Browsing Tag

#Ferguson

Theology

see, here is water

If you grew up going to Sunday school, you’re probably at least a little bit familiar with the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. I’ve never been entirely sure why, but this story, which appears in Acts 8, has always been one of my favorites. I’ve always been fascinated by everything about it, especially since it reads almost like a sci-fi/fantasy story.

An angel comes and tells Philip to stand by a certain road at a certain time, and when he sees a chariot the Holy Spirit instructs him to approach it. He does, and in the following conversation converts him to Christianity and baptizes him. At that moment, Philip is transported to Azotus and continues preaching. In the Bible I used growing up, I had “beam me up, Scotty!” written in the margins. Anytime this passage was used in a sermon, I used to daydream about the Eunuch returning home (to probably somewhere in Sudan) and telling everyone about what had happened, including Queen Amanitare.

My view of this story was simplistic, shaped by the conventions of the people who first told it to me. It was a traditional missionary story, told in the same way that I heard other stories like “The God who Made my Thumbs” or the journeys of David Livingstone. We gawked at this story about Philip teaching the black man just like we gawked at pictures missionaries would bring back from Kenya or Japan. All these things reinforced stereotypes I had about “unreached people groups”– in an attempt to provoke my empathy I was taught to see non-Western nations as backwards, dirty, savage, war-torn, hungry, poverty-stricken, and in desperate need of Christian Missions (aside: please take same time to look at the #TheAfricatheMediaNeverShowsYou tag on twitter).

But, thanks to my need to re-think and re-imagine the Bible stories I’ve been imbibing since I was a child, I was struck by something interesting in this passage:

As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” and he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.

I’ve been thinking about this story fairly consistently ever since I first heard about the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson. Since that time we’ve seen more protests, more killings, more violence, a massacre, and now eight black churches that have been burned down. I remain hopeful that in the midst of all this terror and pain that Christian America will finally wrestle with the long-entrenched sins of racism and white supremacy, but in all this time I have been disappointed by a typical Christian response.

They’ve called for patience, for love, for forgiveness, for mercy.

They’ve demanded that black people silence the cries of their suffering.

They’ve said that they will not listen as long as any black person is not submissive and compliant.

And while they say that, I think of the Ethiopian Eunuch and the way he interacted with Philip. He listened to Philip’s explanation, and then he acted. He chose, for himself, what he wanted to do with this information, and then says “what can stand in the way of my being baptized?“

In our church tradition, baptism has always been and will ever be about identity. When we baptize our children or our new converts, we are proclaiming to everyone that this person is one of us, that they belong. They are as much a part of us as we are a part of them, united in one catholic church.

When the Eunuch– a queer man, a black man– says “what can stand in the way of my being baptized?” he is forcing all of us to acknowledge the truth: he is one of us. He is our equal. He is as much a beloved child of God as any straight white man. He deserves the same love, grace, and compassion as any other Christian, and he claimed the right to it.

Rachel Held Evans said something about this story in Searching for Sunday that stood out to me:

At another time in his life, Philip might have pointed to the eunuch’s ethnicity, or his anatomy, or his inability to gain access to the ceremonial baths that made a person clean. But instead, with no additional conversation between the travelers, the chariot lumbered to a halt and Philip baptized the eunuch in the first body of water the two could find …

Philip got out of God’s way. He remembered that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in. Nothing could prevent the eunuch from being baptized, for the mountains of obstruction had been plowed down, the rocky hills made smooth, and God had cleared a path. There was holy water everywhere. (39)

Christians are still doing what God told Peter to stop: we set up insurmountable roadblocks and maintain them with fierce hatred and misplaced loyalty. We tell black people, queer people, exactly when and exactly how we will accept them. We will not love you until you do everything I think black people should be doing. We will not listen to you until you match the completely imaginary version of Martin Luther King Jr. I have in my head. We will not bestow our sacraments upon you until you do as your are told. Deny who you are. Deny your community. Deny who you love.

But the Ethiopian Eunuch didn’t stop for any of that. He ordered the chariot to stop, he got out, and he stood by the water until Philip baptized him.

Today, it’s men getting tear gas away from the children the police had thrown it at.

Today, it’s Bree Newsome climbing a flag pole and taking down a symbol of hatred and bigotry.

Today, it’s a woman marrying her partner of 72 years.

Today, it’s Isasi-Diaz teaching that everyday struggles are a source for theology.

