A few weeks ago, I posted here about an interview I published elsewhere with the new leader of the Cleveland-based mainline liberal Protestant denomination, the United Church of Christ (UCC). At a time when Pope Francis is grabbing headlines and will address a joint session of Congress, I have (although I suppose I should not have been) surprised that the leader of Congregationalism, the direct institutional descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims is rarely and barely covered by domestic religion reporters. For those who are not familiar with this historic church, it may be most familiar as the denomination of most of those little white wooden churches on the village greens of New England. It has also been the church of such prominent Americans as Andrew Young, Howard Dean, Julian Bond, William Sloane Coffin, and Barack Obama.
I had the opportunity to write ask him about his vision for his tenure as the newly elected General Minister and President of the UCC. He told me, among many other things:
Congregational faith was the byproduct of a movement that swept across the European continent designed to remove the constraints of faith from the clutches of a hierarchy that had attached itself to empire.
Built into the DNA of the congregational way was this impulse to entrust each passing generation with the responsibility to make the faith come alive in their time....
We have always asked each generation to reinterpret the practices of the faith in order to prevent either a stale faith that lost its ability to feed a hungry people; and, as important, to mitigate against the tendency to be co-opted by establishment authority as a tool for control.
The other main—and more controversial—theme of his tenure will be to address white privilege. Dorhauer, a middle-aged, straight white man with three children, brings to the job a decade of experience in this area, following his doctoral work on how white privilege poses obstacles to a just church and society.
Nevertheless, some of the 4,000 delegates to the biannual General Synod in Cleveland in June questioned whether the election of “another white male” was consistent with the denomination’s commitment to diversity. But in a dramatic session prior to the vote, Dorhauer was prominently endorsed by two African-American pastors, including The Rev. Traci Blackmon of Florissant, Missouri, one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement [and a member of the Ferguson Commission, which recently released its recommendations after the Michael Brown episode]. The other, The Rev. Damond Jackson of Tempe, Arizona said, “John Dorhauer is a person of privilege in the world we live in, but he has used his white, heterosexual, male power to lift those who live in the world of no-communication, the world of the unheard.”
“Here I am, a gay, black male, born and raised in the South,” Jackson continued, “and John sought me out. I love him.”
Dorhauer’s election was endorsed by 85% of the delegates.
The UCC’s democratic expression of Christianity is a far cry from more conservative and authoritarian forms of church governance. The General Synod delegates knew Dorhauer well, and his election is an expression of where the church is already going. John Dorhauer has been given as profound a democratic mandate for leadership as exists in public life.
Below is a further excerpt about Dorhauer's thoughts about white privilege. He says it is part of a "sacred conversation" that is
already ongoing in the church, which has also started a blog
New Sacred,
addressing this, among many other matters in the UCC.
What do you think can be done to address white privilege in the UCC?
The first thing that can be done is to raise awareness of the existence of privilege—something that most of those who are the recipients of it don’t admit. People with privilege perpetuate the mythology that everything they have they have earned and that those who go without basic human necessities should just work harder.
I want to challenge the United Church of Christ to develop a set of curricula for local churches that engage them in a process of awareness. When I taught white privilege at Eden Seminary, I would ask the students every day to come back to the next class with answers to one question: “What did you see?”
We won’t be able to dismantle privilege until we can help those who most benefit from it—namely white, heterosexual males—to see its daily manifestation in their lives.
Therefore, we initially want to engage in a deeper conversation oriented towards this seeing. We will start by developing materials to help largely white UCC churches take notice of their “possessive investment in whiteness.” Among those materials will be what we might call a “white audit” handbook.
By this I simply mean an objective analysis of the ways in which whiteness as a social construct are established as their norm. A white audit might include an examination of, for example:
How many pictures of God and Jesus portray them as white?
Of the books in your pastor’s office, how many of the authors are other than white?
How many vendors that the church uses are companies owned and operated by whites?
How many sermons were preached in the last year confronting white privilege and/or racial injustice?
Then we have to figure out how we can become a white ally.
Becoming a white ally is about choosing to engage in both the intentional dismantling of white privilege and the active creation of a just redistribution of wealth commensurate with gospel values and consistent with a commitment a vision of racial equality those values call for.
This is the harder challenge. Assuming our efforts engender a broader and deeper recognition of privilege, the simple truth is that as a small denomination we can’t make commitments on behalf of an entire culture so deeply invested in white privilege.
Nonetheless, to quote Billy Joel, “I have been a fool for lesser things.” And there are some tangible things we can do. Such as:
Intentionally committing to calling black pastors or hiring black employees
Voting to donate a percentage of a church’s income/offerings to minority communities, as a way of engendering a deeper discussion about reparations,
When closing a church, voting to gift its remaining assets or property to a minority owned 501(c)3
Teaching members to confront overt racism when they see it
Choosing vendors from minority-owned businesses
Creating scholarships for minority students
Asking the United Church of Christ to engage in this new sacred conversation is a way of being consistent with our core values. It may be difficult and it will likely be met with fierce resistance. But it also has the potential to continue in meaningful ways what our leaders committed to a generation ago during the Civil Rights movement—a world in which all will not only be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, but in which all will receive just compensation for the fruits of their labor.
Read the whole story,
here.
Follow Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer on Twitter if you are a progressive, because he considers himself "part of the progressive movement." Follow him if you are interested in everything from Christian perspectives on marriage equality, climate change, economic justice, white privilege, reproductive justice, and much more. He is certainly not the only one, but this is what progressive Christianity looks like. And so does the UCC. Follow the UCC on Twitter too.