How and Why the Church Fuels White Supremacy

 

Photo by Jon Tyson via Unsplash

An ecumenical panel explores the extent of that sin and how the church can heal

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE — People recruiting for a white supremacist cause on a Sunday morning will find more success at their local church than at their local coffee shop.

That’s what research revealed for Dr. Robert P. Jones’ most recent book, “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” and it’s a fact he shared Saturday during the White Supremacy and American Christianity webinar attended by about 2,500 people. Jones, the CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, joined Fr. Bryan Massingale, the author of “Racial Justice and the Catholic Church” and the Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Ethics as well as the Senior Ethics Fellow at Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education. Dr. Marcia Chatelain, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America” and a professor of history and African American Studies at Georgetown University, answered Jones’ and Massingale’s presentations with her own critique.

The NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice sponsored the online conference, with help from organizations including the Center for Faith, Justice & Reconciliation at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

Massingale said when he read that statement in Jones’ book, “it jumped out at me. There is something about Christianity that inclines white people to be more racist. I want those participating to pause and let that sink in.”

Fr. Bryan Massingale

“We have this idea of people who marched with torches in Charlottesville or those who stormed the Capitol in January of last year,” Massingale said. “But what we are talking about is people in church, that white Christianity itself incubates a sense of white superiority … I remember the first time I saw an image of a Black Christ. A part of me said, ‘what?’ I had been malformed and deformed. God and Jesus being white is the image I got.”

“If you believe a white person rules in the heavens, you believe they should rule here on Earth,” Massingale said. “The idea of representation isn’t idle. These things have real political impact and create a culture of white Christian nationalism.”

Which is why the faith of former President Barack Obama was attacked, Jones said. “It seemed out of place for this Black Christian,” Jones said. “If we can make him other than Christian, that’s why he faced this attack of being Muslim. White Americans made him ‘other.’”

For many people, just the term “white supremacy” is hard to hear, Jones said. “We think of old photos of people burning a cross. It’s a convenient way to think about white supremacy because we don’t know anybody like that.”

But in “any city we go to” there’s a history of redlining, a “straight-up expression of white supremacy,” Jones said. In many communities, churches were seen as institutions protecting the neighborhood from non-white people entering them. Jones’ own grandfather was a deacon in his church. It was his job to stand outside the church before worship “to make sure no non-white person entered the sanctuary. That history is very near to us and is certainly very present with us in many ways.”

Massingale remembers as a seventh grader the first time attending Mass in a new community. Members of the congregation “told us you would be more comfortable attending your former church.” Their message, he said, is “this church belongs to white people.”

When Massingale presents on racism and white supremacy, “People ask, ‘How can I talk about this in my parish and not make white people uncomfortable?’ I turn it around: ‘Why is it the only group that is never supposed to feel uncomfortable talking about race is white people?’”

In January, Jones published a piece called “The Sacred Work of White Discomfort.” He wonders: What kind of growth do we get without discomfort?

“Do we want to be comfortable, or do we want to be free?” Jones said during Saturday’s webinar. Do we want to keep the status quo, “or work out our salvation with fear and trembling? This commitment to white supremacy is the air we breathe and the water we swim in,” Jones said. “We don’t see how it has distorted the gospel and affected our ability to love one another.”

“If we want to hand down the faith to our kids, we need to think about the work that has to be done,” Jones said. “I can try to find a comfortable faithfulness of my ancestors or I can be faithful to my kids — but I cannot do both.”

What’s needed, Massingale said, is a “racial metanoia” — a “profoundly and radically different path.” For Catholics, the Sacrament of Penance is a five-step process:

• An examination of conscience, or honest truth-telling.
• Contrition, or “the genuine remorse and lament that we haven’t seen” from those holding on to the legacy of white supremacy, Massingale said.
• Confession, a public acknowledgement so there’s “some kind of ownership” to the sin, Massingale said.
• Purpose of amendment, or “taking concrete actions to heal the harm done,” such as making reparations.
• Proclamation of praise, the “resolution for a new beginning and walking together,” Massingale said.

“That’s a roadmap for what we need to,” Massingale said. “The question is, do we have the will and the courage it takes to transfer our convictions into action?”

Dr. Marcia Chatelain

Chatelain identified three issues “to help us get to the core of the way white supremacy operates in American religious communities.”

• “It’s not just about the preservation of ideas of identity,” Chatelain said. “It’s the hording of resources, the exploiting of people and the planet to multiply resources.” Churches have a real opportunity to think about and act upon exclusion and redlining in the neighborhoods where they’re located, Chatelain said.
• Misogyny, especially how “masculinity hinges on protecting white women.” Misogyny is not only a way of controlling women — it’s a “justification for racial violence.” What would it mean, Chatelain wondered, for clergy — particularly male clergy — to speak out against misogyny.
• The role Christians play in civic life. “The anti-death penalty movement is not as strong as the anti-abortion movement. That tells us something powerful,” Chatelain said. “It’s often about backlash rather than creating policy that moves people forward.”

Chatelain has two prescriptions for people of faith. The first is not to disengage from the community. “When I teach students, they hesitate because they think this will alienate themselves from several generations of their family,” Chatelain said. Secondly, can we imagine a world “where the church takes seriously releasing its power to show that another path is possible?”

“We have a lot of difficult work before us,” Chatelain said. “But I am heartened there are people who make this choice and are strengthened by these acts rather than degraded by them.”

“This truth-telling is what we need this Lent as we move into Holy Week,” said Mary J. Novak, executive director of the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, a journey that invokes “emerging from death to life, toward freedom by action and by reparatory justice.”