We need to listen to the people who are saying what can stand in our way? and finally admit that the answer is nothing.

Photo by Dennis Jarvis

July 15, 2015 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

safe spaces or echo chambers?

[content note for discussions of violent racism]

I’ve been paying close attention to the conversation my country is having about the realities of racism in police action for four months, ever since Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown. Thankfully, the discussion has expanded beyond just Ferguson and I am hopeful that this could be a lasting, substantial movement. I’m going to attend the Justice for All March, and if any of you are within the Washington D.C. area and can make it Saturday morning, I urge you to come and be a part of this. I believe it will be a significant moment.

However, since August, I’ve had to avoid conversations about Ferguson, police action, and racism in my private life. I’ve hidden and unfriended so many people on Facebook over the last few months and I still can’t get away from it. Last week a friend of mine commented on an article a friend of hers had posted about Ferguson, and curious, I went to see what she’d said.

Right above her comment was a picture of a semi-truck that was covered in what was obviously supposed to be blood; the caption was “I drove through Ferguson. Didn’t notice any problems.”

I thought I was going to throw up.

And now, scrolling through my Facebook feed makes me nervous. If something even hints at being about rape or racism or sexism I steer far, far away from it; and I also know that I’m not the only person doing this. I’m not the only person who has to mentally steel herself before checking social media, who spends half of the day flinching.

I’ve talked about my desire to create safe spaces for myself in my personal and online spaces and have been accused, more than once, of trying to build myself an echo chamber, and since I talked about one of the dangers of echo chambers last week, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about the difference between safe spaces and echo chambers.

One of the things I want all of you to know is that you do not have to tolerate the presence of assholes in your life just for the sake of “trying to keep an open mind” or avoiding the idea of an echo chamber. If you are in a Facebook discussion with a friend, peer, colleague, or relative, you are not obligated to continue a “discussion” you find unpleasant, and you don’t have to have anything specific to point to in order to have a valid reason for abandoning it. “This is making me upset” is the only reason you need, and you do not owe it to anyone to explain that.

Another thing that’s important to understand is that you don’t have to constantly be engaging with people who viciously disagree with you in order to avoid being in an echo chamber. When I feel mentally prepared, I go and look for articles written from a perspective I disagree with. I read things from Breitbart, and Fox News, and The Blaze, and Christianity Today, because I think it is valuable to at least be aware of what those sorts of people are saying—but I only do that when I am in the mood.

You don’t have to douse your life in perspectives you find distasteful or disagreeable. Being conscientiously aware is possible without having to face it every single time you log in to Facebook.

I am also selective about the sorts of conservative friends that I have a dialog with. I am still friends with many conservatives—online and off—and I enjoy talking to them about things because we are capable of having an actual conversation that doesn’t devolve into Bible references and invectives. There’s a difference between talking with my staunchly pro-life college professor and the man who posted that picture of the blood-spattered semi. One conversation could be productive, even insightful: the other is guaranteed to be a trainwreck-level nightmare.

And lastly, from my personal experience of running a blog, I think it’s pretty much impossible to build an echo chamber unless you intentionally and systematically go about cutting yourself off from every single source of information and every single person who doesn’t totally agree with you. I have a lot of very progressive, very liberal, very feminist, very queer friends, and a few months ago I got into a discussion with one about whether or not Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” contributed to rape culture. She said it didn’t, I said it did.

That sort of thing happens a lot. From the interactions I’ve had with many of you, most of you are here because you enjoy the sorts of things I say or the way I say them or something—but that doesn’t mean you agree with me about every single thing I write always. I love that. I go out on a limb with some of the things that I write—writing them in such a way as to inspire discussion. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it when it happens.

Just the other day, a commenter pointed out something that she thought I’ve been doing wrong in the way I’ve handled Grace’s participation in Real Marriage, and after reading her comment, I agreed with her and committed to not doing that thing anymore.

So, even if all of the people you talk to in your real life and online agree with you on several basic principles, you’re still probably not in an echo chamber.

Which begs the question: when are we in echo chambers?

Personally, I feel that I’m shutting myself up in an echo chamber when I start seeing the people I disagree with as inhuman—and that is a struggle some days. Yesterday Matt Walsh posted a … I don’t even know how to describe that thing he put out on the internet. It was the post of refuse, the post of filth, the post of putrescence. Rubbish, Filth. Slime. Muck.

