Body Difference, Discrimination, a Seminary's Founding, and the Gospel

Today, March 16, the Moral Monday Rally convened between the Capitol and the Legislative Building in downtown Raleigh.  In the season of Pentecost, Rev. Barber said, "This is our political Pentecost."  People representing various communities gathered to say with one voice that discrimination against the smallest, least understood minorities is still wrong.  It's not clear whether the Legislators or Governor were among those with ears to hear in their own language.  House Bill #2 targets transgender people whose lives are often endangered by their simple need to use a restroom.  The Charlotte City Council, in the same pattern as Columbia and Charleston and Myrtle Beach, SC, sought to make life safer and fairer for them, but HB2 reversed that local ordinance.

There is much confusion and misinformation on this legislation.  Some of the confusion comes from the misrepresentation of the bill as primarily about bathrooms.  It is much farther reaching than that, affecting minimum wages and access to courts for those enduring discrimination.  It's easy to spread misinformation on a subject that most people know very little about and even fewer understand.  To be transgender is a complicated and often socially rejected existence that people would not choose on a whim.  Complex biological causes shape the lives of each of us from the earliest stages of gestation, and the timing and presence or absence of certain developmental processes can lead to a great variety of sexual variation and differences in brains and bodies.  But the implication that sexual predators are facilitated by protecting transgender persons, or that transgender persons should be classified as sexual predators, has no basis in fact.

At least one of my friends and fellow ministers brings to the conversation a deep concern for young women and girls, many of whom she has met in juvenile detention centers, whose lives have been marked by sexual and physical abuse from men, often men who should have been their protectors as family or friends.  She speaks of their fear of being in a private, vulnerable place such as a bathroom, when men might also be present.  She is not making this up, and we know that women, especially young women and girls, are also among the most victimized in our society.  These previously harmed women deserve friendship, love, and protection, not further harm.

Yet I do not believe that HB2, by preventing laws like the Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance, is making the world safer for girls and young women.  The statistics that we already know about rape and sexual abuse of women have come about before and without relevance to laws preventing discrimination against transgender persons.  Moreover, transgender women forced to use men's restrooms are among the most likely victims of sexual violence and assault.  The Charlotte ordinance aims to add protections for a vulnerable group.  Male sexual predators hoping to find victims by dressing as women to enter a women's bathroom will do so whether or not there is a law to protect transgender persons.  HB2 does not make life safer for any women, whether transgender or not.

So I was glad to have the opportunity on April 25 to be one of the parade of speakers against HB2 at the Moral Monday Rally.  I was one of about five clergy of various faiths--Muslim, Jewish, and Christian--to speak out for repeal of HB2.  There between the political buildings and the museums, we gathered to do our civic and moral duty to speak on behalf of those who face injustice at the hands of lawmakers, state power, and financial power.  Upholding the heritage of my institutional home, the oldest historically black college in the South, the oldest historically black theological school in the South, Shaw University Divinity School, I framed my remarks to faithfully represent that heritage.

Some of you may know from experience that public speaking to call public servants to accountability requires a certain kind of discipline.  I was told to keep my remarks to two minutes.  As one who often preaches more in the range of 45 to 50 minutes, I have had to learn to also develop the two, three, or four minute address when at public events.  My first draft ran about 2:55 as I practiced it, and that was without introducing myself and my institution, which adds another 15 to 20 seconds.  So I made some cuts and got it down to about 1:50 or so.  The actual delivery, with my nervousness, was a bit slower, and ran 2:40 or so.  I still think I gave the shortest speech of the day.

Below, I will type out the full draft of my remarks, which includes more than I actually said on that day.  Then I will include the video clip of my speech, with the version that was edited down to keep it shorter.  I know this is a controversial topic.  As one minister said before I spoke, the difference of convictions is not between a faith position and a non-faith position.  The difference is between more than one faith position, between more than one non-faith position.  Thus, within the faith conversation, we must seek the most compelling, authoritative, and convincing arguments for what we bear witness to as truth.  I pray that you will find reason to consider these remarks I make as you agree or disagree with my commitment to repealing HB2.

