Category Archives: Racial Justice

Birmingham Institute for Social Change, coming to Beloved this June & July

BISC 2015 flier

Share This:

What Can White People Do About Racism? Thursday, April 23rd, 6:30 pm

What Can White People Do About Racism

 

Presented by Black Lives Matter-Birmingham and Magic City Agriculture Project.

Thursday, April 23rd, 2015, 6:30 pm at Beloved Community Church.

All people are welcome.

Share This:

Lenten Reflections: On the Bridge

Last week, several of our Beloveds traveled to Selma along with members of First Congregational Church, Pilgrim Church and Covenant UCC to commemorate the Bloody Sunday Bridge Crossing. Here are some of our reflections.

“As a white women, being in Selma was like reconnecting a bridge between the ignorance that has been my black history lessons, and the reality of 50 years ago. Bloody Sunday is the point of contact for that bridge – a moment in history which embodies so starkly the experience of so many black folks in America for too many years, and too many years which linger into the present.
Continue reading Lenten Reflections: On the Bridge

Share This:

Selma 50th Anniversary Bridge Crossing Jubilee: God’s Work Continues Among God’s People

Thousands returned to Selma this weekend to remember God’s liberation of God’s people and to rekindle a sense of purpose and unity, to go back into the world with eyes and hearts and minds wide open to those things that stand between the people of God and the justice, mercy and abundant life promised by God

The Selma commemoration is act of remembrance, of gratitude to God and people of faith and courage. It is also an act of recommitment to be about God’s work in the world –

Bloody Sunday brought to light the American state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans and the liberating spirit of God to bring an end to that violence and bondage.

That is the liberating work of the spirit of God even now, and if it is God’s work, it is our work.

As John Legend said, “Selma is Now!”

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two to three Black people were lynched every week in the American South. The same number of Black people are now killed every week now by white police officers; a Black person is killed every 28 hours at the hands of police.

To end this violence and bondage is the liberating work of the spirit of God today, and if it is God’s work, it is our work.

This we know: Nothing and no one will stand in the way of the liberating spirit of God.

Share This:

Lenten Reflection from Rev. Angie: Our Business

I was stunned to read the results of an al.com poll about how people of faith should respond to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the failure to indict the police officer who shot him. Here are the results:

3.9%      Hold a peaceful protest as a statement of solidarity
13.6%     Work to prevent racial violence because it could happen in Alabama too
28.0%     Pray for the Brown family and everyone who is hurting
54.4%     This isn’t a faith issue. It’s a matter of law and order.

Over 54% chose “do nothing” (“This isn’t a faith issue”) over prayer (“Pray for the Brown family and those who are hurting”)!
Continue reading Lenten Reflection from Rev. Angie: Our Business

Share This:

New Year’s Revolutions

Mt5

Instead of New Year’s resolutions, I have something else in mind: New Year’s Revolutions.

A revolution is a radical change, a change at the root, a complete turning.

A revolution casts out forces of death and replaces them with forces that are just and life-giving. Continue reading New Year’s Revolutions

Share This:

Sheep, Goats and Jesus people

Matthew+25+40

I was amazed to see

That the appointed scripture reading for today

Is Matthew 25:

When you did unto the least of these,

You did unto me.

Continue reading Sheep, Goats and Jesus people

Share This:

On shame

“If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” Isaiah 58:9-11

Every Sunday, I tell my flock at Beloved Community Church:

“No matter where you have been, no matter what you have done, no matter what has been done to you, you are still precious in the eyes of God.”

I say this every week because I know that shame keeps so many people from walking into the wide-open arms of a loving God. So many of us have internalized a corrosive shame not only for mistakes we have made and wrong turns we have taken, but for who we are and even for what others have done to us.

People have pointed their fingers at us (ok, even the middle one), shamed us, to the point that we believe the lies they have told us about ourselves. Many of us have internalized a shame for who we are, or for who we are not. Our parents may have convinced us that we just were not enough – not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not strong enough, not giving enough; somehow we failed them when their lives didn’t measure up.

Some hear every day that there is something shameful about who they are as a people. For African-Americans, this dehumanizing public shaming has been codified, enshrined in custom and law, and justified by scripture. If you want to think that this no longer happens, look to last week’s release of a federal Department of Education study documenting that Black children make up about 18 percent of children in preschool programs in schools, but almost half of those who are suspended more than once. Preschoolers are being shamed and internalizing that shame, and it is corrosive to the soul.

But it’s not just race – it’s also about gender. Girls start to see themselves as sex objects as young as 6 years old. They are losing their sense of self-worth as children and it is corrosive to the soul.

Public shaming happens to anyone who loves someone who society or community says they should not love. Certainly same-sex lovers are shamed. So are interracial couples and those who fall in love outside their religion, or tribe, taken literally or metaphorically.

And then there is the victim’s shame – what someone did to you becomes your own shame. The shame of the victim of rape – think of the girls who were tormented to the point of suicide after reporting gang-rape by popular football players.

Think of the shame someone feels when his or her spouse has had an affair – even though s/he has done nothing wrong. Children often internalize shame about their parents’ divorce, unless parents are intentional about reassuring them that it is not their fault. Victims absorb the shame of their own wounds.

Jesus didn’t deal in shame.

When I read the story of “the woman caught in adultery,” as it is commonly called (she was caught practicing adultery all by herself, right?), I think about the pointing of fingers, the public shaming. She was dragged into the public square, surrounded by men ready to stone her to death for her sin. This was what the religious law allowed.

Instead of pointing his finger at this sinful woman or even at judgmental and hypocritical men, Jesus knelt down and used his finger to draw in the sand. Without looking anyone directly in the eye, he said, ‘you who is without sin throw the first stone.’ The men slowly walked away, some dignity and integrity intact.

Instead of pointing his finger at the woman, he stood up and met her eye to eye.

He said to her, “Woman I do not condemn you. I will not shame you.”

He would not throw the first stone. He would not cast shame. He set her free, with the possibility of new life.

It’s tough to resist blame and shame, especially if you have been hurt or threatened. It’s tough to see the image of God in every person.

Sometimes it feels a lot better to point that shaming finger than to do something else with it even if it means drawing in the sand, to keep from pointing it at someone else, causing them to feel shame or blame.

But what abundant life we are promised when we learn to cease the pointing of the finger, the casting of shame.

-Rev. Angie Wright

Share This: