Trinity News: 2016 Trinity Institute

trinity institute vol. 62 | no. 3

TrinityNews THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY WALL STREET

IN TERV IEWS WITH E DUARDO BONILLA-S ILVA MICHAE L CU RRY K E LLY BROWN DOU GLAS J E NNIFE R HARVE Y

TRINITY INSTITUTE

TrinityNews VOL. 62 | NO. 3

THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY WALL STREET

DEPARTMENTS FEATURE STORIES 1 19

Letter from the Rector

2 You Redeem the Past by Facing It Interview with Michael Curry

Archivist’s Mailbag

20

For the Record

23

The Visitor File

24

What Have You Learned?

25

Pew and Partner Notes

4 Facing Our Demons Bob Scott 5 Reconstructing Whiteness Interview with Jennifer Harvey 7 Repair Before Reconciliation Jeremy Sierra 8 Racism without Racists Interview with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva 10 Building Unity in New Orleans Jim Melchiorre 12 Stepping out of Privilege Interview with Kelly Brown Douglas 14 Slavery’s Invisible Past 16 30 Years of Talking about Race Interview with Trinity’s Task Force Against Racism 17 Pioneering Sacred Conversations about Race Leah Reddy 18 The Beloved Community Heidi J. Kim

All photos by Leah Reddy unless otherwise noted.

TRINITY WALL STREET 120 Broadway | New York, NY 10271 | Tel: 212.602.0800 Rector | The Rev. Dr. William Lupfer Executive Editor | Nathan Brockman Editor | Jim Melchiorre Art Director | Rea Ackerman Managing Editor | Jeremy Sierra Copy Editors | Robyn Eldridge, Lynn Goswick Designers | Susie Ng | Joan Adelson Multimedia Producer | Leah Reddy

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LETTER FROM THE RECTOR

T

his issue of Trinity News is designed to complement the 2016 Trinity Institute conference called “Listen for a Change: Sacred Conversations for Racial Justice.” Like Trinity Institute, the stories are meant to prompt difficult conversations about race, history, and how we can each respond to structural racism. It is full of ideas and reflections, shared with you in a spirit of collaboration and partnership. The content is also online (trinitywallstreet.org), where the material is placed in its fullest context alongside other resources, including in-depth video material.

In recent months, we’ve come to realize that publishing Trinity News in print form limits the range and depth of content that we are able to share with you on a timely basis. As a result, we have decided to migrate all of the magazine’s content online beginning with the next issue. In taking this evolutionary step, we hope to broaden our offerings and maximize the many distribution channels available.

In doing so, we would welcome your thoughts on how Trinity could be meaningfully engaged as a content partner and resource to church communities beyond our own. What would be helpful to you? We invite your input, either by e-mailing news@trinitywallstreet.org or visiting this page online: trinitywallstreet.org/trinitynewsonline. You can also call us at 212.602.9686.

When members of the Trinity community travel to visit mission and ministry partners, quite often an appreciative comment will be made about the stories, interviews, reflections, and news Trinity has provided over the past decades. I am pleased that Trinity continues to be a part of ministries worldwide in this way.

Faithfully,

The Rev. Dr. William Lupfer

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ONLINE ONLY BEGINNING IN THE SPRING

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You Redeem the Past by

FACING IT

T h e M o s t R e v. M i c h a e l C u r r y

What’s at stake for us as a church and as a society in this struggle against racism?

Our very humanity. We’re really talking about sin. Paul Tillich once said that the essence of sin is separation. Sin is that which separates us from our God, and it is that which separates us from each other. The core of that sin is that unbridled self-will, sort of a reverse Copernican revolution, where I am the center of the universe and you are on the periphery. When you have a world like that, when you have lives constructed that way, when you have social orders constructed that way, then some human beings become expendable, some forms of injustice become tolerable, and sometimes, the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

That really is what the Bible is talking about when it talks about sin. It is a destructive force in human relationships and human life. That is the root cause of every manmade division in this world, and we are in the business of making sin history.

Does progress in the future need to be different than progress in the past?

When I was growing up, we thought the struggle for civil rights was a struggle for equality for African Americans. That [struggle] began to grow, and we began to realize that it wasn’t just about African Americans, but it had to do with Native Americans, it had to do with Latino Americans, eventually it had to do with women, it had to do with gays. We realized that what seemed like a struggle for one group actually was a struggle for all of us, that this was a human struggle writ large, but you had to start somewhere.

What would this genuine reconciliation look like?

Genuine reconciliation would look like legal structures and relationships where there is community policing, where people respect law officers, and where law officers respect the people. I think that’s true with most, to be honest, but there are enough exceptions to the rule to call it into question. Where we can trust our legal and judicial processes to come as close to true justice as humanly possible.

If we in America could engage authentic racial reconciliation and human reconciliation, then we would find levels of poverty decreasing, we would find education affordable and present for all, we would find that we actually are living in a society where all children are valued equally before God, and therefore, there would be equal access to education for every child.

Are there ways that the church contributes to the problem?

The church can contribute to the problem, and it has when it has done nothing, when it has not found its voice, a voice beyond mere pious platitudes. But on the flip side, when the church has spoken up, let me tell you, something happens.

We are struggling, at the moment we’re doing this taping, with the question of refugees from Syria and from other places around the world.

I have been heartened by the voices of Christians and other people of faith and good will who have stood up and said, we obviously have security needs in this country and those must be attended to, but let us never forget that this is a nation of immigrants. We are a country that does welcome those who are cast out, and let us not cast aside our very birthright because of our fear.

I would submit that we, as followers of Jesus, and other people of faith and good will actually have a voice; and when we raise it, not as just another strident political voice, but as a moral voice, not out of our own self-interest, but because this is what we believe in and what we believe to be right for the common good, that’s the religious voice that will be heard.

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o n r a c e , h i s t o r y, a n d t h e h u m a n f a m i ly

Would you be willing to comment on the Black Lives Matter movement?

Imagine that there are two houses next door to each other, and one is on fire and the other is not. You call the fire department, and you say “All houses matter.” The point is, if one is on fire, you’ve got to deal with that one so the other doesn’t catch on fire.

I think that’s what we’ve got going on with Black Lives Matter. Some of [the issues the movement raises] have socioeconomic causes.

Black lives matter, and we must declare that, because all lives do matter, because the lives of police officers matter, brown lives matter.

I hear the cry for Black Lives Matter as a way of saying, let’s take seriously the injustices and the wrongs that are right in front of us, so that by paying attention to these lives here, we will then be able to pay attention to other lives. I think this is the cry of our young people, a cry of so many who have been crying in silence.

How can Christianity address some of these things?

I really do believe that as we recover our role as being a part of the Jesus movement, of the movement of God in this world, we will realize that Jesus of Nazareth has actually shown us the way, he has given us the principles on which you can build a life and rebuild a society.

Because it’s not all on us. We’re part of a movement that’s bigger than we are.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and people may hear it for the next nine years, nothing on earth can stop the movement of God’s love in this world. Nothing. If you don’t believe me, ask old St. Paul, Romans 8: “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

There are so many examples of systemic issues, but what’s the role of personal responsibility?

It is a both/and. We are personally responsible for our actions, and yet we must also acknowledge that society impacts us. I was born privileged.

I grew up in a home where my parents expected me to accomplish something. I’m blessed to have had that—I had everything going for me.

Imagine Michael Curry with a different set of circumstances, and I might be a different person. I would hope that by the grace of God, I might have landed on my feet, but who knows?

Yet, I have no excuse either way, because the truth of the matter is, I am a responsible agent.

You do have some impact on how your life gets lived.

I was a parish priest for a long time before I became bishop. Many of the years that I was in Baltimore were primarily spent working with kids, many of whom came from desperate home circumstances, where the odds were completely against them. Part of what we sought to do—and were able to do sometimes, and other times we couldn’t—was to help kids and young people find a spiritual foundation for their lives. I really do believe Jesus Christ matters in a life—that there is a bigger vision than just the vision of your immediate community and the world that you know.

They needed that vision that was bigger than the ghetto where they were living. They needed some moral norms that were grounded in a love that’s real and not just a pious platitude, a vision of a community that would continue to hold them up, and a Lord to follow. Those kids had a chance of making it. I saw it as a parish priest. I believe it. It’s part of the reason why I do what I do, because actually, this faith matters, and it makes a difference in lives.

v

What do you think is the value in looking at history?

You don’t go into the past in order to stay there.

You go into the past in order to learn from it, to be honest about it, and then to build a better future. Maya Angelou, in her poem, “On the Pulse of the Morning,” says, say to the Native American, the Indian, the sheikh, the homeless, the gay, the preacher, that history, once lived, cannot be undone but faced with courage need not be lived again. You redeem the past by facing it and turning in a new direction, having learned from it, and marching into a new future. The word for turning into a new direction is the word repentance. Repent, and turn and face the future.

How do you see the spirituality, if you will, of racism?

There is that passage in Ephesians 6 that says, we wrestle not against powers and principalities, but against “spiritual wickedness in high places.” I think part of the insight of that passage is that some of the evils that we confront are not just simply bad people doing bad things, they are social orders and social constructions of reality that somehow conspire together to make even good people do bad things.

One of the first books I read in seminary was a book by Reinhold Niebuhr called Moral Man and Immoral Society. Niebuhr was writing after the Second World War and the Holocaust, and

he was asking himself the question, how was it possible that ordinary good and decent people from one of the countries that gave us Goethe and Kant and Schiller and Einstein could perpetuate such incredible evil? Moral human beings become capable of incredible evil when they see themselves no longer as responsible but part of a bigger collective, and that collective takes over, and therefore, they’re not responsible for the evil that the collective does.

