Justice

We Are Not Winning

America, Black Lives Matter, Current Events, Justice, Politics

My heart aches these days. And I don’t believe that’s the first time I’ve begun a blog post that way. Political polarization is nothing new to us, it’s been steadily increasing for the better part of the last 15-20 years. It was only a matter of time before it started to bubble over, which I think it is now. I hope it is now, because if this isn’t the beginnings of “bubbling over” I fear what is. Regardless, political polarization is nothing new, nor are the problems before us.

Nevertheless, my heart aches. COVID-19 has no doubt contributed to a communal degree of impatience, anxiety, and frustration in our culture, but the outcries following the murder of George Floyd are not new and are not due to the pandemic. They are the cries that black Americans have been sounding for over 400 years. The breadth, intensity, and depth of those cries vary over time, but they’ve always been there. And yet very little changes.

And so, my aches heart today because of our collective and continual abject dismissal of those cries. I’m not going to claim to have a robust understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement, nor am I going to deny my own complicity and propping of systems of oppression in this nation, but what I’m seeing happen before my eyes aches my heart. Protests have not ceased since George Floyd’s murder, and there is some real beauty in that. The vast majority of these protests and the protestors themselves are peaceful.

But there has also been a rash of property destruction, which if we’re honest has been by some who are associated with BLM and some who are associated with white supremacist agitators. It’s been a mix. Let’s get honest about that. And let’s also get honest that damage of property has real life impact on people, but let’s also get real honest about the fact that damaged property pales in comparison with the loss of a life. Let’s get our anger properly ordered.

It’s quite remarkable. For 400 years black Americans and their African descendants have been crying out about varying and continually reimagined forms of oppression, most recently finding expression in black lives taken by Law Enforcement and vigilantes. But we seem to have more political outrage and political will to fix the property damage issues than we do the systemic racism that continually harms and takes the lives of BIPOC Americans.

White Supremacy is not just guys from Alabama in hoods, friends. That’s the easy stuff to address. It also shows up in the form of shifting the conversation away from how and why a man in Kenosha, WI was shot seven times in the back leaving him paralyzed and fighting for his life, to moving the National Guard in to stop the protests and rioting and calling it a victory. That’s a victory? People cry out, tensions rise, the national guard comes in, essentially garrisoning towns, and this is victory?

I submit that there will be no victory until we actually face our issues, chief among them, the many, varied and insidious forms of White Supremacy that we continually deny and deflect. You see, sending in the National Guard to stop a riot is not victory, nor is it strength. It’s actually a concession and a sign of weakness. It’s a concession in that it’s saying that we can’t or won’t do the hard work to resolve these problems, so we will just control them. And It’s weakness in that it’s essentially waging war on our own citizens; and with all due respect to our soldiers, who do put their lives on the line throughout the globe, war is not a show of strength. It’s a show of weakness. It says “we’re too weak to deal with conflict, so we’ll just snuff it out with power”.

As Peter Rollins so wisely puts it, “Wars are called conflicts, yet war manifests the inability to face conflict: the desire to annihilate the other rather than tarry with difference.” And that’s just it, and is why my heart aches. The local and national response to the outcry right now is one that is unwilling to “tarry with difference”.

So if you’re among those looking at the arrival of the National Guard in Minneapolis, Washington DC, Portland, Kenosha, and others as a victory, I urge you to think again. Maybe it needed happen, but there’s nothing to celebrate here. It is not victory. Nobody’s winning. It is a sign that the pledge for “liberty and justice for all” is an empty one, as we’re unwilling to deal with the conflict with which we are faced. It’s just easier to snuff it out with power as a facade of strength.

So my heart aches. I want us to be better than this, and I believe we can be. But, fellow White Americans, it’s going to cost us something. We must come to grips with the power and privilege the system has built for us, and let it be deconstructed. And that’s scary, because we’ve found great comfort in those systems for centuries. But by letting them be broken down, what we just might find is that what we thought was comfort was actually the chain of relentlessly working to protect our power and privilege, holding us back from a truly liberated soul. Let’s be stronger. Let’s be freer. Let’s enter into the conflict rather than continually minimizing it and snuffing it out.

