Friday, August 21, 2020

White Too Long 3 - Sermon for Week ending August 22, 2020


Reading

Our reading for this week is by James Baldwin, from The Fire Next Time.

The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection or myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born into the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honestly with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors.

The tendency has been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing. One watched the lives they led. One could not be fooled about that. One watched the things they did and the excuses they gave themselves. And one felt that if one had had that white man’s worldly advantages, one would never have become as bewildered and as joyless and as thoughtlessly cruel as he.

Sermon 

Robert Jones, the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, ends the book on a note of hope with the story of two churches in Macon, Ga, his parent’s hometown, First Baptist Church of Christ, a white congregation, and First Baptist Church on New Street, a black congregation, just around the corner from each other. They began as one church, First Baptist Macon in 1826.  All of its charter members were slave owners, and for its first two decades, they brought their slaves to church with them. The slave owners sat in the front, and the enslaved people sat in the back. But in the 1840’s, amid tensions around secession and slavery, and with black members outnumbering white members, the whites segregated the blacks into a different building on New Street. These congregations sat almost back to back, through the Civil War and Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and ‘white flight’ from Macon’s city core with no meaningful contact. Until 2014, when a mutual acquaintance urged the two pastors, Rev. Scott Dickison of First Baptist of Christ, and Rev. James Goolsby, of First Baptist on New Street, to meet. They did, and their early conversations led them to connect to The New Baptist Covenant, a group that was started in 2006 by former president Jimmy Carter to help black and white Baptists begin to heal their divisions and work together for social justice. The two churches began joining for social events like Easter egg hunts and potlucks. But other seemingly low-risk joint gatherings revealed just how little they understood each other. When no teenagers from First Baptist New Street signed up for a joint trip to Universal Studios in Florida, planned by First Baptist of Christ, Dickison asked Goolsby, “Why?” And Goolsby told him that he and many church members were parents of teenage boys, and since the murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, due to Florida’s stand your ground laws, no black parents would allow their children to go. He said, “You put a hoodie on my son, and it’s just Trayvon, and there is no way in the world I am going to let my son go to Florida without me.” But that event, and the honesty from pastor Goolsby, opened up a conversation about just how out of touch most white parents are with the lives of black parents and their children. 5 months later, the two churches held a joint service and signed a covenant to work together toward racial justice and healing. 3 weeks after that, when white supremacist Dylan Roof murdered 9 members of Emmanuel AME in Charleston during their bible study, both Macon pastors joined a local rally denouncing white supremacy. When it was discovered the next year that the original First Baptist Church of Macon had sold some of its enslaved members to pay its bills and even to build a new building, Rev. Dickison was open about it, telling his congregation that in order for any progress to be made, it was necessary to get the truth out into the open.

Some white families left the church during these years. Others still argue that uncomfortable conversations about race are pointless, since none of the people currently attending were involved in slavery. In 2018, in their commitment to more directly confront the history of racial violence, 21 people from both churches, ranging in age from their twenties to their seventies, took a trip to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (also known as the Lynching museum) n Montgomery. (I know some of you have visited it, and when this pandemic is over, I want us to take a group trip there)  In their pre-trip discussion the night before, many African Americans expressed fears that it might stir repressed memories of family members going missing  or of seeing names that they recognized. And some white people were apprehensive about being confronted with all that truth right in front of them. The trip was a meaningful experience for both congregations, and in addition to their ongoing work with the New Baptist Covenant, they are in conversation with the Equal Justice Initiative and are committed to joint racial justice work. The story of these two churches and what they have done together isn’t earth shattering, although for Macon, Georgia, it’s a pretty big deal. But it is a testament to the importance of white Christians being honest about our white supremacist past, and having uncomfortable conversations, without getting defensive. And it can serve as an example for us, to take the next steps, to try to repair the damage and heal the divisions that white supremacy has caused. So that we can work together for justice for everyone.

 


1 comment:

  1. Thank you, Kathy and Gary. And thank you for the beautiful music, Jane.

    ReplyDelete

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