BECOMING A TRANSFORMED NONCONFORMIST (THE REMIX)

 

“Be not conformed to the world; but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

 
About fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon entitled, “Transformed Nonconformist.”  Dr. King based his message on the familiar text from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Roman Church, where in the 12^th chapter, Paul reminded the Christians in Rome that they were to “be not conformed to the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of (their) minds.” 

The context for Dr. King’s message, this matter of transformed nonconformity, was the American Civil Rights movement of the mid-20^th century, and the need for leadership in the church and society that would stay the course in seeking to transform society and deliver America from the racial division, economic disparity, and other social maladies that plagued our nation then.

Dr. King’s message has haunted me over the years, as I have thought about what it means to be a leader in the church today.  And it has led me lately to think about what it means for us to be adaptive in our leadership.  In a nutshell adaptive leadership is what I sense that Dr. King was talking about when he talked about transformed nonconformity. 

THE POWER OF LOVE - MOHONDAS K. GANDHI AND NON-VIOLENCE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

by Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, D.Min., Ph.D.

 

(This public lecture was delievered at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore, Maryland on February 10, 2012)

                    

Mohandas K. Gandhi was one of the few pesons in modern history to lead inthe struggle for human progress simultaneously on moral, religious, political and cultural fronts. His life and praxis of non-violence impacted many persons in india and across the world in the promotion of peace and love with jsutice, and continues to impact persons and institutions today.  With the ongoing proliferation of violence, war, local and global conflict, and geopolitical discord, Gandhi’s philosophy and praxis could be helpful in the discovery of non-violent approaches to conflict resolution and transformation in the 21^st century.

Huston Smith, in The World’s Religions offers that “the face of Hinduism for the West is Mohandas Gandhi.”  According to Smith, “Most responsible for awakening the West to (the realities of the East and the beauty of Hinduism) was a little man who weighed not much more than a hundred pounds and whose possessions when he died totaled two dollars.[1]  If his picture were to appear on this page it would be recognized immediately.  How many other portraits would be recognized universally?  Someone ventured a few years ago that there were only three: those of Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse, and Mahatma Gandhi – “whose essence of being is great” as the title “mahatma” would be literally translated.

The achievement for which the world credited Gandhi was the British withdrawal from India in peace.  What is not as well-known is that among his own people, he lowered a barrier much more formidable than that of British colonialism in India, racism in the United States or Apartheid in South Africa, renaming and redefining “untouchables” in India as “harijan”, God’s Children, and raising them to human status.   

WITHOUT LOVE

(This is an exerpt of the sermon preached at Epworth Chapel, Baltimore on 5/12/13)

“Though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge…. but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2)

This text is familiar to many of us because it is a part of what has come to be known as the “love chapter” in the Bible.  It is not uncommon for couples who are preparing to get married to scan the Bible for a scripture text that they wish to be read at their wedding ceremony, to park here are at 1 Corinthians 13 at these marvelous and challenging words attributed to the Apostle Paul.

There is no evidence that Paul intended for 1 Corinthians to become known as the “love chapter,” and the “wedding poem,” but upon close examination, his words speak to the very nature of love for those seeking to be in relationship within the context of the church, and for those of us seeking to understand love in our daily lives. 

On at least five occasions in this particular text, Paul juxtaposes love against various and sundry actions and activities that the people of his day might have understood and to which they might relate.  Paul here talks about the many gifts of the people of Corinth – gifts of tongues of mortals and of angels, gifts of prophecy, gifts of wisdom, gifts of faith, and gifts of charity.  But Paul shares that without love, none of these gifts really mean anything.  

Common Ground for the Common Good

Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, D.Min., Ph.D.

(This is the text of a public panel response/presentation given on April 9, 2012 at the Ecumenical Institute of Theology, St. Mary's Seminary and University in response to Rev. Jim Wallis's new book, On God's Side.)

 

I would venture to suggest that at the root of Protestantism is an ongoing quest for an appropriation of the common good.  Martin Luther’s call for the reformation of the church in the 16^th century seemed to signal a call for Christian communities to address matters of ecclesial, theological, and socio-political significance to the masses of people.    By its very nature Reformation faith and Protestantism served as a faithful protest against what was viewed – at least to some degree – as the perceived class abuses of the church and society – directed primarily toward the poor.  In as much as the Protestant Reformation was to become a protest against some of the practices of the church - as perceived by Luther and others - it would also become a framework for reforming and reframing some of the practices of Christianity in the search for common ground and the common good.    

The quest for such common good became one of the marks of enlightenment faith that would be the hallmark of early Protestantism in America.   Martin Marty intimates in his book Pilgrims in their Own Land, that although early 15^th and 16^th century settlers in the American colonies were largely “pilgrims of dissent,” what they shared was a common quest for freedom, and that colonists were “knit together by law, religion, and custom.”[1]

Addressing Educational Disparities in Urban Settings

          


Dietrich Bonheoffer, the great German theologian pointed out in the middle of the 20^th century that the test of the morality of a society is how it treats its children.  A statement of American abolitionist Frederick Douglas from more than century and a half ago sheds light on the critical importance of properly educating today’s urban young.  Douglas intimated that “literacy unfits a child for slavery.”  Similarly, today education unfits children for poverty, addiction and incarceration. 

It is important to give constructive attention to the education of children in urban areas because – as Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund points out - urban children  face the higher likelihood of being abused and neglected, born into poverty, born without health insurance, killed by a firearm, or born to a teenage mother.  These figures are exacerbated for black and brown children in urban settings.[i]