Defiant Imaginations, Part 1: Thoughts on Malcolm, Ruby, and Louis

Absorbing and responding to the Ava DuVernay film event, When They See Us, will take some time and more than one post here.  As I thought through what I might want to write, I found myself thinking back over some previous learning that seems to be relevant to what I have seen in this film.  So this first post goes back over a series of insights initially spurred by a textbook I used in the Shaw University undergraduate course, Foundations of Knowledge and Ethics.  It was an introduction offered to first-year students on the European and African American traditions of philosophical and religious ethics.  One of the thematic claims of the book has become an important part of my understanding of how persons and communities must respond to systems of injustice, and it continues to stir my moral imagination as years go by.

Robert Franklin's book Liberating Visions examines the lives and words of four important African American leaders who offer powerful moral visions for humanity.  He assigns each one a thematic adjective for the kind of life a person should live:  Booker T. Washington, the adaptive person; W. E. B. DuBois, the strenuous person; Martin Luther King, Jr., the integrative person; and Malcolm X, the defiant person.  Analyzing their views in light of character ethics, Franklin helps the reader see a social vision of the virtuous life, human fulfillment, and the good society through their eyes.  All are powerful social insights worth examining, but Franklin's interpretation of Malcolm X is the one that the music of  When They See Us has brought to the forefront of my thinking.

In theological studies, the term "prophetic imagination" has become a popular term.  Walter Brueggemann writes in The Prophetic Imagination that the tradition of prophetic ministry from Moses to Jeremiah to Jesus engages God's people in dismantling oppression and reconstructing a world built on justice in loving communities.  J. Deotis Roberts plays on the popular Protestant and Baptist theme of the "priesthood of all believers" in his ecclesiological book The Prophethood of Black Believers to emphasize how the black churches have contributed to a richer understanding of the task of the church than mere comfort and religious observance, extending into challenging injustice and working for the common good.  This prophetic calling finds a particular expression in Franklin's use of "defiant" to describe the imagination.  Defiance is a crucial element and a helpful descriptor of certain ways that the prophetic calling may find expression and embodiment.

Over twenty years ago, I was invited to participate in a conference on moral education sponsored by  Shaw's Program in Ethics and Values and Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics.  I had anticipated following a keynote address by Robert Coles--no small task.  I was doing some research into his work in preparation, and it led me to reflect further on Franklin's interpretation of Malcolm. Eventually I presented my paper under the title "Political Realism and the Defiant Imagination." 

Realism is that school of thought in politics and theology which tends to fall back on the balance of powers mode of reasoning.  Keeping all the existing powers in a condition of balance or detente--not at one another's throats, but also not stirring much change toward better justice--is considered the best one can do in the real world.  Hence, realism offers little beyond incremental change for those who suffer under the crushing weight of oppression.  The very idea that someone might challenge the existing powers is considered both ludicrous and dangerous by the realist.  As Franklin realized, Malcolm ultimately did not let his imagination be captured by political realism.

Malcolm had been a budding, intelligent, and hopeful child, doing well in school until his early adolescent years.  Despite his giftedness, one of the teachers he had respected and trusted most advised him that he should not have ambitions to be a lawyer, to take up a profession of intellect and prestige.  He should be realistic and aim to take up a trade, a solid way to make money that would not require him to transgress into the realms of power and status in which he would not be welcome.

The story of Malcolm's life which follows that period shows his dissolution from the prior ambition to achieve into a life that accommodates itself to the world's worst expectations of him.  The white world, the world of powerful people, would expect Malcolm not to amount to much.  They would look at him and see something dangerous, something damaged, something likely to be trouble, and not someone.  They would not see him.  They would see a phantasm, a stereotype, an inevitability.  To some extent, one can look at his life and conclude that Malcolm walked down a path that fulfilled what the world saw in him.  They remade him in their image of his destiny.

Franklin recognizes, however, that Malcolm does not ultimately remain what society had expected him to be.  After being imprisoned for breaking and entering and larceny, Malcolm's original intellectual curiosity and drive began to resurface, largely because of the nurturing friendship of members of the Nation of Islam.  Malcolm reports that he began to copy the dictionary, line by line, page by page, to improve his reading and facility of the English language.  He began to read extensively in history, philosophy, and political thought.  He was instructed in the teachings of the Nation of Islam and trained in their discipline of a life in submission to Allah.  He saw that to accomplish greater things, he had to set aside impulsiveness and raging emotion.  He learned that the limits that had been placed on his life were artificial and externally imposed.  He learned to defy the expectations of society and aim for something greater and more in tune with his true nature.

Malcolm's defiance drove him to gain the education he had missed before.  He became a powerful speaker and capable leader.  He applied his practical knowledge to become a strategic thinker and incisive analyst of the political scene.  And when he was confronted with the inadequacy of the orthodoxies that he had previously accepted, he pursued with relentless critical effort the truth of historic Islam.  Malcolm represented a defiance courageous enough to challenge the existing power relations, to say what must be said, and to be persistent in the face of powerful forces aligned against him.  His radical critique conceded nothing in his effort to dismantle the dominant cultural systems which oppressed African Americans.

Remembering this account of Malcolm's life and his emergence as a leading intellectual of his time, I found myself drawn to Robert Coles's account of the remarkable young Ruby Bridges as another example of defiant imagination.  At age 6, her parents guided her to be one of the first four children to integrate the New Orleans public school system.  She was the only black student enrolling in her particular elementary school.  The white parents took their children out of the school.  Only one teacher agreed to teach in a school with a black child.  So Ruby's teacher taught the class with only one student. 

Federal Marshalls escorted Ruby to and from school because of the rowdy, violent protests that surrounded the school and the streets leading up to it.  Ruby was not particularly scared by the crowds.  She said they looked and sounded like Mardi Gras parties, with shouting and throwing things.  So she bravely walked in and out of the school each day.  Eventually, some white parents brought their children back to the school and the protests subsided.  Still, Ruby remained alone in her classroom.  In the next school year, the actual integrated classrooms began to come about in New Orleans.

Robert Coles became very involved with Ruby and her family, offering psychological care as much as was needed.  He learned a great deal in the process.  One of the central stories that he tells concerns an observation by her classroom teacher.  As Ruby was approaching the school, the teacher observed the little girl stopping, turning to face the yelling crowd, and saying something to them.  When Ruby got to class, the teacher asked about what she had seen.  Ruby explained that she had not been talking to the people, but to God.  Coles asked later for a fuller explanation.  Ruby told him that every day she stopped, usually before getting to the school, and prayed to God for the people.  That day she had forgotten until she was at the school steps.  Cole was shocked that her feelings toward this hateful crowd were leading to her have concern for them and pray for them.  She went on to explain that the prayer she said every day was to ask God to forgive them because they did not know what they were doing.

Her family and church had already instilled in Ruby a way of living in the world that was shocking to Coles and to many others.  They had joined a long procession of courageous defiers unwilling to let conditions of injustice stand.  They defied the barriers placed against the education she and other black children deserved, putting bodies in action to challenge the social order. 

Moreover, her family and community was already embedded in an alternative moral narrative.  She had understood the loving response of Jesus toward those who had done him wrong, and in defiance of the expectation that she should be afraid or should return hatred for hatred, she was seeking the good of those who wanted to do her harm.  She hoped against hope that her opponents could be changed, and she and her community imagined a better world could come about in which enemies become allies, even friends.  As an adult, Ruby Bridges still affirms that we must go against the grain of the world if we want to see change come for the better.

