Tag Archives: Desmond Tutu

It might be a kairos time for renewal

A life in the Spirit, Leadership, Life as the church, The Mission, , , ,

The president of Sojourners, Adam Russell Taylor, is prophetically optimistic about what might emerge from the rubble of this fractious, darkening time. As he pondered what’s going on, he drew from what he learned in the 1990’s from South Africans, especially Desmond Tutu. He faced the question: “Will we meet the opportunity of this Kairos moment like they did?” You are probably asking your own questions – or avoiding them.

A kairos moment is the perfect, critical, or opportune time to say or do a particular thing. The ancient Greek concept of kairos is a qualitative kind of time, which is different from the quantitative, linear concept of chronos. In a kairos moment, like Taylor says we are in, the weight and meaning of the situation matter more than the duration. We tend to sense a kairos moment when we run into it, if we are aware enough. We respond to one rather than  create one.

I was also in South Africa in the 90’s, not long after I came to Philadelphia to help plant Circle of Hope [link to the book]. The Philadelphia Leadership Foundation recruited members from its ranks to create a multiethnic mediation team to apply some skills to bridging what divides our city. We travelled to South Africa to learn from the experts. Unfortunately, our time with Tutu was cancelled because he was an important guy and needed more elsewhere.

We did not become an ongoing force for change as a group, but I know we carried some great lessons to apply to our individual situations when the time was right. The church and the dreamers in the world have spent a lot of time since the 90’s filling our minds and hearts with a yearning for justice and equality. They have salted the Earth and made a difference. Maybe more of what they planted is about to come up at just the right time, right now. I think we could see some fruit when millions of young people around the world took to the streets this year to demand an end to the mass killing of Gazans. Trump is flying to the Middle East to take credit for a cease fire deal. But millions of people caring for the poor and oppressed was what really turned the tide. And one day all that caring applied to the rest of what is being broken will win the day after the oligarchs and their enablers are dust — or so Taylor and I hope.

Here is part of what Adam Russell Taylor wrote in an editorial for Sojourners last week.

I first learned about the theological concept of kairos while studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa in 1996. South African faith leaders taught me that, as compared to chronos, or time as we know it and traditionally experience it, kairos moments are precipitated by times in which our current reality becomes so pernicious and fraudulent that God can create a moment of opportunity for propitious action and transformation.

As I think about the alarming things we’ve seen in the U.S. this year—eviscerated foreign aid, a gutted federal workforce, tax cuts for the 1% at the expense of Medicaid and food stamps, National Guard troops deployed against U.S. cities, indiscriminate immigration raids, an almost complete retreat on addressing our climate crisis, attacks on media outlets and free speech, and other tactics that mirror authoritarian regimes—I’m increasingly sensing that we are in the midst of a kairos moment. Further signs came to a head this past week with the horror of five mass shootings in one weekend, a costly government shutdown, and an alarming and bizarre summoning of 800 generals and admirals to the White House in which President Donald Trump pledged to dangerously misuse the military to come after the “enemy from within.”

We are not the first nation or the first Christians to face a kairos moment. In July 1985, South Africa was in an even deeper crisis. The apartheid government had declared a state of emergency and dramatically escalated mass detentions, repression, and state violence while cracking down on the media. Despite growing international opposition, the apartheid state was doubling down on its repression. Many church leaders in South Africa, especially in the Dutch Reformed Church, misused and weaponized the Bible to justify the apartheid system of racial separation and oppression. Meanwhile, many other Christians remained silent and complacent in the face of increasing repression, staying on the sidelines of the anti-apartheid struggle.

In response, a group of South African church leaders, theologians, and Christian activists gathered to pen the Kairos Document, an open-ended document of faith-inspired resistance to apartheid. Its authors critiqued “state theology,” which they defined as Christianity that justifies “the status quo with its racism, capitalism, and totalitarianism” and “blesses injustice, canonizes the will of the powerful and reduces the poor to passivity, obedience, and apathy.” They also critiqued factions of the church who accepted the argument that the South African government’s repression was justified to maintain law and order, as well as those within the church who pleaded for racial reconciliation without first attending to injustice.

“We are a divided Church precisely because not all the members of our Churches have taken sides against oppression,” wrote the authors. “Unity and reconciliation within the Church itself is only possible around God and Jesus Christ who are to be found on the side of the poor and the oppressed.” [Full article]

That weed-strewn kairos

For thirty years I have been inspired by the faithfulness and tenacity of the people who led the movement to overturn apartheid in South Africa and build a new nation. I don’t think their vision had a long shelf life, after Mandela. But their improved nation still chugs along. And the seeds of justice and people power they planted have grown into several generations of people who can’t be easily turned by more promises built on the lies of power-hungry men.

We’ll see what the seeds planted in the U.S. finally become when the sunshine of this kairos moment dawns on them. It could be amazing. People like Adam Russell Taylor, Desmond Tutu and probably you will feel the urge to sprout from the rubble like plucky spiritual weeds always do.

Forgiveness begins reconciliation: “White” supremacy and the Smith family

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Last week in our cell, we talked about the Theological Declaration on Christian Faith and White Supremacy which our pastors (including me) signed and asked us all to consider. After the outburst of anger and pain in St. Louis last week, it makes our hope for reconciliation even more radical in the face of society’s persistent injustice. But like the authors of the declaration, we have hope.

True. But “white,” “silence,” and “complicity” could all mean more than they appear if you asked our cell’s members.

