White Christian Nationalism on Ballot This Election Cycle

Insightful essays appearing now before the election about how white Christian nationalism is on the ballot this election: Paul Brandeis Raushenbush writes:

Recommended: Ian Gilmour, Slavery to Civil Rights

I'd like to recommend to you a little monograph entitled Slavery to Civil Rights, written by my friend Ian Gilmour, a Presbyterian pastor in Edinburgh who is currently serving the Scottish kirk in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Ian's small book reflects years of research into the role that spirituals and music in general have played among African-Americans and in African-American churches, to sustain hope and courage as people battle prejudice and discrimination. I find Slavery to Civil Rights — which is engagingly and clearly written — fascinating from a number of standpoints.

Charles Marsh's Biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory, on Bonhoeffer's (Highly Contested) Homosexuality

Here's another set of excerpts I'd like to share with you from Charles Marsh's excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (NY: Knopf, 2014). Marsh ruffled feathers of conservative Christians (and the ruffling goes on and has become even more agitated with Diane Reynolds' 2016 Bonhoeffer biography The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany) by concluding that Bonhoeffer was a gay man deeply in love with fellow Lutheran pastor Eberhard Bethge.

"When Love Is the Way, There's Plenty Good Room, Plenty Good Room, for All of God's Children": Showcasing Black Church Gospel Preaching at Royal Wedding

Here's the text of the sermon Bishop Michael Curry gave at the royal wedding today. In his book Silence: A Christian History (NY: Penguin, 2013), Diarmaid MacCulloch cites Canon W. H. Vanstone, who says that the church is like “a swimming pool in which all the noise comes from the shallow end” (p. 224, citing J.A. Vickers, Wisdom and Wit: An Anthology from the Writings of Gordon Rupp [London, 1993], p. 90, which anthologizes a conversation between Rupp and Vanstone in Methodist Recorder [25 July 1968]).

Fred Clark on Rev. William J. Barber's Moral Revolution: A Rebuke to White Evangelical Reading of the Bible

As Fred Clark says, there's a reason Rev. William J. Barber cited "Revive Us Again," a venerable hymn long beloved by Southern white evangelicals, in his stirring commentary at the Democratic National Convention. I blogged about this commentary yesterday; a video of Rev. Barber's address to DNC is at this posting.

Rev. William Barber on 2016 Elections: "I'm Troubled and I'm Worried by the Way Faith Is Cynically Used by Some to Serve Hate, Fear, Racism, and Greed"

Proponents of the religious right have been in the business for a long time now of pretending that they and they alone mediate God to the rest of us. Remember when Anita Bryant, the wildly popular Southern Baptist anti-gay crusader (well, until her marriage crashed and burned [the gays made that happen, her shameless ex-husband maintained] and she went through multiple bankruptcies), solemnly assured us that God did not intend a woman to be president of the U.S.?

Sharing Our Life as Theology: Another Videotaped Theological Conversation with Ivone Gebara, About Diarmaid MaCulloch's Silence, Christian Amnesia, and Gospel Mandate for Inclusivity

I've previously shared with you two videotaped conversations that I had the honor of having in the past year with the distinguished Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara (here and here). As I noted when I shared these videos, Mark Shumway and Rachel Fitzgerald Shumway, who maintain the evolving deep forms blog, organized and videotaped these conversations (with expert technical assistance from Mark's son Chris Shumway and Rachel and Ivone's friend Marlene Denardo, who speaks Portuguese and helped facilitate the conversation when Ivone and I needed her wonderful linguistic skills).

A Question for "Liberal" Catholics Now Praising Amoris Laetitia: What Kind of Holiness Is Purchased at the Price of Making LGBTQ Lives Miserable?

Conferences (when they're good) become thinking spaces for me. At many thought-provoking, energizing meetings like the one we attended this weekend on embracing LGBTQ diversity in the black church, I find myself jotting notes in the margins of my program — notes about seemingly unrelated discussions in which I'm involved which, to my way of thinking, relate intently to the conversations I'm hearing at the conference I'm attending. 