I became aware of a third example of defiant imagination during the period of Everly's illness.  A friend had given her a recording of "What a Wonderful World," made famous by Louis Armstrong.  Everly's first reaction was irritation.  She has never been a person who wanted to paint a rosy picture when things were not rosy.  No romanticizing and no pretending--she liked to simply say what she saw, what she felt.  So she could see no reason to play "What a Wonderful World" when she felt awful and the prognosis was not promising.  In what world could one call it wonderful to know that a person is dying of cancer at the peak of her life?  I understood her point.

It occurred to me that I had never given that song much thought.  I also wondered why someone might think it an appropriate recording for a friend who was fighting through cancer and chemotherapy.  But I knew that the friend was also not one to sugar-coat life's struggles or try to positive think oneself out of real problems.  I bought a Louis Armstrong album and took some time to listen to him sing the song.  I read a little about its themes and its popularity.  I began to understand that this kind of song represents a particular kind of defiance when sung by people who have been dealt every injustice and disadvantage by those with privilege and power.

There is a stance to take to the world when it treats you as if you are inferior, outcast, and unworthy, that defies those treatments.  It is a way of knowing the good, the true, and the beautiful that disavows the knowledge projected by the powerful.  Refusing to accept the world as it is offered, the defiant imagination of the oppressed recognizes that the good things in the world also belong to them.  They know the truth of the world, that it is not what the lies of the powerful would assert to be true.  They know that the beauty of the world, perhaps always mixed with ugliness, yet remains beauty.  In defiance, Armstrong can sing about the particular sights of natural beauty that he passes, the kindness of heart and soul experienced in community, and the hope of a better life as the struggle for liberation presses from one generation to the next.  Living in a world overshadowed by injustice, he can recognize that world as false, as the great lie.  In contrast, the truth remains that it is a wonderful world.

This is not the same as positive thinking.  It is a way of thumbing the nose at the oppressor.  It is a stone-faced challenge to the world's claim on one's life.  It's the laughter of one who knows that the joke is not on her.  It's not pollyannish blindness, but clear sight which sees both the wrong and the right.  It's not pretending, but a kind of honesty that knows tragedy as well as beauty.

I've been motivated to develop this discussion of the defiant imagination after having watched the powerful miniseries, When They See Us.  The title itself focuses on vision.  Presuppositions about the nature of the world and the people in it operate as filters on what human beings see.  The term "normative gaze" identifies a biased perspective shared by those who hold power in society and culture--their way of seeing things defines reality because it is assumed to be the normative way to see.

Yet the words and actions of those who are not in power can challenge the assumed truth.  Seeing beyond the current busyness, they may glimpse a truth not polluted or distorted by the interests of the oppressor.  Taken as part of a declaration, the film title names the way that white people see black people, one which automatically puts black people in jeopardy.  Taken as part of an interrogatory, the title asks whether the black young men have been truly seen at all.  In this case, the young men are waiting to be seen for who they really are, not for what the fantasies of white culture imagine them to be.  A defiant imagination gives its holder the possibility of challenging and overcoming the normative gaze of the oppressor.

The film project itself is an exercise of defiant imagination.  It challenges the dominant narrative, the way that the young men and their families were "seen" by the newspaper reporters, the police, the prosecutors, and by many of their neighbors.  In the next posting, I will discuss how various songs in the soundtrack of When They See Us help to feed a defiant imagination.

Shepherds, Why This Jubilee?

The Christmas season sweeps over people with wave after wave of emotion, a wide range of feelings that reflect the memories of family time, of fears, hopes, dreams, and disappointments.  I'm one of those people. 

I don't remember much mixture of emotions when I was a child. I think when I was a younger adult, part of the mix of emotions was being tired from finishing papers and projects in school.  There was the excitement of giving and receiving presents, and the inevitable disappointment that the long-anticipated presents were not going to actually make life perfect or even very different.  Eventually, the joy was in seeing the happiness of our own children, mixed with the nagging sense that we had sold our souls to the consumer gospel and had accumulated way too much junk.  Now as I look around at the boxes still unpacked from my move to NC from Texas, I still know that it is true.

So this Christmas Eve has been no surprise.  I've had the satisfaction that my adult children and I have agreed to cut back on the orgy of consumption and share time together without the pressure of last-minute shopping or checking off lists from the the tit-for-tat gift mandate.  For that reason, we are able to enjoy being together better, taking care of preparing meals and reveling in them together.  I hung out part of the day with brother-in-law Jim and Dad.  Most everyone relaxed and napped a while.  Jim played some Andy Griffith episodes to make us laugh.  Then our old man trio went to Black Mountain Presbyterian Church for Christmas Eve liturgy. 

Even while waiting and listening to the preparatory organ music, I was drawn to a beautiful hymn and prayer printed in the order of worship:

Jesus is our childhood's patter; day by day, like us he grew;
He was little, weak, and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew...

God of the commonplace,
we confess that we have bee seduced by human wealth and power.
We do not expect to meet you in haggard faces,
cold barns, or lonely watches.
We are slow to receive your word when it comes from improbable places.
God of all creation, intrude on us this night.
Let the clamor of angels and the hurried steps of shepherds
echo in our hearts, until we, too,
spill with good news of great joy.

That waiting, that anticipation, those moments shared so many times with my beloved Everly and Hugh Delle, began to overwhelm me.  Sitting between my dad and a woman who sweetly greeted me when I joined her on the pew, my face clouded and tears flowed.  A knot seemed to swell in my chest, a tension formed of deep longing for what is out of reach.  In our first Christmas without Mom and now the fourth without Everly, I don't really think this kind of feeling is going to ever go away, until a day comes when I don't even know myself any longer.

When I looked ahead and saw the lyric line, "Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains?", it struck me as a summation of my thoughts and feelings in the moment.

My longing and discomfort in this season in inextricably tied to not having Everly and Hugh Delle in the room with me, but it spreads from there to many other things.  There is a great sorrow weighing on me because of the discouraging events and social uproar of this moment in time.  It is a time when people of my generation may have hoped we would see taking shape in our world some element of redeeming change, of movement toward overcoming the racialized structure of the world, of seeing an end to the centuries of Eurochristianist-Muslim hatred, of dividing and despising people for bodily differences. But if we are honest with ourselves, we have to recognize that much of what we hoped might be changed has remained a molten magma under the surface of false civility.  Granted permission and encouraged to set aside pretense of politeness, the fabric of social existence seems to be dissolving around us.

I'm not generally inclined to believe all is lost, but there are times when it is hard to see the hope.  A quarter century ago the long and deadly Lebanese Civil War which had divided a previously peaceful country into camps ruled by warlords, came to a tenuous peace, only to be followed a few years later by an outburst of violence among Rwandans that seared every conscience.  Bolstered by social theory that questioned the inevitability of human unity and highlighted the depth of disagreement as far beyond the conventions and capacities of rational agreement, I wondered if Lebanon and Rwanda might be the future toward which modernity is inexorably plunging.  Next came our family's heartbroken departure from a church in which too many members were asking, "What would be wrong with being an all-white church?" It was not a future I hoped for my children.  But I'm drifting that way again with Syria, deportation, Muslim registries, gun and weapon extravaganza, police killing, racial profiling....

