Becoming an Anti-Racist Church: Journeying toward Wholeness

Part I: The Past: Racism and Resisting Racism in Church History

• 23 • The present is a product of the past. In the church’s past is a painful history of racism, resulting in a divided and sick Christianity today. There can be no understanding of how racism functions today in the church or anywhere else in society without knowing this history. Nor can we begin to comprehend our task of eliminating racism in the church or in society without having a clear picture of efforts to end racism in times before us. In order to move forward to the future, we must remember the past and deal openly and honestly with it. Following are two stories that illustrate that remembering history, particularly the long and complex history of racism and resistance to racism in the church, is critically important and, in the end, profoundly spiritually healing, even if agonizingly painful. the MAAfA suite St. Paul’s Baptist Church, a large African American congregation in Brooklyn, New York, has a weeklong observance each year called the MAAFA. Named after a Kiswahili word describing an unspeakable and inexpressible catastrophe , MAAFA is used to represent the African holocaust of enslavement of an “Theonlywayoutisbackthrough.Inordertogetwell you have to go back through what made you sick in the first place.”1 —Rev. Johnny Ray youngbLooD Part I the past: Racism and Resisting Racism in Church History 24 • BeCoMInG An AntI-RACIst CHURCH estimated 70 million people and the indescribable horrors it produced. The Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood, senior pastor of St. Paul’s Church, led his congregation in creating a movement to commemorate the MAAFA as an annual passion story. At the center of this annual event is “The MAAFA Suite . . . A Healing Journey ,” a three-hour dramatic psychodrama portraying the pain of African enslavement and the power of survival. Other churches and community groups around the united States have adopted the MAAFA observance as a means of “healing through remembrance.” The MAAFA observance places strong emphasis on healing the “wounded warrior” from the destructive power of racism. The goal is not only healing, however , but also reclaiming the power to struggle to dismantle racism and to change the society responsible for the wounding. In the end, the restored warrior and the restored faith community become a stronger part of organizing the struggle to change society.2 traces of the trade: A story from the Deep north In 2006, filmmaker Katrina Browne produced a historical documentary called Traces of the Trade that even today dramatically affects the lives of many white people, including members the Episcopal Church uSA, the denomination within which it originated. Traces of the Trade explores the story of white wealth inherited from the slave trade. Years before making the documentary, Browne discovered that her ancestors, the DeWolf family from New England, were one of the largest slave-trading families in united States history. From 1769 to 1820, three generations of DeWolf men trafficked in human beings. The family owned forty-seven ships that were used to transport thousands of Africans across the Middle Passage into slavery and enabled the DeWolfs to amass an enormous fortune. In the film, the DeWolf descendants retrace the steps of the Triangle Trade, visiting the DeWolf hometown of Bristol, Rhode Island, slave forts on the coast of ghana, and the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba. Back home, the family confronts the question of what to do now. In the context of growing calls for reparations for slavery, family members struggle with the question of how to think about and contribute to repairing the damages of racism. In doing so, Browne and her family reach the core of the issue of racism for white people: exaggerated and unwarranted power and privilege. And they come to the realization of the need for healing and transformation not only in the society at large, but inside themselves.3 our own Healing through Remembering Church History The healing that participants in the MAAFA Suite and Traces of the Trade received through remembering their painful history of racism and resistance to racism is part I: the past • 25 possible for us too, and for the congregations and denominations to which we belong. In fact, it is critical that we seek healing through remembering, for, as philosopher george Santayana warns: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”4 But before we can add our chapters to the story of confronting racism in the church in the...