A biblical approach to the work of anti-racism

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.

Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed: “There can be no deep disappointment where there is no deep love.” As Christian churches look to understand and confront racism, we can build the body of Christ by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15, NIV) The history of the United States must be examined and owned by the church so that we can address the past and current practices of racism that go against the very scriptures we are called to follow by Jesus himself, when he told the teachers of the law that the greatest commandment is to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-39, NIV).

As Christian churches look to understand and confront racism, we can build the body of Christ by ‘speaking the truth in love.

Anti-racism training work is a critical part of our work at MCC. Beginning in the early 1990s, MCC U.S. began its anti-racism efforts through a training program that came to be called Damascus Road (a program that spun off from MCC in 2012, taking on the name Roots of Justice). MCC U.S. remains committed to the hard work of dismantling racism. Over the past three years, I have worked with colleagues to develop a three-tier, biblically-focused approach to the work of anti-racism, a training program that invites both MCC staff and Anabaptist leaders from outside MCC to grapple with biblical texts and to root ourselves in the biblical foundation for anti-racism work. We began rolling out this training in November 2017 with a gathering of eight persons at Nyack College that offered a basic introduction to people who are just now entering the conversation around race or have had a difficult time understanding how racism works. Every one of the tiers follows a three-day model, in which the first day is set up as interactive and experiential and in which participants gather and visit a museum or a national monument that exposes people to the history of race, migration, slavery, immigration and more in the United States. For example, the first training participants visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (other times we have visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.) and then gathered for a time of debriefing and identifying historical truths that are often not told in our educational narratives about our past. The three tiers of three-day anti-racism trainings unfold as follows:

In this 1963 photo, David Augsburger (right) interviews Dr. Vincent Harding on the Mennonite Hour, September Vincent Harding was Program Director in the Atlanta (Georgia) Mennonite Service Unit. Vincent and wife Rosemarie Harding were stationed in Atlanta in October 1961 as peace and service workers with a mandate to search for ways in which the peace witness might come alive in the midst of racist oppression in the United States. (MCC photos)

Tier 1: Uncovering the Roots of Race, Racism and Immigration: This workshop invites participants to understand the role that racism plays in U.S. history. The training introduces participants to the roots of racism in the formation of this nation, including how the Doctrine of Discovery shaped attitudes and practices towards Indigenous people and how the transcontinental trade in enslaved persons was bound up with the nation’s origins. The training culminates with an opportunity to think about our current national systems and about our own organizations as places to dismantle racism. We also address the role of the church and racism in this training, something that is critically needed as we commit to truth-telling and lament.

Our nation’s history must be examined and owned by the church so that we can address the past and current practices of racism that go against the very scriptures we are called to follow by Jesus himself.

Tier 2: Living in the House We Did Not Build (Focus on Racism and Economics): This tier examines the intersectionality of racism and economics, especially with regards to the development of wealth. It looks at how laws, policies and classifications have historically created or denied opportunities based on race. Day one of the training is participatory, interactive and experiential. In past trainings, we have visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, where we considered how exploitative economic systems undergirded slavery and the theft of land from Indigenous peoples. Looking at more recent history, we explore practices such as “redlining” in which banks denied mortgages to people based on race and geography, practices that prevent groups from building up wealth. We review case studies on the systemic challenges for people of color in institutions. We identify ways in which wealth (in the form of land, education, cultural capital and more) is created as well as examine Scripture to better understand how our Christian faith addresses these issues.

Tier 3: The Gift of Agitation for Change (Focus on Policy and Collaboration): This tier is still in the development process but will focus on understanding current movements that are challenging inequality in our country’s laws, policies and practices. It will invite participants to identify how they can collaborate with churches, faith-based organizations and other groups in their contexts to challenge racism and create positive change. This training will push participants to respond to the biblical call to act justly and care for the vulnerable. This culminating tier of MCC U.S.’s anti-racism training will equip participants to work towards dismantling racism by addressing the oppressive systems of injustice such as mass incarceration, unjust immigration policies, disparities in access to and the provision of health care and education and more.

The prophet Amos cries out: “let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24) MCC U.S.’s three-tiered anti-racism program invites participates to join Amos in calling upon God to let God’s justice that dismantles racism flow upon our nation and our institutions.

Dina Gonzalez-Pina is MCC U.S. ethnicity and gender equity specialist.