Searching for paths toward another future, I continued to study and converse and experiment toward a new way of ecclesial practice in community that would form in the world a counterpolitics of beloved community.  In time, that led me into relationships with radicals and innovators--people who, unlike me, were not writing a story in academic language, but remaking neighborhoods and cities and race relations in their corners of the world.  Most of my direct work has been in community organizing, and I've supplemented that with relationships among those who are doing Christian Community Development, who are forming intentional new monastic communities, and who are crying out a prophetic word toward moving Forward Together at Moral Monday rallies.  I still can stir passion to teach and preach that these springs in the desert are the real path toward good news for the poor and despised of the world. I tell myself this is the new wave of Christian renewal. But if that's true, it's so slow. What I've had to accept for a long time, that this world is not on an upward path of progress, remains a painful lesson to learn again and again.

At Christmas time, when all my children who live in three different states have come together, and I sit in church without their mom or grandma still in the world, it becomes painfully, desperately, dismally slow. How have I and my generation of church people failed in our imaginations, in our strivings, in our comfort with this world, to live a gospel radical enough to be a sign of hope in this world? When my friend Chanequa Walker-Barnes asks whether those attacking "Black Lives Matter" can understand the "sheer horror of people objecting to the statement that our lives are valuable?", it drives home the disillusionment with the times. When the NC legislature, elected through illegal voting districts and voter suppressive laws, insists that the heritage of allowing harm to people because of their body differences is too close to their hearts to repeal, it dissipates hope. When people insisting on being known as Christians vote and cheer for the very things that Christians ought to oppose, it begins to clarify the world in which we live.  In an era when churches' primary de facto liturgical expression has become "where are the young people?", I'm feeling a bit lost on how to offer an answer of why young people should give a damn about the church.

Sitting in a church full of white people tonight, I was deeply moved by the liturgy, but it was not lost on me how the message of turning away from fear toward hope seems as out of reach as ever in that context and so many more. The pastor's remark, mid-meditation, that the church has been guilty of peddling fear in order to turn around and offer hope, hits very close to the core of the problem.  Churches of all sorts, having aligned with the tide of culture, are playing the same games. Promote fear, then offer yourself as the solution--sell your product, line your pockets, seek your own interest. I'm pretty sure that's the church my kids and their generation see. I know it has been sold to me many times, and I've willingly bought it. But I hoped I knew better. My friend Deborah Boston and I talk often about the difficulty of believing churches can or want to make the changes they need to make in order to be the gospel here and now. The chilling truth is how much that is true of my own way of being in and of the church.

The beauty of tonight's liturgy, to me, was in its recognition that this advent's waiting was not just pretend. The harshness, horrors, terrors, and struggles of the world are real. When false evangelicalism has told me, "You should not be living under the circumstances. Rise above them!", it was so much bourgeois claptrap. The circumstances are crushing and destroying the very people we claim God loves and wants us to love. Aloof discipleship that looks for a fantasized solution outside of human suffering does not fit with the story of this night. There have been too many times in this almost 59 years of living that I've been willing to let a spiritualized gospel replace the true gospel that took form in a shit-floored shed where a naked baby clung tenuously to life, surrounded by just his homeless, refugee parents and various domestic animals. As Steve Harmon reminded me tonight, the memory of that stable opens up a great mystery--it wasn't a gala party with dressed-up people, a sterile hospital full of highly skilled technicians, or even the comfort of home with family and neighbors helping and praying. The animals in the stable, not the self-important humans hoping for a photo op, were the first witnesses of Jesus in the world.

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!

By the next day, Joseph must have had to go out and hustle up some water, some bread, and whatever other food he could buy or beg.  Mary must have been exhausted as she relinquished from her very body's strength to carry, give birth, and feed the infant Jesus

Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Jesum Christum.
Alleluia!
How blessed is [Mary] the virgin whose tender flesh
was deemed worthy to bear
our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

I started out talking about mixed emotions across a wide range.  Mostly here I've been dwelling on the sadness of this Christmas Eve.  I don't mean by digging deeper into the sorrow that I'm now fixed in one frame of mind and heart.  Yet it seems that I should at least feel the wave of sadness all the way through in this "get over it," "move on, already," "accentuate the positive" age. It's a world in which commercial interests aim to stir up happiness through encouraging mass consumption of trinkets and gadgets.  In the morning, Momma won't be getting me up to have breakfast.  Everly won't be organizing us to look in stockings and unwrap packages. Trinkets, gadgets, and positivity won't change that. And the epidemic of indifference, greed, and hate that has swept our world will still be convulsing all around us. It's not suddenly easy being born or giving birth.

With all the promise of joy that angels announced to the farm workers on the hillside, those marginalized workers still had their hard work to do.  Mary and Joseph, holding on to that tiny baby, still had to find a way to make a living, a place to live, and food to eat. "Shepherds, why this jubilee?" Can such a lowly, outcast moment two millenia ago make a difference now? Looking at the churches of this land, it seems unlikely. But it still seems there is enough good news in the holistic gospel that's worth fighting for. As my friend Matt Jantzen said this week, "I'm angry, and I can't stand to just wait around while things get worse, and not try to do something about it." I hear you, Matt. I can see only glimpses of the path in the dark of this midnight. Y'all who still hunger and thirst for justice gotta help me see where that hungry baby is calling for me to bring some milk, a blanket, and an arm and chest to rest on.

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.

Cultural Encounters and Miscegenation in the Imagination of Octavia Butler

A few years ago, my son David talked to me about science fiction writers.  David is a voracious reader, one of the side effects of growing up in the home of two teachers.  One of the marvels of this young man is the way he used to read large collections of a genre and compare and critique.  When we talked, he was explaining to me the ideological patterns he saw in science fiction as different authors constructed utopian and dystopian visions of worlds to come.  I had not given it much thought, but there is neocon science fiction and liberal science fiction.  I also had not thought about the fact that most of these science fiction writers envision a world much like the dominant narratives of most fiction--populated by white males as the agents of history.  So he told me about female writers and one particularly interesting black female, Octavia Butler.

Butler has won awards from the science fiction world for her writings.  So science fiction writers in general have appreciated her work.  Aspects of her work resonate with many science fiction novels and stories:  there are alien beings, interplanetary travel, advanced technologies, apocalyptic wars, biological variations that blend what we think of as animals and plants, and social structures that differ from conventional families and political structures.  So for science fiction readers, you get what you expect from Butler.

What you may not expect is a sophisticated account of race and gender.  I read a trilogy that is variously called the Xenogenesis trilogy and Lillith's Brood when republished as a set in one volume.  As the trilogy name indicates, the issue of foreignness and difference is at the heart of this multigenerational narrative.  Moreover, at the core of it is the fear of what "miscegenation" means for the existence of a race, or even for the human race.  I will do my best to avoid any spoilers about critical eventualities in these stories.

The human character whose presence continues through each novel is Lillith, a survivor of a devastating apocalyptic nuclear war on earth which destroyed human society and made the planet uninhabitable.  The reader meets Lillith on an alien spaceship that is a dwelling, more than a ship, in orbit near Earth.  She is slowly learning where she is, who she is with, and what will be next in her life.  What becomes clear quickly is that some small portion of humanity was saved from certain death by an alien race of people, the Oankali, whose existence involves exploring the solar system searching for habitable planets and compatible races of beings with whom to join their lives.

Lillith becomes quickly concerned about her future among the Oankali.  They describe their family structure to her, and it becomes apparent that they hope, or plan, for her to become a human mate within a complex family of humans and Oankali.  They have the ability to manipulate genes and cell structures.  They learn from each species they meet and evolve into better forms of their species.  They call this process "trading."  From their point of view, each species benefits.  From Lillith's point of view, she and her descendents will lose their identity as humans and be absorbed into the Oankali.  This theme never goes far below the surface throughout the whole trilogy.  Lillith never arrives at a comfortable resolution.  That's not telling too much.  It is part of the dramatic driving force of the stories.

