Actually, The Apology Is Owed to God

David said it best in Psalm 51: “Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight.” When we wrong others the ultimate offense is always against God.

I boldly I confess that all of my own past acts of insult or injury had some gradation of premeditation and purpose, and not just in the heat of the moment.  In other words, I meant to do them, seeking my own remedy, personal satisfaction, or some kind of attention-getting rise.  I feel confident that a rational (or rabid) sense of intention and accomplishment rested behind each and every action or statement for which I later apologized, but rarely to God.  

I wish others were willing to admit the same, because the many recent publicly-aired apologies of news and radio moguls, who know better, have become sickening. They are the smooth-over that pleads, “I know I have compromised my [already-sorely questionable] credibility and integrity, but I’m essentially doing this to beg to keep my job”.  The substance of these apologies is irrelevant, but we have come to expect them as America’s public appeasement, ignoring the fact that passionate remorse is difficult enough to convey, and exponentially so when the plea was preceded, just days before by venomous, libelous, misogynist, bigoted, or racist insults.

I suspect that Rush Limbaugh, Franklin Graham, and even my beloved Ed Schultz from the Ed Show, all know, as well as I do, that the silver bullet insult that fires from the mouth of your spouse or loved one is forever suspended in the air. All the flowers, gifts, diamonds, even great make-up sex, will not erase the sound of the “B”, “C”, or “D” words in the heat of an argument.  It's an even higher hurdle with a stranger, which is absent the covenantal safety net.

This week’s Gospel lectionary of Jesus turning over the tables of the money-changers in the temple is the kind of anger that will never need an apology, because it establishes that an insult against God is the ultimate insult.  Similarly, when we defile another’s personhood, integrity, intelligence, faith tradition, or humanity, we negate God’s holy creation, and the divinity for which each and every one of us was created. Matthew Fox aptly called it, Original Blessing.

During Black History Month worship services in white churches I have experienced White members passively, but passionately, apologizing to me for the centuries of oppression, suppression, and dehumanization against my African ancestors.  This always made me uncomfortable, because the fact is that those acts were everything but passive. They were blatant acts of cruelty and violence. They were done with calculated evil and conviction, supported by carefully legislated laws, and laced with thin and blasphemous attempts at corroborating them with Biblical principles. The true offense was, and still is, against God.  If anyone needs an apology, it's God.

I would like to hear Rush, Franklin and Ed take a lesson from King David and apologize publicly to God, and then maybe I will believe they are sincere.  

Franklin Graham Falls Far from the Tree AND Rolls Down a Hill

Bill Maher said it best regarding President Obama: “It’s not that these folks don’t like the food or the restaurant; they don’t like the waiter”.  Whatever he brings is unacceptable.  President Obama has persistently shown amazing calm and integrity in the face of so much ignorance. This should only serve to illumine his intellectual brilliance and character in the face of our unabashedly Babylonian Capitol Hill. Instead, it appears that too many Republicans, including those who could not negotiate their way into a bathroom stall with a full bladder, will raise any unfounded argument in an attempt to discredit him. My Mom used to say, “A drowning man will grab at straw.”  If it’s not the birth certificate, it’s his profession of faith, or it’s ridiculously disjointed statements like: “The Muslims define him as Muslim so he must be Muslim”.  Franklin Graham’s recent statements questioning the President’s Christianity are an international, racism-loaded travesty.  So what else do you think, Franklin? Is the Dalai Lama really a closet Pentecostal?

Billy Graham doesn’t have to wait to turn over in his grave; he’s probably doing donuts in his wheelchair in lamentation of his son’s humiliating ignorance. I suspect Billy’s most private moments might include some Job-like responses, such as rent garments and ashes on his head.  Franklin has proved that this apple has not only fallen far, far from the tree, but rolled down a hill into an abyss of theological ignorance.  

