How Princeton Seminary’s slavery audit created moments of unlikely intimacy
We need structural change. We also need to be willing to be personally undone.
When I hear students and faculty of color in theological institutions remark that they do not trust White folks because of the structural trauma they have experienced, I lament. Not because I think they are villainous for feeling this way. Professional theological education in the United States was established in service to a White religious structure and order, and racial pain produces suspicion and distrust. I lament because the violence that produces racial distrust prevents the joining together of lives that the gospel envisions.
I also lament when I see White students and faculty develop indifferent or antagonistic responses to stories of racial pain because they fear the guilt and responsibility associated with acknowledging racism and their own privilege. This scene produces an emotional economy of fear in which new moments of radical intimacy and belonging are impossible.
Still, I have hope. Not in the form of liberal optimism, but as a continual prayer for unlikely people to begin truly desiring each other.
