"Assault In the Barbershop"

I just came from the barber shop this evening. It is usually a happy time for me. It is a much different social group I enjoy there than forms my usual social and ministerial pattern. There is usually quite a cross section of the AU Center community intertwined with a larger public. It is a unisex shop and so there is a certain deference that is shown in the conversation, I think, because women are there. Some traditions have not died in the Black community.

As I said, it is usually a happy time for me. This evening, however, I was distressed. One gentleman, who is a self proclaimed minister of the gospel. decided he would pick on a young fellow who was, like himself, waiting for a fresh cut. Our boisterous interloper discovered that the young man, whose name still is not known to either of us elders, was a Morehouse graduate of some years ago. Our "prophetic" ministerial friend, was not please that this young man was not engaged in the same charismatic social action for which ML King and Benjamin Mays and other giants of Black history were noted. I noted that he did not catalog for us a list of his involvements. Our guru of the forties generation, violated an otherwise happy black male moment by cataloging an endless list of what is wrong with young people today and what Morehouse college is not doing right about the "wrongs" of gay behavior and other abominations on campus be the academic or moral. Ranting as if gay behavior was a novelty of the present age and endemic to Morehouse College, he cataloged his less than studied scriptural condemnations of these people asking for but not receiving "Amen Corner" approbation.

I felt sorry for this young guy, clearly an earnest employee of State Farm Insurance, as we all found out during the "interrogation". I felt sorry that he had to take the hit for every sinful or unwise deed done in the name of blackness simply because he graduated from Morehouse. He did not wish to offer for public consumption, the charitable and justice focused work he engaged in for the service of the Kingdom of God on earth. While I am peeved by this gentleman who chose to do verbal violence while decrying the physical violence in our streets, I am more peeved that I did not even the odds and verbalize my disquiet by coming to the young man's aid. The adage, "silence is consent" comes swiftly to mind.

I am peeved that I did not voice my perception that while Martin L. King Jr. and others are our heroes for mine and his generation, they are but figures of history to twenty-somethings today. They are admired, perhaps, but not experienced. I am peeved with myself that I did not open my mouth and gainsay this gentleman's denigration of young people today who have to deal with a far more diverse and complicated social fabric than he or I did. I am peeved that I did not out shout this self styled minister's proclamation that Martin and WEB and the others would have taken to the streets in droves to protest the violent death of our sister on CAU's campus. He was clearly not there in the sixties to experience the fact that what we see as snapshots of the March on Washington and The Edmond Pettis Bridge, were a point in time framed by many many attempts to do the same that amounted to a trickle. Would that he had been there to experience the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s trips to the barbershop did not include anything like his stentorian harangue.

How much more effective and thought provoking it would have been, had my "colleague" in the work of the gospel simply engaged the young man in civil conversation beginning with a personal introduction: my name is, what's yours?. How much more effective had he been more about the young man's best benefit and the instruction of all the young men present. A conversation leading to a relationship would undoubtedly open the door for an unimaginable number of future encounters which might lead to mutual transformation. I am embarrassed that I still do not know the young man’s name. How unfortunate that he chose to act out of an erroneous reading of the scriptural snapshot of both Jesus and John the Baptist or, for that matter Martin and Malcolm.

We cannot assume that these men, confronted with today’s realities, would have responded with the strategies of the sixties. Then, they had no personal computers, Internet, no cell phones, no blogs, no Facebook, no Skype, no Twitter. There was no CNN or Fox News. There were no fax machines or copiers. Cars were not common among students so everyone was living in the neighborhood. The agenda was common. Achieve public accommodations. There was not much thought about what to do after we got them. Television was relatively new and watching it was not yet a bad habit. Pastors then were not confronted by the gospel of success as charismatic grassroots religious community leaders are today. I am ashamed of my milquetoast failure to confront this gentleman's verbal assault on this young man who's only "sin" was that he admitted graduating from Morehouse. Would that I had smothered this zealot with the gentle reproach that one should not throw stones if he lives in a glass house. While decrying the violence in our streets and the silence in the face of abuse, he brought the violence and verbal abuse into the barbershop, the black male's safe place where he can hear and, if he wishes, contest untested theory and personal perspective...or not.

We cannot assume that Martin, and Malcolm, and WEB, and for that matter, Jesus would have responded with the same strategies were they alive today. We cannot demand or expect that institutional imperatives are to be embodied in those who are enrolled in a given institution. We cannot assume that because one is silent or unable to express his truth amid a barrage of abuse that he is not in fact on the case or that his life is not a tribute. But above all, let us not allow our friends and brothers and sisters to verbally abuse those around us simply because they feel helpless to bring about the social transformation we all agree is necessary. No one institution can do it all. No one person can perfectly carry the institutions mission and mandate be she president or faculty, be he alumnus or freshman.

