Recent changes at the Riverside Church

As the tenure of Senior Minister Jim Forbes came to an end, Riverside began a search for a new Senior Minister. Back in August, 2008, I raised concerns with the Church Council as follows:

August 19, 2008

To the Church Council and Clergy of the Riverside Church,

As a member, I am writing to voice my profound concern about the direction in which our institution is headed. We appear on a course that leads us towards a breach of faith with the values of our members, and opens the door to the risk of litigation for violations of civil non-profit law.

From its inception, Riverside Church was intended to be open to all equally; a place to celebrate our common humanity, marshal our faith, & energize its use in the fight for universal social justice. Our community has been defined by respect and love, as God taught us, not by our skin color or other attributes. This color-blind communal love and humanity has been the “tie that binds” us. Our theological focus has been transformational at the personal, community, national, and international levels; calling us to see each other as Christ did, without regard to the particularities of race, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender. While our members have diverse personal theological views, Riverside has focused on the simple embracing mission of inter-racial, inter-denominational worship.

But in recent years, our worship seems to be increasingly grounded in African-American liberation theology to the exclusion other theological views. Liberation Theologies focus on an oppressed group and their oppressors. African-American Liberation Theology focuses on the institution of American slavery, which was abolished with the enactment of the 13th Amendment, and residual social injustices that continue today. This theology posits all African-Americans as the victims of slavery; and all Caucasians as slavers. But, while slavery is unquestionably an abomination, historically it was never simply a white-on-black institution. The Bible refers to many forms of slavery not based on race. Consider Leviticus 25:44-46; Exodus 21:7-11; 1 Peter 2:18; Ephesians 6: 5-8; and Titus 2:9-10. Race became a factor in discrimination relatively recently in history, promoted by the Portuguese and Spanish in the 1500’s, followed by the English and Scotch-Irish in the 1700’s. Even in colonial times, not all blacks were slaves. The colonial slave trade relied on the many black Africans who willingly kidnapped and sold their neighbors and brethren into slavery. Similarly, not all whites were slavers. In Great Britain and colonial America, many whites (like Wilbur Wilberforce, John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln) fought for emancipation and helped liberate individual slaves. . The Underground Railroad was principally run by whites. Among our present population, many African-Americans are descended from African slavers, and many Caucasians are descended from abolitionists. And many Americans are descendants of neither slaves nor slave-owners. The men, women, and children who are currently enslaved economically or in sex trafficking in the U.S. are being subjugated by people of all races and ethnicities. The line between slaver and slave is not a specific shade of melanin. It is the line between humanity and inhumanity.

Melanin also does not define racism. In America today, there are racists of all hues. Not just among the white supremacist churches, but also in many black churches. Ultimately theologies that blame and denigrate an “other” are theologies of hate, not love. Theologies of blame, not personal responsibility. Theologies looking backward instead of forward. Such insular hostility was not Christ’s mandate, and it is not Riverside’s tradition. Harry Fosdick stood up to such a threat in the exclusionary Fundamentalism of his time. We must similarly stand up to theologies of exclusion in our midst. I have prayed in some African-American church communities where the hostility towards my presence was palpable. Sadly, in recent times I have had the same experience at Riverside. In services, I now regularly encounter men and women whose skin hues differ from mine who literally will not pass the peace with me, something unheard of among long-time members of this church, and under Bill Coffin’s tenure. During one service preached by Jim Forbes, after an elderly African-American sister and I embraced warmly in peace-passing, a young African-American man sitting next to her refused to pass the peace to her or to me, glaring instead at us. That gentle lady was so distressed by his rebuff that she whispered to me throughout the rest of the service, asking why the young man had refused to pass the peace to her. I’ve been similarly personally rebuffed and excluded at Space for Grace. Exclusion is not grace. It is neither Christ’s way nor Riverside’s tradition.

In truth, biologically and anthropologically, we are all African; all the descendants of our ancient mother, whether we call her Eve or Lucy. Africa is the motherland to the entire human species. We are separated from her, and each other, only by generations and migrations. The amount of melanin in our skin does not define who we are. Our ancestors’ acts do not define who we are. Only our actions in this life define who we are. Hostility towards present congregants for acts of generations gone by is unjust. Our accountability is for our acts in these times, not for others’ acts from another time long past. All of us are entrusted with the communal task of overcoming the residual injustice, mistrust, and hostility that we inherited. That is one challenge of Riverside’s inter-racial transformative theology. We are a congregation committed to moving forward in faith and action to fight for justice for all people who are downtrodden. Looking backwards in blame will not actualize Christ’s vision. Looking backwards in blame we cannot solve present injustice. Looking backwards in blame we cannot build “ties that bind.”

