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El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido

There were about fifty of us church "dignitaries" from about twenty countries, including representatives from Latin America, Europe, and the U.S., flying into San Salvador on Palm Sunday weekend to honor our friend and mentor, Archbishop Oscar A. Romero, assassinated the previous Monday while saying Mass.

Despite the nature of the occasion, there was something of a nervous joviality as we greeted one another in the processional lineup. No one was unaware that the funeral posed its own dangers. There would be more than a hundred thousand people attending. The government, we knew, was not in control of its own military and security forces. The manner of the archbishop’s dying had shown once more that assassins were on the loose, professional killers for whom nothing was sacred.

Why go to such a country, to such a funeral, at such a time? I assume that as with others, many of whom, like myself, had become close friends of the archbishop during the three brief years of his leadership, the call to honor his memory was stronger than the hovering sense of possible mass violence. Perhaps some were simply "assigned" by a higher-up who chose not to go. In any case I had learned to treasure this gentle prophet who had brought faith and hope to millions in a country where resignation and despair had become a way of life.

And so, on a radiantly brilliant day, the Mass began in a bit of disarray. An altar was improvised at the top of the stairs leading to the main entrance of the old, unfinished cathedral adjacent to the National Palace, headquarters of the government. Archbishop Romero’s coffin had been placed at the foot of the stairs, protected by a six-foot metal fence. I stood at the altar beside the pope’s representative, Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, archbishop of Mexico City.

The plaza was jammed with the archbishop’s flock -- mostly poor people on whose behalf his voice had been so compelling. They were there, I presume, for the same reason as we friends from abroad: The call to honor his memory was greater than the danger they perceived. Fifteen minutes after the Mass began, I saw an orderly column of some five hundred enter the plaza, marching eight abreast behind banners that identified them as representatives of the huge coalition of popular organizations called "La Coordinadora Revolucionaria de Masas." These were the famous "leftists" one reads about, whom the archbishop loved and sometimes rebuked. The crowds in the plaza cheered and made way for the marchers as they filed by and laid a wreath at the coffin. Then, still calm and orderly, the column withdrew.

As the Mass continued, Cardinal Corripio paid tribute to the martyred archbishop. Just as he was paraphrasing an oft-heard teaching of Archbishop Romero -- "Neither truth nor justice can be killed by violence" -- he was stunned speechless, as were we all, by the thunderous detonation of a bomb.

The explosion occurred at the far corner of the National Palace. I stared open-mouthed at the palace and saw leaping fire and thick fuming smoke as if the pavement were aflame. The crowd stampeded away from the palace. There was the immediate sound of some return gunfire. Like a massive wave, thousands headed for the only possible shelter, the empty cathedral behind us. Some trying to climb the fence were killed as others in panic trampled over them. The chief liturgist grabbed Cardinal Corripio and me by the arms and hurried us into the safety of the cathedral as waves of people thronged behind us.

Moment of Crisis

What does one think in such a situation? My first thought was of a radio or television news bulletin in the U.S. which my wife would hear in horror before I could phone her myself. I did, however, get hold of myself. I was going to need all the serenity I could muster. Because I was wearing a doctoral gown and a hood, I knew people might mistake me for a prelate as they searched to he consoled.

People continued to pour into the cathedral. It is relatively sma1l perhaps half the size of Riverside Church in New York. It cannot comfortably hold three thousand, standing, and by the end of a half-hour’s warfare outside, more than five thousand had packed into it, with more still pressing their way in. People were standing on every available surface, including the main altar. There was no room to bend; eventually, there was barely room to breathe. The building shuddered with bomb blasts. Its awful, reverberating acoustics magnified the sound of gunfire; and all of this was heard above a din of cries and prayers from every direction. The smell of war wafted in. I kept panic away by looking after my neighbors, praying with them and speaking calm words of comfort (some learned from the archbishop).

All my life I have been a pathetic "claustrophobic." Being trapped in a small space has been my private nightmare. And yet, in the cathedral of San Salvador at the funeral of the archbishop, though people were dying of asphyxiation, I was strangely calm. My lifelong dread had come true, and I was going through it feeling only a numb rage at the perpetrators of this violence.

Cardinal Corripio, at the right of me, and I were in the second row of humans from the side wall. To my left, in the row behind me, was a woman who had been pleading with God. She had also begun to die. I could just turn my head, but nothing else; there was simply no way to bring her relief. As a Presbyterian layman I improvised what I thought was the Catholic church’s rite for the dying. "Your sins are forgiven, go in the peace of God," I prayed. She did die, but there was no room for her to fall down. In some cases, people could manage to inch up the body of a person who had fainted or died and carry it on their hands overhead, but to where, one could not know.

All the dead in the cathedral, I later saw, were women: shorter, slighter women. Trampled or asphyxiated. I trust all of us in the U.S., especially the feminist, will not forget this group of San Salvadoran martyrs.

Then, suddenly, astonishingly, over the bombs and guns and prayers, we heard the sound of cheering. Something else was being carried by hands over heads. It took a while for this object to come into my view, but a chant that was joined by everyone in the cathedral announced its coming: "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido." ("The people united never shall be vanquished. The people united never shall be vanquished.") What the chant was announcing, I eventually could see, was the coffin of the archbishop, held aloft by fingertips, making its perilous way into this sanctuary of faith and terror, to its final resting place. Despite the violence outside, a group from the cathedral had gone out and down the steps to retrieve the coffin.

Even in death, the archbishop transformed despair to courage. How he was honored! People died to give his body, his memory, his faith, room where there was no room. Indeed: "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido."

At long last the violence outside ended. It had lasted about an hour and a half. We waited long after the ending to venture out.

We dispersed, but not before pausing to honor the lineup of our cathedral dead. All women. Many other corpses were picked up off the plaza by the Red Cross. As I left with my hands over my head and a sick feeling, I looked at a terrified boy sobbing. His mother was one of the dead women.

Eyewitnesses Confer

That night, we church representatives from around the world met again at the chancery building of the archdiocese to talk over what we had seen. About thirty of us were still in the city. We all had a chance to describe what we had seen. Since we had been scattered throughout the cathedral and outside, among us we were able to piece out to our satisfaction what had happened. This was indispensable. Beginning at 4:30 P.M. the government had begun broadcasting its version of events over a radio network. According to the government the "leftists" of the Coordinadora Revolucionaria had begun the shooting upon arriving, with the intention of stealing the archbishop’s coffin and holding the dignitaries hostage in the cathedral. That official version also asserted that since the night before all military and security forces personnel had been confined to quarters.

Our own evidence pieced together as eyewitnesses was a total contradiction of the government’s falsehoods. We agreed to put that in writing. All still present signed the statement. Then, as we were about to adjourn, we received a request for an interview with the five top leaders of the "leftists" on whom the violence was being blamed. We agreed. We asked them to describe what they had seen. They did. I asked them if they had carried weapons to the funeral.

"Yes, some of us did," they answered, and named the kinds and numbers of guns they had carried and the kinds of bags of kerosene they used for firebombing. "We are the most sought-out targets now," they said, "and we do not go anywhere any more without being prepared. We will not willingly be killed without a fight." They also described a strategy they use of overturning cars and burning them by throwing their bags of kerosene, to set up smoke screens against oncoming attacks.

What was remarkable about all of this is that their account -- both what they volunteered and what they said in response to our questions -- differed in no way from what we had pieced together among ourselves previously.

Official Version Prevails

The next day we were to find a radically different account given in newspapers: Salvadoran and U.S. newspapers. Sadly, the Salvadoran junta’s account was evidently appropriated by U.S. Ambassador Robert White. Even more sadly, major U.S. newspapers apparently got much of their version from the same sources used by the ambassador, who was not present at the funeral.

One of the last things the archbishop did was to write President Carter pleading that no U.S. military assistance be granted to the Salvadoran Junta. I have just learned of the vote of the House Subcommittee on International Operations. By a vote of 6 to 3 it is recommending an appropriation of $5.7 million.

Can I be forgiven if I regard the majority vote as blasphemy? I hope other Americans will agree. Archbishop Romero literally gave his life for peace. A Mexican bishop said to me as we left the cathedral, "Christ has been killed again. But he will rise again." I believe that. If I didn’t I would despair.

