For St. John’s UMC’s pastor, ‘This is a moment for the church to speak’
It’s been a long year for Rudy Rasmus, who co-pastors St. John’s United Methodist Church in downtown Houston along with his wife, Juanita.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the church pivoted to virtual worship in March, while simultaneously ramping up efforts to serve the needs of the community, distributing food to some 2,000 families each week through the nonprofit, Bread of Life, Inc.
“Harvey started subsiding once the sun came up,” Rasmus told me Friday, recalling previous disaster relief initiatives he and Juanita have led since St. John’s was founded in 1992. “The sun didn’t come up on this. We’re still in a very cloudy, dark situation.”
And that was true even before COVID-19, and helps explain why Rasmus was moved to edit a book, “I’m Black. I’m Christian. I’m Methodist,” which brings together autobiographical essays from himself and nine other Black men and women.
“The one thing that has challenged me the most has been the silence of my white evangelical friends,” said Rasmus, reflecting on the Trump era.
“When this great shift occurred, four years ago it was like, “OK, well maybe we don’t have to address that part of the American reality right now. Maybe we can just focus on raising money and creating programs. Maybe we don’t have to stand up in the place where justice was needed.”
That attitude persisted, he continued, even after George Floyd was killed in the custody of Minneapolis police in May, during an encounter that lasted more than eight minutes and was captured on video by witnesses.
“In the midst of watching, in complete shock and horror, an unimaginable occurrence take place, the one thing I kept thinking was this is a moment for the church to speak,” Rasmus said. “This is a moment for the church to say something, for the church to address the evils of white supremacy from a Christian perspective.”
The church — the white evangelical church, at least — missed the moment completely. Indeed, in response to the Black Lives Matters protests that followed, President Donald Trump had law enforcement officers use tear gas to clear protesters from Lafayette Square, north of the White House, so that he could stroll to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he posed for photos shaking a Bible.
Those events, Rasmus explains, spurred him to reach out to friends who serve in the United Methodist Church, to ask for their reflections at this seminal moment in the history of the church and the country.
The resulting collection is illuminating, and “a clarion call,” as Bishop Gregory Palmer puts it
in a foreword. To be a member of any organized church is to be part of an institution run by fallible humans, as well as to share certain beliefs. To be a Methodist is to believe in a beautiful and powerful message about prevenient grace — the grace that God extends to all his children, regardless of their backgrounds or status in society — while also being part of a church whose leaders all too often fail to practice what they preach.
The men and women who contributed to this collection approach the intersection of race and faith from different perspectives, but all of them describe the need for the UMC to confront systemic racism within the church itself as well as within the broader society — in order to remain relevant to young Black Christians, in particular, but also as a matter of acting in accordance with their own beliefs.
“History will judge our works by examining what we did and said during these turbulent times,” writes Rev. Jevonn A. Caldwell-Gross in his essay. “The middle ground has been canceled as a viable option.”
Rasmus himself says he was skeptical of Christianity as a child. In his essay he describes seeing his Auntie MaeMae forgive “a violent, maniacal husband,” over and over in Jesus’ name.
“It was one of many encounters with power,” he writes, “that left me questioning the validity of religion and curious about the church’s inability to access power as an institution responsible for the liberation of oppressed people, and especially Black people in America.”
As a young man, he practiced Buddhism and explored Islam, but began attending church with Juanita as part of their newlywed agreement. The services she
brought him to at Windsor Village United Methodist Church in southwest Houston resonated, he writes, and he “became entangled by the love I received.” Five years later, he rejoined the church, and soon after that he went into ministry as a pastor in the UMC.
But, he told me, his affiliation is subject to change. As it stands, the United Methodist Church is on the verge of schism after a yearslong debate about LBGTQ rights, which is — as several contributors to the collection observe — inseparable from the fight for racial justice and the pursuit of spiritual dignity more generally.
“At the end of the day I can’t be part of a movement that denies the acceptance of a human being based on that human being’s identity,” Rasmus said.
He noted that he held that stance during the debate over the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance in 2015, and that it was “painful;” he estimates that thousands of people left St. John’s during the course of the debate. That may, of course, be what white evangelical leaders fear, when it comes to asking their congregations to confront the emboldened forces of white supremacy. But it’s not an excuse for inaction, in Rasmus’ view.
“I believe Christianity as a faith tradition has merit in this world that we are currently in,” Rasmus told me. “One of the basic tenets Jesus spoke to was to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
Rasmus paused for a few moments.
“That’s kind of it,” he said, with a laugh.