The Love Affair Doesn’t End With a Few Apologies: The SBC and Racism

Imagine the worst of the worst happens: You cheat on your spouse.

Thankfully, you are fully willing to end the extramarital affair and repair the damage. Both you and your spouse want to put it completely behind you.

You confess your transgressions and give an extremely sincere and tearful apology.

This apology is wonderful, important and absolutely necessary—but there is no way you could possibly pretend that it is going to fix everything. One apology is crucial, but it is only the first step on a long journey of reconciliation.

From this point on, it’s not enough to simply be faithful—you will have to go out of your way to demonstrate that you are faithful beyond any reasonable doubt. Trust is hard to build, but it is even harder to rebuild. Wounds take time to heal. They need love, tenderness and patience. You have to prove to your spouse that you are sincere and that your heart is in the marriage.  

For example, you generally wouldn’t spend time alone with another single person and certainly not your former love affair. You may have absolutely no intention of anything beyond friendship, but why would you put your spouse in that position? Old wounds can be triggered. Your spouse could be at home anxious experiencing PTSD, going through a series of mental exercises trying to relax with the situation. You are the one who transgressed; therefore you are the one who should go out of your way to reassure your spouse. Don't put your spouse in that position.

You are going to have to prove yourself over and over—perhaps daily. But that’s okay because you love your spouse. People screw up. Repair and reconciliation are both possible. You may even grow stronger in your marriage. Trust may always be at least a little bit fragile, but major healing is possible. However, healing is going to be impeded if you drag your feet over having to "apologize too much" and complain that your spouse "just can't get over it already."

This analogy fits the Southern Baptist Convention and it’s longtime love affair with racism.

The SBC and racism have a long history. The denomination formed in 1845 when it split from other Baptists over its pro-slavery stance. Later, many of its members were deeply embedded in Jim Crow segregation and were often on the side resisting the Civil Rights struggles of the 20th century. 

The SBC has done much in recent years to leave racism in the past. Public apologies and resolutions have been forthcoming denouncing racism and all its trappings. Milestones include the 1995 apology for its complicity in slavery, the enthusiastic election of an African-American president, Fred Luter, in 2012, and the 2016 repudiation of the Confederate Flag. So this year, when a resolution was proposed to denounce the recent resurgence of white supremacy and the alt-right movement in US culture, it seemed like the stage was set for a routine—but deepening—commitment by the SBC to distance itself from racism in all its forms.

However, that is not how it played out at the Convention this week. The mostly white Resolutions Committee first rejected it from even being brought to a vote. The reasons given were technicalities over topical redundancy and awkward verbiage, but it was all too easy to wonder if there was not another backstory to consider. Voices from the floor tried to resurrect the resolution, but these attempts failed to achieve the needed 2/3 majority. Alt-right groups on Twitter celebrated this as a victory for white supremacy.

Let's consider what this would look like going back to the extramarital affair analogy:

Your spouse admits to some friends that there had been an affair, but tells them it is over and you are healing the marriage. Your spouse asks: “Honey, tell the people that you don’t spend any time with your former mistress anymore.”

A simple "of course not" is all that would be expected to pass through your lips, but to everyone’s amazement, your response is “well . . . it’s complicated . . .”

The trust that had been slowing getting repaired is suddenly put into jeopardy.  What do you mean, ‘it’s complicated?!’

For a denomination whose very origins are steeped in pro-slavery ideology, who members include those who lived and breathed Jim Crow, even two or three apologies will not be sufficient. 

The issue is timely. The campaign and election of Donald Trump has been associated with a surge of racist rhetoric and violence in the USA. 81% of white Evangelical Christians—such as those in the SBC—voted for Trump. This would have been an ideal time for the SBC to make it clear that whatever support its members may have for Trump is in spite of—and not because of—the association with racism. 

The official story may very well be true. This resolution may simply have gotten tangled up in parliamentary procedure and rules of order. But to play games with technicalities with such a sensitive issues, especially given your past history, only lends credence to what so many may have already been suspecting—that perhaps this rodeo with racism is not quite over.

