Prejudice in the Adventist Church Options

[lda77]

I know of a situation that is currently happening... in an adventist church.... predominantly white, more members of color are attending and the white members are quietly leaving and meeting somewhere else.... yes that's right, here in 2006... it is occurring....

It's becoming clear that these are not anomalies. These situations continue to happen and we do...nothing, but we call ourselves Christians. We know clearly that Galatians 3:28 tells us that Paul was trying to communicate that this artificial man made prejudices will not make it to heaven (there are no railroad tracks there!).

Here's a situation I witnessed personally 3 years ago. A predominantly white congregation began to experience a change in membership as the area grew. More people of color started attending. Eventually all of the whites (except 2) left the church. The pastor also stopped attending the church, telling the congregation that he was having church at his home for all of the white members that had left. They met in his home for 2 1/2 years. The conference did nothing. He was still the pastor of that church, he still received the same salary. When questioned about it the conference said they couldn't find anyone to replace him. Shortly after making that statement, several conference officials were killed in a plane crash. Within a few weeks, the church received a new pastor.

[princessdi]

E.E. Cleveland also talks about how they first treated him when he first cam eto GC. It was nothing nice, inlulding secretaries who threaten to quit rather than work under a black man. We can also mention the GC last held in SF, 1958 I thin, where it was picketted by black members because there was not black represenation on any level. Here is this area, there was only a black woman doing who cleaned the building.

We dont' have a good hisotry in this area, and have done next to nothing to repairs the wrongs, and even less to change the racist policies

E E Cleveland's autobiography speaks to this issue very clearly with numerous stories about how blacks were treated in the church early on. He also tells how the black ministers boycotted separate but equal style dinning rooms at conferences. But the most interesting was when the GC president speaking to a group of black ministers after the choir sang, talked about how when he got to heaven he was going to go over to the black side of heaven and just hear their choir!

Apart from church, racism is a national problem. Why do we think that because people go to church, they are living what they are taught in church? It's not about church, it's about hearts. Hearts that are changed and open to living His will are the ones that are open to all people being one. Until all people get over the racial hump, none are going to get to heaven.

On another note, black churches can hardly get to meeting other people when they have trouble sitting next to a member they don't particularly care for, privately, or otherwise. You've got to get your own house in order before you can have an open house.

[Denny]

E.E. Cleveland also talks about how they first treated him when he first cam eto GC. It was nothing nice, inlulding secretaries who threaten to quit rather than work under a black man. We can also mention the GC last held in SF, 1958 I thin, where it was picketted by black members because there was not black represenation on any level. Here is this area, there was only a black woman doing who cleaned the building.

We dont' have a good hisotry in this area, and have done next to nothing to repairs the wrongs, and even less to change the racist policies

And while this is going on we have Adventists who think eating vegelinks prepares them heaven - if it was not sad it would be laughable.

[beanchild]

The church is a reflection of the society it lives in with all its prejudices and the ignorant comments that come with it (race/ethnic grp, gender, class etc). However if we truely believe in being 'transformed by the renewing of our minds' - a new attitude and way of thinking and not 'conforming to this world' how long we going to let the 'old man' run things in the way we do church?

see denny, i'm not sure we actually believe in the whole "being transformed" deal...

maybe it's something that the majority mentions without thinking.

[Green Cochoa]

I'm not the same color as some of you, and I do not like to see injustices either. However, I wonder if you all are not a bit emotionally challenged because of the hurts, and this has an effect on coloring reality, preventing a clear solution from being found. I was never raised to be prejudiced. Quite the opposite. I have relatives of several colors, black included. I have worked with people not of my race for the majority of my working life. But let me share a short experience here, from my perspective, which might help you to see things better from "the other side." If you can walk in the others' shoes for a day, perhaps the understanding from it might pave the way for a proper solution to the injustice--which I sincerely hope you find.

