The Open Vista for a Public Black Theology | Vincent Bacote

[Music] you know being the last person is well well it's an interesting challenge yeah well I was gonna say that and that and that and that and I'll just say it my way like everyone else I wanted to thank Clifton for putting this together thank everyone who's been involved in making this happen and I especially behind-the-scenes your work is not unappreciated and I am very thankful to God for the different gifts that we have seen in the various presenters I sometimes say this and I say this I'll say this now for for those who have rarely been up here but maybe up here in the future this is important I think to think about and it can't be yesterday by I don't have my voice to and that is you've seen lots of styles of presentation and you need to speak in your voice in your personality in your style because otherwise you think you have to conform to what someone else is all right which is what you need to see God and your community to be able to live in to whatever your style is or whatever your voice is I think that's very important because otherwise you think well I didn't do this or I didn't act like this then you know was I a loser or something like well no no you you were hopefully you're trying to you speak in integrity with the person that God made you to be so I think that's very important to say as someone who's lived through that type of crisis so in closing I'm talking about the open vista of a black public theology which is at least in part for me an exercise in thinking out loud so I began to think about the open vista of a public black theology when I encountered Vincent Lloyd's article since reading it I've been considering the various dimensions involved in an attempt to answer the call for this kind of theology while the focus of the article was on the search for Christian black intellectuals I found myself wondering about the range of people including black intellectuals who might be reflecting on a participating in public black theology but before I talk about some of those people I had to start with a prior question and the prior question I find myself asking is well what is a public black theology because what you'll discover is as with the topic of this thing called political theology public theology has a range of definitions there is no Magisterial definition of public black theology which i think is okay so I'm going to join the party in offering another attempt but so we'll just call it a baked odeon public black theology definition so it's important to say at the beginning I moved toward this bike's blissing explicitly approaching this topic as a Christian because there are some definitions of public theology itself that are not tradition specific so I approach this as one inquiring about an aspect of lived Christianity so and get into that definition I have to ask well what is meant by the word public also not something that has a magisterial definition so for me it's important to state that I'm one who is early Christian formation took place in church and parachurch context that either did not connect Christian faith to matters like culture or politics or presented a tension with or dissonance between fidelity to God and engagement with things in the world I believed there was a connection between Christian faithfulness and various forms of engagement with culture and politics but had little more than an intuition to indicate that this connection was legitimate it's from this background that I began to think about the meaning of public and the risk of being overly simplistic I think of public as anything outside of our internal life or as most of what we do in the time between the benediction at the end of corporate worship and the invocation seven days later the public realm includes but is not limited to politics cultural life and the world of work another way to think of it is as those matters not usually connected with a word like spiritual public refers to matters that we share with others but also many domains are outside the typical conception of church life but what I mean by black there's a lot of conversation about that well this might seem quite obvious to some this can also be at least a little bit complicated the term black may generally refer to persons of largely African descent but part of the complexity comes when we think about the history and culture of the persons who use the term it's a bit too easy to think it simply means all those who have African descent because it does not mean the same thing to everyone in fact someone who's indicating yesterday they're people but you want to use the term black for some it's primarily a matter of describing a person's appearance while for others it includes matters of biology history geography culture and much more it's further complicated because of the context of white supremacy in the modern West and the related horrors of racialized societies how does one think about a positive meaning for the word black I'm in a modern West that constructed a modern fiction of racial identity for certain they're those who have seized the term and used it positively but even this positive use exists under the cloud of a racialized world another consideration what is one to make of the ways that sound speak of blackness as a kind of ontology whether they call it a night ology they articulate it as if it is one these are among the factors that make it difficult to easily define the term black still I have to make a choice if there's to be a difference of a public black theology here's my proposal and this is literally in the script very subject to revision so anyone who wants to help me revise it that's cool black here it comes okay so it's really simple black is a less than ideal term the describes persons of sub-saharan African descent by reference their pigmentation more particularly it refers to those who live in the modern West and contend with the horrors and complexities of a racialized world constructed as part of the emergence of the modern era in the broad general sense the term modern or what I mean by theology and and then was my definition of this thing it for this open Vista as I mentioned earlier I'm coming at this as a Christian and therefore I'm referring to a Christian theology when I'm thinking about a definition from that point of view theology refers to the effort to understand the triune God and life with him by seeking to understand divine revelation in conversation with those who have come before me in other words traditions with an S on the end because you know it'd be great to think I'm just making something