10 Tips for Conversations about Race and White Supremacy

“One's response... has to depend, in effect, 
on where you find yourself in the world... 
what your system of reality is.”

James Baldwin
James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr.

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Over the last fifteen weeks of our seminar on "Racism and Human Diversity: Medieval Narratives of Blackness," the students in the seminar became practiced in arguing and listening to arguments centered around the history of white supremacy in the west and the ongoing systems of racism that govern our world. At the start of the seminar, the students drafted a "Class Covenant" that served as the guiding rules of engagement when entering into these conversations. The students drafted the agreement and voted for it. Having practiced these methods of debate and discourse over a semester within the protected space of the classroom, on the last day of classes the students drafted a new list. This list would be addressed to the world they are about to enter back into where conversations on racism and white supremacy don't always play by the same guidelines as an arbitrated academic classroom. Ten tips were listed that could be adapted to scenarios such as season family gatherings, holiday parties, online comment sections, or future seminars where topics of racism and white supremacy arise. While hardly exhaustive, these are samples of the advice the Racism and Human Diversity seminar would suggest as significant to active and respectful engagement:

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Baldwin and Buckley debated racism and white supremacy 

at Cambridge University in 1965

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10 Guidelines for Debates 

on Racism and White Supremacy

1. Think of Counter-Arguments

If one does not try to imagine alternative points of view, even for the purpose of refuting them, then "argumentation" is not possible. What arises without the conscious consideration of other perspectives is a shouting match between set "opinions" which neither side wish to nuance or surrender.

2. Sympathize

Because arguments occur among flesh and blood humans, not between logical automatons, arguments are bound to be informed by emotion as well as experience. Being able to sympathize, even with someone who disagrees with you, makes you a better debater because it gives you access not just to the ideas but the feelings that fuel the counter-argument. Also, sympathy allows for a better process and outcome among people who have long embodied certain points of view.

3. Be Open-Minded

Arguments are like battles and competitions, you shouldn't enter into one if you don't plan on the possibility of losing. This means being open-minded and allowing for the potential that another point of view might have information that can nuance or reform certain parts of your understanding. Arguments need not be 0-Sum games but if one enters into a debate without allowing that one's position might be partially changed or surrendered, then one is not entering fully into an argument.

4. Listen

Too many arguments break down because those engaged are not actually listening to the points being made. If you are spending your time thinking of your next point rather than listening, you might miss out of important information or potential common grounds. Without active listening, you cannot walk away more well informed and you will be unable to learn critical points of access into someone else's position.

5. Be Aware of Motives

All information if it is gathered by humans and communicated by humans will show some trace of perspective and/or prejudice. Don't assume that information presented in a form, abstract way is necessarily true nor necessarily unbiased. Be aware of what a person or persons may have to gain by presenting data in particular ways. This may not mean the information is wrong but will give insight into the sources from which the information is coming.

6. Don't Assume

To "assume" makes an "ass-" out of "-u-" and "-me." Going into a conversation, while one can assume that certain situations and perspectives are not within the person's immediate life experience, people may surprise you with what they think and feel. If you go in assuming that a person will be one the other side of all your positions and experiences, then you may miss out on important common grounds that might serve as the foundations for other differences to be negotiated and even changed. There may be a friend somewhere in a person who might otherwise seem to be an opponent.

7. Define terms

So many arguments break down because people realize that participants were speaking past each other, using different definitions and understandings of words that both sides were using. By defining terms, one may find the difference in position may stem from a difference in understanding or context rather than a difference in opinion. 

8. Inform

The goal of most arguments should - in part - be to inform. Arguments are not always able to conclude with all parties in agreement or with an evident winner or loser. As such, if one seeks to provide others with information that they can understand and emotionally process, then the seeds of change may be planted in otherwise confrontational soil. Approaching arguments in this way seeks the betterment of all parties rather than the mere defeat.

9. Assume "Good" Intentions

When certain positions result in dangerous and damaging consequences it can be easy (and understandable) for those engaging with persons holding such positions to assume that the other's intentions are as bad as their effects; or that intentions are inconsequential. While preventing harm caused by bad consequences should be a priority, when time comes to engage those who support these ideologies, it is helpful to assume that the bad actions were done for the best possible intentions. This may not be the same as "good" intentions because it may stem from ignorance and hate. Yet by assuming the alternative position is the "best possible" version of itself, then one prepares for an argument looking for common grounds and with the best possible responses. If one assumes an opponent is merely evil and operating on the weakest of arguments, then the arguments one brings to task against them will also be weaker. The goal is to elevate a conversation not engage on lowest common denominators.

