Blog Posts
I Am Okay
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev Dr. Valerie Bridgeman’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgman is the founder and president of Women Preach, and she serves as Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. Dr. Bridgman is a graduate of Trinity University, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Baylor University. Dr. Bridgman has written several published works and has edited and contributed to the Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures From Africa and the African Diaspora.
Hello, everyone. I'm glad to be able to speak to you. Hear these words from the Common English Bible Translation from 2 Kings 4:8-37. It's a long reading, but it's worth it:
One day, Elisha went to Shunem. A rich woman lived there. She urged him to eat something. So whenever he passed by, he would stop in to eat some food.
She said to her husband, “Look, I know that he is a holy man of God and he passes by regularly. Let's make a small room on the roof. Let's set up a bed or table, a chair and a lamp for him there. Then when he comes to us, he can stay there.”
So one day Elisha came there, headed to the room on the roof and lay down.
He said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite woman.” Gehazi called her and she stood before him. Elisha then said to Gehazi, “Say to her,’ Look, you've done all, gone to all this trouble for us. What can I do for you? Is there anything I can say to you on behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?’”
And she said, “I am content to live at home with my own people.” Elisha asked, “So what can be done for her?” Gehazi said, “Well, she doesn't have a son and her husband is old.” Elisha said, “Call her.” So Gehazi called her and she stood at the door. Elisha said, “About this time next year you will be holding a son in your arms.” And she said, “No, man of God, sir, don't lie to your servant.” But the woman conceived and gave birth to a son at about that time the next year, this was what Elisha had promised her.
The child grew up. One day he ran to his father who was with the harvest workers.
He said to his father, “Oh, my head, my head.” The father said to a young man, “Carry him to his mother.” So he picked up the boy and brought him to his mother. The boy sat on her lap until noon. Then he died.
She went up and laid him down on the bed for the man of God. Then she went out and closed the door. She called her husband and said, “Send me one of the young men and one of the donkeys, so that I can hurry to the man of God and come back.” Her husband said, “Why are you going to him today? It's not a new moon or Sabbath.”
She said, “Don't worry about it.” She saddled the donkey, said to the young servant, “Drive the donkey hard, don't let me slow down unless I tell you.” So she went off and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel. As soon as the man of God saw her from a distance, he said to Gehazi, his servant, “Look, it's the Shunammite woman. Run out to meet her and ask her, are things okay with you, your husband and your child?”
She said, “Things are okay.” When she got to the man of God at the mountain, she grabbed his feet. Gehazi came to push her away. But the man of God said, “Leave her alone. She's distraught. But the Lord has hidden the reason from me and hasn't told me why.”
She said, “Did I ask you for a son, sir? Didn't I say, don't raise my hopes.” Elisha said to Gehazi, “Get ready, take my staff, and go. If you encounter anyone, don't stop to greet them. If anyone greets you don't reply, put my staff on the boy's face.” But the boy's mother said, “I swear by my life and by the Lord's life, I won't leave you.”
So Elisha got up and followed her. Gehazi went on ahead of them. He set the staff on the young boy's face, but there was no sound or response. So he went back to meet Elisha and said, “The boy didn't wake up.” Elisha came to the house and saw the boy laying dead on his bed. He went in and closed the door behind the two of them.
Then he prayed to the Lord. He got up on the bed and he lay on top of the child putting his mouth on the boy's mouth, his eyes on the boy's eyes, his hands on the boy's hand and as he bent over him the boy’s skin grew warm. Then Elisha got up and paced back and forth in the house. Once again, he got up on the bed and bent over the boy, at which point the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
Elisha called Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite woman.” Gehazi called her, and she came to Elisha. He said, “Pick up your son.” She came and fell at his feet, face down on the ground. She picked up her son and left.
So ends this reading.
I don't know if you've ever listened to that entire story, but let me say this: As a black woman from the deep south of the USA, I know what it's like to grieve and to want for something that doesn't seem like you can have it. She was vulnerable in the patriarchal society of her time. If her husband who was older than her were to die, and she did not have a son, particularly a son, to take care of her she would be a widow in the midst of this country and vulnerable, for who would take care of her?
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman is the Founder and President of WomanPreach!, Inc., the premiere non-profit organization that brings preachers into full prophetic voice around issues of equity and justice both in the pulpit and in the public arena. Her mission is to produce a network of preaching women and men who will use their voice in service to the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially as it relates to Womanist/Feminist concerns of equity and justice.
She serves as Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She also is Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible since 2015, after having served as Visiting Professor for a year and a half.
Dr. Bridgeman is a graduate of Trinity University with a double major in Communication and Religion. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where she won the Charles L. King Excellence in Preaching Award for graduating seniors. She pursued further studies at Baylor University, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Biblical Studies with a concentration in Hebrew Bible.
Dr. Bridgeman has written several published works which include "Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation (2016), "A Perspective on the David Narratives (Rizpah)" and "A Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus (Syrophoenician Woman/Mark 7:24-30)" in Global Perspectives on the Bible (Prentice Hall, 2011). She has edited and contributed to The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (Fortress Press, 2009) with “Jonah” and “Nahum,” and co-edited Those Preaching Women: A Multi-Cultural Collection (Judson Press, 2008).
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.
In This Crucial Election Year What Will Your Community Do on Day One?
On Day One of the next administration (and in whatever follows), communities of faith must continue the work being God’s people. Regardless of whether you see the outcome you desire or not, the work will need to go on. You’ll either be working in alignment with those you trust, or you’ll be in the resistance against those you do not trust. Either way, there will be work to do.
By ERIN WEBER-JOHNSON and REV. THIA REGGIO
Photo by Element5 Digital
“As for you, you will keep my covenant, you and your offspring throughout the generations.”
—Genesis 17:9
We, the people of the Abrahamic traditions, are keepers of God’s covenant. That is our charge, established millennia ago and carried on from generation to generation into the present age. It is a charge that exists both within and outside of human history.
In the moment in which we are living, with the forces of greed, fear-mongering, and power-hungriness that have always been at work in the world now amplified by media and transmitted around the world with lightning speed, it’s easy to lose sight of the longer view that connects us across the ages to our ancestors and to generations yet to come.
We are trained to focus on much shorter timelines: 24-hour news cycles, crises that hold our attention for a few weeks at a time before they’re subsumed by the next crisis, political rhetoric punctuated by election year trends.
In 2024, the U.S. is anticipating a November presidential election in which it’s not an exaggeration to say that Americans face a choice which may well determine the future of our democracy, with impacts that will be felt around the globe. With such high stakes, it’s easy to be hyper-focused on securing the outcome you believe will be the right one.
As people of faith, as bearers of God’s ancient covenant, we cannot allow our vision to be so exclusively near-sighted. We must recalibrate our focus to include a much longer horizon. We must understand that the work of God’s justice does not begin and end with an election cycle. Vote, yes. Work for the near-term outcome you desire. But remember that your commitment to keep God’s covenant will continue when the election results are in.
On Day One of the next administration (and in whatever follows), communities of faith must continue the work being God’s people. Regardless of whether you see the outcome you desire or not, the work will need to go on. You’ll either be working in alignment with those you trust, or you’ll be in the resistance against those you do not trust. Either way, there will be work to do.
