Below are two pieces by Poverty Initiative leaders discussing the different contexts in which they have served as chaplains and how this work is connected to the broader movement to end Poverty.  The first is a reflection by Jennifer Wilder about her work with the Union protest chaplains who have been serving in Zuccotti (Liberty) Park for the past several weeks of Occupy Wall Street.   Jenn’s reflection is followed by an excerpt from a reflection that Union alum and Poverty Initiative leader Onleilove Alston wrote about being a chaplain over the years with the Poverty Initiative, “on the field of battle for justice.”

CHAPLAINCY IN ZUCCOTTI PARK FOR ‘OCCUPY WALL STREET’

As I focused on our prayer, I could hear the Occupation Wall Street People’s Mic start not two yards away from us.  Between my eyes half-closed, I could see a camera flash, irreverent yet commonplace at Occupation Wall Street, taking a picture of the two of us.  The lady, (lets call her Glory) who now clasped hands with me in prayer in the middle of roudy Zuccotti Park, had participated that morning in her first-ever protest, which was in Harlem opposing the stop-and-frisk protest policy.  Glory told me her own humiliating experiences of being stopped, frisked, and accused of prostitution.  Glory was pregnant with twins, and she looked forward to telling them what she had done while expecting them to prepare the way for them to have better conditions.

Such chaplaincy experiences at Occupation Wall Street call into light a question that I have increasingly been thinking about over the past years as I have worked with the Christian Base Communities in El Salvador and with Poverty Scholar organizations:  How do we define religious leadership?  Protest Chaplaincy has given me privileged access to the “spiritual core” of the concerns and commitments that bring people to Occupation Wall Street, some like Glory for the first time and others as part of life-long commitments to social movements and ending poverty, marginalization, and exploitation.  Many of the leaders of these movements to end poverty have made religious or spiritual commitments to their work, and thus they are religious leaders, though they are rarely viewed as such.  What if we looked to these religious leaders to show us in seminary or in the official church how to be religious leaders? What if we looked at Occupation Wall Street, the United Workers, or the Coalition of Immokalee workers to show us how to be community and church?

Protest Chaplaincy at Occupation Wall Street raises these and other questions that help my fellow Protest Chaplains and I develop as religious leaders in social movements.  Because of the participatory nature of Occupation Wall Street, religious leaders have the potential to be more than just figureheads lending support to a good cause.  Religious leaders have the potential to push Occupiers, our congregations, and our organizations to think about such critical questions as:  We are protesting the current system, but exactly how do we envision a more just system, and what are the structures that we want to put in place to build it?  How have we been able to “work for change” in our churches and organizations for so long lacking a sophisticated analysis of what we are up against?  Importantly, religious leaders must work such that Occupy Wall Street and all other movements are led by the interests of the historically poor and oppressed.  The poor and the poor people’s movements have been telling our society for a long time that our system is sick, but recently with increased crisis, other sectors have become poor and becoming activated.  Movements, however, to re-stabilize the middle class and society still leave critical sectors poor, marginalized, and exploited.  As a Protest Chaplain, I have had the opportunity to talk with a wide range of the 99%.  It is good that we are uniting across differences as the 99%, but the movement must put at the forefront the interests of Glory and others from historically oppressed communities, who will only benefit from a radical re-making of the unjust system.-Jenn Wilder

HAPLAINCY FOR THE POVERTY SCHOLARS LEADERSHIP SCHOOL

During both the 2009 and 2011 Leadership Schools participants came up to me privately to discuss issues related to family, relationships or vocation.  What I found both times I served as  chaplain is that it is essential to have what Rev. Dr. Peter Heltzel, The Micah Institute  refers to as “chaplains on the field of the battle for justice” to heal the community and call people to their best selves (September 17, 2011 Faith Rooted Organizing Training). I also experienced moving chapel services where the poor were affirmed and refreshed as leaders. During a time in church history where the prosperity gospel is spreading like wild fire in the world’s poorest communities  serving as a chaplain for the Poverty Initiative or having the opportunity to minister at a Leadership School chapel service offers an opportunity to practice an alternative theology that affirms the poor and calls them to share in God’s work of justice. Personally, this work has affirmed my own call to ministry in the Disciples of Christ with the hope that I can be ordained to minister in this way while doing faith-rooted community organizing.

From my experiences serving as the chaplain for Poverty Initiative Leadership Schools I truly believe that “soul care” is essential to building and sustaining a “movement to end poverty led by the poor”. Community organizers, ministers, activist, social workers and non-profit directors all have concerns about their work, families and purposes. Providing chaplains who are rooted in the movement to “watch and pray” can help protect against burnout and co-optation. Chaplains can also provide a practical way in which clergy can contribute to a social movement. I think the role of chaplain is cornerstone to this movement.  Catholic priest and author Henri Nouwen stated it best when he wrote:

“Our own experience with loneliness, depression, and fear can become a gift for others, especially when we have received good care. As long as our wounds are open and bleeding, we scare others away. But after someone has carefully tended to our wounds, they no longer frighten us or others. When we experience the healing presence of another person, we can discover our own gifts of healing. Then our wounds allow us to enter into a deep solidarity with our wounded brothers and sisters. To enter into solidarity with a suffering person does not mean that we have to talk with that person about our own suffering. Speaking about our own pain is seldom helpful for someone who is in pain. A wounded healer is someone who can listen to a person in pain without having to speak about his or her own wounds. When we have lived through a painful depression, we can listen with great attentiveness and love to a depressed friend without mentioning our experience. Mostly it is better not to direct a suffering person’s attention to ourselves. We have to trust that our own bandaged wounds will allow us to listen to others with our whole beings. That is healing.”

