Barbara Harris, Bishop: Silver Anniversary and Ecumenical Reflection

The following essay appeared in the March 10, 1989 issue of the Catholic lay-edited magazine Commonweal under the title "When the Spirit Leads: Barbara Harris, Bishop." The editors cut out the last sentence without consulting me. They made a few less drastic changes which I note below the text of the essay. This text, with some minor copyediting, is my original version.

Barbara Harris was consecrated bishop on February 11, 1989 and served as Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (1989-2003). She served as Assisting Bishop in the Diocese of Washington (2003-2007). Happily, she is back among us in Massachusetts. We will celebrate the 25th anniversary of her consecration this Sunday, February 16, 2014, with a Gospel Vesper Service.

[February, 1989]

A day or two before the consecration of Barbara Clementine Harris as Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Cardinal Bernard Law and Greek Orthodox Bishop Methodios issue written statements of welcome. The statements are cordial. They also speak of the danger Harris’s consecration presents for reconciliation among Christian churches, or what has become commonly known as “Christian unity.”

At the consecration, the gospel music of St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church choir alternates with the delicate melodies of the Chinese Congregation and classical European harmonies of Trinity Church choir. The stately cadence of the Book of Common Prayer moves us forward, but in the musical realm there is a preferential option in the air: clearly, the day belongs less to Mozart and more to the music of the Black church. The celebration flows. This is no Tower of Babel: we each hear God speaking in our own tongue.

As Barbara Harris walks down the center aisle, a tiny woman whose voice and presence can fill a cathedral, over 8,000 people burst into applause. (“Not very characteristic of the Episcopal Church,” says one member of the congregation, Mary Shannon.) Throngs of priests, row upon row of beaming women and men, process down the side aisles of Boston’s Hynes Auditorium. Barbara Clementine Harris, a woman and a priest of African descent, is consecrated a bishop by the laying on of hands, according to the tradition of the apostles, by 55 men, most of them white. All through the celebration, the bishops have been purposeful, solemn, and excited, with the calm certainty that God, through them, is doing a good thing.

In describing the celebration, those who were there speak of unity. Mary Shannon repeatedly uses the term “body” to speak of the church and of her experience of this day –“finally being part of the body...” “... all of us together in one body.” She is wearing a locket with a picture of her 80-year-old mother, a member of St. Andrew’s Parish in Seattle, who “still carries her white gloves with her in church yet has rolled with the changes.” She speaks in the plural: her mother, her daughters, her husband, her women friends, all rush into the conversation. “I cried,” she says. “I just felt so happy for all of us.”

Modene Dawson of Philadelphia speaks of another unity. For her, and for many African-Americans in the assembly, the significance of the event extends beyond the church. “It’s beautiful for the country,” she says. “It shows racial harmony.” The church which conducts this celebration is not apart from the world; it is the body which proclaims to the world that God is alive in history.

Paul Matthews Washington, in his sermon, speaks about God and history. Harris’s friend and mentor, he is Rector Emeritus of the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, which feeds, clothes, and sanctifies the poorest of the city. In this church was held the first ordination of Episcopal women to the priesthood, in the summer of 1974, less than 15 years ago. Harris, a member of the church, led the procession, carrying the cross.

“We cannot,” says Washington, “overlook the fact that this woman being consecrated today is not just an American woman. She is a Black woman... This is a woman... who has had to struggle; she’s been despised, she’s been rejected... God has lifted up one who was at the bottom of society and has exalted her to be one of His chief pastors.”

Washington speaks of Harriet Tubman, who “nineteen times went back into the land of bondage,” thanking God for her freedom by helping to free others. He speaks of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was raised from her lowly estate and sang of God’s power to raise up the humble and put down the mighty from their thrones: “Mary,” he says after quoting the Magnificat, “was an oppressed woman. That’s how Holy Mary Mother of God felt!” He weeps as he recalls the slavery and oppression of Black people in this country. “Only in understanding the past can we fully appreciate God’s action in this event,” he says.

The Episcopal Church, a church of power and privilege, has chosen “a have-not,” says Washington, but also one who “burns when others are offended,” a “disturbing prophet.” Harris has for years –in her public relations and policy work in the corporate world, in her parish, in her work with the Episcopal Church Publishing Company, in her pastoral ministry—advocated racial and economic justice, taken up the cause of women, spoken out against homophobia; she has, says Washington, devoted enough time to prison chaplaincy “to serve a two-year sentence herself.”