10. Patience

Unlike opinion screaming matches which are often over before they begin, arguments take time. Arguments take time because they are about enacting change. Change does not occur all at once. Thus, arguments may take many sessions to conclude. If one gives into frustration, the hard fought changes and common grounds may be unnecessarily lost. Sometimes building or maintaining lines of communication may be the best possible outcome for any particular argument because they allow for the possibility of change and for the power of time to take effect.

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Racism and Human Diversity: Medieval Narratives of Blackness

“History has its eyes on you”

Hamilton

An American Musical

Lin-Manuel Miranda

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Course Description and Outcomes

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards were founded in 1935 by Cleveland philanthropist and poet, Edith Anisfield-Wolf. Her desire was to establish an award for books that promoted social justice and tolerance by addressing cultural and racial diversity. Since its foundation, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards have honored the best fiction and non-fiction that exemplify these principals. Winners of the award include the novelist Toni Morrison, the literary critic Edward Said, and the historian David Blight.

In this seminar, we will read selections of poetry and books by winners of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards alongside other films and texts from the Middle Ages to the modern day which offer contextual and historical insights into the wider framework of social issues, social justice and diversity that undergird the selected award books. Additionally, students will get the chance to attend the 2017 Awards ceremony and visit to the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award collection at the Cleveland Public Library.

Course Objectives (Reflecting SAGES Learning Outcomes)
By the end of the course you will be able to

• Sympathize across multiple perspectives in academic conversations
• Analyze ethical debates and offer critical inquiries
• Research relevant historical contexts and scholarship 
• Argue in written and oral forms according to the dialectic method
• Help others to understand racism through clear verbal communication

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Selections from the Reading List

Racism and Human Diversity centers its reading and discussion around four winners of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Additional readings and in class viewings serve to offer historical context which augment the four focal texts. The goal of the readings is to draw out the major themes and historical contexts which run through and around the four texts, what come to be identified as "Medieval Narratives of Blackness." These narratives includes ideas of Nation and Religion, White Supremacy and the Role of Medievalism/Historians, The Stonewall Riots and Intersections of Race & Sex, and finally, Poetry and the Prison Industrial Complex. 

Primary Texts (drawn from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards)

• Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth 
• Toni Morrison, Beloved (film adaptation)
• Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution
• R. Phillips, Heaven

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Medieval Context for the Aryan Myth

• The King of Tars 
• Selections from Arthurian Romance, "On Sir. Palamedes"
• John Mandeville, Book of Marvels & Travels

"Neo-Medieval" Film Context for Beloved

• D.W. Griffith (dir.), Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Ron Clements and John Musker (dir.), The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Queer/Trans People of Color Context for The Gay Revolution

• Jennie Livingston, Paris is Burning
• Janet Mock, Redefining Realness

BLM/Law Enforcement Context for Heaven

• Ava DuVernay, 13th (2016)
• Sam Miller, Luke Cage 

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"Indispensable" A Sermon by the Reverend Rachel J Bahr

"The members of the body that seem to be 
weaker are indispensable"

I. Corinthians 12:22

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“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” Amen to that. In any group, no matter how seemingly homogenous there is diversity and fault lines ready to rip own chasms that have been building up pressure for years. Yet however temperamental, anyone who has a family knows a truth, whether one you were born into or chosen later in life, the truth that it is in our differences that we are strong. It is because we have feet, those who will do the legwork, that me make progress in the world. It is because we have hands, those who will offer welcome, embrace and support, that we survive. It is because we have eyes, diverse gifts of perception that allow us to see the world, see secrets, see new truths.

In the scripture of our family, in the passion of our faults, in the testament of our differences, in the commandments of our love we see us how God sees us: as one body with many members. My family knows something about difference within unity. My partner sometimes describes our family in this way, she is a goldilocks surrounded by a family of bears. The truth is the Bahr women are fiercely independent; we enjoy our autonomy within the Bahr kin-dom, adults and bear cubs each wanting to direct the path in our own ways. “Indeed,” scripture tells us, “the body does not consist of one member but of many.”

