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Be A Better White Male

Last week I was a part of conversation about privilege and racism/sexism/oppression. I was asked about some simple starting points and this is the list that I came up with.  I know that it is flawed and limited but it might be a good start.RoadPortraitSunsetD&B

I would love hear your additions.

I will venture to get this started – the suggestions are going to be provisional at best and will need to be supplemented (heavily) by others.

  1. Assume that you are definitely part of the problem and only possibly part of the solution.
  2. Put yourself under the leadership/care of someone or a group that is not like you in race-gender-sexuality. So … if you go to George Fox Evangelical Seminary in Portland and it is time for you write your Master’s thesis, ask Randy Woodley, Roger Nam or Mary Kate Morse to be your adviser.
  3. Listen to them. Just listen.
  4. Resist the temptation to ask questions that have numbers in them. Like don’t ask “how hot does a sweat-lodge get and how many rocks are used?” or “what percentage of people would be X ?”  White guys love numbers – it’s a european enlightenment thing I think.
  5. Listen some more and do not discredit any of it – don’t allow yourself to think ‘that seems over the top’ or ‘it couldn’t have been that bad / blatant’. Don’t do it. You will want to. Don’t.
  6. Buy books by people that are not like you in a greater percentage than ones by white males. Start with Randy Woodley’s Shalom and the Community of Creation and Mary Kate Morse’s Making Room for Leadership.  You will not be sorry.
  7. and most importantly! – do what they tell you. No… Do what they DO … if you can. If they say ‘Don’t go to that conference’ cancel your plans. Even if you like the topic and you will lose money. If they say ‘This group could use some volunteers’, ask them if that is something you could do. If they tell you that they are doing something next Saturday, ask if that is something you could come to. Cancel the other thing you were going to do. Someone else will probably do that other thing.
  8. Assume that you are definitely part of the problem and only possibly part of the solution. You will make mistakes. It’s ok – we all do. The problem is so large and so seemingly insurmountable that we can not afford to get dis-couraged or to entertain allusions of grandeur.
  9. This is gunna take a while. Pace yourself. Embrace your spirituality in a new way – you will need it for the long haul. Don’t chuck it like so many do when they figure out how shitty the world is.
  10. Listen to the Smiley & West podcast every week.
  11. Whenever you are in a group do not use your whole percentage of air-time. If you are in a discussion with 3 other people – don’t talk 25% of the time (let alone 50). Use less than your percentage. I’m not saying ‘don’t talk or ask questions’. We don’t need to be silent … just use less than your 25% allotment.

Please let me know any additions or adjustments that you would like to see.   -Bo

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Race and things like Politics

by Bo Sanders 

[I initially wrote this for Ethnic Space & Faith
but thought it would be fun to cross pollinate.]  

Despite what the caller said on this week’s ‘Take Them to Task’ segment from the Smiley & West show said, race is still an issue in North America – not everyone is color blind. In fact, here are four stories that caught my attention in the past couple of days in the areas of politics, music, TV, and sport:

 Politics:  Much analysis is being done – and will continue to be done – about the U.S. Presidential election.  I had heard leading up to November 6 that if Gov. Romney was to win, he would have to do it with the largest percentage of white voters in recent history.

While he did not win yesterday, the ethnic breakdown was stark and is causing much consternation in conservative circles. Whites, and especially Evangelicals, reports say, voted over 80% for Romney. It is almost exactly the opposite (some reports say as high as 93%) of Latino voters went for Obama.

My only point is that if you think that the election of a Black president makes this a post-racial country, you have another thing coming. Race is still an issue and will continue to be an issue as we move to 2048 when Whites will not be a majority in America.

How will we lead? How will we transition? How will we hear new voices? 

Music: You may have seen the uproar over the music group No Doubt’s new video “Looking Hot”. Rolling Stone describes it this way:

The clip for the second single off their long-awaited new album, Push and Shove, featured a Wild-West theme, replete with tee-pees, feather headdresses and smoke signals. After releasing the video on Friday, No Doubt quickly drew complaints for using the stereotypical imagery, with threads such as “Appropriating Native American culture” appearing

The band did apologize and did remove the video.  Continue reading “Race and things like Politics” →

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>Jesus and Pigs

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There is a problem when it comes to reading the Bible in the modern world.  It’s not that big of a problem – unless we don’t deal with it and then it becomes a huge giant nightmare.

Let me say something positive first. I am a fan of everyone having the Bible in their own language and in their own hand. I am a proud Protestant. I would not want to live in an era where everyone did not have access to the Bible in their language.  I like this aspect of the world and era that I live in.

