Читать книгу Reconciling Places - Paul A. Hoffman - Страница 8

On Friday morning, July 8, 2016, I awoke to the troubling news on my iPhone. Tears initiated an unauthorized launch sequence in my eyes, a rare and unwelcome occurrence for a man of stoic roots—Midwestern and German to be exact. A swirl of emotions collided within me: sadness, righteous anger, fear, and helplessness. The phrase “Enough is enough!” ricocheted around my mind.

Overnight, a sniper had shot twelve law enforcement officers in downtown Dallas, Texas. Five of these public servants died. The cruel irony was that they were supporting a peaceful protest in response to two deaths—only days earlier—involving altercations with police. On Tuesday, July 5, Alton Sterling, a thirty-seven-year-old black male, was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, outside a convenience store. Then on Wednesday, July 6, officer Jeronimo Yanez, during a seemingly routine traffic stop outside Saint Paul, Minnesota, shot Philando Castile, a young black male. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, streamed the aftermath on Facebook Live. Viewers watched Philando fall unconscious as he slowly bled to death. I was horrified to hear Reynolds’s four-year-old daughter, Dae’Anna, comfort her mother while attempting to process this tragic event: “It’s OK, Mommy . . . it’s OK, I’m right here with you. . . . Mom, please stop cussing and screaming ’cause I don’t want you to get shooted. . . . I wish this town was safer. I don’t want it to be like this anymore.”1

This little girl was not alone in her fear and confusion. On Friday, July 8, the Bahamas issued a travel advisory to Bahamians entering the United States: “Young males are asked to exercise extreme caution in affected cities in their interactions with the police. Do not be confrontational and cooperate.”2 For many Americans this news felt surreal: Since when did tourists need to fear to vacation in the United States?

I gathered my emotions, paced my bedroom floor, and passionately prayed. I asked God for wisdom because to do nothing seemed wrong. Finally, I told my wife I wanted to call an impromptu prayer meeting at noon in front of Newport (Rhode Island) City Hall. I started to compose a text message to some of my pastor friends in the area, inviting them to join me. Then I stopped: a different tone was required. I rewrote the text. Instead of making a tentative appeal, I notified them I was following God’s prompting and implored them to join me at our city center and publicly pray for our broken hearts and divided nation. Then I posted a statement on my Facebook account, calling for all people of faith and goodwill to gather with us and pray, and if not, to stop and pray at noon wherever they were. Ryan Belmore, the founder of Whatsupnewp.com (a hub of all things Newport), noticed my plea, and wrote a story and posted it on his popular website. Simultaneously, two sisters, Paula and Marie, our church’s3 public relations virtuosos, reached out to local media to spread the news. All of a sudden, friends and parishioners who planned to attend the rally inundated me with private messages and text messages, some offering support, others confirming details. People felt a compelling desire to connect, and this meeting was catching fire fast.

Around 11:45, I jumped on my bike and pedaled the two miles to city hall. A crowd was forming. By about 12:05, over fifty people had gathered in the plaza in front of the imposing granite building. Far from my usual pastoral tribe of middle-aged, mostly white men, I beheld a cross section of Newport itself: elementary kids, preteens, soccer moms, retirees; those wearing designer sunglasses next to young men sporting baggy T-shirts from Walmart; black, white, brown, and biracial faces from (we estimated) ten local churches. Multiple TV stations and newspaper reporters clamored to interview the attendees.

I called the meeting to order, stating we had gathered in response to the tragic events in Baton Rouge, Saint Paul, and Dallas. Our country was hurting. People were scared. We had come together to pray because prayer makes a difference—it changes our hearts, if not always our circumstances. It unites people in powerful ways. Anyone who wants to pray can pray: silently, out loud, through song, in any way he or she feels led.

And pray we did: for over an hour perfect strangers staged an impromptu revival meeting. They held hands, poured out their hearts in prayer, wept, sang, laughed, cheered, and shouted “Amen!” The reporters stood fixated and kept filming to the very end. Afterward, many of the attendees hung around, introduced themselves to each another, exchanged cell numbers (or friend requests), and headed for local coffee shops to continue their conversations.

