Robert P. Jones's Commentary on the "Historical Record of Lived Christianity in America," White Supremacy, and the Recent Sojourners Débacle

An important contribution (and subtext) of Robert P. Jones's new book White Too Long is its focus on how white Christianity is lived in the US — as opposed to what churches say about themselves or profess in their official statements. As Jones states,

The historical record of lived Christianity in America reveals that Christian theology and institutions have been the central cultural tent pole holding up the very idea of white supremacy (p. 6).

Jim Wallis "Evolves" on Marriage Equality: Responses and Reflections

Now that the left-leaning evangelical leader (and a mover and shaker in the D.C. federal faith-based initiatives) Jim Wallis has come out for marriage equality--well, sort of: marriage equality, but--there's a lot of good commentary circulating about his long, long road to endorsement of gay rights. Well, sort of an endorsement. But. Here's some of it I'm finding valuable:

A Reader Writes: "I Am Sympathetic to the . . . Choice of Giglio Based on His Work on Human Trafficking"

In response to my posting about the Louis Giglio controversy (and Bill Donohue's comments re: it), Wild Hair makes a valuable observation:

Political Application of the Bible in American Culture: Gay Rights Discussion Keeps Conversation Going

Two more valuable pieces at Religion Dispatches catch my eye today:  

The News That's Fit to Tell: End-of-Week List

From a week of news-reading in which I haven't felt sufficient energy to comment on these stories as carefully as I might have wished: here's a set of recent stories/commentary (about widely scattered matters) that have caught my attention, and may interest readers:

Sojourners and the Quest for Socio-Economic Justice: No One's Human Rights Can Be Optional (and That Includes the Gays)

And speaking of a false centrism that predictably provides cover for the religious and political right, while professing to be all about "balance": the question Sarah Posner asks today at Religion Dispatches about the recent Sojourners "God is watching" ad addressing the budget debate is exactly the question I asked myself when I first saw the ad: Was God watching when Sojourners refused to run Believe Out Loud's ad asking faith communities to support the human rights of LGBT persons?

Sojourners Again: Questions about Coherence and Integrity in the Struggle for Justice

I'm continuing to find the story of Sojourners and its prejudice-driven refusal to take sides in the struggle for justice for LGBT persons in society and faith communities instructive.  The narrative line that catches attention here: it's a parable about how people of faith who profess to be committed to justice nullify this when they refuse to practice justice in some area in which, right before their eyes, the struggle for justice is being played out in a conspicuous way.

Diana Butler Bass and Jim Wallis: Moral Dimensions of Wisconsin Story

 

And, turning from Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee to some real and substantial moral analysis of the current American political scene: two good commentaries as the week ends by Diana Butler Bass and Jim Wallis about the situation in Wisconsin.  Both touch on the significant moral-religious issues involved in what's happening there.

Ideas Have Consequences: Progressive Pragmatists, Idealists and the Future of Obama Administration

In my wrap-up posting about Mr. Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame, I concluded,

If there is going to be a resurgence of progressivism under this administration, that resurgence is going to have to come from the public itself, insofar as citizens become fed up with the cultural, political, and religious stalemates the right has produced for us for too many years now, while liberals appease the right and refuse to stand up, or to imagine a truly democratic society.

Which is to say that the moral backbone of progressive change in the Obama era is going to have to come, I believe, from progressive groups themselves, and not from the president and his advisors. I believe the president himself has that backbone, though I also believe he is, in many respects, a classic liberal who is willing to ignore strong moral considerations as he engages in pragmatic balancing acts. And it seems increasingly evident to me that he has surrounded himself with advisors who, to an even greater extent, are tone-deaf to the moral underpinnings of the agenda of change they talk about, and willing at every turn to ignore those underpinnings as they tinker, try to anticipate the winds of change, and seek to remain on top through it all.

