If you have been reasonably comfortable in life, it is likely your religious practices have served as a kind of furniture to that comfort. A chair here or there may have drawn your attention to a particularly beautiful morning view, or an old couch may have discomfited your back, but nevertheless, for the most part you could rely on religion to sit down on.
Then in 2020 two events made many of us uncomfortable in ways we’d rarely experienced. There was the pandemic. And there was George Floyd. The pandemic was universal, planet-wide, and changed essentially every kind of habit we’d been in, leaving us exposed and vulnerable and searching. George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer awakened a wider set of humans across the globe to the deep injustices in our communities, particularly the injustice of police violence and systemic racism.
Of course in the meantime African-Americans and other groups watched the majority wake a bit from their slumbers and thought to themselves, “They think this is new?!” Forgive us, Lord, for our lazy complicity and averted gaze.
As discomfort pushed larger and larger numbers of people of faith into a deconstruction moment (because more and more Christians began to finally see their own faith tradition’s complicity), I began to sit with a certain level of curiosity about how to relate to this shift. On the one hand, as a pastor in a progressive tradition racked considerably less by the influences of Christian nationalism and at least willing to speak up and organize for social justice (rather than dismiss social justice talk), I guess I was positioned to receive or walk alongside those deconstructing.
On the other hand, something inside of me said, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” I tried to not step out and lead deconstruction conversations but rather join them and listen. And in particular, by the grace of God, I was given the chance to listen to African-American voices.
I began following the creative and healing Black Liturgies of Cole Arthur Riley. I’m thankful to have started there, because those liturgies were comforting, constructive, real and needed as we all tried to adapt to the exigencies of pandemic.
Around this time I was also discovering the work of adrienne maree brown. It took me a bit to begin to adapt myself both to her concepts and way of writing (this is about me not her, white men like me have been trained not to hear or listen well to such voices), but as I continued to sit with her emergent strategies I found myself slowly shifting and transforming. Though not overtly a religious voice, nevertheless hers is a faithful voice. I trust her strategies and meditate on them regularly. I am trying to live them.
But what has truly begun to consolidate my thinking is a new collection of reflections. The title may throw you off, if like me you hadn’t (until the reading of the book) heard of “hush harbors.” If the concept is new to you consider reading this brief and helpful blog post. Short definition: a hush harbor was “a secluded informal structure, often built with tree branches, set in places away from masters so that slaves could meet to worship in private.”
Liberating Church: A 21st Century Hush Harbor Manifesto gather leaders of color who influence culture and work collectively to offer a vision for what faith community might begin to look like now in light of all that has happened the past few years.
The authors engaged in ethnographic research at six ministries in Black communities in the South. They gathered the practices of these communities into eight “marks” of such communities: Ubuntu, Stay Woke, North Star, All God’s Children Got Shoes, Steal Away, Sankofa, Joy Unspeakable, and Talking Book.
What I found remarkable while reading the book (and what literally kept me up until the morning hours pondering as I finished it) was the way it reclaims past practices of the Black church in antebellum America rather than deconstructing Christian nationalism.
I think deconstruction is important work, but it’s also, like some previous movements like the emerging church movement, very Anglo. But if you attend to the voices in the Hush Harbor Manifesto, you hear them focused on reclaiming and retrieving examples of strength in their own history. As a white preacher in a predominately white church, it inspires me to spend more time looking to their manifesto and the history of the Black church as a guide rather than hyper-focusing on what to deconstruct in my own.
The manifesto points out: "This moment [2020 and following] has revealed that the way we have organized churches produces consumers not disciples, acquaintances not deep friendships, behavior modifications not deep repentance, and volun-tourists not liberationists, flag-wavers not cross bearers, concubines of the state and not its conscience" (Liberating Church: A 21st Century Hush Harbor Manifesto edited by Brandon Wrencher and Venneikia Samantha Williams)
Then they quote Juan Luis Sgenudo, one of the great liberation theologians, who says, “If the very existence of the Church is meant to be leaven in the dough, salt in the meal, and light for all those who dwell in the human household, then ecclesial community must accept the obligations that derive from its essential function.”
This framing is compelling. Our responsibility now in this moment as church is not to receive the revelation of the past few years and then say, “How can we get back to our comfort?” Our responsibility is to accept the obligations that derive from the essential function of the church as leaven, salt, light.
“We are now forced to grapple with the need for egalitarian (often virtual) spaces rooted in mutuality. Now, more than ever, it seems we must make a radical turn. At our best, the Church brings unique gifts to this work. Think about it: we are a community of people who have been called into a life-long practice of repentance and transformation that demands that we face our frailties and faults while holding on to a sense of our belovedness. What would it look like for the church to be a leavening presence, aiding this work of transformation to take place on the personal, communal and political levels of our cities and world.”
Howard Thurman says of the Hush Harbor movement, “By some amazing but vastly creative insight, they undertook the redemption of the religion that the master had profaned in their midst.”
What I learn from this: it is unlikely that the masters (the profaners) will be able to redeem things themselves. For those of us still complicit in racist systems, it is incumbent upon us to listen to and learn from those who are able to retrieve and redeem what has been profaned. We literally don’t know how to do it ourselves. But there are other communities who have been here before, many times, over the long haul. They recognize this as both a new and an old moment. We have ancestors who can guide us, and emerging communities sensitive to how God is moving in new ways.
Their way is not to reject the church, but to move differently. I’ll conclude with one more quote:
“Church planting as a missionary strategy is how the religious right has spread white supremacist, hetero-patriarchal capitalism and the toxic Christian nationalism that upholds it. The Black Church and other social justice-oriented church traditions—especially those of us who consider ourselves radical and leftist—must deploy missional innovation as a cultural strategy for political and economic transformation in the US. This calls for an emergent liberate ecclesiology to be a movement that would organize new disciples not crowds, commit to base building not platform building, form sacred circles not elitist hierarchies, embody a radical politics not only seek to change politics in the public square.”
Amen to the last paragraph, we white Lutherans must lead and at the same time be changed. Especially in the ways we relate to minorities in our own church ( I’m referring to the treatment of Hispanic pastors & black bishops).
This quote has been part of my conscience lately:
"Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best."
-Otto von Bismarck
I think that sometimes I forgo an incremental step forward because it is unsatisfying. I know that there is always a tension between what is possible, what is useful, what is adequate, and what is good. At the same time, sometimes half-steps defeat what may be better. Lord, help me to recognize the better choice today and tomorrow because yesterday is gone.