United Methodism

The Transformed NonConformist (#4)

~ philipamerson

The Transformed NonConformist

In November 1954, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached his inaugural sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In retrospect, it was his future ministry’s thesis statement[i].  His text?  Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (NRSV). The sermon was titled “The Transformed Nonconformist.” He was proposing that Christians sometimes needed to act in ways that didn’t always “go along to get along.” Civil, nonviolent nonconformity, was a preferred option when democratic institutions failed, and discrimination continued unabated.[ii]

There were scores of other faith leaders, expressing such a witness, prior to and alongside of, Dr. King.  The church had a rich history of persons acting as Transformed Nonconformists.[iii]  Urban Training Centers were active across the nation in the mid-1960s, most notably in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. There were many models unfolding ranging from the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York to Church of the Savior in Washington D.C., to Operation Push in Chicago. In Boston, Cleveland, Nashville, Atlanta, and Los Angeles such efforts were institutionalized and often funded by mainline denominations.  In the rural south there was the witness of the Koinonia Farm in Georgia and Voice of Calvary in Mississippi.[iv]

In Indiana the Rev. Luther Hicks in Indianapolis founded Dignity Unlimited. Hicks, a pastor, also set up work with youth in a storefront outreach effort near Shortridge High School at 34th and Meridian. Hicks was arrested on several occasions for leading nonviolent protests over racial injustices. Urban legend has it that the “Methodist” bishop would call the “Methodist” mayor to intervene.  Hicks’ crime?  Seeking to de-escalate possible violence and “promoting patience and reason.”[v]

In earlier decades, Gary (Indiana) Central Methodist Church championed racial justice efforts as the Reverend S. Walton Cole encouraged members to confront their own prejudices, welcome new members from diverse backgrounds and march in demonstrations for equal pay and education. At Trinity Church in Muncie, Indiana, Rev. J. C. Williams’ activities in Civil Rights struggles lead to his candidacy for Mayor of Muncie as “Poor People’s Party Candidate”[vi]

Back to Evansville, and to the topic the closing of desegregation and the closing of inner-city schools, the counsel “You cannot fight city hall” was heard, and it was reframed to a need the importance of speaking directly to school administrators.[vii]  In the process, changes did come.  Culver School was not closed, and a new building was constructed. Elaine Amerson was elected to the county-wide school board where she served for eight years, three of them as board president. Resources that had been heavily directed to suburban schools were shared more equally across the school system. And, yes, county-wide busing did occur, while at the same time several “naturally racially integrated” schools continued to serve a neighborhood.

Despite the range of these efforts, little research, or documentation of the import of such faith-initiated efforts at transformation has been produced. Dr. King’s legacy endures. It has been revived by persons like the Rev. William Barber II. Taking a longer view, while significant advances have occurred, perhaps a deeper and wider story has gone untold.[viii]  There has been little reporting on the breadth of the many faith-based activities.[ix]  

Denominations have turned inward. The slow and critical work of building up neighborhood parishes appears pushed to the sidelines. Examples of genuinely interracial and multicultural congregational life are little-known or valued only at the margins in Mainline Christianity. The death of Dr. King in 1968 dealt a severe blow to the call made to the church in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”  The time of Non-conforming Transformationalism abated but it has not disappeared.

In the wider culture, since Dr. King’s death, change has come fast and hard, resulting in questions as to the relevance of the church and much handwringing among church leaders. A decline in attendance began in the late 1960s. Baby Boomers emerged as a new and different demographic. At colleges and congregations on university campuses interest in church attendance declined dramatically at the end of the 1960s. Many campus pastors and priests point to 1967, or thereabouts, as a critical juncture when students who had once filled the pews began to disappear in large numbers from worship. Meanwhile, in urban neighborhoods, those expanded church facilities that had been built in the decades following WWII for all the children, were emptying out.

The Vietnam War, the birth control pill, and the weak response by churches to support the civil rights exposed how insular, self-absorbed, and out of touch religious institutions were in the culture.  Going along and Getting Along had taken a toll. We were said to be entering “a post-denominational era.” The call of Dr. King and the work of scores of faith-based initiatives designed to engage the church in seeking transformation in society was seen more as an artifact than a calling. 

For denominations these realities accelerated the anxious casting about for ways to find or retain relevance. There was a willingness to try many things to stop the growing loss of membership. Ironically, efforts to value and benefit by affirming a core denominational identity and neighborhood parish locations was typically missed or overlooked. The megachurch movement was off and running.  It has served as a central hoped-for-solution among denominational bodies.[x]  Now, in hindsight, it appears exclusive focus on a megachurch model was destined to be insufficient to the changes that continue.

Less attention was given to taking seriously the need for in-depth lay theological education.  Popular narrow cultural ideologies, “seeker-friendly” worship that avoided symbols of sacrifice like a cross, along with contemporary music, mixed with safe political perspectives were the tail that wagged the theological dogs of this era.  As church historian Martin E. Marty put it: “To give the whole store away to match what this year’s market says the unchurched want is to have the people who know least about the faith determine most about its expression.”[xi]

Especially notable, in the 1980s through the 2010s, were the more agile, drive in, folk-based religious mega-church expressions.  Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago suburbs or Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan are often-cited examples. These “independent community church” expressions are now in second or third generations of leadership and appear to be going through their own identity crises — and decline. The recent exclusion of Saddle Back Church from the Southern Baptist Convention is worth considering as persons consider what the future of the megachurch will be. 

The story of the megachurch in United Methodism is more complex.  At places like the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas, St. Andrew UMC in Colorado, or Ginghamsburg UMC in Ohio, there have been deliberate efforts to encourage thoughtful theological discourse and support for nearby neighborhood parishes. Typically, however, these types of megachurch congregations are the exceptions among the large church expressions.

Anxiety was the driver. There was a widely held belief, a self-fulfilling prophecy in fact, that we had entered a post-denominational era.  This anxiety was a symptom of what might be diagnosed as“Church Growth fever.” Such fear-based views and flight to “safe places” continues. There have been few efforts to stop to consider what gifts may already be present in smaller and more local parish settings. Megachurch models were advocated that were too often independent from a denomination’s core identity.[xii]

The response over the past four decades has only reinforced the self-focus and self-concern in many settings. Denominations and philanthropic entities focused attention on leadership training and congregational development. These efforts, while not bad in and of themselves, turn attention toward inwardly directed programs. They also, inadvertently perhaps, set up a system where pastoral performance is measured against the “successes” of the booming megachurch in the suburbs.  Looking inward, it was the pastor or the congregation that needed to change to be “more valued.”  One might say the time of Non-transformational Conformity had arrived.

Sadly, in many places, the value of neighborhood congregations was lost; the importance churches as a local center of informal gathering and values-production among residents living nearby was sacrificed. Starbucks, neighborhood eateries and bars now filled the civic void left behind in urban neighborhoods.

BUT WAIT, THERE IS MORE! 

In many urban neighborhoods, congregations have survived, even prospered. They have persisted despite often being undervalued and overlooked.[xiii]  While thousands of neighborhood congregations have disappeared, thousands of others are being transformed. Not all continue as worshipping communities only, or primarily. It is often not the church as known it in the past. Some places are more traditional but in almost all, there is a willingness to be Nonconforming Transformationalists.

There is a remarkable phenomenon, for example, of church buildings being transformed into low-income residences.[xiv] In other places congregations are building tiny houses on church property and are forming communities of care where church members build fellowship with persons finding health and spiritual care for chronic difficulties. There are at the same time new models of faith life bubbling up that don’t require a building, as in coffee shop Bible studies and parenting fellowship groups. There are new forms of believers assembling to “be transformed together” working on immigration reform or providing shelter or health care for low wealth persons that have begun and are beginning.  These are signs of hope and joy and celebration. They are places where diversity is celebrated, where multicultural expressions are honored, and where everyone, no matter race or sexual preference, is welcome.

COMING NEXT: Parish-based Renewal and Seeing Christ in the Neighbor and Neighborhood.

[i] McCullough, Marcus, “Go Along to Get Along,” The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School, 2023.

