The City and Congregation Workgroup
Meeting Highlights
- First Meeting
Charlottesville, VA
July 2, 2002 - Second Meeting
Charlottesville, VA
September 27, 2002 - Third Meeting
Los Angeles, CA
November 6 - 10, 2002 - Fourth Meeting
Charlottesville, VA
February 7, 2003 - Fifth Meeting
Charlottesville, VA
March 7, 2003 - Sixth Meeting
Charlottesville, VA
May 1, 2003
Fifth Meeting
Charlottesville, VA
March 7, 2003
Narrative
The City and Congregation Workgroup convened on Thursday, March 7, 2003 at the offices of the Quality Community Council. The theme for the day was “Theology and History: Remembering Redemptively.” The day’s discussions were a crucial part of our ongoing effort to construct a theological narrative of Charlottesville.
Our first speaker was Dr. R.A. Johnson, local civil rights activist over the past five decades and pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church. Johnson’s moving presentation included accounts of integration efforts in the 1950’s and 1960’s, from marches with King in Montgomery to sit-ins locally at Buddy’s restaurant. Johnson also spoke of the contemporary scene, and his disappointment with the church failing to speak prophetically to the contaminating effects of racism, poverty, and individualism. Not despairing, however, Johnson presented these challenges as opportunities for the church to be the church, and held out the hope that pastors in Charlottesville will once again pray, intermingle and struggle together.
Workgroup member Jennifer McBride followed with a presentation on her paper, “Christ Episcopal Church Amidst Massive: A Theological Examination of Christian Duty.” In it, McBride struggles with the legacy of her parish and its complicity in massive resistance efforts in the 1960’s, inquiring, with the help of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr., into the nature of Christian duty. The paper prompted a number of crucial questions. What is the functional role of theological narrative? How do we preach the past? What does authentic repentance and reconciliation look like?
The afternoon session featured Renae Shackelford and Robert Saunders, authors of Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia. With Shackelford and Saunders, we revisited the painful events surrounding Vinegar Hill, an African American neighborhood that was razed during urban renewal in the late 1960’s. Having heard from Dr. Johnson and his courageous and outspoken efforts on education issues, we struggled together to find out why urban renewal did not generate the same kind of righteous indignation when it was being proposed by the city. Urban renewal was not, in fact, the insidious creation of racists, but the invention of well-intentioned liberals trying to envision better living conditions for its low-income residents. What do we do with that legacy? The way forward through the pain of urban renewal must go through this more honest, nuanced introspection. The injustices of urban renewal become much more complex when we admit that they were not the product of a city working at its worst, but the city working at its best. When we admit this, the role of theology’s alternative vision becomes all the more indispensable.
The day closed with a public lecture delivered by Shackelford and Saunders at Trinity Episcopal Church. The talk, “Remembering Vinegar Hill and Its Troubling Legacy,” was an outstanding success and drew almost 200 community members.
Readings
- James Robert Saunders and Renae Nadine Shackelford. Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1998.
Papers/Presentations
- Jennifer McBride. “Christ Episcopal Church Amidst Massive Resistance: A Theological Examination of Christian Duty.”
- Renae Nadine Shackelford. Remembering Vinegar Hill and Its Troubling Legacy. Please note that this is a 78MB Quicktime movie file and requires a broadband internet connection in order to view without a very lengthy download time.