Session 4E: Widening Our Circle Among Communities of Color

Session 4E: Widening Our Circle Among Communities of Color

with Rev. Dr. Jonipher Kwong, Rev. Loey Powell, Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, Nickie Valdez, Rev. Dr. Renee McCoy, Rev. Cedric Harmon

We tell the stories of how our LGBTQ movement expanded within Communities of Color, exploring how intersectional work can lead us to journey more together beyond barriers that have kept us apart in the past.

Session 4E: “Widening Our Circle Among Communities of Color”

with Rev. Dr. Jonipher Kwong, Rev. Loey Powell, Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, Nicki Valdez, Rev. Dr. Renee McCoy, Rev. Cedric Harmon

Wednesday, November 1st,2017

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-jDg0oJJjY

We tell the stories of how our LGBTQ movement expanded within Communities of Color, exploring how intersectional work can lead us to journey more together beyond barriers that have kept us apart in the past.

Transcribed by: Ve’Amber D. Miller

Summer 2021

:33

Rev. Cedric Harmon: So, welcome to this particular conversation “Widening Our Circle Among Communities of Color”. The description is in your program book. We intend to embody, in this experience, conversation. We also intend for there to be time for some question and response as well, but we're actually intending conversation.

You will hear stories; you will hear truth tellers. You will see and hear an experience, preconceptions, stereotypes, and myths around communities of color being exploded. That's the ultimate intent of this conversation, to break open and bust wide open preconceptions, myths, and stereotypes around communities of color. Entering into such conversations is often clouded by those myths, stereotypes, and preconceptions, notions and ideas about communities of color.

Especially, in faith communities because the communities of faith that we may be accustomed to may not have successfully fully welcomed and included the presence of communities of color. And we must recognize that there are communities of faith specifically and purposefully created to minister effectively to, with, and among communities of color.

3:20

That makes sense? Ok. Alright. So, we have a wonderful panel, and I'm not going to try to introduce, I will invite the panelists that are before you to introduce themselves. I want to say one other thing and then we'll get started with some conversation, breaking open myths, stereotypes, preconceptions. So, to help frame I want to invoke the voice, the wisdom, and the words of a prophet, a spiritual guide, and elder. Of the Lord said the following “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive [repeats x2]”.

Another such prophet, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said the following, “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes-hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism”. And then finally this, how many have heard it said that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line? If you've heard that raise your hand, please. How many believe that? But the hearing of it seems reasonable, logical, even possibly true, but I didn't notice many hands going up indicating that they believe it. Have you experienced it as sometimes true? Is it always true? Blowing up wide open preconceptions, myths, and stereotypes especially around communities of color.

So, I’m now wanting to ask our panelists to, in order, that you choose--I'm not going to like point you out--share around the notion of widening the circle around the LGBTQ movement, and there have been movements, and the experiences of places of worship as spaces seeking to be or having been welcoming places around communities of color. I’m inviting you to tell the truth of your experience. Is that okay? Alright. Who would like to start?

7:30

Rev. Dr. Renee McCoy: My name is Renee McCoy and I’ve been around for a long time. I started out with MCC in 1976. As part of my coming to MCC, I realized that there were very few people who looked like me at MCC Detroit, and yet we were dealing with the same kind of issues that was coming out. But, for me, everybody was talking about being gay and gay was like way down on my list of things that were important. And as part of my ministry at MCC, when I came there, a bunch of us also got together started a group called the National Coalition for Black Lesbians and Gays. At that time it was called the National Coalition of Third World Lesbians and Gays, and I can remember the first March on Washington that we had, the first gay March on Washington, and we had a group that was in Detroit, in Baltimore, and DC and that was pretty much where it was and it was all of our faith though that brought us together.

The thing for us as African-Americans was that when it came to human rights, civil rights, the church made sense it was the only place that we knew to organize from. And so, MCC of course, as we were in the church all of us who started NCBLG we were also connected with the church and connected with MCC. But we realized that it was bigger than sexuality and for us that there was some unfinished business that we needed to take care of as people of faith and all we had was the Civil Rights Movement to guide us. And that's what we did, and that's that continues to be the challenge in dealing with people of color or communities of color that it's not about your ability to walk down the street and hold hands or kiss whoever you want and now marry whoever you want. That there is an unfinished agenda that was never taken care of.

10:15

And so, when I think about what we do in communities of faith and churches, that the church needed to take care of survival issues for us. That it's not about getting rid of racism, not about getting rid of homophobia, it's about how do we ask people of faith I'll help one another survive. Just survive. I'm not interested in getting rid of racism, I'm not, I mean it wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I'm interested in helping people of color survive and thrive and grow and be the best that they can be in the midst of racism. That's all I know, and so, it becomes issues of addressing violence in our community, not just for gays and lesbians, but for a trans persons and bisexuals.

But for people period, that the challenge before us as people of faith is how do we feed one another? How do we cloth one another? How do we take care of issues of despair and hopelessness in our community? Those issues that existed way before we knew about who we were going to make family with and that still is our challenge. And so, for me as an activist my agenda was bigger than that. It was bigger than gay stuff. And the gay stuff, it was okay, it was cute. And you know and now it's really trendy to be gay, but it's not trendy to be homeless and it's not trendy to be hungry and it's not trendy. And so, the trendiness, we cannot stop telling that story. That's the story that we tell, if you dare to recognize communities of people of color, then you dare to recognize all that exists with them and all of that stuff.

