Church in the Round

By Dr. Kwok Pui Lan

This blog post is excerpted from a sermon preached at St. John's Memorial Chapel on December 6, 2012. For the full text of the sermon visit Dr. Kwok Pui Lan’s blog.  


St. John’s Memorial Chapel at the Episcopal Divinity School was built in the nineteenth century. I asked historian David Sigenthaler what chapel and worship was like when he was a student at the school in the 1950s. At that time the altar was set against the east wall, the faculty sat up in the chancel, and the students sat in the pews facing each other. Each would have an assigned seat and chapel during that time was compulsory. The design of sacred space mirrored the hierarchical setup of the community. In the 1960s when Christopher Durasingh and Ed Rodman were students, the pews were removed and replaced with chairs.

In 1992 when I joined the school, the altar was brought forward to the crossing and the ambo was placed on the west side near the entrance. The students sat facing each other.

To honor Brett Donham who renovated St. Paul’s at Brookline after the fire in 1976 and our presider Rev. Jeffrey Mello, the rector of St. Paul’s, we have created a worshipping space modeling after St. Paul’s in which the congregation and the choir sit surrounding the altar. Donham talked about the rationale of why he designed the church in such a way:

“The traditional forms of church buildings, with everyone facing in the same direction and with the ‘expert’; the intermediary or interpreter, on a raised stage addressing an audience is the antithesis of gathering in community.”

Today many churches are recovering the early roots of Christianity. Donham continues, “In these places people gather in community to offer praise and thanksgiving, to reflect on scripture, to share stories about Jesus Christ and his impact on their lives, to share a commemorative meal, and through this to come into communion with Christ, and with one another. These are communal activities, with many players, several centers of action and movement, and require the ability to see one another and feel as a gathered body.”



The church in the round exists not for itself but for others. One of the hallmarks of the church in the round, as theologian Letty Russell has described in her book with the same title is hospitality to those on the margins. Macrina demonstrated her hospitality by feeding the hungry, providing for the needy, and taking care of young women. The two aspects of gathering for worship and sending out to service are inseparable.



Sometimes we are disheartened because we find the church more like the form of a triangle, in which power is concentrated at the top, instead of in the round. The church design and liturgy reinforce the separation between the clergy and the laity. Worship is often separated from ordinary life and from a sense of mission. It fails to give the sustenance that we need or meet the deepest longing we have for God.

In the season of Advent, a time of anticipation and expectation, let us renew our hope and work for a church in the round. One of my students Lucretia Mann brought to my attention an Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas, who has said that church is not an institution, but a way of being, that is deeply bound to the being of human, the being of the world, and the being of God.*


We can each bring something new to rejuvenate and enliven our community and way of being. We do not need to abolish the old church in order to create something new. We can redesign and reoccupy sacred space within traditional buildings so that we can experiment with different ways of being with God. In this semester, we have seen several creative expressions of using sacred space, particularly in the Eucharist led by Stephen Burns and Christopher Duraisingh. In the course of doing so, we experienced new centers and movements as people of God.

The church in the round is also a process and not a perfect circle. Sometimes we move two steps forward and one step back. All we are asked to do is to transform the triangle or the rectangular form in our chapel to make it rounder each day to the glory of God. Amen.

* John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 15.

Kwok Pui Lan is the William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School and her book Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (with Joerg Rieger) is published by Rowman and Littlefield.

Occupy Boston

Kwok Pui Lan

Brendan Curran, a senior M.Div Student at the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), has participated in Occupy Boston since it started in late September. He is living in the tents in Dewey Square by South Station in downtown Boston, while continues to take classes and do his course assignments. Occupy Boston was inspired by Occupy Wall Street in New York.

EDS held a teach-in session on Occupy Boston on October 17, 2011, facilitated by President Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Professor Ed Rodman, two veterans of social movements. The session followed a community Eucharist in which the Rev. Mwape Chilombo, a student from Zambia, delivered a powerful sermon on the need to take a new direction. She linked Occupy Wall Street with the struggles of Zambian people against government corruption and oppression.

