flying.farther

I’ve chewed on that meeting like I’ve never chewed on a church sermon or anything my entire life, she said. I just want to be in a nice neighborhood, and so do all these other people.

I came across an article in the NY Times today on gentrification and what Portland, Oregon is trying to do about it.

First, a moment of pride. I love Portland. In fact, it may be my favorite city in the United States. With 75,000 people showing up for Obama’s speech and now the talk on gentrification, this makes me proud of the city I went to undergrad in. However, the voices in the article speak to the truth, that so far, it seems like a lot of talk right now. There is a long way to go, which is just indicative of this whole country. I was happy for the initiative by the city (even though this should only be the beginning), but the article seemed rather run of the mill. Until I got to the end, which is where the quote above comes from.

Where is the church in this? We’ve just had Jeremiah Wright assassinated on television and the hope of this country is in the initiative in such things as Portland, Oregon?

I’ve chewed on that meeting like I’ve never chewed on a church sermon or anything my entire life, she said.

Perhaps, we ain’t addressing the real pressing questions — the questions that hit at our very existence in this country. I’m willing to assume that people don’t act like Christians most days of the week has something to do with the lack of questions hitting at our existence from the pulpit.

I do have to say that I am not a pastor in a pulpit. My family and job are not on the line from a congregation that may turn hostile in response to necessary questions. However, at least us lay people can bring up the questions ourselves and take off some of the pressure from the pastor. In the end, “we’ve gotta talk about it,” as James Cone often puts it. I suspect such an impact on this woman has to do with the fact that the American Christians, or at least the white ones, don’t talk about, much less talk to black churches, korean churches, etc.

This statement, “I’ve chewed on that meeting like I’ve never chewed on a church sermon or anything my entire life,” ought to haunt us.

Above, the reader will note a new tab: Theological Responses to the Wright Fiasco.

I decided to order the reflections on Liberation theology, Jeremiah Wright, James Cone, Barack Obama, and the media fiasco and to make a space for such a list. I expect such a tab to become somewhat important around November. I also have found some current readers show up at some of the less important posts, so in an effort to guide the reader towards the core, I have also emphasized certain posts on the list. Lastly, I suspect for now, the majority of people would not care for continuing posts, but I do plan on updating the list when need be in the future, say, around election time when all those negative adds slam Wright to slam Obama.

A negative theology is to say what something is not. Generally understood, negative theology applies towards stating what God is not. Below is a negative theology of Dr. Wright. He isn’t a crazy person, a man with “issues”, or a reverse racist.

Last night Bill Moyers reflected on Dr. Wright, conservative preachers, and the whole continuing media debacle on race. Well done sir.

It is quite telling that every time there is a public discussion on Wright - or even a private discussion on race - we must begin with a reflection on the history of slavery. Indeed we ought to begin with an honest history, however, the reason we must today is because the grand story of America refuses to listen to horrors that America has committed. In such a refusal, the ideas that Wright is a crazy person, a black man with issues, or a reverse racist find their genesis.

Dr. Wright is angry. Yes. Or rather, can be angry, but there is nothing wrong with that. I suspect God has been as angry as Wright, and so were the prophets and Jesus. White people might find anger threatening, but Dr. Wright hasn’t lost his ability to speak in his anger. His story is still voiced and that is more threatening. However, those who refuse to hear his words at all, call him a crazy person. They make an appeal that he is out of his mind, that he is merely emotional. This simply isn’t true, rather the opposite is correct. One must simply listen to what Wright says to see this. He is too coherent to be crazy.

Others seem to think Wright has “issues.” Anne Lamott does. Thankfully she admits she isn’t a theologian (and it shows). To put it mildly, yes, Wright has issues, but not in the way we say it. In fact there is still the large issue of race that we refuse to adequately engage (hell, we haven’t even got to other forms of racism directed toward immigrants, etc.). This weighs hard of the black community, while the white community refuses to acknowledge systemic problems (to speak in broad terms - really its the black and white stories that are at odds, one more honest than the other). Of course Wright would have a few problems to shout about, because by and large America is still racist.

Dr. Wright is also not a reverse racist. This is not to say that a black person cannot be racist, however, what Newt Gingrich purports assumes that racism does not continue to exist in any large way. Yet, if what Wright does say is true, understood within a racist culture at large, than it merely rings true. However, Wright is not engaged by others at the level of his and his community’s experience. Instead, Wright’s words are taken from his mouth - from his black body and black context - and put into a white person’s body and context. In some senses, it seems that even Wright speaking cannot be understood as a black person speaking; rather, culture at large must think of him as a white person. How is that not itself racist, stripping him of his own humanity? Sure, maybe if we took Wright’s words and gave them to an oppressive people, the content of the words might sound racist, because they would be coming from the oppressive people’s lips. The body and context from whom the words come from are infinitely important. To call Wright a reverse racist merely on the basis of what he said in his speeches, based on forgetting the black community’s story and acting like he is a white man, is bullshit. This is just another way to marginalize a black man speaking prophetic truth.

