Minority task force members cite their cultural differences
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 11, 2003
CHICAGO – Three members of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity – a Native American, an African-American and a Puerto Rican – took the stage at the task force meeting in Chicago to explain how their cultures differ from the normal Presbyterian way of making decisions.
Some of their comments were barbed.
“I realize the Presbyterian Church is a predominantly white church,” said Martha Sadongei, a Presbyterian minister in Phoenix, Ariz., who traces her ancestry to the Kiowa and Tohono O’odham tribes. “The Book of Order is a white man’s book. It was only through reading this material that I realized how white the church is.”
Besides Sardongei, Lonnie J. Oliver, pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, and Jose Luis Torres-Milan, pastor of Tercera Iglesia Presbiteriana (Third Presbyterian Church) in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, were the multicultural panelists.
All three agreed that the Presbyterian system – with its explicit rules of governance – can become cumbersome in their own cultural contexts.
“We’re a knee-jerk denomination,” Sardongei said, “quick to respond, rather than to just sit and listen to what has been said, without thinking about ramifications about how it might affect those behind us.”
Native-American culture is different, she added. “There is no ‘I’ in our languages. I was brought up with how rude it is to speak of I. We speak for those that come behind us. We’re always mindful that anything we say has some bearing on others. With this understanding, decision-making in our communities is a long process.”
“One church I served, it took us six months to go from communion on a quarterly basis to a monthly basis,” she said. “When decisions are made in native communities, there’s no change, so we have to think about it. We’ve always been a people of the spoken word and your word is your word.”
Sardongei gave her perspective of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in light of her cultural background and tribal councils. “Why aren’t our words honorable? Doesn’t our word mean anything? We’re not paper people, and we’re not time people. It’s a real struggle for Indian people living in both worlds. It’s not only about a deadline and making the right product. It’s about making the right decision that won’t be taken back.”
“Our joke in the Indian community is that we should have been more careful about our immigration laws,” she added. “My experience is that it’s a good thing the missionaries brought us the gospel, but they could have done it a little bit better. The polity is something we’ll do because we have to do it, but it’s not something we’re comfortable with.”
Oliver also emphasized cultural differences. Noting that his own ancestry included Native-American blood, he said African-Americans “are by nature religious. There’s a sense we are one with God. We don’t talk about whether we believe in God. We don’t have to figure it out. God is in charge. I’m not worried about that.”
Oliver said his culture – like Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village to raise a child – focuses on community and oral tradition. “That’s a process I grew up with. For a lot of African-Americans, we think through the heart.”
Like Sardongei, Oliver also said time was less important in his culture than for most Presbyterians – more than 95 percent of whom are Caucasian. “There’s a different connotation of time,” he said, telling the story about one of his parishioners who, after visiting another church, returned to tell “me at 11 o’clock everybody was in church. We’ve got to get our people to church on time.”
Oliver said he told his church member to relax, that people who arrived at 11:30 or other times were “on time.”
Oliver did call for a deeper appreciation of the “gifts that Africa and other cultures bring to the Reformed tradition. Calvin was influenced by Augustine from Africa, yet … it’s like Calvin is God” in Presbyterian circles. “God can use different persons to bring about God’s will.”
Torres-Milan recounted a number of experiences in which he said he did not feel that he was well received. He mentioned an incident that occurred when he was in Los Angeles, seeking ordination to serve a congregation. He said a member of the presbytery’s committee on ministry asked, “‘What would happen if a Catholic came to you and asked to be baptized?'”
The question rankled him, he said, because it implied that he was not a long-standing Presbyterian, but, being Hispanic, was a former Catholic.
Torres-Milan said he responded, “I’m a sixth-generation Presbyterian!” He told the task force that the implication behind the question was that he wasn’t a team player.
He said he felt as if he were being instructed to say no to idols such as St. Joseph and Mary, “but suddenly we saw ourselves as having to say yes to idols like money, power and sex.”
The emphasis in Puerto Rico is not only polity and issues, but community, he said. To make his point, he asked three other members of the task force who had privately relayed to him concerns in their families to tell the whole task force about them. They did, and then Torres-Milan called for the task force to break up into three groups and lay hands on the three people and pray for them.
After the prayers and the laying on of hands, Torres-Milan said, “What just happened is who we are and what we do. To take care of persons is to take care of business. We pay attention to what’s going on in our lives. You call it building community. We call it being community.”
Earlier in the meeting, Torres-Milan had asked whether the task force planned to translate its materials into Korean and Spanish to serve the minority constituencies so that they, too, would feel that they are part of the PCUSA. The first answer was no, primarily because of costs, although later there was a consensus that the final report should be in Spanish and Korean.
During the panel discussion, Sardongei said the first response was a “knee-jerk reaction” that prompted her to wonder, “for the first time, do I belong, not only to this church but also to this committee.”
And Torres-Milan emphasized, “I’m not a token. I’m here as part of the church. I’m not promoting anarchy here.”