<\/p>\n
This \u2018think piece\u2019 is dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Cheryl Stewart Pero, PhD, child<\/em><\/p>\n of God, friend, colleague, theologian, and advocate for justice in the church and world.[1]<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOur hope for creative living in this world house that<\/p>\n we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish<\/p>\n the moral ends of our lives in personal character<\/p>\n and social justice.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1] It was a rather pedestrian December day.\u00a0 The sun was shining.\u00a0 I was on my way to pick up my daughter from her day program for people with disabilities.\u00a0 I was running late.\u00a0 I had to meet her at 12noon.\u00a0 I turned right off 127th<\/sup> street onto S. Kostner to go to 123rd<\/sup> street.\u00a0 There was no traffic.\u00a0 I had driven about a quarter of the way on Kostner and noticed a police car in a parking lot.\u00a0 I turned right onto 123rd<\/sup> (now more than a block from where the police car was parked), I saw flashing blue lights in my rear-view window.\u00a0 I pulled into the parking lot where I was to pick up my daughter.\u00a0 The White police officer stood between the left side passenger door and the driver\u2019s door.\u00a0 He leaned forward and said I was speeding and \u201cclocked me going 39 mph in a 25-mph zone.\u00a0 Everybody does it.\u201d\u00a0 He asked for my insurance card.\u00a0 All I could remember was what happened to Philandro Castile.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 So, I announced that I was reaching into the glove compartment.\u00a0 I showed him my insurance card.\u00a0 Then he asked for my driver\u2019s license.\u00a0 I announced to him that I was reaching into my coat pocket and did so with two fingers.\u00a0 I told him that I knew my license had expired.\u00a0 However, the Secretary of State\u2019s office was closed because of the pandemic.\u00a0 He responded, \u201cthat\u2019s ok.\u201d\u00a0 As I looked in my rear-view I noticed he had his hand on his gun.\u00a0 \u201cHmm, I thought.\u201d\u00a0 I wondered after the officer left, why would he have his hand on his gun?\u00a0 What led him to think that was even necessary during a routine traffic stop?\u00a0 While I did not want to think race was an issue, it played a significant role in my reflecting on that incident.\u00a0 I thanked God that officer did not have a bad day.<\/p>\n [2] Life during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Langston Hughes wrote in his poem, \u201cMother to Son\u201d \u201cain\u2019t been no crystal stair.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 It has been stressful.\u00a0 If I may be blunt, \u201cI am tired of the \u201cokey-doke.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 I am tired of hearing about and seeing African Descent, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islanders,[6]<\/a> Arab and Middle Eastern, American Indian and Alaska Native, LGBTQIA+,[7]<\/a> and female bodies being murdered and abused by White police officers.\u00a0 I am tired of seeing police and National Guard personnel prepared for mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.\u00a0 Yet, for a rally and the insurrection at the Capital in Washington, D. C. the police and National Guard were hardly prepared or present.\u00a0 I am tired of the lies and promises of religious leaders, politicians, and allies with justice movements telling the global community they will \u201creform\u201d systems of police injustice.<\/p>\n [3] The senseless murders of Brianna Taylor (March 2020) and George Floyd (May 2020), among others, reveals how deep white supremacy is within the ethos and structures of society.\u00a0 And as the world learned in December 2020, through a released video, White Chicago Police wrongfully abused an African American woman, Ms. Anjanette Young.\u00a0 Under the legal guise of searching for guns and ammunition, they busted into her home, handcuffed, and held her naked for some time.\u00a0 After telling the officers they were at the wrong house, and pleading to put on some clothes, they finally \u201clet\u201d Ms. Young get dressed!\u00a0 Later an officer said: \u201cWe believe what you\u2019re telling us.\u201d\u00a0 It turns out the police received bad information and went to the wrong house.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n [4] This type of policing behavior was and is simply outrageous!\u00a0 It was outrageous because twelve (12) White police officers just stood around.\u00a0 They committed what Ms. Young identified as sexual abuse.