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In 1865, Henry Martin Tupper, the founder of Shaw University, began offering the first Bible classes of that institution to formerly enslaved students.  They met in a hotel located right here where the North Carolina Museum of History now stands.  Tupper understood that society must not systematically shut out some of its members from education, a livelihood, or the basic goods of life because their bodies are different.  He was following in the tradition of prophetic faith passed on by Jesus, a poor, marginalized, Jewish rabbi under the domination of Rome. 

Shaw’s great scholar Albert W. Pegues, leader of the Theological Department which would become Shaw University Divinity School, himself said that the only path for North Carolinians to take out of their oppressive past must “put in practice principles of right and justice as taught in the Bible.”

       When Jesus stood up in the synagogue to announce his plans for ministry, he began by challenging the power structures that would count out some people as unworthy.  First he named the poor, who with all their struggles to live needed some good news.  He named those who had become wage slaves in a harsh economy.  He named prisoners warehoused in jails. 

But he also named those marginalized, ignored, cast aside, and thrown away because of differences in their bodies.  On that day it was the blind.  On other days he met the lame, the deaf, the chronically ill, people of different ethnicity, like Samaritans, even eunuchs who were people with genital differences. He met these people every day, sitting by the side of the road, placed downtown in a plaza with a pool of water, forced to live outside of town as unclean, shunned to their own place away from respectable society.

Too often, even the most holy-acting religious people despised and rejected others for their differences.  They even tried to boost their power by using labels to inspire fear, like “sinners.”  They classified those people whose bodies were different by claiming their bodies to be signs of God’s punishment. 

But the truth of God’s love for all creation is that in all our differences, we still come from one blood, one divinely beloved humanity.  HB2 plays on fears and hate of differences to divide us, to hurt us, to tempt us to turn away from the truth at the core of our faith.  But faculty and students of the fledgling Shaw University did not quit when faced with divisive hate, threats, bullets, and all manner of efforts to make them give up.  We still are not going to give up.  Repeal this unjust law!

Cooper Should Have Retried the Officer Who Killed Jonathan Ferrell

NC Attorney General Roy Cooper says that the killing of Jonathan Ferrell by Charlotte police officer Randall Kerrick fits the legal description of manslaughter.  He says the killing was illegal because the officer clearly went against department policy.  Even so, he believes he and his prosecutors are right not to retry the case after the first trial ended in a hung jury.

Cooper justifies his position by saying that the prosecutors made the best case possible for conviction.  He says that the eight of twelve votes for acquittal from the jury is a strong indication that a retrial, lacking any powerful new evidence, would fail again.  He says the difficulty of getting an indictment of Kerrick in the first place, when there was no case made by the defense, is another reason to believe that getting a conviction is highly unlikely.

Ministers from Charlotte, NC, came to Raleigh to ask Cooper to change his mind in this case.  They made quite compelling arguments in favor of pursuing a retrial.

1.  The duty of a prosecutor is to pursue a verdict when a crime has been committed.  Cooper said that he and his prosecutorial staff agree on this: "the elements of the crime of voluntary manslaughter were met by the facts and the law in this case."  A grand jury believed they saw enough evidence to call for a trial to determine whether the officer committed a crime.  It is not the duty of the prosecutor to predict in advance whether a case can win, nor to choose not to prosecute some crimes, especially crimes as serious as voluntary manslaughter.  It is an abdication of duty to decide now that a previous hung jury means that there cannot ever be a conviction.  Still that is what the AG Office's statement said: “Meeting the standard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt could not be achieved.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article32625516.html#storylink=cpy

2.  A hung jury has not spoken.  It has, for all intents and purposes, remained silent.  A mistrial is not a trial.  A jury that gives no verdict is a discussion group.  In the words of Rev. William Barber, II, "A hung jury is not a spoken jury."  Yet AG Cooper said, "We need to listen to what the jury said."  They did not say anything, or perhaps what they did say was gibberish.  They have not spoken anything that the public can understand.  They have thrown up their hands and passed the decision on to others.

