Encounters with Liberation Theology.

These reflections, covering some First Pres history of the past 40 years, were shared by individuals during Adult Study in the spring of 2005. (Thanks to Sarah Johnson for putting these together for the web site.)

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Leif Erickson: Our teacher Robert McAfee Brown

In 1962, Bob and Sydney Brown and their family moved to Stanford and Palo Alto and became part of our lives here at First Pres, Palo Alto. In the following years, while a part of the Stanford and First Pres communities, Bob was jailed as a Freedom Rider in the South, worked against the war in Vietnam, and helped start the organization Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, whose charter document began with Bob’s words, “there comes a time when silence is betrayal.” He also served as a counselor to conscientious objectors and participated in civil disobedience against the war. Bob marched with the farmworkers in the Central Valley and, in the 80s, visited Central America and vigorously opposed repressive U. S. policies there. Some here at First Pres were there with him in those struggles for justice. We are part of this story, too.

In 1971, a small man in a humble community in far-off Peru wrote a little book that alarmed the most powerful nation on earth and led to his being declared our enemy by the ever cheerful and optimistic movie actor turned President of the United States. The small man and his little book changed the world of the church, and also changed Bob’s world. The man was Gustavo Gutierrez and when the book was published in English in 1972, it was called A Theology of Liberation. When Bob read the galleys of this new book, he said, “If this is right, I have to start my theological life all over again.”

Bob went on to build bridges between the people and praxis of liberation theology in Latin America and North American theology and churches. He did this through his books, speeches, articles, and teaching—at Union Seminary in New York and Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

In 1978, Bob published his first book responding to liberation theology, Theology in a New Key. He published several other books about it, including a book about the theology of Gustavo Gutierrez, published in 1980 and updated in 1990. Bob began his account of the impact of liberation theology with a story that took place at First Pres, Palo Alto. The story illustrates the change that can happen to any of us when we realize that policies perceived as far away or abstract are actually close and personal because real people are being violated and destroyed by them. Such a realization can place an obligation upon us that transforms our priorities and our lives.

And so, Bob’s story of liberation theology is not only the story of poor people far way in South America, but also of those of us in the privileged countries of North America. The first act in the story is commitment, the second is reflection and theology, the third act is yet to come. And—surprise—we’re not an audience to be entertained. When the curtain goes up on the third act, we’re the ones on stage. We’re the actors with a Bible in one hand and some helpful scripts that Bob has left us in the other hand.

For over 25 years, Bob Brown wrote and told the story of liberation while we listened and responded and reflected and aspired to live it here as the community at First Pres. Bob’s many books captured stories of discovery and amazement, of troubling and painfully honest questions, of anger and love, of compassion and forgiveness, and change—always change. The stories of change—sometimes painful and sometimes joyful—are always recorded with Bob’s honesty and humility and humor—not as destinations reached but as new acts in a drama, with another act yet to come.

In his 1992 book, Persuade Us to Rejoice, Bob reminded us that stories have the power to transform. They have the power to challenge us and engage us, and they may lead us in directions we never intended to go. The power of a story is a power over which we do not have ultimate control, since it can catch us off guard, tell us things about ourselves we would prefer not to know, and liberate us to move in directions we would never have imagined.

I grew up in this congregation and became a student of Bob’s at Stanford. I encountered liberation theology through my own life, the congregation’s life, and through Bob’s books. One perspective that shifted for me in startling ways was that of center and periphery. (At some point we Stanford students think we only have to put the light bulb in the socket and the world will turn around us.) My life and the lives of many others were at first slowly and then rapidly transformed by people I had never met but then began to meet—people out on the periphery, from places like Delano and Vietnam and South Africa and El Salvador and the Mexican border. Meeting those people and forming relationships with them called me and others to a new honesty and a new courage. Together, as a community, we began to respond, helping each other and challenging each other.

Courage, Bob once said, may be the most important Christian word of our times—even more important than faith or hope, or love, since it includes them all. Some stories follow below—stories of courage and fear, of mistakes and successes, of questions asked and asked again, and of change—because once we had looked some of Bob’s friends in the eye and listened to their stories, we could never go back to being who we were before.

Craig Wiesner: The circle as an inspiration for stepping outside the comfort zone

1989—A gay Jewish Air Force veteran, I come into the circle at First Pres. Somewhat conservative, I believe the truth can be found in newspapers, magazines, and from the government. Very little in the Bible seems to speak of truth to me. I hardly understand it at all.

