I was wrong about white privilege: How a truncated understanding of the gospel misunderstands God’s heart for justice

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I was wrong. I’m sure there are still holes in my theology. The aim of this admission is to describe my journey towards understanding my privilege as a white woman and the ways that racism permeates systems in the USA. My narrative traces my journey in the hopes that my vulnerability will allow others to begin or continue their own journeys to understanding how power and privilege have been woven into the fabric of our nation. For readers who identify themselves as Christians, I hope that the explanation of my old and new theologies will push you to reread the ancient text with new eyes, ready to reexamine your own beliefs with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. 

Growing up in a white evangelical world

Curled up in a corner, as a child, I turned page after page, absorbing stories of the resistance during World War II, abolitionists on the Underground Railroad, and suffragettes at the turn of the century. My inarticulate heartcry for as long as I can remember has been to help others by defying injustice. Problematically, though, in the 1990s, it seemed as though the only real problems were overseas. There didn’t seem to be any problems in my world, one where my middle class family lived on one income and my college educated parents devoted themselves to my education. 

Our family was surrounded by other white people, with a few notable exceptions. Since my family was really good friends with a Southeast Indian family, a biracial family, a Chinese family, and my cousins hosted exchange students frequently, I thought I had a diverse community. I didn’t. My friends’ black dad told us stories of getting pulled over by the police for being black in the wrong neighborhood, but aside from his stories, I thought racism had ended during the Jim Crow era. 

First exposure to “otherness” and the minority experience

In college, I worked at an almost-all black summer camp. Curiously, conversations on race happened all-the-time. As in every day. Multiple times a day. As one of four white people in a camp of two hundred kids and staff, I was acutely aware of being white. Other than a few weeks stint in India, this was my first time when I wasn’t part of the majority. Patiently, my camp friends explained the nearly constant awareness of “otherness” they experienced. Sitting in a Panera on our day off, two of my mixed friends asked me: “Did you notice that we are the only brown people here?” “No,” I remarked, surprised, as I looked around and observed they were right. “We did,” they replied, “the moment we walked in here with you.”

After college, I taught high school English at a charter school whose students were primarily white. Race didn’t seem to be an issue there, or I didn’t think it was, until one day I was talking to one of my brother’s best friends. She told me about her dreadful experience as one of the only black students at the school a few years prior. Accused of supporting the Obama administration, she was bullied, beaten in the locker room, her family was threatened, and racial epithets were spray painted outside her home. Crying, I listened to her experience at the school, heartbroken and confused. It just didn’t make sense. How could her experience there have been so different from my own?

My incomplete understanding of the gospel: seeing the cross through an individualistic lens

While teaching, I started a master’s degree at Denver Seminary. My original goal was to go overseas to fight sex-trafficking. During the four years I spent at seminary, my understanding of the Gospel was fundamentally changed, which has allowed me to have an intellectual framework wherein I have space for categories like systemic racism. 

You see, up until I began my master’s program, my framework only had space to see the world in terms of individuals. My own upbringing using this framework meant that I didn’t see race as a problem because I wasn’t a racist and I wasn’t friends with racist people. As a Christian, my worldview was rooted in my understanding of the gospel. Herein lies the problem: the version of the gospel I grew up with was too narrow and was therefore incomplete. It went something like this: People are sinful and they need a savior to save them from God’s wrath. If you believe in Jesus, accept his free gift of salvation, and have a relationship with him, then you’ll go to heaven and live eternally with him there. The subtext in my especially conservative community added: “Since you’re a Christian, you should make sure that other people see you behave like one; no premarital sex, no drunkenness, dress modestly, and be nice to other people.” [1] 

Here’s an illustration of what this version of gospel looks like:[2]

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Ultimately, this gospel comes down to the individual and his or her relationship with God. First, I recognize that I’m a sinner and that I need Jesus, and then from there, being a Christian is about growing in my personal relationship with Him. 

Using this framework for salvation, one understands sin in individual terms (lying, adultery, murder, etc.). In an individual framework, racism amounts to individuals hating other individuals with the wrong skin color. Racists are folks who use the n-word, call black men “boy,” and don’t want their kids to marry people from a different race. My understanding of economics, history, politics, etc. fit into a view of the world where individuals are able to make choices, and how they respond to those choices influences or even determines their outcomes. If black people made choices to have kids out of wedlock, drop-out of school, or do drugs, then those individuals’ choices were responsible for their poverty, imprisonment, etc. People who worked hard, like Arther Ashe, one of my childhood heroes, made it. Simple, right? Hard work equals success. Anyone can achieve the American Dream if he or she works hard enough. This idea is called meritocracy. Personal responsibility is rooted in the white American psyche as the key to one’s success or failure.[3]

A more robust understanding of the gospel: How Jesus redeems the world and us

Up until a few years ago, nothing in my education had contradicted my worldview defined by individualism and meritocracy, and as an Evangelical Christian, this worldview fit neatly with the way I read the Bible and thought about my faith. Seminary pulled the rug out from under me by forcing me to examine how I read the Bible and to question if the way I currently understood the gospel aligned with what the Bible actually says. Ultimately, study of scripture revealed that I had a narrow and incomplete understanding of sin and the gospel. This individual gospel is what had allowed me to define racism only in individual terms and didn’t explain issues like genocide or sexism very well.[4]

A more robust understanding of the gospel made space in my intellectual framework for categories like systemic sin. Genesis teaches that in the garden of Eden, humans were in perfect harmony with God, each other, themselves, and creation until the fateful day they sinned. When sin entered the world, it damaged those four relationships that had been intact and whole. Sin damaged these four relationships by separating us from God, creation, each other, and ourselves. The individual gospel I grew up with emphasised my separation from God and my individual sin. But it didn’t really explain why Ebola existed, or why children were soldiers, or why people suffered from mental illness, or children were raped, or genocide happened. Understanding that sin now influences all aspects of creation accounts for all that we intuitively know is wrong with the world. 