About seven faculty, staff, and students have visited Occupy Boston, and participated in or witnessed the various demonstrations and marches. Sarah Monroe, who is doing field education at Ecclesia Ministries, a ministry for homeless people, said that homeless people feel welcome and supported by Occupy Boston.

Susan B. Taylor brought her family to visit Occupy Boston, together with members of The Crossing, an emergent church community in Boston. Her daughter was asked to share her experience upon her return with three different classes of her school in Western Massachusetts.

Other eye-witnesses were impressed by the toleration of diverse opinions in the general assembly, the decision-making body, and the diversity of people gathered, including students, homeless people, members of the labor unions, older people, and veterans of the civil rights movement.

Brendan Curran taught the hand gestures used in the general assembly to ask a question, to vote, to make a point, and to show disagreement. He was impressed by the collective and collaborative effort against capitalism at Dewey Square. “We do not want to become a political party or to be co-opted by a political party,” he said. The movement has been described as the “the return of the silent majority” by Time magazine. “It is exciting to see it go global,” Curran said. Occupy Wall Street has inspired protests and demonstrations in many cities worldwide on October 15, 2011.

The teach-in session provided an opportunity for President Ragsdale to share her rich experiences in organizing for social change. She said changes happened in 4 steps, which are not linear:
· Personal and spiritual transformation
· Educating others
· Lobbying and providing alternative proposals
· Civil disobedience
She said individuals and institutions can be involved in the different steps of the process and at different stages.

Some of the attendees said the Occupy movement does not have clear demands and a concrete platform and it is hard to explain to others. Professor Rodman recommended two books co-authored by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire and Multitude. In Multitude, the authors have envisaged a mass democratic global movement, mobilized by the Internet and social networking, to rise up to resist Empire. The multitude is marked by diversity rather than similarities. The challenge for the multitude in this new era is “for the social multiplicity to manage to communicate and act in common while remaining internally different.”

Professor Christopher Duraisingh provided a theological perspective. He said Occupy Boston reminds the Church of its prophetic witness. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says prophetic witness involves the articulation of alternative consciousness to demolish and debunk dominant consciousness and providing the impetus for building a different community. Professor Duraisingh asked whether the Church has responsibilities to be involved in and support movements like Occupy Boston. Since the movement is against corporate greed, he challenged the Church to rethink its identification with corporate America.

The teach-in session was closed with Professor Rodman reminiscing about his student days in the 1960s during the height of the civil rights movement. He said Southern white students were ostracized after their classmate Jonathan Daniels was killed working for the civil rights movement in Alabama. It was the black students who reached out to them. He used this example to remind us there is going to be divided opinions on emotionally charged issues and asked us to listen to and care for each other.

*Kwok Pui Lan is William F. Cole Professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her most recent book is Hope Abundant: Third World and Indigenous Women’s Theology.

Faith, Justice, and Solidarity

 by Rosemarie Buxton

There's no divorcing social justice from Christianity. When I was at the Episcopal Divinity School, I heard my professor, the Rev. Ed Rodman, put it something like this: "Charity without justice is just an empty promise." About five years ago, I began a journey that has taught me the truth of those words.

I had been invited to an event held by an interfaith community organizing group called the Merrimack Valley Project.  I didn’t really know what to expect, but what I experienced was a cross between a religious revival meeting and a union rally. 

I learned that people in the Greater Lawrence and Lowell, Massachusetts areas were experiencing workplace injustice in Gillette packaging plants. I learned that residents of Lowell were concerned about gentrification and the lack of affordable housing. I learned that immigrants throughout the Merrimack Valley encountered discrimination and unfair treatment.  

I was hooked, and over the next year or so, I became increasingly involved with the Merrimack Valley Project, but I remained unclear about exactly what was the source of the attraction for me. 

However, the more I became involved, the more I realized that while service work is an important part of a call to ministry, calling attention to the larger issues of social injustice and trying to effect systemic change is an energizing and essential piece of our Christian commitment.