3.  Pursuing justice is not something to give up on.  Even granting the pessimism expressed by Cooper concerning a retrial, the clergy delegation pointed out that the struggle for justice requires going against the odds.  Particularly in communities of people who have historically been denied justice, one cannot always depend on winning every battle.  Sometimes, the battle lasts for decades, and many court cases fail along the way before a powerful precedent emerges to change the direction of case law.  From Dred Scott to the Brown v Board of Education case, there was slow, not always steady, progress to eliminate barriers to equality for African Americans.  The history of lynchings has its corresponding history of failed prosecutions against those who murdered innocent people for the crime of being black.  That history is still being told in the twenty-first century in excessive force and killing at the hands of police.  Fearing the prosecution's case may lose is not reason enough to give up on prosecuting.

4.  It seems that future similar cases need only aim for a hung jury to end prosecution.  Cooper cites the sentiment of jurors who said that any future group of twelve jurors will be unable to arrive at a verdict.  How could they know that?  This particular issue raises one of the most dangerous implications of this case.  It seems to say that in criminal jury trials, in particular cases concerning excessive use of force by the police, a defense attorney can aim for a hung jury.  Selecting jurors whom they expect will disagree, presenting a case that will encourage prejudicial differences of opinion, or using whatever sorts of tactics they can imagine that will bring a hung jury would seem to be enough to avoid a conviction, since a hung jury seems to be enough reason to give up on prosecution.

Above I wrote that the hung jury has not said anything that the public can understand.  Perhaps I need to qualify that statement.  Dr Rodney Sadler has commented that the public may very clearly understand what the official conversation is leaving out.  The ongoing conditions of living in a society still shaped by its history of slavocracy, of white supremacy, of Jim Crow, and of de facto apartheid by neighborhood and congregation, means that a jury is selected from a population of people who do not understand one another and can only with great difficulty see things from one another's point of view.  

Divisions along lines at the intersections of race, ethnicity, and class play an enormous role in how criminal justice is meted out.  When a police officer looks at a black person, all kinds of cultural assumptions play a role in what that officer perceives to be happening, and the assumptions are demonstrably very different than when the person looked upon is white.  The same can be said about jurors.  As long as the claim, "I feared for my life," remains a carte blanche for deadly force against a suspect, a society that automatically fears black men will continue to allow police to kill them with impunity.  The era of lynchings has not come to an end.  We are now observing its continuation in the streets of New York City, Ferguson, Waller County, Baltimore, and Charlotte.

• What are the duties of public officials in the criminal justice system?  
• What constitutes completing the process of seeking justice in a criminal prosecution?  
• What role do citizens have in demanding public responsibility to carry out justice?  
• What can and should churches and ministers do to promote the carrying out of justice in their communities? 

I've already addressed the first three questions:  public officials must pursue justice to arrive at verdicts in criminal cases; a hung jury is not a "spoken" jury; fighting on against the odds is the proper social orientation toward justice.

I'll offer a couple of brief remarks on the last question.  Churches follow Jesus in specific places and times.  Their discernment of how to live in these contexts is shaped by the interplay between their formation in the incarnational ministry given by Jesus.  Being among the people, pursuing the good of the people and the community in which they live--the form this takes will vary in time and space.  In a time of persistent and far too frequent use of excessive force by police, which destroys lives, undermines hope and love, and cuts short faith, churches and ministers may take a representative position and provide advocacy for reorienting structures and systems toward justice.  This sort of intervention is what the clergy speaking to AG Cooper have been doing in many neighborhoods of Charlotte.