And in a subsequent posting on the same theme, I noted that the power of the political and religious right to play unholy culture-war games remains strong. I pointed to the continuing ability of economic elites who benefit from the culture wars to disseminate lies through the mainstream media. And I noted the concern of those elites “to combat the emergence of a new coalition of progressive people of faith at this point in our nation's history.”

As a follow-up to these observations, I’d like to note some significant recent discussion about the diverging strategies of progressive pragmatists and progressive idealists (or, as Frederick Clarkson’s critique of centrist orthodoxy notes, using Mark Silk’s terminology, priests and prophets) in the Obama era. The pragmatist-idealist distinction is Chip Berlet’s, in an important recent article entitled “Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War.” Frederick Clarkson highlights this essay in his latest posting at Talk to Action.

Berlet centers his analysis on the concept of “frames.” He argues that the fundamental struggle going on among progressives who support the new president, but who divide along pragmatist-idealist lines, is the question of how to frame the debate for the progressive agenda.

Progressive pragmatists are persuaded that progressive movements have no choice except to reach out to evangelical voters of the center and moderate right at this point in history. In the view of pragmatists, poll numbers demonstrate that Obama won the elections—and will continue to enjoy success as a leader—by forming a coalition that joins progressives and evangelical voters. The decision to give a high profile to Pastor Rick Warren at the inauguration reflected the intent of the new administration to follow a pragmatist course with outreach to the evangelical community.

Berlet agrees that outreach to evangelical voters is important, if progressives expect to use the mandate for change represented by the presidential election to move their agenda forward. However, in his view the pragmatist stance concedes too much to the religious right: it allows the right (and its centrist-to-moderately right evangelical supporters) to frame the discussion.

In Berlet’s view, before we talk about building a progressive coalition that holds together evangelicals and progressive groups, “we need clearer criteria to determine who we seek to work with”:

If one wants to work in coalition with Christian evangelicals, perhaps it would be better to start by talking with Progressive Idealists, the religious left, and a variety women’s rights and gay rights activist groups to line up our support. Then together we can analyze the source of the ideological opposition (in this case the Christian Right) and develop a counter-frame. Finally, we can reach out to moderate and mildly conservative evangelicals using our counter-frame in a way that emphasizes common interests.

A counter-frame: as Berlet notes, social thinkers including Erving Goffman, Charlotte Ryan, and George Lakoff have argued persuasively that, when we allow our opponents to frame a discussion, we lose. We lose more than we gain when we permit the opposition to provide the terms that frame how we see our challenges and what we decide to do about those challenges. In Posner’s view, “[t]hat’s what the Christian Right has foisted on Democratic centrists—a rigged frame.”

Posner notes several debilitating consequences of the progressive pragmatist move to the center. One is that many liberal Democrats have allowed themselves to be convinced that “there is something inherently unseemly about advocating for reproductive or LGBT rights,” because continued advocacy for these causes in the face of fierce opposition from the Christian right prolongs the culture wars.

Another consequence of permitting the Christian right to provide the frame within which progressives approach issues like reproductive and gay rights is that we are led to see these issues as “problems” to be solved, rather than as challenges in which human rights are at stake. The alliance with evangelicals results in a weakening of the rhetoric of rights—human rights—in the Democratic party, such that progressives begin avoiding the very phrase that provides moral underpinning to their progressive causes.

As in a pre-election Huffington Post article on this theme, Berlet notes that people who expect to be taken seriously as moral agents cannot reduce human rights to political commodities. When we submit human rights issues to pragmatic considerations that diminish the force of our commitment to rights, we yield valuable moral ground—moral ground necessary to any viable program of progressive change:

. . . [I]it is clear that strong Democratic Party positions that stress community values as intertwined with social justice trump Christian Right campaigns against abortion and gay rights, even within the evangelical community. There is no need for Democrats to compromise on issues that reflect basic human rights. And to do so is morally wrong, even if it is pragmatically expedient.

And: “. . . [S]ince Reagan, the numbers do not suggest that compromise with the Christian Right even makes pragmatic sense—much less moral sense.”

