Tuesday, May 19, 2009

May 17, 2009 meeting follow-up

I have tried to post the scans of the various Church Bulletins, and March 1, 2009 sign in sheet. For technical reasons I do not understand, I have thusfar been unable to post these scanned items. I will keep trying. However, should readers want to see them, feel free to either contact me by email and I will email them to you, or go to the Riverside Church library and archive, where you can view the relevant documentary evidence for yourself.

May 17, 2009 meeting

At the May 17, 2009 annual meeting of the Riverside Church, a non-profit religious corporation, a young African-American gentleman sitting directly in front of me apparently asked Barbara Hampton, another African-American member of the congregation, sitting to my right, a number of questions about my qualifications as a lawyer. Had the gentleman asked me directly, I would have answered him, but he did not deign to speak directly to me.

To answer him: I hold degrees from Barnard College, Columbia University (in computer science and religion); and Manhattan School of Music (in harp). I began my legal studies on a generous scholarship at Boston University School of Law. During my 1L year, it came to my attention that a student in another section was using email to anonymously harass other students, using racially pejorative language. I contacted the Dean and demanded that he take all steps to discover the identity of this harasser, expel him or her from the school, and notify the Bar Association to ensure this individual would never become a Bar member. The Dean refused to take action. Additionally, I protested to the Dean of Academic Affairs that the required assignment of a misogynist moot court assignment was unethical. The brief I was assigned to argue was written like pornography, and had many factual and legal flaws. Following a car accident in which I was rear-ended, and missed nearly 20% of my first year classes due to a severe concussion and neck injuries, I argued the matter (in my neck brace) to satisfy my moot court requirement. The head of the moot court judge panel me that I presented the most effective oral argument in my 1L class. (I told him that he should have seen what I would have argued had I been arguing for the side of justice.) At the end of the year, the Dean of Academic Affairs agreed that this sexist assignment would no longer be part of the BUSL curriculum. However, because the Dean refused to address the racial harassment issue, I gave up my scholarship and left the school, not wanting my name associated with an organization that covered-up such egregious conduct. My GPA for my 1L year was 3.79.

I went on to complete my J.D. at New York University School of Law, then rated 4th in the nation (Yale being 1st, Harvard 2nd, Stanford 3rd, and Columbia 5th). I graduated magna cum laude, in the top 10% of my class, and was given membership in the Order of the Coif. I’ve been invited to join MENSA. I am a member in good standing of the New York and Massachusetts Bar Associations. I served as a prosecutor in Manhattan and Staten Island, and a Children’s Law Guardian in Brooklyn. In those capacities, I handled nearly 1,000 matters, and, in over 99% of these cases, the outcome was consistent with my advocacy, whether for the State, or the children who were my clients. Members of the Staten Island and Brooklyn 18b panels told me that my reputation among them was clear: I was known as extremely thorough, absolutely fair, and a tough and unflinching advocate for justice. As Rev. Jim Forbes and others are well aware, I advocated for justice even pressing defense attorneys to get drug treatment and other interventions for their clients, and pressing my own office to immediately drop cases in which I discovered constitutional and other investigatory flaws, even when defense counsel was unaware of these flaws. As Jim and others are also aware, I left one position in protest when the administration instituted internal rules that I believe violated the constitutional rights of their employees.

Prior to entering law school, I advocated pro bono and helped see introduction and passage of state and federal laws to protect children from child sex abuse and hold abusers legally accountable. For nearly a decade, I stood up to an international organization of accused and proven sex offenders who sought to discredit victims of sexual violence, and used a variety of threats to silence them. As a result, they vilified me using the media, the internet, and even textbook publications. In 2006, I published a law review article that exposes an effort to give abusive parents sole custody of their children. The article has been described as the seminal work on the subject and is being used to train judges around the U.S. and in courts in France, Argentina, and other countries. I am currently working on a book about sexual violence, and I handle a variety of pro bono matters. Currently, I earn my living as a harpist, and donate all my legal work pro bono. Last year, I earned about $30,000, gave 8% of that in cash to charities to help the needy, and donated the equivalent of approximately $100,000 in pro bono legal work to the needy.