"The Freshpeople are coming!": Something to Think About...

I was reading The Economist earlier this week. One journalist wrote a blog entitled, The Obama Cult. The subtitle read, “If Obama disappoints his supporters, they have only themselves to blame”. The writers point is that too many of us, so some feel, are intoxicated by his historical import and are not ready to be critical of his policies and points of view. This brings me to the point of this blog. The arrival of the freshmen like the arrival of Obama has us excited and jumping for joy. They themselves are happy to be away from home and tasting the liberty (not necessarily freedom) which will show them who they are and what they really value. The sophomores are happy not to be lowest on the totem pole anymore. The juniors are awakening to a new limbo in which there is space to simply be while they jettison all in academic life which is excess and settle down with a major. The seniors having seen it all in the village are now ready to head for hills and dales of future hope.

Just as we are being called upon to investigate what is essential to making the country and the world move in sync so we all in the academic arena are being asked to reflect on why we are here. Our blogger friend has a long list of critical questions for The President. We who are in the HBCU arena are here to develop and articulate our questions for him. There are questions which are to be born of our learning experience here. That is why you are here, to learn how to think and to pose the hard questions that take us beyond the euphoria of the historic moment . There are significant questions to be advanced about fundamental starting points. Are middle class people to be protected to the detriment of the poor? What is each of our philosophy of life? Is one’s moral orientation individualist or communal? What is the extent to which federal powers should control energy and health care? Is there a way to see to the public health without excessive public debt? While he is clearly more intelligent than most, does that mean our President is more right and less accountable to our scrutiny simply because he is ours? It is possible that he has promised too much. Is it possible that he has bitten off more than the nation can chew in four years?

We are here in the academy to analyze and pose these questions. We are here in the HBCU academy to ask the questions from a particular vantage point in the continuum of history. There are questions that Black people can and should ask a Black president that no one else can because no one else has them. This brings us back to the initiating premise of the opening blog reference. If Obama disappoints, it will be because we have traded liberty to be and do whatever creates personal comfort for the knowledge and perspective to ask critical questions that will assure freedom for all. The President is asking us all to take part in the national debate. We need to be busy about equipping ourselves for the discussion. It is not enough that he be Black to garner our support. It is more important that we be Black enough to insure that he deserves and honors that support.

A Dark Secret Standing In the Light of Day

Not too long ago I gave a homily at one of the parishes here in the Archdiocese of Atlanta. The readings were on the theme of forgiveness. The Gospel recalled Jesus’ mandate to forgive “seventy times seven times”. This is so hard for us in a culture in which retribution rather than restoration is the order of the day. Every day CNN reporters have microphones stuck under the nose of some murder victim’s family member wanting to know how they feel about the verdict. Wanting to know if they feel satisfied that the perpetrator has “gotten what he deserved”. It can’t be an accident that Jesus impressed upon his disciples the necessity to “forgive one’s enemies, be good to those who persecute you, love those who hate you”. It cannot be an accident that all of the evangelists remember that Jesus first instructed those he encountered with the good news that “your sins are forgiven”.

I called that congregation’s attention to the issue of how we treat pedophiles in our country and for that matter anyone guilty of capital crimes. As a case and point, one case among several cited, I asked the congregation to consider how we treat, just the mention of Cardinal Law’s name. How so many want revenge and retribution, rather than reconciliation and restoration. Pope Benedict during his visit to America reminded us that our long standing Christian tradition has always sought reconciling the sinner with the whole community he or she has offended and then engaging the offender in a process of helping to restore the health and fractures of the community he or she has broken. My call to the congregation was not well received in all corners. To be fair, it was not universally rejected either. One woman accosted me in the sacristy afterward and began berating me for even suggesting the Cardinal Law should “get off Scott free” That there were still priests abusing children in Boston and getting away with it and “nobody was doing anything about them”. She didn’t consciously include herself in that number of nobodies who knew but did not speak. She informed me that as soon as I mentioned he should be forgiven, she stopped listening.