If sin is this great, then salvation must be greater. Jesus’s atonement has to be coextensive with the fall. The Bible teaches that it is; Jesus’ death and resurrection atoned for the sins of the world and triumphed over Satan. Everything that had been damaged by sin in the fall, Jesus paid for in his triumphal death and resurrection. Scripture promises that Jesus is building his Kingdom and that in the new heavens and new earth all will be set right. The wholeness, harmony, and peace that characterized Eden pre-fall will once again be restored in an even more glorious way. Men and women in the church are sent out into the world to love and serve the world as ambassadors of Jesus and his glorious Kingdom. Here’s an illustration of this version of the gospel: [5]

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Because the white Evangelical church teaches a version of the gospel where sin is only about the individual, we struggle to explain how the gospel is good news to the poor, the broken, and marginalized. Why is the gospel good news to survivors of genocide? Why is it good news for those who’ve been raped? Why is it good news for women? Because Jesus’ triumph defeats the Evil One and his works. Jesus redeems and restores; he makes all things new. He redeems me from my sins, you from your sins, and our world from the effects of sin.[6]

The gospel & racism

The principalities and powers of this world are opposed to Christ and his Kingdom.[7] One of the ways that the US, since its inception, has seen the effects of sin on a creation level and among ourselves is in racial oppression and disparity in how non-white people are treated. From broken agreements and the forced dislocation of native Americans, to the slave trade and oppression of African Americans, to the exclusion each new wave of immigrants have faced (Chinese, Irish, Latinx, and more), to the eugenics movement, racism has been woven into the fabric of our nation.[8]  

Understanding historical racism’s systemic impacts today

The historical national sin of racism has impacted our country in such a way that the narrative of individual choices is inadequate in explaining the discrepancies in outcomes between white and black people. Claims of systemic racism point to this and explain that sin has given the black community an unequal playing field. When we look at rates of incarceration, kids in special education, and wealth disparity, we see that unless black people are more criminal, stupid, or lazy, if we discount the possibility of a systemic issue, there’s no good explanation for why they’re more likely to be in jail, on individualized education plans, or poor. Since we decry the claims that whites are superior to blacks, and as Christians believe that all are created in the image of God, then what is to explain the stark differences?[9]   

Imagine a race to put together two 1000-piece puzzles. Team A for the first three hours of the puzzle is blind-folded and all members have one hand tied behind their backs. They complain this is unfair. Finally, team B agrees and Team A’s blindfolds are removed and their hands are freed. Four hours into the competition, there’s a pause and the puzzle progress is assessed. Which team has more of their puzzle constructed? What if the judges come in and don’t know about the rule change 3 hours in? Isn’t the automatic assumption that Team A isn’t as good as team B because they don’t have as much of their puzzle complete?[10]  

The historical narrative I learned said that Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. solved racism. It omitted facts about redlining, and how the GI bill gave federally-backed mortgages and college education overwhelmingly to white veterans, enabling them and their families to build wealth. Both my grandfathers benefited from the GI bill, and my parents are both college educated. [11]  Growing up, the question I was asked was where, not if I would go to college. A lot of policies have disproportionately hurt black and brown communities while helping white ones. 

A few years ago, when the Black Lives Matter cry had just gained national attention, I shared a friend’s blog post about how her bi-racial family had been pulled over by the police. White friends who read my post felt like I was calling all cops racists and unleashed their umbridge on me. Without an understanding of how systems can be corrupted by systemic sin, it is difficult to read a story even mildly critical of police and not feel personally attacked, especially in a career where your life is on the line every day. Americans pride themselves on holding ideals of fairness, equality, and justice. No other nation on earth has the freedom that we do, we teach our children. And yet, unless we are willing to take a hard look at our history and the ways that our ancestors (as sinful people) created broken systems (which still bear the effects of sin), we won’t be able to listen to each other or build a more perfect union. 

Implicit bias in white churches & the larger community

My first job out of Seminary was working at a community center run by a white, suburban megachurch. My boss was originally from Argentina, and while he could pass for white, his accent gave away his Latinx roots. I started noticing things like other church staff mispronouncing his name or not making the effort to learn how to say it correctly. I realized that, in meetings with community partners, they would look at me when they were talking, even though my boss was the decision maker. A lot of these kinds of slights are unconscious; those folks who are doing this often have no idea they are devaluing the person of color with whom they’re interacting. 

Around the same time, I started dating the man who is now my husband. He’s Tamil, from Sri Lanka, with beautiful dark brown skin. As a mixed race couple, I realized we got more looks than I’d gotten when on dates with white men. When we would go to Walmart and they had a receipt checker, that person would never ask to see our receipt if I was pushing the cart, but if Edgar was pushing it, we would almost always get stopped. It didn’t matter if the receipt checker was Black, white, Latinx, or Asian. Because Edgar’s darker than me, he doesn’t get the same presumption of innocence that I do.

Raising brown kids & learning about my own privilege

As I considered writing a post on race, I hesitated for a lot of reasons. One is that I don’t have all the answers, and I’m still learning. But if I’m going to be honest, I realize that I still have a lot of implicit bias and privilege at work in me. I get frustrated sometimes that Edgar is less willing to go into stores or handle administrative tasks; “how hard is it really to register the car / make a return / deposit money at the bank?” I ask myself. But the reality is that the system works for me because I’m white: when I go to stores to make a return, I can, no questions asked. When I go to the airport to pick up a refugee family and need a gate pass, I get one, no questions asked. When my black and brown coworkers go, they get the runaround. White privilege is having things work the way they’re supposed to work. It’s feeling safe when the police are in your neighborhood or pull you over. It’s going to a doctor’s office in a nice part of town and having no wait, no stares, no questions asked. It’s having doctors believe me if I’m telling them something hurts.[12]  

My brother was killed suddenly and unexpectedly almost three years ago; losing him was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. He was riding his bike and was hit by a car. The agony of loss and the heartbreak my family endured is something that a lot of black families have experienced. A black mom held my brother’s hand as he died; her own son had been killed in a motorcycle accident the prior year. She prayed over John as he took his last breath and to this day, continues to comfort my mom, knowing the agony of loss herself. 

Moms shouldn’t have to bury their sons, and when they do, something is deeply wrong. Let us mourn the lives that have been lost and beg for forgiveness for our national pride and sin. We have oppressed the poor and the foreigners and have upheld injustice, blind and deaf to the sobs of the hurting. Instead of staunchly defending our individualistic understanding of the gospel and the world around us, could the white Evangelical church choose to listen, learn, and repent? Could we embrace the gospel of scripture that is robust enough to be good news for everyone? 

As I contemplate raising mixed kids (no Mom, I’m not pregnant yet). I want them to love God and their neighbors. I want them to grow up and pursue their dreams and have black and brown role models in leadership in the church and the community around us. If this is going to happen, and we’re going to see more people of color in positions of power and leadership, it will start with white people and churches taking a hard look at ourselves and our positions and asking, “Are my beliefs consistent with the gospel narrative?”



 

[1] I’m including these additional behavioral emphases to indicate the fundamentalist take on the gospel I learned. See Galatians to see how Paul responds to folks who try to add additional requirements onto following Jesus. 

[2] The Navigators popularized the Bridge illustration in evangelical Christianity https://www.navigators.org/resource/the-bridge-to-life/.

[3] For a more in-depth explanation of white cultural values, see Dr. Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism.

[4] Could the lack of explanation be one reason that Millenials are leaving the church in droves? https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/ Religious “nones” numbers are swelling. Perhaps many are disillusioned with the watered-down version of the gospel that Evangelicalism teaches.

[5] InterVarsity “The Big Story” https://2100.intervarsity.org/overview/big-story

[6] See this article for a brief explanation of the Christus Victor understanding of atonement. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/christus-victor/

[7] Ephesians 6:12

[8] Jim Wallis’ America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America is my current read on this subject.

[9] Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness documents the disturbing numbers of incarcerated Black people; disproportionately incarcerated for crimes committed in equal numbers by whites. Ava Duvernay and Jason Moran’s 2016 film 13th is another resource to look at this disparity.

[10] In Divided by Fath, Michael Emerson & Christian Smith give examples of parable of a weightloss camp (110-113) and reference John Perkins analogy of a rigged baseball game (127), to illustrate the historic and ongoing systemic influences of racism leading to unequal outcomes. Divided by Faith helped me think through this and is the basis for the puzzle analogy.

[11]  I learned about the disproportionate effects of the GI bill not in my college’s American Heritage class, but when I read Debby Irving’s book Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race.

[12] This is not how many people of color are treated. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/racial-disparities-seen-in-how-doctors-treat-pain-even-among-children/2020/07/10/265e77d6-b626-11ea-aca5-ebb63d27e1ff_story.html. Also, in 2018 “the maternal death rate for black women was more than double that of white women: 37.1 deaths per 100,000 live births compared to 14.7.” https://www.vox.com/2020/1/30/21113782/pregnancy-deaths-us-maternal-mortality-rate

What Dorothy Day Teaches Evangelicals May Make Us Uncomfortable

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Dorothy Day’s life teaches us in three key areas. First, she offers us a chance to exercise intellectual humility and broaden our individualistic framework to examine systemic injustice. Second, the way she modeled hospitality provides a paradigm that pushes back against the American impulse to evaluate people based on their ability to contribute to society (or lack there of). Finally, she provides an example for Evangelicals of wholeheartedly living out one’s convictions and embracing one’s vocation for the greater good.

Ambiguity is difficult for Evangelicals; we struggle to accept mystery and black-and-white categories comfort us. In our emphasis on Scripture’s authority, we want to define whether or not something is Biblical, so when others disagree with us on its interpretation, it can be difficult to receive them. Dorothy Day’s pacifism, soft stance towards socialism and communism and critique of capitalism may be difficult to swallow. Yet, we cannot applaud her successful stances on issues we agree with her on and disown her the next minute because she’s “too radical” on others. No one is without flaws. Evangelicals support both women’s suffrage and civil rights, and even if we are not on board with her pacifism, we ought to respect her opposition toward war and commitment to an entirely pro-life ethic. Instead of dismissing her critique of capitalism because it makes us uncomfortable, we need to ask ourselves why it does that.

Essentially, we need the humility to learn from those outside our tradition and with whom we may not completely agree. Dorothy Day asked questions about why people were poor that others lacked the courage to ask; she insisted the church and broader society examine issues of systemic injustice. In part because we place such a high value on personal conversion, our default lens as Evangelicals is individualistic. We need to take a page out of Day’s newspaper and examine systemic forms of injustice that are bigger than the individual. When we think about and try to engage issues troubling the world, we do so from an individualistic understanding, because, thanks to our heritage, that is our default framework. Yet, racism, immigration, the school to prison pipeline, abortion, and poverty all are rooted in systems that influence individual choices. Our intellectual framework and theological framework needs to accommodate this reality in order for us to address these issues effectively. We need to ask ourselves how our churches can become communities, like the Catholic Worker houses, in which we work collaboratively to oppose systemic forms of injustice while remaining a welcoming Kingdom presence to all.

Firm in her understanding that being made in the image of God gives people intrinsic worth, Day refused to differentiate between the deserving and undeserving poor or to discriminate based on race or religion. She prohibited her fellow Catholic Workers from putting up signs in their houses of hospitality assigning chores to its inhabitants, and welcomed people not as contributors, but guests.[1] Much of our modern lens, by default evaluates people based on how productive they are; we ask: “Do they do drugs? Are they in school? Do they have a job?” in determining whether or how much help they should receive. As we consider housing policies for the homeless, the Housing First model found in Utah and California is based on the premise that belonging precedes behavior modification.[2] The gospel assumes the same thing: we are part of God’s family before we start to act like it. Whatever issue we look at: immigration, homelessness, rehabilitation, we need to start with Day’s assumption that the men and women in front of us are beloved of God, rather than beginning with questions of what they deserve.

Reading Day’s story is challenging because, firm in her vocation and convictions, she takes such radical stances, willing to go to prison for her beliefs. Are we willing to be counter-cultural and risk being misunderstood for the sake of the gospel? Do we question the prevailing structures of our society or align ourselves with one particular political party and risk becoming a voting block? Furthermore, Day’s most strongly held convictions were ones that involved the good of others. What are ours? Do we have convictions that serve our own ends, or are they on behalf of others, the less fortunate and the marginalized? Do we give voice to the voiceless, or do we use our social power to maintain our own privileged positions? When Day’s seemingly soft stance towards socialism makes us uncomfortable, is it because we are unquestioningly loyal to the American Dream and are unwilling to critically examine capitalism? Yes, capitalism has increased wealth and the standard of living for many, but is it completely flawless? Are we willing to critically ask questions of it?[3] These are questions that I have been forced to confront as a result of reading about Dorothy Day’s life and beliefs. Some of them are uncomfortable because they reveal my own cowardice and fear of being too radical.

Finally, Day found her vocation, living it out in a way that served the common good. She wrote, lived hospitably with the poor, and boldly stood up for her convictions. Would that American Evangelical young people did as much; were we to do so, perhaps we would be a force to be reckoned with, not unlike Dorothy Day.

 

 

[1] Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day for Armchair Theologians, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 61-3.

[2] See this fascinating article for explanation of Housing First’s solution: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah (accessed 25 April 2016).

[3] In his book Radical: Taking back your faith from the American Dream (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2010), David Platt asks, “what is the difference between someone who willfully indulges in sexual pleasures while ignoring the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully indulges in the selfish pursuit of more and more material possessions while ignoring the Bible on caring for the poor? The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and the other involves the social norm in the church” (111).

Dorothy Day: A Radical for God

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A Humbling Admission

Remember those awkward middle school photos where your hair is askew and your fashion is dreadful? Most of us have them, but why admit it or bother to remember? In my intellectual and Christian development, I have an embarrassing confession nearly on par with my middle school photos, but I must admit it in order to explain the motivation behind this post. Eight years ago, I was a young and idealistic college student who wanted to change the world. I was also determined to do so by Christian means, and by Christian, I meant my own fairly narrow Evangelical understanding of the faith. Knowing me, and my zeal to help the marginalized, one of my favorite English professors at Hillsdale recommended I read 20th century Catholic authors Henri Nouwen and Dorothy Day. I’m ashamed to admit, but over the course of my sophomore through senior years, this professor suggested these authors not once, but several times; yet I politely (read: blithely) dismissed Dorothy Day as too much of a radical and socialist to be helpful. Never bothering to examine her life, I was sure that she was much too far left to be of any use to me as a role model. Now, a mere four years later, Henri Nouwen has become one of my very favorite authors, and Dorothy Day one of my heroes. I admire her commitment to the marginalized, love of writing, and deeply held convictions, and now must humbly admit: I was wrong. Do I agree with everything she said or did? No. Have I become a socialist? No. But then again, despite her vocal criticism of capitalism, she was not one either. As this post, and especially the following one will show, young and idealistic evangelicals, like me, have a lot to learn from the likes of Dorothy Day.

A Radical For God

A Catholic convert, radical, suffragette, civil rights activist, and pacifist, Dorothy Day was one of the most influential lay Catholics of the twentieth century. Her conversion to Catholicism consciously shaped her response to social justice and the issues of her day. Accused of being a Communist, Day’s concern for the poor and marginalized, as well as her commitment to pacifism, baffled many and made them uncomfortable.

Early Social Concern and Atheism

As a young girl, Day was drawn to the class-conscious fiction of Upton Sinclair and Jack London; she dreamt of writing books to convince readers of “the injustice of things as they were.”[1] While attending the University of Illinois, Day joined the Socialist party because she wanted “everyone to be kind” and “every home to be open to the lame.”[2] Interpreting religion as preaching “peace and meekness and joy” or rather, more plainly, “pie in the sky,” Day rejected it in favor of the Marxist promise to rid workers of their chains in the here and now.[3] She writes, “I wanted to have nothing to do with the religion of those whom I saw all around me.”[4]

Independence and Radical Affiliations

After a couple of years of independence from her family and university education, Day decided to drop out of college and move with her family from Chicago to New York to work.[5] Hindered by her dad’s influence among his journalist peers and his views of “womanly respectability,” Day struggled to find employment as a journalist; finally receiving an offer to write for the socialist paper the Call in 1916.[6] Dorothy Day’s radicalism led to her involvement with political protests, hunger-strikes, the women’s suffrage movement, and later, the Civil Rights movement.