Clementine is like a pair of hands, she is known for staking claim on people, things, and new territory, like a bear. Once I found she moved all of her belongings into my bedroom, in an attempt to colonize. Things didn’t explicitly have Mom written on them was her explanation. She believes in claiming things. Once she marks you, you are a part of her territory, and she is fiercely protective. She looks out for her own, often behaves like a little mom, to her sister’s annoyance. But the hand she lays on things is of love, she wants to keep you secure & close.

Nora is like a pair of feet. Since she was old enough to crawl to me, upon coming home she always demanded to engage in play before we could do anything else. Nora’s games often involve the adult running themselves ragged, while she sits and laughs, expending little energy. Don’t leave anything out or it becomes a material in her world to smear on the walls. She’s a kid who enjoys all things messy. She likes seeing things move, people, things, thoughts, feelings. She is a kid that wants to set the world into motion, to take static things, the neat and organized, and fill them with a spirit of action.

Having gifted girls often means there is competition when one is praised. The other speaks up, “What about me?” Fearing that raising up one will bring down the others. Many of us fear this I think. But scripture like a mama bear says, “if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body.” You are not any less part of the family for being different. Although sometimes, when each bear wants her way it can feel like that.

In our family, Gabby, the Three Bears' Goldilocks, often knows how to bring us all together. She is a unique pair of eyes. She reminds us that we need one another, especially when we all are demanding things go our own ways. She reminds the den: “The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” She helps each of us, including me, see fault lines as scars on the road to healing, to see hope and wholeness in the worst of divisions, to see the old in new ways.

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The Reverend and the Doctor

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Our scripture today is all about seeing the old in new ways. In seeing the scripture in our family, in the passion of our faults, in the testament of our differences, in the commandments of our love, all saying that we are one body with many members.

But as many of us know, it is our family and even our bodies that challenge us most. In our scripture today, Jesus was visiting his hometown and synagogue. Do some of you know what its like to go away for a time and then come back to the church where you grew up? How many of you came back to the church a new person with a new vision. As long as Jesus followed the “usual” customs he was going to be safe.

But what does Jesus do? He reads from the book of the prophet Isaiah, words familiar to those listening but shows it to them with new vision. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” The year of God’s favor was called the year of Jubilee. Every 50th year Jews were called to forgiveness and liberation. All debts were released, the poor were to be emancipated from slavery, all prisoners were to be released, and even physical impairments would be healed. Jesus reads Isaiah for a reason. Isaiah’s prophetic words foretell what will happen when the anointed one would come, the Messiah, the one who would restore Israel to God’s Vision.

Jesus finishes reading and says to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Folks just stare at him, wondering what this all means. He likely received blank stares. Some of you may know what this feels like, when you return home, to see family, to an old church and you are saying things that shake things up and people are clearly uncomfortable.

Jesus is challenging the status-quo, the forces that maintain that some folks have more worth or value than others. Jesus is challenging who’s in and who’s out, in his own hometown. Jesus is communicating God’s Vision of Wholeness. We’re not leaving anyone out! We will live out being open and affirming!

This revolution Jesus is calling for, is one that he knows folks will run from, it terrifies them, and yet he begins in his hometown. Where he had the greatest potential for criticism, and folks questioning his identity. Jesus is coming out to them, saying things he’s never said to them before, laying it out on the table. People who know us, who knew us from our youth, are the hardest to come out to. Because they want to keep you as they knew you. As safe, domesticated, if sometimes troubled children. They want to keep what they knew rather than turning to face the strange. This was Jesus’ challenge sharing the good news, the radical welcome laid out in God’s Vision, how could he share this good news without rejection? How do we challenge people to welcome the rejected? And this is what the people do to Christ. They run him out of town. They take Christ literally out of their lives. How do we respond?

How do we see ourselves as Christ sees us without domesticating ourselves, without falling back on divisions in order to give us the feeling of safety?

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Clementine

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This last week we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr, a man who knew something about the dangerous promise of seeing us as Christ sees us, seeing how in the scripture of our family, in the passion of our faults, in the testament of our differences, in the commandments of our love God calls down with radical inclusivity that we are one body with many members.