I was attending an Adventist college in the North, where racial prejudices seemed to be largely unthought of. (I'm sure it existed, but it certainly was not blatant or common.) The college, due to the occasion of MLK day, hosted an ENTIRE WEEK of "Black Recognition" chapel services, and attendance was mandatory. Every person on the stage for the entire week was black. They sang a beautiful, black hymn as the theme song for the week (I can't remember the words, only the tune...and unfortunately I can't hum that for you here...). The words did express, to my vague recollection, a nearly political message regarding equality. Every sermon for the chapel during that week, if it did not overtly speak to the plight of black Americans, hinted at it in not-so-subtle ways.

Folks, it was a long time ago that slavery happened in America. I can assure you that none of my ancestors were responsible, having immigrated to the Americas more recently. I, personally, am DEFINITELY not responsible for it. I want to share with you how that week of mandatory chapel attendance (took time out of the normal class schedule) made me feel. At first, nothing. Not the first day. Not the second day. But then it started to get to me. I began to feel angry. Can you guess why? Yes. I felt the influence of misplaced blame. The end result, in my heart, was to feel an influence exerted upon me which ran exactly opposite to the presumed intention of the chapel meetings. I began to see unfairness, alright. Plenty of it. I began to consider that there was no such week held for Native Americans. No special week, or even a day, for the hispanics. No special occasion for the Japanese who where essentially held in concentration camps in the United States of America during World War II. No special occasion for the Chinese, for the Europeans who have immigrated to America, nor for anyone else. THAT seemed unfair. And I had plenty of time to think of those injustices while I sat in the meetings.

I'm not saying that we should not recognize black Americans. I'm not trying to give any message here at all, actually, except to present a rare glimpse into one non-black American's thinking and gut reaction to racial prejudice. Please do not feel that I am at all prejudiced today. I have overcome those emotional reactions at that time with plenty of sound logic since. But I learned a few things from it. One is that oftentimes our struggles can be counter-productive. I had had no _feelings_ of prejudice prior to those meetings (though sometimes I may have dismissed some unfair thoughts before that). I'm talking anger here. Those meetings, intended to clear the air, had quite the opposite influence upon me, and I truly wonder how many others may have felt the same.

It's something to consider.

[Denny]

GreenC I cannot take away the feelings that you had, but look at it this way and wear our shoes....

A white person once asked 'Why is there not a white history month for the white people' the answer given was white history month takes place 365 days of the year and those lessons have been mandotary for 400 years or more. If you want a day to celebrate an important Native American, Japanese American, Hispanic American etc there is nothing stopping you from starting a campaign to get one started. As for recognition for Europan Americans ever since the Pilgrim Fathers stepped foot on Plymouth rock European American recognition week takes place every single day - history is written by the winners Europeans have been writing for a looong time. Your experience does not take away from the fact your church and my church has a long history of racism and pretending the elephant has left the room. BTW what is so political about a hymn about equality that is a basic divine and human fact distorted by sinful man that made it political in the first place. Perhaps you felt the way you did cos the meeting touched a cord, you got upset at one meeting held once a year but you say we are emotionally challenged at our history being ignored for say 400 years and our treatment by Adventist church leaders for over 100 years - I'll leave you to ponder the irony.

This post has been edited by Denny: Oct 26 2006, 10:14 AM

[beanchild]

I'm not the same color as some of you, and I do not like to see injustices either. However, I wonder if you all are not a bit emotionally challenged because of the hurts, and this has an effect on coloring reality, preventing a clear solution from being found. ...

here's something for you to consider: the fact that your statement above shows a invalidation of our comments merely due to what you perceive as an "emotional challenge." how utterly rude and insensitive. you really have no clue.

[Green Cochoa]

here's something for you to consider: the fact that your statement above shows a invalidation of our comments merely due to what you perceive as an "emotional challenge." how utterly rude and insensitive. you really have no clue.

