A New and Unsettling Force Blog Feed

Last week Jeff Mansfield, Union alum and Poverty Initiative Poverty Scholar, was ordained in the United Church of Christ at Judson Memorial Church in New York City.  Jeff has worked for years with the Poverty Initiative and the Poverty Scholars program as a chaplain and organizer for the Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York (ROCNYC).  His involvement with ROC and their struggle against inhumane working conditions demonstrates the type of committed leadership the Poverty Initiative is dedicated to.

Congratulations Jeff!

Below is a  personal reflection from Crystal Hall who knew Jeff through his involvement in the Poverty Scholars program and through her involvement with the work of ROC NY.

Jeff and Michael Ellick of Judsom Memorial with the Golden Calf during the height of Occupy Wall Street

Moments after officially being ordained a minister of the United Church of Christ

I first met Jeff on a sidewalk outside a fine-dining restaurant in New York City.  I was discerning my own call to ministry, but still wasn’t convinced that organizing and church work could fit together.

I met Jeff as he taught a group of seminarians how to organize a candlelight vigil.  We quickly put theory into practice that night.  We sang and prayed outside with the workers fighting for their rights inside the restaurant.  Jeff was one of the first people, for me, who embodied what it means to be a religious leader committed to the work of justice.

In the months ahead I would join Jeff again and again on the sidewalk in front of restaurants being organized by ROC-NY.  I would continue to learn how to organize.  But I also learned something about, in the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the “freedom church of the poor.”  We didn’t just protest.  We held church on the sidewalk.  Through Jeff, organizing became “fishing for people” and protest chants became prayer.

Jeff embodies the Poverty Initiative’s mission of raising up generations of community and religious leaders to build a movement to end poverty, led by the poor.  A leader develops other leaders, and Jeff continues to raise up those around him.  As you take this newest step in your ministry: may you continue to teach as you fight. My you learn as you lead.  May you know that God, through the plight and fight of the poor, walks with you.

-Crystal Hall

Liz Theoharis, coordinator and co-founder of the Poverty Initiative was honored at Union’s 175th Anniversary Gala on Thursday, April 19th.  Below is a transcript of her remarks.

On this occasion of Union’s 175th Anniversary, we remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was at Union when he decided to give his life in the fight against Hitler and fascism; Myles Horton who was at Union when he came up with the idea for the Highlander Folk School, an important training center for the industrial union and Civil Rights Movements; Delores Williams who was at Union when she co-developed and then taught a theology that took seriously the suffering and resistance of the oppressed. Their legacy of engaged scholarship, strategic action, and moral courage are not only an inspiration but a challenge to us all.

So it is with great humility and a deep sense of responsibility, that I thank Union, it’s faculty, staff, students, trustees and especially alumni for giving me this honor and for the long legacy of social justice advocacy that Union represents. I want to thank my family, friends and colleagues, including those who are here tonight. Your love for all God’s creation, passion to work tirelessly, faith that poverty can end, knowledge of who and what came before, and tenacity when times are tough are sustaining.  I want to thank my kids, Sophia and Luke, who are two more reasons why we must work for a world without poverty and war and who have taught me about the urgency of actually achieving justice.

But this honor is not about me. I do not receive it alone. Nearly two decades ago, I joined a budding social movement to end poverty. This movement is made up of an incredibly diverse grouping of people. Many of the people in this movement are the real heroes and heroines in our world, a community of saints who are rarely thanked or recognized at all for dedicating their lives for the betterment of everyone.

This community of saints who make up the Poverty Initiative includes people like Rev. Jessica Chadwick who was a dual degree Masters of Divinity, Masters of Social Work student here at Union, who co-founded the Poverty Initiative, brought her whole family into this work while they simultaneously struggled with unemployment, housing foreclosure and student debt, and is the kind of pastor our country needs now in this time of economic crisis. This community of saints includes Lucas Benitez, director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an organization of farmworkers who have won better wages and working conditions for those who pick the tomatoes we eat for the first time in a generation. This community of saints includes Marian Kramer, President of the National Welfare Rights Union, a movement elder who marched alongside Dr. King and now 45 years later is a grandma raising her grandchildren, resisting the cut offs of 40,000 homes from running water in Detroit each year, who mentored me and many others when we first got involved. This community of saints includes Larry Gibson, who has endured over 120 threats to his life for protecting his family, land and ancestral burial ground from Mountaintop Removal in the Appalachian mountains.

This group gathered together a few summers ago in one of our Poverty Initiative Leadership Schools. There, Jess, Marian, tomato pickers from Florida, taxi workers from Philadelphia, shackdwellers from South Africa, uninsured mothers from New Jersey, public school students from LA and many others gathered on Larry’s family property, Kayford Mountain.

Together we led, learned, sang and prayed – we saw that all our struggles are connected – that we are all part of what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called, “an inescapable network of mutuality”. There we recommitted ourselves to King’s Poor People’s Campaign, to the “Freedom Church of the Poor”, to the beloved community where everyone is welcome. As I look to the future, I imagine all of us there on that mountaintop looking out
to see not the devastation brought by greed and poverty, but rather a world that shares its bounty with all God’s people. Thank you.