I think that’s part of what Ephesians was getting at, by “spiritual wickedness in high places.” Cultures, groups, entities take on a spirit. We must take the best tools at our disposal and bring them together with the best spiritual opportunities at our disposal, and then we can make some headway and transform.

I’m mindful of the words of Benjamin Elijah Mays, who was the president of Morehouse College years ago: “Faith is taking your best step but leaving the rest to God.” As you look at questions of race, what would be your hope?

My deepest hope is that by our courage and by facing painful pasts, even painful presents, the grace of Almighty God can give us the courage, like that old spiritual says, to “rise up, shepherd, and follow.” If we in the Episcopal Church find the courage to rise up and follow, others will join us in that work. If more of us engage in it, we can actually turn this tired old world upside down, which is really right side up. That’s my deepest hope and fondest dream.

The Most Rev. Michael Curry is Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Both sides of his family were descended from slaves and sharecroppers in North Carolina and Alabama. He served as rector of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1988 to 2000. He will preach at the 2016 Trinity Institute conference.

DIG DEEPER Watch the interview with Bishop Curry at trinitywallstreet.org.

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Facing Our Demons William Stringfellow’s prophetic

and practical advice on dismantling racism

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BY ROBERT OWENS SCOTT

hile preparing for Trinity Institute’s 2016 conference, “Listen for a Change: Sacred Conversations for Racial Justice,” I recently read about the First National Conference on Religion and Race, held in Chicago in January 1963.

At the close of the conference, an Episcopal lay theologian, William Stringfellow, rose to respond to a keynote address by the worldrenowned and rightly esteemed rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel. Stringfellow didn’t question anyone’s “nice intentions [or] good will,” but he feared that “this conference is too little, too late, and too lily white.”

Living in Harlem as a civil rights attorney, Stringfellow drew his theology from his life experience, in dialogue with his study of Scripture.

Part of his criticism was that the religious bodies represented were not actually present at the sites of racial oppression and suffering.

More than challenging his peers to walk their talk, however, he wanted them to see that they fundamentally misunderstood racism and therefore had no real idea how it could be addressed. “Racism is not an evil in human hearts or minds; racism is a principality, a demonic power, a representative, image and embodiment of death, over which human beings have little or no control, but which works its awful influence over their lives.”

Despite initial resistance—“If my people had believed as you do, we would still be making bricks for pharaoh,” said Rabbi Heschel— Stringfellow’s remarks proved both prophetic and constructive.

Stringfellow insisted his aim was to introduce a note of realism in the discussion about race.

While his comments landed like a splash of cold water, they also contained a strain of realistic hope. “Principalities and powers” refers to Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” While such talk strikes many today as an unhelpful vestige of a premodern worldview, Stringfellow recognized in it a profound understanding of the systemic nature of the

evils that limit and degrade human flourishing.

He saw that the pernicious hold racism exerted on people of all colors—some reaping the benefits, others paying the price—went far beyond whatever prejudice or good will resided in any individual human heart. It was embedded in U.S. society, working its effects whether one wanted it to or not.

“He was contending that racism has a spiritual reality to it,” Bill Wylie-Kellermann observes in the introduction to Stringfellow’s Essential Writings. “You could dismantle the legal apparatus of American apartheid, that is, repeal Jim Crow and … end racism, right? No, it would rise up and reconfigure itself in some more subtle and guileful forms, but every bit as demonic.”

Forty-nine years after Stringfellow addressed that conference, the publication of Michelle Alexander’s landmark book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, demonstrated the accuracy of that warning. Her widely read book traces how slavery morphed into Jim Crow laws, which morphed into mass incarceration—all systems with the aim and outcome of controlling the lives of people of color. Alexander is a lawyer and focuses on the criminal justice system, but this troubling phenomenon has been amply noted in a variety of disciplines. It does appear, as Stringfellow proposed, that we as a people are not as much misguided as possessed.

What possesses us? Stringfellow recognized the principalities and powers not as disembodied spirits but as “the great institutions and ideologies active in the world.” The Good News (capitals intended) is that Christians have a model and a guide for resisting. “This is the power with which Jesus was confronted and which, at great and sufficient cost, he overcame,” Stringfellow wrote. “The issue here is not equality among humanity, but unity …. The issue is baptism.”

He placed baptism at the core, not to privilege his own faith over that of others but because he believed that baptism affirms the unity of all humanity in God. Wylie-Kellerman sums up Stringfellow’s view like this: “The powers are raging beyond your control and they are already overcome in Christ … The claim renders racism not simply a social problem, but fundamentally a Gospel matter.”

If we’re to begin our conversations about race with the end in mind (to paraphrase Stephen Covey’s famous maxim), that is the place: realizing that while personal prejudice hurts and diminishes human beings, the real enemies are the systems that keep privilege and oppression in place—in biblical terms, the powers. Jesus contended with these powers.

His crucifixion was the price he paid. The resurrection was God’s answer. Stringfellow held no truck with abstract theology, and neither should we. We must ask what in ourselves and our society needs to die. We must look for and encourage signs of new and transformed life.

If Jesus is resurrection’s “first fruits” (1 Corinthians 15:23), how can we be about the work of the harvest?

To begin with the end in mind is not to think that by the conclusion of the conference those gathered in New York and in churches and halls via the web will have somehow “solved” racism. It is to act in the hope and conviction that we will have raised consciousness, forged and deepened relationships, and caught a vision of the “new thing” God is doing (Isaiah 43:19). It is to remember our baptism and be grateful—to remember with Stringfellow that baptism means the unity of all humanity, that the Baptismal Covenant affirms the dignity of all human beings, and that when resisting the powers seems an overwhelming task, we remember the answer to each of the questions we are asked when we are baptized: I will, with God’s help.

Robert Owens Scott is Director of Trinity Institute.

DIG DEEPER For video interviews, suggested reading, and much more, visit TI2016.org

Please note: the opinions expressed in the following articles and interviews do not necessarily reflect those of Trinity Wall Street.

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Reconstructing

Whiteness , MomentbyMoment An Interview with Jennifer Harvey, Associate Professor of Religion at Drake University and ordained minister in the American Baptist Church.

You cite Martin Luther King’s famous observation that 11am Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week, which is maybe even truer now. But the conclusion you draw from that is somewhat different than that of most people.

When you hear Protestants invoke Martin Luther King on that front, they are lamenting that we worship in such racially separated, even segregated, spaces. My belief is that we are still racially separated because of the histories and the relationships that undergird our racial differences. Instead of seeing our racially separated worship spaces as the problem and thus trying to reconcile and come together as the solution, I believe we need to recognize our racial separateness as a symptom of a much deeper problem that we have yet to seriously contend with in the “white church.”

What is race? Is it a biological category?

Is it a genetic category?

We know, and scientists have said, that race in and of itself is not a biological, genetic category.

We might have between an African American person and a white person more DNA similarity than we have between two white people. What we decide counts as race is more of a social phenomenon. I want to be very clear that that does not mean, therefore, that [race] is not real or that it’s only an illusion. It’s very real. This church we’re in right now—it’s a construction, somebody built it. But just because it’s built doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

In the United States the category of race has almost always, but not exclusively, been built in relationship to systems of oppression. We can go all the way back to the 1600s, and we know that the category of “white” was a category that emerged as laws decided which bodies could and could not be legally enslaved, could and could not be legally targeted for genocide and dispossession. When we say race is a product or

a result of material injustices, it’s those kinds of processes we’re talking about.

A lot of us think the category of “white” is underexamined. What is whiteness?

Whiteness has many layers to it. On the broadest, biggest layer, whiteness in the United States is the culture, the set of legal practices, the set of social norms, the kind of ethos that has developed as a social and legal system, decade after decade after decade, that has created and supported a racial hierarchy in which those categorized as white are always at the top.

Whiteness is a phenomenon that exists well beyond the will of individual people who might be categorized as white.

This is something I think about and talk about a lot: what does it mean for those of us who are people of faith—and for all folks committed to equality and justice—to be categorized as white and to live in an environment where every day we experience some level of benefit from what is, in reality, a violent history and social structure, oftentimes without our even knowing it?

Is that why you write, “To be white is to exist in a profound moral crisis”?

Yes. I’m not saying that people who are white can’t commit—and commit profoundly—to justice. But what I am saying is that if and when we do, we have some very particular kind of work to do. I may be committed to justice, and yet every day I walk out my door and what I get back is this pressured invitation that’s drawing me into unjust practices. The route to live out justice can be very vexing.

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In your work you’ve shown that race is a construction being built bit by bit, or moment by moment.

If we recognize something has been constructed, we can always challenge, change, or deconstruct it. I think it’s empowering when we realize that we could actively choose to engage in a different construction process.

Every time someone who is a white person speaks up, stands up, takes the risk of challenging racism, we not only recreate the environment and impact the environment in ways that are very important, but we re-form ourselves.

So the small moments are important.

They’re critically important. You don’t learn to do something differently until you practice and maybe even make mistakes. White people in the United States, in my experience, tend to be quite terrified to talk about race. What those of us who practice doing it discover is that when we start to do it, we get better at it, we come to understand things differently than if we never take that risk. At the same time, even if it’s in small moments, we start to change and challenge the environments that we’re all living in together.

Can you talk a bit about reconciliation and why you feel it’s not the right paradigm?

What do you say to those who say, “History is history, the people you’re talking to today didn’t do these things”?

On almost any measure of social well-being, we see disparities between how white Americans do relative to African Americans and Latinos and to Native Americans even more so—there’s no other explanation for this than what history has bequeathed us. We can’t even begin to understand today if we don’t know our history and notice that at no point was there a significant reparative action [to address] any of these racial abuses.