Rather than succumbing to a sense of overwhelm or becoming paralyzed by dread, the time is now to reflect on your values and priorities and to discern where your energies need to be focused. In addition, this is a moment to consider what groups of people may be impacted depending on the outcome. As you consider this, you can think how your strategies can show care in the days, weeks, and years to follow.
As soon as you’re able, here are steps you can take:
Gather as a community and envision together the world as you believe God desires it to be based on scripture, your tradition, and your core values.
Identify 1-3 priorities where your community can focus sufficient energy.
Call leaders to create a plan of action to support these priorities in light of each potential outcome.
Organize people to start laying the groundwork to bring the plans to life.
Prepare for a new phase of work to begin on Day One of the next administration, adapted for whichever outcome occurs.
Creating a Day One Strategy gives people a sense of agency. There are things that can be done. By allowing us to plan now, this gives us collective power.
Remember, you are not alone. God is with you. God’s promises have been active since before our history began. Powers and principalities have risen and fallen many times in God’s presence and the covenant still stands. So must we stand in God’s promise to work toward the world of peace with justice that God is calling into being—whether we live in an age that reflects those values or obscures them, God’s promise will prevail.
Rev. Thia Reggio
Rev. Thia Reggio, collaborator, seasoned pastor, worship leader, community organizer, disaster response coordinator, career discernment counselor, strategist, writer, simplification consultant, and mother of three. Thia is at her most joyful in an eclectic environment. Connecting and communicating varied aspects of life—like those between a plant pushing up through the soil and the challenges of life in a busy city, between ancient battles and psycho-social structures in organizations, between children learning a language and adults facing retirement, this is what Thia finds life-giving.
After more than twenty years as a process and communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, Thia heeded the call to seminary and the ministry, graduating from Union Seminary with a Master of Divinity in 2012 and a Master of Sacred Theology in Christianity in a Multi-Religious Context in 2013. Thia currently serves as pastor of The Second Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, and on the Advisory Board of the Center for Earth Ethics.
Erin Weber-Johnson
Erin Weber-Johnson is Senior Consultant at Vandersall Collective, a faith based, woman-led consulting firm and Primary Faculty of Project Resource. In 2017 she co-founded the Collective Foundation, which worked to address the gap in giving characteristics in faith communities of color. In 2022 she co-founded The Belonging Project, a movement designed to reimagine belonging across the ecclesial landscape.
Previously, Erin worked as the Senior Program Director at the Episcopal Church Foundation, as a grants officer at Trinity Wall Street in New York City, and served as a missionary for the Episcopal Church. She holds a BS from Greenville University, a Masters of Public Administration for NYU and is currently completing a second masters in Religion and Theology from United Theological Seminary.
A published author, she strives to root her work in practical theology while utilizing her experience in the nonprofit sector. Her co-edited book, Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy is available through Cascade Books.
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.
I lift my eyes to the hills
Jeff Chu wears several hats, including writer, reporter, and editor. He's also the co curator and co-host with Sarah Bessie of Evolving Faith. He's an occasional preacher. Some days, Jeff says he believes in God. Other days, he wants to believe in God.
Let’s revisit Chu’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Jeff Chu’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Jeff Chu wears several hats, including writer, reporter, and editor. He's also the co curator and co-host with Sarah Bessie of Evolving Faith. He's an occasional preacher. He's also a teacher in residence at Cross Point Church in North Carolina. He's an ordinand in the Reformed Church in America. He's a cook, gardener, and dog walker to Fozzie in Michigan, where he lives with his husband.
Some days, Jeff says he believes in God. Other days, he wants to believe in God.
I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?
My first home in scripture was Psalm 1:21. This was the psalm that my grandmother taught me in Cantonese when I was a child. This was also the psalm that went with her when she and my grandfather were forced onto the refugee road during World War II, the psalm that crossed an ocean with them to a new country years later.
The psalm that stayed lodged in my heart as I veered off the straight Baptist path that they and my parents had marked out for me, and the psalm that accompanied me even as I left the Church. The Church that couldn't be my home because I wasn't straight, the Church that didn't want me on equal terms because of this skin and these eyes and this hair, the Church that still isn't sure what to do with me.
I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?
I don't know that my grandmother meant for this psalm to meet me in the fullness of my intersecting identities. In my youth, I didn't know enough to be honest about them to myself, let alone to her.
I do know that these ancient lines had met her in the fullness of her identities: a lone daughter in a family with eight boys in a patriarchal culture, an educated pastor's wife who taught Bible in her own right, a deacon, a poor person, an immigrant.
Perhaps she'd bargained, just as she had taught me to stash away a few twenties in case of emergency, that tucking a few lines of biblical poetry in my heart might just come in handy someday.
I lift my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from?
The old Sunday school psalm about the foolish man building his house on the sand wasn't that wrong after all. What if, in a world that idolizes certainties and fundamentalisms, (progressive or conservative) with their right opinions, what if they're finally revealed to be the sham building materials and shaky foundations that they've always been? What if the human welcome that you wish for, and then the human affirmation when that mere welcome doesn't satisfy, and then the human celebration when affirmation seems paltry, what if they prove insufficient? After all, it's still human, and what your soul longs for is the divine.
What if it's no lasting shelter? No ultimate comfort because what your heart craves, what your heart was made for, is to be loved above all by a God who isn't fickle like people are.
I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. I might once have told you that my help, my sense of home, came from the one who made me fried rice. My grandma's battered old wok produced the most marvelous version, always with extra scallions, both because I love them and because the Chinese word for scallion is homophonous with the first character in the word for intelligence, and my people, even the Christians, are superstitious like that.
The crust got crispy. Egg and soy and sesame oil hugging each grain of rice much as my grandmother seemed to embrace me each time I ate the dish. But then my grandmother died, or as she would have said, she went home to her lord. Did she? I want to think so. I want to believe that before the one who made me fried rice, there was the one who made rice itself. Who created rice to begin with.
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. In a world that can feel so far from home, I lift my eyes to the hills, searching the horizon, seeking divine fingerprints in the ragged silhouette of those hills, against the heavens and in the tree line. In the clouds as they race against the sky, and in the stars as day turns to night. God is there, everywhere, in my own scallions that I grew the way my grandmother taught me, in the sesame and the soy that sing of faraway lands, in my own fried rice, cooked the way I learned from her.
I take a deep breath, smell the damp earth and the bright alliums. And the fragrant rice, and slowly I stumble back into the embrace of the one who makes home for all who struggle to find it.
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. Rooted and grounded in God's ever present love, I, a Hakka son, whose tribe carries the nomad's legacy because our people's name literally means guest family, I, the child of the immigrant, make home nowhere and everywhere.
Once a wise teacher told me that she creates her own belonging wherever she goes, never expecting it to be offered by any other human, always trusting in the presence of home wherever her body happens to be.
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. My help, but also our help, right? We recited this hymn in the little congregation in my grandparents living room, but generations of ancestors before us also sang this psalm. Perhaps there, in the continuity of the centuries, in the echoes of the ages, in the company of the great congregation of sinners and saints, I can find my home and make it for someone else.
My help is not mine alone. nor is home to be mine alone. I can make enough fried rice to share. We're invited to borrow hope, and maybe even home, and to lend it to one another too.
In the name of that one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, creator mothering one who longs to collect her chicks under her wings and companion to us all.
Amen.