And so, where to go with this analysis? Not to the White House, it appears: as I have repeatedly argued on this blog, even if Mr. Obama is attuned to the moral dimensions of these human rights struggles (and I continue to believe he is), the president is clearly persuaded by his pragmatist advisors that taking the moral stand in the struggles will hurt him politically. And, as I’ve noted, nothing compels someone who has made promises to combat injustice done to others to deliver on those promises. Other than that person’s conscience that is . . . .

No, as the opening section of this posting notes, I have come to the conclusion that the moral backbone of progressive change in the Obama era is going to have to come from progressive groups themselves, and not from the president and his advisors. Chip Berlet ends up at the same point:

This is more than just a squabble over who among the religious gets to claim the name progressive, it’s a struggle over whether or not the Obama administration will follow the path blazed by community organizers seeking social, economic, and gender justice. This will not happen unless there is sufficient pressure on them to do so. Social movements pull political movements toward them, not the other way around.

As Jacob Weisberg recently noted at Slate, Mr. Obama “sees the middle ground as high ground.” But this is a pre-moral conviction, when the moral insight one attains through listening and dialogue does not translate into solid moral commitment—commitment to do something in the face of injustice, when one can do something:

This is a wonderful instinct that is bettering America's image and making domestic politics more civil. But listening is not a moral stance, and elevating it to one only highlights the question of what Obama really stands for. The consensus-seeker repudiates torture but doesn't want to investigate it; he endorses gay equality but not in marriage or the military; he thinks government's role is to do whatever works. I continue to suspect him of harboring deeper convictions.

We are at a tipping-point moment in the framing of issues like the human rights of gay human beings as moral issues. For a number of decades now, neoconservatives and their religious apologists have succeeded in capturing the term “moral,” particularly when it comes to issues of gender, sexual orientation, and reproductive rights.

Now, the right’s exclusive ownership of the term “moral” is being hotly contested not only by progressives, but by the center itself. In the case of human rights for gay persons, two cultural developments in the waning part of the 20th century and the opening of the 21st century have radically shifted our culture’s perception of where the moral frame should be placed.

The first of these is the growing awareness of the public at large of the humanity of—and thus, the indefensible brutality of discrimination against—gay and lesbian persons. Too many of us have made our lives and stories public now, for the right to continue its malevolent depiction of us as sub-human and perverse—to continue that depiction successfully, that is. We are brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, co-workers, those sitting in the pew next to everyone else: we have a face, and that face does not correspond to the demonic one the right wishes the public to see, when it smears homosexuals.

The second important development shifting the center’s perception of the moral frame in discussions of gay people and gay human rights at this point in history is the increasingly evident moral bankruptcy of the political and religious right. People who have exposed themselves as immoral agents have a hard time convincing others, when they claim to be spokespersons for morality.

As Stuart Whatley notes in a HuffPo discussion today, conservatives' current strategy of making same-sex marriage the centerpiece of their challenge to Obama is not without significant risk—and that risk lies precisely in what the public at large, the center, may well come to think of the morality of this political strategy:

If conservatives wish to elevate their fight against same-sex marriage to primus inter pares without a smarting backlash, they will have to somehow justify this exclusive denial of rights as something other than hidebound bigotry. Indeed, a mis-tackle of this issue could very well transform the soi disant “moral majority” into an immoral minority, considering that an increased percentage of people will consider such a position to be driven more by social sadism than personal righteousness.

Ideas have consequences, as neoconservative thinkers have never tired of reminding us, echoing Richard M. Weaver. Faced with the waning power of the religious and political right to define the moral center, progressives may well decide to continue yielding moral ground to the right by “reaching out” and broadening the progressive center—even if this means muting progressive rhetoric about and commitment to human rights.

If progressive pragmatists choose to continue down that road now, under the Obama administration, however, there will be some pragmatic consequences to their decision. While it may be true that nothing can compel me to behave morally even when I see clearly the moral thing to do in a situation, persistent morally obtuse behavior on the part of leaders who claim to be all about progressive change siphons off my energy for progressive change, when pragmatist politicians finally declare the time is now right to move ahead.