up as I go along and and that people never existed before me but it's not just Jesus in me so its theology is not limited to but includes branches such as historical systemic practical constructive womanist it's etc and it is not to me this is very important it is not severed from ethics the reason I say that is because because a lot of people live with a kind of assumption that there's biblical studies and theologies over here and ethics is something that you tack on at the end and and and for your perusal I say look at the curriculum of most seminaries look at where ethics is connected to everything else and you'll see that it's often just added on I mean how is it actually related to our biblical studies in our theology well we understand confess and proclaim about God it's connected to the way we conduct our lives the way I think I thought about was this way when I was in seminary it just never made any sense to me that we talked about what we believed and then eventually you get around to how what you believe has something to do with the way that you live which is kind of strange you were thinking about a Jesus who says follow me so to do this well it requires attention to this theology well requires attention to the context of Scripture as well the context of those involved in constructing and reconstruction instructing what Christians confess and practice so putting it all together by public black theology or if you wish baked odeon public black theology be a co T I am there you go all right you won't find in the dictionary a truck believe me but by code Ian black theology I mean their pursuit of understanding life with God with particular reference to the domains of life beyond the benediction with specific focus on the complex reality of black life this definition is not excluding matters typically associated with church but gives primary attention to the lived realities that people bring with them when they participate in the church gathered for worship for me one of the key dimensions in this approach is the way we seek to connect Christian beliefs to the rest of life how doctors of creation Christ Church sanctification pneumatology eschatology how these these connect to and inform our entire lived existence and how might this occur in a way that is not arbitrary or ad-hoc to which I say this I think it's really important that that we think about this connection because otherwise I mean a lot of people could talk about Jesus or church or being holy or whatever but I often wonder how much of it is essentially like an exercise in proof texting in other words you've got a label that label can be Jesus or Church or holy or whatever there's about this much of a content of what that word is and then you connected to whatever kind of public reality that you're talking about which reads you're saying more about the content of the public reality than about your belief informing that reality so most of what it is then is the other reality being determinative than your theology having anything to actually inform it rather than perhaps sponsoring it so I sometimes ask my students well actually often ask my students to think about their beliefs and how their beliefs are are your beliefs saying more about what you are culturally or your beliefs actually saying something about what God has revealed to us and are you able to tell the difference how do you know when you were speaking actually about what the faith says as opposed to what being a good American means and we have to ask those kinds of questions and so if we're if we're going to connect our beliefs and do the work connecting our beliefs to these all these realities of life beyond Sunday then it's important for us to ask you know what we're talking about if we say Jesus if we say Church if we say eschatology etc otherwise we're not really doing something that's theological we're doing something that maybe some other kind of discipline with a veneer of the theological so the theological has to be there in my view so otherwise I think it's arbitrary ad-hoc it's kind of like a buffet style approaches and you can take a little bit mix it with a lot of that and you just put it out there so that's my big codeine thing all right so who's involved in all this so this goes back to the people I was talking about that that first came to my mind at the beginning who are those coming to the table to discuss public black theology come whosoever wills is what I would like to say but I need to be more specific when I first read Vincent Lloyd's article here's what started cooked percolating in my mind I began to think about the fact that at least in the United States pastors and academics rarely occupy the same conversational spaces and that theological conservatives and theological progressives whether pastors or academics also rarely converse with each other there are certainly those who do not easily fit into these categories so I I have you know if there's an objection that's happening your mind objection noted but generally even those people have a consistent set of conversation partners on these issues and of course there are people who mainly traffic within their denominational circles members of these different groups at least some of the members of this group okay share common concerns about various aspects of African American public life but they rarely venture to other conversational spaces as we're doing at this conference I would like to see people from these different groups come together in a an and this is really important i Renick conversational space where they hear each other speak about the ways they have been approaching public concerns this is not an environment focus on arriving at a consensus or even having lots of agreement I mean if you want if you want to turn into a debate you can call it a debate you know and make it that kind of thing I'm not talking about debate I'm talking about people getting together and listening to each other at least in the beginning it's more about discovering that there are compatriots you have never known and learning about and from each other it fascinates me to think about what will be held in common and what will be very different one difficulty with what percolated in my mind is that that only mentioned people of a certain profile and it can seem like an exercise in elitism it is important to find ways to include interested llave voices from across the generations my dream scenario is conversations that provide exposure to the diversity of educational or denominational backgrounds as well as the different personal experiences and range of public priorities at most such