Does #Ferguson Preach?
Challenging white privilege in the pulpit
August 15, 2014
There is certainly much that needs to be said about the troubles in Ferguson, Missouri, what they say about the soul of the nation, and what people of faith and conscious can do in the name of justice, peace, and reconciliation.
Cathy Lynn Grossman has surveyed the digital mediasphere for responses from religious leaders on Twitter and in the streets. And Kelsey Dallas scanned the blogosphere for signs of active engagement in St. Louis and around the country.
In my churchy corner of the interwebs, religious leaders have had a lot more to say about the tragic death of Robin Williams earlier this week than we have about a pattern of violence that seems to defy remediation. My hunch is that Williams, depression, and suicide will show up in a lot more sermons this weekend than will Michael Brown, state-sponsored racism, and faith-based action for equal justice. Now that news is in that Brown had apparently stolen cigars from a convenience store before he was shot to death by officer Darren Wilson, my hunch is that a great homelitic sigh of relief has been heaved by at least some of those who might have felt duty bound to say something about the shooting and the situation in St. Louis. (And, yet, this just in…)
A year and one month ago, in the aftermath of the verdict in the Trayvon Martin trial, I wrote about my frustration with the mostly white churches of my experience and the ways in which we avoid complex engagement with the issues that swirled around the Trayvon Martin case and that have continued to haunt the deaths of unarmed African Americans. At the time, I tweeted what turned out to be rousingly unpopular opinion among the collar and pulpit set:
If you preached a sermon today w/out saying the name #TrayvonMartin, you need to rethink your vocation. Just sayin…
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t say the same thing a year later, and not only because I don’t have time or energy for a inbox full of email from pissed off pastors telling me about how “context” and “occasion” prohibit frank discussions of race, violence, and justice in white, suburban and exurban Christian communities. Rather, I wouldn’t say it because I’m not sure anymore that such conversations matter—at least not situated in mostly white, suburban and exurban congregational locales.
That is, maybe those cranky clergy were right: context matters. It matters that churches have geographically, and therefore socially, politically, and ideologically, structured themselves out of the contexts of injustice and the most of conversations and actions that might effect transformation in communities unlike their own.
Say what you will about social media and its superficial, sensationalized take on reality, you got to give that the Twittersphere is going to testify. Facebook is going to preach and pray. Instagram is going to hold the faces of a suffering before the eyes of the world and whatever God they believe in.
I stopped attending church regularly after the Trayvon Martin verdict. First I was too heartbroken. Then I was too angry.
For a while, I attended different churches in my area, trying to find a genuinely multiethnic one (as in, one not with a Spanish lanuguage service at 9:00 and an English language one at 10:30) within a reasonable drive. Diversity fail. Because I travel a good deal on church-related work, I do attend a lot of church services in different denominations across the country. So, I’m not entirely out of the loop. But of course I am out of the particular, local community that Christians understand as the center of congregational life.
Christianity is not a tradition made up of docile bodies. The Body of Christ is not a docile body. It is meant to move, to act, to live in and thereby transform the world around it.
Followers of Michel Foucault would likely see congregations as a disciplinary structure that creates docile believers who don’t resist dominant social norms. So maybe I’m good that way.
Except, of course, that Christianity is not a tradition made up of docile bodies. The Body of Christ is not a docile body. It is meant to move, to act, to live in and thereby transform the world around it. This is what The Reverend Willis Johnson was up to when he embraced an outraged Joshua Wilson as police pressed in on protestors in Ferguson on Thursday. It was how the Reverend Renata Lamkin responded, praying with protestors as they clashed with police till she herself was hit by a rubber bullet.
Whether or not the death of Michael Brown or the turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri “preach,” in the light of these sorts of bodies and the bodies of those who are gathering this weekend with neighbors, and, more importantly, reaching out to neighborhoods well beyond their usual Sunday experience—bodies not docile, but active in their challenge to violence and injustice as well as to Christian complacency—what happens this Sunday in the pulpit doesn’t seem much to matter.
On the other hand, a clergy colleague reminds me, the choice of how to use the pulpit, what to preach and how to position it “is a form of white privilege for preachers. Our color and our context don’t demand we say something, so we don’t. However, we know deep in our souls that we should or should have. If God is moved with compassion and moved to justice, so should the people who preach.”
So maybe there’s that.
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