The hard work of anti-racism: the good, the bad and the ugly

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.

It seems ironic that I would be writing about MCC’s work on racism from the mid-1990s to the first part of the decade of this century. Our nation finds itself in such troubling times of overt racism and hatred and our churches are struggling how to respond. Why is it so hard for us, as Mennonites, to find ways to address racism? I hope that sharing the story of MCC’s work on racism from within the organization and external work with other agencies can help us understand ourselves. I hope that learning our history will give us the foundation we need to respond and the good sense not to repeat our mistakes.

MCC has worked to address racism from long before the 1990s. MCC, along with other Anabaptist groups, sought to counter racism during the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, for example, Vincent Harding and Rosemarie Freeney Harding led MCC’s Voluntary Service house in Atlanta and became friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. Other Mennonites joined, but in the end, for many Mennonites, the cost of challenging racism was too great. For Mennonites in leadership, engaging in overt activism went too far: although Mennonites at the time did not fully articulate their concern in this way, one can see white Mennonite fear of giving up white privilege. Unfortunately, Mennonite reluctance to undertake the costly work of challenging racist structures led to the loss of the Hardings, two giants in the faith, who had left the Mennonite tradition by 1967, frustrated by Mennonite and MCC hesitancy to combat racism with greater vigor.

I came to work for MCC U.S. in the fall of 1996 as Director of Peace and Justice Ministries. By then, MCC U.S.’s Damascus Road Training was underway under the direction of Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Jody (now Tobin) Miller Shearer. What came to be called Damascus Road developed over the course of a long labor process starting in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, MCC hired John Chapman part-time to work on MCC becoming more ethnically and racially inclusive, both in its staffing and in its engagement of the full racial and ethnic range of Anabaptist groups in the U.S. Staff worked to make human resources policies more inclusive. Lynette Meck, then MCC U.S. director, wrote the first draft of a paper entitled Broadening the Vision in August 1994, in which she outlined a future of MCC becoming more inclusive of people of color. These efforts sought to build on relationships with people of color while resisting systemic racism within MCC. 

As we worship, consider the realities of racism in the Anabaptist community, and share ideas and experiences out of our attempts to resist that racism, may our sight be restored… As we discuss the difficulties of power and privilege, may we be clear and compassionate.

— Invitation letter to Restoring
Our Sight conference, 1995

The Damascus Road program started to take more concrete shape in 1994. That year, Tobin Miller Shearer published Enter the River: Healing Steps from White Privilege toward Racial Reconciliation. In 1995, the MCC U.S. Racism Project hosted a conference in Chicago entitled Restoring Our Sight. Invitations went out to leaders in U.S. Anabaptist institutions and in MCC U.S. and MCC Binational. A total of 250 people attended. The invitation letter sent out on March 1, 1995, stated the conference’s purpose: “As we worship, consider the realities of racism in the Anabaptist community, and share ideas and experiences out of our attempts to resist that racism, may our sight be restored. . . . As we discuss the difficulties of power and privilege, may we be clear and compassionate.” This event birthed what we came to be called the Damascus Road process.

That same year, MCC U.S. produced a video, Free Indeed, as a resource for congregations and other groups seeking to learn about white privilege and the importance of addressing privilege in order to dismantle racism. The video became one of the most widely requested videos in the MCC resource library for many years.

When MCC U.S. established the Damascus Road training program, it set as the program’s goals the preparation of teams within all Anabaptist agencies, including MCC,to dismantle racism within our Anabaptist institutions. The focus was looking at the systemic reality of racism. This work, though promising, also became controversial and threatening. In response to our work at becoming anti-racist and in confronting “whiteness” [racialized ideology that produces white privilege], we began to receive threatening letters. Tobin Miller Shearer, director of the Anti-Racism Desk in 1996, got a death threat from a white supremacist group. He also fielded many angry and negative comments from within the church. As a person of color, I found that very frightening. We consistently received pressure from some within MCC to focus on work on interpersonal relationships rather than on systemic issues, because white people were more comfortable discussing interpersonal relationships rather than confronting their own white privilege and the systemic barriers that kept white people in control, not just in society but within church institutions as well, including Anabaptist institutions.