Now, that is different than saying, “White American, you are individually responsible for all of the racial disparities we see in the social environment.” I’m not interested in that conversation. I do think we have a moral obligation to take account of the ways our lives have, whether we knew it or not, benefited from those unjust structures and to figure out what taking responsibility means. But it’s not about assigning individual guilt; it’s about understanding the way history manifests [itself] today and saying, collectively, that if I believe in justice and I think this is the call of God, then I have to be engaged in responsible, repentant, reparative work.

What does that path look like, in real terms?

I think in local contexts it can be anything as small or as large as an individual congregation looking around—in my city, for example, in the 1960s, the city government built an interstate right down the middle of the black community. That happened in many communities in the 1960s.

How did my congregation benefit from the harm that was done to the black community? A congregation that’s white or predominately white could say, “We owe something because of the way we didn’t fight that

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Someone says to you, “I’m white. I was raised by a single mother, my father was in prison, I have no money. How am I implicated?”

First, I think sometimes the language of white privilege does ignore and make invisible white Americans who have been boxed out of economic access in many, many ways. So within the category of white, we have much diversity. I really want to honor that.

But I also would say to that person, very gently, that even with very real economic suppression and denial of access, at least in the big picture, low income white Americans still do better in specific, concrete ways relative to the black community or Native American peoples or Latino peoples.

Poverty doesn’t look the same in white and black communities.

What advice would you share about how to have those conversations?

One helpful strategy for talking about race together, in many contexts, is to start with some kind of concrete focal point. The most transformative conversations I’ve seen are conversations that folks with different racial identities have with each other [to address a] concrete and clear campaign or practice or action.

The work of repentance and repair, counterintuitively, is a deeply liberating, relationship-building work. My greatest hope for the church is that we would recognize that, not be afraid of it, and instead understand our wholeness, our humanity, our spiritual well-being is at stake and can be claimed if we’re willing to engage in repentance and repair.

S I T L

EN

I believe in reconciliation. However, over and over and over again, the reconciliation paradigm skips repentance and repair. If my sibling and I have an argument, and he or she harms me, for my sibling to say to me, “Come on, let’s be reconciled,” I want to look at her or him and say, “Wait a second, there’s an apology that’s needed, and then you need to repair what you’ve done if you want me to be reconciled.” I think events in the last year in the United States have made it absolutely clear how much concrete repentance and active structural repair is needed before we can even begin to meaningfully talk about reconciliation. We need a paradigm of repair.

when it happened in the ’60s, we’re really sorry. Maybe there’s economic investment we have to commit to, in partnership with members of the black community.”

We could talk about education, we could talk about policing systems, anything that involves white folks collectively finding reparative measures in conversation and in partnership with their brothers and sisters of color.

Jennifer Harvey is Associate Professor of Religion at Drake University and an ordained minister in the American Baptist Church. She is the author of numerous books, including Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation.

DIG DEEPER Watch Trinity’s video about deconstructing whiteness, featuring Jennifer Harvey and others, at TI2016.org.

REPAIR

BEFORE

BY JEREMY SIERRA

RECONCILIATION

MOST OF US

hear the word “reparations” and immediately think of questions that feel unanswerable: How big would the check be?

Who would write it? And who would receive it?

Yet the root of the word is simply “repair.” As Jennifer Harvey and other theologians remind us, we can’t skip to reconciliation with people we’ve hurt without first apologizing and attempting to alleviate the harm we’ve inflicted. We all learn that as children.

In his important article in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates spurred a new round of conversations about this idea.

He demonstrated that the deliberate and systematic oppression of black Americans is not part of distant history. Redlining and other government policies stole wealth from black communities just decades ago. The disproportionate number of African Americans in poverty and prison is evidence that we are still feeling the effects of these very recent sins because we have not repaired the damage done.

Yet, in his article Coates never talks about numbers. While it’s hard to argue that there is no economic aspect to reparations, if we think of it as a broader effort to repair and build up communities that have been torn down by centuries of slavery and discriminatory policies, we can start a dialogue that may be easier for those skeptical of reparations to join.

This act of making reparations is also biblical, as Harvey points out: “When Zacchaeus came to Jesus and said, ‘What do I do?’ Jesus said, ‘Give back everything that you’ve taken.’ And Zacchaeus did it. That was the repentant repair activity that was his pathway to discipleship.”

In 2009, the Diocese of New York formed a Reparations Committee in response to three 2006 General Convention resolutions calling for a response to the transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath.

“The definition that we have been working with,” explained committee chair Nell Braxton Gibson, “is that reparations indicate that an offense has been committed against humanity, that the victims have not received justice, and that there needs to be an apology for that, forgiveness, some kind of repentance and atonement, and some kind of repair.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, even getting to that definition wasn’t easy.

Members had different ideas about racism, reparations, and reconciliation.

“It took us a little over three years to come together as a committee, and they were some tough years,” said Braxton.

“Part of our mission is to remember, and that remembering is not something we necessarily want to do as a society,” said Lynnaia Main, one of the white members of the committee. She found the process at times personally difficult.

“I found myself becoming very emotional about the idea that I am white. I wanted to see myself as colorless, as not having a race,” she said.

“But I feel called, as a child of God, to confront that difficult reality.”

As she and others on the committee recognized, many people of color have no choice but to confront that reality. So the members took time to tell their stories, as well as read and work with archivists and experts to get a sense of the history of slavery and discrimination.

For many white people, the idea that they should make reparations can feel like a personal attack, but that’s not the intention, said committee member Cynthia Copeland. “People say these things like, ‘Reparations is just about coming after my wallet,’” said Copeland. “That’s not what it’s about; it really is about having an understanding.”

The committee isn’t focusing on individual complicity but rather the systems and institutions of slavery and the many years of systemic discrimination that followed it.

“I don’t think you can have justice without reparations,” said Braxton, “because reparations level the playing field.

While there are some people who probably do need money, Braxton, who is black, is not looking for a check.

“I’m the daughter of professionals. I’m not looking for money, and I think probably most middle-income African Americans are not looking for money. For us, it means equal opportunity to get jobs, to have our children go to good schools, to live in communities where the playing field at least feels like it’s level.”

This will require financial commitments because the cost of fixing broken systems can be high. For the committee, however, making reparations is ultimately a process.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be done with the conversation,” said Main, “and I don’t think we’ll ever be done trying to define what ‘reparations’ means, because it’s different for all of us. But that sense of difference points us back to our Creator, and our Reconciler, and the One who calls us to stand in the breach.”

The committee has created video resources and discussion guides, but the conversation is still in its early stages. The ultimate goal is real action, as Copeland points out. She encourages churches to support Congressman John Conyers’s bill, H.R. 40, which calls for studying reparations for African Americans.

It’s been stuck in committee since 1989.

Some churches and dioceses, like the Diocese of Maryland, have made a public apology for their complicity in slavery and created monuments at the sites of slave graveyards. Many others are looking at whether their buildings were built by slaves or considering similar initiatives.

The process of making reparations begins by asking questions: Have we adequately atoned for the sin of slavery and discrimination? Is the playing field level, or is there more work to be done?

“We don’t want false apologies”said Copeland, “Real apology comes from atonement. We need to take some action.”

Jeremy Sierra is Managing Editor of Trinity News

Racism Without An Interview with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Duke University So what is race?

Before we talk about race, we want to talk about the engine of race. The engine of race is racism.

Racism is a system of domination that started at least five hundred years ago, when Europe discovered Africa and the Americas and developed colonial relations with African nations and Latin American nations. But racism changes over time.

You’ve documented what you describe as the “new racism.”

What’s new about it?

In the U.S. we can say that we have had three major periods of racial domination: first, the colonial/slavery period; then, one hundred years of the period that we call Jim Crow. After that, in the late ’60s and ’70s, in part because of the civil rights movement and the “uncivil rights” movement (between 1960 and 1970 about 250 race rebellions or so-called race riots transpired in cities across the U.S.), there was born a new, more sophisticated way of systemic discrimination.

Let me give you one example. We know that in the 1940s and ’50s, someone like me, dark, with a so-called thick accent, would probably experience a lot of discrimination in stores. It would have been overt, in my face: “You cannot shop here because you are not a qualified member of the community.” Today, for the most part, people like me experience either people ignoring us in stores or polite discrimination.

They ask, “May I help you?” “Just looking.”

“May I help you?” “Still looking.” Sometimes this happens in a period of three or four minutes. So this is the kind of discrimination that also happens in the housing market, when we try to buy cars, when we enter universities.

It’s more difficult to identify. We have systematic data comparing how white and nonwhite people are treated in stores, when trying to buy a car, et cetera, but the individual person experiencing discrimination has a hard time labeling that discrimination.

Some people say, “Well, by talking about race, you’re making it real.”

I do understand that white people get mad because they assume that racism is the KKK. As long as we assume that the problem of racism means those bad people, poor people, uneducated people that live in the South, then most whites in America can feel that they are beyond [race]. My argument is that racial domination has always been about collectivity— meaning it’s not about the few people, it’s about what we collectively do to produce a system that gives systemic advantage to some and systemic disadvantage to others. Today, as yesterday, the issue is not the bad apples but the apple tree.

Could you summarize a few examples of how whites put others at a disadvantage, just to give us a taste of how that works?

I claim that this colorblind racism has three different components: frames, style, and storylines. The frames are the fundamental themes that accompany any etiology.

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One of them is the one I call abstract liberalism, which is people saying things in the abstract—like saying, “I’m all for equal opportunity; that is why I oppose affirmative action, because affirmative action is discrimination in reverse.” On the surface you would say, “So what is wrong with that?

Because of his or her liberal perspective, this person is saying if you are qualified, you should get the best job that you can get, but if you’re not, you shouldn’t.” Except that the foundation of that argument is the assumption that discrimination doesn’t happen in the labor market. Research shows that discrimination in the labor market, in the housing market, in every market, happens.

