"YOUNG JOHN LEWIS"

 “YOUNG JOHN LEWIS”  

Last week marked the 5th anniversary of the death of John Lewis, and this is a time when we need his witness so much.  Caroline and I (and Al and Janet Solomon and Jennifer Kimball) saw the world premiere of the play “Young John Lewis” one and one-half times a couple of weeks ago at The Theatrical Outfit in downtown Atlanta.  I say “one and a half” because the first production was interrupted midway through the second act by what initially sounded like sirens.  The space in the play made us think at first that it was police sirens in the play, coming for the protestors.  Then the actors all left the stage, and again we thought that they were running from the police in the play.  I was struck, however, that the sirens were coming through the theater’s emergency exit system, and I thought to myself that was a confusing way to do it.   Then, there was silence and waiting for all of us.  At about the same time, all of us in the audience decided that the sirens were actually an emergency warning, telling us all to exit.  No one from the theater ever announced anything, which was very odd, but we all exited in an orderly fashion to the street outside.

As we waited there, a theater rep finally came out to tell us that there was a malfunction and that they were working to correct it, so that we could go back into the theater to finish the play.  We waited and waited, and as we waited, Jennifer Kimball (who is an excellent theater stage manager herself), told us: “They’re about to run into the ‘Broadway break rule’ soon, so I don’t know that we will get back into the theater for this performance.”  When we asked her about that, she indicated that since this was a matinee, the performers were guaranteed two hours between performances by union rules.  And sure enough, just a few minutes later, the theater rep came out to indicate that they would not be finishing the matinee performance.  They offered tickets to another performance, and we found one that we all could attend for a second time.

We returned in about a week for a fine performance of the story of the early part of John Lewis’ life, from his humble beginnings on a farm in Alabama, where he preached to the chickens, to his failed attempt to desegregate Troy State, to his entry into Fisk University in Nashville.  One of the driving forces in the play is the character of Emmett Till, who returns often to Lewis’ consciousness, asking for revenge.  Lewis is both scared and angered by the lynching of Till in 1955, and it motivates him to seek justice for all those who are oppressed. Another driving force was his hearing Martin Luther King, Jr., speak on the radio about the possibilities for freedom, justice, and equity, and he began to see a new vision for himself and for the entire nation.  The book and lyrics for the play were written by Psalmayene 24 and the music by Eugene H. Russell IV.

In Nashville he encountered Diane Nash in a class on non-violence taught by the Rev. Dr. James Lawson.  One of the positives of the play was the prominent place that the playwright gave to Diane Nash and Ella Baker, women who made a powerful difference in the Movement.  Indeed, when I was telling our group about Diane Nash’s prowess in the Movement, an influence so strong that Attorney General Robert Kennedy once blurted out “Who in the hell is Diane Nash?”, we all decided that a play needed to be written about her – I hope that someone is working on that now!  Our group decided that I should do it, but that is beyond my pay grade.

    Because of his involvement in the Nashville movement, Lewis began to see disciplined non-violence as a possibility for him and for the entire movement, while at the same time being a passionate fighter for justice.  He endured violence and persecution on his journey, from being beaten up on the Freedom Rides to being beaten up on the March from Selma.  The play took him up until 1968, when the terrible violence of that year almost killed the movement.  Yet, throughout his career, Lewis was a witness for justice, equity, and compassion.  We trust that his kind will be rising again among us, and the final song in the play was both a warning a clarion call to all of us in the audience – it is happening to us as it happened to Lewis – where will we find our place?  How will we find our voice?  How will we use our voice?  

“IDA B. WELLS – JUSTICE, EQUITY, AND LIFE-GIVNG COMMUNITY”

 “IDA B. WELLS – JUSTICE, EQUITY, AND LIFE-GIVNG COMMUNITY”

In 2019, Dr. Catherine Meeks and I co-authored a book about Ida Wells and her influence on our time.  It was entitled “Passionate for Justice:  Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time.”  It won several awards, and I am thinking about it this week as Ida Wells’ 163rd birthday approaches on July 16.  It would be fascinating to hear Wells’ perspective on our time, and Catherine and I tried to speculate on some of that in our book.  If you haven’t read it, find it in your library or buy it somewhere (churchpublishing.org or bookshop.org are my suggestions).  Wells lived through a time similar to ours – when rights for Black people were being scaled back, and white supremacy was on the rise.

Stacey Abrams wrote the Foreword for our book, and in honor of the 163rd birthday of Ida Wells in Holly Springs, Mississippi, I want to share part of Stacey’s Foreword with you:

“The story of America has no finer an example of perseverance, brilliance, and accomplishment than Ida B. Wells.  She valiantly navigated a path of courage and strength and trumpeted the call to justice and equality, setting an example that continues to resonate for me and for millions of others.  Born into slavery in Mississippi, the state where I was raised, she saw the promise of Reconstruction and survived the scourge of white supremacy that followed.  Despite a nation that shunned her humanity and ignored her potential, she understood that her capacity stretched deeper and wider than the definitions of white supremacy and patriarchy.  Like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, she crafted her own narrative, and in so doing became a clarion for our soul’s deepest ambitions – justice.

A journalist, scholar, and activist, she wove together the ability to investigate and animate issues that robbed Blacks of full participation in the citizenship guaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.  In 1892, when white men lynched her good friend Tom Moss in Memphis, she confronted the racism that sought to legitimize murder by vigilantes.  She decried lynching and, moreover, demanded action from leaders who failed to protect their citizens.  So affecting were her calls to action, her newspaper offices in Memphis were blown up.  Though exiled from the South for more than twenty years, Wells became emboldened rather than silenced by the attack.  The tenacity, ferocity, and dedication to justice of this former slave girl from rural Mississippi challenged the moral core of America, and her strategic vision for change transformed the lives of millions.

From co-founding the NAACP to producing a compendium of investigations that shocked the conscience of leaders, she redefined what leadership could and should look like.  In particular, she furthered the role of women in the fight for justice, and she led without apology in an era when the words of women were not expected to be heard, and where Black women were summarily dismissed.  Ida B. Wells refused to be dismissed.”

If you don’t know much about Wells, go find the book that Catherine and I wrote.  Or look her up online – you will be amazed at her work and wisdom.  And, you will see how much we need her witness now, when we find the stream of white supremacy in our collective history seeking to become a tidal wave that overwhelms all of us.  Stacey closed her Foreword with these words, and I’ll close this way too:

“They honor the life of Ida B. Wells, a life carved out of the hardscrabble ground of slavery, white supremacy and oppression of women, especially Black women.  In Passionate for Justice, we find a compass that points us to the future, where we can each give voice and action to justice, equity, and life-giving community.  Ida B. Wells would have had it no other way.”  

So, on Wednesday, raise a glass to Ida Wells, give thanks for her witness and plan to find your place in her stunning and life-giving call for justice, equity, and life-giving community.  

"A BIT OF GOOD NEWS IN A DEPRESSING TIME"

 “A BIT OF GOOD NEWS IN A DEPRESSING TIME”

It felt sad and ironic to celebrate the 4th of July when Donald Trump is president, a man who cares little for the country and who cares only for himself and enriching himself at our expense.  I must admit, however, that the has had a disturbing run the last few weeks – the bombing of Iran and the passage of the “Big, Bad, Awful” (BBA) bill.  I will hold Lisa Murkowski responsible for the latter – though I was never a big fan of John McCain, I admired his courage in Trump’s first term when Trump tried to gut Obamacare.  McCain walked down to the well of the Senate floor and turned his thumb down to defeat the proposal.  Now that Trump is beginning the unraveling of Obamacare in the BBA, how I wish that Senator Murkowski had done the same as John McCain did.  It was not to be, however, and she and all the rest of us will be the worst for it.

In the midst of this depressing time, I want to acknowledge a note of hope on the local level.  On June 18, Caroline and I attended the ribbon cutting for new affordable housing located in Decatur’s Legacy Park.  Sixty-six units were dedicated for housing for people who make 30-80% of a living wage.  It is a partnership between the city of Decatur, the Decatur Housing Authority, Dekalb County, and the federal government.  At the same time, there was a ground-breaking ceremony for 66 more units, making a total of 132 units of affordable housing.  A bit of background is needed to understand this good news.

