"INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY"

 “INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ DAY”

        When I was growing up on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta, I inhaled the racism that flowed through the physical and psychological air there.  That racism was one of the reasons that I always felt weird about Columbus Day.  Although Americans of Italian heritage had made it into the classification of “white” by my time, that classification had not quite made it down to Helena, Arkansas.  Those of us who were “truly white” (whatever that means) were sure that people of Italian heritage were somewhere in the middle between the exalted category of “white” and the degraded category of Black (most often described by the N-word).

The celebration of Columbus Day was strange to me as a boy – our segregated school system did not recognize many days as national holidays, and Columbus Day was one of the unrecognized ones.  I have since later learned that my feeling of weirdness about Columbus Day was correct – I was just feeling it for the wrong reasons.  As I learned more about American history, it turns out that Columbus Day was a main focus of the savaging of the land and the indigenous peoples of the land by those classified as “white.”  Now it is called “Indigenous Peoples Day,” as it should be.  Though Columbus did not “discover” America, his landing in a place that he thought was India would become the opening for huge exploitation of the native peoples and the land.  

I experienced that once again in downtown Decatur during the years that I have lived here since 1983.  In the Decatur Square, there were two memorials to the power of racism: one was a tall obelisk glorifying the Confederate soldiers who fought to honor and preserve our wonderful Southern homeland.  The other was a cannon from the “Indian Wars” of 1836, which drove the Muskogee (Cree) Indigenous people out of Georgia and Alabama on the Trail of Tears.  These two monuments to white supremacy were erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in the first decade of the 20th century – they were part of a movement around the South during that decade to solidify the Lost Cause and negate the real meaning of the Civil War.

We joined in with many groups, including the City of Decatur, Dekalb County, and especially the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights to get these abominational monuments removed.  On June 18, 2020 (the day before Juneteenth), the Confederate monument was removed in the dead of night, and in 2024, it was replaced by a marvelous statue in tribute to John Lewis.  In 2021, the horrible cannon from “the Indian Wars” was removed, and earlier this year, it was replaced by a marker that is depicted in the photograph that accompanies this blog.  There is also an interactive educational component about Indigenous Peoples at nearby Agnes Scott College.

I grew up in territory that had previously been occupied by Cosqui and Pacaha natives of the Hopewell Culture.  I did not know that until I went to college, and I do not remember any markers in Helena that proclaimed that.  There may have been some, and if there were, my lack of memory of them speaks volumes about the racism that I learned in Helena.  There was a marker near my house dedicated to Hernando de Soto, one of the Spanish explorers who crossed the Mississippi River near Helena and held the first Christian worship west of the Mississippi in 1541.  The Delta Cultural Center at Helena now tells the stories of both.

So, on this Indigenous Peoples Day, let us remember the sad and horrible times of genocide and attempted erasure of “Indians” who were here when the Europeans came.  Though partially successful, that erasure has not worked – Native peoples are making concerted efforts to reclaim their heritages and some of their lands.  And, let us find our places in that movement for restorative justice.

"WORLD COMMUNION SUNDAY"

 “WORLD COMMUNION SUNDAY”

Yesterday was World Communion Sunday, and I have been celebrating it ever since I first took communion in 1958.  It previously was called “Worldwide Communion Sunday,” the name by which I knew it in the 50’s and 60’s.  I’m not sure when or why the name changed, but perhaps “Worldwide Communion Sunday” seemed a bit pretentious and was actually inaccurate – neither Roman Catholics nor Southern Baptist churches recognize it.

In some ways, World Communion Sunday (WCS) seems outdated, a superficial time where for a short moment, we are asked to feel unity in Christ around the Lord’s Table.  It is a unity that is always elusive and usually unrealistic, but still we observe WCS to remember that in Jesus Christ, the dividing walls of hostility have been broken down.  World Communion Sunday is observed on the first Sunday in October, and it emphasizes that we all have dignity and equality because of God’s revelation to us in Jesus Christ.  It officially began in the fall of 1933, started by the Rev. Hugh Thomson Kerr at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh.  

Its emphasis on Christian unity and on the power of Christ to unite us was a theme that caught on quickly.  In 1936, the Presbyterian denomination adopted it as one of our recognized holy days.  In 1940 the Federal Council of Churches (predecessor to the National Council of Churches) adopted it for all its member churches, and it has been on the Protestant church calendar ever since.

