If you are interested in more of this story, you can find the link to some of the resources that tell this story in depth.

http://calvarydc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Understanding-Calvarys-Origin-Story-In-the-Beginning.mp3

Special poem about the Black Lives Matter movement inside:

Click here to read

Online Rhythm – links to online connection opportunities

Beloved Ones,

We made the difficult decision to move our worship hour to an online format starting Sunday, March 15.  This means we will not gather in our physical worship space at the corner of 8^th and H NW until the declared health emergency ends. We will continue to monitor and evaluate based on best advice from trusted sources about what to do beyond that. As you well know, responses involve hour by hour changes. Please plan to join us via Calvary’s Facebook page each week.

How we came to this decision: With Washington, D.C. declaring a state of emergency, a number of churches making similar choices citywide, the World Health Organization officially designating COVID-19 a pandemic, and our continued concerns about how congregating in larger groups affects the most vulnerable among us and creates a rising challenge for hospitals to meet the need, we believe we have a moral responsibility to respond this way. Though it may feel counterintuitive to not be physically together during a challenge or crisis, we know full well how often a life of faith is mixed with all kinds of ironies.

Staying healthy: We know you have been reading closely about best practices for how to stay healthy in the midst of COVID-19 continuing to spread. We sent you the best advice we’ve gathered in recent days in our pastoral letter March 11. Though we do not consider ourselves healthcare professionals(!), we are happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have. Know that we’re here for you, even if that means digitally for now.

Staying connected: Our deacons are also developing plans to do digital/phone “check-ins” because we want you to know that we love you and that we care about how you are doing and feeling at a time like this. Also, we encourage you to check in with each other via text, messenger, phone call, video chat, email, greeting cards, and so on. You might even consider calling someone you don’t know that well just to say hello and that you’re glad that community at Calvary connects you both, even in the midst of quarantine! These can be small, consistent ways of reminding each other that we are connected, loved, and valued. If you need a church directory to make that more possible, contact Paul Rosstead. Finally, if there are particular ways your church family can be serving you with financial support, access to groceries and/or supplies, etc., please let your pastors know.

Staying in the struggle: So much to say about the deep and complex reminder this is to us about our vulnerability as humans, and about the moral challenges we face together. Our prayer is that this season of urgency may remind us of the litany of urgencies we face as people of faith: the pandemic of economic inequity, the pandemic of climate change, the pandemic of militarism, the pandemic of xenophobia. We must continue praying that God would incite our institutions and systems to treat these crises with equal intention and urgency.

There are lots of ways to say this, but the long and short of it is, we will miss you terribly these next weeks. Please take good care of yourselves and each other.

All our love,
Pastor Sally and Pastor Maria

[To continuation of 12/12/2019 Latest Happenings’ article]

This semester I took a course in the Divinity School at Howard University that changed my life. When I first registered for this class, History of the Black Church, I was expecting it to be more of a refresher course. I was already a Divinity School graduate, a practicing minister, and a lay church historian so I simply wanted this class to fill in the gaps of what I couldn’t quite remember.  I assumed, if the class would have any impact on me, it would be to introduce me to more information—more books, more theories, more scholars of black religion that I should know. I completely went in expecting that the class would add to what I knew, confirm what I believed, and concretized what I mostly understood. I never thought it would fundamentally affect my life and crystallize my calling. But that is exactly what happened.

When I walked into class on that first Thursday at 4:10 pm the words, “Who are you and why are you here?” were written on the board. Spirituals were playing in the background. And images of enslaved Africans flashed across the screen. Dr. Harrison walked around the lectern and said, “You cannot understand the history of the black church, if you do not understand the people who comprised the black church. And you cannot understand them if you do not know where they come and what they believed”. She continued and said, “as young historians you must ask, who were these people and who did they call on in the midnight hour of their enslavement?” Then she closed her remarks by saying, “I contend to you that the history of the black church, the history of black people in America, and more importantly your history, is woefully insufficient if you do not have a thorough understanding of the robust and pluralistic identities of your ancestors. This course is about that— it is about your ancestors and it is about you. It is about who you come from, who you are, and why you are here.”