I was amazed: things like this don’t often occur in Rhode Island or New England, especially in public spaces. We see ourselves as the “frozen chosen,” proud for being curmudgeonly, thrifty, independent, intellectual, and perhaps even just a little bit superior.

But that day rebutted the naysayers. Yes, America and many parts of the world are deeply polarized by issues of race, class, politics, economics, gender, education, location, and legal status, to name a few. Our divisions are real and grave and so must be addressed. However, so many of us are hungry to connect in meaningful and generous ways that seek to bridge the barriers separating us. From this, I surmise people are still attracted to good news, to a positive narrative: a story of hope that overcomes despair, of love that conquers hate, of a unity that does not impose uniformity but respects our differences. Americans are longing for this story to animate solutions that are constructive rather than destructive, to dignify and uplift rather than debase and tear down.

We hunger for a vision of reconciliation, don’t we? And so the question is “how do we, together, bridge the chasms in our communities?” Or more pointedly, “how do we become and grow as reconcilers?”

A white boy from Portland, Maine: My journey to the intersection of reconciliation and place

My journey as a passionate, albeit imperfect, advocate for reconciliation, unity, and justice makes me chuckle because it was at first inauspicious. I was born ten weeks premature on February 8, 1977, at Fletcher-Allen Hospital, the teaching hospital of the University of Vermont. I weighed just two pounds, thirteen ounces. The doctors told my parents the odds of my survival were low, owing to my mother’s preeclampsia and birth complications. Kurt and Linda Hoffman prayed and believed their son had a purpose. After all, they named him after the apostle of New Testament fame (thanks, Mom and Dad, for setting unrealistically high expectations!). By God’s grace, I survived and started to grow and thrive: the expedition commenced.

As life marched forward, my parents added my two sisters into the Hoffman family. Unfortunately, shortly after my younger sister was born, my parents divorced. My mother won primary custody of us and took a teaching job in Skowhegan, Maine. Second grade was a miserable year: I was the new kid in a small mill town where nobody new arrived and even fewer left. I recall during recess, a few of the children on the playground picked on me for being undersized (ironically the name “Paul” means “humble” or “small”) and poor. One experience painfully sticks out. As we approached the school’s annual Christmas gift exchange, my family lacked enough spare money to buy a new gift for my Secret Santa. So my mother and I made the best of a challenging situation: we wrapped a used Matchbox car discovered during a recent foray to a yard sale and spent hours crafting a homemade Santa sleigh out of candy canes, construction paper, stickers, and glitter. I thought it was a masterpiece. My classmate thought otherwise: upon opening the gifts, his brow furled and his lips curled in partially veiled incredulity and disgust: “Is this Matchbox car used? What’s this thing you made?” I remember my cheeks burning as waves of shame, rejection, and humiliation swept over me. It was the first time I learned that difference—whether intentionally or unintentionally—might be used to degrade and dehumanize others. In this case, my perceived poverty made me inferior. I was thankful that at the end of the school year we relocated to Orono, Maine.

During my third and fourth grade years at Asa Adams Elementary School, I had two more experiences regarding “difference” that would further tilt the trajectory of my life toward reconciliation. The first centered on a schoolmate named Salvador Casañas Diaz, my first-ever best friend. Salvador (Sal) and I would go on wild adventures, spending countless hours racing Huffy BMX bikes around our idyllic college town, collecting bottles from the sidewalks and trash cans and then refunding them for a few dollars so we could buy bubble gum, gumdrops, and lollipops. But the biggest adventure took place indoors. I will never forget the first time I entered Sal’s apartment. The space was infused with the pungent scent of rice and beans simmering in a pot, the sound of Puerto Rican salsa music blaring from a boom box, and the strange intonations and cadences of Spanish floating about as his relatives bantered among themselves. I was intrigued: Sal’s world was unique and foreign. A new realization struck me: not every person ate the same food, spoke the same language, or listened to Casey Kasem’s Top Forty radio countdown. Different could be beautiful. I didn’t know it then, but my first cross-cultural (interracial) friendship would open me to the possibility and pursuit of many others in the years to come.

