Editor’s Note: Our publishing house follows Associated Press style, which changed in June 2020 to capitalize the word Black “when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context.” Similarly, writers may capitalize White when reporting on racial issues. Our writers and editors are in the process of adapting to this change. Cannon’s book was published weeks before this change, so our quote from her book lower-cases black.

.

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Just as Marie Kondo has built an international following for her advice on organizing your home—Mae Elise Cannon has become a leading Christian expert on sorting out the often-confusing impulses of your heart.

She can be described as an author, preacher, scholar and social justice advocate. But among that crowded field of voices in 2020—what makes her work distinctive?

Mae Elise Cannon is a Christian ethical organizer.

We know what we’re talking about in this field, because we publish the leading Christian ethicist, Dr. David Gushee, whose influential book Changing Our Mind is featured in the section of Cannon’s new book devoted to sorting out issues on “Marriage and Sexuality.”

Her encyclopedic new handbook is titled Beyond Hashtag Activism: Comprehensive Justice in a Complicated Age and covers lots of topics in front-page news, including the Black Lives Matter movement, the #MeToo movement and the rights of LGBTQ people. Over the decades, Cannon has made this kind of broad-spectrum handbook her trademark niche. We first introduced her work to our ReadTheSpirit readers in a 2009 cover story marking the publication of her book, Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World.

New Teachers Are Emerging Now

If you haven’t been keeping up with Cannon’s work over the past decade, then let us also highly recommend her 2019 book, Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice.

That book introduces readers to more than a dozen leading evangelical thinkers, including women and people of color from around the world. Why is this 2019 book so valuable? Because the men and women profiled in that book are emerging as key Christian voices in the global conversation about social justice—yet they have not yet reached the status of full Wikipedia profiles. Cannon is bringing us the stories of these important men and women before our other online databases like Wikipedia have caught up with the news.

A 21st-Century Erasmus

Another way to understand Cannon’s work is that—through her writing and speaking—she acts as a kind of journalist charting and describing the shape of Christian involvement in these life-and-death global issues.

Among Christian writers, she is emerging as an Erasmus of the 21st Century. Half a millennium ago, in the 16th century, Erasmus defined the role of “Christian humanism” as his writings charted and described the shape of the Christian Reformation sweeping Europe. Even today, no one can fully understand the turbulent changes wrought by the Reformation without reading Erasmus. Right now, reading Cannon’s 2019 and 2020 books, you—and your small group or congregation—will understand a whole lot more about evangelical Christian movements for social justice that are unfolding all around us.

If you think this is merely a bit of historical trivia—think again!

Voices nationwide are calling especially on evangelical Christians—Cannon’s prime audience over the years—to stop and reassess the movement’s support of Donald Trump four years into his presidency. In the July 10 issue of The Atlantic, another Christian ethicist—Duke University’s Peter Wehner—writes a lengthy appeal to evangelicals to rethink their moral and ethical values in light of Trump’s record.

It’s time to end this “Faustian bargain,” Wehner writes, adding: “My hunch is that at the beginning of this Faustian bargain, most evangelicals didn’t imagine it would come to this, with them defending the indefensible, tarnishing their reputations, and doing incalculable damage to their causes.”

This is the same historic moment for evangelical Christians that Cannon is addressing in her new book. Her new book could not be more timely.

Humbly Admitting …

“I am writing these books because the first thing we need to do is humbly admit, as Christians, that we don’t know all the answers. So, we need to understand what is happening in the world today,” Cannon said in our interview about her new book.

She covers many major topics in her new book, but “on racism, my constant message is that all of us need to buy and read more books by people of color, so I understand that it may seem odd to ask people to read about race in my book, written by a privileged White woman. The argument I make is that we all need to start, at least, by understanding the evidence around us. So—at the same time I am telling people to read and listen to authors of color—I can also make sure that my readers are getting the essential evidence on racial injustice they need to consider in my book, as well.”