In Romans 10:9, Paul made it plain and simple: Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart.  The President has unapologetically and unwaveringly professed Jesus Christ with his mouth on national TV and in print several times, sometimes making emphatic statements affirming the Resurrection.  I don’t foresee him recanting this after he’s re-elected in November or even years from now.  In my own, albeit naïve, discernment I cannot imagine him stating at some future point that he “exercised a critical lapse in judgment”, in professing Jesus Christ.  

Well, Franklin, if you’re not satisfied with the verbal confession, do you wanna try your hand at medicine, too, and prove that you can botch a coronary exploration into the heart of a man of such integrity?   (Hint: Why don’t you leave the "heart" part up to God?)

Baby Boomer Check-In

We Baby Boomers have lived the gamut of racial iterations. From civil disobedience to urban infernos to Molotov cocktails, from KKK to Black Panthers to Skin Heads, from peaceful marches and unifying fire and brimstone speeches, to fire hoses, tear-gas and German shepherd attack dogs. Many of us were in grammar school during the Civil Rights era and in high school or college when race riots and unrest blazed across college campuses and major cities in the North and South. And we were just coming of age when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were killed.

It seems that all of a sudden, after being baptized by fire (literally) in cities and on college campuses and singing pop songs that didn’t just rap, but preached and proselytized, we were somehow lulled to sleep in our corporate or nonprofit jobs. Those moral and ethical compasses of music and dissension were traded for mind-numbing and socially deceiving “diversity” training. We responded like the nation of sheep that we are. In no time, most of what was supposed to be open and transforming discussion about the messed up muck of white racism against African Americans in this country got trumped by women’s rights and further diluted with the concerns of everybody else’s disenfranchisement. And I mean everybody.

I remember a water-cooler conversation with a white guy on my job, who was of European descent. He went on and on about the historical violence of one group of Europeans against another, and I thought, “I’ll never explain to this guy that when he and I walk into the same job interview, the fact that he’s white gives him an advantage, even if he’s as dumb as a rock.” He’ll spend the first 20 minutes establishing that he’s as dumb as dirt, because the interviewer will have trouble believing it; and I’ll spend the first 20 minutes proving that I’m not, because the interviewer will expect me to be. 

One of the funniest skits I ever saw on Saturday Night Live was when Dan Akroyd and some other well-groomed, corporate-looking white guys in business suits were on a fictitious talk show demanding that white men need to have their rights acknowledged, too – that they just wanted to be heard as white men, and were tired of being overlooked and ignored. It was hilarious! The minority melting pot had raised enough steam to cloud even white male dominance, and they were suddenly the ones pushed to the margins.

The point is that as a nation, we never got around to fixing the lingering problem between African Americans and white people – not outside the church and certainly not inside the church. No wonder so many of the most prejudiced people are adamant that they are not racist.  They thought that getting paid to sit through mandatory sensitivity training of a sort would heal them of all hatred and disdain. They thought all they had to do was learn to be curious and nice. How sadly naïve.

So I just heard through a casual conversation about a white church that is strongly resisting the cross-racial appointment of a black pastor. The gripe, which was publicly verbalized, is that their white church will eventually end up “filled with [black people] or “their kind”.  Is this a form of xenophobia? Are we still considered foreigners and strangers? Haven't we been American long enough to render our African side less foreign by now, especially in worship?

Yesterday I felt trapped by a parishioner who was negatively surprised that I support President Obama, because “sources claim that he is Muslim”. I went into this long explanation about how I had been to Trinity UCC in Chicago and there seemed to be residual admiration from years before for the grassroots work that he and Michelle did there early in their legal careers, and that he was a good and faithful Christian by all accounts – a pillar of the church and the community. I ended up down a rabbit trail about religion and politics. Good grief!

I was in junior high school when Dr. King was assassinated, so I’ve been around for a lot of the more recent struggles that led to this moment in history when a black man is President in America. So what I really wanted to say is: I’m black and clergy, he’s the first black President of the United States of America, and he openly professes Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. Vote cast.  

