Bishop's Column
Posted Friday, August 31, 2007
On Having a Lot of Nerve
September 2007
But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved. (Hebrews 10:35)
On Sunday, August 31, 1969, I was an eye-witness to one of the most dramatic moments in Episcopal Church history. My father-in-law, a lay deputy from the Diocese of Indianapolis, had invited me to accompany him to Special General Convention II, meeting at the University of Notre Dame, as a spectator. Looking down from the bleachers on the opening session in the hall where the meeting was held, I suddenly saw a black man, accompanied by Paul Washington, rector of the Church of the Advocate, Philadelphia, stride down the aisle, ascend the stage, and seize the microphone that John Hines, the presiding bishop, wisely and graciously surrendered to him.
The man had been born and raised in Chester, Pennsylvania. He had taken the name Muhammad Kenyatta – borrowed from Jomo Kenyatta, the founding father of decolonized Kenya, and was ordained at age 14 by the late Rev. J. Pius Barbour, who had Martin Luther King, Jr. as his assistant pastor and was grandfather to Henry Carnes, Director of Education and Training for the diocese. Kenyatta was the head of the Philadelphia branch of BEDC – the Black Economic Development Conference – and Vice-President of its national organization.
Meeting in Detroit four months earlier, BEDC had issued the Black Manifesto “demanding $500,000,000 from Christian white churches and Jewish synagogues” for education programs, job development programs, and the like. But the Manifesto’s 23 signers also had a far more revolutionary demand: “that black people who have suffered the most from exploitation and racism… protect their black interest by assuming leadership inside the United States of everything that exists. The time has passed when we are second in command and white boy stands on top.”
Psychologically-speaking, BEDC’s language was intentionally intimidating, just as Kenyatta’s public seizure of the microphone from John Hines was purposively terrifying or terroristic – although at the time, symbolically-speaking, it seemed to me prophetic, like Isaiah going barefoot and naked (Isaiah 20). But it was not nearly as terroristic as what I overheard that Sunday evening from a gaggle of elderly white, southern bishops in the seats behind me derogatorily employing the “N” word and whispering racial slurs and insults as Kenyatta called for reparations from our church.
This September 11 marks the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on iconic symbols of U.S. national identity. As occurred that fateful day, the deacons and priests of our diocese will be together for our Annual Clergy Day. With the theme of “Keeping Faith in a Time of Terror,” our focus will be on terrorism, not just as it is enacted by apocalyptically-driven religious devotees at home and abroad, but as it is played out right in our own hearts and in our own diocese through the demonic forces of racism and class-ism that condemn some to “minority” status.
Dalia Sofer, whose first-time novel The Septembers of Shiraz has just been published, grew up Jewish in Iran. Interviewed last month in the New York Times, she recounts how difficult it was to live in a society whose language was not her own, a place that demanded stillness and silence from her, a system where at one point her father was arrested as a spy, could not be located, and then suddenly re-appeared a month later. Asked by the interviewer if she now has nightmares, she replied: “I do. A lot. I am being pursued. Being chased.”
Very few of us have come out of childhood completely unscathed from such personal terrorism. The cruel taunts of siblings, the schoolyard bullying by classmates, the pressures applied by parents, the socially-constructed expectations articulated by the media all leave their marks. If we have the will to do so, therefore, most of us can begin to grasp what it may be like to be part of a religious or racial or socio-economic minority.
But most of us very seldom have the will do so because, as part of the white majority, we do not feel we have reason to. That is why this summer we sent to our active clergy a book by Tim Wise entitled White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Wise will be with our clergy on September 11 to engage us in conversation about the terrorism that results from white privilege.
Race, of course, has huge socio-economic implications. The U.S. economy that today disproportionately benefits white people was built on the basis of slave labor, and race discrimination is still very much part of the fabric of life in our nation and in our church. For that reason on September 11 Sallie Glickman, CEO of the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, will address our clergy on the recent PWIB study about socio-economic disparity in our region entitled A Tale of Two Cities.
It is my hope that our clergy’s conversations on September 11 will raise our awareness of the terrorism of race and class to which I believe we must be sensitive as we map out the Diocesan Urban Mission Strategy about which the design team working on that strategy will report to us that day.
I believe just as strongly that whatever strategy we write for ourselves must also be an exhortation to faithfulness, will-power, patience, perseverance, and perdurability. It needs to remind us that, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, “we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.”
That is because, given the levels of anxiety and terror right now, we need a lot of nerve. As Rabbi Edwin Friedman wrote in his posthumously-published papers: “Whether we are considering any family, any institution, or any nation, for terrorism to hold sway the same three emotional prerequisites must always persist in that relationship system. First, there must be a sense that no one is in charge – in other words, the overall emotional atmosphere must convey that there is no leader with ‘nerve.’ Second, the system must be vulnerable to a hostage situation (i.e., the leaders must be hamstrung by a vulnerability of their own, a vulnerability to which the terrorist – whether a bomber, a client, an employee, or a child – is always exquisitely sensitive. And third, there must be among both the leaders and those they lead an unreasonable faith in being reasonable.”
Thirty-eight years ago, Bishop Robert Dewitt of our diocese had a lot of nerve. At a time when an overwhelming majority of Americans let it be known that they had no intention of taking the Black Manifesto seriously, and when a Gallup poll showed that 92% of Americans opposed payment of reparations to African-Americans, Bishop Dewitt suggested placing a $1M mortgage on national church properties to meet some of the Manifesto’s demands. Though the Episcopal Church rejected his suggestion, after three days of heated debate on September 1-3, 1969, the Episcopal Church appropriated $200,000 for that purpose, a move strongly supported by deputies from our diocese.
A lot of nerve is asked of us, too. Since the 2003 General Convention granted consent for the consecration of a gay partnered man, and the 2006 General Convention elected a woman as our Presiding bishop and the first female primate in the Anglican Communion, people kiddingly asked me what is “left for us” when General Convention meets at Anaheim, California, in 2009. “Reparations,” I reply.
Why? Because the 2006 General Convention resolved “that The Episcopal Church acknowledge its history of participation in this sin [of slavery] and the deep and lasting injury which the institution of slavery and its aftermath have inflicted on society and on the Church.” It further expressed profound regret “that (a) The Episcopal Church lent the institution of slavery its support and justification based on Scripture, and (b) after slavery was formally abolished, The Episcopal Church continued for at least a century to support de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination,” and it directed the Executive Council to report to the 76th General Convention “on how the Church can be ‘the repairer of the breach’ (Isaiah 58:12), both materially and relationally, and achieve the spiritual healing and reconciliation that will lead us to a new life in Christ.”
In preparation for that debate our Anti-Racism Commission is studying what the dioceses of Chicago, Maryland, and Newark have learned in their studies of the concept of reparations and to advance such research and thinking on our behalf. Its members, in concert with the Commission on Diocesan History, are reporting to Executive Council by March 31 each year about what it has learned about the complicity of our diocese in the institution of slavery and in the subsequent history of segregation and discrimination, and the economic benefits our diocese and its parishes have derived from the institution of slavery.
This work is difficult and painful. It requires patience and compassion, and a commitment to truth and reconciliation. It is also full of hope and promise. It takes having a lot of nerve. It means keeping faith in a time of terror. It is the work of us who “are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.”