An Open Letter to Various Leaders in The Episcopal Church On The Evolving Implementation of the 2006 General Convention Resolution A123

by: Ed Rodman

It is with some trepidation that I feel called to write this open letter at this time. I would ask you to indulge me by taking the time to read it in its entirety so that any things that you may have heard or assumed about my various public statements on this issue can be viewed in their full context. This letter is intended to affirm, educate, chastise, and invite us to a deeper dialogue toward the beloved community. Before I begin I should make certain biographical comments, for those who do not know who I am, so that you can appreciate that this comes from a working knowledge of much that has brought us to this point on this issue.

I am a sixty-six year old Black Episcopal priest, who has served his Church as faithfully as I have been able since my ordination in 1967. Prior to that I was a history and political science major at Hampton Institute in Virginia, and one of the founders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Hence I can claim a forty-eight year history as an advocate for social justice and an unyielding opponent of all forms of oppression. During my career I have had the pleasure of helping to found the Union of Black Episcopalians (originally UBCL), the Episcopal Urban Caucus, the Consultation and the first three iterations of the National Church Anti-Racism Program. Much of this was made possible by the good graces of the several bishops of the Diocese of Massachusetts (Anson Stokes, John Burgess, Ben Arnold, John B. Coburn, David Johnson, Barbara Harris, David Birney and M. Thomas Shaw) who permitted me to exercise my ministry as Canon Missioner in these arenas for the national Church on an unpaid seconded basis except for the years 2000 to 2003 when I was a paid consultant to the Anti-Racism Committee; as well as local struggles…from prison abolition, Boston School Desegregation Crisis and many other struggles for justice too numerous to mention here. I am currently a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts where I work in the area of Pastoral Theology, Urban Ministry and Anti-Oppression Studies. I say these things not in pride but in order to establish a foundation of credibility and commitment that I have been blessed to have been able to maintain over these many years.

Having said this, I wish to be very clear that I affirm, support and commend the current leadership of the Presiding Bishop and her staff, as well as that of her predecessor in their willingness to stand tall on this issue and commit their time and the programmatic resources of the Church to see that we remain faithful to the task of combating the sin of racism. In whatever follows, I hope that this ringing affirmation is crystal clear and informs the rest of this letter as a teaching tool and an invitation to deeper dialogue. I should note here that since my election to Executive Council in 2003 by the General Convention, I have felt a strong obligation to be faithful to those who voted for me in the full knowledge of my strong sense of commitment and willingness to speak truth to power. One by-product of that election was to resign as the paid consultant to the Anti-Racism Committee, so that there could be no conflict of interest and equally important, exercise an oversight function on this an other social justice programs that are too often under threat, misunderstood or ignored by too many in the Church. And, it is in this capacity as an elected Executive Council member that I write today, in the full confidence that I speak for many on these matters. What now follows is the education which I promised at the outset.

Many of you may be surprised to know that this is the third such letter that I have written to the leadership of the Church over the last fifteen years. The first was in 1993 when as the convener of the Black Leaders and Diocesan Executives Think Tank in support of Black Ministries that I called into question the serial termination of nearly all the Black male executives on the staff of the national Church in less than a year. It precipitated a frank meeting, with then Presiding Bishop Browning, which attempted to educate him on the appearance of institutional racism that these terminations exhibited on their face. While I was unable to convince him of this fact at the time, subsequent events enabled him to respond more positively to my second open letter in 1995 on the subject of “A Lost Opportunity,” which can be found in the Episcopal Urban Caucus publication, To Heal the Sin-Sick Soul. The presiding officer’s prompt response to that letter led to the creation of the Anti-Racism Training Program which was a necessary programmatic response to the House of Bishops Pastoral Letter on the Sin of Racism and the several General Convention resolutions which had committed the Church to a three triennial year cycle focused on this issue. This was extended at the General Convention in 2000 and the formal committee on Anti-Racism was established and an appropriate staff person was hired to oversee the effort. In the previous three years it had been done on an ad hoc basis with a $100,000 contribution from the Diocese of Massachusetts, and my seconded time. There is a long story which I will not bore you with in this letter of institutional resistance and personality clashes which would make a wonderful novel but are beside the point of the primary objective of the training. Sadly because of the controversies over mandatory versus voluntary in regard to who should take the training and how it was to be administered obscured the fact that the objective was to bring about change on all four levels of our corporate life, i.e. individual, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural. It was to that end that Resolutions A 123 and A 127 were brought forward to the General Convention in 2006 and whose implementation is in no small measure an objective test of the effectiveness of the training and other actions to bring about an authentically welcoming and anti-racist institution. The jury remains out on this latter question, but, the circumstances surrounding the first public effort to implement a key portion of
Resolution A 123 is instructive while A 127 remains unattended.