[ii] Passages from Romans chapters 12-15 have been cited to undergird both conformity and nonconformity with government practices across the centuries. In Romans 13:1ff, Paul seems to argue that Christians should simply submit to civil authority. However, King and others suggested Romans 12 set the terms for any such submission. When faced with evil institutions, conformity is predicated on the ever continuing the call for transformation? Discrimination, Jim Crow laws, lynching, unequal economic, societal, employment and education systems could and should be transformed.

[iii] Too often forgotten or overlooked were the many others who were part of Urban Training Centers shaping urban ministry around the country.  Gibson Winter’s book The Suburban Captivity of the Churches helped set the stage as did his work with the Urban Training Center in Chicago. There were the folks like Clarence and Florence Jordan at Koinonia Farm and Gordon and Mary Cosby at Church of the Savior in Washington D.C.  There was the ministry of Father Jack Egan for the Chicago Catholic Diocese and Vincent Harding with the Mennonite communities in Chicago and Atlanta. Folks like Don Benedict, Archie Hargraves, Bill Webber, and Letty Russell at the East Harlem Protestant Parish New York.

[iv] I mention these few, of many, because much of this history has been overlooked.  Dr. King’s work, and that of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was essential to the changes brought about by the civil rights struggle. At the same time there were dozens of localized ways people of faith were engaged in taking their faith to the streets.

[v] https://www.connerprairie.org/black-history-month/

[vi] https://digital.library.in.gov/Record/BSU_othermiddle-105

[vii] We heard my supervisor’s admonition that one “can’t fight city hall” as a call “not to turn city leaders into the enemy.”  This led to many lunches with school administrators and city officials.  Some of the best allies in seeking more equity in public education came from teachers and administrators within the school system. 

[viii] Examples come in many dimensions: In housing (Habitat for Humanity grew out of the witness of Koinonia Farm with Millard Fuller and Clarence Jordan in Georgia), with economic structures (e.g., Rev. Faith Fowler at Cass Community in Detroit provides a model, as does John Perkins with Christian Community Development Associations, or incubator businesses out of several congregations), and resources linking spirituality and social action continue (e.g., Fr. Richard Rohr’s at the Center for Action and Contemplation and Rev. Jim Wallis’ leadership at the Sojourners in Washington, D.C.).

[ix] Research waits to be done. In the early 1970s, for example, Project Understanding looked at the efficacy of programs designed to bring racial change through religious congregations – little has followed.

[x] Dr. Scott Thuma at Hartford Seminary has done considerable research on the rise (and decline) of the megachurch phenomena. See: mhttp://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/research.html.

[xi] Marty, Martin E., Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7201126-to-give-the-whole-store-away-to-match-what-this.

[xii] It is not surprising that many of the same folks who pushed a singular focus on tinkering with the patterns of congregational life warned we were entering “a post-denominational era.” From “Keys to Growth” and the “Habits of Successful Congregations” the remedies proposed included more parking, new member campaigns, management by objectives, leadership training, changing music or moving the location of the congregation to a “better place.”  Long established denominational connections or linkages with other institutions in a community were not highlighted. Mostly, the unspoken assumption was that larger congregations of like-minded people were the answer.  Seldom was there a focus on the parish surrounding the church – and when there was such a focus, the parish was seen as a place of scarcity, even danger. A place needing outside help rather than a resource for congregational vitality.

[xiii] Some researchers speak of these examples of heath where there is perceived poverty and decline as “positive deviance.”  I choose to see it as the work of the Holy Spirit.

[xiv] A remarkable initiative is being carried out by the United Methodist Foundation in the New England Annual Conference where “redundant” church buildings are being evaluated as places for potential residences or for new ministry/mission sites.

Going Along and Getting Along #3

~ philipamerson

Going Along and Getting Along

“You can’t fight city hall.” my friend said. After I shared efforts to keep several inner-city schools open, he gave this response.  My children attended one school on the docket to be closed – Culver Elementary, in Evansville, Indiana. It was the late 1970s. The Federal Court desegregation orders were being enforced.  School busing was underway across the nation. In places like South Boston, there was angry, even violent, resistance.  In Evansville folks were uneasy.  My friend was also my supervisor.[i]  His counsel was appreciated, well-intentioned. In fact, it was considered “progressive” as a support for desegregation efforts.

Public schools in the city were to “adjust” and “comply.” Our children’s school was naturally racially integrated. Along with others, all children could walk to school from home.  No school bus needed, thank you. There was a natural racial mix. School desegregation orders, although imperfect, were a response to the prevailing patterns of separation and providing unequal resources based on race. The evil of systemic racism has plagued our nation from its founding, shaping the ecology of our cities. In the wake of this, white flight left thousands of formerly predominantly white urban congregations struggling to survive.[ii]

How to best respond to the effort to “desegregate” schools in my community?  On the one hand, my children already attended a racially integrated school; on the other, there were deep systemic problems in cities across the land. In many places – no, in most places – the church lived by the notion “you can’t fight city hall.” It might be called a Go Along and Get Along theology.  In earlier posts, I noted the multiplicity of ways congregational life was reshaped, distorted really, by racist activities, after WWII.  Housing, transportation, education, and economics were woven together on a loom shaped by deeply racist social designs.

THAT WAS THEN. Alternative voices were also emerging. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. represented the best known of such an alternative vision.

In upcoming posts we will look at Dr. King’s prescription for change and how mainline denominations responded. We will also suggest some ideas for a more hopefilled furture. Perhaps Christendom as it has existed in recent generations in the United States is passing — and, perhaps, there are ways Christianity will flower in surprising new manifestations.

Next: Dr. M.L. King’s Nonconforming Transformationalism.

[i] Clergy supervisors in the Methodist tradition are known as district superintendents and bishops. My district superintendent was a good man and the urban ministry work we were doing at Patchwork Ministries in Evansville was made possible through his connectional support.  This support was not primarily money; mostly it was permission for a group of young idealistic pastors to attempt something different in terms of urban ministry.

[ii] Tragically the current US Supreme Court is attacking legislation intended to secure voting rights, affirmative action and equal justice that accompanied these desegregation efforts.

Evaporating Parish and Racism (Part 2-B)

~ philipamerson

Philip Amerson, May 2023

The Ecology of Racial Discrimination

“I was afraid I might be shot walking from my car into the building.”  These were the words of a friend, a denominational leader. He was speaking of work while his office was at Central Avenue UMC in the 1990s.

In recent years I assumed there were few surprises left for me after more than fifty years as a pastor in my particular Protestant denomination. I was wrong.

It was a casual conversation, but a stunning one. My friend’s almost off-hand comment opened a new vista into what I had failed to see those three decades earlier. He was speaking of when his office was in the Central Avenue Church years before. Still, the fear lingered in his voice.

I have written about the decline and closing of the Central Avenue in earlier posts. In the mid-1980s, I joined others in proposing some denominational offices be moved to the unsued space at Central Avenue. Our assumption was it would benefit urban ministry across the state. It would signal and solidify a commitment to valuing of city churches. Surely, if denominational offices and mission activities were located in the core-city, it would guarantee more support and an awareness, a commitment, to city ministry.  In an amazing set of circumstances, in that decade, even Governor, Frank O’Bannon, and his wife Judy, United Methodists themselves, chose to live nearby and associate with Central Avenue. They were advocates for urban revitalization.

Still, something was awry. My assumption in hindsight was fool hearty.  There was an insufficiency in vision. Locating offices in that building didn’t have the effect we had hoped. Central Avenue officially closed in 1999. The building needed significant repairs. The worshipping congregation was down to only thirty members.  Ultimately the grand old structure was given over to Indiana Landmarks and extensive refurbishment was carried out.[i]  

What did we fail to understand when it was thought that locating some denominational offices in that place would be a difference maker? Something more basic, more at the core of things, was at play. Offices might be centered in a building, but fear and a lack of a shared vocational clarity as to city ministry overwhelmed the best of intentions.

Earlier I posed the question, why?  Why did so many urban parishes seem to evaporate or vanish over the past half century? Central Avenue is representative. In fact, it had more advantages than many others. The many parishes that vanished faced a tsunami of urban change. Long deferred building maintenance and the costs of repairs played a significant role. It will be argued later that an inadequate sense of theological clarity and sense of connection between the congregation and a shifting neighborhood population was a contributor to this decline. 