Another frame is cultural racism. That is not necessarily new. Cultural racism refers to people saying, “Poor black people, man, they don’t work hard, they don’t have a work ethic like us, that’s why they don’t do well in life. If they have a different culture, fewer kids, behave right, pull up their pants, stop talking Ebonics, then they’ll do well.” That is cultural racism.

Then the last component of the etiology is testimonies and storylines. I’m thinking of things such as, “The past is the past,” meaning that black people and Latino folks should stop complaining about the past and move forward. “In the past, everybody experienced discrimination. The Irish experienced discrimination, the Catholics experienced discrimination. So how come you guys have not moved forward?” Those are basic elements of the colorblind racist etiology.

RACISTS Could you talk about what it means to be a white person in our society?

Again, “white” is not just an identity. White is a social position in a race order, and whiteness works best when it works like God, in mysterious ways. Anyone who is phenotypically, cognitively, culturally regarded as a member of that group will receive benefits, even if that person is challenging the system. So we now have an antiracist community comprised of progressive whites, and one of the things that they are learning quickly is that it’s not enough to be an antiracist, because they receive benefits by virtue of being seen in society as white persons. In the same way, a man can be a feminist, but that man should always be cognizant that because he is a man in a patriarchal society, he will receive benefits.

Some of those benefits are going to be invisible to [those receiving them].

You wrote about the importance of an antiracist white developing a practice of challenging whiteness.

What advice do you have for people who want to do that?

First, recognize that there is a system of racial domination that you may not have created, but you benefit from it whether you like it or not.

This is beyond your control. Secondly, if you agree that there is essential domination, the question is, what are you going to do to challenge, fight, and hopefully change that system of domination?

You have to begin changing your lives, your cognitions, maybe even dealing, as social psychologists are showing, with your subconscious. You need to begin slowly trying to lead a more interracial life. It’s not enough to

say, “I’m an antiracist, but I live in an all-white neighborhood, and my kids go to all-white schools, and all my friends and significant others are white.” You need to change your life, not only your practice, your race politics, et cetera.

Ultimately, I believe that getting to the Promised Land will most likely require some kind of social movement. I did not predict two years ago that we were going to have a “Black Lives Matter” movement. If I were a progressive white, I would be trying to make connections with [that movement]. That connection [requires] humility, and humility involves recognizing that you have led the world for centuries, and it’s time for you to be part of a movement, which doesn’t mean you have to lead. You might lead, or you might be just a regular member.

DIG DEEPER

Looking at this whole quest, would you name your concerns and your hopes?

We need to have race dialogues, but we need to be real in the dialogues and connect with policies. The only way the policies will happen is if people are active in the streets. For fundamental changes in race, class, gender, you always need a social movement. If you put all your eggs in the electoral basket, you are likely to lose, because politicians are bought by elites, and deep social change doesn’t come from the hearts and minds of elites. It comes from the people and their power, and the only power that people have is the power to raise hell.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Duke University. His most recent book is Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (2013). He is a speaker at the 2016 Trinity Institute conference.

Watch an excerpt of this interview and find a list of suggested readings at TI2016.org.

Trinity News

9

Building Unity in New Orleans

BY JIM MELCHIORRE

Erika Goldring

The Rev. Henry Hudson (left), rector of Trinity Episcopal and Antoine Barriere (right), pastor of Household of Faith, with Ashley Kottemann and her son in front of their new home.

A home was going up on Oleander Street in the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans.

Most of the workers at this Habitat for Humanity project site came from two local church congregations. Trinity Episcopal is made up almost exclusively of white members. The other congregation is Household of Faith, whose members are predominantly African American.

“We are supposed to be the body of Christ, and we have been separate too long,” said Antoine Barriere, founding pastor of Household of Faith.

“It’s not only right, but it feels right. And I’m just so glad I can do it with Henry.”

Henry is the Rev. Henry Hudson, the rector of Trinity Episcopal.

“We started out just being prayer partners,” Hudson recalled of the beginning of his friendship with Barriere. “But then he called up and said, let’s stop talking and start doing. And it’s a thrill.”

At 25 years old, Household of Faith is almost a century and a half younger than Trinity but has grown quickly—there are five thousand members and three worship locations, including one on Jackson Avenue down the street from Trinity.

However, there’s more than a Habitat for Humanity project going on here, according to Trinity’s associate rector, Mitch Smith.

“Antoine and I went to lunch a little over a year ago and had a very open and frank conversation, [and I] said, yes, I would love to build this house,” Smith remembered. “But let’s use this ministry to do some real work of building bridges between our two churches.”

Smith hoped the partnership could be the latest chapter in a long, winding, bumpy, but determined path that Trinity’s congregation calls T.U.R.N.—Trinity Undoing Racism Network.

“Probably 20 years ago, when the General Convention passed a resolution suggesting, actually mandating, antiracism training for all of the clergy and leadership within the Episcopal Church, Trinity Church New Orleans took it seriously,” said Hudson.

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Jim Melchiorre

It’s a whole lot easier to engage in conversations across historic racial lines while swinging a hammer, putting shingles on a roof, painting window frames.

A History Entwined with Slavery New Orleans, that unique city on the banks of the Mississippi River, had the largest population of free people of color of any city in the nation before the Civil War. Simultaneously, it thrived on the labor, as well as the buying and selling, of enslaved Africans and African Americans.

“The economics of this city have always been involved with the slave trade and connections with New York, Rhode Island, with Jamaica and the ports in the Caribbean, as well as Africa,” said Hudson, an enthusiastic amateur historian. “So we were part of that big triangle.”

Trinity Episcopal Church, in the Garden District of New Orleans since the middle of the 19th century, cannot escape that association. The second rector, Leonidas Polk, was a Confederate general killed during the Civil War and a slave owner.

Dr. Don Erwin, a member of Trinity and a physician, has supported, and occasionally prodded, the congregation in its efforts to undo racism.

“All day, every day, me and everybody that looks like me benefits from institutionalized racism,” said Erwin, who is white. “And all the while I get to say, I’m not guilty of that at all.”

At St. Thomas Clinic, a community-based health service he helped to establish, Erwin requires all interns to take antiracism training, and he recommended it for Trinity church members.

“The workshop that’s offered is called ‘Undoing Racism,’ through People’s Institute. It can be a real turnoff for some people, and they resist it,” according to Trinity member Cathy Posey. “And then sometimes they will go back and take the workshop again, and something clicks.”

Regina Matthews, a member of Trinity’s vestry, had that kind of experience.

“I had had, probably 30 years ago, a less-than-pleasant experience at an antiracism network training, and I was not anxious to do it again,” Matthews recalled. “Kathy … [helped me] to recognize that as difficult as my struggle had been, it would have been triply difficult had I been a black woman instead of a white woman.”

Race and the Baptismal Covenant Erwin credits the gentle but persistent leadership of Henry Hudson with prioritizing the Undoing Racism project.

“What Henry has done that I think has been very wise and very appropriate is that he has linked it to the Baptismal Covenant,” Erwin explained. “You go down each component of the Baptismal Covenant, and you say, how might race be impacting that?”

Trinity’s vestry voted in October 2015 to mandate that the principles of Undoing Racism be reflected in everything the church does, including Sunday school and adult education, wage equity for employees, and community service programs that will now emphasize partnership.

Supporters of the Undoing Racism initiative at Trinity realize that not all members will immediately buy in. Mitch Smith preaches patience.

“How do we bring everybody in? Clarity, openness, and then I guess a degree of dogged determination that says, okay, I’ve heard you. We’re still going there, and I hope you can come with me, if not now, maybe later,” Smith said softly.

“But also doing that and saying that from a place of respect and love.”

Trinity leadership hoped the joint Habitat project with Household of Faith would help the Undoing Racism process: it’s a whole lot easier to engage in conversations across historic racial lines while swinging a hammer, putting shingles on a roof, painting window frames—or sharing lunch while sitting together on the ground.

“I think that Trinity will grow as the young adults who have children become middle-aged adults and embrace some of the ideas that we’d like them to have regarding the races living together, not only in peace, but living as one,” said Trinity member and college professor Russ Schmehl, as he hammered nails at the Habitat building site.

“And so, the question is, can we become a unified community?”

Building On A Firm Foundation At the dedication of the house on Oleander Street, the new owner, who had invested her own “sweat equity” into the build, received the keys.

She is a native of New Orleans and has a young son. The people of both congregations consider the completion of the house just the start of a partnership.

“The sky’s the limit. That’s not correct—there is no limit,” said Antoine Barriere. “There are some greater things that we’re ready to do together.”

Members of Trinity Episcopal know there is other work they need to do among themselves to undo racism, including facing their own history in a region where, as Faulkner famously wrote, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”

“Maybe we have an advantage, because as a southerner you grow up knowing those stories,” said Mitch Smith, who has lived in many different places because of his father’s assignments as a priest but who considers “home” to be the South, specifically northern Florida.

“And who my ancestors were is not necessarily who I am, so I can carry that with me or I can choose to leave it.”

Trinity’s rector, Henry Hudson, with roots in the Alabama cities of Selma and Birmingham, has kept his congregation’s focus on the issue he considers vitally important.

“We see how it’s changed our lives to have an understanding of racism as a systemic evil within our society and within ourselves. And we know that this is what we’re called to do here.”

Jim Melchiorre is Editor of Trinity News.

DIG DEEPER Watch a short documentary about this partnership in New Orleans at trinitywallstreet.org/videos.

Trinity News

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G IN

P P E

ST

Shortly after the death of Trayvon Martin, President Obama said, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas does have a son who looks like Trayvon Martin, and this inspired her most recent book, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God.

t u o of I V I R P GE E L

Tell us what you thought after the death of Trayvon Martin.