\u00a0 As I watched that video, I became emotionally distraught.\u00a0 I could not stop crying.\u00a0 As tears flowed, I thought, \u201cwhat if that was my daughter, or mother, or grandmother?\u201d\u00a0 I remembered one of my ancestors, Patsey along with her brother Martin, who was brought to America and landed in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1830.\u00a0 I imagined Patsey had to stand naked (I presumed she was naked because that was the practice of how African American slave women were treated), stripped of her dignity and respect.\u00a0 White supremacy continues to make life for people in communities of color \u2018no crystal stair.\u2019<\/p>\n [5] The experience of racial injustice perpetrated by police departments across the United States results in a feeling of cynicism.\u00a0 This feeling of cynicism, which motivates the title of this \u201cthink piece,\u201d raises questions about the efficacy of Lutheran ethics and its impact and implications for responsible, justice-oriented engagement with social structures.\u00a0 We are, as ELCA Lutherans, called to participate critically<\/em> in the structures of society.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Structures and institutions are meant to provide stability and reduce evil in society.\u00a0 What does it mean to participate in those structures which foster an ethos of white supremacy and perpetuate systemic racism?\u00a0 Of course, some would argue that participating critically leads to enhancing the status quo.\u00a0 Others may argue our participation really leads to transforming structures.<\/p>\n [6] The urgency of our times calls for an attempt to reimagine Lutheran ethics and its operating principles like \u201cfaith active in love\u201d or \u201cneighbor-love.\u201d\u00a0 Is it time to move from a purely 16th<\/sup> century orientation to a more contemporary cosmopolitan perspective which listens to and meaningfully engages communities of color?[10]<\/a>\u00a0 I want to suggest that ethics in this era may need to be more descriptive than prescriptive in nature.\u00a0 Such a perspective begins with owning one\u2019s formation, honoring lived experience (s), analysis of the problem (s) emerging from lived experiences, identifying operating ethical principles orchestrating moral behavior, and suggestions for resolving the problem (s).\u00a0 Knowledge of self, especially for White Americans who enjoy privileges many people of color are denied, is the first place to start.<\/p>\n How Was I Formed?<\/strong><\/p>\n [7] The Greeks have a word which may be appropriate here, paideia<\/em>.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Paideia is a process for molding and educating young people.\u00a0 Its purpose is what I call the socialization process.\u00a0 That is, one is socialized into how they are to think and behave in society.\u00a0 Proverbs 22:6 and Deuteronomy 6: 1-8 (especially v. 6-8) gives wisdom to what parents, guardians, and mentors are to do with their children.\u00a0 Young people are taught what is right and wrong.\u00a0 They are mentored by the elders on what it means to be a moral human being with a heritage and on what it means to have justice as the north star on their moral compass.\u00a0 As King suggests in the epigraph, paideia<\/em>, is an opportunity to \u2018re-establish the moral ends of our personal character and social justice.\u2019<\/p>\n [8] Two summers ago, I took my daughter on a father-daughter road trip to Washington, D.C.\u00a0 I did what my parents did with my siblings and me.\u00a0 My daughter and I spent our first night on a tour of Washington, D.C.\u00a0 The capital city is beautiful at night.\u00a0 The next day, a hot July day, we spent a few hours at the National Museum of African American History & Culture.\u00a0 There she watched some movies, learned about the Middle Passage, the Civil Rights Movement, and most importantly, learned about where her ancestors lived, Mound Bayou, Mississippi.\u00a0 There was so much to see and learn that we went back a second time.\u00a0 We saw the Washington monument, visited the King Statue, the Vietnam Memorial, and other sites of interest.\u00a0 From Washington, D.C. we went to Fredericksburg, Virginia.\u00a0 This was the place where our ancestors, Martin and Patsey, landed in 1830.\u00a0 We found a slave auction block, in the middle of town, which may have been used to sell Martin and Patsey to the Ross family in Grenada County, Mississippi.\u00a0 My daughter learned that the \u2018crystal stair\u2019 is full of broken steps and landings for African American people.