 

 

 

Churches in Communities: A Place to Stand

Walk west if purse-snatchers and crack-crazies permit, along Blake Street in Brooklyn’s Brownsville section. A few shattered buildings remain standing among the rubble-strewn lots; all else is a desolation.

Yet the outlook changes when one rounds a corner onto Mother Gaston Boulevard. First, small shops appear. They are not much to look at, hut they are obviously conducting a vigorous trade. Next come nests of public housing: These multistoried units have been up for two or three decades; the trees in their courtyards are grown to third-floor height, and somebody is keeping graffiti under considerable though not total control. And finally, abruptly, a stroller enters a neighborhood of new and attractive two-story row homes, more than eight hundred of them on this early November day, with an additional two hundred or so scheduled for completion by April 1.

The houses -- erected by something called the Nehemiah Project -- are the only low-income mass housing to be erected in New York City since Congress and Ronald Reagan’s administration pulled the plug more than five years ago on public housing funds. The brick two and three-bedroom dwellings cost $53,000 each to build, and are sold for $43,000 (a $10,000 second mortgage, interest-free, is payable to New York City upon resale). As completed, each house has been occupied immediately -- has had to be occupied immediately, given the ubiquity of thieves prepared to strip plumbing and fixtures from vacant structures -- by a family whose name has been drawn from a waiting list exceeding four thousand. Purchasers usually, though not always, are members of the black or Hispanic majority communities in the Brownsville area. They earn between $15,000 and $25,00) per household, and have managed to accumulate or borrow $5,000 for a down payment (the monthly mortgage payment averages $325 to $345). Departure of these people from public housing a accommodations or from "Section Vlll" apartments (the Nixon era version of federally subsidized housing) has freed up space there even poorer families.

Because the Nehemiah Project has succeeded in erecting homes quickly and at low cost, because its sponsors have put together a smoothly functioning web of available mortgage credit for would-be purchasers, and because the project is such an obvious success in terms of infusing a neighborhood with new life, a lot of people want to copy it.

Five days of wandering the Brownsville, Ocean Hill, and East New York sections of Brooklyn convince me, however, that the Nehemiah effort for so long as it is conceived of as a "project" or a "program" cannot be duplicated. The politicians miss the point entirely: The new homes and their proud owners, attractive as they are, constitute only an episode, a single achievement, in a still unfolding process by which a hitherto powerless people has entered into politics, into what Aristotle defined as "public discourse," and thereby has won the capacity, as George Todd points out, to become "the subject of its own story."

Against a background of decay and change, a Lutheran pastor, the Reverend John Heinemeier, convened a group of Catholic and Protestant clergy and laypersons on April 6, 1978, to discuss ways churches and their members could address area problems. The handful of people who attended listened to a description of the work being done by an organization in the adjacent Borough of Queens that was also centered upon the churches. Encouraged by what was learned, the East Brooklyn group agreed to meet again. By the third meeting, June 8, members of the group, now swollen to forty clergy and laypersons, were led in discussion by Edward T. Chambers, from the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

The encounter between Chambers and the Brooklyn group was portentous for both interests. This is not the place to trace in depth the history of Industrial Areas Foundation -- its beginnings under "radical community organizer" Saul Alinsky in the Chicago of the 1940s, its entry into national prominence (and a certain notoriety) in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of its organizing role in The Woodlawn Organization (Chicago), the Kodak FIGHT controversy in Rochester, and similar community-industry and community-urban government struggles elsewhere. Chambers, once a Catholic seminarian who later spent two years in a Catholic interracial house in Harlem under Dorothy Day’s tutelage, was hired by Alinsky in 1957. He went on with Alinsky to lead in organization of Southwest Chicago (1959), take part in 1962 in the Woodlawn-University of Chicago struggle, organize the FIGHT forces in the Kodak wars (1965-67), and cofounded with Alinsky the IAF Training Institute in 1968. Chambers is, in fact, Alinksy’s heir, and he has continued since his teacher’s death to expand and adapt the Alinsky pratiqur’ by establishing eighteen IAF-affiliated community organizations in California, New York, Maryland, and Texas.

The utility of the Brownsville meeting for Chambers was this: He had recently removed the Industrial Areas Foundation from Chicago to its present headquarters location in Garden City on Long Island, and needed an extra client (in addition to the Queens group) in the New York area. The utility of Chambers for the Brownsville group was equally related to self-interest, "We didn’t know anything except that nothing was to be expected in solving our problems from anybody but ourselves," one who was present remembers," and Chambers was just the man to tell us how much it was going to cost."

What Ed Chambers told the East New York-Brownsville church people was that their community was "a bunch of rubble," and their problem was one that ‘I won’t touch unless you raise $200,000 to get started." He pointed the church men and women toward the upper echelons of their denominations as places to begin their funding drive, at the same time insisting that they also set up a dues-paving system for area congregations that would cost each, depending upon size, from $500 to $3,000 a year.

"I agreed to help them a little in raising the money,’’ Chambers reports, adding that "the United Church of Christ’s Board of Homeland Ministries took the first risk, putting up $45,000. I guess I’d better get that on the record since both the UCC and the Presbyterians did not respond when we needed really big money."

Growth and Action

The new organization -- called East Brooklyn Churches (EBC) -- raised its needed $200,000 of ‘‘front’ money from denominatons and from their own members (local contributions, mostly from congregations, totaled $13,000). But in many ways, know-how about money raising was the least of what the fledgling group drew from Ed Chambers, "The man kept us in touch with reality," Lutheran pastor Dave Benke remembers, "and with our anger. He insisted that our people, pastors included, should be training in organizing skills. He demanded that we research every project or issue to be addressed. And he made us practice ahead of time for every important meeting or action.’"

Despite Chambers’s constant reminders that the East Brooklyn pastors and church members look at their condition directly and soberly, the numbers grew at each meeting At first only seven congregations found it possible to come up with the necessary dues: Our Lady of Mercy, Our Lady of Presentation, St. John Cantius. Risen Christ Lutheran, St. James Holiness, Our Lady of Loretto, and East New York Christian Fellowship. Within ten months -- all this in 1979 -- six more joined. They were St. Peter’s Lutheran (the church of Pastor David Benke), St. Rita’s, St. Malachi, Our Lady of Lourdes, Christ Community Reformed Church, and the Church of the Divine Metaphysic. Some this little group managed to send thirteen people away for ten days of training at Industrial Areas Foundation Training Center, then in Baltimore.

By the beginning of 1980 the group was clearly on its way somewhere. In January of that year eighty-five people of the neighborhood completed a twelve-hour training session in communication, research into community needs, and delegation of responsibilities. Later in the year the group began its now close relationship with Bishop Francis Mugavero, Roman Catholic bishop of Brooklyn, and received his endorsement. It examined its membership, too, and proudly reported -- as the minutes note -- "We are Protestant and Catholic, clergy and laity, black, white, Hispanic, poor and middle-class, old and young, and all residents of the community."

Empowerment

Readers whose last contact with organized community action groups occurred in the 1960s and ‘70s may miss two important characteristics of the IAF-related new-style outfits. In the first place, IAF-related groups do not organize around issues; they organize around churches and other solid organizations for the benefit of people in the neighborhoods. Issues, by the new style, become occasions and opportunities for people to gain experience in empowering themselves; when an issue passes, or changes, the organization remains.

A second difference between such groups as EBC and predecessor organizations is to be found in the absolute, cold, crisp insistence of the new outfits upon competence as a first requirement to he met in the hiring of staff. Though the majority communities in the Brownsville area are black and Hispanic, EBC’s first paid organizer was a white man, Mike Gecan, who gained his experience with Industrial Areas Foundation. Gecan’s administrative hand was upon the new organization’s first steps, and its first actions. In 1981, however, Gecan and EBC took on board an associate, former United Farm Worker organizer Stephen Roberson, who is black. Roberson is today the most visible EBC staff person on a day-to-day basis, and has developed mature inner-city organizing skills of the highest order. He is, in particular, the originator of the network of house meetings across the area at which basic training and recruitment are done, and at which people are encouraged to accept and fulfill basic assignments on committees and in research. During these meetings, leaders emerge. Says Roberson, "You can only demonstrate that you are a leader here; you can’t just talk about it. And a leader is one whose efforts lead to residual benefits for others."

