race took away their self- confidence, self- worth, ability to dream and hope, to marry, drove them to believe that they are “the negro problem,” ability to live outside the realm of suffering and poverty, to own land, to escape bankruptcy and to exist without fear. Their life experiences taught them that they will amount to nothing, they should give up goals and aspirations and most importantly the hope for freedom and justice in their worlds and lifetime. The writer references the worth of the Negro individual living in the South; “To-day it makes little difference to Atlanta, to the South, what the Negro thinks or dreams or wills.”  Du Bois portrays the Negro as the soul that longs to ask the question of God’s existence and what God’s purpose is for the suffering Negro life. Many actively sought peace within the institution of the Negro Christian Church, sending them searching for what was true, right and good.  

When we stop looking into people’s eyes and listening to their words, stories, joy, sorrow, seeking out the context of their lives, who they are, what they believe in and what they live for, through the information that we gather;  we are responding with descriptive and normative ethics and are silently condoning violence, poverty, homelessness, racism, discrimination, sex trafficking, sexism and many more of our society and world’s way of thinking and acting that strips the souls from human beings.  Du Bois wrote, that we live, “in a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood; in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches.” He also wrote, “the opening of heart and hand of the best to the worst, in generous acknowledgement of a common humanity and a common destiny.”

What I learned most from this text is that I cannot let other people define what living truth means to me and as Becca Stevens best said it, we have to stop ourselves, “when they become “them” and we become “us” and ask really who are “them?” Du Bois offered these encouraging words to the Negro people within the text, that “to attain his place in the world, he must be himself and not another.”

Over the weekend, while I was reflecting on “The Souls of Black Folk,” my path met a homeless man in a coffee shop. When I first saw the man with his stack of bags and sleeping bag, I stopped myself from making assumptions about who he is and his past. I hoped to pour into his soul within our short lived interaction with compassion, kindness, humility and gratitude. After we shook hands, I reached up to my face to push my hair from the perimeter of my white face and I could smell the tobacco from his cigarette on my fingertips. What kinds of burdens was this man carrying with him? Was he living behind the veil and was he searching to reclaim his soul? I immediately wanted to wash my hands of the scent of stale cigarettes, the dirt, the sorrow and humiliation that I saw in his eyes. I wanted to wash off the way that I judged him, his bags of dirty clothes, the odor of his body when he brushed by my table, the umbrella sticking out of his back pack, my wild imagination and curiosity of where he had slept that night, where he would rest in safety tonight?, where was he from?, how long had he been living on the streets?...was it because of substance abuse or something worse. I believe that it took a community of people to get him there and I was an active participant; through my actions and thoughts or lack of. What had I done recently to act against violence, to provide a meal, shelter, to believe in someone or pray for someone different than me? Du Bois text has me searching for truth and social justice in my own life.

This reflection left me interested in learning more about how the last hundred years have affected the presence of “the veil” and how other races, genders, cultures, religions, tribes, ethnic groups experienced the same internal, permanent, life-long effects of the veil?