Too few neighbors found a home at the church. Few persons were willing to drive from more distant neighborhoods back into the core-city.  There was insufficient interest, skill or insight in re-establishing this as a viable parish. Other factors contributed to this demise (secularization, smaller families, alternative faith communities nearby); even so, I have come to the belief that, at the core, there are two fundamental issues which offer the clearest explanation. These are:

a) the social and political ecology of embedded racism; and

b) Ineffectual denominational and congregational responses lacking in theological clarity. 

A Look at the Embedded Racism in Urban Ecologies

My friend who spoke of being afraid of being shot walking between his office and the car was not someone who would fit the label of a racist. Over his career he spoke against racial discrimination. Yet, the fear he experienced belied something deeper, something far more problematic.

Racism is about more than individual attitudes or behaviors.  It is embedded in perceptions and expectations. Even more, it is interwoven in the political and economic systems in which we all participate. After speaking of “being afraid of being shot” he went on to say, “I couldn’t invite persons to come to the building for meetings, especially in the evenings, out of concern for their safety.  On more than one occasion I heard gunshots near the building.”

As these words were spoken, I thought of the dozen or so United Methodist congregations nearby, several within a couple of miles. I thought of the dozens of churches, around the city and in urban neighborhoods across the state, that were in more “dangerous” settings (with higher crime statistics or gang activity).

Fear is a powerful force in shaping what we see and how we behave. Comments like “we must go to where the people are” or “I couldn’t invite people here” are not intended to carry racist freight on the surface – but they are marioneted in a broadly assumed and unspoken racist gestalt.  In truth, in nearby churches congregants gathered in more crime ridden neighborhoods, day-and-night, to carry on their ministries.[ii]

There was a failure to consider a wider array of options than an exit strategy. The resulting reality was a benign neglect of most core-city parishes. The “left behind” congregations were undervalued as to their potential.

There are many factors that underlie WHY neighborhoods changed and parishes slowly vanished. Realities and patterns vary from congregation-to-congregation, city-to-city, and neighborhood-to-neighborhood.  Even so, when one considers the common ingredients surrounding neighborhoods that were abandoned and where parish life was ignored, fear of the other (of the stranger) is always present.

Our nation’s history is that of a restless citizenry, moving from place to place, job to job, home to home.[iii] This mobility is assisted by the capitalistic assumptions that social status and a better life can be purchased by a move to a more respected place.

There is a lengthly list of contributors to transitions in urban neighborhoods like those surrounding Central Avenue Church. This recent research on the dynamic of urbanization singles out racist structures as far and away the critical explanatory and discriminatory component. Racism serves as what social scientists call an “independent variable.”

There are now scores of research reports, mostly from the past decade, that document the extent of racial inequity. It permeated our social and economic ecology. It was manifest in the building of interstate highways,[iv] the decline of newspapers and local media,[v] real estate speculation and housing practices,[vi] shopping malls and big-box retail,[vii] employment,[viii] education,[ix] taxation,[x] law enforcement,[xi] urban development,[xii] and, this all reinforced by patterns of governance and political control in cities.[xiii]

To illustrate, here is a quick review of the first factor above, the building of interstate highway systems. It is clear systemic racism shaped the urban landscape. A pervasive, and decades long, reality can be seen in the destroying and/or dividing neighborhoods based on race. The interstate highway system begun in the mid-1950s, and even earlier the parkways built by planners like New York’s Robert Moses, intentionally divided neighborhoods by race and social class.[xiv] In the process it was nearly always the Black and Brown neighborhoods that were destroyed or “isolated off.”

Today the former Central Avenue church building is only a few yards from I-65 as it loops through the middle sections of the city; and, barely two blocks away is another barrier as I-70 separates off heading east. The now gentrified Near Northside neighborhood is, thus, walled off from other, historically poorer neighborhoods in Indianapolis.[xv]

Robert Bullard in 2004 documented how the Interstate Highway System was blatantly and, in most cases, effectively utilized as a tool of “transportation racism”.[xvi]  Bullard speaks of the power of transportation inequity. Poorer neighborhoods suffered the consequences that included: isolated poverty detached from needed services, environmental hazards, loss of neighborhood centers (including churches), excessive noise and more difficult access to shopping, parks, entertainment, and other amenities. Bullard posits that “transportation planning has duplicated the discrimination used by other racist government institutions and private entities to maintain white privilege”.[xvii]

Thus, by the 1970s, in Indianapolis, the building of interstate highways, the establishment of Unigov (bringing together city and county government), the desegregation of schools and taxation policies were powerful reinforces of an often-covert racism.  It was a racism that was deeply embedded in urban planning activities and in the souls of well-meaning but fearful citizens, even church leaders.  It is little wonder that congregations like Central Avenue were in trouble. It is a story deeply embedded in racial fear. But the story is even more nuanced, more complex. 

If racism was a primary cause, the response to this time of transition and the vanishing of parishes by the denominations was also due to largely ineffectual and misguided practices.  We turn to this in the next posting.  There is more. There are words of hope offered by two other questions beyond the “why?”  In future we will also ask about the “what if?” and “why not?” options before us.

ENDNOTES:

[i] More information on the renovation of Central Avenue and transition to the Centrum by Indiana Landmarks can be found at: https://savingplaces.org/stories/nineteenth-century-church-receives-enlightened-renovation-indiana-landmarks-center

[ii] I was serving as one of the pastors at Broadway United Methodist under two miles north of Central Avenue from 1986 to 1992. Yes, there were gun shots heard and even violent exchanges on that parking lot; however, the lay people, who lived near and far away, and the nearby neighbors were beginning to forge bonds of cooperation and respect.  It was hard won – and was filled with the challenges of mistrust and paternalistic behaviors. 

[iii] Frederick Jackson Turner had hypothesized all the way back in 1893 that the American Spirit was one of always moving into a new frontier.  Turner spoke of the idea of an exceptionalism that sought to “win against the wilderness.”  Mobility came naturally to the settlement and resettlement of our cities.

[iv] Bullard, R. D. (2004). The anatomy of transportation racism. Bullard, R., Johnson, G., & Torres, A. (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

[v] There is a clear and growing research on the decline in civic engagement as related to the decline of a local press.  See for example Madeline Price, “No Longer Black and White and Read All Over: How the Disappearance of America’s Local News Threatens Our Democracy,” Democratic Erosion, February 13, 2022.

[vi] Rothstein, Richard and Leah, Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law, Liveright Publishers, 2023.

[vii] Dunlap, Michelle, Retail Racism: Shopping While Black and Brown in America, Rowman and Littlefield, 2021.  See also: Drost, Philip, “How Malls and Freeways helped segregate America, CBC Radio, June 26, 2022; and, Young, Michael and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London, The Free Press, 1957.  This remarkable early study of two communities. The decline in civic engagement and community involvement anticipated the losses of parish awareness ahead for places where suburban development was underway. undermining the viability of neighborhood shops and shopping.

[viii] Wilson, Valerie and William Darity Jr., Understanding black-white disparities in labor market outcomes requires models that account for persistent discrimination and unequal bargaining power, Economic Policy Institute, March 25, 2022.

[ix] Ramsey, Sonya, The Troubled History of American Education after the Brown Decision, The American Historian, March 2021.

[x] Davis, Carl and Wiehe, Meg, Taxes and Racial Equity: An Overview of State and Local Policy Impacts, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, , March 31, 2021. See: https://itep.org/taxes-and-racial-equity/

[xi] Valentine, Ashish, NPR, July 5, 2020, “The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How Race Shaped Americas Roadways and Cities.  See: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/05/887386869/how-transportation-racism-shaped-america

[xii] Baker-Smith, Christine, Lourdes German, Samantha Pedrosa and Stacy Richardson, Racial Equity and Municipal Bond Markets, National League of Cities. 2022.

[xiii] “Unigov: Unifying Indianapolis and Marion County,” Digital Civil Rights Museum, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/42.In Indianapolis the dramatic shift in governance came with the adoption of Unigov – a merger of multiple city and county agencies. While presented as a way to streamline the work of overlapping government agencies, the Indiana Conference on Human and Civil Rights also served to dilute and weaken the voice and representation of the poor and black citizens of Indianapolis.

