First part of two-part sermon by Dawn Longernecker and Harold Vines. Click here for second part.
February 10, 2013
Good morning. Thank you for inviting Harold and me to speak with you today. We both feel called to deal with the issue of Race in this community, and this has drawn us to the same spiritual support group and now the same Mission Group. We’re excited to share with you why we are so interested in this area. Also, I’m going first as I’ve learned that white people need to speak up more on this topic, and help frame this as an issue that affects us all.
Coming here to Church of the Saviour & working with the Discipleship Year (DY) program has awakened in me a passion that I haven’t experienced since my young-adult days when I was on fire to work with the homeless and be part of Sojourners Community. Those were days for me of idealism and excitement when my passions ran high (This was also when I fell in love with Jim, shared $ in common in community, got arrested fighting militarism, and was out to change the world!) Those were the good old days.
Then in our 30s and 40s, we raised our kids, settled down, and in many ways I tamped down my idealism. In 2007, as a burned-out social worker, I came here to run the DY program and got my fire lit again by this radical, alternative community! It’s a combination of things here that are exciting. The DY volunteers join us each year, injecting their youth, energy, and commitment. The Church of the Saviour community has kept itself vibrant and relevant amidst society’s pressures to conform. Also this community recognizes that churches that become too institutionalized stop being life-giving. Then there’s my spiritual support group, which has been wonderful. In this group, we – who are different from each other on the surface - - are creating community through race and class differences that normally divide and it’s powerful! I’m in awe at how, as we face the hardest challenges, we awaken our deepest passions, and there is so much joy underneath! This wasn’t the conclusion I was coming to before. I thought you had to dampen idealism in order to cope with burnout, but I’m finding it’s just the opposite. Thank you for modeling Jesus’ way, where deeper, more meaningful values are kept central.
The scripture Harold and I chose for today is the healing of the Blind Man. I like this story because of its many layers of meaning. The Bible often talks about blindness – both in the actual, physical sense, and metaphorically. What does this have to do with race issues? I’m convinced that those of us who are white, often don’t notice the effects of this socialized aspect of our identities, we don’t explore our whiteness enough and the ways in which we’re trapped in and conform to systemic and institutional racism.
Here within COS, as in much of the progressive community, we know racism is a problem, and we recognize it as something to address. But because we, as white people, are not affected by it in the same way that it affects people of color, and because we have more of the power, relatively speaking, our not noticing it as much and not acting upon it enough has the effect of continuing to perpetuate it. One of the biggest reasons for this, in my perception, is that we’re still not in full or deep enough community with each other to hear and learn and know how racism is a daily, regular, systematic part of the lives of our brothers and sisters of color. In a current discussion group in this community called ‘The Damascus Road group’, we spend time listening and responding to one another with the purpose of intentionally building trust between whites and people of color. In this group we deal a lot with the issue of power. *By the way, I use the term white, for people like me who are European American and the term people of color to include all those who have a darker shade of skin and those whose 1st language isn’t English. It’s not a perfect term but it’s what anti-racism trainers use to include African American, Asian American, Carribean American, Native and Latin American, and those who’ve recently immigrated from non-white countries. And those who are multi-racial.
We (in the white community) have to work very intentionally to allow our eyes and ears to be opened in order to get other people’s realities, and to come to understand how we should respond. We need to be willing to notice that our identities are being warped in dysfunctional ways (for example our ego’s) as we’re systematically given more power and privilege, and this is harmful to us.
The irony is that many in our society strive to be “colorblind” and not notice race, because we think by talking about it, we may be causing more of a problem and we hope that by acting as colorblind as possible we’ll be contributing to better race relations. Unfortunately in the broader society people are treated differently and rewarded unequally, dependent on race, so these, well-intentioned efforts collide with the collective reality.
When we avoid fully dealing with how racism is still operating, and avoid talking about it, this not surprisingly ends up causing more of a problem. Studies show that biologically there are more differences between people of the same racial category than between people of different races, and yet society continues to treat us differently.
This is a complex challenge. We know we need each other to build community, and yet we whites often continue to hold onto certain power and privileges (like keeping strongly dominated white boards in place, in our organizations), instead of recognizing and embracing the benefits to be gained by further opening ourselves up and taking more advanced steps to share power. I see this as an opportunity - - both to work within our own church and ministries and also to partner with churches, initiatives and organizations that are led by people of color, that are on a similar journey with us.
Thankfully, here at 8th Day, we’re already struggling with this issue; having made changes in church structures to be more inclusive. We have more diversity, proportionately, than many churches. That’s one of the reasons I’m attracted here. There is more to do, but I want to be with other people who are on this road already and for whom this challenge isn’t new or one you want to avoid.