Against a background of these events and actions, in which more than fifty congregations are now involved and in which hundreds of people have gained experience in dealing with elected and appointed authorities, the story of the Nehemiah Project can he understood As Saul Alinsky said: "The relevant skill in modern urban life is that of knowing how to hold public officials accountable" -- and that, as we shall see, is what EBC and the Nehemiah Project have been all about.

Finding the Money

Through August, September, and October of 1981 the work of planning went on. Mike Gecan, Chambers, I. D. Robbins, and the EBC pastors came up with a scheme: The churches would raise $7.5 million; then approaches could he made to government. The pastors got busy. The Missouri Synod Lutherans, an unexpected source, expressed interest and later made a $1 million commitment to the undertaking that the Rev. Johnny Ray Younghlood, of St. Paul’s Community Baptist Church, had baptized the "Nehemiah Project" (after the Old Testament story of the rebuilding of Jerusalem).

Mike, meantime, ran a training session for priests who were to make an all-important collective approach to Bishop Mugavero. Nine of the priests, led by Father John Powis of Our Lady’ of Presentation, made the trip together with representative lay persons. They told the bishop of their plans to build two- and three-bedroom houses; he immediately offered $250,000. A woman exulted: "That’s an excellent beginning," and they went away. Soon the bishop got hack to them:

"I think I can get a million." Again the response: "That’s great. Now why not go to the Orders for more?" Eventually, the Roman Catholics of Brooklyn would produce $2.5 million for Nehemiah, and the Episcopalians of Long Island Diocese would come up with $1 million more.

Bishop Mugavero gave more than money to East Brooklyn Churches; he became the members’ companion-in-arms, the coconspirator of them all. It was Mugavero who, as spokesperson. led the first EBC visit to Ed Koch, mayor of New York. In the square outside City Hall, Pastor Fleinemeier led the group in prayer, and then they filed in to His Honor’s office. Mugavero began the conversation with a mistake: "We have raised $12 million to build homes; now we’d like $12 million from you" (actually the bishop had commitments of only $7.5 million). Koch, in a familiar gesture. spread his hands: We haven’t got it, Bishop; our funds are all committed." Then, as though making a great sacrifice. "we’ll give you land though.’ This gesture, of course, was expected; the City had title to vast stretches of vacant land in the Fast Brooklyn area, and no idea in the what to do with it.

Again the Bishop returned to the subject of money He was the moment not only the representative of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, but in some measure of one million New York voters of Italian origin. He said, "Ed, this is so important. There’s got to be some way for you to find that money. If necessary, why don’t you steal it for us?"

KOCH (Laughing to his aides): The bishop is telling me to steal it!

MUGAVERO: If necessary, I’ll give you absolution.

For three weeks there was no response from Koch. Then the glad news came from the mayor. At a press conference EBC announced its intention to build five thousand single-family row houses, and there were two bishops, one Lutheran treasurer, and a top representative of the mayor of the City of New York to lend credence to the promise.

The Nehemiah home-owning process became more complicated than the above, of course. The City of New York provides land and a $10,000 no-interest loan. Mortgages come via the New York State Mortgage Agency. Removal of landfill for excavations is done at city expense, and soft costs, already described, run about a third of normal. For the Nehemiah plan a single sewer hookup serves multiple homes: The cost savings have run more than $3,000 per house.

Despite these arrangements, not everything has run smoothly for Nehemiah Homes. Delays in demolition have held up construction; owners of isolated lots have sometimes delayed acquisition of property, thus destroying the block-long construction possibilities that earn for Nehemiah’s builders their maximum construction savings. Still, construction has proceeded faster by far than the average for housing built in New York. The rejuvenated Mother Gaston neighborhood keeps people expectant of further success. And Nehemiah did not forget to say thank you to Mayor Koch and to (now) Governor Cuomo, too. The two men were hailed by ten thousand EBC members at a huge rally last year.

Who? What?

Sooner or later it occurs to every observer of the Nehemiah Project and of the East Brooklyn Churches to ask two questions:

Who really runs things?

What do the churches get out of it?

The answer to the leadership question fits the presumptions of neither old-style liberals nor radicals. In plain: The churches run both the Nehemiah Project and EBC, and specifically the pastors of churches run things, together with three or four persons from each congregation who meet with pastoral approval. EBC has no president, for example, because it is a cooperative of congregations, an organization of organizations. EBC does possess, however. an informal executive committee -- a clergy caucus of member pastors and women religious.

Only one predisposed to either spiritualize or denigrate the reality of relational patterns within a congregation will be surprised at the continuing role of the clergy in direction of the Nehemiah Project and of EBC. In an area bereft of banks, civic clubs, industry, and professionals, the churches were the only organizations — apart from the rackets -- that remained alive amid the wreckage of community. Pastors of these churches of course became managers and stewards of whatever cohesive, unifying forces remained (apart from the racketeers’ brass knuckles and the policeman’s stun-gun), and therefore they of course held the key to whatever latent legitimate popular power remained in the burgeoning slum.

Equally important, and again with the exception of the rackets, churches have been the only place in the area, in recent years, where marginal wage-earners and even unemployed persons could nevertheless watch capital accumulation occur and discover, in the end, that sums accumulated would be held at least partly for their collective disposal. Even in Brownsville of this decade, the money placed in the collection plate in a large parish on Sunday can he substantial even when it comes from the pockets of the poor. The point is not entirely lost in a small congregation either: Almost every church can allocate at least some money for causes that honest residents cannot afford, by reason of poverty, to fund themselves. Such money, used as EBC has employed it, became leverage for more money from denominations themselves. And that money, in turn, became leverage for city and state money. The process is indeed one of power: a power that is nonetheless real for the fact that it develops from small gifts that proceed from the simple piety of the working or hope-to-he-working poor.

The churches get another thing from EBC and its Nehemiah Project: a viable, functioning community in which to grow. Recently Pastor Johnny Ray Youngblood and his St. Paul Community Baptist Church gave EBC an interest-free $100,000 loan. St, Paul’s can afford the gesture: Younghlood preaches to three thousand and more persons every Sunday, in part because new people have found new homes nearby.

Eleven of twelve Roman Catholic parishes that approached Brooklyn Bishop Mugavero for help in getting Nehemiah started were aid-receiving churches. The priests of these churches promised their bishop that they would get their churches off subsidy if he would help them with Nehemiah. All but one of the parishes has already succeeded in fulfilling the vow, in part because of the new Optimism

of the area in which they exist, in part because members of black Baptist congregations agreed through EBC to come to Catholic churches to teach stewardship. These "tithe training sessions," as Baptists call them, are astonishing encounters that, in one observer’s words, "get as theological as hell."

Even Benke’s little Lutheran church has flourished. "In absolute terms we have increased our membership by only 50," the pastor says, "but deaths in our congregation, and the continued flight of some families, made it necessary to get 250 new members to increase by that number. We really have 250 people here that we didn’t have before. What’s more, our little church of white, black, and Hispanic people is famous all across the Missouri Synod as "our Brooklyn church." That feels good to the members, and it feels good to me."

But the biggest advantage that has come to the churches as a result of their work with East Brooklyn Churches and the Nehemiah Project is the growth in the self-consciousness of strength in pastors and people. I. D. Robbins expressed it best of all. Said he, "This church organization is powerful. It can put four thousand people on the streets to confront a problem, and ten thousand to deal with a mayor. The group has related itself closely to powerful city and national figures -- to people like Bishop Mugavero and Governor Cuomo, for example. While doing these things members of EBC have related to each other in a way that is incredible. You can say about them that, far from being balked by political factors, they have made over political conditions to fit the needs of the community. They sense this, are proud of themselves, and hence are happy -- and unquarrelsome."

Riding home, I think about one thing I was told: "In almost three years at Nehemiah, there has not been one single default on a mortgage."

That points up the other thing that churches and their pastors get from involvement in the Nehemiah Project: a sense of deep respect for the hard-pressed people, earners of extremely modest wages, whom they seek to serve.

 

Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Voices

DAUGHTER: Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?

MOTHER: Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.

DAUGHTER: Mama, I'm walking to Canada and I'm taking you and a bunch of slaves with me.

MOTHER: It wouldn't be the first time.

In these two conversational exchanges, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker begins to show us what she means by the concept "womanist." The concept is presented in Walker's In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, and many women in church and society have appropriated it as a way of affirming themselves as black while simultaneously owning their connection with feminism and with the Afro-American community, male and female. The concept of womanist allows women to claim their roots in black history, religion and culture.