That practical approach to writing and teaching is precisely what you’ll find in these pages.

“You won’t find me being soft or compromising on the truth as I see it,” Cannon said. “I was raised Irish Catholic so I have that fire in my blood as I spread this message that our personal transformational journey as Christians is also something that our communities need to go through together as communities.”

Sometimes she has been accused of being too tough, including a couple of incidents she describes in the book. In one case, a White man stood up in the middle of one of her sermons and accused her of spreading lies. She managed to continue, anyway.

“Sure, I get beat up all the time for what I’m talking about, but that’s part of this work,” Cannon says. “I just keep going.”

What’s in the Book?

Here’s how the book is structured. There are five major sections:

• Biblical Justice and the Gospel
• Poverty
• Race
• Gender
• Twenty-First-Century Divides

Then, each section is further divided into chapters. For example, Race is divided into four chapters:

• White Supremacy and American Christianity
• Racial Violence, Police Brutality and the Age of Incarceration
• Global Immigration and Battles at the Border
• Divisions of Race and Ethnicity around the World

In these four chapters on Race, Cannon draws on her own global experience, the wisdom of scholars who are people of color, her personal interactions with African-American mentors and colleagues—all supported by a host of factual data that builds her case.

She describes for readers the key elements we need to understand to make sense of this complex campaign that is operating on many fronts. She begins by clearly explaining that White Americans have the main responsibility to make changes, because White Americans are the primary perpetuators of racism, white privilege and white supremacy. In other words: The people who created this mess now must play the major role in cleaning it up.

This isn’t a call to simply hold hands and sing together. This is an indictment that strikes at the roots of White communities.

On page 80, Cannon writes: “Racism in 21st-century America is a reality. Acknowledging racism means understanding that white people hold social and institutional power over people of color. The growing face of white supremacy, which seems to have resurfaced in the public square after being less acknowledged for decades, must be identified and rooted out.”

She makes crystal clear to her readers, most of whom will be white Christians, that they still hold the major levers of power and the Black Lives Matter movement is going to require some major—and sometimes painful—changes in White privilege.

The point of this example from the Race section is: In a few weeks of small-group discussion in your congregation—you can have a crash course on the major issues at the center of the current movements for justice.

To help further, Cannon interweaves questions for discussion making it easy for group leaders to spark conversation.

The Greatest Danger is Isolation

Why is there so much emphasis in this book on talking with family, friends and members of your small groups within your congregation?

“The greatest danger right now is isolation, separation,” Cannon said in our interview.

In the Race section, she writes: “For the church to be able to truly advocate on behalf of justice, white privilege must be recognized and understood.” Then, a bit later: “All of us are socialized into a system of racism.” And finally the crucial point about the danger of isolation: “White people, in large part, are isolated from racial stress and can choose to withdraw or ignore the realities of racism if we want to.”

Think of this book as a stepping stone, providing enough information and questions to help men and women sort out their moral and spiritual callings. It’s a short course in Christian ethical organization. Cannon keeps asking readers: Which of the many issues described in this book are closest to our hearts today? Which should we address first? What are the facts? How can we take action?

“Through this information, I’m trying to break down isolation,” Cannon said. “We will never respond to injustice if we’re not in proximity to it. And because of our privileges and luxuries, it’s easier than ever to remain separated from the realities of the world. When people finish reading this book, I want readers to think: Hmmm, now I realize that how I vote just might affect the the life of a 6-year-old girl living in a village in Asia!

“Unless we begin to learn about these issues in the world, we may never even know that little girl’s country even exists on our planet!”

Most importantly, Cannon believes that we all can find purpose—and hope—in our world today. “That really is the question I want readers to consider: How can we find hope in our world today? How can we live with hope and purpose in this age of so much pain and suffering?

“My role as a writer is helping people to find clarity of vision in the fog of fear.”

.

Care to Learn More?

