"50 YEARS OF MINISTRY"

 “FIFTY YEARS OF MINISTRY!”

June 24 marked the 50th anniversary of Caroline’s ordination as a minister in the Presbyterian Church.  She was the 21st woman to be ordained in the PCUS, the former Southern Presbyterian Church. She was ordained by Atlanta Presbytery as a campus minister at Georgia Tech in 1973, and she has served the church faithfully and well over these 50 years, but she faced resistance at every level – many folk felt that her gender identity as female automatically disqualified her from becoming a minister.  

Caroline was no interloper to the church – she had been raised by her parents, Herman and Martha Leach, in Central Presbyterian in Chattanooga from the time that she was a baby.  She participated in Sunday school, youth group, VBS, worship leadership, and later she taught Sunday school, VBS, and she played the piano and organ in worship as a substitute when needed.  She was mentored there by many strong women at Central, the principals being Joyce Tucker and Sandy Winter, both of whom would later go on to become ordained Presbyterian ministers, after Caroline had shown them the way.  She also grew up as a Girl Scout, again mentored by many strong women.  She heard in both of these groups that women did not need to take a back seat to men.

    Caroline went to Columbia Seminary (CTS) to become a Christian educator – the church had groomed her to be a leader in the church.  She was one of 5 women attending CTS when she entered in the fall of 1969.  Many, many males came up to tell her that she should not be there, because ministry and church leadership belonged to men, not women.  Indeed, the president of Columbia asked jher if she had come to seminary to find a husband.  So many men told her “NO!” that she decided to move into the ordination track and seek ordination as a pastor.   Despite her long record of involvement and leadership at Central church, the minister and some of the elders did not believe that God wanted women to be ministers and leaders in the church.  It was both deeply painful and angering to Caroline, because Central church had been so important to her in her spiritual and emotional development.

    She heard from friends in Atlanta that another Central church – Central Presbyterian in Atlanta – might be open to approving women as ministers.  She went to talk with Randy Taylor, the senior pastor there, and he indicated that he and spouse Arlene had six daughters, so of course he believed in the ordination of women.  Painful as it was to Caroline and her parents, she transferred her membership from Central, Chattanooga, to Central, Atlanta, and the Session there took her under care.  When graduation from Columbia approached, she received no interviews from churches to become pastor, and the guidance counselor told her that she would not likely get called anywhere and thus would not be ordained as a pastor.  

    Again, in the midst of the “NO!” from the institutional church, Caroline persisted.  The grapevine worked again – she heard that the Presbyterian ministry at Georgia Tech might be looking for a woman associate campus minister, because so many women students were enrolling.  She went to see Woody McKay, who was the campus minister there, and he said that he had $7,000 for a salary package – if she was willing to come for that, he would welcome her with open arms.  She said “Yes,” and began ministry at Georgia Tech in spring 1972, enriching the lives of both women and men students there. 

    The next hurdle was Atlanta Presbytery.  They were not certain that they could ordain someone to campus ministry – never mind that there were many male ministers doing campus ministry.   Finally they relented, and she was approved to become a minister by the Presbytery at its meeting at Camp Calvin.  She was ordained as a minister on June 24, 1973, with the Reverend Randy Taylor (later to become president of San Francisco Theological Seminary) preaching the sermon.  Longtime friend Ed Loring was also on the Presbytery Commission that ordained her.  She was the 3rd woman ordained in Atlanta Presbytery, following Liz Hill and Mattie Hart. 

    Caroline and I met through mutual friends, after I had returned to seminary at Columbia.  She always made it clear that we did not meet at seminary, that she was already ordained and serving as a campus minister when we met.  Caroline and I were the first clergy couple to serve in the PCUS, and the denominational leaders told us that we would never find a call as a clergy couple.  We persisted, however, and for once Caroline found that she was wanted as a minister.  Norfolk Presbytery was developing a mission ministry at St. Columba Presbyterian Church, and they wanted a woman minister to lead the ministry in the low-income housing complex known as Robin Hood. I was the tag-along, and we shared one salary.  We said “Yes,” and they did too.  In 1978, the ministry would receive the Birthday Offering of the Presbyterian Women, and it established the ministry which continues to this day.

    So, lift a glass to Caroline Leach today and this week – she is a true pioneer and pathfinder.  Where there seemed to be no path, she would make one - good Girl Scout that she is.  At her retirement from Oakhurst, there was a powerful moment where over 80 young adults and children each walked down the aisle in worship to bring her flowers, as a sign of her nurturing of them and so many others.  She not only persisted in the face of resistance – she led.  And so many of us of all gender identities are so glad and grateful that she listened to God and to her heart instead of listening to the world.  She has made and continues to make it such a better place.  