\u00a0 Life, as an African American, includes struggle, resistance in many forms, and overcoming white supremacy.\u00a0 We took many pictures so we, together, could relive those memories and that history.\u00a0 She learned about an America which has been hidden and rendered African American people as deficit.\u00a0 And through it all God is walking with her on her journey in life.<\/p>\n A Persistent Problem<\/strong><\/p>\n [9] America has a persistent problem, white supremacy (some people identify this as white racism or anti-blackness) and one of its progenies, systemic racial injustice.\u00a0 White supremacy is, I would argue, founded on a pseudo anthropology.\u00a0 A central tenet is a false and deceptive understanding of what a human being is.\u00a0 The White body, cultural ethos, and sense of privilege become the norms which every other body and culture is expected to accept as normative.\u00a0 It serves as a rationale for immoral and maladjusted behavior.\u00a0 Pseudo anthropology is supported by an ethos of superiority and inferiority.\u00a0 American society, in my view, is built upon this ethos and rewards people (including people of color) who support it and practice its binary practices.\u00a0 The experience of Ms. Anjanette Young points to this binary.\u00a0 White people are superior, and people of color are inferior.\u00a0 Ms. Young, an African American, was presumed to be guilty of a crime even though she told them she had done nothing wrong.\u00a0 She was treated as an \u201cit,\u201d an object to be controlled.\u00a0 Armed with so-called \u2018fair\u2019 and \u2018just\u2019 policies and laws, those White police officers could treat Ms. Young any way they wanted with impunity.\u00a0 That is white privilege supported by an unjust system of white supremacy!<\/p>\n [10] Moreover, pseudo anthropology is grounded in a contrived knowledge of the creative power of God.\u00a0 It is secondary to the knowledge and power of those White police officers and to those White Americans who support and practice white supremacy.\u00a0 Their \u201cwhiteness\u201d makes them God.\u00a0 This sense of privilege, being White and its privilege, is what Derrick Bell writes about.<\/p>\n Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society\u2019s well.\u00a0 Even<\/p>\n the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a few levels above,<\/p>\n gain their self-esteem by gazing down on us.\u00a0 Surely, they must know that<\/p>\n their deliverance depends on letting down the ropes.\u00a0 Only by working<\/p>\n together is escape possible.\u00a0 Over time, many reach out, but most simply<\/p>\n watch, mesmerized into maintaining their unspoken commitment to keeping<\/p>\n us where we are, at whatever cost to them or to us.[12]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This pseudo anthropology makes \u2018whiteness,\u2019 an ethos of superiority with inherent rights, the ideal and norm for those who are racially, ethnically and culturally different and expected to meet in order to survive and prosper.\u00a0 Pseudo anthropology operates by comparison, \u201cat least I\u2019m not like Black people.\u201d\u00a0 Any pushback to this false sense of self-esteem and \u201cidentity\u201d prevents any wrestling with being a member of a racial group.\u00a0 Said differently, White Americans are socialized into a myth; difference means deficient thus they protect their sense of being a racial group.\u00a0 Consequently, people of color can be treated as less than Whites and unjust systems and\/or institutions will reinforce amoral behavior.<\/p>\n [11] We are now faced with a series of questions: How have we become the human beings we are?\u00a0 What principle (s) emerge from the actions of human beings engaged in the pursuit for justice?\u00a0 How do we understand the world \u201cas it is\u201d and how \u201cit ought to be?\u201d\u00a0 My interest, here, is to begin to disrupt the behavior of those who practice white supremacy, both explicitly and\/or implicitly. \u00a0Ethics in a cosmopolitan era, a descriptive task, includes the following components: belief, responsibility, active listening,[13]<\/a> action, and restorative justice.<\/p>\n Ethics in a Cosmopolitan Era<\/strong><\/p>\n [12] In her essay on an African American Lutheran womanist ethic, Dr. Beverly Wallace wrestles with what that ethic would look like.\u00a0 Building on the thinking of various African American womanist theologians and ethicists, Wallace argues that \u201cChristian ethics is the construction of God\u2019s claim on humanity in the relationship God has with God\u2019s people.\u201d[14]<\/a>\u00a0 In this situation the experience (s) of African American Lutheran women and women in general must come to the center of ethical thinking.\u00a0 God\u2019s grace grounds their voices as they speak out about structural injustices.<\/p>\n [13] If ethics (and subsequently human morality) reflects a pseudo anthropology, binary in nature, what would ethics look like in a cosmopolitan era?\u00a0 We may all agree that ethics, a second level discussion, has to do with frameworks, coherency, principles, and values.\u00a0 Ethics is careful reflection on moral behavior, in this case human beings\u2019 moral conduct.\u00a0 The word \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d reflects that human beings exist in the world.\u00a0 We exist in specific cultural contexts.\u00a0 We live in a universe with people from \u201cevery nation and tribe\u201d (Acts and Revelation).\u00a0 Ethics in a cosmopolitan era reflect specific nations and tribes (with all their diversity) and their lived experiences.\u00a0 This is precisely what the Black Lives Matter Movement has emphasized \u2013 that African American people (and other people of color) experience injustice (systemic racism) through the structures and policies connected with policing.\u00a0 Human dignity and just treatment by the police (an expectation of all Americans) are crucial ethical principles offered to guide the behavior of White police officers and the justice system.<\/p>\n [14] Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. (a professor at Princeton University) recently published a book titled Begin Again: James Baldwin\u2019s America and its Urgent Lessons for our Own<\/em>.[15]<\/a>\u00a0 After exploring Baldwin\u2019s existence in America and his strident critique of the existence of racism, Glaude embraces Baldwin\u2019s charge that we must \u201cbegin again.\u201d \u00a0I agree with Glaude when he says, \u201cWe have to rid ourselves, once and for all, of this belief that white people matter more than others, or we\u2019re doomed to repeat the cycles of our ugly history repeatedly.\u201d[16]<\/a>\u00a0 Thinking that White people matter more is a deflection from the real problem: people of color disproportionally experiencing racial injustice at the hands of White police officers and an unjust police system.<\/p>\n [15] Beginning again, then, means encountering the American lie, white supremacy, that White people are superior and have certain privileges they alone are entitled to.\u00a0 Beginning again means encountering the past and how one was formed.\u00a0 Human beings are particular with a name, culture, religious heritages, and ways of existing in the world.\u00a0 White supremacy grounded in a pseudo anthropology (an I-it relationship) with racial injustice and unjust policing as its fruits must get beyond denying the importance of race in the life of American society.\u00a0 And that means accepting the truth of the history of America in relationship to communities of color.\u00a0 My proposal is that ethics in a cosmopolitan era is a circular process with, at least, five (5) steps: belief, responsibility, active listening, action, and restorative justice.<\/p>\n [16] In the first instance, then, ethics in a cosmopolitan era begins with anthropology, the power of a creative and just God.\u00a0 Every human being has been blessed with the imago dei<\/em> (image of God).\u00a0 Often in meetings, The Reverend Dr. Cheryl Angela Stewart Pero would introduce herself by saying her name and adding, \u201cChild of God.\u201d\u00a0 Reflecting her incorporation into the Body of Christ, through baptism, and whose she was, Pero was establishing, theologically and ethically, the meaning of Luther\u2019s explanation of the First Article of the Apostles\u2019 Creed.\u00a0 \u201cI believe<\/strong>,\u201d writes Luther, \u201cthat GOD has created ME together with all that exists.\u201d\u00a0 Luther goes on to say, GOD protects ME against all danger and shields and preserves ME from all evil.\u201d[17]<\/a>\u00a0 There is no hesitancy in Luther\u2019s words.\u00a0 God has all power, not human beings!\u00a0 God protects that which God creates.\u00a0 Every human being reflects the creating power of God and deserves respect, honor, dignity, and justice.<\/p>\n [17] Life during this pandemic has put a great deal of strain on institutions, especially police systems.\u00a0 Mistrust of those systems is running rampant and contributes to a sense of despondency.\u00a0 The pandemic (with its racial overtones) has made the lives of people of color unbearable at times.\u00a0 Are there any resources within the Christian Tradition which justice-oriented people can engage in their daily lives?