3 Reasons I’m Grateful for the USA

America, Justice, Politics, Wonderings, , ,

22687832_10213956779695709_3860916004584247312_nIn last week’s weekly email to my congregation, I challenged everyone to consider reasons they are grateful for the United States. We live in challenging polarizing times in which we are gripped in fear and anxiety. Anger, vitriol, and bitterness exist across the political spectrum. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to be angry about. There is a lot that needs to be challenged, heavily criticized, carefully examined, and relentlessly fought against, but in all of that, it is easy to slip into untempered anger, unbridled rage, and deep despair, none of which are helpful, and all of which I easily slip into. The antidote is gratitude. Gratitude can be a balm for an anxious soul, and the soul of America is anxious. So, in order to practice what I preach, on this 4th of July, here are three things about the United States for which I am grateful:

1) Free Speech: We argue about the degree of freedom of speech, but if we all step back and look at the big picture, it’s a pretty amazing thing. All freedoms have limits, and we continually find ourselves vigorously debating about those limits (tightening them and then loosening them, depending on which is advantageous to our political agenda), but we must confess that freedom of speech is a beautiful idea, one which is still alive, one which I believe will continue to be alive, and one for which I am grateful today.

2) Baseball: Yes, we owe this to the Brits (but, c’mon, though its roots are in Cricket, baseball is a far superior game), and, yes, Baseball (like our nation) is fraught with issues these days (can we please figure out the pace issue!), but what a beautiful pastime it still is. Though my team is as frustrating as they’ve ever been, I still find a great sense of peace heading to the ballpark or even turning on a game on TV. To quote Will Ferrell, “There’s nothing more American than heading out to the ballpark, grabbing a dog and brew, and watching nine guys from the Dominican play ball.”

3) Privilege: Yup, that’s right. If I’m honest, I cannot escape this. Hear me out on this. I am a great beneficiary of pretty much the whole way in which this nation is set up: Straight, Cisgender, White, Male, Protestant, Clergy- it doesn’t get much easier than that. Why am I grateful for this? I’ll be honest: I struggled coming up with three things about the United States for which I’m grateful these days. As ideas came to mind, they are all tied to my privilege. The truth is, I wake up every morning with no fear of being detained or even murdered by a law enforcement officer; of being sexually assaulted or harassed in any way nor to any degree; of feeling I need to code-shift or hide my sexual/gender orientation or identity;  of being asked to show my papers; or fear of how people may look at me or treat me if I’m wearing my clergy collar or my religious identity is exposed. The truth is, it seems no matter who sits in the oval office or what party occupies the seats of Congress, or what viewpoints sit on the judicial bench, things work out pretty well for me. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful for the relatively comfortable life I have. I don’t like admitting it, but the more I worked this exercise, the more apparent it became.

Now the question is, how do I do the right thing and use the privilege I enjoy in order to break it down? I do love this country. But I want better for it. It works well for me, but it also breaks my heart that it doesn’t work well, or even at all, for so many others. What about the United States are you grateful for? And, as I discovered, how much of it is tied to your privilege? It’s an important question. Celebrate today, but also let that question haunt you a bit. Becuase I’ll say this: The more I’ve let it haunt me over the last couple years, and the more I’ve come to grips with my privilege and tried to loosen that grip, the more actually free I’ve felt. Happy Independence Day, everybody.

A Powerful Afternoon with Justice Alan Page

America, Justice, Politics, sports, , , , , ,

img_9329.jpgOn Wednesday I had the pleasure of going to hear NFL Hall of Famer and honorable Justice Alan Page speak about race, justice, and equality at the Minneapolis Central Library. The lecture was billed as being about Colin Kaepernick and the flood of National Anthem protests that followed his lead in the NFL. This is an issue about which I’ve had great interest, so I was anxious to hear what someone like Alan Page had to say about it. It seemed to me that Hall of Fame football player of color who also happened to be a State Supreme Court Justice might have the perspective on this that we really need. I’ve never been so pleasantly disappointed in my life.