conversations create new networks and help facilitate practices of Christian life that connect to the public domain in a variety of ways well if your hat if we're getting together to do this what are we talk about what are we doing in the open Vista of public black theology the Vista is immense for certain I felt that black theology must contend with the past legacy and present reality of a racialized world that mutates like a stubborn virus like to say that because even when you think you've begun to come with some kind of solution is like a virus that keeps changing you think ah now this shot will do it you see well by the time you've developed like that shot you've had the mutation take place and then you're like why isn't it working because it's mutated and that and that and that's what it keeps on doing Maura Society has the DNA of white supremacy built into it we said that a lot but this is mr. surprise no one and and by the way if if you're dealing with people who when you say the world white supremacy you discover that there on the ledge right or there in the precipice or they're about to they've got a shield at their side that they're about to put up to put up their wall so there's no conversation this is one of the ways that I try to talk them off the ledge or to keep them from reaching for the shield all right sorry I just asked me to think about this I asked them who built the modern world all right well Europeans built the modern world I think it's a surprise to anybody then I asked them who do you think they built it for and if somebody else built it you think they will build it for it should surprise nobody that if somebody builds a world they build it with their interests in mind and we'd like to believe you know it's like this mythology about the Enlightenment Oh everybody is rational and if you know and we're objective and then of course somehow in this these rational objective people of course really thought that all human beings were just equal people which of course is not what they thought they even think that of all Europeans and you know if some African to prove just read Immanuel Kant talking about people of a darker hue and and and you'll see how objective he was or not all right so so so so when we help people know before they reach for the shield just just ask them it's do a little thought experiment all right and they're like okay so then you know they might grab the shield later okay but you might stop that you might begin the conversation and they might actually stay in the conversation if you ask them that question because they they have to really think about what is this world how'd it get here who built it oh yeah I shouldn't be surprised about white supremacy then it just comes with the territory so in this modern world built by Europeans hardly anything is untouched in this modern racialized world so it's going to at least be the backdrop for any issue that we discuss if you're talking about a public black theology that said there are topics of discussion they're not exclusively about questions connected to racial oppression and mayor attention as well with this vast open Vista comprehensiveness is elusive I make no claims of comprehensiveness but I do want to offer a few things to consider as discussion topics in the Vista of public black theology I began by talking about one way of thinking about holistic discipleship in the church I mean you've been hearing it already this morning okay so I'm just adding my voice to what to what has been said so it's important to begin by thinking about modes of Christian information not only in terms of structure in terms alive cultural changes but also the breadth of content well it's likely I speak to a room of people who are convinced that we need a pod black theology my assumption if you're here is that you're at least somewhat convinced that public black theology isn't something you're like well what is then why would you talk about it you at least think okay I'm on board okay great for people in the room that's not every Christian in the world so why speak to the convinced I would wager that each of us in this room knows people in our churches or other Christian networks who are not sure that some of these matters of public concern are properly spiritual issues and may in fact be a distraction from the best kind of fidelity to God some you may even know those who think all of this is just too worldly in which case their formation has framed Christian life as disconnected for most of their everyday life except when God needs to show up in times of crisis a modified catechesis even if your church doesn't use the word okay teaching there we go the modified catechesis is necessary in order to broaden the view of discipleship so that it is truly holistic and extends to the entirety of our existence here's one way I try to do it by asking people to think about the relationship between the Incarnation and life in God's world particularly people have a tendency to believe this salvation is a rescue from creation rather than a reclaiming of creation I asked them if they take Christmas and Easter seriously where we celebrate Jesus being born as a baby in December and we rejoice in his resurrection in a body in April if we do we cannot for a moment believe that salvation means the abandonment of the particulars of life why is Jesus coming in a body if humans are the crown of creation human beings embodied and Jesus comes and takes on a body and he lives the perfect life he dies he's resurrected in a body he's not a sophisticated gated hologram if he's in a body what does that tell you about what God thinks about his creation and if it's his creation why would discipleship have nothing to do with most of it that's just kind of a strange thing to me just doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you think being a Christian means being and a gnostic or being dose addict in your Christology so that's one one way that that I think about doing it perhaps an experiment in our various traditions is to identify the doctrines and the spiritual vocabulary that are central to the denomination or local church and help people to see how that language and doctrine actually Orient's us toward domains of life not typically thought of as spiritual so chances are in whatever circles you run there are phrases that show up all the time so how do those phrases actually connect to what we do in our lives when we're outside Church we're outside those contexts I think that that is a creative and imaginative project that we in which we can participate and get people to see that what they've been talking about all