A second transformative event involved Ryan Grant (not his real name), a school bully who happened to be older and bigger than me. One Saturday Sal and I raced our bikes to the playground at Asa Adams. We discovered a space devoid of children except for Ryan and his buddy pushing their girlfriends on the tire swings. He did not approve of our interrupting his private rendezvous and uncouthly demanded we leave immediately. Likewise, Sal and I did not appreciate his monopolizing this public space. We exchanged words, and he chased us off the playground. Sal and I fled the scene intoxicated by a combination of fear, anger, and adrenaline. This war wasn’t over. Shortly after that, I heard a rumor Ryan was visiting a friend at my apartment complex. I hopped onto my bike and sped to the area of the alleged sighting. It was he. If I recall correctly—and to my shame—I taunted him. Ryan cast a cold glare at me, I panicked, and fled the scene. Upon my entry into our apartment, my father quickly ascertained his son was frantically escaping conflict with a bully. With a piercing ferocity, Dad stared into my eyes and declared, “You can’t run away from that! You can’t let someone intimidate you. You must stand up for yourself.” With my weak legs trembling, Dad marched me outside to the front of our building, where Ryan was eagerly waiting. Without delay, Ryan and I began shoving each other, which quickly devolved into a muddy wrestling match. I could hear my father goading Ryan to “stand up and fight like a man.” Again, I tried to escape to the safe confines of my apartment, but Kurt Hoffman blocked me and said: “Go back, Son.” I am told (in truth I hardly remember a whit about my first and, at present, only fistfight) I punched Ryan in the face two times, and apparently shocked that I fought back, he staggered off.

When pondering that incident, I struggle with my role in the conflict. Although Ryan was older and bigger (did I mention the size of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson!?) and thus our interactions were marked by a power differential, I did nothing to bridge that chasm. I failed to initiate a conversation with Ryan or ask my Dad to referee one. I know conflict is inevitable: it’s a consequence of human beings attempting to share limited resources and overlapping spaces. But when confronting power, what means should we deploy before physical force is brought to bear? How does reconciling work when an opponent is violent or unreasonable?

With the benefit of hindsight, I find it fascinating that as a young child I was learning that class, race, gender, and power shape our differences—how we interpret them and respond to them. I also gleaned there exists, at the very least, three approaches to engaging difference: degradation, appreciation, and confrontation.

Consequently, these experiences catalyzed a lifelong quest to discover how I can join with others (including people of faith, practicing Christians, theology students, and ministry/nongovernment organization [NGO] leaders), to constructively address the differences in our homes, workplaces, churches, communities, and nation. Recently, four areas of my life have coalesced during this pursuit: my Christian faith, extensive world travel,4 my work as a pastor embedded in a particular place, and my doctoral studies in the areas of practical theology and urban mission. These factors have birthed a fresh model called reconciling places, which sits at the intersection of two critical ideas. Reconciling encourages Christians to live into their calling and identity as “peacemakers”:5 those who intentionally build bridges across ethnicity (race), class, and sex (gender) differences.6 Place refers to the embracing of one’s home, locale, or neighborhood, a particular social and cultural location. It is to be fully present, rooted, and embodied within a specific longitude and latitude.

It must be said I come to you neither as an expert nor a hero. My desire is to serve as a guide on your reconciling journey. I’ve gathered some experiences and principles along my own voyage that I’d like to share that may assist you in learning about and practicing reconciling as an identity and way of being. It seems you are reading this book because you care deeply about the challenges besetting us, like globalization, political rancor, war, climate change, wealth and income inequality, and the many “isms” we face—classism, racism, sexism, etc. And rather than contributing to our problems, you want to work for solutions.

The importance of refreshing an ancient narrative during troubled times

As a pastor and practical theologian, I believe we gain insight into our divides and discover constructive solutions to our problems by returning to a biblical narrative. If used as a lens, it could help Christians like you and me (and perhaps others) comprehend our world through a frame that faithfully aligns with some of the ways the triune God views and acts within the created order. More to the point, theologians have suggested, “the Bible as a whole tells a story, in some sense a single story.”7 Missiologist Tim Tennent and Pastor Timothy Keller indicate the Bible depicts a story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.8 While this is good so far as it goes, I think it’s more complete when presented in five movements: Creator, first creation, alienation, reconciliation, and final creation. If fully understood, this account provides several enlightening perspectives, including these two:

•Reminding people of faith, it’s best—and biblically accurate, I would argue—to view their lives, and history itself, through the lens of a single story: that through Jesus Christ, God the Father seeks to “reconcile to himself all things”9 by the power of the Holy Spirit.10 This challenges Christians to enter into some uncomfortable tensions. While the triune God is superintending the reconciling process, for us, it appears messy and alinear. In the face of sin and brokenness, however, followers of Jesus can maintain a sense of purpose, agency, and responsibility because we are joining God on his mission, which thankfully is not entirely dependent on us.