The Poverty Initiative‘s Crystal Hall is in Lakeland, FL all this week where she, along with over 50 allies: farmworkers, students, activists, and religious leaders, are participating in the Fast for Fair Food.  The six-day hunger strike (March 5-10) is led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and is part of their ongoing campaign to pressure companies to pay farmworkers a fair wage.  The campaign is currently directed at the Publix chain of supermarkets in the Southeastern US.

Below is a prayer based on Matthew 5:3-10 that Crystal led on the second day of the fast.   To see more powerful images from the strike and to learn more about CIW follow this link.

Crystal Hall in Lakeland, Florida

Holy and living God,
You are a God of justice.
You are a God of liberation.

From the words of Matthew we know
That you bless those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
You will fill them with good things.
You bless those who are persecuted for the cause of righteousness.
Theirs is the kingdom of God.

Knowing that our cause is righteous and just,
We give thanks for a new day.
We give thanks for the inspiration to commit to sacrifice.
We give thanks for this fast as a witness to the work of justice in this world.

So we ask your blessing this morning:
For us as we hunger for righteousness.
For the law enforcement with us,
That they too might know your loving protection.
And especially for Publix,
That they may come to the table of mercy and justice.

In your many names and the name of Jesus,
Amen

Last week the Poverty Initiative had a chance to reflect with the Union community about its January immersion course in a noon chapel service.  Below are the thoughts that Willa Johnson shared.  Willa was one of 35 Union students, Poverty Initiative staff, and Poverty Scholars who made the trip.  See a collection of images from the trip at our Flikr site.

The Poverty Initiative immersion courses, like all of Poverty Initiative’s work, are aimed at developing leaders who will be able to unite other leaders in a social movement to end poverty.  The task of educating ourselves about our history – how it grounds and guides us today – is an essential element of that leadership development.

Biblical Reflection, "Paul the Social Movement Maker," in the Poverty Initiative office the night before we left for Baltimore.

We learned several things on the immersion that, as Romall might say, give you the willies.  We learned about “Christians” justifying slavery using scriptures.  We learned about the mayor of NY, Ferndando Wood, who proposed seceding from the Union because he too supported slavery.  We learned that, even after their enslavement was over, free Blacks in Baltimore had to abide by a curfew set by white police officers and lived in fear of arbitrary violence from their white neighbors.  And we learned about the mother in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia who fought poverty and homelessness with all her might, only to have her children taken from her and then in desperation, lose herself to heroin.

I personally find it easy to get depressed after learning these things.  It’s easy to think we as a human race just aren’t capable of treating each other right.  If we haven’t stopped doing these things yet, maybe we never will.  I even find it easy to wonder if God is yet at work or if God just gave up on us.  Because if God were working, why would people be so terrible to each other?

But supposedly, there’s Good News. We’re told there’s a reason to say ‘hallelujah.’  Paul says in Romans that we are made righteous when we believe, and that the One God of all of us uses our faith to manifest her justice.  Yes, apparently, the good news is that the same one who wrote a higher law calls us into deep and transforming relationship.  And that is good news.  But do we believe it?

In Paul’s letter to the Romans- to this church situated in the Roman empire- he writes that God’s justice works through faith in Christ for all who believe.  Though most translations read “faith in Christ” the Greek actually allows for “faith of Christ,” meaning perhaps that God’s justice doesn’t happen automatically when we say Jesus is Lord, God’s justice happens, maybe, when we live with the same faith that Jesus had.  When we believe in God’s love and God’s power- and when we act in accordance with that belief, that’s when God’s justice happens.  Why do we normally hear that we need ‘faith in Christ’ instead of ‘faith of Christ’?  Maybe because it’s easier to profess Christ with our mouths than to live Him with our time and our bodies.  It’s certainly easier to control a group of people if they’re sitting around talking about Jesus than if they’re standing up and acting like Him.

Decades later than Paul but inspired by the same person, the gospel writer John explained what he thought this faith of Jesus could do.  He writes: “Yet any who did accept the Word, who believed in that Name, were empowered to become children of God.”

For the gospel writer ‘The Good News’ is that the same one who holds us to a higher law …The same one who condemns in no uncertain terms the travesties we inflict upon each other and the apathy with which we unhurriedly go about seeing if we maybe could, at some point, consider doing something about them– is the same One who has called each and every one of us ‘my beloved child.’   Is the same One who has said to you and to me ‘I have counted every hair on your head.’  Is the same One who has said to us ‘those who have my faith shall do all this and greater works besides.’

Harpers Ferry, view from Jefferson Rock where the Shenendoah and the Potomac meet

John must have seen some crazy stuff to start talking like that.  He must have seen people changed because of Jesus’ message of God’s love for them and for their neighbors.  He must have seen people give up everything they owned to chase an adventure with God.  He must have seen stuff kind of like what the heroines and heroes of the Abolition movement did: believe enough in their worth as God’s children to fight for the freedom that should have been theirs from the beginning.  Believe enough in God’s promises to lay down their lives in order to see them fulfilled.  Love their fellow human beings enough to risk it all to liberate them.  It is Good News that we are called children of God.  It’s Good News that we have what it takes, especially together, to manifest God’s justice on earth.  That the One who holds us to a higher law also gives us a higher power.  And when we recognize our status as that One’s children, there is no limit to what we can do.  Lord, help us live up to that calling.