Those opening words changed the game for me. I wasn’t expecting the questions of history to hit me so personally. I wasn’t expecting her to bring it home in such a specific way. I wasn’t ready for how this information would connect with the deeper questions of vocation I had. I wasn’t quite prepared for how ideas, even ones I already knew, would affect me when they were re-ordered and reframed. I had come to graduate school unsure how my love for history and my passion for ministry would go together. Despite being a year and half in, I was still struggling to fully articulate the oneness of what I was doing and why I was here. So Dr. Harrison’s emphasis on these questions as she taught history brought together what had been previously bifurcated. In the end she helped me to articulate the connection between history and ministry. Below, I have shared just a portion of what I think I learned from her class and what I believe I am called to do in light of what I learned, who I come from, and why I am here. I hope as you read it, you will reflect, think about your own vocation, the mission of our church, and the moral mandate we have to ask questions about who we are as we try to build a world a new.

[continuation from 12/12/19 article]

In the Hebrew scriptures, the beginning of immorality and sin is with Adam, Eve, a snake, and an apple. In the modern world, the beginning of immorality and sin is with the Doctrine of Discovery. The brokenness, the unjust-ness, and the evilness of the international system of buying, selling, trading, cargo-ing, and capturing human beings for the purpose of the building and expanding of the European world must be properly traced to its historical origins. Moreover, that injustice and sin never stayed in once place. The ideas that started the problems moved and evolved as the problems became more sophisticated and pronounced. The Doctrine of Discovery impacted the lives of indigenous African and American peoples. It permitted the development, wealth, ideas, structures, and society that would be the Western world generally, the American world in particular, and their churches, even more specifically. It is reason why, by the time this nation and the denominations and societies responsible for evangelizing and propagating the gospels was founded, none of these core institutions would ultimately ever come to see enslaved people and their descendants as fully human, fully American, or fully Christian. It is also why there are compromises against their rights like that of 1877 and violence done to their bodies, like what was done to Emmett Till and so many others all through our history.

These moments impact me personally because I am African, Christian, a student of history, a human being of compassion, a moral agent, a black liberation theologian, a minister, and activist for human rights and human dignity.  As a person who sits at the intersection of global history and theology, and as a product of colonized Africa, the indigenous traditions of the African diaspora, the American Church and the black radical tradition it can be very hard to find my footing in a place that is home. For years, in my search for home, I felt alienated and home-less. I felt that there was no place ultimately for me. I also felt that it was a futile effort to try to make sense of my complicated past and checkered ancestry; instead I told myself that I should just try to contort my life and body to the world as it was. But this endeavor never seemed right to me. And so the more I studied history, particularly the history of the people I come from, the more I realize that the dis-ease I feel is rooted in a historical dis-ease; That my lack of home is because I come from a people whose homes have been disrupted. Their homes were disrupted by the Church, by enslavement, by colonialism, and by the making of the modern world. In an effort then to reclaim what was disrupted, I have been pushed and pulled to studying our people more deeply and realizing that everything was not destroyed or even tampered with. I have been pushed and pulled to see that some aspects of our identities and cultures, that some of our moral systems and worldviews, that some of our theological traditions and intellectual discourses have been preserved in the cultures, lives, bodies, and institutions of the very people who I come from. In short, I have come to see that I make more sense when I study who I come from because I come from a people who were plural in their beliefs, democratic in the government, open minded in their thoughts, moral in their actions, cooperative in their affairs, just in their dealings, and thoughtful about the world they lived in. I have come to see that the American manifestation of their religious imagination is codified in what we as historians call the slave religion. I have also come to believe that slave religion is the true model for how the society should be reconstructed and reorganized. Their lives are a testament to innate and organic brilliance, courage, and humanity. In their tradition, they had and held on to the ideals that both the church and state claim to have and they offer us all a road map forward in light of the world we have now inherited.