With all this in mind, no wonder liberation theology operates through hermeneutic of suspicion.

With the discussion of race finding its way back into popular discourse, I’d like to mention a “conference” this summer that has Race and the Church as its topic.

This summer at De Paul University, in Chicago, is the summer gathering for the Ekklesia Project. This is the big national gathering. I finally went last summer (I’ve been a signer for some time before that) and had a very fruitful time. I do plan on going again this year, so I hope to see some of you there. Last summer I even met the first person, who I didn’t know, that told me right after he saw my name tag, “Oh hey, I read your blog! I’ve got some questions.” I guess there actually is something redeeming at Duke then eh? I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, this is what the summer gathering will look like:

Crossing the Divide: Race, Racism and the Body of Christ
EP Summer Gathering, July 7-9, Depaul University
We approach this year’s gathering in great hope, believing that the church has been given adequate and even abundant gifts which make unity possible across the false divisions of race. We hope to explore some of those gifts and celebrate the practices of the congregations among us who are being formed graciously into a new body. We are also asking endorsers and guests to help us closely examine our own practices and institutions in order to expose and heal hidden wounds. We plan on worshiping and singing together, and on listening to one another as we encounter a difficult moral issue.

Plenary Sessions will be led by:
Rodney Sadler, Union Theological Seminary
Victor Hinojosa, Baylor University
Kelly Johnson, University of Dayton
Michelle Loyd Paige, Calvin College
Mike Budde, DePaul University

We will also feature a congregational forum in which we hear from two congregations with different approaches to the ministry of racial reconciliation.

Tentative Workshop titles include:
Wrestling with Scripture (led by Michael Cartwright)
Race, Immigration and the Divided Church
The Christian Community Development Association and EP in Conversation (led by Craig Wong of Grace in San Francisco and Glenn Kehrein in Chicago.)
The Liturgical Landscape of Race

As for who the Ekklesia Project is, here is what they say they are about:

The Ekklesia Project is a network of Christians from across the Christian tradition who rejoice in a peculiar kind of friendship rooted in our common love of God and the Church. We come together from Catholic parishes, Protestant congregations, communities in the Anabaptist tradition, house-churches and more as those who are convinced that to call ourselves ‘Christian’ means that following Jesus Christ must shape all areas of life. Our shared friendship is one of God’s good gifts. With deep gratitude for God’s ongoing grace, we are unapologetically…

*…God-centered: We seek to overcome the dominant culture’s limited vision of faith as merely private or personal. We hope to bear witness in our lives and work to the triune God who moves the sun and the stars and is found in the life, cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Against the many idols that compete to determine our lives, we affirm that real power and effectiveness lie in God’s hands; we live by trust and prayer.

*…Church-centered: We share a common commitment to the Church as Christ’s gathered Body, whose true heart is communal worship and whose true freedom is disciplined service. We share a common conviction that the Church is the material, living people of God that crosses all borders and human divisions. Our partnership in the Ekklesia Project deepens our commitments to our local congregations, broadens our care for the whole Church, and kindles in us the hope that the Holy Spirit is blowing fresh winds of unity.

*…Shalom-centered: We are committed to the peace established in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Embodying the crucified and risen Messiah, the Church must provide an alternative to the world’s violence. We challenge Christians to rethink values and practices that presume a smooth fit between killing and discipleship and to reject troubling compromises with institutions, allegiances and assumptions that foster a ‘culture of death.’ By practicing the works of mercy and offering together our various gifts in support of God’s reconciling work in the world, we continue to listen to and learn from each other on those matters we understand differently.

*…Political: We believe that the Kingdom of God transcends national identities and must be the primary focus of our political loyalty. All other loyalties – familial, political or ideological – derive their meaning by participating in the Body of Christ and bearing witness to his Kingdom. We hope to challenge ourselves and the Church to resist accommodation to America and analogous temptations globally. We humbly seek to be used by God so that together, as the Body of Christ, we might become more of what God has called us to be.