the time actually does not take them away from life in God's world but really thrust them in toward it so there's a couple of suggestions is part of an aspiration tour and expanded Christian formation they'll make public black theology part of what we do when we make disciples and do church one of our goals should be doing our best to avoid making those who care about public black theology a theological special interest group so in addition this type of broader formation camp help provide ways for layperson to see their work lives as part of their discipleship and to see themselves as those can be formative within their workplaces from the corner office to the factory floor to the janitorial closet that is really because a lot of times when we complain about things that go wrong in the world and we and there are people and our churches who work in those domains ask them how their faith informs what they do in that work world where they spend all those hours there besides praying which is wonderful I mean you know put prayer supporting okay so yeah I'm on camera gosh I mean if you're looking at me prayer is important okay prayer is important Bible studies are important evangelism is important those aren't the only things that Christians do but if that's all that they know that all they are doing then is just conforming themselves to whatever the status quo is in those domains and their churches are not telling them that their participation in those domains or opportunities for them to become the ones that are formative in those domains rather than those who just get on the rails and just go to wherever the tracks take you instead of being the ones that have building some new rails here I'm setting a new direction here I'm creating a new culture here instead of just being those really good at this task oh I think that is very important and I think within our churches people need permission from their clergy and it's part of their formation to recognize oh you mean I can think about this stuff I can care about this stuff God cares about this stuff so I think that it's very important for us to do that as part of the freight just baked into it a few more issues the issue of identity which has come up in various ways so many people of all kinds live under a reign of terror when it comes to questions of identity I mean that's no matter what you are in a racialized world makes it even more messy and complicated is vital to answer the questions Who am I who are we am i worth something these questions are not simply an internal exercise because the public realm is a vital element in our identity formation think of all the things that wash over us every day that inform people's identities actively and passively and ask yourself in this social media world about the kind of curated selves that people have all right so people in histogram accounts you know I mean how many people show everything about their lives in social media as opposed to a curated life right so till you create look at how pristine my life is right which of course creates all kinds of dissonance or people will my life's not quite that pristine oh my right so those types of things like those things are having a tremendous impact on people's identity of formation for those of African descent who live in the large wake of a racialized society the question of identity has been part of a request for survival in an environment of active dehumanization and while some are felt this more than others the impact is on all of us everyone proposal in the midst of that when we think about surviving and reversing that dehumanization and that is stepping away from the temptation of an identity competition the goal in discovering and growing into our identity is not well served if we feel we must replace white supremacy with black supremacy to do so is only to replace one Idol with another we can firmly pursue a life-giving identity without the need to conquer others our goal is humanization in which case we should model our pursuit of identity is really in the deep truth of our faith along with appreciation of the healthy trajectories that make us us I had initially put all trajectories and then I thought about the fact that that's a bad idea because there are trajectories that make us us that are not good ones you you know you want to close off those trajectories right you want to get you don't want those to be making you who you are because some of those are very dehumanizing very deformative for people part of the reason why I think about this identity competition of the thing is that this strange thing happens right if you you feel like you're an arms race for identity because of white supremacy so so okay let's shore up who we are and the short of who we are there you know it can just creep in so when I show how superior we are then we're okay okay so we're superior said okay black people okay so we're over whites okay and all the non-white people in the world and there are a lot of them what about then all right I mean we're not the only people in the world so so I think resisting the idolatry is really important because we're illegal as humanization for all people not just our own humanization so I that's why I think we have to be leery of that be wary of the temptation with that so that's a little bit about identity I see what the clock is telling me all right there's only three more things I'll be brief in spite of what my brother probably would say because he would say you can never do it Vincent related to identity something I heard about NPR the other day and that's something related to the issue of adoption they produced a program of children who are trans racial adoptees the stories are many and they're tremendous challenges involved and no easy answers children need safe and loving parents but this is a difficult path for parent and child alike I recently spoke a woman who's white she has an adopted son from Ethiopia and there's a phrase she said that was religion she said all adoption is loss in some way an article I read by a translation adopting a black woman disclosed her pain such as when she was growing up and trying to make sense of why she looked as she did knowing she looked different from her adoptive parents these were children who needed off and we should also to foster children in this is a major public concern right they probably good to know to take care of your children how do our approaches to public black theology help inform us and cultivate strategies for this circumstance where human flourishing is a challenge even amid beautiful kaleidoscopic family photos full of smiles of course public