Graduation season

The streams of Charmin blowing in the trees outside the local high school confirmed it: it’s graduation season.

Disciples colleges, universities, and seminaries are sending forth the Class of 2008 this month. Commencement speakers at these schools include Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, former presidential candidate George McGovern, and the esteemed Rev. Fred Craddock, who will speak at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa this weekend.

Jeff Gill, whose wife teaches at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, attended the school’s commencement exercises last weekend where Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, addressed graduates. In “Notes to a Commencement Speaker,” Jeff shares what he wishes the speaker had told them.

‘Round here [the Woods family hacienda], it’s all about the high school graduations this year. We have two of them, plus my ordination, during a four-day span.  [more on that later...]

Conversation on race, anyone?

You may have heard that the United Church of Christ has invited its pastors, members, other Christians, and the nation to participate in a ’sacred conversation on race.’ This was announced about a month ago, in the middle of the whole Jeremiah Wright/Barack Obama thing. Part of the deal is that ministers will be kicking off the conversation this Sunday by preaching on the subject of race.

We’ll be posting an article on DisciplesWorld’s website tomorrow about the UCC and their hopes for this conversation.

Meanwhile, I came across an interesting blog post from Dennis Sanders, an African-American Disciples pastor in Minneapolis. Frankly, Dennis says well what I (and maybe others) are thinking: let’s have a ‘real’ conversation on race.

Maybe Dennis and I are just feeling more than a little post-liberal crankiness these days (hey, he didnt’call his blog “Oscar the Pastor” for no reason), but it seems like all our conversations about race are short, because they seem to be aimed at identifying systems (and people) that are racist. Not that that is bad…but does it really lead to change? What if we had a different kind of conversation, as Dennis suggests? One where people could just speak their minds.

As a white person, I know that I participate in racism. I know that I can’t always see it and I want to help eliminate it. But white guilt is a dead-end street and I gave up living there a long time ago. [Note: there's a great book called The Heart of Racial Justice by Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson which, as a step toward reconciliation, calls for renouncing our false identities, including the "hip white person" identity.]

Now this may seem to contradict some things I’ve said/written in the past, but in my mind it doesn’t. I wish more white people understood more about black liberation theology, but the fact is, most have never heard of it. And most have never participated in anti-racism training. And probably never will. But a real conversation on race, the one we keep on not having in public but having all over the place in private or semi-private, in email and on blogs but NEVER in the church, is the one where whites are allowed to say something like “Jeremiah Wright makes me mad,” without someone looking at them like they’re an unenlightened jack***.  And black people need to be able to say what they need to say too. The conversation might be heated, but it need not devolve into death threats. People do need to be able to be real.

And that’s what I LIKE about Jeremiah Wright, and why I don’t find him offensive. It’s not just that I’ve read James Cone. It’s that at least Wright, for all his brashness, is speaking honestly what he believes (even if many people don’t agree).

My son, who is 18, tells me these conversations we ‘old folks’ (i.e. mostly well-meaning liberal Boomers and X-ers) are having about race are irrelevant to his generation. He agrees that racism exists (as do I, don’t get me wrong) and that it is still a problem. The difference is that his peers talk about race in a different (and possibly more authentic) way. Maybe he’s right.

Female DOC pastor in Haitian church featured in article

The Stamford (CT) Advocate ran a click-worthy article today as part of its “Two Communities, One Faith” series. This particular article, “Women leading the flock,” profiles the few female ministers leading the city’s Hispanic and Haitian congregations. One of the three women profiled is Holny Jean-Louis, pastor of Church of God of the New Jerusalem, a Haitian Disciples of Christ congregation.

The article goes into the issues and obstacles these women face as they try to follow God’s call even though some say they don’t belong in ministry because they are not male.

It also mentions another Disciples congregation in Stamford, First Stamford Spanish Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) whose former pastor, Rev. Candida Gonzalez, was one of only two Hispanic female pastors in the area (Gonzalez retired).

Two out of four…not bad!

