PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Racism and Faith

Sermon May 18, 2008:  The People's UCC, Dover, DE:  the Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            In the past two months some of the television news anchors and reporters and speakers on information programs have expressed ideas related to race that I thought I would never hear again in polite company.  If a retired UCC minister's over-the-top language was the trigger for this torrent, it has been amplified beyond all expectation by people of all races looking into the lenses of cameras.  Its name is "racism," and the fact that it is back with us demonstrates that it never went away:  it's just more subtle now.  Historians, sociologists and political operatives alike know what the rest of us have been trying to forget for thirty years:  America's oldest moral failure is racism. 

            So the national leadership of our denomination, which has been at the center of this whirlwind, has asked all the pastors of UCC churches in America to preach today on racism and to invite our congregation, our denomination, our communities and our nation to a new "sacred conversation on race."  It's time to go back to work on this moral problem. 

            What do you think I should say in my sermon this morning?  I've been trying to get ready for weeks.  I've decided that the best I can do is to speak personally, out of my own experience and the experience of my family.  Yes, America's oldest moral failure is racism.  Let me show you.

 

            I've been doing family history for my entire adult life, so I pulled out some old wills from the early 1800's.  This is going to be painful for me to read, and painful for you to hear, but unless we face this reality nothing else I say will have any roots. 

            On August 18, 1817 the court recorded the will of a Georgia resident named William Griggs, Sr.  He wasn't a direct ancestor of mine:  he was a cousin of the Griggses who moved to Tennessee; but his will is typical of a farmer's will of the time—probably your ancestors as well as mine.

 

 

This is not "sad."  This is not "unfortunate" or "a shame" or even "a sin":  this is the door to hell.  From 1837 I read a part of a deed of conveyance by my mother's grandfather's grandfather—a man whose blood runs through my own veins.  He was born in Delaware, fought in the North Carolina cavalry in the War of 1812, and received a land-grant in Tennessee, which is the land his will describes. 

 

 

The names of human beings who were willed to my mother's great-grandfather need to be spoken:  Sarah, Hanner, Chelse, Sam, Tennessee, and Frank.  My mother grew up in the house these people built.  This is why America's oldest moral failure is racism:  the American form of slavery is our nation's "original sin," and we can't wash our hands of it with a few laws.  It's ingrained in the heart of the country we love. 

 

            Well, enough about the 1800's:  how about today?  Remember that Sunday School song we used to sing, 

 

Our religion taught us better than we have lived.  My son-in-law is "red."  His grandfather's grandfather was among the Cherokees whom President Jackson forced on the "Trail of Tears"—the long, killing march from Georgia to Oklahoma.  That ancestor signed the Dawes List using his Cherokee name, but in Oklahoma he went by his American name; and now my son-in-law can't prove to the Cherokee nation which Cherokee is his ancestor.  If he could, the entire cost of his medical school education would be free, based on federal financial aid to Native Americans.  But it is as a Choctaw summarized to him: "So then, you're from Oklahoma like the rest of us."  How subtle can it get? 

            With the Latino population it isn't very subtle right now.  Everybody who looks Mexican or Guatemalan we immediately suspect of being illegal.  This is nothing new:  they used to be called "wet-backs."  A hundred fifty years ago the Know-Nothing Party brutalized Jews living in America, and when the police grilled them for information they said, "I know nothing."  That was a century before the Holocaust, and still Jews in America are mistrusted by a lot of people.  And "yellow," too:  in 1942 German-heritage Americans were just Americans, but Japanese-heritage Americans lost everything.

 

 

Our religion taught us better than we have lived.  America's oldest moral failure is racism. 

 

            I grew up in Tennessee during the Civil Rights Movement.  Twenty six miles from my home was Clinton, Tennessee, where one of the first attempts to integrate a white high school occurred—months before Little Rock.  It took ten years to integrate my high school:  I was a senior when they closed the black high school in town and the students came to the white high school to graduate.  I've only been to one class reunion, and there were no African Americans there. 

            But I was prepared for welcoming the Civil Rights Bill of 1964—I was taught at church.  Our music director, Myers Wilbanks, had the Spirit of Christ about everything; and everybody in the church was fully aware of it.  So when Myers and Tomie began inviting members of the black church across town into their home for dinner and conversation, we saw.  When Myers and Tomie invited friends from the African American church across town to our revival, and they came, we saw.  Of course it caused whispers and gossip; but we had an example of Christian love right in the middle of the steam-bath of segregation and fear.  I am deeply thankful for their courage, and for the courage of our African American sisters and brothers who responded to their invitations.  I was taught that this little Sunday School song is about sin and redemption, about the worst and the best of the culture and the faith I grew up in.  But it had to be so, because America's oldest moral failure is racism:  it was then, and it is now.

 

            "Racism" doesn't just mean "prejudice"—people can be prejudiced about a lot of things.  Prejudice is what you feel and the way you personally act.  Racism is something other and different:  racism is prejudice wedded to power;[1] and it works like this.  I may be able, personally, to related to anyone:  I may have made my own the deeper message of that Sunday School song; but I can arrange to be in the company of people of my own race most of the time.  My wife can go shopping alone and be pretty sure she won't be followed or harassed.  I have never been told that my success in life is due to a quota.  When my grandchildren go to school, the classroom books and hand-outs will testify to the existence of their race.  I can be oblivious to the languages, customs and histories of people not my color without experiencing any penalty.  I can have a strong disagreement with a colleague who is red or yellow, black or brown, and the heated exchange would be more likely to jeopardize his chances for advancement than mine.  I see many role models of my race in all positions and at every organizational level.  I don't need to manage other people's discomfort about my race when I come into a group.  I can be late to a meeting without my lateness reflecting on my race.  I may not be the best preacher or the best organizer People's Church has ever had, but I can be sure that nobody thinks it's due to my race.[2]  "Racism" means things are just set up so other people can't say what I just said.  And it's that which America needs to address now.  The era of "civil rights" has had its effect:  it wasn't perfect, but it took us well along the road.  Now, because we love our country, and because we are Christians who really mean it, we need to address systemic "racism" like I've just described.  America's oldest moral failure is racism. 

 

            So what shall we do?  Our denominational executives seem to have in mind that every UCC church needs to start an intentional conversation between white people and black people, a "sacred conversation" aimed at addressing racism.  A friend of mine told me a story about this kind of meeting held in Washington state several years ago:  the white church invited a black church to a conversation, chose a neutral site, planned for food, organized a conversation plan.  But one of the African Americans smiled and said, "Why is it the only times you want to talk with us, you want to talk about race?  Why are we just your race-conversation partners?"[3]  There's wisdom there.  What if "a sacred conversation on race" were to take the form of a joint project to deal with homelessness in Kent County?  or the kind of education that's going to happen at the new high school?  or hurricane preparedness?  or an adult education project to help everybody get up to speed on how the new economy works?  And just let the conversation about race emerge while we're attending to our community's needs.  Personally I think that could be a much more probable venue than a dinner with speakers and a few people prepared to lead small-group discussions.  Or maybe the best approach of all is for each of us to go meet our neighbors.  Couldn't that be a "sacred conversation"? 

 

            In this sermon I've tried to speak out of my personal and family story.  I do believe that America's oldest moral failure is racism; and I believe we Christians can do something good for America on this issue, but I hope we do so by claiming our humanity:  which is, after all, our common ground.

AMEN