12:23

What my saving-- my hope--is always that when you look for God, you look for God when you want to find God, you find people who are beat down. And that's what God has always been from day one. When you look for people who are set for God, you look for people who are suffering, because that's where God is at work. And so, it's not about creating some kind of gay-lesbian faith community, it's about creating a human community. One that really, really addresses the issues that enable us to remain alive.

Oh, I got two more minutes? Oh, man.

[audience laughing; inaudible commentary]

Take three [minutes]? Take three!

And, so I think that before all of us you know it's not about how do we get more people to color in our churches, but how do we hold our churches accountable to people of color that exists outside of the church? People of color that exist in the world, how do we hold people accountable? How do we hold--I love Isaiah 45. Where Isaiah says, God says, “I will go before you and make your rough places smooth and I will call you by name”, and so how do we call one another by name? Whatever that name is, that's where you find God. God has said, I will go before you so how do we follow God into a place where there is respect, where there is honor, where there is humility, where there is integrity; that's the challenge.

I don't want to be the token person of color that you tried out for time to time to show that you love God. Show me by feeding so-and-so down the street, who I don't know who she or he is sleeping with, I don't care who they're sleeping with. What I care is that they don't wake up in the middle of the night terrified that someone's going to kick in their door. What I care about, and what I think the church is challenged to care about is, I'm old and so how am I gonna be the best I can be? As you heard the other night, I'm a survivor of pancreatic cancer. So, how do we get people in our community to know about cancer, and about breast cancer, and about diabetes. Diabetes doesn't have a sexuality. So, the challenge of the church is how do we get gays and lesbians and trans persons who won't go to the doctor, because they're afraid of what the doctors gonna say, how do we get them to get to the doctor? How do we get care? How do we feed one another, clothe one another, how do we take care of the least of us and join forces? I don't care, you call me a f*g or a bulldagger all you want but feed my people. All right.

[audience verbal agreements]

15:41

Nicky Valdez: I'm not gonna be that eloquent. Anyway, when I got asked to be on this---.

Rev. McCoy: We need to know who you are.

Valdez: Oh, I'm sorry yes. I'm Nicky Valdez and I was born in 1940. Now, in 1940 like I was gonna say, I feel like inadequate to be here because I don't think I really was always very involved in racial issues. I was too busy staying alive, my grenade shed. And being a little girl in my community I was voiceless. What I said and what I felt was immaterial. You shut up and you sit down, and you hear you're not to be heard you're just seen. And so, I really in my growing up, things like going to school and minding my manners and trying to dip into my family in the Latino community in San Antonio. Because like I said back then being a girl, you know, and you hear all these little things. For example, if you're a Mexican, you're a no-kind and what that means is you don't have a vote, so you don't count, your opinion doesn't count. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do, you’re a Mexican, you know, and that's the way they used to say the word.

So, as far as thinking about what changes or getting involved in my community, I don’t think there was, well there was the Blue Light, but there was very little organization in being Hispanic. They're always a very little organization to fight for rights, to stand up and say what you felt, and claim a place in society. I think for the most part my issue was when I came out, I had to wait till I was 21 to leave home because being a girl and you couldn’t get picked up and taken back home anytime. In fact, my father when I came out, decided he was going to talk to a psychiatrist and put me in the State Hospital because I was not all right up here. And I was so keen that there was a doctor that said, “Mr. Valdez, your daughter is okay, she's going to be alright”, and he wouldn't speak to my dad anymore, which is good.

19:03

Anyway, my main concern was staying alive when I left home because I knew I couldn't go back. I knew that I was a lesbian and I worked in that circle that’s not really homeless, not really employed. I had finished high school but going to college was something that was like, if I couldn't support myself, have a place to stay, I wasn't going to be going to college. And, I did manage to have one semester, and I did real good in English, so I was very happy that I could quit my chance at college for that semester, but then I couldn’t keep it up financially. And, I couldn't go home and I didn't have a permanent place. I went from this woman that I met that I had a love affair with and then I moved in with a gay couple, Fernando and Leal, that owned the bar. And, we trade me having a place to stay for work and that's how I managed to keep myself alive.

So, I think at that time like I said, I thought, “Well, I'm a lesbian. I need to do something about food”, and I was very connected to the Catholic Church. It was where I grew up, and even though it was racist-- we had to sit at the back pew. Just think, we sat at the back of the bus. The bus said, “Front seats are for white patrons”, and we sat at the back. And I remember when my grandmother and I would get on the bus, she and I would head for the back. And in 1952, I think they took the signs down, and I told my grandmother, “You know, we could sit up here”. And she said, “No, those are not for us”. So, you internalized all that and you don't allow yourself to think that you could be better than. Especially like I said in San Antonio, Texas, basically you're very Mexican-Hispanic community, and very attached to the church.

