Today in the Mission Yearbook - How and why the church fuels white supremacy

An ecumenical panel explores the extent of that sin and how the church can heal

July 30, 2022

Photo by Jon Tyson via Unsplash

People recruiting for a white supremacist cause on a Sunday morning will find more success at their local church than at their local coffee shop.

That’s what research revealed for Dr. Robert P. Jones’ most recent book, “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” and it’s a fact he shared during the recent White Supremacy and American Christianity webinar attended by about 2,500 people. Jones, the CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, joined Fr. Bryan Massingale, the author of “Racial Justice and the Catholic Church” and the Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Ethics as well as the Senior Ethics Fellow at Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education. Dr. Marcia Chatelain, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America” and a professor of history and African American Studies at Georgetown University, answered Jones’ and Massingale’s presentations with her own critique.

The NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice sponsored the online conference, with help from organizations including the Center for Faith, Justice & Reconciliation at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

Massingale said when he read that statement in Jones’ book, “it jumped out at me. There is something about Christianity that inclines white people to be more racist. I want those participating to pause and let that sink in.”

“We have this idea of people who marched with torches in Charlottesville or those who stormed the Capitol in January of last year,” Massingale said. “But what we are talking about is people in church, that white Christianity itself incubates a sense of white superiority … I remember the first time I saw an image of a Black Christ. A part of me said, ‘what?’ I had been malformed and deformed. God and Jesus being white is the image I got.”

“If you believe a white person rules in the heavens, you believe they should rule here on Earth,” Massingale said. “The idea of representation isn’t idle. These things have real political impact and create a culture of white Christian nationalism.”

For many people, just the term “white supremacy” is hard to hear, Jones said. “We think of old photos of people burning a cross. It’s a convenient way to think about white supremacy because we don’t know anybody like that.”

But in “any city we go to” there’s a history of redlining, a “straight-up expression of white supremacy,” Jones said. In many communities, churches were seen as institutions protecting the neighborhood from non-white people entering them. Jones’ own grandfather was a deacon in his church. It was his job to stand outside the church before worship “to make sure no non-white person entered the sanctuary. That history is very near to us and is certainly very present with us in many ways.”

Massingale remembers as a seventh grader the first time attending Mass in a new community. Members of the congregation “told us you would be more comfortable attending your former church.” Their message, he said, is “this church belongs to white people.”

When Massingale presents on racism and white supremacy, “People ask, ‘How can I talk about this in my parish and not make white people uncomfortable?’ I turn it around: ‘Why is it the only group that is never supposed to feel uncomfortable talking about race is white people?’”

In January, Jones published a piece called “The Sacred Work of White Discomfort.” He wonders: What kind of growth do we get without discomfort?

“Do we want to be comfortable, or do we want to be free?” Jones said during the webinar. Do we want to keep the status quo, “or work out our salvation with fear and trembling? This commitment to white supremacy is the air we breathe and the water we swim in,” Jones said. “We don’t see how it has distorted the gospel and affected our ability to love one another.”

“If we want to hand down the faith to our kids, we need to think about the work that has to be done,” Jones said. “I can try to find a comfortable faithfulness of my ancestors or I can be faithful to my kids — but I cannot do both.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jacqueline Boersema, Director Financial Education, Board of Pensions
Raymond Bonwell, Corporate Secretary, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Dear God, thank you for hearing our cries to end the injustice of racism and to become the beloved community. Help us to hear and respond to your call on our lives to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with you. Amen.

Ministry Matters - Introducing Methodist house churches | Navigating the future

What role can house churches play in our future? Introducing Methodist house churches by Dave Barnhart   “Methodism” has a distinctive theology, but we acquired the name because it was our practices that set us apart more than our beliefs. Like the early Methodist movement, house churches focus on how we practice being the church together instead of the facilities or programs we offer. It is a shift from consumer-driven religion to communal and collaborative faith. Read here

Can we develop institutions that bear witness to purpose and cultivate flourishing? Navigating the future for Christian institutions by Greg Jones & Andrew Hogue   We love to hate the institutions we need. In the midst of modernity’s ruins, we are aware that we do not have the social infrastructure that we need to flourish. We look for quick fixes: we want networks instead of institutions, we want to be spiritual without being religious, we want a future that has no connection to the past, we want policies that will achieve justice and eliminate suffering. Read here