Legacy Park is the new name of what used to be the United Methodist Children’s Home, located on 77 acres of land on Columbia Drive across from Columbia Seminary.  The Home was started by the Methodists in 1877 as an orphanage for children after the Civil War, and it remained a home for orphans and children from broken or troubled families until 2017.  At that point, the Methodists decided to shift their focus from younger children to young adults who had aged out of the various public and private systems.  They did this with good reason – our state representative Mary Margaret Oliver noted at the ceremony that more than 40% of the young people who age out of foster care at age 18 will be homeless within 18 months.  The Methodists put the land up for sale, hoping to finance their new ventures with the money from the sale.  And, valuable land it is – 77 acres of undeveloped prime land.  When we heard that the land was up for sale, we knew that the developers were licking their lips in anticipation.

Many of us went to the Decatur City Council, urging them to consider a purchase of this land for public use and benefit, rather than allowing it to once again be gobbled up by private developers.  The city of Decatur has not always been receptive to the need for affordable housing, but this time the leadership, as well as numerous residents, felt the need to seek to keep this property as a good for public use.  Partnering with several governmental entities that I named above, they developed a $40 million package to offer the United Methodists for the property.  This was undoubtedly below the market value, but it also appealed to the goodwill of the Methodists.  It was an amount that would adequately fund the new ventures of the Methodists, and they accepted the offer.  The city of Decatur now owns those 77 acres and has developed a plan for its use to benefit the citizens of Decatur.

The next struggle came over what would be housed on the property.  While that is still a work in progress, many people, including our friend Mary Gould, attended many meetings to help the city of Decatur see the need and the possibility of using part of the property for affordable housing.  By this time, the city was open to the message, but it did not hurt that so many people turned out to support it.  There was also significant opposition, but the idea of affordable housing prevailed, and we give thanks for that.  

The opposition did not roll over, however.  After the environmental study indicated that the building of affordable housing would not be a further detriment to the environment, several residents asked for a second study in order to delay the beginning of construction of the affordable housing.  We attended the city council meeting last November and spoke our piece about the need for beginning the project.  One of the residents who opposed the project spoke and indicated that they had filed an ethics complaint against the council for what they took to be dishonesty and a lack of integrity on this process.  African-American Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Tony Powers responded with an unusually frank answer, something like this:  “I hear your complaint, and I can guarantee you that we have approached this project with integrity, honesty, and transparency.  I will also add that I believe that your opposition to this project is not about trees or transparency but rather about your dis-ease with the possibility that Black people will be living in some of these housing units. I’m tired of hearing that, and I’m tired of white people masking their racial concerns by using other reasons.  So, we have been transparent about the need to use some of this land for affordable housing, and we intend to do just that.”  The city council then proceeded to vote unanimously to approve the environmental report and to authorize the construction of the first set of housing units.

It was noted at the June 18 ribbon-cutting that this project is just a drop in the bucket, but that it was a beginning.  Congressman Hank Johnson spoke, and other speakers included Housing Authority Director Larry Padilla, state senator Elena Parent, Columbia Seminary President Victor Aloyo, state rep Mary Margaret Oliver, and many others.  In a time of a torrent of bad news, it was good to be together and to celebrate a bit of good news.  Let us build on that and see if we can revitalize this sense of civic duty and responsibility for the common good.

"CAROLINE LEACH!!!"

 “CAROLINE LEACH!!!”

Trump has had quite a week – bombing of Iran and the SCOTUS partial victory on the nationwide injunctions.  Yet, I’m currently tired of Trump and will write about him another time (unfortunately, more than once, I’m afraid).  So, I’m going to write on a much more pleasant subject – Caroline’s birthday is July 3 of this week.

I first met Caroline at a political rally for George McGovern in Atlanta in 1972.  I was visiting my friend Ed Loring, and I went with him to the rally, and Caroline was there.  She struck me as very interesting, but I was in a committed relationship with a woman in Nashville, where I was doing my alternative service as a conscientious objector (CO) to the Vietnam War.  I paid more attention when I met her the second time, at Robin and Linda Williams’ wedding in Nashville in early summer 1973.  Caroline had come up to the wedding with her housemate Murphy Davis, who was Robin’s cousin.  I was now living at the house where Robin and Linda got married.  I had broken off the romantic relationship with my fiancé; I had finished my CO; and I was seeking discernment for the future.  Ed, who was on the faculty of Columbia Seminary in Atlanta, was urging me to pick up my seminary career there – I had dropped out of Vanderbilt Divinity School to apply for the CO.  

By the time that we re-met in 1973, I was much more interested in getting to know Caroline better.  She was now a Columbia Seminary grad and was Associate Campus Minister at Georgia tech.  We spent a considerable amount of time together at the wedding. After that, Atlanta (and Columbia Seminary) began to look a whole lot better.  I moved to the Decatur part of Atlanta in August of 1973, and Caroline and I began to date almost immediately.  We were young adults in our mid-20’s, but we had seen enough of the world to know what we wanted.  By the end of 1973, we were in a relationship and had decided to get married.

This groundedness of Caroline was instantly appealing to me.  I’m a man, so I also noticed her looks, which were and are fine.  An article about her as a woman minister in the Knoxville Sentinel in 1973 put it this way: “The locks are long, brown, and wavy.   The figure curvy.  Marital status, single.  Sex FEMALE.  The name, Caroline Leach. “If you are a woman,” says Ms. Leach, who was in Knoxville recently for a visit, “you cannot fill the bill.  No matter how dynamic your sermons may be, how well you did in divinity school, how willing you are to work long, hard hours, how close you stand to God…..You don’t fit!”  

Caroline was describing her struggle to find her way as a woman in seminary in 1969-1972.  Her home church in Chattanooga would not sponsor her as a ministerial candidate because she was a woman – even though she had grown up in the church, taught Sunday school, played piano and organ in worship.  She just was FEMALE as the Knoxville Sentinel put it.  She was one of five women students when she went to Columbia, and she remembers how many men students came up to her, reading from the Bible, telling her that she could not be a minister because she was FEMALE, that God would not permit it.  We were talking about this terrible experience this past week, and we were laughing at God’s sense of humor and God’s working in mysterious ways.  When she came to Columbia, Caroline’s intention was to become a Christian educator, but all the “NO’S” and “CAN’TS” convinced her that God was calling her to become an ordained minister.  So, all these negative men helped her to become a minister, as well some of the faculty who had been very supportive of her.

It was an arduous journey – she had to find a new home church who would sponsor her as a candidate (yay for Rev. Randy Taylor and the Session of Central Presbyterian in Atlanta).  Atlanta Presbytery did not want to ordain her or any other women, but the competence and calling of Caroline and other women dragged the Presbytery kicking and screaming into the late 20th century.  No churches would interview her for a pastoral position, but God led her to Rev. Woody McKay, who was Campus Minister at Georgia Tech.  He had reserved a small salary, and the number of women students at Georgia Tech was growing.  So, he offered the position to Caroline, and she was able to get ordained at Georgia Tech and become the 21st woman minister in the former Southern Presbyterian Church.

When we went to get our marriage license from Dekalb County in early spring of 1974, Caroline indicated that she was not going to change her name when we got married.  The female clerk was highly offended and refused to issue a marriage license. We had to threaten to sue in order to get it.  We got married in May, 1974, and after I finished my classes at Columbia in December, 1975, we accepted a call to be co-pastors at St. Columba Presbyterian Church.  Caroline continued her pioneering ministry – we were the first clergy couple in a local church in the PCUS.  We’ve been partners in ministry and marriage ever since.  Indeed, we are working on a book now on our trailblazing ministry – if you have stories or thoughts, please let us know!

Caroline has been a pioneer most of her life, and though she would not say this, I will.  She is one of the giants upon whose shoulders the church and especially women pastors now stand.  When I’ve asked Caroline how she came to have the courage and determination to push through all the barriers and obstacles that she faced in the patriarchal structures of the church and the world, she cites her parents, her youth leaders in her church (the same church who denied her care), and most of all, the Girl Scouts.  She was a Girl Scout through high school, and there she learned that she was competent and even skilled as a woman, that she would need to be determined and resolute in a male world, and that SHE COULD DO IT.  I’m glad that she did – glad that she got the message, glad that she pushed on through all the barriers, of course, personally, glad that she graced me with love and marriage and David and Susan for these 51 years.  So, lift a glass to Caroline this week – contact her too and wish her a happy birthday!