In my younger years as a minister, I celebrated World Communion Sunday, but I was always skeptical of it.  Although I loved the ideal of unity and sibling-hood that it symbolized, I understood that while we might love the symbolism, we rarely ever lived it.  In my home church in Arkansas, people classified as Black were not allowed to worship or even to enter the building except to cook and clean.  So, there was no possibility of experiencing that unity that World Communion Sunday seeks to express.  For me, WCS had turned into a sentimental symbol with no teeth or bite to it.  We were all one in Christ – so what?

Two things changed my mind, however. First, I learned the history of the development of WCS.  It began in the fall of 1933.  Anyone remember the events of 1933?  Yes, the Great Depression was ravaging the USA and the world, shrinking our spirits and crunching our lives.  Even more ominous was the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany.  He wasted no time in creating a monster state in 1933.  He was appointed chancellor in January, 1933, and by the end of February, the Reichstag Parliament Building had been burned.  This led to the Reichstag Decree, passed by the German Parliament in February – it denied the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of public assembly.  Dachau was opened in March, and in July the Nazi Party became the only legal political party in Germany.  World Communion Sunday was born in this atmosphere, and it served as a strong opposition voice to the racism of the Nazi regime.  World Communion Sunday grew in this atmosphere of racism, oppression and war, and it still stands as a powerful symbol of a different world, a different point of view.

Second, my experience of communion at Oakhurst Presbyterian radically changed my view of WCS.  Through God’s Spirit, we developed a multicultural congregation there, and for a white boy raised on the robbery and racism of neo-slavery, it was a powerful moment to remember and experience the unity of Black and white people sharing in World Communion Sunday.  It was no longer a symbol – it was a visible, lived presence.  By the time that we retired from Oakhurst, there were people from 15 countries worshipping at Oakhurst, and because of this, World Communion Sunday took on a whole different meaning.

Though Trump is not Hitler (I sometimes think that he would like to be), we live in a deeply divided country and in a time of great meanness and resentment.  Perhaps it is time now to recover World Communion Sunday and its original meaning – we are siblings after all, no matter what the world tells us or what we tell ourselves. 

"DAVID BILLINGS!"

 “DAVID BILLINGS!”

My longtime friend David Billings turns 80 on October 1.  He and I have known one another since the 4th grade in Helena, and thus he is my longest and dearest friend from those days.  He and his wife Margery Freeman and many friends and colleagues will be celebrating his birthday in the Bronx on October 4, and Caroline and I regret that we will not be able to attend that celebration.  So, I am going to share part of the letter that I sent to him. 

    I was always impressed David’s kind heart, by his great, mischievous sense of humor, and by his intellect and curiosity. When we were playing Pony League baseball on a field in an all-Black neighborhood, he began to raise my consciousness by musing on what the Black boys must be thinking as they watched us white boys play on a field in their neighborhood – a field on which they were forbidden to step in the neo-slavery South.

    In our high school years, we began to migrate closer together because we both knew that there was a larger and deeper world out there.  We gave one another the courage to go find that world, and I will be ever grateful to David for that alliance which changed both of our lives.  I remember sitting outside of Nick’s Restaurant (at the white end of the Cherry Street drag in Helena), at the end of Christmas break in the middle of our sophomore year in college (David at Ole Miss and me at Southwestern in Memphis).  We had both done hard work the summer before, and that night we agreed to seek something else in that coming summer of 1966, something that would stretch us and deepen us (and be less physical!).  Through a fortuitous set of circumstances, we ended up working in a summer program at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, and it changed our lives.  It was a huge jump for young guys from the neo-slavery deep South, and I don’t know that I would have done it without David going also.  Indeed, as I recall, a few nights before we left for Brooklyn, I was ready to back out because I thought I was in love with a young woman in Helena and didn’t want to leave her.  David reminded me how excited we were to go to NYC and how much we would learn there.  I finally agreed – and later learned that “my love” was also dating someone else that same summer!

    LAPC and NYC changed our lives – we learned so much there and discovered how much we loved the city.  Even more importantly, we engaged Black people as human beings for the first time, and I remember us talking during that summer in New York and saying that we could not go home again, to borrow Thomas Wolfe’s phrase.  That proved to be true, and it began painful times for both of us and our families – fortunately, the bonds of love held strong during those times.  We were allies from then on out, especially regarding the world of Helena and the deep South, and I am so grateful for his friendship on that part of the journey.  