African-Americans have been lured by the promise of racial reconciliation many times and places only to find the door slammed in their faces yet again. It’s hard to open up and attempt to trust again.

Some people ask:  Why yet another resolution?  Why can’t we just let this go? We repudiated the Confederate Flag last year, why go through that again?

Those aren't the questions of people bending over backwards to make sure there is no doubt about where they stand on this crucial issue. 

It’s going to take time and sincerity. White people are going to have to prove themselves on this issue over and over again. 

If all you want to do is spit out a quick apology and then go back to doing whatever you have always been doing, perhaps you weren’t as sincere about reconciliation as you’d like to believe. Reconciliation means that things are going to be different going forward. It means not just your words but your actions will to be different, and this needs to be demonstrated consistently over time.

***

As a Roman Catholic attending the SBC as an outside observer, I was personally moved by how members resolved this issue.  A groundswell of support arose to make certain that the convention did not close without righting this wrong. A resolution against white supremacy and the alt-right movement did ultimately pass a day later, and it was nearly unanimous. I will be writing more about this in the future. I was immeasurably blessed to witness the movement of the Holy Spirit in the SBC in this.

This post is meant to address those—both inside and outside the SBC—who are still not convinced about what all the fuss was about. I hope the analogy of an extramarital affair helps to put it in perspective.

As Southern Baptist Jared C. Wilson writes on Twitter:  How long do we keep repenting for the same ol’ sins? Until they’re all gone.

And that’s it, brothers and sisters. It is ultimately not the job of the white community to decide when enough has been done to treat this wound.

Don't Be a Cool Church Leader, Just Be Real

Go church!

The research has come in:  Young people want substantive leaders. They don't (necessarily) want hip, stylish, trendy ones.

The study originally published in Christianity Today and then reported in Baptist News Global brings hard numbers to the conversation.

All I can say to this is: 

AMEN, AMEN, AMEN!

I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to bang my head against the table on this subject. I have talked to campus ministry group numerous times as a colleague or visitor. I'm told they want ministers who can "relate to the students." 

When I ask follow-up questions to gauge what they mean, I discover this: 

They want the cheerleader model of ministry.

They want someone fluent in current student-ese--someone who knows all the latest dances, songs, TV shows and secret handshakes. They want someone with the personality of a walking pep rally. Their goal is to portray the church not as some stodgy, dusty artifact but as cool, modern and relatable. They believe this kind of person accomplishes that.

That's fine . . . up to a point. I guess the litany of old, white men in leadership over the centuries has taken its toll.

But I would challenge them: 

Do you realize that many students are introverts?

Do you realize that many students are gloomy, moody and depressed?

Do you realize that students want true connection with someone more than just about anything else? They are hungry for something and someone real. 

Ask a student to name their favorite professor or campus leader--it is probably an elderly nun or a reclusive, quirky professor. It might be the dormitory janitor who they chat with as he's outside smoking while they are brooding over a heartbreak.

All that we can ever really give anyone is ourselves.

***

You might think Catholics would understand this better than most.  Millions of young people around the world have lined the streets or have attended a World Youth Day hoping for a glimpse of a world traveling pope.  Whether it's Francis, Benedict XVI or John Paul II, it's not age or cool, hipster style that brings them out in droves--it's leadership, presence, wisdom and the prospect of connecting to someone or something meaningful.

In fact, if you roll out a photo album of some of the most beloved Catholics in recent years, you would see bald monks and grey-haired activist nuns. However, we often throw this wisdom out the window when it comes to lay ministry. The shortage in vocations to the priesthood and religious life has created at least a couple generations where young people have mostly had only older role models in the clergy. Young, hipster priests are pretty rare. Whether by choice or necessity, we have given our elderly priests and sisters a chance that they wouldn't have gotten interviewing as a lay person for a campus ministry position.