[xiv] Karas, David, “Highway to Inequality: The Disparate Impact of the Interstate Highway System on Poor and Minority Communities in American Cities,” New Visions for Public Affairs, Volume 7, April 2015, pp. 9 – 21.  See: https://www.ce.washington.edu/files/pdfs/about/Highway-to-inequity.pdf

[xv] Valentine, Ashish, NPR, July 5, 2020, “The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How Race Shaped Americas Roadways and Cities.  See: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/05/887386869/how-transportation-racism-shaped-america

[xvi] Bullard, Robert, Op. Cit., p. 15.

[xvii] Bullard, Robert Op. Cit. p. 20.

The Evaporating Parish (Part #2-A)

~ philipamerson ~ 1 Comment

Philip Amerson, May 2023

The Evaporating Parish (Part 2-A)

In June 1979, the Indiana United Methodist Annual Conference met in the I.U. Auditorium. The presiding bishop, Leroy Hodapp,[i] set an agenda for the future “We must go to where the people are!” The subtext was clear, we must go to the suburbs and invest talent, time, and resources there. As pastor in a core-city neighborhood at the time, I leaned to a friend beside me and whispered, “What are the people in our neighborhoods? Chopped liver?

The post-WWII Baby Boom population surge was slowing. A “population shock wave[ii]” or “Agequake”[iii] disrupted assumed church practices. Denominational anxiety about the future was on the upswing. In 1970 Alvin Toffler, with his wife Adelaide, published the popular Future Shock.[iv]  It spoke of the events of these years as “too much change in too short a period of time.”

Urban neighborhoods, perceived as dangerous and in inevitable decline, were changing rapidly. Homes were abandoned by families, mostly of European ancestry and sold to real estate speculators. The houses left behind were often subdivided into multiapartment residences. The new arrivals came mostly from non-Caucasian ancestry. Typically, they were families with lower wealth. Dramatic population and neighborhood changes continued, wavelike over the next decades, as residences and local businesses were turned into rental properties. Only a couple of decades later, change came again as younger folks who were given the rather ironic label of “urban pioneers”[v] arrived and refurbished the older houses again into single-family dwellings.

In an earlier post,[vi] I wrote of the demise of the Central Avenue United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. A version of Central Avenue’s story was replicated in thousands of churches in the U. S. during the middle-and-late Twentieth Century. The underpinnings of parish life were vanishing as linkages with surrounding neighborhoods diminished. This pattern, like rolling ocean waves, washed across city neighborhoods. Social connections withered, were then rebuilt, and again diminished, and then reestablished again.

Gentrification was only beginning. White flight had speeded changes.[vii] The none-to-subtle subtext of the bishop’s counsel in 1979 was that primary attention should be directed to those leaving the core-city and refocused on suburban church growth. Ironically, of course, the population density in core-city neighborhoods was growing to levels higher than ever.

The good bishop’s analysis and strategy failed to perceive the ways in which the “left behind” neighborhoods were becoming more global, more multicultural.[viii]  There was also a failure to discern the gifts being brought by the new residents. Even as new Asian, Hispanic enclaves emerged, and African American communities were enlarged, at the same time many of these “re-establishing” neighborhoods became more multiethnic in composition.[ix] 

A listening to, visiting with, and welcoming of the people of the neighborhoods near the church buildings by church leaders was rarely practiced.  The focus was on who was leaving, following “our” people. There was a blindness.  Importantly, and in truth determinatively, the financial base for many city congregations was diminishing as members left for the suburbs. In the Baby Boom years of the middle 1950s and early 1960s, many church buildings were expanded beyond what could be afforded by those left behind or newly arriving in the following decades.

The call to “go to where the people are” failed to consider options other than an exit strategy. Left behind were paternalistic responses welcoming the new arrivals. If there was an outreach to the newcomer, it was typically an effort to “fix” these new in-migrants.  Rather than seeing these persons as resources, with gifts to share, they were thought of as “the needy” and as such, well-meaning ministries like food pantries, thrift shops, and tutoring programs became the primary mission of many inner-city churches. 

As was noted in the previous post, “It is one thing to restore buildings and houses, quite another to re-establish (or perhaps rediscover) a parish.”[x]  What lessons might we discover from this history? We ask: why? what if? and why not? 

Why did these parishes evaporate or vanish? In the next two postings I will offer what I believe are the two primary reasons for this phenomenon: 1) the social and political ecology of embedded racism in the nation; and 2) Ineffectual denominational and congregational responses to these changes lacking in theological clarity.

Coming Next: 2-B, The Social and Political Ecology of Embedded Racism in the Nation.

Your thoughts? — Please enter these in the comment section.

ENDNOTES:

[i] Bishop Leroy Hodapp was a good and intelligent man and a good friend.  Still, he was a product of the mid-twentieth century church culture that selected him and shaped him for leadership. He would be considered a Christian “progressive” and generally friendly to many urban ministry efforts at the time. However, the pressures of office and desire to balance competing expectations of over 1,100 congregations and 300,000 Hoosier United Methodists limited what he perceived to be the best way forward. There were dozens of urban congregations and pastors that might have helped widen his vision, but the dye was set by the prevailing myths of the inevitability of suburban growth and urban decay.

[ii] Rizvi, Abul, Population Shock, Monash University Publishing, 2022. 

[iii] Wallace, Paul, Agequake: Riding the Demographic Rollercoaster, Shaking Business, Finance and Our World, UNKNO, 1999.

[iv] Toffler, Alvin and Adelaide, Future Shock, Random House, 1970.  Society was said to move through the three stages: agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial and with each transition there was a period of societal disruption and stress.  Toffler’s analysis followed in follow-up books, The Third Wave and Powershift.

[v] Hwang, Jackelyn, Pioneers of Gentrification: Transformation in Global Neighborhoods in Urban America in the Late Twentieth Century, Demography, February 2016, 189-213.

[vi] Amerson, Philip, Recentering the Parish – Part 1, see: https://wp.me/p5lzr1-3Kc.  Upon reading the earlier piece on the decline of Central Avenue church a friend reminded me of other changes including the interstate highway system where Interstate Highways I-64 and I-70 sectored off neighborhoods from one another. He also noted the consolidation many city and county functions in a new structure known as Unigov in Indianapolis. He was right. There are multiple other contributors as noted in this essay and each one seems shaped by racial discrimination.

[vii] Semuels, Alana, White Flight Never Ended, THE ATLANTIC, July 30, 2015.

[viii] Buccitelli, Anthony, Bak, City of Neighborhoods: Memory, Folklore, and Ethnic Place in Boston, University of Wisconsin Press, 2016.

[ix] Hwang, Jackelyn, op cit.

It’s About Time

~ philipamerson ~ 2 Comments

It’s About Time

You don’t have to go to Pharoah to design a course on freedom, so says Professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Vanderbilt University.  Per usual, Dyson puts the pith into pithy.  We need his clarity as we enter Black History Month 2023. Right on time, Michael Eric Dyson nails the ugliness, the meanness and inappropriateness of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ efforts to block the content of AP African American Studies curriculum. 

This is but a contemporary example of a governor standing in the schoolhouse door.  It is like George Wallace in 1963 who sought to block African American students Vivian Malone Jones, Dave McGlathery, and James Hood from enrolling in the University of Alabama.  This time it is a governor seeking to block the free exchange of ideas and a shared knowledge of a painful history.  It is an attempt to keep us from acting like respectful adults, as people open to the free expression of differing ideas.

But, what about us?  Easy to pick on a demagogue stirring up racial animosity as he prepares to run for the presidency. How might churches faithfully respond in this time?  Let me speak for my group, the United Methodists.  We, who are heirs to John Wesley’s legacy, have a ready response built into our theological DNA.

Sadly, many of our congregations and denominational institutions have forgotten and others often don’t display it. Early Methodists, in cities like London and Newcastle, formed a Strangers Friend Society. Wesley taught Christians “should meet strangers in their own habitation.” These societies designed “to visit and relieve the sick and distressed” were expressions of acceptance and inclusion. One such society still meets, weekly, in John Wesley’s New Room in Bristol near a clock identified as the Strangers’ Friend clock.

