Watching and Worrying

         Permit me to import some thoughts in from the Presbyterian side of my life.  I’m involved in the Synod of the Northeast, the regional governance and mission level of the PC(USA) something like a super-conference of the UCC comprising New York, New Jersey, and New England.  We have adopted as one of priorities multiculturalism.  The northeast is the most culturally and racially diverse parts of the country, and we believe we can lead our society when it comes to living together.  A part of that growth was a recent racial-ethnic caucus keynoted by author James Cone.  He has been instrumental in systematic theology growing from the experience of African Americans and the civil rights movement.  His most recent book is The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a remarkable effort doing Christology on violence toward African-Americans for the last centuries.  While many have looked at lynching, Jim Crow laws, racism, institutional and social violence from historical or sociological or psychological perspectives, Cone is the first to apply theology of the Cross and the interpretive key of crucifixion to that dark and continuing era that I know of.  While Cone can be strident and hard to tolerate from conventional white Christian backgrounds, he’s doing work with strong systematic theological process with striking, even painful results.  Powerful stuff; difficult stuff.

         Ferguson, MO has resurfaced the powerful, difficult, scary topic of racism in the United States.  It has resurfaced questions of privilege and power and opportunity and oppression.  Ugly stuff.  What is different now is the ground-level reporting of participants combining with the more established media sources.  Again this causes cognitive dissonance and confusion and anger, but it also confronts us helpfully with actual events and experiences.  The ability of those “in charge” to control the situation and the interpretation of the situation has been shattered.  I will note that this is not totally new, for it has happened in other situations in the U.S. and certainly in Egypt and Gaza and Israel.  There is more immediacy than ever, which may also increase volatility, but it broadens the issues out and removes veils obscuring events.

         I have simply treated racism as a fact all my life, knowing that I will never understand it or experience it from the perspective of the suffering.  It is so pervasive and insidious that I presume I am infected by it without realizing it.  This means, also, that I will simply accept the experience of others without trying to explain, correct, relativize, or trivialize, and I try really hard not to get defensive.  If someone says something is racist, I’ve got to believe that what they are saying is true for them.  I am in a privileged position, and I have to deal with that.  In fact, having spent a few years in Atlanta and in Richmond with conventional “Southern” racism, I find myself more distressed by the subtle, self-superior racism of the north where I come from.  It has an extra coat of paint on it, but it just as ugly, dehumanizing, and deadly.  And I have met it in Elmira, Ithaca, Syracuse, Dryden, Rochester, Geneva.  Not just outside of St. Louis.  Racism is racism is racism.

        One of the tragic by-products of racism and class tensions is the tendency to depersonalize the other.  Again, this is a popular failure.  If you stop seeing people as people and as a mob, then you dehumanize them and make it easier to put them in your gun sights.  Sadly this is also true in Gaza and Iraq and elsewhere.  But one of the ways you can tell something is systemic injustice is that even privileged or the oppressors let themselves be depersonalized.  A man or woman becomes a police officer and not a person and begins to react as a cog in a system, sometimes very contrary to their real personality.  This is why police officers of color can participate in suppression; they dehumanize themselves, too.

        Historically and culturally racism is so pervasive around the globe and so stretches back before recorded history that it almost seems built into human relationships.  There are many who postulate that tribes are the organizing unit for human society and that tribes based on skin color are nearly engrained into the human animal.  So we just have to live with it, says this reading.

        The theological concept of sin comes up here.  That which separates us from God and others is sin, in the broadest definition.  But just because it is sin and kind of inevitable (if you come from the mainstream of Protestantism) doesn’t mean we accept it and refuse to deal with it.  Racism comes from “fallen” human nature (that is after sin has infected creation) which, while engrained, is not the way God wants it, and we should be always trying to tame our bad impulses and work for the good.  And one of the ways we try to ameliorate the effects of sin is the doctrine of “doing justice.”  Justice is doing the right thing for others despite our proclivity to be selfish and sinful.  This is why we do not merely sigh, shrug our shoulders, say “well, what can yah do?” and ignore manifestly unjust cases of systemic or personal violence.  Working to recreate or redeem broken social or political or criminal systems (or even religious systems) is the work of discipleship.  A minimum we try to not be captured by the unjust system or event; further, we try to fix it or recast it or work deeper into the social structures to remove the next level of injustice.  For instance, going beyond seeing Ferguson as a protest over a single police-involved shooting to addressing poverty and powerlessness in a whole community.  I believe that is our Christian calling once the broadcast and social media images calm down.  And I believe that it just as essential in our quiet little upstate NY communities as big cities and nationally.  Peace-making and justice-making are our Christian responses.

            So as you watch the storms across society, try to set aside your reactions, your reactivity and listen to the voices of others, especially the voices you don’t especially like.  That is one way to keep from dehumanizing people.  And redirect outrage and emotion into spiritual and community energy to mitigate suffering and change hearts and structures, and accept the scriptural warnings about how easy it is to dismiss other people and to ignore the all-giving love of Christ.  Take a moment to step away from the screen and reconnect with humanity and love and support and compassion and grace, and look for the ways you can, yourself, expand the embrace of God’s love right here and now where you are.

                                                                              In Christ,
                                                                           
                                                                                David

Texts for Sunday
      From the Hebrew Bible       Exodus 1:8-2:10
      From the Epistles               Romans 12:1-8
      From the Gospels               Matthew 16:13-20