Column by Rev. Irene Monroe
August 2, 2018

Moral leadership has never been consistent in my lifetime, and I presume for us all. Like most social issues that are shaped by our human actions or inactions, moral leadership has its ebbs and flows.

Right now most people today would say that the world is sadly lacking in moral leadership as we listen to the news. As a nation, we are in a state of moral outrage because we have seen our public and religious leaders co-opt morality to push political agendas. We have seen them use moral arguments as a justification to maintain the status quo, the oppression of other people and to keep in place structural injustices.

So, to tackle this topic I ask five questions: What is moral leadership? What have been examples of moral leadership in my lifetime? Who embodied or embodies it? What should moral leadership look like today? And, where should I look for it?

Moral leadership, for me, is about service to others. It’s guided by core ideals deeply rooted in a praxis of justice and social change that addresses oppressions and its multiple causes and expressions. Motivated by a sense of shared purpose, moral leadership is collaborative and intersectional in building movements and not moments of justice.

For example, I am reminded of the last clause in Isaiah 11:6 KJV which states, “…and a little child shall lead them,” as a recent show of moral leadership.

This April was the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. It was sadly a searing reminder of unaddressed gun violence in America. And, because gun violence has gone unaddressed for half a century, future generations of children residing in a safer and healthier America MLK spoke about so dreamingly in his speeches now in 2018 live in fear of guns when they are not running scared for their lives from them.

During the “March for Our Lives,” student-led demonstration demanding safer gun laws that took place in Washington, D.C., one of the surprise guest speakers was nine-year-old Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like the hundreds of thousands of children and teens who came to the nation’s capital with the mission to end school shootings, Yolanda Renee King told the audience, “My grandfather had a dream that his four little children will not be judged by the color of the skin, but the content of their character.” Standing on stage alongside one of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors, Yolanda continued sharing her dream with the crowd.“I have a dream that enough is enough. And that this should be a gun-free world, period.”

As I watched King’s cherubic-looking granddaughter deliver her speech to a cheering crowd, I nearly cried realizing Yolanda never met her grandfather, because a bullet shortened his life leaving us all wondering how long he might have lived.

In 2018, no one could have fathomed the number one issue all American school-age children face is an epidemic of school shootings- whether in wealthy suburbs like Newtown and Parkland or urban cities like Chicago and Baltimore. Gun violence is killing our children, and gun reform continues to be that hot-button issue as a country we can’t seem to budge on. Our moral leaders in this movement today are neither adults nor our elected officials but instead our school-age kids.

Martin Luther King was an example of moral leadership. Martin Luther King’s civil rights activism began in the unwelcoming “Heart of Dixie” in 1955 when on a cold December evening Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger, birthing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott was the first of what would be many historic marches and protests that would catapult King onto a national stage. His acts of civil disobedience in the 1950’s and 1960’s helped elevate the country’s moral consciousness as Alabama struggled with hers. Sadly, in 2018 Alabama is still struggling.

MLK showed moral leadership, but not many of his white brethren in the South did. As a proponent of the strategy of nonviolent resistance demonstrations, MLK riled the concerns of eight moderate white Alabama clergymen who published their disagreement in their Birmingham town paper. These clergymen lacked moral leadership because they felt racial injustice was better argued in their courts than expressed as public protests. However, MLK disagreed. In his famous 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King felt unjust laws were a moral responsibility not only to break but also to bring to the public’s attention:

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Churches can be beacons of moral leadership. However, when they do not work these churches lose their moral leadership and they open themselves not only to the charge of inhospitality, but also to the charge of moral neglect. Theology in these churches, unfortunately, becomes merely ecclesiastical articulations of the status quo where the bible for them functions as their legitimate talking book. Religious intolerance masks their spiritual abuse, and patriarchal clericalism masks the structural oppressions within these churches so that these holy places of worship become sites of ritualized violence.

For example, in the early 1980’s, when the AIDS epidemic was labeled as the “Gay Plague” that was thought to affect only white gay men in this country, the Black Church turned a deaf ear to this community’s laments for help. When African American gay men made it known that they too were affected by the disease, the Black church did not offer their sons sympathy or prayer. AIDS is the leading killer of African American gay men between the ages of 25 and 44 and it’s the second leading killer of African American heterosexual women of the same age. The Black Church now understands there is a problem but it nonetheless colludes in the death of our African American LGBTQIA people with its silence on the issue. As a faith community that rests on the theological premise that God is on the side of the oppressed, the Black Church must get the moral courage to rid itself of this demon- homo/transphobia- before it is too late. Or, else the Black Church will have participated in the genocide of its people.