By 1919, drawn to the bohemian lifestyle of her socialist friends, Day fell madly in love with Lionel Moise, and, defying social conventions, moved in with him. Their affair ended when Day discovered she was pregnant and Moise urged her to have an abortion. She did, but Moise left anyway.[7] After a subsequent marriage failed, Day wrote a novel and sold the movie rights, making enough money to buy a cottage on Staten Island where she began living with Forester Batterham.

Conversion to Catholicism

Day’s second pregnancy led to her conversion to Catholicism because she was determined to have her baby baptized whatever the cost; during her pregnancy, Day explains that she began to pray “for the gift of faith.”[8] For years, Day had been fearful she was sterile after her abortion, so she was understandably elated to be pregnant a second time, and interpreted it as a sign of God’s blessing. Yet, knowing nothing of the social teaching of church, Day felt torn between her attraction to the faith and betraying her loyalty to the poor, so deciding to convert was a struggle.[9] First baptizing her daughter, Tamar, Day herself eventually received the sacraments of baptism, first communion, and confirmation. Afterward, she began to lose her radical friends and parted from Forester.[10]

Advocacy For And Friendship With The Poor

During the Great Depression, not long after her conversion, Dorothy Day met Peter Maurin, whose friendship catalyzed her newfound faith and proclivity for writing, uniting them with her vocation oriented towards the poor. In 1933, Dorothy Day founded a newspaper, the Catholic Worker. It was “designed to raise consciousness about the church’s social mission, expose systemic and structural injustices, and appeal to workers who were being exploited by the industries they served.”[11] Including editorials, accounts of current happenings, and personal interviews, the Catholic Worker decried injustice in its many manifestations, including racism, which was woven into the very fabric of the American culture. From its founding, the Catholic Worker was clear “that racism could not be ignored when addressing the root causes of poverty and alternative Christian visions for society.” [12] Recording interviews, articles, and editorials, the paper “confronted head on unjust laws such as the Jim Crow laws in the South”[13] It also covered exploited women, child labor, labor strikes, anti-Semitism, and issues abroad.[14]

Not content to write about the condition of the poor, Day felt that to have an authentic witness, she must both live with them and share in their suffering.[15] To this end, she and others from the Catholic Worker founded a house of hospitality to provide shelter and food for anyone in need. In her house of hospitality, Day adamantly refused to allow others to post rules mandating anything; she insisted that everyone is equal and that all enter on the same level, arguing that they needed to help of their own volition. In this, she disputed the notion about the deserving or undeserving poor, which inherently classifies and attributes the value of individuals based on their contribution potential to society.[16] In the spirit of inclusion, operating from the belief that everyone is made in the image of God, the hospitality houses “embraced ecumenism and multiculturalism as a part of their identity,” welcoming immigrants and anyone in need, regardless of religious affiliation.[17]

Religious Belief As Motivation

After her conversion, the motivation behind Day’s involvement in political protests, pacifism, women’s suffrage, and civil rights changed. She believed that taking one’s baptismal vows seriously means putting “off the old person and [putting] on Christ, [growing] constantly in our capacity for love through the exercise of mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.” [18] Thus, in her perspective, we are all called to be saints by “living out and bearing witness to [the gospel] in our daily lives.[19] Day’s writings reveal this deeply held conviction; in her choice of vocabulary, Day uses the word “love” more than “justice.” While her “daily activities were focused on charity and advocacy for people pushed to the margins of society,” she sees this as her way of loving her neighbor and living out her Catholic faith.[20] She wrote that “vigils, fasting, prayer, and marches were all indispensable,” but ultimately, she insisted, “[a]ll these means are useless unless animated by love.”[21] Day’s pacifistic stance rested on this love of neighbor; when Jesus tells us to love our enemies, Day insisted that he really meant it. Officially, the Catholic Church’s stance permits just war. Yet, even though Day’s pacifism was wildly unpopular during her lifetime, since her death, Day has been “widely credited with having restored the ideal of gospel nonviolence to a place of honor within the Catholic church.”[22]

Over the decades, Day went to prison multiple times; she always actively protested war and forms of oppression. In the 40s she vocally opposed Japanese internment camps;[23] in the 50s she refused to comply with air raids, was troubled by the public castigation of Communists, and protested capital punishment of Communist spies;[24] in the 60s she decried nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War in the 70s. Just shy of 75 years old, Day was jailed in 1973 for supporting Caesar Chavez and his protests supporting Mexican itinerant workers’ rights, standing up for the poor until the end of her days.[25]

The Catholic Worker

The Catholic Worker is more than a newspaper, more than Dorothy Day’s brainchild; still in existence today, it is a movement rooted in Catholic social teaching. Its houses of hospitality and farms host men and women who embrace “voluntary poverty as they minister to the destitute.”[26] Voluntary poverty is the central, orienting point of the movement; Catholic Workers see detachment from material possessions a way of resisting the current social order and visibly identifying with Jesus’ Kingdom.[27] They believe in “poverty freely chosen in community” as a way to protest pervasive destitution without community prevalent in the United States.[28] Their kitchens, breadlines, soup kitchens, and farms are places in which they practice the presence of God.[29] In them, they also pray the rosary, have study groups and forums, and spiritual readings at meals.[30] According to their website, today there are 236 Catholic Worker communities which “remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms.”[31] As they continue to promote these ideas and stances for which Day so vocally advocated, Catholic Workers continue to work for justice, striving to live lives consistent with the message of the gospel.