I invite those Riversiders, including Dr. Braxton and others, who have publicly called me a “racist” and “worker of Satan” to contact my former supervisors in Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyn, (Charles King, Quentin Smith, and Fredericka Bashir) and my dear colleague Tosha Foster, all of whom happen to be of African-American descent, as well as the many members of Riverside who know me, including the choir, the last two music directors and their assistants, various Church Council members, and Revs. Pat Lawson, Linda Terry-Chard, Bob Coleman, Fanny Erikson, Jim Forbes, Brenda Stiers, etc. who can address the question of whether I am “racist” and a “worker of Satan.”

I hope this answers the young gentleman’s questions, and would hope that in the future anyone who has a question for me would ask me directly. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached that he dreamed of a society in which no person’s character would be judged by the color of his or her skin. I share Dr. King’s dream. In contrast, Dr. Braxton has used the Riverside pulpit to call Dr. King’s dream a “lie from hell.” It begins to appear that Dr. Braxton’s leadership is increasingly resulting in Riversiders’ characters being judged on the shade of their skin—a genetic factor of melanin levels due to recent ancestry over which they have no control, and no reflection of their original human ancestral roots back in Ethiopia some 50,000 years ago.

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Prior to the May 17, 2009 meeting, the Council announced that Rikk Stone, a fellow church member, had submitted a resolution for the meeting, but that the Council would not entertain it. The Council published their reasons in an email message, and further announced that all other new business must be submitted to the Council by Friday, May 15, 2009 at noon. I duly submitted a resolution to rescind a vote taken at the March 1, 2009 meeting due to voter fraud. I brought documentary evidence to prove the voter fraud and was prepared to call on Rev. Terry-Chard to provide further testimonial evidence supporting this claim. Since the vote on the 2009 annual budget rested on this prior vote based on voter fraud, the matter of this voter fraud is of central ethical and legal importance. Ms. Kathleen Zbylut emailed me to remind me to bring copies for the entire congregation, which I did and distributed duly at the May 17 meeting. At no time did any member of the Council indicate that my resolution would not be entertained.

At the meeting, another resolution was entertained and defeated by a vote of the present members. Dr. Jones gave the author of that resolution leave to amend his resolution during the meeting prior to that vote. Despite the fact that the resolution in question raised questions of infringing members’ First Amendment and Due Process rights, Dr. Jones claimed that this resolution had been vetted by corporate council.

When I stood to bring my resolution, Dr. Billy Jones, head of the Church Council, told me for the first time that the Council would not entertain my resolution. I pointed out that under Robert’s Rules, a motion to rescind a vote for voter fraud is always in order. While Dr. Jones had given the prior resolution’s author leave to amend his resolution, Dr. Jones refused to allow me to amend my resolution to include the term “rescind” or “voter fraud,” and refused to honor Robert’s Rules that state that motions to rescind are always in order. Dr. Jones further accurately observed that addressing this voter fraud issue would result in re-opening the vote on the budget. When Dr. Jones attempted to silence me from speaking, I pointed out that he had allowed other members to make observations from the microphone. I then cited Riverside’s history in fighting for social justice to end apartheid, fight for civil rights, and against the injustice of voter fraud in every other instance. I pointed out that the Council’s refusal to allow me to present evidence of voter fraud within the church proceedings, left no other option but to present the evidence to a wider legal and public audience. At that point, loud jeering and yelling broke out. Despite Dr. Jones’ prior insistence that there be no clapping or yelling during the meeting, he made no effort to silence the jeering, violating the rules he had cited at the beginning of the meeting regarding member conduct.