As fiction is able to do, these stories ask again and again about what might constitute miscegenation.  Part of the question being asked is whether there is such a thing as continuity of identity that passes through multiple generations.  Are humans always changing, and what changes disrupt their humanity?  In contrast to the fear of blending Oankali DNA with human DNA, Butler describes the surviving humans who begin to repopulate the Earth as the remnants of many ethnic and cultural groups.  More of the population of the Southern Hemisphere survived, and some communities are made up of a variety of "races" living together.  Their greatest hope is to repopulate the Earth, but they express little concern about separating the races.  The narrative occasionally makes passing remarks about various communities with greater and less diversity, and with some residual attitudes toward difference based on skin color.  So it is not a naive depiction of post-apocalyptic race relations, but a politically credible view of how human difference might diminish in human social relations when a more overwhelming difference becomes a challenge.  Butler's explorations here are tentative rather than dogmatic.

The exploration of difference between the Oankali and humans has depth of insight.  The Oankali seem sure that their approach to interspecies relations is consensual, although their technological advantages belie some aspects of the consent.  The social power of the Oankali sets a tight range of options for humans.  They are not willing for certain outcomes to occur.  They believe there is an inherent flaw in humanity, and they want to eradicate it.  Here Butler is delving deep into the forgetfulness of contemporary racism.  The Oankali are not inclined to be violent toward humans, and they understand their relationship to humanity as benevolent.  They are seeking to elevate humanity to live longer, be healthier, achieve greater things, and survive as a species.  In return, they are strengthened by elements of humanity they have discovered and absorbed into themselves.  But if their plan is carried forward, will the semi-consensual assimilation of the residents of Earth leave anything recognizably human?  Butler pushes deep into this question through the entire series.

Turning another direction, Butler is also challenging gender politics.  The somewhat dystopian world that results from non-cooperation with the Oankali shows humanity in a harsh perspective as women become commodities for trade and suffer rape and violence at the hands of raiding parties.  In contrast, the Oankali exist as a three-gendered community.  Male and female in Oankali existence do not fit into conventional human stereotypes.  A third neither male nor female gender, the ooloi gender, plays perhaps the most powerful role in the society and family.  Females are largest and strongest.  Males are gatherers and more conversational.  Ooloi are most scientific and political, and they are the key marriage partner in reproduction.  I am not sure I have meditated long enough on the implied gender politics, but it does seem obvious that describing a three-gendered species is a device for Butler to examine the ways that domination and equality function.  The ooloi are benevolent dominant partners, but from the perspective of their human interrogators, their ability to dominate by using biologically sophisticated means, no matter how benevolent, remains a problematic part of their relationships.

I'll not try to pretend to be an expert on Butler's work today.  I'm not going to do any theological speculations at this point beyond the implications of race and gender politics that I have already mentioned.  I do look forward to reading more of her books, as friends have talked with me about some of their favorites already.  Thanks to David for pointing me in this direction.  As is almost always true, an intense foray into narrative fiction was a great mind refresher for me.

Double Consciousness and Independence Day

I have resisted writing lately.  I'm not one who often suffers writer's block.  I don't mean writing is always easy, but I mean that I usually have something I want to write about and rush in where angels fear to tread.

We are in a time when white supremacy's terror has become so vivid that we cannot easily avoid seeing it.  It is a time that excites strong reactions.  I have not avoided talking about what is going on in the streets and in the pulpit.  I have made sure not to ignore these events in preaching and in teaching.  We have had lively Sunday School and seminary classroom discussions.  I have tweeted and Facebook statused some of my sentiments in shorter form.  I've had coffee to ruminate with friends.  I have read and listened to many opinion pieces and scholarly discourses.

But I have had specific reasons to resist writing lately.  One thing that happens when events turn attention to racism is that we white people who consider ourselves sensitive to and appropriately positioned toward racism feel a need to remind people of our credentials.  In a more crude way, we are anxious to make sure people know we are "the good white people." But this anxiety tends to subvert the very purpose we believe we are pursuing.  Rather than focusing on work necessary to overcome the structural and systemic forms of white supremacy that shape every part of life, we are caught up in making ourselves feel better, assuaging white guilt, and sustaining the pretense that at least around us, things are soooooo much better.

So in part, I have been inclined to believe that it is better to shut up and listen. (I would hope that in explaining myself here, I am not simply doing what I described in the previous paragraph. I guess I can't avoid it completely.)  To that extent, I have set aside writing about what is happening on purpose to hear other voices.  But that is only part of it.  I have also found it hard to write.  I have worried that I would simply be making noise when there is so much need for insight.  I have feared that in such intense monologue and dialogue all around, I would say something stupid, reveal from somewhere within my misunderstandings and my formation in a culture of domination. I don't want to be that writer.

This subconscious or semi-conscious fearfulness about writing something stupid comes at a very inconvenient moment for me, in that I promised to write an essay on race and theology with the title "The Deformed Imagination of Why We Are Light and What We Call Darkness."  But last night, the writer's block on that essay finally broke, and it is underway.  Somehow, that opened the floodgates and I decided to write a brief comment on Facebook concerning a post about the Declaration of Independence.  That turned into a poetry analysis of a song by Kate Campbell, bringing together the insights of W.E.B. DuBois, Cornel West, and some things J. Kameron Carter and I were talking through over coffee.  After a while I realized that I was writing a blog post.  So I might as well copy it here.  Here's hoping I'm making my way down the road to get my essay written.

I found this article about the ambiguity of the Declaration of Independence to be worth sharing. It echoes the equally powerful words of Frederick Douglass concerning the paradox and travesty of Independence Day in a system of slavery. It also got me thinking about a song by one of my favorite songwriters.

A very moving song by Kate Campbell tells the story of a fire one night in the late twentieth century, burning down an old mansion with its "sixteen stately Doric columns." Anyone would recognize it as a plantation house, iconic of white domination in a landscape populated by enslaved workers of African descent. Yet the narrator tells the story from the point of view of a child who had not known the horrors and terrors of that system of trading and debasing human beings.

I was taught by elders wiser,
"Love your neighbor. Love your God."
Never saw a cross on fire;
Never saw an angry mob.
I saw sweet magnolia blossoms.
I chased lightning bugs at night,
Never dreaming others
Saw our way of life
In black and white.

Yes, it is naiveté that speaks such words. It comes from a life privileged to avoid seeing what others have no choice but to endure. One might say that it is early formation in the "normative gaze." Yet both black and white parents often seek to shield their young children from the worst of the world. Since Sanford, Ferguson, Cleveland, Baltimore, and now Emanuel AME Church, it has become so much harder to hide from these realities. This is the world we live in. This is the world given to us by our parents. This is the world produced by the centuries of European-American world domination.

I mention this song because it shows something that is not always present in the reflections of dominant culture. W.E.B. DuBois wrote about the "double consciousness" of being African American, being both and yet neither. He wrote it in the context of knowing that "American" meant white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. This double consciousness exists in contrast to the forgetfulness of a singular consciousness. It is the privilege of some to forget that "one ever feels one's twoness:" Irish and American, Italian and American, English and American, Scottish and American, French and American, both and yet neither, living in a land claimed, annexed, appropriated, "reaping where you did not sow."

Kate's song illustrates the dawning of such double consciousness in the narrator, and its eschatological orientation toward the possibility of community to emerge from the dismal swamps of human cruelty to one another. Parsing out the death and life in the structures and systems around us forces one to face what James McClendon said of theological reflection, that "the line between church and world passes through each Christian heart."

