When I was a teen, back in about 1976, I went with a group of kids to the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee to do some charity work: we were helping to repair the backwoods shacks of some of the poorest of America'a poor. One evening, some of us - a group of upper-Midwestern church-raised teenagers - went to a local service in a small town. It was for me, and many of us, the first exposure to what my grandmother might have been more familiar with and what she would have called "fire-and-brimstone" preaching. It was the dramatic, loud, hyperbole-laden preaching that invites congregation participation. We were not prepared for it.You have to understand that I was raised in the Congregational denomination. It's dignified, open (the first Christian denomination, in fact, to openly welcome gays - back in the 1970s) and totally without ornamentation. Our interiors are plain, in keeping with our Puritan roots in America; our sermons are straightforward, scholarly, and hopefully humble on the part of the minister (we don't call them "preachers" - they don't preach, they serve). Our services are calm, but not boring, never about grandstanding or entertaining. (Or maybe "boring" is subjective!)
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| The union of two cultures: American and British |
When I had it out of my system, I went back inside, just as the service was ending. As I'd been taught, I walked up to shake the preacher's hand and thank him for the church's hospitality to our group. He
commented that I hadn't stayed for the end. I must have turned crimson as I carefully explained that I just wasn't used to that style. He laughed... to my relief... and said it was an acquired taste; he joked that I was leaving just before they were going to "bring out the snakes". He was not offended in the least. There are many ways to send God's message. (He was, by the way . . . a white man. The style isn't unique to the black South - although the media has forced its association nowadays with black culture - it is unique to southern Baptist and charismatic history.)
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| Bishop Michael Curry at the Royal Wedding a Windsor |
Something troubles me about the reaction of some of Americans to the sermon, and to the occasional black-inspired elements within the wedding. There is a sort of over-emphasis on race-based identity politics that has saturated American society, and it is itself uniquely racist because it assumes an individual's feelings and reactions based upon skin color. Here everyone, from the neighbor down the street to mainstream news anchors, is making comments - from snide, elitist ones to gushing ones - about how bothered the British at the church were about it. Bothered or surprised or annoyed or awed, depending on the view - and wishful thinking - of the speaker.
But here is my take: I don't think they were any of those things. Assuming they were is not only viewing people through the prism of skin color - itself a bigoted attitude - but it assumed these poor cavemen in Britain have never heard a black preacher. They have - trust me on that. They don't care.
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| Bride's mother Doria Ragland, Prince Charles and wife. |
This wedding was happening in one of the oldest chapels in England. Over a dozen royal unions have happened in that chapel, over many centuries. Its walls are saturated with European royal history. With hundreds of years of a certain tradition. The casualness, the theatrics, the over-emotionality, that a Southern-style sermon involves, would have struck some of the attendees as, well, a bit uncomfortable. Not because of the ethnic background. But because of the overly-dramatic nature of it within that setting. It's a theatrical performance, in a venue where reverence and understatement is the tradition. I did not notice any "shock" on anyone's faces - as some American news pundits have insisted. (Don't they realize that the queen, in her nineties, always looks that grumpy?) I noticed some suppressed mirth - with which I can totally relate. It's the sort of nervous laughter that comes at an inappropriate moment in reaction to an ironic situation - like when a speaker at a funeral says something untrue or too revealing, or inappropriate. Or...like hearing an over-the-top sermon in a traditionally dignified church.
Don't get me wrong. I liked the sermon - when I thought of it apart from where it was given. I'm not sure that giving it there, at that place, in that situation, was the most respectful thing to do. After all, the bishop was a guest in that chapel, that country, and to that tradition. Not the other way around. I heard someone say that it was so melodramatic that it detracted from the bride and groom. I would tend to agree. It certainly has dominated talk of the ceremony, even days later. Did we really need a veiled lecture on American civil rights and racial division at a wedding, in a country that ended slavery decades before America did? I don't think so, but that's me.The out-of-left-field analyzing by the American Left - and some of the Right as well - has extended to commentary on the black choir, the black cellist (the choir was based in Britain, not the U.S., and Heaven knows all black cellists must come from America! Good grief...) and the implication that those Dark-Ages-befuddled Britons have just never seen anything like it. Nonsense! They have, they do, they don't care. They likely thought the whole thing pleasant and interesting, and were positive about it. News reports all back that up.
Along with the exuberant black gospel choir, the attendees also likely enjoyed the cathedral choir and its selections from white European Christian traditions - with several outstanding boy sopranos (one black) and the traditional hymns - two of the most beautiful and ones many of us grew up singing. I thought to myself as the thundering sound of that choir filled the soaring, echoing space of the beautiful, ancient building during the final hymn, that when such a choir is that good one can't help but believe the sound is as close to the sound of angels as we get on earth. As I had that thought, the camera focused on the bride's face, her joyful face turned upward, her eyes filling with tears as she listened. Apparently, she had enjoyed both choirs.
I don't know why people can't put race, and identity, and assumptions about others, aside. The wedding was about both traditions, two ethnic groups. Why glorify one and diminish the significance of the other? Why glorify one skin tone and diminish the other? In either direction? The reluctance to appreciate either tradition, and favor the validity of one over the other, is in fact ethnocentric, and yes... it is racism.
I heard one news pundit - a black man - gush that the bride was black. No, she isn't. She is - like our
past president - of mixed race heritage. Half her heritage, half her blood, is white. The celebration was a reflection of that, and of both heritages. With his stupid, inaccurate comment he showed his own bigoted mindset. Another pundit - a white man from the South no less - could barely contain his joy as he shrieked, "Windsor is woke!" He said this in front of a British commentator, and I cringed to think how insulting and incredibly ignorant she must have found that comment.
Too bad that so many Americans - so blinded as they are by the desperate rush to seem more virtuous and progressive than the next person - or perhaps so much less white - don't appreciate the two heritages equally. Because once, when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, it was equality we talked about. That was the goal. It wasn't bringing the "dominant" race to its knees - which really is the same hate and ugliness reversed, isn't it? And the really pathetic thing about it is that now these people make the same mistake that others did about the Native Americans - in overly-romanticizing one culture at the expense of overly-demonizing another, a person really just demonstrates that they have no real understanding of the true history and value of either one.
Meghan Markle - now offically the Duchess of Sussex - was not the first royal with African blood. (Yes, American pundits, you read that right.) She won't be the last. As was the case centuries back, when a woman with black blood married into the royal family, she is accepted, she is welcomed, and it isn't nearly as big a deal as some Americans would love to trumpet that it is. The British are actually, yes, that enlightened! Because you see, Windsor was already woke.
I am weary of every event becoming a big analysis of race relations - even something as joyous and apolitical as a wedding. I hope that in coming decades the pendulum swings back to the middle: that calm, wonderful place where equality - equal appreciation for all races and ethnicities - is the goal. Only then can the words the bishop offered about love of all people for one another, ever come to mean anything.