About a week ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with words—lots of words—strung together in paragraph form. Now, this is a far cry from my typical writing process. My writing process tends to resemble the subject of Rilke’s poem about the swan, whose ungainly and painstaking descent down a bank into water precedes its effortless swim. That is, my writing process is awkward, slow, and weirdly unattractive, before it produces anything lovely. And yet, for some reason, a lightning bolt of inspiration paid me a visit at 3am, and I decided to pay attention. This inaugural blog post is the result of me being rattled to my senses in the middle of the night with words that insisted themselves upon me. And with this post, I hope more will follow.
Two thoughts have been spiraling in my mind for the last week. The first concerns apocalypses, and the second concerns the way in which many white Christians have begun to pay attention to racism in recent weeks. I suspect that the two are deeply related.
In conversations with friends and family, I keep referring to the present moment as an apocalypse—in part, because the apocalyptic frame helps me to interpret the present moment, but also because, honestly, I want this to be an apocalypse.
When I say that we are experiencing an apocalypse, I do not mean that we are experiencing the big ol’ end-of-days, as though now is the end of everything. I would certainly affirm that, in some sense, finitude is the ontological condition of all created things. That is, everything will pass away. But when I speak of a current apocalypse, I am not speaking about that ending.
Instead, I am referring to the distinct moments in human society in which we undergo an extraordinary, panoramic unveiling. The word 'apocalypse’ does mean revelation, after all. Collectively, we are experiencing the unveiling of the convoluted matrices of oppression and injustice which make up the foundation and the scaffolding of our society.
And while I am not speaking of the “end of all things,” apocalypses in their unveiling of injustice and corruption do signal the unraveling of certain things—the unraveling of regimes, of terrors, of abuses. Apocalypses signal a contending with the powers and principalities of this world which undermine the flourishing of creation. And though the apocalypse itself seems to be characterized by more chaos than we can really withstand, there remains a hopeful invitation: that if we would dare to look at the things being revealed, we could begin to envision and create a just and right future. I think about the author of the book of Revelation, who beseeched the churches to pay attention in the midst of political and societal turmoil. Pay attention, and listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. Keep your eyes wide open, because the risk of looking away would be positively catastrophic.
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These thoughts on apocalypse bring me to wonder about the recent new awakenings among many white Christians, who with newfound voices are entering into public discourse to address racism for the first time.
The process of waking up to, recognizing, learning, and articulating the dynamics of racism for white people is always a clumsy process. I realize clumsy is a very charitable word in this context. Bursting into the fray with newfound awareness of racism can also inflict pain on our neighbors, and is usually marked by horrifically insufficient self-awareness.
I know this all firsthand, as I am a sojourning white person who desires to work for justice in the most effective ways that I can. My journey toward that goal has always been marked by clumsiness, by insufficient self-awareness, and by a procession of painful and all-too-late a-ha moments.
But even so, I have been committed to this journey for a while now, and I have been surprised to see a great number of white Christians (many of whom decidedly stood in opposition to Black Lives Matter in the past) suddenly come forward, desiring to do right by their black neighbors.
The question, “Why now?” has been keeping me up at night. Why now, and not on the occasion of countless other murders of black people at the hands of white folk? Why now, and not upon every interaction they ever had with a beloved, created-by-God black person? Why now, and not while attending schools named after Confederate generals, or while driving on roads named for racial segregation? Why now, and not while listening to parents, grandparents, cousins, siblings, elected officials, and presidents openly deride black people? Why now, and not while sitting cloistered in church pews, marked unsettling so by exclusively white bodies?
Despite the fact that a great many freedom fighters, poets, preachers, musicians, artists, and novelists have been putting the truth before us for centuries (perhaps we could call them faithful harbingers of the apocalypse?), we have not been paying proper attention. So why now?
I think for many white Christians in America the answer, in part, is an ecclesiological one. That is, something recently shifted in the way many white Christians in America think about church and society, and that shift has positioned many white Christians to see things they never saw before. We’ve experienced an unveiling, if you will. Obviously there are countless contributing factors to why eyes are being opened now, but I suspect that for Christians, ecclesiology is a significant factor.
Several months ago, when churches still gathered in buildings, a great number of American churches conducted religious life in distinct spaces designated for worship. Our ecclesiologies were largely animated by a deep sense that the church is different from the world, separate from the world, distinct from the world. Many thought of the church as a community that seeks to rise above the world and its problems. Many Christians understood their identity in terms of a culture clash—the church against the world. And while most Christians said that the church exists for the sake of the world, they often failed to imagine that the church exists for the sake of the world in its solidarity with the world.[1]
That is, up until a couple of months ago.
A couple of months ago, nearly all American churches left the walls of their designated worship spaces and underwent a radical and immediate ecclesiological shift. It turned out that Christians could be church in a great number of ways, in a great number of places. Church entered ordinary spaces. The world that we imagined to be separate from church was suddenly filled with church. Christians, as it turned out, were not so separate from the world. Something about struggling to survive a pandemic next to our neighbors reminded us of our fundamental humanity, which we share with all other earthlings. We were reoriented to our earthiness; we remembered that we are dust. Christians are susceptible to pandemics, too. And it turns out, Christian teachings on compassion, love for neighbor, hope, and generosity found 1000% more applicability in the grocery store aisles than they did in church pews. We learned that to be Christian is to be mindful of our neighbors, to be mindful of bodies, to be mindful of breath.
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Just when we had all begun to pay careful attention to the breath of our neighbors, we heard the distinct cries of George Floyd say, “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s plea joined a chorus of other black voices who have cried out for justice, for air, for America to lift its knee from the necks of black folk.
And White Christians were finally in a position to hear those cries. Yes, too late. Yes, clumsily. Yes, lacking self-awareness. And yet, finally, the breath expelled from George Floyd, like the very Spirit of God, transgressed our boundaries and our blockades and rang in our ears.
Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Listen for the breath.
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Apocalypses bring about a revelation that overwhelmingly exceeds our ability to comprehend. This apocalypse has been propelled by video footage, by unrelenting crowds, by black men and women who have been putting these truths before us for centuries. I don’t know all the reasons why it has taken so long for some people to see the truth, but I can’t help but think there is something significant about this very moment. We are on a learning curve here. But we must continue to pay attention. Those who are experiencing big revelations about yourselves and about our society, keep going. Keep listening. Keep looking. Stay awake. And if you find yourself growing weary, look ahead to the coming day when all creatures will be free to flourish and thrive, and when those who seek to destroy creation will be defeated. Commit to the present storm, so that you will be ready for what comes next.
Apocalypses can signal an ending, if we will listen. I am hopeful that this particular apocalypse could herald the end of white supremacy, the end of racist regimes, the end of the stranglehold of capitalism on social progress, the end of Christian disengagement from the work of racial justice, the end of partisan values balanced upon commodified bodies. But the apocalypse, itself, cannot carry the freight of so much change. The apocalypse is merely our invitation to get to work.
[1]For more on this idea, I strongly recommend Amy Plantinga Pauw’s Church in Ordinary Time: A Wisdom Ecclesiology.
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