The Work Our Soul Must Do: The Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas

I am so humbled by that introduction it is a distinct privilege to be here with you this diocese your Bishop and my sister friend Bishop Baskerville Burroughs to hear in any way that the things that I have written and theologically mused about in order to understand my own faith journey in the contradictions of my faith as I've tried to navigate the best way I could the imperfect realities of our world and of my own person hood to hear that in any way those musings have had an impact or made a difference for anyone's life faith or journey well quite frankly that continues to blow me away my son who is now 26 years old when he was younger I used to take him to various talks and places with me does the only way to parent and keep a job but he also kept me very grounded as he continues to do and very humbled he would come with me and first he would come into a room like this and he'd go why are all these people here so they're gonna be here to listen to you you never do so they might as well and he could never believe that people would actually buy and read my books and I would I would tell him neither can i desmond so please don't peep my whole car so thank you for the distinct honor of being here it's a blessing and on all of these occasions and i know that this will not be any different i am the one that benefits the most and i am the one that learns and so thank you for allowing me to learn with you on this weekend i want to talk briefly and I hope we can engage in some conversation not only in the workshops but here around the topic of what it means to be Church four hundred years later to the best of our historical knowledge some 400 years ago in August a ship named white lion landed at a coastal port near Port Comfort Virginia carrying some twenty to thirty captive African peoples to be sold into slavery while this does not mark the advent of the Atlantic slave trade it does mark the beginning of slavery as a social political economic institution in colonial America put simply the white lion shipment of human cargo to be sold into enslaved labor is the historical moment that inscribed race as an indelible and defining feature of America's identity as such its signal the white supremacist foundation upon which America's capitalistic democracy with all of that social political systems and structures would be built it is for this reason that political philosopher Charles Mills rightly argues that America's democracy is nothing less than a racial democracy for which the promises of just and equal treatment and hence the privileges of citizenship it's put forth by its founders and framers are intended only for those raced white if not also Mel essentially as the late Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Tony Morris and absolutely aptly noted deeply within the word American is its association with race and so it is that four hundred years later the legacy of the white lion continues to loom large and every aspect of the American landscape shaping both our collective and individual existence needless to say the reality of this enduring legacy has come into full relief with the emergence of the vision to make America great again hence a call has emerged for many to examine and reckon with the legacy of slavery which is nothing less than the ongoing legacy of white supremacy in this country in the words of novelists and social critic James Baldwin we have been called to recognize that the time has come God knows he says for us to examine ourselves you can try to find out what is really happening here if this is indeed the challenge for who we are as a nation and I think that it is it is even more the challenge for those of us who would call ourselves Christian for those of us who claim to be Church for some of you it may occur to me say before and as I have certainly written I am convinced that this time in which we are living is nothing less than our Kairos time as so aptly stated by South African clergy and theologians in their 1985 Kairos document in response to apartheid this is for us as they said a moment of grace and opportunity a favorable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action yet as this document goes on to say it is also a dangerous time because if this opportunity is missed and allowed to pass by the loss for the church as well as for our society is immeasurable for the fact of the matter is calling ourselves church is aspirational whether or not we live into that aspiration has much to do with how we respond in this our Kairos time and so I want to spend a few minutes with you reflecting on what is required of us if we are in fact not going to miss this Kairos opportunity but before doing so let me just briefly and frankly state the reality of the Kairos moment as I see it for us today this current make America great again time with the concomitant resurgence of deadly bigoted violence in this country as recently seen in the Oh Paso Texas and in Gilroy California this is a 21st century manifestation of the white supremacist narrative and ideology that has shaped this country's Democratic vention vision since the inception of this nation unfortunately it is not in aberration of who we are rather it reflects the notions of anglo-saxon superiority in anti blackness held by the founders and framers of this country that have been baked into our nation's very identity the point of the matter is white supremacist ideals are in the DNA of this country and the vilest and most violent forms of these ideals can erupt with little provocation especially when that provocation comes from the highest offices of this land as it's indeed been the case thus shaping these times in which we are called to be Church but there is another equally significant aspect of this our Kairos time as I stated last evening there is much at stake in our nation it is not it is not about being a Republican or Democrat nor is it about conservative or progressive ideologies the very soul of our nation is at stake in as much as our soul is the very core and essence of who we are as a people as a nation it is that which connects us to our higher selves to our aspirational selves if you will it is that it is our soul which enables us to be connected to the one and whose image we are create and so it is that which allows us to be in