John Chau.

Who do people say he is?

To some he is a Christian martyr. To others he was a misguided religious zealot. Some say he is a heroic missionary. Others say he is an example of all that’s wrong with Christianity. There are those that mourned his death. There are others who ‘celebrated’ his killing as a life-saving act of resistance. (It is reported that contact with outsiders could have potentially put the entire population at risk of a deadly epidemic of measles, flu, & other diseases.) Some have juxtaposed “Chau’s passion for the unreached” with what they describe as lazy Christians who critique from the comfort of their couches. Others have pointed to the hypocrisy of those who would on one hand cheer Chau’s illegal crossing of a border to evangelize while jeering the caravan of asylum-seeking Christians at our southern border.

But, what do you say about him?

What you say about Chau’s effort reveals a lot about your theological commitments, sociological assumptions, historical awareness, & understanding of what the mission of God is. My objective here is not to debate about what was wrong or right about Chau or the Sentinelese people’s actions. I do not wish to contribute to the dehumanization or demonization of the Sentinelese people or to John Chau. My aim is simply to get us to think about the broader context of this story.

As I’ve watched the vastly different responses to this tragedy it has once again confirmed to me that we need a deeper conversation about “missions”. One that doesn’t begin & end with the “good intentions” of individual missionaries, but deals honestly with the collective, historic, & present *IMPACT* of their work. We need to wrestle with how often the version of Christianity imported into places like Africa, The Americas, & Asia the last 500 years was in the words of Willie Jennings, “diseased in form & distorted in performance.”

We need a conversation that de-centers the heroic tales of missionary movements (past & present), and centers the experiences of those who had missions done TO them. To quote womanist theologian & anthropologist Linda E. Thomas, we need to see ourselves as “guests privileged to privilege the voices of Africans and their histories of Christian mission. I do not look to the colonists or European priest. I look to the people who did not need to file reports detailing how many people they baptized. I listen to the voices that can save me & you from repeating inexcusable violence that so dominates what we call Missio Dei.”

We need a conversation that decolonizes our understanding of God’s sovereignty. One in which phrases like “God was in control” and “at least they got the gospel” are not flung out to excuse genocidal imperialism in “missionary garb.”

“When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “let us close our eyes and pray.” When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land.”

We need to talk about how “conspicuous humanitarianism” hides the reality that those doing the “missions work” are, to varying degrees, complicit in upholding the very structures that CREATE the need for their efforts. Metaphorically, it’s like setting our neighbor’s house on fire & showing up the next day to bandage burn wounds & take selfies as if you had no hand in causing the damage.

We need to talk about how missionaries often import their cultural & political distinctions into The Gospel & thereby call people into assimilation to western white norms. To paraphrase the late Lakota theologian Richard Twiss:

“If Jesus can’t be expressed & experienced equally in all cultures you have preached a foreign religion, not the Good News of God’s Kingdom.”

This convo may ”un-house” and unsettle some of us, but the cognitive dissonance won’t kill us. It may in fact heal us & change how we understand & practice the Missio Dei (Mission of God). For too long, the so-called “Great Commission” has subverted the Greatest Commandment: “love God & neighbor”. This is what I call the Great *Omission. It gives cover to those who want to “preach Christ” while omitting what Christ actually preached/embodied. Jesus preached & practiced good news to the materially poor, freedom for the incarcerated, healing embrace for the disabled/sick, liberation for the oppressed, & jubilee for the economically exploited.

As long as these elements of the messianic movement founded by Jesus of Nazareth are omitted, colonialism will continue to fly in on the wings of missions efforts.

“…triumphant reports by the missions in fact tell us how deep the seeds of alienation have been sown among the colonized. I am talking of Christianity and this should come as no surprise to anybody. The Church in the colonies is a white man’s Church, a foreigners’ Church.”

-Frantz Fanon

written by T. Hawkins

Drum Majors Alliance members Crystal Rook & Thomas Lees deliver a statement on the Ashley Elementary School mold & air quality issues at Forsyth County Public School Board Meeting. (Photo Cred: Winston-Salem Journal)

Last night, members of the Drum Majors Alliance lifted their voices at the Forsyth County public school system’s board meeting with a larger collective of concerned community members, organizations, parents, & teachers who are demanding #ActionForAshley Elementary School. The following is the transcript of an official Drum Majors statement delivered to address the issue of air quality, mold, & educational inequity at Ashley. We hope that you will read, share,  sign the petition, & be moved to action. Now more than ever, we must confront the severe compassion deficit plaguing Winston-Salem:

“It should stand as a basic principle of any community that all of its children, no matter their address, income, or skin color, should be provided with equitable opportunities for education. This much has been affirmed by the North Carolina Supreme Court in its decision in Leandro v. State (1997), declaring that “all children residing in the state have a fundamental state constitutional right to the ‘opportunity to receive a sound basic education.’” Such “opportunities” to a sound basic education are not limited simply to a standing building and ready teachers, but include among other things access to resources and technology, nutritious meals, and a safe, healthy learning environment.

It is in regards to the provision of a safe and healthy learning environment that we find Forsyth County’s commitment to this fundamental constitutional right to be hollow. The conditions of Ashley Elementary School are appalling, not only in their current state, but in the underly negligence and disregard for communities of color that they make blatantly clear.

The issues of air quality and mold have been repeatedly raised by teachers and administrators with little to no action taken by the school board. We do not believe this to be simply an oversight, but a manifestation of Winston Salem’s living legacy of racial, economic, and educational apartheid. It is unimaginable that these conditions would been allowed to arise and go untreated in any predominately white school in the county. That North Carolina as a whole has failed and continues to fail to provide equitable opportunities for education across race and class lines has been affirmed repeatedly by our state’s courts.