In fact, the night President Obama was elected, the very first phone call I got at around 11pm was from an elderly white male who grew up in Central Pennsylvania and still lives in the same farmhouse he was born in, in what is still an overwhelmingly white neighborhood.  (I was surprised he was still awake). He called to congratulate me. He said that he could only imagine what this triumph meant to me. I’ll never forget that.

In one of his outrageous stand-up comedy routines Chris Rock goes on a tirade declaring that doctors do not cure anything [expletive]. According to Chris, “the money is in the medicine”, and we are duped into a pharmaceutical malaise that is mediated by doctors, who are, in religious terminology, “fleecing the flock” while trying to push research and drugs.  It’s a disturbing observation, but he manages to make it comical.

This led me to think of the churches that on a denominational level tout a strategic mission of “curing” racism. Their goal is to “eliminate racism”, by engaging tactics of “healing the wounds” caused by it.  How arrogant and unrealistic is this goal for the church against the Jeremiah Chapter 30 prophecy that our “wound is incurable”?  For the most part, the success of our fight against this universal human indignity is gauged by activities, such as seminars, consortiums, retreats, and conferences, fronted by the kamikaze missions of cross-racial appointments.  Similar to Chris Rock’s observations of doctors and medicine, when we gather to “deal” with racism, there is money in it for the hotels, restaurants, airlines, trains, gas stations, printers and publishers, retreat centers and monastic communities.  Meanwhile, there is no real evidence of cure. We are pursuing healing for a human condition that human beings simply cannot make happen.  Jeremiah gave us a hint that some wounds are simply incurable. Just as our faithfulness relies on and derives from God’s great faithfulness, the cure for human ills is found in Christ alone through the Holy Spirit.  Only God’s mercy can prepare our hearts to be led by the Holy Spirit to speak the truth in love as Christ would do. In and of ourselves, we will never cure or eliminate racism, not even within the church. We’re obsessed and enamored with the distractions, which is where the money is. 

In the year-end fog of Advent I recall finding a moment to read an article on a major network’s website that was very offensive to 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-career clergy.  (This includes me). The article berated the “wave” of lazy, lecherous baby boomers, who are, purportedly, flocking in droves to seminaries for MDiv degrees. The article accuses these opportunistic wanderers of irresponsibly racking up mounds of student loan debt so they can leave the stress of the corporate workplace in order to pursue cushy preacher jobs, get free housing, nominal, flexible work hours, and free vacation expense accounts masked as retreats - in other words, retire comfortably. As soon as I read most of the article, I thought of my 60-plus year-old female colleague, who, after retiring from 30 years as an administrator, forged through a grueling ordination process to earn her clergy credentials.  She confided in me that in a church of about 200 members, she had officiated 15 funerals in less than a year – essentially more than 1 per month.  Another friend who had been serving a church for less than two years shared that she had done just as many in half that time. 

The love, devotion and commitment required of a servant leader can take its toll, and it was not much different for Jesus Christ.  My colleagues and I are not quite sweating blood, but this is a cup many of us would often like to pass and let someone else take our sip.  Only a divine calling could strengthen me enough to think nothing of someone sobbing snot into my dry-clean-only clergy robe, or cry on my shoulder so uncontrollably, that I can feel their tears trickling into my inner-ear; or to go from the intensive care unit to the cancer unit after having waited an hour for someone to come back from diagnostic testing, and then heading for the dark trip alone back to the Center City parking garage.

Serving in a cross-racial or cross-cultural appointment is an added layer of confluence that should be the least of our issues, but unfortunately, it’s not.  There are often some triumphs and victories that propel us forward through the work of the Holy Spirit. I recall my Korean colleague who could not get a dying black parishioner to look at her during a hospital visit, but melted into a smile when she began to sing. And I have learned that an elderly parishioner, who has made racist comments, could care less how dark or kinky-haired I am when I am standing by their hospital bed on Christmas Eve night reading Luke 2.  I’ve learned that the parishioner who describes me as the “colored” pastor is quick to request that I sing an a cappella spiritual at the graveside when they die. 