    Towards the end of our college careers, we both encountered the Vietnam War, and both of us went to seminary to follow God’s call (and to be exempt from the draft).  Through different kinds of circumstances, we both dropped out of seminary and faced the draft once again.  We both applied to be given conscientious objector (CO) status, and I was granted it, and David was not.  I was shocked that David was denied CO status, but in one of God’s great comedy acts, his trumped-up conviction for malicious mischief in Mississippi turned out to be a felony which disqualified him for the draft.  I also learned much later in our lives from a former Helena draft board member that when they considered our applications, they had always known that I was going to be a minister, so the CO for me made sense.  But, they had perceived David as a mischievous ne’er-do-well, and they felt that he was just trying to get out of the draft and thus denied him.

    Their stupid decision led him to New Orleans, where he later became pastor at St. Mark’s Methodist Church and director of its community center.   We both helped one another through many troubled times in those decades, but we also shared a similar vision about the world and our places in it.  And, through his becoming an anti-racism trainer with the Peoples’ Institute, he taught me so much about the continuing power of white privilege and the call to seek to remake the landscape into one of justice and equity.  

    He came to Caroline’s and my wedding in Decatur in 1974 and later came to Norfolk to baptize our son David (partially his namesake) at St. Columba Church in 1980.  And, we both helped one another write our books!  His is “Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life.”  If you haven’t read it, get it – it will tell you a lot about the conditions that led to the rise of Donald Trump.

David’s only flaw is that he is an intrepid Yankees’ fan and has been for many decades.  But, I give thanks for him and for his witness and especially for our long and fruitful friendship.

“MES NACIONAL DE LA HEFRENCIA LATINX/HISPANA”

  “MES NACIONAL DE LA HEFRENCIA LATINX/HISPANA”

             Last week began the month of celebrating the heritage of the diaspora of people from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean, who are now in the USA.  Some have been here for centuries, predating the Anglo arrival, some arrived as recently as today.  The month is sandwiched between famous battles for independence by LatinX or Latine or Hispanic peoples from European colonial powers, and the dates are September 15-October 15. 

             The recognition began under President Johnson and was originally called Hispanic Heritage Week.  It has expanded into a month, and in line with the arbitrary nature of the American system of race, it is ever evolving.  “Hispanic” was the earliest term because it is a word derived from the Latin word for the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and Portugal (Hispana).  

            The word “Hispanic” began to fall out of favor, however, because it does not cover all the language groups in the brown Americas.  “LatinX” or “Latine” have begun to develop as an alternative, and it is a strange term because no one speaks Latin in the brown Americas except priests and some scholars. Why did a word referring to a “dead” language from Italy become the definer for people from the brown Americas?  Because Latin is the basis for what were called the “Romance” languages when I was growing up:  Spanish, Portuguese, and French, which became the dominant European languages in the brown Americas.  “LatinX” has begun to replace the masculine “Latino” as a word of choice to include all people. 

             Whether one prefers “Hispanic” or “Latine” or “Latinx,” all of them still define people from the brown Americas by the history of the European domination of the region in the colonial era.  This crunching of experience is further squeezed by the American system of race, which demands to know who should be classified as “white” and who should not.  This demand, born out of the struggle between slavery and equality in American history, means that everyone must be assigned their place in the system of race, obliterating cultural and language differences, so that those classified as “white” may know where to assign the goodies of American racial capitalism.  One of the great things about “MES NACIONAL DE LA HEFRENCIA LATINX/HISPANA” is that we hope that it will lead to peoples of the Americas helping to break down the oppressive system of race.  We will be hoping and looking for more accurate and just terms and descriptions to emerge.

The profiling of brown people is just the beginning of the Trumpian manifesto to firmly re-establish white males as superior to all others.  The mass deportations are a direct attack on people of color, but it is not the ending of the MAGA movement.  It is rather the thematic prelude to attacking and marginalizing all individuals and groups who stand for the American ideals of justice, equity, and liberty.  In these days, let us remember who we are and where we have been.  Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoeller put it best during the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1940’s:  

First they came for the Communists 

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

So, let us remember this lesson in history in at least two ways this month.  Let us join our brown siblings in recognizing and celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month.  And second, let us speak out against the racial profiling of people of Hispanic heritage.  It is time to both speak out and act up.  

'WHEN GREAT TREES FALL"

 ‘WHEN GREAT TREES FALL”

We have had a tough month with the passing of many stalwarts in our personal and national lives – Christine Callier for Caroline and me, as well as Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan.  Such powerful witnesses, and whenever this happens, I like to share the poem by my fellow Arkansan Maya Angelou.  It is called “When Great Trees Fall,” and here it is:

"WHEN GREAT TREES FALL" by MAYA ANGELOU

When great trees fall, 

rocks on distant hills shudder, 

lions hunker down 

in tall grasses,

and even elephants lumber after safety.