In every instance when I have raised a question about the church’s new theological and leadership direction I have done so openly. (For the record, I am neither the author of nor a member of the distribution list of the Friends of Fosdick, and have only read a few of their publications which have been passed on to me by other Riversiders.) Having attempted to bring the serious legal and ethical issue of voter fraud to the attention of the members of the corporation, and having been silenced in violation of Robert’s Rules by the head of the Church Council, I now bring this evidence, as I openly promised to do at the meeting on May 17, to the public. All of us have witnessed the devastation wrought by voter fraud whether in Zimbabwe or in the U.S. under the Bush administration. Voter fraud is a tactic used to undermine democratic process. The fact that the Riverside Church Council, with the apparent assistance of corporate counsel, has acted to defend and hide this fraud raises serious legal and ethical questions about the present leadership of our religious corporation.

For the record, on March 1, 2009, I did not vote in either the vote on the resolution or the budget because I had to leave the meeting shortly after 2:30PM to go to perform. Rev. Pat Lawson, Diana Solomon-Glover, Brenda Clarke, and others who sat near me can verify this fact. I have thus raised the voter fraud issue solely because voter fraud offends the very nature of democratic governance, and not because the fraud had any impact on any vote I personally cast as a legal member of the corporation.

For those who did not get a copy, here is my resolution:

Whereas, at the March 1, 2009 meeting of the corporate membership of the Riverside Church a Budget Resolution [“Budget Resolution”] was duly proposed and seconded to separate the salaries for the positions of Chief Programming Minister and Director of Administration from the general budget; and table any and all actions on the salaries for the positions of Chief Programming Minister and Director of Administration in the 2009 budget, and said motion was replaced with a substitute motion to eliminate the salaries from the budget which was defeated by one vote, and

Whereas, we Riversiders are committed to the ethical and moral beliefs of our faith tradition, as well as the fundamental fairness inherent in the democratic civil laws that govern our religious non-profit corporation, and

Whereas, under the civil law and the moral dictates of our faith only lawful members of our corporation can cast legal votes on corporate matters, and

Whereas, the names of those individuals who have fulfilled their obligations and have officially become members of the Riverside Church are published contemporaneously with their joining in the official Church Bulletin, and

Whereas, Dr. Braxton announced his hiring of Ms. Kathe Hammond on November 2, 2008 (see Church Bulletin), and

Whereas, Ms. Hammond was not a graduating member of either the November 16, 2007 or January 18, 2009 membership classes (see Church Bulletins), and was not a member of the Riverside Church prior to being hired by Dr. Braxton, and

Whereas, no other new members were announced in the Church Bulletin prior to the March 1, 2009 congregational meeting, and

Whereas, at the congregational meeting on March 1, 2009, Ms. Kathe Hammond registered to vote as a member on the sign in sheet despite the fact she was not a lawful member of the corporation (see Sign In Sheet), and

Whereas, Kathe Hammond was observed casting an illegitimate vote against the Budget Resolution at the March 1, 2009 meeting, and

Whereas, Ms. Hammond’s illegitimate vote was improperly counted along with the votes of lawful members of the corporation, and

Whereas, deducting Ms. Hammond’s unlawful vote, and including the vote cast by Dr. Billy Jones, the final tally on the Budget Resolution was in fact a tie, and the Budget Resolution was not in fact legally defeated, and

Whereas, our commitment to fundamental fairness and Christian ethics is evidenced by our commitment to full and lawful democratic participation of all legal members of the corporation to protect against counter-majoritarian threats to our democratic operation, and

Whereas, as a congregational church, it is the obligation, duty, and honor of all lawful members of our corporation to govern our religious corporation; now therefore, be it

Resolved that the March 1, 2009 Budget Resolution remains an unresolved matter of old business that has not been lawfully concluded by a majority vote of lawful members of the corporation, and thus remains a matter of unresolved corporate business, and

Resolved that said March 1, 2009 Budget Resolution requires an immediate vote by the legal members of this religious corporation to facilitate our congregational duties both under civil law and the dictates of our faith to exercise responsible and ethical fiscal leadership over our church and management of our resources during this period of international economic crisis.

Resolved, that the salaries of the Chief Programming Minister and the Director of Administration be taken out of the budget.
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I am posting the relevant Church Bulletins (official publications of the Church available in the church library and archives) which show that Ms. Hammond is not a legal member of the corporation, as well as the March 1, 2009 sign in sheet (an official corporate document available in the Church library) that includes Ms. Hammond’s signature. I invite readers to contact Rev. Terry-Chard in the membership office, as she can further attest to the fact that Ms. Hammond is not a lawful member of this corporation. Dr. Braxton hired Ms. Hammond as his personal assistant. He has made no effort to expose or rectify her illegitimate voting on March 1.