Part of me hears voices crying.
Part of me can feel their weight.
Part of me believes that mansion
Stood for something more than hate.

But it is not promoting the assumption that one can go back to a pristine golden age when it was possible to pretend everyone knew her and his place and rank. We must, in fact, retreat from our falsehoods and retreat from our forgetfulness. We want to forget the repression of the black churches through laws making them illegal, through domination by white church leaders, through burnings and massacres. But Charleston won't let us forget.

Forgetting is deadly for our souls, and it is deadly for the bodies of those whose lives are considered not worthy of preserving in the streets or in the prayer meeting. Learning our twoness is also learning that we need to be made whole. But we cannot be made whole by a purifying ideology of triumphalism, which only makes of us tools of those who benefit from such violent systems. It is an eschatological hope, but I don't mean pie in the sky by and by. I mean a hope that looks for and longs for and works for the beauty and goodness of that promise to be done "on earth as it is in heaven." That's why

It's a long
And slow surrender,
Retreating from the past.
It's important to remember
To fly the flag half-mast,
And look away...

The Dilemma of the Fourth of July - OnFaith

The roots of America's systemic racism are printed in many of our founding documents.

faithstreet.com

Presidents and Deans in Theological Education: How Must You Lead in These Times?

Our Dean at Shaw University Divinity School, was pleased to host a gathering of the African American Presidents and Deans in schools of theological education this week.  One of his initiatives was drafting a document that was edited and became an open letter, signed by those in attendance.  It addresses the issues of racial and ethnic disparity in the contemporary setting.  The context of progress and lack of progress in civil rights becomes the basis for reflection, as well as the impetus for a call to action. 

It harks back to a landmark of the South African churches' uniting against apartheid, the Kairos Document.  The challenges of injustice in that time are similar to our time, though the events and details may be different.  Mass imprisonment, repressive policing, differentiation of outcomes by race, law and order rhetoric, tragic and wrenching public killings, widespread fear and anger--these conditions ought to drive the church back to its convictions and its knees.  Searching our faith should also compel us to proclaim the love that has taken hold of us, so that we no longer see one another as those formed by the world see one another.  "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to God's own self, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:14-19).

It's a brief statement offering many subjects for thought and action.  It is neither a comprehensive treatise nor a call to a single strategic act.  It speaks to theological educators and their institutions about the way we teach the blessed texts and traditions of a faith that follows one who came to set at liberty those who are oppressed.  Take a moment to attend their words for our time.  And notice in the second paragraph that the person mentioned is Shaw Divinity's Dean David Forbes, who as a Shaw undergraduate was part of the initial gathering at Shaw of what would become the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, guided in part by Shaw's own Ella Baker.

(This Open Letter represents a collective effort by African American Presidents and Deans in Theological Education. A full list of the authors is at the bottom of the letter.)

January 15, 2015

An Open Letter to Presidents and Deans of Theological Schools in the United States,
At its annual meeting at Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh, NC, African American Presidents and Deans of theological schools in the United States issued a call for action in light of the current state of social justice in the United States of America.

One of our leaders, a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), noted that the socio-economic and political realities that led to the establishment of SNCC at Shaw University 54 years ago are actually eclipsed by the realities of this day. In 1960 there were lynchings and robe-wearing Klansmen. Today lynchings occur, but in different forms. Klansmen today bivouac without robes and hoods. Slavery still exists but under the auspices of a prison industrial complex. Discrimination thrives, with no intent or program for relief. As was true in the 1960's it is time for citizens of good conscience to once again rise up and rally to the cry for freedom and justice for all.

From a manger in Bethlehem, a Bantustan in Soweto, a bus in Montgomery, a freedom Summer in Mississippi, a bridge in Selma, a street in Ferguson, a doorway and shots fired in Detroit, a Moral Monday in Raleigh, an assault in an elevator in Atlantic City, an office building in Colorado Springs, a market in Paris, a wall in Palestine, a pilgrimage to the shrine of Rincon and a restoration of ties between Cuba and the United States on December 17th, the kidnapping and assault of young school-aged girls and the reported killing of 2000 women, children and men in Nigeria, a new generation of dream defenders, a transgender teen's suicide note, to our abuse of the environment - God sends a sign - a Kairos moment. The racial climate in the United States, and the respect for our common humanity everywhere, is clearly in decline.

How can Americans acquiesce, remain silent, passive and neutral as African-American men and women are slain in the streets of Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland and beyond? How can people of conscience be still when African-Americans quake with fear to walk without harm in their own cities and towns? How can we remain docile when leaders of our nation, especially the United States Congress abdicate their civic and moral responsibility to set a tone of civility and humanity?

How can we abide a justice system, which is neither blind nor equitable? How can we suffer a justice system that victimizes African Americans and Latinos by jailing them disproportionately?

How can we sit idly by while our children are slaughtered in the streets without provocation?

How can we as United States citizens claim that we are "created equal" and that we are committed to "freedom and justice for all" while injustice is rampant in the land?

How can we continue with business as usual in our theological schools in the midst of so many egregious injustices?

We believe that citizens of good conscience must arise and call our nation to assess and address the rising tide of injustice throughout our legal and criminal justice systems.

There must be restraint to those who shoot, kill, and maim innocent young men and women in the streets of our nation. And so . . .

We call upon the leaders of our nation to reaffirm the founding principles of this nation: liberty and justice for all.

We call on all freedom loving Americans to reaffirm a commitment to "the beloved community," where the freedom and rights of all are respected and protected.

We call on the United States Congress to set a civil and moral tone in the way they respect our twice-elected president.

We call on leaders on the national and local levels to join citizens of good will to reject practices, legal and adjure, which mar the American dream of liberty and justice for all.

We call on our churches and every house of faith to challenge their members and communities to live out an inclusive commitment to love God, self, the neighbor-enemy, and creation across any and all boundaries that would dehumanize, alienate, and separate.

We call on all Americans of good conscience who gather across the country to speak out for liberty and justice for all... always. As our modern day prophet, Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

We invite our colleagues -- presidents, deans and leaders of all divinity and theological schools -- to arise from the embers of silence and speak up and speak out as the prophet of old, "let justice run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24). We encourage you to endorse this statement by responding in your own particular context to our theological call to action with curricular programs, public forums, teach-ins, calls to your congressional leaders, writing op-ed pieces, and more.

We recognize this Kairos moment and stand in solidarity for "liberty and justice for all."

