Tag: antiracism

The Super Bowl & the Sacred: Rethinking Whiteness in Christian Spaces

by Christopher Schouten, Chairperson, SWC Decentering Whiteness Task Force

The recent Super Bowl halftime show, featuring Kendrick Lamar and other prominent Black artists, ignited a firestorm of debate. Many, across racial lines, celebrated the performance as a powerful moment of representation and artistic expression. Yet, some white viewers expressed disappointment, confusion, or resentment, feeling the show wasn’t “for them.” This reaction highlights a critical issue, especially within the church: the need to decenter whiteness. It moves beyond basic racial justice (“Please don’t kill, jail, and discriminate against us”) to address the ingrained habit of placing whiteness at the center of everything. It calls for grace, understanding, and a willingness to step outside our comfort zones, recognizing the vast diversity of God’s creation reflected in the body of Christ.  

These reactions—both positive and negative—are a microcosm of our societal struggle with race and representation. Some criticisms, perhaps well-intentioned, revealed an underlying assumption that major cultural events should primarily cater to a white, mainstream audience. This often unconscious assumption is a manifestation of white-centeredness: the perspective that positions whiteness as the norm, the default, the standard.

This white-centeredness is particularly problematic within the church. We profess equality, bound by shared faith and love for God. Galatians 3:28 reminds us, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Yet, too often, our churches, liturgies, and even interpretations of scripture are filtered through a white lens, marginalizing Black siblings and other people of color.  

Decentering whiteness isn’t about demonizing white people or denying historical racial privilege. It’s about acknowledging whiteness as the constructed center, often at others’ expense. It’s about recognizing that Black experiences, perspectives, and voices, and those of other marginalized communities, have been silenced or dismissed, even within the church.  

This Super Bowl moment offers valuable introspection. It challenges us: Whose voices are we prioritizing? Whose stories are we telling? Whose experiences are we validating? Are we creating space for the full diversity of God’s children?

Decentering is challenging for those who’ve never questioned their centrality. It requires listening, learning, acknowledging the pain and frustration of marginalized communities, and humility—recognizing our perspectives aren’t the only ones. It requires grace for ourselves and others as we navigate biases and assumptions. We’re all on a journey, and mistakes will happen. But through grace, love, and a commitment to justice, we can dismantle oppressive systems.

Like Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s courageous act of speaking truth to power at the Washington National Cathedral, Kendrick Lamar’s performance served as a powerful prophetic witness, addressing systemic racism and police brutality. This “Bishop Budde moment,” this “Kendrick Lamar moment,” isn’t a call for white Christians to be silent. It’s a call to listen, amplify Black voices, stand in solidarity with the marginalized, and examine our own hearts for hidden biases.  

Decentering whiteness is ongoing—a continuous journey of learning, reflection, and action. It requires observing our reactions, learning from them, adjusting our behavior, and dismantling oppressive systems within the church and the wider world.

As Micah 6:8 says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Let us embody these words. Let us act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly, recognizing all are equally beloved children of God. Let us create churches where every voice is heard, every story is valued, and every person is celebrated. Let us, with grace and humility, decenter whiteness and embrace the fullness of God’s diverse creation.  

White people need to let Black America have this moment and be graceful about decentering themselves, saying, “Yeah, maybe this wasn’t for us. And that’s perfectly OK. Maybe it’s more than OK… maybe it’s amazing and brave, especially now, that a people would liberate and empower themselves this way and speak truth directly to power! Maybe this was Black America’s Bishop Budde moment.”

Black Transgender Lives Matter

by Hailey Lyons

Every day, our black trans siblings deal with the intersection of white supremacy and transphobia. Every day they risk misgendering, violence, and murder simply by living as themselves. They are targeted for hate crimes and are the targets of racist and transphobic jokes from construction sites to comfortable CEO offices. Our president propagates white supremacy. Our supposed democratic republic sets up barriers to the recognition of trans people and institutes policies to further the exploitation of people of color. Our prison system profits from the mass incarceration of black people.

We in the UCC need to be uncomfortable. We need to challenge white supremacy in our own spaces just as much as we fight the system. We need to recognize our complicity in and benefit from the systems of whiteness. The UCC has done and continues to do much of that work, but we need to go further than consciousness-raising and discomfort. We must destroy white privilege. We must tear asunder the structures in place that affirm whiteness. We must reconsider our beloved traditions that keep many of our congregations in a bygone era rooted in whiteness.

Black trans activists started the LGBT equality movement in America, and it is precisely their voices that are being erased in current movements toward LGBT equality and recognition. Being Open and Affirming is not enough, we need to aggressively model celebration of the trans community in our congregations and in public. Too often the Open and Affirming creed is simply an open door that trans people walk through and realize that our congregations are just another heteronormative, cisgender-dominated space.

When Jesus stormed the temple grounds, upending tables and tossing out people and animals alike, he called out the temple for becoming a house of commodities. Rather than a holy place, the temple commodified the acts of worship into a system of profit condoned by the so-called priests of God. Jesus violently cleansed the temple of its commodification, disrupting an economy benefiting those in power and exploiting the people. The first Isaiah delivered a stinging rebuke on the stench of the multitude of burnt offerings given to God because they are rooted in the commodification of worship itself. He attacked the very system set up to atone for the sins of Israel because it was a morally empty venture intent on appeasing God by adhering to tradition without passion. Rather, the Israelites should, “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow,”.

The churches of my Evangelical upbringing denied the existence of racism, denied the existence of those who weren’t cisgender. Even as they brought in diverse people, the theological message never strayed from white supremacy. The worship style changed, and the music became more upbeat and ‘contemporary’ – which was just a few thousand rip-offs of whatever U2 was producing – but the theology itself was morally bankrupt, leading them to commodify both the acts of worship and worship itself.

It is a privilege to be in the UCC where our theology acknowledges the sin of white supremacy and actively works to dismantle systemic racism. But don’t stop there. Let us carry forward the work into our liturgies, our polity, and our acts of worship. Let us dismantle the systems of whiteness still present in our congregations and hierarchies. For all lives to matter, black trans lives must also matter, and that means confronting our ideologies of white supremacy and transphobia, challenging those legacies wherever we see them, especially in our congregations.