Though my moral commitment to change in a number of important areas of contemporary culture—including the areas of gender and race—will not wane even when I detect moral betrayals and moral waffling in leaders in those areas, my energy for solidarity and for commitment does shift. Moral betrayal and moral waffling among leaders committed to change grounded in moral values impede my willingness (and, I suspect, that of others) to commit myself and act.

Ideas have consequences. Not very long ago, a friend of mine looked for the second time in a few years at an opening with the Sojourners organization founded by Jim Wallis. Wallis is at the center of the movement to join the energies of progressives and evangelicals. Wallis has also been notably resistant to gay rights, for much of his career.

My friend happens to be gay and in a long-term relationship. Before he looked at this job seriously, I advised him that, were I in his shoes, I would find out what Sojourners says and does about gay people and gay rights. Does Sojourners, for instance, have a policy of providing partner benefits for a gay spouse or gay partner?

On both occasions when a position at Sojourners opened, my friend took my advice. He asked. He was told both times that there are no partner benefits. The first time my friend approached Sojourners was before Obama’s election. The second time was after the election.

It appears that nothing has changed at Sojourners following Mr. Obama’s election—not, that is, for gay people. And, as a result, I find my energy for an organization in whose goals I wholeheartedly believe, and to which I have offered support in the past, significantly diminished.

Ideas have consequences. Lack of commitment to human rights for everyone on the part of groups claiming to stand for progressive moral change siphons off energy for the very changes those groups advocate. My second story has to do with the Notre Dame events last week.

Shortly before the president came to Notre Dame, I received an email request from Catholics United for the Common Good, asking if I would give financial support for an ad to appear at the time of the Notre Dame speech, which would underscore the widespread support the president has among Catholics.

Normally, I would have clicked through the menu of choices and made a donation—strait as our financial circumstances are now. After all, I am passionately committed to broadening the Catholic witness about issues of justice and peace. But I am committed to doing so precisely because I believe that groups committed to human rights deserve my support. It is that very same passionate commitment that compels me to distance myself from the Catholic church today, insofar as it betrays its clear witness to human rights in its teachings and its behavior.

When I got the recent appeal from Catholics United, I ignored it. I did so after deliberation. In moral decisions, one must think things through and weigh choices carefully. I do not break solidarity lightly with groups to whose causes I’m committed. I try to build into my moral decision-making checks and balances, including checks against my own rash judgment or propensity to act out of pique when I’m angry, hurt, off-kilter.

After careful reflection, I decided to ignore this appeal from an organization whose goals I support, for a cause very important to me. After all, only last Friday—a day before the Catholics United ad reached me—I noted in a posting on this blog that Frances Kissling recently called Catholics United to get their statement on the Harry Knox story, and was told they would get back to her.

I noted then that the Catholics United website contained no statement I could find about the attack of the Catholic right on Harry Knox. I’ve just visited it again. If any such statement is there—or has been made—I have not found it.

Ideas have consequences. Groups, including political coalitions, that claim to be acting on moral principle, but which have conspicuous blind spots about some key moral principles (e.g., the claim to human rights of gay persons), undermine my energy for collaborative action. In a world full of needs and causes, I decide to commit myself selectively. I have to do so. I have only so much energy and so much passion.

The energy and passion feeding the election of Barack Obama to the presidency have been extraordinary. The energy level behind the new president remains high.

I predict, however, that it will gradually diminish and slowly wane—and not only among gay citizens—if the president continues to listen to his progressive pragmatist advisors to the exclusion of his progressive idealist supporters. In coming months, we may see an increasing selectivity among the president’s supporters about offering support to his platform—particularly as he continues to back-step on his promises to address injustice to gay and lesbian Americans.

Fear or Hope? The Path Before Us

I talked yesterday about the tension between fear and hope in our democratic society—about the possibility that we may retrieve hope and that fear will lose its power as a tool of manipulative interest groups (including some church leaders) to undermine healthy participatory democracy.