Anyway, when a man writes something like that and flings it out into the void, it does make me wonder if he is an actual human being with a heart—and that’s wrong. I think what Walsh does is monstrous, but he is still a human being created with the image dei and beloved by God.

As hard as that is for me to imagine.

Walsh is an extreme example, but when we reduce those who disagree with us to “opponents” or “conservatives” or “liberals”—when we take the position that this one thing that I disagree with you about right now is all you are, we are doing something wrong.

Photo by Brian Smithson

December 10, 2014 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

returning to Ferguson

It’s been over a month since police officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown.

The peaceful protests that Ferguson officials over-reacted to with horrific abuses of our Constitutional freedoms and what was to me unimaginable police brutality are still ongoing. The people of Micheal’s community are calling for nothing extraordinary: for the Missouri governor to appoint a special prosecutor, and for Darren Wilson to be arrested. Not tried, not convicted, just arrested, as any other man would have been if he’d shot an unarmed teenager in broad daylight in front of multiple eye-witnesses. But instead, it’s been over a month since Darren Wilson disappeared on vacation.

There was intense national interest for a week, maybe two, but the people who initially cared so much are fading away, the initial passion evaporating. I understand why– that first week, I was enraged, and it is impossible to sustain that sort of reaction for very long. Today, when I think about the Brown family and the torture the Ferguson community has experienced for decades, all I can do is grieve, but grief is not enough.

For the last month, I’ve been working on compiling this list of officer-involved shootings. I’ve called and asked my state and federal representatives to sponsor a bill that would require all police forces in the United States (or in my state) to report their officer-involved shootings to a single government body, and for that body to create a public record with all pertinent demographic data, especially race. I would ask that all of you do the same.

It’s also necessary for people like me– and by that I mean white people– to shut the fuck up and listen to black people when they talk about their experiences with the police. To pay attention to stories like Chaumtoli Huq’s, a lawyer, who was arrested because she was waiting for her husband and children outside of a restaurant while they used the bathroom. Or Chris Lollie’s, who was arrested because he was sitting on a bench waiting for his children to get out of school. I don’t care how outrageous you think it sounds, or how difficult it is for you to believe them because you’ve “never seen it” or “it’s never happened to you.” You shut the fuck up and listen.

I want to be a part of the reason why this never ever happens in my country ever again. It will keep happening, and it will be a long time before it stops, but it will never end as long as people like me are only angry once every few years and then we get tired and we start to forget, to stop caring.

We have to take an extremely hard look at ourselves and the things we say– the things we say when we’re hanging out with friends, and something like Ferguson comes up. I know it’s hard, fellow white people, but we absolutely have to stop saying things like “well, being a police officer is an extremely dangerous job. They have to be able to protect themselves” because yes, it’s dangerous but it’s four times more dangerous to be an unarmed black man standing across from a police officer with a gun. We have to ask ourselves what we sound like when our first reaction to a child being slaughtered in his own neighborhood by a police officer is “well, Andy must have done something threatening– and police officers can’t afford to wait” (hint: we sound like privileged racist assholes). It breaks my heart that almost every single conversation I’m in about the intersection of racism and police brutality the reaction I get from white people is a mix of “meh” and “what else do you expect?”

We have to love our neighbor. This sort of love is exhausting, I know, and you’re going to feel like Sisyphus pushing a boulder uphill, and once you start noticing the ways that racism bleeds into every single aspect of our lives you’re going to want to scream and take it all back. Looking outside the white-privilege bubble is hard. Taking the blinders off is going to be overwhelming, and it’s going to make you cry over and over again.

You’re going to feel shame for all of the racist things you’ve said and done, and every once in a while you’re going to remember another way you’ve unwittingly been the person from “shit white girls say,” and you’re going to cringe and desperately wish you could retroactively slap your hand over your mouth or do a full-on body tackle before you ask your black colleague if you can touch her hair.

You’ll be on facebook, and a friend you actually care about is going to share the most racist thing you’ve seen about Ferguson– and, by that point you’ve been on twitter and comment sections, and you thought it couldn’t get any worse– and she’s going to post it with “THIS” and a bunch of your other friends are going to like it and say things like “oh, this is exactly right” and “finally, someone who makes some SENSE!” and you aren’t going to know what to do. And you’re going to keep being racist, because you’re a white person in a system designed around maintaining your privilege.