The circle challenges me. There are constant calls to step outside of my comfort zone. Invitations that sound like nagging, guilt trips, even whining. But also stories of people who have stepped out of our circle—the people they’ve met, the stories they’ve learned and now brought back to the circle. I respect these people. I think they are telling the truth. The Bible also starts to be revealed in the sermons, the stories, and the nagging and whining.

1990/1991, The First Gulf War—Stories of babies being pulled from incubators. Saddam Hussein a monster. The circle objects. A conscientious objector is shielded. I object. The circle tells me stories, loves me, challenges me to step out of my comfort zone. Bible stories relate to what’s happening in real life. Perhaps there is some truth in there, but how do I know? Who is suffering? I begin to hear: Be with those who are suffering, the weak and the powerless. There, you’ll find the truth.

1993/1994, Bombing Serbia—The circle objects. I object. Things happen fast and end quickly, thankfully. I’m learning to trust the circle more than the newspapers and the government. I’m learning to see the suffering of the weak, the poor, the powerless. I hear their stories, the prophets of the Bible, and more truth is revealed.

1999—I ask Stan Grams what kinds of plans he has coming up. Stan says he only plans things short-term because you never know if you’ll be around in a year; if there’s something you feel called to do, do it now. If there’s an invitation, accept it. Stan dies soon after in an Egypt Air crash. Before this he had been to El Salvador with Arlene and had launched a major campaign to raise money to help build clean water wells. He didn’t live to see the fruits of his labor. Arlene Schaupp invites my partner and me once again to go to El Salvador. Of course, we accept.

2000—Now it is our turn to step outside the circle, out of our comfort zone, into completely new territory. We are sent out into a strange place, El Salvador, by being commissioned in the center of our circle. It is very powerful having the congregation surrounding us as we prepare to leave. Powerful knowing that they will be with us as we travel and will be there to hear our stories as we return. In El Salvador I meet people who were tortured, raped, and whose loved ones were murdered in the name of defeating communism. My fellow soldiers had participated in atrocities against these people. Yet the Salvadoran people love us. These poor people who had so little would give us anything they had. We come home to the circle, and tell their stories.

Dorothee Soelle, Ched Myers, Robert McAfee Brown, Diana Gibson, Jeff Vamos, Stan Grams, Sarah Johnson, Sydney Brown, Janet Cox, Jeremy Mineau, Jay Henderson, Jack and Arlene Schaupp, storytellers, cajolers, prophets, pushing us out of our comfort zones, telling us stories in the circle, surrounding us with their love in the circle, pushing us out of the circle, and together reflecting on what we have learned.

2001—I cry out about the suffering of the Palestinians and ask the Israeli consulate to stop torturing, assassinating, and destroying homes. Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone!

2002—When the call comes in 2002 to go to Afghanistan, it is the circle that gives the instant answer: Yes. It is this circle of people, sharing stories and experiences, nagging, cajoling, loving, inspiring, and bringing about what Derrick Kikuchi refers to as “the praxis of liberation theology.” It is being called to step out of your comfort zone, to be with the people who are suffering, to learn and tell their stories, to reflect on what it means to be a child of God.

Go back to your circle to be nurtured, and add to that circle with what you’ve learned. Be ready at any moment for another push, outside of your comfort zone. And don’t worry. You’re supposed to be uncomfortable.

Edie Irons: Encountering globalization on the U. S.-Mexico border

I’ve been on First Presbyterian Church delegations to the U.S.-Mexico border three times. I went in 1995 as the youngest member of a youth mission trip led by pastor Jeff Vamos; I went again in 1998 as the youngest member of an adult trip; and most recently I went in 2002 as a leader of the second First Pres youth mission trip to the border.

That first trip, more than any other single experience before college, opened my eyes to social justice issues, the economics of poverty, and the actual role of the U.S. in the affairs of its neighbors and the world. The trip sparked my interest in immigration, Mexico, the Spanish language, and the fight for social justice, and my interest has only increased since that trip.

We flew to Tucson, where Borderlinks is located. (Borderlinks is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to build relationships and understanding between North and Latin Americans, encourage a shared analysis of the implications of the global economy, and capacitate leaders on both sides of the border to work together to foster healthy communities local and internationally.) Some of the other First Pres people on the trip were Will Erickson, Jessie Thomas, Katie and Jessica Chamberlain, Natalie Eft, and Shanna and Senita Uhila. Borderlinks provided two guides, Jenny and John.