Since I posted those reflections, I’m hearing echoes everywhere. This theme—hope pitched against fear—is emerging strongly in many folks’ thought as the election nears.

For instance, in an article entitled “Too Much Fear” at Huffington Post today, Sophia Carroll explores the way in which the use of fear by right-wing interest groups (including religiously based ones) has been undermining our democracy (www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-carroll/too-much-fear_b_139501.html). Carroll asks, “But can a people remain democratic and self-reliant when its choices are dictated by fear?”

Such questions are important to ask, as we try to reorient ourselves culturally and politically at a crucial transition point in our history. As a tool of control, fear pits us one against the other. It enchains our minds, making us suspect each other.

As I noted yesterday, I have learned this through bitter experience in the workplace. I have had the unpleasant experience of working for people who actively prided themselves on having no trust of others, and who were gifted about playing colleagues against each other in order to assure their domination. I’ve worked for leaders who, even as they talked about transformative leadership and empowerment of others, proclaimed with pride that they cannot and will not trust others—as if lack of trust is a virtue rather than a moral and psychological pathology.

These were folks who have also found a comfortable niche in neoconservative power structures. Their belief that no one is trustworthy and their willingness to exploit fear as a tool of control and domination allow them to fit right into the worldview of the men who have ruled us in the long nightmare of neoconservative domination of our culture and politics.

Sad to say, some of these “leaders” have even been African-American women who have learned that they can advance themselves and secure their power by doing the bidding of the men (largely white) who have been ruling us. To move beyond the politics of fear and division such folks have created, we need to turn now to folks like Mary McLeod Bethune. We need to heal our wounded democracy by re-appropriating and re-applying the insights of prophetic leaders such as this African-American educator who battled on multiple fronts to make the democracy of her day more inclusive.

At a time and in a place in which black and white people did not mix, Dr. Bethune brought the races together for dialogue and created an interracial leadership team for the school she founded. In a period and culture in which women were second-class citizens, she advocated for women’s rights.

At a period in which African Americans and women paid a real price by marching to vote, Dr. Bethune led the way. I have no doubt at all that she would have been right beside Coretta Scott King at the dawn of the 21st century leading the way towards inclusion of gay Americans, when there is a particularly steep price to pay if one advocates for this form of inclusion, both in the African-American community and in society at large.

Another commentator who is urging us to move beyond fear to hope is evangelical activist Jim Wallis. In an article entitled “Be Not Afraid” in today’s Huffington Post, Wallis notes,

Fear has always been the dark side of American politics, and we are seeing its resurgence in the campaign's final days. Demagoguery has come from both the right and the left in America, and the most dependable sign of it is the appeal to fear over hope. Facts don't matter when fear takes over (www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/be-not-afraid_b_139362.html).

Wallis is frank about the source of much of the fear mongering in our political life at present: it comes from the religious right, and it arises from the perceived sense of that movement’s leaders that they are about to lose a control of others that they’ve worked hard to establish:

Some of the worst fear-mongering has sadly come from leaders of the Religious Right who are worried about losing their control over the votes of the evangelical and Catholic communities, especially a new generation of believers . . . . When religious leaders sound so desperate and seek to stoke fear and hate, they have lost their theological perspective by putting too much of their hope in having political power. It is that loss of power and control which seems to be motivating the current campaign of desperation and fear now being waged by so many conservatives.

They have lost their theological perspective: how does it happen that people who tell us they are on intimate terms with God, and who tell us to trust God, have invested so largely in power and control? What really does count in the end for the men who rule us in the religious right: power and control? Or God? Why are these men so confident at this point in history that renewing threats of damnation will motivate people politically?

As Wallis concludes, “It is always better to live (and to vote) in the light of hope than in the darkness of fear. It is always an act of faith to believe that, in the end, hope will prevail over fear.” (For more analysis of how the religious right has been fear-mongering in this election, see Wallis’s analysis of James Dobson’s recent statements at www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/james-dobsons-letter-from_b_139253.html).