Mother Teresa was a Catholic sister from Albania who ministered to the people of India, among other places. She looked different from most Indians. She had a wildly different religion. She spoke with an accent. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was sincere in ministering to the people and making a true connection. When her heart was set on that, all other boundaries were in play to be transcended.

***

I've worked a lot in urban, rural and multi-ethnic ministries over the course of my career. It is wise to bring in local people to assist in this work because they have local knowledge and local sensitivities. However, this can be problematic if we lean on it too much.

Bear with me here, because I'm going to make a very nuanced point: 

Let's say you work with a predominantly Caucasian-American group. You want to do ministry with African-Americans or Hispanic Americas. It would be completely unwise to attempt to minister to these groups without consulting with them directly. The Catholic Church has gotten into loads of trouble over the years making pronouncements on people or ministering to them without actually asking for their involvement in the process at all. You would ideally want some African-Americans or Hispanics as part of the leadership, direct ministry, or at the very least, in a consultant role.

However--and this is where I could risk getting into trouble, but stay with me a minute--you don't have to. 

No, I'm not against diversity, and I certainly don't want to bring back anything that resembles colonial tone deafness.

Here's the reason:

It would be a sad day indeed if we discovered that the only people who can serve African-Americans are other African-Americans. It would be a sad day if the only people who could relate to rural people are other rural people. It would be a sad day indeed if the only people who could minister to young students are leaders who look and act like what we think students look and act like.

The whole Gospel message gets blown to bits if we end up thinking this. It's a gloomy prescription for endless isolation, misunderstandings and miscommunication. It offers no hope of ever transcending our boundaries. It gives us the message: I can only understand you if I've had exactly the same life and experiences that you have had. That's just plain horrible and it runs counter to Gospel hope of inclusion and ultimate reconciliation of all people through Christ. It runs against centuries of Christian tradition where unusual, unlikely outsiders often become the heroes.

Jesus was male, but he reached out to women. He was Jewish but he reached out to Samaritans. The British St. Patrick went to Ireland. St. Francis visited the Sultan. Dorothy Day, once a frequenter in trendy literary circles, went to the slums of New York City. These are not exceptions but rather the general rule of Christian discipleship.

Yes, if a group of elderly, Caucasian nuns want to minister to the urban poor on the streets of Kolkata, India, they ought to consult with local people. There ought to be some local people as consultants or as members of their team. It would be enormously disrespectful and unwise not to do so, and I would bet any money that Mother Teresa did exactly that.  However, that should not stop them from making the effort on their own. In fact, it should enable them to reach out rather than disable their efforts to do so.

All that we can ever really give anyone is ourselves.

***

The cheerleader prescription for campus ministry usually fails on two levels:

1. It makes wrong assumptions about what students are like in the first place.
2. It incorrectly assumes that in order to minister to students one must look and act like students.

That's not ministry, and that's not leadership, and I don't believe that's where the Gospels are calling us.

I would also caution campus ministry teams: Young people can see through any charade in a heartbeat. The cheerleader model caters to only certain students and it truncates the global, diverse church into a little club with a very specific, approved approach. It's also like the "popular kid" trying to witness to a world full of outcasts.

There are some people who actually are like a walking pep rally. That's who they are and they are fully sincere in that. Kudos to them. I would argue that their ministry would only be successful--any ministry is only successful--if it is based on sincerity.

To church leaders, I say this:  Be brave enough to be yourself.  Trust in the dignity in which God has created you. Be whatever you are--nerdy, goofy, quirky, young or old, plain or complex.  Don't be trendy. You don't have to know the latest catch phrases or technology.

Just be you.

That's all that you can ever give, and honestly, that's all that anyone ever really wants.

***

See 2 Corinthians 5:16-21: In Christ, we are all called to the ministry of reconciliation.

Racial Healing in a Small Town



Reconciliation statue at Coventry Cathedral.