Justice Page opened by saying (and I’m paraphrasing), “I know many of you came to hear today to hear what I have to say about Colin Kaepernick and the National Anthem protests, but you may be disappointed to hear that I don’t really have much of an opinion on it because I find it to be the reddest of red herrings out there”. Page went into detail about how it is that a phenomenon like the Kaepernick protest almost always pivots away from conversations about the real and more important issue of justice and equality. While he’s right, I still find the Kaepernick protest an interesting and fruitful topic, but Page’s point did clearly point out a real problem in America today; more specifically white America.

Much of what Page had to say was not new to me since I’ve been studying the concepts of privilege, oppression, and justice over the last year, but that by no means gets me off any hook. As I sat and listened to him carefully and thoroughly outline the ways in which slavery has real and present effects on our culture today, it dawned on me just how unwilling white America really is to have this conversation. I was only willing to have it a year ago when it was forced on me in Seminary.

This unwillingness to have this conversation for real became evident to me that very same day as Page’s lecture, when I found myself in mild Twitter battle with someone I don’t know about the importance of white Americans getting educated on these concepts based off a Tweet of mine that MPR retweeted while Kerri Miller’s midmorning show was having the real conversation. And guess what happened? It didn’t take long before we were no longer Tweeting about race, power, privilege, and oppression, but were breaking down the Democratic nomination in 2016.

And this is how it goes in White America. When the conversation of race comes our way, we find ways to pivot out of it. In August of 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem of a preseason game, because he felt he couldn’t stand for a nation where black people are disproportionately incarcerated and killed by law enforcement. It didn’t take long before no one was talking about race, privilege, and systems of oppression because we quickly pivoted to talking about the military, free speech, and the importance of the flag. Alan Page was 100% right that Kaepernick has become the reddest of red herrings. As long as we keep talking about him, we don’t have to actually talk about race.

Thursday began Black History Month. I remember taking time in school every year when I was a kid during the month of February to learn about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King. I am grateful to have grown up in a school system, where learning these things was a priority. However, they didn’t go far enough. It seems to me that much of what we learn about when it comes to the Civil Rights Movement is also a red herring. Or at least a pacifier. It teaches us enough to let us see that the plight of black and brown bodies have been hard in this country, but the teaching largely keeps the conversation in the past, pacifies white guilt, and calls little to nothing out of us.

And what’s worse is I never learned until a year ago that this thing we say we all want, called justice and equality will (and must) cost something from people like me. This is why we refuse to have the real conversation about the realities of power, privilege, and oppression. I simply do not have the space and time to outline the details of this here, and it’s not exactly my point in writing this anyway.

What is my point? It’s to say this: Fellow white folk… We’ve got some deep learning and listening to do. Just start there- shutting up to listen and learn. Let in the troubling words and ideas that are brought forth by people of color, and stop deflecting and pivoting away from them. You don’t have to like what Colin Kaepernick did. You are allowed even to be offended by it. But watch and listen. It’s high time we started listening. Really listening. Yes, it’s uncomfortable, yes it’s frightening, and yes, it may even throw you into a bit of an internal crisis like it has me beginning a year ago. We have a lot to learn. We have a lot to listen to. And I’m not going to sugar coat it, we also have a lot to lose- a lot that we must lose if we want true justice and equality.

Thank you, Justice Page, for speaking the truth. Thank you for steering me away from the red herrings.

America: Home of the Afraid (Rev. 11/6/17)

#Justice, America, Justice, Politics, , , ,

Today, November 6, 2017, I sat down to write because I found myself so angry about the shooting and our culture’s response to it at 1st Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX yesterday that I had to do something. I went to my blog (which serves as more of an outlet for me than anything I actually expect people to read), and there it is: The piece I wrote after the Las Vegas shooting a month ago. I’ve already said it. No need to start over, except for one addition…

…Those of you coming at me saying “a good guy with a gun actually did stop the bad guy this time” are believing a lie. It’s a fallacy. Because, you see, the problem with that logic is that if the bad guy couldn’t get a gun in the first place, no one would be dead. So just another 26 beloved souls have been offered up on the altar of our gun addiction.