Dorothy Day’s Legacy

Willing to risk controversy and take unpopular stances, Day never cowered, always ready to ask hard questions. In a film on her life, Entertaining Angels, Day declares, “‘If you feed the poor, you’re a saint. If you ask why they’re poor, you’re a communist. Well, we do both here. But we’re neither saints nor communists.’”[32] Staunch in both her pacifism and concern for social justice, Day is “widely admired as a heroic, even holy woman, uncompromisingly committed to social justice and the cause of the poor. She left a deep impact on the American Catholic church.”[33] Day “did not believe holiness was just for a few,” but held that it was a “common calling for all Christians.” [34] Her unique way of living out and bearing witness to the gospel was empowered by her religious devotion wherein she prayed, meditated on scripture, and said the rosary daily in her “continuous conversation with God.”[35]

[1] Dorothy Day, Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, Ed. Robert Ellsberg, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992), xv.

[2] Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist Dorothy Day, (New York: HarperOne, 1997), 39.

[3] Day, The Long Loneliness, 39, 41-2.

[4] Ibid., 43.

[5] Ibid., 50.

[6] William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), 56.

[7] Miller, Dorothy Day, 140-2.

[8] Day, The Long Loneliness, 136.

[9] Ibid., 150.

[10] Ibid., 162.

            [11] Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day for Armchair Theologians, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 53.

[12] Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day, 57.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Day, The Long Loneliness, 205.

[15] Ibid., 214.

[16] Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day, 61.

[17] Ibid., 62-3.

[18] Robert Ellsberg, “Day by Day.” U.S. Catholic 75, no. 11 (November 2010): 36. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16, 2016).

[19] Ellsberg, “Day by Day,” 36

            [20] Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day, 91.

[21] Quoted in Ellsberg, “Day by Day,” 36.

[22] Ellsberg, “Day, Dorothy,” 269.

[23] Miller, Dorothy Day, 353.

[24] Ibid., 434-9.

[25] Ibid., 500.

[26] Nancy L. Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, (Albany: State University of New York

Press, 1984), 5. Roberts notes that these volunteers often enter fields focused on the greater good, including “social work, editing, labor organizing and politics, teaching, writing, and nursing.”

[27] Rogers, Catholic Worker, 11.

[28] Ibid., 10.

[29] Mark and Louise Zwick, The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins, (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 322.

[30] Zwick, The Catholic Worker Movement, 322.

[31] http://www.catholicworker.org/index.html. Accessed 28 April 2016.

[32] Dean G. Peerman, “A people’s saint.” The Christian Century 114, no. 7 (February 26, 1997): 224-227. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16, 2016). 225-26.

[33] Ellsberg, Robert. “DAY, DOROTHY.” Reader’s Companion To American History (January 1991): 268-269. History Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed March 24, 2016). 268.

[34] Ellsberg, “Day by Day,” 36

[35] Ibid., 34.

What Evangelicals Can Learn From St. Vincent de Paul

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Discipleship is a buzzword for Evangelicals, but what does it really look like to be one of Christ’s followers? Transformation into the image of Jesus means more than reading one’s Bible every day and praying. Its goal is a life molded into Christ’s image where the believer actually begins to look like Jesus in every aspect of his or her life. Christ’s life was characterized by caring for the poor, marginalized, and unwanted people and drawing them into a life of wholeness and reliance on the Spirit of God. Thus, for Evangelicals seeking lives transformed by Jesus, St. Vincent de Paul provides a robust example of a life lived by the grace of God for the good of humanity. We can emulate four areas he modeled: openness to the Holy Spirit, collaborative organizational models, relocation alongside of downward mobility, and the discerning use of social capital.

Vincentian spirituality has become increasingly attractive to Evangelicals seeking to reconnect with ancient forms of spiritual disciplines. As lectio Divina, centering prayer, spiritual direction, and other traditional ways of seeing the active presence of the Holy Spirit become a part of the vocabulary and habits of Evangelicals, their inner renovation will naturally produce fruit: they will learn to both love God and their neighbors more. The two walk in tandem as St. Vincent de Paul’s live indicated. His disponibilité to the Holy Spirit sensitized him to the priorities that the Spirit had, allowing him to live from a place of grace. Seeing himself as radically poor and in need of God’s grace, acknowledging his own acceptance and unworthiness, in turn made him “open to receiving every person, without judgment or disdain.”[1] As Evangelicals seek to engage social justice causes, they must do so by first acknowledging their own need for grace, and respond from that place to the needs of others.

The manner in which St. Vincent de Paul worked collaboratively must be an example to Evangelicals as they form partnerships and small groups. Even as the modern societies that bear his name are unashamedly Catholic in the United States, “Vincentian ecumenism expresses itself in a willingness to cooperate and collaborate cordially with others of goodwill in alleviating deprivation and suffering.”[2] Following this example, the Evangelical church ought to form both ecumenical partnerships and serve the needy without regard to religious affiliation or allegiance. Loving one’s neighbor is not limited to those from one’s own ethnic, social, or religious background as the story of the Good Samaritan indicates (Luke 10). Working collaboratively for St. Vincent de Paul also meant operating within the church to motivate his peers to pursue the true calling of the priesthood. The Tuesday Conferences roughly parallel modern small groups as weekly gatherings of disciples praying, and discussing how to live out their faith, where participants leave with “renewed zeal.”[3] These groups cannot be focused only inwardly, but must truly represent the church’s vocation as the Holy Spirit’s vessels by which he accomplishes transformation in a broken world.

