In Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, Imani Perry writes of the fear she has for her two Black sons in a society that denies their humanity.13 Kelly Brown Douglas writes:
Every time he [her son] leaves the house I pray, “God please be my eyes, and be my hands, watch over my son and bring him safely home.” I am sure that I am not the only black mother who prays such a prayer when her black child, especially a black male child, leaves home. . . . So I tremble at the thought that the world is not safe for our sons because if God cannot protect them who can?14
How many Black mothers and fathers sit in our pews wondering if God cares enough to protect our children from White racism? Is there a word from the Church?
On the other side of the coin, as we look at the church, the Diocese of Vermont elected and consecrated its first African American female diocesan bishop, Shannon McVean-Brown, in 2019. Vermont is 95 percent white. In 2016, the Diocese of Indianapolis elected and consecrated the first female African American diocesan bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church, Jennifer Baskerville Burrows. The first African American male elected diocesan bishop was John Burgess in 1970. In 2015, Michael Curry was consecrated as the first African American presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. Yes, there have been moments to make your heart flutter and say, perhaps, just perhaps, things have changed, but then there is the soul crushing, but.
In November 2019, at the Indianapolis diocesan convention, one of the contributors, the Very Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, delivered the keynote address in which she stated, “It is only in speaking the truth about the White supremacist legacy that is ours that we will be truly able to repent of it and turn around and do something different. . . . [We need to be honest about] who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be as the Church. The Church cannot be White and Church; a decision has to be made.” 15
Yes, we have made great strides in this country in race relations; however, eleven o’clock on Sunday is still the most segregated hour in this country. If the Church cannot lead the way to the beloved community, who can? Who will? To what degree does the Church care? Is it willing to risk it all to make the face and mission of Jesus real in the world? Brené Brown has offered that to continue to ask those who are traumatized by bigotry and hatred to build the table and ask others to join is wrong. It is those who continue to benefit from racism who must do the hard work.16 The Church, particularly the Episcopal Church as the Church of England, birthed racism in this country; therefore, the Episcopal Church must take the lead in its eradication. It began racism on these shores through the adoption of slavery; therefore, it must hold itself responsible for doing whatever is necessary to make God’s kingdom real on earth because for all too many who deal with racism every day, heaven can wait.
I want to thank the writers who contributed to this work because dealing with race is difficult. Writing and discussing race makes one vulnerable to attack from those who believe this country and the Church are theirs. Writing and discussing race is soul- and gut-wrenching work; however, it is holy work. Dealing with race also requires that we admit our own complicity in upholding a system that is contrary to the life and mission of Jesus; that at times, we have permitted our religiosity to become the opiate that dulls our senses to the reality that all too many of God’s sun-kissed children experience every day of their lives. While the majority of the writers are Episcopalian, other voices have contributed their take on race and the Church. Jesus transgressed boundaries and borders and in the eradication of race, the Church, the body of Christ, must get beyond its own borders and lines of demarcation to be what the Church is called to be. I also want to thank Church Publishing and Milton Brasher-Cunningham, the editor of this book; they took a chance on a very wild journey.
We begin this journey with sermons that challenge us to think about race: sermons that require a risk to be preached from the pulpit. Preaching is holy work; however, it is also fraught with danger. There are many in our pews who view preaching about race as being too political and will challenge the pastor, leave the church, or withdraw their funding. But preach we must. Then we move on to reflections and essays on advocating for Black lives in the Church and society. These essays stretch us to see Church in ways that are truly inclusive, that encourage us to ensure that our churches are sanctuaries for all God’s people. Finally, we hear the call to rethink or expand Christian formation, from our seminaries to our sanctuaries. As we take this journey, there are reflections from pilgrims who traveled the Civil Rights Trail in Alabama with me in May 2019. Fifty-two people of faith—mostly Episcopalian, but also Baptist, Mennonite—and atheist, Black and White, young and not-so-young, gay and straight, clergy and lay, traveled together for five days, to learn from those involved in the struggle for Black civil and human rights. We learned from being in the company of each other and we learned from each other.
I hope these offerings begin or continue the conversations that must occur to create opportunities for people to gather and be “proximate” in the words of Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) founder Bryan Stevenson,17 to be open to hearing voices that challenge, voices that cry out for God’s justice in this time and in this place. Perhaps, just perhaps, if these conversations occur, the Church can truly be the body of Christ in a world that desperately needs God’s justice today.
1. The Rev. Ray Howell, pastor, First Baptist Church, Lexington, NC, “Racial Slur Reveal’s a County’s Deep Rift,” Washington Post, October 22, 2019, A-1, 6.
2. Trinity United Church of Christ, accessed July 2, 2019, https://www.trinitychicago.org/the-history-of-trinity/.
3. James H. Cone, Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody (New York: Orbis Books, 2018), 22.
4. Santiago Slabodsky, “It’s the Theology, Stupid! Coloniality, Anti-Blackness, and the Bounds of ‘Humanity,’ ” in Anti-Blackness and Christian Ethics, ed. Vincent W. Lloyd and Andrew Prevot (New York: Orbis Books, 2017), 32–35.
5. Drew G. I. Hart, Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2016), 160–61.
6. Peter d-Errico, “What Is a Colonized Mind?” Indian Country Today, December 12, 2011, https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/what-is-a-colonized-mind-yMyi0CHjMEO_HV3uM7caRQ.
7. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 20th anniv. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1997), 27.
8. L. H. Whelchel Jr., The History and Heritage of African-American Churches: A Way Out of No Way (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2011), 82.
9. Da’Shawn Mosley, “Recentering Spirituality: Creating Space for Activism, Mysticism, and Healing by and for People of Color,” Sojourners 47, no. 11 (December 2018): 16–18.