•We start to comprehend and appreciate the profound relationality of God and interconnectedness with his world. After all, the triune God is a relational being interacting within himself11 and outside himself with creation.12

If you are willing to embrace the theology of reconciliation offered here, I believe you will be equipped to act as reconcilers who build bridges in your context, whether you inhabit cities, suburbs, exurbs, or rural areas. This book, then, aims to help Christian leaders and students act as peacemakers by providing several tools. One is helping them exegete and reflect on the promises and perils of their communities (their unique “places”). Another is to identify the particular ways race, class, and sex (gender) are flash points in their locales, owing, in no small measure, to partisan politics’ and social media’s magnifying and warping difference (which is God-given and beautiful) and turning it into divides.

These ideas and practices are worth the fight. I know, because I am living this reconciling places model in my current home of Newport County, Rhode Island. Alongside the church I lead, Evangelical Friends Church of Newport, I regularly forge local partnerships with people across racial (ethnic), class, and sex (gender) chasms—you’ll hear more about these as we go. I believe our community is slowly but surely coming together in the process—that is, if the feedback I am receiving from civic, nonprofit, and religious sources is correct. Indeed life cannot be reduced to neat and tidy boxes, encapsulated by statistics, results, and upward or downward line graphs. Pragmatic and technocratic approaches to life, those that presume impersonal progress leading to never-ceasing prosperity, do not ring true for many of us. These methods are discordant with the messiness we are experiencing as we adventure into the twenty-first century.

In fact, I believe God is raising up a new generation. Many younger Christians are deeply concerned about the polarizing debates in American society. They have soured on partisan rancor, religious polemics, materialistic greed, and wasteful consumption. However, they are hopeful activists with a sensitive social conscience who care passionately about unity without uniformity, respect for diversity, social justice, wise stewardship, and reconciliation. They desire to foster authentic, meaningful, and constructive conversations that lead to practical solutions. This book exists partly to offer a framework for putting their passions and efforts to good use.

Scouting the journey ahead

Let’s map out the path going forward. Chapter 1, “Your Place,” challenges the reader to recognize the uniqueness and importance of her setting. This motivates her to view and interpret her community with fresh eyes to see its brokenness and beauty. It is helpful to analyze one’s location by appropriating a dialectical theology of place. That is, each place reveals aspects of Babylon (alienation) and the New Jerusalem (reconciliation)—both are present and must be identified to obtain a clear understanding. Furthermore, chances are that politics and social media exploit ethnicity, class, and sex to further the existing divisions in each community. With this in mind, the Christian, and her faith family can identity their place’s painful rifts in order to collaborate with others to build bridges. Along the way, I will include reflections on these dynamics based on the places I have lived: Portland (Maine), Boston, Jerusalem, Denver, Newport, and Manchester (UK).

Chapter 2 is called “The Foundation: The Relational Nature of the Trinity.” As the book’s subtitle is “How to Bridge the Chasms in our Communities,” in this chapter I will start unpacking the crowning analogy of reconciling as building bridges across difference. Engineers tell us most bridges are composed of three major sections: the foundation, substructure, and superstructure.13 All three areas are interconnected and necessary for a bridge to function properly. Likewise, each section represents a vital theological category required to construct a reconciling place: the relational nature of the Trinity (foundation), reconciling theology (substructure), and reconciling practices (superstructure).

Reconciliation starts with the foundation of the character of the Trinity. One way Christians can better comprehend the triune God is if they read Scripture through a particular lens, what I call a “relational narrative.” This lens helps us recognize the reconciling DNA inherent in God’s being. I suggest it opens our eyes to see the relational nature of God: both the way God relates facing inward (to himself internally) and facing outward (externally to the world). Reconciling is rooted in the character and personhood of the triune God and his relationship with the created order.

