On the very first morning of the very first meeting of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board that diversity and equity consultant Marian R. Vasser attended, she was standing talking to an Asian woman, having not yet even had time to put down her bag. And a white woman stepped in between them and interrupted.
Vasser is a consultant who serves as the executive director for diversity and equity at the University of Louisville and who attended four of the board’s meetings in 2019 and 2020 (two in person and two virtually) to assess power and privilege dynamics on the board. She took note of things such as who spoke most frequently and which voices were less included; who felt freedom to stand and move around the room; and how much attention people paid when the board discussed matters of race and injustice.
When those subjects came up, she felt the energy in the room immediately drop and noticed changes in body language and facial expression — seeing visible signs of discomfort. “I saw eyebrows almost fly off people’s heads,” Vasser said. And often people of color did the heavy lifting in the anti-racist and justice presentations, with some white board members even choosing not to participate.
“This work is a journey of truth-telling,” Vasser told the board Oct. 8, as she presented her findings (P.201 Power and Privilege Report) from a year of examining issues of power and privilege on the board — extending her conclusions at times to speak more generally about white supremacy in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
She urged the board members to “be aware of resistance” to what she was saying — to the tendency to say, “Not me,” or that “I am Presbyterian, I recycle, I am vegan. … I would never be a part of the problem.” Her goal, she said, was not to blame or shame, but to help board members perceive their own complicity.
Racism encompasses more than lynchings, hate crimes and the Ku Klux Klan, she said. It’s also how, sometimes more covertly, racist behaviors and ideas become normalized and accepted.
“My job is not to come here to label you all,” but to help participants recognize that “you have consumed everything that racism has taught you,” Vasser said.
Americans learn racism at school, at their family dinner tables, in church, at work. “Yes you, yes me, yes all of us” are influenced by systemic racism, she said. “If we do not check power and privilege, we are not only keeping white supremacy in place,” but reinforcing it, and “we are actually celebrating it.”
Vasser’s findings were challenging: for example, “people of Asian descent appear to be rendered invisible” and “there is visible discomfort during conversations around white supremacy and white privilege.” Staff members typically sit in the back of the room, not participating or speaking unless invited. She also wrote of “the perceived lack of commitment to this work,” which was initiated by the board’s own Power and Privilege Task Force — saying her inclusion at meetings at times seemed like an afterthought.
She had special words for liberal white women who “can typically identify issues with everyone but themselves,” she said in her presentation. “You tend to center yourself with the attempt to absolve yourself.”
Vasser wrote: “In summary, PMAB is very hierarchal, all the way down to where folx are allowed to sit and when they are allowed to participate. As a result, power and privilege dynamics are engrained and inevitable. If PMAB is truly committed to disrupting power and privilege dynamics, it must be willing to acknowledge how deeply embedded hierarchies and tradition are in tis organization. Holding onto tradition, in a way that the organization continues to operate business-as-usual, is in direct conflict with innovation, diversity, inclusion and justice.”
Vasser extended that observation to the Presbyterian Church more broadly — speaking of the value of “interrupting tradition.” Some traditions need to go, Vasser said — for example, “we did slavery for 400 years, that’s a tradition.”
The Presbyterian Church has a history of supporting slavery, so “in essence, to hold onto tradition is to hold onto and perpetuate white supremacy,” Vasser wrote.
Earlier in the day, board vice chair Shannan Vance-Ocampo spoke of her own upbringing — saying she grew up in Philadelphia, with a deep sense of Presbyterian history. “It was embedded in my DNA as a child that I was Presbyterian, and Presbyterians founded the United States, and Presbyterians were special because of that and Presbyterians were good because of that,” she said. “Often times, I think our history really warps us, and it warps our identity.”
Now, Vance-Ocampo said, she’s working to re-evaluate what she was taught in those formative years — and to realize that “so much of that is rooted in the white supremacy story.”
The board spent some earlier time in smaller group discussions – with white board members in one virtual session and people of color in another – talking about the book “Good White Racist? Confronting Your Role in Racial Injustice.” (Watch the replay of a Presbyterian Outlook “Holy Imagination + Race” webinar with the book’s author, Kerry Connelly.)
Michelle Hwang, a board member who leads the Power and Privilege Task Force, said the task force needs some time to review Vasser’s report and let her findings “sink in,” before coming back with recommendations on next steps.
In the end, Vasser encouraged the board members to do the work needed to become anti-racist, saying: “White people, do your own education” – there’s a wealth of resources, including books, TED talks and more. “There is no shortcut. There is no trophy. There is no certificate of completion. It’s a process,” in which people will make mistakes, and with learning and work required every day.
When Vasser had completed her remarks, board chair Warren Lesane said: “I think we’re in a good, uncomfortable-as-hell place.”
The board covered other business as well.
Budgets and merger. Kathy Lueckert, president of the PC(USA), A Corporation, explained work that has begun to create a new process for developing denominational budgets — a process required by an administrative action that the Moving Forward Implementation Commission took the day before the General Assembly convened last June.
That action instructs the leadership of the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA), the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and the PC(USA), A Corporation to convene a coordinating table to develop a new budgeting process and to present a unified budget for the three entities for 2023 and 2024. “They gave us big tasks,” Lueckert said, including developing a truly unified budget “that looks at all sources of funding” and makes decisions about how to allocate available funds across all three entities.
Work to create the coordinating table has already begun — the proposal is for a 15-member table including Lueckert, PMA president and executive director Diane Moffett, and PC(USA) stated clerk J. Herbert Nelson, along with two senior staff members and two board members from each of the entities.
Another issue being discussed at top levels of the denomination: a possible merger of PMA and OGA. That’s “kind of a parallel track” as the budget discussions, Lueckert said — happening separately, but at the same time.
Co-moderators. Gregory Bentley, co-moderator of the 2020 General Assembly along with Elona Street-Stewart, gave a brief report, saying, “I’m grateful for what God is doing.”
Quoting from the 4th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, in which a storm comes up while the disciples try to cross the sea, Bentley said, “these are King James times,” in which people ask, as the disciples did of Jesus, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?”
People are dying from COVID-19, churches are losing members, the General Assembly because of the pandemic couldn’t meet in person, Bentley said. The PC(USA) is feeling the pain of transformation, but “to remain in the cocoon means death,” he said. And “Jesus is in the boat right with us.”
Bentley said he and Street-Stewart are “all in with the Matthew 25 vision” of PMA, and hope to get “every congregation, every presbytery, every synod involved.” During her remarks Oct. 7, Moffett presented the most recent numbers of Matthew 25 participation.
Stated clerk. Nelson said the church has been “busy, busy, busy” trying to meet the needs of people in communities: those who are hungry, who have lost their jobs, children who are being sent to school despite the dangers of COVID-19 infection. “We are in a dire, dire space right now in the United States of America,” he said.
As Moffett had done in her presentation, Nelson spoke of the pushback denominational leaders have received to the PC(USA)’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“These are church people” who are voicing that criticism, Nelson said. To one, who asked why the church should affirm that Black lives matter, he replied in frustration: “Because I’m Black, and because I matter. … God gave us all these different hues, “and “no matter who is suffering we have some responsibility to give them comfort.”
The board’s virtual meeting will conclude Oct. 9 with votes on a wide range of issues – including plans to address a PMA budget shortfall brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.