Digging deeper into history and culture
It's necessary for building authentic community.
As a condition of my ministerial standing in the Alabama-Northwest Florida (and Meridian, Mississippi!) Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), I am obliged to attend anti-racism training every five years. I wish every judicatory/ denomination had a similar requirement. Anti-racism is directly related to who we are called to be as Church, which is proactively seeking out relationships with God and others, embodying the love of Christ, and celebrating the diversity of human reflections of God’s image.
The presenter for the training was Rev. Chris Dorsey, President and CEO of Disciples Home Missions. Rev. Dorsey took a different approach than I have experienced in other anti-racism trainings. He spent a lot of time on the bigger picture of what we’re aiming toward as Christians - authentic community - which is characterized as a dynamic, responsive coalescence of people committed to mutual care, respect, vulnerability, and accountability manifested at intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, and systemic levels. Then he talked about how racism, rooted in the desire for power rather than mutuality, is a barrier to this kind of community.
There was so much wisdom in Rev. Dorsey’s presentation that I’ll continue to mull. A particular application for my coaching work became clear, though, over the course of the training. Two important underpinnings for building authentic community are broadening our understandings of history and culture:
History. Many of us only know the dominant narrative about our church as well as our country, community, and family. And in the case of church, as Rev. Dorsey pointed out, most congregants know little about or don’t acknowledge the history of the surrounding area before our church was founded. Not everyone has had the same experience, however. And those who have the power to set the narrative tend to gloss over parts of our stories that make us look less than virtuous. To be authentic community, we need to be conversant in multiple histories.
Culture. Culture includes our practices, way of speaking (not just language itself but also idioms that don’t translate from one culture to another), clothing, and food. But we rarely think of our culture as such, though, especially if we’re in the majority. It’s just the way we do things. If we can’t see our culture as one among many, though, we won’t examine the assumptions underlying it or understand how it excludes people with other cultural backgrounds. To be authentic community, we need both to be self-aware and to invite the contributions of other cultures - and the changes they might bring.
In my work with congregations, I already talk a lot about history or legacy. The anti-racism training was an encouragement to take my curiosity about churches’ narratives even deeper. What happened here, both before and after your congregation’s founding? From whose perspective? What are the untold stories that are operative in your church? What does that mean for who you are now and for how you want to move forward?
Though I don’t often use the word “culture” in congregational coaching, the concept is hovering around most conversations. The anti-racism training taught me that I need to be more purposeful around unearthing it. What do you do, wear, eat, and say? What are the origins of those cultural touchstones? What are the assumptions behind the origins? Which aspects of culture still serve you well? Which ones are preventing you from loving and including and celebrating the contributions of others?
There are many other pieces of the anti-racism training that I need to work into my coaching, but I’m excited for how these two areas might serve churches and the Church well and contribute to the building of authentic community.