Make A Difference For Life: 2013

The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference held their annual meeting in Dallas Texas this year where we were hosted by the Friendship West Baptist Church and Pastor Frederick Douglas Haynes. The Proctor Conference, as it has come to be known, is the brain child of Dr. Haynes and Dr. Jeremiah Wright who was a student of Dr. Proctor at Virginia Union Theological Seminary. This year marked the 10^th anniversary of the conference which is spearheaded by the General Secretary, Dr. Iva Carruthers.

“The mission of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference (SDPC) is to nurture, sustain, and mobilize the African American faith community in collaboration with civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders to address critical needs of human and social justice within local, national, and global communities. SDPC seeks to strengthen the individual and collective capacity of thought leaders and activists in the church, academy, and community through education, advocacy, and activism.” [1]

With Dr. Boesak

This year’s theme was “Living Waters: Unearthing Global Power for Justice”. The session was kicked off on Monday evening with a challenging sermon from Rev. Dr. Alan Boesak entitled, “Where Are Your Wounds?” Dr. Boesak is a veteran of the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa and challenged conference attendees to understand that the life in Christ is a life characterized by struggle. In that struggle there will be wounds. In fact the absence of wounds suggests that one did not find anything worth fighting for. Where are your wounds?

The question is a twofold question, not only “Where are you wounds?” but if you have no wounds then, “<![if !vml]><![endif]>Was there nothing to fight for?” Dr. Boesak said this was the question that God is asking the Black Church today. I would suggest that this is the question for the whole church. Not only the church collectively but for each of us who profess to be followers of the Christ by who’s wounds we are healed!! This is the challenge to every one of us. Are we content to sit in relative ease and comfort while millions of men and women struggle to find the means to “get by” even from day to day. Where are your wounds? Is it enough to hand out sandwiches and blankets and not challenge the systems that create poverty and homelessness? Is there nothing to fight for?

Yes it is easier to blame the “other”, the drug addicted, the old, the poor. It is the popular thing to demonize those who are the most vulnerable in our society today. The challenge of the question is having the courage to speak truth to power. To say that there is something inherently wrong with making a health problem, like drug addiction, into a legal problem. The challenge is fighting a system of mass incarceration that denies the “inalienable rights” of citizenship and creates a social caste of second class citizens in a new system of Jim Crow. Where are your wounds? The challenge is speaking truth to a system of poverty governance that simply makes poverty less harsh while funneling people into low wage, dead end jobs. Is there nothing to fight for? The challenge is defending senior citizens, who have worked all their lives, from a government that wants to privatize their retirement while spending billions of dollars on military aide to foreign countries. “Where are your wounds? Was there nothing to fight for?”

This is the challenge to the church today, and the challenge of theological education, training faith leaders to know the right people, to ask the right questions, and to have the courage to do so!

Where are your wounds? There is much to fight for!

Make A Difference . . . . . . . For Life!

[1] (Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference n.d.)