"504 YEARS"

 “504 YEARS”

This week marks the 504th anniversary of Roman Catholic monk Martin Luther posting 95 theses for debate about the nature of the church – legend has it that he posted them on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.  His actions were part of a movement to reform the church, but his actions also sparked a revolution in Western thinking and led to what we now know as the “Reformation.” He posted these articles for debate on All Hallows Eve,  also called  Halloween.  I was looking over my former blogs to see what I had said previously about this event, and I discovered that I had not discussed it much.  I did find a blog from the 500th anniversary of Luther’s posting in 2017.  It was written at the end of the first year of the Trump administration, and I am repeating most of that below.  

“LUTHER AND THE MODERN WORLD”

            One of my colleagues and friends from Ecuador, Laura Nieto,  commented  that only 25 years separated the landing of Columbus in the West in 1492 and the posting of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” in Germany in 1517, a posting which was the match that lit the Reformation.   I was invited to speak with some Lutherans in Atlanta a month ago to talk about multicultural ministries, and one of the speakers addressed the question of whether Martin Luther would approve of multicultural ministries.  While noting that Luther was a man of his times, he felt that Luther had sown the seeds of the dignity of the individual, and that this idea has led to the ability and validity of some of us seeing people of other cultures as sisters and brothers rather than just “other.”  History suggests otherwise, however.

            Some authors like Richard Marius have called Luther the first “modern man.”  While this does seem to be a stretch, Luther’s sense of the lonely individual dominated by anxiety and existential angst, unable to find home and meaning in a brave new world, seems to resonate strongly in our post-modern world.  I am intrigued with Laura’s connection of Columbus with Luther, and it is striking that one of the outcomes of the liberation of the individual from the confines of medieval Europe and the Roman Catholic Church was not greater dignity for all people but  rampant racism and exploitation of peoples around the world by the enlightened and beginning-to-be-liberated Europeans.  The idea of “race” developed post-Reformation in the Western consciousness as a way of acknowledging the dignity of individual European human beings while exploiting those who seemed human on one level but weren’t really human under the classification of race.  To paraphrase George Orwell’s phrase in his futuristic novel “1984:”  “All human beings are equal, but some human beings are more equal than others.”

            The forces unleashed in the Reformation are still rolling through us 500 years later, and the anxiety that drove Luther to his revolution still speaks loudly in our lives, only amplified to the nth degree.  All of our community attachments seem to be disappearing, and there is a strong connection to the fact that in the 20th century when we had such technological advances and empowerment of the individual, we also had more people killed in wars, revolutions, and genocide than in all the other centuries of recorded history combined.   I am not laying this development at Luther’s feet, because he would have never placed the individual above the community.  I am noting that the anxiety that drove his great insight that our sense of meaning and salvation and home are gifts rather than being earned, that anxiety has grown exponentially in relation to the empowerment of the individual and the diminishing and importance of community.

            So, I’m wondering if this is a time of another Re-formation, if someone(s) out there are already feeling and formulating a new way of balancing the importance of the individual with the necessity of authentic community.   We individuals cannot bear the weight of creating our own meaning.  Sooner or later we will turn to community to provide the meaning for our lives.  If we are fortunate, we will be drawn to a community grounded in authenticity, where the values of both individuals and communities are affirmed and valued.  Most of us, however, will be drawn to inauthentic communities where individuals are crushed, where the community is valued over all other entities, and where strong boundaries must be drawn against the “outsider” in order to strengthen the community.   I call this inauthentic community “tribalism,” but I’m hesitant to use this word because it has such strong resonance in many cultures.  For awhile, I tried calling it “clans,” until one of the participants in a workshop I was leading indicated that when they heard the word “clan,” they thought of the KKK.   I’ve stayed with “tribalism,” but I’ll be glad to hear from those who have a better term. 

            By tribalism, I mean the movement to join others in closing ranks and having strong boundaries to keep the “other” out, no matter who the “other” is.   We are seeing that movement now in the Trump election and presidency, as the tribe of Trump seeks to consolidate power and to hold on to it by seeking to make America great again, i.e. to make America white again.  Tribalism means that we must see the other as enemy, or at least a threat.  The anxiety that drove Luther to a great Reformation is now driving us all, and the white supporters of Trump are seeking to return to boundary-fixing, wall-building, “enemy” speech which they believe will end their anxiety and bring meaning to their lives.  There are other alternatives, and we are called to look for ways to answer our anxieties by building communities whose boundaries are fluid and who welcome others.  I’ll look at that possibility in another blog.

"DREAMING OF AMERICA"

 “DREAMING OF AMERICA”

While I’ve been taking care of Caroline in her recovery from back surgery, I’ve had some time to look through my files and papers.  The Presbyterian Historical Society has graciously asked me to archive my papers and files with them, and I give thanks for that.  Rather than send them 6,000 pounds of papers and sermons (or so it seems to me), I am sorting through stuff.  Tedious and time-consuming, but usually fun as I encounter sermons anew;  sometimes painful as I engage places where I was obviously wrong or insensitive.

