Summer 2013 PRISM

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PRISM Vol. 20, No. 4 Summer 2013

Editor Creative Director Copy Editor Deputy Director Publisher Operations Manager

Kristyn Komarnicki Rhian Tomassetti Leslie Hammond Sarah Withrow King Ronald J. Sider Josh Cradic

Contributing Editors Christine Aroney-Sine Myron Augsburger

Clive Calver

Rudy Carrasco

Andy Crouch J. James DeConto

Gloria Gaither David P. Gushee

Jan Johnson

Craig S. Keener Peter Larson

Richard Mouw

Philip Olson Jenell Williams Paris

Christine Pohl

James Skillen

Al Tizon

Jim Wallis

Issac Canales M. Daniel Carroll R. Paul Alexander James Edwards Perry Glanzer Ben Hartley Stanley Hauerwas Jo Kadlecek Marcie Macolino Mary Naber Earl Palmer Derek Perkins Elizabeth D. Rios Lisa Thompson Heidi Rolland Unruh Bruce Wydick

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A Publication of Evangelicals for Social Action The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University

All contents © 2013 ESA/PRISM magazine.

CONTENTS

SUMMER 2013

COLUMNS 3 REFLECTIONS

Conversations for Growth and Grace

4 TALK BACK

Letters to the Editor

5 CELEBRATE! 6 MUSIC NOTES

Delighting in the Physical World

7 ART & SOUL 8 ON BEING THE CHURCH

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Loving the Church for the Sake of Justice

9 MAY I HAVE A WORD An Immigration Story

42 OFF THE SHELF Book reviews

48 SAY WHAT? 49 FAITH AND REASON

Because “The Bible Says So” Isn’t Enough

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50 MAKING A DIFFERENCE Church for Troubled Minds

53 MINISTRY MATTERS

Woman with a Bag of Seeds: Pamela Leon

54 WORTH REPEATING

“I’m Not a Social Activist”

55 ESXATON

Mabuhay! Osiyo!

56 THE LAST WORD

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The Sun & the Sun / Mobile’s Poetic Justice (photo by Arcenia Finley) / Ron Sider at 2005 protest (photo by Ryan Rodrick Beiler)

Poetic Justice

CONTENTS

SUMMER 2013

FEATURES 10 RACED-AS-WHITE Paul Alexander calls for freedom from the fictions of race and the unearned privileges assigned to light skin.

No guilt required, just a sincere desire to set things right.

16 RACIAL RECONCILIATION AND THE PRO-LIFE

16 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have 16 clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:26-28

AGENDA If white Christians can’t show their African American brethren that they value black life outside the womb as well as inside it, their pro-life arguments will continue to ring hollow.

ALSO: A CRISIS OF VAST PROPORTIONS HOW I BECAME PRO-LIFE AT AGE 15

22 LOVE, LOVE: A SERMON Al Tizon distills the gospel down to the essentials: Love God and love neighbor.

Maryada Vallet

26 LIVING OUT FAITH IN THE WAR ZONE OF THE

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BORDERLANDS Re-imagining our national borderlands as places of justice, faith, and peace.

ALSO: PEACE WITH GOD, PEACE ON EARTH

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STEP OVER A HOMELESS MAN TO FEED A DOG (AND OTHER THINGS I’VE NEVER HAD TO DO AS AN ANIMAL ADVOCATE) Expanding our circle of compassion and care to include all God’s creatures, great and small.

38 CHAT ROOM PRISM speaks with four experts on pornography who are committed to dragging sexual brokenness out of the darkness and into the healing light.

34 This issue’s cover is a nod to the Beatles’ 1968 White Album.

Learn more on page 4.

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This “Beyond Whiteness” PRISM cover is a stylistic nod to the Beatles’ White Album, which was released 45 years ago to mixed reviews.

Critics found its songs too trivial and apolitical given the turbulence of the times, and, in an ironic nod to the Beatles’ album, this issue of PRISM is serving up quite the opposite—a collection of articles that many critics will consider too weighty and politically precarious given the vacuity and indifference of our times.

In a world where porn stars are invited to speak at Ivy League schools and more Americans can identify the Harlem Shake than the Speaker of the House, here at PRISM we are gluttons for real conversations, no matter how difficult and unnerving they might feel to us or others. We don’t mind asking hard questions, viewing things from unusual angles, or being proved wrong—that’s how growth happens; that’s how grace happens.

So welcome to a challenging set of new pages. In our cover story, Paul Alexander calls for the end of Whiteness through the dismantling of race and the privilege we’ve attached to it. This piece includes not only provocative arguments that some will find discomfiting but also some funky words unfamiliar to most of us.

We’ve included a glossary of terms to help you navigate this little-charted terrain. So put on your adventure gear and get ready to confront some treacherous assumptions you’ve likely never considered before.

Elsewhere in the issue, we invite our African American sisters to speak to what a truly pro-life agenda would look like; we wrestle with what border security really means (hint: not more fences); we challenge ourselves to remove torture from the food chain; and we shine a healing spotlight on our sexually broken lives.

I’m confident you’ll find something here to both rock and float your boat.

This issue also marks the beginning of a new era for us. Ron Sider has retired, and our organization

Reflections from the Editor

Conversations for Growth and Grace

is officially under new sub-management—I say “sub,” because Christ has always been our true CEO. Submitting to his lordship and giving him control is what we have always striven for, and that is decidedly not slated to change!

You’ll notice a few logistic and content changes, however. First, instead of this being the July/August issue, it is actually our first-ever summer issue. Starting with this one, we’ll be putting out four seasonal issues a year instead of six bimonthly issues. PRISM will continue to be as rich, confrontational, and beautiful as ever—just think of it as having an extra month per issue to digest it all! And in addition to PRISM, we’ll be working to produce topical resources to help churches (and everyone else) apply a biblical framework to challenging issues such as peace in Israel/Palestine, sexual justice, immigration, etc. We’ll also be expanding our website with lots of great content that we can’t accommodate in PRISM. We also have a handful of new columns appearing for the first time in this issue. “Worth Repeating” will dip into the PRISM archives to revive a past column that is just too good to leave on the shelf, “Faith & Reason” will encourage us to investigate our faith both mindfully and prayerfully, and “The Last Word” will close out each issue with an art/Scripture combo aimed to help us refocus and meditate on Christ—our Savior, foundation, and raison d’etre.

Introducing our new co-presidents, “esXaton” will allow Al Tizon and Paul Alexander to explore how we can incarnate God’s eternal kingdom, today, wherever we may find ourselves. In addition, in a move to embrace the whole family of God, future issues will feature selected articles in Spanish, Arabic, and other languages, with English translations posted online.

We’d like to know what you think about these changes in particular and our vision in general, so don’t keep your thoughts to yourself. Contact us via the website, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever means you use to reach out and tap a friend’s shoulder. We do what we do because of you. Thanks for reading.

This issue’s contributors include:

Cheryl Sanders

Clayton Singleton

Sarah Withrow King

Chris Johnson

Maryada Vallet

Grace Biske

Tammy Carnegie

Kristyn Komarnicki marvels at how blessed she is to have a job that involves wrestling with big ideas, collaborating with gifted writers, entertaining difficult questions, celebrating with sinner-saints, and telling tales about it all.

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Talk Back

@ f Like us on facebook@ Facebook.com/evansocaction t Follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/PRISMMagazine1 I appreciated Al Tizon’s “Justice Filipino Style” in the May/June issue very much. What struck me was the idea of people expressing hatred for their own whiteness. Tizon has inspired me to reflect on that as a white person.

There are stages to the healing process, and if we get stuck in any one stage there is danger. As a white female, I have grown up ignorant for the most part of the damage done by whites. Of course, there was some recognition of slavery and the racial struggles during the civil rights era, but for the most part, as far as I was concerned, that was all in the past and was corrected by the heroic actions of “good white people.” As a Christian, I believed that if we just loved as Christ loved then all would be well. I was in denial.

Through relationships, dialogue, and studying the history of race relations in this country, I have developed an ear to hear the voices of the marginalized and oppressed. Over time there came a point where I realized the magnitude of damage done by whites. Racism is not only an individual problem but also a deeply embedded systemic issue that I am a part of. Coming to terms with this reality broke my heart and continues to do so. At different stages of my awareness, I have grieved being white, and like those students that came knocking at Dr. Tizon’s door, at times I loathed my race and my heritage. I have moments of that even today, especially when I am immersed in the reality of injustice and suffering. The hatred I have at being white is, most likely, deep down inside, a hatred of sin and injustice. I would also venture to say that, in some strange way, to hate being white appeases white guilt, without ever having to really address racial issues.

It took time and wisdom to discern this, but the most dramatic moves away from my hatred of being white occurred within the safety of relationships I developed across racial lines—relationships where unconditional love was extended and received, where stereotypes were challenged through honest dialogue.

These relationships gave me a desire to actively work against racism, because the victims of it were my friends and loved ones. I am so thankful to God that reconciliation and love include the oppressor as well as the oppressed and that there is redemption for all involved! It is a fine line to walk.

How do we open people’s eyes to the sin of racism without bringing a spirit of condemnation, yet help people face the reality of racism beneath the surface?

At the end of the day, the good news is we can die to that sin and embrace being a new creation. We don’t have to go with the flow and participate in a racist system actively or passively. And as repentance happens, white people can use their whiteness for the glory of God and can help reshape a future where racism lessens.

Stefanie Wilson Coatesville, Pa. I really appreciated Kristyn Komarnicki’s “It’s Complicated” essay in the May/ June issue. Food is a concern that is near and dear to my heart. I am a selftaught, fumbling home cook, passionate about food and its potential to create community and nourish weary souls and bodies. My relationship with food is, indeed, incredibly complicated. I go through a lot of butter, sugar, and chocolate in my house, and I am constantly searching for ways to bake more sustainably and more mindfully. My husband and I have been working over the past several years to buy locally, seasonally, and organic and/or fair trade whenever we can.

However, I still struggle with these changes, because I know that for many of the poor folks in my neighborhood, these choices simply aren’t possible. Buying organic and fair trade is expensive. There’s no getting around it. And the stores that are most available in low-income communities don’t have a fancy organic section. You buy what’s on the shelves, and you’re lucky if fresh produce happens to be one of the things on those shelves. I personally shop outside our neighborhood so I can go to a nicer grocery store with more healthy options.

But I realize this is totally a result of my own privilege. It’s a strange place to be—wanting to make healthy, sustainable choices but at the same time understanding that these things are simply not within reach of many in our nation.

I’ve written extensively on this topic a few times on my food blog, Neighborfood (NeighborfoodBlog.com), and would love for you to check it out! Thanks again for writing on this issue!

Courtney Rowland Columbus, Ohio

Join the Conversation @ Email the editor @ KKomarni@Eastern.edu e Sign up for ePistle, the free weekly e-news

also published by ESA, @ EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org/ePistle

Celebrate!

… BY THE GRACE OF

Photo: healthychild.org

There are no small victories in advocacy work. Every victory lays a foundation for future ones. Here we celebrate a handful of positive changes that have taken place in recent months as a reminder that every voice counts when it is added to a chorus of others. You can speak out for justice wherever you find yourself today—and you can start by sending some thank you emails to decision-makers who have responded to the voices of democracy.

GOD WE HAVE THE

services for families of murder victims. His office has already kicked off the program by circulating a survey to victims’ service providers to identify gaps in support, so they can hit the ground running when the budget takes effect.

And it’s all thanks to people like you. Go to Equal Justice USA (tinyurl.com/l4vt6hk) to thank the governor.

SAFETY AND SECURITY TO RUSH HEADLONG INTO THEM AND FIND OURSELVES BETTER FOR IT ON THE OTHER SIDE.

“After closing his book, I’m better equipped to heed Jesus’ simple command, ‘Ask.’”

WESLEY HILL author of Washed and Waiting

Tide, now more “free & gentle” In just one short year, consumers like you succeeded in convincing the biggest consumer product company on the planet to reformulate their laundry products Tide and Tide Free & Gentle to drastically reduce the levels of the cancer-causing chemical 1,4-dioxane. Procter & Gamble was responding to the Tide: Take the Cancer Out campaign. Thanks to a mom who launched a petition that amassed more than 78,000 signatures, we all enjoyed a platform for demanding laundry products that are free from toxic chemicals.

P&G still has a long way to go to make their products safe for people (and their testing methods safe for animals). But in the meantime, let’s applaud them on this move to make Tide safer and let them know how important it is to us that they respond to our concerns. Go to DemocracyinAction. org (tinyurl.com/amfgwqz) to send P&G a thank you email.

Maryland abolishes the death penalty Urged by human rights groups across the country, Governor Martin O’Malley took a leading role in this fight to end the death penalty. In March, Maryland’s General Assembly voted to make Maryland the 18th US state to repeal the death penalty—a cruel, unnecessary, and wasteful policy that risks executing the innocent. In April, O’Malley announced that next year the state budget will reallocate some of the savings from death penalty repeal to expand

The TVPRA is law In late February Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a critical tool that provides vital services to survivors and curtails human trafficking at home and abroad. President Obama signed it into law on March 8.

Says Mary Ellison, policy director of the DCbased anti-trafficking nonprofit Polaris Project, “In 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was a landmark bill that greatly increased America’s ability to protect victims and assist survivors, and it was reauthorized three times with bipartisan support … In 2011, the TVPRA—a bipartisan bill—was allowed to expire for the first time, placing critical anti-trafficking initiatives at risk.” The reauthorization of this bill puts teeth in our pursuit of legal justice for the many men, women, and children right in our own neighborhoods who are compelled to work long hours under harsh conditions for little or no pay, or forced into the commercial sex trade.

Last October, we collected signatures from our readers to urge legislators to pass the TVPRA. Thank you for taking action to help pass this important legislation! Please take a few minutes right now to thank the president and members of Congress on the ESA website at tinyurl. com/cgxwmp4.

TELL US WHAT KIND OF ADVOCACY YOU ENGAGE IN (SEE CONTACT INFO ON PAGE 3).

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Music Notes

cause in my heart is only One. / Through this window to the garden nothing leaves or comes in but love. / On this mountain by the water no one else can touch her but God. / On this boulder in the sunlight nothing else could matter somehow.

Delighting in the Physical World

T

he Soil & the Sun’s sophomore album starts off with a sound like human voices speaking underwater. This liquid motif continues as the accidental squeaking of a finger moving along a roundwound bronze guitar string repeats often enough to conjure a dripping faucet. It’s a fittingly tactile opening for a band that delights in the physical world. The band is named, after all, for the most basic of elements. “What Wonder Is This Universe!” the album title proclaims.

From the opening arpeggio chords, hushed vocals, and swelling strings, it’s hard not to hear a nod to fellow Midwestern native Sufjan Stevens in the music of this Grand Rapids eight-piece. Also like Sufjan, S&S are unafraid of intimate details or metaphysical wonderings: Were you the one who passed / Through these walls / As we took our bath?

With an appearance at the SXSW festival in Austin, Tex., boosts from Paste magazine, and NPR’s All Songs Considered, The Soil & the Sun is poised for the sort of national attention Stevens has earned. They’re culling from some of the best trends in indie rock: big, prominent drumbeats when they’re called for; no drums at all when atmosphere is the goal; layered co-ed vocals; vast, sprawling arrangements of percussion, guitars, violin, cello, keyboards, and more.

The online concert series Audiotree Live hosted a stunning live video that captures the

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band’s controlled cacophony—drumsticks tapping an old bicycle rim, antique bells chiming from a guitarist’s stomping foot and atop a drummer’s snare, electric guitars and bass played with the subtlety and dynamics of a classical orchestra, new voices emerging from every corner of the room over the course of the song. The effect is something like that of David Wimbish and The Collection, whom I covered in this space recently.

But where The Collection evokes effervescent joy, The Soil & the Sun creates a more intense, mystical experience. A line from the song on the

Yet the complex rhythms, the plodding pace of the vocal melody, and a long wordless instrumental break turn what could be a simple, even trite, praise chorus into what the band calls “corn-fed, Michigan-made New Mexican Space Music, or Experiential Spiritual Folk.” (It’s good to know they have a sense of humor, because you wouldn’t guess it from the music itself.)

Or take the song “Who Is He, Anyway?”— an unadorned, Sunday-school telling of Jonah and the whale: Our ship is sinking / Somebody better pay. These are the sort of lyrics you would sing in church, but with a throbbing rhythm, subtly distorted guitar feedback, a melody that demands a Sufjan-esque falsetto, and a closing gypsy rock jam, this is a characteristic S&S song, the sort that attracts an audience beyond the church walls.

One shortcoming of the album, I think, is in the song craft. There’s not a memorable, sing-along tune in the bunch. Like a lot of current indie rock, this is music that you soak in, lost amid the soundscapes. In a live performance, there’s more than enough to hold your attention.

But you’re not going to whistle these tunes while you drive across the Midwestern plains. They demand—and deserve—a closer hearing.

THE SOIL & THE SUN CREATES AN INTENSE, MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE. video—“Raised in Glory”—inspired the title of the band’s debut album, Wake Up, Child. “We hope that what we do (for others as well as ourselves) continues to make us more awake, more alive, more aware of the reality of our world,” songwriter Alex McGrath told the music blog Pickup Productions.

At times, S&S can evoke some of today’s biggest folk-rock stars, like Sharon Van Etten or Andrew Bird. But the percussive vocal delivery on songs like “The Devil Made Me Do It” also brings to mind ‘80s synthpop like the Eurythmics, and the instrumentation can sometimes range into the grander pop-rock of Arcade Fire or Of Monsters and Men. If you just read the lyrics, a few songs—or snippets of songs—could function as congregational worship. Take “On This Mountain,” for example: There is nothing man could owe me be-

Jesse James DeConto is a writer and musician in Durham, N.C. His band, The Pinkerton Raid, was honored with a spot on the Bandspotting compilation at the 2013 Calvin Festival of Faith & Music, where The Soil & the Sun played a “Gig Track” set.

Arcenia Finley

W

hen Stacey Dallas stood alone in a sterile hospital hallway in Mobile, Ala., having just learned that she had been repeatedly exposed to HIV by her partner of many years, she felt numb. There was nothing to do but wait and see.

Dallas had slipped away from God after trying for years to cope with the trauma of childhood abuse by a family member who used physical and mental intimidation to control her.

“He used to tell me I was going to grow up to be a prostitute,” she says. “And the idea that someone could think so little of me eventually made me think very lowly of myself.” She says selfdestructive sexual encounters, depression, and desperation had robbed her of her relationship with Christ. Now it seemed HIV might be poised to take what remained.

“I was sure I had it,” she says. “After how I was exposed, I couldn’t see how I wouldn’t. I pleaded with God to take my life—I just wanted to die.”

But she didn’t die. Instead, she wrote.

I’m hurting—screaming inside!

Can’t anyone hear me?!

Pacing back and forth—up at night.

What’s going on with my life?

Everything is definitely not all right.

Who can I tell?

Who can I trust?

No, they will judge me.

I better hush.

And to her surprise, God seemed to have a

different agenda for her life. When Dallas’ first test came back negative, she, her doctor, and her family were ecstatic. When test after test also came back negative, they rejoiced again and again. “I know it was a miracle,” says Dallas. “My family knows it was a miracle. The Lord knows it was a miracle. I was so grateful for it and for another chance to rebuild my relationship with Christ.”

Dallas found comfort in renewed faith and in her poetry, through which she expressed her emotions, thoughts, and prayers. Suspecting that others might find solace in the same way, she founded Mobile’s Poetic Justice. When she organized the first event, Dallas, now 38, didn’t have many expectations.

“We hosted it at a dance studio, because we felt that having it at a church might make some people feel unc o m fo r t a bl e , ” she recalls. “We wanted this to be a place where everyone was welcome to come share their poetry. We put out 80 chairs, and I remember thinking that it would be pretty amazing to fill those chairs. Then people started showing up … and then we were out of chairs, and so we brought in more chairs, and then there were still people standing all over the place. We had 20 poets sign up for the open mic,

“Poetry and art are just another way we can show Christ to the world.”

Art & Soul

Poetic Justice

and so many more came to listen, and I wanted to cry because these young people just wanted to share themselves and their poetry. It was beautiful. It blew me away.”

Their next event attracted not just young poets but also rappers and Christian reggae artists. Dallas had discovered an untapped demographic, a neglected contingent of young artists searching for a creative outlet.

Gregory Finley Jr., 27, is a Christian rapper, musician, and poet who believes, like Stacey Dallas, that a generation of unbelievers can be reached through the creative arts. “I want people to know the love of God,” he says. “They don’t need money and all the women and all the things they chase after. There’s a God who loves us and cares for us, and we can deliver this message to people through music and spoken word poetry.”

Finley’s sister Arcenia, 21, is also involved with the group and says she would be frustrated and unfulfilled without the ability to express herself through the arts, namely photography and dance.

“Stacey has really shown me that it’s okay to be different and that God loves who I am,” she says.

Yolanda Middlebrooks, a 23-year-old criminal justice student and poet with Mobile’s Poetic Justice, says when she goes to “Christian house parties” and sees young people gathering to share music that is God-honoring and share spoken-word poetry, she feels a peace and happiness that is supernatural.

Dallas, whose day job is at a crisis pregnancy center, estimates that about one-third of the people attending events are unbelievers and another third are self-professed Christians who “go to church now and then but aren’t really walking the walk.” Taking poetry to the people, she says, is bringing the gospel message to many unreached youth. “There are people who are just not going to receive Christ within the four walls of a church, and there are people who aren’t going to see Christ if we don’t show them who he is through the creative arts,” says Dallas. “Poetry and art are just another way we can show Christ to the world.”

Learn more at Facebook.com/MobilePoeticJustice.

Shannon Sutherland Smith is a freelance writer focusing on faith and social justice issues and is based in Alberta, Canada.

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On Being the Church

AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. RONALD J. SIDER

“H

istoric biblical faith understood the church as a new community. The basic New Testament images of the church are of the body of Christ, the people of God, and the family of God. All these stress the fact that we’re talking about a new community—a new, visible social order. That new community in the New Testament was living so differently from the world that people would say, ‘Wow, what’s going on here?’”