How does healthy leadership impact stewardship in our local churches? Thoughts on stewardship leadership by Timothy Siburg   Within stewardship then, if one of the potholes is that too often congregations and communities of faith focus only on money, a leader or leadership needs to emerge to help navigate around this pothole. Yes, it is important to articulate why money is needed and important, as well as why it's important to talk about. Read here

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Sermon notes for Ordinary Time's 8th Sunday Preaching on the rich fools parable this Sunday

Elements for what matters most in worship this Sunday

We're looking for congregational leaders like you. Our mission is to offer resources and content that can help you in your work—and we want to know how you are putting those resources to use. We're looking for congregational leaders to review books and other resources for MinistryMatters, helping orient our readers to the resource and explaining how the resource has influenced your practices in ministry. If you are interested in becoming a published reviewer, please contact our editor here.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Even in our polarized times, it’s possible to preach faithfully on third-rail topics

But it takes caution and care

July 29, 2022

The Rev. Dr. Angela Dienhart Hancock

Each week, preachers make their way to the pulpit — whether wooden or virtual — to deliver a sermon to congregants living in a nation that’s increasingly polarized.

To say that preachers must thread a needle each Sunday morning in front of God and everybody doesn’t do justice to the preacher’s plight. Exploring that challenge recently fell to the Rev. Dr. Angela Dienhart Hancock, associate professor of Homiletics and Worship at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, who spoke to more than 30 people during the monthly installment of Synod of the Covenant’s Equipping Preachers series. Her “Preaching in Polarized Times” conversation built on a talk by the Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick, the synod’s transitional executive, who spoke on “Stretching Into Prophetic Preaching.” Watch Hardwick’s talk here.

A recent visit by a contractor drove home for Hancock just how polarized things have become. A question about whether or not to mask up soon turned into a pointed discussion on vaccines and climate change. “It was unpleasant,” Hancock said. “What we wanted more than anything else was to get the contractor out of the house, even though I knew we should stay in relationship with this contractor.”

For the church, one result of polarization is that we now have fewer opportunities for cross-cutting conversations — a time to talk to and maybe learn from people with differing views. “Americans increasingly agree,” Hancock said, “that talking with those with whom they disagree is stressful and frustrating,” adding that most Americans now say that debate has become less respectful, fact-based and substantive.

Still, on any given Sunday up to one-third of the people in worship are paying little or no attention to politics. “People are saturated and exhausted by this, across the political spectrum,” Hancock said.

Churches that embrace an activist stance on either side of the political divide tend to attract worshipers who lean in the same direction. “For some preachers, then, the question about how to address people across political lines does not show up as a concern, necessarily,” Hancock said. “For conservatives, it becomes a matter of preaching to the choir. For liberals, the dynamics are similar.”

Many congregations report a diversity of political orientations. In others, there’s a mismatch between the pastor’s political views and those of the majority of members and friends. In addition, the denomination to which the church belongs may have mixed political orientations. “It can be difficult to know what members think about social and political issues,” Hancock said, “because everyone is so careful in these settings to preserve peace and unity. They don’t want church to become the place where we have experiences like we did with that contractor.”

On top of that, a few boisterous partisans may discourage others in the congregation to share their views. “Many political scientists say churches have great potential for these cross-cutting conversations,” Hancock said. “The reason they don’t happen in diverse settings is this avoidance issue,” where people say what they value the most is unity and harmony. “Tacitly,” Hancock said, “that means how we think about our political lives has nothing to do with faith.”

Most Americans say they want their local church to stay out of politics. A 2019 survey showed 63% of congregants in mainline churches expressed that preference. In effect, we now have two kinds of faith communities, Hancock said: enclave congregations, where “everyone leans in the same political direction,” and avoidant congregations, which contain a diversity of views but where politics is not discussed.

What, then, are the consequences for preaching?

One webinar participant said that sermons might well be met with resistance, “that you will unsettle their expectation. They don’t want that cage rattled at all.”