Something has to change. We have been willing to adjust our freedoms in seemingly infinite ways to make us more safe, yet we refuse to do anything when it comes to gun control. Congress, there is blood on your hands.

 

26e84572b77f4e866d6e9e183b59c610My heart aches. My soul weeps. My mind screams. My body is tired. Something has changed. This is not like a lot of things today where the world isn’t really that different, we’re just seeing things more because of social media and cable news. No, something has changed. We’ve heard it said over and over: Mass shootings are becoming the norm. And though there is a degree to which they have become normalized, when the images come across our screens, and we see the horror before our very eyes, we still weep. And we should.

But I’ll tell you what: I’m tired of weeping. I’m angry. I refuse to sit back and chalk this up to “the price of freedom”, as Bill O’Reilly and so many others are.  Since when are Americans quitters? I thought we were the home of the brave? But the prevailing sentiment seems to be that when mass shootings happen, we shake our heads in sorrow and then shrug our shoulders saying, “Welp. You can’t stop a madman.”

If you can’t stop a madman, then why have we been in a war on terror for 16 years? If you can’t stop a madman then why have so many women and men given life and limb to hunting them, finding them, and killing them? If we are the home of the brave, who stand tall in the idolatrous rhetoric of a “city on a hill”, then why is it so dark here now? Why are we so hopeless? Why are we quitting?

1449267674564.jpegAfter the San Bernadino shooting in 2015 the Daily News posted a headline that read, “God Isn’t Fixing This”. And they were 100% right. God isn’t fixing this. But we can. I thought America was the never-quit, always positive, beacon of hope in the world. Yet when it comes to gun violence, we’ve given up. We are, to use one of our President’s favorite words, “losers”.

You see, you cannot deny the United States is the deadliest developed nation in the world when it coms to gun violence. It’s data. It’s a fact. I’m sure there are alternative facts to the contrary out there, but let’s remember what alternative facts actually are: Lies. And so we then must look at what separates us from other nations who do not experience gun violence like we do.

According the gun lobby, I guess we’re just crazier. We just have too many madmen who cannot be stopped. Evidently there are no madmen in other parts of the world, because the gun lobby is convinced that no matter what we do, we can’t stop them, and they don’t seem to be killing en masse at the same rate in other countries as they are here. So other nations simply must not have these madmen.

61zuDrDlgiL._SX355_Or could the difference between us and other nations be that they have stricter and more meaningful gun laws? The fact that we are unwilling to even entertain this as a possibility is symptomatic of just how addicted to guns we are, and how much the gun is part of our national identity. Forget the eagle, just replace it with a AR-14. It’s who we are. And don’t come back at me with “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” rhetoric. The stats bare out that the more guns there are, the more deaths there are. Correlation, of course, does not necessarily equal causation, but to ignore the correlation is simply stupid.

So here’s what will happen: We will wait for the “facts of this case” to come out. Then the gun addicts will come up multiple arguments to show us how stricter gun laws would not have prevented this. Case closed. Meanwhile the narrative of increased mass shootings and gun deaths will continue to go untouched. “There’s just nothing we can do.” We quit. We lose. We’re losers. Madmen win. But let’s call them what they really are: The terrorists win. According to the gun lobby, the terrorists have won.

“Home of the brave”? If we were truly brave, and if we truly wanted to reduce the violence and death, we’d be willing to try just about anything to do it- especially things that seemed to have worked in other nations.

But we’re not. We don’t want to fix this. We just want to keep throwing out “thoughts and prayers” so we can blame God for it. We may be the land of the free, but in matters of gun violence, we are the home of the afraid. The time has already come for us to stop perverting the 2nd Amendment, and for us to have actual conversations and new legislation around gun control. To refuse to do so, is to quit.