In closing, I will reiterate what Dr. Jones acknowledged (available on the tape recording of the May 17, 2009 meeting): The March 1, 2009 members’ vote on the 2009 corporate budget was taken following the vote on the March 1, 2009 resolution. The budget vote was taken based on the understanding that the resolution had been voted down. However, the resolution was not in fact voted down. The deciding vote was the illegitimate vote of non-member Hammond. Thus, the vote on the budget was also invalid since it failed to take the salaries of the Chief Programming Minister and the Director of Administration out of the budget.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Recent changes at the Riverside Church

As the tenure of Senior Minister Jim Forbes came to an end, Riverside began a search for a new Senior Minister. Back in August, 2008, I raised concerns with the Church Council as follows:

August 19, 2008

To the Church Council and Clergy of the Riverside Church,

As a member, I am writing to voice my profound concern about the direction in which our institution is headed. We appear on a course that leads us towards a breach of faith with the values of our members, and opens the door to the risk of litigation for violations of civil non-profit law.

From its inception, Riverside Church was intended to be open to all equally; a place to celebrate our common humanity, marshal our faith, & energize its use in the fight for universal social justice. Our community has been defined by respect and love, as God taught us, not by our skin color or other attributes. This color-blind communal love and humanity has been the “tie that binds” us. Our theological focus has been transformational at the personal, community, national, and international levels; calling us to see each other as Christ did, without regard to the particularities of race, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender. While our members have diverse personal theological views, Riverside has focused on the simple embracing mission of inter-racial, inter-denominational worship.

But in recent years, our worship seems to be increasingly grounded in African-American liberation theology to the exclusion other theological views. Liberation Theologies focus on an oppressed group and their oppressors. African-American Liberation Theology focuses on the institution of American slavery, which was abolished with the enactment of the 13th Amendment, and residual social injustices that continue today. This theology posits all African-Americans as the victims of slavery; and all Caucasians as slavers. But, while slavery is unquestionably an abomination, historically it was never simply a white-on-black institution. The Bible refers to many forms of slavery not based on race. Consider Leviticus 25:44-46; Exodus 21:7-11; 1 Peter 2:18; Ephesians 6: 5-8; and Titus 2:9-10. Race became a factor in discrimination relatively recently in history, promoted by the Portuguese and Spanish in the 1500’s, followed by the English and Scotch-Irish in the 1700’s. Even in colonial times, not all blacks were slaves. The colonial slave trade relied on the many black Africans who willingly kidnapped and sold their neighbors and brethren into slavery. Similarly, not all whites were slavers. In Great Britain and colonial America, many whites (like Wilbur Wilberforce, John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln) fought for emancipation and helped liberate individual slaves. . The Underground Railroad was principally run by whites. Among our present population, many African-Americans are descended from African slavers, and many Caucasians are descended from abolitionists. And many Americans are descendants of neither slaves nor slave-owners. The men, women, and children who are currently enslaved economically or in sex trafficking in the U.S. are being subjugated by people of all races and ethnicities. The line between slaver and slave is not a specific shade of melanin. It is the line between humanity and inhumanity.

Melanin also does not define racism. In America today, there are racists of all hues. Not just among the white supremacist churches, but also in many black churches. Ultimately theologies that blame and denigrate an “other” are theologies of hate, not love. Theologies of blame, not personal responsibility. Theologies looking backward instead of forward. Such insular hostility was not Christ’s mandate, and it is not Riverside’s tradition. Harry Fosdick stood up to such a threat in the exclusionary Fundamentalism of his time. We must similarly stand up to theologies of exclusion in our midst. I have prayed in some African-American church communities where the hostility towards my presence was palpable. Sadly, in recent times I have had the same experience at Riverside. In services, I now regularly encounter men and women whose skin hues differ from mine who literally will not pass the peace with me, something unheard of among long-time members of this church, and under Bill Coffin’s tenure. During one service preached by Jim Forbes, after an elderly African-American sister and I embraced warmly in peace-passing, a young African-American man sitting next to her refused to pass the peace to her or to me, glaring instead at us. That gentle lady was so distressed by his rebuff that she whispered to me throughout the rest of the service, asking why the young man had refused to pass the peace to her. I’ve been similarly personally rebuffed and excluded at Space for Grace. Exclusion is not grace. It is neither Christ’s way nor Riverside’s tradition.

