MLK Jr. famously said that Sunday morning at 11 was the most segregated hour in America.I am white. I did one of those DNA-swab-your-inner-cheek tests to track my ancestral roots a while back and apparently I'm very white.
Most of the people in our congregation have white skin, although there are shades of black and brown as well, ranging from the beautiful J. from Cameroon, G. from Nigeria, and P. from Kenya to the not-as-dark-but-not-white H. with his Indian heritage. We have several interracial couples and I remember one couple telling me that when they (he is white, she is Asian) walked into the sanctuary the first time and saw people like them, they realized immediately they could stay.
There is a Pentecostal congregation that meets in our building on Sunday afternoons and their pastors are white but the congregation is black and Hispanic. This troubles me a little because of all the usual power issues. Do the non-white members know that they could lead this congregation too?
The reason I write all this is because today marks a shift in the leadership of our church. It's the first day on board for L. who will be the summer pastor while I'm on sabbatical. She graduated from Howard Divinity School. She is black.
She was the best candidate of over 15 very good candidates who applied and she is fantastic in general, and we - well-educated progressive Presbyterian Christians - are probably congratulating ourselves somewhere in the recesses of our minds that we are so incredibly open and non-racist. But not-so-deeply-in-my-mind I wonder: I wonder if she will be respected by all. I wonder if people will notice or care that she is black. I wonder if we really are beyond all that.
Do we look for tiny slights in the course of the summer to avoid something bigger? Do we assume that everyone is okay with this? Do I make a special effort to take L. to meet with elderly members from the Old South?
As ridiculous as this may sound to you - especially with a black man in the White House down the street - I still wonder if everyone in our congregation will support her. How are your congregations in terms of welcoming all races?
Our kids go to prom together, so why not church? After Katrina a traditionally black congregation and a traditionally white worship together at First Grace United Methodist Church in New Orleans. (top photo)
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3 comments:
I wish we had the opportunity to find out. Maine is old and white There are a few people of Native American who are welcome and the occasional visitor of color, but the town is basically white.
Here in Runamuk, our congregation is so small that the only criteria for attending worship is a pulse. Those without said pulse tend to show up only once, but to great fanfare.
Our congregation is far more multi-cultural than the parish it's in (being an up and coming affluent part of south London). I think it's a good thing when the young families peek in and you can see their children are surprised to see so many black and indian people.
OTOH, bless you for writing this: so often white people don't like talking about race, which is so frustrating for black anti-racists. It's good to see other people think deeply about these things too.
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