A Review: I'M STILL HERE by Austin Channing Brown

Austin Channing Brown's I'M STILL HERE: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness is a challenging, honest and insightful look into her experiences as a Black (Christian) woman living in a white culture.

She observes: "Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort."

A few pages later, Channing Brown states, "In the mind of whiteness, half-baked efforts at diversity are enough, because the status quo is fine." And a few sentences later, perhaps to help us understand her frustration, she writes: "It's hard to be calm in a world made for whiteness."

She is not shy about calling out racism for what it is. Nor is Channing Brown shy about expressing her annoyance with those who would point to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s as a hallmark of equity. "I do not consider it praiseworthy that only within the last generation did America reach the baseline for human decency."

She points to the heart of white fragility and how it gets in the way of true progress. "A great many people believe that reconciliation boils down to dialogue: a conference on race, a lecture, a moving sermon about the diversity we'll see in heaven. But dialogue is productive toward reconciliation only when it leads to action - when it inverts power and pursues justice for those who are most marginalized."

Austin Channing Brown

And towards the end of I'M STILL HERE, Channing Brown suggests a hopeful road towards true healing. "In too many churches and organizations listening to the hurt and pain of people of color is the end of the road, rather than the beginning."

"Reconciliation is not about white feelings. It's about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, towards the powerless."

Civil Righteousness 2020 Conference Coming Up March 13 in Kalamazoo

In February of 2017 the Kalamazoo House of Prayer (KHOP) sponsored a Civil Righteousness Conference that featured Jonathan Tremaine Thomas. During that Conference, he said that "we're living in a protest culture," and that protesting "keeps recruiting on the unhealed wounds of America." The solution Thomas offered was to address the spiritual underpinnings of the struggle with what he called "Civil Righteousness," which he defined as "the pursuit of moral excellence in the face of injustice."

The Civil Righteousness Conference 2020, sponsored by Jesus Loves Kalamazoo and Kalamazoo House of Prayer (KHOP) is coming up on March 13. We recently had an opportunity to interview Tami Flick, Executive Director of KHOP about the Conference. 

Can you describe the relationship that Jesus Loves Kalamazoo has with the Northside Ministerial Alliance? How is that partnership strategic to healing? 

Jesus Loves Kalamazoo has partnered with the Northside Ministerial Alliance (NMA) officially for the 2019 and 2020 conferences.  Mt. Zion Church (pastored by Dr. Addis Moore, who also serves as NMA president) has served as a host site for our 2015 Healing the Land (the precursor to the Civil Righteousness conferences), and our 2019 Civil Righteousness conference with Sean Smith and Paul Hughes.

One of the reasons we reached out to Dr. Moore, Mt. Zion, and the NMA is because of their heart for ethnic reconciliation and justice.  They have been some of the key leaders in our community with creating a dialog between community officials and faith leaders, as well as fostering greater understanding between cultures.  We knew that with where we felt the Lord wanted to bring the messaging of Civil Righteousness to Kalamazoo, that we needed Dr. Moore and the Northside Ministerial Alliance’s help and partnership. 

How about the Civil Righteousness internship developed with Kalamazoo House of Prayer? Can you offer details of that experience? 

The Kalamazoo House of Prayer (KHOP) was founded in July of 2013 and began our internship program in January of 2014.  So, from almost the very beginning, internships have been a part of our culture of training and equipping people for prayer, worship, and evangelistic ministry.  After the Civil Righteousness conference in 2018, I knew I wanted to create an internship that was dedicated to teaching about Civil Righteousness in greater detail.  In preparation for the internship, we launched this past summer (2019), Jonathan Tremaine Thomas and I began to pray and brainstorm into what topics our internship should explore.  We realized pretty quickly that we were actually developing a curriculum that could be used not just by the KHOP, but by people around the country.  We also knew that we did not want to just teach on these subjects, but provide a way for people to engage in acts of justice as well.  One of the activities interns participated in was called “The Wall.”  Our students stood in a line along W. Michigan Ave, in downtown Kalamazoo, with white tape over their mouths.  Each person wrote a word or words on their tape of a specific thing they were contending for in prayer.  Then, we stood silently in prayer for two hours.  Although at first glance this act looks like a protest, it is actually a prayer meeting, praying against racism in our city and praying for God’s Kingdom to come to earth as it is in heaven.