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
Jeff Chu
I wear several different hats to cover my coarse Chinese hair, which requires too much product to tame:
Writer, reporter, editor. Co-curator and co-host, with Sarah Bessey, of Evolving Faith. Occasional preacher. Teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church. Ordinand in the Reformed Church in America (RCA). Cook, gardener, and dog walker to Fozzie in Michigan, where my husband and I moved two years ago. (First time living in the Midwest. Snow tires are a revelation!) Some days, I believe in God; other days, I want to believe in God.
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.
Tethered Away From God
The Reverend Ranjit Mathews preaches because God has called him to prophetic and embodied witness to those with ears to hear. His vocation is to love extravagantly, and to invite the shedding from systems of white supremacy, purity culture, patriarchy, and the gospel of production. Let’s revisit his talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev. Ranjit Mathews’ talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
The Reverend Ranjit Mathews. Ranjit preaches because God has called him to prophetic and embodied witness to those with ears to hear. His vocation is to love extravagantly, and to invite the shedding from systems of white supremacy, purity culture, patriarchy, and the gospel of production. Ranjitt preaches with vulnerability, knowing he is deliciously imperfect.
Ranjit preaches to the Episcopal Church, and has served in parishes in New London, Connecticut; Long Beach, California; and Milton, Massachusetts, and as a midwife to the Jesus Movement with Anglican partners in Sub Saharan Africa. He preaches about the realm of God, and how it touches all parts of us, from our bodies to our minds and our souls.
Ranjit preaches among his ancestors of Indian Christian healers from Kerala in India. He preaches as a Catholic. Personality who has lived and learned from so many beautifully open personalities.
The truth is… truth is… is that I am worshiping something other than God. I have been so attached and tethered to systems in this world. Every day I see on my work calendar at 2:30pm, I've inscribed it in for a 2:30pm “nap.”
And every day I move beyond it. I push it away, recognizing that in my body, more than likely, I need to take a nap. I need to rest.
Friends, I share that because I know in myself that my worship is not of God.
I know that from when I grew up, (and this could be maybe a cultural upbringing, and in my time in a more fundamentalist Christian upbringing in college), that I was so interwoven with a sense of purity theology, or purity culture, that had me so disconnected or disembodied from myself.
Or even if I were to be connected with myself and enjoying the pleasure of my own body, I was told that that was wrong. I was told that that was a sin. Early on.
And so then I learned very intentionally to disconnect from myself. So then a whole understanding that I am invited into by God of connecting not only with my mind and my soul, my spirit, but also my body, that was cut off.
So is it any wonder, is it any wonder that at 2:30pm on a given day when that pops up just inviting me to take a nap, that I do not listen to that part of myself, of my whole embodied self?
I just dismiss it. Because, in fact, I've done that already because of my indoctrination, because of this purity theology, and also because I'm so tethered, that purity theology is so tethered to the market.
As if, ‘Ranjit, you are not worth shit if you take a nap.’ You're not goddamn worth it, right? You need to get on and be productive. Is that not anyway connected again from my distancing from my own body, my own bodily intuition, because I'm so tethered again also to the market, that then I lift up a sense of toxic masculinity within myself, right?
Because I do not connect it again to my emotions, to where my body is on a day-to-day basis. And when I'm disconnected from that, then I bring things in. I let any sort of trauma or emotion to just bubble up within me and harden, thus disconnecting myself from my emotions, from my feelings, and becoming more of a patriarchal man.
Aren't these all symptoms also of a deepening of white supremacy within myself?
We all know that, you know, I'm invited into perfection. I'm invited to cut myself off from my body in a very intentional way.
So, my friends, I name these things because, in fact, I do not worship God. Hell no.
I am tethered to white supremacy.
I am tethered to purity theology. I am tethered to market based capitalism. I am tethered to patriarchy.
Those are the systems, those are the idols in which my body and myself [are tethered]. That's who we worship.
So I share that with you all, my friends, folks, people of color living in the United States, maybe abroad, of how important it is to just let go and to grieve all the ways in which you, maybe, certainly me, have been attached to those systems. Giving a space to just grieve it all and fall apart.
During this pandemic time, that shifted for me. Where I realized that, you know, I do not have it all together.
And I was awakened to this portal within me of brokenness, and how I might be invited forward if I just allow myself the space to grieve, to not go forward and do something more productive, but maybe to rest.
I share that with you all, hoping that we are not tethered to becoming more productive within a sort of capitalist market based understanding, but that we lean ourselves more deeply into flourishing.
But what does it mean to flourish as people who are made in the image of God? Does that not mean to untether from those systems? Create space where maybe we have rest so that then we can then dream what a new world might be inviting us into?
My friends, I confess that I worship these systems and that I am not a person of faith, but I'm struggling to become one of them. Thank you.
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
REV. RANJIT K. MATHEWS
The Rev. Ranjit K. Mathews was called as Rector of St. James, New London, on May 21, 2017. Rev. Mathews most recently served on the staff of the Presiding Bishop as the Partnership Officer for Africa.
Prior to his work with the churchwide office, Rev. Mathews was associate rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Long Beach, California, a bilingual parish where he worked to build connections between the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking community members and led the youth group. Before that he was a theology lecturer at the Msalato Theological College of St. John's University in Tanzania, and he has also served as assistant rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Milton, Massachusetts. Starting September 14th, he will be the Canon for Mission Advocacy, Racial Justice and Reconciliation for the Episcopal Church in Connecticut.
Throughout his work, Rev. Mathews has followed the example of Jesus' ministry of presence, compassion, justice and reconciliation, whether in pastoral care, or in the diplomacy involved with the Anglican partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa, or in anti-war protests before the Iraq War, or in investigations of immigrant detentions, or in building community partnerships to address local needs.
Rev. Mathews was born in Brighton, Mass. and grew up in Sharon, Mass. He majored in business administration at George Washington University and received his Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York. As a seminarian, Rev. Mathews served at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem and also studied theology at United Theological College in Bangalore, India. His father, Rev. Koshy Mathews, is interim rector of Gloria Dei Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rev. Mathews lives in New London with his spouse, Johanna, and their two young boys, Dhruv and Kabir. In addition to his extensive world service experiences in Africa and Asia, Rev. Mathews brings to us an ability to speak Spanish and a working knowledge of Malayalam, as well as a love of New England sports teams, national and world politics, books, nature, travel, movies, hip hop music and playing tennis!
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.
Your Words Will Become Seeds
Dr. Christine Hong usually mostly writes and teaches, instead of preaches, as a seminary professor. But after her writing and teaching slips into sermon mode, and she's mostly sorry about it, Christine mostly teaches and preaches to seminary students and their loved ones at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Christine preaches among an amazing group of colleagues and friends with the spirits of her ancestors.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of a talk Dr. Christine Hong gave at our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Christine usually mostly writes and teaches, instead of preaches, as a seminary professor. But after her writing and teaching slips into sermon mode, and she's mostly sorry about it, Christine mostly teaches and preaches to seminary students and their loved ones at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Christine preaches among an amazing group of colleagues and friends with the spirits of her ancestors.
The word comes today from Psalm 19:14, “but the words of my mouth. And the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Oh God, my strength and my redeemer.” Amen.
In Korean, we have a saying, "말이 씨앗이 되다" (Mal-i ssiga doenda)
Or, your words will become seeds.