VISIT CANNON’S OWN WEBSITE: www.maecannon.com Among the resources she provides is her growing list of podcasts.

By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Contributing Columnist

“People can change. People can change.”

These are words from John Lewis, legendary civil rights leader, speaker at the Lincoln Memorial Freedom March with Martin Luther King, Jr. and an organizer of the March 7, 1965, Selma March that changed hearts—and laws—as America took another step toward liberty and justice for all.

The skull of that Black American was fractured that day—and those scars remain. He also had been beaten earlier, in 1961, at a bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

The reason Lewis was repeating the mantra of “people can change” was not just because Americans changed enough in 1965 to pass major Civil Rights legislation, including a changed President Lyndon Johnson. No, this was a personal healing he was incanting.

Half a century after his bloody baseball-bat beating in the bus station—to which he had only his non-violent response—an old man walked into Congressman Lewis’s office in Washington, D.C., with his middle-aged son and said, “Mr. Lewis, my name is Elwin Wilson. I’m one of the men who beat you in that bus station back in 1961. I want to atone for the terrible thing I did, so I’ve come to seek your forgiveness. Will you forgive me?”

Lewis did. They embraced, the son embraced, they wept, and then they talked.

People can change.

To understand the healing of America that is ahead for us all, these stories, Selma and Rock Hill, are retold by Parker Palmer in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy. This is the personal and the political healing that is possible.

Following the cataclysm of the Covid-19 virus pandemic the first place of healing is personal not political. What we can see in the heart of John Lewis and in his attacker is that cynical contempt does not have to win. Blame wins no game.

A nation of high promises, like America, is a country that will break your heart. That’s one of the central themes of our other cover story this week—about Abraham Lincoln and James Baldwin.

A broken heart must endure grief. Great grief has come to America in this pandemic. Grief follows suffering and grief can teach the spiritual purpose of suffering: to open the heart to self-sacrifice, relationship, community and to the Other.

When Elwin Wilson died in 2013, the story of his reconnection with Lewis was shared once again via The New York Times and other news media.

But the most moving words came from Lewis himself, who marked Wilson’s passing with this epilogue:

I am very sorry to learn of Elwin Wilson’s passing. It is my prayer that he will rest in peace since he made amends to many of those he had injured. He told me he wanted to be right when he met his Maker, and I believe Elwin Wilson accomplished what he set out to do.

We can all learn a valuable lesson from the life of this one man. He demonstrates to all of us that we fall down, but we can get up. We all make blunders, but we can get on the right road toward building a greater sense of community.

Elwin Wilson experienced what Martin Luther King Jr. told all of us that “hate is too heavy a burden to bear.” He demonstrated the power of love and the effectiveness of non-violent direct action not only to fix legislative injustice but to mend the wounded souls in our society, the soul of the victim as well as the perpetrator. Elwin Wilson shows us that people can change; and when they put down the mechanisms of division and separation to pick up the tools of reconciliation, they can help build a greater sense of community in our society, even between the most unlikely people. Elwin Wilson proves that we are all one people, one family, the human family—and what affects one of us affect us all.

I will never forget Elwin Wilson. I speak about our meeting often. In fact, just this morning I mentioned him to 147 students from California, New York and Ohio. And I spoke about him earlier this month on the pilgrimage to Alabama. Because this one man had the courage to seek the power of forgiveness, he stepped off the sidelines and into the pages of American history forever.

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Today, a growing number of Americans agree that the so-called Emancipation Memorial in Washington D.C.—and its duplicate in Boston—need to come down. City officials in Boston already have removed their copy. The fate of the D.C. original has not been determined.

Why such a strong consensus? Because—as Lincoln scholar Duncan Newcomer writes this week—almost certainly, Lincoln himself would never have wanted that image as his legacy. Lincoln did not want anyone kneeling before him—and said so!