In truth, biologically and anthropologically, we are all African; all the descendants of our ancient mother, whether we call her Eve or Lucy. Africa is the motherland to the entire human species. We are separated from her, and each other, only by generations and migrations. The amount of melanin in our skin does not define who we are. Our ancestors’ acts do not define who we are. Only our actions in this life define who we are. Hostility towards present congregants for acts of generations gone by is unjust. Our accountability is for our acts in these times, not for others’ acts from another time long past. All of us are entrusted with the communal task of overcoming the residual injustice, mistrust, and hostility that we inherited. That is one challenge of Riverside’s inter-racial transformative theology. We are a congregation committed to moving forward in faith and action to fight for justice for all people who are downtrodden. Looking backwards in blame will not actualize Christ’s vision. Looking backwards in blame we cannot solve present injustice. Looking backwards in blame we cannot build “ties that bind.”

I think Rev. Bob Polk was right: we are becoming just another black Harlem church. We are abandoning Riverside’s unique inter-racial mandate, the specific reason many of us of all races chose to worship here, for racial homogeneity. In Sunday preaching I hear the names of many heroes and heroines of African-American descent. These are people who deserve laud and praise. But increasingly, there is scant mention of heroes and heroines of other ethnicities and races. We don’t hear about Joan of Arc, Theresa of Avila, or Mother Theresa. We don’t hear about Mahatma Ghandi, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Friederick Bonhoeffer. People like my friends Norman and Geraldine Frenkiel, Eastern European Jews who hid French Jewish children from the Nazis. People like my young Chinese client, who fled to the U.S. after being persecuted in China for worshipping Christ. We don’t hear about the Uighers, Tibetan Buddhists, or Buddhist monks in Myanmar. Men and women who have fought to expose and recover from childhood sexual violence by American clergy. Native Americans and Canadians, and native people of Chiappas and Peru, who even now are legally subjugated by their governments. We don’t talk about the growing schism in the Episcopal church over the inclusion of gay clergy. Or our brothers and sisters who praise God through Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism and share our fight for tolerance. Among those who fought for emancipation and against Jim Crow, Rosa Parks made an important stand. So did men and women of all races and genders. Today there are people of all races, ethnicities, sexualities, and genders marching and fighting for justice for immigrants, for minorities, for women, for children, for living wages, for responsible lending practices, for the enforcement of the 4th Amendment, for equal rights for gays, and against the use of torture by our military (to name but a few current fights for justice). There are heroes everywhere, but Riverside’s vision of heroism seems increasingly based on a melanin litmus test. That is not our tradition or our mission. It is not what we want to teach our children. To be inter-racial means to transcend monochromatic sight. It is to see with Christ’s transcendent vision of all humanity.

Recent leadership choices here further the impression that this institution is moving away from its spiritual and civil mandate for inter-racial worship into the realm of the politically homogenous. Demands that department heads resign in anticipation that the next Senior Minister will want to clean house, stripping our institution of the people who have helped build our diverse traditions, demonstrate a breaking of institutional commitment to our past tradition. These leadership acts mirror the recent illegal discriminatory and political purges within our nation’s Justice Department. Equally troubling is the appearance of racial discrimination against those whose contracts have not been renewed and who have been fired. Such conduct exposes this institution to civil actions for racial discrimination and violations of our non-profit mission.