After a brief orientation, we set out in a giant van for El Paso/Juarez on the Texas-Mexico border. While we were in Juarez, we stayed with working-class families in hillside colonias that had started out as squatter’s camps. Slowly, the colonias had fought for and obtained electricity and running water, but they were still quite rough by our standards. We spent our days talking to people on all sides of many issues. We met with the U. S. Border Patrol and asked questions; toured a maquiladora that made alarm systems; and met a fifteen year-old boy who had come from Honduras, gotten caught in Juarez, escaped from deportation, and crossed into the U.S. a few weeks before. We met a couple from El Salvador who own a restaurant in El Paso. We heard the story of how in El Salvador the man had been pulled from his car by paramilitaries at a red light and tortured before eventually being released and seeking political asylum in the U.S. We learned about international water rights and the unregulated pollution of Mexico by U.S. companies and farms. One of the men we stayed with had been fired from a Hoover maquila for trying to unionize the workers.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned was about NAFTA’s effects on people, through playing a Borderlinks game called Tortilla Landia. Every night we met and discussed the revelations of the day, guided by a passage from the Bible. We asked questions such as What are borders? Do we need them? What options does an agricultural worker, a maquiladora worker, a border patrol agent, or a recent immigrant have? By the end of the trip, I could put the pieces together. People don’t come to the border because they want to live in the land of opportunity; they come because there are too few viable opportunities at home, and they want to survive and support their families. The lessons I learned made me see my life, my country, and, eventually, my calling in a new light.

The next two trips reinforced and fleshed out what I had seen on the first one. While in college I also went to Chiapas, Mexico (the southern border) and served as an international human rights observer in a Zapatista community. I majored in Latin American history at Barnard, and as soon as I get a chance, I will go to Mexico and beyond for as long as I can. This congregation, and these trips in particular, have played a huge part in the development of my conscience as a human being and a privileged American living in the world. I feel now that I have a responsibility to work for social justice and opportunity for all people, and I would strongly urge us to emphasize these values with our youth now, not just in Sunday school, but in the real world.

Sarah Johnson: Study, reflection, and action for community empowerment

I will be describing and reflecting on some of the experiences that Dick and I and our children had at First Pres in the late sixties and the seventies—especially our involvement with the Midpeninsula Christian Ministry. This was a Presbyterian-sponsored ecumenical ministry that focused on the needs of East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park from about 1963 to 1975. The actual location, on University Ave in EPA, was known as Community House. The ministry was established and funded out of the urban ministry arm of the PCUSA and was also sponsored initially by Covenant, First Pres, and Menlo Park churches (Menlo Park later withdrew its official support). Its director was an ordained Presbyterian minister, Carl Smith. The mission of the ministry was to be a presence in the community—to be involved with residents as they worked to make the community a better place to live and to develop services that were needed. The needs of the community were great: unemployment was high; EPA was a corner of the county, not a city and so its needs were often unnoticed; its high school was part of a larger district that didn’t always pay attention to EPA’s unique needs; housing was limited. The ministry worked on issues related to these needs providing services such as job counseling and tutoring, and also vigorous advocacy for government to meet the community’s needs. The ministry planned events designed to “bridge the freeway” such as a marvelous and very large interracial day camp.

I don’t think that many of us realized until much later how unusual this ministry was. We met for worship that often drew on the Iona traditions, met for study and reflection of the Bible and theology, formed task forces to study the community institutions—what was working and not working about them, advocated and provided services and programs for community life. I became interested in working with others on issues of housing for all income levels. The task force I worked on went to housing authority and city council meetings, advocated for more attention to the housing needs of East Palo Alto and for a more accountable county housing authority. We joined many other community groups in lobbying for federal money for rental assistance programs. Some of the things we learned about housing translated into First Pres involvement on this housing issue in Palo Alto, too—ultimately leading to the Lytton Gardens senior housing development in Palo Alto (brought into being by the special leadership of Marshall Virello and Seldon Martin). What was special was the combination of worship, reflection, and action. (We were reading liberation theology, but had no idea we might have been doing anything worthy of that name.)

One of the books that I read during that era was Rubem Alves’s A Theology of Human Hope. Here are a few notes that I took then:

Hope stems from the idea that history is not finished. A better society is possible. The gospel proclaims God’s action in history, a new possibility for human life. God remains faithful to God’s vision even when humans forget. God has given humans the gift of freedom—freedom FOR life, and freedom to be open to the future. Humans are also free for the present. One must love the present world. Today is God’s gift and is to be enjoyed. Trust in the politics of God.

Minako Sano: the call to support the farmworker movement

 

For years and years before 1965, the agricultural workers on California farms had been denied a decent life, with extremely low wages, as low as 90 cents an hour. There were also no portable toilets on the work site, and workers lived in metal shacks with no indoor plumbing or cooking facilities. Use of child labor was widespread.

