Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Alban at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States for Monday, 5 November 2018 "Alban Weekly: Practicing kindness in the midst of rage"

Alban at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States for Monday, 5 November 2018 "Alban Weekly: Practicing kindness in the midst of rage"

PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS

A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity

CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP

Alaina Kleinbeck: Practicing kindness in the midst of rage

Expulsion of the merchants from the temple by A.N. Mironov

Practicing kindness in

the midst of rage

HOW MIGHT JESUS' WAY INVITE US TO DO A DIFFERENT WAY OF BEING?

Jesus welcomed the oppressed and the oppressor to eat, learn and join him. He did not dehumanize, insult or disparage. How does that invite us to a new way of being?
Rage seems to be an ever-present part of daily life. It's in my conversations with friends and strangers, in the checkout line at the grocery store, at the dinner table, in my social media feeds. And often, frankly, it's in me.

Many times, the rage is a response to violence committed against vulnerable people. It's grounded in real, personal experiences of abuse of power, denial of dignity, manipulation, coercion and harm. Sometimes, it's a response to a gradual erosion of trust between people.

As a Christian, I feel my rage rise when I see the sacred breath of God in one person being used to silence that very breath in another. I find myself frequently astonished by the human capacity to incite anger in one another, to default toward distrust and disbelief, to allow bitterness to fester -- to our own harm. Doubtless, each of us, without much preparation, can name moments when we've witnessed, experienced or even perpetrated such a denial of another's humanity.

While rage in such moments can be justified, it can also rob us of hope and diminish our capacity to engage fruitfully in our relationships, our work and our play.

Recently, in the midst of yet another grueling national media story about women's experiences with sexual violence, author Glennon Doyle asked her social media followers to hold her accountable to being kind in the midst of her rage.
This struck me as a profoundly Christian request, one that convicted and inspired me to reconsider the relationship of kindness and rage.

Jesus was no stranger to rage. His righteous anger turned over tables, cleansed the temple, rebuked friends, exorcised demons and chastised religious leaders. Jesus was prudent in his displays of rage, but the mere fact that he experienced the full range of human emotions brings me comfort.

The Letter to the Hebrews explains: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16 NRSV).

In Jesus, we have a high priest who drew near to the rage we experience, knowing its full potential to harden our spirits toward one another. In Jesus, we have a God who knew real, justified rage. Jesus hid away from the masses when their needs, pain and perversity overwhelmed him and he needed to pray. I can imagine Jesus counting to 10 to let the wave of human emotion ebb before responding to a group of scheming religious leaders or stubborn disciples. In Jesus, we have a God who prayed through raging tears of blood for the whole thing just to end. It is Jesus’ resurrection that gives us hope that rage and death are not the end of our story.

The rage I witness all around me is a deep lament that this world is not as it could or should be. Jesus’ capacity to hold rage and kindness together point me toward a way of being that goes beyond the readily available cultural examples of rage.

When Jesus experienced rage, he did not dehumanize, insult or disparage. Instead of responding with violence, Jesus offered grace, mercy and kindness. Jesus welcomed both oppressed and oppressor, without judgment, to be with him, to eat and learn with him, to experience a different way of being. When Jesus saw people for who they could be and invited them to follow, he was holding his rage and kindness together in powerful and sacred ways.

Jesus had intimate knowledge of what it is like to live in times of rage and death, yet he practiced kindness in every part of his life. The author of Hebrews says that because of this, we can be bold to approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace. I am learning that receiving mercy and finding grace isn’t the end of the story but rather a call to live differently in this world.

At the throne of grace, in the presence of God’s mercy, I am challenged and emboldened to review my rage. Like Doyle, I can ask for help in being kind. At the throne of grace, I can find the peace of mind and endurance of heart to practice kindness in the midst of my profound anger.

Kindness forces us to resist using the real people around us as targets for the rage we feel toward oppressive systems and absent perpetrators. The catharsis we might experience in treating others poorly only sparks further rage in their lives. Causing harm with our rage is not the Christian task.

Like Doyle, I am a white woman. I am aware of the ways I have been formed by a racialized imagination that prescribes and denies emotions according to racial identity. I want to be clear that a conviction to hold rage and kindness together is not a call for the silence of my sisters and brothers of color or others experiencing oppression in systemic forms. Quite the opposite.