And, now I will give the chastisement. It is not my purpose to cast aspersions or to make accusations, what I do know is that the resolution clearly called, in part, for a public apology by the national Church at the National Cathedral for its complicity in, and the benefits derived from slavery in the United States of America. This did not happen. Further no satisfactory answer has been given to explain this decision. Many have urged the presiding officers in light of this fact to consider some major event at the General Convention in which a better expression of the intent of the resolution could be made manifest and the several dioceses who have attempted to do the
historical research as requested by the resolution in other sections might have a national platform to educate the church on their findings. This may in turn inspire others to do likewise and still others in the spirit of this resolution and A 127 to examine the Church’s less than glorious relationship with Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Let us hope that this will occur. What did happen was a two day event at the historic St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in Philadelphia on the 3^rd and 4^th of October 2008. Many of us had great difficulty with this decision inasmuch as it created the curious dynamic of those seeking to apologize to those who had been aggrieved inviting themselves to the house of those who had been offended. This and other “curiosities” were more than amply addressed by the Reverend Doctor Harold Lewis and the Honorable Byron Rushing in their remarkable presentations on the first day. It is their talks which need to be widely circulated in the Church, both in print and on DVD, as they address the critical issues of the legacy of slavery and how we might approach the future, in light of the fact that the first step was being taken by the Church in publicly acknowledging its sins of omission.

Had the program ended there, it would have been a great success on its face, because those to whom the apology was being offered were able to articulate in some detail those things for which the apology was needed. Sadly, on the second day a service was planned in which there was to be a liturgical expression marking this event and providing an opportunity for our current Presiding Bishop to lead the service and address the issue. She did her job with grace, clarity, amazing insight and honesty, however, the decision was made to begin the service with a litany which was neither historically correct nor appropriately structured to acknowledge that one group of people was apologizing to another group of people who for all of the history of slavery and most of the history of the Episcopal Church have been separate and unequal, and the people of color specifically excluded from the Councils of the Church. Hence a litany which did not permit the group aggrieved to respond or to acknowledge their presence, especially in their own house, was the ultimate of racism and insulting to many of us who could not understand how people of color were to participate in a litany which correctly chronicled the sins but of which we were the involuntary subjects or as Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, “what do you mean WE” . Of equal importance the litany did not recognize nor give legitimacy to the history of protests begun by Absalom Jones and carried forward by Alexander Crummel and all those lay and clergy leaders who endured exclusion from the House of Deputies and General Convention until the 1930’s. Also, the litany did not acknowledge nor give legitimacy to the many white Church leaders, known and unknown, who protested slavery, established the colonization societies, and dutifully took messages to the General Conventions from the Conference of Colored Church Workers during the long period when Black folks had no voice much less a vote.It also ignored the many efforts at uplift carried on by black laity and clergy,particularly in education,which continue to be supported by the Nat. Church to this day. As Maya Angelou has so eloquently said, “History with all of its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.” It is to this dictum that we must rededicate ourselves as we go forward.

To conclude, I would like to offer you an invitation in the form of a quotation that I used to open my remarks at the conclusion of the Friday educational event, they were penned by the noted peace maker Vern Neufeld Redekop in his seminal book From Violence to Blessing. In the introduction to his chapter on reconciliation he makes the following observation:

“Reconciliation means to stop imitating the entrenched patterns of past violence, and to imagine, imitate and create life patterns of well being meeting the identity needs of Self and Other.”

I firmly believe that we are struggling mightily to live into this understanding of reconciliation and that we have enough time and effort invested in it to not allow this little bump in the road to set us off track and keeping our eye on the prize. One of the reasons that I delayed writing this letter until after the election was that I was hopeful that Barack Obama’s one person anti-racism training program would prevail, and as he noted, now gives us a chance to make a change. Regardless of how you feel about the election or the growing fears that the alarming economic crisis are raising, now more than ever the Church has to stand up and continue the internal dialogue and the external struggle to combat racism. History teaches us that in these critical moments of transition and the promise of change, the desire to return to the fleshpots of Egypt often keep us prisoners of our fear rather than having the Gospel eyes to see the Red Sea being parted. Now more than ever we must attempt to live into every way that we can find the profound truth of my favorite saying “Let there be peace among us and let us not be instruments of our own or others oppression.”