A second response to the last question has to do with the racial separation of church people.  Church people's responsibility to one another and to God is clear in the gospels.  Jesus taught his followers and his opponents that the primary path of righteousness comes through loving God and loving one another.  Gustavo Gutierrez calls this process "conversion to the neighbor."  A Christian has to quit being caught up in his or her own way of seeing things and learn to see life as the neighbor sees it.  A Christian must love the good of the neighbor, and not only as an afterthought.  That means the rich need to learn to see what the poor see in the world.  Whites need to learn to see what blacks see in the world.  There is a place for reciprocity here, but most important is to recognize that the "normal" way of things is shaped by the view of those in power.  The crucial step is for majorities and for the powerful to open their eyes and hearts to those who have been held down or pushed to the margins.  This conversion to the neighbor should follow the path of Rev Barber's constant theme that in North Carolina we are dealing with a "heart problem."  Churches ought to be on the leading edge of this process of knowing one another and loving one another across the barriers that keep people apart and keep those who benefit from division on a path of injustice.

Along with incarnational representation and with conversion to the neighbor, the church must uphold its calling to a prophetic ministry.  In the tradition of Amos, Isaiah, and Micah of old, the church must be the bearer of truth to those who hold power, especially when they fail to live up to their calling to seek the good of the people, to protect the widow, orphan, and marginalized, to promote peace and justice, and to build beloved community.  Part of fixing the heart problem is what Rev Barber has called being the "defibrillator."  It's an aggressive intervention to save a life that could be lost.  A prophetic word must challenge the ways of those who have become misleaders, for their own good and for the whole body which suffers from their failure.  Who else will speak if the church does not?  God will not be without a witness, but God is calling for the church to be that witness to righteousness, to justice, to the good that God intends for this world.  It is also a witness against greed, against domination, against violence, against injustice, against the evil that corrupts social systems and those who lead them.  There is no doubt that this group of Charlotte clergy intends to continue down this road of witness to the justice and blessing God intends for creation.

Violence Out of Control

As I prepared to relocate back to Durham this summer, the news about policing and its impact on minorities was not good.  I had read or heard too many stories of young adults shot in police custody or by police, both in Durham and around the state of North Carolina.  There is no replacing the life of young people killed by gun violence, and when it happens under questionable circumstances as part of policing, the pain is intensified.  I took some consolation knowing that many of my fellow church people and ministers had played a leading role in calling for an audit of policing practices in Durham.  The City Manager's report is a sign that some things may get better.  Yet we wait to see if there will be more than paper and lip service.

Durham's situation is not good, and it is a microcosm of a national trend toward militarized, threatening, violence-prone policing.  Conscientious citizens can't help but give attention to cases across the land in which unarmed, non-threatening young men and women have been quickly and summarily shot by police.  Targeting neighborhoods becomes a way to justify racial profiling, and the cycle of harassment, imprisonment, and violent death spirals out of control.

Culturally fostered fear and distrust of people who don't look like oneself is all too common.  Christians ought to know that this sort of prejudice is sinful.  As an act of Christian discipleship, I must lend my voice and my feet to the outcry for change.  Almost all police officers understand this problem and respect and value the lives of citizens.  But we cannot allow police departments to shield and protect officers who either out of fear or anger do not make every effort to protect the lives of fellow human beings.  Violence cannot be the first option in policing, and we pray that building community relationships and accountability can make it the rarest of occurrences.

What Are We Waiting For? Part 2

Here is the second part of the sermon, continued from the previous post.

What Are We Waiting For?
Part 2

Romans 8:12-25

Paul wrote in verse 19 that all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. He goes on to say that creation groans in labor pains for redemption, for the renewal of creation, the new creation that God has already set in motion in the redeeming work of Jesus. All of creation groans. We try to make our way in life by using fossil fuels, but the system of manufacturing and consumption spins out of control until the world’s climate starts to be changed, pollution affects our air and waterways, and finally competition over limited supplies of fuel drives gasoline prices higher and higher. Creation groans in labor pains for redemption.

The two young men long for a world in which people treat one another well; they long for it without hope that it can really happen. The people across the Middle East and Africa long for rulers who will not sacrifice the lives of the people of the land in order to hold on to their power. They long for the powerful nations of the world to stop playing power games over their resources and lives. All creation groans for the children of God to be revealed. The poor people of this country long for their leaders to invest in people’s health and lives rather than more and more weapons. Creation is groaning all around us. The children of the world long for the opportunity to eat, learn, be healthy, and grow up to have families and homes, rather than being forced to work in sweatshops, to wander as refugees, or to be kidnapped to become child soldiers or part of the modern slave trade. All creation groans, longing for redemption.