Hancock reminded listeners that Scripture “is full of texts of people in conflict in terms of identity. Biblical texts suggest what a faithful posture might be,” such as the fruit of the Spirit. Or preachers can consider “calls to participate in God’s ministry of reconciliation,” such as 2 Corinthians 5:16–20a.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Ricky Blade, Customer Service Consultant, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Michele Blum, Managing Director of Editorial, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray

God, help us to avoid double vision when we preach your gospel by thinking it’s either about evangelism or about justice. Help us to know it’s about both: Loving Jesus means working for justice, too. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘Covid-19 did not discriminate, but we did’

Poor People’s Campaign report maps the intersections of poverty, race and Covid

July 28,  2022

The Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, Associate Director of Advocacy for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), stands with the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, who is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign with the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. (Courtesy of the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness and the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations)

The Poor People’s Campaign, co-chaired by Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor and theologian the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, took to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., recently to release a detailed report connecting information about Covid deaths to demographic characteristics including income, race, health insurance status and more.

“You’ve got to let us wail,” Theoharis said, quoting her “dear sister and leader” in the PPC, Kelly Greer. “Wail for children, elders and siblings who are no more.”

As we are showing today,” Theoharis said of the report, available here with the executive summary found here, “it is the poor and low-income who have been hurt first and worst and are feeling the greatest loss still.”

“Our nation has gotten accustomed to death, especially when it’s the death of the poor,” said Theoharis, who also directs the Kairos Center at Union Theological Seminary. “To look at this report is to hold up a mirror on our nation.”

Among the findings in the report, completed with help from Howard University and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and titled “Mapping the Intersections of Poverty, Race and COVID-19”:

• During the pandemic, people living in poorer counties died at nearly two times the rate of people who lived in richer counties.
• During the deadliest phases of the pandemic, poorer counties saw many times more deaths than wealthier counties. For example, during the fifth phase of the pandemic brought on by the delta variant, death rates were five times higher in low-income counties.
• Vaccination status cannot explain all the variation of death rates across income groups.
• Counties with the highest death rates are poorer than counties with lower death rates, with higher percentages of people of color.
• In the poorest 10th percentile counties, more than half the population lives under 200% of the poverty line and people of color are over-represented. Uninsured rates are twice as high as the highest median income counties.

“As the report reveals, poverty was not tangential to the pandemic, but deeply embedded in its geography,” the executive summary states. “Yet, failing to consider how poverty intersected with race, gender, ability, insured status and occupation during the pandemic created blind spots in our policy and decision-making, which wrought unnecessary suffering to millions of people.”

And yet, said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, President Joe Biden has declined to meet with poor and low-wealth people “to put addressing this front and center of the nation’s agenda.”

“We must put a face on human abuse,” Barber said. “We refuse to be silent anymore.”

“These findings should create righteous anger among people of conscience,” said Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economics professor and author who directs the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “It’s not individual choices or behavior. Systems are at work.”

“The findings are so contrary to a nation that claims to establish justice and are certainly contrary to God’s call to care for the least of these,” Sachs said. “COVID-19 did not discriminate, but we did.”

“We call on all Americans, and especially President Biden, to look at this data to understand how unjust the system has been and take actions to rectify it,” Sachs said. “President Biden, meet poor people. Meet the people Rev. Barber has been mobilizing. It’s not good keeping poor people away. They can tell you the reality on the ground. Meet them in the White House … This report is more reason to have that meeting.”

By the numbers cited in the report, “more white folk died” during the pandemic than people of color, Barber said. “Black people experienced a higher percentage, but more white people died related to poverty and inequity. We have to tell both stories.”

“We can’t worry anymore about why they aren’t listening,” Barber said during a question-and-answer session concluding the news conference, which can be viewed here. “There has never been a listening until there’s been a massive moral movement,” a movement that “builds power among people hurting and oppressed and presents the nation an agenda for saving itself.”

“Let’s get to work, y’all,” Barber said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Barbara Betts, Manager of Presbyterian Distribution Services, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Teresa Bidart, Bilingual Mission Specialist, Self-Development of People, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God, who created the world when all was chaos and void — as we wander, not knowing where we go, and when all seems dark — say again, we pray, “Let there be light.” Amen.

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