Christian forgiveness is so hard for mainstream Americans, and yet it is the “darker brothers and sisters” in America and in South Africa who give the evidence that forgiveness and reconciliation works. It is a Christian thing. Ironically those who have been abused for the sake of “bringing the gospel to the heathens” are the very ones lifting the gospel principle of ubuntu out of that same Christian conviction. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called us all to the three stage process by which South Africa has been saved from a blood bath. A three stage process by which we can be saved from our own worst demons: “See compassionately, interrupt the cycle, and forgive.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa enabled victims and perpetrators of violence together to tell their stories, to interrupt the cycles of violence by standing and praying peacefully in the midst of confronting groups of victims and perpetrators, and in the end enabling each to ask for forgiveness and to forgive. It is still at work and working today. Why can we not look and see and believe? Is it perhaps that we have not been able to be committed to conversation with the God who made us long enough to understand how we really are made? Praying beyond saying prayers is a hard thing. It sometimes demands that when we don’t feel like praying we pray anyway. It requires that we realize that our prayer is carried by those who can pray better and more faithfully than ourselves. It shows us that the prayer of faith communities is not validated by the priest, but by the faith of those praying. Even our private prayer is common in that sense. In this it seems to me lies the answer to our American dilemma. It must become a common truth that our wealth in not in what we own but how close we arrive at our divine destiny. The creation that we are is much more than the goods and social grades we attain.

Make Miracles, Not Magic

The composer, Grayson Warren Brown was with us here in Atlanta for a revival he conducted over the last three nights. We have known each other for forty years. We get together at least once every year at Thanksgiving (it is closer to go to Jacksonville than to Washington) It strikes me that this time as all others over the last several years our conversation has turned to our experience of lower numbers in the pews for these mission events. We engage in rounds of lament and then move on to other topics of moment.

It strikes me that that these moments of lament are, among other things, a product of our Americanization. We quantify everything. We do it in ways that Jesus would never have entertained. As an African person, Jesus was relational. We never see in the scriptures that he lamented the lack of numbers in crowds. Nor, for that matter, did he make a commodity of his ministry. We deal so much in goods and services that we have projected our proclivity for the same onto God and the “God business”. We ask such questions as how many people were there, how long will the mass last, how much was the collection. We assume that success is the large crowd, the right faces in it. Did I get the Spirit? Did we “have church”?

Jesus had 12 apostles around him (most of the time when they weren’t running away or thinking about running). His ministering was never more than five miles from his home. He was clear about the difference between miracles and magic. Grayson shared the story of the priest who promised a magic trick of making clean water out of murky, dark, dyed water at the pulpit. The change did not take place. What we look for in Church and in Christianity and hopefully in our lives is a miracle-a manifestation of the presence of God’s saving power within us. Magic sells (sometimes); miracles don’t because they require relationship. Jesus got mad and turned over the tables in the temple because the House of God was being turned from a place of God encounter to a place of magic-making for the sake of profit at the expense of poor people. Are we about miracles or are we about magic?

This time as on all the other occasions, my encounter with Grayson reconfirmed my experience of the revelation that God is not a capitalist. He is not about magic, commodities, and numbers. He acts most powerfully when believers in whatever numbers are in the room and in the world doing the work that makes miracles happen. God acts when we are doing the work that manifests the presence of God in others and in the world. Money is never made on miracles because there are too few people around to witness them. Magic, on the other hand, can be boxed and sold.

So much of our lives is effected by turning miracles into magic. Failed love relationships are so often the result of making commodities, or sexual objects of the other. Friendships fail because the one or the other would not be made a commodity. Sacramental life becomes magic and covered over with trinkets, because someone has turned the miracle moment of divine relationship into capital gain from stuff, or artificially satisfying some relatives need for personal fulfillment; or some couples’ need to “get grandma off my back” by dragging their infant in for baptism though they have no intention of showing up again in life.

Maybe the numbers are low because God has made us for miracle and not for magic, as relational and not as commodities for sale. Our culture is calling us away from our true selves. I hope the relatively small numbers we see at the worship hour are because there are relationships developing with God and the magic has been found wanting.

Two Good Men

Question: What do you call 1000 lawyers chained to the bottom of the ocean?
Answer: A good start

Make that 998 lawyers.

There are at least two good ones we need to keep. One is Professor Vincent Rougeau, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He has just published a book entitled, Christianity in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order. At last a well educated Black Catholic steps forward with the fruit of the education and career the Church has provided him to call us all to accountability in a new kind of society in which the United States trumpeting of its protection of “our American way of life” is called into question not on political grounds, but on the basis of scripture and the social justice teaching of the Church. I can’t say it better that he has said it himself:

“Christians in the American Empire challenges American Christians and others of goodwill to resist becoming apologists for political agendas that serve the powerful and to develop more complex notions of religious engagement in American political life. This means bringing Christian values like human dignity, economic responsibility, solidarity, and meaningful participation for the poor into decisions about law and policy, not only in the United States, but also worldwide. Indeed, Christians need to recognize the international implications of their values and see themselves as important voices in discussions about the global common good.”