I saw Trayvon and I thought, how could someone see that young man as a threat? He had never been involved with the criminal justice system, while his killer had been, but he was presented as the “thug.” I understood that people would perceive my son as a threat, and that in his young life, people already had. I knew deep within me that I had to figure out what was going on to keep my son safe and to keep others who look like my son, other young black men and women, safe.

Could you talk about the history that got us to this point?

Our Founding Fathers were steeped in this idea that the white body was the superior body, and in so many respects, this country, [and its claims of] freedom and justice and life and liberty for all, was never intended for the nonwhite body. It was never intended for the black body. The black body, by and large, was introduced into this country as chattel, as property. It was never meant to have the freedom of its own labor, the freedom of its own body, the freedom of space. That privilege was the privilege of whiteness.

What we began to see is that whiteness stands for certain privileges, for freedom, and blackness began to symbolize that which is unfree.

We know that whiteness is an artificial, social construct, and that doesn’t mean that it’s any less insidious or intractable or impactful. When we talk about white people, we are talking about people of a diverse heritage. But as James Baldwin said in his book, The Price of the Ticket, “A funny thing happened on the way to America.” He says that when white people came to America, they came as Italian-Americans, they came as Irish-Americans, they came as German-Americans, but when they came here, they became white. Of course, if you couldn’t cross the line of whiteness, then you weren’t entitled to certain privileges.

How was theology tangled up with that?

Theology can be used for good or for bad. It can become a legitimating canopy for some of the worst sins of a nation. There were numerous and diverse theologies that suggested that, in many respects, black people were separate creations. There were also theologies that emerged that suggested that God wanted black people to be slaves, and that if black people stayed in their place as slaves, when they got to the other side, they would be rewarded. So there was a theology that sustained the status quo and suggested that the way things are on Earth is the way God intended them to be.

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Are elements of that theology still around today?

One of the artifacts of that [theology] is what we call American civil religion. This notion that we are “one nation under God” emerged from the ideology and theology that the Puritans and the Pilgrims brought with them. They believed that God had indeed chosen them to lead the way, to show the world what it meant to be a nation under God. It’s a religion that suggests we are a people reflective of the way God’s world ought to be. Well, that means that God has ordained this myth that white people are the chosen. If the nation is the way God intends it to be, and things are racially unjust, then we see the continuation of this notion that black people are not meant to be free.

How does all this history bring us into what you have described as “stand-yourground culture”?

Throughout our history as a nation, whiteness has always stood its ground against that which would intrude upon its privileged spaces. Every time the black body has enjoyed some measure of freedom, the narrative of whiteness—that stand your ground narrative that protects the space of white people—has emerged in a virulent way. We saw it again after the 1960s civil rights movement, what people termed a white backlash.

I call it stand-your-ground culture because of stand your ground laws. It says that one does not have to retreat. If one feels threatened, one can respond with force. As President Obama asked, “Would Trayvon Martin have had the opportunity to stand his ground?” Those of us in Black America know the answer to that: no, because he’s a black body, and he is the threatening body.

Could you talk about how that power is exercised now?

You just construct other kind of laws and systems and structures that maintain that reality. One of those systems is the prison industrial complex. We create laws, such as the drug laws, that trap black bodies. While you

are no longer saying that black people were not created to be free, what you do is create laws, systems, and structures that indeed make that a reality. You create images and stereotypes, and when you show portrayals of black people, you present] them in negative ways. You create within the collective consciousness of America this idea of the criminal black male and the angry black woman. It’s almost this unconscious response, that you immediately feel threatened in the presence of a black male­—he must have a gun. And so you see a gun.

As a theologian, how do you reflect on the significance of what you just talked about?

Well, that’s anti-Christ and goes against who God is, particularly as we understand who God is in relationship to Jesus on that cross.

God identified with the least and the lowliest of society, the oppressed, the suffering. The enslaved used to sing this song, “Poor little Jesus boy born in a manger, world treat him so mean, treat me so mean, too.” They began to understand that God wasn’t on the side of the crucifiers; God was on the side of the crucified.

In the black faith tradition, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection go together, because the Resurrection is the triumph over those crucifying realities. When you look at who God is as God revealed God’s self through Jesus, you see a God of freedom, a God on the side of the oppressed, a God who points us to a different reality.

Could you reflect on the relationship between individual sinfulness or responsibility and systemic sin?

We know this story of Jesus engaging in conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well and offering her something to drink as she comes to the well at high noon. We also know that the Samaritans were seen as impure people; I like to say they were the black people of their time. Jesus enters into that context anyway, and he has the unmitigated gall to engage in conversation with the least of these, those that were considered the most impure and the most defiled, this Samaritan woman.

Jesus steps outside of the privileges of what it means to be a Jewish male. He empties himself of those privileges, he affirms the humanity and the sacred dignity of this woman, and he goes against the constructs, systems, and structures that suggest that these people don’t deserve the dignity of [being considered] sacred children of God. Jesus is always fighting against those systems and structures that marginalize others. People have to name their privilege, as

Jesus did, and step out of that privilege—when you do that, you begin to recognize the systems and structures that allow you to maintain that privilege.

What does it mean to be faithful in times such as these?

I believe that this is what theologians have called a kairos time in our history, a time that some say is pregnant with possibilities, that God is disrupting things as they are. God is working to disrupt racial injustice, to bring us to a different point of relationship, to [help us] begin to name racism in this country, and to name it at its roots, and to recognize why we keep replaying these moments over and over and over again in our history.

The other thing is the strength of the black faith tradition. I am always moved by two statements by Trayvon Martin’s parents: after the acquittal of his son’s killer, the father said, “My heart is broken, but my faith is unshattered.” After that, his mother, Sybrina Fulton, said, “God is still in control.”

What that represented was black faith at its finest. Black faith was born in the context of black oppression. It’s almost a paradoxical faith.

It continues to believe in the justice of God even in a world full of injustice, because black faith says that the way things are isn’t the way God intended them to be. We know that because of the Resurrection. Sometimes I wonder where black people would be without that faith, because it’s that which allows you not to give in to white racist hatred, not to allow yourself to be defined by that, but instead to be defined by the sacredness of who you are as a child of God, to believe in the justice of God and [know] that God’s justice will indeed reign.

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas is Professor and Director of the Religion Department at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a leading voice in womanist theology and a speaker at the 2016 Trinity Institute conference.

DIG DEEPER Find a list of books by TI2016 speakers, further reading, and videos at TI2016.org.

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Slavery’s Invisible Past

BY LEAH REDDY

Lower Manhattan is filled with memorials and monuments: Castle Clinton, the Irish Hunger Memorial, streets named for prominent early New Yorkers, and the 9/11 Memorial to name just a few. The past is present in our landscape and our language. But the past we speak and see isn’t the whole story. Thousands of slaves lived and died in Manhattan, and most have no plaque or statue to remind us of them. Here are three such stories that are easy for modern eyes to overlook.

Location #1:

Slave Market, Wall and Water Streets, facing west

In 1711, a slave market was built on Wall Street between Pearl and Water Streets. The city had a population of 6,400, about 1,000 of whom were slaves. Young enslaved men were typically taught their master’s trade, and when not needed were hired out at a lower daily wage—paid, of course, to their owners. Before the slave market was built, these slaves often walked the streets seeking work. White citizens feared a slave uprising, and the city passed a law requiring that all hiring, buying, and selling of slaves take place at the market. The city collected taxes on each transaction involving the sale or purchase of a slave, and even hired slaves to work on city streets. The slave market closed in 1762.

In the summer of 2015 a small historical marker was placed in a park across the street from the slave market.

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Location #2 :

Elias Neau’s grave, Trinity Churchyard Elias Neau, born in 1662, was a French-born Huguenot who, after capture by Catholic privateers, was sentenced to galley slavery and later imprisoned for his faith. He was released after six years and returned to New York and, perhaps sensitized to the plight of the city’s enslaved, asked the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to appoint a “catechist to slaves.” Neau himself was assigned the task and, with the support of Trinity Church (he converted to Anglicanism in 1704) was a tireless educator. He soon had hundreds of pupils, and translated the Lord’s Prayer into several African languages. His work was not popular among slave owners, and he was (incorrectly) blamed for a 1712 slave uprising.

Neau’s work was motivated by his strong faith, but he never called for an end to slavery. Justice would have to wait for the next life. Enslaved students, who worked long days and devoted their evenings to study, found value in his work: perhaps they saw it as a way to raise their status, or enjoyed the intellectual opportunity, or gained insight from Christian spirituality. The story of Neau and his students provides a chance to meditate on the intersection of faith, power, literacy, and race in colonial New York.

Location #3:

Execution Grounds, Foley Square In April of 1741, after a cold, difficult winter, a series of arson fires broke out in New York.

The fires were blamed on slaves, a feared “Negro uprising.” (Something was going on, perhaps involving stolen property, but the specifics are lost to history.) A number of slaves were imprisoned, and a grand jury was convened. The first witness called to testify was Mary Burton, the sixteenyear-old indentured servant of a tavern owner. She testified that her employer, a member of the white working class, an Irish prostitute pregnant with a slave’s child, and a number of slaves were behind a conspiracy to burn and take over New York. This began a cascade of wild accusations, false confessions, and a naming-of-names around this largely unbelievable conspiracy. Daniel Horsemanden, a Trinity vestryman, presided over the trials. By summer’s end, thirty enslaved persons (both African-American and “Spanish Negroes”) and four white persons had been executed, many of whom were innocent of the charges against them. Some of their bodies were left hanging or otherwise displayed.

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30 years

talking about

race

Trinity Wall Street’s Task Force Against Racism is a congregation led committee that has been active since 1984.

We spoke with a few Task Force members about the importance, and the challenge, of talking about race.