My grandmother would say this to me as a warning whenever she would catch me saying something she felt was rude or plain mean. And believe me, it happened way too often in my adolescence. As I grew up, these words were always lurking in the back of my head. I hear my grandmother's voice telling me, watch what you say and don't say things that you don't want to become reality.
She meant don't wish people harm and even don't wish something good for yourself if it will bring harm to other people. In some traditions, we believe that words aren't just words, they are spells. Words are the result of things that lay brewing in our hearts and even in our dreams. They reveal our innermost thoughts.
What's in your heart? What do your words reveal about you? About the things that you want most in this life?
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
What my grandmother taught me continues to be true for me. Words, as I understand them, can commit violence and damage into generations. Think about any type of federal or local policy or law that was created to dehumanize, steal people and land, and facilitate the legal oppression and suppression of entire peoples.
Those aren't just legal words on a page. They were and are also thoughts and values in the hearts of people. Think about the residential boarding schools for native children in Canada and in the U. S. and the children who are right now being found. Their bodies recovered from mass graves as we speak. The church which supported, funded, and facilitated these boarding schools is complicit in sowing the words, the seeds, which turned into acts of genocide.
In the church, when we don't ponder carefully the thoughts in our hearts, they can become words, seeds, and acts of violence and injustice everywhere. Recently, there's been story after story coming out of a popular mainly Asian American and Korean American church stories of sexual and spiritual abuse by pastors and members steeped in a culture of purity culture and theologies of justified violence.
And I'm talking about it because we have to start talking about it.
Words were used to plant seeds and deeds of violence. Words were used to justify and hide dehumanizing actions. Words veiled in theological frameworks like salvation, called, purity, righteousness, chosenness, and even love.
These stories enrage me because I recognize those places, cultures, and the misuse of these words from my own experiences. Words that were meant to comfort and uplift, but became weaponized and used to violate instead.
This isn't you. This is not a single church. or a single time. Abuse in churches, sexual and spiritual often co-occur and happen all the time. And still the church uses its words meant for care and nurture to commit acts of deceit and to cover up its complicity with even more violence.
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
Yet in the face of the mess that the church has wrought throughout its history and in our present time, there's this other side to the same. We can plant different types of seeds.
The meditations of our hearts can also be seeds for liberative and freedom oriented futures. It's through the planting of the words and seeds for liberation that we refuse the way the church has too often let its words and actions harm the lives of our beloveds.
If words are the seeds planted for the future, then let's plant different seeds of flourishing for all. Especially for those of us upon whose backs the systems and structures of oppression through white supremacy, colonization, heteronormativity, and ableism have been built. Let's become bold and claim that our words are the seeds that beckon collective action.
Seeds of a collective liberation and freedom that is coming and coming soon. Seeds of justice that's already here, rooted, and ready to blossom in our midst. Your dreams of joy, of love, of thriving can and must become the seeds of the future church. This is one way that we refuse the way the church has and still is harming through its words and actions.
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
What are the meditations of your heart? Are they acceptable to our God of love and justice? Our God who loves justice? Our God who is the rock and redeemer of those who are oppressed in this life? Our words are a reflection of what dwells in the innermost spaces of our hearts, our dreams, our visions.
They are our dearest meditations. What types of seeds are you planting? Which dreams are being seeded through your words in your teaching, in your preaching, your parenting, and your neighboring. For too long, the church and those within it have used the words that they say to plant seeds that lead only to death and death dealing.
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
Let us plant a different type of word, a different type of seed, words and seeds of life, a life where everyone gets what they need, a future where the church no longer harms but works to mend, repair, and heal. May the words that come from our freedom dreaming scatter in the wind like dandelion seeds, adhering to the earth in every place and time and blossoming as justice and joy for us and for the generations to come
말이 씨앗이 되다 Our words, our seeds.
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
DR. CHRISTINE J. HONG
Christine J. Hong is Associate Professor of Educational Ministry and the Director of the Doctor of Educational Ministry Program at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. Her research includes anti-colonial and decolonial approaches to religious and interreligious education. Hong's research interests also include Asian American spiritualties, and the spiritual and theological formation of children and adolescents among people of color communities. Hong is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and has spent time as both as a religious educator and youth and young adult minister in New York and Southern California. She is the author of two monographs, the first is, Youth, Identity, and Gender in the Korean American Church, published by Palgrave, and the second, Decolonial Futures: Intercultural and Interreligious Intelligence for Theological Education from Lexington Press. Hong is the current Steering Committee Chair of the Association for Asian/North American Theological Educators, serves as a faculty mentor at the Louisville Institute for doctoral fellows, and is a committee member for the Women of Color in Scholarship and Teaching Unit at the AAR.
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.
The Playfulness of God
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of a talk Ophelia Hu Kinney gave at our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Ophelia most frequently speaks to peoples who may misunderstand each other. She is a queer Asian American who belongs to Hope Gateway, a progressive congregation in the whitest state in the country. There she serves on staff to open the pulpit up and all facets of Sunday worship to all, bringing forth the collective and unique wisdoms of the community.
Ophelia preaches about a creator who is kin and parent alike to our inner children, a god who is playful, imaginative, queer, and courageous. To Ophelia, preaching is an act of translation. She preaches because she externally processes the divine, and because the news is good indeed.
My name is Ophelia Hu Kinney.
She, her, and hers are my pronouns.
I am a child of emigrants from China, and I am a sister and a wife. I come from many streams, many traditions of playfulness, from peoples for whom play is part and parcel of survival and heritage and meaning making.
There is the high art of Chinese opera, for example, an extravagant commitment of imagination to fantastical storytelling, lavish makeup, exaggerated vocal performance, the whole nine yards. Of course, of only the most exquisite fabric.
And I also come from a queer lineage, a people who, like many peoples, have responded to marginalization with audacious joy. One public expression of that joy is pride festivals. which began as, and still are, riots against normativities, against marginalization and oppression.
And another public expression of that joy is drag. This is a performance, or a mythology, of gender. And I can't speak of a divine, of play, or of drag, without invoking the poetry of the great Sufi Muslim poet Hafiz, who said, “You are the sun in drag. You are God hiding from yourself. Sweetheart, oh sweetheart, you are God in drag.”
I come, as I've said, from traditions of play, of playfulness, and sweetheart, oh sweetheart, I believe that you do too. Deep and alive and co-mingled like the mycelia, that oceanic neural network that connects fungi and plants, that is the vastness of our respective traditions of play, of imagination, of exploration and fantasy and curiosity.
Play is how we first made sense of the world into which we were born. It was how we explored ourselves and our worlds, our divine outer and our divine inner realms. Unless we change and become like children, right? Then perhaps we will find our hands cupped and overflowing with the kingdom of God. Above this mycelium, Above the vast and rich traditions of playfulness that buoy and connect our cultures is what is visible on the forest floor of our existence.
Up on the forest floor, we are planted in churches and communities where playfulness too often has little value, and where play itself is subject to judgment. Leisure is what we call the play of the wealthy and the powerful. And laziness is what we call the play of the poor and the disempowered. Up on the ground level, our peoples are held captive by the belief that some of us are permitted to be playful, and some of us are not.
We may even believe, about ourselves, that we are not allowed to be playful. That as people of the global majority, as people of color, our nobility and our worth are inextricable from our productivity. We may believe that we are only as valuable as what can be extracted from us.
