TRANSFORMING CHRISTIAN LIFE Rev. Dr. Velda R. Love

Rev. Dr. Debra AugerTRIENNIAL XV KANSAS CITY 2016

SANKOFA EXPERIENCE

Form table Groups

KC Sankofa Civil Rights Sankofa No Sankofa Experience

ICE BREAKER

What compelled you to choose this Sankofa Learning Experience?

What do you expect to take away?

Facilitator Narratives

BIBLICAL MANDATEERADICATE RACISM BY

• Suspend Eurocentric assumptions by removing that particular cultural context from the center of biblical, theological and worldview narratives

• God as the center of all cultural narratives

• The God-human relationship is established, and humans are to be in co-equal relationships with each other

• There is no hierarchy of culture, ethnicity, or gender. Genesis 1:26-31 is the foundation.

GENESIS NARRATIVE

IN [A] THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED ...

Over time God creates earthly existence and everything to sustain life. And it is good.

God creates humanity. Humanity is created in the image of God, and everything, including humanity is very good according to the scribes and storytellers.

GENESIS 1:26-27Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image,

according to our likeness; So God created humankind in the image of God, male and female, God create them.

וירדו כדמותנו בצלמנו אדם נעשה אלהים ויאמרובכל־הארץ ובבהמה השמים ובעוף הים בדגת

על־הארץ׃ הרמש ובכל־הרמשברא אלהים בצלם בצלמו את־האדם ׀ אלהים ויברא

אתם ברא ונקבה זכר אתוTHE NEW OXFORD ANNOTATED NRSV & THE HEBREW BIBLE

NEW TESTAMENT CORINTH• Is Christ divided? ( 1: 13)

• There are different kinds of gifts but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. (12:4-6)

• Just as a body though one has many parts, but all its parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, salve or free—we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. (12:12-14)

Ekklesia- the gathered ones

The church

Corinth as example

“…it is in the very diversity we struggle to embrace that we are made one…more like Christ. ”

New Testament-Corinth

SANKOFA IS FOUNDATIONALSankofa was created to provide a foundation for an in-depth analysis of the socio-political construction of race in America; mainly the creation, explanation, indoctrination, exploitation, capitalization, and classification of people of African descent. Students participate in listening, exploring, learning, and unpacking the cause, effect and impact of racism in the U.S. on all cultures. Racism distorts the image of God. You are present in this workshop to reclaim and redeem God’s divine intention for humanity as conceived and birthed “In the Beginning when God created.”

Participants and facilitators are not gathered to find fault, lay blame, or make those of Anglo and European descent feel guilty for the creation of racism. Facilitators and participants journey together to support the biblical and theological treatise that humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Human beings, male and female, are equal and therefore called to be the Good News of the Gospel eradicating racism, engage unjust systems and institutions, including the Christian church wherever possible transforming society so that all lives matter.

There are historical realities that have created our present condition of racism in America in all spheres of life. Participants learn Pre-colonial Black African history, biblical and theological interpretations that are pedagogically African-centered. Cultural immersion is introduced as a learning tool that can also be used to dismantle racism in America. Sankofa learning experiences brings people into an understanding of truth and self-awareness to build a Beloved community based on God’s model of justice, equality, and righteousness for all.

EQUALITY IS BIBLICAL• HUMANITY

• GENDER

• CULTURE

• ETHNICITY

• STEWARDSHIP WITH THE EARTH

SANKOFA Sankofa means “we cannot look forward intelligently or effectively plan for future without a careful review of the past. All events arise from the confluence of some kind of antecedents; failure to appreciate the past eliminates the possibility of foresight. The “myth of the Negro” as described by the scholar Melville Herskovits will not be completely neutralized until the truth of the African is revealed. As the African American experience is fundamentally shaped by the rich ancestral past as well as by responses to racist hostility, our study of African Americans must necessarily consider the history of Africa.”

The History and Heritage of African American Christianity L.H. Whelchel, Jr.

WHY SANKOFA?BECAUSE HUMANS CREATE RACE AND RACIAM

“In spiritual and biblical terms, racism is a perverse sin that cuts to the core of the gospel message. Put simply, racism negates the reason for which Christ died—the reconciling work of the cross. It denies the purpose of the church: to bring together, in Christ, those who have been divided from one another, particularly in the early church's case, Jew and Gentile—a division based on race.”

“Racism: America’s Original Sin.” Jim Wallis, Sojourners

WHY SANKOFA?• REDUCE AND ERADICATE RACISM

• SPEAK OUT AGAINST & ERADICATE WHITE SUPREMACY

• UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF WHITE PRIVILEGE

• ELIMINATE THINKING AND BELIEVING IN A DOMINATE CULTURE OR NARRATIVE

ERADICATE THE MYTH“Racism is a philosophy based on contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual and physical homicide upon the out-group.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy.

IMAGO DEI: THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY

“In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.” Galatians 3:28-29 The Message

ALL ARE EQUAL

TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES• BLACK LIBERATION

• WOMANIST THOUGHT AND IDEOLOGY

• SLAVE REVOLTS, WHITE SUPREMACY RESISTANCE, SOCIAL UPRISINGS, CIVIL RIGHTS, BLACK POWER AND BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENTS

PARTICIPANT SANKOFA JOURNEY EXPERIENCE

Civil Rights or KC journey experience in group sharing

One person summarize group dialogue

“…an inner state and sometimes an outer situation where we can begin to think and act in genuinely new ways. It is when we are betwixt and between, having left one room or stage of life but not yet entered the next.” Richard Rohr

LIMINALITY

“….spiritual traditions offer temporary and partial liminality in experiences like pilgrimages, urban plunges into different levels of society, silent retreats, extended periods of fasting, solitude in nature, and sacred times like Lent and Ramadan. There has to be something different and daring, even nonsensical, to break our comfortable sleepwalk and our compulsive cultural trance. Mere piety will never do it.”

(R. Rohr)

TABLE WORK

Name some barriers and discomforts that you have overcome and have yet to overcome as you enter into this conversation and work

Dismantling Racism Looks Like This : Movement from Bondage to Freedom

I carry this I learned thisI hold on to thisI believe this

CLOSING PRAYERFOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONE AND ONLY SON, THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM SHALL NOT PERISH BUT HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.

GOD LOVES THE WORLD

GOD LOVES ALL HUMANS

GOD LOVES YOUJohn 3:16 NIV

RESOURCES FOR THE JOURNEY• Homecoming: A “White” Man’s Journey through Harlem to Jerusalem, Curtiss

Paul DeYoung, Jezi Press (April 13, 2009)

• Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America, Joseph Barndt, Fortress Press (October 1, 2007)

• Joy DeGury Leary, Ph.D., Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Uptone Press, Milwaukie, Oregon, 2005

• Michael O. Emerson et.al, "Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America" (Oxford University Press, New York: 2000)

• Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism. Allan Boesak & Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2012

RESOURCES FOR THE JOURNEY• Race and Theology (Horizons in Theology), Elaine A. Robinson, Abingdon Press (October

1, 2012)

MOVIES

• Amistad

• 12 Years a Slave

• RACE: The Power of An Illusion – PBS Documentary

• Unequal Opportunity Race https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBb5TgOXgNY

• Dialogue Partners

• The Great Queens and Kings of Africa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUAheV852Qk

• A Timeline of African History http://www.afropedea.org/timeline-of-african-history

FACILITATORS CONTACT INFOREV. DR. DEB AUGER dauger@northpark.edu

REV. DR. VELDA R. LOVEvlove@northpark.edu