We are a Christian community practicing discipleship as we worship, learn and serve.
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace. - Martin Luther
This Sunday, February 19th, CtK's Adult Forum will continue conversation around our calling to confront racism and celebrate diversity in culture and ethnicity. So far the conversations have been engaging and thought-provoking.
If you're planning to participate, here are a few links which will help you get ready:
Bishop Eaton’s statement on the shooting in Charleston
June 18, 2015
It has been a long season of disquiet in our country. From Ferguson to Baltimore, simmering racial tensions have boiled over into violence. But this … the fatal shooting of nine African Americans in a church is a stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism. The church was desecrated. The people of that congregation were desecrated.
The aspiration voiced in the Pledge of Allegiance that we are “one nation under God” was desecrated.
Mother Emanuel AME’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, as was the Rev. Daniel Simmons, associate pastor at Mother Emanuel. The suspected shooter is a member of an ELCA congregation. All of a sudden and for all of us, this is an intensely personal tragedy. One of our own is alleged to have shot and killed two who adopted us as their own.
We might say that this was an isolated act by a deeply disturbed man. But we know that is not the whole truth. It is not an isolated event. And even if the shooter was unstable, the framework upon which he built his vision of race is not. Racism is a fact in American culture. Denial and avoidance of this fact are deadly. The Rev. Mr. Pinckney leaves a wife and children. The other eight victims leave grieving families. The family of the suspected killer and two congregations are broken. When will this end?
The nine dead in Charleston are not the first innocent victims killed by violence. Our only hope rests in the innocent One, who was violently executed on Good Friday. Emmanuel, God with us, carried our grief and sorrow – the grief and sorrow of Mother Emanuel AME church – and he was wounded for our transgressions – the deadly sin of racism.
I urge all of us to spend a day in repentance and mourning. And then we need to get to work. Each of us and all of us need to examine ourselves, our church and our communities. We need to be honest about the reality of racism within us and around us. We need to talk and we need to listen, but we also need to act. No stereotype or racial slur is justified. Speak out against inequity. Look with newly opened eyes at the many subtle and overt ways that we and our communities see people of color as being of less worth. Above all pray – for insight, for forgiveness, for courage.
Kyrie Eleison.
The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton Presiding Bishop Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
The Friday morning Small Group finished reading and discussing The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone, this past Friday morning. Just a day and a half after the horrific attack on Bible Study participants at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, we wondered together what to do, as white Christians in America, where clearly racism is alive and well. That will be an ongoing conversation, but includes continuing to learn about American history as experienced by people of color, to listen to perspectives different from our own, to speak up against racial slurs and stereotypes when we hear them, to pray, to examine and repent of our own racist thoughts and behaviors, to work for justice and reconciliation...
One of the quotes at the beginning of the book's Conclusion especially struck me:
"Perhaps nothing about the history of mob violence in the United States is more surprising than how quickly an understanding of the full horror of lynching has receded from the nation's collective historical memory." - W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Yes, the shooter on Wednesday night appears to have acted on his own, though he certainly did not live and form his opinions and beliefs in isolation. Yet, the history of lynching in the US is something most of us in the Friday small group didn't know much about. And it's not ancient history. As hard as reading The Cross and the Lynching Tree was, we're all glad we read it. And I think I can safely say each member of the group would encourage you to read it, too.
The group's next book is Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, by Imaculee Ilibagiza. The discussion of the first chapter begins on Friday, July 3rd, at Clark's Fork at 7am. All are welcome!
*This blog may contain photos and language that some will find offensive.
The old hatred is in our midst again.
A news article in the September 29th edition of the Bozeman Daily Chroncile reports that White Supremist groups are once again on the rise here in Montana.
Racist literature is being distributed through out Bozeman. Some pamphlets are being left at the library and at area businesses.
Lies are being told about our current president, fueled by fear and rage over the current economic situtation.
I take offense at the young man featured in the photograph for this blog. The language on his shirt causes my stomach to heave and my face to burn red.
Whatever side you fall on politically (and our political environment is becoming increasingly polarized) this act of "free speech" is really an act of hate speech.
Children learn to hate from their parents, and from the adults around them.
I commend you to make a commitment not to speak words of hate.
In our order for baptism there is a section of the service where we ask baptism candidates or their parents and sponsors these words "Do you renounce the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?"
We hope candidates, parents, and sponsors cry out "We do!"
When someone is attacked, whether its our president Barak Obama, or any other person of color, we all are demeaned, belittled, and made less than fully human.
A wise old Christian taught me when "you speak words of hate you are speaking against what God has created and has made in God's image."
When a Jewish synagogue was vandalized in 1994 in Eugene, OR I stood with 100 of my fellow citizens in solidarity with that community of faith. Collectively, we renounced racial hatred in our midst.
Let us once again, renounce the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises.
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