This week as the disheartening revelation from Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s yearbook photos from 1984 unfolded with their racist imagery which resulted in many political leaders calling for his resignation and the State Attorney General Mark Herring came forward with his revelations that he too had appeared in blackface as a young college student, I couldn’t help but recall an interview the public theologian Ruby Sales gave back in 2016 on Krista Tippett’s On Being show.

In that interview, Ruby Sales speaks about the elephant in the room for all Americans, and that is the unacknowledged and unaddressed white spiritual crisis in America:

“And we’ve got a — there’s a spiritual crisis in white America. It’s a crisis of meaning. And I don’t hear — we talk a lot about black theologies, but I want a liberating white theology. I want a theology that speaks to Appalachia. I want a theology that begins to deepen people’s understanding about their capacity to live fully human lives and to touch the goodness inside of them, rather than call upon them — the part of themselves that’s not relational. Because there’s nothing wrong with being European-American; that’s not the problem. It’s how you actualize that history and how you actualize that reality. It’s almost like white people don’t believe that other white people are worthy of being redeemed.

And I don’t quite understand that. It must be more sexy to deal with black folk than it is to deal with white folk, if you’re a white person. So as a black person, I want a theology that gives hope and meaning to people who are struggling to have meaning in a world where they no longer are as essential to whiteness as they once were.”

Ruby Sales — On Being Interview with Krista Tippett, August 2017

How do we go about building that liberating white theology Ruby Sales challenges us to? How do we go about laying the foundations of a theology in 2019 and beyond that acknowledges the wrongs of racist acts, attitudes, prejudices, and power and control of European-American ancestors who enslaved African-Americans without shaming white Americans for their ancestry?  How do we acknowledge the wrongs of foolish racist acts of white male political leaders in their youth and hold those same leaders accountable for the actions of their youth without compromising our beliefs in redemption and forgiveness while not enabling on-going racist acts and beliefs?  How do we go about building a liberating white theology that is for all white Americans from the under employed and underpaid grocery store cashier, the under employed and underpaid fast food worker, the unemployed drug addict, to the successful small business owner, the full time with healthcare benefits banker, IT programmer, doctor, nurse, teacher, congressperson and president?

That is the crux of the crisis Ruby Sales prophetically challenges us to address.  We are, no doubt, in the midst of the tearing down of the privileged, older, white, wealthy male controlled power structures to a new power structure that is hopefully more egalitarian emboldening a world view where control and power are no longer based on gender, race, or economic class.

Has theology and spirituality kept up with this evolution?  if not, might we explore how each of us individually can contribute to the advancement of this more egalitarian world view?

In the coming weeks and months, I hope to explore at least beginning the discussion on what might a theology like Ruby Sales challenges us to establish look like.

In so doing, may we lean into and live up to offering that gift to God that Hans von Balthasar encourages us to do when he said:

“What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.” 

― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer