The religious writings of The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray—the trailblazing 20th century Civil, Women’s, and LGBTQ-rights advocate—were gathered together by Anthony B. Pinn in 2023’s To Speak a Defiant Word. Murray’s story is as fascinating as it was impactful: an African American member of the LGBTQ community raised in Durham, North Carolina; Civil Rights and Women’s Rights activist; the lawyer responsible for producing what Justice Thurgood Marshall called “the Bible of Civil Rights law;” a poet and writer; the first female African American Episcopal priest, and an Episcopal saint.

In a Pentecost sermon from 1978, Murray notes that as one of the successors to Martin Luther King, Jr. she hopes to address herself to the possibility of reconciliation. Racial division in the United States has led to the situation where although blacks and whites share the same geographical space, they have had a different historical experience. The same is true for men and women. “And much of our social turmoil today stems from our inability to share those different experiences, to share those experiences . . . to hear one another speaking in our own language” to harken back to that first experience of Pentecost.

Hearing one another won’t happen if we stay within our tribal boundaries. It can only come with the joining up of the human race. With the celebration of Pentecost coming this Sunday, it seems an appropriate time to hear her words.

But reconciliation cannot come without a simultaneous transformation of our society into a caring, humane society—where people are not just numbers in a computer; where human services are not tainted with the idolatrous notion of profit, power, and privilege; where the elderly are seen as repositories of our collective wisdom and not inconveniences to be endured . . . and where it is the national ethos that human beings are our most important resource, that spiritual and physical energy is as important as energy from coal and oil.

Then she lays out examples of what reconciliation requires. It is not easy.

Reconciliation cannot come without pain and suffering—the suffering of a well-intentioned white person when a Negro/Black rejects his/her kindly gesture because it is seen as arrogant and paternalistic; the suffering of an inadequately trained white male when he suddenly finds the jobs or positions he has been accustomed to get are taken by better trained Blacks, other minorities, or white females; . . . the anger and suffering of a young Black when he or she finally realizes the extent to which he or she has been robbed of a heritage and then penalized for “inferior” performance. Yes, we must suffer with and for one another before we will be healed of the sickness of our common history, before we will be free to face one another and walk together toward a brighter future.

America has never had the type of reckoning on race that brings forward truth and offers the hope of reconciliation. There were calls for candid national conversations after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, but yet, “with some exceptions, the idea of a national, formal reconciliation process has not been a central part of the discussion about how the country can move forward,” and few politicians in 2020 were pushing such a measure. As Sarah Souli, a writer in Athens, Greece, who covered worldwide efforts at truth, dignity, and reconciliation, wrote:

“There are more intangible factors, too—including denial. ‘People in the U.S. refuse to make the connection between slavery, Jim Crow and all the institutional racism going on currently,’ says Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman, a South African-born senior program director at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscious, a global network of sites and initiatives that memorialize victims of atrocities. ‘In the U.S., we very often deny things that are right in front of us and think America is the exception to many things that are occurring every day,”’

In the light of today’s hatred, ignorance, and misinformation, the reality of the difficulty of truth and reconciliation can be hard to face. Small steps and local attempts to hear each other speaking in our own language, are often the most successful. However we get there, reconciliation—as Pauli Murray suggests—is necessary for our physical wellbeing and our spiritual survival.

More to come . . .

DJB

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For another Pentecost Eve post, check out 2021’s Les Colombes.

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The Weekly Reader links to the works of other writers I’ve enjoyed.

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Photo by Aamir Suhail on Unsplash