- Ron Sider, in a 1995 interview with Stan Guthrie, Christianity Today Dear Ron, Because I will not be present at your retirement gala in July, I want to take time to thank you personally, publicaly, and on behalf of my congregation, for your 50-plus years of prophetic service, to which the American church is deeply indebted (whether or not all realize it).

Pastors like mine, the late Rev. Bob Appleby, were much in need of outside encouragement amid the frenzied culture of 1970s-era evangelicalism.

Our roots as a congregation began in a large, Chi-

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gelical resistance to, or passivity about, the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. So he ran to his Bible in search of answers. What does the New Testament church look like, and why doesn’t the prevailing evangelical church look much like it?

That the biblical gospel shatters racial, economic, and social barriers of every kind, knitting together a community submitted to one another in love is, of course, quite threatening to radical individualism, an American idol you have been faithful in calling out. Appleby used to constantly remind us that “niceness is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit.” Your insistence on preaching the unpopular word has been an inspiration to us all. The ecclesial firestorm following Rich Christians, culminating in the release of Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators (David Chilton, 1981), is the stuff of legends.

Your work violently broke the anesthetizing silence of the status quo, making way for much-needed, albeit messy, conversation among Christians about moral non-neutrality of economic systems. Some 33 years later, the exchange remains messy, but know that were it not for prophets like you, we might not be having the conversation at all.

The last time I saw you in person, Ron, we were singing hymns, glorifying Christ among Your work violently broke a choir of many the anesthetizing silence of the status quo, making way for much-needed, albeit messy, denominations and conversation among Christians about moral colors.

Huddled non-neutrality of economic systems. together on a cold, wintry afternoon in Your message deeply resonated with other rare, pro- our nation’s capital, we affirmed the peace of Christ phetic voices captured in writings important in our with one another, gave words to the just and compascongregational formation: for example, The Kingdom sionate reign of Christ, prayed for our congressional of God by John Bright (biblical scholar, Union Theo- leaders, and called for laws that would not benefit the logical Seminary), Incendiary Fellowship by Elton wealthiest at the expense of the poor. We were then Trueblood (Quaker theologian philosopher), and Joy arrested and carted off, our wrists tied behind our to the World by Robert Henderson (pastor, Presby- backs, and brought to a holding pen where we conterian Church USA), among others. These voices tinued the heavenly chorus. I recall this memory of together helped us to keep believing that being the you fondly, because it beautifully captures the person church was inherent to, not separate from, the saving you are—a disciple of Jesus Christ who loves the work of the cross. Put another way, true salvation church for the sake of justice. gives rise to a peculiar, sociologically unpredictable people.

Sincerely, The notion of an alternative community has Craig Wong been at work on us for many years, stemming from Grace Fellowship Community Church Appleby’s early musings as a young, budding Chris- San Francisco, Calif. tian leader during the civil rights movement in East Palo Alto, Calif. In the late ‘50s, racial demographics in East Palo Alto underwent rapid change as many postwar African Americans resettled in suburbs outside of San Francisco. Appleby was deeply troubled Craig Wong is the executive director by the prejudice of the Anglo churches toward their of Grace Urban Ministries in San new black neighbors. He was also troubled by evanFrancisco.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler

Loving the Church for the sake of justice

nese Presbyterian congregation in San Francisco’s Chinatown at a time when “Evangelism Explosion” was all the rage, and churches were aggressively handing out tickets for God in the form of neatly packaged, soul-saving propositions.

For Appleby and his colleagues, moving from an understanding of the gospel as personal “fire insurance” to one that subversively confronted the existing social order was a lonely endeavor.

For this reason, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger represented the kind of voice in the wilderness that Appleby needed for assurance that he wasn’t crazy or, if he was, at least he wasn’t alone.

D

ebates about immigration policy are back in the news. At such times, it’s helpful to remember the other side of policy: hundreds of thousands of individual stories. Immigration has always involved hardship, but unfortunately I never fully came to grips with that reality until it became part of my own reality. Ours was supposed to be an open-and-shut case: a fiancée visa. Our timing, however, was admittedly unhelpful—right after 9/11.

Médine and I had long been friends and had even discussed marriage. Then I received a letter that a relative had carried out of Congo-Brazzaville for her. Civil war had come to her country, Médine wrote to me, and she didn’t know whether she would live or die. By the time her letter reached me, her town had been abandoned and burned. For the next 18 anguished months I could do nothing but pray for her safety. Meanwhile, she was often traveling miles through snake-infested swamps and fields of army ants to get food for her family.

When the war ended and we were able to resume communication, we decided to marry, but we were very naïve about international politics and policies. Because of the recent war, her country lacked a functioning US consulate, so she and her 3-year-old son would have to travel to Cameroon.

It took a while in the postwar situation to get all the papers that the US government understandably required. For example, even though she had kept her passport while she was a refugee, the new government required new passports. For another, she had to get documents regarding her marital status. (She had been married briefly in Congo, but

the husband had tried to strangle her while she was pregnant and turned out to be a bigamist.)

A week after she finally reached Cameroon, my teaching semester ended, and I flew there to be with her while seeking the visa. We had been advised that a marriage visa took twice as long as a fiancée visa at that time, so it was suggested that we delay our marriage until Médine was in the United States.

The requirement, though, was for me to return to the United States and file. A contact also informed us that one of her documents was inadequate, so she had to return to Congo while I fretted further for her safety—and her son worried that she might never come back. When I finally had the documents in hand and my lawyer was preparing to submit them, 9/11 happened—and immigration policy changed virtually overnight. On top of that, the Vermont Service Center was shut down due to an anthrax scare, and petitions became backlogged.

My fiancée had spent 18 months displaced from her home in Congo. Now she spent months displaced in a country not her own, waiting for a visa to my country. Conditions were better, and the family hosting her was gracious, but now she was far from family and friends and lonelier than she had been as a refugee. As a professor I had an unusual gift in that I did not need to report for work during summer and winter breaks. Apart from those periods, however, I could not be with her or her son.

Through a senator’s intervention, the fiancée visa was expedited after I

May I Have a Word?

An Immigration Story

returned to Cameroon. We happily took our copy to the consulate, only to discover that the consulate needed the form directly by diplomatic pouch from the United States. The consulate kept expecting it in the next pouch, but it never arrived.

After more than two months back in Cameroon, I had to return home because my next semester was starting. We had already missed our first wedding date. What broke my heart most were the sincere pleas of the boy, David, then 4. “I will come to Philadelphia with you tomorrow,” he kept promising. When I finally had to leave without him, he cried. “Who will play with me?” A friend took us all to the airport; afterward Médine found a place alone and sobbed.

“The consulate must have lost the file,” the woman at the immigration service assured me.

The consulate, however, insisted that the immigration service must have lost the file. Similar stories from friends suggested that the fault likelier lay with the overworked immigration service, but it didn’t matter. The woman on the phone warned me that regardless of who lost the file, I would have to start over with a new petition, and that could take six more months. We were devastated, and it could have really been six more months had the consulate not had mercy on us in view of the evidence already provided. (I should mention that once Médine and David were in the United States, immigration officials here were very courteous to them.)

Our experience was painful, but we saw even more painful experiences among friends who did not have such well-established legal grounds to have family members with them. Of course there are many factors to consider when debating the logistical details of immigration policy. But debates about policy should never lose sight of what immigration involves in the lives of the real people that immigration rules affect. When my wife and I think about immigration, our first thoughts are about the concrete pain of real families separated by international borders.

Craig Keener, professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, is author of 17 books and some 200 articles. His wife, Dr. Médine Moussounga Keener, is writing a book about her story.. Recently, Médine’s niece Keren joined the family from Congo.

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Photo: “Mirror” ©2012-2013 ~Shahsepram

Raced-As-White Exposing our misguided efforts to race ourselves and each other

by Paul Alexander

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W

e’ve been scammed.

Many of us have been raced-as-White by Whiteness, or racedas-“less than White” by Whiteness. You and I have both been raced by a system. If you were raced-as-White, as I was, try thinking of yourself as “racedas-White-by-Whiteness-for-light-skin-privilege.” It might be uncomfortable, but that’s okay. The question is this: How can people like me who are raced-as-White go boldly where relatively few from the United States’ settler class have gone before?

I have been socialized to be nice. But whereas kindness is a virtue, niceness was constructed to promote complicity with injustice and exploitation. Acting “nice” for me would be passively and silently accepting privilege based on my White racing and the systems that support light-skin privilege. So I will be kind, but I will not play nice.

Emilie Townes, an ethicist at Yale, encourages people-raced-as-White to interrogate their own coloredness. She says we need to air our dirty laundry, soak it in the sun, and talk about Whiteness as openly as we can and not hold anything back. People raced-as-White need to explore the historical and theological realities and admit how messed up it has been, how messed up it is, and discover how the Spirit can disempower us in our Whiteness and help us become different and better. So we take our first step into this difficult journey by sharing stories.

Here’s part of mine.

I was a Jesus-lovin’, tongue-talkin’, gun-totin’, American flag-wavin’, foreignerhatin’, Christian raced-as-White boy reared in a 99 percent White county in Kansas.

Even though my mom and dad raised me to love everybody, I was a raced-as-White boy who told many, many racist jokes. I told jokes mostly about African Americans, but also about Latina/os, Asian Americans, Asians, and Africans. I still remember many of them because I repeated them a lot.

I went to church at least three times per week and I learned many of the racist jokes from my youth group leaders. I would go to revivals, support missionaries around the world, and pray at the altar for hours; and I also ridiculed, insulted, and mocked the appearance, intelligence, morality, histories, and cultures of people whose skin

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pigment was darker than mine. I’d probably said the n-word, as a racist, hundreds of times in my life.

In college I met my first African American friend, Baby James. But I could have a raced-as-black friend and still be prejudiced. And one of my closest friends was Chun Young-Ku from South Korea, but stereotypes die hard.

I do not think I realized I was a racist until a friend in college told me that I was. While stranded on the side of Highway 287 after running out of gas near Ennis, Tex., I received a piece of evangelistic literature from a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He did not say whom he represented, and the association was veiled in the material, but I read it through and agreed with most of it. When I told my friend about this, he explained some things to me in a way I do not remember having heard as clearly before that day, and I began to have a series of epiphanies about my own deeply held prejudices. Although they felt like epiphanies for me, they really are basic steps in the journey of conscientization, or, as Paolo Freire calls it, “becoming aware of your oppression or your participation in oppression.”1 In graduate school I read Documents of American Prejudice that had quotes like this one from Abraham Lincoln: I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of White and black races, [applause] I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race. . . . I do not understand that because I do not want a Negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] So it seems quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of Negroes. I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between Negroes and White men. . . . I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of White people with Negroes [Laughter

Glossary of terms race (verb, transitive): to impose a racialized identity on another human being (or on oneself) with the goal to subjugate, control, dismiss, or elevate. [I wish Ham had refused to let Noah race him.] raced-as (adjective): recognizing that we have been labeled as a particular race but also that race is a social construct invented by people. We’ve all been raced-as something, whether “White” or “black” or “red” or “yellow” or “brown,” etc. We didn’t choose these labels; they were imposed on us. [I benefit from light-skin privilege since I’ve been raced-as-White and live in a world that still codes and stratifies according to that system.] other (verb, transitive): to identify another person or group as different from and inferior to one’s own person or group. [My belief that it was okay to other people of different ethnic origins from my own was reinforced every time my youth group laughed at my racist jokes.] othered (adjective): the state of being subjected to othering or disparagement; the person who is othered has no agency or say in how or why he/she is being considered inferior. [Under Jim Crow laws African Americans were othered and thus excluded from many privileges of US citizenship.] coloredness (noun): having color. All people are colored people, but some people think that they are White and that White is somehow not a color. This is what ethicist Emilie Townes calls “uninterrogated coloredness.” [I didn’t know I was a colored person—I thought I was White and neutral!]

Whiteness (noun): an identity invented within the last few hundred years connected to privilege and social status as well as to the social, cultural, religious, and legal systems that sustain that privilege. [If we want justice, this Whiteness has to go.”] protestimony (noun): a combination of the word protest—“to complain about something”—and testimony—“to tell a story about something good in one’s life.” [Let’s each share a protestimony about how racing has hurt us or helped us and what we’re doing about it now.]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: “Whiteness” is capitalized throughout this article to highlight its historical importance as a constructed system of oppression that can have an end, like Pharaonic Egypt and the Roman Empire.

and applause.]. . . . I am not in favor of Negro citizenship [Renewed applause.]2 I really started to dislike White people. I remember when I consciously realized and said to myself, “I am not smarter or better or superior in any way because I’m White.” George “Tink” Tinker says that White liberation must include confession. In my experience of assuming the inferiority of people who were not raced-as-White, it was remarkable to realize with such great clarity that I had been duped. I had been living in a powerful lie that privileged me by abusing others. The way I understood myself began to change radically.

As one raced-as-White who seeks to exit Whiteness, this brief autobiographical counternarrative provides context for a reading of Scripture that might help people raced by Whiteness as White find an open future not so determined by oppressive institutional systems of light skin and cultural privilege. But some people are raced by Whiteness as inferior to others; they are “othered.” Whether my reading helps those raced by Whiteness in othered ways can be analyzed by those who have suffered the destructive effects of White supremacy in all its pseudoscientific, political, economic, and cultural manifestations.

Noah’s hangover and the curse of Whiteness To get beyond Whiteness, those raced-as-White need to explore a space and time before Whiteness, a “previous spatial existence” long before they were raced for privilege and conquest as settlers and colonizers. In a different article and forthcoming book, I explore Egypt as Whiteness and the possibilities of a White liberation theology. But in this article I go to the biblical narratives even before Egyptian captivity and read them for liberation. As a Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, I’ve learned some hermeneutical methods from the rabbinic traditions where faithful readings of the text

interrogate the texts and the characters within them. Sometimes the biblical stories invite us to ask harder questions than some of us are used to asking, but in order to deal with the deepest issues of oppression and racism, the hardest questions have to be asked. Native American theologian Robert Warrior proposed a “Canaanite hermeneutic” many years ago—to read Scripture through the eyes of the Canaanites. Since systems of superiority and inferiority are often backed up theologically and biblically, the rabbinic tradition of asking tough questions combined with the Canaanite hermeneutic may lead us into a better promised land without so much oppression.

Egypt—the metaphor I use for Whiteness—first appears in the biblical narratives immediately after Abram arrives in Canaan from Ur (in what is modern-day Iraq). But the Canaanites were already living in the land that was promised to Abram. Canaanites predate Abram in that land. When Abram entered the narrative, Canaanites had already enjoyed the milk and honey of the land, and they did not know that anyone was coming from Ur with a God who had promised him the land where they lived. If Canaanites already had the land and Abram was all the way over in Iraq, where in the biblical narrative did these hierarchical identity distinctions come from? Noah.

Noah awoke from his drunken stupor and, with a hangover, “raced” his three sons (Genesis 9: 24-27). This pro-Semitic text is anti-Hamitic, yet I seek to read it in a way that is pro-Semitic, pro-Hamitic, and pro-Japhethic. I read Noah’s angry words as the confused speech of a man with a splitting headache. Through the fog of his hangover he hears that he has been violated and, rather than forgiving his youngest son, he issues the first stammering words of Whiteness.

Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.

Noah sounds like an angry coercive voice of Whiteness, an offended and hung-over power that establishes the structures of domination and oppression. I see at least two ways to unmask and interpret this story so that racial domination systems like Whiteness and White supremacy are dethroned.

The first strategy is to engage in a kind of theological jujitsu when Canaan (Ham) is “cursed” and named as a slave three times—slave, slave, slave. Jujitsu is a martial arts form that uses the force of one’s opponents against them rather than confronting them solely with one’s own force. The Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 received Jesus’ derogatory insult (when he called her a “dog”) and then she turned the force of it back on him, further empowered by her own re-analysis (“even the puppies”), thus winning the argument. This Canaanite-woman-style, jujitsu, liberatory move here is to re-member these brothers, with the first becoming last and the last becoming first. The Canaanite Jewish Jesus embodied the “very nature of a slave…humbled himself…and God exalted him to the highest place” (Phil. 2).

In cursing Canaan to slavery, Noah thus cursed him to the highest place above all. In cursing Canaan, Noah cursed God, who is “the least of these” at the bottom of the pyramid of oppression.

This “straight lick with a crooked stick” reading is to accept the curse as a blessing, the naming as “slave” as the naming as leader of all, the racing as nonWhite as a destiny of greatness. In this reading, when Whiteness races the other as nonWhite, it sows the seeds of its own destruction. A system can only coercively dominate for a limited amount of time; eventually the oppressed overthrow the masters. When coercive voices and bodies of Whiteness named others as nonWhite inferiors during the last several centuries, those systems of oppression named the voices and bodies who are blessed on a trajectory for greatness. Those who are cursed are the only hope of salvation for those raced-as-White, their only hope to get beyond Whiteness.

The problem with this reading, and the reason I resist it and offer my preferred one below, is that it too highly values the currency of accepting racist terminology and White supremacy. It accepts slavery, servanthood, and abuse in the hope that someday it will get better and the tables will turn.

It may have limited liberatory potential or sustaining power because it shows a way of living within a domination system as one who is systemically dispossessed, but it does not challenge Noah the way White supremacy and oppressive racializing need to be challenged.

The second strategy, my preferred reading, is for all three sons to repudiate their father’s ridiculous morning greeting. Ham speaks first and refuses to receive the racing, the curse, and the oppression placed on him. Ham says, “No! I will not accept your curse or your racing as nonWhite

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White American Christians need a liberation theology of their own to free them from the denial of their own past…. White Amer-Europeans must courageously own their past, without guilt but with great intentionality, to change the present and the future.

person or institution accepts or believes a naming that issued from White supremacy it is like accepting the curse/bless from Noah. Second and third millennium CE Whiteness is a reincarnation— a re-embodying or re-enfleshing through bodies raced for enfranchisement and disenfranchisement—of the structures of domination and exploitation that have existed for millennia.

Beyond Whiteness A friend of mine was a lifelong Christian. She played the orto engage in a collective or corporate gan and piano in her church for at least 50 years; she taught type of confession and repentance that Sunday School, took meals to sick folk, drove the elderly to serlooks incisively at the systemic and vices, and grew some of the best peaches and tomatoes I’ve ever tastingrained violence that has been ed. She also owned a couple of small rental homes in the part of town that used such a consistent part of the to be “White” but slowly became predominantly Latina/o with a few African Americans as American experience…9 well. One day a young African American woman with a small child knocked on her door and asked if she could apply to rent one of the homes, which was vacant. My friend told her it had already been rented, but later she explained that she “never rents to colored people or Mexicans because you can’t trust them.” and I will not be the lowest of slaves. In fact, I won’t be any kind of slave. If My friend had played a race card. That young African American woman you are offended by what I did, I will ask for your forgiveness, and you can had been dealt a race card by this lady, who had dealt untold numbers of offer it—but we should talk about this. I’m your son for crying out loud. them during her 40 years of renting out those two houses. The woman who Have you gone mad?” received the card certainly has stacks and stacks of them that have been Japheth also refuses his father’s racing, for it includes the extension dealt to her. When raced-as-White people cry out defensively, “They’re playof his territory, the enslaving of his brother’s descendants, and he himself ing a race card!” they forget why there are just so many race cards out there. living in Shem’s tents. Japheth says, “No! I will not let you race me either. I Raced-as-Whites have manufactured and distributed them by the millions, will not take territory through conquest, enslave and oppress Ham’s kids, or just like my friend and I did. We raced-as-White folk just about perfected the be subordinated to Shem. I reject your pseudo-blessing.” racializing system that produces race cards, but we really don’t like it when Shem, the one most highly favored by Noah, refuses to accept the one gets handed back to us. It feels a lot better to give them than to receive blessing directed toward him and his God since it seems to be possible only them. through the cursing and enslaving of Canaan: His superior positioning is These uncomfortable stories are what I call protestimonies. They are ensured only by the inferior positioning of others. Shem says, “No! I will not protests and testimonies combined. They are counter-memories, and they let you race me as superior. I am Ham’s brother, not his master.” are subversive moves. When I tell the stories of my own prejudicial actions Having all said “No!” to Noah, the three brothers then ask, “And what and beliefs, I am interrogating my own coloredness. Uninterrogated coloredabout our sisters? Why have you left them out?” Then God, hearing the ness is deeply problematic. By telling these stories, these testimonies, I am Spirit-inspired resistance to Noah’s misuse of God’s name, says to him, “Your protesting the injustice and I am un-silencing the “White” silence. Yet while sons are right. Listen to them. But your daughters have even more to say, uninterrogated Whiteness perpetuates racial discrimination and structural so don’t go back to sleep just yet.” injustice, Emilie Townes rightly points out that all too often White confession But in the received text, Ham, Japheth, and Shem did not confront and “White resistance to White supremacy [are] weirdly elevated to a higher Noah’s curses and blessings. And they all three suffered from them. They ethical and moral terrain.”3 I reject the idea that my confession of “White” did not have God’s noncompliant spirit of resistance so as to make a more racism is superior to anybody else’s stories related to race and ethnicity; my egalitarian and equitable world. Perhaps Noah should have died on the ark. resistance, antipathy, and deconstruction of racist structural evil is not better I’m theorizing Whiteness as a historical and spatial reality with entry than anybody else’s. My only option thus far is to do it as a person raced-asroutes and exit routes that are continually presented to us. Each time a White since that’s what the system has raced me as.

This means Amer-Europeans will have

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When I reflect on Paul’s claim that there is “neither Jew nor Greek” in Christ Jesus, I think Paul was trying to protest the exclusion of Gentiles, women, and slaves in the people of God and testifying and arguing that they should be included. But perhaps Paul’s “neither Jew nor Greek” was like a person raced-as-White saying we should all be colorblind, which I occasionally hear from raced-as-White people. They’re saying: “Color shouldn’t matter; we should all just get along.” But color does matter. We are not supposed to be colorblind, because there are colors and shades and complexities within the shades, so we should see the colors, and injustices, and oppressions, and exploitation clearly and work for liberation rather than seeing color and furthering injustice, as my friend and I did.