As a Poverty Scholar who has experienced the wounds of poverty first hand and found my faith while living in one of twelve poorest communities in New York City my job as a chaplain is to pass on the healing I gained from this movement, enter into solidarity with other poor people and listen with my whole being so that I can help build the “freedom church of the poor”.-Onleilove

Friendly Hands Ministers @ FPWA 2011 Lobby Day

At 12 noon on Nov. 16,  faith, community and non-profit leaders in New York City will come together for an hour of prayer and action, in the hope of creating a “circle of protection” around Friendly Hands Ministries.

Friendly Hands is a faith-based organization founded by Latino/a clergy to serve New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood through a feeding program, job training, childcare, health care referrals and legal advocacy for immigrants.

Many of the clergy who work with Friendly Hands are Pentecostal and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to take action in their community. In addition to providing direct services the leadership of Friendly Hands has undergone faith-based advocacy training and lobbied in New York’s state capital on behalf of their community. This organization is moving from charity to justice and having a powerful impact in East Harlem.

As we pray for Friendly Hands (which depends on federal EFSP funding from FEMA for it’s feeding program), we will also pray for all the non-profits and human services agencies throughout New York City and our nation that will be directly affected by the Congressional Super Committee and appropriations processes as our lawmakers decide which federal funding to cut and which to preserve.

Programs such as Friendly Hands are on the front lines of serving and organizing low-income people and it’s a moral imperative that people of faith stand with these organizations.

The New York City Human Circle will be replicated throughout across the nation, when faith leaders host Human Circles as members of the Sojourners National Mobilizing Circle, which is bringing together faith and community leaders to organize faith-rooted actions in their communities.

The purpose of these circles is not only to lobby for the poor but also with them. During the New York City action, we will hear powerful testimony from formerly-homeless father and veteran organizer Willie Baptist, now a scholar-in-residence at Union Theological Seminary’s Poverty Initiative; Domingo Vasquez, director of Friendly Hands Ministries; and Lisa Sharon Harper, Director of Mobilizing for Sojourners. Nov. 16 will be a time of faith in action across the nation.

Will you join us?

If you are in the New York City area on Nov. 16and want to join our action please contact Onleilove Alston.

If you want to organize a Human Circle Action in your city visit: Sojourners Human Circles to learn more.

Are you Called to Join the Women’s Ordination Conference Anti- Racism Team?

In the forty years since the beginning of the movement to ordain Catholic women, massive changes have taken place in U.S. and global societies, and in the theological discussion that emerge from and impact them. The exclusion of women from ordination once seemed an unambiguous example of injustice. Today, in light of the shift of the center of Catholic Christianity to the countries of the South and to communities of color in the North, the question of ordination has become more complex. While it remains true that the exclusion of women from the Catholic priesthood is ethically unacceptable, it is also necessary to ask which women we are referring to when we speak of women being ordained or not ordained. We need strategies that will enable women’s ordination activists to struggle with the question: what does it mean that we are both oppressors and oppressed at the same time?

The women’s ordination movement needs to be more diverse, but we also need to look at power dynamics and the way in which white women, women from the middle-to-upper classes, and women with higher levels of institutional education function within the church, the movement and WOC. How are white women held up differently than women of color? How are women of color isolated, ignored, or not taken seriously? How are white women’s perspectives normalized and made to define what it means to be “feminist”? Or even that we use the term at all? We need to look at power dynamics and the ways this impacts the effectiveness of our work for social justice. In order to do this, WOC has dedicated itself to addressing the ways in which oppression plays out within the organization.

Since May 2004, WOC’s Board of Directors has studied strategies to make WOC anti-racist, diverse and inclusive. In 2006, the WOC Board of Directors approved a plan to incorporate anti-racism, diversity and inclusion into WOC. To view the plan, WOC’s anti-racism history, and related articles, visit: Women’s Ordination under Programs, then Diversity and Inclusion. The next step has been to develop an anti-racism team that gathers people committed to anti-racism, diversity and inclusion work within the women’s ordination movement, and this is what we are inviting you to become a part. The team systematically analyzed how racism and oppression plays out within the women’s ordination movement and created a strategic plan based on this analysis. The strategic plan was presented to WOC’s Board of Directors last month, on September 17, 2011. It is in the process of being approved by the Board, and it will be incorporated into WOC’s overall strategic plan in the coming months.

Team members will have an opportunity to re-commit to the team every year. The term will be from July 1 to June 30 every year (WOC’s fiscal year). You have the ability to make a major difference in the women’s ordination movement. Our collective intentional efforts to confront race and class privilege will enable us to authentically and effectively advocate WOC’s mission: women’s ordination into a renewed priestly ministry.