The Right Reverend Barbara Harris, newly robed in bright vestments with Ashanti designs and symbols, presides at her first Eucharist as bishop. Among the concelebrants are Carter Heyward, one of the “Philadelphia Eleven” ordained at the Church of the Advocate, and Florence Tim-Oi Li, the first woman ordained a priest in the Anglican Communion, in Hong Kong, one generation ago. At the distribution, Harris slips over to the far side of the auditorium and gives communion to the people in the hearing-impaired section, who have been singing with their hands for three hours.

A bishop is, among other things, a maker of unity. Barbara Harris has already begun to make unity; but not in the ways in which unity was previously understood or structured. Her brother bishops, Law and Methodios, fear for the health and welfare of Christian unity. But where are the real rifts in our lives today? Are they doctrinal? Where is the real, urgent need for unity? And when we say “unity,” what do we mean? Whose unity, which unity, and at what cost?

The deeper chasm today is not between Protestants and Catholics, or Greek Orthodox and Episcopalians. It is, much more, between haves and have-nots, between Blacks and whites, between men and women, between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These are the wounds in need of healing, in church and in society. As for denominationalism, it is no longer the principal intrachurch split. Far deeper is the gap within each of our faith communities between fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists.

Early in the service, the Presiding Bishop, Edmond L. Browning, asks if anyone knows of any reason why the consecration ought not to proceed. Two men come to the microphone. The first calls the consecration “a sacrilegious imposture,” the second “an impediment to the realization of the visible unity of the Church for which Christ prayed.” There will be a problem, they argue, with the value of any sacrament celebrated by Harris.

Bernardine Hayes, a computer systems analyst, self-described “dormant Catholic,” and veteran civil rights and peace activist (she is currently Vice President of WAND, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament), had never before today “seen a woman offer the sacraments. She is so clearly affiliated with the poor,” Hayes adds. “She strikes me as a true minister.” Hayes feels something stir within her during the liturgy –“the realization that the piece of my life which is missing is the spiritual piece.”

This was, she says, "like a Pentecost."

Whose unity?

The intervention of the dissenters highlights the lack of unanimity in the church about the consecration (although Browning is quick to point out, at the post-consecration press conference, that the overwhelming majority of Episcopalians support it). But it is, in its way, a step on the road to greater unity. Perhaps the two men will change their minds; perhaps never. What is hopeful and healthy and makes a body strong is that their pain was not swept under the rug. However token, this part of the ceremony honors difference: and the unity of the Episcopal Church around this celebration –the unity behind the liturgy— is not the easy unity of unreflecting liberals. It has been hard won, tempered by prayer and struggle, and forged through the participatory process of decision-making in the Episcopal Church, a community that gave us two-thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Elizabeth Pearson Rice-Smith, a United Church of Christ minister who witnessed both the ordination of the “Philadelphia Eleven” and Barbara Harris’s consecration, believes that “if our vision of church unity embraces diversity in God’s ministries and the human experience of faith, there is much less need to split off. I think,” she adds, “that women are willing to say things about the messy stuff that don’t condemn or blame or banish. We want to create spirited change that doesn’t mean war, that doesn’t mean people don’t talk to each other, that doesn’t mean annihilation.”

Which unity, and at what cost?

Christians do still need to speak with one another about Eucharist and ministry, about theological thought and ecclesial practice. But the context of this discussion has changed, and so have the discussion questions themselves. Unable and unwilling to hide her particularity, unlikely to temper her prophetic stance, Barbara Harris –not in spite of this but because of this—is a maker, not a breaker, of unity.

(c) Jane Redmont 1989

A few other changes – skip this if you don’t care about the minutiae: The editors also lower-cased “Black,” which I had in upper case, and made a spelling change that eliminated my metaphor “singing with their hands.” They changed it to “signing with their hands.” Of course the congregation members in question were signing –but adding “with their hands” would in that case have been unnecessary. The celebration was full of song, and part of the beauty of it was that people sang with both voice and hands. I was seated in the section next to the one using American Sign Language. The editors also deleted the paragraph with Rice-Smith’s quote.

I was still a Roman Catholic at the time I wrote this essay.