Suffering and mourning are no better relieved when the skin of hands that are joined in prayer or the cheeks that touch in comfort, are the same color.  And no baby boomers in their right (or wrong) minds would voluntarily spend the latter of their natural days suffering and mourning on a regular and unpredictable basis with, for the most part, social and cultural strangers.  It’s hardly a prudent or desirable retirement plan.  It’s a high calling for a peculiar people.  

A Church Food Revelation

 “After 4 days of white people food, man, your cookin’ was slammin!” I stared at this text that I wrote to my son-in-law, but could not get myself to hit “send.”  Something seemed wrong about it.  Was I saying that “white people’s food” was nasty? Tasteless?  Unpalatable?  No, because most of the food that had been served or given to me to take home over the holidays was quite good.  It’s just that I have an ingrained perception of the differences between “white people food” and the food with which my palate is most familiar and often craves, called, “soul food.”  I chickened out and changed my text to say, “After 4 days of ‘church people’ food…”  Yet, I knew that my son-in-law, knowing what my world was like, would crack the code that I really meant “white people food”.  

The truth is that there is a difference in our approaches to food and fellowship.  (Yet another hurdle for us to overcome on our journey to the fully racially-integrated church).   We have to acknowledge and admit these differences, and we should confess that there are kitchen counter whisperings that express how we really feel about each other’s foods.  Some white person right now is declaring, “I love collard greens!” or “I grew up on hoppin’ john”, and some black person is bragging, “I’ve never eaten chit’lins”!  Despite the endless TV food shows, we are still sometimes worlds apart when it comes to food, and hence, fellowship.

In the home I grew up in we ate pig’s feet often.  At first when I left home, in my yuppie life, the thought of ever having eaten straight-up fat, especially from a pig, repulsed me.  (I’m still amazed that my Dad lived into his seventies).  A stark reality was evoked at my son-in-law’s Christmas Eve party, where there was a full roast pig, golden-brown and stretched out on the kitchen counter from head-to-toe – hairy face, ears and tail intact. I was fully sober, but somehow drawn to the pig’s feet. I kept staring at them thinking that if I were in a less sophisticated setting, I would snap those feet off, douse them in vinegar and hot sauce, and eat every bit of the fat and lean meat and suck the toes. 

I imagined appropriate side servings of greasy, cheesy macaroni and cheese, slippery collard greens soaked in smoked ham hock grease, sweet potato slices swimming in syrup and real butter (and aptly called “candied” yams), and fried chicken that squirts juice (and grease) when you bite into it, and of course, boiled-egg-laden potato salad, and salty, chicken-y flavored “church rice”. These are the standard comfort foods of my Baptist heritage, always, always served and expected at church events, fellowship and funerals.  I admit that I miss these culinary staples rarely served at the gatherings of white churches in the North.   

The revelation is that in our quest to ultimately bring us together, some things will remain unshaken.  I realize that rice is the only commonality between dirty rice, stuffed grape leaves and spring rolls, but given the choice, I’m probably gonna choose dirty rice every time and twice on Sunday.  

I have a feeling there will never be such a thing as “church people food,” because at least in Pennsylvania, it would have to range from pot pie to borscht.  But I did learn how easy it is, even for us clergy people, to craft cross-over terminology to mask our simplest prejudices. 

Guilty, as revealed. 

White Politicians - No Shame to Their Game

I was called to cross-racial ministry in predominantly white churches more than 10 years ago.  God’s idea, not mine. One thing I know I will not miss in the coming election-year is the “politico-circuit riders” who will plague black churches.  The browning and blacking of America has made this more necessary with every election. How sad that discretion and discernment go out the window when a non-African American politician feels the need to use the worship hour to beg for black votes in order to get elected to public office.

Soon white politicians, who are seeking coveted black votes, will circle the parking lots, atriums, narthexes, fellowship halls and pulpits of Black churches in the best and worst neighborhoods. Like sales people in the cosmetics section of a department store donning fluffed, fake, dyed or plugged hair, and flashing capped-teeth smiles, they will ask in syrupy sweet tones if you are willing to walk around for the rest of the day harboring some fragrance that may or may not suit your personal chemistry. They spritz you with a dab, and they’re off to the next aisle!

