The Conference
“the thing for white women to do is you have to divest from whiteness.”
I still have visceral memories of the day I first read this quote.
I’m still not sure what made this one different.
What made that then 23 year old not instinctively flinch, roll her eyes, and categorize the statement away with all the other “nonsense, progressive” jargon she had heard up to that point.
Like most significant changes and shifts we experience throughout life, it is hard to pinpoint the exact moments they begin. And while I remain unsure of what subtle moments of change, shift, and disorientation had happened before that April 2, 2019, I am positive that the shift that happened within me upon that day, while reading those words for the very first time, would be one of the most monumental I will experience in this life.
The words came from Ekemini Uwan, who had been interviewed during a Women’s Christian Conference regarding the topic of racial harmony and unity in the church. They were plucked out of a much longer response she had given to a question asking about racial identity, what it means, and why it is important for us as believers to know about it. Her response caused quite the evangelical uproar as several women attending the conference got up and left, while several more took to social media after the fact to share all about their horror and frustration.
It was in the midst of this uproar and aftermath that I— being very much immersed within the world that was white evangelical women’s conferences, blogs, and frustrations— first heard about both the interview and Ekemini.
The Group Chat
So immersed in this world was I at the time, that I also found myself included in a group chat with several other women writers who all wrote for the same Christian digital magazine as me. While I found myself reading over the details of the interview and the much longer and fuller statements made by Ekemini, the uproar of these women began to flood my phone.
The chat has since been deleted, so I am working strictly from memory here, but from what I can recall the statements were all pretty par for the course given the fact that this was a group chat of majority white women. Ekemini’s statements were seen as “racist” and “part of the problem.” There was immediate defense, outrage, and shock. It made my own response of simple pause and curiosity seem that much more out of step.
I timidly entered my thoughts into the chat by sending a screenshot of a tweet (God-forbid I use my own voice…no, far easier to share the voice of another who is more confident than I to say what I am thinking). This tweet came from another black woman, but one who was and still is highly regarded in even the most conservative and evangelical spaces. Once again, I am working from memory on this, but the tweet said something along the lines of:
“I was there. I heard what she said. And all I had to say was, ‘yes and amen'.’”
“Did ya’ll see this?” I shyly captioned the screenshot, hoping it would be enough to get these women on the same painfully low bar as myself of simply pausing and thinking a bit deeper about what was said.
“I think we should be careful idolizing people’s opinions. No one is right all the time” was the disappointing response I got instead.
I respected that tweeting woman’s voice and wisdom in all other regards at the time, it seemed so silly to toss that out the second she said something I didn’t quite understand. It also seemed so silly to be told I was was idolizing her for simply mentioning, “hey, she is someone we all admire and respect and she seems to see something we don’t here. Maybe there’s something to that.”
Truth be told, I think it was the aggressively defensive and angry response to such pitiful and timid disagreement that made me question the whole thing to begin with.
“Something feels off here.”
“I feel like they aren’t even trying to understand the point of what she said.”
“The fullness of what she said doesn’t even seem that crazy. It’s actually pretty interesting.”
Such were the first tiny pellets of empathy that would begin to tap against my heart of apathetic stone. And the cracks that they would create would be all the Spirit of the Lord would need to bust the whole damn thing wide open for good.
George Floyd
The events of The Sparrow Conference and Ekemini’s interview would occur 4 months before our move from San Antonio, TX to Los Angeles, CA. Born and raised southern texans, this was both my husband and I’s first experience being far from the southern evangelical bubble. A church plant we were involved with at the time led us to planting roots in Koreatown, just 5 minutes outside of DTLA. We went from the familiarity of the quiet suburbs to the radical discomfort of inner-city living over night. And the Lord did not waste a single ounce of our sudden unfamiliar surroundings.
May 25th, 2020— just 9 months into our new lives as Californians— a black man was murdered in Minneapolis by a white police offer. The story was anything but novel. And again, it is hard to pinpoint what exactly about this event at this moment in time stirred something different in us. I don’t know if it was the fact the Ekemini had caused me to discover and begin learning from a regretfully small amount of black theologians and leaders by this point. I don’t know if it was the fact that for the first time in our experience, an event such as this occurred while we were far from the expected and repetitious conservative talking points so often used to cover and excuse such a tragedy. I don’t know if it was that one, fateful April day a little over a year prior that had cracked open the tiniest sliver of humility that was necessary to allow an event like this to actually move us. I don’t know if it was a combination of all of the above and so many more unnoticed, unseen promptings and workings of the God of perfect justice (okay, I do and it was). But that following Monday afternoon, when Troy came home from work, I sat on the couch and asked him if he had been following along with the unfolding reactions to George Floyd’s death. He said he had. And we both agreed in that moment, something was seriously off.