We started celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday in 1985 at Oakhurst.  One of our former members, Wanda White, had been on Coretta Scott King’s staff, and she remembered the breakfasts that they had with and for the staff.  So, in 1985, we started having a Sunday MLK Breakfast on his birthday weekend, with speakers and/or youth, followed by a sermon on MLK.  That tradition continues at Oakhurst, so we thank Wanda White, Azzie Preston, Choquita McGriff and others for getting it started!

Looking through my files this weekend, I’ve begun engaging the many sermons that I was privileged to preach on Martin Luther King, Jr.  We covered many of his themes, and over our last decade at Oakhurst, we would pick particular speeches and sermons of his and focus on its context and its content.  In looking at all these again, I was reminded of how much MLK believed in the dream of America.  My favorite speech of Dr. King’s was “Drum Major for Justice,” but the one that influenced me the most was “I Have a Dream,” delivered by King most famously at the March on Washington in August, 1963.  It was the most influential in my life because it helped me to see a different vision of America, of Black people, and of myself.  I first listened to it by myself in my house on the day that King preached it in DC – I was deliberately by myself.  My mother was working, and I did not want any of my white friends to know that I was listening to it.  I had begun to feel some churnings in relation to the racism that I had been taught – and that I believed.  I had heard and had believed that King was just trying to make money off unsuspecting people.  I also believed that all those who agreed with him – Black and white alike – were fools.

Something drew me to him and to that day, and his speech was one of the motivating factors in my beginning to step out of the bounds of the racism which held me captive.  His eloquence, his ideas, and his emphasis on the American dream all touched me deeply.  And, with 250,000+ people there, it was hard to think that all of them were fools.  This speech was given the week before I began my senior year in high school, and although I did not make any real changes in my life in regard to race at that time, I did decide that there was more to the story than I had been told.  And, I did decide that I would make an effort to learn that different story.

Dr. King believed in the American dream when he gave that speech in 1963.  As he engaged the racism that is so deep in the American character, he began to lose hope in that dream, in the capacity of those classified as “white” to hear the truth, to receive the truth, and to begin to change our lives and our minds and our actions in relation to race.   His overall mood about the American dream - especially in regard to the Vietnam war and the racism that undergirded it – began to change.  His belief in the power of the arc of history to move towards justice began to be shaken.  By the time of his assassination by the very people he sought to love, he was deeply depressed and angered about the possibilities of America.  As the fine writer and theologian James Cone (a fellow Arkansan, I might note) put it so well in his book on Malcolm X and MLK,  King began with love and moved towards justice, while Malcolm began with justice and moved towards love.

That American dream – a dream of justice and equity that is also at the heart of American history – looks shaky again.  Though we have made significant progress since King’s speech, the power of racism remains deep and wide in American culture.  With Donald Trump’s rise on the back of white supremacy, we hear the voices of racism returning to a full-throated blast, and many fear that the next elections will be like those of the 1890’s:  a repudiation of past gains on justice and equity and a return to the repressive forces that have dogged us and shaped us in so many twisted ways.  

    In her 2016 book “Living into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America,” my friend and co-author Catherine Meeks suggests that it is possible to recover the American dream that drove Dr. King and many others.  In order to find such recovery, however, we will need to do a lot of work for ourselves and for the world, and as Catherine so aptly puts it, we are all called to be just a little bit braver each day.  We may not be able to take giant steps each day – I sure couldn’t do it on that day in August, 1963 – but we can all take some baby steps each day.  Let us find those steps to take in our lives and seek to live into God’s dream for us.

"TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY"

 “TODAY IS 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.  

    Caroline and I had our first pastorate in Norfolk, Virginia, and there we learned that American history actually began before the Civil War.  We visited Jamestown several times , and there I learned about the hospitality of the coalition of native tribes led by Chief Powhatan.  While not all native tribes welcomed the immigrants known as “whites,” many of them did.  Or at least they did until it became clear that those classified as “white” intended to do them harm and to take their land and resources.  Chief Powhatan noted this shift in his speech to Captain John Smith in 1609:

“Why should you take by force from us that which you can have by love?  

Why should you destroy us who have provided you with food?  What can

you get by war? And then you must consequently famish by wrongdoing

your friends…….I therefore exhort you to peaceable councils, and above all

I insist that the guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy and uneasiness,

be removed and sent away.”  

I am grateful to John Peacock and Ed Loring of Baltimore for calling my attention to this speech, and our hope is to print the full version in Hospitality Magazine early in 2022.  Chief Powhatan’s speech is part of a long litany of laments and anguish and anger directed at the rapacious appetites of those classified as “white.”  This approach to “non-white” peoples on the land continued for centuries.  Indeed, in a speech almost 250 years after Powhatan’s speech, Chief Seattle gave a similar one to the “white” governor of Washington in  1854:

            “Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt

 from the common destiny. We may be {brothers} after all. We shall see.    We will ponder your

 proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make

 this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will

 the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side,

 every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of

 my tribe.”

In Chief Seattle’s response, we should note one of the great gifts of Indigenous people to all of us:  his sense that the land belongs to God, that we all are siblings, and especially that there is special connection between the earth and humanity.  As we swelter with global warming, as we worry about the rising sea levels, as we see the dramatic climate change brought on by the human greed noted by Chief Powhatan, let us remember that there is a different way of approaching life, a different way of approaching one another.  

