January 6 Reflections on this MLK day
The morning of Jan 6, 2021, we awoke to black organizing work triumphantly overcoming Georgia’s voter suppression with the election of Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. served. In his victory speech Warnock shared, “The 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator.”
For Christians January 6 was also Epiphany, the day to celebrate the revealing of the Light of the World, the Incarnate Word bearing “good news to the poor” and “release to the captives.” Epiphany means revelation or manifestation. That morning we took a step forward and that afternoon we took several steps back. For some, this day revealed so much. For some, this day was not a surprise. For all, it was a shock.
The world watched a mob storm the US Capitol - with zero to no consequences.
The world watched as violent right-wing extremists were escorted in.
The world watched as facist mobs marched on the floors of the Capitol Building with Confederate flags.
The world watched as an attempted coup took place, with minimal pushback from authorities and elected officials.
The world watched and immediately took note of the incredible dichotomy between this day and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
January 6, 2021 was the definition of white privilege incarnate.
The attempted coup’s display of white privilege is just more evidence to the significance of white supremacy in US American institutions. Indeed it was a day of Epiphany, where those who had not seen before began to see, really see, who we are as a nation. No change in administration or leadership will miraculously eliminate this fact: The United States is a white-dominated nation, the United Methodist Church is a white-dominated denomination, and MFSA is a white-dominated organization. The United States, UMC, and MFSA have a responsibility, a moral obligation, to confront its continued perpetuation of white supremacy and radically rethink what it means to become antiracist institutions in the present and the future.
Seeking to confront and disrupt our own participation with white supremacy, MFSA began to work on an Organizational Racial Audit at the end of 2019. Today the Racial Audit team is about two-thirds of the way into the audit process where we are critically examining MFSA and studying where, why, and how white supremacy and racism operate within us as an organization. This process will result in a list of recommendations and an implementation plan. We continue to be reminded of the urgency and importance of the work we are doing.
White privilege and white supremacy cannot be the end of the narrative. We must face and peel back the messy, intersectional, layers of injustice rooted in white supremacy that dominates this world, this nation, our church, and our organization. We must demand accountability and justice not only from the outgoing administration but also from the incoming one and from ourselves. The work of antiracism is rooted in mutual accountability, interdependence, relationship, and community.
We “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
This is the work of seeking God’s justice and peace. This is justice-seeking work. This is the work God requires of us.
Won’t you join us in this work?
Yeo Jin Yun and George McClain
MFSA does not receive any financial support from the United Methodist Church's giving channels. 100% of our work is funded through your generosity.
Rev. George McClain is MFSA executive director emeritus (1973-1998); author, Claiming All Things for God–Prayer, Discernment, and Ritual for Social Change and Creating a Scene in Corinth–A Simulation; adjunct professor, St. Paul School of Theology, teaching in the UM Deaconess/Home Missioner Program; mentor to formerly incarcerated men; "retired" elder, NY Ann. Conference. George is passionate about theological education for clergy and laity; prison reform; racial justice; LGBTQ justice; Christian feminism, eco-justice; unity of social witness and spirituality; that the church (UMC and beyond) BE the church. And now, biblical resistance to newly-energized principalities and powers not of God.
Yeo Jin Yun is a 2019 Global Mission Fellow (GMF) US-2 commissioned by the General Board of Global Ministries. Serving the next two years in the position of the Development and Communications Coordinator, Yeo Jin works in collaboration with Executive Director Bridget Cabrera in supporting the works and goals of MFSA by increasing the quality of donor relationships and by strategically communicating with and engaging United Methodists of our ministries via social media and E-newsletters.