Two Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to visit a former Duke Divinity student who is a pastor at a small town on the north side of Burlington, Vermont. Driving down through Vermont, along Lake Champlain and across the three large islands in the northern part of the lake, I had the privilege of seeing another piece of the beauty of God’s creation. This week in Kentucky a group of professors I was meeting with hiked up into the mountains to see a natural stone arch formed by the power of waters which once flowed where now there is a deep gorge and a thick forest. We don’t have to look very far beyond our parking lot at Mt. Level to see the great variety and complexity of the vegetation, animals, and landscape that make up the earth on which we are blessed to live.

Maybe if I could just step outside, get out of the rat race, and look at the beautiful countryside, I might be able to convince myself that things are just fine in the world and that nothing remains to be redeemed. But even in the midst of this beauty, I suspect you could tell me why what seems to be beautiful and complete falls short of perfection. Divisions among people because of skin color, social status, and economic opportunities no doubt affect the lives of people in Vermont just as they do in North Carolina. Economic and political decisions made in Washington, D. C., Beijing, Moscow, London, New Delhi, Jerusalem, and Teheran play a role in how many refugees are compelled to seek asylum or a new start. Offshore outsourcing of industry has turned the economy of places like North Carolina, Kentucky, and Vermont upside down, as factories close and jobs go away. Creation groans for our redemption.

Yes, all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. Who are these children of God? What will we see in their revealing? What are we waiting for? First we should note that they are joint-heirs with Christ. They have been adopted through a new birth into the very family of God. They are God’s children. Previously they were orphans, living without love or hope, with no purpose or meaning, nothing in which to place their faith. But having been adopted, now they are heirs of all that God has given in creation. They are a new race of God’s children, acknowledging with Paul in Athens that God has made all nations of people of one blood. They are joined to Christ as the beloved of God, and they are joined to Christ in the mission of God’s love. They have received the Spirit of God that sets them free.

Why is the gift of the Spirit a gift of freedom? Having been joined to Christ and the Spirit, the children of God can set aside their fears of what the powers of the world might do to them. They can give up their fears of people who are different from them. They are free to live and love with the kind of self-giving commitment Jesus had. They can give up their own privileges for the sake of others as Jesus did. With their lives joined to Christ and the Spirit, nothing can destroy them. They can even risk their livelihood and their lives, knowing that God will be with them in life or in death. The whole of creation awaits the revealing of the children of God, a people who like Jesus are willing to suffer if they must to see God’s demands for justice carried out. They know that the blessings they receive from God are not for hoarding but for sharing. I think I would like to know that kind of person. I’d really like to have that kind of person live in my neighborhood. I’d be eager to meet a group of people who lived that way.

I hate to say it, but when I read about church people, I don’t always see people like this. When I talk to church people, I don’t always hear about the risks they are taking for the poor and marginalized, the beloved of Christ. Too often, so much attention and effort goes into managing the organization that the church forgets about being God’s plan to display the character and nature of God in the world. We may be the only image of Jesus that people ever see, so we don’t want to be out of focus and blurry.

Paul teaches us in Romans and elsewhere that the community of people who live God’s way are the very definition of the glory of God. He says that as we grow in grace, as we grow in our Christian lives, as we grow as God’s people, we will be transformed from one degree of glory to another. In this way, it will be as if we see the glory of God in a mirror. Did you get that? The glory of God is something Paul says we should see in the mirror, not because God is satisfied with us to stay stuck where we were on the day of our baptism, but because God will walk this road of life with us to change us to be more and more in the image of the true humanity revealed in Jesus Christ.

Jesus, our joint-heir, is the measure and standard of our humanity. He is the firstborn of many brothers and sisters who bear a family resemblance. Joined to him in baptism, we commit ourselves to become like him in his humility, his generosity, his faithfulness, his gentleness, his peacefulness, his patience, his kindness, his meekness, his hunger for justice, his purity of heart. People who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God are the very purpose God had for creation, the true image of God in humanity, the revealing of the glory of God. This is why all creation groans, longing for the glory of God to be revealed in the children of God.