As followers of Jesus, we believe that all people are created in the image of God and endowed with immeasurable worth, dignity, and value. And as such, we affirm in the strongest possible language – alongside of people from various faith traditions & beliefs- that the well-being of every single child should be of the highest priority for a community and that the school board has the utmost responsibility to ensure that every single school in its district is equally well-maintained so that no matter the school a child attends, he or she will truly have an opportunity to receive a “sound basic education.”

We ask the members of the school board to remember your commitments and obligations. We ask that you remember your oath to serve the children of Ashley Elementary School. According to the North Carolina School Board Association, one of the primary duties of a school board is to provide adequate school facilities. Therefore, we demand that you fulfill that obligation and provide an adequate building for Ashley Elementary School. In short, we demand of the School Board of Forsyth County that Ashley Elementary be closed immediately until the issues surrounding air quality and mold be fully and totally addressed.

This is not a matter of charity but of justice, and we, as people of faith, stand for justice. Micah 6:8 states, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Our school board has neglected the cry of those in our city who do not have economic or political power. But we stand with the students, parents, & teachers of Ashley. We affirm and magnify their voice. We affirm their equality under the law, the fullness of their humanity, and their dignity and beauty as bearers of the image of God.”

-The Drum Majors Alliance

#ActionForAshley #NotAnotherBrick #NotAnotherBond

Student activists in Chicago during last May’s “March for Peace” demonstrations.

In late May of last year, thousands of students in Chicago organized a peace demonstration. Prior to the march they staged a sit-in in which they layed down on the street to highlight the 100s of lives lost in their community due to gun violence. These incredible kids channeled their pain into a powerful call for change, but their efforts went largely under-the-radar & unheard. As Chicago activist Ja’mal Green put it in an interview:

“The youth that I mentor every week are going through deppression. I don’t call it PTSD. (post traumatic stress disorder) I call it CTSD. It’s continuous! And then we look to our leaders to actually figure out ways to solve this problem & what do we get? We get the mayor who shut down all the mental health facilities…”

Fast forward almost a year later & the nation has been rocked by the anti-gun violence activism of amazing students in Parkland, Florida who have been raising their voices for change in the wake of the tragic school mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High. Like their Chicago counterparts, they have valiantly fought through their trauma & grief to stage “die-ins”, student walk outs, & are gearing up for a national #MarchForOurLives on the 24th of this month.

The Compassion Deficit

In one sense, America suffers from a lack of compassion & moral will across the board to confront & cure the violence coursing through its national veins. We live in the United States of Amnesia & Denial. This empire quickly moves on as if nothing happened once the most recent mass shooting news headlines begin to fade. When powerfully confronted about this reality, too many of us slip into delusional displays of denial.

A few weeks back I read an article entitled “Why We’re Underestimating The American Collapse”. Author Umar Haque really seems to get at the very distinct nature of the soul’cial disease ravaging the so called “land of the free & home of the brave”. We are indeed exceptional….just in all the wrong ways. Hague writes:

“Let me give you just five examples of what I’ll call the social pathologies of collapse — strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don’t usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.

America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days. That’s one every other day, more or less. That statistic is alarming enough — but it is just a number. Perspective asks us for comparison. So let me put that another way. America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days, which is more than anywhere else in the world, even Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, the phenomenon of regular school shootings appears to be a unique feature of American collapse — it just doesn’t happen in any other country — and that is what I mean by “social pathologies of collapse”: a new, bizarre, terrible disease striking society.
Why are American kids killing each other? Why doesn’t their society care enough to intervene? Well, probably because those kids have given up on life — and their elders have given up on them. Or maybe you’re right — and it’s not that simple. Still, what do the kids who aren’t killing each other do? Well, a lot of them are busy killing themselves.”

Given that America has always been & continues to be, “one nation under white supremacy”, these issues tend to have a racialized (and gendered) component to them. White (male) mass shooters enjoy “lone wolf” status while people of color & religous minorities endure the woes of “wolfpack” status when an individual from their ethnic/racial or religious group commits heinous acts. The young man who killed 17 people allegedly had swastikas embedded on his weapons & there are contested reports that he had recently trained with a white nationalist militia group. Still, he is humanized by speculations about how childhood trauma & mental illness contributed to his actions by some of the same people  who could not employ similar empathy for black victims of state & vigilante violence like Rekia Boyd, Trayvon Martin, or Mike Brown. Their records & flaws are dug up as they endure what one writer calls “post-mortem media violence” as known white mass shooters & terrorists get post-massacre trips to Burger King. *deep sigh* 

Back to the Chicago student movement & the Parkland student movement…….

Quite a few folks have undertaken the task of showing the tragic disparities of how the anti-gun violence work initiated by working class & poor students of color across the nation has been received versus the response & major support garnered by the predominately white middle & upper class students in Parkland Florida. One sad example of this is the full-throated vocal & financial support recently given by the likes of Oprah & Obama. Though mainstream conservative media would have you believe that Obama was the founder & chief supporter of Black Lives Matter, the truth is that both he & Oprah struggled & stumbled in their attempts to respond affirmatively to the young activists leading these charges. There are reasons for this. Assistant professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, recently wrote:

“Black movements are never popular because they reveal the ugly underbelly of American history and society. Even liberals who recoil from what they perceive to be the “imperfections” of U.S. society often reject the systemic critiques that arise from the struggles of working class and poor Black movements.”