Seeing Christ’s Body as our “first family,” the Ekklesia Project aims to put discipleship and the Church as an alternative community of practices, worship, and integration at the center of contemporary debates on Christianity and society. We work to assist the Church as it lives its true calling as the real-world community whose primary loyalty is to God’s Kingdom that has broken into the world in Jesus’ person, priorities and practices, and that continues to do so in and through the gathered Body of Christ.

I am excited to hear that at my undergrad, Multnomah Bible College, Dr. John Perkins is giving lectures. Coming to Union last semester was dramatically different to say the least (though it was something I was looking for) and in that difference I found myself reading and listening to critiques, some solid and others flimsy. Here following is part three of three responsorial writings to three books I read for Social Ethics as Social Criticism dealing with race, as I presume some of Multnomah is going through too.

Part 3 – The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World: A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism, by Anselm Min (New York: T&T Clark 2004).

For the most part, I liked this book. Before reading the book, I had never encountered Emmanuel Levinas and only had a decent working knowledge of Jacques Derrida; however, Anselm Min wrote The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World in such a clear and readable fashion that my use of reference materials were minimal. Certainly Min’s language was a bit different than what I am used to, but, after a short time, his language seemed like second nature and in fact, maybe even a better way of describing the universal – totality.

In the past few years, I have discovered Trinitarian theologians, like Colin Gunton, and even more recently, the suffering, Trinitarian Christology of Moltmann. With this in mind, it seems obvious I would like this book, but aside from the prolific use of Moltmann (and critique), I found that the author addressed a topic that has literally been on my mind for years – “the oddity of the Holy Spirit” (109). The social nature of the Trinity is clear, after all the words Father and Son are relational terms of identity; however, the Holy Spirit seems to lack a similar relational name. Min answers well the question with verse after verse from the Bible and finally concluding with the selfless nature of the Spirit and the role the Spirit plays as the one “who actualizes the full potentialities of the model” – a relator for others (118, 121, 125).

I found it a wonderful stroke to ground solidarity as a reflection of the social God and inherently within the Trinitarian framework – to the Christ of God by way of the cohesive Spirit. Granted much of what Min is saying is not necessarily new because he grounds so much in Moltmann, but the way Min says it is new for it is geared towards the first steps of communion – solidarity – as the next step for theology. Also, Min is talking ecclesiology throughout his book when he says solidarity, and that the church, or better said the body of Christ, finds not only unity in the past and future acts of the suffering, resurrected Christ, but also in the now through the Holy Spirit.

Another chapter in the book that delighted me was “Solidarity of Others in the Body of Christ.” I have found this particular metaphor of the body of Christ to be particularly rich and vivid. I was thrilled that Min covered the variety of subjects that the metaphor addresses and I know it will be a reference in the future merely because of its brevity and clarity.

However, I am unsure as to the success that Min achieves when addressing pluralism. I myself am undecided on the extent for Christianity and pluralism. The body of Christ seems a great metaphor for explaining Christianity’s identity in the world where it interacts with religions, but as Min notes, the metaphor is at least partially exclusive (150). I know some classmates will object, but if the church (Christianity) does not draw its identity from Christ, what then makes it Christian? I think Min makes a good point, that within a pluralistic world, being Christian does not mean one does not have boundaries; rather that, Christianity confesses its own boundaries, enters into sensitive dialogue with other religions and finds commonality from which to work together (150, 174, 175).

I am excited to hear that at my undergrad, Multnomah Bible College, Dr. John Perkins is giving lectures. Coming to Union last semester was dramatically different to say the least (though it was something I was looking for) and in that difference I found myself reading and listening to critiques, some solid and others flimsy. Here following is part two of three responsorial writings to three books I read for Social Ethics as Social Criticism dealing with race, as I presume some of Multnomah is going through too.

Part 2 – Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives Matter, by Traci C. West (Louisville: Westminster Press, 2006).

I was particularly interested with the chapter on liturgy. Having read Theopolitical Imagination (I am sorry if I am beginning to sound like a broken record), I was looking in West’s chapter on liturgy specifically for a treatment on the Eucharist. Cavanaugh, in my opinion, writes wonderfully about the death of Rutilio Grande and the response of Archbishop Oscar Romero – a single mass (121-122). The Eucharist broke through economic barriers bringing together rich and poor. And so reading Disruptive Christian Ethics, I was excited to see that liturgy was included. I would have liked to have seen more from West on baptism and communion, but even with the limited treatment, I feel like she brought an important component of race to my thought, which I will tease out here.