 A decade later, in 1999, a few years after I moved to California, I was invited to be on the panel of speakers at the 10th anniversary celebration of Bishop Harris’s consecration. The invitation came from the Rev. Canon Edward Rodman, with whom I had often been on the television show “In Good Faith” on WCVB-Channel 5 (then the ABC affiliate in Boston). I served as the Roman Catholic voice on the panel and offered some insights from a Catholic feminist perspective.

A few years later –12 years ago last month— I was received into the Episcopal Church. The discernment leading to this reception –and the lengthy process toward ordination to the priesthood, a vocation dating back to the 1970s– are another story for another time and place.

 

Thanks be to God for Bishop Barbara!

50th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre

21 March 1960. Remember.

I'm still here, just writing...

... and editing, in those rare summer moments of quiet and solitude of which I get so little during the year.

Also mowing the lawn, griping about muggy weather, and enjoying being with my cat and my congregation again.

On Saturday, I chaired my last meeting (as Chair - I'm staying on the committee) of the Bishop's Committee for Racial Justice and Reconciliation of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina.

And then of course there are naps. And the bureaucracy ye shall have always with you.

I still plan to write here about Halifax, about which I continue to think fond thoughts.

Patience, my turtledoves.

Hiroshige, "Tree of Good Writing." More info here.

April 4: two MLK anniversaries and a third, with the Freedom Seder

The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 3, 1968, before MLK gave the last speech of his life. Photo: Ken Ross via American RadioWorks. He was assassinated the following day.


Today is the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.

It is also the anniversary of the "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech which he gave exactly a year before, on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City.

Although I have posted the speech before, I post it here again for those who have not read or hear it. The link includes audio as well as transcript text. The speech is long but well worth pondering.

A good feature on the last year of King's life (the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, et al.) is here, courtesy of American RadioWorks. It includes both text and audio.

And, with thanks to my colleague the Rev. Susan Redfern Spencer (also here), via Facebook, the note below from the Shalom Center and YouTube video:

On April 4, 1969, the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, the third night of Passover, hundreds of people of varied racial and religious communities gathered in a Black church in the heart of Washington DC to celebrate the original Freedom Seder. For the first time, it intertwined the ancient story of liberation from Pharaoh with the story of Black America's struggle for liberation, and the liberation of other peoples as well.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Seder and to address one of the greatest dangers ever to face the human race --the danger of "global scorching" worse than the traditional "Ten Plagues"-- The Shalom Center has initiated a New Freedom Seder for the Earth was scheduled to sponsor it in Washington DC on March 29, 2009. Here is more information on the original Freedom Seder and the New Freedom Seder for the Earth. (You can download the text of the Seder for the Earth at that last link.)

Journey of Reconciliation: the first "freedom ride" - in 1947! Commemorations in Chapel Hill.

I received this letter a few days ago from the Fellowship of Reconciliation:

Did you know that the first civil rights "freedom ride" took place in 1947, fourteen years before the 1961 riders captured the nation's attention by exposing the brutality of Jim Crow in the South? The Journey of Reconciliation was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which was born at FOR, and was led by FOR staff members Bayard Rustin and George Houser.

The interracial group of nine men on the Journey of Reconciliation set out from Washington, D.C. on April 9th, 1947. They met some resistance from passengers and drivers on buses in Virginia and North Carolina. But when they attempted to sit at the front of a bus in Chapel Hill on April 12th, the driver refused, and removed some of the riders by force. They were then attacked by angry cab drivers at the Chapel Hill bus station, and arrested by local police. Their subsequent time serving on a chain gang led Rustin to write about the experience. His serialized journal led to major reforms in the North Carolina prison system.

[Note from Jane: For a much earlier post on Bayard Rustin, see here.]

There are so many fascinating parts of this story. Please read this narrative by a local historian to learn more about the context and outcome of this journey.

Next week, a state historic marker will be installed in Chapel Hill to commemorate the Journey of Reconciliation. The event will be an opportunity to remember the horrors of Jim Crow past, and to look forward at the racial justice challenges of our future. I hope you can join me at one or more of these events in Chapel Hill. If not, perhaps you can show your support by making a donation to FOR in honor of the first freedom ride . Click the titles below to learn more and RSVP for these events.

Thursday 2/26, 7 pm: Screening & discussion: "You Don't have to Ride Jim Crow." Watch the documentary and discuss Chapel Hill's civil rights history with filmmaker Robin Washington. Sponsored by FOR and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP.

Friday 2/27, time TBA: Nonviolent direct action organizing, then and now . A discussion of old tactics and new frontiers with Robin Washington. Sponsored by FOR.