My spiritual support group has given me growth opportunities in this area. I’ve been confronted with my own racial attitudes and the ways I act out my own internalized superiority as a white person. This comes up in my efforts to help and lead, which are received as disempowering, often. It’s critical in race work for people of color to be the predominant leaders. It is necessary for whites to learn humility, how to work as a team, and how to follow, recognizing that people of color see things we don’t and that we truly need each other.
So back to the biblical story - - No one has attempted to heal the blind man before Jesus comes along and offers the hope of something “impossible.” He approaches the man, heals him, and everyone is amazed. In one of the most gripping parts of the story, Jesus says, “I have come into the world to give sight to those who are spiritually blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” Hearing this, some Pharisees who were present said. “Are you saying we are blind?” Jesus replies, “If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty, but your guilt remains because you claim to know what you are doing.”
Jesus’ message is that we need humility. This should be our normal posture in the world, or we risk being like the Pharisees or the disciples who didn’t get Jesus much of the time. It’s important to realize we need people different than ourselves to help us see the full truth.
I discovered my blind spot around all of this at my first anti-racism training in the late ‘90s. I worked for the Lutheran Volunteer Corps then. LVC’s sponsoring church, Luther Place, and their outreach ministry to the poor and largely black neighbors, N Street Village all entered into a several-year-long consultation relationship with anti-racism trainers, a process that helped them become more inclusive to and with people of color. Despite challenges and set-backs., they were very successful on many levels.
Through this process, they learned that racism isn’t just about personal bias that individuals have with each other. They learned that institutions wield power and generally it’s white people that benefit at the expense of people of color – even when there are no negative attitudes or intentions exhibited or even held. In fact, the most lethal forms of racism are these institutional and systemic ways that oppression plays out, and not just the individual acts of discrimination and prejudice that we normally think of when we think of racism.
Some of the gains in this community were that more people of color who were already on staff at N Street were promoted (some assisted in getting further education) to take on management positions there, LVC & N Street added more people of color to their boards, to give guidance and direction to the ministries. They added more people of color to their staff, and the Lutheran Vol. Corps formed more partnerships with organizations led by people of color for their placement sites. The volunteer corps began becoming more diverse. Luther Pl Church added a 2nd service that was a lot more appealing to people of color. LVC incorporated anti-racism training in its orientation for volunteers, staff, and board, equipping them to more fully engage for change around this area……They called this initiative “The Journey to a More Inclusive Community.”
We learned that the many oppressions of our time are interlinked, and when you begin to uncover and unravel one, another pops up. So that you can never solely deal with just one. In fact, within that community, the church – while working on issues of race – also became a “welcoming congregation” to the LGBTQ community and LVC made progress on more gender equality, by equipping their field offices with more ‘power’ in board meetings. They didn’t allow these other issues to become more dominant than the race issue for them, but they were still important to focus on.
Predominantly white organizations need to keep an intentional focus on race, as this area often gets less attention, due to other issues and concerns that white people feel more acutely. Racism is a distinctive oppressive power; if left unaddressed in its own uniqueness, we won’t be able to move out of the “Cage of Interlocking Oppressions” we’re all trapped in. Sometimes, for example, in the white progressive community, we lump “racism” and “classism” together. This can get in the way of effective work for change. Why? These issues are very tied, but they aren’t completely and totally the same. We (and again I’m addressing the whites here) cannot make progress in this area, unless we work to build community, not only with people of color who are poor and struggling but also with middle class people of color, many of whom are on the same journey of radical discipleship we are. People of color are not all poor; racism affects their middle and upper classes. So when dealing with power issues, middle class folks in both these groups need to work together.
Now that a new mission group is forming around this area, I look forward to even more dialogue and joint work together with you as we continue building the rainbow community. Let us seek God on this journey and open ourselves up to where the spirit may be leading us.
And now it’s time to hear from Harold Vines. Harold has been dedicated to the issue of racism since coming to the Church of the Saviour in the mid-90’s. He is co-pastor at Friends of Jesus Church with Joe Collier, which is fast becoming a predominantly black church. He is leader of the Unbinding Lazarus Spiritual Support Group & the Damascus Road group. He’s also part of the new ‘Racial Justice and Healing Mission Group’. He’s a Spirit-filled man. It’s been an honor to know and walk with him these years. Harold ...
Part 2 of sermon by Harold Vines
**Footnote: “Cage of Interlocking Oppression” is a term used in Anti-Racism Trainings.