Marsh Chapel, Human Dignity, and Professing Christians

My wife and I recently spent some time in Boston with her aunt and uncle. During our time there I convinced the group to visit Marsh Chapel at Boston University.

Jun 20, 2023

My wife and I recently spent some time in Boston with her aunt and uncle. During our time there I convinced the group to visit Marsh Chapel at Boston University. I wanted to experience the location where Howard Thurman had served as the first African American Dean at a predominantly white institution. Howard Thurman is a hero and spiritual guide in my life through his writing, recorded talks, and the embodied life he lived. And it’s always an inspiring gift to retrace parts of his life.

During Thurman’s time as a pastor in San Francisco prior to becoming Dean in 1953, and then during his time at Boston University, he was consistently cultivating communities that were groundbreaking in their multiethnic partnership. His work was always motivated by a vision to break through barriers of separation so that those who have their backs against the wall could encounter God in liberating and inclusive spaces. His theological blend of contemplation and action have always inspired (and convicted) me.

As I sat on the red-cushioned chair in the front row of an empty chapel, I envisioned Thurman before me. I began to wonder: What might he say today? And how do I want to live in light of his life’s teaching? Thurman is famous for a quote in which he encouraged a friend during a conversation, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.”

In light of all this, I felt compelled to share 1) what’s been stirring in me, because, 2) I’m always trying to live what makes me come alive. I hope we can begin to realize his revolutionary vision, in what he called, “the search for common ground.” For in his book by the same title he wrote, “I have always wanted to be me without making it difficult for you to be you.”

I’m afraid some of us who profess to be Christians are making it difficult.

Here’s what I have to say:

As a follower of Jesus I find it disheartening how time and again professing Christians dehumanize people, especially those who, in the words of Howard Thurman, “have their backs against the wall.”

For instance:

The ways in which professing Christians mock and malign their neighbors and friends who, often unbeknownst to them, are part of the LGBTQ+ community.
The ways in which professing Christians wield the term “woke” as an epithet in order to obscure and ignore racist ideas while upholding a White dominant status quo that continually harms their BIPOC neighbors.
The ways in which professing Christians devalue the giftedness and contributions of women by deeming that, whether in word or deed, women are not only too weak, too emotional, or too incompetent, but are also defined by their bodies, looks, relationship status, and ability to give birth.
The ways in which professing Christians universalize people who experience poverty or homelessness as simply lacking a work ethic, and who therefore deserve (as if “they had it coming”) to have their families, opportunities, and possessions confiscated.
The ways in which professing Christians who are able bodied mock, hinder, or ignore the access to basic human needs of love, belonging, and life to those who do not fit their definition of normal.
The ways in which professing Christians refuse to relinquish their gun owning idolatry even as gun violence rises to the number one killer of children.
The ways in which professing Christians fail to interrogate their biases, or acknowledge the ways in which the community of people who have their backs against the wall are made up of a complicated intersection of what is listed above… and so much more.

The Jesus I follow is found at Thurman’s wall. In fact, he’s been there all along, and I hope each of us might learn to take our cues from Jesus and, at the bare minimum, offer basic human dignity to one another.

To put a fine point on it, professing Christians need to stop mocking the human dignity of neighbors who, at some point or another, find themselves cast to the margins of society where that basic human dignity (not to mention their human rights) are infringed upon. Therefore, in what should be the safest of places, I’m asking professing Christians to STOP cultivating places that are outright harmful and unsafe to those who have their backs against the wall, and as always, stop perpetuating such harm.

May we all remind ourselves of the humble love of Jesus. A Jesus who came into the world not to condemn it, but to love it with a liberating love, for none of us can be free until everybody is free.