Catholics are not the only Christians with a social teaching based on the gospels, but we have had a longer tradition and have been more vocal about it. We who are Black and Catholic need to know and emphasize the fact that Dr. Rougeau is the latest in a long line of lay people in America calling the Church, and for that matter anyone who would listen, to think critically about “the American way of life,” and the damage it is doing to people’s right to life, including the unborn. Dr. Rougeau is standing in the tradition of Daniel Rudd, Henry Wyatt Turner, Dr. Lena Edwards, Elizabeth Lange, and many others who headed Christ’s call to put the poor first and attend to the common good. “Unless the grain of wheat falls to earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies it springs forth and bears much fruit.” Dr. Rougeau challenges the popular and publicized notion that the Republican right is the only Catholic way. As a matter of fact he exposes the very un-Catholic position touted by so many, even some bishops, that the republican agenda is the only one which will deliver the imperiled unborn.

“…my book is a critique of the uncritical association of conservative Christians--the Religious Right--with the aggressive militarism and neo-liberal, free market economic policies of the Republican party despite obvious conflicts with traditional Christian teaching”

What I really want to say is that Dr. Rougeau has read up, studied up, and written up enough in his career to help us all think more critically about what it means to be Christian and that being the gung-ho American might not always be consistent with that commitment, especially where issues of the common good are at question. He is showing us how to be Christians in the American Empire. The first principle of that Christianity is to be responsible for putting that world out there.

This is not different from what my second good lawyer, President Obama, is asking us all to do relative to the stem cell and partial birth abortion debate. He is bringing the Freedom of Choice Act to the forefront not because he believes all those things should occur - he does not - but because he is firmly convinced that citizens need to speak up and Christians need to act up to create a consciousness among the American people which will create an acceptable environment for the unborn and all those whose lives are at risk. He is calling for all Americans to take responsibility to know and to vote knowledgeably about right to life amendments. These should be in place, our president feels, not by his personal and individual action but by the vote of the people and the legislation of their representatives.

Political machinations behind closed doors while still a fact of life are no longer the way of choice to do business in America. In this new world order the Catholic Christian has got to be equipped and willing to carry the message and publicly debate the issues. Each of us must become conversant and converted enough to engage our friends and associates in the conversation. The baptized are now, for the most part, literate enough and educated enough to be equipped to do their part in the marketplace as the leadership does its part in the Church. It is not appropriate to continue the efforts to shut up the perceived opposition as some of those who would disinvite our President from speaking at Notre Dame’s commencement. We should hear what he has to say in dialogue with our Catholic tradition before ideologically muzzling him.

Obama’s call to the nation is not all that different from the Church’s call to the baptized and confirmed. The message is clear: we are all responsible for knowing and pressing the message. It can’t be just the priest or the president anymore.

I’m so glad we haven’t chained these two good men to the bottom of the ocean.

"Ridiculous Is In the Eye (and Heart) of the Beholder"

Something happened this week that we need to reflect upon. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Recife, Brazil announced the excommunication of a doctor who performed an abortion of twins on a minor, and of her mother who paid him to do it, but not the uncle who raped the girl.

The TV news reporter, dressed in credible blue with hues of orange behind him, recounted the “details” inferring that this bishop must be crazy. The perpetrator, he implied, should be excommunicated not the doctor or the poor girl’s mother. Why would the Church be punishing the victims? The rapist uncle, after all, is the one who owes retribution. Shouldn’t he suffer for his crime, we feel? Once again, we see that those Catholics are out of touch, right?

The problem from the Church’s point of view is that excommunication is not a punishment but rather a statement of a public condition. The Bishop only announced what the mother and the doctor publicly proclaimed with their actions “we don’t hold or believe what the Catholic Church believes and teaches”. One believes with one’s mind and body. One witnesses with one’s mind and body. Because American law (2oo years in monocultural development) permits it does not mean that divine law (2000 years in multicultural development), manifested in the longstanding teaching of scripture and tradition does as well. Now: does God love all four people unconditionally? Yes. So why the excommunication of the mother and the doctor and not the uncle?

Excommunication is condition people place themselves in because they have shown themselves or announced themselves to be contrary to the faith of the believing community in an irreconcilable way. The effect of the sin committed is so infectious that remaining within the community without public contrition would multiply the evil. It will invite duplication. Excommunication is not an act of the Church but an announcement it makes.