Colorblindness is “the polite language of racism.”4 It’s trying to be nice.

It avoids “the messiness and complexity of race in the quest for a colorblind stance” and it often ends up bracketing and ignoring coloredness. “When taken to the extreme, it assumes a noncolored self who, when disrobed, is actually Whiteness redux.”5 So rather than saying “there is neither Jew nor Greek” or calling for colorblindness, perhaps Paul could have written that “there are both Jews and Greeks…for you are all many in Christ Jesus.” This is a call for a re-cognition of diversity and particularity, a valuing of one’s own and the other’s bodily and culturally inscribed differences. Not blindedness, but seeing as clearly as possible and valuing highly the differences as well as the similarities. This does not essentialize race, which is a social construct, but recognizes that human beings are diverse. So as I acknowledge what I know about racings and racism, try to learn more about the much that I do not know, interrogate my coloredness, and engage in counterhegemonic protestifying, I close with one question and one suggestion.

Liberation for the raced-as-White What does White liberation look like? I benefit from light-skin privilege since I’ve been raced-as-White and live in a world that still codes and stratifies according to that system—but I don’t want to use that language of Whiteness any longer, and I want those systems dismantled and reconstructed.

But not calling myself White does not mean that others do not see me as White. Not calling myself White does not mean that I have not accrued truckloads of benefits from being raced-as-White in a society structured, built, and dominated by Whiteness and White supremacy. I want to claim my historical spatial heritage that predates the social construction of Whiteness.

My ancestors came from Holland, Wales, France, and elsewhere—those are geographical spatial places, not colors.

People raced-as-White could help us get beyond White supremacy by refusing to submit to racings. Instead, claim a geographical heritage and hyphenate and hybridize, so there’s no “American” for raced-as-White people unless it is hyphenated or qualified with another identifier. As Tinker predicts, de-racializing will be necessary for living in a world beyond Whiteness and the oppression that it continues to bring.6 I do not think that people raced as White can find a “natural” past or an original identity, but we can find nonWhite pasts and can construct non-White futures.

What actions are necessary to dismantle the structures and constructs that sustain White privilege? To cease being called a color that was created to oppress is a partial answer, but to dismantle the structures of privilege that accrue to that color will take a lot more work. Routes and paths out of Whiteness must include building structures of equity not based on racings, but taking into account the continuing effects of past racings. I wish it were as simple as the nonviolent direct action of not marking “White” on data

In my experience of assuming the inferiority of people who were not raced-as-White, it was remarkable to realize with such great clarity that I had been duped. I had been living in a powerful lie that privileged me by abusing others. The way I understood myself began to change radically. forms, but that is one way that anyone who has been raced can mess with the system if they think it doesn’t have the right space for them. If there is not an identifier you are comfortable with, check “other.” That space may provide a buffer as we exit Whiteness and move into a world beyond. People raced as White need to accept their otherness, identify as other, and live as other, perhaps for a few generations. As Latina feminist theologian Leticia Guardiola-Sáenz writes: First, identities are constituted by power relations: they are created in relation to outsiders, the “other”…. Second, identities are not unified: they are fragmented, ruptured, discontinued, and contradictory. We are split among political allegiances, and we have multiple identities that struggle within us. Third, identities are constantly in flux: they are not final productions but productions in process.7 Whiteness must be “discontinued” as we produce identities not designed for oppression but produced for equity. And some of the scriptural stories have to be re-narrated and re-interpreted from beyond Whiteness because, as they stand, many stories in the received texts are over-determined by domination systems and racializing. Tinker explains: The planting and uprooting of power and powerlessness is not at all a smooth, sequential plot. Colonizing and imperializing powers, as we know, have a chameleon-like capacity for persistence. Decolonization and liberation are, therefore, not a given, nor an unfinished business…. To be in the struggle for justice and liberation is, therefore, to be in la lucha continua, the struggle that always continues.8 I hope that future generations can inhabit a world in which no human being refers to herself or himself as White and that privilege no longer attaches to skin tone. Whiteness must become history, a construct that folks in the future study as a construct of the past. Perhaps in a few centuries people will be amazed when they learn that for several hundred years of human history some people called themselves “White.” Let’s start building that world, now.

(Editor’s note: You’ll find the endnotes for this article at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Paul Alexander is a professor of public policy at Eastern University’s Palmer Seminary and co-president of the Sider Center.

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racial reconciliation AND THE PRO-LIFE AGENDA

The pro-life movement offers the evangelical church an opportunity to partner with the African American church in a meaningful and healing way.

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BY CHERYL J. SANDERS

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n his 1987 book Completely Pro-Life, evangelical theologian Ron Sider advocated a “biblically informed pro-life agenda” that seeks fullness of life for everyone, including the unborn and those marginalized in any way.1 Twenty-five years later in Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement, Sider observed that “increasingly, Christians are embracing this broader agenda.”2 He sees the center of Catholicism and white evangelicalism now advocating a pro-life, pro-poor, pro-family, pro-social justice, pro-sexual integrity, and pro-creation care agenda. But what about African American Christians? Does a “completely pro-life” agenda also represent the thinking of a majority of African Americans?

While African American and white evangelicals both hold the Bible in high regard, many African American Christians adhere to a reading of the Bible that is theologically conservative and politically progressive at the same time. This reading supports heterosexual, monogamous marriage and a God who favors the poor and delivers people from slavery and oppression. It upholds the example of Jesus as a mandate for the church to preach good news to the poor and make disciples of all nations, supported by ministries of healing and reconciliation. This view of the Scriptures and the church is consistent with a pro-life agenda but opposes political indifference to poverty and social injustice.

One reason that African Americans and whites may differ in their embrace of a pro-life agenda is that many African Americans doubt the willingness of whites to acknowledge the value of black life outside the womb. In other words, the ongoing impact of the problem of race on the sanctity of human life imposes a huge dilemma upon African American Christians.

The perceived indifference of many white Americans to poverty and hunger as public policy issues may cause African Americans to question the integrity of the pro-life agenda of white evangelicals, notwithstanding the moral presumptions African Americans may bring to their opposition to abortion.

The task at hand is renewed advocacy of a progressive pro-life agenda that ascribes the same value to black lives as to others at every stage of development, with a consistent focus on elevating quality of life and equality of opportunity for all.

Racial identity and American politics: The elephant in the room The media coverage of the 2012 political conventions and election night results presented some ironic and compelling portrayals. In the summer of 2012, the two political conventions projected two radically different images—an overwhelmingly white gathering convened by the Republican Party to nominate Gov. Romney on the one hand, and the broad diversity of the Democratic Convention on the other. On election night in November, the television networks cut back and forth between images of the diverse and exuberant crowd dancing as they awaited the delayed delivery of President Obama’s acceptance speech at McCormick Place in Chicago and the somber assembly of well-heeled white supporters who sobbed in a Boston hotel in woeful anticipation of a concession speech from a reluctant Gov. Romney.

Given these contrasting snapshots of identity politics in the US, now may be the opportune moment for white evangelical Christians to choose one picture or the other as a guide to realign the future of evangelical faith and politics.

The choice is between joining forces with African American Christians to craft a faith-based reconciliation movement that is diverse and inclusive in terms of race, gender, and class on the one hand, or, on the other hand, clinging to a religious outlook undergirded by an identity politics that despises diversity while carefully preserving the privilege of the few.

Looking back on the 2012 presidential election, it is clear that the vast

majority of white evangelicals supported Republican candidates and policies, while African American Christians stood firm in commitment to the Democratic Party and the incumbent black president, notwithstanding President Obama’s pro-choice position regarding abortion and his support of samesex marriage. Many African American pastors registered their opposition to the president’s approval of same-sex marriage while maintaining support of his candidacy for reelection. The logic of this position is grounded in a strong moral exception to the perceived racist undercurrents of the socially conservative policies and practices of the Republican Party, which remains more stringent than African Americans’ objections to the social liberalism of President Obama, the Democratic Party, and the NAACP. The loyal support of the Democratic Party by African American voters can be explained in part by the positive impact experienced by African Americans as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies in the 1930s and ‘40s and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society anti-poverty programs in the 1960s and ‘70s. Before the Depression years, African Americans (except in Southern states where discriminatory laws denied their voting rights on the basis of race) typically supported the Republican Party, following the legacy of President Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator.

However, the shift of allegiance of white evangelicals to the Republican Party after the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (especially in the traditionally Democratic South) and the ascendancy of President Ronald Reagan as a champion of white evangelical values were seen by many African Americans as a political realignment motivated by race.

For more than five centuries, generations of African American Christians have complained of the persistent and hypocritical racism of white Christians who promoted slavery and the slave trade; colonized Africa, South America, and the Caribbean; and endorsed racial discrimination and injustice in the US. So any effort to unite African American and white Christians along the lines of a pro-life agenda must begin by addressing the “elephant in the room,” namely, the failure of white Christians to embrace African Americans as equal participants in the church and society. How can we account for the inability of Christians to perceive the injustice of these practices as an ungodly affront to the human dignity of others?

Howard Thurman and the religion of Jesus For a thoughtful answer to this critical question, we can turn to the testimony of Howard Thurman, the most influential African American theologian of the 20th century. He tells the story of his 1935 visit to Ceylon as a young minister and scholar, when during a conversation over coffee he was confronted by the principal of a law college who challenged Thurman to defend his Christian faith as a black American: You have lived in a Christian nation in which you are segregated, lynched, and burned. Even in the church, I understand, there is segregation. One of my students who went to your country sent me a clipping telling about a Christian church in which the regular Sunday worship was interrupted so that many could join a mob against one of your fellows. When he had been caught and done to death, they came back to resume their worship of their Christian God. I am a Hindu. I do not understand. Here you are in my country, standing deep within the Christian faith and tradition. I do not wish to seem rude to you. But, sir, I think you are a traitor to all the darker peoples of the earth.3 In 1949 Thurman published an account of his measured response to this af-

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front in a small but influential book, Jesus and the Disinherited. He proclaims the significance of the religion of Jesus to “people who stand with their backs against the wall,” and he offers a line of questioning that bears directly on the current potential for meaningful interracial dialogue among Christians: This is the question which individuals and groups who live in our land always under the threat of profound social and psychological displacement face: Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion, and national origin? Is this impotency due to a betrayal of the genius of the religion, or is it due to a basic weakness in the religion itself?4 In his book Thurman portrays Jesus as an impoverished Jew living under conditions of political and economic oppression in a Palestinian homeland crushed under the heel of the Roman Empire. Thurman’s defense of his own Christian faith is based on the simple logic that he is a follower of Jesus, who was absolutely truthful in his witness against the same forces of poverty, oppression, and injustice experienced by Thurman’s own people in his own time and social location. Encounters with God aboard the slave ships—under brutal conditions and endless humiliations of forced servitude—brought forth songs of lament and triumph known as the Negro spirituals. Out of deep suffering emerged hope for a future where freedom and justice would prevail, not just in the afterlife but also on earth for the benefit of generations to come. Throughout his lifetime, Thurman vigorously devoted his best intellectual energies and spiritual resources to fostering racial reconciliation and social change in the US and abroad.

Thurman’s story embodies the spiritual and ethical legacy of African American Christians—their lament of the moral failings of the white Christians who victimized black people, their prayers to God to look with favor upon the poor in their affliction, and their celebration of God’s power to bring justice and deliverance to the world. This perspective on faith and life is informed by the Bible, especially the Old Testament history, psalms, and prophets, and the New Testament gospels and epistles, notwithstanding the fact that during slavery African Americans in most states were by law deprived of access to literacy, education, and freedom of assembly for worship. A century and a half after the end of slavery, the only one of these three that has been effectively remedied is freedom to worship. Black denominations emerged during and after the slave era, not because of doctrinal disagreements but rather because white Christians insisted upon imposing the color line in all aspects of social life, most notably in their places of worship. Racial profiling prevails in our cities, suburbs, and churches—that is, instantaneous negative judgments of persons based upon skin color, hairstyles, and apparel.

As long as this situation persists in the public consciousness, and as long as Thurman’s question concerning the failure of Christians to address issues of discrimination and injustice remains unanswered, the problem of race will re-

BOUND4LIFE.COM Made up of a diverse young group of Christians who believe that both prayer and action are needed to address the tidal wave of abortions in America today, Bound4Life conducts “silent sieges”—public stands of silent prayer where protesters wear duck tape over their mouths with the word “life” written on it—in front of courthouses and abortion centers around the nation.

TOOMANYABORTED.COM An initiative of the Radiance Foundation, Too Many Aborted uses bold and creative billboards, videos, and other media to raise awareness of and decry the epidemic of abortion in the black community specifically and the broader community in general.

THATSABORTION.COM An outreach of Life Always, That’s Abortion uses advertising, research, and confrontational truth to inform and educate individuals to choose life.

main the chief factor accounting for differences in pro-life concepts between black and white Christians.

Reconciliation and hope in the Beloved Community Is there any hope for achieving a unified agenda of religion and politics for American Christians? Sociologists Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith thoroughly investigated the problem of race and religion in the United States in their 2001 book, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America.5 Based upon their surveys of 2,000 white evangelicals, they pinpointed some social blind spots that have caused white evangelicals to deny the problem of race and dismiss the agenda of racial reconciliation set forth by a few African Americans and whites after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Smith and Emerson conclude that white evangelicals’ emphasis upon individualism, free will, and personal relationships enables them to refuse to admit or acknowledge the sin of racial privilege. This problem could be alleviated by building personal relationships between blacks and whites, but THE TASK AT HAND IS RENEWED ADVOCACY OF A PROGRESSIVE these relationships are hindered by the reality of racial PRO-LIFE AGENDA THAT ASCRIBES THE SAME VALUE TO BLACK segregation in our communities and congregations. To LIVES AS TO OTHERS AT EVERY STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT, WITH A make things worse, in the absence of regular interacCONSISTENT FOCUS ON ELEVATING QUALITY OF LIFE AND EQUALITY tion with blacks as neighbors or fellow church members, OF OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL. negative media stereotypes of blacks as criminals and buffoons further deprive whites of the opportunity to

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revise their attitudes toward blacks based upon personal relationships.

In 2012 Emerson partnered with Jason E. Shelton, an African American sociologist, to produce a comprehensive, systematic analysis of African American religious beliefs and political attitudes. This book, Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions, shows how the religious beliefs and practices of African Americans are shaped by the experience of racial discrimination. Shelton and Emerson report that while black Protestants strongly support opportunity-enhancing and outcome-based policies designed to assist African Americans with overcoming the problems of racial inequality, the vast majority of white Protestants neither support government efforts to assist minorities and the poor nor possess a strong commitment to social justice.6 These authors use the term “identity politics” to explain the political partisanship of African American Protestants and white evangelicals, defining it as “the political beliefs and actions that are associated with a group of people that someone identifies with.” Their study demonstrates how strong commitment to identity politics by both groups drives significant racial differences with respect to faithbased thoughts and practices.7 Shelton and Emerson acknowledge the continued importance of King’s vision of the Beloved Community as a governing influence for African American Protestants. However, they caution that King’s ideal of a “spiritually based gathering of people from all walks of life motivated by goodwill, reconciliation, and justice” will remain unachievable until Christians engage in “honest and forthright dialogue on the respective roles that racial oppression and privilege have played in shaping commitments to dissimilar models of Christianity.”8 King’s vision of the Beloved Community was incorporated into the racial reconciliation movement that emerged in the intermediate aftermath of the civil rights movement. The first wave of this racial reconciliation movement was pioneered by a handful of black preachers, including John Perkins, Tom Skinner, and Samuel Hines, who argued that racism is a sin that should be viewed in the same way that Christians view other moral transgressions such as murder, theft, and adultery. They also proclaimed that black and white Christians must demonstrate God’s power by not only reconciling to one another but also linking arms to fight against inequality and injustice.9 The second wave of the racial reconciliation movement was popularized by white evangelical preachers and activists like Billy Graham and Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney.10 The second-wave reconciliation movement spawned new organizations, books, musicians, articles, publications, formal apologies, sermons, instructional guides, and religious conferences that addressed the issue. Promise Keepers events drew crowds of white evangelical men numbering in the hundreds of thousands to the National Mall in Washington, DC, and to the nation’s largest stadiums and arenas.

However, as the authors observe, the second wave fizzled out by the late 1990s due in part to its lack of a structural agenda for social change.

Left in its wake were the masses of black and white evangelicals clinging to a divisive identity politics that has carried forcefully into the present century.

Based on their findings, Shelton and Emerson are not particularly hopeful about the future: “Our quantitative and qualitative results suggest that contrasting commitments to identity politics severely limit prospects for racial reconciliation among black and white Protestants.”11 They express the clear conviction that, “in the final analysis, we cannot expect to live in a better world if we do not become actively involved in efforts to eliminate racism, poverty, and injustice.”12

any effort to unite African American and white Christians along the lines of a pro-life agenda must begin by addressing the “elephant in the room,” namely, the failure of white Christians to embrace African Americans as equal participants in the church and society.

Conclusion Can the Beloved Community envisioned by King and the pro-life agenda advocated by Sider be merged to appeal to the current generation of African American and white Christians who are poised for renewed engagement in the public sphere? Perhaps we can conceive of a third-wave reconciliation movement, one that fully engages the cultural, interpersonal, and structural dimensions of the persistent dilemma of social injustice in the United States.

Regardless of what it is called and who sets it in motion, the emergence of a renewed evangelical faith marked more by social justice than identity politics will be required to redeem any shared vision of the common good. African American and white Christians can come together in purposeful implementation of a pro-life agenda that is aligned with King’s vision of the Beloved Community. However, to keep each other honest in this pursuit, let us stay attuned to Thurman’s challenge to recover the potency of a Christian faith that deals radically and effectively with the issues of discrimination and injustice.

(Editor’s note: You’ll find the endnotes for this article at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Dr. Cheryl J. Sanders is a professor of Christian Ethics at Howard University School of Divinity. Her key areas of research and writing are African American religious studies, bioethics, pastoral leadership and womanist studies. She is also senior pastor, since 1997, of Third Street Church of God in Washington, DC, and has authored several books, including Ministry at the Margins: The Prophetic Mission of Women, Youth & the Poor (1997) and Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture (1996).

Perhaps we can conceive of a third-wave reconciliation movement, one that fully engages the cultural, interpersonal, and structural dimensions of the persistent dilemma of social injustice in the US. 19

A Crisis of Vast Proportions

BY GRACE BISKE

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hile the Kermit Gosnell trials have brought to light some of the more gruesome aspects of abortion, the fact remains that abortion continues to thrive in poor urban areas. The majority of clinics offering abortions are housed in African American or Latino neighborhoodsi: one of every three abortions performed in the US on African American children.ii Over 30 million African American souls have been extinguished in clinics since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion 40 years ago, making it the leading cause of death among African Americans, more devastating even than heart disease. Numbers like these put the crisis on the level of female gendercide in China.

Those 30 million aborted children have cost our community nearly $4 billion. What would our country look like with 42 million black people instead of the 12 million we currently have? What a tremendous loss of precious human life. Imagine if we had poured those $4 billion back into our community for education, the arts, and urban revitalization instead of killing off members of our own community.

We hear abortion defended as a “woman’s right.” But other rights are at stake here. Do we have the right to spend billions of dollars reducing the African American population to a third of its potential? Is it our right to choose who enters life and who doesn’t? In the late 1800s it was the white man’s right to subjugate, own, and torture Africans. Today we call it our right to extinguish our brothers and sisters—and we pay an abortionist to do it. If our ancestors knew the choices we’ve made and the flippancy with which we toss aside human life, I believe they’d be extremely disappointed in us. After all the sacrifices they made for the freedom of generations to come, we have repaid them with so much loss of life and dignity. What a shame.

Negative eugenics A few years ago, I attended a birthday party of a family member on the white side of my family. We played a word association game in which Margaret Sanger came up. The game referred to her as a “nurse” though she is the founder of the American Birth Control League, a body that eventually became the multi-billion dollar corporation Planned Parenthood. A so-called “birth control advocate,” Sanger advocated abortion as a means of birth control, especially in the African American community. She admitted to being a proponent of “negative eugenics” and the purity of the white race. Eugenics is a deliberate plan carried out over time to completely kill off what is considered an “inferior race,” and it is often associated with the genocide of the Jews.

Very rarely does anyone associate eugenics with the black community. But we should.

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With government funding under her belt, Sanger was able to set up abortion clinics in red-lined, blacks-only zip codes enforced by Jim Crow laws.

Her agenda to push “the best option” for low-income blacks through abortion worked. While she publicly shamed those who would torture and lynch African Americans, Sanger knew that if we would kill our own, blacks would cease to exist as a people group. And for the most part, we have cooperated beautifully with her plan. In this way, Margaret Sanger was a success.

When I mentioned this to someone at the family gathering, an older white man, he smirked and responded under his breath, “Good.” The sentiment didn’t surprise me. Many people gladly continue to benefit financially and otherwise from the killing of unborn African American children. It hurt that he articulated it, yet so many others articulate it through inaction.

What do we do now?

Unfortunately, many pro-life churches address abortion with defensive tactics like protesting abortion clinics. The picket line is no place to build relationships and helpful connections. Christians need to focus on solutions to the conditions that perpetuate abortions.

Instead of belittling low-income blacks and Latinos, Christians need to educate ourselves and advocate for these clinics to be move out of poor, urban neighborhoods.

We are quick to adopt internationally, while African American children languish in the system longer than any other race or ethnic group. Where is the church for these children after it has prevented their abortion?

As an African American, I have been deeply hurt by the silence of the body of Christ—red and yellow, black and white—regarding the systemic, disproportionate number of African American children lost through abortion. The body of Christ needs to be committed to seeing God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Let’s avoid the picket line and craft a more creative and complex approach. Let’s use our best time, energy, and resources to put an end to yet another legal form of oppression of blacks in America.