Thank you for reading this and let us march on until victory is won.

Peace,

Ed Rodman

Thanksgiving/Remembrance Day 2008

Reparations Will Give You a Proper Understanding of Holy Scripture

This posting was sparked by a few events. First, I was in attendance at a "RoundTable" discussion entitled, "Politics and the Pulpit." It's a precarious topic because I do not agree that the Government, Political Parties or any organization can empower the Church. The Church's Power - and empowerment - comes from God alone. And, although I disagree with that premise, I honestly thought it was a commendable effort by the group's founder to engage Black Hill Staffers and others in discussion about issues of substance. Yet, the speech by Senate Chaplin Barry C. Black was indicative of foundational problem affecting our people.

Chaplin Black spoke of what he called our "dual citizenship" in heaven and on earth. And, you could tell from the subsequent discussion that many were uncomfortable with what was said. It reminds me of some of those plantation preachers who consistently and singularly preached the slaves obedience to his master.

Reparations will give you a proper understanding of Holy Scripture. And, with that proper understanding we will understand the importance of our role as a people. It is the preaching of misleaders that has us throwing away the Holy Bible as "a book distorted by White People for the subjugation of all others." It is the twisting of the Word of God that leads us to try and discredit Christianity as "the White Man's Religion."

The Holy Bible teaches submission, not subservience. Christ preaches meekness, not docility. There is no "dual citizenship." We owe our allegiance to earthly authorities only as they are in submission to God. Yet even when they are out of line, we do not resist their "authority" out of our respect for God.

There can be no "dual citizenship," for St. Paul tells us in Philippians: "our citizenship is in heaven." And, Christ tells us that "no one can serve two masters...for he will either love the one and hate the other, or hate the one and love the other." So, to tell someone that Christian Faith demands us to be "patriotic" is a perversion of the Truth.

Reparations will give you a proper understanding of Holy Scripture. And, it was that proper understanding that drove countless many of the Ancient Church to submit themselves to mutilation and martyrdom under Diocletian and other tyrants of old. It was that proper understanding that comforted numerous American slaves as they endured mutilation and tyranny of America's Diocletians and despots. And, it was that proper understanding that culminated in the "Era of American Martyrdom" that we refer to as the Civil Rights Era. (You may wish to read Wade in the River to learn more about this.)


Allow this clip to put things in perspective:


See: reparations will give you a proper understanding of Holy Scripture. And, by no means is this a political posting. I place that clip her for this purpose: how can on (Dr. Dobson) be so arrogant as to speak of someone twisting words of Scripture when Western Civilization itself was built on a perversion of Scripture? Do not accept this perversion! Take Action!

St. Paul also instructs us that we are to follow the Gospel as it was preached by the Apostles...and that any preaching of the Gospel (Scriptures) that is not in alignment with those early teachings must be regarded as invalid. When we do this, we will understand our role as a people...and as humanity.

Come and Get Your Reparations!

Reparations Means Defending our Right To an Independent Faith Tradition

Everyone is questioning Reverend Jeremiah Wright and wondering why he should be speaking. As Reverend Anthony said last night, and as Reverend Wright said today - this is about the Black Church. How? Well, in attacking Reverend Jeremiah Wright's comments the mainstream society has attacked the Black Church's theology and independence.

Princeton Professor of Religion, Dr. Albert J. Raboteau wrote a book entitled, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South. (emphasis mine) In this book, Dr. Raboteau discusses the growth of the Black Christian Church in America and its distinct separation from the White Church. In his book he stated: "Incidents of Christian slaveholders, including clergymen, brutalizing their slaves abound in the narratives of former slaves...The blatant hypocrisy of White Christians was a fact of life to slaves, a fact undoubtedly discussed and deplored in the quarters." And, it was in the quarters through these discussion of deplorable - blatant - hypocrisy that the Christianity of the American Slave was developed. And, it was this Christianity that was passed down to the descendants of the slaves.

Reparations means defending our right to an independent Faith Tradition. To do away with our perspective would be doing away with the realities of our existence. Would they ask the Jew to forget the realities of the Holocaust? Does society criticize the true Jew because the experience of the Holocaust shapes their faith? So why must we separate the Slave Experience from our faith perspective?