Then, how did this become such an icon? As Duncan points out, statues are external expressions of artists’ perspectives on historic figures and events. In most cases they are erected after a hero has died and are not—by their very nature—an expression of that person’s inner soul. They are biographical, not autobiographical. And among biographies, most memorial statues would fit in the genre “hagiography,” stories of saints by those who adore them that are infamous for their inaccuracies.

.

What Was Frederick Douglass’s Perspective?

In recent arguments for the removal of Thomas Ball’s original sculpture in Washington D.C. and its duplicates, many commentators quote a couple of lines from Frederick Douglass’s dedication of the memorial in 1876. Douglass’s lengthy oration has been preserved online by the Smithsonian and it is well worth reading in its entirety, because Douglass eloquently indicts Lincoln for moving toward emancipation mainly as a last-ditch weapon in his effort to defeat the South.

Douglass makes crystal clear in that 1876 oration that Lincoln was a “white man” living with the biases that were so common among white Americans.

What most commentators fail to add is that Douglass stressed Lincoln’s biases—in order to express how amazing it was that Lincoln, despite those prejudices, nevertheless made the astonishing decision to end the institution of slavery.

As his oration built toward is challenge to continue what Lincoln had begun, Douglass called on White Americans to lift up Lincoln’s model to future generations. White Americans should embrace both their identity as Lincoln’s “children” and the new role of Black Americans as Lincoln’s “step-children.” Speaking for Black Americans to White Americans, he declared: “We would exhort you to build high his monuments.”

Whatever Lincoln’s complex rationale was for ending slavery, the fact is that history was transformed at that moment—and White Americans must find the courage to continue down the path Lincoln had opened, Douglass argued. Reading the entire text of Douglass’s oration that day, it is obvious that he had little praise for the actual statue. Douglass’s oration was, at best, a pragmatic endorsement of the image as a small step White Americans were taking to move further along the path Lincoln had opened for the nation.

Today, there is no question: The Thomas Bell monument was a tragically conceived image of a powerful White figure dominating a groveling Black figure. Black Americans objected to its depiction even in 1876.

That is why Boston removed its copy of the memorial. Meanwhile, so many other monuments are falling in the wake of George Floyd’s killing that Wikipedia has a huge page devoted to listing them all, including the June 30 removal in Boston.

(The other Lincoln-related removal on the Wikipedia list is a stained glass window in the Cathedral of the Rockies, which will be removed because it shows Robert E. Lee standing with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The leadership of this United Methodist congregation that calls itself “Cathedral of the Rockies” had been discussing the window’s removal since 2015—and finally decided to take it down after Floyd’s death.)

William Edouard Scott Reverses Ball’s Image of Dominant Lincoln

A dramatic contrast to Ball’s image of a dominant Lincoln was a ground-breaking mural by Black artist William Edouard Scott (1884-1964). Scott graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was committed to developing positive images of Black Americans—especially in his depictions of Frederick Douglass.

In 1943, Scott was selected as the only Black artist chosen to create a mural for the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, D.C. He named the mural: “Douglass Appealing to President Lincoln.”

Frederick Douglass met Lincoln face to face three times. Scott’s mural depicts his first appeal to Lincoln in 1862 to combat discrimination in the Union army against black soldiers. The main effort to recruit black regiments began only after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in January 1863. No photographs were taken during that meeting.

African-American art scholar and curator Edmund B. Gaither, devoted part of a book about four Black artists to this particular Scott mural, writing: “Scott, in his manner of depicting the exchange between Lincoln and Douglass, suggests that the fiery orator is here the aggressive speaker. Whereas Douglass, hands extended slightly, shifts his weight forward while speaking to Lincoln, the president appears to avoid looking into Douglass’s eyes and concentrates on listening to his words.”

Furthermore, the strewn and scattered papers on the desk and around the trashcan suggest urgency and desperation—and this was certainly the case. “The Civil War was proving much more difficult than the Union leadership had expected.” And while Douglass presents a possible solution to the president, it is far from ideal in Lincoln’s eyes. Many whites of this time didn’t believe that African Americans could be effective soldiers. Regardless, Douglass is undeniably the active part of this depiction. This portrayal furthers the message inherent in the subject matter: African Americans could be equally as patriotic, and thus equally effective as soldiers, as any whites.