Saturday 2/28, noon: Day of Commemoration and Re-dedication . Freedom Riders in Chapel Hill 1947-2009: The Struggle for Racial Justice Continues. Sponsored by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP and the Community Church, with support from the Town of Chapel Hill.

I am helping to organize these events because I believe in the power of nonviolent direct action to bring about justice. I want others to remember this powerful legacy and to be inspired about the change we can continue to make happen today. I hope you will join me in Chapel Hill.

Peace,

Ruby Sinreich

Communications Co-Director

Fellowship of Reconciliation

Chapel Hill, N.C.

Fellowship of Reconciliation • 521 N. Broadway • Nyack, New York 10960 • 845-358-4601 • http://forusa.org/

Cross-posted at Race, Justice, and Love.

A note on the reactions to the death of John Updike (R.I.P.)

This isn't really about John Updike, may he rest in peace, but about the descriptions of John Updike on the radio.

I found myself yelling at the radio this morning. Yes, me, yelling at my blessed NPR shows in the car on the short drive to work.

Updike was a great writer, no doubt about it, and an art critic and thinker and many other things. So this isn't a dissing of Updike.

What is getting to me is how everyone is speaking of him as a writer about (the United States of) America, American post-war life, the American middle.

Excuse me?!

Updike wrote about white American post-war life.

Of course, he wrote about other things too. I have had his novel about a fictional African country, The Coup, on my shelf for years and have been meaning to read it, and I will read it in memory of him. Updike was, as one critic said, kaleidoscopic.

But Rabbit is not (the U.S. of) America.

Is Rabbit a part of it? Of course. A significant part of it? Of course. The whole story? No. "Representative" (of the whole story)? No.

We are so (as the kids would say) not out of the era of white privilege.

If we're going to name the fact that people are chroniclers of Jewish life or Black life in these United States, then let's name the fact that people are chroniclers of White or White Protestant life in the United States. (Or, for that matter, of the U.S. white middle class, or of middle-class Northern men.)

Either that or I want the obits for Toni Morrison (long may she live and continue to write) to say as much as the obits for Updike that she wrote the Great American Novel.

'Cause if you think that slavery and its aftermath or love and work in Harlem or the U.S. South have not been as American as apple pie and as the life of suburban white businessmen, you are still thinking of white America as normative --as the rule, the standard, the "normal"-- and the rest of these United States as the exception or the other.

White privilege is not just present in what we do or in what happens to us, but in how we think and how we speak. *

Think about it.

*See, for instance, re: the American novel, item 7 in the list on the document at the "white privilege" link above.

Also on "Talk of the Nation:" MLK's challenging words

If anyone still lives under the delusion that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. only spoke of holding hands and singing Kumbaya, that person would do well to listen to the final segment (twenty minutes before the hour, mas o menos) of "Talk of the Nation." The show mentioned below offers to us one of Dr. King's most eloquent speeches.

It is the "I Have a Dream" speech, but in full, with the criticism and prophecy -- not just the final few sentences everyone knows and quotes.

Listen. Listen.

The speech is also available here. It will be up at NPR via the link above (the green words) this evening.

"We Are One" online

HBO rebroadcast of this afternoon's "We Are One" event at the Lincoln Memorial (an American liturgy if I ever saw one) is supposed to be free on HBO, but it isn't on my TV. You can watch it online, as I am right now. (Tom Hanks has just read the words of Lincoln. Marisa Tomei is on right now.) And here comes my man James Taylor. Watch here. You can watch anytime. This is also good if you are not in the U.S.

Enjoy.

+Gene Robinson's prayer wasn't included in the broadcast, but you can read it here.

More on racism and the campaign

Read this.

Good companion to the white privilege piece.

Hat tip to janinsanfran.

45 days.

Brought to you by your daily ¡Si, se puede!

Activated till the polls close on November 4.

This Is Your Nation on White Privilege

Tim Wise nails it, once again.

This Is Your Nation on White Privilege

by Tim Wise

9/13/08

Original is here.

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

North Carolina (and Virginia?) churchy folks: registration open for event on racial history of the Diocese of North Carolina

I've mentioned before that a group of us have been planning a one-day conference on the racial history (particularly slavery and the Jim Crow era and their legacies) of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina. It will take place September 6, about a month from now.

Registration has been open for a while, but we now have registration forms online (printable). There's a link on the other blog.

