“Where are you from? No, I mean, where are you really from?”
“You speak English so well. And I could hear you all the way in the back!”
“Ni hao.”
Though now anticipated, each time these words or ones like them are uttered, I am reminded that I am a perpetual foreigner in the land of my birth. These words tell me where I am expected to stand and the assumptions surrounding my very being. Churches are not an exception to this experience but often the biggest perpetrators.
I don’t want to be someone’s teacher in the classroom of race, socialization, difference and inclusion. I am not an object lesson for someone else’s learning. I’m not interested in the most up-to-date language, good intentions, or well-meaning actions, either for myself or all of us living in the midst of these very real circumstances. I’m weary of the countless stories of families ripped apart because risking crossing U.S. borders (with all of its racism, violence and wavering human rights) is still an opportunity for a different life. I’m tired of people killed because of who they are, what they look like, and the now apparent luxury of existing even in one’s own neighborhood. I am horrified as rights are taken away because our bodies are no longer our own. Language and “correctness” will not disrupt these narratives.
Our institutions are infected.
Our systems and structures are liable.
Life is more like a privilege these days than a right.
The reality is: We cannot policy our way into relationships. We cannot trust the same powers and principalities who used policies to keep people in line and compliant to free us from the insidiousness of racism and oppression within and around us.
If these are our primary acts for change, then we are distracted by small tweaks rather than the radical disruption we must create together. At best, the harder, embodied work is left for another day (and another, and another … ). At worst, the wordsmithed policy is celebrated as an end in and of itself, not a step on the journey toward a new way of being.
Consider welcoming language in bulletins and on websites for LGBTQIA+ siblings which stops short of allowing the diversity of the church to inform the richness of its life together: for starters, shifts in language, building accessibility, centering (rather than marginalizing) experiences, and the ability to see oneself within the leadership. Or the decades-long desire of mainline Protestant denominations to create racial/ethnic diversity in congregations through numerical goals and integration rather than equitable participation and influence. And, finally, the antiracism policy requirement within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Book of Church Discipline. Its placement in this portion of the Book of Order risks damaging the fertile ground on which it could be planted by using punishment for compliance rather than seeking the restoration of the whole body through diverse, liberatory actions.
Within the denominational system, from local congregations to national offices and decision-making bodies, marginalized groups are kept fighting for the scraps under the table (financial resources, communal support, and even basic acknowledgement) rather than a seat at it.
Well-meaning intentions can get trapped in debates of who is in and who is out, what is acceptable and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, how can it be phrased in a broad yet decisive manner, all when God’s liberatory acts are already much farther ahead.
From table conversations to session meetings to offices or classrooms to the highest decision-making bodies of a whole denomination to the halls of civil power, we cannot miss the ways to practice the movement toward relational change. Opportunities to shift our approaches are all around us.
What if our policies drew us to ask:
- Does this primarily check a box or lead to an action that liberates all?
- What if this work did not amplify the centers of power as the primary way to create change over and against it?
- How is power being used to uphold the status quo?
- How can I affect lasting change as an individual in
the system? - Who are my collaborators and co-conspirators in this work? How can we hold one another accountable and provide the support necessary for the work ahead?
- What does it really mean to be in relationship with one another, embodying antiracist, liberative values as we seek to live as people of faith within and outside of the church walls?
Note: a version of this article was previously published by NEXT church, and the Outlook is republishing with permission.