The uncle, on the other hand, though acting sinfully (assuming he is not crazy, which we can’t assume) does not intend in his action to publicly reject the values and teaching of the believing community. The Church prays for his forgiveness, restoration to mental health, and submission to the requirements of civil law. Will others look at him and say, "He did it, therefore it’s ok if I do it?" Not likely. Because of the ethic of Jesus, the Church is concerned that it reflects His emphasis on forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. The Jesus ethic does not assume no punishment or isolation from the general public. If his condition is such, as in the case of the serial capital murderer, that he cannot be rehabilitated, then he must be isolated. In any case, the ideology of retribution is to be avoided at all cost. It is as Jesus intimated and Martin Luther King, jr said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will leave us all blind and toothless.”

The Catholic Church is a community of believers in Jesus and strives to hear and reflect God’s will for the human family. When someone publicly decides that they cannot follow what scripture and the longstanding moral conviction of the community reveals, they place themselves outside of it. There are some aspects of our tradition that are not open to democratic process. Forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration, for Catholic Christians, are non-negotiables. The seamless garment that is the right to life ethic - be it the unborn, or the feable elderly, or the uninsured sick, or the unemployed wage earner - is a non-negotiable.

Leander Perez and three of his cohorts were excommunicated in 1962 by Archbishop Rummel for being a public and unrepentant proponent of racism in New Orleans. They separated themselves from the moral witness of the believers. This mother and doctor have separated themselves from the moral witness of the believers in Recife. This Bishop could make no other call until they show themselves changed. This doesn’t make sense to the American who wants retribution and revenge (not ever Jesus' approach). It only makes sense to a global community of Christians standing in the footsteps of Jesus who sought only restitution and conversion.

"Pragmatic Spirituality: Questionable Christianity"

Someone called me last week to celebrate the Obama event and their experience while being a face in the place, as it were, in our National Capital. She was quite animated as she recounted taking her son with her so that he could experience this historic event. She told of the press of the crowds, the drama at the subway stations, and the press of the multitude into the Third Street tunnel under the Mall. Of particular note to me was the miracle moment. She and her son were the last to enter into the reserve section by the reflecting pool where they could have an eyeshot of the inaugural moment. God had made it possible for them to be at the gate at just the right time for the policeman to shuffle them through.

While I didn't want to rain on her parade and certainly not steal her joy, I could not help but think to myself, "Do you mean all those other people who had tickets but got shut out by the crowd controller’s count, were not objects of God's favor? God cared so much about you and your son that the disappointment of others was worth the price?

Gayraud Wilmore in his wonderful overview of Black Religious experience entitled, Pragmatic Spirituality, makes the point that it was common for early African communities to change gods based on weather their god was "working for them" or not. If some other tribe's god was apparently affecting good fortune for them, then that would become their god as well. I really believe that this pragmatic spirituality is constantly at work among us. It is indeed a false god that is really nothing else but our own self interest.

Too often we Christians confuse devotional, personal, faith with salvation history. As strange as it may sound, God has shown little preference in the scriptures for the outcome of any political event or personal agenda. While God listened to the many prayers thrown in the divine direction on inauguration morning, I doubt that the beatific eye was cast on the event- bright sunshine or no; the cries of the blind, the lame, and the poor throughout the 2/3 the world, so little spoken of at the Mall proceedings, certainly monopolized the Holy Ears that morning.

We need to be careful, us Christians, of trumping God's agenda with our personal concerns. Uncritical accounting of our personal perks to God's activity risks the heresy of assuming that our personal and individual wishes and concerns are indeed God's will or part of the diving plan for human good.

Too often we hear some of our brothers and sisters proclaim that "God put it on my heart to do this" Too often the stated action is much too self serving to be included in the Divine plan for our salvation. To often the statement of devotional faith (as opposed to Biblical faith) confirms the speaker's selfish wish for a personal experience of Divine prerogative.

I am always reminded of that moment in the Gospel of John when John the Baptist had sent two envoys to inquire of Jesus if he was the messiah. Jesus (the enfleshed expression of God's will) told the envoys to go back to John and tell him that the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, "the blind see, the lame walk, and the poor have the good news preached to them."

The call to follow Jesus, Christianity, is the call to judge the presence and will of God by that acid test. Will the blind see, the lame walk, or the poor have the gospel preached to them? If not, we ought to thank God that we had this stroke of good luck. Beyond that, as commendable as one's faith focus may be, God "ain't in it"