Racial Justice and the Church

14/6/2020

On Sunday 14 June, after our bell rang 72 times for the lives lost in the Grenfell Tower fire 3 years ago, we had a parish conversation about racism, the Church, and transformation.

I compiled some quotations and resources to help frame and stimulate our discussion and they’re below, together with film, book, and podcast recommendations.

I’m especially inspired by what James Baldwin, the black gay American writer, has to say about change:
‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’

The photograph was taken at the recent London protests. Change is possible. Good conversations are possible. Growth and transformation are possible, as we strive for justice and liberation together.

IDEAS AND VOICES

Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. It’s not a comfortable conversation for any of us. It is risky and messy. It is haunting work to recall the sins of our past. But is this not the work we have been called to anyway? Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate truth and inspire transformation? It’s haunting. But it’s also holy.

– Austin Channing Brown

If you are disgusted by what you see, and if you feel the fire coursing through your veins, then it’s up to you. You don’t have to be the leader of a global movement or a household name. It can be as small scale as chipping away at the warped power relations in your workplace. It can be passing on knowledge and skills to those who wouldn’t access them otherwise. It can be creative. It can be informal. It can be your job. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you’re doing something.

– Reni Eddo-Lodge

Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can’t afford to stay silent.

– Reni Eddo-Lodge

To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely – to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you…and no empire can take away.

– Cornel West

Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

– James Baldwin

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

– James Baldwin

The reality is, racism was baked into the very fabric, if you will, of the cake of our country…I really do believe that we’ve got to face the pain of our past and then work together to create new ways to create a new future.

– Michael Curry

Excerpt from a conversation between Regina Munch and Fr Bryan Massingale:

RM: You’ve compared the way that racism functions to a liturgy. How does that work?

BM: I got that insight from a sociologist named Joe Feagin, and he says that just as in a liturgy you have an officiant or presider, you have acolytes, and you have a congregation, so too does racism. You have officiants, the people who are the obvious perpetrators of racial injustice. They’re the people who are telling awful jokes, the people who pass policies that would disadvantage persons of color—for example, policies that create an unequal distribution of educational resources. Then you have the acolytes, who are, in a sense, the enablers. The enablers are those who carry out those policies, who give approval to the heinous actions that are going on. But then you have the congregation. The congregation are the bystanders—the people who see what’s going on, know what’s going on, but who take no action to intervene.

When I talk about the bystanders, I ask people to think about going to their family meal at Christmas or Thanksgiving. You have the family member who tells a racist joke or who says a racist thing. What bystanders or the congregation will often do during that situation is to say things like, “Well, your grandfather comes from a different generation,” or, “That’s just the way your aunt was raised,” or, “It’s a terrible thing that he said, but deep down he’s a really good person.”

Bystanders teach onlookers a very important message: doing racist things is okay because white people will let you get away with it. We create safe spaces for racism to fester and to brew, and it’s out of that toxic atmosphere in our country that more heinous actions take place—the murder of George Floyd or the brutal killing of Ahmaud Arbery simply because he was jogging in a neighborhood. We create the atmosphere that says when white people do terrible things, other white people have your back. Other white people won’t call you out.

Feagan talks about how white people act one way in public, but when they’re backstage, as it were, in the company of whites, there’s a whole different set of behaviors that come into play. Even if you don’t do anything negative, if you are not actively anti-racist, if you’re not actively challenging people when they say and do terrible things, then you’re creating the permissive atmosphere that allows these blatant things to happen.

Excerpt from an essay by Ramond Mitchell:

Leaders from the margins are viewed as equal parts, necessary and threatening. I say necessary because there is fairly widespread acknowledgement of the lack or underrepresentation of women and people of color in leadership roles within the church. But I also use the word threatening. Some view leaders from the margin as less than. Leaders from the margins are viewed as a compromise for others. So leaders from the margins have to defy what the world sets before us. So we borough deeper into the margins. We struggle to hold ourselves to a standard of excellence that is defined by us, not by this center. But that resistance can’t be done alone.

For me, my resistance in the margins was done with my mother who as a single mom ensured her children received a college education. It was done with the family who endorsed my scholarships; who used their resources from this center to take my hand in the margins and help pay for me to attend a school where people believed in my academic ability. It was done by the people of God who loved me when loving myself seemed impossible. And it was the church who gave me a space to flourish and use my talents for the greater glory of God.

So I ask each of you, how can we elevate others, leaders, leaders from the margins, leaders for the church, by simply recognizing that their leadership gifts aren’t despite the margins but because of the margins?

FURTHER RESOURCES

To read:

Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race

Ben Lindsay, We Need to Talk about Race

Akala, Natives

Walter Brueggemann, Interrupting Silence

James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation

Judy Ryde, White Privilege Unmasked

Robin di’Angelo, White Fragility

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Austin Channing Brown, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

Martin Luther King Jr, Letter from Birmingham Jail