theology is unavoidably political so politics is of course a topic and again while this room we are the convinced I wonder how many of us know church nope North churches or people in churches or ten churches with a political is off-limits from the pulpit now there's an example of where this is opposite which occurred this week so you may have heard that the progressive National Baptist Convention issued a statement this week which says the following as the home dr. Martin Luther King jr. the P NB C is compelled to step forward amidst the worsening crisis at the heart of American life to reaffirm the commitment of the Church of Jesus Christ to truth and justice P NBC is sounding a clear alarm in a moment of spiritual and cultural confusion and pointing the way toward the redemption of this trying hour the blatant moral hypocrisy and rancid theological heresy the so-called Christian Right have transformed the current political and cultural crisis into a deeper spiritual catastrophe the skewed perception of the Christian faith in the press encouraged by a liberal enlightenment bias against religion which consistently identifies it with the most vociferous ly ignorant and reactionary elements in public life has led to a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between Christian faith and the public square through the alchemy of media shorthand the white and often racist conservative evangelical movement gets identified with the Christian of faith while the black churches witness is reduced to civil rights light L ite this misplaced emphasis has effectively silenced the most authentic expression of Christian faith in the modern world as subsumed under the headings of either the conservative evangelical because the conservative vertical right or the liberal left but it's always been the african-american shirt that has led the way forward along the moral arc of American history I know some people may have questions about that particular denomination you know we can that's fine I'm just reading the statement okay P NBC is explicitly and intentionally enjoying the conversation as the alternative yet the most authentic Christian voice in this critical hour P NBC will continue efforts to raise the visibility of the black church as a voice to be acknowledged and recognized as germane to all conversations relative to the Christian faith in America so one of people who was speaking on that behalf was of Reverend Calvin butts of Abyssinian Baptist Church and a specific thing he talked about was the declaration will lead to other steps including the black church support or personal withdrawing of money from banks such as Wells Fargo for their role in the subprime mortgage crisis that has disproportionately affected minority owners I said as we always remember them when this economy booms is usually exploitation of black and brown people it's also important to note that while was it p NBC announcement others attending the declaration included representatives of the Church of God in Christ the Interfaith Alliance the National african-american clergy that work in the ecumenical poverty initiative so that's an example of at least you know a statement that's being made by churches about this again the question we have to ask is in terms of where we are and in the circles that we're in how much are people actually willing to talk about these things and is there any way you can connect what's going on in the pulpit and the Christian formation to these types of things I think you can but I think a way to get the skeptical convinced is for them to see how political commitments are things that flow out of you know particular texts that are being preached that you know that help them to see it's sort of common sense for example if you preach about to Dre's Commandments you're talking about love your neighbor for yourself and you're asking about what are all the ways we can contribute to people loving our neighbors as ourselves avoiding politics is not one of those ways and I mean however you would do everybody but but that's a way of thinking about that so I think that's a way to think about it another dimension I want to talk about in relationship to politics is the fact that when we think about political life we need to reckon with the fact that there are all kinds of people in our churches which means that they'll have different kinds of things that they're that they can do well and some things they probably just won't do which I mean this so some people are just born prophetic types and activists it's just who they are okay don't try to convince them to not be those people I mean that's just like I'm gonna muzzle you look it's it's who they are I mean it's like breathing for that okay other people would rather die than protest there's no question about it maybe you met them I'm sure so so my point is that my point is not that it's choosing between activism or something else the boy is that there's just we talk about a diversity of gifts in the body there's diversity of things to be done we need people who are activists types to be out there pointing at things that are going wrong and in a country like this one where you know it's an expression of free speech to take advantage of the expression of free speech in the various ways that they go about doing their activism but it's also fort I think to say about activist etiquette while they're investing the time and that generally they don't have time to make public policy and you need to make public policy so we other people who love the intricacy of details and the elegance of the you know that like people who love being accountants I mean I'm not this is not disparaging those people okay them just point that out that but they're very behind-the-scenes detail-oriented people who love to build these things but you may never see their face but they're absolutely vital because without the people making public policy activism would just be a lot of exhaustion because we're set we're talking mothers was so still things have to get implemented and at least in this country where when you're a citizen you can influence the way things go in society then you know you can participate in the formation of public policy so we need to encourage just as much people being involved in the intricate details that are often boring and mundane for some people to be involved in that as much as we need people being activists we need all hands on deck and we also need to encourage everyone to vote here's another reason why we have the presidency that we have 40 percent of the population didn't vote the last election okay so that's also part of what you have