Late in May of 2021, amid the ongoing fear and uncertainties of the COVID public health emergency, commissioners of the Presbytery of Utica gathered online to consider a single question that had been the subject of discussion and discernment for the better part of a year: Will the Presbytery of Utica become a founding partner of the Center for Jubilee Practice?
This question was important for several reasons: not only did it call on the people in the churches to make a significant investment in time and energy, it also involved a substantial financial investment: $100,000 per year over three years to support the Center for Jubilee Practice’s mission of encouraging the Christian Church in the United States to develop concrete practices of reparations, watershed discipleship, full LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and respectful multifaith partnership.
In some ways, the proposition was nonsensical. The Presbytery of Utica has the same challenges as many other Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) judicatories. We are grappling with being made up of small, aging, declining congregations, many of them rural. Additionally, with 30 constituent congregations averaging 52 members, the Presbytery of Utica is far smaller than the average judicatory of the denomination, which includes 53 congregations averaging 104 members. While the Presbytery of Utica is far from insolvent, its financial resources are not unlimited, and a great deal smaller than many if most other judicatories.
When I attend national conferences and introduce myself as being from Utica, the most often asked question is “Where is that?” So, what business does a small, somewhat isolated judicatory like the Presbytery of Utica have in supporting and meaningfully engaging with the Center for Jubilee Practice, an institution with a grand, national vision?
To paraphrase a question asked in the Gospel of John: can anything good come out of Utica (John 1:46)?
One only needs to look at the history of our region for an answer. Central New York – and Utica in particular – have a deep history on the abolitionist movement of the mid-1800s. The Oneida Institute, a school founded in 1827 and located a short walk from Whitesboro Presbyterian Church just outside Utica, was the first institution of higher learning to admit Black and White men together. In July of 1832, 35 students from the Oneida Institute formed the first antislavery society in the state of New York. History is clear that not every congregation in the Presbytery of Utica at that time readily embraced the abolitionist movement, but the tremors of liberation that shook the ground in Utica were felt throughout the nation and added to the cumulative force that led to emancipation. The notion of all being equal and free in the sight of God is in our blood.
The leadership of the Presbytery of Utica felt that the mission of the Center for Jubilee Practice was vital and important, and the matter came to the floor for consideration at the May 2021 stated meeting. After an hour of impassioned discussion and debate, Moderator Rick Riggle called commissioners to pause for several minutes of communal and silent prayer before the vote was taken. Once the session reconvened, the commissioners, one by one, cast their votes. While not unanimous, the motion was voted approved by an overwhelming majority.
In September of 2022, the commissioners present at a stated meeting of the presbytery voted to adopt a “Policy for Reparation and Repair” that solemnizes the presbytery’s intention to affirm an ongoing commitment to a practice of healing, repair and reparations for historic actions committed in the name of Christianity or with the blessing of Christian institutions, “in order to take responsibility for harm that we have caused both intentionally and unintentionally, and because we know that this action is foundational to our desire to create vibrant, vital and healthy Christian communities.”
In his book Hospitality to the Stranger, Thomas Ogletree comments that the “ramifications of hospitality are not fully manifest unless I also know the meaning of being a stranger,” and that “hospitality designates occasions of potential discovery which can open up our narrow provincial worlds.”
We who comprise the church of the 21st century are deeply in need of this level of awareness. In many ways, we have lost the sense of the adventure and discovery to which God invites us. But I firmly believe that God is not done with us, that God has a loving dream for each and every one of the communities where we live and work and worship. To gain a sense of that dream, to be able to articulate the future that it portends and be energized by it, “our narrow provincial worlds” need opening and enlarging. Our minds, hearts and wills need to recall “the meaning of being a stranger.”
In partnership with the Center for Jubilee Practice, the saints in the congregations of the Presbytery of Utica continue the journey to seek the guidance of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit in living out the legacy of liberation of the oppressed, of hospitality to the stranger, and finding fresh new expressions of that legacy today and into the future.
Can anything good come out of Utica? With God’s help, our answer is a robust and full-throated “YES!”