In the famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr writes about his disappointment with the domesticated white moderate saying:

(1)“who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice… who… believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises [the oppressed] to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”

Some would say that hiring a queer pastor, enacting serious support for transgender persons is too much too quick. Some would beg us to wait, slow down, so we can hold onto our hate or fear a little bit longer. But this holding on to hate is what Christ and Martin Luther King Jr. says is killing us, killing black and queer and trans youth in the streets or alone in despair, and is killing us all spiritually. Waiting can be a sensible compromise, and radicalness can go too far, but we cannot wait to affirm life and we cannot go too far in the work of love. Love, as the late David Bowie tells us, challenges us to care for those on the edge of the night and in so loving to care for ourselves. It is never too soon to see the ignored, it is never too much to heal the wounded, there is no peace without justice, especially when we see ourselves in the isolated, suffering, and devalued. It is never beyond Christianity to see as Christ sees.

Dr. King continues: 2) “There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace."

At youth at General Synod this past summer our young people, some from this congregation attended a UCC Polity and History class with the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who with Rev. Bernice Jackson spoke about the civil rights movement, and other movements such as the Occupy Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement as all having a common thread. They were begun by young adults who were tired of standing by, doing nothing to make society change. They reminded us if you don’t have a mortgage it’s much easier to join the movement, you’re more willing to take risks for your own or another’s liberation.

The revered Dr. King continues his argument: 3) “Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are.”

We have the impulse to turn away from MLK’s honest critiques, embarrassed that now over 50 years later, his message is still relevant, that Christ’s call two millennia later is still desperately needed, that in the scripture of family, the passion of our faults, in the testament of our differences, in the commandments of our love, we still need help to see ourselves as God sees us: as one body with many members. But in closing I say for us all: “the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” We are not unchristian for our brokenness and divisions for it is ever by Christ through those that the Church is continually resurrected. There is hope. We are the Church of the poor. We are the Church of resurrection. And Hope is always with us. Amen.

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Nora

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For more information on 

the Reverend Rachel J Bahr

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The family reading together

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The Corporate Sin of Racism with Rev. Rachel J. Bahr

"The poet took the terror and turned it 
against itself. What was meant for fear 
he used to stir up faith 
in a different kind of future."

Strange Fruit

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Introduction to English Literature 1 

A Genealogy of Gender and Genre

In this course, we explore gender and genre through literature produced in and around the early British Isles, from the elegiac poetry of the Anglo Saxons to the Epic poetry of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In this survey of medieval and early modern texts, we trace how forms of narrative were informed by and acted on the construction of concepts of sex and sexuality. We study how debates around nature and nurture, essential and artificial, eternal and mutable came to produce later notions of transgender, queerness, disability, race, and religious difference.

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Corporate Sin

On February 19th, 2015, my course on a Genealogy of Gender and Genre hosted a guest lecturer, the Reverend Pastor Rachel J. Bahr, M.Div, who spoke on "Confession and the Corporate Sin of Racism." Corporate sin is defined by Francisco Cervantes, M.Div., as systematic social injustice in opposition to personal sin which is dependent on will and intent. "Corporate sin," writes Cervantes, "does not mean something that companies or corporations do (though they too commit sin). Corporate Sin has to do with our actions as a body of believers. It is a sinful act done by many to others" (Cervantes, A Catholic View). Like Cervantes, Rev. Bahr named racism in particular as a corporate sin prominent in contemporary American culture. One does not need to consciously think "racist thoughts" to participate in the corporate sin of racism. Because of its collective, systematic, and passive nature, corporate sin may be enacted even while holding counter-racist intents or without thought of any kind. Here, the sin is in social ideology, environment and action. Of course, personal prejudice and ill-intent still play roles but in this context they are instrumental to the wider injustice rather than being considered the beginning or the end. Personal and individual racism may be seen as the symptom of the problem rather the whole disease. As such, the reflection and response to such injustice requires a different kind of confession that turns from personal texts toward contexts.

Many of us have some sense of "confession" and "sin" but likely think of it in its contemporary context, as a personal admission of fault and culpability. This is seen today in Catholic confessionals and their secular counter-part: the psychologist's office. Here we are called to narrate our live in order to examine sins/pathologies which are supposedly diagnosed and rectified. We emphasized the pre-modern conception of sin as a collective rather than personal problem and confession as a "speaking-together" - how we act in and as society against justice and love. Rev. Bahr traced the roots of social justice from the practices of the People of Israel, the offering of sacrifices for the sins of a whole family, the Year of Jubilee where all debts and transgression are forgiven, and the practice of Prophetic Literature that reflects on moments when the community has worked contrary to Love and Justice. Next, Rev. Bahr discussed how confession began to shift in Christian communities in the 14th century during a series of outbreaks of the Plague. In order to make sense of why so many died while others were spared, sin began to be understood as unequally existing in certain persons more than others. The logic shifted from "sin is a product of community" to "sin as marking specific persons" through disease, disability, skin color, gender, and sexuality.