We read the Bible. Not reading the Bible is not our problem. Sometimes preachers get on people for not reading their Bibles enough. I disagree.  I think that people are generally reading the Bible enough. That is not our problem. (I know these are generalities – just go with me for a second)


I do, however, think that there are two problems when it comes to reading the Bible.

  1. The first is that  we don’t know enough about the first century.
  2. The second is that we don’t know enough about the genres that the books of Scripture are written in.


It is difficult for me to express how important this issue is in our contemporary situation.
It would be overstating it to say that we don’t know how to read the Bible.  
It would be understating it to say that we just need to read it more.  One might even go as far as to say that if we are reading it wrong, then reading that way more will just create more of a problem!

This is what I want to address over the next 4 weeks with this conversation.

I will start with a story that illustrates both the points (about the 1st Century and about the genres).

The story of Jesus and ‘Legion’ (you can go read this is  Mark 5 and Luke 8)

Here are three readings of that story:  modern-Literal, Political, and Post-Colonial

In the modern-Literal reading, Jesus goes over to this region called the Decapolis which is primarily inhabited by gentiles. He finds this guy chained up because he is being tormented by a large number of demons and had become a danger to himself and to the town folk. Jesus comes over – the only time he was ever in that area on that side of the sea – and he casts out the demons. But the demons make a deal with Jesus and so he casts them into a herd of pigs – which immediately run down the hill into the sea and drown. The townspeople are not happy with Jesus for wrecking their economic livelihood and agricultural income.  They ask Jesus to leave. The guy – now freed from his torment – asks to come with Jesus and Jesus tells him to go back into town and testify.
It is not said if he wanted to leave because a) he was mad at the people for chaining him out there or b) the people would be mad at the guy for what happened to the pigs.

This is a straight forward reading and when one does not know much about the first century … it is probably the reading that you would go with. The story is about demons, pigs, and people. And that is about all.   The application is that Jesus loves this one guy more than a bunch of livestock and is concerned with the well–being of a single person more than the livelihood of an entire town.

In a political reading, the lens of first century politics gives the story a different look. Jesus goes into a Roman occupied territory (think about the name Decapolis). He encounters a man tormented by a foreign occupier with a Roman name (Legion is a military term) and frees this man who is bound by casting out the alien presence into pigs – which are unclean to the Hebrew mind.  It is also notable that a pig had been sacrificed in the Jerusalem Temple in the time between the Hebrew (older) Testament and the beginning of our newer (christian) Testament.
The story that we get Hanukkah from is found in the Maccabean revolt. This uprising was ultimately set off by the sacrifice of a pig (called the abomination of desolation) in the Temple.
But in our story,  what to do with the pigs drowning is water?  I have heard two good explanations.The first revolves around the Egyptian army drowning in the Exodus and so drawing of the imagery of Jesus (as a Moses character) liberating his people out of captivity.  The second has to do with Shamanism (both ancient and modern) which puts extracted bad things (tumors, spirits, venom, etc.) into water to neutralize them.

Either way – knowing about the Political landscape of the 1st Century makes it possible to say maybe demons aren’t demons and pigs aren’t pigs in this sense.   

Of course the obvious thing  is to say “Well, can’t it be both?” that Jesus really did cast out the demons but that the way Luke told the story allows them to be not JUST demons.  This way, pigs are pigs but they are not just pigs. Demons, likewise, are real demons who are really cast out … but they are not just demons – there is another implication to them.

Here is my point though! You can not have the possibility of pigs not being pigs or pigs being more than pigs unless you know something about the politics of the 1st century!   Otherwise pigs are only pigs and nothing more.   In that case, we may be missing more than half the message of Jesus or at the message as it was portrayed by the Gospel writer.

Added Bonus:
After I had already written this post, I heard another take on this passage. At Big Tent Christianity last week, Anthony Smith (the Postmodern Negro) and Tripp Fuller (of Homebrewed Christianity) had a dialogue about post-colonial Pentecostalism and race.

In this lens the reading of this passage takes on a very different look. The story becomes a model or a type of parable that is recreated over and over again.

The man is in chains (slavery) and the free culture keeps him outside. Jesus finds him and Jesus frees him. This exposes the disgraceful treatment of this man by those who are free. The liberation comes at great price (the pigs) and collateral damage (the economy). The man wants to flee and go with Jesus but Jesus asks him to stay and testify to those that who had bound him – to be an uncomfortable presence for them and to not simply be an “out of sight – out of mind” part of their past .