"TRUMP MAKES HIS MOVE"

 “TRUMP MAKES HIS MOVE”

When Trump made the decision to bomb Iran on Saturday evening, he told only Republican legislators, leaving the Democrats out of the process until after the bombing was done.  We don’t yet know the extent of the damage, and we don’t yet know what Iran’s response will be, though I am guessing that the Iranians had contingency plans in place, which are likely being put into action as I write.  We all tremble as this step for US involvement in attacking yet another Middle East country is underway. We also await the response of Russia and China.

I watched Trump’s short press statement on Saturday night, with his lackeys Vance, Hegseth and Rubio close at hand.  He worked hard to project an image as the almighty leader, the one who is in control not only of the United States, but of the world as well.  It is the image that he has always cultivated, the image that drove him to seek the presidency in the first place.  And now, thanks to Israel’s Nazi-like approach to the Palestinians, Trump has been given the opportunity to make his mark as the leader of the world.  For the time being, he has control of the United States, with the Supreme Court virtually turning him loose with its presidential immunity rulings.  The Congress is exceedingly weak, with the slim Republican majority currently holding together, though Thomas Harris and even Marjorie Taylor Greene withholding support on this latest foray.  

Trump has been driven to prove that his father was wrong about him, that he is not a weakling who must be sent to military school to be toughened up.  I wonder if Trump has a shrine to his father in his White House bedroom, a shrine in which he counts up the evidence daily to demonstrate to his father that he is indeed the strong son.  He has now made his move to show that he is invincible, that he is indeed the most powerful man in the world – the Supreme Court cannot stop him, the Congress cannot stop him, the American people cannot stop him.  And now, the bad, old Iranians have felt his wrath.  Meanwhile, his ICE officers now wear masks to demonstrate the powerful, unstoppable, unknowable force that can arrest U.S. Senators, City of New York Comptrollers, and whoever else might dare to get in his way.

It is a daunting situation for us in the USA who believe in peace, justice, and equity.  Yet, the “No Kings” marches revealed a deeper truth:  millions upon millions marched against Trump in over 1500 towns and cities across the country on June 14, while only a few thousand showed up for Trump’s birthday parade in DC.  The opposition is deep and powerful to Trump and his policies, and we must be vigilant and active in expressing that opposition, pointing toward a Democratic takeover of Congress in the 2026 elections.

I’m also remembering another Republican president who attacked a country in the Middle East – the invasion of Iraq by George Bush and the “coalition of the willing” in March, 2002, because Sadaam Hussein and his buddies in Iraq had WMD’s, the weapons of mass destruction.  I remember seeing President Bush land on the USS Abraham Lincoln in his aviator jacket, declaring “mission accomplished.” And, of course, no WMD’s ever found in Iraq.  The war in Iraq would prove long and costly, with Barack Obama pulling most US troops out of Iraq in 2011, with no regime change, no real changes made.  Iraq is now mainly controlled by militias, including some loyal to Iran.  

We should note that Iran in 2025 is not Iraq in 2002, but the similarities in American arrogance in both cases is striking.  None of us knows where the Saturday night massacre will lead, but right now it is both scary and sobering.  The dictatorship of Donald Trump has begun – he has made his move.  Currently there seem to be no forces capable of checking him, but his foray into the Middle East will prove more difficult than he or his puppets can imagine.  In that unpredictability may lie our greatest hope for restoration at home.  Bush was immensely popular when he invaded Iraq, but by the time that he left office, he and his Republican party were so unpopular that white people in America were willing to vote for a Black man for president.  Trump is currently underwater in popularity, and I don’t think that will change any time soon.  The Joker has made his move, and it is now up to us to counter that move with force, dedication, love, justice, and actions in the street.  As Bob Dylan put it in the ending to his famous apocalyptic song “All Along the Watchtower”:

Outside, in the distance

A wildcat did growl

Two riders were approaching

The wind began to howl

"JUNTEENTH"

  “JUNETEENTH”

    In 2021, Juneteenth was made a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of many people.  This week 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.

Yet, as we all are well aware, this powerful gift of equality is always banging against the idea of white supremacy, which seeks to tell us that those of us classified as “white” that we are meant to be in control.  We saw that struggle this past weekend, as the Trumpster gathered his tanks and soldiers and a few people in DC, while millions marched and protested in cities and towns across the country against the white supremacy that is the base root of the MAGA movement.

            It is now time to step up, speak up, and act out.  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.  Let us join in that parade of witnesses. 

"FIFTY YEARS AS A MINISTER!!"

 “FIFTY YEARS AS A MINISTER!”

Last year was Caroline and my 50th wedding anniversary, and this year  marks the 50th anniversary of my ordination as a minister in the Presbyterian Church.  Caroline was ordained as a pastor in 1973 by Atlanta Presbytery, the 21st woman to be ordained as a pastor by the former Southern Presbyterian Church.  So, she is the senior pastor in our family.

I was ordained by Norfolk Presbytery (now Eastern Virginia Presbytery) as co-pastor with Caroline of St. Columba Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoon, June 8 at St. Columba Church in Norfolk.  Caroline and I were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church (the Presbyterian denominations reunited in 1983 after the Southern church split off at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, so that it could support slavery).  We came to St. Columba from Atlanta, where I was finishing up seminary at Columbia, and Caroline was a campus minister at Georgia Tech.  Though no one had ever tried it in the Southern church, we wanted to try it, and we were young enough to still have that pioneering spirit.  St. Columba was a small missionary church, located in a private 1500 unit low income housing project, with many Navy families.  Norfolk Presbytery was funding the work, and we later received the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday Offering to put St. Columba Ministries on solid financial ground.  

I grew up in First Presbyterian Church in Helena, Arkansas, and though its members included wealthy planters, First Pres was largely a working-class Presbyterian church.  My mother was a dedicated church member, so we were at the church all the time, and I drank in the atmosphere of hearing that God loved me.  This was especially important to me because my father had abandoned my mother and me when I was an infant. It was especially important to hear that definition rather than feeling that I was defined as child abandoned by my father.  I loved the church, and it loved me, and because of that, many people in the church indicated that I would make a great minister.  

Though I loved talking about and thinking about God and religion, I resisted the idea of becoming a minister for a long time.  Part of my resistance came from my sense of not being worthy, of not being good enough.  Ministers lead public lives, and I had enough internal impulses and feelings that made me feel that I could never live up to the call.  Second, southern white culture sought to emasculate most male ministers, so that the liberating power of the Gospel would be mitigated as much as possible.  How could white people who were Christians hold people in slavery and in neo-slavery?  By splitting out the Gospel from justice issues – God only cared about what happened to people when they died.  Though I could not articulate this as a teenage boy, I intuited this idea that I would have to give up some of my humanity and my masculinity and my passion if I were to become a minister.

The Reverend Harold Jackson was my pastor in my teenage years, and he helped to mitigate some of my resistance to becoming a minister.  He was fully a man; he was a passionate and good preacher; and he believed in weaving the Gospel with life in the world.  In 1963, he led my youth group in a staged reading of the play “A Cup of Trembling,” about the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  It only occurred to me later that in that same spring of 1963, MLK was leading the Birmingham campaign.  I am certain that Harold had this revolution in mind as he led us in the reading and discussion of this play.  He was helping us to see the necessity of living the Gospel faith out in the world, that God cared about not only what happened to us when we died, but what happened to us when we were living as well.

After college, I went to Vanderbilt Divinity School with the intention of getting a PhD in philosophy and religion, but mainly I wanted to be near my fiancé, who was still a student at Rhodes College.  While at Vandy, I met Ed Loring, who was getting his PhD in American church history, and he was an ordained Presbyterian minister.  He was articulate, manly, intelligent, and he was passionate about the need to weave the Gospel message in with the life of the world.  He encouraged me to move towards ordination, and so I did.  

I have served three Presbyterian churches as pastor:  St. Columba in Norfolk; Second in Nashville, and our long pastorate at Oakhurst Presbyterian in Decatur.  I discovered that I loved to preach and that I loved to be a pastor to people – to hear their faith stories and struggles, to help them hear about God’s love, as I was helped to hear about God’s love.  It is a sacred walk to be invited by people into their deepest journeys and feelings, and it has been a great privilege to do so.  And the preaching!  I preached yesterday at North Decatur Presbyterian Church on Pentecost Sunday, and I loved putting together the sermon which noted how afraid the first disciples were and how afraid we are in these crazy days.  