What then is a womanist? Her origins are in the black folk expression "You acting womanish," meaning, according to Walker, "wanting to know more and in greater depth than is good for one -- outrageous audacious, courageous and willful behavior." A womanist is also "responsible, in charge, serious." She can walk to Canada and take others with her. She loves, she is committed, she is a universalist by temperament.

Her universality includes loving men and woman, sexually or nonsexually. She loves music, dance, the spirit, food and roundness, struggle, and she loves herself. "Regardless."

Walker insists that a womanist is also "committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female." She is no separatist, "except for health." A womanist is a black feminist or feminist of color. Or as Walker says, "Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender."

Womanist theology, a vision in its infancy, is emerging among Afro-American Christian women. Ultimately many sources -- biblical, theological, ecclesiastical, social, anthropological, economic, and material from other religious traditions will inform the development of this theology. As a contribution to this process, I will demonstrate how Walker's concept of womanist provides some significant clues for the work of womanist theologians. I will then focus on method and God-content in womanist theology. This contribution belongs to the work of prolegomena -- prefatory remarks, introductory observations intended to be suggestive and not conclusive.

Codes and Contents

In her definition, Walker provides significant clues for the development of womanist theology. Her concept contains what black feminist scholar Bell Hooks in From Margin to Center identifies as cultural codes. These are words, beliefs, and behavioral patterns of a people that must he deciphered before meaningful communication can happen cross-culturally. Walker's codes are female-centered and they point beyond themselves to conditions, events, meanings. and values that have crystallized in the Afro-American community around women's activity and formed traditions.

A paramount example is mother-daughter advice: Black mothers have passed on wisdom for survival -- in the white world, in the black community, and with men -- for as long as anyone can remember. Female slave narratives, folk tales, and some contemporary black poetry and prose reflect this tradition. Some of it is collected in "Old Sister's Advice to Her Daughters," in The Book of Negro Folklore, edited by Langston Hughes and Ama Bontemps (Dodd Mead 1958).

Walker's allusion to skin color points to a historic tradition of tension between black women over the matter of some black men's preference for light-skinned women. Her reference to black women's love of food and roundness points to customs of female care in the black community (including the church) associated with hospitality and nurture.

These cultural codes and their corresponding traditions are valuable resources for indicating and validating the kind of data upon which womanist theologians can reflect as they bring black women's social, religious, and cultural experience into the discourse of theology, ethics, biblical and religious studies. Female slave narratives, imaginative literature by black women, autobiographies, the work by black women in academic disciplines, and the testimonies of black church women will be authoritative sources for womanist theologians.

Walker situates her understanding of a womanist in the context of nonbourgeois black folk culture. The literature of this culture has traditionally reflected more egalitarian relations between men and women, much less rigidity in male-female roles, and more respect for female intelligence and ingenuity than is found in bourgeois culture.

The black folk are poor less individualistic than those who are better off, they have, for generations, practiced various forms of economic sharing. For example, immediately after Emancipation mutual aid societies pooled the resources of black folk to help pay for funerals and other daily expenses. The Book of Negro Folklore describes the practice of rent parties which flourished during the Depression. The black folk stressed togetherness and a closer connection with nature. They respect knowledge gained through lived experience monitored by elders who differ profoundly in social class and worldview from the teachers and education encountered in American academic institutions. Walker's choice of context suggests that womanist theology can establish its lines of continuity in the black community with nonbourgeois traditions less sexist than the black power and black nationalist traditions.

In this folk context, some of the black female-centered cultural codes in Walker's definition (e.g., "Mama, I'm walking to Canada and I'm taking you and a bunch of slaves with me") point to folk heroines like Harriet Tubman, whose liberation activity earned her the name "Moses" of her people. This allusion to Tubman directs womanist memory to a liberation tradition in black history in which women took the lead, acting as catalysts for the community's revolutionary action and for social change. Retrieving this often hidden or diminished female tradition of catalytic action is an important task for womanist theologians and ethicists. Their research may well reveal that female models of authority have been absolutely essential for every struggle in the black community and for building and maintaining the community's institutions.

Freedom Fighters

The womanist theologian must search for the voices, actions, opinions, experience, and faith of women whose names sometimes slip into the male-centered rendering of black history, hut whose actual stories remain remote. This search can lead to such little-known freedom fighters as Milla Granson and her courageous work on a Mississippi plantation. Her liberation method broadens our knowledge of the variety of strategies black people have used to obtain freedom. According to scholar Sylvia Dannett, in Profiles in Negro Womanhood:

Milla Granson, a slave, conducted a midnight school for several years. She had been taught to read and write by her former master in Kentucky, and in her little school hundreds of slaves benefited from her learning. After laboring all day for their master, the slaves would creep stealthily to Milla's "schoolroom" (a little cabin in a hack alley). The doors and windows

had to be kept tightly sealed to avoid discovery. Each class was composed of twelve pupils and when Milla had brought them up to the extent of her ability, she "graduated" them and took in a dozen more. Through this means she graduated hundreds of slaves. Many of whom she taught to write a legible hand forged their own passes and set out for Canada,

Women like Tubman and Granson used subtle and silent strategies to liberate themselves and large numbers of black people. By uncovering as much as possible about such female liberation, the womanist begins to understand the relation of black history to the contemporary folk expression: "If Rosa Parks had not sat down, Martin King would not have stood up."

While she celebrates and emphasizes black women's culture and way of being in the world, Walker simultaneously affirms black women's historic connection with men through love and through a shared struggle for survival and for a productive quality of life (e.g., "wholeness"). This suggests that two of the principal concerns of womanist theology should he survival and community building and maintenance. The goal of this community building is, of course, to establish a positive quality of life -- economic, spiritual, educational -- for black women, men, and children. Walker's understanding of a womanist as "not a separatist" ("except for health"), however, reminds the Christian womanist theologian that her concern for community building and maintenance must ultimately extend to the entire Christian community and beyond that to the larger human community.

Yet womanist consciousness is also informed by women's determination to love themselves. "regardless." This translates into an admonition to black women to avoid the self-destruction of hearing a disproportionately large burden in the work of community building and maintenance. Walker suggests that women can avoid this trap by connecting with women's communities concerned about women's rights and well-being. Her identification of a womanist as also a feminist joins black women with their feminist heritage extending back into the nineteenth century in the work of black feminists like Sojourner Truth, Frances W. Harper, and Mary Church Terrell.

In making the feminist-womanist connection, however, Walker proceeds with great caution. While affirming an organic relationship between womanists and feminists, she also declares a deep shade of difference between them ("Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender.") This gives womanist scholars the freedom to explore the particularities of black women's history and culture without being guided by what white feminists have already identified as women's issues.

But womanist consciousness directs black women away from the negative divisions prohibiting community building among women. The womanist loves other women sexually and nonsexually. Therefore, respect for sexual preferences is one of the marks of womanist community. According to Walker, homophobia has no place. Nor does "Colorism" (i.e., "yella" and half-white black people valued more in the black world than black-skinned people), which often separates black women from each other. Rather, Walker's womanist claim is that color variety is the substance of universality. Color, like birth and death, is common to all people. Like the navel, it is a badge of humanity connecting people with people. Two other distinctions are prohibited in Walker's womanist thinking. Class hierarchy does not dwell among women who "... love struggle, love the Folks. . . are committed to the survival and wholeness of an entire people." Nor do women compete for male attention when they "...appreciate and prefer female culture. . . value. . . women's emotional flexibility. . . and women's strength."

The intimations about community provided by Walker's definition suggest no genuine community building is possible when men are excluded (except when women's health is at stake). Neither can it occur when black women's self-love, culture, and love for each other are not affirmed and are not considered vital for the community's self-understanding. And it is thwarted if black women are expected to bear "the lion's share" of the work and to sacrifice their well-being for the good of the group.

Yet, for the womanist, mothering and nurturing are vitally important. Walker's womanist reality begins with mothers relating to their children and is characterized by black women (not necessarily bearers of children) nurturing great numbers of black people in the liberation struggle (e.g., Harriet Tubman). Womanist emphasis upon the value of mothering and nurturing is consistent with the testimony of many black women. The poet Carolyn Rogers speaks of her mother as the great black bridge that brought her over. Walker dedicated her novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland to her mother "...who made a way out of no way." As a child in the black church, I heard women (and men) give thanks to God for their mothers . . . who stayed behind and pulled the wagon over the long haul."