Where in the world in DisciplesWorld?

Rev. Ike Nicholson and his wife Shauna, of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Ashland, Ky., visited Jordan in March, hosting a group of 25 Disciples from Kentucky, and they took DisciplesWorld along - literally.

If your Disciples of Christ congregation or group is going on a mission trip or tour this summer, take us with you! Send us a photo of your group with our magazine, and we’ll post it on our blog.

We also want to hear about your experiences. We publish trip stories and reflections on our website under the “Disciples Around the World” and “Hurricane Recovery Stories” categories. This is a great way to tell others how Disciples are learning and serving in Jesus’ name. We also hear, from those who’ve been on mission trips and tours to places such as the Holy Land, that the experiences deepened their faith and that they received more than they gave. So send us your trip stories and photos!

Photo: Rev. Ike Nicholson (left) with Jordanian tour guide Ali, and Hakim, in the holy city of Petra.

Desperately seeking faith

I’ve only met him once, but I wouldn’t have figured Rev. Bob Cornwall for a “Desperate Housewives” viewer. Yet in his latest column in the Lompoc (Calif.) Record, he writes about an episode of the popular show that explored faith and church-going in a surprising way. Bob writes:

If you follow the show, you know that the character of Lynette Scavo has faced a series of challenges that include cancer, seeing a friend being killed by a tornado, along with significant marriage issues.

Having gotten to that point in life without any significant religious training or background, she begins to wrestle with spiritual questions. As she does so, she spies the prissy Bree Van de Kamp and her new husband heading off to church.

Filled with questions, she decides to go to church and looks to Bree for guidance.

Read more about the episode, and what Bob had to say about it, here. For more of Bob - visit his blog “Ponderings on a Faith Journey” on the Christian Century’s blog network. It’s worth the trip.

Wright’s theology “not new or radical”

Some of you may be tired of the whole Jeremiah Wright thing, but I’d be remiss not to let readers know about a great article that puts Rev. Wright’s preaching and remarks into their context, and then explains that context extremely well.

Salon.com’s Sarah Posner interviewed Dr. Jonathan L. Walton, assistant professor of religious studies at UC-Riverside. It’s an excellent interview.

Walton points out, among other things:

1. Black Liberation Theology has been around since the 1960s and can be found in the curriculum of the leading seminaries in the U.S.

2. While Wright and Martin Luther King are two different people, MLK had his own “God damn America” moment toward the end of his career. Walton also says that the sermon he was schedule to preach on the Sunday after he was assassinated was titled “Why American may go to hell.”

3. While Wright’s statements about HIV/AIDS may not be true, they can be seen as shorthand for frustration with the government’s lack of truthfulness on the Tuskegee experiments, Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, etc.

Posner’s interview with Walton takes “black liberation theology” out of quotation marks [as it's been used in the press, as if it's something made up, as in "this so-called 'black liberation theology'"]. If you’re still puzzled and angered by Wright, but open to learning something new, this article will help.

“Vintage Wright”

We were fortunate to have one of our writers, Beckie Supiano, in attendance yesterday to cover Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s speech/Q&A at the National Press Club. Beckie’s article is posted on the DisciplesWorld website today.

Dr. Delores Carpenter, who was also there, called it “vintage Wright.” Like him or not, you’ve got to respect him for just going there and being himself, which it sounds like he did.

I haven’t had a chance to talk with Beckie yet, but I’m interested in hearing what her impressions were. Not just of Wright, but of the kinds of questions journalists asked him. From some of the reports I’ve read, it almost seems like they’ve got their collective minds made up about Wright. But we’ll see what Beckie thinks.

The big debate in what I’ve read outside the religious press seems to be “What should Obama do?”  Salon.com compiled an article from its staff today along those lines. I usually respect Salon’s approach but most of their staff reports just struck me as off-point. The question of what Obama should do is not the right one, in my opinion. Wright is his own man. As is Obama. One’s a preacher, the other, a politician. 