Though I did not want to become a pastor, I have leaned in to in a way that has astonished me and has enriched me in ways that I could not have imagined.  And, I have been privileged to walk in this space as a pastor.  These fifty years have not gone by quickly, but in many ways, it seems just the twinkling of an eye since that Sunday afternoon when I said “yes” fifty years ago in Norfolk.  I give thanks to God, to Caroline, to my mother, and to all those who have nurtured me along this way.  

"NEW YORK, NEW YORK!!"

 “NEW YORK, NEW YORK!”

Caroline and I are back in Decatur after a two week trip to Baltimore, Providence, and New York.  Our daughter Susan drove us all around the Northeast, as we celebrated granddaughter Emma’s graduation from Brown and then went to visit New York City.  We were blessed to stay with Nancy Regalado Horwitz, sister of Margery Freeman.  Nancy’s apartment is in Greenwich Village, and she was such a gracious host, fixing us scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast each morning before we went out on our adventures for the day.  On Tuesday evening we rode the subway from 14th Street to 231st Street to eat supper with Margery and David Billings at their home in the Bronx.  The subway was full of different kinds of people, all heading home from work.  It was good to be with David and Margery again, especially since David and I had first experienced New York City in the summer of 1966.  We were grateful to see them each of our three days in New York.

Our first foray into the city took us into Brooklyn, where we had taken a Lyft to see Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, the church that changed the lives of David and me.  Caroline, Susan, and I were greeted by LAPC’S administrative assistant Harriet Bodner – the pastor Emily Brewer was on vacation.  As we entered the building through the South Oxford Street entrance, I was flooded by so many memories of the place that changed my heart and my mind. We went into the sanctuary, which is currently not being used because some of the ceiling has fallen in.  The church will soon launch a capital campaign to do repairs to the sanctuary.  The sanctuary has many Tiffany stained glass windows, but in 1978,  a powerful, fluid mural was added to the sanctuary walls and ceiling.  It is called “Cloud of Witnesses,” and it was painted by Hank Prussing, who was around when David and I were summer staff members.  It is a collage of the people of the Fort Greene in which LAPC is located. 

As we walked through the sanctuary and some of the rest of the building, I felt the pangs and the possibilities of urban ministry that Caroline and I had experienced in our pastorate at Oakhurst.  Like Oakhurst, LAPC is an old building, constantly in need of repair but also with a center of a vibrant spiritual and social justice ministry.  It is the urban church at its best and at its neediest – congregations are shrinking, but funding is always needed.  Before I get in too lofty a space, we also went into the Jarvie Room, which was a gathering place for the summer staff in 1966 and 1967.  It was also the place where I had my first real romantic kiss – a young Black woman named Deirdre Jordan and I began a summer romance that at the time I hoped would last longer, but time and distance diminished our fervor.  Yet, it. was stunning and great at the time!

We left LAPC, ate lunch at a local diner, then took the subway back to 14th Street, where we went to Strand Books, which advertises itself as having 18 miles of books.  It was indeed overwhelming, but I managed to get out with only some postcards.  That night we ate supper at Nancy’s apartment with David and Margery and daughter Stella coming over – we had not seen Stella in many years.  It was great to catch up, and also to hear of Nancy’s impending birthday party – she will be 90 this month!

On Thursday we met Margery at the Guggenheim Museum in the Central Park, and we saw a powerful exhibit by Rashid Johnson called “A Poem for Deep Thinkers.”  It wound all around the spirals of the Guggenheim structure, and it is many kinds of media, with its emphasis being the glory and the struggles of being Black in American culture – look him up and check it out if you can’t get there in person.  Since Caroline had never been to Central Park, we took a quick walk through there, before taking a bus back to Nancy’s apartment in the Village, a long but relatively quick trek through late afternoon New York traffic.

That night we had a fine finish to our New York trip by joining David and Margery at the Majestic Theater in the Broadway district to see Audra McDonald star in the reprise of the play “Gypsy.”  She gave a stunning performance as the mother who seeks to drive her daughters into stardom, with one of them – Louise – becoming Gypsy Rose Lee.  Ms. McDonald has been nominated for a Tony Award for this performance, and though I have not seen any other performers, it is hard to imagine one better than hers.  After the play, we went to John’s Pizzeria with David and Margery to discuss the play and to reluctantly say good-bye to our good and longtime friends. Susan suggested that we take a cab back to Nancy’s, so that we could experience all of NYC’s modes of transportation – subway, train, bus, rideshare, and personal car.

New York City was a magical place to me in the summers of 1966 and 1967, and as I have written before, it changed my life forever.  Though some of the magic has dimmed over the years, in this visit, I still felt its call and its vision for a multicultural life seeking to move towards equity and justice.  I am grateful to Caroline and Susan, who suggested that we take a short trip into NYC on the way back from Providence.  It was good to be back in the Big City, the greatest in the world, according to many.

"ON CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS"

 “ON CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS”

Caroline, Susan and I attended Emma’s graduation from Brown yesterday, and it was a grand occasion!  I graduated from college in 1968, and the world has changed dramatically since then, so I’m wondering what Emma’s world will look like 50 years from now.  More on that another time.  

We are also heading for New York City on the way back from Providence to Baltimore, and thanks to our friends David Billings and Margery Freeman, we will be staying in a friend’s apartment while there.  My first trip to New York changed my life, and I want to share some of that journey in today’s blog.  David Billings and I went up to Brooklyn in 1966 to work in the summer program at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church.  We had both been raised in the white supremacist culture of  Arkansas on the Mississippi River Delta. We had believed the lies of white supremacy because they had been taught to us by people whom we loved and trusted – our families, our churches, our schools.  Yet, we had been in college for almost 2 years, and we had both begun to believe that there was a deeper and wider world out there than our white supremacist worldview.  Lest our motives sound too noble, our main motivating factor was to get out of small town life for the summer and go to NYC to experience the excitement of the big city! 

Our summer at LAPC changed our lives.  It was there in 1966 that the hold of white supremacy began to be loosened in our hearts and in our perceptions.  The supervisors of the summer program were African-American, and many of our co-workers were African-American.  For a short while, we tried to hold on to the white supremacist beliefs that we brought with us, but that did not last very long.  Though we had grown up with African-Americans all around us in the neo-slavery South, we had never considered that they were human beings like us.  Our summer in Brooklyn in 1966 changed all of that.  It showed us why the segregation of neo-slavery was so important in maintaining white supremacy.   In Brooklyn, we worked with and were supervised by African-Americans, and it did not take long for us to recognize that they were human beings just like us.

I remember going a field trip to Prospect Park with the workers and students of the summer program.  As we walked from the subway station to the Park, and as I looked out over the rainbow coalition of our group, I thought to myself for the first time that I was experiencing a new world here, and that I was excited about it.  Later on that day, David and I shared some of these perceptions, and we discerned that we would not be able to go back home and pick up the mantle of white supremacy again.  We would have many more lessons to learn about the depth of racism in our own souls, but we made a huge step that summer at LAPC in Brooklyn.  We could no longer accept the white supremacy that we had been taught.  We were excited about that, but we also knew that it meant trouble for us – we could not go home again.  Just by returning South to our family and friends, we would be getting into some good trouble.  It was the beginning of our changing our hearts and minds from the white supremacy of the South to a larger and deeper vision of the humanity of all people.  It was the beginning of our working to seek to change that world of white supremacy into a world that valued diversity, equity and inclusion.

I later found out that this was part of LAPC’s history – they often hired young white adults from the South, seeking to show us a different way of life and a different way of perceiving ourselves and perceiving others.  It worked for David and me, and we have been trying ever since to work out a new way of life, and the  new way of being anti-racists in the world.  LAPC and NYC changed our lives forever, and for that we are profoundly grateful. 

As it often has in north American history, that power of white supremacy is trying to re-assert itself again, with the Trumpster leading the charge.  In these days when white supremacy has become fashionable again, let us remember who we are as children of God – siblings of all kinds of colors and sexual orientations and genders and economic classes and nationalities, all called to build a culture where al are valued and included.  So, let’s get to building that new world.

"BIG WEEK!"

 “BIG WEEK!”