The Repentance
Something was off within us. Something had been off for a very long time. Every single time an event like this had happened prior and we ignored it, or felt apathetically toward it, or simply waited for it to be drowned out in the next wave of the news cycle. Something was off that we had yet to truly listen, to actually hear the cries of people’s pain, their anguish, their anger, their wisdom, and their demands for justice and change.
That something off was fully encapsulated in yet another social media post I would come across later that week. It came from a white pastor and the first line he wrote is all I needed to read:
“This is the story of the first time I realized I was racist.”
He went on to explain one of the most mundane and lackluster stories of seeing a black man in public and immediately feeling fear and reacting accordingly to it. It was the first time I saw someone so freely and plainly identify exactly what that moment was. And in his freedom and plainness, I too was invited to step into that recognition. I too was invited into the scanning throughout my life and identifying all the moments I both intentionally and unintentionally, both personally and systemically participated in the harm, oppression, and marginalization of my black brothers and sisters. I too was invited to call each of those moments exactly what they were. And I too was invited to repent of that which I was finally able to name: racism.
I was invited into some of the most honest and uncomfortable conversations I have ever had with the Lord, inviting him to not just continue but to increase whatever this work was within both of our hearts. I was invited into the incredibly intimate and necessary work of asking how and why I was complicit in such sin for so long and what it would look like to move forward in restoring that harm just as intimately.
We prayed, we read books, we devoured podcasts, we followed every black voice we came across during those early weeks to ensure such discomfort and repentance would not end in the initial aftermath of these events. And nearly 4 years later, that discomfort and repentance continues on in ways we never could have anticipated.
The work the Lord did in our hearts during those early days of learning and revelation have led to more change, more discomfort, more surrender, and more repentance than we ever could have thought possible. And it has all led to more joy, more grace, more mercy, more empathy, and more wholeness than we ever could have experienced in the perspectives we were living with prior.
I would say we still have so far to go, but that’s the thing with repentance. It is far less about some far off trajectory you are trying to get to and far more about a completely different way of living that now becomes the only norm you know.
The New Normal
Our awareness broadened, our language expanded, our concerns reoriented— never before did I have such a clear understanding of what it meant to “turn away” from sin. It meant to turn toward a whole other direction, a whole other way of life, a whole other future one’s old self would have never imagined nor probably would have ever wanted.
Our heros changed, our mentors went silent, our relationships with family shifted — in the following 4 years I would lose a job, lose friendships, lose a theology, and lose long-held to dreams as this new direction we headed toward would not allow for the remnants of old ways to follow.
And while the turning away, the leaving behind, did and probably always will hold a grief, a pain, a loss, and some scars, such suffering has truly proved itself to be incomparable to the joy and the glory that has stood before us in the turning toward.
In the last 4 years we have turned toward greater love, deeper empathy, better boundaries, fuller joy, healthier relationships, and a far more holistic understanding of our God. I have gotten to re-discover a long forgotten heritage and learn from people that look, sound, and worship like my Tita did. I have gotten to finally discover God’s preferential care for the marginalized and learn from image bearers that look, sound, and worship nothing like me.
The last 4 years have been a constant, difficult, beautiful, and necessary reckoning that I pray isn’t ever over. Because it has been 4 years of getting that much closer to, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Change Happens
I have had this post in my drafts for 2 months now. It was not originally intended to be shared in honor of George Floyd’s death. I thought maybe I would share it come the height of election mayhem. In truth, I didn’t give much thought to when or why I would share this post, because initially it was written for myself. It was written to remind me that I am my own constant evidence that people can change. That hearts can change. That there are no shitty people, just really shitty beliefs.
It was written to remind me of just how slow and small and subtle those changes were in me. That this change didn’t happen overnight. This change was the result of many, many people’s faithfulness, burdensome and costly education, and even unnecessary and horrific sacrifices of life. This change should have happened sooner, and also, it is a miracle it happened at all. This change is a work of God and all the proof I need that he can and will do it again, and again, and again.
This was written to remind me, more than anyone, that change happens and I am living proof.
Would it continue to happen for me, for you, for those we love, for those we feel like we've lost, again, and again, and again.