Before I go any further, let me be clear: I am 100% behind & excited about the work that young folks in Parkland are doing & believe they should be getting the support they have received so far and more. (Full stop!)

However, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t shed a couple tears lamenting the fact that black, brown, & indigenous student-led anti-gun violence efforts have gone unheard for YEARS. This is just another example of America’s severe “compassion deficit” as it relates to people of color. Until we close this deficit the gaping wounds of violence & injustice will go unhealed!

Can’t We All Just Resist Together?

The point of this post is not to challenge readers to a “duel of outrage olympics”.  My aim is to provoke people to think about what it would look like for collaboration across these lines. It is to ask the question: “Can’t we all just resist together”? Seriously. What possibilities for change could emerge if students representing the predominant social demographics of Stonewall Mountain High linked arms with movements against gun violence led by socioeconomically marginalized & racially oppressed people? What blindspots in analysis & weaknesses in activism would be addressed?

For too long folks have assumed that their predominately white suburban enclaves could shelter them from the grief, pain, & tragedy that runs amuck in oppressed communities of color. Could this be a moment in which we learn that what “affects one (community) directly, affects all (communities) indirectly” & that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Metaphorically speaking, sailing bullets flying from AR-15s in socially engineered spaces of deprivation like the hoods of Baltimore, St Louis, Cleveland, Ferguson, East & Northeast Winston-Salem eventually land in the Newtowns, Sandy Hooks, Parklands, & West Winston-Salem’s of our nation. US. predator drone strikes that tragically kill civilians overseas also strike down chances for the poor in our own back yard to experience conditions ripe for human flourishing. (The billions & trillions of dollars spent on militarism could easily be redirected to the uplift of marginalized communities.) There are eerie correlations between the the flooding of Black & Brown communities with guns & drugs by law enforcement agencies and the US’s practice of financing & arming violent regime change in foreign nations. The subsequent destabilization of nations abroad  tragically mirrors the post-civil rights era destabilization of oppressed communities in our own nation.

Beyond Binaries, Beyond the 2 Party Duopoly 

This moment demands that we center the insights & cries of the most vulnerable & seize the opportunity to create comprehensive solutions for the various forms of both civilian & state violence that run through the very DNA of this nation! We must #demandtheban of semi-automatic weapons like the one used to destroy lives in Parkland, Florida while also demanding resources for the traumatized, economically distressed, & socially oppressed that experience the brunt of the violence in our nation.

Binary thinking & solutions play right into the hands of the 2-party duopoly. Too often Republicans want to demonize & criminalize resistance movements while Democrats want to co-opt & “neoliberalize” them!

Unbound by any party’s platform we must offer holistic solutions that address mental health issues AND gun control, individual evil AND cultural pathologies, personal responsibility AND social justice, anti-domestic violence work AND gang prevention/intervention work, white supremacy AND toxic masculinity, capitalism AND militarism.  It’s BOTH and! It’s always been BOTH and! Souls interact with systems & systems interact with souls, individuals interact with cultures & cultures interact with individuals. The world cannot be compartmentalized into neat black & white categories.

Can we resist together? I hope & pray that we can! I wrote the first draft for this article last week but yesterday I hopped on twitter only to find this hopeful sign:

Yesterday Parkland, Florida student activist Emma Gonzales tweeted this pic with the following caption: “Yesterday, the members of @AMarch4OurLives got to meet up with some of the most wonderful and most strong spoken students of Chicago. “Florida’s safest city” and one of the cities in America most affected by gun violence came together to share stories, ideologies, and pizza.”

(Written T. Hawkins)

Today is a day that Americans of all colors, cultures, classes, & creeds (mis)remember the life & witness of Martin Luther King Jr. MLK remains one of the most well known but least understood figures of U.S. History & perhaps even of human history. For the past 12 years or so its been my personal ambition to recover, recapture, & reclaim the authentic King. Far too many Americans (& more specifically American christians) consciously & unconsciously betray the legacy of the man whom they profess to deeply revere. Today I want to briefly unpack 10 specific ways that we betray the legacy of Martin.

1) The “Mr Rogers-ification” & “Santa Cluasification” of Martin                             

Americans have domesticated, sanitized, & as Cornel West has put it, “santa-clausified” King.  Contrary to popular belief, King should not be characterized as a jolly, happy, black preacher with a big sack of cheap grace & forgiveness for guilt-ridden white folks & colorblindness for the masses. We have re-imaged MLK & “Mr. Roger-ized” his social-political project. In the minds of too many, King was a southern preacher whose obsession with “racial integration” drove him to crusade the nation in a docile Mr Rogers-like manner begging white sisters & brothers:

“Wont you be, please won’t you be, please won’t you be my neighbor!”

This version of Martin is more devoted to making white folks feel “comfy” than he is to telling the truth about America. It’s this image of King that fuels those who evoke his legacy to derail honest, painful, serious dialogue & work to dismantle white supremacy.

In the final analysis, the real Martin was not a chocolate Santa Clause trying desperately to fit down the chimney of white America. King was a disruptive prophet who spoke hard & bitter truth for the cause of love & justice!