Along with other members of all races, genders, and ethnicities, I am profoundly troubled. People leave other churches because the clergy shifts course. Our mission is so simple and inclusive that we should never lose a member: we should never shift course. No one who is committed to a truly inter-racial community would want to leave an institution that pursues that course. People are leaving because we are steering into the shallow waters of homogeneity. The staggering drop in donations is a democratic outcry of members’ discontent. The choice to use our endowment to pay for routine expenses shows stark disregard for that democratic outcry. And, instead of conserving, we appear to be courting pastors who flount Isaiah 55:2, demanding luxury housing and salaries. Christ did not demand riches. Such funds would be more appropriately used to follow Christ’s example by helping our countless brothers and sisters living in strife. When Harry Emerson Fosdisk left First Presbyterian, driven out by Fundamentalists who were outraged by his call for inclusion, he said, “Leadership is not true leadership that draws people to the leader only. It must draw them past the leader to the cause….Never mind about me.” Focusing on individual personalities and financial demands, we are becoming personal bankers to clergy instead of shepherds in our community. We are steering off Christ’s course.

Riverside has been a light of transformative inter-racial harmony in the great darkness of injustice and human tribalism. I do not want this light to go out. Harlem does not need one more black church, but the world does need a truly inter-racial church. Our human community needs Riverside Church.

Jennifer Hoult, J.D.
687 West 204 St. #3G
NY, NY 10034

212-567-0710
jahoult@cs.com

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Dr. Billy Jones, head of the church Council, responded, and I responded thus to his letter:

August 29, 2008

To the Clergy and Council members of the Riverside Church

Re: Dr. Jones’ letter of August 21, 2008

Dear Dr. Jones,

Thank you for your response to my letter. Among other things, you wrote: “I, too, value that there is an inter-racial congregation at Riverside. However, I think that is an outdated end goal dating us to the 1950’s and 1960’s. Riverside has been making considerable progress and strides to move well beyond inter-racial, which was simply having ethnically diverse members worshiping in an essentially white oriented and controlled church. While that was a beginning step to a truly integrated church it falls far short of what is to be expected at the heavenly banquet. A truly integrated congregation will not be color-blind, as you state, but will rejoice in the color and heritage of all our members. How can you truly love me if you do not see that I am a black, gay man? A beloved community, of which you speak, defined by respect and love, does not deny or negate differences, but embraces them.”

Brother, I respectfully believe you are in error in your demand for color-awareness instead of color-blindness. God did not create the construct of race. “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Gen 1: 27-28. God sees no race, no gender, no sexuality, or other ephemeral distinctions. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:28. God sees no husbands and wives; He sees humans “like angels in heaven.” Mat 22: 23-30. Thus we sing, “In Christ there is no east and west.” God sees no race, Dr. Jones, only souls. He invites us to his heavenly banquet as souls, not as men or women, black or white, gay or straight. Mathew 22:2, 3-5, 8-14. It was human beings who created the biologically and spiritually unfounded construct of race as a political weapon to divide, separate, and subjugate our one African family from one another. Like the dispersing effects of Babel, Gen 11: 1-9, the construct of race divides us from the truth of our undifferentiated spiritual nature. When you say, “I am black,” you implicitly also say, “You are not black.” This construction falsely divides you from others through exclusion and false differentiation. Color-awareness is nothing more than the espousal of the lie inherent in the construct of race; nothing other than “separate by equal” by another name. And separate is indeed “inherently unequal.” Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483. My brother, the Bible is very clear: God’s vision is indeed color-blind.

Furthermore, God clearly calls us to see with His color-blind vision. John 13:15; “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do;” Eph. 5: 1-2: “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us;” Romans 15: 5-6: “..think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God does not separate us by the shade of our skin. God does not see you as a black, gay man Dr. Jones. God sees you as a soul that She created. Seeing you otherwise thwarts God’s law. “Have we not all the one Father? Has not the one God created us? Why then do we break faith with each other, violating the covenant of our fathers?” Malach. 2:10. God calls us to move from the “darkness” of unjust human constructions to the “light” of His truth. In God’s Kingdom there is no place for false division and false sight, and failure to follow God’s mandate is a grave peril. Romans 2:1-3. To follow Leviticus 19:18, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” we must love one another as God sees us; as souls. We must see, as God sees, our common undifferentiated nature as God’s children. To love you in Christ is not to differentiate myself from you. It is to realize our common nature as souls; as God’s children. To realize our prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we must see each other as God sees us. Clinging to divisions based on the false human construct of race is to willfully divide our true nature from one another. We cannot overcome the wrongs of the present by clinging to old grievances and false divisions. Luke 17: 3-4.