Today, I am president of the Merrimack Valley Project, and as I was developing my speech for MVP’s most recent action to support homeowners experiencing foreclosures, I talked about what I learned about charity and justice from the Rev. Ed Rodman.  

My involvement with MVP has tied together my own roots as the granddaughter of immigrant mill workers in Western Massachusetts with the anti-oppression-based education I received at EDS.   The support and economic conditions that allowed my immigrant grandparents to achieve the “American dream” for themselves and their children – a union-protected job with fair wages, the move from tenements to a first home, a college education for a child – are becoming increasingly out of reach for today’s immigrant and working class Americans. 

When Gillette and Proctor and Gamble used and abused so-called temporary workers (some employed for as long as six years!), MVP took action and organized for fair treatment, wages, and job security. When immigrants throughout the Merrimack Valley expressed concern about fair treatment by law enforcement, substandard school systems, and lack of access to legal resources, MVP held story forums between suburban and urban parishes and held an action of 500 residents calling for immigrant justice. 

                 

Today, MVP is acting in solidarity with homeowners and tenants facing foreclosures and evictions. Some homeowners are victims of the voracious and deceptive subprime lending market of the early 2000s. The newest wave of foreclosures is due to the financial crisis, which has resulted in many unemployed and underemployed homeowners. Many of them started out as well-qualified borrowers and now find it difficult to make their mortgage payments.

While CEOs of banks that received stimulus funds received record bonuses in 2009 and 2010, desperate homeowners filed mountains of paperwork to obtain modifications only to see the notice of the foreclosure auction of their home appear in the newspaper. In fact, MVP has even seen homeowners who are paying on their modifications receive foreclosure notices. 

Apparently, the bail out applied only to the banks and lenders, not to their customers.  Meanwhile, neighborhoods are filled with boarded-up houses and uprooted families without a place to live. This system produces vacant properties that offer temptations to crime and vandalism, and families who become wanderers with decimated credit ratings, hoping to find rental property with landlords who will accept them. 

The voices of the leaders of the Merrimack Valley Project demanded that legislatures pay attention to homeowners facing foreclosure and eviction. Together with state-wide allies and partners like City Life, we urged our legislators to pass the Massachusetts Foreclosure Prevention law.  As a result of that law (passed last summer) homeowners in default have up to 150 days to negotiate with the bank, and tenants in good standing can no longer be evicted from foreclosed properties. 

At MVP’s most recent action, we called on our legislators to support two new laws that have been proposed. Massachusetts is one of the few states that does not require judicial process for foreclosure; the proposed new law would require a judicial mediator to sit down with the bank and the homeowner.  The second law, an Act to Prevent Unnecessary Vacancies in Foreclosed Homes, would allow former owners to stay in their homes and pay rent to the bank. This would help preserve neighborhood stability and prevent homelessness.  Already, MVP has received the commitment of the Massachusetts representative from Lawrence, Marcos Devers, to support this legislation.

As MVP continues to build its leadership and strength, we also continue to find new solutions, continue to hold banks accountable, continue to make our voices heard, continue to pray, and continue to hope. The voices of many people of faith, calling out for justice, can indeed move mountains, or in this case, the minds and hearts of our legislators.  

Rosemarie Buxton received a Master's in Theological Studies at EDS in 2008, and sees her education and spiritual formation there as crucial to her passion for social justice.  She is originally from Chicopee, Massachusetts, and her grandparents were French Canadian immigrants who worked in the mills there.  She has been involved with MVP since the spring of 2006, and she has served as President for the past two years. 

She is also a member of  Christ Episcopal Church in Andover, where she has been a mentor in the lay Christian formation program Education for Ministry for six years, and she has also served as a lay delegate for the Diocese of Massachusetts annual convention.  

In addition to her role as a community organizer, Rosemarie also works as a teacher of ESL, English, and Writing at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and at Hesser College in New Hampshire.