Yours in the struggle,

African American Presidents and Deans in Theological Education

List of Signatories

• Dr. Willard W.C. Ashley, Dean of the Seminary, New Brunswick Seminary
• Dr. Brian K. Blount, President, Union Presbyterian Seminary
• Dr. Marsha Foster Boyd, President Emerita, Ecumenical Theological Seminary
• Dr. Michael J. Brown, Academic Dean, Payne Theological Seminary
• Dr. Gay L. Byron, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Howard University School of Divinity
• Dr. Leah Gaskin Fitchue, President, Payne Theological Seminary
• Dr. David C. Forbes Sr., Interim Dean, Shaw University Divinity School
• Dr. Charisse L. Gillett, President, Lexington Theological Seminary
• Dr. Thomas W. Gilmore, Coordinator of Education, Cleveland Center, Ashland Theological Seminary
• Dr. Mark G. Harden, Dean of the Boston Campus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
• Dr. Kenneth E. Harris, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean, Ecumenical Theological Seminary
• Dr. Barbara A. Holmes, President, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
• Dr. Carrie D. Hudson, Associate Dean for Academic Advising and Scheduling, Ashland Theological Seminary
• Dr. Vivian L. Johnson, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, United Theological Seminary
• Dr. John W. Kinney, Senior Vice President & Dean for the School of Theology, Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology
• Dr. Vergel Lattimore, President, Hood Theological Seminary
• Dr. James W. Lewis, Dean, Anderson University School of Theology
• Rev. Stephen Lewis, President, Forum for Theological Exploration
• Dr. Paul M. Martin, President/CEO, American Baptist Seminary of the West
• Dr. Myron F. McCoy, former President, Saint Paul School of Theology
• Dr. Marvin A. McMickle, President, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School
• Dr. Rosemary Bray McNatt, President, Starr King School for the Ministry
• Dr. Joy J. Moore, Associate Dean of African American Church Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary
• Dr. Deborah Flemister Mullen, Dean of Faculty and Executive Vice President, Columbia Theological Seminary
• Dr. Evelyn L. Parker, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Perkins School of Theology
• Dr. Alton B. Pollard, III, Dean, Howard University School of Divinity
• Dr. Angela D. Sims, Dean of Academic Programs, Saint Paul School of Theology
• Dr. Emilie M. Townes, Dean, Vanderbilt University Divinity School
• Dr. Edward P. Wimberly, President, Interdenominational Theological Center
• Dr. Robert S. Woods, Vice President of Academic Affairs/Dean, Memphis Theological Seminary
• Dr. Mary H. Young, Associate Dean, Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology

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.

Put On the Armor of Light

This sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on September 7, 2014.

Romans 13:8-14

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

             Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (NRSV).

I want to begin by making a few personal remarks.  I hope I am not being too presumptuous by commenting to you about events in my life.  Most of you know something about the recent years and the major opportunities and challenges that my family and I have faced.  In 2009, Everly took the opportunity to lead the mathematics curriculum for the public school system of the state of Texas, the second most populous state in our country, and certainly one of the most influential states in national policies concerning many areas of our lives.  We decided to make this move largely because of the desire to be near our aging parents in the last years of their lives.  We had been in North Carolina for almost 24 years by that time.  All four of our parents were living and approaching eighty years of age.  So we perceived the opportunity as God’s blessing to let us share some time with them after so many years away.

Everly took the state by storm.  She stood out above the crowd among statewide education administrators.  She inspired and energized math teachers and college professors.  Her talents and leadership drew her into the highest circles of influence.  Her candid and forthright words changed the minds of commissioners and the governor on mathematics education policy.  Recognizing what a treasure was in their midst, she was given near carte blanche to rewrite the curriculum of mathematics for grades K through 12, and she put all the experience, talent, skill, and relational ability she had into the task.

At the same time, we realized that it would be difficult for me to find a job in theological education in Texas.  So we settled for a very modern kind of family situation.  I worked in North Carolina while living in Texas.  I commuted for stints of a few weeks at a time in North Carolina, then continued my work using the wonders of the internet to teach from Texas.  Thanks to the generosity of my church family, I always had a place to stay in North Carolina after we moved out and put our house on the market.  It was a complicated and hectic way to live, but we were making the most of it.

About two and one-half years after she started her job in Texas, we discovered that Everly had metastatic cancer which was focused in her liver and backbone.  Doctors were unsure whether it would be worth giving her any treatment at all, but then decided there was enough chance for improving her life and extending it that we should try.  The first treatment almost took her life, and in the month-long recovery from that dose of chemical poisons, she drifted through many stages of discouragement and hope.  God granted her visions and insight into her remaining life with us.  And with great joy, we discovered that the treatment had brought about a dramatic reduction in her cancer.  She slowly regained her strength, and then began a regimen of chemotherapy that showed promise of managing her cancer.  All of our children were able to join us in Texas and be with her for this challenging and precious time of being close to one another.

During that struggle, she came here to visit you and her many friends in North Carolina.  She stood up in this sanctuary and testified of the goodness of God in her life, in the opportunities she had had to use her gifts, and in this special time of being available to be away from work and with her family.  Eventually, that early plan of treatment’s progress diminished, so we began other forms of experimental treatment.  Over a year of cancer treatments, we developed hope that she might live many more years.  But eventually her ability to resist the disease ran out.  The last three months involved regrouping, searching for new options, and ultimately coming to face that she was not getting better.  Of course, even near the end, we kept thinking things would turn around. 

With what would only by a little more than a week remaining, Everly came home for hospice care.  The children and I spent all the time we had with her, and watched her life slowly ebb away.  She had given us all she had to give, and she was ready to leave the troubles of this world.  She knew she was in God’s hands, and we knew that as well.  Not quite fourteen months ago, she went on to her reward and left behind all her pain.

It was, of course, a beginning of a season of pain for the rest of us.  We had to try to find a way to live our lives without our anchor and guide.  We could reasonably call these “dark days.”  So during this past year we have sometimes floundered about, and we have sought out the support, the love, and the counsel of many friends who knew Everly and who know us.  Even though it was comfortable for me to live in Texas, sharing the home of my parents, it became clear to me as this past year unfolded that I ought to relocate back to North Carolina where my job, my church, and my networks of friends remained. 

So three weeks ago, Naomi and I arrived with a truck full of our things and moved in just a couple of blocks from here on Denfield Street.  Naomi is starting the Masters of Social Work program at UNC-Chapel Hill.  I am back to a more normal work situation in the same job I have had for over twenty years, teaching at Shaw University.  In locating down the street, I say to myself, to our congregation, and to our community that this neighborhood is made up of the neighbors God has sent us to love.  So I’m putting my roots here, and looking with expectation at what God will do with my life and with the life of the people who are Mt. Level in the coming years.  All of my family cannot be together now.  Lydia is finishing her bachelor’s degree in Texas.  David is relocating and starting up a new life in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  And we are holding one another close as we trust that the God who holds our Everly will hold us, too.  All of us, in our own ways, by God’s grace, are striving to lay back the darkness and let in the light.

Well, telling that story was the hard part of this morning for me.  And it is prologue to what this scripture text will tell us.  In the text that was read this morning, the Apostle Paul makes remarks of the same sort that the Prophet Micah did many centuries before.  As Micah had posed the question, “What does the Lord require of you?”, now Paul offers the guidance that we should “owe no one anything, except….”  Micah said that it is really pretty simple.  Do justice.  Love mercy.  Walk humbly with God.  Paul says they should narrow it down to this:  love one another.  That’s all you owe anyone.  That’s what Jesus said really mattered.  That’s what God expects of you.  That fulfills the whole stinking law, every jot and tittle of it.  Of course, you can learn by studying the specifics of the law, but Jesus already told us how to sum it up:  Love your neighbor as yourself.

So in the way that you live with others, if you love them, you will do no wrong to your neighbor.  And the law is largely about telling you what wrongs not to do.  So love, and you won’t do wrong.  That’s why love fulfills the whole law—every bit of it.

Paul was continuing a train of thought from what to us is the previous chapter.  Of course, Paul did not divide his letters into chapters and verses.  Like you or I, he just wrote out his sentences and paragraphs.  The chapters and verses were added later by readers who wanted to be able to analyze and talk together about the books in a systematic way.  That way, you and I can quickly get on the same page for conversation and study.  But Paul did not have chapters and verses.  So I should say he was continuing a train of thought from a few paragraphs before.

In our habit of speaking, in chapter 12, verse 10, he started talking about living toward Christian love with one another as God’s people.  Just before this section, he had written about how everyone has gifts from the Spirit, and we are not all the same.  But each of us has something to offer to one another and to the whole group, like parts of the body all have their function.  He told them back there, “Let love be genuine.”  Those verses were part of the wedding vows Everly and I spoke in 1980.  That short sentence is now engraved on the gravestone where she is buried.  “Let love be genuine.” 