“….the “white backlash” is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities & ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of Black Power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that characterized America when the black man [sic] landed in chains on the shores of this nation. The white backlash is an expression of the same vacillations, the same search for rationalizations, the same lack of commitment that has always characterized white America on the question of race.”  MLK

2.) Multi-racial Churches That Orbit Around Whiteness      

How many times have we heard pastors & partitioners of self-identified “multi-racial” or multi-cultural congregations claim Martin as one of their architects. Quick to quote King’s lament that “Sunday mornings are the most segregated hours of the week” they say that their mere existence is proof that “The Dream” is alive & well. For everything that can be celebrated about these churches there is much to critique. Too often they betray the colorfulness of their pews with mostly white leadership & a white cultural orientation. Research demonstrates that instead of being a space in which momentum is created to overcome structural racism, they actually reify it through the transmission of a weak & white-centered understanding of what “life together” requires. These congregations tend to incorrectly assert that the spatial separation of racial groups is the root problem, instead of seeing it as a symptom of a much deeper spiritual & social issue. Hence, they tend to place a strong emphasis on cross-racial relationship building & place very little emphasis (if any) on building collective memory of America’s dark history & overcoming present forms of systemic racial injustice. It must be said that mere multiculturalism does not equal anti-racism. King was an anti-racist pastor-activist who deeply cared about the Body of Christ. For that reason he wanted to see diverse followers of Jesus worship & bear witness together as the family of God but his desire did not end there. King’s vision of beloved community was an other-worldly, justice-laced, love-rooted oneness, not a thin unity that conforms to the world’s patterns of racial hierarchy. 

“In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.” MLK

3.) The Sentimentalizing of MLK’s Love Ethic

MLK once said “I have decided to stick of love, hate is too great a burden to bear.” This quote & others like it are often ripped from the lived witness of King & made to mean almost anything. What was this way of love he spoke of? For King, love was something to be radically embodied in a particular time, space, & place with attention to the on-the-ground spiritual, cultural, & political realities.  It was not an “ethereal goo” of warm & fuzzy feelings. Far from being abstract, love *concretely* faces & seeks to overcome every barrier to liberation, community, & human flourishing. Love provokes compassion for both enemies & friends, but does not sit by idly in situations of oppression & state violence. “The way of love” demands a fierce commitment to stand in solidarity with those who are catching hell. King understood love as a call to cut through the numbness of the status quo with disruptive protest! We betray him when we demonize protest movements like The Movement for Black Lives for making us feel uncomfortable. We betray him when we think “loving our neighbors” is completely disconnected from the work of social transformation. For King, “justice is what love looks like in public.”

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best i power correcting everything that stands against love.” -MLK

4.) Trapping King Inside the “I Have A Dream Speech” Loop     

Nothing has proven a more powerful tool in the “post-mortem domestication” of MLK than the attempt to trap him inside of a loop of what is known by most as the “I Have a Dream” speech.  The U.S. has imprisoned one of its greatest freedom fighters inside of a strange ‘space time continuum’ in which a short clip from that speech is the totality of his witness & existence. This does two tragic things: First of all, King’s thoughts, speeches, actions, & books beyond that moment are marginalized or erased. Secondly, it distorts the very nature of the speech AND the demonstrations from which those famous lines emerged. King’s speech originally titled “The Cancelled Check” was the climax of the March on Washington for JOBS & FREEDOM. The demands connected to this march in their original form were nothing short of radical. Here are a couple less popular quotes from the speech:

“The Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality” 

“The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”  MLK 

5.) Anemic Solidarity with The Poor & Capitulation to Neoliberal Capitalism

We can’t scapegoat, brow beat, & in live in self-righteous isolation from poor people in one breathe while celebrating Martin Luther King in the next. King’s critique of capitalism can be traced back as early as the 1950s in love letter exchanges with his then girlfriend Corretta Scott. In his latter years King moved his family into a slum apartment in Chicago & was working on a national multi-racial alliance called the “Poor People’s Campaign”.  We can’t be deeply committed to the values of a neoliberal capitalism that “demand endless sacrifices from the poor & creation”, while claiming commitments to the eradication of poverty, both at home & abroad. “Neoliberalism is the triumph of the market over all social values”, but King declared that “we must rapidly begin to shift from a thing oriented society to a person oriented society” & warned us that transformation cannot happen when “machines, computers, profit motives, & property rights are considered more important than people.”

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, here and abroad.” MLK

6.) Silence on the Violence of U.S. Militarism & Imperialism

King’s commitment to non-violent civil disobedience & protest is well known. What’s less known, is that King argued that it was hypocritical to demand that black folks protest peacefully while not demanding that the U.S. take a posture of non-violence & peacemaking in the world. Against the advice of many of his close colleagues in the struggle for racial justice, King came out publicly against the war in Vietnam on April 4th 1967 in a speech at the Riverside Church. A year to the date, he’d be gunned down on the balcony of the Loraine Motel in Memphis. During that year King increased the volume & veracity of his condemnation of U.S. militarism & imperialism. Calling America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” King questioned the notion that God had ordained it as some kind of “divine messianic police force”. With the current ongoing bi-partisan support of gargantuan military budgets, war crimes, & excessive amounts of military bases across the world its amazing that an ant-war activist like MLK is even evoked by the political establishment. Martin teaches us that any nation more willing to invest in instruments of death (militarism) than instruments of life (health care) is morally & spiritually bankrupt.:

“The peculiar genius of imperialism was found in its capacity to delude so much of the world into the belief that it was civilizing primitive cultures even though it was grossly exploiting them.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”  MLK
                         

7.) The Symbolism of Representation w/o The Substance of Transformation                 

One of the ways in which King’s legacy has been co-opted is the advancement of a (false) version of his vision that fits neatly within liberalism.  To assume that any slice of the the black radical tradition is in step with liberalism (or conservatism) is a gross misreading.  At his best, King was wholeheartedly in opposition to the idea that mere tweaks of the current system & inclusion within it was the ultimate aim. Therefore, the fulfillment of King’s vision is not merely “black faces in high places” who willfully or inadvertently contribute to the momentum of systemic oppression. King was calling for a revolution of values & boldly proclaimed that “that the whole structure of America must be changed” & “born again” into something entirely different. Yes, representation is important, but it does not necessarily equal transformation. A close look at the emergence of the black political leadership class as mayors, senators, police chiefs, judges, & DA’s, & president reveals how ineffective a strategy of mere inclusion has been. Placing an accommodationist black, brown, queer, immigrant, or women face in front of an oppressive system makes it no less oppressive. In the words of Eduardo Bonilla Silva, “In the post civil rights era you can get false positives; folks who have the “RIGHT” skin color but the wrong politic & therefore we need to move beyond (mere) “epidermic” notions of race to political notions of race.”