<\/p>\n [18] The Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) is a song which testifies to the liberating power of God.\u00a0 The God who is here praised is a strong God who liberates the powerless and those who are oppressed by people in structures of society.\u00a0 The testimony of The Magnificat is that a new era is dawning.\u00a0 GOD, who has all power, will remove those who misuse their power and implement unjust policies.\u00a0 That is an awesome claim.\u00a0 There is no indication how God will remove the mighty from their thrones.\u00a0 There is no indication when God will act.\u00a0 Quite simply, God is beyond all situations, including the practice and belief in white supremacy.\u00a0 Belief<\/strong> in the power of the God brings hope that things will be reversed in the world and that is liberating for the poor and powerless.\u00a0 Faith is critical in believing God will act.<\/p>\n [19] Second, this form of ethics challenges all people, especially White people, to take responsibility<\/strong> for how they were and are formed.\u00a0 It is essential to hear the stories of people from communities of color.\u00a0 Those stories are critical for people of color because they establish what it means to be human and to be treated inhumanly.\u00a0 They are stories about being a moral being.\u00a0 Stories articulate and clarify who we are and our view of the world.\u00a0 Stories remove self-deception and exposes pseudo anthropology.\u00a0 Stories reveal the complexity of life.\u00a0 Yet, for people of color, those stories will have a single thread, being victims of white supremacy.\u00a0 In America, and as we saw around the globe, the depth of white supremacy was revealed through people taking to the streets and telling their stories.\u00a0 White people must give up their comfort and tell their stories of how they have struggled to become human beings who resist perpetuating a pseudo anthropology.\u00a0 Our times call for White people to be uncomfortable for a moment.\u00a0 For example, I have often heard some White people say to me: (Richard, if they really know me or Dr. Perry if they do not know me), \u201cWhen I see you I don\u2019t see color.\u201d\u00a0 Comments like that are offensive, end conversations, and reflect the depth of white supremacy.\u00a0 It is inconsistent with the ethos of society, in America at least, which has been built on a racial binary, White and African American (Black) to not see race or color.\u00a0 Lutheran ethics would surely look different when one gets beyond a form of voyeurism (just listening to stories of people of color) to White people being honest about their own struggles overcoming white supremacy.<\/p>\n [20] Bearing responsibility includes engaging in active listening<\/strong>.\u00a0 Active listening is more than just hearing the stories of people of color.\u00a0 It involves setting aside judgment about the stories, character of the individual, and the community of origin of the storyteller.\u00a0 Actively listening is more about leaving one\u2019s personal agenda and the institution\u2019s agenda aside.\u00a0 Actively listening is not about whose story is right or wrong.\u00a0 It involves an internal and external dimension.\u00a0 Internally some of the questions are: how does that story affect my perception of the person of color and his or her community of origin?\u00a0 What is preventing me from hearing the lived experience(s) being shared?\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 What opportunities do those stories provide for more deeply engaging self and the person of color?\u00a0 Externally the questions are: Am I willing to go beyond myself and my cultural lens and examine the larger message communicated as a member of the White community and its larger cultural ethos?\u00a0 What would institutional life, especially policing, look like if we heard stories of White people trying to institute just policies?<\/p>\n [21] A fourth element of an ethics in a cosmopolitan era is action<\/strong>.\u00a0 One of the popular proverbs in the African American community is, \u201caction speaks louder than words.\u201d\u00a0 What an individual does says a lot about who the individual is and their agenda.\u00a0 Here my focus is on more than public pronouncements.\u00a0 Pronouncements are necessary because they establish what a structure stands for.\u00a0 Meeting the needs of the neighbor is commanded (Matthew 25).\u00a0 My concern is about POLICIES.\u00a0 Do individuals in power enact just policies?\u00a0 Are they asking the right questions, who is missing from the table? or Who is served by the policies?\u00a0 Are White Americans willing to accept a new understanding of what it means to be an ally?\u00a0 Are White Americans willing to move into new spaces and be uncomfortable recognizing that God\u2019s grace surrounds them?\u00a0 Being an ally is more than joining marches for justice.\u00a0 Being an ally means acknowledging the privilege associated with being White and doing something about it.\u00a0 Am I, as a White ally, willing to forgo thinking that \u201cI am losing something if I pursue just policies for people of color?[18]<\/a>\u00a0 To be an ally leads one to be open to different perspectives and to refrain from affirming the comfort of other Whites.\u00a0 Being an ally means working for restorative justice in the structures of power.<\/p>\n [22] Finally, there is an element of working for restorative justice<\/strong>.\u00a0 Restorative justice is the center, the core ingredient for life in a world with people from every tribe and nation.\u00a0 Some say justice is the implementation of love in society.\u00a0 It seeks to return human beings to the biblical God who creates and seeks justice for the poor and people left out in church and society.\u00a0 Restorative justice is about reconciliation with the God of the Magnificat<\/em> and the God of Aretha Franklin.\u00a0 Believing in God\u2019s power to remove those individuals running oppressive structures maybe perceived as passive.\u00a0 However, that belief is having faith in the promises of God to act on behalf of those communities suffering from white supremacy and other forms of oppression.\u00a0 Restorative justice is about engaging self-deception by hearing the truth of one\u2019s own experience (s), hearing the lived experience (s) of people of color, and sharing one\u2019s own struggle to dismantle white supremacy.<\/p>\n [23] On January 6, 2021, my daughter and I watched the insurrection at the Capital in Washington, D.C. unfold on TV.\u00a0 Throughout the day, I kept hearing, in my spirit, a song I learned about over the summer.\u00a0 It was the \u201cQueen of Soul\u201d Aretha Franklin\u2019s song, \u201cNever Gonna Break My Faith.\u201d\u00a0 Like The Magnificat<\/em>, Franklin\u2019s song is a song about the reality of life in society with its oppressive structures, faith and hope.\u00a0 No matter what those who practice white supremacy do and no matter its fruit of racial injustice, God will make it right.\u00a0 Franklin sings,<\/p>\n \u201cyou can lie to a child with a smiling face<\/p>\n tell me that colour ain\u2019t about race<\/p>\n you can cast the first stone you can break my bones<\/p>\n but you\u2019re never gonna break<\/p>\n never gonna break my\u2026<\/p>\n faith and hope ain\u2019t ours to give<\/p>\n truth and liberty are mine to live<\/p>\n steal a crown from a king, break an angels wings<\/p>\n but you\u2019re never gonna break, never gonna break my faith.\u201d[19]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n During our struggle with white supremacy, African American people and many other people of color hold on to faith.\u00a0 Faith is having the courage to go into uncomfortable spaces and valuing the difference we experience in the world.\u00a0 After appropriate introspection about one\u2019s own formation and practices, one can find a newfound interest in the formation and practices of people from different tribes and nations.\u00a0 Then genuine conversation can occur with the goal being restorative justice.\u00a0 Ethics in a cosmopolitan era calls us to begin again so that we can creatively live and flourish as God\u2019s people.\u00a0 In the end, as disciples of Christ, the call is to \u201cLet justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream\u201d (Amos 5:24).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Questions for Discussion:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Endnotes<\/p>\n [1]This \u201cthink piece\u201d was rewritten to reflect discussion at the Lutheran Ethicists Gathering and the events which occurred on January 6, 2021.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Martin Luther Kings, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?<\/em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 173.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Philandro Castile, an African American male, was shot to death during a traffic stop in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 6, 2016.\u00a0 See Pat Pheifer and Claude Peck, \u201cAftermath of Fatal Falcon Heights officer-involved shooting captured on video,\u201d StarTribune<\/em> at https:\/\/www.startribune.com\/aftermath-of-officer-involved-shooting-captured-on-phone-video\/385789251<\/a>. July 7, 2016.