I'm sorry if it seems insensitive. If I were being insensitive, I wouldn't have bothered to tell the story in the first place. My intention here is not to step on any toes. Far from it. I'm not here to debate on this issue. I only desired to show another perspective, for the sake of some mutual understanding. I have close friends who are black. I have heard the stories my mother tells of her childhood when she lived in the south; about the buses and bathrooms and restaurants. I grew up with my parents telling me that those things were not fair and that all people should be treated equally. However, I have also lived down there, and I have felt the "bristle." On both sides. There are actually hurts on both sides. It is my perspective that the hurts on the "caucasian" side are largely self-inflicted in the "poor me" style of thinking. But, looking fairly at the issue from my "third-party" perspective, I cannot say that ALL of the hurts on the other side are warranted either. One of my best friends in college was black. She was raised by adoptive white parents, so her culture/background was white. I saw nothing different about her. But she could tell a few stories of unequal treatment. I know it happens. I'm not blind to it. But I could also tell you plenty of stories of unfair treatment which my family has experienced--just for being Christian.

Jesus was treated cruelly--above that which any of us is called to bear. Yet He never complained. I think when we harbor resentments, it hurts us more in the end. It is simply human to allow the emotions to get the better of us, but we just need to give it all to God, and ask Him to help us.

Trust me. I may not have a silver tongue, but I have no intention to cause any hurt here. The fact that hypersensitivity exists amid these racial tensions should be ample enough evidence that the hurts are there--and don't tell me that those hurts don't get tied into the emotions. I wish I knew just the right words to say to erase all of those hurts and negative emotions. The problem is, this is a classic example of actions speaking louder than words, and unfortunately, I have no jurisdiction on the behavior of others.

May God bless His work here, that all such unfairness come to a speedy end in the new and perfect government of Heaven.

[awesumtenor]

I'm not the same color as some of you, and I do not like to see injustices either. However, I wonder if you all are not a bit emotionally challenged because of the hurts, and this has an effect on coloring reality, preventing a clear solution from being found.

"You all"? You've been getting cultural sensitivity lessons from Ross Perot, it seems...

I was never raised to be prejudiced. Quite the opposite.

Yes, you were... To quote Joan Olsen in her article "Detour Spotting for white 'anti-racists':

No white person has ever lived in a non‐racist North America. We were never taught the skills of anti‐racist living. Indeed, we were carefully taught the opposite: how to maintain our white privilege. Racism, the system of oppression (of people of color) and advantage (for white people) depends on the collusion and cooperation of white people for its perpetuation.

Most of us first became aware of racial prejudice and injustice as children. As white infants we
were fed a pabulum of racist propaganda. That early “training” was comprehensive and left little room for question, challenge or doubt. Our childhood games, rhymes and media conspired: “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo; Catch a n…r by his toe …” We played cowboys and Indians. All of us knew the Indians were bad and had to die. My WWII generation watched “Bugs Bunny” outwit evil Japanese villains. As Lillian Smith acknowledged:

“These ceremonials in honor of white supremacy, performed from babyhood,
slip from the conscious mind down deep into muscles and glands…and
become difficult to tear out.” (1)


Our generous child wisdom told us racism was wrong, but there was no escaping the daily racist
catechism. We resisted the lies, the deceit and the injustice of racism, but we did not have the skills to counter the poisonous messages. Our conditioning filled us with fear, suspicion and stereotypes that substituted for true knowing of people of color. We internalized our beliefs about people of color, ourselves, other white people and about being white. Those internalized attitudes became actualized into racist behavior.

She then goes on to note 18 common detours that derail your attempts to be anti-racist... I'll note a few as they crop up in your response...

I have relatives of several colors, black included. I have worked with people not of my race for the majority of my working life.

This is a variant of the "innocence by association" detour. This detour into denial wrongly equates personal interactions with people of color, no matter how intimate they may be, with anti‐racism. It assumes our personal associations free us magically from our racist conditioning.

But let me share a short experience here, from my perspective, which might help you to see things better from "the other side." If you can walk in the others' shoes for a day, perhaps the understanding from it might pave the way for a proper solution to the injustice--which I sincerely hope you find.