“I’m tired of hearing about the “first negro” this & the “first negro” that!”            Martin Luther King Jr

“One of the ways of making sure you sanitize any talk about racism is to talk about diversity. We lost sight of attacking issues of poverty, class––with the death of Martin—and moved into an obsession with having black faces in high places. As long as we had those black faces in high places, the poor could live symbolically through them, vicariously through them. Or those black faces themselves, middle class and upper middle class, could claim that somehow they were the index of progress.”

Cornel West

8.) Discipling Our Churches into a Justice-less Gospel

The Gospel of The Kingdom of God is the righting, reordering, renewal, & reconciliaton of ALL THINGS through the life, teachings, death, resurrection, & enthronement of Jesus. Within the scope of God’s redemptive aims in the world is both the reordering of souls AND societies. Sadly, even though Jesus of Nazareth pronounced a blessing on those who “hunger & thirst for justice”, large swaths of the American church label those who hunger & pursue it as unfaithful, unspiritual, & “unbiblical”. The themes of justice & the call to faith-rooted activism for & with the pushed down, left out, & overlooked of society in both the old & new testaments are collapsed into an understanding of The Faith that keeps the unholy status quo in tact. We betray King when we do not disciple followers of Jesus into the work of social justice as a spiritual discipline.

In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” MLK

9.) Resisting Trump without Understanding The Systems That Created Him

While its true that we need to keep track of & push back on the ways in which President Donald Trump is narrating & legislating a climate of bigotry, lies, hate, & oppression, that is simply not enough. Donald Trump is the ugly symptom of a soul-cial sickness that has ravaged the American body politic for years, decades, & centuries. He does not appear on the political-landscape ex-nihilo (out of nowhere). No, Trump is the explicit personification of unjust structures, oppressive systems, & cultural idols that have animated U.S. life for centuries. Trump is rightly understood as the most undiluted (presidential) embodiment of what Bell Hooks calls “imperialist white supremacist (hetero)patriarchal capitalism” in the post-civil rights era of hollow civility. He voices out loud what is said in private in the halls of American power. Obama quietly deported over 2 million undocumented people, Trump does it loudly while hurling xenophobic rhetoric. Obama silently dropped 26,000 bombs his last year in office (a rate of 3 per hour) and Trump continues this project while brashly threatening North Korea that “there will be fire & fury the likes of which no one has ever seen”. This is not to say that there aren’t real differences between president 44 & 45. Obama for all his flaws is NOT Trump. However, if we do not take a Kingian lens that understands the deeper issues that gave us Trump, our movements will flatline & simply reproduce what came before him. The following excerpt from King’s eulogy for the 4 little girls killed in the 1963 racial terrorist attack on the church in Birmingham is relevant in this regard:

They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats  and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.

MLK

10.) Refusing to Acquire an Internationalist & Intersectional Lens of Oppression   

The height of King’s socio-political analysis is found in what he called the “triplet evils” of “racism, militarism, & poverty”. King had come to see the interconnectedness of structures of oppression that create the climate for injustice. Refusing to allow his concern to be barricaded by U.S. borders, King was vocal about the plight of the poor, oppressed, war-torn, & exploited people & nations across the globe. Though he was radically committed to justice for black people within the U.S. empire he resisted the temptation to allow that to be the totality of his concern. When we fail to see the “chilling parallels between overseas drone programs and how police treat America’s non-white citizens, with the slightest suspicion escalating into official violence and even death”  we betray the thrust of King’s work in his last days. Martin’s internationalist & intersectional lens was the fruit of his long held belief that:

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

MLK

(Article written by T. Hawkins)

“

I’ve often playfully said that The Church needs to abandon (white) “Jesus of Norway” & embrace (brown) Jesus of Nazareth. This is not an original or new thought at all. The essence of this argument has been powerfully communicated by theologians like Jacqueline Grant, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, & James Cone.

“Jesus of Norway” is the Eurocentric False God who oversees & fuels the mission of white colonial power.

Jesus of Nazareth, is the poor, oppressed, brown Palestinian Jew living under Roman occupation who came to abolish idolatry & injustice & make all things new. Quoting the Prophet Isaiah, Matthew wrote of him:

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he has brought justice through to victory. In his name all nations will put their hope.”

(this includes the nations labeled as sh&%holes.)

The worship of the former & the disregard of the latter has had very real implications for the last 5 centuries. 45s most recent remarks illuminate this. When he reportedly said that the “US should stop accepting immigrants from sh#%hole places like Haiti & Africa & start bringing in people from places like Norway” he was articulating a white supremacist narrative of what the “ideal human” is & who has the birthright to claim dominion & access in the world. The narrative of white supremacy has been encoded into every aspect of U.S. political structures & systems, including immigration policy. As is his custom, 45, has just AMPLIFIED the (post-civil rights era) covert bigotry of dog-whistle politics to a blaring, overt volume. Its important to note as theologian J Kameron Carter points out, that Trumpism predates Trump. Yes, Trump is unique as the first “tweeter-in-chief”, but he is participating in a political project that can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson.