So, no, Dr. Jones, with due respect, I do not see you as a black, gay man. I see you as a child of God, a glorious soul unfettered by the human construction we call race. Your skin color, your education, your vocation, your sexuality, your age, your gifts and weaknesses are simply ephemeral corporeal trappings in your present journey; as transitory as the shoes you are now wearing. These corporeal traits will all return to dust. You want me to love and respect you based on the shade of your skin and your sexuality. I love and respect you based on what God made you and what God sees: a fellow soul journeying with Christ.

And no, Dr. Jones, I do not agree with your belief that Riverside Church’s mission needs changing or updating. Since 1930, Riverside’s mission, spiritually and legally, has been as an inter-racial institution to build a house of “Living Stones” and to live following the example of Christ’s “Living Word.” That mission is the reason many of us of all skin hues are members. You have indicated that you want to change this mission. As a matter of civil law, such a change requires both an affirmative democratic vote by the membership and the legal filing of appropriate changes in our civil non-profit incorporation mission. In my opinion, the “separate but equal” exclusion inherent in the color-awareness you propose has no place in the Riverside Church or in God's Kingdom. However, since you feel strongly otherwise, this matter should be brought openly to the attention of the membership for discussion and a vote.

May God bless you with the embracing generosity of his vision and light,


Jennifer Hoult, J.D.
687 West 204 St. #3G
New York, NY 10034
jahoult@cs.com


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On Sept. 11, 2008, Dr. Brad Braxton, the one candidate for the position of Senior Minister, publicly called me and other members of the congregation who had raised these theological concerns, "workers of Satan" and "racists." Dr. Braxton refused to answer questions about his published theological works, including the following statements he published in book “No Longer Slaves – Galatians and African American Experience," a book espousing the principles of African-American liberation theology:

“It is possible for one who is white biologically to sympathize with the African American struggle, but only up to a point, for the possibility always remains for a white person to stop "being black" at any moment that the struggles of being black no longer fit that person's agenda." p 7

"As I argued in Chapter One, there are limits on how completely even the most understanding white persons can enter the black experience. Nevertheless, if white persons are interested in establishing common ground with African Americans, white persons must be willing to undergo 'conversions' in their cultural conceptual framework." p 42

"[D]ominant white society has told African Americans, especially our children, that our specific callings or "apostleship" in life are invalid because those callings have not bowed at the altar of white society to pay homage and to receive permission to exist." p 61

"[T]he dominant culture has implicitly indicated that it really believes the promises of America to be the sole possession of white Americans; otherwise there would not be such pressure put on African Americans to be like them. . . In Christ, African Americans have been freed from the curse of the dominant ideology that would force us to become white in order to receive the promises." pp 90-91

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On Sept. 14, 2008, I cited Dr. Braxton's theology and its incompatibility with Riverside's inclusive tradition in opposition of his candidacy for Senior Minister. After citing the following scripture, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:28, I was publicly called "racist" by one of Dr. Braxton's supporters.

Dr. Braxton has repeatedly refused to respond to congregants questions about how his black liberation theology fits with Riverside's non-credal, inter-racial mission. At his recent installation, Dr. Braxton accepted a robe bearing the colors of the black liberation movement.

On April 30, 2009, Dr. Braxton published a link to his article "Paul and Racial Reconciliation: A Postcolonial Approach to 2 Corinthians 3:12-18" on the Riverside Church website. His article argues in favor of descendants of white Europeans and American settlers paying various forms of reparations to African-American citizens and 21st Century African nations.

It seems that the concerns I raised back in August were in fact warranted.
Jennifer Hoult, J.D.