Seminaries grow moral leadership. However, seminaries lose their moral leadership when they address only the academy, or address only the institutional interests of their denominational churches. These seminaries may occasionally glance at the world, but never fully engage themselves in the world. Their effort to teach cultural and ethnic diversity- a diversity which is seldom reflected in their faculties or student bodies- mask, at best, their anemic attempt to be politically correct and, at worse, their academic arrogance to exclude from their folds the very people theological education ought to be about. Theology emerging out of these seminaries, unfortunately, becomes inauthentic expressions of the life of God’s people.

For example, in 2016, to the shock of many of us LGBTQ people of faith was the Vatican’s decision in the document “The Gift of Priestly Vocation,” to ban gays from the priesthood. And to know that Pope Francis, our LGBTQ pope- friendly pontiff, approved the document have many of us in disbelief. We all recall Pope Francis’s remarks when flying home after a weeklong visit to Brazil in 2013 (which set off global shock waves) where the pontiff was queried about the much talked about “gay lobby” in the Vatican.

“When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?”

Pope Frances’ more liberal-leaning pronouncements, however, don’t match his actions

Another example, this May, Pope Francis hurled a directive to Italian bishops to block admission to gay males or perceived gay males from entering the seminary. Catholic News Agency reported Pope Francis stating, “If you have even the slightest doubt it’s better not to let them enter because these acts or deep-seated tendencies can lead to scandals and can compromise the life of the seminary, as well as the man himself and his future priesthood.”

The problem in the Catholic Church is not its gay priests, and its solution to the problem is not the removal of them from church or seminaries. The problem in the Catholic Church is its transgressions against them. And I ask: Who will remove the church from itself?

Scapegoating all gay priests as pedophiles is a cheap and easy solution. It gives the Catholic Church an easy escape hatch that allows the Church not own up to the reality that the reason the Catholic Church exists and will continue to exist in perpetuity is because of the gifts, and dedicated service of its gay priests.

Right now, the Catholic Church and its seminaries stand in the need of prayer for moral guidance. And the Pontiff knows it. Francis aptly stated in his a December 2013 interview with 16 Jesuit magazines that “the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards” should the Catholic Church, in this 21st Century, continue on its anti-modernity trek like his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.

Within a Christian context, I have come to understand moral leadership as a type of leadership that is rooted in acts of helping others, and it is arched toward justice. It is a leadership that calls attention to the present-day social injustices and institutional ills that bring about particular people’s forced eviction from the Kingdom of God. Within a Christian context, moral leadership is a theology-in-praxis that looks at reality from an involved, committed stance in light of a faith that does justice. Within a Christian framework of moral leadership, God symbolizes for us a unified plurality that helps us create a multicultural society so that no one is left behind and every voice is lifted up.

When I think of what moral leadership is it is leaders who have moral outrage that transforms into acts of moral courage. For example, had Rosa Parks, an unassuming black seamstress, not had the moral outrage to refuse giving up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 this nation would not have seen the moral courage of African Americans. Moral leadership is neither gender-specific nor centered around one person. Both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. were leaders in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, because had Rosa Parks not sat down, King could not have stood up. While moral leadership does not call us to be prophets, where one person leads and all others are to follow, it does call us to be prophetic in this particular time in the life of American democracy.

Moral leadership can bring back our democracy. For example, taking a knee at NFL games is an act of moral leadership. However, the litmus test of American patriotism in sports these days is whether or not you stand for the national anthem, ignoring that the protest started as a statement against police brutality and systemic racism. However, since 9/11 the militarization of our sports culture has created a sports-military complex that now many white fans come not only for the entertainment but they come to display fidelity to police and the military, too.

With Trump now having an opening to appoint a pro-life Supreme Court justice to the bench in the hope of overturning “Roe v. Wade” women’s reproductive justice issues will no longer be of serious consideration, impacting predominantly poor, disabled and women of color.

There is already an erosion of LGBTQ civil rights under the guise of religious liberty. A new Trump Supreme Court justice will likely go after “Obergefell v. Hodges,” returning same-sex marriage to the states. And, while Trump bloviates his isolationist rhetoric to “Make America Great Again” our democracy hangs in the balance, revealing both its hypocrisy and its inhumanity.

Many people working for justice today stand on the shoulders of Martin Luther King Jr because of his moral leadership and what he achieved in Alabama. But I believe King’s vision of justice is often gravely limited and misunderstood. Too many people thought then, and continue to think, that King’s statements regarding justice were only about race and the African-American community. We fail to see how King’s vision of inclusion and community is far broader than we might have once imagined.

For King, justice was more than a racial issue, more than a legal or moral issue. Justice was a human issue. And this was evident in King’s passionate concern about a wide range of concerns: “The revolution for human rights is opening up unhealthy areas in American life and permitting a new and wholesome healing to take place,” King once told a racially mixed audience. “Eventually the civil rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial injustice.”

Moral leadership is about the inclusion and involvement of all people, where people are part of a participatory government and movement that is working to dismantle all existing discriminatory laws that truncate full participation in the fight to advance democracy.