One of the most important tools for this ongoing & ever-fluid project of racism is the whitewashing of Jesus & the Gospel. As one theologian points out,

“Beneficiaries of systemic injustice can only envision religion as a reproduction of their own socio-economic privilege.”

This has meant for some that God is the cosmic power behind wall-building projects, deportations, predator drones strikes abroad, predator policing at home, neoliberal wealth extraction & redistribution of resources from Africa & South America to the white, rich, & powerful “Christian nations” of the world. In subtle & not so subtle ways, it means that conformity to Jesus = assimilation to whiteness.  In other words, the Gospel of Jesus of Norway to black, brown, red, yellow peoples of the earth is that “God wants to wash you white as snow.”
To this we must say NO in word & in deed. As we keep track of Trump’s activities we must not lose sight of the reality that his foul hard-heartedness is the ugly symptom of a nation whose bowels of compassion have been stopped up by its insatiable appetite to feast on the weak & vulnerable. We must be honest about the historic & present political arrangements that have lead to the devastation of places like Haiti & the continent of Africa. Ultimately, we must worshipfully live into the (re)arrangement that the unwed, pregnant, soon-to-be refugee Mary of Nazareth imagined that her Son would usher in:

“His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
 He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.  (Luke 1:50-53)

Mary’s worship-fueled declaration of God’s great reversal is in no way, shape, or form congruent with “Jesus of Norway & the Gospel of Sh**holes”……….

(Article written by T. Hawkins)

Peacemaking activist in Brooklyn

My heart is extremely heavy this morning. I woke up to news that yet another black man had been gunned down in the streets of my city yesterday evening. As was the case a few weeks ago, the murder took place just up the road from where my family & I reside. As always, I began searching for info on just who had been taken from us & the circumstances surrounding the incident. Within a few minutes of googling & texting friends who keep their ears to the streets the incident became much more painful than I anticipated. The 20 year old victim, Leon Conrad Jr is my cousin. But the pain does not stop there. The tragic irony of this young man’s death is that his dad (who I grew up with) had been murdered in a robbery 10 years ago on almost the same exact date!

Memories flashed through my mind. Leon Conrad Sr & I went to the same elementary school & for various reasons he was one of my favorite cousins growing up. We lost contact in our adult years but I remember running into him shortly before his death at the BP on Liberty Street. He yelled out at me, “What’s up cuz!” with that big smile, made all the more striking by his shiny “gold grillz”. We dapped each other up, hugged, & stood there a good little while catching up on life. I never would have imagined that that would be the last time I’d see him.

Now his son—who publicly lamented the absence of his father on social media just hours before yesterday’s incident—is gone too.

Some read headlines like this and lose track of the humanity of the people lost, the families fractured, the communities that are traumatized. Media pundits & politicians far removed from the problem use the “statistics” for their own agendas. But these two (and all victims of gun violence) were more than mere “statistics”. They were living, breathing, loved, image-of-God bearing humans full of purpose, worth, & potential.

Left to right- Leon Conrad Sr holding his son as a toddler & Leon Jr his senior in high school.

I cannot imagine the shock & sorrow that his closest of kin are feeling right now. This is pain upon pain, grief upon grief. Like me, I’m sure you’ll be diligently praying for them over the coming weeks but that’s just not enough. This tragedy  and others like it, point to a cycle of intra-community violence that we must work to STOP!

It’s well documented that the last couple months or so in my city have been uncharacteristically violent. It’s as if a dam has broken somewhere. Many in our communities are rightfully expressing outrage & concern over all that has occurred recently. While these important dialogues are happening online, in our barber shops/beauty salons, our schools, our homes, & our churches I want to contribute a few thoughts. The following is an open letter I wrote a few weeks ago but never published. I guess it wasn’t time. Now with great urgency I share this with hopes that it will help spark thoughtful action in my city & beyond.

Men in Baltimore gather for vigil during a recent ‘cease fire’ weekend.

To Those Who Really Care about Peer-on-Peer Violence in Communities of Color,

First, let me say with the deepest sincerity that I’m so glad you care! I’m grateful for those of you who are actively working to interrupt violence by addressing root causes & modeling creative alternatives to it. You are the moms, dads, aunties, uncles, grandmas/abuelas, community organizers, pastors, counselors, school teachers, & youth workers that labor day in & day out on the front lines. Over the years it is folks like you have taught me the importance of taking personal AND communal responsibility for our freedom, peace, justice, & flourishing! Even though I don’t always agree with your critiques & solutions I appreciate the authenticity of your passion. It’s actually quite refreshing given the fact that I’m often in spaces outside of our communities where people disingenuously bring up crime rates in the hood & the barrio to derail conversations & discredit activism against systemic racial oppression.

As we continue our work & rally others to join us I just want to put 3 things on the table for reflection & consideration.

1) Let’s reject the false dichotomy between state violence & peer-on-peer violence. In a very real sense, these two issues are two sides of the same coin. The best of our freedom fighters & sociologist have gone through great lengths to effectively demonstrate how the historic & systemic deprivation & exploitation of our communities has helped engender the violence & crime we grieve. Read chapter 4 of Martin Luther King’s last book “Where Do We Go From Here”, study the work of renowned sociologist William Julius Wilson, & watch this short clip of the BRILLIANT & courageous Michelle Alexander.