It seems, then, that the clues about community from Walker's definition of a womanist suggest that the mothering and nurturing dimension of Afro-American history can provide resources for shaping criteria to measure the quality of justice in the community. These criteria could be used to assure female-male equity in the presentation of the community's models of authority. They could also gauge the community's division of labor with regard to the survival tasks necessary for building and maintaining community.

Womanist Theology and Method

Womanist theology is already beginning to define the categories and methods needed to develop along lines consistent with the sources of that theology. Christian womanist theological methodology needs to be informed by at least four elements: (1) a multidialogical intent, (2) a liturgical intent, (3) a didactic intent, and (4) a commitment both to reason and to the validity of female imagery and metaphorical language in the construction of theological statements.

A multidialogical intent will allow Christian womanist theologians to advocate and participate in dialogue and action with many diverse social, political, and religious communities concerned about human survival and productive quality of life for the oppressed. The genocide of cultures and peoples (which has often been instigated and accomplished by Western white Christian groups or governments) and the nuclear threat of omnicide mandates womanist participation in such dialogue/action. But in this dialogue/action the womanist also should keep her speech and action focused upon the slow genocide of poor black women, children, and men by exploitative systems denying them productive jobs, education, health care, and living space. Multidialogical activity may, like a jazz symphony, communicate some of its most important messages in what the harmony-driven conventional ear hears as discord, as disruption of the harmony in both the black American and white American social, political, and religious status quo.

If womanist theological method is informed by a liturgical intent, then womanist theology will he relevant to (and will reflect) the thought, worship, and action of the black church. But a liturgical intent will also allow womanist theology to challenge the thought/worship/action of the black church with the discordant and prophetic messages emerging from womanist participation in multidialogics. This means that womanist theology will consciously impact critically upon the foundations of liturgy, challenging the church to use justice principles to select the sources that will shape the content of liturgy. The question must be asked: "How does this source portray blackness/ darkness, women and economic justice for nonruling-class people?" A negative portrayal will demand omission of the source or its radical reformation by the black church. The Bible, a major source in black church liturgy, must also be subjected to the scrutiny of justice principles.

A didactic intent in womanist theological method assigns a teaching function to theology. Womanist theology should teach Christians new insights about moral life based on ethics supporting justice for women, survival, and a productive quality of life for poor women, children, and men. This means that the womanist theologian must give authoritative status to black folk wisdom (e.g., Brer Rabbit literature) and to black women's moral wisdom (expressed in their literature) when she responds to the question, "How ought the Christian to live in the world?" Certainly tensions may exist between the moral teachings derived from these sources and the moral teachings about obedience, love, and humility that have usually buttressed presuppositions about living the Christian life. Nevertheless, womanist theology, in its didactic intent, must teach the church the different ways God reveals prophetic word and action for Christian living.

These intents, informing theological method, can yield a theological language whose foundation depends as much upon its imagistic content as upon reason. The language can be rich in female imagery, metaphor, and story. For the black church, this kind of theological language may be quite useful, since the language of the black religious experience abounds in images and metaphors. Clifton Johnson's collection of black conversion experiences, God Struck Me Dead, illustrates this point.

The appropriateness of womanist theological language will ultimately reside in its ability to bring black women's history, culture, and religious experience into the interpretive circle of Christian theology and into the liturgical life of the church. Womanist theological language must, in this sense, he an instrument for social and theological change in church and society.

Who Do You Say God Is?

Regardless of one's hopes about intentionality and womanist theological method, questions must he raised about the God-content of the theology. Walker's mention of the black womanist's love of the spirit is a true reflection of the great respect Afro-American women have always shown for the presence and work of the spirit. In the black church, women (and men) often judge the effectiveness of the worship service not on the scholarly content of the sermon nor on the ritual nor on orderly process. Rather, worship has been effective if "the spirit was high," i.e., if the spirit was actively and obviously present in a balanced blend of prayer, of cadenced word (the sermon), and of syncopated music ministering to the pain of the people.

The importance of this emphasis upon the spirit is that it allows Christian womanist theologians, in their use of the Bible, to identify and reflect upon those biblical stories in which poor oppressed women had a special encounter with divine emissaries of God, like the spirit. In the Hebrew Testament, Hagar's story is most illustrative and relevant to Afro-American women's experience of bondage, of African heritage, of encounter with God/emissary in the midst of fierce survival struggles. Katie Cannon among a number of black female preachers and ethicists urges black Christian women to regard themselves as Hagar's sisters.

In relation to the Christian or New Testament, the Christian wornanist theologian can refocus the salvation story so that it emphasizes the beginning of revelation with the spirit mounting Mary, a woman of the poor: "...the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee (Luke 1:35). Such an interpretation of revelation has roots in nineteenth-century black abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth. Posing an important question and response, she refuted a white preacher's claim that women could not have rights equal to men's because Christ was not a woman. Truth asked, "Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him!" This suggests that womanist theology could eventually speak of God in a well-developed theology of the spirit. The sources for this theology are many. Harriet Tubman often "went into the spirit" before her liberation missions and claimed her strength for liberation activity came from this way of meeting God. Womanist theology has grounds for shaping a theology of the spirit informed by black women's political action.

Christian womanist responses to the question "who do you say God is?" will he influenced by these many sources. Walker's way of connecting womanists with the spirit is on/v one clue. The integrity of black church women's faith, their love of Jesus, their commitment to life, love, family, and politics will also yield vital clues. And other theological voices (black liberation, feminist, Islamic, Asian, Hispanic, African, Jewish, and Western white male traditional) will provide insights relevant for the construction of the God-content of womanist theology.

Each womanist theologian will add her own special accent to the understandings of God emerging from womanist theology. But if one needs a final image to describe women coming together to shape the enterprise, Bess B. Johnson in God's Fierce Whimsy offers an appropriate one. Describing the difference between the play of male and female children in the black community where she developed, Johnson says: the boys in the neighborhood had this game with rope. . . tug-o'-war.. till finally some side would jerk the rope away from the others, who'd fall down. . . . Girls. . . weren't allowed to play with them in this tug-o'-war; so we figured out how to make our own rope -- out of…little dandelions. You just keep adding them, one to another, and you can go on and on. . . . Anybody, even the boys, could join us. . . . The whole purpose of our game was to create this dandelion chain -- that was it. And we'd keep going, creating till our mamas called us home.

Like Johnson's dandelion chain, womanist theological vision will grow as black women come together and connect piece with piece. Between the process of creating and the sense of calling, womanist theology will one day present itself in full array, reflecting the divine spirit that connects us all.

What Does the Bible Say? (Ezek. 34:11-16; I Cor. 15:20-28; Mt. 25:31-46.)

While giving lectures at a mid-western college I came face to face with a major affliction among young people: biblical illiteracy. As we tried to interpret some literature crammed with biblical allusions (all of which functioned symbolically), the students were at sea. They knew none of the biblical contexts. Finally we got to the theme of salvation, and a student asked: "What does the Bible say about salvation?"

This prompted me to reflect on the spot about biblical passages that communicated an important word about salvation. Some of that word is positive and productive. It speaks of salvation on earth in a social sense. Some of the word from Paul is problematic. It uses hierarchical and patriarchal imagery to speak of salvation at the end of history. This imagery can be alienating.

Ezekiel and Matthew suggest that salvation has to do with faithfulness, hope and healing. Ezekiel 34 indicates that the community’s salvation depends upon how faithfully and responsibly leaders minister to the people. Unfaithful leaders cause the community to disintegrate, scatter, and lose power in relationship. For the sake of the salvation of community, leaders cannot become "fat cats" feeding off the weaknesses of the people.

When God tells the people through Ezekiel that God will take over their leadership because of the gross negligence of their leaders, one gets a sense of what it means to be faithful in a position of authority. The leader seeks out those members of the community who have scattered "on a day of clouds and thick darkness." The leader seeks the lost and brings them to economic well-being: "I will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel. . . I will feed them with good pasture." The leader is concerned about the physical and spiritual condition of the community. Therefore she or he will use the resources at his or her disposal to "bind up the crippled" and "strengthen the weak." The faithful leader will champion justice and "will feed them in justice."