So, I thought okay well, I need to get together with folks that feel the way I do about church. That we need to figure out for second, where it belongs, where we belong in that, and what the scripture said, and what did it mean for me in our lives? So, we got together and met in homes and discussed scripture and talked about it, and we did that until we found a place to meet as a group and the church didn't want us there. The archbishop at that time in San Antonio asked the nun that had given this space to move out. He didn’t ask, he told her, “You need to get that group out of the Catholic Student Center”. It wasn’t even church, but it was church property. Anyway, I think from that point on we met. We went on and worked at creating a space for ourselves.

23:30

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza: As a younger person, I just want to hold these stories some space because those stories have created room for me. And so, I thank you for your struggle and for your words. My name is Robyn Henderson-Espinoza. I’m also from Texas, from San Antonio. I’m born of a Mexican woman, not of this country, and an Anglo father. I’m a light-skinned Mexican with white passing privilege. And in many respects, I have throughout my life have been in white serving institutions that have expected me to assimilate into a cultural norm, and act in a way, and behave in a way, and be socialized in a way that was unfamiliar to me. And in many respects, the LGBT movement has demanded that of me. And 20 or so years ago when I was in college and coming out, I noticed the presence of the absence of Latinx folks and of African Americans. And I sort of had this question in my heart, where are my people?

And leaving Texas for Chicago and seminary, I noticed the presence of the absence of my people. And it wasn't until I began to say out loud the questions that I was holding in my heart; and naming the racism, and the ways in which the logic of white supremacy was functioning; and our movement that folks were awakened maybe to this issue or to this problem, right? Like, that the imagination, the norm that was in our movement couldn’t hold the complexity of who was missing. And that is a culture of whiteness, right? An inability to imagine who was not in the room.

As a light-skinned person of color, I am able to say things that darker skinned folks aren't able to. That there's a different dynamic that happens when something comes out of my mouth, than what something comes out of a darker skinned person’s mouth. And so, for the past 20 years, I have been living in that in-between space of just telling the truth, and asking the questions, and living the questions, and really try to lean into the potential and the possibility of our movement.

My survival as a non-binary trans Latinx is made possible by the struggle of Renee and Nicki, and that is important to me in the face and say out loud because without our elders, my people don't have the conditions of possibility. So, I have spent 20 years naming the culture of whiteness that is in our movement, naming the ways in which even welcoming and affirming movements. That that movement is predicated on a particular cultural norm of whiteness.

So early on I began sort of bridging together the LGBT movement, and racism, and the ways in which the logic of white supremacy functions and has a repetition in its movements, continuing to marginalize people of color in really, really detrimental ways. So, it is true that trans people of color aren't going to the doctor and aren't receiving the care that is part of a larger socialization issue. And what are the ways that our churches are contributing to the ways in which our people, people of color, are not receiving the care that they need, right? Like what is our theology ethics saying that creates in the minds of people of color that they aren't--that they don't have the chance to be well and whole.

28:00

I am a colleague of Monica Coleman who is an African American Process Theologian has been posting on Instagram questions of “are you ready to be well and whole”? And I think for people of color, we just aren't ready to answer that question. Partially because the conditions of possibility aren't made for us to answer that question. And that is the impact of the logic of white supremacy on our movement. So, I want to say that and sort of name that truth in this space. And that we are all complicit in it, and it sucks, and this is part of surviving the bullshit.

The other thing I want to say is in my 30s living in Chicago around a lot of undocumented queers, I learned that I am possible in this country because my Mexican mother, not of this country, married an Anglo man. And so, the opportunities that were afforded me was because I was born in this country to folks who had documents that my mom received documents because of marriage, etcetera. And that undocumented queers face a particular challenge this ongoing diaspora, this ongoing being displaced, and the ways in which our movement cannot hold that. And that is another sort of impact of white supremacy that says who's in and who's out. And so, I have a real heart for undocumented queers and work with a colleague of mine in Atlanta, Georgia in trying to build capacity to respond to that pressing social concern. And we are not there yet. We are still on the way.

I think that one of the myths of our movements is that because we have marriage equality, because we have predominately welcoming and affirming churches, that we've arrived. And I want to say that is a lie. That is a lie.

Welcoming and affirming movements in marriage equality is about marrying the dominant system. It is about participating in the logic of dominance. That continues to impact our people. And if we are not working for what I call the politics of radical difference, where we can all be together in community--in deep, deep community--and really see one another, and learn to be human again, we will not achieve collective liberation. We won't; and that is a message for all of us.

So, I know that [is] my time, and there's no need for me to reclaim my time, I’m going to pass the mic. Thank you.

31:20

Rev. Loey Powel: Thank you Robin, and Renee, and Nikki. I'm Loey Powell. I’m with United Church of Christ. And I'm here--my personal context is that my life partner, my spouse, is African American. We have been together for 20 years. My family, therefore, is African American, as well. And her family is also white, but I want to say some things about what I've experienced in the United Church of Christ. I've been active in the coalition since the mid-seventies, and we struggled for many years to be a place that would be welcoming of all the gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans members and people interested in the United Church of Christ. And we failed most of the time.