Before moving to the other side of segregated worship, it never occurred to me to be annoyed by the white politicians who shamelessly (and literally) popped their heads into the Sunday services of black churches to campaign. I guess I didn’t know any better, and apparently, neither did our pastors. Now that I’m on the other side, this political parade of pretense, in retrospect, is an abyss of condescension to the black community.   White politicians from every party and ilk, hopefuls from county commissioner and school board on the local level, to those obsessed with getting to the big house in Washington, DC, would show up early or late, but just in time to get their few minutes in the pulpit. I was too young or too chicken or too naïve to question this back then, but a little seminary education can be a dangerous thing. 

In more than 40 years of experiencing these shenanigans, I can only think of one white female public school board campaigner who stayed for an entire service and stood alongside our black pastor following worship to greet us. But come to think of it, she was the exception in every way, and a class act few could follow professionally or otherwise.

The rest of these politicians were never able to stay for the whole worship service. Never. The excuse was always that they had to hit several other churches [in the ‘hood] while the Sunday morning crowd was still captive. Subtext: After they finished promising what they thought we thought was the moon – after-school programs, reduced lunches, cleaner public pools in “our own” neighborhoods, and of course, more, more and more job opportunities targeted for our “communities”, they had to hurry back to the other side of the tracks before we turned back into ordinary black folks again.  And the sub-subtext is: “How convenient that you folks like to spend all day Sunday in church!"

Looking back, I cannot for the life of me understand why our black pastors allowed this.  Of course, the hook was always that “this” candidate, whoever he or she was, promised to be the savior of black and/ or poor folks. The other Savior we would hear about that morning got trumped, just until votes were cast, after which we would never – and I mean never – see these politicians in our church again. Well, maybe if they had gotten elected, and their incumbency was later threatened.  Most of these white politicians would never consider worshiping in a black church, much less having their caskets brought there. That is to say, they literally would not be caught dead in a black church.

Frantically waving carefully manicured hands as they all but sprint up and down the church’s center aisle, strategically shaking hands (mostly with the male deacons) in the congregation as they rush to the next venue is just as pathetic as it is irreverent. And the some of the white female politicians are the worst, often coming across like bad impersonations of Cagney and Lacey (“Rizzoli and Isles” for milennial viewers) like “bad-A”  women who will “kick butt” for single moms and old people, as if that’s all we need.  For the first time in a long time I will not miss being in a black church this coming year.

As a Philadelphia resident I could easily imagine former Mayor John Street standing in the pulpits of several different African American churches following his election declaring that, “The brothas have taken over the city!”   When he woke from his celebratory stupor, he realized, the hard way, that unlike his years on City Council, his entire life would be played out in a racially-mixed public forum no matter where he was.  Understandably, upon hearing this, the response from white constituents was that of betrayal and bewilderment: “Is he the mayor of all city residents, or did he pursue this office so he could exclusively give the brothas in the ‘hood the hookup with jobs and contracts?” These are reasonable questions unless you know that racially-divisive language takes place in the pulpits of black churches as regularly as worship itself. Dr. Jeremiah Wright helped to confirm and bring this to wider public awareness. His viral YouTube sermons bear testament.

Well, as my Mom used to say, “We got it honest,” because we inherited the worship conditions of our slave ancestors. In slave quarters or in a clearing in the woods, we resorted to using inverted wash kettles or large pots to capture, deflect and muffle the sound of our highly-charged and emotional preaching, praying and singing to God. Another method was to hang wet blankets from tree branches in the woods, also to muffle the sounds of loud, energetic worship. Slave masters and overseers severely controlled and limited worship opportunities for black slaves, and we were sometimes severely beaten for worshiping without permission or when we should have been doing something else. The worship context also served as a type of military barracks for devising maneuvers for escape to freedom. Consequently, to this day, black worship usually has more than praise to God on its agenda. It is black folks’ weekly opportunity to chart their practical and spiritual course through an endless maze of prejudice and evil.