Not only must the leader be faithful to these tenets of good, leadership, the people must be faithful in participating with the leader in sustaining and healing community members. In Matthew, Jesus makes it clear that salvation also depends upon the people exercising charity and compassion for each other: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, welcoming the stranger and giving drink to the thirsty. Neglecting these responsibilities means damnation for the community.

Paul speaks of salvation in another sense when he affirms hope in a grand resurrection of the dead at the end of history. At this time Christ will become triumphant by subjecting all things under himself and conquering death. Finally all reality (even Christ) will be subjected to God, the father, who will be "everything to every one." Though Paul also suggests that salvation is realized in life when we die to the sin of Adam and take on life in Christ, this image of the eschaton sounds discouraging to many women. In this state of affairs patriarchy reigns supremely in images of God, the Father and Christ ("the first fruits, at his coming". . . "until he puts all things in subjection under his feet")

Paul also suggests an astounding sacralization of hierarchy here: "But when it says ‘all things are put in subjection under him [Christ],’ it is plain that he is expected who put all things under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him . . ."

In this vision of salvation at the end of history we can see the final affirmation of patriarchies and hierarchies. Perhaps in Paul’s time these images were not problematic. But our consciousness has been heightened about the ways hierarchical and patriarchal systems oppress people according to sex, race and class.

Citing the Pauline passage, I made this point to the young people: What the Bible says about salvation is not to be interpreted and accepted uncritically. The Bible provides many discussions of salvation in various social contexts, according to various traditions (the prophetic tradition, the apocalyptic tradition) and at different stages in Christian and Jewish history.

But for those who have not read the Bible, it is important to do a literal reading of the text in order to become familiar with its face value. Critical techniques can be used to extract deeper meanings from texts only after the entire book has been read.

My sudden encounter with biblical illiteracy among the young made me aware that in many American homes the Bible has nothing to do with the foundations of faith and morality. Perhaps these very bright young people had learned about Christian ethics only from Western history where Christian ethics coincides with slavery, racism, the Holocaust, the oppression of women and the exploitation of the poor. Inasmuch as these sorts of evils continue, young people have a right to wonder whether knowledge of the Bible makes any difference. Do its teachings about morality and salvation belong to a world passed away long, long ago? Is the Bible merely good literature like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, telling of exploits that fire the imagination but have very little or nothing to do with life as we live it?

Young people have perhaps discovered that as the 20th century nears its end, we in the Western world are living in an age of immediacy where instant gratification and rabid individualism based on greed erode the processes of reflection and moral and spiritual preparation for adult life. I suppose, from the perspective of the biblically illiterate, the final question may be, as one student put it: "Why read a book telling about a kingdom coming when technology has already created paradise? And it’s getting better every day."

The Sent and the Sender (Is. 61:1-2, 65:17-25; I Th. 5:16-28; Jn. 1:6-8, 19-28.)

One of the most important motifs of the Advent season is that of "the sent" and "the sender." Generations of believers have found hope in the notion that someone (or something) is coming to relieve them of their burden. This someone will be sent by a higher, divine power who has seen the people’s affliction and has decided to instigate some kind of relief action. The African-American spiritual songs contain imagery reflecting this notion of the sent and the sender: "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home; a band of angels Comin’ after me, comin’ for to carry me home"; or "Oh Lord, I want some valiant soldier to help me bear the cross."

In Hebrew literature the sent often comes as the prophet, who brings words of consolation to the oppressed and promises of better times from the sender. Isaiah, the prophet, was the sent. When the Israelites were released from captivity in another land, he proclaimed that the Lord had anointed him to bring good tidings to the afflicted: "The Lord has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn."

And the Divine One who sent the prophet will do even more for the community. This One will "create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind . . . no more shall be heard in [Jerusalem] the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or aged folk who do not fill out their days . . . They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat . . . They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their children with them. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear."

The Christian testament also contains the motif of the sent and the sender. In Paul’s letters the early Christian communities are advised to affirm the sent in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Paul advises them to accept the Spirit and prophecy as forces sent to work on their behalf. Paul blesses them in the name of the sender and the sent: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

In the Gospel of John we see the divine sender and earthly senders working at cross-purposes. The divine sender is not bound to express divine reality in the way that the people are accustomed to identifying it. Therefore the Gospel of John records: "There was sent by God a person named John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light." Then the earthly senders ("the Jewish people") sent priests and Levites to ask John to identify himself.

Since the divine sender usually sent a prophet to bear witness, the priests and Levites asked John if he was a prophet, if he was Elijah. John said No, but the inquirers persisted: "Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" John answered that he had come to witness to the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy: "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said." Those sent by the earthly sender were befuddled. John was baptizing people, and the priests and Levites understood John’s words and actions as belonging to the tradition of the prophet Elijah; yet John did not confess to being a prophet. He merely performed the original task assigned him by the divine sender. He was a messenger whose final word is an announcement: "I baptize with water; but among you stands one whom you do not know, even the one who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie."

Like the priests and the Levites, people want the sent to come in accord with the traditional ways. And like the priests and Levites, moderns often reject the messenger. If the messenger happens to be black, female, Hispanic or Asian, many will reject the message and the messenger. It is no wonder that when theologian James Cone identified Jesus Christ as the oppressed black One, much of the white Christian world was shocked.

During Advent we remember that the One sent by the divine sender defied his people’s expectations when he came poor, humble and lying in a manger.

The ‘Sense’ of Advent (Is.40:9-11; II Pet.3:8-14; Mk.1:1-8)

Both the Hebrew and the Christian testaments proclaim the coming of the Lord, though they present Advent and God in different images. Isaiah describes the coming Lord as a tender, loving warrior: "Behold, the Lord God comes with might, with an arm to rule . . . The Lord will feed the chosen flock like a shepherd; God’s arms will gather the lambs. God’s bosom will bear them up; the Lord will gently lead those who are with young." The author of 2 Peter describes this coming as cosmic havoc. "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up." In Mark, John the Baptist describes the coming Lord as "one who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie . . . the one who is coming will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

These ancient passages about God’s coming, which are read in churches during the Advent season, aggravated me during my undergraduate days. Trying to live a Christian life in a thoroughly secular culture, I asked hard questions about Advent. For instance, since the eschatological expectations recorded in both the Hebrew and Christian testaments have not come to pass after hundreds and hundreds of years, why should Christians today harbor the same expectations? Doesn’t this create endless anxiety? How on earth is it possible for us to live -- as the author of 2 Peter advises -- without spot or blemish or to be at peace in a world full of turmoil? And what do we do while we "wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Pet. 3:13) ? Do we retreat from the world into a state of a monastic piety waiting for the Lord to come?

As I got older I responded to these questions out of a liberation faith informed by my own religious and social action experience and by the thought of various liberal, neo-orthodox and liberation theologians. I realized that one of the most important features of some of the Advent passages like those cited above is that they show us something about national sin, God’s punishment, repentance and hope.

One of Israel’s greatest sins was its tendency to degenerate into a wealthy nation that forgot to exercise justice and charity the poor and the oppressed. Therefore its people received double punishment for all their sins (Isa. 40:1-2) It experienced estrangement from those things (power, control, autonomy) that had made it a nation. Its power and autonomy were taken away by another conquering people. The people became exiles in a foreign land. They were no longer nations. Utter humility and humiliation became their condition before God and humanity. Through many years of anguish and toil they waited to be restored to their former glory and homeland.

Israel’s sin was not unlike the sin of which our nation has been guilty: the sin of supporting the wealthy and ignoring the poor. As the U.S. experiences financial crises, the working poor -- those who live from paycheck to paycheck -- experience unemployment. Some become homeless. These who may have few funds put aside gradually become penniless as rising prices and taxes absorb meager savings. As the banks foreclose on farmers’ loans, farmers lose their farms to wealthy agribusiness conglomerates. Meanwhile, the wealthy prosper even more through the policy of deregulating prices and corporate growth. The wages of this national sin are beginning to show up as the colossal national debt, the huge financial deficits of savings and loans associations, high unemployment and escalating numbers of homeless and hungry citizens.

However, the Advent texts give believers hope. Humans may repent of their sins and be forgiven by God who provides the reward of salvation. Isaiah says, "Behold, God comes bearing the reward, preceded by the recompense" that is human payment for the debt of sin. This is a gracious God who tells the prophet Isaiah to "Comfort, comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to the city that its warfare is ended, that its iniquity is pardoned."