And there were a few years where at national gatherings we had intentional conversations about racism. About white privilege. About this, “We did our work. We the white men, and did white privilege”, and that people of color there met and you know talked about that, and we met then jointly learned from each other. And they were phenomenal conversations but the organization itself I think was stuck. And once you have an organization that sort of gets almost set in stone, you get stuck. When real change is needed, when real viable options for transformation are present before you and you just don't know quite how to do it yet, but also because you still feel we're not quite there. We still have so many issues to work on around sexuality. We have so many of this and how can we take on everything. All at once. [speaks tongues]

So, I confess that that we fail in many places. Even though Bishop Yvette Flunder and other people color are on a panel for the coalition and maintain that relationship and participation, it's still stuck. In the United Church of Christ, we are 90 percent congregations’ membership of white people. We have…but what I tried to lift up last night in Paul Sherry's words is the movement of “we were confronted and graced”. Confronted and graced by people who came to us, communities who have come to us, that caused us have conversation. To be put in a place of faith that said we haven't looked at that, our eyes are opening. We hear you; we want to hear you; want to be with you. You are us; we are one. How do we move forward together?



34:40

And the UCC has been a place that has not always done it right or well or fully or completely, but a place of transformation in and of itself. Especially, in our local communities. So, when the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries came and then the conversations moved over the years to a place where we establish a formal covenant, a partnerships with the fellowship, it was a true moment of joy because many of the members of the fellowship are UCC members now. Maybe the clergy are, not all of them are, and they bring to us a structure that is foreign to the history of the United Church of Christ. We don't have bishops, we don't consecrate bishops, and things like that. So, we have all of us been learning together to honor and respect and learn from our siblings in the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries in full and complete ways.

And what I have learned that as a white person and I've known Yvette since forever, since before she started the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, which was out in California beginning, just beginning to get refuge together. I’ve known her for a very long time. She was on the Board for Justice and she's been an active leader in the structures of the United Church of Christ, but what I am learning as me. Low-congregational style white person is to appreciate the multiple ways in which God is given praise and glory. We also have churches in…I mean we're all over as your denominations are as well. We have Latinx, LGBTQ folks, we have Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Rim folks, and Pacific islanders and Asian American folks, etcetera. But we don't do well, necessarily, pulling everybody together. And here’s the model in some ways and learnings from the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries can be helpful but we have to move sometimes from a place of intellectual snobbishness.

Like our denomination has this white privilege curriculum to do in the churches and then what we use white people do is check that off, “I've got that, not there anymore”. Come on, god, every single day I'm confronted with my own privilege, my own racism, every single day, but I am NOT a person that is afflicted with white fragility. I hate that term. And so, I want my stuff to get broken through but I want me to be breaking through it because I see what I have done and I don't need to be told that gap is there, but we have our work to do, I know that. But I also know when I have experienced worship and community, true community, or the fullness of God's people with that beloved community that can come together, I'm given new hope, we are all given me hope for what can happen, and for the issues that can be addressed all those multiplicities of issues that the church needs to address to be real. Thank you.

38:10

Rev. Dr. Jonipher Kūpono Kwong: I'm the Reverend Dr. Jonipher Kūpono Kwong and I'm proud to say as a Unitarian Universalist minister, and also part of my identity is actually being born and raised in the Philippines but being of Chinese descent. So, that was a little confusing to me growing up, you know, where do I belong and who am I? And coming to the United States when I was the age of 11 or 12 on a tourist visa further exacerbated the confusion because we were supposed to only stay for six months in the United States, but as y'all could probably attest to one cannot tour the whole United States in six months.

So, we kept touring and touring and our tourist visa expired and we're still here so for a number of years I was actually undocumented. And what saved me during that time was I'm belonging to an immigrant religious community. So, I was a Chinese Mennonite of all things right and not the kind that you have in the East Coast where they drive around in a horse and buggy. So, we actually used technology and all of that but nonetheless it was for me kind of restrictive to go to a mono-ethnic Church. And it was also restrictive with my queer identity starting to emerge. I didn't really quite know how to reconcile the two together.

And so, my older sister and I decided we wanted to go to a more multicultural congregation, and we joined Calvary Chapel. Which as many of you probably know is not the most queer affirming place on the planet, and that's when I was introduced to the Exodus Movement and several of you have heard about them. I was prayed for or preyed on by someone who had gone through the ex-gay movement himself and you know needless to say it was quite a journey for me to actually get to a place where I could reject that toxic theology that I grew up with and it was at a United Methodist Church in Santa Barbara, California where my heart felt strangely warm. And I hear a testimony today. And that's where I found process theology and feminist theology. That's really what saved my fundamentalist ass from you know what I described as contempt eternal damnation.

I was actually converted in, a good way, and made a left turn so to speak. So, fast forward to a few years later when I moved to West Hollywood where I finally thought I could be free and come out as who I am and found the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles. That's when I went to seminary class with Nathan, and I fell in love with Claremont School of Theology. That's where again I had another conversion experience. I was pursuing MCC credentialing at the time but the funny thing about MCC is that it too has its struggles with racism. I don't know if you all have cured yourself of it by now I was hoping that you would but…[laughs and audience response].

Now, I saw Robin Tyler's article our blog or opinion piece yesterday but let’s not go there. So, I think you know well I was struggling with the fact that there weren't that many people who look like me who are also clergy and served in a leadership capacity other than people like the Reverend Elder Hong Tan, for example, who's a wonderful role model. There's also Reverend Dr. Patrick Chang but you know you can really count with one hand the number of the Asian Pacific Islander clergy, and I really to be honest didn't quite feel like I belong in MCC either with my radical process theology. Especially, serving the congregations that I’m serving so there's certainly that disconnect, and I felt like, you know, Patrick Chang once framed it this way. He said, “Jesus once said that foxes have holes, and the birds have trees to perch on, but the child of humanity has no place to rest his head”.

