Blog Posts
Jan. 6 Was the Whitest Epiphany: White Christians, Where Do We Go from Here?
It feels like an eon ago. I awoke ebullient to learn that, on Epiphany — the day that three wise nobles outwitted a desperate, murderous despot — that the Rev. Dr. Warnock had been elected to the U.S. Senate. My spirits did an abrupt 180 and my stomach churned as I witnessed (from my couch) the violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol orchestrated by white people. No one should have been surprised. Black and Brown people certainly were not. Many (predominately white) journalists and pundits lamented the "dark day." Womanist biblical scholar and Episcopal priest Wil Gafney aptly corrected them on Facebook:
"Today was not a 'dark day.' Today was a white day. One of the whitest days in American history."
Gafney is right 100 percent. The problem is that we white Christians still don't get it — even after witnessing the damning footage of white hoards, both gleeful and angry, as they deployed numerous assault tactics — flex cuffs, radios, earpieces, an array of weapons. They prepared for months in plain sight. Republican elected officials and off-duty police officers and fire fighters were among their ranks. After delaying the DHS report, the Department of Homeland Security Acting Director Chad Wolf (picked by the 45th President) warned us on Oct. 6 that domestic white supremacist groups "remain the most persistent and lethal threat" to our nation. Mere seconds, along with the courage and quick-thinking of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, kept them from U.S. senators.
To be sure, notable officials, many of whom identify as white, have called out the egregious, racist desecration and insurrection for what it was. Yet, the troubling and troubled silence of far too many white Christians reverberates far and wide across digital and other platforms.
It is tempting for me and others who identify as white progressive Christians to distance ourselves from the ugliness of Epiphany 2021.
We blame the exceptional "extremists" — card-carrying white supremacists and white nationalists; the radical right; neo-fascists; Q-anon disciples; Proud Boys. To do so irresponsibly ignores that among the mob (both those who stormed the Capitol and those who remained outside) were thousands of Christians. Their/our signs and symbols were everywhere. As of Dec. 20, 2020 56 percent of white evangelical Protestants and 51 percent of white Catholics hold favorable views of the 45th President.
I still clearly hear white folks defending the "good white" people who did not enter the Capitol who were merely exercising their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. As just one example, Chicago Police Union President John Catanzara:
"There was no arson, there was no burning of anything, there was no looting, there was very little destruction of property … It was a bunch of pissed-off people that feel an election was stolen … If the worst crime here is trespassing, so be it. But to call these people treasonous is beyond ridiculous and ignorant … They're individuals … They get to do what they want … They're entitled to voice their frustration."
His remarks remain revealing of predominant white mindsets: white people are "peaceful, patriots, law-abiding, Constitution-defending" — and we have a God-given right to voice our views and get angry. Implicitly, he is also saying that Black and Brown people do not. The ragged, racist litany is all-too familiar: Black and Brown people are "looters, dangerous, socialists, anarchists, criminals, welfare queens." In short, they are not Americans, not fully human. Dr. Brittney Cooper pointedly puts it this way:
"Our empathy meter is set to seeing white violence as protest and Black protest as violence."
By now, you have no excuse for not seeing the photos contrasting the police responses of Jan. 6 to that of BLM protests and marches.
Dr. Bryan Massingale makes plain what white Christians need to be able to see already for ourselves:
"What we witnessed in Washington is a direct consequence of four years of enabling complicity, cynical appeasement, and cowardly silence … It is also the consequence of the complicit silence and active support of religious leaders who refused to confront the cancer of white nationalism that this president endorses and who excused all manner of his wrongdoing, incompetence and brutality …"
So, white Christians, what's next for us? Yes, we must hold elected officials — at all levels of government (the 45th President, the Sedition Caucus led by Senators Cruz and Hawley, Rep. Mary Miller who praised Hitler for what he "got right" and the 147 lawmakers who objected to the certification of electoral votes; the newly elected West Virginia delegate who recorded himself storming into the Capitol) — accountable for their complicity. Yes, we must denounce the Capitol police who posed for selfies with the rioters and call for a full investigation into the appalling, possibly complicit, disaster of the law enforcement response.
