From the editor

According to Elizabeth Soto Albrecht, moderator of Mennonite Church USA, our denomination has moved beyond tokenism in the inclusion of underrepresented racial/ethnic members.

“We have arrived at a critical mass,” she said at a gathering of 60 Mennonite leaders of color last January. “Can we now produce systemic changes?”

Soto Albrecht’s pronouncement was right, and her question was right.

In September, she dramatized the change by first asking all people of color to stand at the joint meeting of the Governance Council and Executive Board. She then asked all women to stand.

“We can see how far we have come,” she said, “and how far we have to go.”

But in an aside, Executive Board member Charlotte Hardt said something prescient to me.

“Yes, we have all these women and people of color,” she said, “but we’re still doing business the same old ways. Maybe the women and people of color who make it into the system are just those who can operate in Anglo ways.”

Although many leaders worked at dismantling racism in the church over the years, an event nearly two decades ago laid the foundation for much of what has been done since.

In 1994, the “Restoring Our Sight” conference in Chicago, led by Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Tobin Miller Shearer, planted the seeds for what later would bloom as the Damascus Road antiracism training provided by Mennonite Central Committee.

Damascus Road training taught us several important things:

• Most of us white people swim unaware in a sea of privilege.
• While individuals may experience the scales of privilege falling from their eyes in a personal Damascus Road conversion, real and substantial change happens only when systems are transformed.
• When organizations and institutions begin to change, racism mutates into forms that are less obvious and less easy to confront.

One of the most helpful tools developed for the antiracism training was a six-step continuum that described what each stage of positive change would look like.

This continuum was helpful because no institution or organization can skip any stage.

And each stage brings with it a new set of challenges requiring solutions not employed in earlier stages.

So Elizabeth and Charlotte are both right. We need systemic change in Mennonite Church USA, and the current systems have not changed much.

Charlotte may also be right that the reason women and people of color must operate in our current Anglo structures is because there has not yet been a deeply shared vision or the will and resolve to change the systems.

So what systemic changes should we make?

Damascus Road training says the first people to whom we ask this question are those most hurt by white privilege. So we ask our many leaders of color (that “critical mass” as Elizabeth called it) to speak to the issue first.

Of course, not all leaders of color will have the same point of view or suggestions.

But if we really have moved beyond tokenism with the leaders now in place, we white leaders will step back, sit down and listen as new voices discern what God’s Spirit would have for Mennonite Church USA in the future.