This is not a message about rest, which is also vital, and which is very different.
To be playful is to be wasteful, to be unproductive in the colloquial sense of the word, to be uninhibited by the immediacy of what is, and to have little ulterior motive. Up on the ground level, far from our roots, we are susceptible to commodifying even our joy, a hustle culture that lures us to ossify our happiness into an income stream.
We live in a culture where people of color must achieve far more than white people do in ministry, in our careers, and in our academic lives to compete for this seeming scarcity of empathy, respect, and opportunity. So what, then, is the purpose of play in a world that strips us of our playfulness, that profits off of, even banks on us, forgetting that we were ever a people of play?
Consider Jesus in his first act of public ministry. A party, a wedding, where he turned water into an overabundance of wine. This lavishness and playfulness, cupped and overflowing. There is the kingdom of God.
And then consider the woman with the alabaster jar of expensive perfume poured out over Jesus' feet the night before he was betrayed. A wastefulness, someone called it. A foolishness. And there too, overflowing, is the kingdom of God.
In our propensity for playfulness, in our childlike capacity for delight and mischief and wonder, is something like the image of God. A God who exhibits what we might call lavish and playful and wasteful and foolish.
That image of God remains unextinguished by the puritanical anti-tradition in which we live. And that deprives us, especially people of color and other marginalized peoples, of play and its associated innocence, youth, and grace.
In the realm of psychotherapy, there's an approach to viewing the mind called Internal Family Systems, or IFS. And IFS imagines the mind as an interactive system of parts protecting a truer self. And what our truer selves have in common is our propensity for playfulness, openness, and curiosity. Our response to subjugation is to suppress that inner child so that it cannot be hurt or exploited. But at our core, the theory implies, when we are unguarded, we are playful.
And when we forget the value of play, we forget God in us, and we lose a vital mode of connection to the divine. In the miasma of this puritanical anti-tradition, do we dare to encounter God playfully? Do we believe that God has room for our questions, our what-ifs, our unorthodox methods of reaching for God's self?
What God has called playfulness, let us not call a slippery slope or an idle or heretical simply because it balks against the anti-tradition of an unadventurous fundamentalism. Therein is the possibility of finding a God and an us that cannot be so easily controlled or manipulated.
So people of the global majority.
People of God's deep delight.
We were once children, too, made in the image of God. We were playful and imaginative and full of trouble.
And may it be that we recollect that we are cast in the image of God the child, full of mischief and wonder; God of a thousand stories, some of which we have called silly make believe through our collective history; God the child who dressed themselves up in the drag of human flesh.
And aren't creation and recreation a form of play?
God of joy, holy child, who breathed us into becoming, saying,”hmm, I wonder…”
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
OPHELIA HU KINNEY
Ophelia Hu Kinney serves as the Director of Communications for an organization seeking LGBTQ justice and inclusion in The United Methodist Church and on the staff of a fiercely loving, justice-seeking church in Portland, Maine.
She also shares her time with Beloved Arise and the Equality Community Center of Maine.
Her pronouns are she/her.
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.
Beyond the Politics of Visibility
Jesus embodies a different kind of knowing, a different ministry and witness that comes with stiff social and economic penalties. His visions of an end to evil and dehumanizing systems so that all might flourish. Those were both popular and exceedingly disruptive.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of a talk Rev. Laura Cheifetz gave at our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Laura preaches because her understanding of the vision of the world God desires is so very different from how things are. Laura preaches to anyone who will listen. Seriously. But most typically, she preaches to the good people of the Protestant mainline. Mainly, the PCUSA.
Laura preaches hard things when called for, and beauty, and love, and body, and radical inclusion. That's when she's had a nap and is hydrated. Sometimes she preaches the gospel. of grace in “just enough”. Like we're all tired, but sometimes just enough is more than enough.
Our friends James and John asked Jesus for positions, you know, in his cabinet, on his pastoral staff. But wait, that's what we do. That's what those of us who are considered leaders in the progressive people of color Christian space sometimes do.
In our defense, it's what we're told to do in our capitalist society. Women are told to lean in. People of color are encouraged to put our names in for prominent positions where only white people have gone before.
It's not just that we are told to live as though we have the confidence of mediocre white men, particularly when we know we are better than that. It's that for generations we have not been given a choice about the shared cup and the shared baptism. Suffering and death have stalked all of us, but some of us faster than others.
Because the society we live in does its best to legally, culturally, economically advantage white people and men with the best we have to give, leaving the rest of us with the dregs.
Of course we are jockeying for our own positions. A place at the table, right? And if it comes with the ability to provide for our families and make positive change?
James and John are playing the system. This is what they know. James and John make the error and become object lessons of asking such a thing of a prophet who healed on the Sabbath, palled around with sex workers, and sat and talked with strange women.
While we are accustomed to writing what could be maybe the next best selling book in our space or the next article that gets a lot of clicks.
Putting forward our names for Bishop, self referring to the open call at that tall, steeple church, Jesus's words echo, “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”
Jesus embodies a different kind of knowing, a different ministry and witness that comes with stiff social and economic penalties. His visions of an end to evil and dehumanizing systems so that all might flourish. Those were both popular and exceedingly disruptive.
James and John see popularity and imagine power as it is shaped in their society. But the way Jesus perceives is paved with consequences.
It is alienation, not comfort. Humility, not power. It is the ill and the unhoused. It is the challenge to the powers that be, unto death. And that, itself, is faithfulness. It is an honoring of all that our ancestors went through so that we could be.
We who are people of color know the danger we already live through our bodies, our ancestries, our cultures. And our ancestors lived this too, although we have had some problematic ancestors.
One of these ancestors is Takao Ozawa. He had the misfortune of living in the United States when the only way to be a citizen was to be white or black. Ozawa, an immigrant from Japan, argued that he was white. And he took this all the way to the Supreme Court in 1922.
He was Christian. His skin was, as he said, white. His children had English names. He had been educated in the United States. Despite all of his efforts, Japanese immigrants remained ineligible for citizenship until 30 years later in 1952. The lesson he took from a life of racism and xenophobia was the wrong one.
But honestly, who could blame him? We have other ancestors who knew the truth about this place.
Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American activist in Detroit, told us to build movements an inch wide and a mile deep.
Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist who engaged in causes ranging from Puerto Rican independence, to freeing black political prisoners, to redress for Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, urged us to speak out wherever there is injustice.
And she modeled it for us. She didn't want us to be so polite.
Some of us are playing those old politics of visibility and respectability clothed in new social media strategies. How many followers do we have? Do prominent people think of us for speaking or for church positions? How provocative, but still within the basic framework, could we be?
Can we get that photo op maybe in the Oval Office? How can we create change within the denomination? Meanwhile, Jesus is over here making sure the children have a bite to eat.
We are the next ancestors. How will we shape what comes after us? Will we strive for the limits of our imaginations? Are we planning to be James and John?
Or will we be the ancestors willing to serve? Following the way of Jesus, fighting against injustice, a servant all the way to the end.
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
REV. LAURA CHEIFETZ
Laura Mariko Cheifetz is the Assistant Dean of Admissions, Vocation, and Stewardship at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a graduate of North Park University (MBA, ’11), McCormick Theological Seminary (M.Div. ’05), and Western Washington University (BA in Sociology, 2000).