43:14

So, then we really think and grapple with the issue of belonging. Do I belong here as an Asian Pacific Islander person? I thought about jumping ship because I certainly, theologically, felt more at home with Unitarian Universalism and I had seminary colleagues that had these great seven principles that were plagiarized right out of Process Theology, right? [Audience laughter]

But I also knew that this denomination is 90% white, close cousins of the Congregationalist. They too were upper middle class, and I just didn't quite feel like I belonged there either. To be honest with you there are still days when I still wake up and feel like I don't belong to this denomination. Going through the candidate process, which is kind of like a prolonged addition in my faith tradition there were house parties. One of the questions asked by that group was, “Well, if we called you to be our minister, will there be a danger that we'd become an all-gay church”? And I thought, “Well, wouldn't that be fabulous”? You'd be the first UU congregation that's predominately LGBTIQ, but I told him I said, “What you really should be worried about is if you're going to turn into an all-Asian church, and that would be fabulous as well because you'd be the first predominately API UU congregation in the whole entire country”, right?

Again, these days I still struggle with that, and I struggle with how to dismantle white supremacy from within because just recently we certainly had this hiring controversy within our movement that caused the resignation of our first Latino president Peter Morales three months before his term ended. It caused the resignation of the COO, the Chief Operating Officer, at the record of congregational life all because we still haven't quite dealt with the fact that we do live and operate in white supremacy context and the rules of the games are rigged. To be honest even me with [intelligible] has to wonder over and over again whether I got my position because I'm worthy and I have the experience and the qualifications for it? Or is it because of affirmative action? Or is it because of white guilt? Or is it because of any number of issues? So, all of us I think in leadership positions as people of color constantly grapple with not just a question of do we belong or not, but did we get here because of who we are or what role does that play in terms of our relationship with the people that we serve? I'll just end there.

46:33

Harmon: The first thing to do is I invite those in this room to show appreciation.

[Audience Applause]

If I did not define myself, for myself, I would be crushed by the fantasies of those who seek to define our Lord. Once again crush; a crushing weight of knowing yourself. Your identities. All of your identities but the particularity of knowing your identities as members of communities of color, where there are dominant cultures that refuse to see you, know you, and seek to know except through lenses of stereotypes, preconceived ideas, and myths. It affects our ability to minister effectively; it affects our ability to belong and feel that sense of belonging; it affects our ability to be in a relationship; it affects our ability to simply make sure that everyone thrives, and survives, and has human needs met, and are understood, and cared for, and valued. This is what we struggle with, and if we don't struggle with it what does that say about us.

If we do not stop dealing with it. If we do not do the difficult work of introspection and reflection, how can transformation come? Will it come? Is it what we want? Is it what we desire? Do we desire to check off a box and feel good, or do we desire actual transformation? These are the questions that we must confront.

“Widening the circle”. What circle? Perhaps, it's a triangle or a rhombus or rectangle. Perhaps it's not a geometric form. Perhaps, it's a cosmic understanding of the divine.

My name is Reverend Cedric Harmon, and I didn't introduce myself. I serve as the Executive Director of an organization titled Many Voices, a black church movement for gay and transgender justice, LGBTQI justice. We specifically named “black churches” because we had seen so many times how in many mainline denominations local programs have sought to do the work within denominations and then wondered where are communities of color.

In my experience, my social location, where I grew up not unlike you, my pastor never spoke a homophobic sermon. My church never grappled with sexuality and gender identity. I didn't experience it growing up what I heard my pastor saying is, “Every one of you are gift from God. Every one of you, and my job is to help you realize that”. I saw my pastor minister to the person on the corner who had had way too much wine from a brown paper bag and loved that person just the same as he loved the choir director and associate pastor, and somehow, I believed that this is what God desires.

51:55

So, as I came to understand more fully who I was and announced that I felt the call to ministry, the church affirmed that. My pastor affirmed it. I left home and I went to school in the Northeast and then gay and lesbian persons that were out and I went, “Hm, is that me? I don't quite know because gay doesn't seem like the right term because gay seemed like a character on soap. And that’s not quite me”.

I struggled and struggled and discovered and discovered and came to know okay, this is who I am. I remembered my pastor back home still saying “You’re a gift”. So, I prayed to God and I said, “Okay, God, you’re God. My understanding of you, God, is that all things are possible of you. That nothing that is impossible. So, I have a question, if this is not who I am supposed to be, let me know because you’re God and if it's not then you will cause it to be something else”. And God was heard.

I never prayed again because clearly if God had a different plan, he would have shown up. That was my belief, but I knew so many others who had prayed so hard as I gone off into the world “Change me, change me, change me” because the message they heard is you cannot possibly be a gift if this is true. There's something wrong that needs to be fixed for you to be acceptable but my experience was opposite that. This is not the story that you often hear especially around black churches, but my experience was that I believe that that was the experience other people had and I believe that we can have that experience for everyone. My color, I knew my color. I knew the experience of them and I knew that that presented challenges. I never asked for that to change. I knew that there would be challenges with that I was told you will have challenges around. Confront them do what you must do this is what it's going to be required of you and you're going to be called some names.

