Faith in Diversity Newsletter - 8.2.24 - DEI Criminal Part III
Part III: The Gospel According to DEI
Read DEI Criminal Part I and Part II
A straight, white, Christian dude - ‘tis I! - perhaps more usually the profile of a pundit on fake news calling Kamala Harris a DEI hire than someone you’d find helping lead a university diversity office.
Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here. And one answer, perhaps not the most expected, is: for the Bible tells me so.
In Part 1, I shared how my origins of faith led me to finding beauty in diversity. In Part III, I am exploring where I find it deeply embedded in my holy text and particularly an aspect which causes more controversy: naming oppression and pursuing justice.
I think the Bible has something to say about how we value diversity, work for the justice of equity, and achieve the beauty of inclusion. I think I have been reading and seeing it in the Bible from my earliest memories. Beauty and inclusion is an easier sell. Calling out power, privilege, and oppression, though? Should we talk about systemic injustice and who does it to others and hold them accountable? Is that even in the Bible?
What even is the Bible? I’m not just talking about your 1990s NIV Adventure Bible gifted me in 4th grade, the one with the cover ripped off years ago but I still keep it for nostalgia. It’s not even the dusty, yellowed King James Bible inherited from my great, great grandfather, a crusty heirloom with pages falling out and crumbling to dust. The Bible is a book put together thousands of years ago. With ancient stories in it that crawl back even further to 3000, 4000 or more years ago. Echoes of millennia that we can hold in our hands.
Or can we? The Bible you hold in your hands is in English, but it is a translation and interpretation from Ancient Koine Greek and Hebrew and even some Aramaic. And those words you see there, sometimes they are guesses. In ancient Hebrew, the vowels were not in the writing, so there is some guesswork and interpretation involved. Other times a word could go several ways. In Greek, camel and rope are very close in writing. So does Jesus say it’s easier for a camel - or a rope - to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter the kingdom of God? Or sometimes a missing word creates a brand new, completely opposite meaning, as in what became known as the Wicked Bible, which omitted the word “not” and thus commanded people, Thou Shalt Commit Adultery.
That one might be easier to figure out, but much of the rest of the Bible can be quite a puzzle. And we haven’t even considered the compositional and historical questions: how did these stories come to be recorded? Who passed them on? Who told them orally and who wrote them down? What fragments do we use to reconstruct passages? What role did memory and theology play in creatively reimagining a scripture which goes beyond strictly historical facts? In other words, How do we apply this book, this approximation of ancient memories, to our modern context, far removed in culture and time?
Maybe I have overstated the problem a bit to start us out on the ground of humility. Humility is always a good place to start in interpretation. Even when we know much.
And, it’s true, despite the challenges, thanks to generations of scholars, there is much we understand about the stories of the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures. Sometimes that is the problem itself – we understand and it bothers us. For better or worse, it bothers us, it sticks with us. The good, the bad and the ugly of scripture. There is something human in there. And for a lot of us, there is something divine in there that has a hold on us. That is faith. Not something entirely our own choice. Something which has chosen us, but also that we take a leap if faith for. There is something human in continually reinterpreting this ancient holiness. We see it in the scriptures themselves, as they speak to the evolution in interpretations in their own times.
The book of Exodus provides us a case study in this matter in our reading today. One of the most famous and central stories of the Hebrew Scriptures, of God delivering the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt across the parted Red Sea. Or was it the reed sea, a completely different and more passable body of water? Difficult to translate words strike again. Some would seize on a scientific question: is there a way a wind could have blown and caused this to happen naturally? We could also consider the historical record and whether this is more of a mythical than historical story.
But if we hold those concerns lightly, and our different interpretations, we may turn together to a question of meaning. And this is where a passage like this has stirred and bothered people of faith for generations. This is a story of delivery which not only buoyed the Jewish people through millennia of travels and travails, of persecutions and perseverance, but a story which Christians and others adopted. Jesus as a new Moses. Moses as a prophet in Islam. Millenia later, enslaved African Americans found courage in the story and heroic deliverers like Harriet Tubman were called the Moses of their people.
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians. Saved from their enslavers. Saved from their oppressors. This is what the test says.
The writers of Exodus are not shy about who the enemy is. Or about what God does to the enemy. The Lord tossed Pharaoh’s army into the sea.
There is no hesitation to name who did what to who. Harriet Tubman did not deliver her people from a generalized enslavement. She delivered her people from White Christian Southern enslavers, who were fighting a war to preserve their enslavement and doing it in the name of Christ. That’s history, it’s the history that has always bothered people so much they wanted to hide it and call slavery a job skills program or say that Rosa Parks stayed in her seat but we’re not going to say who demanded she move based on laws we are not going to call racist. That’s Pharaoh writing history.
But when God writes history, the oppressor is named. And the oppressor is opposed. And the oppressor is defeated.
Miracles of justice are not always so neat in our world. But we can be sure of this much: the first step to overcoming oppression is: naming it.
It’s not just Exodus which is unafraid of naming oppression. The later Hebrew prophets rail against the rich and powerful for their economic exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. Their rallying cry is justice, which, again, is not a generalized improvement of life. It is a correction of injustice enacted by those with power who should know and do better.
And this is how Jesus’ ministry is from its start. In his first sermon, he quotes the prophets, saying, I have come to release the captives, to bring good news to the poor, and to let the oppressed go free.
The good news, the Gospel, includes freedom overcoming oppression. I can imagine people saying, This Jesus focuses too much on oppression. He should focus on the positives.
You won’t be the most popular person or biggest fundraiser by naming oppression.
Sure there are some people who seem to focus excessively on the negative. We might laugh at them, call them Debbie Downers, and make fun of those who tell us the bad news - but sometimes it is because we can’t bear to face it. When it would challenge our comfort, even our power and privilege. And so we say stuff like, we need less critics in the world.
But Jesus never stopped speaking truth to power. Comfortable and powerful and rich people were annoyed by him. I am sure people called him a Debbie Downer. I am sure they laughed because they did not know how to face his critique of systemic injustice.
Being a critic does not mean you can’t also be constructive. Jesus called people out who abused their privilege but he also called people in who were willing to reinvest their power and wealth by giving it away. Zacchaeus joins Jesus, giving half his fortune away and offering reparations from those he defrauded, offering 4 times what he took. Jesus invites a rich young man to give away his wealth to the poor, but the man walks away, and Jesus has compassion for this young man who could part with his power and privilege.
And that’s who Jesus was. He just wouldn’t shut up about this. He could hold together the possibility of naming oppression, of teaching power dynamics, but also opening the holy possibility of the kingdom of God, where oppression ceases, where everyone can be invited in and where the world can be reconciled.
For the Bible tells me so. The Gospel according to DEI. Or at least, my understanding of where they meet!
Next time on DEI Criminal, back to the drama in the State of Florida as Interfaith found common cause in resistance with other diversity areas…
Allie Vroegop
As Kamala Harris has rapidly ascended to become the Democratic candidate for President, some attention has turned to religious diversity in her upbringing and family life. Raised on Hinduism by her Indian mother, taken to Black church by her mother's friends, and now married to a Jewish man who grew up in the Reform tradition, Harris embodies the idea of Interfaith America. Whether viewed through a representational lens, or as a way gauge her empathy as a candidate, it may lead some supporters to reclaim titling her a "DEI candidate", not as a pejorative, but as a person whose values and experiences help attune her to concerns of diversity, equity, and inclusion, religion included. Regardless, as Anthea Butler notes, her experience reflects back that of many Americans: "Nobody grows up in a straight line with religion in America anymore."
Allie Vroegop
The Summer Olympics are in full swing and, alongside 11,000 athletes, over 100 chaplains representing 5 world religions are present to provide spiritual support in this moment of pressure and intense competition. They have their own corner of the Olympic village including a mosque, synagogue, and Buddhist and Hindu temple, among others. Greek Orthodox Priest Anton Gelyasov sees their corner of the games embodying the Olympic spirit:
“The athletes, volunteers, members of official delegations or journalists passing by cast puzzled glances at us: a female Muslim chaplain, a rabbi, a Protestant pastor, an imam, a Buddhist lama, a Hindu, an Orthodox and a Catholic priest are walking together, talking, telling jokes and laughing...I think this is very important, because we show that we are not competitors, we are not at odds, I would even say that we do not just peacefully coexist — we are brothers and sisters, we are friends!”
If you don't have much experience with Black Church, you may think First Ladies refer to Hillary, Laura, Michelle, Melania, and Jill. But First Ladies, the Pastor's wife but more than that, play a significant role in the ministries of many Black Churches, as dramatized and satirized in the comedy film "Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul." Or more rightly, it hilariously sympathizes with a First Lady, played with a wink and heart by Regina Hall, who is living with the turbulence of her fallen megachurch pastor husband, played with bravado and hubris by the charismatic Sterling K. Brown. Beyond the laughs, this film considers the role of ambition in ministry, especially as it intersects in the relationship of this husband and wife team.
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Thank you for subscribing and see you next time! ~ Matt