Reparations means defending our right to an independent Faith Tradition. And, this is indeed bigger than Senator Obama. It is far greater than Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Truly, this is about the Black Church and the right of a free Black people to be free in the expression of their faith. This is about the very right of Black people to be shaped by their faith perspective. This is about the right of free people to worship and preach their faith, without needing the approval of the White Community.

This is a clear description that there is much work to be done. And, the mainstream society wishes to make spiritual and cultural issues into political ones. So I ask: where are our political leaders? I can understand the Mess Media missing the point. I can understand White folks missing the point. But, how can Black people - especially those who lived through segregation, and those entrusted with the wellbeing of the Black Community - miss the point? And, if they do "get it," how can they remain silent while our right to be free and independent people is stripped before their very eyes?

Reparations means defending our right to an independent Faith Tradition. And, because this issue has been made to be political, we should be hearing more from Black elected officials. Regardless of who they support in the election, they should be able to understand this point. And, if they are willing to allow our heritage and First Amendment Rights to be usurped how can we trust them to do what is best for us?

Does it bother you that the Black Church still has no right - in the eyes of the media and White Society - to stand as an independent voice? How do you feel about Black Leadership and their fear of standing on the right side of this issue? Let us hear from you!

Come and Get Your Reparations!

Reparations Means Standing for Our RIGHT to Speak Truth to Power

Tonight, we were blessed to hear from the Reverend Wendell Anthony of the Detroit NAACP. And, in his introduction of Reverend Jeremiah Wright he stated that this is not about Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or John McCain. He said, "this is about the African American Church...this is about our right to speak truth to power."

Everyone has been looking at the snippets of Reverend Wright's sermons and injecting Senator Obama into the discussion. They have been questioning Senator Obama about the words of his pastor. But, why must a free man's sermons be explained?

Reparations means standing for our right to speak truth to power. And, this is what Reverend Jeremiah Wright was saying when he said "different does not mean deficient." Is Reverend Wright entitled to have a different view of world events and their relation to Scriptural realities? Is the Black Church entitled to have a different view of world events and their relation to Scriptural realities?

Different does not mean deficient. And, reparations means standing for our right to speak truth to power. No longer should we bow to the pressure to conform. As a free people, we have the right to speak as we feel. We must stand for that right, before that right is stripped away.

We must never forget - and Western Society must come to understand - that the Black Church has grown in a separate incubator from the White Church. The Black Church grew from the from a paradigm of challenging the prevailing social construct. The Black Church in America was rooted in confronting the hypocrisies of a racist Nation that espoused certain "self-evident truths" - that all men are created equal, yet holding some as slave and some as free. The Black Church spoke out against the injustice of an American Society that promoted such "inalienable rights" as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," while there remained members of that society who were alienated from the inalienable.

You see, reparations means standing for our right to speak truth to power. And, we must be free enough to stand "naked and unashamed" before what is called mainstream society. We must be able to stand "under the bludgeoning of chance" with heads bloodied but yet unbowed. (Black Greeks, remember the pledge process and Invictus - this is the application of that poem...do not bow.)

And as I watch CNN's extended coverage of the speech, I see the analysts and pundits still miss the point. Again, as Reverend Wendell Anthony said, "this is not about Barack Obama..." But, the Mess Media is trying to turn this into a campaign affair. Again, as Reverend Wendell Anthony said, "this is about the African American Church...and our right to speak truth to power."

Reparations means standing for our right to speak truth to power. And, it means standing for the right to be free. Freedom - for our context - means embracing the US Constitution. Part of that is freedom of religion and freedom of speech. So, why must the Black faith perspective fit into the constructs of the box designed by White America? Why must Black free speech be regulated, parsed and analyzed?

Our "Black Leadership" must speak truth to power. They must see this as an assault on the inalienable rights of Black People. "Black Leadership" must realize that this is an attempt to infringe upon our First Amendment Rights. If they do not view it as such, they should no longer be deemed worthy to lead our people.

Reparations means standing for our right to speak truth to power, and we must demand that our "Black Leadership" do its job. They wanted to be "Drum Majors" for the Black Community. Tell them it is time to lead us on a different course. Tell them we did not fight for our rights, only to hand them over again. Tell them we do not fight for equality to have it measured by the standards of White America. Tell them we do not "have a Dream" of so-called unity that whitewashes us and forces free men and women to conform to modalities that are self-conflicting. You have the power to hold your leadership accountable. You have the power to challenge the "Drum Majors" and take their place.