Yet, we must do much more.
To begin, we need to own our complicity. We — white people, especially white Christians, must actively resist and dismantle the white privilege and presumption that allows white people to enact such treasonous violence with such confidence and comfort. Now is the moment to do the bold, hard work of self-reflection, repair and repentance.
We must have honest, heart-felt conversations with our white neighbors, communities, and families. We must consistently stand and show up for racial justice — and for the long haul. All clergy may sign this public statement from the National Council of Churches calling for the removal of President Trump from office. Google has all the resources — for reading, podcasts, and connecting with Christians and others doing substantive anti-racism work. Commit now and plug in — with humility and readiness to do much more listening than talking.
Jesus and his family are still on the run fleeing those who plot their death. To live the Epiphany Gospel we proclaim, white Christians must do this work.
Dr. Aana Marie Vigen
Aana Marie Vigen, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Loyola University Chicago and is an active member of the Lutheran Church (ELCA).
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
May You Be Brave
In December 2013, I wrote the blessing below and posted it on my social media. I don’t remember the context for this blessing, what made me write it at the time. But as I was reflecting on what I wanted to say to preachers who must stand and deliver this Sunday, the first Sunday after Epiphany, and the Sundays that follow, it seems especially appropriate:
May God Strengthen You for Adversity
A blessing for today:
May God strengthen you for adversity
and companion you in joy.
May God give you the courage of your conviction
and the wisdom to know when to speak and act.
May you know peace.
May you be gifted with deep,
true friendship and love.
May every God-breathed thing you put
your hand to prosper and succeed.
May you have laughter to fortify you
against the disappointments.
May you be brave.
© Valerie Bridgeman
December 18, 2013
On Wednesday, I watched with sadness as the United States Capitol building was overrun by aggrieved citizens. I want to be clear to note that they were citizens. They’ve been called a number of things, including by me: rioters, insurrectionists, seditionists. But they were citizens who believe that the election was “stolen” from them, who believe that the votes of (mostly) black and brown people should be rejected, that there is “proof” that the current president has been wronged. And so, they were there for the revolution and to “take back their country.” For them, those of us who voted against their will are not true Americans. I was not surprised at all. I have found myself weary from all the handwringing and the “this is not who we are” posts from (mostly) white people. I have found myself weary from the “unbelievable” and “shock” from the media and others. Most of that weariness is because no one I know that is an activist/advocate for racial and social justice found it “unbelievable” or “shocking.” It was predictable. I’ve been saying for many years, “we are not safe,” because I have been in conversations with (white) people who have said directly that they can’t wait for a revolution to “take our country back.” It was as American as baseball and apple pie. White grievance and rage are baked into the DNA of this nation. I know what I just wrote is offensive to people whose mythmaking about this country deifies it and demonizes anyone who says such things. Right about now comes the “if you don’t love this country, leave” or “go back where you came from.” It’s all so very predictable.
I turned my television to a station that is consistently sympathetic to the current president and was reminded that there is no Venn diagram between the world I generally inhabit and the world of those who only dwell in that world. And, as I usually pray, I wondered how in the world will we ever know one another since we don’t live in the same universe. And that’s where the blessing I wrote in 2013 comes in. I don’t have anything deep to write in this moment. But I know that those who claim the gospel as our starting point will have to be brave. Bravery requires precision. It requires thinking clearly about what all the issues are. It requires using language carefully. It requires resisting pablum and platitudes. It requires resisting “what about-ism” when calling out wrong. It requires truth-telling, even in the face of rage and handwringing. It calls for wisdom. But it also calls for friendships, love, and laughter. It calls for strength and God-given companionship. And preachers must invoke all of that. So, friends, may you be brave as you prepare to preach in the breach of these difficult days.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio
Facebook | @valerie.bridgeman.3
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
A Eulogy for John Robert Lewis, “The Boy from Troy”
I was six years old when the late Congressman John Robert Lewis was beaten to near death on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on what became known as Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. This weekend I searched for proof that I heard about the march and the violence from CBS’s Walter Cronkite, since that’s from where our family learned all our television news in those days. I could find no footage, but I can hear the story in his voice. I do sharply remember, as a young child, the intent look on my mother’s dignified face as she listened to either television or radio in those days. I could not possibly know the weight of the moments, young as I was, but thinking back, I remember how weighty our house felt in central Alabama with all the happenings around us.