Living and working among the poor and adopting a lifestyle of poverty as a Catholic priest transformed St. Vincent de Paul. It was not until after he became the priest of a poor rural parish just northwest of Paris in 1612 that de Paul’s inner transformation took place.[4] Addressing the members of the Congregation of the Mission, St. Vincent de Paul wrote, “Christ himself, the Lord of all, lived in poverty to such an extent that he had nowhere to lay his head. He formed his disciples, his co-workers in his mission, to live in the same sort of way so that individually they did not own anything. In that way, they were freer to combat greed for wealth in a better and more practical way, greed which is ruining almost the whole world.”[5] While he goes on to qualify somewhat the practicality of living in total poverty while trying to do mission, St. Vincent still insists that it should be “an ideal.”[6] Evangelicals today ought to consider the inner transformation that they too could experience if they were to follow in St. Vincent de Paul’s footsteps. Relocation and conscious choices towards downward mobility (the modern equivalent of a vow of poverty) seem radical to today’s Evangelicals. But if we espouse a belief in the priesthood of all believers, and desire to live whole-heartedly for Christ in his footsteps, then should we perhaps consider more seriously choices like these that men and women of the cloth have made for centuries? Has our American affluence made us so comfortable that we are unwilling to even consider the radical calls of gospel Jesus preached? Even if the Evangelical church were to encourage downward mobility and living simply for the sake of giving generously, this would be a significant shift from the current state of most churches.

Finally, integral to St. Vincent de Paul’s success were his friendships across social classes. While class stratification looks different in 21st century America than it did in 17th century France, in part because of America’s tragic history of race relations, socio-economic divisions alone still manage to divide people in significant ways today. St. Vincent was transformed by his friendships with the poor and called upon his wealthy friends to help his brothers and sisters. Relocation to form friendships with the poor, coupled with Vincent’s own inner transformation and acknowledgement of his own interior poverty, changed the way he leveraged his social capital. Drawing upon his friendships with the wealthy and powerful, Vincent unabashedly asked for them to come alongside him in caring for the abandoned children, prisoners, refugees, invalids, and the poor to whom he ministered.[7] As the Evangelical church seeks to participate in the Colossians 1:15-20 vision the restoration of all things, one key way in which it ought to do so is by encouraging those with privilege and power to acknowledge it and then leverage it on behalf of the disenfranchised and powerless.

 

[1] Frances Ryan and John E. Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac: Rules,

Conferences, and Writings, (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 17.

[2] Gallagher R.G.S., Sister Vera, Hearing the Cry of the Poor: The Story of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, (Liguori, MS: Liguori Publications, 1983), 21.

[3] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 25.

[4] Ibid., 17.

[5] Ibid., 93.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Bernard Pujo, Vincent de Paul: The Trailblazer. Trans. Gertrud Champe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 251 and http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=326 (accessed 26 March 2016).

Engaging Justice: Stories from the Past for Modern Evangelicals

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Stories inspire the imagination and instigate change. From an early age, I have loved reading about heroes from the past who dedicated their lives to caring for those around them in need. Whether it was reading about the Resistance during World War II, the Underground Railroad, or the first Suffragettes, the lives of these men and women from the past made me want to grow up to help those less privileged and protected than I.

Studying the Biblical mandate to care for “the quartet of the vulnerable,” (including the poor, widows, immigrant, and orphan) has convinced me that the contemporary American church needs to engage the social justice issues of our days with both an understanding of the Bible and grounding in history.[1] The following series of blog posts will present the stories of past Christians and the justice movements into which they helped lead the church. It will identify best practices and modern application for the Evangelical church today in the hopes that the church will engage these examples of social engagement and embrace the deeply Biblical nature of their efforts.

Saint Vincent de Paul: Social Justice Motivated by the Love of God

             Ragged street children begged and homeless people filled the streets, while the toll of seemingly endless warfare, deadly pestilence, and famine plagued post-Reformation France. The wealthy carelessly ate cake and the French Church was corrupted from the inside; meanwhile, the majority of 16th century peasants struggled to make ends meet and stay alive. It is in this starkly divided and very desperate context that St. Vincent de Paul’s life sheds light on the way social justice and church reform go hand-in-hand.

A key figure in the renewal of faith in France, transformation of Catholic lay and religious leaders, and ministry to the destitute, was Saint Vincent de Paul (1581—1660). He navigated these tumultuous times with a vocation that he expressed thus: “To inflame the hearts of men. It is not enough for me to love God if my neighbor does not love him as well.”[2] Initially, St. Vincent became a priest for its financial advantages, not because he felt called by God or cared about the poor.[3] However, actually becoming the priest of a poor rural parish just northwest of Paris in 1612 and a three or four-year period of subsequent soul-searching deeply impacted de Paul.[4] He became “[e]xperientially aware of his own radical poverty,” and “was open to receiving every person, without judgment or disdain.”[5] By 1617, a shift in Vincent de Paul’s vocabulary indicates he had a growing personal relationship with the Lord, because he began consistently using the name “Jesus” instead of referring to him as “Christ.”[6] Concurrently, he began the first Confraternity of Charity where he empowered women to organize themselves into an organization to aid the poor.

At the beginning, the women of the aristocracy “were entirely out of touch” with the beleaguered state of the poor, but as they discovered their misery and “the depths of its horror” their indifference lessened.[7] They gave enough money to care for abandoned children, began to visit prisoners, and cared for the sick in hospitals. When their enthusiasm waned, St. Vincent called on them to give up their jewels to keep funding the care of the orphans and they did.[8] But the reach of the Ladies of Charity could only go so far; young women who were “willing to serve the poor and devote themselves to God” extended St. Vincent de Paul’s plan for mobilizing social action.[9] Caring for poor people, and the victims of famine and war, the Company of the Daughters of Charity were to be like nuns “without habits, veils, or solemn vows,” having the perspective of religious life with the vocation of missionary servants.[10] The houses of the poor served as their monastery, the local church as their chapel, and the streets of the city became their cloister.[11] Saint Vincent organized feeding for thousands of beggars, nursing for the sick, housing for abandoned children, and aid for the thousands of families living in squalor.[12]