Presbyterian News Service April 12, 2022

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Nurturing Emotionally Healthy Relationships

 

Nurturing Emotionally Healthy Relationships

Recently, a sermon series at Maitland Presbyterian Church in Maitland Florida, highlighted the topic of emotionally healthy relationships.  The series highlights aspects of maintaining emotionally healthy relationships.  This is not a summary of that series but rather some of my thoughts on this topic. I recommend the series and will include the link below.

An emotionally healthy relationship is one that is defined by mutual respect, trust, a healthy interdependence (not enmeshed or overly dependent) a sense of boundaries, honest communication, emotional understanding, empathy, and compassion.  How do we go about nurturing and sustaining these relationships?  The following are a few suggestions. 

First, it is important to be cautious around assumptions about the other person's motives when discussing an action or behavior pattern having a negative impact on that relationship.  Too often we are quick to make assumptions in relationships with negative implications.  For example, imagine that there is someone who has been perpetually late in the past.  The person arrives to a scheduled meeting late as they often do.  We respond by saying, "you are always late, that is your pattern, it is selfish and inconsiderate of you."  Now, also imagine that unknown to us, this person has actually been dramatically improving, and now has begun to arrive early to appointments and is improving.  In this case however, even though ample time was allotted, an unforeseen traffic blockage prevented them from arriving.  

My assumption turned out to be incorrect.  Furthermore, I was prevented from seeing or discovering the truth because I was not willing to revisit my basic assumptions about this person.  This demonstrates two other important elements.  There is a difference between facts and the interpretation of those facts.  One fact is that this person has a bad habit of being late in the past, it was also a fact that the person couldn't have done anything to be early in this case.  Although I had some of the facts correct, I had the wrong interpretation, and came to the wrong conclusion.  Second, the way I responded automatically puts the person on the defensive, and doesn't give them a chance to even explain.  It is a recipe for an argument that will escalate.  

How to avoid the mistake of making assumptions. 

One way to avoid the mistake cited above is to use "I" statements.  Use an "I" statement to communicate clearly, reduce defensiveness, and prevent incorrect assumptions.  So, instead of operating on a false assumption, it is better to say how that person's actions make you feel.  "You are always late, you are very inconsiderate"  Try saying this instead: "when you show up late, I feel worried about you."  Not only is this a better way to communicate, it lets the friend know the behavior and how it is impacting them.  It also avoids making a false assumption.  Often, when we are late to an appointment, we of course know whether we are at fault or not, but we don't extend the same courtesy to others. Using "I" statements can help begin the conversation.  

In a healthy relationship people cannot use manipulation or coercion to force others to do what we want them to do.  At times, people will use power when they want to force someone to comply with their wishes regardless of how the other person feels or thinks.  A person may not even have come to a decision on their own.  Why do we do this in relationships?  Sometimes it may be a deep fear or anxiety working in us, or perhaps it may be a desire to "win" over the other person, we may even have what we think is best in mind for the other person.  Guilt, blackmail, coercion, constant nagging, threats, and anger, can all be forms of coercion.  A healthy relationship is built on mutual trust and respect, and while anger is a normal human emotion, using that anger or turning that anger against someone to get them to do something we want them to do undermines any kind of mutuality.  It is tempting to use anger or nagging to make the person whose tardiness is impacting us negatively to change.  Although the goal may be admirable, this way of handling the situation isn't.  

Another rule to keep in mind is simple, people should always speak for themselves.  Even at a young age, we should allow children to begin speaking for themselves.  Sometimes an adult might speak for a child assuming what a child thinks or wants.  Supposing there are apples and oranges available and the adult may say, "here, you like apples don't you" while handing the child an apple. The child may be confused as she or he does not recall thinking this way, they would prefer to eat the orange.  Sometimes we speak on behalf of others, at a public meeting saying, "we believe that the government has lost the trust of the people."  

Using an "I" statement would be appropriate here, it is better to say, "I believe the government has lost my trust." We should not volunteer for others, make commitment for others, or attempt to influence, bully or suppress the opinions of others.  If we want to have a healthy relationship with others, we have to have mutual respect, and thinking we can tell others how they feel is not mutually respectful. "I" statements also follow the rule of letting people speak for themselves.  

Last, it is important to remember that we while we are individuals, we are also part of a community, and therefore, in relationships that depend on one another.  In many cases, we have to make collective decisions.  Having healthy relationships is even more crucial.  We can make better decisions often as a group when we collectively listen to each other.  Making "I" statements does not mean that we ignore the advice and opinions of others.  In fact, it makes their opinions even more important.   Even when we have to make decisions that are our own personal decisions it is important to take the advice and consent of others.  Ultimately, we are responsible for those decision that are under our control.  We cannot make decisions for others, nor can we ask others to make decisions that are our responsibility.  We engage advice and wisdom to make the best possible decision whether in a group or as an individual. 

Conclusion

Creating emotionally healthy relationships is the only way to ensure a long term sustainable relationship.  Using "I" statements, allowing others to speak for themselves, checking our assumptions or exceptions of others, wisely consulting others while taking personal responsibility for our decisions, all are foundational to mutual respect. In the book of Philippians we read "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." When we want to speak the truth to others, we can do that in a spirit of humility that values the other individual and gives them the respect to hear us and make their own decisions.  

To learn more about healthy emotional relationships check out the special sermon series below: 

Maitland Presbyterian Church Youtube Page

Sabbath as Resistance - Walter Brueggemann

Self Care for Clergy

The Emotionally Healthy Series (Leader, Spirituality, Church)