Yesterday was Caroline’s and my 51st anniversary – a calm day compared to the great whirlwind and ado of our 50th anniversary last year.  We postponed our 50th a bit last year because our granddaughter Zoe was graduating from high school at Interlochen Arts Academy on the same weekend.  We went up for that grand occasion and had our 50th on June 22 at Hawkins Hall at Legacy Park in Decatur.  That building had previously been the dining hall for the former Methodist Children’s Home in Decatur.  We had a great time, with over 135 people attending, and many who could not come shared a video about us.  We then went on a 50th anniversary tour, stopping in Edisto Island, SC, then Norfolk, Virginia (where we had our first church together as a clergy couple), then to Baltimore, DC, and Pennsylvania.  We are grateful for Susan and David organizing it for us.  We got married on May 18 in 1974 because Caroline did not want to be a “June bride,” and I teased her at our 50th that after all these years, we were celebrating our 50th in June, not in May, so our wedding got connected to June after all.

We’re now about to head out on a similar tour, though this one will center on our granddaughter Emma’s graduation from college at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  We’ll head to Baltimore for a day, and then we’ll drive with Susan up to Brown, where we’ll meet up with David, Erin, and Zoe (who has just completed her first year of college at the University of Colorado).  We’ll share an Airbnb, celebrate Emma’s hard work, and watch her graduate on Sunday, May 25.  Then David will get ready to be inducted into the American Academy of Science in DC before he and the family head off to Finland, where he will be doing some lectures on science education.  

    Caroline, Susan and I will make a stopover in NYC, for a few days.  Caroline has never spent much time there, so we’ll be tourists for a few days, thanks to Margery Freeman and David Billings, who have found a place for us to stay in the Village.  Caroline has a visit planned to the Statue of Liberty;  I want to see Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, which changed my life in 1966; and Susan has found a play for us to see – “Lights Out” about Nat King Cole’s final TV show.  So, a lot to see!

    It has been quite a ride over these 51 years for Caroline and me – many ups and downs, many joys, some struggles, but most of all a great adventure.  I’m now working on a book about our pioneering ministry as a clergy couple – we were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church. It is tentatively entitled “Better Together: Pioneers in Ministry and Partners in Marriage.”   It is fun (and sometimes painful) to revisit all those stories and streams in our lives together.  If you have stories, memories, insights about our ministry or our marriage, we’d love to hear from you – maybe they’ll appear in the book!  For now, I give thanks to Caroline for all her gifts to me and to so many others!

 

"DAVID BILLINGS!"

 “DAVID BILLINGS”

In mid-April, Caroline and I traveled to Baltimore to see Susan and to see the play that she directed at her university (UMBC).  The title of the play is “John Proctor Is the Villain,” an answer to Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” from the early 1950’s.  It is quite a good play – indeed, the Broadway version has just been nominated for 7 Tony awards.  Susan was prescient, and Caroline and I are hip because we have seen this highly regarded play, as well as being proud of Susan for her fine direction of the play.

Several of our friends came down to see the play, including my long-time friend David Billings and his spouse Margery Freeman, who traveled down from the Bronx to see us and to see the play.  David and I were remembering that we had known one another for 70 years!  I remember meeting him in the 4th grade at segregated Helena Junior High School (it was 4th-8th grade at that time).  He had moved from McComb, Mississippi, leaving his family home to go west.  Over the years, we became good friends.  I was drawn to him by his mind, by his sense of humor, and by his kind heart.  He was a “regular” guy – liked sports and played them, dated a lot, was religious and a solid citizen, and like me, believed in white supremacy.  I was more on the periphery – shy, didn’t date much, believing in white supremacy, but wavering a bit as I hit high school.  We hit it off because of our love of ideas and because we knew that there was a deeper and wider world out there.  He also loved being around my mother, who encouraged our nascent free thinking.

We went off to college – David to Ole Miss, me to Rhodes (then Southwestern at Memphis) – but we stayed in close touch.  We both had experiences in our first year that began to break down the hold that white supremacy had on our hearts and our minds.  David loved history and literature, although he was a math stud as well.  I was a math whiz, but my heart leaped when I took a philosophy course.  I remember sitting at Nick’s Cafe in Helena with David during Christmas break of our college sophomore years.  We had both done hard physical labor the summer before, and we were determined to do something different in this upcoming summer.  It was 1966, and through various contacts, we ended up being accepted to work in a summer youth program at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, and we were ecstatic!  New York!  Getting out of the South, getting out of small-town Arkansas – finding a new world.

It was a huge leap – I don’t know that either of us would have gone up to NYC without the other, but together we felt like we could do it.  Indeed, a few nights before our departure to Brooklyn, I almost backed out.  I had begun dating a young woman in Helena, and in my lack of experience, I dreamed that we were falling in love.  I did not want to leave Helena and risk losing her.  I remember sitting on the hood of David’s car on a summer night on a dirt road in the middle of a cotton field, telling David that I did not think that I could go to Brooklyn because of my love for the young woman.  David stepped up that night and convinced me to follow that dream that we had discovered earlier in the year.  If the love was true, he said, it would be there when I returned.  “Besides,” he added, “this is a chance of a lifetime to see a brand new world – in New York City!”

We did go to Brooklyn in that summer of 1966, and it changed our lives forever.  The shackles of white supremacy began to loosen their hold on us, and before we returned to Arkansas at the end of that summer, we acknowledged to one another that we could not go home again – we were not the same.  As I have written elsewhere (see my most recent book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World”), when we came back to Helena, the whole world looked different.  We could no longer abide in the white supremacy that held us when we headed to Brooklyn, and for the next few years, David and I would be fellow pilgrims on a new journey towards liberation and wholeness – many miles to go before we slept, but on the journey, nonetheless.  David writes the story of his journey in his book :“Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life” – if you haven’t read it, get it and learn from it.

David and I have remained friends and colleagues and comrades over many decades, and I’ll be writing this year about some of our journeys together – seminary days, Nashville and New Orleans, anti-racism work, Ole Miss football and Nellie Fox and the dreaded Yankees (how could a man of such insight be a Yankees’ fan?), writing days, and now in our latter years, looking back over lifetimes of friendship, engagement and encouragement, pushing and pulling, supporting and celebrating one another and our life together.  We’ll have a chance to visit again when Caroline, Susan, and I spend a few days in NYC in late May on the way back from granddaughter Emma’s college graduation.  I look forward to that, but for now, I want to say:  Thank you, David, for all your gifts to me and to so many others!

"MOTHER'S DAY"

 “MOTHER’S DAY”

Last summer, Wipf and Stock published my book on my mother and me, entitled:  “She Made A Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.”  For Mother’s Day, here is a tribute to my mother from that book.  If you haven’t gotten your copy, please do so.  It will make a great Mother’s Day gift!  

    As I have noted before, I was raised by a single mom, Mary Armour Stroupe, and we lived with my great-great aunt Bernice Higgins (I called her “Gran.”) My father abandoned my mother and me for another woman when I was an infant, and I never met him again until I was 23 – he never contacted me or ever came to see me. 

    Though we lived in a patriarchal world in Helena, Arkansas, my mother escaped much of it because she worked as a beautician at Ted’s Beauty Shop in downtown Helena at the other end of Porter Street, about a mile from our house.  I don’t know how or when Mother started that job at Ted’s – she was there when my memories began.  In my younger days, I thought that it was owned by a man named “Ted,” but Mother let me know that it was named after the woman who owned it – Ted Bostick.  I can remember nothing else about Ted, but as I write this, I am just realizing that such female ownership reinforced the sense that beauty shops in the 1950’s were a woman’s domain, whether one was classified as white or Black.  No males, except salesman, were to be found in those beauty shops.  

    Ted’s was located in the Cleburne Hotel, which had been opened in 1905 and named after Confederate General Patrick Cleburne.  It had a colonial revival style with huge columns in the front, facing Cherry Street, the main downtown street.  In its youth, it was quite a grand place, near the railroad depot for travelers to stay, housing barber and beauty shops and other stores. I would often stop by Ted’s Beauty Shop on my way home from school.  It was a fascinating place to me – a woman’s world!  All women beauty operators, and all kinds of white women there, getting their hair done, getting pampered, getting listened to, getting a chance to share their stories and local gossip, getting a chance to exhale and be accepted without the censoring or lustful eyes of men to put them in their places.  

    It was a refuge from patriarchy, even though they were often getting their hair done and having themselves made up for their men (and other women).  When I would enter Ted’s, there was an intriguing set of smells wafting through the air, a mixture of perfume, shampoo, dyes, chemicals, hair spray, and cigarette smoke.  As a young boy, the women there - both operators and customers – would fawn over me, and I loved the attention.  Part of it was my relationship to Mother, and part of it was that in my childhood, I was still in my innocent youth, a young male fascinated by being allowed to enter this women’s world, not yet so tainted by the crushing patriarchy (and sexuality) that awaited them outside the confines of the beauty shop. 