We have a relatively large cell, so our reactions to the declaration fell on quite a spectrum. Some did not read much of the statement since it was so long. Some found it hard to understand. Some had never heard of it, yet. But once I provided the gist of it, we all had stories about racist people who don’t get it and our own feelings about white supremacy. So-called white people had their own experiences of wearing supremacy to share.

In the course of our dialogue, I remembered a verse from Jesus Loves Me, which I learned when my parents dropped me off for Sunday School. Many people had never heard it. I looked it up on Google to make sure it actually existed! Sure enough:

Jesus loves me, Indian boy
Bow and arrow for a toy
Big Filipino, wee Chinese
Living far across the seas.

The verse is a nice, little lesson for “Jesus loves everybody, even people who are not ‘us.’” The sentiment is nice, as long as you can erase the white supremacy from the mixture (which is unlikely, of course). The song also teaches that we are the center of the universe and tall Filipinos (they are the little ones in other versions) and those wee Chinese people with their funny clothes and language are also partakers of our grace. I say “our” because God gave it to us to give to them. They’ve gotten into this Christianity we have owned for a long time. All that is also laced into the message and fed to youngsters.

Click picture for PBS story

For instance, after Charlottesville, the members of the BIC List had an argument as to whether white supremacy exists. I imagine some are shaking their heads over the family members of Anthony Lamar Smith who were at the forefront of protests  in St. Louis after Jason Stockley was acquitted of murder last week. While the family already received $900,000 in their wrongful death suit, justice for the policeman, personally, did not happen in their estimation. All this again reminded so-called black people to remember that they can be killed by the police without repercussion.

What do Jesus followers do in the face of this?

To be clear, it would be impossible to list all the things Jesus followers do about these things because they do a lot, from trying to change the justice system, to alleviating the impoverishing impact of injustice, to invading the prison system with grace, to flooding the streets with those who are brave enough to say “No!.” Many of our members in Circle of Hope are leading us every day to do a lot.

But generally, what should we all do about white supremacy, the long oppression that continues to raise its ugly, often-denied head?

Repent

So-called white people need to repent. The violence, self-aggrandizement, systemic division and oppression, the persistent self-interest all happened; it created and maintains white supremacy. Yes, you may not have done much personally, but you continue to benefit, whether you want the white privilege or not. Donald Trump is the president of white privilege. The election was a whitelash. Maybe the whole term “white” will begin its long-needed decline, soon, but it is alive and destructive right now. To repent means admitting the sin and turning away from it. Admitting is not quite enough. It is the turning that transforms and heals.

Forgive

So-called white people can forgive themselves so “people of color” (yes, that is the pernicious label for everyone who is not “white”) can get along without having to comfort you in your guilt. Guilt might be a starting point, if you have never felt it about your privilege. But that should last for about five minutes, maybe. If you carry your guilt like a badge of your awareness, it is, essentially, yet another feature of your privilege.

So-called black people, of all the people who experience the ill-effects of white supremacy, need to forgive, if they follow Jesus. Desmond Tutu taught this so much during the South African transformation that he put it all in a book: No Future without Forgiveness. Here’s a quote:

“To forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, that greatest good, communal harmony that enhances the humanity and personhood of all in the community.”

Forgiveness is the beginning point, like Jesus says. Forgive as you have been forgiven. As Tutu adds, it makes you human and no one can take that from you.

…working in the lives of all genders, of course.

Many “people of color” to whom I have spoken are afraid not being angry and out for retribution makes them disengaged or cowardly, even a traitor. That could be true. But getting loud for justice can also be an endless, unproductive fight against the windmill of evil humanity. Jesus followers are going to keep prophesying and acting, but if that’s all we’ve got, good luck. Martin Luther King had more than that to motivate his efforts. Here’s a point from one of his early sermon outlines:

Forgiveness is a process of life and the Christian weapon of social redemption. Forgiveness is always spoken of for others. Give Peter’s attempt to put it in legal and statistical terms.[How many times should I forgive?]

Here then is the Christian weapon against social evil. We are to go out with the spirit of forgiveness, heal the hurts, right the wrongs and change society with forgiveness. Of course we don’t think this is practical.

This is the solution of the race problem.

Forgiveness is often mistaken for reconciliation. If the dominated believer thinks that forgiveness means everything is settled, a call to forgiveness could mean “I need to roll over and take what the oppressor dishes out because I forgave them” or “I need to make it work for white people because I love Jesus.” That’s not accurate. Forgiveness begins the road to reconciliation, which is God’s goal. We forgive for the redemption of the person who sins against us, not to preserve their status quo. Forgiveness is a weapon of transformation, not the imposition of self-denial, as if not being my true self in Christ will help the world, as if letting someone live a lie will save them from some suffering. In the hands of Jesus, forgiveness is the tool that begins the possibility of new individuals and instills the hope of the beloved community. Without it, we just keep using the tools of the world to change the world, and nothing really changes; no one is new and no new community is formed. Perhaps something changes in us, though, since we become the tools of hatred and violence.

In our cell we were tempted to refight all the battles the world foists upon us when I brought up white supremacy, how it labels us this or that, creates division, rewards white people and despises the rest. One of our members with an “Asian” background (who has a great story about teaching some racist tormenters about his culture and changing his environment one time), reoriented us when he talked about having nothing when his family arrived as immigrants to the United States and now having houses in which to live. He had a perspective which differed from most of us. We see things in many different ways in our diverse church. As my friend finished his story, I secretly celebrated our capacity to have a great conversation about white supremacy and still enjoy the cookies. We all took a sweet next step on the road to the beloved community.