Liberating Church

A Twenty-First Century Hush Harbor Manifesto

Brandon Wrencher, Venneikia Samantha Williams, Brandon Wrencher, Venneikia Samantha Williams

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781666730043, 9781666721065
• eBook ISBN: 9781666721072
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

While the North American church grapples with an eroding position of privilege in society, there is a liberating vision of church from the margins. This manifesto defines eight marks of liberating churches that were identified through research of antebellum hush harbors. Hush harbors were the covert gatherings of enslaved Africans to worship and organize for change free from the surveillance of plantation Christianity. Liberating Church explores how the marks of antebellum hush harbors are being lived out now in several faith communities. This book offers a guide for anyone who wants to embrace innovative models for building spaces of faith and activism with structural critique and spiritual power.

The Eight Marks

Ubuntu

A deep mutual care and welcome rooted in our inter­connect­ed­ness.

While we call ourselves a church, we do church differently, so I would describe it as a community of people who support each other . . . and we bring Jesus’ teachings to life in a different way, so that it’s not about being saved, it’s about us having authentic relationships with each other and living in community.

—member-leader, Good Neighbor Movement

They first ask each other how they feel, the state of their minds . . . The slave forgets all his sufferings, except to remind others of the trials during the past week, exclaiming, “Thank God, I shall not live here always!” Then they pass from one to another, shaking hands, and bidding each other farewell, promising, should they meet no more on earth, to strive and meet in heaven, where all is joy, happiness, and liberty. As they separate, they sing a parting hymn of praise.

—enslaved preacher Peter Randolph, describing the hush harbors9

Reflection on Ubuntu Venneikia Samantha Williams

“A person is a person through other persons,” says Archbishop Desmond Tutu.10 In a traditional reading of the biblical story of Creation, there was just one thing that was not good, and that was for a person to be alone. God fixed this by giving the first human ever created the gift of companionship with another person. When God saw this, it was declared that this was “very good.”

“Ubuntu” is a Southern African principle concerning oneness, collectivism, and basic human kindness. The Zulu phrase in which “ubuntu” is found, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, literally translates to “a person is a person (through other) persons.” No one person can meet all their needs and achieve every one of their goals without the help of another. The philosophy of Ubuntu tells us that we are interconnected and can only thrive through interdependency.

Interdependency and collectivism are largely discouraged and dis-incentivized in most American and Western contexts. If individualism continues to be the dominating principle and defining mark of the society and congregations, it will be the death of us and all we hold dear.

The practice of meeting each other’s needs amongst and by the people was commonplace in Black community and family life in antebellum times. All that we might have need of was “in the room.” It had to be. While we could wait for those with an abundance of power and resources to be benevolent and humane, instead we decided to be the doctor, teacher, preacher, artisan, and whatever else was needed to both survive and thrive.

In the 1960s, The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense taught us about this type of people power. Through the creation of feeding programs, rideshares, ambulance services, and more, they protected and served their neighbors. They countered the efforts of white, capitalist endeavors to eliminate and disempower them with the services and education their community needed.

The account of the earliest church in Acts 2:44 shows us this type of collectivism that requires getting close to people, building trust, knowing people’s names and their stories. These early believers were all together and had all things in common. They knew if their neighbor had a need because they were in proximity and in frequent conversation. From a place of knowing, trusting, and being with one another, they made sure to find tangible solutions to the material conditions their neighbors faced.

Hezekiah Walker’s song, “I Need You to Survive” beautifully describes ubuntu:

I need you, you need me.

We’re all a part of God’s body . . .

It is [God’s] will, that every need be supplied.

You are important to me, I need you to survive.11

The biblical principles of being a body of many parts and bearing one another’s burdens must be remembered, internalized, and lived out faithfully. This is where our healing lies. This is where our power lies.

As our structures and institutions currently stand, we have a long way to go before things are stable and life-giving, especially our churches. There is more often concern for maintaining a brand than meeting the needs of the people in the congregation, or the neighborhood the church is in. There is more often concern for amassing more numbers of people in pews and on screens than tending to the people in our immediate circle, getting to know them and how our destinies are intertwined. The parish or neighborhood-based model of church has become replaced with commuter church. We must know and believe that our well-being is tied up with the well-being of the people in closest proximity to us, and to all those that are oppressed. Up the street and around the corner. The needs of our neighbors must be taken seriously.

adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy, helps us further understand ubuntu when she says this about social movements and building people power: “The idea of interdependence is that we can meet each other’s needs in a variety of ways, that we can truly lean on others and they can lean on us.”12

Even the trinitarian relationship between the God Who Parents, the Son, and the Holy Spirit models for us how we ought to love and long for one another. How to make room for one another. Depend on one another. How we might testify to the glory we see in one another. Ubuntu makes interpersonal, political, and theological demands of us:

•a redistribution and equitable sharing of resources;

•a hospitality for the “person passing through”;13 and

•a respect for and celebration of the different skills and ways of making meaning in the world.

If I have and my neighbor does not, they cannot continue to go without for long. This is an opportunity to build intimacy and for reciprocity, with the unspoken commitment that they would do the same for me if and when my time comes. We are only as strong as our most vulnerable neighbor. Our elderly neighbor. Our trans neighbor. Our incarcerated neighbor.

We have been shown and have always known: we all we got. We must not forget one another. Along with our remembrance, we must show up in tangible ways for each other.

Feed one another. Love on our kids. Create and maintain sharing circles. Be for one another what “they” never have and never will be for us.

This is what the hush harbors modeled for us. This is what community should look like.

Stay Woke

Awakening to the rupturing grief that slavery never ended—a sacred attention and care for bodies in captivity and for bodies crying ou...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Invocation
• Hush Harbor
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• A Changing Landscape
• Church from the Margins
• The Eight Marks
• The Six Communities
• Conclusions
• Litany of Affirmations and Intentions
• Epilogue
• Data Summary
• Interview Themes Defined
• Graphs for Interviews and Surveys
• Reflection Questions
• Liberating Church Team
• Bibliography
• Further Readings and Resources