I grew up two hours northeast of Troy, Alabama, in the rural farmlands between Childersburg, where we attended school after desegregation—a story for another time—and Sylacauga, our rural route address. In the summers, we spent plenty of weeks in the blackbelt further south in either Reeltown (sic), where my paternal grandmother lived in a sharecropper’s shack and worked in white people’s homes, or Opelika, where aunts, uncles, and cousins lived “in town.” In Opelika is where I met another boy from Troy, and there we shared, maybe lamented, the world as it was and how dangerous it was for us, even as it was in the 1970s by then. I share these memories only to say that John Lewis’ landscape is the one I know intimately, the memory of walking on hot dirt, picking cotton, drinking from cool creeks are deep in my veins, and being aware of the danger of running into violent white people. We weren’t even trying to “get in the way,” as Lewis would later admonish us. We were just trying to survive.
Over the years, I have been deeply affected by Lewis’ life and commitment, partly because he reminded me so much of my own father, who would be 95 were he alive today, who was also short with a hearty laugh and a twinkle in his eyes, and a fiery preacher. That’s the part about Lewis that I want people to remember. Though he lived his call out in public life, it was the call to the life of a public theologian whose life and legislation and commitments were his primary sermons. He became known as the “Conscience of Congress.” He had a fierce strength that came through, even when he was not speaking. He never lost that country southern lilt to his voice, so I’m sure there were times people thought of him as a “country bumpkin.” I know, because in the past few years I actually heard a much, much younger activist call him that. Hearing it enraged me, but as an Alabamian myself, I know how easy it is for people to dismiss the moral courage and strength of my people. Regionalism aside, Lewis’ dignity was my parents’ dignity; my grandparents’ dignity. I have seen it all my life from ordinary black people. Lewis’s life just called him to a bigger stage, a historic role, but he was of the waft and woof of his landscape.
When the word came that Lewis died, I was not surprised since news had come a few weeks earlier that he had decided to receive hospice care for stage IV pancreatic cancer.[1] As a former hospice chaplain, I read the news knowing that he had come to death’s door with the same dignity and clear-eyed thinking as he had lived his life. That he would teach us how to die as he taught us to live made sense to me. As Lewis lies in state today, only the second black legislator to do so,[2] I honor his life. He deserves whatever accolades come toward him today and in the future. He really was the best of us as a people and as a nation. An even more deserving tribute to him will be who we will decide to be in the light of his legacy, and whether we will commit ourselves to “getting in the way” (as he often said) of injustice and instead get in “good trouble.” It will be whether those of us who are Christian follow his example for moral integrity, humility, passion for justice, and faithfulness. We still have work to do.
[1]Ralph Ellis, “Civil Rights Icon and Congressman John Lewis Dies,” https://www.webmd.com/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/news/20200718/civil-rights-icon-and-congressman-john-lewis-dies. Accessed July 27, 2020.
[2]Clare Foran, “ Elijah Cummings lies in state at the Capitol,” Elijah Cummings, who died in October 2019, was the first African American lawmaker to lie in state in the Capital Rotunda. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/24/politics/elijah-cummings-lie-in-state-capitol/index.html. Accessed July 27, 2020.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio
Facebook | @valerie.bridgeman.3
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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.