Where then do we look for moral leadership?

I offer two suggestions where you might begin to look for it.

First, we must realize that looking for moral leadership only in one person is problematic because it maintains the belief that moral leadership is not out there in the world. However, if we look for moral leadership in brief instances in people ’s lives, in our own lives, we will see it more often.

Second, I believe that when we use our gifts in the service of others, we then shift the paradigm of moral leadership from outside of ourselves to within ourselves, and only then can we realize that we are the moral leaders we have been looking for.

Moral leadership played a profound role in the justice work that King did. Martin Luther King said there are two types of leadership. There are those who are thermometers, who measure the temperature in the room, and those who are thermostats, who change the temperature. Let’s improve this moral climate we’re in and be thermostats.

Why?

Because moral leadership provides a promising today as well as a promising future. And, in so doing, we fight until Hell freezes over, and then we fight on the ice, knowing that the power of the people is greater than the people in power.

~ Rev. Irene Monroe

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About the Author

The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister. She does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), a Boston member station of National Public Radio (NPR), that is now a podcast, and a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists (Boston) – Detour

Monroe’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, Ireland, Canada. Monroe writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and Opinion pieces for the Boston Globe.

Monroe stated that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As an religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.

Q: By A Reader

Can Christian liturgies be made to reflect reality rather than nostalgia?

Dear Reader,

It seems to me not all liturgy is “nostalgia.” There are many groups, like the Wild Goose Worship Group, that write more contemporary liturgies. Of course, there are parts of our religious history or “nostalgia” that have played an important role in getting us to where we are. Some have been healthier than others, but I'd argue they should not be forgotten. Maybe we just need to learn to not allow them to be the “end all be all.”

I think it would be much more useful to allow our past to inform our future, but not dictate it. Simply use it as one of the many filters through which we now view our current realities.

In the end, I think liturgies should fit the communities in which they reside. Some will be more traditional, and others will be more contemporary. The important part is for them to aid us in our acts of worship and spiritual growth.

~ Rev.Mark Sandlin

Click here to read and share online

Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press' Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on "The Huffington Post," "Sojourners," "Time," "Church World Services," and even the "Richard Dawkins Foundation." He's been featured on PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" and NPR's "The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin

 We began this series of columns by searching for the source of the almost universally negative definition of women that is held in religious circles. Somehow it has been imperative for men to portray women as weak, dependent wards, wrapping that portrayal in the garments of patriarchal religion. This definition used what they called God-given facts of themselves as the  originators of life. They believed that they alone planted new life into the womb of the woman who was little more than fertile soil that nurtured the male seed to maturity. They took this analogy from the farmer planting his seed into the womb of Mother Earth. The woman, like Mother Earth, was not a contributor to life but a passive receptacle designed to sustain life. This biologically imposed inferiority was thought to have come from God, so to rebel against it was to rebel against God.

Next we focused on the biblical story in the Judeo-Christian faith tradition to see how this ancient definition became incorporated into our own religious tradition. The Bible asserts in its oldest  creation story, that the woman was created because the birds and the animals failed to satisfy the man’s need for “a helper fit for him.” This secondary status in turn set the stage for the woman to be considered the property of the man, which enabled polygamy to develop since, if women were property a man could have as many wives as he could afford. We noted how this definition actually got enshrined in the Ten Commandments (see numbers 7 and 10). This week I want to examine another biblical strand of our religion-based anti-female bias. It is the idea that the woman is the source of that evil which infects our common humanity.

In the biblical story, after God had created the woman, she took her place as Adam’s “helpmeet” in the Garden of Eden. While tending that garden alone, the man had managed to obey the divine injunction not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil on pain of death. Now, however, in this obviously male-authored story, through this weak, subhuman creature called woman, that injunction was destined to be disobeyed.

In chapter three of the Book of Genesis, the story unfolds dramatically. Here we see the woman alone in the Garden of Eden. She is staring at the forbidden fruit, probably fantasizing about its taste, and perhaps wondering why it was prohibited. In this weakened state of brooding temptation she is approached by a remarkable snake, which appears to walk on two legs and to be able to speak perfect Hebrew since that would be the only language that Eve understood. Sensing a vulnerable target for this phallic-shaped creature, the serpent confronts the woman. A conversation ensues, “Eve, did God say you shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” “Mr. Snake,” the woman answered, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of that tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.” The snake responded, “You shall not die! For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes shall be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.”

The temptation was framed in such a way as to create in the human being a yearning for divine qualities. The temptation developed slowly. First, the woman’s fantasies convinced her that the fruit would be good for food. Second, she observed that this fruit was a delight to look at! Now she is told that it would also make her wise and enable her to transcend the boundaries of her humanity. The combination was something she could not resist. She took of this fruit and ate it. Then she gave it to her husband and, gullible and trusting as this stereotypical husband is portrayed as being, he also ate. According to the Hebrew myth, this was the moment when human awakening arrived. Later it would be described as “the Fall,” the cause of the brokenness of life, the source of “original sin.”