She is a contributing editor to Inheritance, a magazine amplifying the stories of Asian American and Pacific Islander Christian faith. She is the co-author and editor of "Church on Purpose: Reinventing Discipleship, Community, & Justice" (Judson Press) and contributor to "Race in a Post Obama America: The Church Responds" (Westminster John Knox Press), "Leading Wisdom: Asian and Asian North American Women Leaders" (WJK), "Here I Am: Faith Stories of Korean American Clergywomen" (Judson), and "Streams Run Uphill: Conversations with Young Clergywomen of Color" (Judson). She is co-author of the "Forming Asian Leaders for North American Churches" entry in the "Religious Leadership" reference handbook (SAGE Publishing). An occasional contributor to various blogs, her piece "Race Gives Me Poetry" for "Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice" won the Associated Church Press 2016 Award of Excellence - Reporting and Writing: Personal Experience/1st Person Account (long format).
Laura is multiracial Asian American of Japanese and white Jewish descent. She was the fourth generation of her family to be born in California, and grew up in eastern Oregon and western Washington. Laura has served on various boards, national and international ecumenical bodies, and has been president of two homeowners associations. She is currently the co-moderator of the Special Committee on Per Capita-Based Funding & National Church Financial Sustainability for the Presbyterian Church (USA). As you might imagine, she is well-versed in people and politics.
Laura and her partner, Jessica Vazquez Torres, the National Program Manager for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training, live in Nashville, Tenn. with two rescued Shih Tzus. They enjoy all their nieces and nephews, and hope to be such fabulous aunties that the kids smuggle good booze to them in their retirement home. In their free time, Jessica bakes and Laura delivers the baked goods to friends and neighbors.
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.
It’s Almost the 4th of July: What Are We Willing to Sacrifice?
Photo by Timothy Wolff on Unsplash
I was stunned by the Supreme Court majority opinions announced last week on guns and abortion. Emotions in the streets and in tweets remain palpable, from grief to elation.
As Christians and as Americans, we share a civic and moral responsibility to discuss these two decisions with one another—across our religious and political differences. Yet there is an even more urgent task.
Whether we feel jubilation, sorrow or indifference right now, we must each grapple with this question: What are you willing to sacrifice? I ask because this bold, fragile republic is on the ropes. Did you notice?
The searing testimonies and overwhelming evidence coming to light in the House January 6 Committee Hearings are the epoch-defining news of summer 2022. If you are not gobsmacked, you have not been paying attention.
So far, we have heard everyday, heroic defenders of democracy speak up. The vast majority are Republicans who served during the Trump administration. Many identify as Christians. Their sworn testimony is reinforced by over 1,000 witnesses who testified earlier along with 125,000 documents (emails, memos, phone call transcripts, videos, texts, tweets) The tremendous body of evidence makes it plain how far-reaching the attempts were to overturn the 2020 election.
The hard truth is this: Former President Trump and his allies blatantly lied to us. They dragged decent, dedicated, humble, public servants through the mud, endangering and forever altering their lives. They pressured Republican politicians and the highest levels of the Department of Justice to promote false narratives. They strategically and cynically stoked the anger and resentment of Trump voters.
They didn’t pour gas on a fire; they laid the wood, kindled it and unleashed a roaring wildfire on Jan. 6, 2021. Had it not been for the dogged integrity and commitment to the truth of Republicans like AZ House Speaker Rusty Bowers, GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and key DOJ officials (William Barr, Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donoghue), the rule of law in the United States would have perished.
As Judge Michael Luttig (a prominent conservative nominated to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush) wrote in his testimony to the House Committee:
“January 6 was a war for America’s democracy, a war irresponsibly instigated and prosecuted by the former president, his political party allies, and his supporters. The time has come for us to decide whether we allow this war over our democracy to be prosecuted to its catastrophic end or whether we ourselves demand the immediate suspension of this war and insist on peace instead.”
In all honesty, I probably disagree with these men on nearly everything. Yet on these things we agree: the fundamental primacy of the U.S. Constitution; the absolute necessity of safeguarding free and fair elections; facts matter. No one—no matter their power or position—is allowed to distort reality to serve selfish aims. Indeed, if we the people do not agree on these points, we do not live in anything resembling a republic.
In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. voiced his exasperation with white Christians who professed to be on the side of equality, but who were woefully complacent in confronting the moral evil of segregation:
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of [people] willing to be co-workers with God.”
My grandparents, whom I loved fiercely, were life-long Republicans and Christians. When Nixon’s betrayal became known, without hesitation, they vigorously called him and his toadies out. Will we finally do the same now?
Even more: Are we—The People—willing to sacrifice our most foundational laws and principles to see the policies and people we prefer in power? Is outlawing abortion or expanding gun rights in every state worth sacrificing democracy itself? Right now, numerous states are working to restrict voting rights, gerrymander districts and put Trump loyalists in charge of state elections. Earlier this month, a NM county commission refused to certify the primary results until the NM Supreme Court stepped in.
In 1968, King implored us to awaken to the “fierce urgency of now.” In 2022, we are again at an inflection point.
We Christian Americans could unite around the most basic tenets of our Constitution and form of government. We could insist on facts. We could hold liars accountable. We could extend grace to those defrauded and deceived by the Big Lie. We could vote (just 66% of those eligible made it to the polls in 2020) and help others do so. We could insist on laws to ensure our elections remain the standard bearer of free and fair elections in the world.
And we could again discuss, with sincere ideas and hearts, the hot-button issues of the day— abortion, guns, racial inequity, the climate crisis, LGBTQIA rights, gaping wealth inequity—in town halls, around kitchen tables, in our congregations. So many Christians care deeply about all these issues.
My students look at the state of things and wonder how we (anyone over 30)—have allowed so much structural sin to fester: poverty, hunger, homelessness, intensifying weather patterns. They wonder, “Does anything matter if the future is so bleak?” They are more despondent about their prospects than in the prior 18 years that I have taught. When classes resume in August, do I tell them that they are right—the world is going to hell in a handbasket and there is not much we can do?
Through our collective (in)actions in these precious months, we will make the answer clear. I hope you will help me give them—give all of us—reasons to stay engaged, to hope, to fight and sacrifice for our shared democracy.
Dr. Aana Marie Vigen
Aana Marie Vigen, Ph.D. is a parent, educator, and public scholar. Dr. Vigen is 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.
Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People
We have a unique opportunity right now in America. To move from Paternalistic Racism to partnering and listening and working for justice.
If you recognize yourself in this article, and it makes you cringe or feel embarrassed or even makes you mad, Hi, Me Too.
If you recognize yourself in this article, and it makes you cringe or feel embarrassed or even makes you mad, Hi, Me Too. I encourage you to keep reading. We have a unique opportunity in America right now, and so it's time to tell the truth—even when it hurts.
***
One of the proudest images shared here in Minneapolis after the tragic murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, is a picture of mountains of food donations delivered to the South Side neighborhood where Floyd was killed.
Food donations in Minneapolis after George Floyd's death at the hands of white Minneapolis police officers
So much food. Mountains of blue boxes of macaroni and cheese. Lucky Charms cereal. Golden Grahams. Canned corn and beans and bags and boxes of rice. Bottled water.
There was so much food that some donation sites had to ask people to stop bringing it. They suggested diapers instead. Or cash donations.
We got an email from the Minneapolis Public Schools asking people not to bring donated food to their sites for school lunch pick-up.