Shame on us for quitting. Shame on us for being willing to lay down the lives of women and men to stop a madman in a cave across the sea, but not being willing to lay down our gun addiction to stop them here.

Why I “Stand” With Kaepernick #takeaknee

#Justice, America, Current Events, Justice, Politics, sports, Uncategorized,

200It was about a year ago when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem and all hell broke loose. Here we are a year later, Kaepernick doesn’t have a job, and this is still a hot issue. I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last year. I’ve been trying to assess what it’s all about and why it matters so much, and I’ve been trying to see both sides in the process.

I get why people are deeply offended by him taking a knee. There is something to be said for taking that moment at a sports gathering to remember things that matter more, not the least of which is showing some respect to the country in which we live and which really is a great place to live. I understand that the raising of the flag and the singing of the anthem means even more to those who’ve served in our military and particularly for those who’ve fought and are fighting in our wars. And I get that it’s hard for people for whom that means so much to watch others take a knee during it, effectively sitting out.

But with all that in mind, and having really listened to those points, I’m at a point where I’m with Kap. Everything we’re talking about when it comes to the National Anthem is symbolic. It is something that represents something else that’s real. The blood, sweat, tears and lives given in fighting in our military are real- very real- but the flag is a symbol. The song is a symbol. And I love symbols. As a pastor symbols play a massive role in much of what I do. And what I’ve said about religious symbols also applies to any symbol, and that is that while they are beautiful, they are also dangerous. When our relationship with the symbol becomes more important than the human sitting (in Kap’s case literally kneeling) next to me, the symbol has begun to play too significant of a role in my life.

I believe the flag and the anthem have begun to play too significant of a role in our collective lives here in America. And what Kap did was expose it. Kap didn’t take a knee to disrespect soldiers. He took a knee because something in him said, “I just can’t stand up and give myself to a flag that has enslaved and murdered black bodies since its inception”. You see, what people of color have experienced in this country over the last few centuries is real. And though there have been many noble, good and great people who have fought for our freedom, what we white people need to start hearing and getting is that this freedom is one that people of color have (generally speaking) simply not experienced as we have.

The history on this is long, convoluted, and buried, but it’s there. Yet we’ve heard the voices of black America crying out for centuries, and in the last four years, that voice has begun to cry out again in a particular way. Every time it cries, white American largely dismisses it. We pat black America on the back and say, “oh it’s ok, honey, it’s not as bad as you think”. No, friends, it’s not as good as we think. As we dismiss the cries for black lives, we not only dismiss the content, but we also critique the form, which effectively silences the cries. No matter how it is that black America cries out for justice, we tell them that their means are wrong, so, therefore, we don’t have to listen.

When I think about Kaepernick’s protest, I think it may just be perfect: First of all, why would we expect him to stand and honor a flag that, though it has given him some huge blessings in the success he’s had in the NFL, it has systematically marginalized his race? Furthermore why would we expect him to stand and honor a flag and sing a song to that flag whose 3rd verse reads “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/ From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave/ And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave/ O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave”? The land of the free has slaves?

So Kap decided, “I can’t do it”. He was being honest about what is going on inside of him. To stand and sing would be a charade. I’ll be honest: There have been times in my not so distant past where my soul has been troubled with enough doubt and sorrow that I could not stand and sing “Amazing Grace”. It would be dishonest. But as a pastor sometimes I need to do that, just as a soldier stands and sings no matter how she/he/they may feel. As far as I know, Colin Kaepernick is not a soldier. So he took a knee.

On top of all that, he did it discreetly. Certainly, he knew the cameras would find him (you can only be so discreet on an NFL sideline), but he quietly took a knee on the sideline and did not make a show of it himself. The media made it a show. And, yes, he probably knew that would happen and is part of the reason he did it, but still, he quietly knelt and chose not to sing. Not only that, he didn’t tell anyone else they shouldn’t sing. he prevented no one from honoring America, and he simply made a personal choice consistent with his thoughts, feelings, and experience.

In these ways, it’s a nearly perfect form of nonviolent protest: personal, authentic, legal, powerful, and clear.