In the United States, the distressing chronic illness of racism continues – sometimes it seems to overwhelm. The tragic death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis in recent days is an expression of our dilemma. Let me suggest it is time for United Methodists to turn STRANGERS INTO FRIENDS.  What if United Methodist congregations across the nation and world offered classes in Critical Race Theory or on Being “Woke” to Racial Injustice?  Okay, not realistic, you say.  Well, what if… oh, let’s say 50%, or 25%, or even 10% of United Methodist congregations offered such courses?  What if pastors and lay leaders in these places taught complementary classes based on Biblical sources and drawing on curriculum already developed by fine faculty in our seminaries?

 In a time when all Christians, especially United Methodists, are too focused on much less relevant matters like institutional survival, or on how to handle our divisions, what if we called for healing of the disease of racism in our nation. What if we acted like we believed in a conversion (a wokeness).  What if we called for the need of repentance and conversion from our chronic racism?

I can imagine certain politicians’ discomfort when they passed the church with the sign “Critical Race Theory Taught Here, Monday Evening at 7:00 PM, Register NOW.”  It’s about time!

Avoiding Deep Change: Racism and the Ineffectual Church, Chapter 1

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Avoiding Deep Change: Racism and the Ineffectual Church, Chapter 1

A year ago, October 1, 2021, I made a calendar note, “Write about this next year!” A year ago today, I had just read of another “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” workshop planned by a denominational group. My heart sank. One could find dozens of such events planned — and, no doubt, there were consultants who were happy to have the work!

Please understand. I am not against “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” commitments. A good thing this. I’m not as enthusiastic about workshops, training events, webinars, etc. that are unhinged from engagement in the communities nearby where undiscovered neighbors, real people, live and work. Workshops can become tools of avoidance, especially as stand alone, one-off, efforts. Without a deeper look at institutional and cultural strata shaped by racism over decades there are well intentioned but shallow responses. Tragically, they sometimes result in representational leadership (a minority person promoted to a leadership role) without addressing the deeply embedded patterns upon which institutions function.

Let me confess that I delayed a year in writing this because I didn’t want to be reactive. Perhaps, if I waited, something would emerge to assuage my doubts. Or, I could give a more measured response than simply concluding most church leaders would prefer to avoid, delay and placate all the while appearing to make progress by offering training sessions. Perhaps I would see real, deep and sustainable change. As of a year — I still wait for something substantial to address the racial injustice in which we are mired. Even worse, in this year it appears white nationalism sentiments have grown, sadly often within congregations.

A year ago, following the murders of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor I had been involved in several conversations, web seminars, zoom meetings and the like, where I attempted to share research that showed education and sermons were not sufficient to bring enduring change. I attempted to argue that DEI workshops would not be enough — they would be ineffectual. I even warned pastors “Don’t preach that sermon” until you have in place a way to work with neighbors on antiracism measures in your setting. This advice was not based on a hunch, but on research on addressing racism that had been done decades earlier as part of a program called Project Understanding. That research made it clear that real and enduring change to address racism at a root level involved action with others who brought their differences, as well as education.

A true addressing of racism involves deep change in the ways our institutions understand, and act differently based on their financial and cultural options. There are instruments designed to address institutional racism. These were not requested. There was work to be done beyond training sessions — work to support minority owned banks, address racial discrimination in housing, business, and real estate. Any true addressing of racism in the church would take more than sermons, minority clergy serving as pastors in predominantly white settings or pulpit exchanges once a year with a racial ethnic congregation down the street. There were concrete, measurable ways congregants could be deeply involved, spiritually alive and committed to take common action with persons of different racial and religious groups — action for fundamental change.

An early Inventory of Institutional Racism, from 1973

The year has past… Surely some good has resulted. Please share this in the comments section. Even so, I don’t hear much being reported that is substantial and sustainable. I write a year later of my concern and will in the next few postings offer again insights regarding other approaches. I will share insights from saints who are nearing the end of life or have now passed on — persons like William Pannell at Fuller Seminary, Thomas Broden at Notre Dame, Joseph Taylor and LaVerta Terry at Indiana University, Gilbert James at Asbury Seminary and Jicelyn Thomas who was a gifted preacher and theologian taken from our earthly fellowship too soon, too soon.

Summer Reading Bouquet

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A Summer Reading Bouquet

Among my summer bouquet of reading — or re-reading, I have put two in my backpack to carry along with others. These are meant to be devotional books. I plan to carry them as devotional resources to be read and re-read as gifts in these challenging days. These are valuable starting points for reflection and meditation… a stopping to smell spiritual flowers.

For persons of faith, or those interested in exploring Christianity, I recommend these two theologian/prophets from the mid-twentieth Century as among the best of the witnesses of their time. First, take a look at a book about E. Stanley Jones and second, a book penned by Georgia Harkness. Both were essential Christian figures writing during our nation’s troubled times of war, depression, racial injustice and rapid social change.

Dr. Georgia Harkness

In the recently publishedThirty Days with E. Stanley Jones Jack Harnish offers a fresh look into the life of Jones – the mystic, prophet, missionary, peace activist, evangelist, ecumenist and global ambassador. Georgia Harkness’ Prayer and the Common Life is written for folks in that mid-Twentieth Century, socially moble, economically bubbling and globally expanding culture. Professor Harkness, theologian and philosopher, authored more than thirty books, some scholarly and many others, like Prayer and the Common Life, are meant to be accessible to the lay audience. I believe both have much to teach us, today.

By reading these two together one can see the hoped for seeds of renewal and unity anticipated in the church and society in those years, and at the same time, they point to the troubles ahead for Christendom caught up in narrow cultural understandings. For Christians inclined to devotional reading that comes from an earlier time and yet speaks with profundity to our current dilemmas, I lift these two remarkable people of faith for our personal and common benefit.

For believers, doubters or just plan folks interested, I share these two suggestions as remarkable additions to a good summer reading boquet.

‘Untied’ Methodism: Ten Turnings

~ philipamerson

‘Untied’ Methodism: Ten Turnings

The wedding was to be an oppulent affair. No detail overlooked. Expensive floral boquets adorned every corner of the sanctuary. The string quartet rehearsing, women attendents doning gorgeous gowns and men were in tuxedos, all in anticipation as a stretch limo waited at the door to parade the bride and groom to a reception for hundreds following the wedding. As pastor, I observed it all with embarrassment. These were fine young people; I liked and prayed for them. This event was detailed in bridal magazines as one costing hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars! This, at a time when our congregation was giving considerable attention, energy and resources to aid the homeless and hungry around us. What witness did this extravagence offer?

Preparing to preside, heavy hearted, I put the robe over my shoulders and picked up the order of service. Immediately, my sadness melted; I began to laugh. This perfectly planned wedding would be remembered, not so much for the wealth displayed but for a typo atop the custom-printed bulletin. There it was on the second line, the church was identified as “The First Untied Methodist Church.” Amid all the preparations, the printer and spell-check had missed it. The church was not named the “First United Methodist,” but rather indellibly printed were the words “First Untied Methodist.” We were UNTIED, and at a wedding!

Steve Harper recently wrote that the “The Future of the United Methodist Church is Now.” The denomination’s 2020 General Conference (an event scheduled for every four years) has now been delayed for the third time due to the COVID pandemic. It will now be convened in 2024. In response, a break-away group, identifying itself as “traditionalist,” indicated they can “wait no longer.” They are forming a new and seperate denomination, the Global Methodist Church to be initiated in May 2022. Our denominational un-tiedness is on full display. Dr. Harper advises that for the large majority who do not exit, the phrase “United Methodist” should be understood as a verb. He suggests to be about intentionally and actively forging a renewed identity. To be passive, he writes, is for “congregations to be impotent and irrelevant.”

It is time to move from being “untied” to being “united” again. Earlier Methodists and Evangelical United Brethren, shaped by the likes of the Wesley brothers, Philip Otterbien, Jacob Albright, Barbara Heck, E. Stanley Jones and Georgia Harkness, James Thomas, Leontyne Kelly each pointed to God’s redemptive work as resource. Even so; the doors opening to the future require new eyes to see the ways forward. Isaiah 43 comes to mind — behold, God is doing a new thing. The New Testament is filled with the call to “turn around” (metanoia) and walk a renewed and ever-renewing path.