This revelation and realization is at the heart of my calling as a historian, minister, theologian, activist, and scholar. My ministry then is to blend these truths and understand our African past as best as I can so that I can work in a like-minded international, multi-cultural, and pluralistic coalition to build a just world. I want to preach sermons, give lectures, write books, teach classes, organize programs, advocate for policy, fight for people, and work for a world where we honor the lives of the people who were dominated by the world that was remade beginning in the 15^th century. I want the Christian church as it is to die to its bigoted, intolerant, violent, racist, sexist, homophobic, trans phobic, xenophobic, European hegemonic, and white supremacist ways and  perhaps be resurrected as the model for a moral and just society based on the religion of the slave, their friend Jesus, and experience of their total lives, including the suffering that birthed their moral imagination. I want a world remade, but this time in the image of Nat Turner, Lucy, and Charlotte, Harriett, Helen and Virginia, Flora and JoAnn.  I want a world remade where Ifa and Akan, Dahomey and Vodun, and Islam share the discursive power and influence the religious imagination of the whole world. I want a world remade where our foremothers and forefathers lives are honored, remembered, sacretized, and venerated. I want a world where Black Theology of Liberation is our guide, Womanism is our norm, and Freedom is our end. I want a world as it should be, as it can be, and as our ancestors imagined it would be, needed it to be, and yet didn’t live to see it become. I want to dedicate my life to struggling for a world a remade. I pray for the courage and fidelity to remain faithful to this call no matter the cost and open to the spirits push no matter where it takes us so that together we can all one day Be Free.

-He has no access to food or water in a brutal and unrelenting physical environment.
-He faces severe emotional manipulation and abuse.
-He is completely isolated from anyone who can offer support.
-He does not know if he’s going to survive.
-He must have experienced serious fear, anxiety, and depression

Dr. Shelly Rambo, a professor of theology at Boston University, describes in a recent Christian Century article that “trauma marks a ‘new normal’ [in our lives] in that there is no possibility of returning to who [we] were before. A radical break has occurred between the old self and the new one.” She goes on to say, that “knowing something about trauma should change the shape of Christian ministry,” especially if we more often paid attention to three important lessons of trauma studies:
The past is not in the past.
The body remembers.
The wounds do not simply go away.

This Lent, we will examine together the various traumas that many of us have faced: migration, war, domestic violence, emotional abuse, divorce and separation, and much more. And together, we will learn ways to build resilience as we face these traumas with integrity and honesty. We will also discuss the collective work of changing systems that produce many of these traumas in the first place. Journey with us these forty days.

Tuesday, after 28 years of living in this country, I became a United States citizen. For most people born here, especially those born into privilege, it is difficult to fathom what this means and how difficult this journey often is. While every immigration story isn’t the same and everyone’s process may not take as long as ours, each immigrant I know—documented and undocumented—-has treaded through some paths of the blood of slaughtered to be here. My story is no different. My family came to this country in August of 1991 to escape the Civil War in Liberia. My dad was already working on his PhD when the war broke out. The rest of the family, including two year old me, was still in Liberia with my mom. For almost a year my dad didn’t know our whereabouts or if we were even alive. Through a miracle or chance meeting we met a priest from Louisiana who helped to arrange our travel and reconnect us to my dad. Once we got here and I assumed an age of reason and conscience, I knew that my story was different.

For years I could see the anxiety and despair in my parents faces as they wondered if the life they were trying to build would be suddenly upended by threats of deportation or a dramatic change in our status. Each year of my life, I remember going to the immigration office and feeling like a criminal as they spoke to us aggressively, searched us, disrespected our time, and made us feel unwelcome in the country I was trying to grow up in. At every key moment in my life I was plagued by my precarious immigration status. As my friends focused on the normal issues of our youth, my primary question was where would I live next year if the President didn’t renew our status. In high school as friends prepared to get their license it took me almost 2 years to prove to the Louisiana DMV that I could/should get my license. As others prepared for college, I was reminded that I couldn’t get any federal loans, and many scholarships because I was an international student even though I had never left the country. And despite applying for early admission to Morehouse, I didn’t secure it until May of my senior year because they had to review my status. Once finally in college I still didn’t have the freedom to dream and move like everyone else. As my classmates heeded President Franklin’s call for us to be global citizens, I saw them traveling the world, studying abroad, and spreading the Morehouse vision to every corner of the globe. I however couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave the country; at best I could live through the stories they told me, and see the world through their eyes. As graduate schools, law schools, and prestigious fellowships recruited from our class, I always had to steer clear of those events because I knew the dreaded question would come up and my status would prove a barrier to my success even though I had the grades and resume to apply for The Rhodes and Fulbright Scholarships. Even when I made it to graduate school at the University of Chicago and eventually started working at Calvary, my status still haunted and limited me. I often thought people would eventually find out that I wasn’t really American, still just a temporary resident and at any moment my time here could be up. This problem has plagued me my entire life and has affected every bit of normalcy I’ve tried to have.