Join one of our groups to the right of this frame. Engage the dialogue. Make your voice heard. Come and Get Your Reparations!

Reparations and "A More Perfect Union" - Pt. 3

Okay. This is proving to be larger than life. A few issues need to be discussed.

Reparations means pursuing a more perfect Union. How do we do this? We must first find the places where our Union is weak.

Let's look at the coverage of this speech and the racist tone of the media. No one questioned White pastors when they called Hurricane Katrina God's judgment on New Orleans in specific and the Country in general. Just perform the following Google Search, and see what is out there. So, why is Reverend Wright worthy of condemnation but White pastors have never been denounced? There was no endless cycle of media clips depicting John Hagee, Pat Robertson, David Duke, Billy Graham or any of the numerous other controversial White pastors who have made seemingly outlandish comments. But, this is all surface.

As I said, reparations means pursuing a more perfect Union. So, let us dig a bit deeper and look at the argument of "preaching hate." Critics and the larger public say that Jeremiah Wright preaches hate. They ask, how can parents allow their children to grow up in these churches and be "indoctrinated by hate."

That may be a valid question. But, those same critics would be faced with the rebuttal argument: what about the hatred that was/is preached by White Churches? What about the pastors that preached the racial inferiority of Black people and condoned - even encouraged - slavery, colonialism and segregation? What about the Christian heritage and Terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan?

So, I ask those critics: what about you? For by and large, your parents were raised in those churches, heard truly hate-filled preaching, and they stayed in those churches. So, what about you: how did you turn out? Were you damaged by that preaching? And, if we were does that mean you are still damaged? Did you demand that your parents leave those churches? Did you walk out of those churches in protest? These are the answers to the arguments of Jeremiah Wright's critics.

Remember, reparations means pursuing a more perfect Union. So, let's now examine the so-called "Black hate." This fiery preaching comes from the foundations of the Black Church. The Black Church was born during American Slavery. As part of American Slavery, Black preachers were forced to examine the hypocrisy of the larger society. Because of their bondage Black Clergy were compelled to read the Old Testament and the experience of the Ancient Jews as a direct parallel to their own. Egypt and Babylon became synonymous with America and the West. Pharaoh became a reference for the slave master and the rulers of this system.

We were compelled to read the New Testament with a keen eye to the sheer hypocrisy. In his Inaugural Address as President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis once said, "Slavery was established by decree of Almighty God. It is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation." Slave masters, and society, used St. Paul's words ("Slaves obey your master" and “Let slaves regard their masters as worthy of all honor") to control slaves. Yet, Black Clergy saw this in the Holy Scriptures:

"For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:27-28; cf. 1 Corinthians 12:13)

So, that legacy of criticism has continued. And, that legacy must not be ignored - but cherished, and considered. Why? Because had it not been for that criticism of society - that pulling on the soul of the Nation - there would have been no en to slavery. Without that tug on our conscience, there would have been no end of Jim Crow. And unless you're willing to argue that the end of slavery and Jim Crow were not good things, we must agree that the critical nature of the Black Church is something that has been a blessing to America. Embrace your blessing, America.

Come and Get Your Reparations!

Reparations is a Spiritual Thing

Reverend Jeremiah Wright's comments are proving to be the best thing since sliced bread.

Why? Because look at the dialogue that has been forced to the forefront. People in the mainstream are now struggling with issues of race on the world stage, and the Nation is growing.

Reparations is a spiritual thing! And, I remember what Joseph said when he was reunited with his brothers, who had sold him into slavery: "what man intended for evil, God intends for good!"

Man intended the promotion of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's comments for evil. Those comments have existed for years. Now that Senator Obama is about to win the Democratic Primary, they mysteriously appear. "Things that make you go: hmmmm...."

But, we should not become upset about the way those comments came to prominence. Nor should we become upset about the way the media treated those comments. Likewise, we should not become upset by they way the media and pundits are struggling with the issue now that Senator Obama has made a speech.

Why? Because, reparations is a spiritual thing. And, as such this process must play out in the media. We will see the ugly depths to which racism still prevails in America and we will have to confront many issues that still remain unsettled. Because of this confrontation, we will have the opportunity to lay an foundation for healing. At least, that's my naive hope...indeed it is my prayer.

Why? Because, reparations is a spiritual thing. So, let's engage in that dialogue; don't shy away from that dialogue. Let's stand up as free men and let no one tell us with whom we should associate.

Come and Get Your Reparations!