It was a commitment we shared with one another.  In so many ways, we certainly fell short of the ideal, but it was a byword for how we knew we ought to live in relation to the world and the people God had given us.  But it is not a statement specifically about the love of married people.  It is about the love that we have for one another in the church.  It is the love God expects us to have for all God’s children.  As followers of Jesus, married people and families should also live up to this kind of love.  So Paul is making it plain here.  Love genuinely.  Love honestly.  Love thoroughly.  Love wholeheartedly.  Love the lovable people, and love the unlovable people.  Love when you are eager to do so, and love when you are on your last nerve. 

But, we may ask, isn’t there something or someone I can hate?  Paul says to hate evil.  Don’t harbor your evil thoughts.  Don’t plot evil devices.  Don’t fixate on evil responses.  Don’t seek revenge.  Hate evil, but don’t act evilly to oppose it.  Hold fast to what is good.  Keep on imagining the good possibilities.  Look beyond people’s troublesome actions to see the good that is in them.  Think of ways to return good for evil.  Do not repay evil for evil, but put your mind on a noble response to the times when you are wronged.  At the climax of this reflection, he tells them there is a way to fight evil:  overcome evil with good.  Let good grow and snowball and expand and press outward until it overwhelms all the evil it can find.  Don’t let evil overcome you.  You get out there in all the goodness that God can produce in you and let that goodness overcome evil.

Paul knew that the times in which these Roman Christians were living were evil times.  Powerful people wanted to persecute them, put them in jail, fire them from their jobs, take away their homes, make outcasts of their children, drive them out of town.  Rulers were selfish and devious, and so were their assistants and lackeys.  Soldiers and police were directed to obey the whims of the rulers.  They might not have the strength of conscience to realize that the policies of the leaders were twisted and wrong.  Paul was not deceived.  He knew his own life had hung in the balance of unjust laws and unjust rulers before.  So he acknowledged that the times were rife with evil.  He warned the Christians to watch out.  And he taught them that even in an evil setting and situation, God had a different way for them.

Paul could say this because Paul also knew that the time in which these Roman Christians were living were good times.  They were fertile with opportunities for virtuous living.  They could watch the growth of their love touch their neighbors and their neighborhoods.  God was not defeated by the Imperial power.  God was just getting started showing them all that God can do.  So when they come up against violence and wrong, Paul said to live peaceably with all.  He said don’t avenge yourself, but stand up against evil by doing good.  Don’t flag in your zeal.  Be ardent.  Be motivated.  Work it out.  Yes, work it.  Work that goodness that God has placed in you.  Be intense about fighting wrong, but do it with goodness. 

Paul knew that the Roman Christians should have hope.  Knowing that hope, they could rejoice even in hard times.  They could show patience when they suffered because their hope is in God.  They could continue in prayer, knowing that God is with them and guiding them into the next opportunity to overcome.  Love one another.  Show mutual affection.  Outdo one another in doing right and honoring each other.  Make sure no one is in need.  Show hospitality.  Love, love, love, love, love, in word and deed.  Because God created this world to be good.  God’s goodness has been poured out in your lives.  Good will prevail, even if not in every moment, if not in every situation.  Even after setbacks, we can build a better world in God’s power and grace.  Death is defeated.  Christ is risen.  Good will prevail.

Paul had pressed this case hard in that earlier section, the second half of chapter 12.  Then he took a kind of aside.  He chased a rabbit.  He made an illustration of sorts.  He planned to finish his exhortation about love, but there was this little matter of the Empire to deal with.  He started talking about how they should act toward Caesar and Caesar’s minions.  But he talked about it in vague terms.  He talked about his enemies in abstract terms.  He did not say anything about Caesar, per se.  He didn’t name Caesar or any of the lesser officials.  He did not say anything about the Empire or the Senate or the Roman Legions or the Centurions.  He did not name any of the officials or even their offices.

Instead, he talked in broad theological terms about divine creation.  He talked about God’s good work in creating humanity as social beings.  He talked about the concept of authority in the abstract.  He said that having a system of authority is a good thing.  Ruling authorities, in general, help make our lives better.  Human authorities, as a concept, contribute to a better life for us.  In the ideal, authorities reward good and punish evil.  According to its purpose, authority maintains justice. 

But of course, Paul has been talking previously not about theory, but about the facts on the ground.  The facts on the ground were that Roman authorities were prejudiced toward their own kind.  The facts on the ground were that Christianity was an illicit, an illegal community of faith.  The facts on the ground were that everywhere Christianity had raised its liberating message of God’s love for the least and the lowly, people in power had gotten angry.  From the synagogue officials to the Sanhedrin.  From the Proconsuls to the Procurators.  From the Kings to the Emperors.  From the Pharisees to the Sadducees to the who knows who sees you practicing Christian faith, people wanted to shut it down.

That’s what Paul was telling them in the discourse about letting love be genuine, hating evil, and overcoming evil with good.  The facts on the ground were that the authorities, not in concept, but in flesh and blood, were coming down hard on the Christians.  The facts on the ground were that people who in theory were supposed to keep the peace were disturbing the peace.  Officials whose job was to serve and protect were self-serving and destroying lives in the streets.  Paul understood what was what.  He knew that everybody who had a title did not live up to the duties of office.  He knew that power, once it is in someone’s hands, can become a tool of domination.  That is what he and the Christians in Rome saw.  It’s what they knew.  It’s the yoke they felt on their shoulders.

So he said, in theory, they should recognize the goodness of authority.  They should cooperate with authority to do good.  They should not resist authority just to get their own way.  Paul was not being a respectability preacher here.  There have been a number of people lately talking about “respectability churchfolk” and “respectability preaching.”  They mean those people who try to find the fault in an unarmed youth’s behavior for his own death.  They mean those people who say that if the black community could just work harder to stay in school, to dress conventionally, to keep a job and keep their noses clean, then things like Ferguson would not happen.  That’s what they mean by the “respectability” view. 

But Paul was not talking respectability, and neither am I.  Paul was not saying that the answer to our oppression is to be more docile in obeying our oppressors.  He was not saying that the real problem is us, so we need to mend our ways.  No, he knew who was troubling the world.  God was not doing this.  The church’s service to God was not doing this.

If the powers that be want to keep people down, it does not matter how respectably people act.  They will get pressed down on.  So the answer is to press back.  That’s why Paul was saying that they need to get serious about resisting evil in the world.  They should continue their efforts to overcome evil with good by pressing the authorities to do the good they should do.  But he was not fooled into thinking that Caesar or his minions were likely to do the good.  That’s why he reminded the church to go ahead and pay taxes to whom taxes are due and revenue to whom revenue is due.  But then he turns the phrase.  He speaks with irony and from the point of view of faith.  He does not say that some people who demand your respect may not deserve your respect.  No, he is not that explicit.  He does not say that Caesar has not earned the honor that he wants you to show.  No, he is more subtle.  He says to pay respect to whom respect is due.  (Wink, wink.)  He says give honor to whom honor is due.  (“You know what I mean?”)  God deserves our honor.  Caesar probably does not.