Some of our interns also joined me and some of our KHOP musicians and singers on a ministry trip down to Ferguson, MO for the fifth anniversary of the Michael Brown shooting.  Jonathan Tremaine Thomas had organized a large prayer and worship tent just a block away from “ground zero” of the shooting.  The weekend was called “Fragrance Ferguson.”  Our worship team led worship during some of that 12-hour gathering and our entire team either participated in The Wall at the very spot Michael Brown perished and/or participated in street ministry nearby.

The curriculum includes topics such as Introduction to Civil Righteousness, One Blood (based on the book by Dr. John Perkins), One New Man, Biblical Justice, Peacemaking, the Table of Brotherhood,  and Actions Steps.

Because this was a KHOP internship, we also taught and practiced subjects such as Basics of Intercessory Prayer, Hearing the Voice of God, Intro to Harp & Bowl, etc.  Each intern was required to attend and/or serve in the prayer room 4 - 6 hours per week.  

In August 2019, Jesus Loves Kalamazoo sent a ministry team to Ferguson for the 5th anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown. What were the takeaways and lessons learned from that? 

This trip confirmed what my team and I felt: That Jesus Loves Kalamazoo and the Kalamazoo House of Prayer are forerunners in the realm of ethnic reconciliation and unity.  The Lord continues to encourage us that we are on the right track.  Even though Kalamazoo may be small, the Jesus-centered unity that God is helping us cultivate here is beautiful and significant, and I believe will become a healing oil of sorts for communities all over our nation.  Big dream, I know.  However, I believe that God has been challenging us to dream big, especially when it comes to seeing the racial divide healed. 

John M. Perkins

John M. Perkins is set to be one of the speakers at the upcoming One Blood Civil Righteousness Conference on March 13. Perkins was born in 1930 in Mississippi and has a rich and extensive history as a social justice activist. In the mid-1960s Perkins was involved in the school desegregation movement, via his own son attending a previously all-white school. A few years later Perkins led an economic boycott of white-owned stores and was arrested and tortured in early 1970. This experience led Perkins to commit to a vision of holistic ministry as a result of seeing how racism inflicted bondage on whites as well as damage to the black community. How did you get John Perkins to come to Kalamazoo?

Pastor James Harris, one of JLK’s vision team members, had the opportunity to meet Dr. Perkins at a couple of conferences over the last few years.  He connected with Dr. Perkins’ daughter (who also serves as his manager) and was able to work with her to secure Dr. Perkins for this year’s CR conference.  Pastor James had recently taken his entire church through Perkins’ book One Blood, so he knew Perkins’ teaching well and felt he would be an excellent choice for our conference this year. 

Another speaker at the March 13th Conference will be Soon-Chan Rah who also has a history of work in the area of multi-ethnic, urban ministry, focused on living out racial reconciliation and social justice. I'm curious how Jesus Loves Kalamazoo succeeded in getting Rah to be part of the Conference?

We reached out to him via email and by leaving a voicemail on his office phone at North Park University (Chicago).  It took a little while to get a hold of him due to his being out on sabbatical last semester.  Thankfully, we were able to connect with him in early January.

If there were one thing you could say to encourage people to come to the One Blood: Civil Righteousness Conference, what would it be? 