While the texts we would be studying in the next section of the course are drawn from a 14th century medieval context, the corporate sin and confession we are considering exist in a system that spans a time and place through a genealogy of thought and practice that isolates and eliminates communities marked with difference. These texts are drawn from John Gower's Confessio Amantis (in particular, "the Corporate Sin of Sloth in 'the Tale of Iphis and Ianthe'" and "the Corporate Sin of Pride in 'the Tale of Narcissus'") Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (in particular, "the Corporate Sin of Sloth in 'the Canon's Yeoman's Tale," "the Corporate Sin of Lust in 'the Pardoner's Prologue,'" and "the Corporate Sin of Wrath in 'the Wife of Bath's Prologue'"). How do examine the ethics of the these tales without victim blaming or repeating a violent prejudice by blaming marginalized peoples (women, eunuchs, mad, etc.)? This may require reading a text designed to villainize or terrorize against the grain to turn the terror against itself. On this day, we connected discussions of Love, Division, Creation, and Social Justice to the world of literature, film, and music, such as "the Hanging Tree" from the Hunger Games book and movie.  The call to remember lynchings as a call to action functions as a kind of "Confession in the Hanging Tree." Here, the hanging tree symbolizes the imagery of oppressed peoples being lynched for unfounded crimes, and the song ultimately calls for a revolution. Beginning with this popular and familiar text, Rev. Bahr turned the discussion towards the haunting classic song by Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit.

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Strange Fruit

How might we understand this in a contemporary context? Rev. Bahr also shared her work in the fields of womanism, queer and black liberation theology. Rev. Bahr turned the class discussion to the song "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday, based on a poem by Abel Meeropol, a teacher, and talked about the context in which this song was written. The students pointed out the obvious connection between the opening song, "the Hanging Tree," and Holiday's. Strange Fruit reminds us of the strange imagery of the lynched bodies of Black folks. "Southern trees bear strange fruit," sings Holiday, "blood on the leaves and blood at the root. Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees" (Holiday 1939). In both songs, the fruit spreads these seeds of hate, distrust, violence, and marginalization. These insidious seeds of violence that continues to grow even while seemingly dormant. Holiday's song, however, was tied to a specific hate crime when Black men in Indiana during the time of Jim Crow were suspected of a crime they didn't commit, were jailed and then released to an angry mob of over four thousand white folks, many of whom were Christians. In this context, the hanging of "strange fruit" either as violent lynching or as a genealogy of corporate sin stands in sharp relief next to two other trees in the Christian story: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Crucifix. 

The Salt Project's Emmy Winning film on the song "Strange Fruit" recasts this song in the Christian histories of creation, crucifixion, and lynching. The film begins with Genesis, imagining all Creation as a garden, where all life was made and flourished. Here humanity may be and know all things as good. The only commandment was that the humans were not to eat the "strange fruit" growing on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This fruit, the film articulates, was a new way of knowing and dividing humanity. "[The Humans] wanted to eat and discover truth of racism, pain, and difference of violence," explains the film in a brilliant song of biblical exegesis. "Apples don't do that. This was strange fruit. They saw themselves. Strange fruit. And the truth hit them" (The Salt Project). The forbidden knowledge was not only an object to be attained but a morbid way of knowing. Fruit after all is alive, it is digested, it is excreted, it spreads, and it grows. 

So too was the act of knowing where the self became defined through othering, setting others apart through difference and categories, the beginning of racism inscribed on the world through violence and pain. "They did not want this," continues the film's exegesis. "but it made them powerful; powerful enough to see their own pain, powerful enough to dish it to other. Fruit bears fruits" (The Salt Project). This act of original sin was not something merely spiritual, or physical, but a corporate act - a violent way of knowing that made the self powerful by subjugating the other. Sin of this sort breeds a genealogy of hate through systems of power-knowledge. The spawn of this fruit is what causes other trees to carry their own strange fruit. In Rome, racism and violence made the empire strong and brought the crucifix into being where Christ was hung. In America, racism and violence made the United States strong but hung countless black lives. "[Human's] became powerful enough to make their own 'southern trees bear strange fruit," continues the film. "Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze" (The Salt Project). Each one of these strange trees is bound up in one another, made to "speak together" by the scripture, song, and film in an act of Confession that looks beyond any specific individual to a collective struggle.