But just so we don’t conclude that he means to start blatantly disrespecting the officials, and blatantly dishonoring Caesar, he goes back to his previous theme about loving our neighbors.  Now, we are finally back to the text we started with.  He says owe no one anything except love.  Martin Luther, the 16^th-century reformer translated that verse as a declarative statement, not an imperative.  He said it means that you don’t owe anyone anything, except you do owe everyone love.  God made us for love.  God made us to love one another, to be loved by one another, to receive love from one another—God made us for love.  So even Caesar gets our love.  Even the harassing official on the street gets our love.  Love does no wrong to the neighbor.  Love fulfills all our requirements and obligations.  Not just a feeling of love, but more importantly a way of treating someone.

Having made his case about love that’s genuine, that overcomes evil with good, that supersedes whatever resentments or desires for revenge we may have, Paul then starts talking about how important it is for us to stand strong in the face of evil.  He does not mean for us to sit back in our bedrooms thinking loving thoughts about those who do evil.  He does not mean for us to wait around the kitchen table until the tide of evil forces overwhelms and swallows up our whole neighborhood, our town, our community institutions.  He does not mean hiding behind church doors, shouting and singing while the neighborhood dies.  No we can’t just nap while destruction is happening all around us.  Overcoming evil with good is not a passive admonition.

We have to know what time it is.  It is the time for God’s good news.  It is the time for people to know that we can live together in harmony.  We can live together in love.  It’s the time that no one any longer has to be trying to dominate anyone else.  People can make a life without domination systems.  So if it was not real to you when you first got saved, then it needs to become real to you now that God is not interested in just a little bit of our lives.  God is not interested in just 10% of the church people to be part of the struggle.  God is not interested in just a token commitment.  God wants the whole of us.  God want you, and God wants us, and God wants you and me and us to be building the beloved community.  That is the whole reason God made the world and put us in it.  God wants to see that loving, just community come into the light of day.

Paul tells them to lay aside the works of darkness.  Now somebody might try to twist the term darkness here and make out that dark is equivalent to black, and that somehow blackness is opposed to God.  But Paul was not talking that way, and we know better than to fall into the trap of that kind of thinking.  Darkness here is the absence of light.  Light is the beacon that shines upon the realities of the world and reveals the truth.  Darkness is the world hiding from the light.  What is hidden from the light is afraid, is ashamed, is deceptive, is indifferent.  But in the light of day, we have to take a stand.  We have to show who we are and what we live for.

Paul says that the light is our armor.  Armor is our protection.  Bringing the truth into the light of day is our hope, because Jesus himself is the truth.  The love of God is the truth.  People able to get along and treat one another right is the truth.  Enough good gifts of God to feed and clothe and shelter everybody is the truth.  Letting everyone have a good education is the truth.  Paying people a decent, living wage is the truth.  Finding ways to keep people in their homes is the truth.  Our armor is joining together in the truth. 

You or I alone might try to stand up to the powers that be and get ignored.  But we are not alone.  God has put us together into a holy nation, a peculiar people.  Together, in solidarity with one another and with God, we can stand up to the powers and be heard.  This is the heart of the labor union movement.  The people with the capital, the people with the money—these people know that they need to organize into corporate boards and chambers of commerce and political action committees if they are going to make the world go their way.  Their hope is that the workers and the average people will stay disorganized.  A labor union exists to provide the organization necessary to stand up to the owners and managers who want to be in charge of our lives.  In a way, the church is a labor union of the neighborhood.  We organize together and care for our neighbors with the intensity and capacity to be a union of neighbors, loving our neighbors.  We join Durham CAN to operate as a union of people of faith and people of commitment to press our theoretical public servants toward being actual servants of the people.  The union makes us strong.

What time is it?  Paul says we had better know.  It is a time when people full of fear are trying to shut down and shut out and shout down and shut up the voices of those who are suffering.  They are belittling and humiliating teachers.  They are closing off access to voting.  They are shutting down jobs and taking them places where the poor workers have no protections.  They are refusing to hear the cry of the poor.  They are warehousing the desperately unemployed in prisons.  They are blaming the victimized and the marginalized for all the social ills.  They are shooting down our children in the streets.  They are claiming that the 1% deserve to own half of all the goods in the world.

We’d better know what time it is.  We have to lay aside the works of darkness.  The works of darkness are many.  Hiding out and believing we cannot make a difference is one of the works of darkness.  Get out in the light and stand for truth.  Being satisfied that we have a home and a job and not caring about others is a work of darkness.  Get into the light.  Letting some misguided police (I know it’s not all of them) continue to do whatever they have made it their habit to do, just because they can get by with it, is a work of darkness.  Pressing for reform is our armor of light.  Paul says don’t get discouraged and drown your sorrows in drunkenness.  Don’t go out and party because you think the world is going to hell anyway.  Get into the light.  Shine a light for God.  Shine a light for justice.  He says don’t take up the ways of the oppressors and sink into debauchery.  Don’t say that since the world is all corrupt anyway, I will now join the corruption of licentiousness, and consider that I have a license to do whatever I “blankety-blank” well please. Being free from the law does not mean that each of us can be a law unto ourselves.  Let a light shine into that despair that wants to give up on making things work, and let that light bring the hope of Jesus Christ who showed us another way. 

And don’t slip into the darkness of arguing and quarreling with one another.  We can find a way together to move forward.  It is the deceiver that tells us that it has to be my way or the highway.  Let the light of cooperation and solidarity shine.  And Paul says don’t become jealous of who is getting the credit.  If the Mayor or City Manager can bring a change, then let them claim the credit, even if they did so only because we pushed them and nudged them and scared them into doing it.  If the Police Chief wants to turn around and start policing in a fair and just and transparent and clean manner, then let him have the credit, no matter how slow he was in coming around to the light.  If the legislature wants to do right by our teachers and our voting citizens, let them have the credit, even if they did it kicking and screaming in resistance to the flood of people crying for justice.  Let the light shine above and beyond jealousies.  If justice is done, we don’t care who gets the credit.  We know God is the one who gets the credit.

So dress yourselves up to be the image of Jesus Christ that the world needs to see.  He did not count his own life above others.  He did not let even the small children or the disabled widows be disrespected.  He did not tolerate the poor being mistreated or the haughty and wealthy acting proud.  Paul says we should get dressed in Jesus.  Go to our closets, pull out a hanger with Jesus on it, and put that on.  Wear Jesus out into the wide world.  It’s a graphic image of the deep theological claim that in his life and death and resurrection, we have been united to Jesus.  God has drawn us into God’s own self.  So our image should be a beacon of God in the world.  We are the Jesus the world an see.  Jesus is the light of the world, and we keep on shining that light.  Be a light.  Be a beacon.  It’s a dangerous and troubling time.  But it is a time ripe for goodness.  The harvest is plentiful.  The workers are few.  We must work while it is day. 

Drawing on the words of songwriter Kyle Matthews (“My Heart Knows,” See for Yourself, Benson Records, 2000.)

We’ve thought it through,

And we’ve decided

We’re sure of You,

Whatever happens to us…

Whatever happens to us.

And if you lead

Where there is no path,

Where there’s no way out

And no way back,

We will go where we have to go;

Give what we have to give;

Face what we have to face;

And we will live where we have to live.

Our hearts know where home is.

Our hearts know our home is with You.

The road is rough—

Our courage leaves us.

The way of love

Was never easy for You.

And it won’t be easy for us.

But If you’ll reach down

From time to time

And let us feel

Your hand in ours,

We will go where we have to go;

Give what we have to give;

Face what we have to face;

And we will live where we have to live.

Our hearts know where home is.

Our hearts know our home is You.

Our hearts know, Lord.  You are our home.  So lead us now.  Lead, us Jesus.  Lead, kindly light.  Lead and we will follow.  Thanks be to God.  Thanks be to God.