Embracing and Affirming LGBTQ Diversity Within the Black Church: Notes from a Conference Sponsored by New Millennium Baptist Church, Little Rock

Fred Clark, Slacktivist

As I mentioned on Saturday, this weekend, Steve and I attended a conference on "Embracing and Affirming LGBTQ Diversity Within the Black Church" sponsored by New Millennium Baptist church in Little Rock. Those of us attending this wonderful event made a covenant not to tweet or share personal information revealed by participants in conference discussions, but unless I completely misunderstand, we're welcome to share information about the conference itself and about the important discussions that took place over the course of the weekend.

Study War No More, or He Taught Me How to Watch, Fight, and Pray? Bellicose Bible-Grounded Christianity As No Christianity at All

Another of those captcha-like postings designed to prove that a real human being and not a monkey is typing these meandering musings:

A Week of Amazing Grace, and of No Grace at All: Reading the Testimony of the Mother Emanuel Martyrs Alongside the Dissenting Obergefell v. Hodges Statements of Four Supreme Catholic Men

What's a church for?, President Barack Obama asked the American people on the day on which the highest court of the land struck down barriers to legal civil marriage for same-sex couples What's a church for?, President Obama asks us as he delivers a deep-souled eulogy for the martyred pastor of Mother Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston, South Carolina, that will go down in history as one of the most significant orations made by any U.S. president.

Quote for Day: "White Christians Are Conflicted about Whether to Identify with the Oppressed Israelites or with Pharoah and Pharoah’s Enforcers"

Peter Laarman on the top five toxic religion stories of 2014:

Marriage Equality in Arkansas with Rallies, Flying Fur, Duelling Bible Verses, the Whole Shebang: A Footnote

As a footnote to my previous posting about what has been happening on the marriage equality front in Arkansas since our supremes stayed same-sex marriages, I'd like to share with you two letters that have caught my eye, both from our statewide alternative free paper, Arkansas Times. The first of these appeared in that paper a week ago, and the second this past week.

"God Loves Uganda" Airs Tonight on PBS Stations in U.S.

A note to all of you that Roger Ross Williams's powerful documentary "God Loves Uganda," which tracks the role of the American evangelical right in fostering anti-gay hysteria in Uganda and other African countries, is being released today in DVD, and is also airing today on many PBS stations. If you click the link "TV (May 19)" on this page, it will open to a window that allows you to check your local PBS station to see whether it's showing the film, and at what time.

Quote for the Day: "Yet There Was Not a Single Woman in the Room"

Hazel Cherry at Religion Dispatches:

Remembering a Brother's Death, Looking at Churches' Response to LGBT People

Dear Folks,

Continuing to feel raw these days, in part, due to what is happening in Japan, and  the strange way in which my dream life involved me in that disaster with a dream full of foreboding some days before the events there.  Not a bad thing to feel raw for Lent, I suppose, since feeling the tender new skin with which we approach each day exposed and wondering how to fit things together opens us to God, I have to believe.

African-American Faith Communities and the LGBT Community: An Arkansas Church Builds Bridges

National Organization for Marriage chair Maggie Gallagher has recently been crowing that the opposition to marriage equality in Maryland is being led not only by her own Catholic church but by black churches as well.  (Unfortunately for Maggie, her fellow Catholics decidedly do not support her attempt and that of the Catholic hierarchy to block the human rights of LGBT citizens: as Tom Fox noted recently in National Catholic Reporter, Catholic lawmakers and Catholic citizens have bucked the hierarchy to support the marriage equality bill, and polls show 49% of Maryland Catholics supporting marriage equality with 42% opposed--a higher percentage of support than among citizens at large).  

Wallace Best on Eddie Long Story and Need of Churches to Create Welcome Place for All

Wonderful analysis by Wallace Best of the Eddie Long scandal, and of the failure of many black churches (and of churches in general) to address homophobia honestly and with healing intent:

One of my Princeton colleagues recently pronounced the "death of the black church." If by that he means a church that fails to create a welcome place at the table for all God's children, I say good riddance. A new vision for African-American churches (dare I say all American churches) is one that is inclusive, universal, and forward-thinking. In a church like that, no one would have to hide behind a mask, and they would be less likely to hurt themselves or anyone else. 

A church that creates a welcome place at the table for all God's children: one can only keep dreaming. And hoping.

The graphic is one of several paintings that Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese did depicting Jesus at feasts to which every sort of person was invited--a theme for which Veronese was investigated by the Inquisition.