touch with our divinely created goodness put another way our very soul is that which animates us pushes us if not compels us to do better to be better it prompts us to live into our divine best selves it prompts us to live into the fullest potential of what it means to be created as good in this regard our soul is not defined by the mercurial and compromising declarations of human beings and hence human societies nor is it accountable to the frailties of human history for our soul is inextricably bound to that transcendent arc of the universe as king would put it that bends toward justice that which is the good in loving justice of God it seems however that in this our time our nation is without the moral leadership that would help it to discover its soul and thus to listen to its soul's whispers its urgings calling us as a nation and as a people to reach for that transcendent arc and to live in to the better angels of who we can be it is therefore in such a time as this that I believe it is left to faith communities and those of us who claim to be Church hence to claiming to be a people presumedly accountable to our very souls it is left to us to show forth to reflect at least a glimpse of the just future which God promises for us all and so now let me briefly suggest what that might look like in a time like this what might it look like for us to lead the way for this nation and its people to move closer to being our better selves first and foremost it means that we are called to lead the way in helping our nation to tell the truth of our history the truth of who we are which means we as a church as an Episcopal Church must tell our truth we must reckon with the 400 year legacy of the white lion landing that is ours we must tell a truth a truth that I call a moral memory I've been struck that at this 400 year anniversary moment in which many in our nation are in fact examining the complex and multi-dimensional legacy of slavery that is white supremacy I am struck that a legacy which is most overlooked is the legacy that our faith communities are part of and carry forward this is the legacy of faith that has been complicit and if not strident legitamate errs of white supremacist ideologies systems and constructs like chattel slavery not to speak of the extermination of First Nations people in the stealing of their land to be sure the Episcopal Church as the established church in colonial America has played a profound role in both of these in regard to slavery for instance even as our denomination was the first to establish a missionary program through the auspices of the Society for the propagation of the gospel that that would come with some intentionality to Christianize Native Americans and the enslaved notwithstanding that its primary purpose was to care for the white colonizers even though we were the first to do this these missionary efforts never public Lior forthrightly criticized chattel slavery moreover every effort was made to ensure slaveholders that slavery was compatible with Christianity and in fact that it made for more docile and obedient slaves and so in 1727 the Bishop of London Edmund Gibson issued a letter which declared that salvation offered in baptism did not contravene the shackles of chattel slavery and then there was one of the most celebrated figures in Anglican Episcopal history the Great Awakening evangelist George Whitefield now while Whitefield will firstly proclaimed that there was no difference between white souls and black souls while he advocated for more humane treatment of the enslaved as if there was a way for slavery to be humane and while he termed some slaveholders as monsters of barbarity he did not criticize the institution of slavery itself moreover he firmly believed that Africans weren't inherently as he put it degraded people for him slavery was the best way to save the souls of these people and so not only did he argue against a ban on slavery but he was also a major slave holder indeed the Episcopal Church was known as the church that was the home of some of the wealthiest and most powerful slave owners in the land indeed the vestries of many of the Episcopal churches were made up of wealthy slaveholders it is fair to say that at this time this antebellum period much of the wealth of the Episcopal Church was a result of the white supremacist slave economy it is no wonder then that the Episcopal denomination was reluctant to speak out against slavery and unlike unite unlike Methodists or Presbyterians Episcopalians did not split into northern and southern branches during the fight over slavery this is the kind of hard truth the moral memory that we must foster if we are to live into the opportunity of this Kairos leading our nation to a better place we must began to tell about our past and our continued relationship to it be clear telling this truth is not about exonerating ourselves from the past rather it is about taking responsibility for it it is about recognizing the past we carry within us the past we want to carry within us in the past we want to make write in writing the past is about more than facile apologies or easy reparations rather to write the pass is about remedies which means acknowledging the ways in which our collegial systems structures and ways of being a denomination or a continuation of white supremacist myths narratives ideologies and constructs and then after recognizing that naming that working to dismantle and transform them essentially it is with the truth telling that is a moral memory that we can recognize the ways in which we have been shaped by and perhaps continue to benefit from the reality and legacy of white supremacy it is with the moral memory for instance that we might be compelled to look at how or our church's racial attitudes from the past have indeed contributed to the kind of structures and policies that continue to impact the demographics of our church today such as in the House of Bishops for we should recall that suffrage and bishops were established in part to spare white bishops from the humiliating task of caring for black souls it also withheld actual Episcopal authority from black bishops and that suffering and bishops initially did not have the right to vote in church conventions and of course they still do not have the right to succeed the diocesan bishops above them today perhaps therefore it is no consequence that