You're going to be treated differently but allowed such an orientation and gender I did not have that experience of so many others had and so I put it to you today, this morning, in this conversation: can you imagine a different reality; and can you imagine that the stories of one are not the stories of all; and can you imagine transforming yourself such that there could be greater transformation in the world? Where injustice rears, rises up, shows up, can you imagine yourself stepping into that space to create something very different, the difference that is justice?

And now it's your turn to talk with us having heard what you heard and experienced what you experienced. What’s happening for you in this space now? And just before you speak, take three real breaths.

[pause]

57:17

Unidentified Audience Member #1: So, this is this idea of thought has been with me and I hope they pass what's matter. So, I want to lift up as one who was a part of both disciples of Christ and UCC. This is just a truth that I need to say in this room and that is it’s problematic for me as a black man, a black queer man, whenever I approach the UCC, and I identify my and-ness that the response is “Do you know Bishop Flunder?”. And what that says to me is that that is our figure, that is our go to, that is our hub of resources.

I’m thinking that I know that there are more people beside Bishop Flunder. Brilliant people along with her who aren't being cultivated, who aren’t being brought in. So, I needed to say it out loud because that becomes just an echo in reality that I think the UCC is failing on. When it comes to the intersection of race and LGBT identity.

Powell: You're absolutely correct but there's a group of African American women in ministry who have been meeting who are pulled together by Bernice Jackson and Yvonne now for years, many years and they meet every other year. In the recent last three years of their meeting, more of them have been able to come out and be who they are either as trans or as lesbian African American women in their clergy. So, there are networks beyond fellowship affirming ministries that are providing incredible ministries to folks in the United Church of Christ.

Henderson-Espinoza: I just want to affirm what you're saying and we often fetishize people of color, both within our community and outside our community. And when we do that at an institutional level that also communicates a particular thing, which is wrapped up in white supremacy, as well. So, I just want to affirm what you're saying and that we're not there yet.

McCoy: Just real quickly, I have to again also affirm what you’re saying but I was bridge pastor of a UCC Church for the last year and a half, for 13 month, probably going back into that again in a little bit. One of the things that I realized at UCC is that if you want to talk about race, they love that, but if you want to talk about community, you want to talk about building, you just want to be who you are, there's no place for that. I think the challenge for UCC clergy and disciples of Christ and MCC and all of that is to consistently talk about building community and seeing who we are. Also, what I realized is that as long as we stay in that box and allow ourselves to be in that box, we do not hold one another accountable for what we do to each other as people of color and everything becomes about race. All they see is the color of our skin, so we can go out here and kill somebody and we got a bunch of white folks saying they’re a murderer but they black so if you don't see them as murderers you ain't doing it.

So, the reason that people like you have to keep speaking that truth is so that we hold one another accountable for what we do to each other because within that denominational context we're hurting each other. So, I encourage you to be batted. One of my things is I live by is “truth disarms your enemies” and as long as we can tell the truth, then we have disarmed the enemy and the truth is who we are, that we're bigger than that. Reverend Flunder would say the same thing, don't put me in that place, but denominations are comfortable putting the one or two black people that we have in that place, and I have big respect for her and she would not allow it either but we gotta keep saying it.

1:02:33

Randall [Audience Member #2]: Well, as always Renee and Robyn said more eloquently, it's good to say and because of those things and because of what I often think of as the “Onliest One Syndrome”. So, the onliest one - someone picks you to be the onliest black person, and not only do they want you to be the onliest one, just drawing from Judith Butler, they want you to perform the onliest part. You can only be a certain type, my own heritage black person in the room, so the onliest unique one who's articulate but also I think because we're in a cross-generational space and I think when I observe both in academia and in the broader LGBT movement is that there's a moment now where those who have been in those spaces for a long, long time need to begin to open the doors for somebody else to inhabit the spaces and because of the onliest one syndrome, had to struggle to get somewhere in the movement, we sometimes don't do that. And I speak of nearly 60, that we just don't do that well and without intentionality, people saying there is this fantastic younger person who is doing this.

Honestly, I hang out with people who are mostly in my age bracket these days, so I need someone to say who are these amazing young folks and let them go because it's often tiring to be speaking at every conference, every time, everywhere in the world and falling into the Onliest Syndrome. Those of us who are either younger and always asked or older and around 40 years and are a little tired we just have to actively say them at this time you choose somebody else. They might not say exactly what you want to script them to say but that's a really good thing because you've heard my rap about liberation for 40 years and obviously if that's not had any impact, so now somebody else needs to come in and tear it up and then you know where you you've worked through the conflict that raises and we might get somewhere. So, that's my only point and I think it bridges the two things that I heard both of you say.

Dr. Henderson-Espinoza: I just want to say yes and the thing that I'm learning right now from someone who serves as chosen mother, pastor, teacher, professor is Ruby Saddles who says to me, every time we talk or every time I'm in New York, “we have to reimagine leadership in this moment”. That we cannot do the grandstanding leadership anymore that is not how we're gonna move the movement. So, I just want to say yes, and we have to have these conversations on how do we reimagine leadership.