And he’s gotten black-balled for it. Colin Kaepernick can’t find a job, primarily because he’s not that great of a football player, but also certainly because of his protest. Teams don’t want the distraction. That is a natural consequence of his actions in 2017 America. If he were at a Tom Brady level, he’d have a job. It would be worth the distraction. But what’s also true is if he hadn’t been true to himself and simply stood and sang, he’d also have a job. He’s good enough in a quarterback-hungry league to have a job somewhere. (I, for one, would love to see him in purple and gold backing up Sam Bradford. After all, with our offensive line, we need a QB who can run.) But Kap doesn’t have a job. And he doesn’t because he called out America’s racism in a clear and powerful way.

It’s quite amazing. You can rape women, beat your kid, bet on dog fights, and incur numerous DUIs in the NFL and still have a job making millions. But you take a knee during the anthem, and you’re out. The symbol has become valued above and beyond the way we’re treating humans (and dogs). Our relationship to the symbol is out of whack, and Colin Kaepernick called it out.

He called out the god under whom America is one nation: and that god is the stars and stripes. The god we worship is the flag and the way we worship it is by singing The Star Spangled Banner. The ancietns had a golden calf. America has a red, white, and blue flag. And Colin Kaepernick gets the credit for exposing our idolatry. And let me be clear: It is exposed as idolatry not because we stand and sing, but because of how we respond to those who choose not to.

We have a nasty disgusting sin of enslavement and genocide in our nation’s history and system, and we need to get honest about it. Don’t deflect it. Don’t deny it. Start really letting in the cries of the oppressed in our midst. It’s there. I get why so many boo him, and if that’s you, you absolutely have the right to do that. I’m just asking you to really examine why you boo. And I’m sorry but I can’t stomach the “men and women gave their lives to protect our freedom” rhetoric. Embedded in that statement is the notion that every military action this nation has taken has been one to defend our freedom. We’re fools if we think that’s true.

More often than not these days, what so many women and men have died defending is western imperialism. And that is not a critique of those who have fought and died in those actions, it is a critique of the women and men who sent them there to do it. It is a critique of those at the top who exploit soldiers’ loyalty and send them off to protect national interests in the veneer of “freedom”. This is not always the case, but it is enough so that we cannot give military operations a free pass. Those soldiers need to be respected and remembered and taken care of, but not necessarily the causes for which they were forced and sent to fight.

All of that is to say, I stand (or rather kneel) with Colin Kaepernick. I hear the cries, I see the pain, and I don’t want to be party to it anymore. I have a ton yet to learn, and a lot of courage to muster to fight for equality in more than symbolic ways, but for now, when I enter that NFL stadium on Thursday, though Kap won’t be there, he should be, and so I will kneel for him. I’ll sit this one out for you, Kap. And if you ever don my beloved purple and gold, I’ll sit one out with you.

Our White Rubble

America, church, Current Events, Justice, ,

My heart is heavy today. Very heavy. As I said in worship yesterday, this all began for me when I was 8 or 9 and my mom wouldn’t let me watch The Dukes of Hazzard- not because of Daisy Duke’s “daisy dukes”- but because of the General Lee and its glorious roof. I didn’t get it. It came back to me in 1991 when the video of Rodney King being assaulted by police offers was released. I got it a little more, but not entirely. Then it seemed to disappear as it was buried in a period where black Americans were imprisoned at a rate never before seen in humanity. It came back to white America in 2014 with the murder Michael Brown, and since then we’ve been in an ugly, endless, futile struggle.

It seems that about every 6-12 months something happens that takes root in our news cycle and we find ourselves in these odd social media debates around race in America. It happened again this weekend. We had actual Nazi flags being flown alongside confederate ones, as wannabe-nazis and KKK members joined forces with torches to march for the preservation of the statue of a military leader who fought to preserve slavery . It’s kind of mind boggling when you think about it.