But then, one day, you’re going to see a black man in the metro asking other riders for “just one dollar” because he has almost nothing left on his fare card and he can’t get home, and pulling out a $10 will be nothing to you anymore because you’ll remember that one time you didn’t have enough cash on you to pay a toll in West Virginia and it was a black woman who overheard you crying on the phone with your mother and she gave you the $16 you needed to pay the next four tolls and you’ll see a person who needs help instead of a wasteful, do-nothing black man who should get a job you’d been taught by racism to see.

It’ll take you a very long time, but you’ll start figuring out how to stop being racist, and start seeing all the small things you can do every single day to help those oppressed by it. It’s the only way to stop Ferguson from ever happening again.

September 12, 2014 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

the facts are these

I haven’t said anything about what happened and is still happening in Ferguson, Missouri for the primary reason that if I did say something, someone else has already said it better, and I’ll be linking to what I think are some important articles at the end of this post. I also haven’t blogged about it because I incorrectly assumed that if I knew about it, then everyone I know and have the opportunity to reach would also already know, would already have seen the same posts and articles and tweets and pictures that I have.

But over this weekend I found out how untrue that was. So, I’m taking a break from my review series to hopefully contribute something helpful.

So, if you have no idea what anyone is talking about when you see “#Ferguson” or hear someone mention Michael Brown, this is what you absolutely need to know.

On Saturday, August 9th, Michael Brown was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, and some of these shots appeared to have created multiple entrance and exit wounds. It is possible that the first four or five shots were not fatal, that it was only the sixth shot– which seems, to some experts, to have been delivered “execution style” to the back of the head. He was killed by a man named Darren Wilson.

Wilson was a white police officer. Michael Brown was a black teenager.

The Ferguson police department has a history of civil rights violations and also were so inept in their duties that their records were rejected for “major errors in data” by the Missouri Department of Public Safety; they also criminally charged a man for bleeding on an officer’s uniform after they beat him. The officers involved in that situation also appear to have committed perjury in open court.

Because of what Wilson did to Michael, and because of this history, the Ferguson community, which is almost 70% black, began protesting– a right protected by the Bill of Rights, and a right which is under literal, physical, brutal attack. American citizens are guaranteed the right to peaceably assemble, to petition their government for a redress of grievances. The people of Ferguson are embracing their duty as citizens to make it known that they will no longer tolerate such reckless disregard for human life and a completely out-of-control police department.

Since Saturday, many citizens have been tear-gassed, including senators, children, and news crews. After tear-gassing the Al Jazeera news crew, the police took down the video equipment and then approached the KSDK news crew with guns drawn. Multiple journalists have been arrested. Wesley Lowery, who was assaulted during his arrest, said that he was not given any names of arresting officers, would not be given badge numbers, was not told what he was being arrested for, and was released without knowing anything and without having any paperwork whatsoever. Multiple reporters have been threatened, detained and imprisoned under similar circumstances, and many have beguan wearing gas masks and bullet-proof vests because the area is so dangerous.

The police have been firing rubber bullets and tear-gassing peaceful protestors all week. These methods are technically considered non-lethal, but they are capable of doing horrific damage, like what they did to pastor Renita Lamkin and Mya Aaten-White:

And the situation is continuing to deteriorate. After two nights of trying to enforce a curfew, the governor has opted to summon the National Guard to Ferguson. President Obama has sent the Attorney General to co-operate with the Department of Justice and the FBI, who are conducting investigations into Michael’s murder and civil rights violations.

At this point, it would be easy to get caught up into all of the rights being openly attacked by our own police force– violation of the right to free speech, unlawful seizure, to peaceably assemble . . . but that would not just be a mistake, it would be wrong.

We cannot forget what the community of Ferguson is protesting, and why all of this is happening. They are protesting because their police officer, a man sworn to protect and defend their community, murdered one of their children. We also must not be distracted by the smoke-and-mirrors show that the police and much of mass media has to offer.

Those are the facts.

I would highly recommend you read the following articles. I think they would be valuable to read, as they offer an important perspective on the reality of systemic racial oppression in America. For what are hopefully obvious reasons, I’ve decided to include only articles written by black people.

“Things to Stop Being Distracted by when a Black Person Gets Murdered by Police,” by Mia McKenzie.

“Black Bodies, White Souls,” by Austin Channing Brown.

“Becoming a White Ally to Black People in the Aftermath of the Michael Brown Murder,” by Janee Woods

“10 Ways Racism Killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner” by Chauncey DeVega

For accurate, up-to-date information, I recommend you follow this list on Twitter.

August 18, 2014 by SamanthaField