Presbyterian Mission Agency Board opens Wednesday meeting with antiracism training

Panelists discuss economic disenfranchisement and systemic racism

by Gail Strange | Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE — As a part of the opening plenary of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board (PMAB) meeting on Wednesday, board members participated in a panel discussion on cultural humility moderated by the Rev. Denise Anderson, coordinator for racial and intercultural justice, working in connection with the agency’s Compassion, Peace & Justice and Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries.

Panel members included the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator for the Committee on the Self-Development of People, the Rev. Michael Moore, newly appointed associate for African American Intercultural Congregational Support and the Rev. Carlton Johnson, associate for Vital Congregations.

The conversation focused on one of the three foci of the Matthew 25 invitation, anti-racism. In particular, the focus of the conversation centered on economic justice from the Black church perspective.

The Rev. Denise Anderson, coordinator for Racial and Intercultural Justice in the Presbyterian Mission Agency, preached during a Vital Congregations worship service Friday in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center. (Photo by Rich Copley)

Anderson began the antiracism conversation by asking each speaker what brought them to their specific work.

In reply, Alonzo Johnson said growing up poor and Black in northern New Jersey is the thing that ultimately brought him to his ministry. “For me there has always been a concern that God had to be concerned for those who are hurting, and that God had to be concerned for the oppressed,” he said.  Johnson says that as a child he wondered how one could love God and live in the kind of poverty his family lived in. “I would say to my mom, how can God love us when we don’t have enough money to pay the electric bill? How does God love us when we don’t have the money to take the two buses to the enormous church that we attended at the time,” he said.

The Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson is SDOP coordinator.

“So, I come to this work because of my life, but also because of the calling on my life and the concern for a justice that comes out of a concern for eradicating poverty,” he explained. “What brought me here is a concern for those who suffer. In our tradition there are things that people can do to address poverty. We know that in this tradition to be called by God is to be active in justice. And, because God is a God of justice, it is in our DNA to do justice.”

Anderson next asked the panel members about what our histories and practices suggest about the value of Black people and Black churches to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in response, Moore, who has 25 years of pastoral experience and has been in his new position less than a week, said for the past few days he’s been thinking about his transition from his role as a pastor to his new position at the PMA. He referenced the tradition of Ku Klux Klan members holding a barbecue when they lynched a Black person. “There is an iconic photo that is etched in my mind,” he said. “This photo is of a Black man hanging and a little white girl is gazing up at the man. What’s etched in my mind is when we think about the value and the humanity of Black life and when we’re having this conversation, we’re struck very ashamedly when we see a hanging Black body. But we don’t also think about the trauma to the little white girl in a setting where it is being affirmed that this is something to be celebrated,” he noted. “And we don’t think about not only the trauma and inhumanity to Black people, but we also don’t think about the trauma to our white brothers and sisters as well.”

Making reference to the recent killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, Moore says after going through a series of unjust killings it seems as if the church has become desensitized to the trauma related to these happenings.

“The church already has had the symbolism of the trauma that we all experienced,” he said. “Look at the abuse of Christ, the trauma of the cross.”  He says considering what’s going on in our country, the church should feel something. “It should make us want to do something,” he said.  However, Moore says the nation cannot get to healing or reconciliation without reparations.

The Rev. Carlton Johnson is associate for Vital Congregations.

On the matter of reparations and the church’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement from a theological perspective, Carlton Johnson said, “Too often our language around Jesus’ crucifixion comes with a note that Jesus died on the cross. No, Jesus was killed; Jesus was lynched,” he said. “Jesus didn’t climb on the cross and fall asleep. He was killed.”

“And what we often have to wrestle with is what happened after Jesus died?” he said. “What happened for, or to, Jesus’s family? What happened for or to their church that Jesus started?”

“And if we keep the idea of Breonna Taylor’s murder before us, nobody confessed to doing it,” he said. “There’s a move in our liturgy called a moment of confession, a moment where we read something and we’re absolved. And many of us historically have taken that moment to say of all the raggedly behavior that we’ve done in the past day, week, or month; the raggedly behavior of our parents, grandparents, and ancestors, to say we’re fine now because the pastor has made that next move in the liturgy after the reading of the confession to say go forth in your forgiveness.”

“What does that do? That allows us to continue in our sin; sin such as racism, such as ignoring other people who suffer,” he said. “Jesus’s presence among us was not the idea so that we would have a reason to go to church on Sunday, but that we would know how to be in relationship with others, how we would understand the redistribution of wealth and goods, and so that we would understand what it means to be community.”