What this stuff doesn’t take long to lead to among we progressives is a social media pissing contest to see who is the most enlightened. And while we do that, the racists, white supremacists, nazis, and grand wizards celebrate with a can of Schlitz in one hand, and a torch in the other, while progressives eat their own.

I took the bait. So my heart is heavy.brick-white-wall-1468830718LdH

I’m a cis-gender, straight, white, male, Christian pastor. I’m trying to find my way through actually doing something about privilege, white supremacy, and equality. I’m
deeply concerned about the systemic racism that is alive and well in our world and which continues to marginalize and oppress people of color. And I’m trying to do what I can as a faith/community leader to move my sphere of influence to work for a better, more whole, and equal world. And here’s my confession:

I have no idea what I’m doing. But here’s what else: I don’t know if anyone does.

My heart is heavy because all we seem able to do is lash out on the Twitter and Facebook machines about how horrible it is. And it is. And while limousine liberals like myself duke it our for social media king-of-the-hill, nothing changes. It’s not getting better. And I think part of why it’s not getting better is that we seem to be more concerned with rhetoric than we do actual change. We want to hear white supremacy condemned, and we seem to be satisfied with that.

White supremacy needs to be condemned, but if we want actual change in our culture, we’re going to have to do a lot more than preach and post on social media. This is going to take hard work that goes to the soul of whiteness. We don’t get off the hook because we preached about it Sunday. We don’t get off the hook because we called out those who didn’t. We don’t get off the hook because a black friend liked or shared what we had to say. I don’t get off the hook for writing a blog. We’ve got hard work to do. We need to get into our respective white communities and start to have the hard conversations, rather than surrounding ourselves in our echo chambers that make us feel better ourselves. And we need to be supporting and resourcing one another along the way.

My heart is heavy, because here we are again, arguing it out with people we don’t know, most of whom probably want the same end, but rather than helping each other, we’re eat each other along the way. Meanwhile white America will continue dreaming, marginalized and oppressed people will still get harmed as they are buried more deeply in our white rubble, and the Nazis and white supremacists will continue to prop up a 300 year old system that protects their (and my) privilege and power. So my heart is heavy.

It’s very heavy today. The cycle seems endless. Unless those of us who truly do want equality stop tearing each other down, and start helping one another in the fight, we will lose. Or rather, people not like me will lose. Because that’s who always loses.

Evangelicalism at Iliff School of Theology (Wait… What?)

Justice, Religion, United Methodist, , , ,

IMG_8059The journey has been long, at times painful, and mostly liberating. In 2012 I wrote a piece I called My Journey to No, which was my way of not only publicly opposing the Minnesota marriage amendment to ban same sex marriage, but it was also my way of publicly announcing my theological shift in regards to the humans I had previously whittled down to the “issue” of homosexuality. That is, I had moved from someone who bought and taught conservative evangelical theology on “matters of human sexuality” to someone who believes in a more generous Gospel of Christ, and believes that not only should LGBTQ people be accepted fully into the fold of Christianity and humanity, but also should be called to be our leaders, teachers, and mentors in and of the faith. It is statements like this that I know often upset my evangelical sisters and brothers, but the truth is we cannot hold a generous Gospel in one hand, while holding a charge against Bishop Oliveto in the other.

Nearly five years after writing My Journey to No, last Wednesday I found myself in the Iliff School of Theology chapel in a near full-on heave cry as I was led in one of the most powerful worship experiences of my life. Bishop Karen Oliveto was scheduled to preach, even though she had just returned home from hearings in New Jersey regarding whether her election to the Episcopacy last year was valid simply because she is a publicly professing lesbian. I can’t imagine the painful words she had to endure in those hearings…

…Oh wait, yes I can imagine those words, because for the first 15-20 years of my Christianity I believed those words, I said those words, and (and here is where I really cringe) I taught those words to teenagers. You see, I was an evangelical. That meant that I had a responsibility to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, which when it came to LGBTQ people meant “you’re an abomination, but I can help you.” We can spin it all we want, but that essentially was our “good news”.