Think with me on this. The assassinations & political imprisonment of our brightest leaders in the 60s & 70s was a form of state violence. The systemic subjection of communities of color to environmental hazards like lead poisoning at disproportionate rates is a form of violence. Quarantining our communities into food deserts, divesting from development resources that create (livable wage-paying) jobs, & infesting them with predatory businesses is violent. Health & mental care inequity is violent. Educational apartheid is violent. The US criminal (in)justice system is violent. Far from being a means of rehabilitation & restoration, it is a punitive, racist, classist, family destroying cancer that reproduces the very things it claims to counteract. (For example: People of all colors & cultures use drugs at roughly the same rate, yet black people are 5x more likely to do time for drug offenses.)

All that said, we are going to have to walk & chew gum at the same time.  We must metaphorically “kneel” in protest of systemic injustices while working to heal both self & state-inflicted wounds. Contrary to popular opinion, these pursuits are not at odds with each other.

2) As we do our work & have our dialogues let’s rigorously reject the use of the racist & propagandistic term “black on black crime”. It is a term that presupposes an inherent criminality in black folks. There are those that argue that “we have put this on ourselves” by perpetuating the worst stereotypes of blackness through rap music. Certainly, we must grapple with the ways in which much of mainstream hip-hop has been a tool of social control & spiritual blackout. Still, it MUST be firmly stated that the narrative of innate black criminality & immorality pre-dates gangster & trap rap. Centuries before rappers like ‘Chief Keef’ or ‘21 Savage’ grabbed a microphone, the white supremacist lie that black, brown, & red people are ‘dangerous savages’ was one of the chief ideas that shaped this country. This myth is as old as America itself & has been used to justify everything from chattel slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, Jim Crow, Juan Crow, eugenics, & the hyper surveillance & incarceration of our communities. Let’s be CLEAR: the disproportionate violence in communities of color is NOT a “racial trait”, it is environmental. Research demonstrates that when you control the data on violent crimes for joblessness, black & brown men commit crimes at the same rates as their white counterparts. Due to racism, communities of color suffer the worst from poverty & the various forms of desperation that accompanies it. (Not to mention that due to the living legacy of slavery & segregation it will take the average black family 228 years to build the average wealth of a white family today.)

3) Last but definitely NOT least, let’s commit to doing our work with compassion & in collaboration with each other. If our efforts to cure violence are not rooted in love they are bankrupt. Leaders of people must first be lovers of people. If you don’t love the people you have no business trying to lead the people. Too often, we brow-beat our most vulnerable & speak about them with disdain & disgust. That’s gotta stop! Let’s not get so caught up in the “gory details” of their behavior that we miss the fact that they often have an even gorier life story of pain & isolation that helped lead them to the destructive decisions they are currently making. As we have in-house dialogues about toxic masculinity, gang culture, fatherlessness, & internalized oppression lets resist every wave of self-righteousness that bubbles up within our souls. By all means speak the Truth, but do it with the humility that should flow from the heart of someone who recognizes their own frailties & flaws.

In closing, we cannot afford to engage in non-profit org competition. We simply do not have the “luxury” to let our egos cause us to work in silos! The most effective work gets done when we stop worrying about which leader, which organization, which initiative, which church is going to get the credit. We need each other & I’m not just talking about educated “respectable” folks. We need the wisdom, insights, input, & leadership of the “Tyrones”, “Tomeikas”, “Juans”, & “Marias” of our neighborhoods.

With Love, Hope, & Respect,

T. Hawkins

#WagePeace #StopTheViolence #StopTheKilling #StartTheHealing 

by Terrance Hawkins

Monsoon flooding in Bangladesh & Nepal, mudslides in Sierra Leone, record wild-fires in the western U.S., earthquake in Mexico, record hurricanes devastating Texas, the Caribbean Islands, & headed towards Florida…..

How are we to respond to the ever-increasing volume of creation’s groan?

I believe we must join the groan.

By now you’ve probably heard the tragic news coming out of Seattle about yet another case of state violence committed against black people. Added to the litany of names that have become symbolic of a painful & traumatic legacy that is centuries old, is one #CharleenaLyles.

It’s reported that Charleena Lyles, a 30 year old, pregnant mother of 2 called the police after an attempted break-in at her residence. The police showed up & found Charleena “brandishing” a knife. Though she was a very tiny woman in stature, this prompted the officers to shoot her several times, killing her in front of her children. Many have expressed anger that the situation was not de-escalated & that non-lethal force was not used. Adding injury to insult, video has emerged of the police standing outside her door promising “we will not shoot you. Just open the door.” It’s a shame that a call to police about a home burglary can result in your own death in this “land of the free & home of the brave.”

Zooming Out & Rewinding Back

In our fast-paced media driven world it is so hard to resist the temptation to get lost in the latest tragedy without zooming out & rewinding back to see the bigger picture & larger story. We generally look at incidents like these “in media res”; a cinematic term that means to begin a movie “in the middle of the plot.” This habit keeps us from seeing what spiritual, social, & structural forces might have been at work long before the fateful encounter of the slain.

Charleena Lyles inhabited the high-risk social status that I call “quadruple jeopardy.”  This image-of-God bearing human lived at the dangerous intersection of 4 marginalized social identities. Even if we could go back in time & re-route her call away from 911 to some non-violent alternative she still had enormous structural odds stacked against her.

In no particular order, her likelihood of  experiencing the conditions necessary for human flourishing were jeopardized because she was:

• 1) black (racism/white supremacy)

From our first steps on this continent to the current moment black folks have been at the bottom of the racialized social order. Subject to domination, exploitation, & dehumanization we have endured unspeakable horrors on the interpersonal, institutional, spiritual, & emotional realm.