Alternet today carries a particularly sobering article on the negative role religion has sometimes been playing in our democratic society. This is George Monbiot’s “The Triumph of Ignorance: How Morons Succeed in American Politics” (www.alternet.org/story/105447/the_triumph_of_ignorance%3A_how_morons_succeed_in_u.s._politics). Monbiot notes that, in recent political analysis of how our democracy has been dumbed down (e.g., in Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Religion), “One theme is both familiar and clear: Religion -- in particular fundamentalist religion -- makes you stupid. The United States is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.”

Overcoming fear-based ignorance and reviving hope is not easy. Religious groups have a unique ability to reach into our psyches. Their influence begins in childhood, and is shored up through the bold claim that they oversee a reward-punishment system with eternal results. When religious groups have actively worked to instill fear into a whole populace for decades, retrieving hope demands work.

As Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez noted at a conference called “Transformed by Hope” in Chicago yesterday, hope is not a matter of waiting for a better future to fall into our hands—it requires collaboration with others who share our vision of a better world, to begin building such a world: “This is the future, not waiting for beautiful reasons to hope, but to try to do something to create that hope” (http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2386).

The work of rebuilding hope is going to require, on the part of people of faith who want to build a society energized not by fear but by hope, critique of the religious forces that brought us to the place where we now find ourselves. We are going to have to ask now, as Douglas Kmiec asks in a commentary today on why Archbishop Chaput’s abortion stance is wrong, how some of our religious leaders have allowed themselves to become “trapped within the narrative framework of one political party” (http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2389).

Becoming trapped within the narrative framework of one political party; becoming so partisan that we can no longer see the growing gap between a party’s ideology and the values we profess to cherish: this is a form of what the Judaeo-Christian scriptures call idolatry. No political party or no political leader deserves that kind of slavish devotion. This devotion has cost the Christian churches a tremendous amount, in a period in which too many pastors have sold their souls to one party.

And “sold” may be the operative word. In trying to understand how it happens that some pastoral leaders have so blindly divinized one political party, we cannot discard the influence of money. As we try to undo the damage that this kind of partisan politics has done to communities of faith, we are going to have to follow the money.

Who are those anonymous donors to the homophobic state amendment in Florida, whose identity Mr. Stemberger has sought to shield? Who’s been funding those thinly veiled “religious” ads for the Republican party like the ones in Colorado about which I’ve blogged? Who paid for the pro-Republican video that Bishop Martino of Scranton was able to produce with breathtaking speed for this last week before the election? Where is the money for homophobic robo-calls like the ones associated with the campaign of Catholic Mick Mulvaney in South Carolina coming from (though Mulvaney is denying that he is responsible for the calls)?

Inquiring minds want to know. We need to know because a healthy democracy requires transparency, in which we can see who is trying to influence our political process and for what reasons. One of the huge wounds inflicted on our body politic in recent years is the breach of the wall of church and state. If churches are now allowing themselves to be used as overt political tools of one political party, is it not time to tax the churches?

It has just been revealed that a secret donor who recently gave a million dollars to the campaign for the homophobic proposition 8 in California is Alan Ashton (www.noonprop8.com/articles/2008/10/30/secret-million-dollar-mormon-donor-to-prop-8-revealed). Alan Ashton of Lindon, Utah, not of California. Alan Ashton, a devout Mormon whose grandfather was once the President of the LDS Church.

One has to wonder about the lavish funds some churches and some people of faith are investing in these political battles to keep hatred alive. In a world of such pressing need, something seems downright obscene about spending money to remove human rights from a despised class of citizens.

For many of us who are Catholic, it is obscene that the Knights of Columbus also gave a million dollars to this homophobic initiative. It is equally obscene that the Vatican chooses to announce right at the same time that it wants seminaries to screen candidates for the priesthood for “deep-seated homosexual tendencies”
(http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008333595_priests31.html).