A post-colonial reading talks of liberation, of exposing the shameful treatment of ‘the other’, and of speaking truth to power.  This is a powerful reading that places Jesus squarely in our midst again and allows the Gospel to speak with real power to our real situations.

It is important to note that post-colonial readings are not merely allegories or metaphors – they are read as real events that really impact our real world… but they are not simply literalistic one-dimensional readings like the our first model (modern-literal).

There are many more interpretations that merit to be in the conversation – I simply wanted to introduce these three in order to say that A) what was happening in the first century matters to how we read the newer Testament  B) what genre a text is written in matters to how we read it.

The post-colonial reading introduces a third:
C) that the world we live in is both a lens and a light through which we read and view the text. That is called interpretation and that is our focus for next week.  

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>Weekend Roundup

>I put up the podcast (and transcript) called “Big Concern(s)” this past Tuesday and there have been two developments in the conversation that have caused me to think.

The initial post was about three things that I think will most impact the Church in the next 50 years.

Generations: I am talking about the WWII & Boomer generations passing away & retiring (respectively)

Race: There will no longer be a white majority by 2048.  Black, Asian and Latino charismatic and evangelical churches mean that it will be true of the church before it is true of the culture.

Location: the Urban- Suburban – Rural divide looks to become a real gap. What does that mean for ‘doing’ church and ‘being’ the church?

Here are the two things that came up that caused me to think:

 a) Most of  the ‘chatter’ than I hear on the christian Radio, religions TV and the internet would lead me to think that the popular BIG 3 when it comes to religion are : Politics, Heresy or Pluralism. I have been forced to think about why  those are not my three.  I have come up with some initial answers but I will save them for a January Podcast.

b) Several people brought up the Gender and Sexuality issue. No doubt they have a point. As odd as this may sound, I am actually going to lump those in with Politics in my scenario that I am proposing.  I think that partisan politics and sectarian religion (denominational divisions) are going to drag homosexuality and the abortion issue out – front and center. So I will deal with that there.

Another interesting thing that I wanted to pass along: I found this really good article on JFK, Mitt Romney, and Sarah Palin in the Washington Post.  It is worth a read to think about Religion in the public sphere. [link]

I’ll see you Tuesday for the new Pod! 

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Religion in Public

As my semester comes to a close, I finally have some breathing space to post the backlog of stuff I have thinking about and finding along the way.

One of my classes this semester was in Ethics focusing on Pluralism and the Public arena.  A conversation that interested me deeply revolved around the famous JFK speech on religion and the more recent one by Mitt Romney. Though they were probably more similar than different, their differences were profound.

I found this interesting article today in the Washington Post where JFK’s niece says that Sarah Palin gets the argument wrong in her new book.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303209.html

Continue reading “Religion in Public” →

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>My BIG concern(s)

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People ask all the time about Emergent Village and the emergent conversation.* They are disappointed/concerned that it is too cynical, too white, too male, not organized enough, not powerful enough or not theologically conservative enough. 

I only get 1000 words a week so let me just make two quick points and then I will tell ya what I think that bigger issue is. 

to listen to the Podcast of this click [here] or go to Itunes “Everyday Theology”