All y'all come if you are within driving distance and can spare a Saturday. Even if you are not from this diocese or are not an Episcopalian, it should be an event well worth attending.

I'll post on this event as time allows and will likely do some kind of writeup afterwards via my monthly column at the Episcopal Café, but you may want to bookmark the other blog, Race, Justice, and Love, since I am about to start updating it and posting there more often and it will have related posts and resources.

I updated this post on August 6. --JCR

Sensible advice: "No grave-dancing, please."

And please, no misogynist comments. Even those of us who have not been supporting Senator Clinton's candidacy have come to her defense when faced with the misogyny and sexism in the media, among political activists and commentators, and in casual conversation. She's not the Wicked Witch of the West. She's a politician.

Not that we have any illusions about politicians. But that is a different matter.

For the rest, I refer you to the eminently sensible FranIAm, who reminds us of the need for decency and decorum. (Sure you're not an Anglican, Fran? Oh wait, we Anglicans haven't been very decorous of late.)

Acts of Hope seems to be posting a lot about politics these days. If you want a break from that, see the post on Blandina and her martyr companions below. Which is not to say that martyrdom at the hand of empires isn't political...

Feline photos coming soon. Maya Pavlova, the publicity hound (yes, she approved the interspecies terminology) has been complaining that you haven't seen her gorgeous face in a while.

An addendum:

Two worth-the-read op-eds, from mainstream media, no less:

1. How Obama Won and Clinton Lost (Matthew Dowd, ABC TV)

2. What Obama and Clinton Underestimate (Mark Halperin, Time magazine)

Political palate-cleanser: Frank Rich on the all-white elephant in the room

Well, palate-cleanser in one way -- at least it's a break from the brouhaha over Pastor Wright and a call to examine our double standards.

Frank Rich of the New York Times weighs in.

... Mr. Hagee's videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright's. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn't have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.

Perhaps that's why virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant prototype for Mr. Wright's fiery claim that 9/11 was America's chickens "coming home to roost." That would be the Sept. 13, 2001, televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks on America's abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr. Wright blamed the attacks on America's foreign policy.) Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers "agents of intolerance" and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006.

None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama's long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama's judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn't a double standard operating here. If we're to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates - and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them - we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick...

Read the full text of "The All-White Elephant in the Room"here.

Bayard Rustin and Reading Days

We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. -Bayard Rustin.

We are entering Reading Days, which come before Finals, except that I don't believe in giving final exams for religious studies courses. I require a final research paper (on which the students have been working for weeks, in stages) and after that's all done, a final reflection paper so people can think about their learning experience of the past few months.

These are Reading Days for me too, and for others on the faculty, since I have to read all those student papers, plus the three last senior theses which the little darlings are "defending" tomorrow afternoon.

But tonight and tomorrow night I have final meetings of my evening classes* and in addition to handing out evaluations (required here in U.S. colleges and universities so students can --anonymously-- evaluate the course and the instructor, and yes, it counts toward tenure) and having a short discussion of one piece of reading, I am showing a movie.

* really class, this semester I had two sections of the same course, first time that has ever happened, so I teach the same course twice -- and the dynamics couldn't be more different, but more on that some other time.

I had scheduled the movie for a few weeks ago when it fit into the syllabus sequence, but someone (a faculty member whose name I am not allowed to know) did not return the DVD to the library. I had reserved it three months ago, too, AND my teaching assistant had contacted the library to remind them ten days before the class. Long story short, the library rush-0rdered a new copy of the DVD and it arrived before the end of term, hallelujah thank you Jesus, so I am showing "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin" and if you have not seen it, you must must must.

Don't know who Bayard Rustin was? Have a look here.

Remember the March on Washington? The 1963 one with MLK, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech? Rustin organized it. The whole thing.

He has many other claims to fame, too. A remarkable man in the 20th century.

He was, by the way, an out gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Which is part of why we don't read about him in the history books.

Bayard Rustin, ¡Presente!

Opus the Penguin weighs in

Thank you, Salon. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

The "Wright Stuff" event

It was fabulous. It was packed.

I have to lead a Bible study on the prophet Amos at 7 p.m. and I am not ready (because I was prepping for the panel on Wright/Obama part of the afternoon and making handouts) so off I go.

Let justice roll down like water....

Evensong in Atlanta

The conference in Atlanta was very, very fine.