At the end of the summer of 1965 when the grapes were ripening to be picked in Delano, just north of Bakersfield, the newly organized farmworkers asked that their hourly wage be raised to $1.25. They did not get it. The workers on nine farms, then, went on strike, and the strike spread fast from there on. The wages were not the only issue; the workers were also asking that they be allowed to unionize. Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers put a call out to churches and community organizations asking for support of their movement, and First Pres responded.

I remember the Sanos driving down to Delano with Sydney and Bob Brown and their children and pastor George Wilson and his boys, all piled into the big van that the Browns had in those days. We had been invited to come to the meeting to show solidarity with farmworkers in their struggle. Our children were all elementary school age or younger, and we, the parents, had to make sure that they would be kept reasonably happy with toys and snacks on hand during the long hours of driving down to Delano. Before we left to come home, our son, Stephen, had left his favorite sweater in the meeting hall where the families of the strikers, with many children, were gathered. I remember him saying, “Well, one of those kids can wear my sweater instead of me.”

Around that time, the churches were also asked to collect staple food for the striking workers and deliver it to them. In response, First Pres collected sacks of rice, flour, dry beans, etc., which we dedicated during worship as part of our liturgy. The Sanos volunteered to deliver these supplies to a spot in the Central Valley. We were driving through Merced when we heard on the radio that a tornado was developing in the area, warning people in the area to watch out. I could not have been more thankful for those sacks of grains in the trunk of our car that were weighing us down solidly on the road.

Another time, there was a big march of the farmworkers and their supporters coming from San Jose and going up to San Francisco. Our church was asked to give them a place to stay overnight. The request came so late that our pastor, George Wilson, simply did not have time to check with and get permission from Session to accept such a request. Knowing that he’d have to live with the consequences, George went ahead and gave them an OK. The marchers rested and slept at our church that night.

There were meetings organized and held in homes to inform people of the farmworkers struggle. The Rev. Chris Hartmire of the National Farmworker Ministry was present at the meeting we attended. Chris noticed Peter and me, obviously Japanese Americans, approached us, and asked quietly if we just might be on the side of the growers. Many of the growers in the Central Valley were of Japanese descent, and they were, of course, a target in the farmworkers’ struggle. Chris looked so relieved to find that we were on his side.

Many of us from First Pres participated in leafleting in front of the supermarkets that were selling non-union grapes, asking shoppers to boycott the markets. Those were the days when many of us shopped at Palo Alto Coop, the one store that always carried union products, grapes in those days and lettuce later on.

Sydney Brown: Our progressive tradition includes work on many issues

A progressive church comes into being through faith, study, prayer, and action—helped and informed by the prophetic teaching and preaching of pastors and staff.

Through the years, I have been present many times when this congregation has sought to be a place where people of conscience could find guidance and support as they struggle with issues of love and justice—including civil, political, and economic justice for all; whether to participate in the military; protection of human rights; and immigration issues. After study and prayer, we have sent members to march for civil rights in the south, worked for racial justice and reconciliation in our own community, advocated for economically disadvantaged people, supported farmworkers, studied and collaborated with other denominations to promote ecumenical understanding, and offered sanctuary to service people during the Vietnam War. We also offered sanctuary or sponsorship to families from Hungary, Chile, El Salvador, and Vietnam. We have marched and stood vigil with thousands of others in opposition to violence in Vietnam, Central America, and Iraq. As an ongoing part of our congregational life, we have sent members to the far corners of the globe—regularly to El Salvador and the U. S.-Mexico border and also to Nicaragua, Honduras, Afghanistan, and Israel-Palestine.

We’ve sought to use our church plant resources wisely and have made Westminster House available for nonprofit offices. Through that, we’ve fostered the creation and sustenance of nonprofits, including a job counseling center, a fair housing organization, the peace and justice center, a grief counseling center, and more. We host a child care center on our property, too.

We became a More Light church and have been enriched by membership and leadership of many gay and lesbian individuals and families. Our More Light position has also put us in community with many other wonderful people advocating full inclusion of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in church and civic life.

We have taken seriously our call to be stewards of the earth and have worked with presbytery and other organizations to protect and preserve the beautiful area where we live, with sensitivity to environmental justice for low-income communities and the toxic effects of Silicon Valley industries on our environment.

Many of our members have worked locally to provide care for the poorest among us: we work for Habitat for Humanity, support Peninsula Interfaith Action, work to bring the Opportunity Center into being, serve meals to the homeless, and support the Urban Ministry.

We continue and expand our ecumenical work, reaching out to the Moslem community and others in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 event, especially working through Multifaith Voices for Peace. We strive to be the people we aspire to be, seeking always to find the strength through prayer, worship, study, and action—never alone but in partnership with others.

 

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