Though God’s way of reckoning time is not our way, though "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," God does not want to punish us for long periods (2 Pet. 3:8) According to 2 Peter, God is tolerant toward us and wishes "that all should reach repentance." The purpose of contrition is so that humans may be in a state of readiness to receive the salvation brought to humankind by God’s Advent. This state of readiness is described as "holiness and godliness," being "zealous to be found by God without spot or blemish, and at peace," and growing "in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Christians, believing in a merciful and liberating God, know that the heart of the Advent message is the One of whom John the Baptist spoke: the "one who is coming [and came] to baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Mark 1:8) This One became human to be made poor so that humankind could see both its sin and its redemption. Thus today, because of this thoroughly poor, ethical and divine One, the sense of Advent becomes meaningful in a nation where sin seems to have no boundaries.

The Salvation of Growth (Isaiah 5:1-7)

Let me sing for my beloved

a love song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

He digged it and cleared it of stones,

and planted it with choice vines;

he built a watchtower in the midst of it,

and hewed out a wine vat in it;

and he looked for it to yield grapes

but it yielded wild grapes.

And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem

and men of Judah,

judge, I pray you, between me

and my vineyard,

What more was there to do for my vineyard,

that I have not done in it?

When I looked for it to yield grapes,

why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you

what I will do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge,

and it shall be devoured;

I will break down its wall,

and it shall be trampled down.

I will make it a waste;

it shall not be pruned or hoed,

and briers and thorns shall grow up;

I will also command the clouds

that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts

is the house of Israel,

and the men of Judah

are his pleasant planting;

and he looked for justice,

but behold, bloodshed;

for righteousness,

but behold, a cry!

This poem from Isaiah, full of proper beginnings, good intentions, anger and things gone wrong, reminds me of parenting. Like the owner and his vineyard, parents are involved in molding and caring for children. Most parents provide their children with the best resources at their disposal. Whether they are below the poverty level or above it, most parents are full of good intentions for their children. Some parents think they have done special planting and pruning on fertile soil, and they expect a rich yield.

But sometimes things go wrong. The harvest is disappointing, given the care, love and support put into the growing process. The child emerges like the grapes in the poem -- unruly, bent on its own wild course. The parent, in anger, anguish and dismay, says, with T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock:

"That is not what I meant at all." With a sense of being at their wits’ end, some parents may resort to the actions of the planter in Isaiah’s poem. They may withdraw their support from the child, "remove its hedge." They may even expel the child from their home if the situation is threatening enough to the family.

Then there are parents who ask themselves, What did we do wrong? Like Judah of Isaiah’s poem, they think the situation demands that they pass judgment upon themselves. In their pain they may feel betrayed by the child and oppressed by the situation. Nevertheless, they feel guilty. It may take a lot of outside help before the parents can let go of the judging and guilt and seek help and hope for the child and for themselves.

We who grew up in the African-American community some 40 years ago know there were (and still are) things in the social "soil" beyond our little vineyards that affect how the "planted seed" grows. There were (and still are) things in the soil that disturb growth, that put the best-laid plans awry. Our parents not only had to tend their own little vineyards, they also had to attend to the larger territories to make sure the soil was conducive to growth. Our mothers and fathers, and the children when they got old enough, were involved on several fronts in order to make the social soil suitable for growth: the neighborhood, the white world that tried to put immovable stones in the soil, and the church that helped provide moral and spiritual (and often political) sustenance. Many a sapling grew to strong adulthood because of this kind of involved parenting.

The keys to the parenting some of us grew up with were involvement, on several fronts, and spirituality. In the past eight or ten years in America, we have forgotten how important it is for our children to see us and to help us be involved in tending the soil beyond our own little vineyards -- to see and help us work in the larger society to make a better and more just world for all people. This kind of involvement introduces our children to goals not inspired by the greed of our capitalist culture gone wrong.

We who are Christian parents believe that parenting is a privilege entrusted to us by God. However, it is easy to get caught up in our own pursuits (exclusive of our children) and forget that trust. It is easy to do everything for our children rather than let them at an early age become active and responsible with us in community and other involvements. While we realize that there are gains and losses to parenting even in the best situations, we also know that those who help their children value and develop spirituality at an early age provide them with resources for a productive future. Spiritual healing and development, at any age, can help people recover from things gone wrong.

As I read Isaiah’s poem today I realize that the planter of the vineyard forgot to test the soil around the fertile hill. He does not see what we today are growing more and more to believe and accept: the connectedness of all things. Watchtowers are high in the air, rather disconnected. They are not good positions from which to see harmful elements spreading through the soil. This poem leads me to understand the salvation of growth much as I understand Jesus’ way of bringing salvation to the people: He did not minister from an exalted station above them. Rather, like a loving, involved parent, he was involved at ground level.

Rub Poor Lil’ Judas’s Head (Revelation 21:10-11; 22:5; Is. 26:21)

While researching the spiritual songs of African-American slaves I was surprised to come upon a line that commanded: "When you get to heaven, rub poor lil’ Judas’s head." Most Christian teaching casts Judas into hell as an unforgiven sinner. Never had I heard a kind word about Judas. What is going on here? Is this an instance of what black statesmen and scholars like Frederick Douglass and John Lovell called the masked language of the spiritual songs? Since the songs are thought to have been created by the entire community rather than by one person, was the slave community trying to pass along some message that white masters would forbid?

I have never settled this matter. But the sentence has communicated some important messages. To me, "When you get to heaven, rub poor lil’ Judas’s head" speaks of victory, forgiveness, judgment, blessing and expectation of a great new dispensation.

Of course, the great new dispensation will occur in that fabulous place imaged in the spiritual songs as "heaven" where God reigns supremely and with justice. I always thought Revelation 21:10-11 imaged this place as the slave might have: "And in the Spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal."

The holy city is where all needs are supplied (as in the line from one song: "All God’s children got shoes. When I get to heaven goin’ta put on shoes and walk all over God’s heaven") For the slave, it was a place like John the Revelator saw -- a place where "night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Rev. 22:5)

The sentence about rubbing Judas’s head suggests that in this new place people relinquish grudges and hostilities they have held for generations. So much mercy abounds that the most dastardly and cruel deeds are forgiven. Judgment is replaced by compassion. Rubbing the head suggests sympathy and blessing rather than curses.

Discovering this reference to Judas made by slaves caused me to look at the Beatitudes again, for this was the model of blessing from God with which I was familiar. I said to myself: It is indeed wonderful for Jesus to pronounce blessings upon the poor in spirit, the meek, the mourners, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and the peacemakers. But where does he pronounce blessings upon and promise rewards (heaven) to the betrayer of God? Judas is forgiven by God?

Within the theology of the spirituals, that would be the only way Judas could get into heaven. Perhaps the song is also suggesting that the reason he is forgiven is because his act of betrayal fits into God’s plan for the way in which Jesus would redeem humankind.

Whatever the case, the line about rubbing Judas’s head takes judgment out of the range of human response. In the song, humans express only compassion for another human. Maybe the song also suggests that sin is the terrible force that shrinks the distances and heights we try to put between ourselves and others. No one is without sin and error. Compassion is what we offer others in light of our own sin.

The line triggers in my imagination the fierce struggle we undergo in our souls in our efforts to forgive those who have inflicted deep and serious wounds. Beyond forgiveness comes the compassion the victim has for the perpetrator. There is, of course, the intimation that heaven is the reward for such experiences, and that God plays an important role in this final victim-perpetrator relation. But human compassion evidences the victory. In our world it is not easy to see this kind of compassion as anything other than foolishness or weakness. In terms of social existence, haven’t people in power always expected their victims to forgive them? Doesn’t this kind of compassion for perpetrators of wounds and victimization cause the perpetrators to believe they can always get away with their crimes? Doesn’t "rub poor lil’ Judas’s head" get in the way of justice being done in the earthly communities where people live their daily lives? Are oppressed people ever going to be able to affirm judgment like Isaiah did when he declared: "For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity and the earth will disclose the blood shed upon her, and will no more cover her slain" (26:21) ?

Even though this is an eschatological expectation on Isaiah’s part, it still speaks of justice rather than compassion. Isn’t that fair? Were the African-American slaves suggesting that the kind of compassion that it took to rub Judas’s head could happen only in heaven and not on earth? Scholars have often disagreed about the reality to which the word "heaven" pointed in the spiritual songs. So the word might not have eschatological significance here.

