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.