Emerging from my observations as pastor and seminary administrator, and thinking of United Methodism as a verb, I offer here ten turnings for a renewal of identity and mission for United Methodists:

  1. Repentance, not Reactivity: Let us repent of the damage done to the “other.” Our healthiest future will involve repentence. I do not suggest this is easy, or obvious, or perfectly done, or that we should give up core beliefs/commitments/actions, or our welcome of LGBTQ+ persons throughout our church. However, we can give up the practice of “talking about” rather than “talking with” one another. We have been too quick to react and too slow to repent. Repentance takes a lifetime, reactivity is a quick fix, that in my experience doesn’t work and damages more than it heals. My dear friend, Walter Wangerin, Jr., died last summer. Watching the warfare inside of our Untied Methodist Church these days, I recall what Walt shared with me on more than one occassion. Walt left his beloved Missouri Synod Lutheran ancestry, the denomination of his birth, early in his pastoral career to join another Lutheran body. He would remind me that “schism in the body of Christ was a mark of sinfulness on all sides.”
  2. Resurrection, not Rebuilding: This is God’s work. We are privileged to join. Jesus spoke of those who lose their life “for my sake” might find it. Much energy has been spent and is being spent on trying to “save the denominaton.” As a wise pastor-friend of mine once observed, “People don’t get burned out, It’s mostly that they were committed to the wrong thing in the first place.” Saving a denomination has left us in a place where the melodrama obscures God’s first purpose — bringing life and hope to the world. It is time to let the many assumptions about power, place and authority die and trust our future in God’s hands. Prayer more than plan, laughter more than grievance, humility shaped by community and friendship more than caucus will be signs of resurrection. In these years it may be more important to “give up” rather than “gain up” in restructuring. At the center of our story is death and resurrection. Yet, it is the thing that scares us most of all.  We seem not to believe that resurrection doesn’t come without a death.
  3. Welcome, not Exclusion: Let us unite in acting as a loving community with the poor, the immigrant, the disenfranchised. Our denominational squabbles have turned us inward, unable to accept the interruptions of the Spirit at work at our doorsteps. Let us turn to know the names of our neighbors and their stories, not as those who we seek to fix but rather the others with whom we share, together, the transforming love of Christ.
  4. Heart Religion, not Statute: At our best we are a people who value Christian Experience, a people who practice a faith that is confirmed by a tranformed heart and mind (a metanoia) that is sustained and flourishes by living in loving relationship with other believers. Rather than more rules to keep things as they were, we might look to less standing still and more turning to live in loving relationships with other believers. The Shaker hymn “Tis a Gift to Be Simple” speaks of “turning, turning, till we come round right.”
  5. Ecumenical, not Faith Enclave: Let us turn to truly be a global and ecumenical church, not in words but in practice. Let us see the beauty all around in the practice of grass-roots ecumenism and interfaith sharing. Let’s do this, moving past the often thinly veiled paternalism and colonialism that has shaped much of our talk and action about “mission.” This will involve the essential task of learning from those in other places and who seek to follow Christ in different ways.
  6. Economy of Love, not the Marketing of Scarcity: Let us turn from, and give up, the “business facade and facination” that has distorted our core Christian identity and purpose. Too much time, energy, and resources have been directed to “best practice” models from business or from scarcity models designed to hoard resources. There are certainly lessons to draw from business and commerce, but where is our witness to “faith, hope and charity?” Strategies and designs that turn congregations into branch offices have done real damage. Rather than seeing God’s people gathered in unique communities, with distinctive gifts, expensive programs have been established that, while well-meaning, in too many places are counter-productive. Pastors are bombarded with the message that unless they do it like corporate America, or a megachurch somewhere, they are failing. They are told by some authority unfamilar with the ministry context, or the gifts of the people they know, how to “be fruitful.” (There are important parallel lessons coming from well-intended but ultimately destructive models in modern agriculture whose full damage to our environment and food resources is only now becoming apparent.)
  7. Encourage Positive Deviance, not Scaleable Formulas: Let us celebrate the overlooked places, sometimes small or nontraditonal, where ministry results in changed lives, new ways of being church, and witness that is otherwise overlooked. Such places of “positive deviance” offer dozens of exciting examples of witness in finding community with homeless persons, in caring for God’s creation, in welcoming the immigrant, in giving witness in the corporate board room, in demonstrating our opposition to war and violence in all forms. Let these be the ministries we seek to replicate, more than a mega-church or a drive-in restaurant chain.
  8. Watching Over in Love, not with Sanction: Let us turn to focus again on building and sustaining small group relationships and the practice of “watching over one another in love.” As my friend Michael Mather puts it, “If we watched over one another in love, we would not keep missing the abundant acts of grace, charity, and encouragement that happen in all of our churches and that would pull our heart and attention to somewhere that would certainly please God.” Whether called “class meeting” or “covenant discipleship” or any other name, we United Methodists have a remarkable tradition here.
  9. Horizontal, rather than Vertical: Let the connection be rewoven — horizontally. This could model for the world a different way of being community, a way that has been lost. This will involve discovering again and turning toward the value of circuits, of districts, subdistricts, relationships with and among our schools, colleges, seminaries, hospitals and other institutions. It would change what we counted and valued. General Boards and Agencies (whichever ones remain) should turn toward acting as weavers and reweavers of connections, turning from perceiving themselves as the center of action and returning to the earlier practice of assisting others in flourishing and being sustainable. The models await development and our moving from the heavily top-down and bureaucratic approaches of the past generation. Too many laypersons were placed on the sidelines as conferences merged, institutions drifted away from positive connections with the wider church. More attention to our colleges and universities is overdue. Our seminaries too need to think horizontally. Some will need to merge, some should close or discover another mission. All should become more cooperative. In preparing pastors, United Methodist theological students should spend at least one year in a United Methodist seminary as a part of this reweaving and building relationships for mission.
  10. Democratic doorkeepers, not Border Guards. Perhaps we need to stop merging conferences and allow for core polity and mission structures that are smaller, more agile and more adaptable. Perhaps these units might be the size of a couple of districts today with an elected presiding elder or table of leadership. Focus could be on the social and cultural ecology of each place – urban, suburban or rural. Perhaps there would be no bishops or superintendents at all, as is the case in other Methodist bodies. Or, if we continue in the episcopal format, explore a term limited episcopacy rather than life-episcopacy. Perhaps all appointments beyond the local church should also be expected to serve in a local congregation as well as in a non-congregational setting.

These, then, are Ten Turnings that might be considered as we move from being the Un-tied church. They are, in the Protestant tradition, a call to be a people who are Forever Reforming (Semper Reformanda), or as the Methodist Bicentennial motto in the United States put it “Forever Beginning.”

In recent days there has been much talk about a conspiracy around the postponing of the General Conference, yet again. It is charged that General Conference 2020 is being further delayed for some political advantage and suggested that those “moderates” and “progressives” who plan to stay in the United Methodist church, have successfully plotted to postpone any the General Conference until 2024, as a way to undercut the plans of the “traditionalists.” I laugh at such notions. Having spent much of my life around the corridors of authority in the denomination, I know that our church leaders have problems organizing a three float parade! Something as dramatic as a power play to change the General Conference dates three times, for a power advantage, is as likely as a Southern Baptist giving up immersion. Further, the COVID pandemic that shut down the gathering of persons from around the world, leving a singnificant minority unable to obtain visas, is not a conspiracy of anyone’s planning.

Let’s face it, we live and serve in an anacronistic institution. It is one we don’t know how to handle. We need let go of the foolish conspiracy thinking that has marked too much of our brokenness, and for too long, and which is, let me say it again – sinful.

My friend Noah was a Trappist monk who two decades after the changes in the Roman Catholic Church from Vatican II, shared with me an insight about his disappointment that there was not more renewal in denominational practices, structure and mission. Speaking of his sadness that positive changes were painfully slow to come, Noah said, “At the monestary, we changed our dress, our leadership patterns, and the arrangement of our furniture in the chapel. We changed our music, our liturgy, and our educational curriculum.” He paused and smiling said, “We tried changing everything… but our hearts.”