On this Indigenous Peoples Day, let us remember the horrific suffering brought by those of European heritage, but even more strongly let us remember this gift that is still available to us from current Indigenous People, from current Native Americans – a vision of life that sees all of life as part of the same web.  Let us live by the love noted by Chief Powhatan and the connectedness lifted up by Chief Seattle.  It is a calling and a struggle that offers us life.  It is a struggle which we cannot avoid on Indigenous Peoples Day. Yet, it is the way to life.

"100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN - WOW!"

 “100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN – WOW!

On September 25, 1921, some 66 people came forward in a tent meeting at the corner of East lake and Second Avenue in Decatur, Georgia, to sign a charter to become members of the newly forming church, Oakhurst Presbyterian.  In those segregated, neo-slavery days, it formed as an all-white church, and it stayed that way for 50 years, almost losing its life to its belief in white supremacy.  When the city of Atlanta took housing from Black people in the 1960’s in order to build stadia for budding professional sports teams, the people moved east and south, many coming into the Oakhurst neighborhood.  As those of us classified as “white” usually do, we fled when Black people moved into the community.  Oakhurst Presbyterian was no exception – its membership dropped from 850 to 80 over a 15 year period. With a huge building, a huge mortgage, and rapidly dwindling membership, the Presbytery gave serious effort to closing the church or forcing it to merge with another congregation.  

The first Black member joined in 1970, and the ministers and members were dedicated to developing that diversity and to keeping the church open.  Dr. Lawrence Bottoms was the senior pastor in the mid-1970’s.  He was one of the first Black ministers in the PCUS denomination to be called as senior pastor of a majority white congregation, and while he was pastor at Oakhurst, he was elected as the first and only Black Moderator of the denomination.  His leadership and ministry enabled the church to survive, along with that of the Reverend Jim Andrews, who was stated clerk of the former PCUS denomination, and later first stated clerk of the re-united PCUSA.  The other pastors, Rev. Jack Morris and Rev. Bruce Gannaway, were also powerful leaders in helping Oakhurst to develop its diversity and to keep its doors open.

Caroline and I were blessed to join in that leadership in 1983 and to stay there until she retired in 2012, and I retired in 2017.  The Presbytery leadership had given us two years of funding to try to get Oakhurst stabilized. Through God’s power and with the hard work of the members and elders and friends of Oakhurst, it worked.  Presbytery continued to fund Oakhurst through 2006, when the membership and budget had grown to a size that would sustain the church.  At that time, the Session asked Presbytery to share the funds with other congregations and ministries.  

Through Christine Caliier’s initiative to contact Sylvester Monroe of Time Magazine, we began to receive national publicity, including a full-page article in Time in April, 1995, which included these words: “Oakhurst, which has a congregation that is roughly half Black and half white, is what diversity is all about:  people of different races coming together not in the mournful, candle-bearing aftermath of some urban riot or the artificially arranged precursor to some political photo op, but because they want to be together.”  That article led to many others in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and on NPR, CNN, NBC News, CBS Radio, and the Christian Science Monitor, and others.

There were many factors in the survival and the thriving of Oakhurst, but today I want to give thanks for Caroline’s powerful, visionary, and dedicated ministry at Oakhurst.  Her leadership enabled us to make tremendous progress in two vital areas:  community ministry and Christian education.  She was a whirlwind in getting the ministry and the building open to the community, motivating people to get out of their houses to come see what all the energy and work was at the church.  She also had the vision to see that if we were to get new members who would sustain the church over the long haul, we would have to have first-rate Christian education programs, especially for families with young children.  She went to work on that and brought it into being.  Her ministry paid off on so many levels for Oakhurst, even though she never received a full-time salary until the last year before her retirement.  On the Sunday of her retirement, Inez Giles arranged for a parade of 75 children and young adults, who had grown up at Oakhurst, under Caroline’s leadership.  They came into the sanctuary and brought her flowers– a powerful moment.

Don’t take my word for it – here’s what one of the books about Oakhurst had to say about her.  The quote is  taken from “We Are the Church Together: Cultural Diversity in Congregational Life,” written in 1996 by Chuck Foster and Ted Brelsford, based on a Candler at Emory study of three diverse churches in Atlanta:

“Caroline, Oakhurst’s associate pastor, greets us also.  Caroline is strikingly friendly in this setting.  For the most part, I have seen and heard of Caroline before primarily in her capacity as minister of outreach: challenging the status quo at school board meetings; taking commissioners to task for feeble and discriminating housing policies; advocating for the community health center, drug addicted children, illiterate adults, low income parents.  This morning she is not carrying those burdens.  She seems excited and buoyant.  She is delighted to meet my family and eager to make us comfortable.”

So, thank you, Caroline!  And, thanks to so many others who made Oakhurst possible and who continue to do so.  Under the leadership of Reverend Amantha Barbee, the congregation just began a celebration of its 100 year history and visioning of its future.  Check it out sometime!