"JUNETEENTH"

 “JUNETEENTH”

    In 2021, Juneteenth was made a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of many people.  Today, June 19, many folk will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on “Juneteenth,” the name given to the event in Texas, where news of the Proclamation  and the Union defeat of the Confederacy did not reach African-Americans held in slavery in Texas until June 19, 1865.  At that time, U.S. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with 2,000 federal troops and made this General Order #3:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

            Juneteenth has become the most recognized national celebration of the end of legal slavery in the country.  Many other dates could qualify, and some are celebrated:  watch night services in African-American churches on December 31 of each year, similar  to the ones in 1862, right before the Proclamation took effect;  January 31, when the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery passed Congress;  December 6, when the states ratified the 13th Amendment. Yet, Juneteenth has held on for many reasons.  

            Perhaps the biggest reason that Juneteenth has held on is that it expresses both celebration and ambivalence.  Celebration that there was finally some recognition of the humanity and equality of people of African descent.  Ambivalence because there was so much reluctance to get this news to the people of Texas.  The racism that would eviscerate the Union victory over the next 40 years, after the Civil War,  could be seen in the last sentence of Order #3 – though African-Americans had built the wealth of much of America, they were still seen as being “in idleness.”  The order arrived over 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  As WEB Dubois put it:  “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

The recognition of Juneteenth is a reminder of two of the most powerful forces in American history, forces that are opposed to one another.  One is the idea of equality, and the other is the idea of slavery (and the white supremacy that undergirds it).  These have been warring ideas in American history.  The idea of equality – the vision that all human beings are created with equal dignity – is a powerful one in American history.  It was born in Europe, but it found its deepest expression in the colonies of America.  This idea of equality is one of the great and unexpected gifts of the American experience.  It is a revolutionary idea, and it calls out to all structures -  class structures, racial categories,  gender categories – that their time is winding down, that a new way of looking sat ourselves and at one another is emerging in the world.  That way is the idea of equality, the idea that we are all created with equal dignity.  That way is the idea that the institutional and structural foundations of society should be reformed to reflect this radical idea.

            So, on June 19,  find a way to celebrate the great American vision of the fundamental equality of all people.  Find a way to acknowledge how deeply white supremacy still has a hold on our hearts and vision.  Find a way to work against that captivity, as did Frederick Douglass and Abby Kelley and William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Tubman and Ida Wells and Anne Braden and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and many others have done.  And, don’t forget to vote! 

"THE WHITE SOUTH ANSWERS"

 “THE WHITE SOUTH ANSWERS”

This year marks the 60th anniversary of many important events in 1963 in the civil rights movement.  In January, 1963, George Wallace was inaugurated governor of Alabama, with his “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” speech.  In April and May, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held a series of demonstrations in Birmingham, designed to break the hold of white supremacy on the institutions of Birmingham.  Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” during this campaign.  Later he would lead the March on Washington in late August.  

This week marks two events which were part of the response of the white South to the civil rights movement.  For several months in 1963, the NAACP had been working on desegregating the University of Alabama, and after sifting through many potential students to be the test cases, James Hood and Vivian Malone were selected.  Both were native Alabamians – Hood was born in Gadsden, and Malone in Mobile County.  The NAACP had filed suit in federal court in Alabama to force the University to admit Hood and Malone.  Federal judge Harlan Grooms ordered the University of Alabama to allow Malone and Hood to register for classes.  On June 11, 1963, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach accompanied Malone and Hood to register, but standing in the door of Foster Auditorium was Governor George Wallace, who had vowed to block the registration of Hood and Malone.  The students stayed in the car, while Attorney General Katzenbach asked Wallace to step aside and allow the students to register.  

While Katzenbach was speaking, Wallace interrupted him to say:

“The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama ... of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government." Katzenbach then contacted President John F. Kennedy, who nationalized the Alabama National Guard.  The Guard then accompanied Malone and Hood, and Governor Wallace stepped aside, with Malone and Hood becoming the first Black students at the University of Alabama.  Vivian Malone would later become the first Black graduate of the University.

The power of that white resistance would travel quickly almost 200 miles to the west in Jackson, Mississippi.  The next day on June 12, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi, was assassinated by Byron de la Beckwith, as Evers returned home from many meetings.  Beckwith shot Evers with a rifle, dropped the rifle and ran.  Evers was a World War II veteran, and he had been heavily involved in the civil rights movement in Mississippi, including assisting Mamie Till Mobley in dealing with the lynching of her son Emmett Till. Beckwith was arrested and tried twice, but an all-white jury acquitted him both times. Thanks to the hard work and witness of Myrlie Evers, Medgar Evers’ widow, and thanks to the investigative work of reporter Jerry Mitchell and others, Beckwith was retried in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison, which is where he died in 2001.