California-Pacific Annual Conference worship, June 2019

There is much in our United Methodist tradition(s) that is of great value… and much that need be changed. I look and chuckle to see the multiple ways folks are trying to arrive at perfection, like the effort at that wedding service where I presided so many years ago. In remembering, I begin to laugh out loud. We who call United Methodism home are indeed more UN-TIED than we are UNITED. There are now, and will be, many plans as to how the future should be approached. We are indeed a verb — but too often in the passive tense. And knowing this, and knowing human nature, I chuckle. As God’s church, perhaps we can find ways whereby our hearts might be changed and not just our structures and ways of sanctioning. Perhaps these “Ten Turnings” offer a few ideas, hunches really, as to where we can discover the God already at work among us.

Deeper and Wider

~ philipamerson ~ 6 Comments

Deeper and Wider

Recently while sorting though an old file, I found the letter from Professor Gilbert James written in 1970. I had taken a leave from my formal seminary education in Kentucky and was in a year-long intership, teaching at the United Methodist School IPA, in the Republic of Panamá. Professor James at Asbury Seminary and I exchanged correspondence during the year. I was taking a reading course from him while away from campus.

Dr. Gilbert James,
Used Courtesy of the Archives and Special Collections of Asbury Theological Seminary

In the letter I recently discovered, Dr. James asks that I not share its contents because “if expressed openly on campus would be considered high treason.” Hyperbole is all too comon in the academy. However, I think Gilbert was quite serious. His comments in the letter would have created problems and perhaps even censure.

My spouse, Elaine, and I were in Panama. Back in the U.S. Gilbert was confronted with a “spontaneous revival” which had begun at the college across the street. Others have since spoken and written about the 1970 Asbury College Revival in positive terms. There are, indeed, powerful stories of persons finding emotional and physical healing and being restored in their faith.

What were these controversial comments in the letter? Gilbert writes of his dismay watching folks “getting high on ‘mass enthususiasm.'” As a social scientist, educated in both sociology and psychology, what he observed was a religious fanaticism, interpreted with narrow fundamentalist language, and celebrated with “abysmal Biblical ignorance.” Only that!

Gilbert and Esther James with Abbie Christian Establishing a Work in Indianapolis for the Department of
Interracial Evangelism for the Free Methodist Church (circa 1955).
(Used with Permission of the Asbury Seminary B.L. Fisher Archives and Special Collections)

Some saw in the enthusiastic fervor at Asbury College in 1970 a great time of spiritual renewal. Gilbert noted there was good, but expressed concerns rooted in his years of experience with such spiritual awakenings. There is irony in the fact that Gilbert James had spent much of his life as an evangelist, attending and preaching in many camp meetings and revivals. Between 1946 and 1960 he was the Superintendent of the Department of Interracial Evangelism for the Free Methodist Church. He knew the genuine article and celebrated it. In 1970 he also was troubled.

Knowing my teacher as a world class provocatuer, I suspect that his fear of being accused of being a traitor to the faith is correct. He might have been charged with something like “high theological treason” in that particular time and place five decades ago — and in many places still today. He saw some of the fanaticism of the events at the college across the street, spilling over into the seminary. My guess is that during the 1970 Asbury Revival his wife, Esther, had to tone him down each evening; although, I suspect she shared many of his perspectives.

With some discomfort I recall that Gilbert was a revivalist. He believed in seeking both personal and institutional renewal. My discomfort is primarily due to the fact that his breadth of theological vision seems to be in short supply in today’s world. Evangelism has been given over to a narrow set of understandings. It has been limited to only a change in an individual — who is being introduced into thinly disguised social and political understandings. Unlike the revivals in the Second Great Awkening, where a wide array of societal injustices were addressed (poverty, slavery, voting rights for women, etc.), there is scant focus on institutional practices that need transformation, apart from a short list that includes fights against abortion and homosexuality.

Gilbert, the evangelist, believed in personal conversion — in transformation, possible through faith in Christ. Such change is affirmed in the letter — but he knew of an evangelism that was much deeper and wider. And he knew of the threats of individualism and fundamentalism that were at play. There were troublesome signs for him in the events surrounding the 1970 Asbury Revival that I don’t believe have been made public before.

So, here, 52 years later I offer this insight into his perspective of the 1950 Asbury Revival. I have highlighted in bold some passages mentioned above, the underlining was his.

++++++++

Letter from Dr. Gilbert James – March 31, 1970 – Wilmore, Kentucty To: Phil and Elaine Amerson – Republic of Panamá

Dear Phil and Elaine,

            “Thanks for your good letters and your patience with me… “ [Professor James then writes a few paragraphs about a reading course for Phil.]… The letter then continues speaking of the 1970 Asbury Revival.

“I am sure you have read of the revival and all of the excitement around here with teams going out in all directions – classes suspended – and the academic quarter an educational shambles.“

Letter from Gilbert James to Phil and Elaine Amerson, March 31, 1970

“There were some remarkable individual examples and changed lives and I am grateful for every one of them.  There has been, however, I must in all honesty confess, a great deal of shear non-sense that was nothing more than “getting high” on mass enthusiasm.  I have never witnessed in my life more expressions of atrocious theology and abysmal biblical ignorance than I heard from the “witnessing” lips of those college students.  As a result, we underwent the usual “exorcism of demons” at the college until it was suppressed and now we have the most frightful outbreak of “tongues” at the seminary that we have ever suffered. The word is out that Asbury Seminary is the “Mecca” for the tongues movement.  I am just sick about it.  The most remarkable aspect of the whole affair is not that it occurred, but rather that as much good was accomplished as was with all the inane and disrespectful antics that went on with it.“

“Please do not write back to anyone about this, for what I am writing to you, if expressed openly on the campus would be considered high treason.”  I repeat, I am glad for the work of a sovereign God, in spite of man’s ignorance and sinfulness, but I predict it will be years to fully recover from the unfortunate results that have damaged the reputation of Asbury and reflected on the sound biblical basis of her message.“

“I am right in the midst of the elaborate planning necessary for the Chicago program.  We received $50,000 from Lilly for the experiment, and this is our big chance to try to seek some new directions in theological education. After a full day’s consultation with the Minister’s Study Board director of the NCC.  He said, in great seriousness, “This is one of the most exciting and unique experiments in American theological education.  He has agreed to direct our evaluation of the program and we hope to get a monograph out of it.“

“Love to you both – I must close.  Write soon about books you want.  Pray for me – please.“

Gilbert James

++++++++++++++++

Teaching in Panamá, I was thousands of miles away from the spiritual, emotional, psychological cyclone richocheting in and around Wilmore, Kentucky. I was far from the events my teacher, Gilbert, saw at close proximity. However, a “spiritual awakening” was continuing for me at the time in Panamá. There I saw more clearly the injustice, racism and violence of institutions and nations. Gilbert James had been insturmental in alerting me of similar structures in the U.S. in my earlier years as his student. In Panamá, these were brought into even sharper relief. I saw, up close, what it was like to live in a nation suffering under a dictator who was propped up by the U.S. I saw the racism institutionalized in the practices of the Canal Zone and the abuses of so called “aid projects” privileging of wealthy, both in Panamá and the U.S. I saw hungry children dumpster diving to have something to eat. And there was the corruption of young women sold into sexual arrangements as teenagers. Evangelization needed to be wider and deeper than “individuals getting high on mass enthusiasm.”

In my review of materials from the 1970 Revival and from reports I recall receiving from others at the time, there were many testimonies about giving up cheating, lying, gossip, drinking alcohol, smoking, sexual petting, premarital sex or persons having an “insufficient prayer life.” It is almost exclusively about individual sins or a shortcoming of one’s self. Where are the witnesses who say, “We must now speak out against racism, war, poverty or violence?”

I do not agree with all of Gilbert’s perspectives, including some in this letter. That would make him happy… and he would, no doubt, want to have a conversation about where we differ and what we might together learn. Even so, I very much believe his call to an intelligent faith that combines personal and social transformation, informed by careful biblical and theological work was right then, and continues to be right today.

