Commentary: A future with hope: Can we emerge from our wilderness struggle with race?
Photo courtesy of the United Methodist Archives at the
General Commission on Archives and History |
By John Coleman
In his 1963 March on Washington speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. offered us his dream, “deeply rooted in the American dream,” that one day his children and all generations to come would be “judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
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John Coleman
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It has been 40 years since Dr. King was assassinated while preparing to march for racial justice and the economic survival of exploited African American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. It has been 40 years also since Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign for justice, compassion and the U.S. presidency were cut short, along with his young, vibrant life, likewise by an assassin’s bullet.
With the war in Vietnam and civil uprisings in our urban streets both reaching a more lethal intensity, 1968 was a tumultuous year filled with the tragedy of death and destruction. But it also bore the promise of hopeful change and new life.
It was 40 years ago that our United States and our United Methodist Church, like fraternal twins, were pushed painfully from the womb of history and emerged reborn, with screams and cries of protest and proclamation. A new church and a new nation were reborn out of resistance in the face of retribution. Both boasted new commissions, programs and organizational structures, new caucuses and demands for social change, new mandates for justice, racial and gender diversity, and equal opportunity for all.
For 40 years the people of ancient Israel, newly freed from bondage in Egypt, wandered in the wilderness being nurtured, challenged and shaped by their God. Finally they emerged ready to build a new nation, a new future. Freed 40 years ago from our worst two centuries of racial oppression, we too may be just now emerging from our wilderness, manifesting richly evident but still unfulfilled potential to build a new nation, a new future.
The first major-party nomination of an African American candidate for U.S. president, and the possibility of his election to the nation’s highest office, is by no means a panacea to our ongoing, seemingly futile struggle with the sin of racism in this country. In fact, it has made that struggle more visible and vocal in our media and in our public and private conversations throughout this year.
Signs of hope and maturity?
But that candidacy may be a sign of hope for real change on a national scale. Despite the persistent racial foolishness of our thoughts, words and deeds, even 40 years after the rebirth of our nation and our church, we are nonetheless showing some signs of early maturity.
“We need to celebrate the gains we’ve made in race,” asserts Bishop Woodie White in “Journey to Inclusiveness: 40 Years of the General Commission on Religion and Race,” the wonderful new video about The United Methodist Church’s racial monitoring agency that he helped start in 1968. “The reason I say celebrate is you already have an idea of what the church can do. You already have evidence that you can attack racism. You already have evidence that people of color can be competent and capable leaders. You already have evidence that white people can change. We already have this.”
Mired as we are in military and economic crises as a nation, and in the anxiety over our aging and declining membership as a church, the theme of necessary and credible change on both stages looms large as we look toward the next four years. We are looking desperately for new leadership and new policies, programs and priorities, all cognizant and inclusive of our increasingly multicultural populace.
It is time for real change, time for choosing leadership with sound judgment, not based on color but on character. It is time for us to seek leaders with not just experience but wisdom forged from broad perspectives, daring imagination and selfless dedication to integrity, values and service for the common good.
It is time, after 40 years, for both the United States of America and The United Methodist Church to be grown up, matured beyond childish fallacies of superiority and fears of inferiority, racial or otherwise. It is time to come out of our wildernesses and begin to build together the beloved community dreamt of by Dr. King, using the tools, talents and skills we have been given, led by God’s steadfast guidance and Christ’s loving example.
We have already been reborn and reared in the crucible of our wilderness struggle with race. Now it is time for us to emerge grown up and ready to claim what God has promised us: a future with hope.
John Coleman is Director of Communications for the General Commission on Religion and Race in Washington, DC.
What do you think about this commentary and what ideas do you have about this subject? Please e-mail us your response at info@gcorr.org.
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