"WORDS FROM GERMANY"

 “WORDS FROM GERMANY”

At the end of May, the Rev. Andreas Holzbauer asked me to lead one of his seminars for college students in Germany at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.  The class was on “White Christianity,” with an emphasis on the rise of white supremacy in USA under the guise of Christianity.  Due to the time change, I had to be ready to talk on Zoom and lead about 30 students at 7 AM EDT.  I was honored to be asked to do it, so I jumped right in!  Andreas had asked me to share my story for the first part of the seminar.

I shared the usual parts of my background.  I had been raised by a loving, single mother in the racist South in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I learned and accepted racism and patriarchy and homophobia and militarism and other demonic forces.  I had been taught these forces by people who loved me and whom I loved, and because of that, I believed that they were true.

I also shared some of the leverage points where I had begun to change my mind and my heart on these forces.  One was my mother – though captured by these forces herself, she worked in subtle ways to shape me in another view, ways such as not allowing me to say the “N-word” or call Black people by their first names.  I recalled hearing MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and thinking that there were other realities out there, realities that I had not yet allowed myself to encounter.  I lifted up my college experiences, and I talked about the most powerful experience that changed me:  working for a summer at a church in Brooklyn, where for the first time in my life I experienced Black people as human beings like me.  I also shared how my time as pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church had challenged my continuing captivity to racism, and how it had deepened my understanding of myself and others and of how demonic forces like white supremacy can take us over.

I concluded by discussing the rising tide of white supremacy in the Obama and Trump years, and how such forces seem to be a permanent part of our life together.  When I opened up the seminar for questions, I noticed that all of those who asked questions (about half the students) spoke fluently in English, and I remembered my own provincialism – I speak only English.  The first question threw me for a loop – “Do you think that there will be a civil war in the United States again soon?”

That question had been hanging around the corners of my mind ever since the January 6 insurrection and the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.  It had persisted because Trump promoted the “Big Lie,” and so many people seemed to believe it.  Still, I was taken aback by the question from a German student, until I remembered that Germans have such a better memory than we do on how democracy is undermined.  I had started re-reading David Potter’s excellent book on the prelude to the Civil War called “Impending Crisis 1848-1861,” published in 1976.  In it he names many steps that led to the Civil War, and he emphasized 4 main ones:  the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the horrible SCOTUS decision of 1857 when Dred and Harriet Scott were deemed not to be human beings because of their racial classification, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

As I pondered the German student’s question, I tried to run through what similar steps might be in our time.  I came up with my four, and I invite you to think of your four.  My four steps are the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008 (triggering a huge surge in racism), the horrible SCOTUS decision in 2013 Shelby v. Holder which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, and the January 6 insurrection connected to the continuing “Big Lie.”  Added to these four steps is the Covid crisis which has put everyone on edge.

We live in crucial times – will there be a civil war in our time?  At this point, I do not think so, but we seem so divided and so volatile.  The US Census data released last week shows a drop in population for those classified as “white” for the first time since the census began in 1790.  That is not news, but it still gave me pause in these times.  Rather than celebrating this glorious vision of democracy and diversity in USA, I am afraid that my “white” siblings will see this as a time to act in order to preserve the “white” nature of the USA.  

Words from Germany are provocative at this time, and they leave me wondering. Yet they also make me more determined to work for justice and equity for all of us counted in the 2020 Census, while at the same time giving a loud “YES” to this growing, sprawling democracy, even as the forces of repression and oppression growl more loudly.