Liturgy accomplishes multiple functions: personal reflection, a visible representation of the body of Christ, unity, and “recogniz[ing] and contest[ing] repressive cultural norms like white superiority” to name a few (112). For instance, the Eucharist: prompts personal reflection on the person and work of Jesus Christ; visibly depicts the body of Christ in both time and space before one’s eyes; brings to light the unity in the body of Christ (both visible and universal); and thus, in theory, portrays each Christian as a human being of equal worth and equal acceptance.

However, white dominance (117), or white isolation, breaks the tangible image of the body of Christ existing in the world. The universal body of Christ is made up of all types of people, of all skin colors, and for a local church to be racially dominated by whiteness creates a Eucharist that is fundamentally myopic and thus a poor misrepresentation of the Eucharist. The body and blood no longer visibly shows the breadth of the church, nor does it portray each Christian as equally accepted. The representation of only whiteness can only lead to personal reflection (a personal reflection that is probably inherently white too), unless the Christian is confronted by a church that looks like him/herself.

The specific liturgical form of the Eucharist in my church in Portland, Oregon is different from the norm and I think one of the most powerful ways I have ever encountered the church and subsequently the Eucharist. The way in which they give the elements is helpful in retaining a sense of equality and importance – they share it together, literally. Instead of getting in a line to individually receive the bread and drink, they circle around the drink (the bread has already been dispensed), pick up the cup, take it to another person, let them drink, and then give words of encouragement or solidarity. They do this over and over again, making sure no one is left out and that we each gave to those whom we individually sought to affirm. Across racial lines (and there are multiple racial lines), this congregation personally ministers to itself, and in my mind, truly fulfilling the function of the Eucharist ritual.

I am excited to hear that at my undergrad, Multnomah Bible College, Dr. John Perkins is giving lectures. Coming to Union last semester was dramatically different to say the least (though it was something I was looking for) and in that difference I found myself reading and listening to critiques, some solid and others flimsy. Here following is part one of three responsorial writings to three books I read for Social Ethics as Social Criticism dealing with race, as I presume some of Multnomah is going through too.

Part 1 – Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998, by James H. Cone (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999).

James Cone’s book Risks of Faith, I have to admit, was convicting. I come from the evangelical tradition and a fundamentalist home. While I left the literalist roots, the evangelical doctrine continues to hold some sway. During my time in undergrad, under the influence of authors and friends, I came to hold a quasi-Mennonite stance. Also Kingdom theology, championed by Moltmann, Pannenberg and others, has largely shaped me, and fits well (in my mind) within the Anabaptist tradition. Kingdom theology leads to Kingdom ethics; thus when I think ethics, I think to care for the poor and the widow.

I was so focused on the poor and the widow, I neglected other aspects of theology; I was too simplistic. It felt like Cone specifically talked to me when he addressed hope theology: “white American theologians have been virtually silent on black liberation, preferring instead to do theology in the light of a modern liberalism that assumes that black people want to integrate into the white way of life” (27). I was and am fully aware that the poor are stuck at the bottom in a system of power structures; nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, I saw it as merely economic injustice – not also racial. Kingdom theology can cohere with Liberation theology, and to some degree it had for me, but I lacked the color dimension.

However, the book was far from done with me. As pitiful an excuse as it may sound, I felt that I was not allowed previously into the discussion. Whether it is culture, my up bringing, or whatever, I felt that since I was not black, I had no right to speak. I’ve been silent. Cone, however, has called me out. I felt invited into the discussion of racism, particularly in the chapter “White Theology Revisited.” My theology should reflect the richness of all the Christian traditions. I can and should include black theology right along side Yoder, Grenz, and Hauerwas. If I aim to teach theology at a college somewhere and one of the first classes I want to do will incorporate the non-white, non-male, and non-heterosexual theologies – essentially, liberationists. I especially see the need to do this at the Bible College I went to, not to be the token class that covers recent movements (for they already have one that briefly glosses over black theology and feminism), but to interact with the traditions that the evangelical world has marginalized. I want to balance out the white theology and incorporate the other voices.

I do have a concern though: violence. I first want to preface that I have come to hold some sort of loose pacifism, or better described as, peace ethic. My value of peace and non-violence stems from Kingdom ethics – the Kingdom is here but not here, however, as Christians we should endeavor to spread the Kingdom through Kingdom acts (i.e. non-violence). Also, the Kingdom liberates people and contradicts earthly power structures. Cone allows for violence, but I do not…I think. I understand that the oppressed should not work within the oppressor’s paradigm, yet at the same time, I believe the Kingdom not only liberates, but addresses the world and its evil in entirely different ways than the world acts. For now I disagree with Cone on the tactics of liberation, not because I am white and worried about the status quo, rather because I think the Kingdom ethics include non-violence and liberation together.