Women of color disproportionately bear the burden of oppression while simultaneously being deemed hysterical or irrational when they exhibit rage. It is my sisters of color in the Christian faith who intimately understand Jesus’ rage and kindness and what it means to hold them together. They teach me by example how to live in that tension.

I am learning the need to take a break. Sometimes, I gather with others who have a shared experience and vent rage before attempting to confront the situation again. Sometimes, I spend time alone, processing my rage and praying through it. I am learning that part of my work as a white woman is not to focus on myself but to hold the experiences of the vulnerable at the center of my rage and kindness.

Ultimately, Jesus’ rage was not about him but about his deep yearning for the people of God to take action to put things right in the kingdom of God. Jesus’ other-centered, kingdom-minded anger points me toward the grace, mercy and kindness that I might offer in seasons of unrelenting rage.

A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity

MANAGEMENT, COMMUNICATION, TECHNOLOGY

You can change the conversation

In this archive column from 2014, Managing Director of Alban Nathan Kirkpatrick writes that Christian leaders can reject the tone of current debates and, instead, elevate the level of discoursePerhaps your Facebook feed has resembled mine in the last several weeks. Perhaps you have been inundated with links to articles about Phil Robertson and A&E, Franklin Graham and church trials. Maybe your friends, too, have asked for your opinions on these topics or lobbied for your voice for “their side.” And, if so, perhaps you are feeling a bit baited by all these conversations and by the false choices they represent. I know I am.

It may be helpful in these moments to remember that one of the particular privileges of being a Christian institutional leader or a leader with Christian commitment is that one can reject the terms of debate as they have been offered. By virtue of one’s role and faith commitment, one can change the conversation for the better. One can elevate the level of discourse and can alter the tone of dialogue. One can ignore straw man arguments and litmus tests alike. One can refuse false choices. The conversation can be translated into a theological key, and one can demand more from one’s interlocutors.

For years, I watched as one of my mentors would do just that, and I remember people complaining that he didn’t discuss the most contentious issues in the life of the church. No matter how much they prodded him or complained to him, he persisted in carrying on a different conversation.

In hindsight, what I realize is that he was inviting us to join him in that different conversation, that one conducted on different terms. Though we didn’t have ears to hear it yet, he was rejecting the terms of debate as we offered them and as society offered them. He was asking us to have a more theologically informed discussion with him and with one another. He was asking us to lift our eyes again to the mission of God in the world. Looking back on it, it was a profound model of Christ-shaped leadership, no matter how frustrating it may have been at the time.

I am learning that to do what he did requires a consistent commitment to go deeper into the tradition and into the practices of faith. It is, after all, much easier to join in the conversation than it is to change it. One can only change the conversation when one is grounded and centered, when one has been schooled by the tradition and when one has practiced the disciplines that lead to humility and holiness.

The certain Christlikeness that my mentor displayed is formed gradually. It is the result of a thousand prayers and struggles. It is the result of years befriending the scriptures. It comes when the heart is turned toward God and broken by the world.

It is still the prerogative of the leader to engage people in surprising conversation about serious things in substantive ways. In these reductionist times, when complicated issues are mocked by sound bytes and status updates, it is rare and refreshing when someone dares to do just that..

A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity

CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, PASTORAL LEADERSHIP

Jason Byassee: A pastoral response to meanness

A pastoral response to meanness

In 2009, Jason Byassee asked "What does a pastor say when a visitor curses her at the church door?" He wonders if aggressive kindness might be part of the answer. What does a pastor say when a visitor curses her at the church door? Would "And also with you" work? A pastor friend greeted a visitor after church Sunday. Normally, it’s a joyous moment. If as a pastor you don’t feel the joy, you had better fake it. Look the person in the eye. Thank them for coming. And do everything you can to figure out who they are so you can visit them, encourage them to come back, and bring them into the church.

None of that happened this time.

As the pastor extended her hand the visitor took it, told her she was “a goddamn liar” and stomped out, muttering something about abortion and tax dollars. Apparently the pastor had offended the visitor during the prayer requests, when she referred to the vitriol on display at a political rally in Washington the day before. The pastor’s sermon wasn’t even about that. It didn’t matter.

