DisciplesWorld writer named editor of United Church News

Rev. Gregg Brekke

DisciplesWorld contributing writer Gregg Brekke will soon be the new editor of United Church News, the bi-monthly newspaper of the United Church of Christ, and news director for the denomination’s website. Gregg is currently the pastor of Nexus UCC in Fairfield, OH.

Some of his work for DisciplesWorld includes feature articles and photos on the lives of homeless families and on migrant workers who are rebuilding New Orleans, and news articles on Blue Theology, a new congregation in Kentucky ministering to those recovering from addiction, Cool People Care, and the upcoming Sessions conference for Disciples men. Gregg’s photography is also featured in the documentary “Beyond Borders: Faith and Action in the Arizona Desert.”

We will miss Gregg but look forward to collaborating with him in his new role, which begins Sept. 2. Congratulations Gregg!

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.

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.

UCC gets Sirius with pre-Easter radio ad campaign

Beginning on March 10, the United Church of Christ will be running a two-week radio ad campaign on Sirius satellite radio. Accoring to a report on the UCC’s website the ads are part of the UCC’s “Stillspeaking” initiative and will include a new 60-second spot called “Telephone Tree.” The ads will air on CNN, Fox News, Sirius Left, and OutQ channels, among others.

UCC Communications Director J. Bennett Guess described the ads as “laugh-out-loud funny” — you can listen to “Telephone Tree” on the UCC website and decide for yourself. It takes a lot to make me laugh out loud (and then it’s usually something less cerebral, like a Will Farrell or Chris Farley comedy, or when the talking baby spit up during the E-Trade Super Bowl commercial) but I have to admit, I chuckled at toward the end of the Telephone Tree spot, when the recorded telephone voice says “Have a NICE day!” 

The devil’s in the details…and the fine print

One of our regular writers, Rev. Gregg Brekke, is the pastor of a new church start called Nexus Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Liberty Township, Ohio. This week, several local newspapers owned by Cox Publishing printed a nice story about Gregg’s congregation doing an outreach event for Lent.

Imagine Gregg’s surprise on Tuesday morning when he received several phone calls to let him know that one of the newspapers, the Middletown (OH) Journal, had identified Gregg’s denomination as the “United Church of Satan” in a photo caption.

The caption ran correctly in the other Cox publications, which means that most likely, someone at the Middletown Journal went into their publishing system and changed the caption. 

Gregg placed a call to both his writer and to his advertising rep at the paper. He says they are investigating the incident. To the newspaper’s credit, they ran an apology today. And Gregg, being a stand-up guy, isn’t upset. Bad publicity is still publicity, right?

Darfur: Tents of Hope

The humanitarian relief effort in Darfur is the world’s largest. More than two million people are estimated to be displaced by the ongoing conflicts there, and they are beginning to lose hope

Tents of Hope, an outgrowth of relief efforts from the Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Christ, and Dear Sudan, aims to change that. Groups of people - schools, churches, seminaries, communities - purchase and decorate tents like those the Darfuri refugees live in. The tents are erected as a reminder of the crisis in Darfur.

 Read more about Tents of Hope here; visit the official website; or watch a YouTube video.

UCC launches new blog

The United Church of Christ announced on Sept. 26 the launch of a new blog to highlight congregational news and to facilitate discussion of social justice issues.

The Rev. Chuck Currie, a longtime UCC blogger and progressive writer, is maintaining the new blog. Currie, a UCC pastor and advocate for the homeless, has been blogging for a while now.  We look forward to this addition to the UCC’s news coverage.

One post of note — a young woman from Chicago who went missing recently is a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, one of the UCC’s largest congregations. Trinity is asking for prayers as police search for clues in the disappearance of 28-year-old Nailah Franklin, whose car was found abandoned in Hammond, Indiana earlier this week.