I can already hear some saying, but you must begin with the individual, then “changed persons will change society.” My response: Where is your evidence? It has now been fifty years. If you disagree, please point me to how this “revival” made the kind of difference in our society that came from the revivals of the Second Great Awakening. The Cane Ridge Revival began forty-six miles from Wilmore and one-hundred-and-sixty-nine years earlier.

[Attached is an extended reflection comparing the Cane Ridge Revival of 1801 and the Asbury Revival of 1970: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:8c3d4bbf-2e81-39c1-bbf9-d054ae64f7ef.

Other “Awakenings” or revivals involved more than an adjustment of personal pieties or individual behaviors and beliefs. For early Evangelicals like John Wesley or John Calvin, institutional changes accompanied personal change. For the Anabaptists, a new personal faith meant a commitment to pacifism and the persecution that ensued. There is the conversion of John Newton who wrote the lyric we now sing as “Amazing Grace.” Newton’s conversion led him to become an abolitionist, after serving as the captian of slave ships. More recently one thinks of the bombing of Coventry Cathedral in England and the ensuing spiritual awakening resulting in international work at peacemaking (See: Fire in Coventry, Varney, Stephen: Hoder and Stoughton Ltd., 1974). Dozens of other examples could be cited; the sadness is that even today Asbury College and Seminary have fallen into the narrow valleys of a tamed evangelism and pursue cultural stances that are more informed by reactionary political elites and shaped by categories of individualism.

Professor Gilbert James and Eugene Carson Blake, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches,
Taize Community, circa 1971. Used Courtesy of the Archives and Special Collections, Asbury Theological Seminary.

Gilbert James was way ahead of me in 1970, and I suspect even now. When traveling with him for a seminary class in Chicago, New York, Detroit or Minneapolis, it was always amazing how he nudged us forward to see the broader ecology and the challenges of ministry in urban settings. It was even more astonishing meeting the people he brought to those seminars. Today I think of Letty Russell, Bill Stringfellow, Bill Pannell, George Riddick, Richard Leuke, Stan Hallett and George Weber, to name only a few.

A 1974 article by Gilbert entitled “The Use and Abuse of Power: A Study of the Principalities and Powers” demonstrates his understandings of the challenges Christians face in urban ecologies. He understood the need to seek transformation that is more than individual renewal (http://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitspapers/15/).

My last visit with Gilbert was, I believe, in the fall of 1978. Having finished my doctoral work, I was asked to cover his seminary classes for a semester. My brilliant teacher was decending into early onset dementia. He would die in 1982 at the age of 66. I traveled to the seminary from my home at the time in Evansville, Indiana.

As I walked down a hallway in the seminary’s administration building, there was Gilbert heading toward the mail room. As he approached, we both began to weep. Then he gave me a hug and said, “I should know but I can’t place who you are.”

Ah, Gilbert, my friend, my beloved teacher, what is truly sad is that too few today remember who YOU are!

Practitioner of Intelligent Love

~ philipamerson ~ 2 Comments

Practitioner of Intelligent Love

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So goes the aphorism. Another version of this idea, attributed to Buddha Siddhartha Guatama, is: “Teachers are like enzymes. Nature’s go-to facilitators of change.” Even if only partially true, there is much wisdom here — at least in my experience.

Dr. Gilbert James,
Used Courtesy of the Archives and Special Collections of Asbury Theological Seminary.

By the late 1960s, my generation in the U.S. were “teacher-ready.” We watched as young men, many of them friends, were being shipped off to an inexplicable war in Vietnam. Too many returning in body bags. State governors stood in univeristy doorways blocking entrance to African American students. We witnessed the assinations of M. L. King, Jr. and the Kennedy brothers. Riots were breaking out in many cities and the emerging “counter culture” saw a growing interest in drug use. Given the availability of “the pill,” a sexual revolution was afoot.

Like other young men, my name was placed in the military lottery; I was one of the lucky ones with a high number, so after college I headed to Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. There I met Gilbert James. He was teaching courses on The Church in Society, Race Relations and Sociology of Religion. The teacher appeared and I was “ready.”

Gilbert James: Free Methodist pastor, sawdust revival preacher, boxer, university professor, union organizer, poet, brilliant social researcher, friend of the poor, worker for racial justice, comfortable in a corporate board room and on skid row. Great “teachers” are not limited to the classroom. Fortunately, for many of us, Gilbert offered graduate-level insights wherever you found him. He challenged us to learn, whether in a classroom, on a Chicago “L” train, in a Congressional office, or, on a street corner in Harlem. Socratic in approach, he would ask probing questions, frame a situation so that those within earshot began to teach and learn from one another. How does one cipher the complexities of this man?

Not far beneath the surface was Gilbert James’ commitment to an historic Wesleyanism that encouraged vital piety, valued knowledge and sought social justice. He was one of several teachers at Asbury Seminary in those years who found ready students. I think of Bob Lyon who helped us explore serious Biblical interpretation and modeled a faith that included deep commitments to nonviolent action.

Gil James spoke easily of personal conversion and Christian experience; after all, he had come to faith by such a personal spiritual journey. However, he was critical of an individualism that ignored the Biblical mandates to love God and the neighbor. He spoke of a church that might live in terms of a “Jubilee sharing” of resources with the poor. He was suspicious of fanaticism and cautioned against the abuses of those seeking power for power’s sake – especially in the church. He had seen enough chicanery in the church and beyond. He knew the dangers of fanaticism when mixed uncritically into the religious life.

Gilbert encouraged us to be “both faithful and forward leaning.” At the same time he wanted us to know our ancestry. James reminded us of the insights of Eighteenth Century Methodists (including Free Methodists, Wesleyans and others). Our legacy included those who opposed pew rentals privileging the wealthy, who supported abolitionist struggles against slavery, who welcomed women in leadership, who encouraged ecumenism and unity, and who practiced peacemaking — often as pacifists.

Gilbert knew of the dangers of individualistic theology and the drift away from a balancing of personal conversion with social justice. In my next blog, I will share a letter from Gilbert written 52 years ago in the midst of an extended revival at Asbury College (a neighboring undergraduate institution to the seminary, seperate in curriculum and faculty).

James knew of the marginalization experienced by religious conservatives and foresaw a time when greivance would spill over and could lead to a insatiable hunger for power and status unmoored from Biblical ethics. He noted the transformation of Fundamentalism into Evangelicalism — that brought a sophistication in the use of political power. It might result, he suggested, in danger for our nation and the ruin of our churches. I remember thinking, as we were reflecting on the writings of Reinhold Neibuhr, that James was being overly grandiouse. Today, I see how on target he was about this threat that faith could to be compromised by a lust for approval and blind acquisition of institutional power these fifty years later.

Over coffee in the seminary cafeteriaI, I recall many informal “debates” with other faculty and students. Such exchanges were common and truly a gift. Students might be asked to “grab a cup and join the conversation.” I recall, one well-known faculty member offering up a common trope used at the time. Assuming the notion that there were two camps in American Protestant Christianity, this faculty member said that “Evangelicals were always rooted in ultimate authorithy of scripture, but Liberals always let the dominant culture set the agenda for their theology.” I recall Gilbert wriley smiling and responding, “Your culture does not set the agenda for how you read the scripture?”

Other exceptional teachers followed (Jackson Carroll, Earl Brewer, Gwen Neville) at Emory University. I then went on to my days of university teaching and Gilbert stayed in touch. In Atlanta, at Candler School of Theology, I helped him bring a group of Asbury students to that city, just as he had brought me as a student to Chicgo, Detroit and New York a decade earlier. He was still learning, teaching, making connections and demonstrating to students the ways a life of faith might be practiced among the institutions of the powerful and the gifts in low-wealth communities that were often hidden.

Gilbert James touched many lives and shaped the work of pastors and laity in diverse places. We found him to be a READY teacher and friend. Still, his concerns about the corruption of Evangelicalism ring true; and, are more applicable than ever. At his funeral in 1982 the great African American pastor and theologian James Earl Massey stood to speak of Gilbert and his influence. Massey summerized my teacher’s greatness in these simple words: He was a “practitioner of intelligent love.” It is my sense that we have a whole new generation of students ready to find such teachers today. May it be so.