I’ve recently moved to Chapel Hill, NC. The same night that I interviewed for a youth pastor job at a 175 year old church on UNC campus, one block over, the community was gathering to protest “Silent Sam.” My interview ended before the protest began, but there was an eerie calm before the storm, police officers bracing themselves, news helicopters flying overhead, a Confederate statue staring blankly into the empty street. The protestors prevailed that night, and the statue was knocked off its pedestal. By then I was back home in Raleigh, blissfully unaware of the commotion I had barely missed, unaware of what the event meant for so many people.
I’ve now been working a full month on Franklin Street at University United Methodist Church, one block away from the empty pedestal of Silent Sam. Last night, I learned that the UNC Board of Trustees are planning to build a $5 million museum on campus to put the statue back up and protect it. Five. Million. Dollars. Hundreds of students and community members crowded the streets outside my new church to protest this decision.
From the outside, I get that this issue seems small. Silent Sam is not actively enslaving non-white people. So why bother protesting? Don’t these Confederate statues commemorate fallen heroes? Aren’t we honoring our dead countrymen? What difference does a statue make in the grand scheme of things, anyway? If it should come down, shouldn’t we work to make laws that take it down rather than breaking the law and vandalizing property? Shouldn’t we show with our dollars and our votes that change must come?
The problem is that it seems like the people with the dollars and the votes are the ones who want to keep Sam up. I’ve only lived in this town for about two months and I can already taste the longing for nostalgia, for preserving everything the way it’s always been, for remembering a golden past, no matter how revised or fictitious it was. The problem is that Sam doesn’t just represent a glamorized re-writing of the Confederate War (it was about protecting states’ rights!…to own and brutalize non-whites), Sam is respected by an entire demographic of people who are blissfully unaware that the policies they maintain to protect their privilege continue to gerrymander justice. I wonder if the $5 million museum to protect Silent Sam will be filled with the pictures of lynchings and murders he inspired over the years, images of mass incarceration, printed documents of legislation that smother voters rights in North Carolina.
Educate yourself on Confederate Statues that were built during Jim Crow America.
Then do something about it. I draw a weekly comic featuring historical figures because they were people just like you and me. The last letter John Wesley wrote before he died was to the young William Wilberforce, a parliamentarian whose life’s work was to abolish slavery in the British colonies. Wesley had recently read the life’s work of Gustavus Vassa, (the European name given to Olaudah Equiano), an African sold into slavery in Barbados and later freed. Wesley was moved by Vassa’s outcry that the word of a black man stood for nothing against the testimony of a white man.
In his old age, Wesley had become an abolitionist, writing one of the more influential tracts of his time, Against Slavery. His final letter commends Wilberforce’s work, and compares Wilberforce to St. Athanasius, a church father who stood for the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus Christ, at a time when popular Christianity insisted differently. What was at stake in the incarnation of God in Christ was the transformative belief that spirit AND flesh matter.
Popular Christianity always has a way of separating spirit and flesh, of emphasizing the soul’s salvation but dehumanizing the whole person. The faithful who cry out for justice for both soul AND body always seem so alone. But they stand with Mother Mary as she sings her Magnificat…where God’s mercy is shown to all even as God scatters the proud and gives food to the hungry while sending the rich away empty. What mercy is there is sending the rich away empty?
One of Wesley’s late-in-life sermons, Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity, (1789), proposed that it is exactly the wealth and luxury of so many Christians that prevents us from the humility that tends to seek justice for all. Rich Christians concerned with the salvation of souls but not with the well-being of the whole person are blinded to our own sin, our own “luxury and lust of gain” as Vassa puts it. We will sing Mary’s Magnificat in our beautiful buildings this coming Sunday, and then go out to lunch with friends, too busy to concern ourselves with the hard work of defending the lowly we just sang about.
For all of you who feel alone in the hard work of incarnational Christianity, remember Wilberforce. His diligent efforts surrounded by the support of so many others led to the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1833, three days before he died. Find which of your politicians are fighting to make incarnational change, and write them a letter of support today. Even if your voice isn’t the one that breaks the systems of oppression, your voice among many could be the one that sets off a chain of events that topples idols and scatters the proud. Whether you share my faith or not, this is a season where we all recognize that the darker and shorter the days get, the brighter our lights shine when we hold them alongside each other.
This link is an Advent playlist I’ve asked Charles Wesley to put together for you (it’s what he was doing on his iPad in the comic). It’s full of sacred and secular songs focused on longing for more. There are some beautiful lyrics in here that I love to listen to each year as I prepare the way in my heart to accept once again that I was, I am, I always will be accepted by the love of Christ. So if you’re looking for something different than the regular Christmas tunes, please follow Charles Wesley’s Songs for Advent!
One last plug: now’s the time to order your Wesley Bros Comics Year C Liturgical Calendar! I’ll be shipping calendars every day this week. Click here to look through the Etsy store. Have a blessed Advent, my brothers and sisters!