(Editor’s note: You will find endnotes for this article at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Grace Biskie is a discipleship coach, freelance writer (DeeperStory.com) and blogger (GabbingwithGrace.com), wife, and mother living in Kalamazoo, Mich. She loves Jesus and Swiss cake rolls and hates horcruxes and human trafficking.

How I Became “Prolife” at Age 15

BY TAMMY CARNEGIE

Photo: broomeunderground.info

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hen I was 15 years old, while living with my father and stepmother, I was sexually abused and raped by an older family member. I didn’t know very much about sex at the time, and I didn’t know I was pregnant until I was just into my second trimester.

I told my sister about it, who told my mother. She wanted my abuser to go to jail, but I just wanted to get away from the situation and get an abortion. I didn’t want to have a baby by a rapist. “After all,” I reasoned, “it will be okay with God, because I was raped.” So my mother arranged to take me, without my father’s knowledge, to the hospital, even though she was against the idea. (At that time I didn’t know my mom had been date raped at age 14, hidden the resulting pregnancy, and given birth to a son.)

When I got to Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., two astonishing things happened. First, when I met the doctor who would be doing the abortion, he blanched and said, “You look like you’re 12 years old. I am not going to perform an abortion on you.” He called the chief of staff in to take a look at me. While the doctors were making their decision, my mother’s friend, who had accompanied us to the hospital, gave me a tract that said, “If you make a blood covenant with God, he will take care of all of your needs.”

I had been up for a challenge with God ever since I could remember. I asked the woman, “If I decide not to have an abortion, what will people think of me? What should I do?”

She informed me of a place called Inwood House in New York City, a residential program for pregnant teens, and told me that I could place my baby for adoption or give my mother custody of the baby. She was prepared with answers for a girl like me, in a hard situation. “A bad thing happened to you,” she said, “but it was not your fault, and if you trust God he will take care of you and your baby.”

This sounded like a good idea. I wouldn’t have to worry about going to a public high school and facing people’s questions and judgments; at Inwood House, the school was in the same building, and all the girls there were pregnant.

I thought about placing my baby for adoption or foster care, but after giving birth to my daughter, I looked at her and saw myself. She looked just like I did as a baby.

I got counseling while at Inwood House, but the pain from my abuse caused a huge void in my soul. I started drinking, dropped out of school, and became promiscuous. By the time I was in my late twenties I was at my wits’ end. A woman I worked with invited me to her church; I went with my children and got saved. I received healing from my past

“A bad thing happened to you,” she said, “but it was not your fault, and if you trust God he will take care of you and your baby.”

with the help of that woman, who turned out to be the pastor of the church.

To this day God has kept the covenant with us, providing for all our needs. In spite of making some bad choices as a teenager, I went on to become a helper and caregiver to many people, including family and friends. I knew my story would be a great encouragement to women with unplanned pregnancies who were afraid of the unknown, so I volunteered at a pregnancy center, where they ended up hiring me. Although I am now retired, I still talk to some of my old clients, some on a weekly basis.

Today my daughter is 37 years old, and I am a fulltime student at Thomas Nelson Community College studying human services with a minor in psychology. My dream is to open a home for single women with children who have special needs. I don’t always listen to God, but when I do it is always phenomenal. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the women and children God sends us.

Tammy Carnegie lives with her husband in Southeastern Virginia.

BLACKGENOCIDE.ORG Most polls indicate that the majority of African Americans favor a pro-life position. However, very few African Americans have become involved in pro-life activism primarily because of misinformation coming from pro-choice proponents. Lack of information about the impact of abortion on the African American community and the failure of high-profile leadership within the clergy to share the pro-life message have compounded the problem. Black Genocide seeks to change this through education and outreach.

SALLYSLAMBS.ORG An outreach of the Radiance Foundation, Sally’s Lambs exists to encourage and support birth moms facing unplanned pregnancies.

Working with established pregnancy care centers, with adoption agencies, and with birth mothers directly, Sally’s Lambs seeks to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of birth mothers.

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Love, Love:

A Sermon Text: Luke 10:25-42

by Al Tizon

I

t was 1975. World heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was invited by Harvard University to give the commencement speech. After hearing the usual things about using their education to change the world, a student in the crowd requested a poem from Ali, who obliged with the following brief rhyme: “Me…we.” It is this two-word poem that most people remember about Ali’s commencement speech.

Ali’s brevity reminds me of something Jesus said one day, when asked by a lawyer what he must to do inherit eternal life. Jesus replied, “Love, Love.”

Love God, love neighbor.

For all of us who are in the people-helping business for the sake of the gospel, we need sometimes—maybe regularly—to go back to basics, especially when things start to feel too complicated and shaky and difficult and unfocused.

If we’re talking about Christianity 101, then there it is: Love God, love neighbor. This summation of the faith in fact came from the mouth of Jesus precisely to counter the way in which the elite theologians and lawyers of his day made the faith so complicated that the people could no longer understand or even access God. If we want to anger the Son of God, then there’s the formula—make

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it hard for people to come to faith and to enjoy God. In his confrontation with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded everyone within earshot that it boils down to this: Love God, love neighbor.

What are we supposed to be about as a church? Love God, love neighbor. And what is our whole mission in the world? Love God, love neighbor.

There are two stories in Luke 10 that follow Jesus’ “Love, Love” speech: the story of the Good Samaritan, which gives us a picture of loving neighbor; and the story of Jesus, Mary, and Martha having dinner one night, which gives us a picture of loving God. Love neighbor To love our neighbor is so basic to our faith, but what does it look like on the ground? In answer to the lawyer’s persistent questioning about who and what constitutes a neighbor, Jesus painted a simple picture for him, what we call the Parable of the Good Samaritan. What a beautiful picture of what it means to love our neighbor; it’s a picture of compassion and justice.

Compassion The story of the Good Samaritan is, first of all, a picture of compassion, pure

Sarah Spence: Sato-photography 2013

and uncomplicated; because when it comes down to it, it’s about a human being who had fallen on hard times and another human being doing everything in his power to help, restore, and heal him. Simply put, to love our neighbor is to care for people, especially those who suffer, period. We don’t care for them so that we can evangelize them; we don’t show compassion so that we can have a grateful but captive audience to preach at, to convert, to add to our numbers. I think of relief efforts that distribute the goods—whether food, clothes, and/or other basic necessities—only after making the hungry and the naked endure an hour of preaching and altar call. We don’t show compassion so that we look good to our constituents, get more “likes” on Facebook and more media attention. We don’t do compassion so that . . . anything!

Compassion with ulterior motives—even justifiable ones in our minds—is no longer pure and uncomplicated. It becomes compassion with strings attached, and that is not the picture that Jesus painted with this parable. The Samaritan helped the victim of a mugging, not for anything that he could gain but solely for the welfare of the victim.

I love stories of people in Christ so moved by compassion in the face of a need in the world that they not only don’t personally gain anything out of it but they also risk their lives for the sake of the other. I think of Gary Haugen,

who founded International Justice Mission, an organization made up of lawyers and activists who seek to rescue victims of oppression and to make the law a friend of the poor. NBC Dateline featured them a few years ago as they conducted a sting operation in Cambodia to capture the pimps of child prostitution rings as well as to rescue trafficked girls. It’s stories like these, of people helping people in Christ’s name for no other reason than that they are moved, that demonstrate pure and uncomplicated compassion. But as inspiring as the story of Haugen and IJM is, it may be far enough removed from our everyday reality that it doesn’t do much to move us “ordinary people” to a deeper life of compassion. It’s just too big. We can’t ever do that, we might say silently to ourselves.

I was walking down a busy street one day and saw a homeless man unconscious, leaning on the side of a building. There was a thin stream of urine coming from his general direction and flowing across the sidewalk; people had to step over it in order to walk past him. I did the same thing— stepped over it and walked right on by—not giving it another thought. But then I sensed the God of compassion stopping me in my tracks. Learning to pay more attention to those divine tugs, I walked back over to the man to see if he was dead or alive. When I couldn’t revive him, I called 911, and as I waited for the ambulance, I sat by him and silently prayed over him. While waiting, another seemingly homeless man came by, who obviously knew him, and he also tried to wake him. He then asked me what I was doing there, so I told him that I called 911 and that I was just waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He said, “Thanks, man. Steve’s in bad shape. You probably just saved his life,” and then he walked off.

The ambulance came shortly thereafter, took some information from me, and carried Steve off to the hospital to get help. As I resumed my walk, I thought about what the friend had said about possibly saving Steve’s life. I doubt it, I said to myself, but what if? What if that small, tangible, doable act of taking out my cell phone and calling 911 did end up saving this man’s life?

What if? I’ll never know in that particular case, but is it possible that these kinds of small simple acts, acts that we are all capable of doing, add up in the hands of God to change the world?

God may not call each and everyone of us to greatness and fame of the NBC Dateline variety; but God does call us to be like the Samaritan in our story today, engaging in doable, tangible acts of compassion, pure and uncomplicated, for the sake of the needy in the world.

Justice The parable of the Good Samaritan is also a story about justice. “And who is my neighbor?” the lawyer persisted in v. 29. This is where the story gets interesting, because as simple as it reads now, I’m sure it sent shockwaves through that lawyer and any other Jewish person within earshot. You see, “good” and “Samaritan” didn’t go together at all in those days, not to the Jews. Samaritans were considered an immoral, heretical, disloyal mongrel of a people, and they had no place in this world from the perspective of the Jews of Jesus’ day. How dare they claim to worship the one true God? The animosity between Jews and Samaritans was absolute. And so who does Jesus assign as the hero of the story to his primarily Jewish audience? A Samaritan, of course! Not the priest and not the temple assistant (the Levite), but the Samaritan.

You see, the nature of the lawyer’s question was that of selectivity. The lawyer agreed well enough with Jesus that love of neighbor summed up the bulk of the law; but just how far should we take this neighbor thing, Jesus?

Who is my neighbor?

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This question reverberates through time, because in every age and for every people group, somebody is going to be on the outs. In many Christian circles today, I can think of a few “types” who lie outside the sphere of compassion. So the question might be reframed like this: “Jesus, are the people in the gay and lesbian community our neighbors? Or how about the gay bashers; are they our neighbors? How about fundamentalist Muslims; aren’t they the number one rival of Christianity in the 21st century? What about those extremists who blow up buildings or set bombs off at marathons, Jesus—are they our neighbors? How about those Tea Party Republicans; I mean, God, you can’t possibly…? Or how about those ultra-liberal, Birkenstock-clad, vegan, ex-hippie Democrats; are they our neighbors?

Or how about our literal neighbors, those who live right next to us? Am I supposed to love the obnoxious, loud ones? How about the one who fills his yard with trash and never mows? Are our annoying neighbors our neighbors?

In contemporary terms, this is the parable of the Good Drag Queen or the Good Terrorist or whomever we think the word “good” shouldn’t be used for.

Now if it seems that this back-to-basics message just got complicated, I urge us, sisters and brothers, to see that the all-encompassing, unconditional love of God for all is fundamental to the Christian faith, and to do justice (which Cornel West says is simply “what love looks like in public”) is fundamental to our mission.

Those keen to the text will notice that Jesus didn’t really answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” on the lawyer’s terms—namely, on the terms of selectivity. The lawyer wanted criteria from Jesus in order to select who his neighbors were. But instead Jesus defined a neighbor in terms of God’s justice, that is, as the one who practices God’s unconditional love indiscriminately. Jesus’ answer to the lawyer was essentially, “If you want to be a good neighbor, be like this Samaritan.” And by answering it in this way, Jesus basically ignored the selectivity question. And we should interpret this as not being granted permission to select; we don’t get to choose who our neighbors are! We get to love everyone, which is at least the beginning of understanding the nature and practice of justice.

Loving God We can do this, right? We can love everyone, even those whom we deem as enemies—no problem, right? Listen, on our power we can’t even love those whom we’re supposed to love! As simple as it sounds to cultivate a missional life of compassion and justice, we simply don’t have it in us. This is where the command to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength comes in. You see, our compassion and justice work doesn’t amount to much and won’t last very long if it does not flow out of our love relationship with God. The second story of today’s text, where Jesus visited Mary and Martha, points to this truth, as we consider what it means to love God as the very basis and power that enable us to love others.

We know the story: Jesus visits his friends Mary and Martha; Martha works hard to make the house fit and clean for Jesus while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet. And Martha is … not happy. Now, from our multi-tasking 21st-century perspective, Martha had the right be annoyed. All this work needs to be done, and Mary’s just sitting. Jesus, don’t you care that my lazy sister isn’t helping me?

And Jesus’ response? Martha, Martha (Al, Al), my busybody, my wellintentioned, good-hearted but stressed-out servant, you are worried and distracted by so many things. You are so busy preparing for me that you’ve forgotten me. Relax, child. Let’s talk, hang. That’s the real reason for my visit.

Spend time with me; that’s what your sister Mary is doing, and I’m sorry, but

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I’m not going to take that away from her.

Martha’s dis-ease is our dis-ease, isn’t it? I know I’m afflicted with it. We get so caught up in the tasks of life, doing, doing, and doing some more, that we often forget why we’re even doing it. The pathetic life of a caged hamster comes to mind. I’m convinced that caged hamsters are clinically depressed— or should be. Their whole life consists of eating, drinking, pooping, sleeping, and running around in circles on a wheel. I often wonder what the poor thing is thinking when it gets on that wheel: Today I’m gonna get somewhere. Seize the day! But soon it realizes it’s getting nowhere, gets off the wheel, and takes a nap.

That hamster on the wheel describes me at times—and likely many of you. No wonder we often feel lost and empty, annoyed and stressed out on life and church and mission. Well-intentioned, we put out a lot of energy in the service of the Lord, but we have forgotten why and ultimately for whom.

And at that point, the Lord urges us to go back to basics, gently exhorting us, “[insert your name here], you are worried and distracted by so many things.”

By contrast, Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, listening. She was communing with her Lord. She was fulfilling the real purpose of Jesus’ visit. She was celebrating his presence. She was loving God. This is what the Lord desires of us—that we acknowledge God for the divine parent and friend that God is.

God loves us with unfathomable depth! And God wants to spend time with us, visit with us.

I’m convinced that only by loving God in this way can we cultivate a genuine love of neighbor that is compassionate and just; only by loving God can we develop a love of neighbor that doesn’t select, doesn’t exclude but rather sees every human being as made in the image of God and therefore worthy of attention and respect. It is only by loving God that we can love our neighbor.

I find it interesting that this chapter ends with the story of Mary and Martha, reminding us that worshiping at the feet of Jesus is a good thing, an essential thing. It’s interesting because it caps off arguably one of the busiest chapters in the New Testament and maybe in all of Scripture. In verses 1-20, Jesus sent out 70 disciples to proclaim and demonstrate the good news of the kingdom all over the Mediterranean. And in verses 25-37, as we’ve already seen, the compassionate Samaritan cared for a needy person. The chapter is chock full of loving-our-neighbor activities. If I had been writing it, I would have found it more logical to cap such a chapter with some kind of call to transform the world. Instead, it ends with a call to sit at the feet of Jesus.

At some point in the evening, I imagine Jesus telling Mary, Okay, it’s time to get up now and serve alongside Martha. Let’s go help your sister set the table. Empowered by my word and my presence, go serve the poor now, love your neighbor with compassion and justice, and share with them the good news concerning me.

Love, love. Love God, love neighbor. These constitute the basics of our faith and mission, and I encourage us to go back to these when things feel overwhelming, out-of-focus, and empty. I like the way the prophet Micah puts it, and I’ll end with this: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Amen.

At Tizon is a professor of holistic ministry at Eastern University’s Palmer Seminary and co-president of the Sider Center.

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LIVING OUT FAITH IN THE WAR ZONE OF THE BORDERLANDS 26

The blood-stained sidewalk where 16-year-old José Antonio was killed by US Border Patrol agents. (Photo by Murphy Woodhouse)

WHAT WOULD TRUE SECURITY AT OUR BORDERS LOOK LIKE?

BY MARYADA VALLET

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“Playing at the [border] should not be the death penalty” reads a sign at a vigil held for José Antonio.

(Photo by Murphy Woodhouse)

A

nd Jesus said, “Let there be double and triple fencing...”

It is more than absurd to put those words in Jesus’ mouth. While Jesus was never recorded as saying anything about border walls directly, his ministry exemplified crossing nearly every imaginable border—social, political, and religious—of his time.

It is also ludicrous for me, as someone who grew up in Arizona and has worked as a humanitarian on the Mexico-Southern US border for eight years, to hear those words. It is hard to imagine even more fortifications added to this heavily militarized region. The walls are both a tremendous waste of money and a primary cause of increasing death of migrants as they seek to go over, under, and around them. The death rate of migrants rose 27 percent between 2011 and 2012 as people were funneled to ever more remote and dangerous crossing points.1 The walls clearly function as a symbol, employed for political persuasion, however impractical and disgraceful they are for border communities.

Locally it is understood that neither the walls nor the number of boots on the ground actually deter most immigrants. Even Department of Homeland Security Secretary (and former Arizona Governor) Janet Napolitano has expressed doubt. “You show me a 50-foot wall,” she said, “and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That’s the way the border works.”2 The persistence in crossing has mostly been associated with economic push and pull factors, but is currently related to the strong ties that immigrants have to the US. A recent study conducted by the University of Arizona in migrant shelters on the Mexican side of the border found that half of deported migrants have a family member who is a US citizen. Further, migrants who consider the United States their home are more likely to return after deportation, with 70 percent planning to cross again in the future.3 This idea of double and triple fencing belongs to the same US congressmen who drafted the long-awaited comprehensive immigration reform legislation.4 Apart from more walls, the legislation features increased enforcement measures at the southern border. These measures include more agents,

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MORE OF THE SAME BORDER POLICY THAT HAS ENVELOPED THE REGION FOR NEARLY TWO DECADES ACTUALLY MEANS MORE INSECURITY. National Guard troops, checkpoints, drones, permission to overrun protected federal lands, and increased prosecutions and incarceration for unauthorized entry.

Hyperactive border security has been deemed politically necessary—even prioritized—in debates over this long overdue overhaul of the immigration system. Essentially it is more of the same. It is unimaginative and destructive. As border communities, we know that more of the same border policy that has enveloped the region for nearly two decades actually means more insecurity.

The war zone at home To live in the US-Mexico border region under the current border policy can be likened to living in a low-grade war zone. Humanitarian volunteers who have come from around the country to work in southern Arizona have been shocked to experience this atmosphere of war on US soil. This “Constitutionfree zone”5 is characterized by the daily and insidious presence of militarystyle equipment, weapons, agents, and, worst of all, the war mindset. For to have a war, there must be an enemy.

But who is the enemy that justifies this heavy militarization of communities and public lands? We are told that border security protects us from terrorists and cartels. Fueled by public fear and unfamiliarity with border realities, our government has created an enemy to justify the unprecedented growth of military-style enforcement within our country. The original border policy from 1993, called the “policy of deterrence,” has not changed course. It is primarily aimed toward keeping out poor Latin Americans.6 Even the proposed border-security legislation clearly says that “high-risk” regions of the border simply mean more migrants are crossing and have little to do with actual security threats.7 All the drones, the hidden sensors, the thousands of agents armed with hollow-point bullets (prohibited by international law for use in war)8, and the walls that cost millions per mile—they’re meant to keep out poor people— people who are the refugees of the unfair global economy and increasingly of changing climate patterns. Such is the policy of deterrence, and it is replicated in rich countries around the world. The goal behind fortifying borders is to protect the exorbitant wealth that we’ve accumulated from the Global South, as we use 80 percent of the world’s resources and have to keep the disgruntled and poor masses of the world at bay.9 But at what cost is this done?

The past two decades of border militarization have caused record rates of human suffering, environmental degradation, and insecurity in the region.

These impacts of border enforcement are rarely discussed by policy makers.

Some of these devastating effects have included: • More than 6,000 known deaths of migrants crossing the desert: These deaths have mostly occurred since the walls were erected, and countless more will never be discovered.10 • Environmental degradation of national and protected lands: The border region hosts multiple national forests, wilderness refuges, and endangered species that have suffered from the walls and heavy enforcement.11 • Intensified human trafficking: With few legal avenues to work or join family in the United States, the profit from smuggling and extorting people has risen. [See “Wanted, Abolitionists to Work for Immigration Reform” on the ESA blog.]12 • Native peoples and lands are divided and disrespected: The Tohono O’odham reside in the Sonoran Desert that spans the US-Mexico border, and the wall now divides this community.13 • Checkpoints established in border communities promote racial profiling: Immigration checkpoints are permitted within 100 miles of the border, and they are infamous for racial profiling and the harassment of people of color.14 • Increased criminalization of the act of migration: Border crossing in a location other than an official port of entry used to be a civil violation, but through the expansion of Operation Streamline (2005-2008), increasing numbers of apprehended immigrants now receive criminal charges and mandatory jail-time for entry and reentry.15 • Increased criminalization of humanitarian workers: More than a dozen humanitarian volunteers have been cited and even prosecuted for providing life-saving humanitarian assistance to migrants. All cases have been either dropped or won thus far.16 • Abuse and killing by Border Patrol with no accountability. Academics, human rights advocates, and Jesuits have released reports demonstrating the systematic and alarming levels of abuse under Border Patrol custody.17 NMD volunteer caring for the blistered feet of a migrant walking through the treacherous desert of southern Arizona. (Photo by Stefano Milano)

NMD volunteers walk the migrant trails of the Sonoran Desert in order to provide basic assistance to people in distress. (Photo by Stefano Milano)

I will share just one severe and recent example of the impact of border security. On the evening of October 10, 2012, 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez was walking down the street in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico— the same street that I myself have walked hundreds of times, which runs parallel to the border wall. On that night, Border Patrol agents opened fire through the paneled border wall and hit the boy 11 times from behind.18 His crime? Being a young man walking down the street in Mexico, caught in the crossfire of a low-grade war zone. As concerned community members, church leaders, and activists, we held vigil at the site of Jose Antonio’s death alongside his family members.

