Day 1- Columbia State House and considering a black Jesus
After a great send-off from Pastor Volley Hanson at St. Mark's Lutheran, Lumberton, NC, we headed down to South Carolina, stopping in Bishopville, SC at Pearl Fryar's Topiary Garden. Since it's housed at Mr. Fryar's house, he happened to be home and stopped to chat with some of the students. He is a veteran, was active in the Civil Rights movement, and then started shaping trees into peaceful and joyful shapes in his 50s. And now he has a yard filled with whimsical shapes and statues open free to anyone to enjoy them.
And then we got to Columbia, our home for the next few days. We went straight to the State House for a tour, asking our students to notice what was celebrated and memorialized and what was not. And our students were frustrated and baffled after asking our tour guide whether slave labor was used to build the State House and being told resoundingly "no" because only very skilled labor was needed. And then we watched a movie about the State House a few minutes later where it said definitively that slave labor was a part of the early construction that was begun in 1855. Our history is painful and hard to have to speak about, but it's our history. To not honor the contributions of those who built the State House is deliberately making our history more palatable to some and ignoring the pain of others. And it doesn't move us forward as a nation. The same way that Strom Thurmond is spoken about as a great deal-maker and passionate supporter of his state in this same movie, while his history of opposing integration is completely ignored, as was his fifth child. At least that is a history that people have tried to correct, even though that righting of a previous untruth looks messy and uncomfortable. Messy and uncomfortable is what we need- to look the messy truth in the eye and determine that the future can look different.
The African American monument outside the State House offered a timeline of the realities for African Americans in South Carolina, with an African American Civil War soldier carrying a flag stating, "God gives liberty." A man who was most likely enslaved carried this flag- stating the truth that can mean that in Christ, we are all free, but can also mean that that God can bring real, physical liberty in THIS life. What does it mean to carry that flag when you are enslaved? What faith does it take to defy what you see right in front of you? How many of our brothers and sisters still carry that flag in faith? And how many just are too weary to pick it up anymore?
Brian Foulks, a student earning his Masters in Sacred Theology at the Lutheran seminary in Columbia, joined us for dinner and a powerful conversation about racism in the South Carolina and in the church. He thesis for his STM is about black rage and how it affects African Americans' view of God, especially drawing on the writings of James Baldwin, James Cone and Ta-nehisi Coates. And he talked about the authenticity that is needed in conversations about race- to get past playing nice and really put who we are and the biases we have on the table and have a real conversation with people of different ethnic backgrounds so we can hear each other and move into a new future. And he shared powerfully about his own experiences of racism, including his experience of the police.
He also shared about steps that the South Carolina Synod is taking in talking about race and racial reconciliation. While they are a beginning, Brian also said that the Church, and the ELCA in particular, is going to need to take risks, big risks. And the risks need to be taken by those whose skin is white, rather than asking for African Americans to make the first step into primarily white churches. If there is going to be any change, we need to risk offending some and having some leave. In the same way that the ELCA was bold in bringing questions about full-inclusion of LGBTQ persons in our churches, knowing that we risked having some congregations and members leave, this is a time to have that same boldness in talking about racial justice and celebration of our brothers and sisters of color.
And perhaps what stuck with our students the most was when Brian talked about what it feels like to walk into a church and see a white Jesus with every hair in place, who never seems to have suffered. He says that when he sees Jesus, he sees someone who looks like Emmett Till, the 14-year old African American boy who was lynched in 1955. To him, Jesus wears the skin that he does- skin that has known oppression and pain. Our students struggled to understand why it mattered what color Jesus' skin was. But perhaps when we have white skin in this country, it doesn't become a part of our story that much. Because it's considered normative. It's just seen as "regular." So it doesn't matter what color Jesus' skin was. But for those whose skin color is maligned, oppressed and seen as less than others, skin color marks every aspect of life. Every story. Every experience. And incarnation means something very particular. It means that Jesus took on YOUR flesh. Your struggles. Your pain.
When we put a picture of a black Jesus in our churches, it means that whiteness can't be normative and the standard anymore. And it means that we are willing to see persons with black skin as just as holy and beloved as Jesus. As sacred as Jesus. As worthy of honor as Jesus. It changes how we see everyone else who wears flesh that looks like the picture of Jesus we have in our heads.
Brian wondered what would happen if next week, every picture of a white Jesus in an ELCA church had to come down. Would our members be more tied to a white portrait of Jesus than they are tied to their brothers and sisters who feel excluded by that picture? Would making space for our brothers and sisters of color feel like oppression to those who had always had the privilege of seeing Jesus in their own complexion? Would we be able to honor the pain of our brothers and sisters and let our connection in Christ be central to our future together? Deep questions to carry with us this trip.