to think about 40 percent it's almost half the population being asked people your congregation why didn't they vote and at least say this to people I mean pastors can do this you can say to the people in your congregation who didn't vote because you didn't vote you have forfeited complaining for four years because when you when you forfeit political activity you say to other people I'm fine with what you're doing with political activity and for all the messiness of the world that we live in the United States you at least if you're assisting the United States you still have political agency and if it's tough it's hard but it's agency that can't actually make something you can move the needle a little bit sometimes a lot but if you're saying you know who cares then please don't say anything except I'm gonna watch don't complain because because you throw other people know you go ahead so it's important vote vote be involved write to your Congressman all those things it's important so I think that those are important dimensions Apple it life to talk about and we're gonna we're thinking about it you want to connect it to what we believe is you know do you believe that Christians are followers of Jesus who to love their neighbors as themselves if you do and you're in a country where one of the ways you can do that is by political participation then are you going to avail yourself of doing that that's important that's politics so I'm going to note these topics and say nothing about them and then close oh actually I'm sorry I'll note to say something about one and then close talking about education it's very important but because it's that's vital to the ways of people being able to participate in our society in its imperfection but we have not solved anywhere near the problem with things like public education and then I'm gonna go to this topic public health that's also a public concern so it has to do with I mean that's all that's all so as you relate to things like economic life you know what kinds of stores are available neighborhoods how much access do people have to health care how much access do they have to the kinds of foods that they can eat so they're eating more healthy as opposed to foods that are going to contribute to them you know just being more another statistic in the way that diabetes has made a huge comeback I mean that's a major public concern as is mental health as part of public health so here is a a graph I have I have to look at my phone to tell you who the source is because it's not on the graph and I was advised by a good friend to make sure I told you who the source was for this I'm going to tell you who the source is on my phone before I read these statistics all right Mental Health America is the source so here's what they say thirteen point two percent of the u.s. population identifies as black or african-american of those six over 16% a diagnosable mental illness in the past year the raw number of that is over 6.8 million people which is more than the populations of Chicago Houston and Philadelphia combined and I mean people have been talking about this but but you know only about a quarter of African America see mental health compared to 40 percent of whites some of the reasons why distrust misdiagnosis socio-economic factors you know lack of access to to insurance but and of course one of the challenges is can you if you're in a church talk about depression can you talk about suicidal thoughts and if you do well someone actually willing to say we need to take you to a specialist I'm not saying don't pray for them unless I believe in miracles but you know Paul didn't tell Luke stop being a physician right it's like Luke you're now escribe you're no longer physician will be that anywhere right Luke still Luke the physician so we need to take seriously the medical world especially mental health all right very last thing which is I'm going to be very brief about this a healthy pursuit of justice by which I mean one of the potential hazards of pursuing justice of engaging public concerns especially if you're thinking about it in a racialized world is one you can be overwhelmed by just looking at the horror you know I mean I've said it in other places I'll say it again you know I'm very thankful this summer I did the series eyes on the prize I don't usually watch it because it's hard to watch I mean you know because oh look where there's kind of an achievement at the end okay what do you have to do having suppose be exposed to take to get to that part it's tough and I sayin don't ever look at it I'm not talking about denial by reckoning with the fact that we recycle Brian Steven says we haven't really faced our history when you face it you are facing horror whatever for therefore for a movie aficionados on that in here you like horror movies you won't like this one you were not like this way it will overwhelm you it will devastate you there's are so much devastation that people can take and so I think we have to make sure that people are being careful we're asking them to do this and to look at this and also when people are dealing with you know people have their consciousness raised by issues of oppression and justice sometimes they get angry anger is appropriate being consumed by your anger is not you do not need to be burned up by the fire of your anger in order to pursue justice that is an unnecessary sacrifice now and we need to make sure that when people are pursuing justice that they are being cared for because otherwise you have where I think is part we have the present which is a pastoral emergency that happens in a social media society where people get exposed to all the things that are happening about race and of course you get more and more and more stuff all the time because we're in a 24/7 news cycle and people get hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and you see people being outraged about the justice but you can also see that they are being harmed just by their exposure to it all that is a pastoral emergency that is a puppet you know that is a public issue so we I think it is important for us to think about a healthy pursuit of justice as part of also what is out there on the Vista there are many other things and I'm overtime so I would close by saying this the Vista is wide the opportunity is immense and the privilege is ours let us do more than survey the Vista let's head into it full of faith and strong in hope in our God who is greater than the most daunting challenges [Music]

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Length: 49min 9sec (2949 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018