I then spent some time with two friends, one after the other. The first was a friend who was also at the conference. I visited her home, and then she showed me parts of the city: some of the poorest neighborhoods of Atlanta, literally on the other side of the tracks from the prosperous business side of town. The chasm between rich and poor is deep, and it is heavily racialized, though Atlanta also has a significant African American upper-middle and upper class, as many of you know.

The second friend was Luiz, singing in the choir for Evensong with (are you ready) Rite One Eucharist at a downtown church. After Evensong we got to spend some lovely time together catching up on life.

A true delight.

And it was good to have Eucharist with Evensong since I'd been in conference sessions all morning and thus hadn't gotten to church.

I Amtrak'd back, believe it or not. Slice of American life on the Crescent, the train that goes from New Orleans to New York.

And now I am home and am going to sleep, take the car to the shop, sleep, catch up on various things of the bureaucratic and paperwork sort (oh joy), sleep some more, and be quiet.

But there will be catch-up and one or two more reports from the Atlanta trip. Eventually.

First a sermon on Scarlett, now a trip to Atlanta

We are being SO Southern.

One of my students and I are off to a conference tomorrow (an annual gig for professors and scholars of religious studies in the region, i.e. the U.S. Southeast, and a regional unit of the big huge conference I go to in November) to learn various things and make a presentation.

The presentation is a workshop of the AAR/SBL Consultation on Teaching Feminism/Womanism and it is called "Religion, Ecofeminism, and Environmental Justice: A Pedagogical Workshop on Engaged Learning & Community Commitments." (I know, very crunchy-granola plus liberation-theology. Yes, I do teach History of Christianity, but that is another course -- which is not easy and has acquired the street name of "the Organic Chemistry of the Religious Studies Department" according to one of my colleagues, though it does have its own grooviness.)

Undergraduates do not usually present at these conferences or even attend them, but it seemed like a bad idea to have a pedagogy workshop on a particular course without the perspective of a student who actually took the course. The same student was my teaching assistant the following year for an introductory-level offshoot of this course called "Health, Spirituality, and Justice." (Another interdisciplinary crunchy-granola course. One a year, whether I need it or not. ;-)) This is also a more feminist way of doing things. And we're driving, not flying. (I don't know how pedagogical that is, it's more like girlz gotta go on road trips.)

I will be making a blog after the conference which will have resources related to this course and to the workshop. Stay tuned.

The other workshop of the AAR/SBL Consultation on Teaching Feminism/Womanism will be by A. Nevell Owens on the topic "Can A Man Teach Women Anything About Women in Religion?: A Pedagogical Workshop on Men in the Feminist Classroom."

Also, Dr. Musa Dube, who was here in the Triangle and Triad regions of North Carolina this week, will be the keynote speaker at the conference, which covers a range of topics but has a focus this year on religion and health.

Her talk is entitled "Go tla Siama, O tla Fola: Doing Biblical Studies in an HIV & AIDS Context" and it will take place at 11 a.m. on Saturday. If you are in Atlanta, write me if you want details, I think we may be able to make arrangements for non-members to come and hear this one. Leave a note in the comments section or write to me at missmayapavlova at gmail dot com.

When I return after the weekend it will be Spring Break, GLORY BE TO GODDE!

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: the speech we need

This is the speech we need to read, or listen to, today. The link has both text and audio.

I've put this up on all the course websites for my students. Texts of it began circulating again after we got into the latest war(s). Note the careful analysis in there. It is a much more dangerous and radical speech than "I Have a Dream."

MLK was assassinated a year to the day after giving it.

It's called "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence." Riverside Church, April 4, 1967. Forty years ago.

Read it. Listen to it.

P.S. I posted this around noon but am amending the time because I had to repost the video below and I want you to see the MLK material when you first arrive. This message brought to you by the tech repair crew at Acts of Hope.

"Women Are Never Front-Runners"

Important op-ed by Gloria Steinem in today's New York Times. I'm pasting the whole thing here since you might have trouble with the web link to the Times if you don't have a login (it's free though, so I will also post the link for you in case you want to start reading the Times online).

Read. Discuss.

WOMEN ARE NEVER FRONT-RUNNERS

The woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.

That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public style — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits.

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”

Correction: An earlier version of this Op-Ed stated that Senator Edward Kennedy had endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has not made an endorsement in the 2008 presidential race.

Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women’s Media Center.