Who is our neighbor?

Ever wonder who is your neighbor in the Pittsburgh area?  Well we have found a few reports to let you in on demographics of our community.  Did you know that Pittsburgh is a Majority minority community?  That is to say, there are more minorities than there are Caucasians in the community. And that the largest age group in the Pittsburgh area are 25-29 year olds. Check out the resources below. Copy and paste the address and find out more.

Census Data: Neighborhood Profiles

file:///Users/studentofthetruth/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail%20Downloads/0626CF5B-09FE-4783-B460-3B0283C89882/UCSUR_SF1_NeighborhoodProfiles_July2011.pdf

2007 Racial Demographics
file:///Users/studentofthetruth/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail%20Downloads/308CC6DA-1A8B-4B22-BB95-C1DA6736ED3B/Demographics_Complete.pdf

Primary Texts for Biblical Reconciliation #1 Revelation 7:9-10

One of the goals of our blog is to present the Anglican communion Bible passages which provide a foundation for Racial Reconciliation Ministry.  It has been my personal experience that the evangelical world in general has overlooked the emphasis in scripture on race and reconciliation. This is the first post  in a series which we have entitled Primary Texts for Biblical Reconciliation.  We begin this series with the end. The heavenly vision of eternity that awaits the church triumphant.  Revelation 7:9-10 pulls back the vail on the future and all what eternity will one day be like. 

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.  And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,

who sits on the throne,

and to the Lamb.”

Note John’s description of the scene. One is first struck by the numbers gathered before the “throne.  Here is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy regarding Abraham’s decedents.  “Therefore, the multitudes in Rev. 7:9 are the consummate fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise and appear to be another of the manifold ways in which John refers to Christians as Israel.”^⁠1 Here is a gathering of people to vast to count. Here is a Church in its pristine, holy state, doing what it was called out of the world to do—worship the lamb.  
First, John then brings attention to the this group’s diversity.   It is not merely a matter of skin tone, which is in view in the word “tribe.”  Tribe, meaning those who share a common ancestry and heritage. Instead, those present are gathered from and across every conceivable boundary in which humanity can be divided.  The most basic of these is human language. “This word would refer also to the inhabitants of the earth with respect to the fact, that they speak different languages not as divided into nations; not with reference to their lineage or clanship; and not as a mere mass without reference to any distinction, but as divided by speech.”^⁠2 Language is the foremost carrier of culture. John McWhorter in his book Doing Our own Thing shows just how much cultural identity is transmitted in and through language. Before the throne of God, languages and the people they represent are brought together to give human expression to God’s greatness.  What was done on the tower of Babel, the division of human thought through language is redeemed. The word for “nations” in the Bible meant those not of the Jewish nation, those originally excluded from the promise of the messiah are now brought together with Abraham’s decedents. It is not simply a nation but every nation, every it fulfills the Old Testament prophecies concern the nations gathering to worship YAHWEH.  
Second, John makes it clear those gathered together from such diversity are in fact gathered together for a single purpose.  Diversity for the sake of diversity is not Biblical diversity. Rather, diversity as an expression of God’s greatness, diversity that celebrates a love that stretches out across all barriers is the reason for diversity and reconciliation.   A Biblical diversity lives in the tension of the one and many of  God’s children.  We are all made to worship the same God.  Our hearts are all made with the same God shaped void at its center.  But we are also people whose diverse expression of the God shaped vacuum enables to see each other more clearly as God’s grace reigns in our relationships.

¹ G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: a Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, Cumbria: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 1999), 427.

² John Peter Lange et al., A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Revelation (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 190.

Virtue and Schori Face Off Across Racial Divide, End Up In Same Place by Peg Bowman

On Martin Luther King Day 2014 the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, preached a sermon on racial reconciliation.  (The text of her sermon can be found here.)

The next day, conservative Anglican blogger David Virtue blasted Schori’s message in an article titled “Episcopal Presiding Bishop's Anti-Racism Sermon Stirs Racial Division.” (His blog post can be found here.)

That Virtue should object to what Schori says is nothing new.  That Schori and Virtue are talking past each other is also no surprise.

What is surprising – and saddening – is both authors show indications of racism, as well as a lack of solid scriptural teaching, in their words.

At One Step Into Samaria we believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and racial reconciliation must go hand-in-hand; the Bible leaves no room for division in the Church along racial or ethnic lines. The above two articles are examples of what can go wrong when the Gospel and racial reconciliation are separated from each other.

Looking at Schori’s sermon, her words and examples are emotionally charged but her reasoning process is unclear.  We find ourselves jumping from Liverpool to colonial Virginia to Ghana to New Orleans to Haiti to France to Nazi Germany in a matter of sentences. After listing vignettes of victimization in these locations, Schori summarizes, “The human urge to expel, enslave, and exterminate the ‘other’ is as old as Cain and Abel, as old as Canaanite and Israelite, as old as Joseph and his brothers.  We are all connected by that sin.” 