It’s not always easy for people to purposefully sit down at the “table of brotherhood” with the goal of listening, sharing, and growing with people who look different than you and may think differently than you.  It takes courage.  However, God is extending an invitation to all of us in this season to be bridge-builders, peace-makers.  According to Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in John 17:23, when we as followers of Christ choose to live as one IN Him, our oneness serves as a catalyst for harvest:  “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  

Soon-Chan Rah: Photo Credit North Park University

If we believe that Jesus is justice and that He is the answer to issues like racism that plague our society, then we need to seek out how Christ wants to manifest His love, unity, and healing through us.  Jesus’ prayer shows us how our unity can serve as the lens by which the world recognizes that Jesus is the messiah.  This means that the God who created the heavens and the earth is inviting us to the table of brotherhood.  

I believe the table of brotherhood can become His banqueting table, where people from every tribe and every tongue convene at the wedding supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6 - 9 and Matthew 22:1 - 14).  But the table of brotherhood is a first step.  

Is there anything else you'd like to share? 

Sometimes we avoid talking about subject matters such as ethnic reconciliation and justice because we are afraid that we’ll end up saying the wrong thing and offend someone (and/or make ourselves look stupid).  I remember learning to speak French and being afraid to converse with native French speakers because I didn’t have a diverse vocabulary nor was I comfortable with all of the fancy verb tenses.  However, it wasn’t until I lived in Paris for one summer during my undergrad years and was forced to converse every single day, that my ability to communicate exponentially grew.  By the end of the summer, I was even thinking and dreaming in French.  Likewise, in order to grow as ministers of reconciliation, we need to place ourselves in positions and with people that will force us to listen, learn, and dialog.  It’s not always a comfortable place (at least not at first), but I can promise you that it will be rewarding. 

If we want to be part of the solution to the ethnic division that plagues our communities, doing something as simple as attending a Civil Righteousness conference is a great first step.  From there, I believe the Lord will begin to show you what your next steps as a minister of reconciliation will be.

You can get more information about the Civil Righteousness 2020 Conference and register for it here.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean: A Review

Susan Orlean: Photo Credit @susanorlean

Susan Orlean's THE LIBRARY BOOK burns with the brilliance of her love of libraries.

She observes: "Books are a sort of cultural DNA, the code for who, as a society, we are, and what we know. All the wonders and failures, all the champions and villains, all the legends and ideas and revelations of a culture last forever in its books."

The theme of her novel is the great fire in the Central Library of Los Angeles on April 28, 1986. A fire so intense that it reached 2000 degrees while burning over 400,000 books and damaging another 700,000 in the course of a seven-hour rampage through the shelves.

Orlean uses her considerable journalistic skills to give us quite an inside story of the Central Library and the development of the LA library system, including intriguing glimpses into many of the LA system's early head librarians.

Along the way, we're introduced to Harry Peak, who was suspected but never proven to be, the arsonist behind the linguistic inferno. Peak was a handsome, attention-starved would-be actor, who comes across as likable, but with a strong tendency towards lying.

Orlean also shares the beginnings of her love of libraries, starting with the Bertram Woods branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library. "Throughout my childhood, starting when I was very young, I went there several times a week with my mother. On those visits, my mother and I walked in together but as soon as we passed through the door, we split up and each headed to our favorite section. The library might have been the first place I was ever given autonomy..."

"Those visits were dreamy, frictionless interludes that promised I would leave richer than I arrived."

Orlean took years to research and complete THE LIBRARY BOOK and her persistence and skill are reflected on each page of the book. Also worth noting is that her Orlean's mother passed away during it's writing - she had dementia and her memory was eroding during this time.

Towards the end of THE LIBRARY BOOK, Orlean slips back to LA's Central Library shortly after a new addition had been built and the Central Library was rededicated for public use. "I thought about my mother, who died when I was halfway done with this book, and I knew how pleased she would have been to see me in the library, and I was able to use that thought to transport myself for a split second to a time when I was young and she was in the moment, alert and tender, with years ahead of her, and she was beaming at me as I toddled to the checkout counter with an armload of books. I knew that if we had come here together, to this enchanted place of stucco and statuary and all the stories in the world for us to have, she would have reminded me just about now that if she could have chosen any profession in the world, she would have been a librarian."