John Powell, of Buffalo, New York, pins a square of cloth onto a piece of fabric as part of the first night of the Damascus Road conference, “Damascus and Beyond: seeking clearer sight, bolder spirit,” held in Atlanta, Georgia in March 2005. Damascus Road used trainings about systemic racism to organize teams to work on dismantling racism in their own institutions or congregations. In 2005, Damascus Road was developing a system of chaplains and organizers in order to better nurture teams and link them together. (MCC photo/Matthew Lester)

Despite this pushback from various segments within MCC, Damascus Road did make an impact both on MCC and within the broader Anabaptist world in the U.S. This past year, my congregation welcomed Julie Hart as a guest speaker. Julie had been a sociology professor at Bethel College in Kansas when we organized a Damascus Road training there many years ago. When we talked briefly this past summer, Julie shared how her academic training had not previously introduced her to concepts of whiteness and white privilege: the Damascus Road training equipped her with analysis that has now become standard within sociology. Damascus Road anti-racism training has had an impact not only on individuals but also institutions. For example, today we have many more people of color in leadership positions within and on the board of Mennonite Church USA than when this anti-racism work first began. People of color groups, meanwhile, have been able to find places to be heard and contribute within Mennonite Church USA in ways that did not happen twenty years ago.

Regina Shands Stoltzfus, Tobin Miller Shearer and I co-authored a book together, Set Free, in 2001 while working for MCC U.S. In that book, we named the reality of racism and highlighted how power is used to maintain the status quo. We repeatedly found that many white people named racism as an issue of relationships, while people of color identified the issue of racism as systemic. The truth, of course, is that racism has both relational and systemic dimensions, but it is the systemic piece that affects people of color the most, from access to resources to the toll on our physical and mental health.

Anti-racism work often faces backlash, with the impact falling most frequently on the people whose voices are marginalized, who are silenced when what they have to say becomes uncomfortable and who are terminated when they become a threat to white institutions.

The Damascus Road program found that it was imperative for white people to address their racism if the task of dismantling racism could gain traction. The MCC U.S. anti-racism program thus developed a training module entitled Fire and Clay, a workshop for white people to confront the white privilege they carry. The first Fire and Clay gathering was held in April 2003. People attended, but MCC leadership, for the most part, did not participate. Earlier in June 2002, the Damascus Road program had developed a training called Set Free for people of color to work on internalized racism. Set Free trainings helped to inspire events like the Hope for the Future gatherings sponsored by Mennonite Church USA, in which people of color began to amplify their voices and make connections to one another to work together on issues that were important to them.

By the first decade of this century, the difficulty of working both within and beyond MCC U.S. to confront racism was taking a toll on people of color, who frequently felt they had to be the bridge builders and teachers for white people. In June 2006, MCC Binational and MCC U.S. jointly hired Rick Derksen, a white man, as coordinator of MCC’s Anti-Racism Accountability Council. Rick did a lot of good work, but by then many people of color tasked with anti-racism work were exhausted. Eventually, after much internal consultation, Damascus Road trainers determined that they wanted to undertake a broader, more intersectional, approach to anti-racism work, while also reaching out beyond Anabaptist communities. These discussions led in September 2012 to Damascus Road spinning off from MCC, becoming part of the independent organization, Roots of Justice.

Anabaptist institutions continue to work with Roots of Justice to hold Damascus Road anti-racism trainings because it has proven so effective in transforming their boards and leadership structures. To be sure, the gains made by this anti-racism work has come at a cost, taking a toll on people of color and white allies. Anti-racism work often faces backlash, with the impact falling most frequently on the people whose voices are marginalized, who are silenced when what they have to say becomes uncomfortable and who are terminated when they become a threat to white institutions. The work within our institutions needs white people to take ownership. Funding must be available for the work if the church is serious about dismantling racism. I pray and hope that MCC U.S. will come forward again in a bold way in its anti-racism work to name and speak against the renewed racist nationalism and xenophobia we are experiencing in our society and in our churches and that MCC will stand with congregations and institutions that are speaking up in defense of those at the receiving end of racism and hate.

Iris deLeón-Hartshorn is associate executive director for operations of Mennonite Church USA.

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Learn more

DeLeón-Hartshorn, Iris, Tobin Miller Shearer and Regina Shands Stoltzfus. Set Free: A Journey toward Solidarity against Racism. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001.

Shearer, Tobin Miller. Daily Demonstrators: The Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite Homes and Sanctuaries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

——. Enter the River: Healing Steps from White Privilege toward Racial Reconciliation. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1994.