  • Even if the critiques are true – aren’t we glad at some level that white guys are talking about this kind of stuff (making changes, challenging the status quo, etc)? My thought is that if 85% of pastors in America are male… then of course the demographics are going to reflect that starting point. We all start somewhere. You never start from scratch. We all makes the best out of where we begin.  
  • The emergent conversation is really something that has come up in just over a decade. With the 24 hour news cycle, the blog-o-sphere and Twitter… things take on an immediacy in our ‘plugged in culture’  that is unprecedented in human history (the dissemination of information).  But have you ever tried to change something at a church? Most of the time it does not change that quickly! For example, just to be ordained will take my friends 6 years before they can even serve communion! 
I have a greater concern:  I have broken them down into 3 sets of 3. 
Generation: A lot of attention gets paid to the overall changes in the 18-35 year old window.  And it should. There is definitely something going on. 
I am not sure that most churches are going to be able to bridge the gap that is about to come. That is not a knock against the church – it is an acknowledgement of how difficult the task is going to be and how wide the gap is going to become. 
Most churches are funded and/or led by the Boomers and WWII generation. But who those churches are most set up to reach is Parents (35-50) who are generically known as ‘shoppers’. They are looking for a church that meets all the needs of their family. 
I am not speaking negatively here, I am trying to sketch out a changing landscape. Here is what I am nervous about: when this Baby Boom / WWII generation  retires / passes-on (respectively) in the next 10-20 years… there is going to be a finical and leadership vacuum in many local congregations. We will not be able to keep doing ministry the way that we have been doing ministry. 
The problem is that the 18-35 generation is not interested in just doing ministry the way that it has been done – they are not going to just faithfully serve without question or input (for the most part). The expectations are different, the questions are different, and the frameworks are different. 
Context: I am very interested and concerned with the Rural, Sub-urban and Urban triangle. I am a huge proponent of contextualization. This is a huge difference from Islam (as I understand the situation) Judaism and even Christendom. The gospel is meant to be (designed to be) contextualized. The gospel of Jesus Christ is incarnational. It looks different in every different place. 
Unlike Islam you don’t have to face Mecca when you pray, you don’t have to make a trip to the holy city, and -most importantly- you don’t have to read the sacred text in its original language (Arabic in Islam, Hebrew in Judaism, and Greek for Christianity). Our Bible is meant to be translated!
So we have a contextual gospel that is meant to be incarnated in each locale in a fresh way. This is one of the great distinctions of Christianity that is often overlooked.  
In America, however, we have a Consumeristic mentality and so we often like to buy, import and replicate instead of contextualize and incarnate.  (if you think that I am overstating it go to a website like Oureach.com and click on “Fireproof” or any other theme and get ready to buy mailers, bulletins, news sheets, powerpoint slides, banners, t-shirts, and a six week sermon series). 
I am not being critical of websites and services like Outreach.com, I am simply saying that I am concerned that in my lifetime the gap between Urban, Suburban and Rural is going to increase – especially for the church of Jesus Christ. 
(I have had this conversation with Mainline, Pentecostal, and Evangelical leaders. I don’t think that it is unique to any specific style or creed).
Race: I am so intrigued by the Civil Rights movements of 50 years ago. But I am more fascinated by what is coming in the next 50 years. Studies are saying that by the year 2048 there will be no white majority in America.(Canada is in a completely different situation – I will have to talk about that some other time)  Soong Chan-Rah [link] says that it will be true of the Church by 2042 – due to the nature and makeup of Charismatic and Evangelical churches.  
Black, White, Yellow, Red, and Brown – these are us. 
What is the church doing now or planning to do in the next 20 years to get ready for this?  I don’t know.  It seems to me from all the stuff I come across, listen to, read, and discuss that race and ethnic diversity might be lucky to break the top 10 in concerns.
And this it the great concern of mine and what I would hope to address (to a degree) with the Everyday Theology project. Generation, Location and Race is a triangle that I think about everyday.  So here is my three fold make-shift framework that I am employing in my studies to get ready to be a part of the change: Philosophical, Theological and Congregational. 
  • To be Philosophically credible to the world that we are trying to reach and participate with. My hope would be for an internal coherence – that what we do and say is logical credible and is believable. 
  • To be Theologically faithful to the Christian tradition.This includes an awareness of the good and bad of Christian history, so that there is a congruence that avoids disorientation and that provides a continuity that brings some level of orientation.
  • To be contextual (incarnational) as a Congregation. That each local body would be empowered to  have a authentic expression that was appropriate for their community (so that it is not an alien expression that is just imported and implemented or imposed on a community).
My concerns are Generation, Location, and Race… My solutions are Intellectual, Historical, and Incarnational.

That is what I think awaits us in our generation and is our task as we walk forward as global christian who are hoping for a brand new day.  

* I usually preferred “emergence” without the strong “T” at the end. That “T” is what makes it a proper name or title that people often see as a brand. 
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Notes from the Future

I have recently moved to Southern California (from the Pacific Northwest and the NorthEastern United States before that) and I have been thinking  about a theme that I wrote about in my master thesis.  First a story .

My nephew and I went to church our first week here. We were two of the five white people at the service. It was primarily a Japanese and Korean congregation with some Hispanic and a few Blacks. I had a wonderful talk with my nephew on the way home about A) the future of America and B) the irony of him being from Montana where the white/non-white split may actually be at  exact inverse proportions to our church service.

I also started a new program in Practical Theology (sound like an oxymoron to most) at a school that is preparing for the future by taking a bold look at religious diversity, inter-faith engagements and the future of pluralism.

All of this got me thinking about these things that will play major roles in our lifetime:
– the Shift toward the global south
-the changing demographics of North America
-and the Post-Modern shift in thinking.

I will tackle the first two here Continue reading “Notes from the Future” →

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