I was attending an Adventist college in the North, where racial prejudices seemed to be largely unthought of. (I'm sure it existed, but it certainly was not blatant or common.) The college, due to the occasion of MLK day, hosted an ENTIRE WEEK of "Black Recognition" chapel services, and attendance was mandatory. Every person on the stage for the entire week was black. They sang a beautiful, black hymn as the theme song for the week (I can't remember the words, only the tune...and unfortunately I can't hum that for you here...). The words did express, to my vague recollection, a nearly political message regarding equality. Every sermon for the chapel during that week, if it did not overtly speak to the plight of black Americans, hinted at it in not-so-subtle ways.

A whole week huh... yeah that should be enough to outweigh centuries of propaganda and societal conditioning designed to make the world view caucasians as a ruling class by divine fiat...and their exploitations as benevolence...This, BTW, it the detour called "the accountant"... with a little " white on white, and righteously so" thrown in... You are keeping a tally of the "anti-racist" things you've said and done so you can show how much a racist you arent... But the bottom line is you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage, no matter what your intentions are.

Folks, it was a long time ago that slavery happened in America.

NO, it wasnt... consider this. My Maternal great grandfather died in 1980 (at an estimated 105 years old... estimated because he was born in a Georgia sharecropper's shack and never had a birth certificate but he was around 20 years older than my great grandmother and she was 85 when he died) when I was 16. He was the youngest of 17 children... and his older siblings were emancipated slaves. This was a man I knew, who I visited regularly and talked with at length... not some dusty photograph in an old album. I was at the hospital when he died.

His generation was a generation of freed slaves and he lived to see me graduate from high school the year before he died.

It wasn't that long ago.

I can assure you that none of my ancestors were responsible, having immigrated to the Americas more recently. I, personally, am DEFINITELY not responsible for it.

You are responsible for allowing it to perpetuate because you continue to cash the checks that are the residuals of what W.E.B. DuBois called the "psychological wage of being white"

I want to share with you how that week of mandatory chapel attendance (took time out of the normal class schedule) made me feel. At first, nothing. Not the first day. Not the second day. But then it started to get to me. I began to feel angry. Can you guess why? Yes. I felt the influence of misplaced blame. The end result, in my heart, was to feel an influence exerted upon me which ran exactly opposite to the presumed intention of the chapel meetings. I began to see unfairness, alright. Plenty of it. I began to consider that there was no such week held for Native Americans. No special week, or even a day, for the hispanics. No special occasion for the Japanese who where essentially held in concentration camps in the United States of America during World War II. No special occasion for the Chinese, for the Europeans who have immigrated to America, nor for anyone else. THAT seemed unfair. And I had plenty of time to think of those injustices while I sat in the meetings.

This is a classic argument of the type B.W.A.M.E.: "But What About ME". If I were to make the argument you have here in this manner... ' The Japanese were given reparations for 4 years of iinjustice when they were interred in camps during world war 2... how come black people can't get a dime for 450 years of systemic injustice in the so-called "land of the free and home of the brave"?' you would immediately reject it as fallacious.

I'm not saying that we should not recognize black Americans. I'm not trying to give any message here at all, actually, except to present a rare glimpse into one non-black American's thinking and gut reaction to racial prejudice.

And that visceral reaction is *denial*.

Please do not feel that I am at all prejudiced today. I have overcome those emotional reactions at that time with plenty of sound logic since. But I learned a few things from it. One is that oftentimes our struggles can be counter-productive. I had had no _feelings_ of prejudice prior to those meetings (though sometimes I may have dismissed some unfair thoughts before that). I'm talking anger here. Those meetings, intended to clear the air, had quite the opposite influence upon me, and I truly wonder how many others may have felt the same.

It's something to consider.

Read the article in the link above and when you are done, replay those instances where you are patting yourself on the back because you thought you were taking the high moral ground. If you are honest with yourself, you will see yourself in that article on myriad occasions.. and for all your insisting that you are not prejudiced, your statements exude a presumption of intellectual and spiritual superiority in your dealing with non-whites.

That presumption is the very essence of prejudice...

Selah.

In His service,
Mr. J

[Green Cochoa]

Awesumtenor,

It sure sounds like you want every white person to say he or she is racist. Is this really true? Why would you WANT such a thing? Incomprehensible to me. I'm sorry.