Randall: Can I just say I thank you for that and my response was not meant as a critique about the event. It was a critique of all of us. Just to be very clear.

Unidentified Audience Member #3: I'm not entirely sure how to find the words for this but I'm feeling a growing... Last night and today, and this may not be the space for it, but as a local church pastor most if not all of us I presume have some connection to a religious tradition that has a structure, we may have treasure denominational identities, and it comes as no news to any of us that “Church”, air quotes, is declining and dying. And it just feels to me that there's something in this conversation that is speaking to the passing of one way of being “Church” and we can become you know God's people in a different way.

Two things that sort of are speaking today, and I'm not exactly sure how we'll talk about that and not even this setting or that setting, but you know we're religious folk coming together. We're gonna talk about the fact that church just isn't the wave of the future. So, two things that I heard here from Renee calling our community to account for those in our immediate community, that feels like the future. That it's more about the people who are not sitting their butts in my pews than getting them to sit their butts in my pews and there's something about evicting her more from Robyn if possible about the politics of radical difference and how that intersects with theology. That is part of a change for all of us.

Harmon: Thank you for that, he said it well, he said it well because this transformation is imagining means just that, imagining. Imagining means also that old phrase, “abolition”, to abolish but not for the simple purpose of abolishing but to construct something new. That's scary often, it's unfamiliar most often, and extremely uncomfortable always.

Unidentified Audience Member #3: Just because I preached on this on Sunday, Reformation Sunday. I can’t resist. I used the image of “are we at a broken pot moment or at a potter’s kiln”? Are we fracturing or ready to be transformed as something new?

McCoy: It's about building community, for real, and for me as a black person you know my family had all of us work together, and I think we got to get there. I’m old, but brother I want to work with you cuz you got energy, but I can send you checks, I can be with you, I can hold you when you're scared. We didn't have that, did we Randall? We did not have anybody

Randall [Audience Member #2]: I had you!

McCoy: You had me? Yeah, but I always knew, man, that the next step was for me to be there and hold you when you're scared. Nobody held me when I was scared but that's what we are called to do and that's what community was and that's what the black family is for me.

1:10:07

Henderson-Espinoza: So, just quickly, just to address your question on the politics around difference. Two things: one is I am transit theologian of Ephesus so I what I've talked about the politics around difference. I'm thinking how do we shift our theology and social practices to reflect the thing that Renee is talking about which is building community. And then two, I did a film for Work of the People last year and this is 2016, and that film is on the politics around difference and it's around 12 minutes and it is on my website which is irobyn.com.

I think the third thing I will say is difference is not the same as diversity. Diversity is a code word for tolerance and that I learned from Dr. Lee Taos and we need to be real careful that we are not creating communities of diversity which mimic the “rainbow coalition” quote-unquote. It's less about having representational identities in the room and more about figuring out how to be human with one another because I think what I call the tyranny of the now, our present moment, is a reflection of our inability to be human with one another, period.

We don't know how to be human with one another and so the politics right difference is my attempt to speak theologically to our moment of crisis. That it is less about diversity, and it has to be about difference and I can talk at nauseam about philosophically what difference means, etcetera, and the implication for theology, you can catch all that in the film.

Kwong: In twelve minutes!

Powell: Can I just say one thing real quick? A couple weeks ago I went to a reception for the new president of Oberlin College who was the first, Carmen Twillie Ambar, who was the first black president there at Oberlin, who said this, “We can't be a place of differences but only the differences we agree with”.

Kwong: I love Beth Zemsky’s definition of diversity. She says that diversity is where you count people in terms of you know are we representing the X number of Latinxes, and Asians, and blah, blah, blah, but inclusion is where people count. How we get there she says is through intercultural competency and I'd like to add cultural humility. It takes a lot of listening for us in order to be able to truly understand the humanity in the other. It's interesting how I brought this up, Nathan, because last night as we were singing “Our Journey”, I was thinking of the line or verse that was left out, which is one of my favorite ones. It's “Should the threats of dire prediction causes you to withdraw in pain/ may your blazing Phoenix spirit resurrect the church again”.

This is gonna sound weird coming from a Unitarian Universalist, but I actually believe in the resurrection, not a physical resurrection, but I believe that resurrection is possible and what that looks like in my humble opinion is to be centered. The things that we've centered in Christianity and in other faith traditions. So, it's decenter whiteness, to decenter leadership, what leadership looks like so that becomes a leader full kind of movement instead of just ordaining all these names and titles that I don't even know what the heck they mean. My apologies to the Episcopalians and they're “very reverent right” whatever, but let's get real here it's about the people and it's about making the margins attractive enough so that we would go to the margins. So, the church needs to get outside of itself in order to experience resurrection. It can never happen within the walls of the church these days, that's why people aren't coming, because that's not where resurrection is happening in our society these days, can I get an amen?

Audience: Amen!

Kwong: With that I have to leave. I have a flight to catch.

Henderson-Espinoza: I'm glad that Jon brought up inclusion because the logic of inclusion demands exclusion, if we think about that, and we need to ask the question and he read or he quoted the verse of the hymn. I want to ask the question because if logic demands exclusion--I mean if inclusion demands exclusion, we need to ask the question “where does it hurt”? Where's the pain? I think that we're not often asking that question.