I think Rev. Bob Polk was right: we are becoming just another black Harlem church. We are abandoning Riverside’s unique inter-racial mandate, the specific reason many of us of all races chose to worship here, for racial homogeneity. In Sunday preaching I hear the names of many heroes and heroines of African-American descent. These are people who deserve laud and praise. But increasingly, there is scant mention of heroes and heroines of other ethnicities and races. We don’t hear about Joan of Arc, Theresa of Avila, or Mother Theresa. We don’t hear about Mahatma Ghandi, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Friederick Bonhoeffer. People like my friends Norman and Geraldine Frenkiel, Eastern European Jews who hid French Jewish children from the Nazis. People like my young Chinese client, who fled to the U.S. after being persecuted in China for worshipping Christ. We don’t hear about the Uighers, Tibetan Buddhists, or Buddhist monks in Myanmar. Men and women who have fought to expose and recover from childhood sexual violence by American clergy. Native Americans and Canadians, and native people of Chiappas and Peru, who even now are legally subjugated by their governments. We don’t talk about the growing schism in the Episcopal church over the inclusion of gay clergy. Or our brothers and sisters who praise God through Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism and share our fight for tolerance. Among those who fought for emancipation and against Jim Crow, Rosa Parks made an important stand. So did men and women of all races and genders. Today there are people of all races, ethnicities, sexualities, and genders marching and fighting for justice for immigrants, for minorities, for women, for children, for living wages, for responsible lending practices, for the enforcement of the 4th Amendment, for equal rights for gays, and against the use of torture by our military (to name but a few current fights for justice). There are heroes everywhere, but Riverside’s vision of heroism seems increasingly based on a melanin litmus test. That is not our tradition or our mission. It is not what we want to teach our children. To be inter-racial means to transcend monochromatic sight. It is to see with Christ’s transcendent vision of all humanity.

Recent leadership choices here further the impression that this institution is moving away from its spiritual and civil mandate for inter-racial worship into the realm of the politically homogenous. Demands that department heads resign in anticipation that the next Senior Minister will want to clean house, stripping our institution of the people who have helped build our diverse traditions, demonstrate a breaking of institutional commitment to our past tradition. These leadership acts mirror the recent illegal discriminatory and political purges within our nation’s Justice Department. Equally troubling is the appearance of racial discrimination against those whose contracts have not been renewed and who have been fired. Such conduct exposes this institution to civil actions for racial discrimination and violations of our non-profit mission.

Along with other members of all races, genders, and ethnicities, I am profoundly troubled. People leave other churches because the clergy shifts course. Our mission is so simple and inclusive that we should never lose a member: we should never shift course. No one who is committed to a truly inter-racial community would want to leave an institution that pursues that course. People are leaving because we are steering into the shallow waters of homogeneity. The staggering drop in donations is a democratic outcry of members’ discontent. The choice to use our endowment to pay for routine expenses shows stark disregard for that democratic outcry. And, instead of conserving, we appear to be courting pastors who flount Isaiah 55:2, demanding luxury housing and salaries. Christ did not demand riches. Such funds would be more appropriately used to follow Christ’s example by helping our countless brothers and sisters living in strife. When Harry Emerson Fosdisk left First Presbyterian, driven out by Fundamentalists who were outraged by his call for inclusion, he said, “Leadership is not true leadership that draws people to the leader only. It must draw them past the leader to the cause….Never mind about me.” Focusing on individual personalities and financial demands, we are becoming personal bankers to clergy instead of shepherds in our community. We are steering off Christ’s course.

Riverside has been a light of transformative inter-racial harmony in the great darkness of injustice and human tribalism. I do not want this light to go out. Harlem does not need one more black church, but the world does need a truly inter-racial church. Our human community needs Riverside Church.

Jennifer Hoult, J.D.
687 West 204 St. #3G
NY, NY 10034

212-567-0710
jahoult@cs.com

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Dr. Billy Jones, head of the church Council, responded, and I responded thus to his letter:

August 29, 2008

To the Clergy and Council members of the Riverside Church

Re: Dr. Jones’ letter of August 21, 2008

Dear Dr. Jones,

Thank you for your response to my letter. Among other things, you wrote: “I, too, value that there is an inter-racial congregation at Riverside. However, I think that is an outdated end goal dating us to the 1950’s and 1960’s. Riverside has been making considerable progress and strides to move well beyond inter-racial, which was simply having ethnically diverse members worshiping in an essentially white oriented and controlled church. While that was a beginning step to a truly integrated church it falls far short of what is to be expected at the heavenly banquet. A truly integrated congregation will not be color-blind, as you state, but will rejoice in the color and heritage of all our members. How can you truly love me if you do not see that I am a black, gay man? A beloved community, of which you speak, defined by respect and love, does not deny or negate differences, but embraces them.”

Brother, I respectfully believe you are in error in your demand for color-awareness instead of color-blindness. God did not create the construct of race. “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Gen 1: 27-28. God sees no race, no gender, no sexuality, or other ephemeral distinctions. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:28. God sees no husbands and wives; He sees humans “like angels in heaven.” Mat 22: 23-30. Thus we sing, “In Christ there is no east and west.” God sees no race, Dr. Jones, only souls. He invites us to his heavenly banquet as souls, not as men or women, black or white, gay or straight. Mathew 22:2, 3-5, 8-14. It was human beings who created the biologically and spiritually unfounded construct of race as a political weapon to divide, separate, and subjugate our one African family from one another. Like the dispersing effects of Babel, Gen 11: 1-9, the construct of race divides us from the truth of our undifferentiated spiritual nature. When you say, “I am black,” you implicitly also say, “You are not black.” This construction falsely divides you from others through exclusion and false differentiation. Color-awareness is nothing more than the espousal of the lie inherent in the construct of race; nothing other than “separate by equal” by another name. And separate is indeed “inherently unequal.” Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483. My brother, the Bible is very clear: God’s vision is indeed color-blind.

