This is short today, and a freebie: it matters that we use words. It matters that we listen to what people are saying. It matters that we think deeply about what we experience and what we hear, and even that we think about what we write or say. Words tell us things that can generally be understood in the same way by most people. (Yeah, there’s a philosophical argument that no one experiences the same experience, whether it’s from words or from interactions, but in my view there’s a general idea that we can understand even though we appreciate it with different emphases.) Words help me process my feelings or my thoughts. (I can’t really tell you if I think in words or if, when I think, words are how my mind informs my self of what I’m thinking. Would a non-verbal person be able to think? Or can they only feel and react? These are other interesting questions.)
When I listen to someone tell me something that is an argument for or against a proposition, I’m listening to the words, and trying to understand the words and the deeper argument being made. There is probably a calculus to be made if words mean precisely one thing, because then meaning could be assigned values according to the precise word used. But words don’t do that. They only inform what we can understand, and so I listen to words to help me understand better, and to understand deeper, as I listen more and think more.
What I find, however, is that words by themselves aren’t enough. It’s not enough for me to have the words and do the thinking and make the conclusions. There’s something in me that says “if this proposition is true, then it means that I, an intelligent moral agent, must act in certain ways informed by the words and the meanings I am listening to and I am understanding.”
Words matter, but deeds matter as well. Maybe more than words. I don’t know. That’s a debate I’m not really engaging in right now—as it seems yet another way to use words as an attempt to stall deeds.
What got me to thinking about this was two things.
One was the plaint of a preacher back in the early 1900s who pointed out that as long as white Christians remained committed to words about equality in Christ but performed no deeds that would be the result of equality in Christ, then their faith was useless:
“The fact that in Christian America, in this land that is rolling up its church members by the millions, race prejudice has gone on steadily increasing, is a standing indictment of the white Christianity of this land—an indictment that ought to bring the blush of shame to the faces of the men and women, who are responsible for it, whose silence, whose quiet acquiescence, whose cowardice, or worse whose active cooperation, have made it possible. The first thing for the church to do, I say, is to wake up to the fact that it can do something. Its present attitude is a disgrace to it, is utterly un worthy of the name which it bears.” — Francis Grimké, 1910
(h/t Also a Carpenter)
There have been several attempts by good men and women in the American church to highlight the issues of racial disparity and even hostility that flows from the white Christian church, and several attempts to grapple with it, and even several attempts to work out actions that would break racism. But nothing has ever come from those words. The American church, comprising people of every tribe and tongue and nation, is still riven by race much more than it is by theology. Still. After 100 years of preaching. (I’m of course eliding a bit of the truth here. It’s been more than 100 years—it’s been 400 years—but stay with me on this point.) The words were spoken or written, the words were absorbed and processed, and the words impelled…
…nothing that has remained.
There’s nothing to show for the words that has in any real way broken the back of racism in the American white church.
The words swirl around us. The deeds are missing.
This inaction explains the earnest plaints today from men and women in the American church, both in the camp of the white tribe and in the camps of everyone else, pleading and praying for conciliation between the white church and all other churches. This inaction explains the plaints of good men and women who are edging into despair and hopelessness and even anger, because all they see are words and not deeds. They’re saying their words, because words are the only way we have to communicate thoughts, of course, but the words are not moving the needle.
I don’t know what the deeds look like. I suspect that if we repeat what we’ve done in the past—the deeds of public repentance, conferences, sincere efforts to put people of color on staff of our white churches, but in insignificant positions, cooperative ministries between white suburban churches and ring and urban churches with majority-minority congregations—we will achieve the same results, which is really just artificial proximity, like oil floating on water.
I wish it were different, and I wish I knew how to get to a goal that I can’t even quite define. I’m trying to use words to comprehend, though, so that I can commit to, and then do, the deeds that are needed to break racism and bring conciliation.
The second thing that sparked this was listening to one of our pastors speak this morning, a testimony from Pastor Chávez. The topic was the empowerment and the dignity of women in the world that’s run by men. Here’s the kicker: she spoke for about 30 minutes about her experiences in the world and in the church, and they were not much different. She was made to feel, in both worlds, that she had contributions to make as long as she stayed within the role assigned to her. The church has been just as dismissive as the world about the place of women, and it has been only recently that she’s found a place in the church where she can work out her calling.
Imagine that we literally dismiss the talents and gifts of 50% of the planet because they have the wrong blood type or the wrong shoe size or the inability to taste cilantro. That’s how it can seem to women who traditionally have been excluded from power. An arbitrary meaning was assigned to birth gender, and that was that.
We’ve had the words, of course, that women are powerful and necessary and dignified, but hidden within the words are the meanings that lead to the deeds: as long as women stay in their lane, they can have power and dignity and even necessity. (“We need you in the kitchen.”) The deeds didn’t match the superficial meanings of the words. The deeds match the deeper meanings. And as long as we focus on the superficial meanings we won’t see changes and we won’t see deeds that enact the meaning of our words.
That’s all I have for now. I’m headed out to my afternoon sermon in a bit and I might have more thoughts. Stay tuned.