On the six-month anniversary we called upon the US government to investigate and provide information about the incident. The family has been virtually ignored as they continue to ask, “Where is the justice?” Border communities recommend community-based oversight and monitoring mechanisms to hold those in power accountable for what is done in the name of homeland security.

AS I WASHED AND BANDAGED WOUNDED FEET AND LISTENED TO THEIR STORIES, I FOUND DEEPER CONNECTION WITH THE VERY REAL LIFE FORCES OF FAITH AND COURAGE, PASSED ON TO ME BY MY MIGRANT BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

Called to be a desert wanderer In 2005 I felt called to become a desert wanderer and joined the faith-based humanitarian group No More Deaths (NMD). I joined other humanitarian volunteers in the humanitarian aid camp known as the Ark of the Covenant to stop the deaths of migrants crossing the desert of southern Arizona.

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When I first responded to this call, I was struck by the biblical sacredness of the desert as a place that propelled Jesus and many of the prophets into action and advocacy for justice. The desert is a place to encounter the divine in an extreme way, a place of both intense beauty and suffering. At first I sympathized with the migrant on this difficult journey, for sympathy is how I learned (through short-term mission trips) to respond to uncomfortable disparity. But it wasn’t long before I began to understand solidarity more deeply, realizing that our lives are interconnected. Solidarity is the recognition that my liberation (spiritual and physical) is bound to the liberation of my neighbors who are crushed by the wheels of oppression. Indeed, I became the one touched and liberated in this desert place as I washed and bandaged wounded feet and listened to their stories. I found deep connection with the very real life forces of faith and courage, passed on to me by my migrant brothers and sisters.

NMD is an organization of individuals of faith and conscience working to end the increasing death toll and suffering of migrants crossing the ArizonaMexico border. NMD has no salaried staff or board of directors; we have trained thousands of volunteers from around the world to help by providing direct humanitarian aid. We are a grassroots movement based on the principle that when confronted with the face of suffering as a result of deadly policy, we must act. Particularly as people of faith, we can do no other.

It’s simply called civil initiative. What started for me as a summer of desert wandering has become my life journey and passion, to cross borders and to find the heart of God there.

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.

Real security and divine social transformation come through breaking down those walls—with acknowledgement of the hostility and abuse that have occurred and recognition of the fear and injustice that have existed. Then the borderlands may be transformed into a place where faith, hope, and love can coexist between neighbors and before God. I think most Christians can agree that Jesus’ ministry and vision for the transformative kingdom of God would not include walls, semi-automatic weapons, and detention centers. When we catch ourselves, and others, advocating for more border security based on politics or fear, we must advocate a new vision.

Just as Jesus would not advocate for more walls and punitive enforce-

Faith and real security When it comes to social transformation, I’ve noticed that we Christians often expect no more than the status quo from our church leaders, our communities, and even from ourselves. Social transformation is the hard work of expanding the will of God on earth as it is in heaven. If we fasted and prayed together for a healed border, what would God put in our hearts? Where does true security come from, and how is it modeled through you and me? I am convinced that as long as border security How many more deaths? A shrine at the NMD humanitarian aid and walls are socially accepted, the policymakcamp remembering those who have died crossing the desert. ers won’t go against it. We have to start by (Photo by Stefano Milano) shifting the war zone mentality and culture of fear in our communities, in places far from the border, and in our own hearts. ment against our neighbors or poor communities, neither should we. Let’s Scriptures teach us that fear or worry inhibits our ability to welcome build a movement that transforms the spirit of our communities and transGod’s presence in our lives. The Psalms provide the reminder that “The LORD forms borders to be truly and deeply secure. It is time we let our imaginations is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” (27:1). When we run wild in the borderlands! fear, we erect walls or strongholds in our hearts, which block us from the transformative love of Jesus. We also have walls in our minds, creating divi(Editor’s note: You’ll find the endnotes for this article at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.) sions in our communities and between neighbors. Grounded in fear—which is the opposite of faith—these walls hinder us from following the greatest Maryada Vallet stays busy as a humanitarian, health professional, and evancommandment: to love God and love neighbor. The longer the walls exist, the gelical agitator on the border. For more on border humanitarian work, go more hostility and hopelessness take root. Living our faith can promote the to NoMoreDeaths.org. kind of radical and countercultural unity described in Ephesians 2:14-16:

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PEACE WITH GOD, PEACE ON EARTH FORMER-DETAINEES-TURNEDACTIVISTS FIGHT FOR JUST IMMIGRATION LAWS

BY JESSE JAMES DECONTO

Pastor Ruben Garcia’s neighbor spent the holiday season last year apart from his wife and five kids. A construction worker from the Mexican state of Guerrero, the man had been stopped and arrested for driving without a license where he lived in Raleigh, N.C. He spent two months in jail, and then the federal government deported him back to Mexico.

This is a typical experience in Hispanic communities all over the United States, but Garcia and his church, Iglesia del Buen Pastor, were highly motivated to act on that neighbor’s behalf, because they had only recently been in that man’s shoes. Less than three years ago, 46 members of the church, including 19 children, were detained overnight in Louisiana as they returned to their homes in Raleigh from their denomination’s annual Santa Cena (Holy Supper) retreat during Holy Week in Houston, Tex. Six adults were held and deported, and 21 others received removal orders, part of a 30 percent hike in deportations in the early years of the Obama administration.

“We didn’t think that this could happen,” explained Buen Pastor member Sada Lopez through a translator.

“The people who immigrate here are poor and looking for a better life for their families,” Garcia added, after a worship service in Buen Pastor’s warehouse sanctuary in a Raleigh industrial park. “It was when we began to see that people don’t have the freedoms they expected in this country that we began to pray to God that they would change the politics.”

They not only started to pray but also to take action, like cooking meals and collecting an offering for their neighbor’s temporarily fatherless family. Informed and inspired by their own detention in Louisiana, they held

vigils, spoke out in the media, and traveled hours to Arlington, Va., and Asheville, N.C., to meet with other immigrant-rights activists. Suddenly this evangelical congregation of landscape workers—who find relief in emotive, transcendent worship and faith-healing—started getting their hands dirty in earthly politics.

“We feel that we have to fight for our well-being here on earth and also fight for eternal life,” Garcia said. “I would hope that if there’s peace here, we’ll be able to be at peace with God also. God commands us to love one another, and we aren’t doing that. We have to fight in order for this to happen.”

For Buen Pastor, this new energy grows out of personal experience.

But this tiny congregation also represents a broader movement of churches getting active for immigration reform. Progressive religious coalitions formed years ago to work for change, but they’ve been joined in the past year by a host of evangelical groups, signaling a more diverse faith-based movement that has a better chance of accomplishing its goals.

Between surveys in June 2010 and March 2011, the Pew Research Center found a huge jump in the ratio of white, non-Hispanic evangelical Protestants who support legalizing currently unauthorized immigrants, from 54 percent up to 65 percent. That number had remained unchanged in the four years leading up to 2010. By the time of the second survey, fewer than a third of white evangelicals opposed citizenship for illegal immigrants currently in the United States. The general public also slightly increased its support between the 2010 and 2011 surveys, from 68 to 72 percent.

Both of those outcomes reflected a significant increase over Pew’s more comprehensive survey in 2006, which showed 57 percent of white mainline Protestants, 58 percent of white Catholics, and 62 percent of “secular” respondents supported a path to citizenship.

In June 2012, the National Association of Evangelicals joined with major denominations and parachurch organizations to form the Evangelical

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Immigration Table, calling for a new path toward legal status for undocuchief, Alexander Baumgardner, and immigration policy analyst Katie Conway, mented immigrants. Signatories included not just well-known social-justice in a letter to the committee. traditions like the Mennonites and Sojourners, but also Focus on the Family, Other denominations and monastic orders likewise emphasized how InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and the Southern Baptist Convention. the current immigration regime makes it relatively easy for businesses to Starting back in 2005, groups like Sojourners, Bread for the World, hire undocumented workers yet very difficult for those workers to relocate and World Relief had joined with mainline denominations and progressive with their families. Many migrants come to the United States to work and Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim voices to sign an Interfaith Statement on Immisend money to spouses, children, parents, and siblings back in Mexico and gration Reform. Together, they became the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, Central America. lobbying President George W. Bush and then President Obama for compreAnother letter, this one from the United Church of Christ, noted how hensive reform. But with Republicans struggling to attract the Hispanic vote, that denomination grew from the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. “As such, we as highlighted in the media after the 2012 presidential election, evangelical support the struggle of our sisters and brothers who have journeyed to this eyes were opening to how the biblical mandate to “welcome the stranger” land seeking safety, opportunity, and peace.” aligned with political necessity. Evangelical Republicans and evangelical That’s what the members of Buen Pastor ask of their English-speakDemocrats could find common ground on the immigration issue. In Januing fellow Christians. ary of this year, the Table launched “I Was a Stranger,” a campaign urging “It’s very important for them to stand beside us,” said Juan Carloschurches to spend 40 days in prayer for immigration reform.

Pacheco, another one of those arrested in Louisiana. “We are also people.

By the end of that month, a group of American senators—the “Gang We are people.” of Eight,” including former Republican residential candidate “They could put themselves in our shoes and try to imagine John McCain and Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin— what it’s like to be us and to see all of us as brothers and sisters IT IS ESPECIAL- in Christ,” added Lopez, whose own brother is one of several would cross party lines to propose a comprehensive reform LY IMPORTANT friends of Buen Pastor who have been detained and deported with new legal paths to citizenship, at a scale that hasn’t FOR FAITH- after what appeared to be racial-profiling traffic stops. “We are been enacted since 1986. By April they released the text of BASED COALI- all equal.” the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, which is currently being debated in the Pastor Garcia said undocumented immigrants can never live TIONS TO STEP Senate.

UP, BECAUSE at peace in the United States, even when they have stable homes The Act would require the Department of Homeland THEY CAN PRO- and jobs.

Security (DHS) to create, fund, and initiate both a border “The problem is that we feel like we’re illegal,” he said. “No VIDE A MORE matter where we walk or go, we’re still always illegal. Because of security plan and a border fence plan within six months of COMPASSION- this we can’t get a license to drive. We are very fearful when we the bill’s passing. At that point, undocumented immigrants ATE, HOLISTIC see a police officer and especially if they are driving behind us. would be required to come forward and declare themselves, pay fines and any unpaid taxes, and pass a background VISION OF It’s really hard.” check before receiving provisional status, which would qualUnfortunately, many political organizations view immigration IMMIGRATION ify them for a work permit. They would also have to learn reform as a way to meet their own ends (presidential votes, larger REFORM. membership, etc.) rather than as a way to ensure that human beEnglish and American civics and show a pattern of employment. Only if DHS can, within a 10-year period, meet the ings like Pastor Garcia and his congregation are treated, in their required standards of border security would immigrants then be allowed to own words, as “people.” Immigration reform is talked of almost as though apply for permanent residency. When they do apply, their applications would it’s a gift being granted to undocumented immigrants, when in reality it is a go behind the two-decade backlog of all those who have currently applied recognition of their status as children of God. It is also the result of tireless legally. (The framework also calls for stiffer sanctions against employers immigrant and Latino activists who have brought this issue to the forefront, who hire unauthorized workers.) through their voices and their votes.

On Ash Wednesday of this year, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a It is especially important for faith-based coalitions to step up, because hearing on the Gang of Eight’s initial proposal. Immigration has long been a they can provide a more compassionate, holistic vision of immigration redivisive political issue, and while there is growing support for legalizing an form—one that focuses not just on legal or economic ramifications but also estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United on separated families, the situation of immigrants in detention, and other States, the sticking point may be on how to regulate the flow of newcomers aspects of the immigration system that are anything but life-giving. Garcia in the future. “Controversy over a guest-worker program derailed comprealso points out that US citizens in particular are free to speak out in ways hensive reform when the Senate last debated it in 2007,” wrote Alexander that unauthorized immigrants cannot.

Bolton, who covers Congress for The Hill. Prior to the judiciary hearing, “For us, not having papers, being illegal, it’s taking a lot more risk,” he faith leaders held an ash-imposition liturgy across from the Senate office said, noting widespread arrests at the 2010 May Day rallies for immigration building in Washington. Across the country, interfaith coalition members held reform just weeks after Buen Pastor’s own detention. Those demonstramarches and vigils in support of new paths to citizenship. tions had drawn hundreds of thousands of activists from all over the United “Our immigration system should be reformed so that immigrants who States in four previous years. “We’re all willing to help and collaborate, but wish to reunify with their families or seek employment in the United States they used force, and that began to intimidate people, so the next year there do not have to make impossible choices between our immigration laws and were marches again, but there weren’t nearly as many people. It’s not that the people they love,” wrote the Episcopal Church’s government relations we don’t want to, it’s just that we’re afraid to go back to jail.”

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Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Shutterstock.com

Ten undocumented immigrants risked their freedom in a very public way last summer at the Democratic National Convention across the state in Charlotte. The 10 had ridden the UnDocuBus across the country from Arizona to demand immigration reform. Like Raleigh’s surrounding Wake County, Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County participates in the federal 287(g) program, which empowers local jailers to hold undocumented immigrants for immigration violations and hand them over to immigration authorities, even though such violations are not crimes but administrative breaches under US law. Often an immigrant is stopped for a license check, arrested for driving without a license, and then transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation. But the protesters in Charlotte were released that same night. At the time, ICE spokesman Vincent Picard told the Charlotte Observer those protesters would have been a higher priority if they had committed other crimes, had recently crossed the border, or had been previously deported and then had returned.

Garcia speculates that the Democratic Party had quietly endorsed not only the protesters’ release but also the protest itself. “It was kind of a political stunt. The Democrats were kind of staging all of it,” he said. “But it’s important because it ended up helping us out.” Garcia said he is grateful for the bipartisan senators’ work toward reform. “The Republicans are changing their stance. As they’ve seen that more Latinos are voting for Democrats, the Republicans are starting to change.”

“We believe that in time we will see changes and there will be access to legalization for people like us,” said Carlos-Pacheco.

Despite their involvement in more political, hands-on work for immigration reform, Garcia said that Buen Pastor’s most powerful tool is prayer. At the service this past winter, a quartet—mother, father, daughter, uncle—led the congregation in the hymn “Grande Gozo Yo Siento En Mi Alma” (Great Joy I Feel in My Soul). The people sat in a windowless room, surrounded by 20-foot warehouse walls completely covered in a flowing crimson velour tapestry. Men and boys were on the left. Women sat on the right, with heads

covered and wearing skirts or dresses. They followed Garcia’s lead, standing, shouting, and raising their hands in worship as the family sang lines like, “He suffered scorn for my cause, he changed my darkness to light!” Associated with Mexico’s iconoclastic, apostolic Iglesia del Dios Vivo Columna y Apoyo de la Verdad, La Luz del Mundo, the “Good Shepherd” churches forbid musical instruments, so the people sang song after song without accompaniment.

Some congregants fell to their knees, pounding on the carpeted floor of the altar, weeping, crying out with “Gloria a Cristo!”

“Primarily what we do is that we pray for justice, we pray for the prosecutor to make a good decision in the case, and for there to be reform, and for people who are in these positions, for their hearts to be changed,” said Garcia.

For the 21 church members who weren’t deported immediately after the Louisiana traffic stop, the outcome has been satisfactory. They were released the following morning and two years later, while they were back in Houston for another Easter retreat, they got news from their lawyer that the removal orders had been lifted.

“It was a really important moment for us,” Garcia said. He also recognizes that media coverage and tireless legal work helped their case, and he feels responsible to do what he can to help others, like his neighbors from the Mexican state of Guerrero.

“We were praying for them, and thanks be to God, the man has recrossed the border to come back to them,” said Garcia. “He had really swollen feet from having walked so far.”

Jesse James DeConto is a freelance writer and musician in Durham, N.C., with a special interest in biblical justice. He is a regular contributor to PRISM, often writing for Music Notes, as he has in this issue.

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Step Over a Homeless Man to Feed a Dog

(and other things I’ve never had to do as an animal advocate)

by Sarah Withrow King

beaks

The beaks of chickens, turkeys and ducks are often removed to reduce the excessive feather pecking and cannibalism that can arise among stressed, overcrowded birds.

overproduction

To induce greater egg production, farmers shock hens’ bodies into additional egglaying cycles by starving them for several days and keeping them in the dark.

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Toes Toe-clipping is

the amputation of a bird’s toes just behind the claw. This painful procedure is performed to reduce clawrelated injuries to workers on factory farms.

I’ve

been an activist since I was old enough to walk. For most of my life, my passion was poured into the pro-life movement. When I was 4, my parents took me to a pro-life rally at the Idaho capitol building, and our picture made the front page of the newspaper. In middle school, I was president of a drug education club. In high school, I presided over the local Teens for Life group, worked tables for Oregon Right to Life at local events, performed pro-life songs and plays at rallies, and attended packed, statewide pro-life conferences. None of my Christian friends and family ever questioned whether or not the defenseless beings I was working to protect needed or deserved my help. It was (and continues to be) my calling to be a voice for the voiceless, to stand up for justice and life in the face of a culture that systematically finds ways to prevent lives from truly flourishing.

During college, I started to read about factory farming, which is the way that billions of animals that end up on North American plates are raised and slaughtered. My images of happy animals on Old MacDonald’s farm were shattered and replaced with dark new ones: miserable lives all ending in the same nightmarish way, hung upside down on a fast-moving slaughter line, throat slit, waiting to die. I stopped being able to look at the chicken on my plate as food and started to realize that when I ate meat, my meal had stopped a beating heart.

I started to work for animals. I didn’t stop loving Jesus. I didn’t stop advocating for peace and life for humans everywhere. I just started to advocate for nonhuman animals, too. And when that started, so did the pushback: “Aren’t there other things that are more important?” “What about the starving kids in Africa?” “Shouldn’t you work to solve all of the human problems first?” “What, are you going to step over a homeless dude and

feed his dog?”

I understand the concern. One of my closest friends spent a lot of time in foster homes as a teenager. He and houses full of kids without families would be watching TV and hear the familiar Sarah McLachlan refrain as pictures of abused and homeless dogs and cats flashed across the screen.

He still gets pretty fired up at the memory and says he’ll be happy to start worrying about homeless dogs and cats as soon as people start airing commercials for homeless kids. I totally get it. But here’s the thing—if God is calling you to reduce homelessness, dig wells in Africa, fight poverty, minister to the dying, stop sex trafficking, fix a broken education system, reduce gun violence, foster world peace or racial reconciliation, or any other Really Godly Uses of Time, you can do any of that and still help stop cruelty to animals.

One vegetarian saves more than 100 animal lives a year. Period. No protesting, tract-handing-out, quitting-of-full-time-job-level sacrifices required.

Helping animals and helping people are not mutually exclusive propositions.

In fact, they are closely linked.

Meat wastes essential water and grain Eating meat wastes valuable and increasingly limited resources. It takes up to 13 pounds of grain plus another 30 pounds of grasses to produce just a pound of meat.1 You want a pound of animal protein? That’ll use 100 times more water than a pound of plant protein. Studies have shown that up to 5,000 gallons of water is required for every pound of beef.2 That’s what it takes to produce, but what do we consume? In 2011: 26.5 billion pounds of cow flesh.3 In 2012: 35.4 billion pounds of chickens and turkeys4 and nearly 18 billion pounds of pigs.5 These aren’t worldwide figures—this is what we consumed in the United States alone. That means

separation at birth Dairy cows are forcibly impregnated through artificial insemination every year. Calves are generally taken away within a day of being born. Mother cows can often be seen searching and calling for their babies long after they have been taken away.

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billions upon billions of pounds of grain and millions of gallons of water destroyed to raise crops used to feed animals on factory farms.9 Meanwhile, were pumped into animals to produce a limited and costly food source for Oxfam reports that 66 million Brazilians face daily food insecurity.10 These an already fattened populace instead of being distributed directly to hungry, are just a few examples of the global failures of today’s food production thirsty people throughout the world. The World Health Organization reports methods. that “Chronic food deficits affect about 792 million people in the world, including 20 percent of the population in developing countries. Worldwide, God made the whole world malnutrition affects one in three people and each of its major forms dwarfs I think sometimes we forget that God made the whole world, including the most other diseases globally.”6 chickens and the turkeys. I think we forget, because why else would we think Jesus tells his disciples, “When it was okay to do some of the Son of Man comes in his glory, and Most chickens used for meat or eggs never see sunlight or the things we do to animals all the angels with him…he will say to breathe fresh air. Conditions are so crowded from birth to before we eat them? I have those at his left hand, ‘I was hungry and death that they cannot even stretch their wings. a special affinity for chickens, you gave me no food, I was thirsty and so let’s talk about them for a you gave me nothing to drink...Truly few minutes.