Furthermore, God clearly calls us to see with His color-blind vision. John 13:15; “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do;” Eph. 5: 1-2: “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us;” Romans 15: 5-6: “..think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God does not separate us by the shade of our skin. God does not see you as a black, gay man Dr. Jones. God sees you as a soul that She created. Seeing you otherwise thwarts God’s law. “Have we not all the one Father? Has not the one God created us? Why then do we break faith with each other, violating the covenant of our fathers?” Malach. 2:10. God calls us to move from the “darkness” of unjust human constructions to the “light” of His truth. In God’s Kingdom there is no place for false division and false sight, and failure to follow God’s mandate is a grave peril. Romans 2:1-3. To follow Leviticus 19:18, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” we must love one another as God sees us; as souls. We must see, as God sees, our common undifferentiated nature as God’s children. To love you in Christ is not to differentiate myself from you. It is to realize our common nature as souls; as God’s children. To realize our prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we must see each other as God sees us. Clinging to divisions based on the false human construct of race is to willfully divide our true nature from one another. We cannot overcome the wrongs of the present by clinging to old grievances and false divisions. Luke 17: 3-4.

So, no, Dr. Jones, with due respect, I do not see you as a black, gay man. I see you as a child of God, a glorious soul unfettered by the human construction we call race. Your skin color, your education, your vocation, your sexuality, your age, your gifts and weaknesses are simply ephemeral corporeal trappings in your present journey; as transitory as the shoes you are now wearing. These corporeal traits will all return to dust. You want me to love and respect you based on the shade of your skin and your sexuality. I love and respect you based on what God made you and what God sees: a fellow soul journeying with Christ.

And no, Dr. Jones, I do not agree with your belief that Riverside Church’s mission needs changing or updating. Since 1930, Riverside’s mission, spiritually and legally, has been as an inter-racial institution to build a house of “Living Stones” and to live following the example of Christ’s “Living Word.” That mission is the reason many of us of all skin hues are members. You have indicated that you want to change this mission. As a matter of civil law, such a change requires both an affirmative democratic vote by the membership and the legal filing of appropriate changes in our civil non-profit incorporation mission. In my opinion, the “separate but equal” exclusion inherent in the color-awareness you propose has no place in the Riverside Church or in God's Kingdom. However, since you feel strongly otherwise, this matter should be brought openly to the attention of the membership for discussion and a vote.

May God bless you with the embracing generosity of his vision and light,


Jennifer Hoult, J.D.
687 West 204 St. #3G
New York, NY 10034
jahoult@cs.com


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On Sept. 11, 2008, Dr. Brad Braxton, the one candidate for the position of Senior Minister, publicly called me and other members of the congregation who had raised these theological concerns, "workers of Satan" and "racists." Dr. Braxton refused to answer questions about his published theological works, including the following statements he published in book “No Longer Slaves – Galatians and African American Experience," a book espousing the principles of African-American liberation theology:

“It is possible for one who is white biologically to sympathize with the African American struggle, but only up to a point, for the possibility always remains for a white person to stop "being black" at any moment that the struggles of being black no longer fit that person's agenda." p 7

"As I argued in Chapter One, there are limits on how completely even the most understanding white persons can enter the black experience. Nevertheless, if white persons are interested in establishing common ground with African Americans, white persons must be willing to undergo 'conversions' in their cultural conceptual framework." p 42

"[D]ominant white society has told African Americans, especially our children, that our specific callings or "apostleship" in life are invalid because those callings have not bowed at the altar of white society to pay homage and to receive permission to exist." p 61

"[T]he dominant culture has implicitly indicated that it really believes the promises of America to be the sole possession of white Americans; otherwise there would not be such pressure put on African Americans to be like them. . . In Christ, African Americans have been freed from the curse of the dominant ideology that would force us to become white in order to receive the promises." pp 90-91

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On Sept. 14, 2008, I cited Dr. Braxton's theology and its incompatibility with Riverside's inclusive tradition in opposition of his candidacy for Senior Minister. After citing the following scripture, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:28, I was publicly called "racist" by one of Dr. Braxton's supporters.

Dr. Braxton has repeatedly refused to respond to congregants questions about how his black liberation theology fits with Riverside's non-credal, inter-racial mission. At his recent installation, Dr. Braxton accepted a robe bearing the colors of the black liberation movement.

On April 30, 2009, Dr. Braxton published a link to his article "Paul and Racial Reconciliation: A Postcolonial Approach to 2 Corinthians 3:12-18" on the Riverside Church website. His article argues in favor of descendants of white Europeans and American settlers paying various forms of reparations to African-American citizens and 21st Century African nations.

It seems that the concerns I raised back in August were in fact warranted.
Jennifer Hoult, J.D.