Selvena Mosley:

“

What the Task Force Against Racism does is promote dialogue amongst all peoples, to come together and be able to express their positive views, their negative views, or whatever. It’s an education. I think we’ve seen some folks who have come to the Task Force who we thought might never be interested in this subject.

”

Toni Foy:

“

These are hard things to talk about. It becomes very personal, so folks will feel attacked. I’ve experienced that a couple of times in my conversations. I don’t think that should stop the conversation.

Even my son gets really annoyed with the whole race question because he says, ‘There’s no such thing as race. It’s a social construction. I don’t want to talk about it.’ I say, ‘As long as your skin is black, brother, you’re going to have to talk about it.’ It’s good in a way that it’s on top of people’s minds, but if you’re not prepared to have that conversation then it’s even more difficult to have. It brings up emotions that you haven’t been trained to deal with. So when we have the conversations we have to know what our triggers are. I have to think about what I say. My experience can offend other people. Even telling your story is a challenge.

”

Mildred Chandler:

“

I didn’t experience racism until I came here from Barbados, to be truthful. I grew up in school where 99.9 percent were black. When I came here and I was applying for jobs and I found myself in a corporate environment it was a different situation, because I had to compete with whites.

”

“

Lonny Shockley:

I face race issues every day. I work at a public school that’s 98.9 percent minority kids. It’s an alternative school so a lot of them have probation records, they’re dropouts, they have low reading scores. All that is the result of the race issue and the unbalance it causes in education in their communities. That’s an everyday ongoing occurrence for me—counseling and teaching them how they can overcome that against all odds; try and give them a little glimmer of hope so they can go forward.

My father is always telling me that you have to fight racism. You have to say what is wrong. Don’t be afraid. I think I got that attitude from him. It’s not going to go away unless you say something. I need the conversation with someone who doesn’t agree with me. We can’t go forward unless everybody is committed to it. We need to talk it through. It doesn’t just affect the black community. It affects the whole nation. It’s the differences that are going to make us better.

”

Roz Hall:

“

It’s all connected. It’s a continuum. Sometimes people are more inclined to focus on prison ministry and mass incarceration but you can’t genuinely do that without focusing as well on the issues around racism because the statistics show that predominantly people who are incarcerated are people of color.

Generally speaking people don’t fully understand the different levels of racism that there are. They think it’s just personal bias. They don’t think of it being institutional or systemic. Then you’re talking on different levels and you miss the connection. It really is an educational issue.

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”

d t e r c a bou S ing ons a r e e sati n o Pi nver Co

E C RA Y EDD

HR

EA

BY L

More than 100 years before Trinity Institute’s conference on race, Ida B. Wells was a model for crossing racial boundaries.

On the afternoon of April 21, 1893, a 30-year-old African-American woman entered the drawing room of a private home in Aberdeen, Scotland, and explained the problem of lynching in the American South to a group of white Scottish locals. They listened.

At the end of the event, the group voted to establish the Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man, which was dedicated to opposing racial separation and other forms of brutal injustice. Ida B. Wells’s first European speaking engagement had been a success.

AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE Born into slavery in 1862 and orphaned at 16, Wells raised her siblings while teaching school. After suing the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for the right to sit in the first-class ladies car, she wrote about her experiences, which led to a career in journalism. She became part owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, an anti-segregation newspaper in Tennessee, and a leading member of the Memphis literary scene.

Wells entered the public fight against lynching in 1892 (a year in which 161 African Americans were killed by lynch mobs) after three of her friends were dragged from prison and lynched. Wells used her newspaper to advocate for a black exodus from Memphis and a boycott of whiteowned businesses by those who remained. It worked: six thousand people left. White citizens soon destroyed the offices of the Free Speech and Headlight and forced Wells into permanent exile, first in Brooklyn and later Chicago. Wells devoted herself to uncovering the facts about lynching and anti-lynching advocacy. Later in her career she would advocate for civil rights and women’s suffrage and even run for the United States Senate.

Wells’s work was rooted in the church, both the African-American churches of the United States and progressive white congregations of the United Kingdom and United States that were engaged in the “social gospel” movement. In an era before Facebook groups, email chains, or even radio news, churches hosted lectures, disseminated ideas, and organized campaigns. They were social influencers. Much of Wells’s early work was devoted to pressuring leaders of majority white denominations, congregations, and Christian organizations to publicly condemn lynching.

Wells visited the United Kingdom in 1893 at the invitation of Catherine Impey, an English Quaker and activist. Impey understood the plight of African Americans in the context of the fight against oppression of “darker brethren” by the English around the globe. Impey was, to use 21st-century language, an ally of Wells: a woman from across the color line who shared Wells’s goal of “breaking the silent

indifference” to lynching. By raising awareness in the United Kingdom, the women hoped to put pressure on political and religious leaders in the United States. Wells’s tour with Impey is thought to have been her first experience of long-term fellowship with a white person, and their partnership seems to have been effective and respectful.

In her autobiography, Wells acknowledges that it wasn’t until her second tour of the United Kingdom, more than a year later, that she came to trust a white person. During that visit Wells stayed for six months with the family of a pastor named Charles Aked. “They did me a great personal favor,” she wrote. “They seemed to sense that I did not like or rather had no confidence in, white people, and they set themselves to work to uproot my natural distrust and suspicion.” Wells named her firstborn Charles Aked Barnett in Aked’s honor.

UNCOMFORTABLE BUT HONEST Wells spent the rest of her life working on issues of racial justice, always with other people, often with people she disagreed with, and with people who didn’t look like her. She angered black clergymen with her frank discussion of consensual “adulteries” between white women and AfricanAmerican men as a cause of lynching. The clergymen wanted Wells to preach a more palatable message. But she would not, as she felt the need to work against racist propaganda that “black men were wild beasts after white women.” If there is one theme to Wells’s life and work, it’s that she never shied away from telling the truth as she saw it, even when it made her allies uncomfortable.

Wells maintained relationships with white suffragists, though at times their movement purposefully marginalized black women in order to win support from southern lawmakers.

She spoke highly of Susan B. Anthony, who supported her both publicly and privately, but who also famously said, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”

Wells is particularly remembered for a 1913 suffrage parade during which she slipped into a prominent crowd of white marchers after the event’s organizers had asked her and other women of color to march at the back.

Most of Wells’s professional relationships involved the uncomfortable but creative tension that comes with different experiences of life. As people of faith grapple with issues of racial injustice, they may have similar experiences. Conversations may be awkward, and some may wish, like the clergyman who approached Wells, that the message of others be less controversial, or more aggressive, or just plain different. Or, like the white suffragists, some may see the questions of race as an impediment to solving other problems. Perhaps it is helpful at these times to remember that we are following in the footsteps of Ida B. Wells, a model of bravery and faithful persistence.

Leah Reddy is Multimedia Producer for Trinity Wall Street.

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do

Will you all you can to escape the web of racism? I will, with

God’s Help THE

BELOVEDCOMMUNITY

by Heidi J. Kim

RACISM IS A WEB THAT TRAPS US AND SEPARATES US FROM EACH OTHER AND FROM GOD. WE HUMANS WERE MADE TO BE AND BECOME THE BELOVED COMMUNITY. ANYTHING THAT PREVENTS OR HARMS THAT IS EVIL, BECAUSE IT HARMS LIFE.

—The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry

I am privileged to serve the Episcopal Church on the Presiding Bishop’s staff as the Missioner for Racial Reconciliation. When I meet Episcopalians and talk about that ministry, I am inspired and moved by the compassion, love, and commitment to justice I find throughout the church. I am also often reminded of the challenges in this ministry when people share with me their frustration, pain, and grief about how our church has (or has not) addressed systemic racism and our call to be reconciled to God and one another.

For many Americans it took an event like the murders of nine people by a young white man welcomed into Bible study at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, to demonstrate that racism is still very much with us. Many folks believed that racism was eradicated with civil rights legislation, and that the election of President Barack Obama (twice) proved that we were, in fact, living in a postracial society.

Yet, now our nation and our church are beginning to question the comfortable assumption that we are living in a less racist society, given the Charleston murders and the ever-growing numbers of unarmed young people of color who have been killed by law enforcement officers.

How do we engage in serious dialogue about these events? How do we navigate the tensions between our desire to seek reconciliation and our frustrations with how difficult that really is?

One of the biggest challenges for engaging in ministries of racial justice and reconciliation is how quickly we forget that all of us are the Body of Christ together. We tend to focus on our individual experience and local knowledge, creating boundaries around how we should be thinking, talking, praying, and acting in regard to the sin of racism. For those who experience racism daily, there is a strong and understandable frustration with those who deny that racism is real. For those who believe that they are not racist and don’t understand why so many people of color are so angry, there is a sense of feeling under attack for sins for which they are not directly responsible. Instead of working together to build the Beloved Community, we end up trapped in the web that separates us from each other and from God. This is one of the reasons why racism is so insidious —even our attempts to talk about it can result in further separation and antagonism.

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For example, I have often observed the use of #BlackLivesMatter as a way of starting a conversation, and the use of #AllLivesMatter as a way of ending it. I have also observed the exact opposite. Both have happened with enough frequency that I am grieved by our inability to engage one another deeply, meaningfully, and respectfully, without allowing anger, frustration, or just plain stubbornness to get in the way of our being in right relationship with one another.

In my ministry, I often say that being in right relationship has to be more important than being right. I have heard many Episcopalians who are loving, faithful, and generous people say that they don’t need to talk about racism because they did diversity training 10 years ago, and it was 1) common sense, 2) an exercise in bashing white people, or 3) a waste of time. To that, I would respond, “Would you ever say that you don’t need to exercise anymore because you spent 45 minutes on a treadmill in 2002?” I also know many committed, loving, justice-seeking anti-racism trainers and activists who hold up their own way of proceeding as the “one true way” and refuse to acknowledge the merits of other approaches in other contexts. To them I would ask, “Would you provide the same driver’s education training to a 16-year-old, a 45-year-old immigrant from Japan who learned how to drive there, and a 30-year-old with a physical challenge?”

