Isabel Wilkerson Random House, 496 pages Isabel Wilkerson explains “systemic.” “Systemic” racism isn’t a blanket accusation against non-Black people. Rather, it encompasses presumptions, attitudes and practices developed to serve the interests of slaveholders before we were born and, subtly updated, continue to distort the way we interpret the world. Unless drawn to our attention, we neither see it nor recognize the role it plays in our lives. Few of us think of ourselves as racist. We would never treat another person rudely, whatever their race; we try not to use or even think offensive language; and insist that all people are equal. But racism exists, nevertheless, and affects us all, even those who mean well. One way to awaken to systemwide blind spots is to identify similarities in a different culture. Wilkerson has found a parallel of sorts in the caste system. In Hinduism, one is born into a particular caste that absolutely determines one’s status and role forever. … [Read more...]
Rebuilding from the foundation up
Pastors find a place in my prayers every day, both those known to me and the many who are not. Pastoral ministry today – and that includes church educators and musicians – has to be undertaken in an environment quite unlike what church folk have been used to for generations. The COVID-19 pandemic is a dramatic version of the encounter with a changed and changing culture that has been creeping up on us for years. Before the pandemic, we might have succeeded in putting it out of mind; now we certainly cannot deny it. On the Second Sunday in Lent, 2020, worshippers came to services as usual, even though some accommodations may have been made in light of the dawning awareness of possible contagion. On the Third Sunday in Lent, we stayed home. All at once, without any warning, pastors, musicians and educators found themselves needing to become instantly acquainted with technologies that few were prepared to tackle with acquired skill. We are waiting, of course, for a vaccine, or a … [Read more...]
Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Crown, 272 pages When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, it must have seemed to many abolitionists that their work was done. When the post-Civil War constitutional amendments became law, those with hopes for political and social rights for former slaves may have thought that theirs was done. But soon came lynchings, the KKK, Jim Crow, voter suppression and the virtual replacement of slavery with something remarkably like it. Retrospectively, it can seem as though every movement toward racial justice is followed by a complacency that leaves the status quo undisturbed. Eddie Glaude, who teaches at Princeton University, reflects on the ways that new beginnings have typically fizzled out, borrowing Walt Whitman’s use of the label “after times.” When discussions of race come up in churches, there’s often a participant confident that race is a non-issue in the 21st century. After all, we have civil rights acts from the 1960s — and people of all … [Read more...]
The Collected Sermons of David Bartlett
David Bartlett (foreword by Leonora Tubbs Tisdale) Westminster John Knox, 256 pages At a commencement ceremony in Richmond, Virginia, I introduced myself to Jonah, David Bartlett’s son, adding, “I’ll bet I’m the only one here who heard your grandfather [Gene Bartlett] give the Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School.” Of course, David Bartlett also delivered the Beecher Lectures some four decades after his father, but he and I never met. However, I had used some of his writing in my own teaching, and knew that his voice was one to be trusted. The most recent of these published sermons were preached either at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, where David served as theologian in residence for several years while teaching at Columbia Seminary, or at The Congregational Church of New Canaan, Connecticut. Together these account for more than half of the 52 sermons. The last is one he preached at Yale Divinity School a few months before his death in 2017. Since Bartlett’s … [Read more...]
Won’t Jesus miss us?
While I was leading a church-sponsored trip, the father of a parishioner told me a family story. His two daughters had left the nest. His adult son, who was intellectually challenged, remained at home. Every Sunday, he, his wife and their son worshipped in their Lutheran congregation. One week, for some reason, it seemed prudent to stay home, and the father told his son that they would not be going to church that day. The young man was silent for a time, and then asked, “Won’t Jesus miss us?” It was a touching question, one that highlighted the simplicity of the young man and the charm of what seemed to be his naiveté. Although I have described this scene in print more than once, the passing of time has led me to revisit it with an ever-increasing sense that it reveals something profoundly important. His unguarded description of how he experienced the church at worship is a reminder of what has dimmed for many of us in a secular age, or even been lost. The whole of Western … [Read more...]
Miracles: God’s Presence and Power in Creation
Luke Timothy Johnson WJK Press, 392 pages True story: A young pastor wrote an article for the church newsletter one Easter making the point that the resurrection was the keystone of the Christian gospel. Two families declared that that was too much for them to swallow, and they hit the road. Anyone who has been on a pastoral staff knows there are others with similar sympathies who keep it to themselves. Such knowledge tempts those who preach to turn the volume down when it comes to the bolder affirmations of the gospel. Embarrassed by and recoiling from aggressive fundamentalisms, mainstream Protestants risk a theological timidity meant to calm those in the pews for whom a polite skepticism seems the best way to defend their integrity. Luke Timothy Johnson is professor of New Testament emeritus at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, and decades of observation leave him dismayed that “Christians have more or less given away the game by debating things like miracles in terms … [Read more...]
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