The best suggestions I heard from Salon’s staff were that Obama, with all eyes on him now, needs to stop this train-wreck-in-the-making and remind people of what’s going on while we’re all uncritically following this non-crisis: war, poverty, food crisis, destruction of the earth…stuff like that. 

By the way, Beckie said only a couple of journalists stuck around for the REST of the day’s events which included a teach-in at Shiloh Baptist Church, and a worship service. The whole event, including the National Press Club breakfast, was part of a two-day symposium on the prophetic witness of the African American Church, sponsored by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference.  Yeah, I know, they had deadlines to meet and stories to file. Too bad though - they might have learned that there’s more to this whole “prophetic witness” thing than they can contain inside a set of quotation marks.

Brings to mind a great line from another prophet, Bob Dylan: “I’ll know my song well, before I start singin’…”

As the rest of the song goes, “…it’s a hard rain’s gonna fall.” 

Herrmann wins SPJ award for environmental article

Just found out this morning that Angela Herrmann of Disciples Home Missions won an award from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for her DisciplesWorld article, “Eating away at the environment” (April 2007) (login required).  Congrats, Angie!

Miscellaneous props

Lots happening in the world of Disciples these days. First off, one of our writers, Lisa Barnett, is graduating in a few weeks from Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Lisa is a Disciples M.Div. student and recently won several awards given by the faculty and her peers. She will do well wherever she goes from here. Lisa was part of our General Assembly news staff in ‘07 and has covered the Stalcup Lectures at Brite for us this year, among other things.

Next up, young adult Disciples have been making the news lately. Beau Underwood was interviewed by the Associated Press for this article on young religious voters. [Thanks, Adam Frieberg, for allowing us to use this photo of Beau in a t-shirt that complements the headline!]

Pastors Stacy Spencer and Greg Diaz were also in the news last week. The Commercial Appeal in Memphis did an excellent article about building relationships between Hispanic and black churches.

Finally, DisciplesWorld won 7 awards at the Associated Church Press conference last week in Dallas, including a runner-up award in the Best Denominational Magazine category. I mention this not so much to brag, as to say “thanks” to all those who supported the magazine through a tough financial year in 2007. Without advertisers, subscribers, donors, and readers, we would not be able to do the work that we do. It is a privelege to represent Disciples and an honor to tell your stories.

UPDATE 4/29/08: Lisa Barnett’s awards were the Colby D. Hall Award, and the Student Pastoral Ministry Award. She graduates on May 10.   RW

Wright and King

Bob Cornwall, on his “Ponderings on a Faith Journey” blog http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/, makes some interesting observations about the whole Jeremiah Wright controversy. While checking those out though, I started reading through some really interesting stuff he posted regarding the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, on April 4.

Bob includes a link to King’s “Mountaintop” speech and excerpts a piece by Michael Eric Dyson in the LA Times as reminders that King’s calls for justice became stronger and less palatable to many in the years since his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. By 1968, he was losing popularity for his willingness to take on the Vietnam War, among other reasons, and he may have been losing hope that the nation could really make racial progress.

Since his death, as Dyson points out in his recent Time Magazine piece called ”The Burdens of Martyrdom,” (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1726040,00.html) remembrances of King tend to portray him more like he was in the early 1960s, in the “I Have a Dream” days.  Bob compiles examples of some of King’s rhetoric toward the end of his life, which sounds not all that far off from Jeremiah Wright’s.  All of this is not to disparage King, but to point out how much our collective memory has forgotten. 

Improved race relations are a great thing, but we have a long way to go and we don’t have to “whitewash” history to achieve them.

Speaking of race relations, the United Church of Christ is calling for a new national dialogue on race. (http://www.disciplesworld.com/newsArticle.html?wsnID=13237 )

Wherefore art thou, Disciples of Christ? Per my last post, now WOULD be an appropriate time for the leaders of the UCC’s partner denomination to step up. Perhaps they will.

Editor’s note: an apology for including the links in this post. WordPress switched its blog interface and it’s not allowing me to link the usual way.