These events of white resistance to the idea of the equality of those classified as “Black” are part of a long and terrible history, which is continuing and even being revived in these days.  Historian Jefferson Cowie wrote a powerful book on this last year entitled “Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power,” and it details the sordid story of this white resistance, focused on George Wallace’s home county, Barbour County, with Eufala as the center of it.  That story is echoed all over the South, and it still resonates today.  Many of us were surprised when SCOTUS ruled last week that Alabama’s redistricting map violated the Voting Rights Act and will have to be redrawn – that will be interesting to watch.  Vivian Malone’s spirit will be involved in that – for a while in the 1970’s, she was the director of the The Voter Education Project, which sought to expand voting rights for all, especially for those classified as “Black.”

"FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE"

 “FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE”

Today is the 48th anniversary of my being ordained as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church.  I was ordained in 1975 by what was then Norfolk Presbytery on a hot Sunday afternoon (no ac – I seem to be drawn to those types of churches) to be co-pastor of St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk. My co-pastor was my spouse the Reverend Caroline Leach.  She was already ordained in 1973, so she is the senior pastor in our family, and the 50th anniversary of her ordination is June 26, of which I will write in a few weeks. We were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS).

While at St. Columba, I was converted on the LGBTQ+ issue.  Thanks to Caroline and others, I had already changed my mind on whether gay and lesbian people were human beings like me, and on whether they could be members of the church.  I still was feeling uncomfortable on what I thought were the Biblical issues related to those attracted to people of the same gender.  That would change pretty quickly one autumn afternoon, when I was converted.  St. Columba was a small church (12 members when we arrived) with a big mission to 5,000 low income residents of the complex in which the church building was located.  As we found throughout our ministry over 5 decades, we tended to attract people on the margins of life and of the church.  One of those people was a woman member, who demonstrated time and again in the life of St. Columba, that she simply was one of the finest Christians and human beings that I have ever met.

When it came time to nominate church members to be elders on the Session, her name came up quickly.  I called her to ask her about agreeing to be nominated, but she said that she wanted to come in to talk with me about it.  When she came in that afternoon, she said that she wanted me to know that she was lesbian, that she was attracted to women, and she wondered if that would disqualify her from serving as an elder.  Internally, I was shocked – she did not fit into any of my stereotypes of who lesbians were.  Internally, I also thought that I could not imagine God telling her that while she was a great Christian, she was not welcome because she was attracted to someone of the same gender – if she wasn’t welcome, no one else could be.  I replied that nothing she had told me disqualified her from being an elder, and she was ordained as a leader in 1978.  We have been ordaining people as deacons and elders ever since, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

In this Pride Month, I’m also remembering and giving thanks for my friend and colleague, the Reverend Reginald (Reggie) Avant.  He is now pastor at Madrona Grace Presbyterian Church in Seattle, but prior to that, he was a chaplain at Grady Hospital here in Atlanta.  I got to know him after he visited Oakhurst.  We met for coffee after his visit, and we have been good friends ever since.  Reggie shared many of his struggles about growing up gay as a young Black man, and he tried many ways to change the fact that he was attracted to men.  Finally, God got through to him to let him know that Reggie was a child of God, no matter what the world told him or what he told himself.  He shared that it was such a relief to hear and to know that he was  “fearfully and wonderfully made, “ as the Psalmist put it in Psalm 139, with the phrasing from the King James Version.  My life has been deeply enriched by my friendship with Reggie, and I give thanks to God for him.

Reggie was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor in California before he had revealed his sexual orientation, and once he decided to reveal it, he resigned from his church position to try to figure out his next steps.  He moved to the Atlanta area and was called as a chaplain to Grady Memorial Hospital.  After he had been there for a while, he decided to try to transfer his pastoral membership to Atlanta Presbytery.  If he were approved, he would be the first openly gay pastor in the Presbytery. Such a transfer is usually just a pro forma event, but because of his desire to be welcomed as a gay man, it became a fight at the meeting.  The Commission on the Ministry approved his application, but some members at the Presbytery meeting voiced strong concerns. 

     Reggie handled it all graciously, and he made a powerful presentation about himself, ending with the great news that he was so grateful to God that God had made him as he was, that he was “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Many of us spoke in his behalf at that meeting, but Caroline made an especially forceful statement.  She reminded people that the same arguments being made against gay and lesbian people had been made about her and other women as ministers, and she especially singled out the women who had spoken from the floor against accepting Reggie as a member.  “Remember this,” she said, “if some of us like Reggie had not fought for the humanity of women, none of you would have been able to speak at this meeting.  It’s time for all of us to hear and to live out those powerful words from Psalm 139:  “We are all wonderfully and fearfully made.”  

    Reggie was approved to become a member of the Presbytery by a strong vote, and we give thanks to God for that.  Though I’m hoping that this horse has already left the barn, I also know that strong forces, including those on the Supreme Court, want to claw back this hard won right of the humanity of all people.  We are in a time when the power of white male supremacy is trying to reassert itself, and in this month when we celebrate the gifts and the humanity and ministry of Reggie Avant and so many others, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the idea that in God’s eyes, we are all fearfully and wonderfully made.