Still, the donations kept on coming.
My husband, Ben, was raised in Missouri. He didn't really get the food thing—the rush to donate food in the aftermath of police brutality and racist violence.
I explained to him the easy answer, that neighborhood stores had burned and grocery stores were closed and people needed food and people living in poverty didn't have huge stockpiles, etc., etc., etc.
That was the easy answer.
Here's the hard one.
We know how to donate food in the aftermath of racist violence here in Minneapolis because so many of us have been raised in a dominant white culture that tells us that black people are forever and desperately in need of our help.
I know. I grew up with it, too.
Growing up in an overwhelmingly white suburb and attending overwhelmingly white schools and churches, I learned early on about slavery and the Civil War and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I learned about poverty-stricken neighborhoods in North Minneapolis, and in nearby Brooklyn Park, where black people lived.
In the absence of a vibrant black culture where I lived, the lessons I learned led easily to what I've experienced—and acted out: "The Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People."
We are so comfortable being the charity providers, lamenting racism far away, in the South, or on TV, or in the opposing political party. We are not so comfortable stepping back and listening to the black people right in front of us tell us that our well-meaning efforts too often perpetuate racism, too.
I grew up thinking that there were lots of things you could do to not be racist and to work for equal rights. You could volunteer at homeless shelters and donate food and sort it at Feed My Starving Children. You could go on mission trips to other places and work in neighborhoods much more diverse than your own, because those neighborhoods and those places and those people needed your help.
Eventually, Jesus challenged these notions.
It took a long time. It's still taking a long time, inside of me, too, to move from Paternalistic Racism to partnering and listening and working for justice.
It began by attending college in Missouri and participating in a culture that was decidedly less white than the Minneapolis suburb where I grew up. My college had its own well-documented issues with race. But that's partly because it actually had a significant population of people of color. It's easy to pretend you have no issues with race when the non-white population is made to be invisible, and "othered."
My education continued as a white sportswriter often covering stories of athletes of color, by attending Baptist and non-denominational churches in Florida, and "broadening my horizons."
I came back to Minneapolis in 2009. I was working with a group to research churches in predominately black North Minneapolis, predominately black because racist housing rules enacted in the mid-20th-Century effectively pushed black families out of many South Minneapolis neighborhoods and surrounding suburbs. It's shameful, but it's true. I grew up thinking that North Minneapolis was dangerous and full of gangs and drugs and murders. This is what happens when you enact rules to keep businesses and capital and investment out of neighborhoods, when you limit public transit in particular neighborhoods, when you base school funds on property taxes. Still, North Minneapolis was much more than I ever understood it to be.
So I came back in 2009, with a group of mostly white researchers researching churches and neighborhoods. We pored over statistics and charts and interviewed pastors at predominately white Lutheran churches, because at the time I was studying to be a Lutheran pastor. Fun fact: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has long been America's whitest denomination.
We interviewed people from the neighborhood, most of whom were black. Many—not all—of the people who attended the white neighborhood churches had moved out of the city and drove in for church. These nice white Lutherans were struggling to reach out to their neighborhood. They desperately wanted to connect, but like I'd been taught, they also wanted to "help."
So they put that Scandinavian work ethic to work and they set up food pantries and community meals and job training sites. They organized English classes for English language learners, for neighbors who had recently immigrated to the U.S. They did amazing things. They worked hard. People of color from the neighborhood attended the classes and ate the meals.
Sunday morning remained a segregated hour.
We interviewed some of these neighbors, most of whom were black.
The words of one of the women we met, all these years ago, still ring in my memory, fresh as we confront anew the truth that my state has been among the worst places to live in America for black people, as opposed to white people, for whom it is among the best places to live in America.
"When we need food and services, we come to the Lutheran church," she said. "But when we want to hear the Gospel, we go to the Baptist church."
It's my shame that I don't remember her name. I had a chance there, to learn more. Instead all I have left are her words. And ignore the denominations if they bother you. Here's what I took from it, and what sticks with me over all these years.
White Christians knew how to provide services. But our offerings rang hollow with Jesus, without offering ourselves.
The heartbreaking thing is that sometimes our efforts and donations were papering over long-held and destructive racism, racism that assumed that black people needed our help.
That racism denied the important truth, that we needed each other. That white people needed black people as much or more than they needed us. We went to them too often as helpers and saviors instead of fellow bearers of the image of God, seeking genuine connection and relationship.
We blamed it on discomfort. Or on an ability to want to show the Gospel without having to talk about Jesus or the Holy Spirit.
Look at what we did! The glittering new shelter. The mountains of food. The pounds of Feed My Starving Children packages sent away to Africa.
At night cars were pulled over in North Minneapolis. Heads were slammed to the pavement. Children attended decrepit schools.
We lamented the "achievement gap." We hid statistics about how black people were doing in Minnesota. We crowed about our average income and educational achievements. We voted in black people to prominent positions in government, because tokenism is a part of Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People, too. Not that the people of color who hold prominent positions don't deserve them—they do. But too often white Minnesotans pointed to those leaders and elected officials as proof we weren't racist, instead of building genuine relationships across a broader community. In the absence of relationships, all we had were our ideals, and many of them hid a paternalistic racism that savaged our state.
***
I began this article saying we had a unique opportunity right now in America. People who've never talked about race are using their platforms to start conversations. Massive peaceful protest marches are taking place across America. White and black clergy marched this week in Minneapolis for justice.
So in the midst of this unique opportunity, I think it's important to talk about those things that make you the most uncomfortable. This is my contribution: a challenge to all of us who consider ourselves not at all racist, who'd never use the "n" word, who see our role as Christians to work for racial justice.
The mountains of food signify a desire to be involved, a desire to help. That is a good thing. An important thing. But maybe we have a chance, right now, to do even better. Instead of seeing our black siblings as desperate people in need of our saving, maybe we step back. Listen first. Look in your community, as close as you can, for who the black leaders are. Follow their work. Figure out what they're already doing to work for the causes you believe in, too.
Build genuine, honest relationships, relationships that will last before, during, and after the next instance of racist violence against black people. Find yourself quoting black leaders, listening to sermons from black preachers, and when you're looking for leaders in the battle for justice and hope in America, look to the black community.
In saying this, a caution. Part of the trouble with the Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People that has been a part of my own experience, is that white people assumed we were to serve as saviors. A quick mistake all of us often make when attempting to change this is to reverse it. And quickly we look to the first black person we're in relationship with to be our savior, to imagine that now instead, it's their turn to save us.
Part of being a Christian, for those of us who are, is knowing that there's only one Savior, and that's Jesus. We shouldn't make gods of others just as we can't make gods of ourselves. So in working to build relationships, to create a more equitable community, we have to remember our shared humanity first. White people don't need to save black people, and black people also don't need to save white people. Jesus promises to save us all.
But while we're here on this imperfect, imploding, beautiful, colorful, massive planet: Jesus asks us not to save each other but to figure out how to live together in harmony and at the very minimum, refrain from killing each other. Jesus asks us to look at each other and see life worth saving.
***
Nine days after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer's knee in bright daylight on a South Minneapolis street, I'm crushed but not defeated. I'm hopeful because I see nascent relationships beginning to form. I see people starting to listen. I'm trying to shut up and listen. I write, too, because this is what I can do. I'm a crappy organizer, I don't follow directions well, I'm impatient, I'm inconsistent. God gave me words, and so I try to use them. God gave you your gifts. All we each can do is try to use them.