the vast majority of black bishops in our church do not lead diocese in their own right but were elected to the post of suffering it took a hundred and thirty-four years after the consecration of the church's first bishop Samuel Seabury in 1784 for Episcopalians to elect even the first black suffer again Edward didn't be a sufferer gans Edward Denby and Henry Delaney in 1918 and why we should ask did it take another fifty-two years before the church elected its first black bishop to actually lead a diocese John Burgess of Massachusetts in 1970 and we might ask why it took another 47 years after Bishop Burgess for even a single black woman to be elected diocesan bishop our own your own bishop dinner for Baskerville burrows what does the legacy of white supremacy have to do with that historical timeline with a moral memory we might also be led to acknowledge the ways that we continue to perpetuate a culture that has not fall stirred black ministries in general or has made it difficult for black people to attain a theological education as well as other persons of color how is it for instance that the culture which denied Alexander crummell entry into general Theological Seminary in 1839 how does it persist in new and updated ways today and what about the ways in which the legacy of our being a Church of powerful wealthy slaveholders continues today thereby rendering our church over 90% white with the continued reputation of being the Church of the powerful elite not to speak of the fact that the immense wealth of some of our most prominent churches was derived from industries fuelled and fed by slave labor could it really be simply a coincidence that our church's racial demographic is wider than the United States was in 1790 in the words of William Faulkner the past is never dead it's not even past truth-telling that is moral memory allows us to recognize how in fact the past is not past but continues to shape our present realities it does not ignore but recognizes the legacy of white supremacy that continues to be enacted in our own church and to be sure it is only in speaking the truth about the white supremacist late see that is ours that we will be able to truly repent of it by turning around in doing something different in the words of Tanisha Colts what is needed in our churches is an airing of family secrets a settling with old ghosts less those old ghosts continue to haunt us as part of the wider churches our wider churches racial initiative becoming Beloved Community one of the first steps in the four-part plan that is simply of the four-part plan the first step is simply titled telling the truth that means being honest about who we are who we have been and who we want to be as a church this brings me to the second task required for us as a church in this our Kairos time and this is the need to engage in what I have termed a moral identity to claim a moral identity in this our society shaped by a white supremacist culture that privileges whiteness even as it penalized sometimes unto death those who are the non-white other is to in fact name and denounce white privilege even as white privilege describes a false sense of superiority to white Americans at the peril of non-white persons especially to black people it is not non-white persons that is those without the benefits of white privilege whose essential humanity and indeed whose souls are most at stake rather it is the humanity and souls of those who live out of and into the privileges of whiteness that are most compromised for the fact of the matter is the only way they can be who they are is by claiming a privilege that belittles the humanity and lives of others whether they recognize it or not in this regard it is not about being racists it is about benefiting from white supremacist realities one does not have to be overtly racist or even and implicitly racist to do that in this regard to make the choice to be white even when it is simply a passive refusal to confront what it means to be a beneficiary of white supremacy and its legacy to make that choice is an immoral choice for it is the choice to see oneself as better than another and thus it is the choice to betray the truth of our sacred common humanity which is that everyone who has breath or has ever had breath is a sacred child of God reflecting God's own image nothing more and nothing less but that's pretty darn good and so in the words of James cone just because you look like a white American doesn't mean that you have to act like one the choice is yours and so it is that whiteness is a sinful choice and likewise the culture that privileges whiteness as they both separate us from God again distorting the very sacred integrity of all human beings who are equally regarded as sacred children of God therefore it seems to me that we have an ecclesiastical responsibility if you will in leading the way toward a moral identity by in fact naming and freeing ourselves from its from our own white privileges put bluntly we as an Episcopal institution have a decision to make are we going to be white or are we going to be for one cannot be at once white in church why because to be church is to follow the one crucified that Jesus was crucified and as we know refused to save himself from being crucified reveals the fact that he emptied himself of any sense of privilege that might be bestowed upon him due to his maleness his Jewishness or even his divinity in short he let go of that which would set him apart from humanity especially the crucify classes of humanity those victims of the deadly cultural political and religious privilege of his time this letting go this canosa's if you will made abundantly clear that the salvation which comes to croute the crucified one comes to solidarity with those who seek freedom from oppression why because it is only when those whose backs are most against the wall as Howard Thurman would say or those who have no walls upon to put upon to rest their backs only when they are able to live freely into the fullness of their sacred humanity it is only then that the salvation of God which is justice can be made real for all of God's people simply put to not let go of the privilege that is why it is to essentially be one with the white supremacist crucifying crowd not the crucified Christ in that betrays what it means to be Church this brings me to the need for what I call moral proximity