    I remember when I was about 6 years old, waiting on our front porch for Mother to come home from work.  We had no car, and she had to walk a mile home from Ted’s after being on her feet all day.  I was waiting with great anticipation because I wanted her to play catch with me, to toss the baseball around with me.  I remember feeling excited when I saw her - in her white beautician’s uniform and heavy white shoes - climb the big hill on Porter Street, now only about a block from our house.  I would run up to her and say, “Mama, let’s play catch!  I’ve been waiting a long time.”  I do not ever remember her saying to me: “Nibs, I’m just too tired. Let’s do it another day.”  My memory of her is that she always said “Yes, Nibs, let’s do that – let me change out of my uniform, and we’ll throw the ball around.”  

    I never realized what I was asking of her until I had my own kids – how tired she must have been, how stressed out she was with our tenuous financial situation, how she likely longed to sit down for a while and put her feet up.  Later in her life, I asked her if she ever said “No” to me when I asked her to play catch right after work, and she said: “Of course – often I was just too tired.”  I am intrigued that I do not remember those times – my memories are focused on the “Yes,” not the “No.”

       And, that’s how I remember my mother – the one who stayed, the one who loved me, the one who gave me life.  I know that some people have trouble with the idea of Mother’s Day – bad relations with their mothers, the sentimentalism and commercialization of Mother’s Day, those women unable to have children – but for me, it is an opportunity to say “Thank you” to my mother, to Gran, and to all the other women who provided mothering love to me.  It is also a reminder that all of us, regardless of our gender identity, are called to share that mothering love with one another – comforting, enduring, challenging, nurturing.  Let us be mothers one to the other.

"EARTH DAY"

 “EARTH DAY”

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the official beginning of Earth Day.  I remember when Earth Day was officially recognized in 1970.  It had been semi-officially started in 1969 by Iowa native and later Californian John McConnell.  Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin got it going nationally by calling for a country-wide teach-in on the environment on April, 22, 1970, using the model of the teach-ins against the Vietnam war.  It caught on, and I remember that Caroline and I started observing it in worship in our church in Norfolk in 1976.  As we all know now, we are at a crucial point in the earth’s life, and many think that it is already too late.  I prefer to think that we still have a chance, and in that mindset, I’m sharing a poem by Mary Oliver that may us shift our way of thinking about the earth and all of creation.  It’s called “The Sun.”  The last lines describe Trump and his transactional henchpeople.

“THE SUN”

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone–

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance–

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love–

do you think there is anywhere, in any

language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed–

or have you too

turned from this world–

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

"RESURRECTION!"

 “RESURRECTION!”

We are in the season of Resurrection. Easter was yesterday, and whether or not you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead after he was given the death penalty by Rome, the power of Resurrection still speaks to all of us.  The power of the Resurrection is not so much what happens to us when we die.  The power of the Resurrection is that we are offered the opportunity to experience new life now, to see life and ourselves and others in a new way.  

In this sense, Resurrection is always contemporary, because we are always in captivity.  Those of us seeking liberation can use the power of Resurrection as a metaphor for helping us to find new life and new vision.  In this time when Trump would be king, it is sometimes hard to feel and to experience the power of Resurrection.  There is a hopeless malaise hanging over us, like an early morning fog that robs us of our ability to see clearly.  Indeed, that is what Trump wants – for us to give up and give in to his move for imperial power.  

In this kind of time, let us recall those first followers of Jesus, who felt the power and vision of Resurrection.  They lived under the oppressive power of imperial Rome, and they were so unimportant that no Roman historian recorded their names or their actions or their histories.  They could have been crushed at any time by Rome – they had very little agency in regard to political power.  When the word first began to spread about the Resurrection, Rome did not tremble or even notice – another little sect with some weird theory.  

    Yet, even Rome would yield to the power of Resurrection.  Several hundred years later, Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of the Empire.  This was not a good development for Christianity, but it did show the lasting power of Resurrection, once it takes hold.  Many Christians were tortured and executed by Rome, but still they kept coming – they still were driven by the power of Resurrection.  It’s sort of like the Freedom Riders on the buses into the South in the early 1960’s.  Even after all the violence and deals and orders to stop the Freedom Rides, they kept coming – no one could stop them.  They were inspired and fired by Resurrection, and they grabbed hold of that vision and kept riding it.

    In John’s version of the Resurrection in John 20, Mary Magdalene comes alone to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his dead body for burial.  The body is gone, however, and she thinks that the body is stolen.  Later in the passage, she sees the risen Jesus standing right in front of her, but she does not recognize him.  She sees him and talks with him, but she does not recognize him, because she is captured by the power of death.  She is not looking for life because her perceptual apparatus belongs to death.  She finally recognizes the risen Jesus when he calls her name:  “Mary.”  Then her eyes are opened, and her heart leaps.  She runs to tell the other disciples: “I have seen the Lord!”  Rome and men still rule over her body, but now she has a new vision of herself and of life.  She is fired up – she has seen the Lord!  Indeed, Mary Magdalene is the primary witness to the Resurrection – she is the only witness mentioned in all four Gospel accounts.

    Her witness now seeks viability in our time, too.  We live in a scary and dangerous time, and for many of us, the great experiment in democracy (flaws and all) now seems in deep peril.  We don’t know what the longing-to-be-king Trumpster will do next, but Resurrection gives us promises about our lives and about life itself.  We are promised that the final word in each of our lives and in all of our lives is not death, but rather life and love.  We are also promised that the Spirit will not fail us, that even in these dismal days, God is moving and shaping possibilities for life and love and justice.  

    Our calling in this season of Resurrection is to acknowledge that like Mary Magdalene, we are captured by the power of death – in these Trumpian days, that acknowledgment is not a far stretch.  Despair has us in its grip, and it is difficult to recognize the work of God that is moving among us.  Like Mary, let us listen for our names being called, and let us hear them and respond as Mary did.  Let us be witnesses for a different view of life, a different understanding of what it means to be a human being.  And, let us join Mary in sharing the stunning news of Resurrection: “We have seen the Lord!”

"LONGING FOR LOVE, BUT BELIEVING IN DEATH"

 “LONGING FOR LOVE, BUT BELIEVING IN DEATH”

On Palm Sunday, 1865 (April 9 that year), General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, and the Civil War, which began in April of 1861, began to come to a close. There was relief and celebration in DC and in the North (and to some in the South), but by Good Friday, that relief would turn to shock and horror when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated – he would die the next day.  It was a stunning Holy Week that year.

The biblical Holy Week begins on a note of triumph and expectation.  Jesus of Nazareth, the great healer and wise teacher, is entering Jerusalem during Passover in a politically charged atmosphere.  His followers celebrate him – they have experienced love and healing and a new vision of what life can be.  They are fired up, and who can blame them?  Can this be the time that Jesus will overthrow Rome and reform the Temple? 

           The Roman governor Pontus Pilate has left his comfort in the villa on the Mediterranean Sea and has paraded into Jerusalem with his imperial army – coming to quell any thoughts of seeking liberation by Jewish folk during the Festival of Passover.  These two leaders of very different parades do not know each other, when Jesus enters Jerusalem on the first day of the week.  Their paths will intersect soon, however, and things have never been the same since their engagement with one another.

       These early days of April seem to justify why T.S. Eliot called April “the cruelest month” – so many assassinations and executions.  Jesus, killed on Good Friday.  Abraham Lincoln, shot on Good Friday and dying the next day.  Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated in Memphis 57 years ago on April 4.  The death that closes out Holy Week seems to abide in all places and in all ages.  The followers of Jesus enter Jerusalem longing for love, believing in love, but finding death.  Jesus executed, Lincoln shot down, MLK shot down, children shot down, women disappeared.  Holy Week begins in excitement and anticipation but ends in death, despair and flight – the world indeed seems dominated by death.

    Holy Week shows us the drama of our lives – we long for love, but we believe in death.  We want to believe in this Jesus of Nazareth, but the world seems so much with us, a world dominated by corrupt and egotistical leaders, a world that believes in the power of violence and death.  Holy Week walks us squarely into the midst of this struggle – no fading away here, no sentimentality allowed.  Holy Week looks squarely at one of the most difficult truths of our lives:  we long for love, but we believe in death.  Holy Week asks us to sit with this uncomfortable truth this week – to think about our visions lost or visions diminished, about our hopes being dashed, to think about our compromises that make us gradually lose hold of our dreams and hopes.  Holy Week asks us to stay with that process in our own lives and in the life of the world.

