The Dance Continues by Kelle Brown
I happily accepted the opportunity to curate the conversation on inclusion and African American ministerial leadership in dominant-culture spaces. I began writing with so much confidence, wanting to share my insights so that the church I love and am a part of might grow as a result.
After three starts and stops to this essay, I have encountered a lesson in humility. This work requires honesty, and the road forward must be laid with stones of vulnerability and compassion.
Here is my truth: I currently am the lead pastor of a dominant culture-church. I am an African American woman from the United States south. My participation has been a time of great joy, and most often, I feel very liberated to be myself. Most often, I preach, pray and sing with conviction, visit the sick, and attend many meetings with no concern. I am met with joy most days, and many understand the significance of having an African American woman in the role of lead pastor at a prominent and nationally-recognized UCC church.
With jubilance, a woman said I was the church’s Obama. I later discovered that some members were saying that because I was there, the church was now post-racial. I was a feather in their cap, along with the minister with whom I was in collaborative leadership, a gay, white man.
According to the building folklore, all was well. Few realized that the dance of inclusion was just beginning.
I am the first to celebrate the church I serve. Since the church’s founding almost 150 years ago, it has lent its considerable weight to initiate and support work that has impacted the city and world. Plymouth was one of the churches that made space for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he came to Seattle and was dis-invited by another church. This church created Plymouth Housing Group, an organization that serves the most vulnerable in the city who experience homelessness; Plymouth Healing Communities, which interrupts the cycle of poverty and homelessness for those living with mental illness.
As a church, we march. We protest. We’ve challenged the powers that be when a new youth jail is planned without admitting the well-known evils of incarceration, particularly of the high rate of young people of color who are detained. A Muslim community holds their gathering prayers every Friday in one of our worship spaces. An Undoing Institutional Racism training is held once a month at Plymouth. A Catholic community is celebrating its 40th anniversary of sharing our space. A rainbow flag flies in the air, promising that queer and transgendered people of all expressions will find acceptance. On our building hangs a banner that say, #BlackLivesMatter. We are a church of great generosity and compassion, who is open to discover what God would have us be.
My observation is that as Plymouth, the church—like many organizations in the context of western society—is a case study in privilege. In many ways, it has named itself based on its past dances of inclusion. Plymouth has successfully understood how the Spirit was moving, and followed the Spirit’s trail. Yet, every movement leads to another. Every attempt at inclusion will welcome God to reveal the challenge of new ways to embrace the other.
There have been members of color all along in Plymouth’s history. However, accepting the leadership of an African American woman is a more significant challenge. I represent a shift in the music, a shift in the power dynamics that have been in place for a long time—and an opportunity to become more of the place that God in Jesus Christ was welcoming the church to be.
One can never underestimate the habit of what has been. Still, God invites the dance.
There are moments I am struck silent by the awkwardness and utter determination of discrimination and micro-aggressions. They are constant. Being raised in Georgia prepared me for overt racism. However, my current struggle is due to the unexpected events, loaded feedback and passive aggressive words infused with surprising meanness.
My belief in the highly intelligent, faithful people who live in the Pacific Northwest, in a city such as civic and open-minded Seattle, was naive. I encounter micro-aggressions from people who, when made aware, are surprised and appalled by the acts and attitudes of racism that are pervasive in the culture of the church. My hair and hairstyles are often the source of much conversation. Some openly share that that they are interested from week to week to see how it might be styled. Several asked me not to sing in worship, though it is my joy to use my singing voice in ministry. My speaking voice was too loud, or wasn’t enunciating so that I might be understood, per their perception. Our need to improve our amplification of the spoken word is not accused for this concern.
Most seem unfamiliar with the tropes these accusations recall. One person invited me to lunch, and cracked racist jokes throughout our time together. I was stunned and hurt, as this person is elderly but regularly in the company of people of color. My sermons are regularly scrutinized. Another congregant told me that they would leave the church if I didn’t soften my voice, or become less of “the angry, Black woman”. I was told to watch how I speak about privilege in a church with so many in our membership who were privileged.
Teaching about the things of justice in a church where it has named itself just is a dangerous endeavor. Privilege does not understand that it makes one numb and deaf to those whose experience is different than the myth of itself.
Some have left the church, and I know based on our conversations that it was due to my refusal to be less than authentic. When this happens, it is one of the most painful things I have ever encountered in ministry. However, I often find myself teaching and loving constantly through the thick web of ignorance privilege allows. I often find myself in the tension between visibility and invisibility, living in a cauldron and chalice of a “two-ness”, a state of being so aptly described by W.E.B. Dubois, that many African Americans find themselves.
There is often the request of me to help them know how to “fix” things and prevent the current of biased comments and assumptions.
How can I fix anything while also suffering? It’s an enigma, and it’s not my work. I’ve found that I cannot ever leave the high road, and that it can be dangerous to tell the truth. Furthermore, some believe that what happens in these instances might simply be the “regular” engagement of congregants with clergy in a church that names itself as a place where power bubbles up rather than trickles down. Meanness has traditionally been incorporated in the culture, with some using the device with abandon. Sometimes, I am invited to grin and bear it, for it certainly cannot be as bad as I am suggesting.
As best I can tell, the culture believes that if the minister cannot withstand what comes, then perhaps the person should reconsider if one is truly called. Though I am clear to make the leadership and others aware of the regular struggle to be a prophetic and liberative voice, there is no way to police racism. Oppression is embedded in the soul of this country and the heart of the church.
My sermons are more rightly movement classes, where I teach and remind the church how to welcome, how to build tables of communion that make more and more room; I offer ways to quiet the pervasive culture enough to invite the voices of the unheard—but never silent—to rise. Collectively, the church is discovering how to accept the challenge to participate in the hard conversations, to resist being conflict-adverse, and to honor the process of hospitality and welcome which is based in the reality of its character, rather than the myth it creates for itself.
I will not throw anyone to the winds of futility, and there are many who have come forward as allies. Many silently go about doing good, understanding that the work is not simply for me, but for making ready the atmosphere for our dance of inclusion.
Of course, I do not always experience repentant spirits. The resistance that comes with dismantling racism is present. Yet, my choice is to be committed, to tell the truth and confront with love, and to discern with nuance what I encounter moment by moment, for every episode isn’t the same. I remain present and transparent and grounded in my relationship with God, for I know the Spirit of God makes possible transformation and healing. I will tell the truth, knowing the truth may bruise, but will cure with the same action. The truth makes one come alive.
Accepting the leadership of an African American woman is a significant challenge. I represent a shift in the music, and a shift in the power dynamics that have been in place for a long time. One can never underestimate the habit of what has been. Still, God invites the dance, and I believe Plymouth will be a microcosm of hope on how to invite, accept, trust and empower the other.
Kelle Brown is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and recently accepted the call as Lead Pastor of Plymouth Church United Church of Christ in downtown Seattle, Washington. She is a graduate of Spelman College, received her Master of Divinity from Seattle University Seattle School of Theology School of Theology and Ministry, and is completing her Doctor of Ministry from San Francisco Theological Seminary. Kelle works tirelessly on dismantling racism and other forms of oppression. One of her major concerns is enlarging the voice of those most disenfranchised and marginalized, and is proud to have been chosen as a faith leader to participate in Seattle U’s new Center for Religious Wisdom and World Affairs concerned with issues for those experiencing homelessness. She sings, writes, and enjoys family time with her grandmother, Dorothy, and her daughter, Indigo, a student at the University of Washington.