\u00a0 Accessed March 1, 2021.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Selected Poems of Langston Hughes<\/em>. (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), 187-188.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Cree1.0., February 24, 2018.\u00a0 This phrase is defined as \u201cbeing lied to, or someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes.\u201d\u00a0 Available at www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=okey%20doke<\/a>.\u00a0 Accessed January 18, 2021.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Qian Julie Wong, \u201cAnti-Racism Isn\u2019t New.\u201d\u00a0 Available at https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/2\/18\/opinion\/asian-americans-racism.html<\/a>.\u00a0 Accessed March 1, 2021.\u00a0 See also the recent ELCA \u201cStatement on anti-Asian Racism\u201d available at https:\/\/www.elca.org\/news-and-events\/8089<\/a>.\u00a0 Accessed March 4, 2021.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> I am following the ethnic designations identified in the ELCA\u2019s \u201cHow Strategic and Authentic is Our Diversity: A Call for Confession, Reflection and Healing Action,\u201d 2.\u00a0 It should be noted that the ELCA has a European Descent Association for Racial Justice.\u00a0 I am using \u201cWhite\u201d to refer to European Americans.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> \u201cBotched police raid of Anjanette Young\u2019s home,\u201d Chicago SunTimes Staff Writers.\u00a0 Available at https:\/\/Chicago.suntimes.com\/2020\/12\/18\/22189350\/Chicago-police-raid-anjanette-young-lori-lightfoot<\/a>.\u00a0 Accessed on February 20, 2021.<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> \u201cThe Church in Society: A Lutheran Perspective,\u201d September 1991. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 3.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> I have been influenced by two authors on the concept of \u201ccosmopolitanism.\u201d\u00a0 See Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitan: Ethics in a World of Strangers<\/em>.\u00a0 New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006 and Namsoon Kang.\u00a0 Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World<\/em>.\u00a0 St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2013.<\/p>\n [11]<\/a> \u201cPaideia,\u201d Encyclopaedia Britannica<\/em>.\u00a0 Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 08 February 1999.\u00a0 Available at https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/paideia<\/a>.\u00a0 Access date: February 20, 2021.<\/p>\n [12]<\/a> Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism<\/em>. (New York: Basic Books, 1992), v.<\/p>\n [13]<\/a> In the discussion of a panel member\u2019s \u2018think piece,\u2019 the concept of \u201cactive listening\u201d was suggested as a way for moving forward in conversations.\u00a0 See also my chapter in \u201cLet Justice Roll Down Like Waters\u2026\u201d: A Black Cultural Awareness Resource, A Living Waters of Faith Series<\/em>.\u00a0 Written by Richard Perry, Albert Pero, and Cheryl Stewart.\u00a0 Frank Klos, Editor. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House\/Fortress Press, 1988, Chapter 12.<\/p>\n [14]<\/a> Beverly Wallace, \u201cHush No More! Constructing an African American Lutheran Womanist Ethic,\u201d in Transformative Lutheran Theologies: Feminist, Womanist, and Mujerista Perspectives<\/em>.\u00a0 Mary J. Streufert, Editor. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 179.<\/p>\n [15]<\/a> Crown (Random House): New York, 2020.\u00a0 Kindle edition.<\/p>\n [16]<\/a> Glaude, 202.<\/p>\n [17]<\/a> \u201cThe Creed,\u201d The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church<\/em>. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 354-355.<\/p>\n [18]<\/a> See the recently published book by Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together<\/em>.\u00a0 New York: One World, February 2021.<\/p>\n [19]<\/a> The reader is strongly encouraged to watch the video of this song.\u00a0 It is available at https:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?y=ZLbHi92YOhE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This \u2018think piece\u2019 is dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Cheryl Stewart Pero, PhD, child of God, friend, colleague, theologian, and advocate for justice in the church and world.[1] \u201cOur hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish the moral ends of our lives in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-19"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n