    This belief in death, this yielding to death is so powerful, and it even enters into the incredible story of God with us.  Holy Week asks us to remember that process, to acknowledge it even now.  This power of death is not the end of the story, but it is a central pivoting point of The Story and of our story.  We won’t be left wailing at the Cross, but we are asked to acknowledge that we are, indeed, there when they give Jesus the death penalty.

"THE RESISTANCE"

 “THE RESISTANCE”

Caroline and I were privileged to be among the 30,000+ people who marched through Atlanta on Saturday and gathered at Liberty Plaza across the street from the Capitol to join in the “Hands Off” protest against the Trumpster tricks and his move to crush history and dissent.  As we got on MARTA at the East Lake station, we were glad to see longtime friends gathering too.  When the MARTA train pulled into the station, it was almost full, burgeoning with protesters going down to the rally.  We saw that repeated at the next stations.  It was reminiscent of our going to the Obama inauguration in 2009.  We got on the Red line at Siver Springs at 5:30 AM, and as we came to various train stops, people were pouring in to go to the inauguration in 20 degree weather.  One big difference, though – at the 2009 gathering, there was excitement and hope and joy.  Yesterday, there was excitement that so many people were showing up, but we were fueled mostly by anger, disgust and determination.

There were many great speakers at the “Hands Off” rally.  Some made the contrast between wanting to tell the Trumpsters to keep their hands off the hard-earned rights that we have, while urging us at the same time to be “hands on” in engaging and resisting the movement to repress, oppress, and suppress that the Trumpster is leading.  As I wrote in an earlier blog about Lenten practices, we are called to engage, to resist, and to work to regain the vision of justice and equity in our culture. If you don’t remember those practices, go back to the March 3rd Blog on “Lent and Trumpism” to review them.

As the speakers wove their stories of anger and determined resistance, one thread stood out to me.  Andrea Young, director of the ACLU of Georgia, spoke of who we should be listening to.  She also added this line:  “And of course I will not be listening to or bowing down to a white man who grew up in South Africa under apartheid.”  And, yes, Elon Musk did grow up in the apartheid regime, and with that background, he is rooted in the white supremacy that he and the Trumpster are trying to restore in its inglorious dimensions.

There was energy, passion, longing, and deep anger in those who marched and rallied and spoke yesterday.  It looks like this was repeated all over the country, with estimates of 5 million people turning throughout the country.  And, we will need that energy and passion to be able to provide resistance to the Trumpster’s move to reinstate white, male supremacy in every corner of the USA.  He has the power, and he is using it as much like a king as we will let him.

It was heartening to see so many people, so many different ages, so many different skin colors, so many different orientations – the “Hands Off” rally was good for that.  As Caroline noted, there were older folks like us who had clearly been marching for a long while, and there middle and high school students and other younger folk who were just starting out their marching career. Caroline remembered that her first march was against the Vietnam War in downtown Atlanta in May, 1970, after the USA had invaded Laos and Cambodia.  My first march was in the fall of 1966, when I marched against the Vietnam War while I was a junior in college.  That next spring I would help to organize a march against Gammons Steakhouse because they would not admit a Black student from Southwestern.  So, think back in your own life – what was your first march for justice?  If you’ve never been on a march, why not?  This, especially, is the time to do it!  We must all find ways to resist this current administration and its anti-democratic work.  It is time to speak up and act up before that too becomes illegal.

"O, Pioneers!"

 “O, PIONEERS!”

I want to conclude this Women’s Herstory Month with a glimpse into the pioneering work of the great Caroline Leach.  Many universities and other groups studied Oakhurst Presbyterian Church when Caroline and I were pastors there.  They came to learn from Oakhurst how to do interracial and community ministry from a church that had almost died in the early 1980’s, after losing 90% of its membership over 15 years.  One of the groups who studied us was Dr. Charles Foster, faculty at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  He and his graduate student Ted Brelsford, studied us for two years, and they published a book on their findings called “We Are Church Together: Cultural Diversity in Congregational Life.”  In that book, they described Caroline this way as they studied the church:

“Caroline, Nibs’s spouse and Oakhurst’s associate pastor, greets us also.  Caroline is striking and 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 feel comfortable.” 

Caroline did bring that “can do” spirit to our ministry together, which started in Norfolk, Virginia in 1975.  Sometimes, I would be Eyeore to her Christopher Robin, to borrow from the Winnie the Pooh stories.  Perhaps she got that from her encounter with all the male systems which sought to tell her “no.”  When she came to Columba Seminary in 1971, she was one of five women students there.  Some of the male students would accost her on campus to read to her from the Bible, especially using the Pauline gospels which seemed to denigrate women.  When she went to seminary, she was not intending to be ordained as a pastor – she was there to become a Christian educator.  Yet, the strong male resistance to her presence convinced her that only by becoming an ordained pastor would she have the power and the strength to resist such pressure and to find ways to thrive as a daughter of God.

That same resistance continued as she neared graduation from seminary – the office of student support told her that they would not refer her or the two other women students to interview with churches who were seeking a pastor.  Was this because they were unfit as a pastors?  No, they were highly qualified pastors.  Their resistance came from their gender – women were not supposed to be pastors in churches.  Leave that to the men, please.  Through her connections, Caroline found a campus ministry position at Georgia Tech, through the gracious invitation of Woody McKay, the senior campus minister there.  The number of women students at Tech was growing, and he had the wisdom to discern that he needed a woman pastor on the staff to take the lead in offering ministry to the women students.

Atlanta Presbytery was not thrilled that Caroline and other women were beginning to hear God’s call to them to become ministers.  Caroline was the second woman to seek ordination in Atlanta Presbytery, and she had a hard time getting to that opportunity.  Though she had grown up in Central Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and had been all over the church in terms of participation and leadership and service, the elders there decided that they could not sponsor her to be a candidate for ministry because they did not believe that God could possibly call women to be pastors.  Although she was deeply hurt by this rejection by her home church, she was not to be denied.  During her seminary years, she worshipped at Central Presbyterian in Atlanta.  She sought help from Reverend Randy Taylor, who was the senior pastor there, and he welcomed her into candidacy for the ministry.

After jumping through many hoops and leaping (sometimes crawling) over many obstacles, she was finally approved for ordination to the ministry by Atlanta Presbytery.  In June, 1973, she was ordained as a pastor, holding the ceremony at Georgia Tech.  She was the 21st woman ordained as a pastor in the former Southern Presbyterian Church. If you haven’t noted already, she is the senior pastor in our family by two years.

In many ways, Caroline and a few other women helped to blow open the locked and shut doors, which sought to bar women from entering ministry.  She had to come through many dangers, toils and snares in order to make it into ordained ministry as a pastor, and to help pave the way for future women who heard God calling their names.  I give thanks for Caroline’s gifts to me and to so many others in this pioneering spirit and in her determined (and yet buoyant and excited) ministry.

"AN ORDINARY PERSON FROM SHILOH METHODIST CHURCH"

 “AN ORDINARY PERSON FROM SHILOH METHODIST CHURCH” 

(This is an excerpt from Nibs’ article in the Mar/Apr, 2024 issue of Hospitality)

In 2021 Joan Browning gave a speech in West Virginia which gave a capsule of her history and her times:

“Sixty years ago, we Freedom Riders challenged a reluctant United States federal government to enforce sacrificially obtained Supreme Court rulings and Interstate Commerce Commission orders.  White supremacist state governments, that were elected by refusing the right to vote to African American citizens, said of those federal rulings: “You and what army will make us obey?”  Four hundred and thirty-six of us in 62 small groups enlisted in that army.  As historian Raymond Arsenault wrote, Freedom Riders “appeared to court martyrdom with a reckless regard for personal safety or civic order.  None of the obstacles placed in their path – not widespread censure, not political and financial pressure, not arrest and imprisonment, not even the threat of death – seemed to weaken their commitment to nonviolent struggle.”