I tell you, just as you did not do it to Chickens raised and one of the least of these, you did not killed for their meat on facdo it to me’” (Matt. 25: 31-46). Take tory farms are hatched in a few minutes to read the whole pasdrawers and dumped onto sage and then reread the disturbing the floor of a giant shed facts above. where they stay for two The Global North is often acmonths until they are “fully cused of using far more than its fair grown.” As the chickens share of resources. We vow to change grow, quarters get tighter the kind of light bulbs we use, drive and tighter, and the aca little less, take reusable shopping cumulation of feathers, bags to the grocery store, recycle feces, and urine creates our pizza boxes and water bottles… toxic air and can become these are all valuable changes, but so dangerous that chickthey barely make a dent when we ens get ammonia burns continue to chow down on animals. and workers must wear In the first chapter of Genesis, Male chicks are useless to the egg industry, so they are protective clothing and God prescribes a vegetarian diet for ground up alive or simply thrown away and left to die. respirators to safely enter human and nonhuman animals alike the sheds.11 Chickens natand calls the created world “very urally establish dominance good” (Genesis 1:29-31). In the secthrough pecking orders, ond account of the creation story, God but in such cramped quartells the human creatures to “till and ters, pecking can be quite keep” the garden (Genesis 2:15). We harmful. To prevent this are tilling the garden, but we aren’t natural behavior, workers doing a very good job of keeping it. In use hot blades or wires to the United States about 60 percent of cut the beaks off of baby our pastures are overgrazed, and soil birds. Because we have erosion is accelerating at an unsusdeveloped an affinity for tainable pace.7 The land simply isn’t breast meat, chickens are made to sustain billions of people bred to grow too fast, and relying on a diet of animal products. their legs often cripple beIt would be bad enough if we neath them.12 were wreaking this havoc just on our Egg-laying hens are own soil, but globalization has exported more than cheap and dangerous crammed into cages about the size of a file cabinet. They each have less clothing manufacturing to the majority world. In an effort to keep pace with room than a sheet of paper on which to live.13 They eat, sleep, and defecate the global market and capitalize on an export market hungry for animal in this small space and are unable to stretch their wings. Cages are stacked protein, the Brazilian Amazon has become, according to Greenpeace, the one on top of the other in huge warehouses; you can imagine what that “largest driver of deforestation in the world, responsible for an average of looks, feels, and smells like. Egg-laying hens live this way for an average one acre lost every eight seconds.”8 Greenpeace researchers found that in of two years before their bodies will no longer produce enough eggs to be the 2004-2005 growing season alone, 2.9 million acres of rainforest were worth keeping. Dead and dying chickens are rarely removed.

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The first time most chickens feel the sunshine or breathe fresh air is when they are on the back of a truck, headed to slaughter. To gather chickens for transport to the slaughterhouse, workers walk through the sheds, grabbing birds and flinging them into crates; this frequently breaks wings and legs. At the slaughterhouse, the crates are dumped onto conveyer belts from which workers grab birds and slam their legs into shackles at the rate of 140-180 birds per minute per line.14 Their heads are sent through an electric stunning bath (which often does not render them insensible to pain), and then they are run across an automatic blade, which frequently misses the bird’s throat, maiming them instead. In 2007, 1.5 million chickens and turkeys were still alive when they entered the scalding tank for feather removal, meaning they drowned to death in boiling water.15 While I have focused on chickens, the foundational view of animals as commodities and resulting methodologies are found across the entire industry, and parallel abuses will be found in an examination of cow, pig, or fish farming. What I have described is standard agricultural practice, meaning these practices are common, accepted, and legal. What I have not described are the grotesque abuses exposed by undercover investigations of farms and slaughterhouses by animal advocacy groups, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Mercy for Animals.16 Factory farms are only “successful” because they dramatically alter God’s original creative design. We have seen many examples of this in explorations of chicken farming: Birds are unable to stretch their wings; they are denied the small pleasures of fresh air, sunlight, pecking for food, or social interaction; and they are genetically modified to a crippling degree.

Cows, chickens, pigs, and turkeys that would otherwise forage for a variety of foods are given a manufactured diet of grain spiked with antibiotics. To keep pigs from biting one another and chewing on their cage bars, their teeth and tails are cut off. Pigs and cows are castrated without painkillers, and cow’s horns are scooped or burned out of their heads. These acts are not only cruel, they dishonor God’s creative plan and betray our selfish and power-hungry tendency to elevate our own wants and desires at any cost.

The British theologian Andrew Linzey claims that a strong Christology leads to a view of nonhuman animals that doesn’t allow for these types of uses or abuses. “The pattern of obligation disclosed by Christ makes no appeal to equality. The obligation is always and everywhere on the ‘higher’ to sacrifice for the ‘lower’; for the strong, powerful, and rich to give to those who are vulnerable, poor, or powerless.”17 Jesus came to us as a humble servant (c.f. Mark 10:45, John 13:1-20, Acts 3:13, Philippians 2:5-9). Consider again the passage from Matthew 25—what we do to the “least of these” we do to Jesus. When we are in positions of power, we are called to serve.

The Good Samaritan One striking example of the power of service is in the story of the Good Samaritan. When the story begins, Jesus is teaching a small crowd. A lawyer asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. We’re told the man is testing Jesus, who responds as a teacher does, with a question: “What is written in the law?” The lawyer answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus commends him, but the lawyer pushes back: “And who is my neighbor?” In this context, we hear of the man who was traveling a dangerous road and overcome by robbers. He is passed by a priest and a Levite (examples of highly respected citizens) before the Samaritan stops, is “moved with pity,” and saves him from certain

"THE OBLIGATION IS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE ON THE ‘HIGHER’ TO SACRIFICE FOR THE ‘LOWER’; FOR THE STRONG, POWERFUL, AND RICH TO GIVE TO THOSE WHO ARE VULNERABLE, POOR, OR POWERLESS." death. Jesus asks the lawyer which of the three was a neighbor. The lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy,” and Jesus tells his listener to “Go and do likewise.” In this story, the hero is the person who crosses the road and saves the life of another—and he is a Samaritan—a no-class, unclean, bottom-of-the-barrel foreigner. 18 Through the lens of this parable, through the lens of Jesus, “neighbor” is not social location but action—and specifically love in action. Using a Samaritan to illustrate neighborly love was a game-changer in 1st-century Palestine. It was astounding to think that a barbaric Samaritan could demonstrate love, and unthinkable to cross the rigid cultural boundaries that prevented showing mercy or friendship to the “other.” Perhaps it is just as astounding to consider crossing rigid species boundaries to extend mercy and friendship to nonhuman animals. But consider that as each era passes, humans realize past injustices (slavery, child labor, the subjugation of women, the wanton abuse of natural resources) and work to rectify them.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is not the only place Jesus makes the outrageous claims to expand our circle of compassion and care (remember “Love your enemies”?). We are to respond in love to those who persecute us, who want to murder us and our families. How much more is our obligation to respond in love to the vulnerable creatures God has placed in the world alongside of us?

Theologian and ethicist Daniel Miller points out that “granting neighborly love to animals does not lead to a diminishment of the Christian’s capacity to love human neighbors.”19 Indeed, doesn’t our capacity for communion with God and neighbor, and our ability to freely respond to injustice in our world, demand from us care rather than cruelty?

Jesus didn’t ask us to love some times and hate other times. Jesus didn’t ask us to be merciful when it was convenient and to turn a blind eye when we felt uncomfortable. Jesus didn’t ask us to categorize and prioritize and show love to the top first—and then to the bottom if we had any energy left at the end of the day. Jesus didn’t ask us to have the bleeding victim of greed answer a three-part questionnaire to determine his worthiness before intervening on his behalf. Jesus tells us that neighborly love is merciful love, regardless of the giver or the recipient, and that we are to go and do likewise.

HELPING ANIMALS AND HELPING PEOPLE ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE PROPOSITIONS. IN FACT, THEY ARE CLOSELY LINKED.

(Editor’s note: You’ll find the endnotes for this article at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Sarah Withrow King is deputy director of the Sider Center and an MTS student at Eastern University’s Palmer Seminary. She lives in Philadelphia and believes that peace begins on our plates.

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CHAT

Interviews by Chris Johnson

ROOM

Experts speak about pornography, addiction, and the deepest hungers of the heart

We sat down with four people who are passionate about embracing God’s wholeness and are willing to tell the uncensored truth about sexual brokenness. Listen in on these snippets of conversation, then check out the full interviews on our website (see details at end).

Not Just a “Man” Issue: Jessica Harris

Jessica Harris is the 27-year-old voice behind Beggar’s Daughter, an online resource for women who struggle with sexual sin. The aim of Beggar’s Daughter is to educate about female lust addiction, encourage the addict, and equip the church to help. Harris struggled with a pornography addiction for nearly 10 years and now writes and speaks, sharing her own story of addiction, grace, and healing in hopes of helping others find freedom.

What is it that hooks women into using pornography, especially when most porn is degrading to women?

Harris: It’s important to remember, first off, that pornography is not a “man” issue. It is a sin issue, which makes it a humanity issue. A woman can be drawn in either visually or emotionally. There is this incorrect idea that only men are visually stimulated, so we get confused when women struggle.

There are women who are drawn to pornography simply because it arouses them sexually. A woman may start with something “soft” like romance novels or nonviolent erotica. Then eventually she can build up to using hardcore pornography, which is degrading toward women. She won’t even realize it’s degrading, because it’s all about the sexual stimulation. It’s similar to watching a train wreck. There might be graphic and disturbing images, but in the context of the unfolding drama, viewers just can’t look away.

That’s the same line of reasoning that plays in an addict’s mind. If you showed her a video of a woman being beat up, she would likely be appalled, but if it’s in the context of pornography where it’s sexual and the woman appears to be consenting, then it’s “different.” It’s excusable to her. What she doesn’t realize is that she is becoming desensitized. The longer she stays involved the more violent and bizarre her preferences will become and the more likely it is that she will act out her addiction.

For other women, it is an emotional hook. Many of the women who come to me have a background of abuse. There’s a history of brokenness, pain, and degradation. In a way, that has become a norm for her. She thinks, consciously or unconsciously, “This is just how life is. This is just how women are treated.” She may start with sex chatting as a way to feel connected and accepted.

When that woman stumbles across pornography, as violent and degrading as it can be, she sees it

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as love. These two people on the screen are being intimate. This woman usually imagines herself in the scene as opposed to standing outside of it looking in. She is not visually stimulated by the sex; she is stimulated by the fantasy of being that woman in the video. She doesn’t understand she is worth more and deserves better.

What does the church need to do to help women who are trapped in a porn habit?

Harris: When Jesus came, he didn’t march around informing people they were sick; the sick came to him for healing. If the church is the body of Christ, the representation of his hope on earth, then we need to be that same beacon of hope, healing, and grace.

Churches need to have women who can step up as mentors and accountability partners for women who struggle. Churches need to openly address the reality that, yes, Christian women can be trapped in sexual sins. People need to extend grace, not judgment; men may respond well to being hit upside the head with truth, but women need compassion more than we need confrontation. A couple of years ago I sat and listened as a pastor went on and on and on about how sick pornography was and how sick people were who watched it. With every “sick” I wanted to cry. We know we’re sick. Tell us how to get better! Give us hope that there’s a way out and encourage us to walk in the freedom that is ours in Christ.

How did you get out?

Harris: Someone else started the conversation. I had been waiting for years for someone else to acknowledge I was there. All of the resources were

for men, and I had no clue how to ask for help!

At my lowest point, I was actually considering joining the porn industry. I was caught in my addiction, and I kept hearing people say, “Women just don’t have this problem.” I figured I had no choice but to actually become an adult actress. I was so tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I was 17 when I sent out my first pictures. I felt so disgusting and worthless.

A year later, during an all-women meeting at college, the dean of women stood at the front of the room and said, “We know some of you struggle with pornography and masturbation, and we’re going to help.” She encouraged us to let someone know if we were struggling with this. I did, and it was probably the scariest thing I have ever done, but I’ve never regretted it.

Healing is a journey. When a woman watches pornography for so long, she loses a sense of her worth not only as a woman but as a human being. It can completely destroy how she views her body, men, sex, her faith, love, and so much more. The process of freedom is more than just not watching the porn anymore. Freedom is about being healed from all of its effects, too. It is a long process.

Over the following two years, various women invested their time and effort into helping me find healing and freedom. Everything I do today is a direct result of their willingness to talk about what no one else would. I do what I do in hopes that it will start that process of freedom for someone else.

Harris recommends the book Sexual Sanity for Women: Healing from Sexual and Relational Brokenness, edited by Ellen Dykas (New Growth Press, 2012).

Learn more at BeggarsDaughter.com.

Let the Conversation Begin: Steven Siler Steve Siler founded Music for the Soul on the basis of two passionately held beliefs—that Jesus is a compassionate and loving healer and that music has the power to speak healing straight into people’s hearts.

Siler writes and produces songs that address painful topics rarely breached in music—abortion, eating disorders, cancer, life after suicide. He writes for those living with terminal disease, disability, or grief of any kind. But one of his central passions is putting to music the pain of sexual abuse and addiction, expressed in his Somebody’s Daughter project, which tells the truth about pornography.

How can men be a part of the solution to stop the exploitation of girls and children?

Siler: Every woman you look at in pornography is somebody’s daughter. If you wouldn’t want to see your daughter, your wife, your mom, or your sister being prostituted in that magazine spread or video, why would you want that for anyone else’s daughter, wife, mom, or sister?

Once you acknowledge that, it becomes incumbent on us as men, and especially Christian men, to take a step back and a hard look at our culture and ask, “Where in my life I am dropping the ball?

Where have I become so anesthetized that I don’t object to the way we look at women culturally, that I don’t object to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue? That’s not the message I want to send to my daughter about what it takes to have value in our culture.” These are the kinds of questions I don’t think guys are asking themselves, because we have just accepted that “boys-will-be-boys” thing that has been handed to us. That is not good enough for us, especially as believers. Start simply with the Golden Rule—if you wouldn’t want the women you love in a pornographic video, why would you want it for any woman?

Every time you buy a magazine, every time you rent a DVD, you are speaking out with your money about whether or not the way women are being presented in those scenarios is okay with you or not. You’re complicit. Guys will say, “You’re being too harsh,” but Ephesians 5:3 says that “among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality.” I don’t see any wiggle room here. First Corinthians 6:18 says, “Flee sexual immorality.” That means to turn and run hard in the other direc-

tion. I don’t see the Christian men in this culture turning and running hard from a porn-drenched culture. I do not see them objecting to Kate Hudson posing naked on the cover of a magazine sold at the supermarket right where any 5-year-old can see it. We are like frogs in a pot—we are being boiled alive, and we don’t even know it.

What are the biggest challenges facing men in terms of sexuality, and what can the church do to help?

Siler: Well, this is an area where we really need some help in the church., because the whole “flesh being evil” thing has created some seriously bad theology. If God created us in God’s image, then divinity is a part of who we are. That’s how we reflect God. So when we buy into this idea that somehow there is some part of God’s creation that is inherently evil and then we shush it up and refuse to talk about those “dirty” parts, we create a situation where things fester, and anytime you do something in the dark, you know Satan has a field day. That’s what we’ve done; we’ve basically said, “Oh, we don’t talk about this stuff.” And sin can flourish because it is in the dark. The moment you drag it out in the light and start talking about it, that changes the game. So the first thing I think the church needs to do is start talking honestly about this. The church wants to change the world, but we can’t change the world until we have the ability to mentor our own kids, and we can’t mentor our own kids until we clean up our own act, and we can’t clean up our own act until we turn the light on.

What went into writing the songs about pornography?

Siler: All of the songs were created after long conversations with guys who had been through porn addictions and with people who counsel and pastor them. Once the songs were written we went back to those folks and played the songs for them, and when they said, “That’s it—that’s exactly how I felt,” then we knew they were good. We want people to hear their story and to recognize themselves in these songs. If the song is meant to convict, we want them to recognize their sin in the song. If the song is meant to encourage a spouse, we want her to be able to say, “Oh, I thought I was the only one, but I’m not, because that woman is singing about it so it happened to her, too.” We are trying to create community and a sense of support for people.

She’s Somebody’s Daughter is preparing to launch a nationwide conversation on October 1, starting in Oklahoma City. It will involve billboards, PSAs, and a non-proprietary website where people can get the facts, get help, and get involved. Learn more at ShesSomebodysDaughter. wordpress.com.

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An Untreated Pandemic: Patrick Trueman Patrick Trueman was chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, US Department of Justice in DC from 1988 to 1993. Today, as CEO of Morality In Media, Trueman directs the War on Illegal Pornography, a national coalition effort involving dozens of national, state, and local groups that are educating the American public on the great harms of pornography and calling for vigorous enforcement of federal laws against illegal pornography.

The literature from Morality in Media speaks of America suffering from the “untreated pandemic of harm from pornography.” Can you speak to this?

Trueman: Well, the first thing we have to understand about pornography is that it is very addictive and in many ways no different from cocaine. It actually changes brain function. Many people who use pornography say, “Sure, I look at porn for a few hours a day, but I’m not addicted.” And I always respond by saying, “Okay, why don’t you try going without pornography for a week and see how it goes?” But when they try to go without it a hunger wells up inside them because their brains have grown accustomed to—and dependent on—the high levels of dopamine that pornography produces. It actually rewires the brain by creating new pathways that can keep a person looking at pornography for a long time, because even when you leave it behind you have these images in your brain. Your brain wants to keep the new pathways active, and it is demanding, so it will drag you back to look at more pornography.

But in order to maintain the same level of excitement, the porn user has to have harder and harder material to look at, so that’s how you get driven to more deviant pornography. In an effort to find riskier and more illicit material, some consumers will eventually move on to child pornography. The former president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has pointed out that child pornography was virtually wiped out 20 years ago. That is an important observation, because child pornography has become a $3 billion a year industry since that time.1 Do you see any generational differences in how people and various groups address porn?

Trueman: For many of the 50 years that Morality in Media has been in existence,

Today many people are fighting against pornography because of what it’s doing to society and to their own personal relationships rather than just for moral reasons.

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the issue of pornography was fought on moral and spiritual grounds. But over the last 10 to 15 years, science has been catching up, and scientists are discovering how the brain is affected by pornography. We can see that there are actually scientific reasons for opposing pornography. So what we’re finding today, in this culture where far fewer people have spiritual background than earlier generations, is that many people are fighting against pornography because of what it’s doing to society and to their own personal relationships rather than just for moral reasons.

Pornography doesn’t just change the brain physiologically, but it also changes our way of thinking. Regular consumers of pornography end up believing things that aren’t true, for example that women like sex mixed with violence. Of course, that’s a total falsehood, but men come to believe that by watching pornography, which contains so much violence. That’s just one example.2 I urge you to go to PornHarmsResearch.com, where we’ve assembled all of our scientific articles.

Given the damage that pornography does—to the brain, to relationships, to our thinking—and how it exacerbates trafficking, can you envision the government putting a surgeon general’s warning of sorts on pornographic products, the way it does with cigarettes?

Trueman: I think it would be very good to have a warning by the surgeon general.

That is what happened with smoking. I tell young people today that there was a time when people smoked on an airplane. They smoked in stores—I remember kids were smoking in class when I was in college. Today, we have bought into the science that shows us the harm from smoking. That all came about because science rose above fiction, and that’s what is needed with respect to pornography.

The surgeon general could play a very big role in that.

In fact, when C. Everett Koop was surgeon general under Reagan, he did speak out against pornography, saying that it constituted “a clear and present danger to American public health.”3 President Reagan convened the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. Now, that’s almost 30 years ago, and they found evidence that if pornography goes unchecked it will affect great numbers of the American people. Well, that’s exactly what we’re seeing today. The surgeon general’s support on the harm of pornography would be a wonderful thing. As people get informed about the harm that pornography is causing, they will want to do something about it. Even people who at one time defended pornography—once they discover how it affects their entire life or how it has destroyed their marriage, they change their mind. We’re living in a time where pornography is harming virtually every American family, so maybe it’s time now to explore a surgeon general’s warning on—or at least a new surgeon general study of—the harms of pornography.

(Editor’s note: Endnotes for this interview can be found at PRISMmagazine.org/ endnotes)

Learn more at PornHarms.com and WarOnIllegalPornography.com.

Living out of Wholeness: Michael John Cusick Michael John Cusick is an ordained minister, spiritual director, and professional counselor. He is the founder and president of Restoring the Soul, a ministry to provide soul care for Christian leaders and their organizations. His recent book, Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle, asks the compelling question “What if lust for porn is really a search for the divine?”

So what’s this about divine desire?

Cusick: This is not just about porn, lust, or sexual addiction. That’s my story, and I believe that many men are in bondage to that. But my passion is to connect the brokenness of life to reality. One of the things I see happening in evangelical Christianity today is this massive disconnect between our lives and the power of the crucified, resurrected Jesus and the implications of that disconnect for the kingdom of God. There’s a big difference between asking if Christianity is true and asking if it is real. I think there are countless people who believe that Christianity is true but have no experience of it being real, because it has no power in their own lives.

Christ is all about transformation. And when people live out of the reality of Christ their hearts become free, and that’s when all the good stuff happens—when the kingdom of God begins to thrive because people are living out of wholeness and not out of brokenness. In the context of sexuality, it’s not just about getting sober or stopping harmful behavior—it’s truly about doing life differently. If we did life differently, eventually that story could address the demand for sex trafficking and for pornography.

What is it about pornography that is so appealing?

Cusick: Whether we’re talking about porn or something else (food, power, control, security), lust is the problem. Lust is the attempt to fill ourselves with things we believe will give us some worth, and it is incredibly invasive. And while you can’t look at pornography without lust, you can certainly lust without looking at pornography. I think the reason pornography is so appealing is that it’s a counterfeit of what we’re really created for. It’s sexual engagement without vulnerability, without risk, without the need for strength or courage. Porn is a counterfeit of something good and intimate.

You say men need to recognize where they were wounded in their past but that it’s hard for them. Why is that?

Cusick: The short answer is shame. We are dismissive of our past. We don’t want to admit that our heart has been affected and shaped by pain, by things that have been done to us that shouldn’t have been done, by things that weren’t done that should have been done—what I call wounds of presence and wounds of absence.

When men live out of their brokenness, very often they avoid their past or they go to the other end of the continuum and try to control. Shame says whatever is inside of you is bad, wrong, flawed, inadequate. You can’t expose that. So for a man to begin to look at his brokenness, inadequacies, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and limitations he must get in touch with pain that is very often unhealed, unaddressed, unrecognized. It’s not something that can be fixed like a carburetor or earned like an MBA. And ultimately we have to ask ourselves, “Can I really trust God with my heart?”

Ultimately we have to ask ourselves, “Can I really trust God with my heart?”

What are the top three obstacles to healthy sexuality?

Cusick: Number one—Christian culture has very little idea what healthy sexuality is. Healthy sexuality is understanding that our sexuality is not just a physical thing, it’s not just an impulse that has to do with what we do with our genitals, but it has to do with our maleness and our femaleness and how we connect to God and others. So we need to understand healthy sexuality.