This verbal assault on a pastor by a stranger struck me as strikingly similar to the “You lie!” that Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted at President Barack Obama during his recent address to Congress. The public yawp of rudeness -- whether at the church door or in the House chamber -- is what is most striking. We do not have a tradition of heckling our head of state in this country. We don’t impugn their characters to their face in front of a world audience. To the best of my knowledge, the same has generally been true for pastors as well. We certainly don’t curse at them in the brief post-worship doorway visits. Or at least we didn’t until recently.

What do these two nasty instances of rudeness, one a public scandal, the other a private exchange, mean? One, as several evangelical authors have pointed out in fine, but clearly underread books, we need to retrieve a culture of civility. Wherever basic kindness has gone, wherever at least minimal deference for positions of authority may be hiding, we could stand to get some of it back. Blame whomever you like (my preference is hate radio). But people used to believe in respect for the office that an authority occupied, even if not for the individual currently holding it. Liberals were naturally guilty of the same disrespect for individuals that blurred into disrespect of an office during George Bush’s presidency. And clearly one visitor to a church needs to learn how to mind her manners.

Second, I’m struck by the enormity of the claim that someone is lying. It’s an extraordinarily high bar to clear to show that someone is knowingly contravening the truth. It’s much easier to claim that someone is wrong, and grant that there may be legitimate difference of opinion on a matter. But to claim that a pastor or president knows a truth and intentionally misleads away from it is another thing altogether.

My third observation is that pastors have a responsibility to stand up and confront rudeness, whether at the doorway on Sunday or in a congregational meeting.

This reflection comes from an incident recounted by another pastor friend. In a contentious congregational meeting, longtime members thundered away about how terrible a proposed new ministry initiative would be, while newer members mostly cowered on the sidelines.

Thinking about the incident later, the pastor asked “Why have we let people think it’s ok to act like that?” As in most congregations, her older members had been faithfully attending, participating and tithing for decades.

But we pastors, being peacemaker types, have not confronted them when they bullied others. This has been a pastoral disservice. To treat a pastor or anyone else like dirt is to act in a way unworthy of the life we are called to as Christians.

Maybe the best way we can push back is with a counter-assault —of kindness.

I’m talking about an aggressive kindness that takes sheer meanness, absorbs it and responds with love. This is not a proposal for wimpiness, but strength. It’s the sort of answer Jesus gives to those who murdered him. Not acquiescence, or passive acceptance, but active, engaged, love -- often of enemies. Brian McLaren writes that the best way to respond to the fanatical hatred we see among fundamentalists is with equal fanaticism— fanatical love. But at the same time, I’m talking about an aggressive kindness that also holds others to account.

Perhaps the best model of aggressive kindness is the civil rights movement, which used engaged nonviolence to hold others accountable and changed the world. Given the rise of angry public discourse we may need a new infusion of it just to survive the average congregational meeting or random angry visitors.

What would kindness have meant in my friends’ situations? At the door, maybe nothing. Maybe a simple “We don’t talk that way in this house,” would have been kind enough.

In routine congregational life, a pastor might not be the best person to insist on kindness from parishioners. Healthy churches often have a leader or two who is willing to take another aside and talk sense to them. Pastors come and go. Fellow patriarchs or matriarchs stay behind. One who has the guts to insist on kindness from a fellow parishioner goes a long way toward a healthy congregation—one in which would-be bullies aren’t allowed to gore the innocent without challenge.

A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity

Resistance and healing after the election

After the last presidential election, the CEO of Sojourners said that it was time for listening and learning. With the midterm elections ahead in the United States, how might we continue to practice those skills? Christians are called to healing and resistance -- though not necessarily in that order, said Robert Wilson-Black, the CEO of Sojourners, in an interview that took place five days before the Nov. 8 presidential election.

"If it's President Trump, it's resistance and healing," Wilson-Black said. "If it's President Clinton, it's healing and resistance."

"What I mean by that is Sojourners, along with other progressive Christians, doesn't sit in a camp where we take our directives from a political party or a president," he said. "We take ours from the gospel."

No matter who is in the White House, Christians "still need to resist the ways in which any president leads a country that harms the vulnerable and that basically goes against what we consider to be gospel values," Wilson-Black said.

The task for the church in that process of healing will be, first, to listen and stay focused on the gospel, on the "good news" for the poor.

"There's a lot of listening, a lot of learning to do," he said.

As CEO of Sojourners since 2013, Wilson-Black manages the organization, working with the board of directors and with president and founder Jim Wallis.