So on the day of your baptism, you probably could not see all that God intends for you to be. Even years later, we see our failures and our shortcomings. We have far to go to take hold of that for which God has taken hold of us. So we press on toward the high calling. We run with perseverance the race set before us because of the glory that is being revealed to us and in us. We hope in Christ, for Christ is the hope of glory. With patience, we await that for which we have hoped, a creation which measures up to the goodness, beauty, and justice God has intended from before the foundation of the world.

Today our fair state of North Carolina is participating in a ritual of democratic governance through primary elections. I have been especially caught up in this election season for several reasons.

First, my church is part of a community organizing group called Durham CAN, and we are engaged with mostly local issues relating to poverty, youth, health, and other matters of quality of life in Durham. We held one of our most successful Delegate's Assemblies this past Sunday at the site of one of our newest member congregations, First Presbyterian Church. Our organizations showed up in strength, more candidates than we had expected showed up to interact with us, and the agenda went off as planned. We found candidates very eager to support our proposals concerning assistance to the elderly and disabled, job training for ex-offenders, and health department disease tracking.

We got a good report from Duke University that they have extended their policy of paying a livable wage to their own employees, extended to certain restaurant vendor workers a year ago a year ago, to include workers at 100% of vendors who do business with the university, and that by November all vendors will also offer health benefits comparable to the University's health benefits for workers. Duke is to be commended for its commitment to its workers. Durham CAN can claim some credit for making the livable wage a key issue of discussion in Durham. Before Duke made this policy official, already Durham CAN had helped to bring about its adoption by Durham County Government, Durham City Government, and Durham Public Schools.

At the assembly, I had my moment in the sun as I spoke about Durham CAN's relationships with similar groups: Charlotte HELP, Winston-Salem CHANGE, Orange County Organizing Committee, and North Carolina Latino Coalition. We operate together under the name North Carolina United Power. Our work together on issues affecting all our communities gives us reason to need relationships with the Governor, Lt. Governor, other statewide officials, and representatives in the NC Legislature. In the past we have also worked with member of the US Congress.

At this assembly, two candidates for Governor and two for Lt. Governor came at our invitation to publicly agree to meet with us and to make their case for why we should vote for them. My job was to ask them a question about agreeing to a future meeting and to tell them how long they would be allowed to speak. For a few minutes, I was able to tell these statewide officials where to stand and when to talk. It was a heady feeling, like being "King for a Day." The TV coverage, for some reason, was more interested in what the candidates had to say than in my speech or instructions, but you can see me for less than a second, standing in the elevated pulpit to the left of the screen, in a black suit.

Second, I have been very interested in this primary election because of the candidacy of Barack Obama. He has been a community organizer in the past, doing work similar to the work we do in Durham CAN. The way of organizing his campaign has demonstrated this experience, working to bring together everyday people to have their say. Moreover, his connection with Trinity United Church of Christ, a church with a strong record of community service and transformation, has piqued my interest. I've been writing here about Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright in recent weeks. Not all of the campaigning and campaign coverage has treated the racial politics of the U. S. with honesty and integrity, and I would hope that more people would be willing to put a mature conversation about race on the table, as Sen. Obama has said well in his Philadelphia address. So today I was pleased to have the opportunity to cast a vote for Sen. Obama in my precinct.

I have been accused for several rounds of recent elections of "wasting" my vote for president. Overall, I see little difference between the Republicats and the Demicans. Neither is committed to the ends and means of a politics that would pay attention to the convictions I hold dear. I have voted for Ross Perot (for a change), Jimmy Carter (a write-in on the basis of his life of service), and such. But I might be able to vote for one of the parties this Fall, if some of the commitments to health care, better international relations, a restructured economy, and grassroots participation continue to be on the agenda. Not only Obama has offered some of these good ideas. We'll see what today brings, and what the campaigns and ballots offer in November.