This is going to be one of those stories where the names and locations are kept anonymous to protect privacy.  When it comes to racial and religious reconciliation, all too often the most heartfelt stories are also the most confidential.

It is a story that needs to be told, though. I will do my best to share the light and protect all parties.

My travels take me all across the US rural Southeast--to small towns and hollers, cities and hamlets, mountaintops, farms and empty lots. For some reason, my work has not yet taken me to the beach, but I have been to just about every other geographic feature in this region. I digress.

This story takes place in one of those small towns.

Like so many locations in the rural Southeast, this town has had a long and difficult history along racial and religious lines. Many people are eager to move beyond the past they have inherited, even if they are not altogether sure how to do that. However, there is much work to be done and many levels of consciousness where this work still needs to happen.

This is a town with a ministerial association. For those not familiar with the term, this is a group where local ministers from various churches come together for dialogue and shared projects. It was not that long ago that mutual condemnation and shunning were the typical manner that churches from different denominations treated each other, so these ministerial alliances have been a huge force in moving beyond that. Pastors get together to break bread, organize events and discern ways to serve the community together.

It can take a tremendous bravery for folks to be willing to give this a try, especially when the history has been particularly difficult. After generations of misunderstandings and mistreatment--with much of it still a very living memory--folks cross religious, racial and ethnic lines to take the first steps toward fellowship with one another in faith. It takes real vulnerability, because doing this will often bring all those unhealed wounds and misunderstandings right to the surface. It takes faith to even try and an outpouring of grace to succeed, and that is exactly why the church can sometimes be the best way to bring a fractured community together.

Among their activities, this ministerial alliance in question has organized a community-wide Martin Luther King Jr. worship service. It has been going on for over 10 years with tentative but strong involvement from local churches, black, white and Hispanic. In fact, every church in town would participate. It was a growing and well-regarded annual occasion.

All that came to a halt when a very unfortunate incident happened.

After an MLK Jr. worship service a few years ago, the assembled people shared food and fellowship. One of the African-American churches had led the assembly in music that day. During this fellowship, a white person was overheard complaining: "I wish those people wouldn't sing so loud!" Word of this got back to the respective churches, and the African-American church that had sung that day became very upset. They subsequently withdrew from the ministerial alliance and from all such events in town.

It may be difficult to understand the kind of harm such a statement can carry if you do not share the same history of segregation, injustice and persecution. This is why it is so important for communities to listen to each other and respect each others' feelings. Was this an offhanded comment of a single individual? It is easy to fear that perhaps this individual was speaking aloud the hidden thoughts of the larger community. It is easy to understand why a community that had experienced a long history of negativity toward them would not want to re-engage with this kind of negativity again, especially if the veil of politeness was masking a hidden racism that manifested as jokes told behind their backs.

Reconciliation can be a very fragile thing. People are silently wondering--can we trust you? Are we really going to put the past behind us and take real steps forward, or are we just going to keep reliving the past? This is true whether the reconciliation is religious, racial, ethnic or along other lines.

In another anonymous town in another anonymous location, I have seen a Catholic and Pentecostal church develop a robust and warm friendship. They were a model relationship and had many layers of connection over the course of a few years. Nevertheless, this partnership came to a screeching halt when old theological fears flared up and one community became worried about the influence and legitimacy of the other. In still other places, I have seen Hispanics and Muslims go from regular, friendly faces in the community to barely tolerated outsiders as larger cultural trends in American politics have a very real local impact on very real individuals. Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric, so often bandied about in the media and on talk radio, often turns into real bruises on real people in towns all across this country.

Unity can be so fragile.

Going back to the first small town, all the hard work of building harmony together was suddenly eroded after one unfortunate incidence. This African-American church would no longer participate in activities with the other churches. The ministerial alliance continued with their services, but it was not quite the same. It was like a member of the family was no longer there. It was impossible to say the whole community was coming together when it was not.

Some of the pastors attempted to bridge the divide in the years since then, but the offended church was not interested in rejoining.

Until now.
 