We get caught up in asserting the correctness of our own view about how to address racism, and we don’t have any space in our hearts or minds to consider another way. I want to be clear that I am not judging people for responding in this way. The point that I am making is that racism is indeed an insidious web that traps us and makes us fearful that we will be blamed, shamed, and found lacking in God’s eyes. Yet we are called as Christians to do better and be better.

I write this in the season of Advent, when we are awaiting the fulfillment of God’s promise to his people through Jesus. As you contemplate how you might engage in ministries of racial justice and reconciliation, I invite you to reconsider your Baptismal Covenant. I invite you to consider what it would mean to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” Will you remember that the full diversity of the Body of Christ, not just in race, but in experience, ideology, political leanings, etc., is a beautiful gift to God’s people? Will you remember to invite others who disagree with you to share their full, holy selves with you? Will you remain vigilant about the ways that the web of racism entraps us and prevents us from truly seeing one another? Will you remember that you are made to be and become the Beloved Community?

I will, with God’s help, and I pray that you will too.

Heidi J. Kim is the Missioner for Racial Reconciliation for the Episcopal Church.

George, Francis, Abe, and Superstorm Sandy On March 8, 1875, noted diarist and Trinity vestryman George Templeton Strong wrote in his diary that “Cisco, Astor, and two or three others presented [the vestry] with a portrait of the late Rev. Francis Vinton, by LeClear. It’s a good picture and lifelike and has one great advantage over its revered original, namely, that it preaches not. One doesn’t feel the least disposition to say, ‘O that those lips had language!’”

If those lips could talk, the language they would have used in late October of 2012, 137 years after the portrait was painted, might not have been becoming for a clergyman—as the painting, leaning against a wall in a subbasement storage area, found itself submerged under six feet of dirty water when Lower Manhattan flooded during Superstorm Sandy.

This is a story about a priest, a diarist, a president, a painting, and a storm.

In 1847, Strong became a member of the vestry of Trinity Church, on which he would serve for nearly thirty years—through the end of his life. As a congregant, vestryman, and eventually comptroller of Trinity, Strong remarked frequently in his diaries on church affairs. He gave his opinion on the proceedings of vestry meetings, the building of the third (and present) Trinity Church edifice, and the quality of the parish’s various priests— especially Francis Vinton.

In 1855, Francis Vinton was called as an assistant minister in the parish, appointed to serve at St. Paul’s Chapel. In his diary, Strong pulled no punches where it came to Vinton. He frequently took issue with Vinton’s preaching: “Vinton’s sermon was long, windy, and worthless as usual,” he wrote on Christmas Eve in 1868.

In 1869 he gave this colorful description of Vinton’s sermon: “It was bombastic, hyperbolical, kompomatous, verbose, pleonastic, periphrastic, and preposterous.”

Luckily for his posthumous reputation, Vinton reportedly had a fan more famous than the diarist: according to some sources, President Abraham Lincoln was a fan. In 1862, the Lincolns suffered the tragic death of their young son, Willie. Reports vary as to how Vinton found himself a guest at the White House, but they generally agree that the message he imparted to Lincoln—that his son was alive in paradise— provided great comfort to the grieving leader.

He supposedly mailed Lincoln a copy of one of his sermons on the topic of death, which Lincoln kept close at hand and read frequently.

As a diarist during the Civil War, Strong had opinions about Lincoln. Though he was a supporter of the war and of Lincoln himself, by 1862 (around the same time Vinton is supposed to have made his fateful visit to Washington)

an exasperated Strong wrote in his diary, “ I cannot bear to admit the country has no man to believe in, and that honest Abe Lincoln is not the style of goods we want just now. But it is impossible to resist the conviction that he is unequal to his place.”

Strong was such a colorful commentator, it’s enlightening to pick a day or a topic from history and see what he had to say. If his tenure on the vestry of Trinity had begun in 2012

George Templeton Strong

instead of 1847, he no doubt would have had a few words to say about the storm. Vinton, too, might have had thoughts: perhaps a “windy” sermon on the topic.

Though Trinity Church is on high ground, the land abruptly drops off at the back of the building and slopes downward until it falls away into the Hudson River about five blocks away. Directly behind the church, on that first block of low-lying land, is 68/74 Trinity Place, the office building that housed Trinity staff from 1934-2014. Sandy wreaked havoc on New York City, in particular Lower Manhattan. The basement and street levels of 68/74 Trinity Place were flooded, and the building was without power for days. Staff had to telecommute, and the Trinity facilities team worked around the clock to get the building back up and running and to remove the stagnant dirty water.

Trinity’s archives, on the fourth floor of the building, were safe. The same could not be said of the subbasement storage room, which was kind of an island of misfit toys—strange artifacts of tenuous connection, if any, to Trinity (a porcelain doll; miscellaneous bricks of dubious historical origin); extra supplies;

infrequently accessed formats such as 78 rpm records and reel-to-reel tapes; and items too large or awkward to fit in the vault on the fourth floor, such as paintings.

When archives staff were finally able to access the storage room, it was a mess, and the stench was almost unbearable. Weeks had passed, and most things were completely unsalvageable. We saved four paintings with various degrees of damage and, with the help of an emergency network of conservators, performed triage on the materials. Two of the paintings, oil on canvas, including the portrait of Vinton, went to a fine-art conservator for cleaning and restoration.

In the course of cleaning the portrait, conservators made a surprising discovery: there was a face beneath the face. What was on the surface was overpaint, covering an original and, according to the conservators, well-preserved and more high-quality rendering. The conservators removed the overpaint to reveal the painting beneath. Though damage from the flood is still apparent, the colors are clearer and brighter, and there are fewer spots of loss. It’s not clear from records when this overpainting took place—but it’s likely that we are now looking at the face that Strong called “a good picture and lifelike.”​ Connected as they were in life, Strong and Vinton were connected in death as well: both succumbed to liver disease in 1875. Though Strong, while quietly suffering through his own illness, was critical of Vinton’s demands on the vestry during the latter’s convalescence, members must have felt strongly that Vinton was important to the church. While each rector by tradition has his portrait painted, very few portraits of the hundreds of other clergy who have served the church are part of Trinity’s historic fine-art collection. The fact that Vinton is one of them speaks volumes about how he was perceived by those other than Strong.

Whether they like it or not, Strong and Vinton live on together in Trinity’s archives: Strong in the published copies of his diaries and Vinton in his painting.

Sources: Strong, George T. The Diary of George Templeton Strong. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952.

Carpenter, Francis B. Six Months in the White House with Abraham Lincoln. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866.

Vestry Minutes, Trinity Wall Street Archives.

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Baptizing 22 New Saints On All Saints’ Sunday, 22 new saints were baptized at Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel. The Rev. Kristin K. Miles preached at Trinity Church and welcomed the baptismal candidates, saying, “We want you to know that you are beloved in God and held in this love through all time. We celebrate the ways that you each will be or have already been a saint in different times and places, helping others to experience a glimpse of God’s mercy and love.” Some of the smallest saints had mixed feelings about the experience.

Diversifying Assets for Future Generations On November 20, Trinity Wall Street and Norges Bank Investment Management signed an agreement creating a joint venture in which Norges took a 44 percent interest, and Trinity retained a 56 percent interest in a portfolio valued at $3.55 billion comprising 11 office properties totaling 4.9 million square feet in New York City’s Hudson Square neighborhood.

The joint venture resulted in a diversification of Trinity’s total assets, critical to sustaining the church’s mission that encompasses programs, services, and ministries reaching millions of people in New York City and around the world. The partnership will remain in place 75 years, after which all 11 properties will revert to 100 percent Trinity ownership.

The buildings were originally built in the early 1900s to house printing presses, but have been redeveloped by Trinity to attract a mix of creative office tenants. The properties are approximately 94 percent leased and total over 4.9 million square feet, and are all located in Hudson Square. They include: 12-16 Vestry Street, 200 Hudson Street, 205 Hudson Street, 75 Varick Street, 100 Avenue of the Americas, 155 Avenue of the Americas, 345 Hudson Street, 350 Hudson Street, 10 Hudson Square, 225 Varick Street, and 435 Hudson Street. The total portfolio comprises over 30 percent of the Hudson Square commercial neighborhood.

For more than 300 years, Trinity Church has nurtured and shared its gift of land in Hudson Square, which has directly supported the church and its mission, as well as the growth of New York City. The partnership with Norges Bank Investment Management will help to continue Trinity’s ministries around the globe for many generations to come.

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GIVING

TREE

All Faithful Departed Each year in the weeks before All Saints’ Sunday, Trinity creates and blesses an Altar of Remembrance where members of the community may leave mementos of loved ones who have died and light candles to honor them. The altar was blessed during the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed Holy Eucharist on November 2.

Trinity collected shoes for scholarship students in Haiti, coloring books for kids in New Orleans, winter coats for the children of formerly incarcerated women in New York City, and more with the Giving Tree. The Christmas gifts went to the children and youth from Trinity’s mission partners in New Orleans, Panama, Haiti, and Burundi. Trinity is also collecting toiletries for Brown Bag Lunch clients, some of whom are homeless.

Participants simply took a “leaf” from the Giving Tree, bought the gift listed, and returned it to the collection box. This was the fourth year Trinity collected gifts with The Giving Tree.

