Today in the Mission Yearbook - The thread of bondage

Sunspots, the Synod of the Sun podcast, takes on the Supreme Court and other institutions where recently justice isn’t readily apparent

November 15, 2022

 

Participants during the most recent edition of Sunspots were, clockwise from top left, Sarah Leer, the Rev. Elizabeth Brinegar and Natarsha Sanders. (Screenshot)

As they did earlier this year, three thought leaders in the Synod of the Sun again joined their hearts, minds and voices while recording Sunspots, the synod’s podcast. Listen to their conversation here.

The three — podcast host Rev. Elizabeth Brinegar along with Natarsha Sanders and Sarah Leer — called their 54-minute conversation “The Thread of Bondage,” based at least initially on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn historic abortion rights in place since the high court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

Last week the 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) affirmed two items related to reproductive justice: HSB-03, “A Resolution on Reproductive Justice,” and HSB-11, “On Affirming Reproductive Justice.”

Brinegar is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Arkansas, as well as the chair of the synod’s network for dismantling racism and the operations director for the synod’s ecumenical mission, Solar Under the Sun. Leer is a practical theologian and a former Young Adult Volunteer in New Orleans who’s serving First Presbyterian Church in Dallas. Sanders founded Centering the Sacred with her husband, Lorenzo, and is passionate about inclusion. Both Sanders and Leer are doctoral students in educational ministry in the same cohort at Columbia Theological Seminary.

“We believe that learning about God should change our lives,” Brinegar said at the outset of the podcast before asking: “What do we as individuals feel our faith is saying about this ruling?”

“Did we not see this coming? Did they not tell us this was in the works?” Sanders asked. “There is a thread of bondage that has weaved its way into the foundation of our nation.”

Participants in the most recent edition of Sunspots were, clockwise from top left, Sarah Leer, the Rev. Elizabeth Brinegar and Natarsha Sanders. (Screenshot)

“I know that can be tiring to hear, but we are going to keep hearing it because it is still necessary, and we are still bound,” Sanders said. A quick online search reveals that states that allowed people to be enslaved up until 1865 and states restricting abortion rights or preparing to do so are practically the same, Sanders noted. “In 2022, the thread of bondage has gotten tighter and has become more apparent. People are starting to say, ‘Wait a minute.’”

“If you were not in the fight earlier, now’s the time, friend,” Leer said. “If that means looking at your personal finances to get some skin in the game” or investing time and energy, get busy, Leer urged. “You can write beautiful liturgy all day long, but what are you going to do beyond that? What are our communities going to do?”

Sanders offered one caution, courtesy of the Rev. Traci Blackmon, Associate General Minister of Justice & Local Church Ministries for the United Church of Christ: This is not the time to learn how to ride a bike.

“Don’t you get over here with your training wheels on,” crowding out other cyclists who have long trained for the fight, Sanders said. “Go on the sidelines and cheer on those who have trained for this moment. Don’t you be in the Tour de France with training wheels on.”

“If you aren’t ready to jump in, that’s all right,” Leer said. “Stay on the sidelines and help fix up bikes or distribute beverages. We are all in the web of interdependence in the struggle for liberation.”

The fight does, however, necessitate showing up, Brinegar said.

“Colleagues and friends have accompanied people at [reproductive health] clinics for a long time, serving on boards and giving funds and sounding the alarm,” Leer said. “Rosa Parks didn’t one day say, ‘My feet are tired.’”

Parks “was not the first person to refuse to move,” Brinegar said. “But she’s the one we hear about. She was trained for that moment.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Tamron Keith, Associate Director for Finance and Administration, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Stephen Keizer, Vice President Ministry Relations, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

God of amazing grace, may we see the face of Christ and respond with your compassionate love in ways that transform lives. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Synod of the Sun network aims to help confront and dismantle racism

About 40 people in four states seek to heed ‘God’s ongoing call to love and justice’

November 30, 2020

Members of the Synod of the Sun’s Network for Dismantling Racism during a June 4 video meeting. (Contributed photo)

Some symptoms of racism might be obliterated with a wrecking ball approach, but a new Synod of the Sun network aims to help dismantle the structure and proactively remember grim events of the past, including the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

“If the hope and goal is for everyone to be equal, then the hard work that we are doing will be undoing, dismantling that structure and building anew,” said Rev. Jennifer Hardin, 31, associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and a member of the synod network that she helped name.

Activity in the Synod’s Network for Dismantling Racism has accelerated since its formation in January. Members have built a list of 10 goals with a mission to heed “God’s ongoing call to love and justice … to (see) the atrocities of systemic racial injustice” and to “equip and engage for transformation throughout society.”

Valerie Young, Synod Leader and Stated Clerk, lived in the Tulsa area several years ago, but had never heard of the Race Massacre. She learned about it during a conversation with Rev. Jerrod Lowry, an African American pastor who is now the general presbyter for Coastal Carolina Presbytery, and learned more on a synod leaders’ trip to Montgomery, Alabama.

“We don’t want confrontation,” Young said. “We want to be gently prodded. That is what has been ingrained in us — it’s part of white privilege. Now it’s time for white people to get uncomfortable.”

Young drafted Commissioned Pastor Kristy Rodgers for synod leadership and then asked her to start the network. Rodgers had been on a slow simmer over racism and decided that she could not “stand on the sidelines any longer.”

Now she has read three books describing the destruction and massacre of a thriving community in a 35-block area of Tulsa often referred to as “America’s Black Wall Street.” As a teen she moved from a small Wisconsin town of 1,300 people to Tulsa’s Memorial High School with an enrollment of 1,300 students.

The synod’s Network for Dismantling Racism (NDR) is still defining itself in weekly meetings facilitated by Rodgers on a video conferencing service. About 40 members have signed on to confront racism in the synod’s geography of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

“I’ve observed lots of silent complacency,” said Rev. Dr. Ron Hankins, pastor of First Presbyterian in Odessa, Texas, during a recent meeting. “Zero risk means zero change.”

Hankins, an African American man from New Jersey, took the call in Odessa after a 15- year pastorate in Baltimore.

Young drafted Hankins to join Rodgers. Both are 57-year-old military veterans. Both are struck deeply by the Tulsa Massacre. Hankins sees the same “cloud of dark rage and anger deep within the human heart” motivating actions a century ago as well as the racist actions in 2020. Younger Presbyterians see the same concern.

“As a full-time college student in Tulsa, I see systemic racism and its consequences scattered throughout my community,” said Katharine Nipp, 21, a network member who is grateful the synod is taking a role in racial justice.

The NDR will host two educational events annually and facilitate antiracism training throughout the synod’s 11 presbyteries. The network aims to “identify and reject practices and policies that protect a racist status quo in our churches and communities.”

The workgroups of the NDR cover advocacy and activism, education, resources, and training in addition to planning the centennial commemoration in Tulsa next June.

The commemoration will be coordinated among Oklahoma’s three presbyteries and avoid duplication of other events led by the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. The NDR will host an educational event to continue uncomfortable conversations and actions in the name of the gospel.

 Shane Whisler for the Synod of the Sun, Special to Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:  

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Andrea Trautwein, Office of the General Assembly
Tonia Trice, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray:

Good and gracious God, thank you for the unending opportunities to share what we have and learn again and again that your grace is sufficient. Amen.