Joan Browning was one of the foot soldiers in that army, beginning when she was 18.  How did she come to do this?   Was she a fire-breathing Northerner, come down to rescue the Black folk of the South?   No, she was a child of the South, born in 1942 to a farming family in Wheeler County, Georgia.  Her mother sewed the clothes that her seven siblings and Joan wore from flour and chicken-feed sacks.  When she was 8, her family became the first in the neighborhood to get electricity, first to get a telephone.  She grew up in the die-hard white supremacy of her time – neo-slavery governor Eugene Talmadge’s farm was only 4 miles away.  

  She was raised as a Christian, and she and her family were guided by the Micah 6 prophecy:  “do justice, to love kindness, and  walk humbly with your God.”  She was raised in her daddy’s Shiloh Methodist Church.  The launching of Sputnik in 1957 had stirred her to want to become a scientist/engineer to help the USA catch up in the space race.  She longed to go to Georgia Tech, but in 1958 it did not accept women (or Black people).  She ended up going to Georgia State College for Women (GSCW) in Milledgeville in the summer of 1958 – it is now Georgia State College and University.  

She liked the academics of college, but she felt out of place in Milledgeville, missing her family, her church, and the community in which she grew up.  Browning was a dedicated churchperson, and she attended the whites-only Milledgeville Methodist Church.  She found that it was too large and cold, and she missed her rural, family church.  She also resented that as a young white Southern lady in training, she had to wear the girdle, garter belt and stockings and hats and gloves mandated for church attendance.  She began seeking retreats for herself and found a spot near campus where she could read and meditate.  It was in close proximity to Wesley Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and she shared the retreat space with eleven year old Cassandra Mency, who introduced Joan to her father, Reverend T. Leander Mency.  They began having conversations, and soon Reverend Mency invited her to worship at his church.  In the autumn of 1960, she began attending his church with another white friend Faye Powell.  Here she found what she had desperately been seeking:  vibrant worship, a sense of community, and a genuine welcoming place. 

Unknowingly, however, she had crossed the white dividing line that had a taboo against white people and Black people worshipping together.  The president of GSCW called her into his office – his name was Dr. Robert E. Lee – and he warned her strongly against going to the AME church, indicating that 1960 was not yet the time to cross such a racial barrier.  He told her that her continued attendance there would likely result in her being expelled from the college and harm to the Mency family, possibly even the burning of Wesley Chapel A.M.E. Church.  Browning was flabbergasted – what was her offense?  Dr. Lee indicated that such racial boundaries could not be crossed, and he ordered her and Faye to cease attending the Black church.

Rather than submitting, she upped her game.  She began attending reconciliation conferences at Paine College, and while she was there, she participated in sit-ins in Augusta.  Word got back to GSCW, and she was forced to withdraw from the college or be expelled.  She enrolled part-time at Georgia State College of Business Administration (now Georgia State University), and she began working at Emory University.  While in Atlanta, she discovered the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and joined with them. Later that year, Jim Forman asked her to sign up for the Freedom Rides – this one from Atlanta to Albany.  She agreed to do it. 

In December 1961, she boarded the train in Atlanta with the integrated Freedom Riders group, and when they arrived in Albany, there were police officers waiting for them, and for the first time in her life, Joan Browning would spend time in jail, the only white woman arrested in the Albany Freedom Ride.   She was released after 24 hours, then jailed two days later for five long days.  She went to a rally at Mr. Zion Baptist Church, and she looked around in awe – the Black sanctuary was filled to overflowing.  She was asked to speak, and she noted how lonely she had been in jail but how good it was: “It’s a funny, mixed up feeling to hate being in a dirty place---but to be glad you’re there for a good reason.  We hope that you’ll keep it going.”

The sit-ins and the Freedom Rides were part of the body of civil rights work that Joan Browning developed.  She lived in Atlanta for a while, then the north Georgia mountains, then to the mountains of West Virginia, where she now lives in a doublewide mobile home on a hillside.  Ever the warrior and witness, she had these words to say in early 2023 on an op-ed piece for the Charleston Mail-Gazette:

“Now, I speak as an ordinary citizen and challenge students and others who consider themselves ordinary to see themselves as living lives of purpose, of grabbing what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described as the “moral arc of the universe” and help bend it more toward justice.  I try to convey to citizens and students alike that even those who consider themselves as “ordinary” citizens can make a difference. My work has been recognized and honored with a long list of awards and appointments.

But now, all that many others and I are doing — and have done — is in danger of being erased as legislatures around the country, including in West Virginia, try to stifle discussion of those parts of America’s past.  For the first time in those 3 1/2 decades of speaking about the Freedom Rides, I have had two presentations cancelled because leaders in those states had issued an edict forbidding the discussion of race, diversity, equality or inclusion.

It seems that the West Virginia Legislature, through the proposed Anti-Racism Act of 2023 and other legislation, also intends to forbid me to speak about being an ordinary person who, by going on a Freedom Ride, helped take down those illegal, discriminatory signs and also inspire other ordinary citizens to help make this a better place for all of us.”

West Virginia did not pass the Anti-Racism Act (though it has returned in 2025), and witnesses like Joan Browning helped to derail it.  Browning’s life and witness remind us that we are all called out of our “ordinariness” to be extraordinary witnesses.  Let us find our places in this great cloud of witnesses.  

"DADDY'S HOUSE"

“DADDY’S HOUSE”

Several weeks ago when I preached at Antioch AME Church in Stone Mountain (via Reverend Vandy Simmons), I was privileged to meet many great people.  One of them was a Black woman named Mildred J. Mills, who bought a copy of my book “She Made a Way.”  She also gave me a copy of her book “Daddy’s House: A Daughter’s Memoir of Setbacks, Triumphs and Rising Above Her Roots.”  She indicated that our backgrounds were very similar. 

I read “Daddy’s House,” and it is a remarkable story.  Ms. Mills was one of seventeen children born to her parents in rural Alabama, in the early 1950’s. She describes it this way in the beginning of her book: “I was the third of Abraham and Mildred Billups’s seventeen children, born in Wetumpka, Alabama – a small, dusty community in the sticks of Elmore County.  Our white cinderblock house sat at the dead end of a red dirt road that ran straight through the woods at the butt end of the earth.”

Her book is the story of her wrestling with the demons in her life – racism, sexism, poverty, and a domineering and violent father.  She made the decision early on to find a way to get out of the oppression of rural Alabama during neo-slavery days, and the beginning of her book is her wavering at the front of her house as an 18 year old, right before she is to make the trip north to a college in Ohio.  She knows that she stands at the precipice of a monumental decision, and she decides to go.  Like the journey of Odysseus, she encounters many twists and turns, and she encounters her own share of monsters, as did the mythical traveler.  

Born in 1951, she grew up in a rural and racist and neo-slavery South.  One unusual aspect of her life is that though her family was poor, her parents owned the land on which they lived.  That rootedness gave her a sense of place and stability that many Black families did not have in the South.  The menacing white presence was always there, but her daily life was lived in the necessity of producing crops that her family could use to make money to live on. 

She and her siblings did the many chores on the farm that made it a viable place, especially picking cotton.  As one of the older sisters, she helped to raise her younger siblings, and they all lived in fear of her volatile father, who dominated her mother and who used the rod whenever he thought that it was necessary – and he seemed to think that it was necessary a lot.  That same dominating spirit, however, made him a formidable force who white people left alone.  In an earlier era, he might have been targeted for lynching, but like Ida B. Wells, his persona was so fierce that he exuded the mantra: “if you come for me, I’m taking as many of you with me as I can.”

     Ms. Mills encountered many obstacles on her journey, as she struggled to free herself from some of the cement blocks that sought to weigh both her body and her spirit down.  She was used and abused, but through it all, she found a way to make a way out of no way.  Throughout her fine book, she weaves the complexities of her life and her journey into an epic tale.  As I told her when we talked about her book, “I can’t believe that you made it out.  What an iron resolve you had.”

Ms. Mills recently interviewed me on her podcast “My Cotton Patch Moment,” and it will air on March 18.  Here is the link to it:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-cotton-patch-moment/id1676455331

During the interview, she noted that I was the first white person who she had ever encountered who would admit that they had racism in them.  We talked about how important it was to people classified as “white” to be able to deny the existence of racism, especially racism in each of us as individuals.  As my long-time friend David Billings put it in his fine book, we are in “deep denial.”

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Ms. Mills, in reading her book, and in our conversation in the podcast.  I look forward to getting to know her better and to learning from her.  In the meantime, find her fine book “Daddy’s House, and get ready for an intriguing (and harrowing) story.