Five Generations
Five generations of American slaves in one family. (Shutterstock Photo Courtesy of The Conversation)
“Race is the child of racism, not the father.”
– Author Ta-Nehisi Coates
Special to United Methodist Insight
As schism threatens United Methodism, the diligent and faithful work of those who developed the recent protocol bring several facts to mind:
• In 1844, the Methodist Church split so that the building of wealth would continue through enslaving Black people in the south
• In 1939 a union occurred at the price of further legislated bigotry, called jurisdictions, against the progeny of enslaved Black people.
• In 1968 another unification happened, eliminating the Black jurisdiction but leaving all the other jurisdictions in place.
• In 1984, a Black woman had to leave the South to be elected as a bishop in the West.
• In 2016, the Southeastern Jurisdiction elected a Black woman for the first time.
• In January 2020, a Black woman has yet to be elected bishop in the South Central Jurisdiction.
Many Black people chose to stay Methodist, believing that Jesus’ disciples would one day repent and live salvation as love for all people. Kidnapping, lies, humiliation, degradation, torture, terror, lynching somehow did not deter their faith for unity in him.
Now, there have been plans, consultations, strategies, arrangements to challenge church law, to address church sexuality legislation and to ultimately split as sides “contend for the faith.” The comprehensive opposition, the detailed resistance has at least been admirable.
All this for an ecclesial divorce, one seeking assets accumulated through a four-hundred-year-old, blood-drenched, morally reprehensible and spiritually criminal inheritance through racism. Who can claim “their assets,” or any division of assets without first repenting, in the scriptural model of Zaccheus, for these sins that create wealth even now?
From moderate to conservative, from liberal to traditional, from progressive to centrist, no Methodist manifestation has clean hands around the destruction and the lies caused by racism. Race is the child of racism, not the father. No schism will prevent racism from living, breathing and killing people in new Methodist expressions. If this issue — one that found its victims believing liberation and unity, only to be dismissed and degraded — shall still be ignored, let us say so and begin a proper biblical division of assets, beginning with those whose lives and properties continue to be stolen.
Vincent Isner Photo by Vincent Isner
Vance P. Ross
The Rev. Dr. Vance P. Ross
The Rev. Dr. Vance P. Ross serves as senior pastor of Central United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Ga.