Valdez: The Reverend a week earlier quoted something about what was executive intellectual snobbishness. I find that because I haven't had the greatest education in the world, so every once in a while when I'm hearing people, I hear them saying things that I think well if that makes me feel like, “Well, I haven't been around. I don't know enough. I’m whatever”. That term hit me because I think we use, with each other and against each other, that intellectual snobbishness and we need to quit that because we don't need to be so great that you make the others feel like they don't know enough.

1:16:37

Audience Member #3: One of the things that I'm trying to figure out how to really phrase this. I’ve been thinking about this is that, I've been in this room a lot of times and a lot of different meetings, and we always say the same stuff but nothing happens outside of the room. And so, my question is Robyn I know in your classrooms you push people. The only two people I know on the panel are Loey and Robin and I know Loey what you have done within our denomination, but we still come back to the same questions, and the same statements. How do we move beyond this room, these rooms metaphorically, into a place where we can stop playing who's more oppressed than the other and recognize that there is a lot of intersectionality in the multiple oppressions that we feel and that we experience, but how do we work together to overcome those so that we do indeed create a different world, a different church, a different room, a different on, and on, and on?

Harmon: [counting raised hands] Let’s see, one, two, three, four.

Henderson-Espinoza: And we have three minutes.

Harmon: And we have three minutes. So, I need to get the other questions in, let’s try that, and then let’s see what we can do. Will that work? Okay.

Scott [Audience Member #4]: Hello, I'm Scott and I'm a Unitarian Universalist, so that’s the church I’m a part of. I came to Unitarian Universalism because of being transgender, but I'm also a surviving active transgender community leader in the Appalachian community, where I came from. That's somehow working out for me and my church, it didn't work out very well to start with but it's doing better now, and my question is about the overt racism that's coming out of my community and about the way the church is receiving what is often a lot of people very confused about who they are and the church coming forward and telling them that they're a bunch of Nazis. People coming in saying, “You will not replace us”, and people responding, “Go home, Nazis” and how that's playing out between the church, and my community, and conversations about inclusion, and you know racial and ethnic diversity, and who we are as white people who don't really fit in many of the progressive churches.

I do not feel culturally comfortable in a union church, I would not feel culturally comfortable Anglican Church. The only reason I showed up there at all is because I'm transgender and I got shut out of my home church, in my home community, but now I’ve found my way back there and I'm finding that things are working much better than I ever thought they would. I'm wondering okay so what are the next steps? How do we help people find an identity that they want to have that doesn't culturally just make us into the same kind of white people as all the other white people because people are very much against that, but that isn't hateful of the rest of humanity? It's a very painful spot to be in but I'm staying here because it's working better than I thought it ever would.

Unidentified Audience Member #5: Thank you there's so much there that we could explore. I just wanted to share around where’s the pain in the next generation. I'm here in St. Louis. I'm privileged to get to be in the streets for a lot of the protests and actions that have been going on. The queerest thing in St. Louis are the people in the streets, the gender non-binary, the genderqueer, and androgynous, asexual, young queer homosexuals. Fifteen to thirty hundreds of queer folks and we were just at a self-care day the other day, my friend Tori and I, and we looked around where 7/8 of the room were visibly queer folks in there. So very much what we've been saying, I hope that's a little helpful and hopeful because where is the pain with the pain right here are black people are being murdered, that's where the pain is. We as queer people, again that falls down the list when black people are being murdered just for their skin. If we have vital real presence, the queer folks are there.

Unidentified Audience Member #6: As we're celebrating a phenomenal movement we made in basically one lifetime, we're still alive with the LGBT inclusion in institutional Christian churches. The reality continues that around issues of race we're just back a thousand years and I think we just have to name that the issue of race is significantly different from the issue of sexual orientation in terms of institutional churches in this part of the white European construction of religious belief that has come into American, at least in our UCC tradition. Where we have phenomenally few people of color for such a progressive church that stands on race issues in all the right spots but just isn't there. This is so hard, I agree with you, it's like we talked about this dude we're blue in the face book week. It seems like now with the election we have gone back so far, so fast, maybe it's a tipping point. I don't know but there's just something I guess we just have to name. The gay and lesbian thing I think did come in under the Eurocentric marriage issue and a lot around that brought the welcoming and made us similar to what “us” was in the institutional Church was really not that much difference now between gay and heterosexual but there's still this huge chasm among race and we somehow have to be able to come about this in a new way.

Harmon: There's never, ever enough time. And yet there's an abundance of time. Some of our panelists had to leave because they had other engagements, flights to catch. I wanted to say that the question of what happens beyond this room is in fact what's happening in the streets of our cities and towns and in small rural communities that never get the press because it doesn't fit with the prevailing merit. What we must find a way to do is be a community where change and transformation is actually happening. We are more connected and yet more disconnected than we've ever been. We must find the ways where there are these limbers of green sheets popping up every damn where, and go there and help nourish and water so that they flourish in whatever way you can add nourishment. Put your body there, put your money there, put your time there, tell the damn story. Whatever you have to do, we have to make clear transformation is possible, is happening, we must make it wider. That perhaps is the circle we're hoping to widen. Thank you.