Jeremiah Wright's Little Rock Sermon: What He Said, What I Heard

When I blogged about Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermon at New Millennium Baptist church in Little Rock yesterday, I mentioned that I might add a bit later about what Rev. Wright said in his sermon.  I’m not sure that the notes I took are worth sharing with anyone else, because they’re idiosyncratic.  Like most longtime listeners to sermons, I hear what I want to hear in homilies that make a broader and more elegant point than the one I’m receiving—though I have long since trained myself to hear the text even as I weave my own subtext while I listen.

Bearing Witness: One Bread, One Body--The Revolutionary Implications of Communion

Another of those postings in which I feel moved to bear witness to a gift that has come my way, the significance of which isn’t entirely plain to me. And so I write about it, to understand as I give witness.

It’s a gift that will appear insignificant to many other folks, I imagine. It’s this—simply this: last night, I had the chance to attend a potluck supper at a local church that hosts both a black and a white church on its premises. The two churches are separate and independent of each other. But on occasion, one or the other community sponsors an event that brings the two groups together. And that’s what happened last night.

I have ties to both of these churches. My aunt attends the “white” church. Two good friends of mine attend the “black” church. In fact, one of these two friends is that church’s pastor.

Both are Baptist churches, but with slightly different affiliations. The way Baptist churches function is perhaps not clear to those raised in areas of the country where there are not large concentrations of Baptists, as there are in my region.

Each Baptist church considers itself autonomous. It is the people of that particular church who constitute the church. In fact, historically, each Baptist church drafted its own constitution, when the church began, with all the constituting members signing the constitution.

Even so, Baptist churches affiliate, forming local and statewide associations, and then national-level conventions. The church to which my aunt belongs is part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the group that broke from the Southern Baptist Convention when it went fundamentalist and cast its lot definitively with the political agenda of the religious right.

The black church that shares space with my aunt’s church is dually affiliated—to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as well as to the National Baptist Convention, a largely African-American organization. The two churches happen to be sharing a church building (and educational building, along with a kitchen and “fellowship” hall) because the “white” church is, frankly, dying. Its members are almost all elderly, and new members aren’t joining.

Fortunately, unlike some institutions approaching death, this church has recognized that it has an obligation to spread its resources around as it dies (it also sponsors a food pantry for indigent people, in which my aunt works). And so the church has offered to share its church campus with the “black” church, which is thriving.

This cooperative arrangement has proven wonderful for both churches. If nothing else, it brings together, on an ongoing basis, two communities from two different cultural backgrounds, who share a profession of faith in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. And last night’s potluck supper, sponsored by the “black” church, is an example of what happens when the two groups meet.

My aunt sees my friends in the “black” church many Sundays, since the services of the two churches are back to back. As she leaves her service, she bumps into the members of the other church, headed into the church. She has adopted my friends in the “black” church, and considers them her friends now.

So my invitation to attend this potluck dinner began with an invitation to my aunt from my friends in the “black” church, who then contacted me directly to ask if Steve and I could come to the event, and if I would also please extend the invitation to my brother and his family. The rationale for the potluck supper was a presentation by the pastor’s wife re: her trip to India this past summer. The supper would feature Indian foods prepared by a local restaurant, as well as whatever those attending brought to contribute.

And there would be a slideshow presentation and lecture about Indian culture, led by the pastor’s wife, with a question and answer session about her trip and about what she learned in India. (The pastor’s wife is my other friend in the church—a wonderful person with whom I worked at an historically black college several years ago. In the small world that is Arkansas, we have other ties, too. My uncle was academic v-p of the college she attended, and my aunt taught her English there.)

That’s it, in a nutshell—a church potluck supper with an educational session about Indian culture. That’s the gift about which I feel so grateful this morning, the day following the event.

And what’s the gratitude about, I wonder? First and foremost, I think, it’s gratitude for the opportunity to share a meal with a group of socially engaged, committed believers, whose faith I share, though my own religious tradition is distinct from theirs. Because I’ve been pushed away from the table in my own Catholic tradition, I find it deeply significant when friends in other traditions invite me to their table.

And this was a communion event. Our ritualization of the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist has caused us to forget that when we gather for this central act of worship, we gather around a table. To share a meal. To break bread together.