Today there are 3 conversations going on when it comes to race and mainline denomination churches: the one that takes place in Black churches, the one that takes place in White churches and the one that takes place in the public square or “offline,” if you will. When white people show up in an all-black church where everyone is welcome, someone is bound to ask, “Who are those white people, and who do they know here?” Or “What are those white people doing here today?”  In the white churches there is an ongoing – whether sincere or insincere - plea for more diversity and multi-ethnicity, by any means necessary, even if blatantly ineffective – as if seeing a diversity of skin color in the congregation automatically means their church is not racist.  

In the public square, on the other hand, white folks will openly admit that the extreme emotion displayed in Black worship is superfluous, distracting and disturbing; while black folks declare that whites are “too stiff” and lacking a real manifestation of the Holy Spirit. No wonder true multi-ethnic and successful cross-racial/ cross-cultural worship is so evident in non- and inter-denominational congregations – they apparently, abandoned these 3 conversations and started their own.

Love this quote: "Love without truth lies, and truth without love kills".

When Scarlett O’Hara argued with Rhett Butler on the grand staircase at Tara in the epic movie, Gone with the Wind, she may have been responsible for more broken limbs and serious injuries to women than any other calamity around that time. In this dramatic scene, Scarlett ends up falling down the entire staircase, causing her to suffer a tragic miscarriage.  News back-stories tell us that some women, after seeing the movie, deduced that this must be an easy, relatively harmless way to get rid of an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy, and so they threw themselves down a staircase or hurled their bodies over a balcony.  No doubt some of these women did, tragically, harm their unborn babies, but more than likely, most ended up still pregnant, but limping, in a sling, in traction, or worse.

Perhaps this great movie of cinematic genius has an equally detrimental take-away as it translates into the modern-day cross-racial appointments of black pastors to white congregations.   For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American actress to be awarded the coveted Academy Award – the Oscar.  Ironically, she was awarded for affirming the stereotype of the doting, selfless, self-effacing, devotee of pampered white people. Her sidekick, Butterfly McQueen, reinforced the profile as Prissy in the same movie.  Fifty (50) years went by until the next African American female, Whoopi Goldberg, was awarded an Oscar, again in the Supporting Actress category, for the movie Ghost, for essentially mediating and running positive interference for white folks stuck in a negative, transitional and formidable situation.

 In cross-racial appointments, particularly of African American pastors to white congregations, do we affirm and sustain the Prissy, Mammy, Stepin Fetchit, Bojangles and other classic black stereotypes as the quintessential nannies, valets, minstrels, mourners and entertainers of white existence?

Listening to the Tom Joyner Morning Show on the radio – 100.3 - and Malcolm Jamal Warner of Cosby Show fame is promoting his new show, “Reed Between the Lines” which is clearly on prime-time life support.  It seems the TV show is too white to be black and too black to be white, yet trying to achieve universality and cultural cross-over by using the Cosby template of 2 “professional” parents who “just happen to be black” with cute, precocious kids. Good Grief! This along with polite, subtle, tactful references to the black buffoonery of Tyler Perry ‘s movies is so draining. How can black folks get around the endless need to be black enough or white enough depending on the venue –including the White House?

Black pastors in cross-racial appointments often comment that their white congregations “love my preaching and my praying, and my singing; they even laugh at my jokes. But when it’s time to make a decision, especially a major administrative one, I become invisible and inept.”

Can we conclude that in cross-racial contexts clergy power and performance are inherently bifurcated?

People keep asking why I don’t just schedule private interviews with clergy serving in cross-racial appointments and then compile the findings for pasteurized publication, instead of hosting a Blog that people are afraid to use for open and sensitive comments.  This drumbeat of caution and caveat prompted my own revelation: Thomas Jefferson would still be one of my American history idols had I not learned about his black mistress, Sally Hemings, when I was in my 40’s.  One of Jefferson’s black great-great-great-grandchildren lived in Downingtown when I lived in West Chester.  The Thomas Jefferson I learned about as a college undergrad was scrubbed, combed and propped up on a throne in every book about him that I read. I’ve learned a lot about this popular President since then that was disappointing, to say the least.  When people started speaking up and out against normative historical accounts, and I was no longer limited to the published research of a handful of historians, most, but not all, of what I admired about President Jefferson changed. The moral of the Blog is that we all deserve to hear and live the truth. And much of the truth cannot be found in the library.