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

The dramatic wave of support for the Black Lives Matter campaign shows an astonishing change in American awareness of systemic racism. Nearly 6 percent of Americans now are saying that they have taken part in protests in recent weeks. That’s 18 million protesters, based on Pew Research—half of whom are white. There is overwhelming support for justice right now. Pew says 67 percent of all Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement. That’s up from 43 percent who supported the movement after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014.

So—now is the time to channel that tidal wave toward change, says the Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil. Now is the time—as her new book urges—that all of us should be Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now. (That Amazon link takes you to the pre-order page. You’ll get your copy when the book is released in August, just in time for autumn reading and small-group discussion.)

McNeil is nationally respected for her many years of work in this field. She directs the Reconciliation Studies program in the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University, preparing students to engage the culture around them as Christian reconcilers. You can visit her website to learn much more about her ongoing work. Or, visit her Amazon author page to see all of her books at a glance.

This new book, Becoming Brave, is a call to action for people in congregations who want to get more involved in the work of changing America. At various points in the new book: McNeil talks to us as a teacher; sometimes she preaches a little bit; occasionally she tells compelling stories of real people she has encountered—and her entire narrative is interwoven with the life of Esther. Esther is the courageous queen in the Bible who risked her life to protect people targeted with genocide under the reign of a Persian king.

The book is perfectly designed for small group participants in congregations—many of whom like to have a biblical basis for their discussion. There are millions of these small groups in congregations, some of them called “Sunday School” or “Bible study” or “men’s group” or “women’s group.” McNeil’s teaching style, interwoven with the story of Esther, can fit into any of those formats.

Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil’s Call to Action

McNeil outlines her call to action right away in the book: “Now more than ever, … we must speak up and out about injustice and must go about the work of dismantling the structures of this injustice and combating the harmful, even deadly result of this country’s unchecked legacy of systemic inequality and discrimination. The church must talk about justice. I must talk abut injustice. The time is now.”

NOTE to those readers considering a group discussion: Many major figures in the Hebrew Bible also appear in the Quran. Although Esther is not one of those figures included in the Quran—Islamic tradition does have many examples of heroic women. This mean’s McNeil’s book could be used to spark interfaith conversations, because the core values she describes run through all of the world’s major religions.

“I think there is real potential for interfaith conversation here,” McNeil said in our interview about her work. “I remember attending my first Purim, which is the annual Jewish celebration of Esther. It was really, really wonderful and I would encourage other people to experience this with Jewish friends.”

In 2020, Purim already passed in March—but it comes around again in February 2021, which makes this summer a great time to get McNeil’s books and plan a discussion series in your own congregation. Then, equipped with all of the background about Esther in McNeil’s book, you can plan ahead for an interfaith gathering during the 2021 Purim to celebrate how God’s people can triumph over deadly oppression.

Pairing This Book with the ‘Roadmap’

But, wait, there’s so much more!

McNeil’s second new book, this summer, is: Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0—Moving Communities to Unity, Wholeness and Justice.

(ANOTHER NOTE: If you’re planning to order Roadmap, don’t confuse it in bookstore listings with a 2015 book that has nearly the same title. This 2020 book, called “2.0,” builds on that earlier book in which McNeil first described the structures of reconciliation.)

“Here’s how I would describe this new 2.0 edition of my book to readers: There’s a whole lot more in this new expanded-and-revised edition—a lot more that I realized I needed to share with readers in the five years since that first book came out. So, yes, make sure you’re pointing people to the new 2.0 version,” McNeil said in our interview.

Read together—either individually or in a small group—the two books function like a toolbox for building a community response (the “toolbox” is the Roadmap to Reconciliation)—and then (in Becoming Brave) we get an invitation to summon our collective courage and actually set off on that road.