Yet as hard as it has been, this problem has also made me the person I am. As someone who both wanted the American dream from the moment I could see it, but always faced the limitations of it, I was put in solidarity with other oppressed people. Over the years I came to see that the immigrant experience
And black American experience are closely linked. I learned that while I struggled for formal citizenship and status, my African American friends and family were still struggling for real citizenship beyond what they had on paper. I learned that my temporary yet legal status was not that different from the precarious status of so many other immigrants especially those undocumented from Latin America who became the “face” of the problem. I came to see that the political structures and public discourse about who this country would ultimately be for affected all of our lives the same way. My story as a displaced Liberian immigrant living as a black person in American south pushed me to use my perpetual despair to tap into resources that would sustain me and imaginations that could free us. And so while there was much blood, sweat, and tears (oh so many tears), nothing in my life more has helped me to feel than my own story of being rejected by and on the margins of this. Because of this I feel for dreamers and undocumented parents and youth, migrants crossing the borders, children locked in cages because of their status and adults locked in cages because of their color. I feel for those killed unjustly by the police and brutalized because of their orientation or gender non conformity. I feel for religious minorities and women who are discriminated against because they refuse to be sexually exploited. I feel for those who suffer even if it shows up in ordinary every day encounters.

And so while I’m smiling in these pictures I’m fully feeling the weight of what it means to become a citizen when Donald J. Trump is the President and people who have cruel feelings towards immigrants, blacks, and other minorities have the power of the state to cause despair on millions of lives. So I can’t really celebrate that much because I feel for all of the people in my life whose status has not changed and whose citizenship hasn’t been fully actualized. But while I can’t celebrate much, what I can do is recommit myself to the dreams of citizenship that I had when I was a kid and still have today. Those were and are dreams of a world, but more specifically a country, a place, a community, where no one is made to feel inferior, treated unequally, or held back from their dreams because of the color of their skin, country of birth, immigration status, physical ability, persons they are attracted to, dieties they believe in, or gender identity they claim. As I reflect on what it means for me to become a citizen today, I am choosing to recommit myself to stretching this country’s moral imaginations as far as possible and pushing our political structures and institutions to make space for as many people as possible, to do as Martin King said, “what America promised on paper”. So today I stand in the tradition of my American heroes, people who have made a place for themselves and ultimately one for me too so that I could claim this place as my own even when others rejected me, people like— Oladuah Equiano and Sally Hemmings, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, Sojouner Truth and Homer Plessy, W. E. B. Dubois and Ida Barnett Wells, A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Ruston, Rosa Parks and Ella Baker, Delores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King and Malcom X, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson, James Cone and Delores Williams, Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehesi Coates and Ilhan Omar, and the millions of people out here grinding, surviving, trying to live, be, and imagine freedom. They help me to feel and I hope with this new status I can keep feeling and help make this place feel them too through. I hope I can keep helping people feel through moral pressure from the church, through the content of my scholarship and teaching, and through the public policy process I can now formally participate in. I am excited to put my citizenship to work as “I, too sing America,” as Langston Hughes once said, knowing that millions sing with me and even though some other millions feel as though they have no reason to sing, we can sing for them. We can imagine and curate a world together, for and with each other, where we have seats at the tables, and rooms in the house, and where there is nothing to be ashamed for because everyone sees how beautiful we all are.

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,” Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed–
I, too, am America.
–Langston Hughes, 1926

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