God's Faithfulness on the Journey
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Rostered Women of Color Project Steering Committee Wyvetta Bullock Carolyn Foster Marlene Helgemo Kholoud Khoury Idalia Negron Priscilla Paris-Austin Cheryl S. Pero Angela Shannon Viviane Thomas-Breitfeld Alicia Vargas Maxine Washington Chienyu Jade Yi Administrative Support Sonia Hayden Contributors The Rev. April Maja Almaas lives and serves in Trondheim, Norway. Deacon Tempie D. Beaman recently retired as executive director of My Friend’s House Inc. in Los Angeles where she has served in various capacities since 2010. The Rev. Thulie N. Beresford serves as chaplain at Franke at Seaside, a Lutheran Homes of South Carolina continuing care retirement community in Mount Pleasant, S.C. It is a ministry of the South Carolina Synod. The Rev. Dr. Linda Boston is pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Master in Sacramento, Calif. The Rev. Dr. Wyvetta Bullock serves as the executive for administration in the ELCA churchwide organization. She also serves as a pastoral associate at Bethel Lutheran Church in Chicago. The Rev. Perucy Nyanjula Butiku is assistant for Global and Multicultural Mission and is Bishop Robert Alan Rimbo’s staff liaison for the Anti-racism Committee of the Metropolitan New York Synod. She is a representative of the synod on international issues and leads the synod’s Multicultural Committee. The Rev. Tiffany C. Chaney is pastor/mission developer of Gathered by Grace, a newly forming synodically authorized worshiping community of the ELCA in Montgomery, Ala. The Rev. Mary Ling-Hsi Chang has been a rostered ELCA clergy woman for 21 years and serves at the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation in Cedarhurst, N.Y. The Rev. Patricia A. Davenport – widow of Joel, mother to Joel, Jr., Shanena, and Jamar, and grandmother of seven – is director for Evangelical Mission for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod. The Rev. Sarah Geddada is the associate pastor at St. Paul's International Lutheran Church in Floral Park, N.Y. The Rev. Louisa D. Groce is retired from Redeemer Lutheran Church in Jersey City, N.J., where she served for 10 years after graduating from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary at age 80. The Rev. Victoria L. Hamilton is co-pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Jacksonville, Fla,, with her spouse, William. The Rev. Laura Ingersol is retired after 32 years of pastoral ministry and lives in Baltimore. The Rev. Lydia Kalb is retired from her position as director for the Multicultural Center at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Ms. Kholoud Khoury is assistant to the ELCA director of New Congregations in the churchwide organization. The Rev. Gwendolyn S. King is serving as a supply, bridge and sabbatical pastor in the ELCA Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod and the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The Rev. Margrethe Shizuko Chinen Kleiber, formally a member of the Global Mission staff of the ELCA churchwide organization, served congregations in San Diego, London and northern Virginia. She was the first woman president of the Association of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The Rev. Charlene Limenih is serving in an interim capacity at Chapel of Peace Lutheran Church in Inglewood, Calif. The Rev. Dr. Kathryn Love is interim pastor of Martin Lutheran and St. Paul Lutheran churches in Mobile, Ala. The Rev. Lucille “CeCee” Mills serves as program associate director for the ELCA’s African Descent Ministries and also serves in the North Carolina Synod as an interim pastor at A Mighty Fortress Lutheran Church in Charlotte. The Rev. Gladys G. Moore is serving as senior pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Summit, N.J. The Rev. Idalia Negron Caamaño is the director of Evangelical Mission and assistant to the bishop of the Caribbean Synod. The Rev. Linda Norman is the former ELCA treasurer. The Rev. Cheryl A. S. Pero, Ph.D., served in a variety of ministry settings in Chicago; she retired as director of the Rev. Dr. Albert “Pete” Pero Jr. Multicultural Center at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago on June 30, 2017. The Rev. Rhonda Pruitt serves on the staff at Our Saviour Lutheran Church in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago as associate pastor of youth and families. The Rev. Carmen Ana Ramirez Marrero is an ethics teacher at Colegio Luterano Santisima Trinidad, in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. The Rev. Tuhina Verma Rasche serves as the networker for #decolonizeLutheranism. The Rev. Graciela R. Rivera serves at Ascension Lutheran Church in Dorado, Puerto Rico. The Rev. Dr. Niveen Sarras has been a rostered ELCA clergy woman for a year and a half and currently serves at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Wausau, Wis. Ms. Prairie Rose Seminole is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of ND. The Fort Berthold reservation is home to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations. Currently, Prairie Rose serves as the ELCA American Indian Alaska Native Program director. The