On
May 24th, Ascension Sunday
, Pastor Nancy Petty issued a direct challenge to Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. The Deacon Council felt it was important for us to respond publicly to that call.
Helping us see the imagery of Jesus’ ascension as a passing of the baton, Nancy said: “The baton of racial justice has been passed to us. If we are committed to not fumbling the pass there are things we need to do as a community.” She issued six specific challenges:
- that every member of Pullen read one of the following: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article from the July/August 2015 issue of The Atlantic entitled “The Case for Reparations”; Howard Thurman’s book, Jesus and the Disinherited; or Kelly Brown Douglas’ book, Stand your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God;
- that we conduct a review of our constitution and bylaws and church policies and procedures, including our worship traditions, to determine where they reinforce racial bias;
- that we initiate a six-month theologian-in-residence program in which we invite more people of color to work alongside us as we develop a theological framework for our racial justice work;
- that we form a working group to identify those who need our radical welcome right now and discern how we can better shape our work in this world to meet their needs;
- that we define, specifically, how we will use our resources to fight poverty beyond what we are already doing;
- that we recognize and internalize the intersectionality of race, gender, poverty, and all the other social justice issues we work on, especially ecological devastation.
Importantly, these six steps are just the first in a larger movement: to strive toward becoming an anti-racist church. The Deacon Council wholeheartedly endorses Nancy’s anti-racist platform for Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. We support her call for us to focus intensely on efforts to fight policies and contest actions that accept or reinforce inequality among racial groups, both within the walls of Pullen and outside them.
Striving to become an anti-racist church will be hard. Like liberation itself, it is a movement that is never-ending. There is no certification process, no checklist with which to measure progress, no clear finish line to cross. As Dr. Ibram X. Kendi writes in
How to be an Antiracist
: “No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other… Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.” Kendi emphasizes we all can knowingly or unknowingly reinforce racism one moment and fight racism the next. We cannot purify ourselves of racism. The question instead is whether our actions and words challenge or reinforce racial inequalities. When we fight racial inequalities, we are being anti-racist.
But if not us, then who? Pullen’s activism for the oppressed is rooted in the radical teachings and life of Jesus Christ. Those roots pass through the deep soil of John T. Pullen, from whose call to serve the most marginalized we draw sustenance. Those roots send forth shoots in our new member welcoming statement, in which we Pullenites commit ourselves to “journey together in the spirit that we are ever becoming.” Those shoots sprout more fully in our sanctuary art, where the anchoring text summarizes our vision for our community: “Ever embracing, ever becoming.”
Pullen’s tradition of ever embracing and ever becoming well suits the effort to be an antiracist congregation. Like Pullen itself, anti-racism is a process that is based on communal discernment, but driven by collective action. We, the Deacons, commit ourselves to lead the community of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in this long and hard, but necessary and life-giving movement.
Our staff have set a strong example of antiracism throughout the recent weeks’ protests following the murder of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. They have participated actively in the protests, sometimes as representatives of Pullen, sometimes as individuals. In the spirit of antiracism, we fully endorse their engagement as staff members of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. We further recognize their right to represent Pullen while maintaining their freedom of conscience in the policies they support.
You will hear more in the days ahead about specific plans to begin this journey. We invite every member of this community to join us in this work. If you have questions or thoughts about this platform and the process, we welcome them.
You may direct those to Mark Nance (
marknance@yahoo.com
) or any member of the Deacon Council.
In the spirit of ever embracing, ever becoming,
Members of the Deacon Council
