Can We Talk About Ferguson?
Can we talk about Ferguson? And now Staten Island?
I won’t be surprised if you’re not sure you want to keep reading. It’s hard stuff – unpleasant and, perhaps more to the point, divisive. I myself have friends on all sides of the spectrum of attitudes about the grand jury decisions, about the protests that followed, and about the state of race relations in our country. Which is why so many of us would be just as happy to avoid talking about this in general and most certainly at church.
But there’s more than one way to talk about an issue, and I’d like to invite us to think about another tact. Might we, for instance, talk with each other in order to try to appreciate the various positions people hold with a goal not first of persuasion but of understanding? I sometimes think that part of what makes these kinds of conversations so difficult is that precisely because people feel strongly about them we feel it’s a contest, if not a conquest, and that the goal is to make people see and accept our point of view (or the fear that others think that way about us).
Might, however, we in the church recognize that relationship comes before and is more important than information and offer ourselves as places where people who hold different points of view might listen to each other to try to understand each other? Might we ask what it’s like to grow up as an African American kid and get nervous when a police cruiser comes by? Might we ask what it’s like to be a police officer and know that each and every stop you make could be potentially violent? Might we further wonder how we have come to be so suspicious of those who differ from us, whether that’s a difference in ethnicity or religion? And might we also ask what the implications are of own theology and the confession that in Jesus Christ God was reconciling the whole world and commissioning us to be ambassadors of reconciliation?
I thought of this all last night was I was meeting with a group of African American pastors and one lamented the tense relationship members of his congregation and community have with the police force. “The irony,” he said, “is that we live in communities that most need the police and want to support the police. And yet it’s hard.”
Yes, it’s hard. Really hard. Which is why we in the church can’t simply sit back and say nothing, hoping it will all go away. It won’t. Moreover, if we keep saying nothing about things that shape the world our kids are growing up in, they will eventually believe the faith has nothing to say to them.
Trust me, I know that conversations – even conversations that seek understanding rather than immediate resolution – can be difficult. But they are possible, even crucial. And we have something to offer – hope, mutual respect, and the love we know in Christ. Moreover, we believe that the promise we sing that God will bring peace to earth and good will to all isn’t only an end-time promise but one that God keeps in part through the holy, though also difficult, conversations we have about things that matter.
Think for a moment of the powerful witness and potential good of a largely white Lutheran congregation inviting members of a mostly African American Baptist congregation to supper and conversation, or of a African Methodist Episcopal congregation engaging a mainline Presbyterian Church in conversation. It can happen, and you can help. Keep in mind, you don’t have to get it all right, as even the gesture is important. But if you want help, I’d suggest two resources both with the same main title. The first is by my excellent colleague here at LTSP, Katie Day: Difficult Conversations: Taking Risks, Acting with Integrity
David, We’ve been hearing a lot about the existing Grand Jury concept up here in Canada also. What I hear you saying is paralleled by Peter Senge in his book “The Fifth Discipline.” A quote from page 10 of my copy:
“The discipline of team learning starts with ‘dialogue,’ the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine ‘thinking together’.”
In the same paragraph:
“(Dialogue differs from the more common ‘discussion,’ with its roots with ‘percussion’ and ‘concussion,’ literally a heaving of ideas back and forth in a winner-takes-all competition.)”
Senge further discusses ways of blending the two concepts on page 230:
“A learning team masters movement back and forth between dialogue and discussion.”
“A unique relationship develops among team members who enter into dialogue regularly. They develop a deep trust that cannot help but carry over to discussions.”
We continue to learn how to get along with one another.
Thank you for sharing this need from another perspective.
Thank you for this. I have been engaged with some folks here about other issues, but nonetheless deeply held beliefs, that don’t line up with particular theologies, statements, and more.
What I have found time and again in these conversations is that the approach that is often initially taken with me is ‘against’ me or ‘at’ me. It is the presentation of a case with one side listing all the good things about X and the bad things about Y.
In those times, I fall back to my long-standing dialogue partners and the way in which we converse. Pulling at each other’s threads to see where we have not asked questions of our own thoughts, digging into our own minds and opinions more than our partner’s.
If we are going to engage in meaningful dialogue regarding topics from religion to race, faith to economics, there is such a baseline that needs to be created for us to engage in something peace-filled.
Coming to a table for a meal and dialogue rather than coming armed with whatever show or website arms you with is an amazingly simple and confoundingly hard way to approach it, and yet it must begin in such a way. With an invitation, a relationship, and a meal. After all, that’s the way we ourselves, the grand deniers and betrayers we all are, we Peters and Judases, were invited by the Word, no?
Thank you again for your depth and ability to help us all take a step back to figure out how we can begin the work to which we are called. Cheers.