Rev. Angela Lynn Shannon serves as dean of student life at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. The Rev. Beverly Brown Shaw serves as associate pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church of Atlanta. The Rev. Gigie Sijera-Grant serves as pastor at First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ellicott City, Md. The Rev. Viviane Thomas-Breitfield serves as an intentional interim pastor in the Greater Milwaukee Synod. The Rev. Rebecca Thomas-Templeton has served in four Metropolitan Chicago Synod congregations in her 18 years as a pastor. The Rev. Jacqueline Utley is the first African American and first female pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church in Columbia, S.C., where she currently serves. The Rev. Terisita Valeriano, a third generation Lutheran from the Philippines, was a pastor, mission developer, chaplain and regional officer for The Lutheran World Federation. She currently advocates for Filipino domestic workers and comprehensive immigration reform; she and her spouse Dr. Jennifer Snow have a son, Taal. The Rev. Dr. Alicia Vargas is dean and associate professor of multicultural ministry studies at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. The Rev. Kimberly A. Vaughn serves as assistant to the bishop for multicultural ministry, and discipleship and witness in the New Jersey Synod. The Rev. Dr. Andrea L. Walker is the ELCA’s Global Mission area director for Madagascar, West and Central Africa. The Rev. Beverly Wallace, Ph.D., is the assistant professor of pastoral care and counseling at Shaw University Divinity School. The Rev. Dr. Maxine M. Washington is rostered clergy of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod and is serving throughout the synod. The Rev. Chienyu Jade Yi, is serving at Living Truth Chinese Lutheran Church in Bothell, Wash., as a mission developer. Introduction M. Wyvetta Bullock and Cheryl Stewart Pero (with Rosetta E. Ross, Ph.D.) 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It has been a year of celebrating the beginning of Protestantism, which emerged from the 1517 publicizing of Martin Luther’s 95 propositional challenges to the Christian church. 2017 is even more special for Lutherans since it marks five centuries during which the Lutheran theological tradition developed worldwide reach and influence. Commemorations of the birth of Lutheranism abound across the globe, and, interestingly, include a gathering of 120 women from 18 countries who traveled to Wittenberg, Germany, the town where Luther conceived and wrote his 95 theses. The women gathered in Wittenberg to publicize the challenge that, while Lutherans celebrate 500 years of the tradition’s birth, “in many churches, women are disadvantaged.” The diverse group of 17 bishops and other church leaders included women “from Suriname, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Latvia, Norway and Greenland.”1 A publicity photograph memorializing their August 2017 gathering is stunning, because it presents high-ranking women church officials in clerical dress representing Lutherans worldwide and because it presents the racial and ethnic diversity among Lutheran women leaders. Unfortunately, as the message they shared proclaims, diversity in Lutheranism, including the ELCA, is an issue that warrants special attention. On July 27, 2015, the Pew Research Center released results of a poll on religious diversity in the United States. In an article titled “The Most and Least Racially Diverse U.S. Religious Groups,”2 Michael Lipka reports the survey examined 30 groups and looked for the presence of “Hispanics, as well as non-Hispanic whites, blacks, Asians and an umbrella category of other races and mixed-race Americans.” The ELCA was found at the bottom of the list, second from last, with 96 percent white people. Although there have been steady (though small) increases toward the ELCA’s 10-year anniversary goal of achieving 10 percent people of color/language other than English by 1998, increases from 2.2 percent in 1998, to 2.7 (2008), to 3.6 (2009), to 4.8 percent (2014)3 are dismal after 30-plus years of having such a goal. The reality that attrition (of white members) accounts for a substantial amount of the change makes the minor increases even more disappointing. The Lutheran theological tradition of grace and freedom is often compelling to people of color in the United States, but the ELCA remains burdened by its Northern European culture and orientation, which, among other misconceptions, assumes that all people of color are recent members of the church, that people of color are not able to understand and promote Lutheran theology and piety, that they are in the ELCA to become assimilated, and that the gifts God gave people of color are inferior. This attitude is reflected in literature the ELCA publishes, in our standards of local expressions of this church, our recruitment strategies, our understandings (or lack thereof) of our mission, and in the way our rostered leaders of color are welcomed and treated. 1 “A Visual Message from Wittenberg on Women’s Ordination,” The Lutheran World Federation, lutheranworld.org/news/here-we-stand, accessed Oct.