Stewardship Means Loving Our Neighbors The parish’s annual Harvest Brunch was held at St. Paul’s Chapel in November. The event kicked off the 2016 Stewardship Campaign with food, fellowship, and a talk by guest speaker M. Douglas Meeks, Cal Turner Chancellor Professor of Theology and Wesleyan Studies, The Divinity School, Vanderbilt University. Meeks exhorted the congregation, saying “Stewardship is the awareness that the church is not an end in itself. The church is here to serve God’s reign of love and justice in the world.”

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Another Day Lost In December, Syrian-born artist Issam Kourbaj built a miniature refugee camp out of discarded items, such as medicine packaging and old books in the Trinity churchyard. Another Day Lost, Kourbaj’s art installation, was inspired by aerial images of a refugee camp in Jordan. The artwork evokes the plight of millions of Syrians displaced by war since 2011.

“Another Day Lost offers a somber perspective on the human cost of the Syrian civil war,” said The Rev. Winnie Varghese, Priest and Director of Justice and Reconciliation at Trinity. “Though far away, we cannot stand by at a time when worldwide, we are faced with a desperate humanitarian crisis. Growing numbers of people need asylum. In global partnership, we must find ways to welcome the stranger to our midst.”

The installation in the churchyard is housed within a tent and encircled with a “fence” of burnt matches. The used matches reference not only the irreversible changes in everyday Syrian life but also the loss of thousands of lives. Matches are arranged in tally marks, which enumerate the number of days that have passed since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, and one match will be added to the artwork for each day while the conflict continues.

In the nearby Parish Center the community was invited to participate in making another artwork, loosely based on Another Day Lost, by creating their own “tents” to be installed on the walls of the center.

“Another Day Lost is an archive of loss and remembrance,” said Kourbaj, “not of the distant past, but of the very painful present; a present of lasting scars, abandoned humans and cities turned to dust. More than 1,730 days have passed since the Syrian uprising, and the count goes on. Tragically millions of Syrians are still uprooted, displaced and orphaned and many are becoming citizens of a tent.”

For more information about the exhibit and how you can help Syrian refugees, visit ArtAsAdvocacy.org

Richard Rohr Speaks about Anti-Establishment Saints Trinity Wall Street welcomed internationally recognized teacher and author Fr. Richard Rohr, who delivered a speech entitled “The Francis Factor.” He spoke about Pope Francis, whom Rohr believes is transforming the church for the better.

“I think the Pope has the prophetic charism,” he said. “The prophetic charism is the ability to criticize positively from the inside.” His speech touched on anti-establishment saints, the practice of using the crucifix as a logo, and what he considers the dangerous philosophy of turning individual rights into an idol. You can watch the full speech at tinitywalltreet.org.

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JOHN CAMPBELL Photo Courtesy of John Campbell

has been the Dean’s Verger for Lincoln Cathedral in Lincolnshire, U.K., for 25 years.

Would you tell me about Lincoln Cathedral?

We’re a pretty impressive pile of stones built in 1098. What we do with the stones helps us do what we do with the people who come in. I look after the fabric inside, the people, and make sure that the place is ready with what I call “Yahweh’s hardware” for liturgy and services. Without the stones we cannot serve the people, and without the people there’s no need for the stones. We have to be ready to serve them, and hopefully people can find something special when they get here whether they’re pilgrims or tourists.

What are your responsibilities?

I’m responsible for everything that happens on the floor of the cathedral. We’re handling sacred vessels. We’re handling humanity—the mad, the bad, the sad, and the glad—responding to those people. Whether they come in happy, whether they come in sad, whether they come in to do trouble, we’ve got to treat them all with dignity and make sure that we ready the place for them. And that’s a great privilege.

Is there a difference between vergers in the United Kingdom and the United States?

The majority of people stateside are enthusiastic volunteers, where most vergers in England are paid in some way. Every church has a verger in some sort of capacity, even if it’s a small parish church in a one-horse village. You’ve got someone who will open the door in the morning, prepare the altar, and make sure that everything’s ready for worship. They’re washing, and they’re cleaning, and they’re providing, and they’re feeding and making the church ready for people coming in.

When was your first visit to Trinity?

I first came to Trinity in 1989. I was chairman of the Church of England Vergers, and we were fostering a relationship and developing a guild for vergers in America. It was a privilege to plant the seed for the foundation of what’s now the Verger’s Guild of the Episcopal Church and to see that start with five people. Now there’s an organization with about three thousand people.

What about this latest visit?

My last visit was probably my sixth visit to Wall Street. I was in New Jersey doing some talks, and one of them was entitled, “God, Place or Space?” Should we be concentrating on God in a place, or is it just as good to go out to the mountaintops and find God there? People come into Lincoln Cathedral, and we’ve got a marvelous “wow” factor. Look at what man has made for God. You go back to the states and look at the Grand Canyon and see what God has made for man.

So we don’t always need to be wrapped up in the trappings of the church. What’s right in a big space like Lincoln Cathedral is not right for some small parish churches, and sometimes it’s the other way around. In the church you need a varied diet. At party time you need pâté de foie gras, but you also need grits just to keep you going. So I’m a typical Anglican really. I’m a product of a Methodist minister who left the church before I was born, and my grandmother was a Roman Catholic who was excommunicated. Now I swing like a pendulum between them.

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learned?

WHAT HAVE YOU

SINGING TOGETHER, ESPECIALLY IN CHURCH, shapes faith, heals

brokenness, transforms lives, and renews peace.

COMMUNITY SINGING helps me get to know people and it creates a

bond between us that is strong.

PAPERLESS MUSIC is music by heart because that’s where the song lives.

It’s not the only way to sing but it can include most people.

OVER THE YEARS I’VE LEARNED THAT many different kinds of music

can be church music: jazz, spirituals, laments, cantatas, praying songs, private songs and group songs, clapping songs, stomping songs, organ music, and instrumental music.

CHURCH MUSIC must belong to the people—not just when they sing,

but also when they listen.

WHEN WE SING, if we are unsure of some of the notes, we listen to each

other and learn. When we hear someone make a mistake or sing off-key, we can forgive and carry on because the song belongs to all of us. Alice Parker said: “If we’re arguing with our rational minds, we’re talking about that which divides us. If we’re singing with our intuitive minds, we’re concentrating on what unites us.”

A LEADER must remember to be helpful and not get in the way of the people singing their song.

I LIKE TO TEACH songs that are easy but have great depth of meaning: the hymns that come to us from our tradition, especially early American hymns, spirituals, Gospel hymns, and music from all over the world where people sing unaccompanied.

I WILL NEVER FORGET worship at St. Paul’s Chapel, where a wildly

MARILYN HASKEL WAS PROGRAM MANAGER OF LITURGICAL ARTS AND NEW INITIATIVES FOR MUSIC AND THE ARTS FOR NEARLY A DECADE. SHE ALSO HELD SEVERAL LEADERSHIP POSITIONS WITHIN THE ANGLICAN MUSICAL COMMUNITY, INCLUDING MUSIC EDITOR OF SEVERAL EPISCOPAL HYMNALS NOW USED WORLDWIDE. SHE RETIRED IN NOVEMBER.

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diverse group of people from all over the world gathered to worship each week. The sound of a roomful of people singing enthusiastically in praise of God is just about the best there is. People want to sing given the chance.

News from Trinity’s partners and friends, near and far

Marc Tremitiere The prestigious design magazine, HOW, recognized Trinity staff member, Marc Tremitiere, for Outstanding Achievement in the nonprofit category. The award was given for artwork he designed for the 2014 Symposium on the Elaine Race Massacre.

Jim Kennedy Jim Kennedy, Director of IT for Trinity Wall Street, was recognized as one of 2015’s 20 top Chief Information Officers by Info-Tech Research Group.

Abiding in God Day by Day The Rev. Dr. Mark Bozzuti-Jones, Director of Pastoral Care and Community, and Trinity vestry member Dr. Westina Matthews contributed to the 2016 edition of Abiding in God Day by Day. Each wrote 12 reflections for the book, which features daily readings by more than 30 authors from across the spectrum of the Episcopal Church.

Mandy Culbreath Trinity’s Program Coordinator for Social Outreach, Mandy Culbreath, wrote a reflection for the food issue of The Episcopal New Yorker, the news publication of the Diocese of New York. The issue includes reflections and stories about food as well as recipes. In her article, “The Other Side of Bad Luck,” Culbreath reflected on Trinity’s Brown Bag Lunch program, which provides lunches to those in need of a meal in Lower Manhattan.

Eva Suarez Trinity community member Eva Suarez was ordained into the diaconate in November.

Suarez is participating in a dual degree program, and will receive a master’s of divinity from Union Theological Seminary and an master’s of social work from Hunter College.

Turkey Drop Trinity Community members donated more than 100 turkeys for Trinity’s Turkey Drop event. They were distributed to families in need and through New York Rescue Mission, an organization that serves homeless men and women.

The Trinity Preschool, Trinity Real Estate, and the Sunday School and Youth program participants also collected more than two hundred pounds of dry goods, cans, and toiletries which were given away to clients from Our Lady of Sorrow Food Pantry on the Lower East Side and the families that attend the Brown Bag Lunch.

Food Justice Summit Community Food Advocates, Added Value Youth Farm, Bushwick YFPC, Children’s Aid Society, East NY Farms, Eco Station NY, NYC Food Policy Center at Hunter, Friends of the Highline, and Teenergetic partnered with our Brown Bag Lunch program to host NYC Youth Empowerment Summit for Food Justice at St. Paul’s Chapel on November 7, 2015. Over 100 High schoolers from all five boroughs met and discussed food policy and advocacy for change in their communities.

DIG DEEPER For more information about Trinity Institute, as well as videos and stories about race and other topics, visit trinitywallstreet.org.

Spread the Word Do you have news to share with the rest of the Trinity community?

Email your news, milestones, and updates to news@trinitywallstreet.org or call 212.602.9686.

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