Wilson-Black has a Ph.D. and an A.M. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from the University of Richmond.

Sojourners is a nonprofit organization that publishes the Sojourners magazine and website, covering the intersection of faith, politics and culture, generally from a progressive, evangelical perspective.

Wilson-Black was at Duke recently to deliver the lecture "What do we owe one another? A new social covenant and theory of change to make sense of the times," and he spoke with Faith & Leadership. The following is an edited transcript.

Q: What is the role of Sojourners as a progressive, liberal evangelical magazine on the religious landscape today?

We have a couple of roles. The first is to resource the people who've been following us -- Catholics, progressive evangelicals, mainline Protestants -- giving them the content, the inspiration and the connection they need.

And then second, we play the bridge-builder role. That's where, for example, we have our board member David Gushee write an article about LGBTQ in the Scriptures. We're able to build that bridge across parts of the body of Christ that are hurting and in pain and haven't figured out how to understand the Scriptures deeply enough to be able to talk with their neighbor. We play that role on a number of issues.

And then the third role is more evangelical, reaching out to share the good news of Jesus Christ and how Jesus taught us to turn our eye toward those who have less power, those who have less of a voice, those being pushed to the margins.

Q: What's your assessment of the current state of evangelical Christianity, and in particular, progressive evangelical Christianity?

A couple of things are important to remember. No. 1, we're called by God not to be successful but faithful. The things that are considered successful or unsuccessful in our culture are turned around by the gospel. It doesn't mean that you can be lazy or that failure or less than excellence is expected in our work, but it means, when you're looking at larger things you can't control, faithful is more important than successful.

The second thing is, power has decreased not only for mainline Protestants since the late 1950s, early '60s; over the last 10 years, the Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, has also been seeing decline. And if you track the numbers, you'll see that many young evangelicals want no part of the institutional church, along with the rise of the "nones," or the "underaffiliated," as I call them. So fewer people are turning to those traditional institutions.

But also, right now we're seeing some tectonic plate shifts in how people think about faith in the late modern world, how they are able to understand religion itself.

If myth is an authoritative narrative and people are living into all kinds of myths, what about the question of authority and what about metanarratives? Do we believe in overarching narratives, or do we have kind of a hermeneutics of suspicion regarding all metanarratives? There's that kind of questioning.

So these massive shifts are occurring -- culturally, intellectually, socially. The way we connect with people is very different these days. We have virtual lives well outside of our face-to-face lives. When you put all this together, it's very difficult for institutions to navigate.

It's a complicated time, and we have to be faithful to our call.

Q: What does that mean for progressive evangelical Christianity in the future?

We have a particular call right now to help people who find no more oxygen in their faith life. They're looking for something to give them breathing room in their understanding of the Scriptures and of institutional church and the late modern world. And progressive Christianity actually can offer that, because we have a capacious and loving "generous orthodoxy," to quote our former board chair Brian McLaren.

The second good thing about progressive evangelicalism and progressive Christianity at this moment is that it is a great re-entry point into the gospel for those who are fed up with institutional church or who put their faith in a little box somewhere and forgot about it and don't seem to have it anymore.

Why? Because if you look at the pains and agony and difficulties of the world -- which could be very much highlighted in this election season -- progressive Christianity doesn't have simplistic answers, such as, "Just follow this, and all your pain will go away."

It brings the theology of "We will be with you during this tough time." Which is, of course, what Jesus says to us: "I will be with you; I may not be able to solve everything."

At the same time, progressive Christianity is all about trying to play a role in solving the greatest social ills that we're facing.

What better way to provide both to the nones and whatnot? "You know those things you care about, underaffiliated folk? We care about those, too, and here's a lens on the gospel that gets us into solving those problems."

"You also have difficulties with institutional church? Come, let us reason together."

Q: You're at Duke to give a presentation entitled "What do we owe one another?" What is that about?

It's an examination of the phrase "What do we owe one another?" Do we owe one another nothing? Something? More than we thought we did? More than we'd like to admit? Everything?

Q: That's a great question for the current political climate.

I found that to be the case.

On one hand, for example, you can look at redlining maps of hundreds of cities in the United States, where billions of dollars were sucked out of the African-American community -- potential gains and actual gains in real estate -- by segregating people. What do you owe people when that has happened?