‘Transformation Animated by God’

“What I’m trying to encourage is transformation animated by God,” McNeil said. “What I realized, some years ago, is that too many Christians talk about reconciliation in theory but, in truth, they have no clear definition of what reconciliation actually is.”

In Becoming Brave, McNeil writes a lot about this crucial distinction in her work. Mid-way through her book, she writes: “The relational, diversity-oriented approach to reconciliation has grown stale and was not leading to real, lasting change. … This message of reconciliation is not able to produce real social change, because it is too rooted in a narrative about coming together across our various differences. That message was more palatable to white Christians because it did not focus on or demand justice from them. Instead, it implied that white Christians and Christians of color have parallel work to do in order to repair racial brokenness. … This approach does not take seriously the realities, both historic and current, that produced and continue to uphold divisiveness, nor does it acknowledge the specific work that different groups must do to repair the divide.”

So, what does that divide—that deep injustice—look like? McNeil explores the process of repairing the divide in more detail in the Roadmap book, however, she also describes it very pointed passages of Becoming Brave.

‘An Insidious and Growing Evil’

Halfway through Becoming Brave, for example, she writes: “There is an insidious and growing evil at work among us that continues to commodify and dehumanize human beings based on a racial hierarchy. This is rooted in a philosophical belief that certain people are higher on the ‘great chain of being’ than others and that justifies mistreating people deemed ‘lower’ as less than human.”

Stop a moment and read those lines again, please. McNeil’s words may seem obvious to many readers, but what she is summarizing in this passage is a deep realization that is harder to accept than most of us realize. For further reading on this same point, get a copy of Ta Nehesi-Coates’s National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me. If your congregation is building widespread awareness of the work that lies ahead of us—having a member of your discussion group read Coates’ book along with McNeil’s books will add a powerful perspective.

Here is one passage in Becoming Brave in which McNeil tries to describe the shape of this evil. She writes: “That’s why a white man can have a gun in his hands and be arrested without being shot or killed, but a Black child holding a toy gun is killed by the police within two seconds of their arrival, before he even has a chance to speak. This type of racialized injustice is woven throughout every aspect of our human society, and I feel compelled (like Esther in her day) to come ‘out of the palace’ and speak out against it. If I and others do not call people to tell the truth about what’s happening, we will replicate this type of racial evil from one generation to the next. If we refuse to face the truth about our racialized society, we will find new ways to repackage it and will never heal the pervasive racial and social injustice in our land.”

‘Rocking the Boat’

In our interview, McNeil said that she is surprising herself with the blunt honesty she is speaking and writing these days. “For years, I was known as the ‘nice person’ who came to speak and teach about how reconciliation is possible. Some of my friends have actually challenged me and said that, at times, I sounded like someone who wasn’t going to rock the boat very much.

“Well, with Becoming Brave, I’m saying very clearly that—like the choices Esther had to make—this work is going to require courage. This is not a feel-good lovefest where we all come together around a table of brotherhood and sisterhood to make friends. To actually come to reconciliation is scary. Esther knew that. Esther’s knees were knocking. Her teeth were chattering. But, Esther shows us: We must dare to speak truth to power.”

As we spoke, McNeil paused and then added, “I do hope that people reading this realize that I am not setting out to hurt people. But right now there is hard work we must do. Right now we’ve literally seen a man killed on television with someone kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes until he was dead!

“That’s why we now have these millions of good-hearted people of faith who want to do something—like this Pew data you’re describing. That’s activation. What I’m saying in these books is that activation and short-term reactivity does not lead to the deeper systemic change we need.

“What gives me hope, now, is that people are hungry. People do want to do something. In these books, I’m trying to give them clarity about what those next steps can look like.

“I keep repeating this: What we need is an ongoing spiritual process that involves forgivess, repentance and justice that transforms broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish.”

.

.