In addition to administering these social justice initiatives, he devoted a lot of energy to bringing spiritual reform to the French Catholic clergy. One critical way he did this was by organizing and leading Tuesday Conferences, which were weekly meetings of priests to challenge and support one another in their vocations. The Tuesday Conferences always began in prayer and then attendees discussed thoughts and convictions about what it meant to be a priest.[13] These interactions were “mutually encouraging,” and attendees left the meetings with “renewed zeal.”[14] Their focus was twofold: on the life of the Church and their own spiritual development and devotion as priests.[15] The Tuesday conferences soon became popular, so that priests were “anxious to belong,” but “only those of exemplary life” were admitted.[16] “The Society of the ‘Tuesdays’ spread quickly to the great cities of the kingdom,” contributing to the spiritual renewal and reform movement in France.[17] As numbers at the Tuesday Conferences continued to grow, twenty-two of this society eventually became bishops, indicating that reform was moving up in the ranks of the clergy.[18]

In reminding priests of the importance of their vocation, de Paul underscored the sacrosanct nature of the priesthood; he saw its renewal as key to the revitalization of Catholicism in France. He warned them that in the Old Testament God had rejected corrupted priests who had profaned the temple’s holy objects.[19] St. Vincent was invited to address a retreat of ordinands; due to this initial success, he soon became responsible for this retreat every year before the candidates’ ordination and eventually addressed between 13,000 and 14,000 ordinands.[20] St. Vincent de Paul’s personal spiritual renewal allowed him to lead other clergy to see their religious vocations in a spiritual light. He founded the Congregation of the Mission to “help poor people of the countryside” and “priests in their vocations” in 1625. According to one biographer, once Vincent was “in touch with his own radical poverty and with the unconditional mercy of God, he entered into the freedom of the disciples of Jesus and became completely available to the Holy Spirit.”[21] History’s account of St. Vincent de Paul’s life indicates that the Holy Spirit used him both for social justice ends as well as to bring spiritual renewal to the Catholic clergy and church in 17th century France.

St. Vincent de Paul navigated relationships not only with the poor, but also with the wealthy and influential people of his day. Initially, he built a relationship with the de Gondi family, who were wealthy and noble Parisians. Through contacts from them and thanks to his likable personality, he developed a network of other wealthy people; he collaborated with affluent women and encouraged them to organize themselves to help the poor of their parishes, founding the first Confraternity of Charity, from which developed the Ladies of Charity.[22] He drew on his personal connections with wealthy people in order to fund his missions; when those sources were exhausted, he appealed to the highest authorities for financial backing. King Louis XIII entrusted him with distributing the substantial sum of 45,000 livres.[23] Yet “Vincent was not content with just collecting money; he organized payment and distribution as well,” always “insisting on the spirit of fairness which must govern the distribution of aid” as well as controlling and programing it well.[24] Furthermore, he made sure to circulate reports to his donors and make known to the public what his missionaries were doing to help war-torn people.[25] De Paul’s influence continued to grow over the course of his lifetime as his social network expanded and his connections with wealthy families and the court multiplied, making him an authority beyond the clerical world and into the salons of Paris and the court.[26] Not everyone was happy about St. Vincent’s success, however. When ladies of the court and maids of honor started visiting the poor and sick, dressing in “humble garments,” nobles complained that they might bring back something contagious, causing the queen come to their defense.[27] Throughout St. Vincent de Paul’s lifetime, he helped abandoned children, prisoners, refugees, invalids, and the poor, as his legacy as the patron saint of charitable societies reflects.[28]

St. Vincent responded to the misery of his day “determined to remedy it and finding an appropriate solution for every situation,” be it moral or physical.[29] Opening the doors of the Church to teaching the clergy to work with the laity, as well as valuing the contribution of women, St. Vincent de Paul paved the way for today’s social service institutions and charities.[30] Everything St. Vincent did was rooted in his faith: he believed that the invisible God “is alive and visible in our actions.”[31] With the missionary Christ as his model, he felt his call was to associate himself with Jesus in his redemptive mission.[32] Through this lens, he lived with disponibilité (or unrestricted readiness) to do the Lord’s will without his own preconditions.[33]

[1] Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Journey Toward Justice: Personal Encounters in the Global South, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 77.

[2] Pujo, Bernard. Vincent de Paul: The Trailblazer, Translated by Gertrud Champe, (Notre Dame,

IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 251.

[3] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 15, and Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 11.

[4] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 17.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 19-20.

[7] Jean Calvet, Saint Vincent de Paul, Translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard, (New York: McKay, 1948), 156.

[8] Ibid., 161.

[9] André Dodin. Vincent de Paul and Charity: a Contemporary Portrait of his Life and Apostolic Spirit. Trans. Jean Marie Smith and Dennis Saunders. Eds. Hugh O’Donnell and Marjorie Hornstein, (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), 33.

[10] Dodin. Vincent de Paul and Charity, 33.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., 43.

[13] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 25.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Calvert, Saint Vincent, 120.

[16] Ibid., 121.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Dodin. Vincent de Paul and Charity, 30.

[19] “Vous savez qu’anciennement Dieu rejeta les prêtres pollus qui avaient profané les choses saintes…. ” in André Dodin, Textes et Études Saint Vincent de Paul, (Paris: Aubier, 1947), 123.

[20] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 25.

[21] Ibid., 23.

[22] Ibid., 19.

[23] Ibid., 131.

[24] Ibid., 131-2.

[25] Ibid., 132, 134.

[26] Ibid., 142.

[27] Ibid., 123.

[28] Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 251 and http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=326 (accessed 26 March 2016).

[29] Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 251.

[30] Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 251.

[31] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 32.

[32] Ibid., 32.

[33] Ibid., 34.