Backstory: Reparations in a Local Church
In Louisville, Kentucky, I learned how a former SBC church is dealing with its historic connections to enslavers and segregationists, some commemorated in the building's stained-glass windows.
HBC and Its Reparations Task Force
It’s a beautiful church building, just two miles from the Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship Seminary, the sanctuary built in 1915. It may have started as an SBC church, but Highland Baptist Church in Louisville is one of many that split from the denomination for its progressive stance on women’s ordination, LGBTQ inclusion, and other social issues. Highland came to my attention as part of my current Lilly-funded research on antiracism among progressive churches. Their leaders had been among the most intentional in confronting racism, especially after the death of Breanna Taylor prompted an immediate reckoning on racial issues in their city. I was eager to visit.
A sabbatical year from Davidson College allowed me to become the Interim Executive Director of the Louisville Institute this academic year. While I’m in Louisville, I am able to learn more about the impressive work of their Anti-Racism Team, created in 2016. In 2020, this group became the Reparations Task Force.
Highland’s ministry team was described in a Baptist News Global article about a year ago:
That task force spent months researching the church’s history — from before its founding in 1893 to the present — and documenting what was said and not said, what was done and not done and laying that against the city and the nation’s history. The task force produced a 55-page report that has been used in two all-church dialogues and will guide next steps in what has come to be known as the church’s reparations project.
I am fortunate to have met some of the pastors and lay leaders over the past few months who are directly responsible for this work, and they are impressive.
For one thing, it is important to know that leaders and members are committed to looking at themselves first.
Without presuming or passing judgment, Highland’s leaders asked direct questions that focused on their own congregation. How has the church participated in racist structures, and how have they benefited? To the extent they are able, what might be the response of the church? How do would the church process these decisions as a community?
Coming to terms with the church itself was crucial. Like any city in the United States, the city of Louisville has a history of segregation, and, unfortunately, their Christian churches have been part of legitimating and sustaining the underlying racism that justified exclusion, affecting income, wealth, and future opportunity. Highland is enmeshed with the constraints placed on formerly enslaved people after the Civil War on top of the complicated racial history of the Southern Baptist Convention itself. And although Southern Seminary issued a report in 2018 on historical ties to slavery and racism, its leaders almost immediately walked away from this report, marking SBC’s refusing much of any practical action on this knowledge. Highland’s leaders took a different path in addressing American’s history of racism. In the process, Highland discovered new things about itself.
The church was shocked to discover that the beautiful windows in their building commemorated two enslavers, James Boyce and Richard Furman, and one radical segregationist, E.Y. Mullins, and an additional enslaver, Basil Manly Jr. in the Fellowship Hall.
Perhaps the most surprising discovery in their process was a revelation largely unknown to them that their own building showcased people who owned slaves and supported a fundamentally racist regime. When I learned about this story, I found it remarkable. It prompted an essay that I co-wrote with Pastor Lauren Mayfield Jones, starting with a question:
The challenge of naming and owning harm is one that pastors regularly face when repairing relationships within their congregations.
But the stakes of such mediation are much higher when harm is embedded in the church itself. How do pastors and lay leaders navigate the work of repair when the history of their own church is implicated?
This essay on Highland’s reparations process, published in December, was tweeted out today by Duke Divinity’s Faith & Leadership:
Although the windows, themed around “a cloud of witnesses” from Hebrews 12:1, were installed in the 1970s, the theme was extended further more recently in the later 2000’s. It appears that “heroes of the faith” were emphasized, both historically and locally, yet enslavers and defenders of slavery tied to Highland were unknowingly included. What to do?
No surprise that the reactions from Highland’s members were varied and difficult to navigate:
Anxiety threatened relationships in the congregation, raising the potential for real division. Some folks unknowingly sought to maintain the status quo. “Touching those windows would be an affront to the art and artist who created them,” they argued.
“They tell our story, even the parts of the story we do not like — do not mess with them,” others said.
Others focused on the money that would be spent if the windows were amended or contextualized. “Money spent on [changing] the windows would be better spent in the Black community,” some argued.
“Dismantle and destroy the enslavers immediately,” those distressed by the windows insisted.
Ultimately, the enslavers in the windows put our church at risk of losing members, as some indicated they would leave the church. “I cannot worship in a sanctuary that venerates people who owned other people,” they said.
What I find most striking in Highland’s actions is their profound commitment to working through decisions together.
Despite the disruptions of COVID-19, Highland’s pastors and lay leaders continued their efforts to examine their past and provide options toward the future. If we know anything about congregational life during this pandemic, it is that any ministry required a combination of creativity and sheer will of effort, often with the help of a bevy of gracious volunteers. Highland’s efforts in these past two years demonstrate how accomplishing the work of restorative justice is especially challenging for those churches who decide to work through these issues in unison.
As I was considering Highland’s process, I was able to read through Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson’s recent book, Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair (Brazos Press, 2021). Some key quotes seemed especially relevant for appreciating the path Highland has taken:
“We believe that the Christian church in America bears a singular responsibility to address the historical thefts of White supremacy [because] the church served as an accomplice by willingly benefiting from White supremacy. The church knowingly harbored stolen goods and received the profit and bounty of despoiling acts."
“This history implicates us all. Some may insist that individuals and discrete institutions alone are responsible for the aforementioned failures, but this line of reasoning simply will not do. These sins are our sins. Time and again, the Christian Scriptures affirm the principle of corporate or Collective responsibility in the church. The church, after all, is one body, and its members are irrevocably bound to one another in Christ by covenant.”
“As a people committed to truth, we must resist the temptation to neglect either the story of the church's faithfulness or the story of the church's failures with regard to White supremacy. [S]eeing the church's history of failure is critical not only because it keeps us from proud triumphalism in our labors but also because it demands that we honestly reckon with those failures. In other words, the church's past faithfulness fuels us with hope concerning the possibility of the church in its work of repair. And the church’s past failures fuel us with repentance concerning the culpability of the church and demand that we engage the work of repair. Indeed, one of the glories of the church is that we are not left alone but are generously furnished with a rich moral tradition that teaches us how to address the culpability and possibilities revealed in the church's complicated history.”
Highland now commits 1% of its budget specifically toward reparations and raises funds to further contribute to this initiative.
As the church continues to assess further, the church created a designated fund for donations targeted for reparations. They are beginning steps toward addressing the images in their windows, including accepting recommendations to darken the skin tones of biblical persons, including Christ. More decisions are coming. In the midst of it all, my admiration grows for the explicitness and openness of their discussions together. As our essay concluded:
Although no final decisions about the windows have been made, the reparations work continues taking shape on the racial justice journey. As a consequence, the leaders of Highland have achieved greater confidence in the capacity of our congregation to address controversy directly and to confront injustices in the world without compromise.