THERE IS NO 'THEM'
Race & Racism Today
It’s well past the time to have a conversation about racism. We’ve talked around this subject in the past, we’ve invited our African American friends to come and tell us their stories, we’ve thought about things and then… nothing. It is as if we hope that it all sort of will go away. But the things we’ve seen over the past three months says we need more than a hope and a wish that everything will just work out. Our friends, our fellow citizens, deserve more from us than a promise of something better in the future. They’ve heard that from us before.
We have also learned in this time that we need to do work on our own. We need to ask ourselves why this conversation has been so hard for us, for white Americans, for white Christians. Even when it has been well-meaning, our efforts to refocus the rallying cry of “black lives matter” to “justice for all” – to say nothing of the petulant “all lives matter” – misses the point that black Americans continue to be dehumanized, to the point that it is necessary to say “black lives matter” in voices loud enough to be heard. Our attempts to dodge and deflect, to ignore and close our eyes and ears, say more about us than we probably realize.
So, let’s have a conversation. Let’s start and let’s see if we can let God speak to us through one another, through the voices of our neighbors and fellow citizens. We imagine a journey throughmuch of the year ahead of us. We’ll begin with Martin Luther King, Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a brief Bible study and a conversation about racism and the church. We’ll spend several weeks thinking about Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and then Ibraham X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist. We’ll read Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy. After this, we will take some time to watch “13 th ” and the movie “Just Mercy”, based on Bryan Stevenson’s book of the same title. We’ll finish with some theological thinking by reading James H. Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree and William J. Barber II’s sermon “We Are Called To Be A Movement.”
This is a lot of stuff. And it is a lot of work. None of this is an exhaustive list of resources, but things to push us to think. Over our weeks together I’ll have some guests come and work with us through some of these resources. We’ll do our class through Zoom, which will also allow us to break into some small groups and discuss our thoughts and reflections with each other. You may want to engage in all of the resources, you may need to take a couple of weeks off. But I’d like to invite you to try. Try thinking about this. Try asking why it’s so hard. You may not always agree but try to ask yourself where you are and why you’re thinking what you’re thinking.
Maybe, by the end we’ll find some strength to be something different. We will meet on Wednesday evenings at 7:30 pm for about 1 hour, 15 minutes. The first meeting will be Wednesday, September 9. You don’t need to purchase anything for the first four sessions, as we’ll use online resources for these meetings. If you are interested, I’d ask you to fill out the form below. This way I can get more information out to you, an outline of our work and a link to our Zoom meetings. If you have a friend or two you think you might want to be part of this, invite them to come along as well. I look forward to taking this journey with you.
-Pastor Gary Erdos
We have also learned in this time that we need to do work on our own. We need to ask ourselves why this conversation has been so hard for us, for white Americans, for white Christians. Even when it has been well-meaning, our efforts to refocus the rallying cry of “black lives matter” to “justice for all” – to say nothing of the petulant “all lives matter” – misses the point that black Americans continue to be dehumanized, to the point that it is necessary to say “black lives matter” in voices loud enough to be heard. Our attempts to dodge and deflect, to ignore and close our eyes and ears, say more about us than we probably realize.
So, let’s have a conversation. Let’s start and let’s see if we can let God speak to us through one another, through the voices of our neighbors and fellow citizens. We imagine a journey throughmuch of the year ahead of us. We’ll begin with Martin Luther King, Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a brief Bible study and a conversation about racism and the church. We’ll spend several weeks thinking about Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and then Ibraham X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist. We’ll read Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy. After this, we will take some time to watch “13 th ” and the movie “Just Mercy”, based on Bryan Stevenson’s book of the same title. We’ll finish with some theological thinking by reading James H. Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree and William J. Barber II’s sermon “We Are Called To Be A Movement.”
This is a lot of stuff. And it is a lot of work. None of this is an exhaustive list of resources, but things to push us to think. Over our weeks together I’ll have some guests come and work with us through some of these resources. We’ll do our class through Zoom, which will also allow us to break into some small groups and discuss our thoughts and reflections with each other. You may want to engage in all of the resources, you may need to take a couple of weeks off. But I’d like to invite you to try. Try thinking about this. Try asking why it’s so hard. You may not always agree but try to ask yourself where you are and why you’re thinking what you’re thinking.
Maybe, by the end we’ll find some strength to be something different. We will meet on Wednesday evenings at 7:30 pm for about 1 hour, 15 minutes. The first meeting will be Wednesday, September 9. You don’t need to purchase anything for the first four sessions, as we’ll use online resources for these meetings. If you are interested, I’d ask you to fill out the form below. This way I can get more information out to you, an outline of our work and a link to our Zoom meetings. If you have a friend or two you think you might want to be part of this, invite them to come along as well. I look forward to taking this journey with you.
-Pastor Gary Erdos