Just a couple weeks ago, a group of white women from the community decided to go to this African-American church to attend their worship service. As is customary, there was a time for visitors to stand up, introduce themselves and talk about why they decided to attend worship.

They made an announcement. They said they heard there was a terrible insult. They said they were sorry and apologized. They invited this church to come back, saying, "We need you." They invited them to attend the MLK Jr. Day worship scheduled for the following week and join in the service.

The women were not sure what impact this might have had. On the day of the MLK Jr. service, it looked at first like there was no sign of this African-American church returning and participating in the service. However, one woman saw the pastor and some congregations members sitting in the back. After the service, the women approached them and thanked them for coming. The pastor said he appreciated the invitation. He let them know there was not enough time for the whole choir to prepare, but they would do so another time in the future.

It is easy to feel the first steps toward healing have happened.

 

I was not privy to all the discussion in this community. I do not know what made this church take this step. Perhaps it was a combination of the healing effect of time plus the sum total of other attempts at reconciliation. Nevertheless, this encounter seemed to break the ice.

The power of a public apology is so powerful. These women were able to do what their pastors alone were not. They went out of their way to invite this church back, and their words and actions made it clear--the individual who made that comment does not speak for the whole community.

A public apology is one of the most rarely used tools at our disposal in our culture. We do it even more rarely for actions committed by others in the past. But these women recognized that even though they did not commit this insult, by being part of the community they have a responsibility to make it right.  

I am reminded of the actions of Pope Francis. He goes out of his way on regular occasions to apologize for the actions of some Catholics--or the Catholic Church as a whole--in the past. You can just Google search "Pope Francis apologizes" and you will find a quite a bit of material.

Most recently, Pope Francis apologized for the ways Catholics have treated other Christians throughout history. No, Pope Francis did not personally commit those grievous acts of violence against non-Catholics in previous centuries. But as pope, he along with all faithful Catholics carry the mantle of an inherited tradition. That means inheriting the good as well as the bad. It means a Catholic cannot be proud to stand on the shoulders of the robust intellectual and artistic tradition and the works of mercy of the saints without also living in the tragic legacy of unhealed wounds and tainted riches that have come from dubious sources.

Americans have a difficult time with this. We are quick to be proud of the traditions of our families, our nation and our churches.  We are proud to stand on the shoulders of the noble people who have come before us. However, we distance ourselves from anything negative that comes along with that. Apologies and reparations are widely unpopular in modern US culture.

Whether we personally have committed negative acts directly or not, we as a community always bear responsibility for making it right. It may seem unfair to inherit someone else's mess, but if we are quick to accept the good from our ancestors that means we also have to take ownership of the bad, too. It is a package deal.

There is always a danger in a story like this in portraying the white women as the heroes, which can run the risk of perpetuating a subtle racism rather than overcoming it. However, I think that is a risk worth taking, as long as we proceed with care and sensitivity. Not taking that risk and just doing nothing would be far worse. 

Besides, I don't see this story as one-sided. Both sides of this fracture have taken steps in bravery and vulnerability to work towards reconciliation. I admire people who are willing to do this very difficult but necessary work.  Otherwise, the pain just gets passed down from generation to generation and it never goes away until someone engages with it. Just like Jesus healed through touch, we must also be willing to touch our wounds and the wounds of others for healing to happen. We must proceed gently.  If we err, let's make sure we always err on the side of apologizing too much and giving each other too many chances, rather than too few.  Seventy times seven chances, actually.

Setbacks can bring despair, especially after the hard work of years can seem to evaporate in an instant. But setbacks are to be expected, as the path to reconciliation is rarely a straight line.  Each setback affords us the opportunity to renew our commitment to each other.  A setback can be a fracture or an opportunity for grace.

I suggest we keep this anonymous small town in our thoughts and prayers. They have certainly inspired me.

Let us hope that God continues to bless this work of reconciliation done in Christ's name!

II Corinthians 5:17-20

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.