In chapter 3, “The Substructure: Reconciling Theology,” I outline the four great theological equalizers: the imago Dei, human sinfulness and the brokenness of creation, the vast atoning love of Jesus Christ, and his final judgment. The equality among the persons of God lays the foundation for human equality. With these commitments established, I highlight a few key bonding agents that are needed to hold the reconciling bridge together.

Chapter 4, “The Superstructure: Reconciling Practices,” offers the reader actionable ways she can apply the reconciling places model. I challenge Christians to engage in reconciling prayer, reconciling rhetoric, and reconciling communities/coalitions. Because reconciling is so hard, Christians need to be connected to the heart and priorities of God. Prayer is their power source. Prayer shapes a repentant rhetoric. Christians forgo strident language amidst the blare of Twitter rants and political sound bites. Reconcilers pursue face-to-face (incarnational) conversations rather than Facade-Book (disembodied through social media) ones. Moreover, reconcilers “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15) while avoiding “two particularly destructive forms of speech: the hurtful insult and the conversation stopper.”14 Our words and tone matter when it comes to reconciling. Finally, the person (and community) committed to reconciling will construct diverse coalitions that focus more on common goals than differences when engaging social issues. This entails embracing two overlapping convictions: “Unity is not uniformity” and “We are better together.” These three concepts lead reconcilers to work toward the total flourishing of all our places.

In the concluding chapter, I recount organizing another prayer rally in the face of national unrest, then recast Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community” for our day and age. I end with a reconciling commission: a dream that my two sons, Landon and Kelan, will join others, including generations to come, in embodying reconciliation, whatever the longitude and latitude in which they invest their lives.

A final disclaimer

As an academically trained practical theologian, I am acutely aware of my limitations, liabilities, and privileged position. Simply put, this book is written from a particular perspective: I am an American white male raised and located in the middle class of New England, of French Canadian and northern European ancestry (predominantly German and British), early forties in age, and an evangelical centrist (I’m slightly theologically Reformed with a strong Anabaptist-Wesleyan-Holiness thrust). I’m trusting, though, that this book’s theological reflections and practical tools will be enough to help you embrace and embody your calling as reconcilers whatever your place. Consequently, at the end of the chapters there is a section comprised of “Questions for Reflection” and “Practical Next Steps.” I urge you to make use of these exercises as I believe they will help stimulate fresh thinking and new actions. Lord knows our world needs that now more than ever—and you can make a difference! So let’s get started.

Questions for Reflection

1.How have you experienced difference in your life, e.g., a friendship where there was a contrast in class or ethnicity?

2.Have you ever faced prejudice, injustice, or a bully? How did you handle the situation? What did you learn?

3.Which of the three parts of the reconciling bridge are you most intrigued by and why? Which part do you feel most uncertain or unknowledgeable about and why?

Practical Next Steps

1.If you have never done so, write out part of your story that describes an experience with difference or injustice.

2.Start composing a sketch that conveys aspects of your identity: what is your ancestry? Ethnic background? Education? Religious or faith tradition? The kind of place you were born and raised: a city, suburb, town, or rural area?

1. Etehad, “‘I Don’t Want You to Get Shooted’.”

2. Government of the Bahamas, “Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

3. Please note that throughout the book I will follow the Apostles’ Creed and capitalize “Church” when referring to the Church universal. I will use “church” to refer to a local church or congregation.

4. Thirty-three countries, and counting, located in the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

5. Matt 5:9.

6. I call this the “Gal 3:28 triad”—more on this in chapter 1.

7. Bauckham, Bible and Mission, 11–12. This group includes missiologists Michael Goheen and Christopher Wright—more on this in chapter 2.

8. Tennent, Invitation to World Missions, 105; Keller, Center Church, 43.

9. Col 1:20.

10. A note about pronouns: throughout the book I refer to God or members of the Godhead using “he” or “his.” I do this primarily for internal consistency with quotations and Scripture. It is not intended to promote androcentrism.

11. Theologians call this the “immanent Trinity.”

12. Theologians call this the “economic Trinity.”

13. History of Bridges, “Structure, Components and Parts of Bridge.”

14. Inazu, Confident Pluralism, 96.