In casting her rhetorical net so wide Schori minimizes the experience of African slaves in America.  The problem she presents us with is no longer how to build connections across the racial divide; the problem has become ‘all about us’. The ‘human urge to expel, enslave’ etc describes the actions of the victimizers, not the victims.  Like a repentant spouse-beater whose ego leads him to believe that if he apologizes abjectly enough everything will be all right, the focus of attention is on the quality of white peoples’ confession of their sin, not on the pain suffered by victims of racism.

Schori continues her analysis of slavery by looking at the story of Joseph in ancient Egypt.  She writes, “When Joseph’s brothers come looking for help, he notes that in spite of their evil intentions toward him, God has used their actions for good.” A little later she comments, “whenever individuals on opposite sides of the dividing wall between slave and master began to see the ‘other’ as human being, created in the image of God, the seeds of justice were planted.”

Drawing a parallel between Joseph’s meta-story and the meta-story of African slaves in America suggests horrific possibilities. Is Schori saying that in spite of the evil intentions of racists, God is using African-American suffering for the good of the victimizers?  Of course not; but that is the logical conclusion to be drawn from her quotation from Joseph.  The truth is Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery not because he was ‘other’ but because he was one of them and they wanted to make him ‘other’.  They wanted to disown him; they wanted him dead.  Joseph’s story, in his dealing with his brothers, is a forerunner of salvation, paralleling Jesus’ relationship with us – an example of God’s unmerited grace and forgiveness.  It has nothing to do with ‘planting seeds of justice’.  Just the opposite: Joseph’s story demonstrates why justice is insufficient, why God’s radical, self-sacrificing mercy is the only solution.

Schori continues: “Yet we continue to be a people of hope – that bond we have as beloved children of God is deeper and more powerful than death.  When Joseph claims that God has made him a father to Pharaoh, he is naming that reality.  We know the same reality, as Martin Luther King became redeeming father to “the man,” and Nelson Mandela to his captors.  The underdog can always choose how to engage the threat – it may not remove it, but ultimately our hope says it can change the interaction and the system.”

This is where Schori completely loses the connection between the Gospel and racial reconciliation.  Hope has its foundation in God, not in the ability of humanity to improve itself or its social systems.  The patriarch Joseph was not in the business of naming reality.  Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were not redeeming fathers. Reality and redemption belong to God, as all three of these men would have acknowledged. 

Ultimately Schori’s paradigm, despairing that white repentance will ever be sufficient, places the responsibility for righting the wrongs of racism on the shoulders of ‘the underdog’ – the oppressed.  Is this not racism?

What a wide-open opportunity David Virtue has! 

But he misses it completely. Instead, Virtue indulges himself in vitriolic ranting, using thinly veiled manipulations aimed at getting white conservative knees jerking: “…Episcopalian antiracism is just the systemization of racial spoils. It's the same old money grubbing race card. It's Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton's game…”

He continues, going from bad to worse: “Victimhood from racism, slavery, and segregation, according to TEC, has only black victims. This denies our lived reality here in New Orleans.” And who are the ‘other’ victims of racism and slavery in New Orleans?  According to Virtue, the victims of black-on-white crimes. 

All of a sudden it’s all about white people again. Ironically Schori and Virtue have landed in the same place.Virtue continues:"Are we supposed to see Christ in violent thugs…

Are we supposed to cancel our private security patrol in the Garden District…

Are we are supposed to… fund more outreach to perpetually chaotic and dysfunctional black neighborhoods... TEC requires us to hurt those who aren't black by marginalizing the white 'other'…If we hire a white, we're accused of 'perpetuating White privilege.' When we hire a black instead, we're told that we were 'too slow and haven't done enough.”

Playing the reverse discrimination card for all it’s worth, Virtue refuses to even acknowledge discrimination against non-whites exists.  Instead he whines that whites are misunderstood and marginalized and nothing they do is appreciated.  What a perfect example of the racism that, sadly, lurks just beneath the surface of far too many conservative Christian movements.

Our Title and Our Aim by Daniel McGregor

The title for our blog, One Step into Samaria, is taken from John chapter 4.  Here Jesus meets with the woman at the well. In the initial reading the passage appears as if Jesus makes his way to meet a helpless sinner who needs to hear the gospel.  The passage is indeed about the proclamation of the Gospel. However, the real question is to whom the gospel is proclaimed, as opposed to the mere fact of its proclamation.   

The clue to the unique significance of the passage is in plain sight ever so early in the passage. In what is almost always lost to the casual, or first reading is verse four (it was hidden from my view for many years). “And he had to pass through Samaria.”  The causal reader will miss two things in his reading.  One, A Samaritan woman and a Jewish Rabbi represented their culture’s book ends, the most racially divided groups of a particular culture or geographic location.  One can imagine the encounter if you replace the protagonist in John 4 with a white, Wall Street investment banker with a country estate in the Hampton's and a street wise African-American from Harlem. Like the banker and the hustler, the samaritan woman and Christ were geographic neighbors but worlds apart. 