This is an ugly political move designed to deflect attention from the bishops’ (and the Vatican’s) mishandling of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, by insinuating that the crisis is due to the large proportion of gay men in the priesthood. As anyone studying the abuse crisis quickly learns, it is about pedophilia, not homosexuality. The sexual orientation of the priest abusing children is not the problem; the problem is the desire and willingness of a significant number of priests to act on their desire for sexual contact with children—who include both male and female minors.

The problem is also about power and the abuse of power. Pedophilia is rooted in the desire to have power over others. Clericalism, as a system of church governance, is about the same kind of power. There are deep, undeniable links between the abuse crisis and clericalism. This is the secret that church authorities do not want ordinary people to discover, since it means that, if we are serious about changing the abuse situation, we have to change the clerical system in the church. And that would require substantial change.

The Vatican document scapegoating gay seminarians and priests comes out on almost the same day in which the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, issued his infamous Halloween Letter in 1986. That letter has caused a world of woe to gay Catholics and their families and friends, by defining gay human beings as “intrinsically disordered.”

One has to wonder about the wisdom (or better, lack of wisdom) of church leaders who continue to expend valuable resources to promote an agenda that is increasingly seen by people of good will as hateful. One has to wonder about the lack of wisdom of pastoral leaders who continue to rub salt into wounds they have inflicted, especially when many Catholic leaders live in glass houses when it comes to the issue of sexual orientation.

Is it any wonder that a large majority of Catholics in the United States are simply choosing not to listen to bishops who continue to promote a political agenda that, in the view of many of us, is allied with hate? Is it any wonder that, as of February this year, weekly Mass attendance by American Catholics had dropped to 23%?

We who continue to believe that faith has the potential to be a powerful force for good in the world, an energizing force for those building participatory democracy, and a source of hope that trumps fear, have work to do now. It is not just our democracy that needs to be rebuilt, but our churches, too.

Race and Our Transformational Moment

This morning I read an essay by evangelical activist Jim Wallis at HuffingtonPost entitled “A Transformational Moment” (www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/a-transformational-moment_b_105495.html.) Wallis sees the choice of Barack Obama as our Democratic candidate as a transformational moment—one many people in our generation (Wallis is two years older than I am) never expected to see. He notes,

But for my generation -- I'm dating myself now -- this is a transformational moment, one we didn't think would come in our lifetimes. Race was the issue that changed us, shaped us, determined our path, and even defined the meaning of our faith. Now a black man is running for president of the United States. Amazing grace.

But he depicts race as transformational for our generation in more ways than one. He notes that for us who grew up within churches that were either silent about or resistant to the need for racial justice during the Civil Rights struggle, race was a defining moment in our maturing as believers. What he says about his own life in this respect could almost have been lifted from my biography. Wallis states,

Race was the issue that led to my own confrontation with the church that raised me. It was my "converting issue," though the conversion led me out of the white church of my childhood, not into the church. A church elder bluntly told me one night that "Christianity has nothing to do with racism. That's political and our faith is personal." I was only about 15, but it was the night I think I left, in my head and my heart. And a couple years later, I was gone all together.

The little evangelical church that my parents had started and that was my second home was simply wrong about race -- completely wrong. Race was the issue that fundamentally shaped my early social conscience.

As readers know, I left my childhood church in the mid-1960s when the church almost split over the issue of whether to admit black members. As I have written several times, we anguished over this issue. I well remember the church-wide debates in which some adults—people I had thought had some sense and virtue—got up and shook and cried at the outrageous thought of admitting African Americans to “our” church.

Though we finally decided to admit black members, none came. And why would they? Is one welcome, when people open the door only with dour faces, biting their tongues to keep them from saying something ugly in the house of God?

I was so concerned about what I witnessed in these church discussions, that I scheduled some time with our pastor. I asked him why the church was not leading the way in a social struggle in which (it was clear to me even at the age of fifteen) the courts and the federal executive branch had moral right on their side.