And then, likewise, Black Lives Matter has asked, what do you owe people in terms of doing no harm? Leviticus 25:17 -- "Do not take advantage of one another." What does that mean in the context of Black Lives Matter?

And then you have people who say they have so much less power than they thought: "My children have left my faith. My job has evaporated. I don't have a future economically. The culture seems to be shifting in a way that's not me. What happened to the culture that I thought I had?"

What do you say to those people?

What do we owe one another?

And then as a Christian, Jesus calls us to follow his example, and he was willing to give his life. What does it mean to owe one another that?

And then technically, we owe any number of things, from our taxes to covenants we've made at our religious institutions to covenants we've made to take care of our parents in their old age.

We literally have a set of about 20 to 30 things that we owe other people, either literally, in the sense of a financial obligation, or morally, to our parents or others, to take care of them.

The question is a call for a deep reflection on what we owe one another. Even if you decide you owe nothing, then reflect on that theologically. What does that mean in your tradition?

If you say we owe nothing to each other, you're really exempting yourself from all associative behavior, and religious organizations.

Certainly, some folks interpret it that way, but I don't agree. To become a more flourishing democracy, you need that.

Q: So what do we do with that? What do we owe one another?

I call for three things.

One, spend an hour sitting down, figuring out what you owe other people. I did it and came up with 30 things that I owe, literally.

The second thing we do with that question is search the Scriptures. For me, it's the Christian Scriptures. If you're not a practicing person of faith with scriptures or traditions to turn to, then turn to the moral, ethical scriptures of your own life and ask through that lens.

Third, figure out how can you act on these first two parts. If you've taken a personal inventory and you've run it through the lens, what's the third step? How can I be more a part of this rich web of owing and being owed, and live into that?

It can be small practices. Maybe when I pull into a gas station and fill up, I look around at the other people and think about their lives and think about how I may be connected to them. It's really just spiritual practices. And then maybe I think, "Oh, they've got kids in the car; I wonder if they're getting a good education?"

If you do those three steps, it may mean very little change in your behavior. Or it may mean some change in behavior. But it's certainly a different way of viewing things and living in the world. It can be a richer experience, realizing I was owed, I am owed, I owe.

Q: The general election is next week, and by the time this interview is published, we'll know the winner. But sitting here today, imagine you wake up next Wednesday morning and Donald Trump is the president-elect. What's your thought? What do we do?

It's resistance and healing.

Resistance to anything that President Trump would do that is going to harm other individuals. That can mean everything from people taking to the streets to actually forcing the hand, policywise, protecting the most vulnerable.

It's really an enhancement of resistance -- being prepared to be imprisoned, being prepared to go the extra mile as faithful Christians to resist, in the same way that we resist the use of drones in the current administration.

Q: Same question. You wake up next Wednesday and Hillary Clinton is the president-elect. What's your thought? What do we do?

For me, then it's healing and resistance. Notice I switched them. If it's President Trump, it's resistance and healing. If it's President Clinton, it's healing and resistance.

What I mean by that is Sojourners, along with other progressive Christians, don't sit in a camp where we take our directives from a political party or a president; we take ours from the gospel.

What that means for those two different Wednesday mornings is you'll still need to resist the ways in which any president leads a country that harms the vulnerable and that basically goes against what we consider to be gospel values.

But the healing part is critical for both. What does that mean? It doesn't mean pandering to the people who feel like they've been left out, but it does mean helping them to imagine a new way of participating in the country when they feel like they've lost. You can often judge any great society by how they treat people at the "bottom," by any metrics you have, or losers, people who've lost something.

We need to attend to that. What do the Scriptures say about people who feel on the margins?

It's certainly a time of listening and healing and attending to.

Q: What's the role for the church in that healing process?

One, the pastor and the church leadership has to be in a nonpartisan stance of listening. You can have justice on your mind and heart but not be politically partisan. There's a big difference between national elections and living out faithfully.

Second, churches have the ability to keep the gospel at the center, and the gospel is about good news, good news for the poor. It takes you straight to Matthew 25 -- "I was hungry" -- and if that is the center, that does have a healing way.

And the third way, we don't know yet. We have to be attentive as the church to how that healing will happen. There's a lot of listening, a lot of learning to do. What will our role be? You just don't know on Wednesday what that will be. Stay prayerful.

Read the interview with Robert Wilson-Black »

FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY

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by Thomas G. Kirkpatrick

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