As soon as I saw Bishop Oliveto walk in I felt tears well up. The worship experience was beautifully crafted and led mostly by Iliff’s LGBTQ community and included great music, including a powerful acoustic rendition of “Blessed Assurance”, as well as some other beautiful choruses and original pieces. But in all the beauty, something wasn’t right in me. I couldn’t figure out what. My soul was aching as though it was waiting to crack open and unleash something. What was this about? I’ve been through this. I’ve come to terms with my evangelical past and have since worked to be an ally (not always well, but I’m learning). What was happening? Why was my soul so unsettled.

The coup de gras for my aching soul came when a fellow Iliff classmate read a poem they wrote for this occasion. It cannot be described, nor can it be merely read. This was true poetry: It needs to be experienced. Take six minutes and give it a listen/viewing (yes it’s a six minute poem, and it needs to be, and it’s beautiful):

As the recitation went on, I found myself beginning to mildly convulse as I tried to hold back the tears that were beginning to pour out from my soul like a spring of abundant life. I didn’t want the drama of my soul to distract from the beauty being breathed into the Iiliff Chapel air.

The poem finished and I was torn open in all the good ways. This unveiling of my soul felt like what I imagine the tearing open of the veil of the Holy of Holies to be. Something was exposed. Then it hit me. How many students have I silenced? How many teenagers sat in my youth rooms desperately needing a safe space to be, express, and live into who they are, and I silenced them? I know there’s grace, and I know I’ve changed, and I even know that in those days, my motives, though misguided, were not to cause harm. But I did. My intentions do not change the fact that I silenced. As students gathered for confirmations and baptisms, I put white robes on them to homogenize them when perhaps all they wanted or even needed was to live into their unique, colorful, fully alive, and not always normative selves.

My soul laid bare, I collected myself, as Bishop Oliveto began to preach. I can’t tell you what an honor it was to be in that space with her and other dear friends, most relatively new but one I’ve known for well over half my life- one whose story is intimately and inseparably tied to mine. In Bishop Oliveto you could see that the pain was real and deep, but more so, it was not the final word. Resurrection will have the final word. Resurrection will precede the final punctuation mark of her story. And mine. And yours. Hope began to swirl in the air with the grace of gentle but felt summer breeze. The kind that messes up your neat and tidy picnic table.

And then another classmate of mine for whom I have great admiration sang a song he wrote for Bishop Oliveto. The poem broke open my aching soul, and this song became a healing balm for it, not closing it back up, but leaving it laid bare and vulnerable and free: “I’m made in the image love…” poured into the air like an aspirated baptism drowning me in grace and healing with every breath. Listen to it. All of it:

I walked out of this worship experience with an undeniably felt experience of the very Spirit of God. She swam through that room with a kind of power and beauty that takes your breath away. In a time of such bad news in the life of LGBTQ United Methodists, hope, grace, and healing echoed off the walls of the Iliff Chapel that morning.

Bad news came later in the week. On Friday the UMC Judicial Council ruled by a 6-3 vote that Bishop Oliveto’s election to the episcopacy did violate church law. It was another crushing blow in the hope for inclusion in the United Methodist Church. But I did not leave hopeless. Still wet from the drenching of the Spirit in chapel on Wednesday, my soul rose in protest against this ruling. And isn’t that what worship is? A protest? Isn’t this thing we call worship- that is, the gathering of the community- intended to be a protest against the current condition of the world? A protest against bad news?

As the world spits out more bad news of hate, exclusion, destruction, and fear, the gathered community is intended to stand in opposition as a anthem of good news. The Greek word in the New Testament that translates to “good news” is εὐαγγέλιον (euaggelion). It’s where we get our word “evangelical”. In this sense, at its most raw, evangelicalism is a protest against the bad news of the world. Because of this, the only word I can use to describe my experience in the Iliff Chapel on Wednesday is “evangelical”.

The journey has been long, at times painful, and mostly liberating. It’s becoming a more common story, that of people leaving evangelicalism. But leaving that worship experience on Wednesday, I’m not so certain I left evangelicalism eight years ago. I may have just finally found it.