Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Conversation Pieces with the Bishop: Part 1

I have managed to procure permission to bring forth parts of my conversation with Bishop Mike Rinehart.  I have told him to monitor what I write to make sure I am being faithful to the conversation and to his part in it, so if you see a response from him, please read it over.  I have found that as I age and increase the number of children in my household (not to mention the number of members in my congregation) my IQ has dropped.  Memory becomes fuzzy, and it's not because of the type of beverages I might or might not consume from time to time. :-)

First off: the reason for our meeting.

Mike has been a huge proponent of all clergy in the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod filling out their annual parochial reports and sending them to the synod (and consequently ELCA) offices.  Mike wants them because he makes important decisions based upon the data he receives.  I have not filed a report in six years.  I have, however, filled them out, and they are kept here at St. John to be turned in at a later date.  That date will be determined when the ELCA ceases a practice I find detestable--more on that below.

Mike sent me an email and asked me how things were going since I hadn't turned in my reports.  I thought of responding to him by email, but decided a face to face meeting would be more productive.  Further, I'm becoming more and more skeptical of technology's ability to keep us connected.  In my evolving opinion, true connection can only take place in face to face meetings.  Therefore, I asked if Mike would allow me to take him out to lunch.

Of course, at one point the topic of those ELCA reports came up.   Here's the back story.

In January of 2005, we adopted a bi-racial little girl.  She's 1/2 African-American and 1/2 Polish.  It's a heck of a combination, let me tell you.  Because of her skin color, she would most likely be considered black even though she is technically bi-racial.  Sixteen months later, we adopted a second little girl who is 1/2 African-American, 1/4 Latina, and 1/4 Polish.  Another heck of a combination.  Again, because of her skin color, she would be considered black even though she is technically bi-racial.

I was and still am fortunate I have not experienced any hard-core racial tension because of the decision to adopt these little girls.  95% of the people we run into are absolutely cool with seeing our blended family.  It's really cool when we get stopped by people who marvel and ooh and aah over our girls and then launch into conversations like, "This is what you see on t.v....where skin color doesn't matter...where families can be blended...etc., etc."  I remember eating at a Mexican food restaurant and having a guy excitedly carry on such a conversation for nearly 10 minutes!

There have been a few experiences where folks have looked down their noses at my family.  About five percent of the folks we have encountered from any culture look at us with some form of disdain.  I really don't give a flip.  I know what I believe, and it is a deep seeded principle.

I do not believe skin color is important in the sight of God.  Period.

And if God doesn't give a rip about the color of a person's skin, I shouldn't either.

The Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best when he stated we should judge a person by the content of his or her character and not by the color of his or her skin. 

Yep.  Consider me a convert to this reality.  I'd have never adopted those two girls if I only said such a thing with my lips and didn't believe it in my heart.  Not only do I believe it, I LIVE IT!

And here's the rub...

I remember very clearly the day I sat down to fill out my ELCA parochial report in 2006.  I began putting in all the facts and figures for my congregation, and then I came upon the segment on race and ethnicity.  I paused. 

The church was asking me to take notice of the skin color and ethnicity of members of my congregation.  Suddenly, there was a clash within me.

For a long time, one of my favorite Bible passages was Galatians 3:27-28, "For as many of you have been baptized into Christ Jesus have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek.  There is no longer slave or free.  There is no longer male or female.  For all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

When I looked at that race/ethnicity section, this verse popped into my head, and right alongside of it was a picture in my mind of me holding my little girl and looking lovingly into her eyes as a father.  Seeing her only as my child, skin color be damned.  Then there was a scene of a little girl crying to her daddy when someone had made fun of her because of the color of her skin, and I heard myself saying, "Skin color doesn't matter.  God made you perfectly, and God doesn't make a mistake.  Anyone who makes fun of you because of your skin color isn't worth crying over."

I saw myself responding to a congregation member who asked me why we didn't adopt someone of our own "culture." 

"Because God doesn't worry about the color of a person's skin, and neither do we," I said.

How could I ever look my girls in the eye and tell them skin color doesn't matter when I was asked to take notice of it in these reports?  How could I tell them God didn't care about skin color when the institution which seeks to represent Him on this earth blatantly took notice of such things and kept statistics on them?

Right then and there, I decided my children would not be a statistic no matter how well intentional it might be.  I decided I would respond differently to this request by the ELCA offices.  Not only with my children, but with my entire congregation.

Under the race/ethnicity portion of this report, I checked the box marked other, and then on the space provided, I put in the entire membership of my congregation with the title, "Children of God." 

Imagine my distaste when a few months later, as I was browsing on the ELCA web site and looking at my congregation's profile when I came across the racial/ethnic make up and saw the data I had sent in was changed.  Someone in the data department apparently didn't like what I had written in and moved the entire membership number into the "White" category.

I WAS LIVID!  Not only had someone changed my report.   They did so without asking me.

Subsequent emailings got me nowhere.  They had changed it.  They weren't going to change it back to the way I reported it, and I needed to change my mind and fill it out as they requested.

"I'll be damned if I do," I told myself.  "If they want to change my report, they can fill it out themselves." 

So I stopped sending it in.  We keep records here on file, but they are not and will not be sent in because I absolutely, positively refuse to be a party to something I reject on Biblical, theological, and personal grounds. 

In the midst of my conversation with Mike, I reminded him of what the data folks in the ELCA offices would do even if I didn't fill that section out.

He remarked, "Oh yeah."

"So I won't do it."

He replied, "You are stubborn."

Yep.  Tell me something I don't know. 

I will not support a policy which goes against something very, very important to me that affects those closest to me.  I would like to think I am a man of integrity, and to fill out that portion of the report or allow someone to change what I write doesn't compute--especially if I believe I am in the right.  And I think on the basis of the Bible, theology, and ethics, I am right.

If my bishop wants such information, he'll have to settle for a phone call, email, or lunch again.  I'll glady talk about my congregation's average worship attendance, our giving, our struggles, our Sunday School program, or what have you.  But do not ask me to talk about race/ethnicity and give any facts and figures about that stuff. 

God doesn't care about it.

Why should I?

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