Andetrie (Park Slope United Methodist Church, Brooklyn NY)

ANDETRIE
Park Slope United Methodist Church
Brooklyn, New York

I choose to be identified as a woman of both African-American and Native American heritage (Choctaw).  I have been a United Methodist for many years.  I was drawn to PSUMC because, among other reasons, it was and remains a reconciling congregation.

I am a lesbian.  I continue to be discriminated against for that as well as my ethnic identity.  In many of the indigenous nations, transgendered and gay people were respected and valued.  There is evidence that homophobia was sometimes one of the reasons that the European conquerors massacred native peoples.

The stole that represents me has an ankh on one end and a drum on the other and a triangle which is black with pink borders.  This represents my understanding that just as gays were persecuted, forced to wear pink triangles in Nazi Germany concentration camps, that same ideology was racist.

Generally, organizations that deny human freedom have done so by rigid control of gender roles and sexuality as well as defining people as in-groups and out-groups racially.  Many people in the church have chosen to condemn one form of bigotry while affirming another.  I pray, "Let us see the connections."

This is one of thirty one stoles from Park Slope United Methodist Church included in a display of UM stoles at the 2000 General Conference of the UMC in Cleveland.  All are made from identically sized pieces in turquoise, lavender and purple cotton batik,  With only 200 members, Park Slope has donated the largest number of stoles to the collection from a single United Methodist congregation. 

A diverse community, Park Slope's creed is: Hand in hand, we the people of the Park Slope United Methodist Church -- black and white, straight and gay, old and young, rich and poor -- unite as a loving community, in covenant with God and the Creation. Summoned by our faith in Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves to the humanization of urban life and to physical and spiritual growth.  A scrappy congregation utterly committed to putting their faith into action, Park Slope has been unrelenting in its pursuit of justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the UMC.

The story included on Andetrie's stole is perhaps the collection's strongest statement on the connections between racism, sexism and homophobia -- and, more important, the church's complicity in all three.  To her prayer that we "see the connections," I would add, "May the church finally acknowledge the damage done through its own history of racism, sexism, and homophobia; and work without ceasing to end all three."

In 1999, the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) inquired about the possibility of having a display of the Shower of Stoles at the General Conference the following April.  At the time, there were only around twenty United Methodist stoles in the collection.  We decided to introduce the Shower of Stoles to the Reconciling community by bringing the twenty UM stoles and about a hundred others to RMN’s Convocation in Denton, TX over the Labor Day weekend.  Stoles started to trickle in during the fall, and by February they began coming in droves.  In all, we received 220 United Methodist stoles – the vast majority of them arriving within eight weeks of the Conference.  Thanks to a monumental effort by a number of volunteers who pitched in to help record, inventory, sew labels and make last-minute repairs, all of the new stoles were present in Cleveland.  Twenty more people brought stoles directly to Cleveland, bringing the total number on display to 240.

Towards the end of the General Conference, twenty eight lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender United Methodists and allies stood on the Conference floor in silent protest over the Conference’s failure to overturn the ban on LGBT ordination – a profound witness and act of defiance for which they were later arrested.  As these twenty eight moved to the front of the room, another 200 supporters stood up around the balcony railing, each wearing one of the new United Methodist stoles.  Hundreds more stood in solidarity as well, in the balcony and on the plenary floor, wearing symbolic “stoles” made from colorful bands of cloth.  A group of young people from Minneapolis, members of a Communicant’s Class, had purchased bolts of cloth the preceding evening and stayed up all night cutting out close to a thousand of these “stoles”.  In less than eight months, a handful of stoles had grown to become a powerful, visible witness to the steadfast faith of LGBT United Methodists nationwide.

Martha Juillerat
Founder, Shower of Stoles Project
2006