Number two—a lack of understanding of our brokenness. Brokenness includes sin but extends beyond sin to the places where we have been wounded, to the places where we have been lied to and have come to believe those lies.

And brokenness extends to our weaknesses, which are simply vulnerabilities, limitations, or actual shortcomings. A holistic approach to brokenness has got to be more than just “we are sinners.” We have been sinned against, we are targets of warfare, and even our wiring—the neurological connections that mediate all of our experience—is broken. And so issues with sexual compulsion are ultimately about broken masculinity or femininity.

Number three—shame. In the beginning, men and women were naked and unashamed. But shame came from the accusation of the enemy, who twisted our God-given ability to experience guilt. Shame is the primary thing that keeps men isolated.

Sex is woven so closely into the core of our identity that with sexual shame we either flaunt our shame—“Oh well, it’s nothing but biology, and sex is a wonderful thing, so let’s talk about it everywhere,” or we hide our shame.

The stigma is related to the shame, and sexual addiction is potentially one of the most shaming things that a man or a woman can speak of in the church.

But when a church encourages conversation about sexual addiction and allows the gospel to be applied to it, it is enormously powerful. Generally speaking, in churches that allow for people who are sexually addicted to speak openly about it, you’ll see deep levels of transformation and the gospel taking root.

Learn more at SurfingforGodBook.com.

You’ll find the full interviews of Harris, Siler, Trueman, and Cusick— as well as others—at PRISMmagazine.org/SexualJustice-interviews.

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Off the Shelf

The World Is Not Ours to Save Intervarsity Press

by Tyler Wigg-Stevenson Review by Margot Starbuck For the briefest moment, the title of this book—The World Is Not Ours to Save: Finding Freedom to Do Good—confused me. I’m one who really likes to pigeonhole people, and I’d already decided before reading a single word what Wigg-Stevenson would have to say about saving the world.

As the founder and director of the Two Futures Project, a movement of Christians for nuclear threat reduction and the global abolition of nuclear weapons, Wigg-Stevenson was, in my mind, caricatured as one of these Chicken Little types of activists. Since I’m happy enough to move through most of my days completely unaware of nuclear reality and feel certain I’m not alone in this particular stupor, I figured that he probably runs around frantically screaming at people like me, “The nukes are falling! The nukes are falling!” I just assumed that there had been a rare typo at InterVarsity Press and that the cover should have asserted that the world is indeed “ours to save.”

Imagine my relief and delight to discover that they’d actually gotten the title right. But this isn’t a book for the apathetic.

It’s a book for the kind of people who read PRISM. It’s a book for those who have heard God’s call to transform the world and are seeking to be faithful to that call.

That a book with this kind of substance is beautifully written is a true bonus gift. Wigg-Stevenson is my favorite kind of writer—a great storyteller. His stunningly worded turns of phrase give delicious (and memorable) shape to his ideas. In tickling our imaginations with moments from his travels around the world, he consistently honors the tension between a world that needs to be saved, eager activists who are ready to do the saving, and the reality that there is One alone who saves. He exercises integrity, presenting and dealing fairly with the arguments of others. He writes with a relatable, intelligent, compassionate voice. Despite the fact that he is not offering world-saving instruction, his evident wisdom primed me, nonetheless, to do whatever he might have suggested. (Did I mention that, like you, I really want to save the world?)

The World Is Not Ours to Save instead invites activists to identify what is not ours and thereby be freed to own what is. Miroslav Volf, author and professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, prescribes Wigg-Stevenson’s book for what he calls “cause fatigue,” promising that it will “give you rest and help you not tire out of Continued on page 52

The Heart of Religion

by Matthew T. Lee, Margaret M. Poloma, Stephen G. Post Oxford University Press Reviewed by Mae Elise Cannon Through a discourse of science and theology, The Heart of Religion: Spiritual Empowerment, Benevolence, and the Experience of God’s Love looks at the centrality of a loving God in the lives of benevolent people. The book seeks to answer the question of whether or not faith makes a difference and also examines the role of God’s love in influencing benevolence and spiritual empowerment. This interdisciplinary work emphasizes sociological scientific analysis while also recounting personal stories of men and women who directly experience the love of God and have committed their lives to making a difference in the world. The focus is the experience of “divine love that fosters benevolence.”

The title The Heart of Religion is misleading, as the book concentrates almost entirely on the Christian faith, primarily in the Pentecostal tradition, while providing only brief mention of other religions. While Christianity was the focus of research, the authors do not claim it to be uniquely benevolent or beyond the scope of other religions. The authors’ findings did conclude that there is a correlation between religious people and acts of benevolence.

Lee, Poloma, and Post further define the heart of religion as “the dynamic and emotionally powerful experience of a radically loving, radically accepting God that provides the energy for religious social networks and institutions.” Their research “pilgrimage” included the Godly Love National Survey (GLNS), which included 1,208 randomly selected Americans from across the country in addition to hundreds of more targeted survey responses and dozens of in-depth interviews. Further evidence includes the personal stories and accounts of five individuals who exemplify extensive benevolence in their own lives and ministry, including Heidi Baker (cofounder of Iris ministries and global servant of the poor); Paul Alexander (co-President of the Sider Center, academic, theologian, and peace activist); and Anne Beiler (co-founder of Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels and the Family Center of Gap) among others.

Research resulted in several observations about the relationship between one’s experience of God’s love and one’s subsequent actions toward family, loved ones, and community. The authors defined benevolent characteristics in three primary categories: service (community engagement); renewal (supernatural revitalization); and provoking change (advocating for justice). The exemplars of love-inspired benevolence had much in common, including “a high sensitivity to global needs that transcend national boundaries.” Case studies focused on individuals who have committed their lives to responding to the needs of the global poor, Continued on page 52

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Does Jesus Really Love Me?

by Jeff Chu Harper Collins Reviewed by Marg Herder It used to be that evangelical Christians didn’t have much trouble with LGBT people. There weren’t many of them in their churches or hanging around in evangelical circles. The few who showed up were quickly and quietly asked to leave, lest they have to deal with the shame of being publicly outed. And almost always they did just that; they left quietly.

But that’s been changing.

More and more gay people are coming out in evangelical families, schools, and churches. Evangelicals, for the most part, have tried to be more compassionate by asking them to either stop acting on their orientation or be courteous enough to leave. But gay people are starting to refuse to go quietly, instead sticking around and asking to talk about hermeneutics and Jesus’ commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. And then there are even a few evangelical straight people opening their arms and their sanctuaries to queer people of all sorts.

Jeff Chu is one of those gay Christians who doesn’t want to simply go quietly. He’s unwilling to remain celibate, believing there must be another path to reconciliation.

Toward this end Chu has written a book, Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America.

In 2005 he set off on what he describes as a pilgrimage across America. His goal was to learn what Christians had to say about homosexuality, so he met and interviewed many different people across the country. He spoke with all kinds of Christians, some gay and some not, some evangelical and some not, some conservative and some liberal, some who come off as admirable, loving human beings and some who don’t.

The book is divided into four sections titled “Doubting,” “Struggling,” “Reconciling,” and “Hoping.” The sections are divided into chapters, each dealing with a person, group of people, or particular example of gay Christian culture. Some chapters feature the usual suspects (Westboro Baptist Church, the Gay Christian Network, Metropolitan Community Church, Jennifer Knapp) and others feature people or organizations with which you are likely unfamiliar.

The book is very well written, as one would expect from a journalist of Chu’s experience (he wrote for Time magazine for seven years). Chu chooses useful words, Continued on page 52

Educating All God’s Children

by Nicole Baker Fulgham Brazos Press Reviewed by Stephanie Summers In Educating All God’s Children: What Christians Can—and Should—Do to Improve Public Education for Low-Income Kids, Nicole Baker Fulgham urges Christians to respond to the academic achievement gap within America’s public schools, calling it a “nationwide epidemic.” She uses personal stories and concrete examples to put names and faces to the reality that “Every urban center and many mixed-income suburban and rural school districts exhibit significant academic disparities between children in wealthier communities and children in low-income areas.” This disparity, she argues, is one that Christians should care deeply about and respond to out of a conviction that every child is created in God’s image.

The academic achievement gap within America’s public schools is a nationwide epidemic.

The book is written for lay Christians unfamiliar with the scope of the achievement gap and what ordinary faithful citizens can do to close it. Fulgham is multifaceted in her approach to the problem, affirming that teacher quality matters while affirming a significant role for parents and the work of the church to support families. She is forthright that public funding for education “is necessary, but not sufficient, to improve educational outcomes.”

Fulgham also offers a thorough discussion of root causes and systemic factors. One vitally important contribution is her specific focus on the historic racial dynamics involved in the desegregation of public schools and the corresponding exit of white Christians from the newly integrated public system. “We should ask ourselves some pointed questions,” she writes. “In what ways is the Christian community fully seeking racial reconciliation for these previous wrongs? Have we fully acknowledged our collective history in response to racial integration? Until we discuss this openly and honestly, it will likely hinder our efforts to become a force for public school equity.”

Her invitation to the church is clear and candid: “At its best, the church can provide a wonderful example of cross-cultural understanding and courageous leadership.”

This insight demands a reflection on the role of religious people in addressing systemic injustice throughout history.

The final chapters detail how Christian churches might employ a fourfold strategy to build national awareness of the achievement gap, offer programming to Continued on page 52

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47

Say What?

A Good Spanking?

For this issue’s you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it fodder, we begin with the stunning doublespeak in our nation—and indeed in the church— around the topic of sexuality.

The New York Times gave us a splendid example of this doublespeak when in the space of just two days it presented us with a story rejoicing in the congressional reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and another telling us, without irony, that bondage, domination, and sadomasochism are ordinary and acceptable ways for men and women to interact. Here’s the letter to the editor that PRISM sent to the New York Times: Dear editor, Re: “Bondage, Domination and Kink Sex Communities Step Into View”—“‘We’re perfectly ordinary people except that we like kinky sex,’ participants say...”

Since when is setting people on fire or lashing someone’s flesh with a whip something “ordinary” people do? In a world where women are daily beaten, set ablaze, and raped, do you really want to play a part in making these horrific acts acceptable for your readers?

We already have most of Hollywood, and in particular James Franco’s new documentary, Kink, hard at work normalizing violent behavior.

We are tired of people telling us that anything goes as long as there is adult consult. With porn teaching men (and yes, even women) that “no” means “yes,” people hardly know what consent means any more. The last time I checked, torture was illegal. Just because someone “consents” doesn’t make it acceptable. If I sign a contract saying I give my husband permission to kill me, he will still go to jail for murder if he does.

Please give us a break. Please don’t tell us that this is just another healthy, viable choice for our sex lives. Please don’t give these people the time of day! Report on some real news, or if you must report on this, at least use a critical eye.

You’re killing us out here! And I don’t mean that metaphorically.

Kristyn Komarnicki Add to this craziness the emergence, over the last decade, of something that’s being called “Christian domestic discipline” (ChristianDomesticDiscipline.com), and you will be excused for thinking that the church has drunk the Kool Aid. Because some segments of it absolutely have.

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I’d be more likely to ignore the appalling suggestion that “wife-spanking” is godly (not erotic spanking in this case; no, this is for wives who have been bad girls and need to be put back in their place!) if it weren’t for the alarmingly broad popularity of the sadomasochistic book series (and soon to be Hollywood movie) 50 Shades of Grey. Touted as “Mommy porn” (titillating fare for the bored housewives of America), Grey has been embraced by Christians as well as nonChristians. Last fall, talk show host Steve Harvey (a self-proclaimed Jesus-follower) devoted a whole show to “how to turn your man into Christian Grey.” Hey, I thought we were supposed to pray that our men would emulate Christ. When they do, they “love their wives as their own bodies,” because “he who loves his wife loves himself” (Eph. 5:28).

Gun Crazy Recent months have shown how truly bizarre this country is in its attitude toward firearms. In March, a second-grader in Maryland was suspended for two days after officials claimed he chewed his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun and said “bang, bang.” The 7-year-old claims that, in fact, he bit it into the shape of a mountain. Overreaction in the wake of the horrific Newtown, Mass., school shootings of December? Probably.

Absurd? Yes, but possibly explainable.

But how do you explain the decision by Texas state representatives in May giving final approval to a proposal to allow concealed handgun license holders to carry guns into buildings on college campuses? According to Rep. Allen Fletcher, who proposed what is known as the “campus carry bill,” students should be free to carry a weapon in order to protect themselves on campus.

This has led some to conclude with painful hilarity that “Guns don’t kill people, Pop Tarts kill people.”

C

hristianity has a long history of association with learned people and free-thinkers. Jesus’ first followers were convicted by the depth of his knowledge and wisdom, and the Pharisees learned to dread his quick-witted evasion of every rhetorical trap they set for him.

Paul admonished the early Christians to uphold a standard of examination and skepticism that most would consider excessive, instructing them to “test all things; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). For thousands of years, some of the world’s greatest minds have proudly identified themselves as Christians.

However, even a brief examination of contemporary cultural references to the Christian faith presents a very different picture. Christians are widely reviled as being closed-minded and hopelessly ignorant. Jokes about Christian stupidity abound and are fast becoming an old standby for comedy shows. In one episode of Family Guy, a main character converts to Christianity after watching a televangelist network, immediately morphs into a zealous anti-intellectual, and is seen participating in a book burning, where she throws a volume called Logic for First Graders into the flames.

It would be easy for Christians to shrug

Faith & Reason

Because “the Bible Says So” Isn’t Enough

tians chose to step out of the intellectual arena entirely. This extremely reactive response has done more harm than good.

“Some of it is our fault,” Duffy says. “We haven’t engaged. Instead, we retreated for a long time. We gave up the public forum, and we didn’t care to have a debate. Our answer was ‘the Bible says so,’ and for a culture that doesn’t believe in the Bible, that’s just circular.”

But what can be done about it? How can Christians remain uncompromising in their beliefs while also engaging a secular community convinced that Christianity is, at best, a comforting superstition?

“For one thing,” Duffy asserts, “Christians need to prepare themselves.” They also need to learn how to begin a dialogue with the secular community. “Christians want to start with Jesus and the cross. But as C.S. Lewis said in Mere their shoulders and dismiss this disturbing shift Christianity, that’s often too many steps ahead. as a sign of cultural depravity and growing hostilSometimes we have to start with the possibility of ity towards the gospel. But while Christians have God, or even the possibility of truth.” always been persecuted in one way or another, Churches also need to step up to the plate persecution traditionally arose and start providing first-rate when corrupt, powerful people felt HOW CAN educational resources to their threatened by the liberating mes“Churches need to do CHRISTIANS members. sage of Jesus. Today, at least in the a better job of training people. I REMAIN UN- don’t think we can rest on an old United States, it more often results COMPROMISfrom the average joe thinking that paradigm of training and discipleChristianity is for idiots.

ING IN THEIR ship,” says Duffy. As the unofficial What is the source of this BELIEFS “apologetics director” of Village toxic misconception? The disagreeWHILE ALSO Baptist, he has seen firsthand ment of many Christians with the need for better teaching in ENGAGING the scientific consensus, particularly the church, and he has seen the A SECULAR amazing results when such teachconcerning issues such as evolution COMMUNITY and the age of the earth, is a major ing is made available to believers. contributing factor, but Kevin Duffy, There’s a lot of work to CONVINCED minister of evangelism and discipleTHAT CHRIS- be done, but he is optimistic. ship at Village Baptist Church in FayTIANITY IS, AT “I’ve seen a growing interest in etteville, N.C., says that the idea that particularly among BEST, A COM- apologetics, Christians are anti-intellectual is not young people. The primary way to FORTING impact culture is through the colentirely without basis. He has run SUPERSTIacross quite a few believers who lege campus, so when we equip seem to live up to this unfortunate TION? our high school students, they go stereotype. “Honestly, to some exon to make big changes. When tent, the charge that Christians are anti-intellecChristians learn what they believe and are willing tual is true,” Duffy says. “We often aren’t willing to to engage, we have tremendous impact.” work very hard to learn about what we believe.”

Christians today are facing the consequences of a slow but steady withdrawal from the intellectual community. While Christian thinkA North Carolina State ers and scientists were once at the forefront of University graduate and the latest intellectual developments and debate, freelance writer, Tabitha some ideas—Darwinism in particular—so alienMiddleton has a passion for ated the Christian community that many Chrislanguage and logic.

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Making a Difference

Church for Troubled Minds

L

ives affected by mental illness, whether the afflicted or their families, are typically marked by isolation. Those suffering from the effects of mental illness desperately need to experience the love and empathy of their fellow human beings and to know that their Creator has not abandoned them, but many reach out only to receive a cold shoulder from the church. Others fear the church’s rejection enough to hide their struggles and not risk exposure at all.

But some churches are leading by example with intentional ministries to people affected by mental illness.

Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (MPPC. org) in Northern California founded the HELP (Hope, Encouragement, Love, Prayer) Mental Health Support Ministry in 1999. The weekly meeting is open to anyone affected by mental illness, both people with illness (copers) and their families and others who support them (supporters). Initially the group was only for loved ones of people with mental illness; when they opened the group to those who themselves were ill, it expanded dramatically and became more dynamic.

Group meetings include a shared meal, discussion or educational speaker, and a brief time of music and worship. Finally, the group divides into small groups of four who go to separate rooms to share their needs and pray for one another.

HELP also hosts an annual conference to educate other churches and equip them to minister to people with mental illness, and it has helped about 10 churches to start their own similar ministry. About half of the people who attend the group’s weekly meetings are from the congrega-

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tion; the rest come from the broader community.

Now in their eighties, Fred and Jane Pramann came to HELP in its early days and served as coleaders until 2011. The Pramanns’ interest began when their son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 21. Shocked and confused, they turned to their church for support but didn’t find any. They tried other churches and eventually found their way to Menlo Park and a group of like-minded leaders who were affected by mental illness.

What has made the HELP group so effective?

The Pramanns claim the most powerful element has been praying for one another in small groups.

“People really feel such a tremendous support in that. Prayer has been the big thing that has made the group successful.”

They also credit another simple practice: reading their group guidelines at every meeting and asking each person present to affirm commitment to these guidelines each week. Developed by the group’s founders, the guidelines call for confidentiality, sensitivity, and other simple ways of relating to one another that build trust and openness.

People interested in starting such a group often worry about disruptive behavior. The Pramanns soothe fears by talking about their own experience. In more than 12 years of ministry, only one person was asked to leave and find the help he needed outside the group. They have had no serious incidents. In fact, they say, “Almost exclusively our copers are a very gentle group of people. Very caring and very loving. It’s just a lot of fun being with these folks and having them be part of us.”

Thanks to this program, people who have come to the church for help have found hope. “We can think of a couple of people who have come to us and said, ‘If it hadn’t been for the group, I wouldn’t be alive today.’ We’ve seen people move

from being ready to take their lives to being more stable and able to go on with their lives in a better way and get jobs …. It’s been a tremendous, valuable program for a church to have.”

The Bipolar Support Group ministry of First Presbyterian Church (1stPres.com) in WinstonSalem, N.C., has ministered to nearly 1,500 people since its inception in 2001. Though the ministry focuses on bipolar disorder, some group members suffer with schizophrenia, clinical depression, and other disorders. They minister to people with diagnosed illness as well as loved ones, with the two groups meeting separately.

The group also works to educate the church about mental health, mobilizing Christian counselors/psychiatrists and presenting to Sunday school classes, men’s and women’s ministries, and in the worship service.

Lead facilitator Bob Mills serves in his professional life as associate vice president of advancement at Wake Forest University. At age 48, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a history of depression and his first manic episode.

After his yearlong journey toward stabilization on medication and a few years of wrestling spiritually with what his illness meant for his theology, he was encouraged by one of his pastors to start the support group and begin to minister to others affected by serious mental illness.

Mills talks about the important role the support group plays: “People want to talk about this stuff. They may not be willing to talk in front of their Sunday school class or their best friends, but they certainly come up to you or send you an e-mail afterward and say, ‘We have this problem, and I really would like some help.’”

Mills wants other churches to “understand that this is the simplest and cheapest of all ministries, because all it takes is broken people who are willing to open up to God and allow him to work through them to heal them and then help them become healers. It costs the church nothing other than whatever power it takes for us to turn on lights for an extra three hours. And what you get in exchange for that is truly amazing. It’s the depth of healing that people receive. And certainly not just the people who have the illness; the loved ones who come are dealing with lots of emotional bondage issues, and pressures that these illnesses bring on relationships are huge. So there’s a lot of healing that goes on.”

New Heights Church (NewHeights.org) in Vancouver, Wash., is home to a mental health support group started by Elaine Tse and Cindy Hannan. Hannan is married to the senior pastor, who emphasizes mental health in his own ministry and in his training of other church staff. She developed a heart for people with mental illness after her own experience with depression and anxiety and her son’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

“While we had wonderful support from elders, staff, family, and friends,” says Hannan, “I still felt alone as I knew no one who was dealing with the same circumstances and feelings.” She was struggling with her own questions, unsure where to begin, when she met Tse, a doctor who had just joined the church-run medical clinic. When Hannan saw Tse’s concern about the silent suffering of so many people with mental illness, she knew she had found the partner she needed to start the support group.

Hannan and Tse believe that “with medica-

that they can point people in a helpful direction.”

To serve as a leader in this church’s mental health support group, a person must have a history of mental illness or must have a relative or a friend with a mental illness. “In this way,” Hannan says, “people who may have at one time been marginalized have a productive place of service for the kingdom of God. We all get to see God use all things for our good. For me, that is payday.”

The mental health ministry at University Presbyterian Church (UPC.org) in Seattle, Wash., was founded in 1994 and serves both copers and supporters. The group’s leader, David Zucker, has contact with about 200 people a week in the context of this ministry; he hosts weekly meetings and eight-week internships for people interested in learning about mental health ministry. He also collaborates with other churches, social service organizations, and community mental health agencies on strategies for welcoming people with severe and persistent mental illness.

the church staff and congregation. But soon church members began approaching him secretly, “like Nicodemus in the night, seeking support for their long-suffering family members and themselves. ‘Please don’t tell anyone here that I spoke with you’ became the mantra for these struggling families.”

