Atelier@Duke: Intellectuals and Activism

Atelier@Duke: Intellectuals and Activism
February 25, 2011

Panelists at the Atelier@Duke symposium discuss "Intellectuals and Activism," the third of five panels at the Atelier@Duke, an event marking the 15th anniversary of the John Hope Franklin Research Center at Duke University Libraries.

Panelists include Joanne Braxton (William & Mary), Paula Giddings (Smith College), Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Harvard), Tim Tyson (Duke), and moderator William H. Chafe (Duke).

Panel tackles 'Faith in Public Space'

from The Herald-Sun

Panel Tackles 'Faith in Public Space'
By Cliff Bellamy

DURHAM -- How can Christians who consider themselves politically progressive make their case in a religion that includes people of varying views? Can Facebook and other social network tools help them spread the message? How can the church's message be revamped to reach those disillusioned with the church?

The questions were part of a wide-ranging discussion on "The Role of Faith in Public Space," held Sunday at Watts Street Baptist Church. The discussion commemorated the eighth anniversary of Compassion Ministries of Durham. The Rev. Carl W. Kenney, pastor of Compassion Ministries, and a local columnist, moderated the discussion and question-and-answer session afterward.

One common thread in the discussion was that progressives often are reluctant to voice their views -- on the role of women in the church, the treatment of gays and other issues -- in the context of the church. "Those of us who identify ourselves as progressive are in some ways captive to our middle-class ethics," said panelist Chanequa Walker-Barnes, who teaches at the Shaw University Divinity School. That ethic dictates that you should not cause conflict or make others uncomfortable. Progressive Christians must become "comfortable with being uncomfortable," she said.

Mark Anthony Neal, panelist and professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University, referring to the views put forth in so-called mega churches, said he could not accept any view that dehumanizes another person, "and that's what homophobia does." He said that the "elite black ministers" need to be challenged on their views toward sexuality and the treatment of gays.

Tim Tyson, author of "Blood Done Sign My Name" and research scholar at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, said in his research he had learned about the very progressive side of his family that he never knew about. "We have to be bold," Tyson said of progressives, because "our adversaries are well organized."

He praised the North Carolina NAACP and its president, the Rev. William Barber, for leading the opposition to school re-segregation, particularly in Wake County, as an example of prophetic action in the world. "That has been one of the very exciting things to me," he said. (Tyson was among those arrested for trespassing for allegedly disrupting a meeting of the Wake school board over the issue of school district lines.)

The African-American church became the safe haven, particularly during the time leading up to the Civil Rights Act, where black progressives could discuss their views, said Neal. "There is no place where black progressive thought" can be discussed "except the black church," Neal said.

He said that "spiritual progressives need to rebrand themselves" and embrace some of the tools of technology. "The reality is that social media gives us access to people we did not have 20 years ago," he said.

At the end of the discussion, Kenney offered his thoughts on the difficulty of being Christian but having progressive political views. "One of the sad realities is that when people ask me what I do, I'm more comfortable with saying I'm a writer," Kenney said. He referred to the Florida pastor who recently wanted to publicly burn the Quran, and said it is hard to be connected to an institution that might tolerate that kind of action.

MOVIE REVIEW

Blood Done Sign My Name

A Town Torn Asunder by Racial Killing in ’70

By A. O. SCOTT

Jeb Stuart’s “Blood Done Sign My Name” scrupulously examines a page from the recent history of the South — a racially charged murder that took place in Oxford, N.C., in 1970. The details of the case resemble those of many similar events that took place across the region at the height of the civil rights movement. A black man, Henry Marrow, was brutally killed and his accused murderers, members of a family of white business owners, were acquitted by an all-white jury as the town seethed and its leaders panicked. There were peaceful marches to the state capital, and also acts of looting, vandalism and arson.

The film, based on a book of the same title by Timothy B. Tyson, a scholar of African-American history (and, as a boy, a character in the story), reminds us that such episodes did not end with the passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Early scenes emphasize that to many of its black residents, Oxford, a tobacco-growing hamlet not far from Durham, seemed at the end of that decade to be frozen in a Jim Crow past. Whites might have agreed but found more cause for complacency than frustration.

Ben Chavis (Nate Parker), a son of a well-to-do local African-American family who has come home to teach school and later reopen his father’s restaurant, is startled at how little appetite for change there seems to be. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, an idealistic minister takes up a post at the Methodist church and startles its all-white congregation with his rather moderate invocations of racial equality and his insistence on inviting a prominent black educator to speak at Sunday services.

In a more conventional telling of the story, the preacher, Vernon Tyson (who is the father of Timothy, and who is played with amiable understatement by Ricky Schroder), would have been the hero of the story, the white man whose awakened conscience drives history forward. But neither he nor Mr. Chavis — who after the events depicted in the film would go on to become the executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. many years later — quite fills that role. They are both portrayed as thoughtful, morally serious men, but “Blood Done Sign My Name” is not really concerned with their inner struggles or psychological motivations.

Read the Full Review @ The New York Times