Congregational Community

Church of Sunnyvale

* 408-739-3285 * conglchurch@earthlink.net
1112 Bernardo Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94087 *

by Pastor Gen Heywood

Yes, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright is the recently retired pastor of Trinity UCC, the home church of Senator Barack Obama. His style and language when preaching has gotten him on the news a lot in the last several weeks. The clips the media plays of his sermons are ugly and they are out of context. It is true that what Rev. Wright said could not have been said in a predominately white church.

Well, at least not in a white church where the sermon is recorded. Upon the visit to my Aunt's church in Missouri several years ago, I heard the minister tell how all the evil of this country is because of gays, feminists, and blacks - yep. He added in blacks but didn't stay with it. He expounded heavily on gays as child abusers and feminists as the perpetrators of the break down in the family and thus in society and the fall of America. It wasn't recorded and no one from that church is currently running for president. And the church had 2000 members at that time. I saw only one person who was not of Euro-American Heritage.

A colleague of mine says,"white people are easily frightened." Oh, if it were only that easy. Upon my few visits to Hawaii, the paradise of many commercials, I was amazed and uncomfortable to hear so much racial boxing of people. That is, identifying people by the race they most look like and then placing them in a box of behaviors. This was done by everyone I met and only a few were white. It does make your world have more order if you believe that you can tell how a person will act by the look of their body. And while Hawaii seemed to be more out with their prejudices, it happens throughout our country.

However, prejudice is different than racist. Oh, that doesn't mean that people who are prejudiced should get off the hook. It is a potentially nasty and toxic condition. Prejudice leads to alienation and division. Racism leads to harm and even destruction. The difference is power. If you are deeply prejudiced but have no power to keep people from getting loans, good schools, medical care, good jobs, or a fair trial, your prejudice while ugly is not racism.

 Thus, Trinity UCC might be called a church prejudiced toward Black identity and the Black experience. Nothing I’ve read from the church systematically denies people of other races their full humanity. Sadly, while I am sorry for the words Rev. Wright used, I am grateful that the conversation has begun with Senator Obama speaking honestly about his biracial experience.

But here is the bad news. We do live in a racist society. Even though many Americans are not racist, many Americans are racist. Regardless of where we fall, our society does give whites privilege.

We also live in a classist society where the rich are privileged. If you are Black, Asian, Native American, Hispanic and rich you do better than if you are of that same group but are poor. If you are White and rich, you still do better. If you are white and poor you do better than if you are not white and poor. And according to the census, most of the poor, in spite of our prejudices, are white. More of them live in rural and suburban areas. Because of this and because the media projects nearly all images of minorities as poor, many of the crimes and pathologies of the white poor remain hidden and destructive.

Perhaps you saw the documentary on PBS called “In Sickness and in Wealth”
Here is a little about the program from www.pbs.org/unnaturalcauses/hour_01.htm:

“In Sickness and In Wealth” travels to Louisville, Kentucky, not to examine health care but to discover what makes us sick in the first place. The lives of a CEO, lab supervisor, janitor and unemployed mother illustrate how social class shapes access to power, resources and opportunity, resulting in a health-wealth gradient. On average, people at the top live longer, healthier lives. Those at the bottom are more disempowered, get sicker more often and die sooner. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

Louisville Metro maps reveal 5- and 10-year gaps in life expectancy between the city’s rich, middle- and working-class neighborhoods. Experiments with monkeys and humans shed light on chronic stress as one culprit.

We also see how racial inequality imposes an additional risk burden on people of color. Solutions being pursued in Louisville and elsewhere focus not on more pills but on more equitable social policies.
 
We live in a complicated social system that truly needs us to all step back into scripture and to declare again that we are “to do unto others as we would have them do to us.” There is a lot of work to be done. The UUFS that meets in our chapel is offering a video and program called “Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible.” It is offered on Saturday April 19, 1:30 pm - 5:30 pm in the Chapel. Donations from $5-$15 are requested.

On Sunday May 18, “Trinity Sunday” in our liturgical calendar, we will join with UCC churches around our nation to make this worship one where we are mindful and prayerful about the experience of race in this country. We will also pray for our church family at Trinity where members of the church have been harassed and media “spies” have attended worship to take notes.

We have lived, as Scott Peck points out in his stages of community, in a pseudo-community where we have acted nice and as if we have overcome the racial divide. Hopefully, we are entering his next stage of chaos where hurts and truth are expressed. If we do this well, we can enter into a time of letting go and move on toward real community where we thrive in a process of living an honest and healing life together.

Blessings,
Pastor Gen

______________________________
Join Pastor Gen in prayer
for our church
Tuesday and Thursday mornings
from 9:00-9:30 am.
Come and pray with her in our sanctuary
or take a few minutes for prayer
wherever you are.
______________________________

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The meters
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