our churches simply must find ways of helping people to be proximate to borrow a word from Brian Stevenson to be proximate with one with others recent studies have revealed the harsh reality that seventy-five percent two thirds think about that two thirds of white Americans have no people of color not a single one within their intimate social circles two thirds and of the 25% that do those social circles are still 90 percent white it is no wonder then that black and white people for instance have such widely different views of reality such as on the impact of racism on all of our lives the racial divide in this country is real it is palpable in every aspect of our common and communal lives together we as a church must be intentional in leading the way to bridging that divide which means nothing less than fostering opportunities for moral proximity that is fostering opportunities for people to be proximate with those who are different from themselves it is only through moral proximity that we can discover that those who seem so different from us are indeed just like us people with hearts that can be broken indeed love bodies that can be wounded and need Hill and souls that can be lost in the guidance and it is only when we discover the ways in which we are all the same that true compassion can take place and Lord knows in this hour time human compassion has been lost let me now move to the final aspect that I want to speak about today that is required for us to respond to this our Kairos this is what I call moral participation if faith is about partnering with God to help them in the world and I believe that it is then we who call ourselves church are compelled to join God in mending the world of the injustice that is the division of race in this country and this is what moral participation at this time must be about so practically speaking what does this mean what does it look like it means at least two broad things first that our churches must be places of sanctuary and that our churches must be places of witness to be a sanctuary means that no one should feel diminished or unsafe because of who they are or are not when they are in our presence or in our churches and so we must make our churches spaces free of bigotry or intolerance of any kind not simply in the most overt ways in which that can manifest itself but perhaps in the ways that we don't even readily notice ways that may be embedded into the fabric of our buildings or even in the fabric of our programming and worship what for instance are the images and icons hanging in our church what is the story they tell whose bodies are being represented as sacred what is the music that we play in our church as images of black Christ are important for more than just black congregations soul too is bilingual worship important for more than just Latin next congregations or congregations with Latin ex congregants to take into account the fabric of our church its artifacts as well as the fabric of our church in terms of the way in which we program and worship is the first step toward making our churches sanctuaries places where all people feel safe and affirmed and feel as if they are indeed a sacred child of God and that their story is God's story in God's story is their story secondly we are called to be witness witness to the very vision that is God's for us which means nothing less than calling out racism xenophobia and any other ISM or bigotry for what it is even when it masks itself in the politically correct language of greatness but most importantly we must be the change we want to see by being those sanctuaries of God's very kingdom this means that justice not unity must be our guiding principle we must not be afraid to speak up because of the donors we may lose the reputation we may forego we must speak out we must allow ourselves to be on that arc that bends toward God's justice this I know to be true that without a commitment to the truth-telling that is moral memory without a commitment to fostering a moral identity moral proximity and moral participation we are not a part of a movement that follows Jesus the movement not only that we have been called by our presiding bishop to be a part of but most importantly called by God and here's the thing to not be a part of that movement means that we are in fact not a church and so if we want to be more than simply a social institution that happens to be religious if we in fact want to be a church then being engaged in the work to dismantle white supremacy within our ecclesia and hence within this nation is not an option for us for the work of racial justice is the work of the church especially in this our time a time so divided by the continuing legacy of white supremacy to not do that work is to betray our very identity as Church indeed it is to betray our identity as not only Christians but as children of God it is my friends to miss the opportunity that this Kairos time brings us and that's deeply consequential the church's blueprint for building the Beloved Community puts it this way Beloved Community it says is the practical limit of the world we pray for when we say thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven it goes on to say that we dream of communities where all people may experience dignity and abundant life and see themselves and others as beloved children of God this is indeed a community I say freed from the legacy that is white supremacy which takes me back to the beginning 400 years after the landing of the white lion this nation if not this our church continues to suffer from its legacy bringing us to these most challenging of times so yes these are challenging times yes the work before us is hard and maybe for some uncomfortable but never before has there been a more dramatic opportunity if you will to be a sign of God's just future then now it is thus left for us as an Episcopal denomination to embrace this opportunity and to be Church this is our call this is our challenge this is the work our soul must do leading this nation back to its very soul let us leave this place committed to being Church thank you

Channel: Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows

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Keywords: Episcopal

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Length: 40min 12sec (2412 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2019