When great trees fall in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond repair.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words, unsaid,

promised walks never taken.

Great souls die and 

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls, dependent upon their nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed 

and informed by their radiance,

fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of 

dark, cold caves.

And, when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly.  Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed.  They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed. 

"SUSAN STROUPE!!!"

 “SUSAN STROUPE!”

Caroline and I were playing balloon ball with 2-year-old David in our duplex in Nashville in the late evening of September 11, 1982 – years before that date became one of infamy in American history.  Caroline said: “I think that my water broke – I believe that the baby is coming.”  It was a few days early, and I was skeptical, but I’ve learned that Caroline (and other women) may know more than I do on this subject.  We went to the birthing room at Vanderbilt Hospital, and Mary Susan came out a couple of hours later early in the morning of September 12.  We have been celebrating her ever since.  

We moved from Nashville to Decatur five months later, so baby Susan was a hit at Oakhurst Presbyterian for many reasons, including the fact that she was the only infant there.  She grew up there, and it was a great blessing to her and to us – many grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles.  She also learned how to be a good listener there – hearing many different cultural approaches and voices.  With so many African Americans at Oakhurst and so much African-American music there, she learned to clap on the back beat!  

She has been (and continues to be) our teacher on so many levels.  She took us up into the cold north when she went to Macalaster College in Minnesota.  She majored in English and drama, and we were introduced to the world of theater in a way that I never thought possible.  We took a trip to the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca one year when she was there.  I was amazed that I could walk across the beginnings of the River that swirls and eddies and flows fast in its mile wide crossing at my hometown of Helena, Arkansas.

        She worked for Americorps for two years in Albuquerque, and we learned a whole new world of the Southwest.  Given her compassionate heart, she worked in Albuquerque with adults with developmental disabilities.  She made lifelong friends there among the artists in that Americorps Center, and they helped their students do a play by Shakespeare.

She moved to Baltimore in 2009 to work on her MFA in theater at Towson University, and she has been thriving and growing in Baltimore ever since.  We have enjoyed getting to see her develop her personality and leadership.  She joined the church choir at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.  She later joined the church as a member, later chaired the Worship Committee there and has been an elder and co-clerk of  the Session.

As an artist in American culture, Susan has to cobble “day jobs” together for income, but she has been blessed to find theater-related jobs to do this, for which we are grateful.  She is one of the founders of Submersive Theater, a group of colleagues who approach works of art in an “immersive” way.  Yes, another learning for us – “immersive theater” invites the audience to be participants in the performance of the play itself.  For those such as I who like linear plots, I’ve had a learning curve on this.  But, it is great and pleasing to watch Susan develop and perform so well in these contexts.  As Susan put it to me, “There’s a lot of similarities between worship and theater, and I learned a lot of this in worship at Oakhurst: the willingness to not rely so much on script; the belief that the congregation/audience are integral parts of the performances; the necessity of recognizing and learning to cross cultural boundaries without colonizing the other.”

Susan is passionate for justice and has a deeply compassionate heart, a combination that makes her so impressive and such a good theater (and church) leader and performer.  She has been a gift to us ever since she popped out of Caroline’s womb in 1982. We had not done amniocentesis during the pregnancy to determine the gender identity or anything else about the baby whom Caroline was carrying in 1982, and we were expecting a boy.  We even had a mild disagreement on the way to the hospital about what name we would give a boy, but we were agreed that if we were blessed to have a girl, we would name her “Mary Susan.”  When Dr. Betty Neff helped to slide Susan out of Caroline, she said: “Welcome to the world, Mary Susan!”  And Caroline almost leaped up from the birthing table in joy – the girl that we so wanted.  Susan has been blessing us and teaching us ever since, and we give so many thanks for her on her birthday!  Give a shout-out and raise a glass for Susan Stroupe on her birthday on September 12! 

"NASHVILLE"

 “NASHVILLE”

Caroline and I visited Nashville last week, staying with long-time (met in Norfolk) friends Jane and John Skelly, who provided great hospitality to us.  We were traveling up to Nashville when we heard that Dolly Parton had died, so that made it a special time to be in Nashville, as her humanity and her music were celebrated.  Our daughter Susan was also born in Vanderbilt Hospital, though we left Nashville for Decatur and Oakhurst when she we six months old.