Within a month, his schedule was packed with stealth meetings, mostly offsite, with families in his church. He soon realized the mental health ministry would be reaching into the congregation as much as reaching out. The individuals and families who have themselves been affected by mental illness make the most effective and caring volunteers in the program, says Zucker.

“It’s a whole lot easier for grassroots movements to get started when they’re seeded and watered by folks at the top,” he says. But “the good news is that even in the absence of leadership buy-in, church-based mental health ministries can thrive, provided someone is willing to do the work

“All it takes is broken people who are willing to open up to God and allow him to work through them to heal them and then help them become healers.” tion, counseling, and good support, people with mental illness can flourish. They also need to be able to find help, home, and hope within the church.”

Hannan feels that this support group has started a healthy conversation about mental illness in the larger church body. “Mental illness is not an elephant in the room that no one talks about here. It is right out there in the open, just like lots of other challenges people deal with. It communicates that people with mental illness belong in this church, are welcomed and accepted by this church, and can expect the same love and care and support as others in the church.”

Their advice to churches that want to help people with mental illness and their loved ones is to start with acknowledging that mental illness is common and treatable and that it strikes both Christians and non-Christians. They also recommend training both pastoral and lay leaders to be aware of and unafraid of mental illnesses: “We all need to know the signs of mental illness, warning signs of a looming crisis, and what resources we as a church and community can offer. At the very least, leaders should know what the larger community offers in terms of crisis lines, mental health clinics, NAMI, counselors, and social services, so

Shortly after he became a Christian in his mid-twenties, Zucker fell into a deep, clinical depression. The church he attended at the time “initially responded with care, but once they were unable to pray away my agonizing brain disorder, they judged, vilified, and all but threw me out on my ear.” For several years he avoided seeking mental health care, fully believing his church leaders’ claim that psychiatry is anti-Christian.

Zucker eventually found the help he needed, made his way to University Presbyterian, and worked as a manager for a faith-based residential community for men and women recovering from serious mental illness. “Our residents were getting better and rejoining the world at an astounding rate,” he says. “It was clear to me that the support and accountability of a loving community was the primary reason.” When he had the opportunity to start such a ministry at the church, he was enthusiastic.

Zucker spent his first year volunteering full time but now he is on the church staff, supported by direct donations to the mental health ministry.

At first, he was disappointed by the lukewarm response among

autonomously, raise their own support, and risk taking on some of the stigma of the folks they’re supporting. This is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but I can say, unequivocally, this is the most meaningful and rewarding work I’ve done in my life.”

Zucker echoes others in his response to his own suffering and his observation of what grappling with mental illness does for a person: “So many of us have discovered, in a supportive community, that what doesn’t kill you really can make you stronger. Through the years, I’ve never met an emotionally mature man or woman of God who has not traveled through a period of great suffering.

With God as our touchstone, suffering builds hope and humility.”

Amy Simpson (AmySimpsononline.com) is editor of Christianity Today’s GiftedforLeadership.com and a freelance writer living in Illinois. This column is adapted from her new book, Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission. Used by kind permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515 (IVPress.com).

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The World Is Not Ours to Save continued from page 42

Does Jesus Really Love Me? continued from page 43

radical commitments and faith-based activism.” That’s a valuable gift to older, cause-weary readers. Younger activists who still think they might have a chance at saving the world will find in this book wisdom typically earned only after years in the trenches.

It isn’t until the end of this creative volume that Wigg-Stevenson suggests a kingdom strategy for engagement with the world God loves. Instead of asking, as we often do, “How can public goods be obtained using Christianity?” he proposes asking, “What unique and authentic contribution can the Christian church make to the public square?” Rather than reflexively “defaulting to mobilization or moral declarations,” he urges us to seek our God-given vocations, steward the gifts God has blessed us with, and ground “our compassion and action within Christ’s invincible church, against which the armies of hell will someday fall.”

Providentially, neither the sky nor the nukes are falling yet. If you’re someone like me, committed to partnering with God to ensure that they don’t, this book is for you.

the tone is best described as professional, and there is not much emotion or poetry to his prose. Personal conclusions and assessments are generally reserved until after he makes his “journalistic” presentation in each chapter.

On its most approachable level, this book serves as a kind of “Gay and Christian 101” for evangelicals. One can only hope that more than a few people will quietly download or buy this book and familiarize themselves with the actual people, emotions, and issues involved. This book will certainly provide more relevant and factual information than most Christians are hearing from television and Internet media outlets.

On another level, the book will serve as a source of some reassurance for emerging LGBT evangelical Christians who will identify with Chu’s forthright expression. In sharing his struggle the reader can get a glimpse of the confusion, doubt, and anxiety associated with losing one’s place in family, church, and evangelical culture.

On a much less apparent level, the book is a blurry black-and-white snapshot of a man in an untenable spiritual position. He has come to understand his homosexuality as something fundamental and innate, but he has not yet been able to sufficiently distance himself from the belief that an angry God sits in judgment of him because of it.

Overall, Does Jesus Really Love Me? offers something valuable to any sincere reader. The book has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and for good reason.

Margot Starbuck’s newest book, Permission Granted: And Other Thoughts on Living Graciously Among Sinners and Saints (Baker, 2013), is about loving those the church has identified as “special sinners.” Connect on Facebook.com/Margot or at MargotStarbuck.com.

The Heart of Religion continued from page 42 contributing to peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israelis and the Arab world, and meeting the needs of their immediate neighbors.

In addition to others-oriented activism, exemplars also commonly expressed a spiritual transformation that began with a divine calling toward benevolent ministry, which they embraced with a willing spirit. This transformational process included several components starting with a “born-again experience, sensing God’s love, receiving a divine calling, taking benevolent action, [which led to an] increased experience of increased well-being.” Other descriptions included lives of prayer as devotional activity (purposeful human activity directed toward God); prophetic conversation (hearing God’s divine direction and calling with responsiveness); and mystical communion (experiencing intimacy with God through supernatural connection).

Through empirical research and interviews, The Heart of Religion concludes that “a decided majority of Americans are engaged with divine love, and this engagement positively affects not only their personal well-being but also that of friends, families, and communities.” This effect of spiritual experiences is perhaps the most significant outcome of the GLNS survey. For most Americans, experiences of divine love and lives of benevolent service are inseparable. Results showed that people who experience God’s love the most intensely are the ones who are the most generous with their time, money, and benevolent service to others.

The Heart of Religion is a compelling study of people who manifest the love of God they themselves have experienced, calling readers to a similarly full life—“thriving while serving others, loving as you have been loved, living a life of meaning.”

Mae Elise Cannon serves as the senior director of advocacy and outreach for World Vision US. She is the author of Social Justice Handbook and Just Spirituality, both from InterVarsity Press.

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Marg Herder is the office manager and web developer for EEWC-Christian Feminism Today (EEWC.com). See more of her writing at MargHerder.com.

Educating All God’s Children continued from page 43 provide academic support to public school students (like Dr. Tony Evans’ National Adopt-a-School Initiative), come alongside families with tangible support, and embrace faith-based advocacy. Readers who have concerns about churches “appearing too political” will find some, but not all, of their concerns addressed; those who are already engaged in the first three activities will find the chapter called “Faith-Based Advocacy” an appetizer for the prudential work of sustained Christian political engagement at the level of law and policy. Fulgham rightly points out that “Christians are called to eliminate laws that perpetuate injustice,” and she highlights several policies that are currently making headlines, but appropriately leaves the work of developing a just framework for policy development and evaluation to other organizations. It is my prayer we can respond to the challenge she sets before us.

Stephanie Summers is the CEO of the Center for Public Justice, which is engaged in a multi-year policy project on Christians investing in public education.

P

amela Leon is the director of El Refugio (The Refuge), a home for abused women and their children on the outskirts of Guatemala City, Guatemala. She is also the director of a project addressing violence against women called Ministerios Integrados para Mujeres.

A group of missionaries from the United States started the home in 2008, and Leon, a lawyer, became its first director, overseeing a staff of four and living with 10 women and their children.

How did you get started in your current work?

It’s a very clear call from God. Working as a lawyer in the courts, I became more sensitive to the challenges and needs of the women. But because the court was so corrupt, I resigned. And God closed every door for any other job. That’s when I received the invitation to be the director of El Refugio, thanks to 30 old women from my church who started to pray for me.

What is one cultural-specific challenge that you encounter in working with the women at El Refugio?

They assume that violence against women is normal, and that’s really the biggest problem. Growing up, they see their mom beaten, their grandmother and their neighbors beaten, so they assume that’s how love is expressed.

What are some misconceptions you had about the ministry before you got started, and what did you learn by delving in?

The main misconception was that women actually wanted to live with domestic violence. Now I know that women live under violence not because

What’s one piece of advice that you wish someone wise had given you before you started in ministry?

I wish I had known that when women escaping violence arrive at our home, their cell phones should be taken from them, because otherwise the men keep calling them and controlling them through the phones. Today, the women have to sign an agreement to give up their phones when they come.

Lastly, I wish I’d known that every woman working with me in the home needs to have a pastoral heart. I’ve absolutely implemented that now.

When I hire staff, I say if you don’t have a pastoral heart, don’t even think about working here, because I travel frequently and need to be able to trust my staff.

In what ways do you encounter Christ in the people you serve?

When I see their pain, their profound need, the way they have been hurt, what makes me suffer the most is that their dreams have been shattered.

Some haven’t even dared to dream about a different life. I see Jesus present among them, and he’s asking me to be the bridge so that they can accomplish their dreams.

How would you define success in holistic ministry?

In this kind of ministry you never know how a woman is going to respond. We are there to offer her an opportunity, but in a way we do not have any specific expectations in this ministry; we just stay faithful because God has called us to do this. I see myself as

a woman with a bag of seeds, and I walk around and throw the seeds but am not sure which will take root.

How does the local church figure into your holistic ministry efforts?

In Guatemala there are few churches that want to get involved, because their own congregations are home to many aggressors—98 percent of the women who come to our home come from the evangelical churches. Only Union Church in Guatemala, which is an American church, helps by providing some funding.

Ministry Matters

Woman with a Bag of Seeds: Pamela Leon

they want to but because there are complex cycles of violence and dependence, and they don’t know how to get out. This dependence on the man becomes like an addiction that paralyzes them.

The women need more than support; they need someone to accompany them through the process of recovery from violence.

I also learned that not all women tell the truth all the time—there are stories, and then there are stories.

How do you refresh your spirit and sustain yourself in the hard work of holistic ministry?

My personal devotions—this is something I’ve discovered only in the last few years. I wake up early in the morning, wondering what God wants to tell me through his Word for that day. I also allow my pastor, a very good pastor, to shepherd me. And I receive spiritual support from my local church (Central Nazareth Church of the Central American church).

What is the most exciting transformation you’ve ever witnessed in your work?

There was this woman who used to beat the man she lived with, kick and abuse him. One time the police came, and she told them that it was he who had beaten her. The man ended up in prison, and she ended up in our home. Through the discipleship program, she realized what she had done, and one day she started to cry, and she repented.

We interceded so the man could be freed, and I helped them reconcile. Then they got married and are doing very well. As a lawyer in Guatemala, I was able to officiate the wedding, so they got married in my church.

What Bible passage has guided you most through the years, and why?

Jeremiah 29:11—“I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper and to bring you a good end.” I have no idea what the future holds. I only depend on God. Wherever the Lord sends me, I will go.

Interview by Jo Kadlecek, who got a chance to talk with Leon, through a translator, while the two of them travelled on a bus in Honduras, where they were both attending a justice seminar sponsored by the Association for a More Just Society.

Kadlecek is the senior writer and journalist-inresidence at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass.

53

Worth Repeating

to be the Jewish Messiah, come to inaugurate the new Messianic age when all things would be made new, when everything distorted by sin would be made whole. The resurrection and Pentecost confirmed that the new Messianic age was indeed now breaking in. Of course, the early Christians knew that the old age of sin and injustice would continue, but they so strongly believed that Jesus’ Messianic kingdom was upon them that they expected to live according to the radical kingdom values that Jesus had taught. They embraced kingdom ethics and kingdom expectations of holiness. They believed, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:18, that Christians look with unveiled faces at the glory of the Lord and daily “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

The transformation that comes with Jesus’ dawning Messianic kingdom affects every area of reality—from individual persons to social systems to the groaning creation.

At the center is personal, living faith in Jesus Christ the Lord, whose atoning death provides free, unmerited forgiveness to all who repent and whose Holy Spirit now transforms selfish, sinful persons into Christ-centered, wholesome human beings. But equally important is the fact that all believers become part of Christ’s new visible body where, when that body faithfully obeys all that Jesus taught, the world can observe a new redeemed society of transformed sinners living as they were created to live.

It is a terrible misunderstanding of what the early Christians believed to reduce Christian faith to a private personal relationship between an individual and Jesus. It certainly starts at that wonderful point, but the early Christians’ belief that the Messianic kingdom was now taking shape on this earth meant the transformation went beyond individuals to society and all of broken creation.

That’s why they refused to worship the Roman emperor, claiming Jesus Christ as their new king.

That’s why Paul said the new multi-ethnic body

“I’m Not a Social Activist”

I

’m not a social activist. I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord of the universe.

In the inner-city congregation where my family worshipped for more than a decade, the choir often sang a song I still love: Jesus, you’re the center of my joy. All that’s good and perfect comes from you. You’re the heart of my contentment, hope for all I do. Jesus, you’re the center of my joy.

I’ve been blessed in so many ways in life: wonderful Christian parents, a 52-year marriage to a gifted woman, three wonderful children, six delightful granddaughters, an excellent education, and ministry opportunities that have vastly exceeded even the wildest dreams of this farm boy. At the center of all that goodness and joy stands Jesus my Lord.

In college, when classical intellectual doubt led me to question whether an honest thinker in the modern world could still believe in historic Christian faith, a brilliant professor helped me see that the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection was very strong.

When the typical problems that invade every marriage threatened to destroy what we had built for 15 years, the commands and power of Christ kept us faithful to each other, enabling us to work through the challenges and discover a better, stronger, deeply satisfying marriage.

When new opportunities in evangelical social activism opened up, leading me to modify my earlier vocation as an apologist for historic Christianity in the secular university world, I resolved to keep the full, biblical Christ at the center of my theology and work.

When Jesus walked the earth he claimed

54

of believers (where ancient ethnic hostilities between Jews and Gentiles were overcome in Christ) was part of the gospel (Ephesians 2-3).

Every area of the created order is being affected. Forgiven individuals are now being sanctified. The church is a visible model of a redeemed social order. The power of the principalities and powers that dominated have fallen. Twisted social structures are now being broken, and society is slowly being transformed. Even the groaning creation—the nonhuman world of rivers. rocks, and trees that has been distorted by human sin— will at Christ’s final return “be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

At Christ’s return, too, according to Revelation 21 and 22, the glory of the nations, the best of human civilization will be purged of its evil and taken up into the new Jerusalem, the glorious transformed earth where God will dwell with us.

And the kingdoms of this earth will become the kingdom of our Christ.

Because that is the agenda of the risen Jesus—because we know history is heading in that direction—we work now to establish signs of that coming complete transformation not just in individuals but also in the new society of the church and even in the total social order and the creation itself. As the great Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper loved to say, there is not one square inch of this whole earth that does not belong to the risen Lord.

Jesus’ gospel—his death, resurrection, and agenda—must remain at the center of any faithful Christian social action.

Social action without an evangelistic passion to share Jesus’ gospel fails to convert the next generation of activists. Social action without Jesus’ resurrection has no power. Social action without Jesus, true God and true human, at the center is not Christian. Social action without Jesus’ agenda quickly loses its way. If ESA has accomplished anything in the last 40 years, I hope it is that we have played our part in nurturing a biblical social action that is thoroughly grounded and centered in Jesus.

Jesus, you’re the center of our joy, our vision, our ministry. We are not social activists. We are disciples of Jesus the carpenter, Creator, and risen Lord of the universe.

(This essay was excerpted—and slightly updated—from a sermon at ESA’s 30th Anniversary Celebration in July 2003. Ron Sider just retired after 40 years of faithful service to ESA.)

Though singular in vision, the arenas of holistic ministry, public policy, and cultural transformation create a tapestry of ministries that we believe are most effectively woven by a shared leadership approach. founded and ran for 40 years, and his retirement is a big change for PRISM and the Sider Center. But it’s also an opportunity to expand on his legacy as we faithfully strive to live out God’s vision for a healthier, more peaceful, and just world in the 21st century.

So as Ron’s last column was titled “Farewell,” let us start by simply saying “Hello!” Except that Al hails from the Philippines and Paul from brokenpromised-”Indian Territory”-turned-Kansas, so it’s more of a “Mabuhay! Osiyo!”

Now we’d like to tell you how we sense God’s leading for the Sider Center and let you know about

in general, and evangelicalism in particular, become increasingly multi-ethnic, organizations that embody diversity in their leadership will gain the credibility and skills necessary to engage our globalized world with the whole gospel.

That’s the how. Here’s the what: We’re going to focus on a few issues that we feel called to address, while never losing sight of Jesus. As always, we’ll tackle these issues by producing critical scholarship; popularizing that scholarship so that people on the grassroots level can engage, grapple with, and be transformed by it; and mobilizing ourselves and others to faithful action, even

if those actions have social and political consequences.

For instance, we acknowledge that racism, light-skin privilege, and Western cultural captivity are still serious problems that need to be interrogated directly, so we will produce work that challenges racism and helps create a more equitable society. The same is true for human trafficking and sexual justice, immigration reform, the Israeli/Palestinian situation, economic justice, creation care, animal welfare, and other crucial issues (you know, the easy ones). And we’ll tackle such issues in and through the church as we work to strengthen the church’s witness, to ensure that Christians are engaged in local community transformation and structural change as well as in preaching, teaching, and authentic evangelism.

So what kind of crazy people would want to spend all day slogging with us through issues and proposing policies that make everyone a little mad? Well, we have an amazing staff, and they can take the heat. They’ve got practical experience, scholarly know-how, and passion coming out of their pores.

As you read this, you can bet that Ron is either just returning home from fishing or just about to go fishing and that we are not. But that’s okay. We’re pretty excited to get to work.

And we hope we’ll see you, July 12th-14th, at our 40th anniversary, Follow.Jesus.2013—it’s going be an amazing weekend, full of conversation and discussion with those who strive to follow Jesus passionately and radically. You can read more about it and save your seat at ESA40.com. We also invite you to come to Impact Holy Land in Philadelphia in December (ImpactHolyLand.org).

A few more ways to walk with us: sign up all your friends for gift subscriptions to PRISM, pray for us, and send us a donation if you feel led to support our efforts to help the church look deeply, live justly, and love radically. Finally, tell us what you think God wants us to work on in the days and months ahead. We only want to do this work with you.

So let’s do it. Or as we say in the Philippines when it’s time to act together, “Sige, tayo na!”

esXaton [/ˈeskəˌtän/]: on earth as it is in Heaven; radical love made visible

S

tudies have shown that the average American family eats about the same nine meals in rotation, week after week. We walk the same route to work every day, shop at the same grocery store, tell the same stories (over and over, our kids would say while rolling their eyes). There’s a big part of the human psyche that craves sameness. We find it comfortable, secure, safe. And it doesn’t take two PhDs to know that change can be scary.

But change, especially big changes, can also help us see possibility and promise in new places.

Ron Sider helped change the course of the evangelical church through an organization that he

a few of the ways you can continue to walk with us.

You might have noticed that we’re an “us” and not an “I.” We pressed for the Sider Center to adopt a consensus model of leadership because Ron built a rich and complex entity whose work interweaves scholarship, popularization, and activism. Though singular in vision, the arenas of holistic ministry, public policy, and cultural transformation create a tapestry of ministries that we believe are most effectively woven by a shared leadership approach: teamwork! This model guides egalitarian, inclusive communities of believers, where topdown hierarchy is set aside for the more difficult but ultimately more fruitful process of seeking consensus.

We also see this particular co-leadership model as reflecting the increasingly diverse body and face of evangelicalism. As the United States

esXaton

Mabuhay! Osiyo!

Al Tizon (left) and Paul Alexander (right) are co-presidents of ESA/ Sider Center.

55

The Last Word

Ponyboy by Clayton Singleton, acrylic on Canvas (ClaytonSingleton.com)

The disciples came to Jesus with the question, “Who is really greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?”

Jesus called a little child to his side and set him on his feet in the middle of them all.

“Believe me,” he said, “unless you change your whole outlook and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. It is the one who can be as humble as this little child who is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.

“Anyone who welcomes one child like this for my sake is welcoming me.

“Be careful that you never despise a single one of these little ones—for I tell you that they have angels who see my Father’s face continually in Heaven.”

Matthew 18:1-7, 10-11 (J.B Phillips New Testament) 56

PRISM Vol. 20, No. 4

Summer 2013

Editorial Board

Miriam Adeney

Tony Campolo

Luis Cortés

Richard Foster G. Gaebelein Hull

Karen Mains

Vinay Samuel

Tom Sine

Eldin Villafane

George Barna Rodney Clapp Samuel Escobar William Frey Roberta Hestenes John Perkins Amy Sherman Vinson Synan Harold DeanTrulear

Editorial/Advertising Information PRISM Magazine offers affordable ad placement for organizations and businesses. To receive our ad placement form or to submit your ad art please contact us via email.

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PRISMmagazine.org P.O Box 367 Wayne, PA 19087 484-384-2990/PRISM@eastern.edu Note: Standard A mail is not forwarded; please contact us if your address changes.

A Publication of Evangelicals for Social Action The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University

All contents © 2013 ESA/PRISM magazine.

GOD, FREEDOM AND HUMAN DIGNITY Embracing a God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered Culture Ron Highfield 229 pages, paperback, 978-0-8308-2711-4, $22.00

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—Richard Mouw, Fuller Theological Seminary

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