Why were they so estranged from one another?  It comes down to differences in religious worldview. There were two differences in cultural outlook that had been fought over for so long that they had become second nature to the two parties involved.  First, the Samaritans only recognized the first five books of the Old Testament as scripture. Second, the Samaritans did not worship in Jerusalem, but instead on the mountain at Gerizim, 10 miles southeast of Samaria. From these two different views of worshiping the almighty the opposing sides dug a trench big enough to swallow the Mediterranean Sea. 

The second item the casual reader will miss it the intensity of the Greek in verse 4. The ‘had’ of the verse has the undertone of force and necessity. “To be something which should be done as the result of compulsion.”^⁠1  The word often denoted a sense of obligation and religious duty.  In other words, Christ was compelled to step into Samaria. It was not a chance encounter, or random meeting.  Rather, Christ saw the step into Samaria as a necessary part of his ministry. 

As bloggers and member of the commission we believe that it is a necessary, even compulsory step to be reconciled to one another across racial, ethnic, and cultural lines.  We aim to encourage and foster Anglicans making the step toward unity and peace with their brothers from different ethnicities and nations. We believe racial reconciliation is not a ‘nice thing’ if we had time. We believe it lays at the heart of the Gospel message. Because, after all, Christ handed this woman not only his hand of friendship but the message of reconciliation to God through him.  

As bloggers and members of the Racial Reconciliation Commision we understand in as monocultural as our tradition has been in the United States we cannot expect reconciliation to take place over night. It must first be of smaller steps, creating trust and assurance that we bring no other agenda other than the desire to see the faith proclaimed to all nations and to every neighbor irrespecutful of their ethnic or national background.  This blog will present book and  movie reviews, insights on the critical biblical texts, and commentary on events as it relates to racial reconciliation and the Anglican Church. We hope to include a diverse range of opinions and views points that will help the church engage in the debate.  We hope in this offering to the church that we encourage all of our journeys, one step at a time, into the Samaria next door. 

¹ Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 669.

First Words by Fr. John Paul Chaney

I was 10 years old when I first heard The Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give his “I Have a Dream” speech.   There was something about this speech that made me believe that America could be a more loving, caring place for all people.  It set an ideal in my heart of what the world should look like and it has never left.  I came to see and believe that Jesus Christ has the same vision for what the Church should be.  The Church should reflect God’s Kingdom on Earth.  The Church of Christ is the primary instrument of shalom (peace) on earth. It is obvious to me that The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was drawing deeply on his relationship with Jesus Christ when he said, ““I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."  When he called for America to become a more Christian country, standing against to the evils of hatred and racism, he was treated like his Lord.  Dr. King died a martyr as a result of an assassin’s bullet.  Jesus warns his disciples, “’A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20).

Fifty-two years later, as an Anglican Priest in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, I am still working toward this goal to see America reflect more fully the Kingdom of God.  For my part, I serve as Rector of Seeds of Hope Anglican Church, a multi-ethnic congregation in the Bloomfield and Friendship neighborhoods. My wife and I through the non-profit ministry we started, Earthen Vessels Outreach, serve underprivileged children of all backgrounds and nationalities.

This blog, One Step into Samaria, is one small attempt to bring to light and clarify our call as the Church to be a leader in this racial and social transformation of our communities, country and world.  That is why I am part of the Reconciliation Commission in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.  The Reconciliation Commission of the Anglican Dioceses of Pittsburgh’s mission is to bring awareness of, and to speak against racial and cultural hatred, bigotry, and misunderstandings.  As a commission we aim to make our fellow churchmen aware of the blessings and burdens of other cultures and ethnicities. We seek ways in which to bring them together under the peace of God and together be the body of Christ.   

This blog seeks to be a place to address the RC’s Mission and to create a forum to teac the clergy in our Diocese and the ACNA concerning issues related to race and God’s heart for all people and nations. We believe for the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh and Anglican Church in North America to thrive that it must look more like what the Apostle John sees in Revelation 7,

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

Members of the Commission

Co-Leaders:  Gladys Hunt-Mason, The Rev Dr. John Paul Chaney

Members: The Rev. Karen Stevenson, The Rev. Andrea Buettner, The Rev Dee Scott, Peg Bowman and Tina and Daniel McGregor

Daniel and Tina McGregor are the editors and administrators of this endeavor. They will help facilitate the conversations, publishing reviews, theological reflections and gather a diverse set of testimonies of those on the Canterbury road. Daniel and Tina welcome submissions from fellow Anglicans and minorities on topics pertaining to the mission and vision of this blog. Feel free to submit your ideas to rrcanglicanofPGH@gmail.com My hope is that this blog will be a catalyst for change and healing.