We commune by making ourselves one (cum, “with” + unio, “one”) with each other through the simple, profound, everyday act of sharing bread. Through the act of breaking and eating bread together, we profess the unity that binds us together in our shared commitment to the way of discipleship. But we do more: we not only express the unity we already have through that commitment to the way of discipleship; we also consolidate and deepen the unity through our act of communion.

We commune with each other in order to effect communion. We continue breaking bread in the ritual act of the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper, over and over, because our communion is never complete. It is always tenuous, threatened, broken. It needs to be restored, made whole, rediscovered. Again and again.

Because my own Catholic church family has driven me from the table, I am profoundly moved when I am invited to the table of other religious traditions. I feel privileged to break bread with other believers who seek me out and actively express their desire to include me at their table.

My heart overflows at such gatherings. And it did last night. Not much of import happened at the meal last night. But everything in the world took place there.

I broke bread with family members and friends—with my aunt, my brother, two of his sons, Steve, and my friends in the church sponsoring the event. The meal began with a blessing by the minister of the “black” church which turned the event into more than an “ordinary” meal (though no meal is ordinary; we remember the Lord’s death and resurrection every time we break bread around a table). It ended with a prayer by the pastor of the “white” church to send us forth and share what had happened to us around the table.

Moreover, I broke bread with members of a church that shares the faith I profess, but which lives across a decisive racial line from me. In the gathering of white believers and black believers around a table, even now, even A.D. 2009, anywhere in the United States, there is still something noteworthy, something to be remarked on.

There is particularly something to be noted in such a gathering in a place like Arkansas, where the pastor of this particular “black” church has recently ruffled feathers in the white community by pointing out the obvious: that the all-white make-up of our state Supreme Court in 2009 returns us to the Jim Crow era of 1910. We have gone backwards as a state in recent years in this respect, at least: in the era of the first African-American president in U.S. history, our highest court in Arkansas is all-white, less racially inclusive than it has been for some decades now.

And pointing this out gets folks into trouble. My friend, the pastor of this church, who is a retired federal judge, suffers slings and arrows when he notes this simple, glaring fact about who we now are as a people—as he did when he was an active judge and was hotly pursued by the state’s judicial ethics commission for making ethical statements, in his capacity as a pastor, that the commission wished to construe as politically partisan.

No place is more segregated in the South, still, than the church. There are historic reasons for the segregation, which go beyond the wish of white churches in the past to exclude black members. There is also the need of the black church to safeguard a precious cultural space of the African-American community, in which black people can exercise autonomy, can control an institution that belongs to them, and can worship in a way that befits their cultural background. The black church was, for many years, the sole institution of which African Americans could claim exclusive ownership, and as such an institution, it became a vehicle for education and political organization, as well as for worship.

So for members of a white and a black church to gather, to break bread around a common table, is still a big deal, in a city in which one can go into almost any restaurant at breakfast, dinner, or supper and find black and white people eating nonchalantly together—and that in itself is a big deal, when one race fought bitterly to continue excluding the other from its tables as recently as the 1960s.

Under such circumstances, communion—breaking bread together at the same table—is a quietly revolutionary act. It overturns social conventions. It effects the communion that the church proclaims through its shared faith, but which is not yet lived in its everyday life.

The simple, quiet act of breaking bread around the same table proves revolutionary in such circumstances, because it moves counter to currents in the surrounding world that need, powerfully, to maintain lines of separation. Where people gather around a table to break bread together, there are no lines of separation—there is no we and no they, for the small time and small space in which one bread is broken at one table.

Just as, for the time and space in which Jesus accepted invitations from lepers, prostitutes, tax-collectors, and other social and religious outcasts, and when he broke bread with them, becoming one with them and taking on himself their outcast status, the rigid lines that kept his social world in order vanished. And so the powers that be, who considered such an eradication of the lines keeping their world in order a revolutionary threat, put him to death.

And so the meal that his followers share, as we walk after him in the way of discipleship, has revolutionary roots, insofar as it commits us to erasing each and every social line that turns one group of us into insiders and other groups into outsiders. It is to that breaching of insider-outsider boundary lines that we commit ourselves each time we break bread together in memory of Jesus—if we are serious about remembering who he was, what he did, and the way to which he calls us.