What We Do
Congregational Project
From Slavery to Freedom:
2008
Jewish and Christian Readings
of the ExodusThe final session of the 2008 ICJS Congregational Proj-ect began with a welcome by Executive Director Christopher Leighton and his expression of gratitude to Woodbrook Baptist Church for hosting the four sessions of this year's Project.
The evening's program was led by the Rev. Grady Yeargin, Pastor of The City Temple of Baltimore Baptist Church.
Pastor Yeargin's Presentation The heart of Pastor Yeargin's presentation was the question with which the Congregational Project began: Whose story is this? What kind of imaginings grow out of the exodus narrative for people to whom the story did not originally belong? Is there such a thing as taking somebody else's story and making it one's own story?
The text used by Pastor Yeargin, "Let My People Go," constitutes a retelling of the exodus story from the African-American perspective. "Let My People Go" is one of seven dramatic sermons in James Weldon Johnson's book God's Trombones.
Pastor Yeargin began his talk by putting Johnson's ser-mon into the contexts from which it came -- the situation of slaves brought to America from Africa and the way in which the African-American Church in the South came into being. When slaves were first brought to this country, there was a discussion concerning whether or not they should be baptized and whether or not baptizing them would make them free. The first question was answered in the affirmative, the second in the negative. So the slaves were baptized and began to attend various churches, sitting in galleries in the back. But the slaves also began to create what came to be known as "the invisible institution" -- a gathering some-where back in the woods where they would come together and have their own encounter with God. In South Carolina the places where slaves gathered were called "brush harbors."
It was assumed that newly arrived slaves were heathens and needed to be Christianized in order to become civi-lized and to adjust to American culture. Pastor Yeargin explained that there is some argument about whether or not any remnants of African culture were preserved among the people living in slavery. One argument says that slaves were stripped of everything -- language, customs, religion, family cohesiveness, tribal affiliations, and so forth. The other argument maintains that they did not lose everything. Pastor Yeargin believes that slaves retained their sense of spirituality, as evidenced by the fact that it was so easy for them to plug into the Christian religion.
Christianity was not intended to convert the slaves; it was intended to control them. Christianity served as both the means of keeping slaves in line and the justi-fication for keeping them slaves. What slaves heard preached in white churches were those passages of Scripture that ordered slaves to be obedient to their masters.
African-American slaves were fascinated by the stories they heard in church, and they repeated those stories from memory in their brush harbors. Their preachers were the people who could tell the best stories. For the slaves, religion was not a matter of getting saved but of getting free, and the biblical story that most spoke to their situation was the story of the children of Israel being liberated from Egyptian bondage: If God would do that for the people of Israel, surely God would do that for them. The story of the exodus, told with deep emotion, gave them hope. James Weldon Johnson heard this story as a child, and he wrote "Let My People Go" in order to tell the story as the black preachers told it, thereby making Israel's narrative applicable to African Americans.
Having provided the essential background and context of Johnson's sermon, Pastor Yeargin first played a tape of the spiritual called "Let My People Go" (sung by Hugh Jackson, a parishioner at Pastor Yeargin's church), and then he read Johnson's sermon aloud. Following the reading, participants were put to work at their tables with some questions for discussion:
- What are some of the differences (contextual differences and differences in the telling of the story) between the two stories? Does the context make any difference in the story?
- How does the Jewish community use this story, and how does it appear that the African-American community used this story?
- Is there any difference between the Jewish understanding of God in its story and the African-American understanding of God in its story?
Discussion A spirited discussion grew out of these questions. One participant focused on the change in verb tense in the second question: How does the Jewish community use this story, and how does it appear that the African-American community used this story? The exodus story -- in the Bible or in James Weldon Johnson's retelling -- is not now a part of the worship experience of the African-American people. Deliverance from slavery is celebrated on "Watch Night," but the exodus story is not told as part of the worship service. ["Watch Night" is a New Year's Eve observance in the Black Church that grew out of the experience of slaves gathered in their churches waiting for word that the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, had actually become law.]
A Jewish participant commented on the difference in tone between this week and the previous week. She felt far more comfortable with the African-American retelling of the exodus story than she had with the classical Christian version of the story. Dr. Rosann Catalano suggested that the difference was probably due to the absence of Christology in Johnson's retelling and the fact that the Christian taking of the exodus story was done at the expense of the Jewish people.
A third participant explained that at her table, in the discussion of the third question, the members of the group concluded that in the Jewish narrative God was acting out of God's contract with the people Israel [as had been explained by Rabbi Joel Zaiman in the second presentation]; and in the James Weldon Johnson version of the story, God was acting out of compassion for the people's suffering. Pastor Yeargin responded that it is important to remember that the slaves were not God's Chosen People. They had no covenant with God, they had no contract with God, and they had no promise from God. Pastor Yeargin said that that tells him more about God than it does about the African-American people.
The discussion was enriched by one participant's story of a visit to Washington to see her senator during her days in the sixties as a civil rights activist. At the conclusion of this discussion, Pastor Yeargin put every-one back to work on two more questions:
- What contributes to the story of one people becoming the story of another people?
- What prevents the story of one people from becoming the story of another people?
Discussion Whose story is this? The first answer given was that this story belongs to the Jewish people. Others have adapted it to their own experience, but in essence this is a Jewish story. A second answer was that this is God's story, a story of God's love and compassion. It's a story for all people who have experienced oppression. A third answer was that "Whose story is this?" is the wrong question to ask because it sets up a situation in which there are competing theologies that prevent the story of one people from becoming the story of another people. The common experience of injustice, on the other hand, contributes to a sharing of the story.
Dr. Catalano pointed out that once a story is "out there" anyone can claim it and do whatever he, she, or they want to do with it. What is important is what one does with the story after one has claimed it. Rabbi Zaiman reminded the group that one of the reasons people tell stories is in order to create and define their community. The Jewish, White Christian, and African-American Chris-tian communities are all different from one another. Therefore, to universalize the exodus story as if we were all telling the same story is to pervert what is actually happening. It's the same story, but it's not the same story. Each telling is unique to the people who are doing the telling.
When the evening's presentation was nearly at an end, Pastor Yeargin asked everyone present to look around at the faces of the other people in the room. Everyone has hair, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and yet everyone in the room looks different. God has a passion for diversity. So whenever a story is told, there is a possibility of seeing the story in different ways, depending on who one is, what one's experiences are, and how one under-stands God. Everyone's story is as valid as anyone else's story. The day we all learn that, said Pastor Yeargin, the Kingdom will come.
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