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Black Liberation Theology

Where then do these corporate sins and collective struggles call us to go? In response, Rev. Bahr pointed towards the work of James Cone's concepts of "Ontological Blackness" and James Foreman's "the Black Manifesto." Rev. Bahr recounted how she studied diligently under the scholarship of Dr. James Cone while in seminary. It is here, she attests, that she found Jesus' being was bound in solidarity with the oppressed, an inextricable relation that he maintained onto cross. Dr. Cone argued that slavery was the U.S. original sin, with over 400 years of Black people being oppressed and lynched, and segregated. In 2012, Dr. James Cone, preaching at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church in his sermon argues, "Despite the obvious similarity between Jesus' death on the cross and the Black people who have been strung up by their necks, relatively few people have looked at the deep similarities between the cross and the lynching tree" (Cone, "The Cross & The Lynching Tree"). The alienation that has developed between Christianity and the practice of social justice, contended the burgeoning liberation theology, was no accident. White Christian communities wanted a safe distance between the demands of their faith and the security of a prosperity built on the backs of racist systems of power.

According to Black Liberation theology, the central work of Christianity is offering a preferential option for the poor and marginalized. The project of such a theology is to turn the instruments of horror back on themselves by calling on those Church, political and academic authorities. "To create an antiracist theology," writes Cone, "White theologians must engage the histories, cultures and theologies of people of color. It is not enough to condemn racism. The voices of people of color must be found in your theology." (Cone, "Theology's Great Sin")In the particular American and European context, Black Liberation Theology presents "a profound critique of white theology that does not yet recognize its whiteness." ( J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement). This point was one the class was becoming increasingly attuned to throughout the semester. As Rev. James Ellis III writes, Black Liberation theology against "to hold white Christians and theologians accountable for their many atrocities committed against blacks under the guise of biblical orthodoxy" (Ellis III, "A Critique of Cone's Black Liberation Theology"). There is no studying scripture, theology, or literature without considering one's subjective and methodological position towards race; especially when the history of the practice works towards the exclusion and subjugation of people of color.

When Cone's argument on the ontological blackness of Christ was raised, the students were particularly curious. Rev. Bahr directed the students to read these blackness both through the twin lenses through which we read all the material in the course: historical and metaphorical. Cone writes, "Christ's blackness is both literal and symbolic... The least in America are literally and symbolically present in black people." (Cone, God of the Oppressed). Christ's skin color and other physical features marked him as part of a marginalized community in the Roman empire. Additionally, Christ himself practiced radical solidarity with the poor and marginalized. It is with the oppressed that Christ spent most of his time, did most of his service, and called on to receive preferential positions in society. In the American context, the alterity pressed upon persons because of physical features and the struggle of the oppress locate Christ with people of color. To find and follow Christ, then, Christians must exist in communion with the black community. This does not mean that a person is damned for having white skin, but if one aligns themselves with an oppressive white culture against the marginalized, one sets oneself against the way of Christ. The call of Christianity, according to Cone, is seek out communion and liberation among the black community. The work of medieval and American literature that places the emphasis of Christian back from a merely personal faith towards the corporate practices of sin and liberation is an imperative in the Church and all those who practice theology and biblical exegesis. 

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Rev. Rachel J. Bahr

The Reverend Rachel J. Bahr is currently Associate Pastor at the First Parish Congregational Church in York, Maine.

She earned a Master of Divinity form Chicago Theological Seminary and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Catawba College in Salisbury, NC. Pastor Rachel loves working with young people and has for much of her life (especially being a PK or Preacher's Kid). One of Pastor Rachel's fondest memories is of being baptized by the Power Team (if you don't know what the Power Team is ask her). She also delights in her two young daughters, Clementine and Elanora, who daily remind her to let go and be silly; God is sometimes speaking through fingerpainting little girls with mischievous grins.

RachelJBahr.blogspot.com

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