Over the last 5 days it is absolutely amazing how much fear has been personally expressed to me in face-to-face conversations about this Blog.  I am advised over and over that “no clergyperson in their right mind” is going to write on it, and not because they are too busy, but because they are afraid to talk openly about racial tension in our churches.  And posting under “Anonymous” is considered way too risky. 

The real risk (and insanity) is in thinking that seminars, retreats and specialized training of clergy and their congregations will help to eradicate racism in our churches.  They haven’t and they won’t, any more than putting the African American Hymnal next to the traditional hymnal in the pews of white churches will get us moving toward meaningful worship integration. Only open and honest dialogue will result in progress and real reconciliation.  Anyone who has a black brother-in-law or a “bi-racial” grandchild knows what I’m talking about.  When someone finally speaks up to say: “This is what I am experiencing, and this is how it feels,” there is immediate progress, whether not everyone is listening. Being heard is a start.

So if having a black man or woman in the pulpit does not change racism in our churches, what will?

Is our crusade for racial integration in mainline churches limited to and dependent upon people of color being in a position of crisis and need? 

Does our hope of truly integrated worship hinge on merely sharing in the festivities, foods and fabrics of ethnic groups?

Ministry or Minstrelsy?

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. preached me happy in a recent revival in Philadelphia. But as exegetically succulent as his sermon was, one comment that he made about President Obama was a little pungent. Rev. Wright said that “Barack Hussein Obama was selected and not elected” to the presidency. To a nearly packed sanctuary of African American worshipers Rev. Wright supported his own opinion with this rhetorical question: “Why do you think Wall Street was at the head of the line for financial bailout funds?” He then answered his own question: (my paraphrase): “Because the supposedly elected simply did what he was selected to do,” while the marginalized and disenfranchised still are, and will remain, so.

Driving home from that revival, despite all that I know about his gifts, skills and intellect, I asked myself if my number one 21^st century hero, President Obama, was merely a pawn in the ongoing game of White American politics. And then I turned inward to ask myself this question: Do African American pastors in front of white congregations in reality serve more in minstrelsy than ministry?

Cross-Racial Clergy Appointments: Cure or Kamikaze?

Are cross-racial appointments of African American pastors to white congregations our best strategy for racial integration in mainline denomination worship?  What is your opinion?  After more than 10 years of serving as both laity and clergy in cross-racial contexts, I’m ready for some honest and open dialogue, and I hope you will join me.

Recently, I was devotional worship leader for a denominational district meeting in which at least 80% of the attendees were white.  I led this group of mostly clergy and some laity in singing an a cappella African American Spiritual and another familiar song in Spanish. In order to heighten involvement, rhythm and fun, I randomly distributed percussion instruments – maracas, tambourines, and shakers – so that people could join in with more than just singing.  After the meeting, several white people spoke to me very candidly and apologetically about their “lack of rhythm,” declaring that it was inherent or hereditary, or both.  Even seasoned clergy lamented and apologized for their white congregations’ inability to sing or “pull off” these songs, “no matter how hard they’ve tried” over the years.  

As much as I hear this (I heard it again yesterday in my own predominantly white church) I could not help wondering for the hundredth time, why we believe that cross-racial clergy appointments of African American clergy to white congregations is the answer to the racial integration of mainline denomination worship. Why is the burden on the clergy of color, and not vice versa?  Is this the best way to build and achieve racial diversity in the worship context? And if it is the best or only way, how can we better prepare these clergy and the congregations for such deeply personal and cultural precipitation?

Share your thoughts and experiences. Maybe we will have a revelation!