My pastor spoke of what Dr. King calls the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Give it time. People can’t change overnight. Church shouldn’t be a place where people butt heads (but I had seen them do just that when we really allowed folks to speak their true minds). Church is about healing souls, not society.

After my session with the pastor, I left the church. Preceding this, I was also castigated by a Sunday School teacher when I gave the “wrong” answer to a question about Vietnam War protests. When our banker-teacher asked us if any of us would ever, ever walk in one of those filthy protest marches, when he went around the classroom and received one solemn “No, sir!” after another, I told him that, well, I’d have to think about what was being protested, consider the merits of the cause in light of my conscience, and then make my decision.

What happened in my area in the Civil Rights period, and the way the white churches of my community responded, galvanized my conscience. When I went to college several years later and there were protest marches to boycott a bar that had refused to serve a party of black and white patrons, I didn’t even begin to wonder if I should march in that line. When a black friend of mine from high school moved to the city just as I graduated and needed a place to stay as he looked for housing, I didn’t think twice about offering him a room in my apartment.

When my landlady hotly informed me either to get that n----r out or move out, I told her I’d gladly move. When I secured another apartment (not so easy, since I had just finished school and had few resources), and when the new landlord told me, after we had agreed on his renting the place to me, that he didn’t want any blacks visiting the apartment, I might have said, “Yes, sir,” and gone about my business.

I didn’t. I couldn’t. He relented.

I did, of course, also march in anti-war protests. How could I not, especially after I watched on t.v. what happened to fellow college students at Kent State in Ohio?

But my heart, my visceral engagement, was not with the war across the globe. It was with the war right at my doorstep, the war I had seen going on in the town in which I grew up, the war to make skin color superfluous to how we evaluate other human beings.

Does this mean that I was not, am not, racist? Hardly. In my view, one cannot grow up in a racist society and not be racist. I grew up in an overtly racist society. I can well remember specific moments of indoctrination into the various linguistic codes of behavior that governed racial relations in the South in which I grew up—the codes I was expected, as a middle-class white Southerner, to observe, both to keep everyone in his or her place, and at the same time, to try to safeguard the feelings of those we considered “childish” and prone to pout.

I was indoctrinated. Racism is taught. I was taught racism even before I had any word for what was happening to me. I began to be aware that segregation was not a natural, God-given social arrangement only when I began to reach adolescence and could begin to see the world through my own eyes, and not those of my family, church, school, and the society in which I lived.

I am always leery of those who grow up in the U.S.—especially those of us who are white—and who think we have no taint of racism inside us. It is much harder to face and thus eradicate what we do not even see within us. In all the classes I taught during my many years teaching in historically black universities, and in addressing faculty when I was asked to lead faculty, this is always something I say off the bat: I am here among you to serve and learn, not because I am free of racism, but because I am confronting my own racism. In my work in HBCUs, I always thought of myself as an invited guest, someone there to learn as much as to teach.

I am reflecting on these themes these days, because they will emerge very strongly in the coming days, with Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency. The powerful right wing in church and society will play the race card hard and heavy. While ridiculing Obama behind the scenes, entre nous, they will challenge liberals in a divide-and-conquer campaign to castigate liberals adverting to race, dealing with race, admitting the racial factor, as racists.

I am not persuaded of the sincerity of the concern that right-wing churches, some of which have been formed for the express purpose of excluding gay persons, now suddenly have for Africans and African Americans. I am not persuaded that this concern is genuine, a real expression of intent to address the deep racism of our social (and ecclesial) structures. I see far too much evidence of an ugly strategy in this "concern," one to divide progressive movements within church and society by playing people of color against gays.

We need to be clear-eyed about race in the days ahead. We should have been talking about this deep social wound (and wound inside our how souls) for years now, and not just in the context of this historic election.

Still, even as malicious political operatives try to twist and turn the rhetoric of race during this election, talk we must. And it is in talking honestly, facing honestly our shortcomings, and articulating together a dream of a better society in which everyone has a place at the table of participatory democracy, that we will find the healing we need.