One thing is clear. Some of my African-American slave ancestors tried to leave me and my people a message about compassion that defies what many of us want to hear. We do not want judgment to equal compassion and compassion to equal judgment in our relation to those who have so seriously sinned against us. Shouldn’t there be a place for the cosmic scream of oppressed people? Shouldn’t there be a dispensation on earth where justice happens in ways we can affirm? Shouldn’t our suffering be vindicated on the old earth? Do we have to wait for a new heaven and a new earth when the old earth has passed away?

Sentences out of context and out of joint with the times can leave us confounded. Research into the past can lead us to ancient ideas that shake us to the very core of our being. Sometimes we are made to realize that the ancestors in their great inscrutableness refuse to be less than major voices.

Representatives and Partners (2 Sam.7:8-16; Lk.1:26-38)

The birth of Jesus calls our attention to God’s tradition of selecting representatives and partners from lowly places. During Advent we naturally focus upon Jesus as such a representative, and we sometimes forget that Jesus’ birth began with a humble woman. Mary was selected by God as a partner for producing the divine child that Christians believe redeemed humankind. This was strictly an affair between God and woman -- the decisive agent.

The 19th-century black feminist Sojourner Truth was one of the first to understand the significance for women of this intimate relation between God and Mary. At a women’s right’s convention she refuted a white clergyman who argued against women’s rights on the basis of what he saw as women’s biological weakness and their "need" to be cared for by men. In the course of her response, Truth biblically validated women’s autonomy: "Whar did your Jesus come from? From God and a woman. Man didn’t have nuthin’ to do with it." And Mary, this partner God chose, came from the ranks of the poor.

God also chose humble male representatives to participate in bringing the kingdom Jesus talked about. King David, Jesus’ noble ancestor, was not always so royal. When God tells the prophet Nathan to speak to David about building a house (temple) for God, the prophet is to say to David: "Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel . . ." (2 Sam. 7:8) And one of David’s posterity, Jesus, emerged from a manger to become the ultimate sovereign over a religious movement that has lasted for almost 2,000 years.

Reflecting upon God’s choice of poor people (female and male) to be God’s representatives and partners reminds me of the sense of the unexpected associated with Advent. Even though the birth of such a One had been prophesied among the Jews, they did not expect such a lowly person to be the One, the deliverer. His life on earth seemed not to reap all of what the angel gave Mary reason to expect. In Luke, Gabriel predicts that "he will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever . . ." Jesus does not inherit a throne on earth. Nor does he rule over the house of Jacob forever. From the perspective of Mary, the "unexpected" is even more pronounced. Hearing the announcement of her unexpected pregnancy, she asks the angel, "How shall this be, since I am a virgin?"

God’s way of choosing the poor and humble as well as the element of the "unexpected" associated with Advent suggests several important questions for U.S. Christians today. First, if God showed such a preference for the poor, shouldn’t we demonstrate real care for the homeless, whose numbers are steadily increasing? We may easily conclude that our Christian responsibility in relation to the homeless and hungry can be met with food pantries, soup kitchens and temporary shelters. But does Christian love not also demand that we become involved in the political processes and social movements advocating the elimination of poverty through the economic restructuring of our society? This means Christians working for and advocating the redistribution of goods and services so that poor people can experience a positive, productive quality of life. The ultimate question is whether the church can really be Christian if it does not clearly demonstrate its preference for poor, humble and oppressed peoples.

The second challenge is in the area of the "unexpected." Too often at Christmas "the unexpected" refers to adults’ and children’s expectations of gifts and other material things. How do we liberate Christmas from the commercialization of "the unexpected"? How do we put the spiritual quality of "the unexpected" back into Advent so that the meaning extends beyond Christmas Day into the future?

If Advent were a time when Christians and the church reviewed the quality of their relation with the poor and oppressed, people could focus upon the true meaning of the coming of God’s kingdom. In a country in which money and capital are thought to be the greatest good, Advent should help Christians remember that charity is the greatest gift and the greatest good.

Such a review process would not mean that the advent season is not full of joy and celebration. It does mean that the joy and celebration would center on the happiness we Christians experience in practicing charity throughout the year. Perhaps the world would be a better place if at Christmas (and throughout the year) we Christians emphasized to our children God’s choice of poor people as God’s representatives and partners on earth. Maybe there would be more and better alliances between the homeless and the nonhomeless. Maybe our children would be able to hear honest faith rather than vacant words in our prayer that God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Piety and Preparation for New Life (Am.5:18-24; I Th.4:13-18; Mt. 25:1-13.)

The prophet Amos warned the people that their shallow piety would not prepare them for the new life they believed God would bring. God finds no pleasure in their feasts, solemn assemblies, burnt offerings or peace offerings. Their pious acts are of no avail, for God’s pleasure is in justice that must "roll down like waters" and in righteousness that must be "like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24) The people have not practiced justice or righteousness.

Ancient Israel, whom Amos addresses, is no different from the solemn assembly we call the church. Our congregations are busy with study groups, prayers, youth work, Sunday-school preparation, preaching, outreach and even mission activities that they believe help prepare them for the new life of the kingdom Christ will bring. More often than not, all this pious activity has nothing to do with letting "justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Countless times I have heard ministers at ministerial meetings say: If I preach too much about justice and take action in behalf of the oppressed, my congregation will fire me. Look at what happened to so-and-so, who tried seriously to bring justice issues into his church. They gave him the boot. Or, as one minister said, "How can I preach justice for the poor and the oppressed when my congregation consists of mine owners and bankers? These are the people causing the labor problems and unemployment in my town. I tried on two occasions and got duly warned about losing my job."

Many churches have become as complacent and isolated from the world of pain as ancient Israel was in Amos’s time. Hence the church has not only lost the capacity to heed the voice of its prophets, it is also no longer prepared to meet Christ in the world or in the kingdom. Today, liberation theologians worldwide are as prophetic as Amos in denouncing the church’s way of supporting oppression rather than vigorously opposing it. Latin American prophet Gustavo Gutiérrez reminds the church: "God became human to be made poor. Thus the church must meet Christ today in the poor. It is from this encounter, rather than from piety, that the church gets new life.

Most of the church is apparently no more ready for this encounter than the five foolish maids were in Jesus’ parable about the kingdom of heaven. Ten maidens set out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them, the foolish ones, took their lamps but no oil supply; the five wise maidens took the needed supply. When the bridegroom was announced the maids with their trimmed lamps were ready to go into the marriage feast. The five foolish maids had to scout around to find dealers from whom to buy oil. When they returned to the marriage feast, it was too late; the doors had been closed.

Though Jesus relates this parable to demonstrate that some believers will be unprepared to enter into the kingdom of new life that the bridegroom brings, the parable notes that both the wise and the foolish maidens slept when the bridegroom was delayed. At times, all the church fails to give full attention to the task it is supposed to accomplish. But when the church awakens, only part of it will be equipped with what it takes to participate in the new life that Christ the bridegroom brings. The prepared churches, like the wise maidens, begin their journey by correctly gauging the scope and nature of their mission. The unprepared churches underestimate what it takes to be ready to meet the new life the bridegroom brings.

I often think that the Christian base communities around the world, composed mostly of poor people who once belonged to the slumbering churches, are the five wise maidens. These communities represent the church advancing on its journey with the proper assessment of the scope and nature of its mission. From these base communities some of the most prophetic liberation theology has emerged to try to awaken the unprepared element of the church to the plight of the poor and oppressed. Their message to the world is the same as Jesus’ message in the New Testament: Repent, for the kingdom of God is a hand.

The church at large is not heeding the gravity of this message. It cloaks itself in comfort, ignoring the politics of poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia that spreads oppression in the world like a fire out of control. The church seems to believe that the eschatological hope of which Paul speaks in I Thessalonians 4:13-18 and in other places will be realized by steeping itself in spiritual exercises that have nothing to do with justice and righteousness in the world. Therefore much of the church is not prepared to be God’s kingdom on earth or to realize that kingdom when Christ brings it in the future. One can only hope that all the church will awaken and affirm that piety, as preparation for new life in Christ’s kingdom, is efficacious only when the church hears and heeds the words of prophets like Amos.