God knows my heart. You have more than presumption here--as though you know my heart, when you have not even met me.

Your words are strong. It appears that you perceive me to be your enemy. Tell me this, would you perceive the white gentleman who wrote the book "black like me" to be prejudiced too? (I cried when I read that book.) I suppose you have no forgiveness for any of us melanin-challenged folk.

Would you please forgive me? Would I need to change my skin at the dermatologist's to get any respect with you? Or would that even do anything.

"Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further."

[TrulyBlessedOne]

I'm not the same color as some of you, and I do not like to see injustices either. However, I wonder if you all are not a bit emotionally challenged because of the hurts, and this has an effect on coloring reality, preventing a clear solution from being found.

GC, you are treading on thin ice with that statement. The fact that you never had to live through the type of discrimination that many blacks have had to live through disqualifies you from making the statement you just made.

How dare you minimize the feelings of the majority of the members of this board. For far too long, we have been told to just let go over 400 years of injustice. If racism were no longer present, then it could be considered, but I know personally that it is still alive and well and being taught to a new generation of little racist white kids.

The only "clear solution" is the ending of racism in the church is those in leadership giving up their racist ways. If they recognized that the majority of church members around the world are people who are not of european heritage. Until there is proper representation and the true acknoledgement that we don't have to follow a european model for worship services, there will continue to be racism in the church.

I even question why there are non-black members on this board. It is my experience that blacks can never have anything of substance without whites wanting to be involved. There are always one or two whites in prodominantly black churches. I have thought, in my conspiracy theory imagination, that many times they are there merely to spy on the situation.

THis may sound like racism, but it is my belief that black would be better off if we followed the model of the later years of Malcolm X. After his journey to Mecca, he revised his views to lay aside his hateful ways, however, for the bettering of blacks, he allowed whites to support the movement, but not join. Reason being, whites CANNOT relate to the black experience. Regardless of how much research you do on the subject, until you live it, you CANNOT relate.

I admire those who "turn black" to experience some of the life, but unless you grew up being called nigger and jiggaboo; been chased through the woods by a band of rednecks; been turned down for a job or credit without them even looking at the applications; or had someone move to the other side of the street, sidewalk, or hallway when they see you coming, you CANNOT understand the black experience. Just because you grew up around blacks or have black friends, doesn't give you the black experience by osmisis.

So please save your commentary on black matters, unless you are coming to announce that centuries of racism has suddenly come to an end. Unless you are coming to offer a solution that empowers blacks and provides a proper balance of power within the church and society, please simply read and move on.

That's My Two Lincolnstm

Pastor J

p.s. yeah I have a issues

[västergötland]

Pro 13:3 Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.


This post has been edited by västergötland: Oct 26 2006, 12:26 PM

[TrulyBlessedOne]

Your words are strong. It appears that you perceive me to be your enemy. Tell me this, would you perceive the white gentleman who wrote the book "black like me" to be prejudiced too? (I cried when I read that book.) I suppose you have no forgiveness for any of us melanin-challenged folk.

Of course you cried, think of how many tears are shed by those who have had to live in this skin all their life. That gentlemen only scratched the surface of the black experience.

Pastor J

[västergötland]

I even question why there are non-black members on this board. It is my experience that blacks can never have anything of substance without whites wanting to be involved. There are always one or two whites in prodominantly black churches. I have thought, in my conspiracy theory imagination, that many times they are there merely to spy on the situation.

THis may sound like racism, but it is my belief that black would be better off if we followed the model of the later years of Malcolm X. After his journey to Mecca, he revised his views to lay aside his hateful ways, however, for the bettering of blacks, he allowed whites to support the movement, but not join. Reason being, whites CANNOT relate to the black experience. Regardless of how much research you do on the subject, until you live it, you CANNOT relate.
Pastor J

Is this your wish? Should we leave?

[beanchild]

Pro 13:3 Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.

thomas, i see yer puttin that smiley to immediate use, eh? lol.