If you have any additional questions please contact me Eda at: Eda@hopesem.org or the WOC office at202.675.1006. We would be delighted to send more information your way! If you think you may be interested in joining us, please send us your bio and a short letter of intent. Women of color are especially invited to join!

We’re thrilled to announce our September 2011- May 2012 programming! Whether you’re interested in building communities and missions accessible to all, or participating in free, supportive, and challenging anti-racism training and community for white folks, or practicing womanist/feminist preaching on the body in a community of sisters, we have something for you this year!

Special Communion readers are especially invited to our new learning/preaching circle, SisterTemples: Testimonies of the Body from Where We Stand meeting fourth Tuesdays, 8-9PM EST by video conference. Please be sure to register by August 31^st. Programming is (as always) FREE but spaces are limited!

A 2011- 2012 learning/preaching circle devoted to our stories of women’s bodies, we hope that SisterTemples will be an intimate interracial, intergenerational, multi-class community. Transwomen, women of color, and women with disabilities are especially invited to participate. Whoever you are, you’re welcome!

Depending on participant interest, sessions may center on:

Racism/Colorism
Dis/ability
Beauty/Body Image
Psychological/Psychiatric Healing
Sexuality/Pleasure
Sex/Gender
Women’s labor
Reproductive justice, pregnancy, birth, and motherhood in the face of devouring dragons- occupation, poverty, inadequate medical care, war…

The circle will convene monthly in one hour video conference sessions, starting in September and lasting through the school year. At each session, one preacher will present a sermon-in-process to the group, incorporating Scripture, academic study and resources, and personal reflection. Some might present fully developed sermons while others might share a looser set of thoughts, reflections, songs, poems, or prayers on the text. Each session will also include time for feedback for the session’s preacher, group reflection, and discussion time. Please write us  at eda@hopesem.org by August 31st to let us know of your interest in joining. Limited slots for participants. Registration and tech training will be required!

Want a taste of the learning/teaching circle now? Check out H!PS director Eda Uca-Dorn’s article and interview on Jesus Radicals’ Iconocast discussing the Hosanna! Communities Initiative. Visit: www.hopesem.org for more information.

Join us for the first Hosanna! Communities Initiative learning/teaching circle, SEX, RACE, & MONEY: Rolling Away the Stone in the Beloved Community. In this four-part liberation training program we will begin dreaming together what would make for missions of mutual liberation, that is those built on Lila Watson’sinvitation: If you have come to help me, go home. If you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, let us work together. Eda Uca-Dorn will be facilitating with Chelsea Collogne presenting research on sex-positive community building and Onleilove Alston presenting research on race and class dynamics in Christian mission. (Learn more about our presenters)

1.   When/How/Where will you meet?

We will be meeting 5PM PST/8PM EST by web-based video conference.

2.   What does it cost?

It’s free! In fact, we will be lending limited supplies of webcams, headsets, and Ethernet cables to those for whom buying supplies would pose a barrier to participation.

3.   Who can participate in this learning/teaching circle?

Anyone who agrees to abide in our community guidelines and who can meet the following minimum technology requirements. We will be offering (in fact, requiring) tech training for participants (picking one person in your group to be the tech liaison is fine). If you have any questions (or suggestions!) on tech, please contact Mike@hopesem.org. The tech requirements are:

4.   How many people will be able to participate?

It’s a weird sort of question to answer. You’re welcome to gather in as large groups as you’d like for the sessions however unfortunately, we only have room for ten webcam streams in this program.

5.   Webcam Streams? What are you talking about?

In web-based video conference lingo, a “stream” is the video coming from a web cam. The details are complicated for tech neophytes like us to explain but if you imagine that each “stream” is like a car on a road and the more cars are on the road, the more likelihood of traffic and slowdown. Because the “road” offered by our video conference provider is pretty small (that’s due to current developments in technology- we’d have gotten a bigger “road” if one existed) we can only have about 10 “cars” or webcam streams per session or we’re likely to have annoying technical difficulties.

6.   How can I/we have one of the ten streams?

Register soon!

7.   I have a community meal/work/yoga/other commitment during the meeting time. Is it OK for me to only come to one or two of the sessions?

• Because we have limited room for full participants and we are meeting only four times, we ask all participants to commit to attending all four sessions. Communities which register may have rotating members in the sessions if members make a commitment to sharing what was discussed at missed sessions with others. We ask that members who missed sessions are eager to listen and slow to speak.
  
  
  8.   What if I/we can’t participate in the sessions?

We will be making available taped presentations on this site along with a resources list and message board to allow you and your community to follow along independently. We hope to be creating many more opportunities for this kind of learning and dialogue in the future!

9.   I have more questions! Whom should I contact?

We’d love to hear from you! Contact info@hopesem.org.

My version of hell is eating some overcooked starch in a creamy sauce in front of a room of people while they all make idle chatter and comment on how much or how little I’m eating.  Unfortunately for me, I’m a minister, so this situation occurs approximately 5,348 times every week.