6/7/20 “Confessions” by Brian Crisp, Tommy Cook, and Larry Schultz

Brian D. Crisp

Without thinking, I said, “Yes.” Yes, I’ll meet you at the march.  Yes, I’ll participate in our community forum. Yes, I’ll write a letter to all my elected officials. Yes, I’ll speak at the special city council meeting and talk about police brutality and anti-black practices in Raleigh. Yes, I can find a way to feed that family and pay the rent. And, at the planning of this week when this staff collectively acknowledged that what we needed as a community was not held in the passages of the lectionary, but resided in confessing our own emotions and ideas about white supremacy, without really thinking, I said, “Yes.”

I had not considered how difficult this particular task would be.  How do I talk about a god too nestled into the comforts of the white church while living in a country where black and brown people are continually killed? How do I talk about the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt while living in a country that has enslaved the descendants of the Egyptians? How do I participate in the church universal knowing she has used her power to demonize and colonize Brown, Black, Indigenous, People of Color communities around the world?  How do I handle my Baptist role models who worked so relentlessly for racial justice during their careers and then spent the remainder of their lives in all-white spaces filled with anti-black sentiment? How do I acknowledge and remedy the fact that I have reaped the rich rewards of black literature, film, theater, art, and music without significantly bearing the burden of black suffering? How do I reckon with a society that was more comfortable granting humanity to corporations than acknowledging it had easily made humans chattel? How do I begin to minister to people of color in this congregation and community as they are exposed to daily aggression?  How do I confess that I would rather be reading books about race than engaging in the hard and uncomfortable work of liberation and solidarity?  How do I confess that I have stopped asking if any of us are okay because it is painfully obvious that we are not okay?

I don’t know. This is a phrase I learned to earnestly use later in life, and now, I see it as a first step toward learning, changing, transforming, if you will. This simple phrase allows me to be open to new ideas, new voices, new ways of being, and new ways of living, and at this moment, I need new ways in the world, this community, Pullen Church, and in my life. At the moment, I don’t know the answers to my questions, but I do, I pray, know the good and right thing to do.  It is good and right to be in solidarity with Brown, Black, Indigenous, People of Color making room for their voices, their experiences, and their lives.  It is good and right to use my privileges to advocate for liberation and justice.  It is good and right to show and stand beside, behind, in front, or wherever I am needed. It is good and right to have hard conversations with other white people about the importance of being actively anti-racist. It is good and right for me to invite you all into this work.

This morning I was having my daily conversation with Lorena and we were talking about protesting, feeding people, housing people, advocating for people, abolishing the police force, and caring for each other. She paused and said, “You know, this is what it means to be loving in perilous times.”  This is what it is to be loving.  This is what it is.  This.  I inhaled that breath, long and luxurious. How do I talk about a god in these times?  I say, “Yes.”

Tommy Cook

Several months ago, as Robin and I walked, in our small town, we passed a metal power box on a utility pole just less than a mile away from where … some 40 years ago… a billboard once read “KKK WELCOMES YOU TO SMITHFIELD.”  On that power box, we took notice of a sticker that someone placed on that box which read “IT’S OK TO BE WHITE.”   I don’t know the intent of the person that stuck it there, but I’m guessing it was someone’s frustrated response to “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”   Robin and I shook our heads with disgust, then continued  on our walk.  

With the recent events… the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd … and upon witnessing the response…. the protest, the sadness, the anger, the civil unrest and the resurgence of the cry “BLACK LIVES MATTER” …. all from my comfortable couch…  I have reflected upon the words on that sticker, “IT’S OK TO BE WHITE.”   

I confess…. that I am guilty as one who is immersed in white privilege and just walks on by.   I “fit the description” of a male Caucasian who JUST who sits and watches on my couch, knowing things are not OK with my black and brown sisters and brothers … but yet, I sit.  This is not “OK.”  

Larry Schultz

In the past two weeks, being shocked and speechless after hearing of yet another shameful killing of a black individual, a hymn poem came rushing to my mind, helping me to express anguish and anger. The hymn is by Brian Wren, and its first stanza expresses these cathartic words: 

Stanza 1 from “The Horrors of Our History” by Brian Wren © 1975 Hope Publishing Company.
Reprinted by permission of ONE LICENSE #A-701723. All rights reserved.

With this hymn I lament and confess the truth that the atrocities we’ve witnessed, are the direct result of our own shameful past, of this nation’s immoral history, and not of some outside force. This is our own doing and of our own making. It results from a history of white supremacy turned into white privilege. 

This history is revealed in a personal example I found out about just several months ago. My maternal grandmother died of a rare disease in June 1968 when I was almost three years old. As she was dying in the hospital, she asked my mother to forgive her if she had instilled any prejudice within her. She wanted her to know that any racial bias that she had shown in her life was wrong, that prejudice against people of color was wrong.  

This weighed very heavily upon my grandmother, because during her time in the hospital, it was an African-American nursing assistant who cared for her, and who with kindness would rub her with lotion to help relieve her pain. I’m sure my grandmother, a committed Christian, came to see Christ in this woman as she should have all along. And through this individual’s selfless acts, my grandmother recognized the error of her thinking and that of her society.  

Today we lament and confess the horrors of our history. Our hearts are breaking for all the oppressed. And our spirits groan with a groan too deep for words.