I’ve had three iterations in Nashville.  After I graduated from Rhodes College in 1968, I moved to Nashville to attend Vanderbilt Divinity School, seeking either a PhD in philosophy or theology there.  Thanks to Dr. Michael McClain at Rhodes, I got a full scholarship, plus I wanted to be near to my girlfriend/fiancé, who was still a student at Rhodes.  Nashville was a great place to be in those days, and I learned  how deeply the Civil Rights Movement revolved around Nashville.  I started volunteering for the Tennessee Council on Human Relations, and I worked with Baxton Bryant, Andy Lipscomb, Will Campbell, Riggins Earl, Ed Hamlett, and others.   Eventually, my romantic relationship was broken off, which threw me for a loop (I don’t recommend such long-distance romances).  I was still in school, but I was increasingly involved in the anti-Vietnam war movement.  While attending an anti-war seminary conference in New Hampshire in the summer of 1969, I began to think about giving up my draft-exempt status, seeking to force the church to take a stronger stand against the Vietnam War.

The USA invaded Cambodia and Laos in May, 1970, and I was part of thousands of demonstrators who went to DC to protest that invasion and the continuing war.  While there, I made up my mind to drop out of seminary and seek to work to end the war.  Giving up my draft exemption meant that I would be drafted, but I was not going to serve in the War, so I had three choices:  go to Canada, go to jail, or seek conscientious objector (CO) status.  During the summer of 1970, I was on the faculty of the Roses Creek Folk School in the mountains of east Tennessee, which brought together middle-class students and mountain people.  In that summer, I became good friends with Ed Loring and his first wife Pat Hiott Loring, and they both helped to steer me towards seeking conscientious objector status.  Professor Don Beisswenger at Vanderbilt Divinity School was also instrumental in helping me discern my direction on this.

At the end of that summer, I moved back in with my mother in Arkansas to apply for my CO status and to seek a job which would qualify for alternative service to fulfill my duty to serve my country.  The local draft board in Helena would determine if I would be granted CO status and would have to approve any job placement that I would find.  While I was working on all this, Don called me at home to tell me that Father Jim Zralek was looking for someone to help him start a halfway house for men getting out of prison.  He felt that it would qualify as a CO position, especially since the pay was so low!  I talked with Father Zralek, and he sounded enthusiastic about my coming.  I packed up and moved back to Nashville for my second iteration there as director of Opportunity House.  I served there for two years, and it was there that I had my eyes and heart opened about prisons and how they serve in American culture.  Almost half of those in prison were Black, and there were a miniscule number of people with money in prison.  (For more on this part of the story, see my book “She Made a Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.”).

While living in Nashville in this second iteration, I met Caroline in Nashville at the wedding of Robin and Linda Williams. Caroline had been ordained in 1973 by Atlanta Presbytery and was a campus minister at Georgia Tech.  She had come to Nashville with her housemate Murphy Davis, and I was smitten by her.  By this time, Ed Loring had talked me into returning to seminary and in coming to Columbia in Decatur, where he was on the faculty.  I was also motivated by the fact that Caroline lived in Atlanta!  I moved to Decatur, re-entered Columbia Seminary on a scholarship (thanks to Ed and Erskine Clarke), and Caroline and I started dating.  We eventually got married in 1974 and moved to Norfolk, where we became the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the Presbyterian Church in the United States at St. Columba Presbyterian Church.

After doing ministry at St. Columba for five years and writing a grant to receive the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday Offering, our son David was born in 1980.  We were a long way from our families, so we worked with our friends Randy and Theon Dempsey to try communal living in Nashville for my third iteration.  I worked there at the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prison (under Joe Ingle and state director Harmon Wray), and Caroline stayed home with baby David.  My job was to work for prison reform in the Tennessee state legislature and to visit with people on death row.  I was terrible at being a lobbyist, but my pastoral presence on death row was strong – my designated death row prisoner eventually had his death sentence rescinded.  While in Nashville in this third round, I also became part-time pastor at Second Presbyterian, which was a great church for us.  We discovered that we were not made for communal living, and my work at Second reminded me how much I missed pastoring in the church.  Again, through Ed Loring, we were contacted by Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in the fall of 1982 to see if we would be interested in becoming pastors there.  We were, and we did.  We moved to the Decatur area in March, 1983, and stayed as pastors at Oakhurst until I retired in 2017.

There will be more of these stories in our upcoming book “Better Together:  Pioneers in Ministry and Marriage,” which we will complete soon.  But, for now, a lot of these memories rolled through my consciousness in our recent visit to Nashville.  Like the Civil Rights Movement, Nashville was central to our formation too.