Two-thousand years ago or so, the Apostle Paul wrote letters to a wealthy church in Corinth, which was undergoing great upheaval and trying to sort out social differences in the midst of a Gospel of Jesus which insisted upon no human distinctions, but unity in Christ Jesus.
Paul says we have this treasure in clay jars, and I look down at my white arms, covered in freckles and moles, my itchy scalp, my dimpled thighs. My ancestors were oppressors and Civil Rights marchers, poor whites and German immigrants, people who struggled to get by and battle their demons and try to follow Jesus and keep their families fed.
My vessel is imperfect. I was born in a culture that taught me to sin, and into a family that also taught me to love. In this imperfect jar I can lament my imperfections or I can whitewash them and cover them up with good deeds and nice words and passive aggressive utterances of racism.
Or I can stand, blemished and unblemished, at the foot of the Cross. I can try to tell the truth. I can try to work harder for justice. I can hand off the microphone. I can build authentic, honest relationships with white people and black people alike. I can confess my sin, I can be forgiven, and I can forgive others.
America is changing. Justice is rolling down like waters. I want to bathe in the truth, and let it finally set me free.
"But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you."
2 Corinthians 4:7-12
Used with permission. Originally posted on A Good Christian Woman blog, June 3, 2020.
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
To write Red State Christians, Angela spent 2018 traveling across America to interview Christians and Christian leaders in red states and counties. While spending time with the people in her book - and her own loved ones living in red states and counties, she found surprise, warning, opportunity and hope. In retelling those stories, she hopes to build empathy and dialogue without shying away from telling hard truths about the politicization of religion and the prevalence of Christian Nationalism in churches across America.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | http://agoodchristianwoman.blogspot.com
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.
Coronavirus in America: Politics and Survival
In 2020 America, what does your mask say about you and how you live?
Masks. A sign of saying who we are and how we live personally and publicly.
Today I got ready to visit our local nursery to pick up a plant. I knew I’d be outside, and I’d plan on staying 6 feet away from everyone else.
Then, I had to figure out a mask. I tried on a mask at home, tightened the back strings, pulled off my sunglasses, tightened it again, pulled it down, walked to the car, drove to the nursery, ventured out into the world. I knew people were watching me. I was watching them. When I saw everyone else wearing masks, I pulled mine back up, covering my mouth and nose. We were alone together again, hidden and revealed.
This week in mid-May, after political protests against coronavirus restrictions in several states, and news stories of violence ensuing over mask requirements in Southern California and Flint, Michigan, the prospect of wearing a mask in public had been complicated by political concerns that hadn’t entered my mind when I’d decided to wear one last week to the grocery store. Then it was just awkward and uncomfortable and unfamiliar; now it seemed to be political, with my friends and family dividing over ideological lines about whether to wear masks or not.
It is by virtue of privilege itself that I had plenty of masks to wear and I could wonder whether or not to wear one as I ventured out, not to treat patients or drive a bus, but to buy a plant for my living room, a decidedly nonessential activity. Across the city of Minneapolis from my house, masks were in short supply—despite the fact that most people relied on public transportation to get to essential, low-wage jobs.
The politics of mask-wearing didn’t bother my husband, an engineer, who had grown used to wearing masks everywhere after spending much of the past month working out of town to design an emergency Covid hospital site. The workers I saw every fortnight at the grocery store were used to masks, too, as was my dear friend the ICU nurse, and my neighbor the ER doc.
I had thus far been shielded and sheltered at home, where I broadcast weekly worship services, tried to teach first grade over the Internet to my 7-year-old son and make sure my 4-year-old son didn’t tear the house down.
My “other” job, as writer and speaker, had been dually affected. I conducted interviews by phone and wrote articles in the backyard while watching my son in the sandbox. I canceled upcoming flights to conferences where I’d been planning to share about my book with churches and universities.
I was lucky and unlucky, like most everyone else. I had so far been shielded from the worst impacts of COVID-19, the ones I read about from acquaintances and long-lost friends on social media, who were mourning their loved ones’ deaths, and being laid off from their jobs.
The rest of us—the relatively lucky majority—await deliveries at home and figure out how to wear masks and make frozen meals and water our plants.
In this time, it is a rare gift to have the luxury of defining yourself in the face of a pandemic. The best among us have long declared such questions moot, as they eat and sleep and work nonstop to care for others, whether they’re healthcare workers or grocery store clerks or engineers or delivery drivers.
The rest of us fight over the margins.
What does my mask say about me?
Is survival political? The nearly 100,000 American dead do not fit neatly into ideological boxes. For some this is all a hoax, a plot, not serious, a drain on the economy. Others have ridden our high horses past the city parks, looking down our nose at the teenagers playing there. They aren’t socially distancing!
We’ve become police to one another, judging each other harshly, letting anger shout while grace whispers.
Each side has its villains. The politicians and health care advisors who shut down your business. The group who gathered for a funeral and set off a viral outbreak.
In 2020 America, is this who we have become? A mask cannot just be protective or precautionary: for some it has become be a political statement.
We are expected to line up: mask or no mask, on either side of a binary that threatens to destroy the greatest nation in the world. Because as a life-or-death pandemic swallows America, we remain in the muck of this debate.
Churches and pastors and parishioners line up, too—some toeing the center of the line, others edging toward the extremes of each group. Should we worship online-only for years? Shall we plan a hymn sing at a time when singing is known to spread the virus? Will God protect us? Is God punishing us?
What about offering? Why about witness? What about community meals and food pantries and First Communions and bread and wine and holy water and communal confession and graduate recognition and colorful vestments and administrative assemblies?
A nurse rolls her eyes.
She pulls on her mask without thinking. She washes her hands. Walks into the patient’s room.
Here is the holy, a space removed from hatred and conspiracy and injustice.
At the beginning and the end of life, we are granted permission to be human. We are loved merely because we exist, the same way that God loves us, that God created us.
God promises to renew our lives, even after death, and life remains a miracle, created out of science and spirit and breath after ragged breath.
There are those who are helping us to breathe again. The respiratory technicians, the ventilators, the doctors, the nurses, the CNAs …
The yoga teachers, staring into the video screen.
The mask covers my mouth and forces me to shut up and listen. I breathe in life. I am alive, and I am not alone. Of course it will not matter what side of political divide I chose if my breath begins to fade. They will remember how I cared for those around me, how I chose life: not only for a cluster of cells inside a woman’s body but also for the man across the street from me, for the people who didn’t have the privilege to socially distance, those for whom the mask was not a political statement but a chasm of life or death.
Jesus entered into death so that we might live.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:7-10
Don’t tell me who you’re voting for in 2020, or what news station you watch, or what Internet research you did this spring about coronavirus.
Tell me how you stayed alive.
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
To write Red State Christians, Angela spent 2018 traveling across America to interview Christians and Christian leaders in red states and counties. While spending time with the people in her book - and her own loved ones living in red states and counties, she found surprise, warning, opportunity and hope. In retelling those stories, she hopes to build empathy and dialogue without shying away from telling hard truths about the politicization of religion and the prevalence of Christian Nationalism in churches across America.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | http://agoodchristianwoman.blogspot.com
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.