In that moment, the writers of the Bible believed that everything changed. Perfection was destroyed. Shame and guilt entered the human mind. Our oneness with God was broken, to be replaced by a sense of alienation. God, who had once walked with the first man and woman in the garden as their friend, was now looked upon as their judge, the elicitor of their guilt. Armed with this primitive understanding of God, the first human couple sought to escape the divine presence by hiding among the bushes of the garden.

Befuddled by their sudden absence, God calls out, “Where are you?” Confrontation ensues, “Have you eaten of that fruit?” “It was not I, Lord,” said Adam, “It was that woman, that woman you created, she gave me the fruit and I ate.” Turning to the woman, the divine interrogation continues. The woman claimed the snake had beguiled her. Blame and defensiveness enter the human arena.

Punishment is handed out next. The snake is cursed. It will never again walk on two legs but must slither on its belly through all eternity, eating the dust of the earth. The woman is doomed to experience pain in childbirth but will never escape it because her “desire will always be for her husband.” Adam, whose sin is defined as listening “to the voice of your wife,” is condemned to scratch out a living from the hostile earth. The ground will bring forth thorns and thistles, making him sweat to have sufficient bread to eat. All of them would eventually die. Death was thus interpreted as punishment. Because all flesh died, it followed that all flesh must be sinful. Finally, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden. From that moment to this, the Bible asserted, it would be the human destiny to live filled with guilt, shame and alienation somewhere “East of Eden” to borrow a phrase from John Steinbeck. All of this was blamed on that person, the woman, who was understood to be the weak link in creation. Male hostility to women was said to reside in the fact that the woman brought this pain, this sin and this degradation to the man, destroying if you will the perfect original image of God within him.

That there is hostility and fear directed toward women by men is beyond doubt. Every religious system seems compelled to explain its origin. The battle between the sexes is a perennial conflict. In almost every culture, man has always sought to subjugate the woman. For most of western history, the woman has had few rights. The husband could quite legally abuse his wife, beat her, rape her, divorce her and even kill her without any threat of punishment. Yet his dominance over this creature was always threatened by her power over him. Her feminine power was based on the woman’s ability to tempt him with desire for her body. The dominant male felt powerless in that attraction. He felt vulnerable since after emptying his sperm into her womb he was left weak, exhausted and sleepy. Patriarchal society was thus organized to keep the male in his position of dominance. That is why the woman’s independence had to be prescribed by local customs. For centuries the woman was not allowed in the workplace. That did not mean that the woman was unemployed, but only that she was not compensated and thus was chronically dependent. She actually worked long and hard to make her family’s well-being possible. She not only bore the babies and nursed the young, but she also cooked the food, made the clothes and cleaned the house. In return she received the protection of her husband to whom she had to promise obedience.

Later in history, however, driven by economic necessity, the woman was finally allowed to enter the work place but only as a source of cheap labor. She became the low-paid nurse helper to the male doctor, doing the bedpans the doctor did not want to do. She became the teacher of the children because the teaching profession paid so poorly that males no longer wanted to enter it except as the better-paid principals and superintendents who had authority over the women teachers. She was the dutiful secretary to the male executive, who did not want to do the routine work that business requires. Once outside the home she was always regarded as the potential temptress, who might lure gullible men into ‘sin.’ Sexual abuse in the workplace was so commonplace as to be expected. Males tended to divide women into the two categories of virgin and prostitute. Men sought virgins to be their wives and the mothers of their children, while viewing all other women as prostitutes or potential prostitutes, who were out to seduce them so that their indiscretions were not their own fault but the result of being unable to resist the evil spells cast by the feminine wiles of the opposite sex. It was a fascinating cultural explanation of the source of evil. Women have paid a tremendous price historically for being defined as such in the Bible. We have been very slow in coming out of this definition. Until very recently, spousal abuse was not a crime because a wife owed obedience to her husband. She had promised it in marriage. Rape was something the woman brought on herself by “provocative clothing.” Men kept women under economic control and no woman could own property in their own name until relatively late in western history. Women were not allowed to receive university educations until the 20th century so they could not achieve economic independence.

All of these things arise directly or indirectly out of the cultural assumption, based on an ancient biblical story that women are dangerous to men, the source of potential male weakness and of sin. So to keep weakness and sin under control, women must be kept under control. That was thought to be the will of God. The feminist revolution in the last century therefore, has been traditionally viewed by men as anti-Bible, anti-Church and anti-Christian.

Can the Christian Church ever escape its sexist past? That will be my topic next week.

~  John Shelby Spong