• 2) woman (sexism/patriarchy)

In a patriarchal society women continue to face challenges that their male counterparts do not. Sexism, misogynoir, rape culture, domestic violence, wage inequality are just a short list of the obstacles women are forced to overcome.

• 3) poor (capitalism/classism)

It is reported that Lyles had battled homelessness in recent years & was struggling to get the economic footing needed to stay afloat in society.

• 4) mentally ill  (ableism)

Lyles was mentally ill & officers were alerted of this before they arrived on the scene.

Tragic Collisions

It was a collision at the intersection of these 4 social locations that helped create this tragedy. Therefore, it is unhelpful at best & intellectually dishonest at worst, to reduce her plight to a single issue. All of the above realities factored into her killing at the hands of the state yesterday. (Racism, classism, sexism, & ableism) Some will want to parse these factors out & zoom in on just one. They’d say, “it was just a matter of mental illness. If we solve this issue, we can prevent future deaths like this.” This tendency is rather unfortunate. We miss the opportunity to really probe into social ills when we “rest our hats” on the factor that fits our personal soapbox. Its like forecasting weather by only looking at the wind patterns & completely  ignoring things like temperature & pressure. Others will push back on this idea of “quadruple jeopardy” as some hyper brand of “identity politics”. However, this post is not an attempt to “play” identity politics, it is a plea to people of goodwill generally, & to the church more specifically, to wake up to the overlapping political structures & cultural idols that violently impact and impede the flourishing of neighbors who live under the social weight of them. (Furthermore, most who decry “identity politics” have gross misunderstandings of its original meaning. )

This method of analysis has been called “intersectionality.” In its inception it was about keeping track with the larger SYSTEMS that play into the on-the-ground symptoms of inequality & injustice. However, in recent times its meaning has devolved as it’s become a buzz word employed by neoliberal elites & “pop activists”.

As it’s been used more & more in mainstream discourse, the deep structural analysis has often been erased. This has allowed politicians to gain “cookie points” for naming the intersectional nature of evils like sexism & racism while “veiling” their commitment to uphold the systems & apparatuses that generate these problems.

In short, we must make intersectional analysis “great again”. 😉  The police killing of a poor, black, mentally ill, woman who called 911 for help after an attempted burglary is the horrifically visible tip of an iceberg of spiritual wickedness in high places, unjust structures, economies, & cultures.

As we mourn her death & pray for her loved ones may God “bless us with discomfort at easy answers” & enough foolishness to believe that the structures of The U.S. can be rearranged & transformed in a way that fosters  “justice for all” both at home & abroad.

Written by Terrance Hawkins

The Drum Majors Alliance is very excited to present our 3rd annual “Holy Week of Resistance” starting on Palm Sunday, April 9th and ending on Good Friday, April 14th!

Each day, will afford the Body of Christ with opportunities to engage with the last week of Jesus’s life in fresh ways that mobilize us for the biblical ministries of justice & reconciliation. Too often we are discipled to view Christ’s death as a narrowly salvific & individualistic moment detached from its historical context & its socially transformative power. Profound wisdom embedded within the narrative goes untapped as a result. By illuminating the socio-political climate that made Jesus’ witness such a threat to the status quo–such that he was “executed by the state”–we are empowered to see what faithfully “bearing the cross” in our current moment requires of us. This is the central aim of each event during Holy Week.

Below you’ll find brief descriptions for the events. Don’t get overwhelmed. Take a look at the week’s itinerary & decide which event(s) you feel stirred by. (Please note: some event locations have not been nailed down. Final details will be communicated next week.)

FREEDOM RIDE (Sunday, April 9th 5:30pm-7:30pm)  – Hop on a bus with a diverse group of Christ followers & take a journey to strategic & historic locations to raise awareness about our city’s past & present & to lift up prayers for restoration & renewal. Plan to arrive by 5:15. Bus departs from Old Salem Visitor promptly @ 5:30.  RSVP for FREEDOM RIDE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/freedom-ride-tickets-33200915833

BELOVED COMMUNITY ACTION HUDDLES (Monday-Wednesday April 10-12) –We live in a moment of great hostility, division, & oppression. Yet, the Gospel calls us to a form of intimacy that resists the hierarchies of the world &  to link arms in seeking the wholeness & well-being of the cities we have been called to bear witness to the Gospel in. Gather with or host a small group of Jesus followers for a meaningful time of discussion about how The Cross shapes Beloved Community across lines of difference. The dialogue will be followed by a time of writing letters to local officials to share your concern about issues of food insecurity & economic development in impoverished communities. The Drum Majors Alliance will host a huddle @ THe Chop Shop Barber Shop & Beauty Salon in Downtown Winston-Salem on Monday, April 10th, 7pm. RSVP with link below or contact Drum Majors at drummajorsalliance@gmail.com to host your own huddle. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beloved-community-action-huddle-tickets-33382376587

Where the Cross Meets the Streets PANEL DISCUSSION- (Thursday, April 13th)          A powerful panel discussion centered around nationally known Christian theologian, activist, CEO of the Christian Community Development Association, Noel Castellano’s book called “Where the Cross Meets the Streets: What Happens in the Neighborhood When God is At the Center”. The panel will feature faith-fueled practitioners who are serving in various spheres of our city to bring renewal. The panel will wrestle with what a Jesus-like,  holistic witness looks like in our city. Christians who are passionate about outreach, ministry to the poor & vulnerable, & faith in the public square should not miss this paradigm-shifting discussion!

#STAYWOKE GOOD FRIDAY VIGIL- (Friday, March 15th) – A time of prayer, worship, & deep reflection on the violent execution of Jesus & its redemptive meaning in a world marred by spiritual & social oppression.