LENNETT J. ANDERSON ON RACE, JESUS AND JUSTICE

Faith Today: You’ve just been appointed lecturer in leadership and racial justice at Acadia Divinity College where you did your own MDiv degree. Tell me what this appointment feels like and what it will look like for you. What are your plans?

Lennett J. Anderson: I’m ecstatic. My heart is overjoyed with the opportunity and the possibilities that are on the horizon. I just believe it’s a dynamic duo of seminarytrained leaders and community engagement. And I think that’s the ideal. This is where the rubber hits the road. I am so humbled by the trust of the board, and by the college, to deem me a worthy candidate to come alongside students and just dream of the possibility of having church in community fully engaged as we seek to infuse culture and just address the social ills of our day.

I believe the Church has to regain its prophetic voice.

FT: We’re definitely in a moment where we’re talking about racial justice and injustice in a way that maybe we haven’t as much as we should have been in recent years. Tell me, as you’ve been watching things unfold as a church leader in Canada and specifically in Nova Scotia, what was your reaction? And what were you saying to your congregation on Sunday mornings about this?

LA: We are a mosaic in our fellowship. I think of the richness of ethnicities and cultures really representing the Kingdom of God. But they heard the pain in my voice and if I could be very honest, Karen, although some of the events took place in the United States of America, it sent shock waves. It was traumatic. Viewing such incidents was traumatic to people of colour, and when I watched even my children heard the pain in my voice. Just because many of us can identify that that’s a possible brother, an aunt, an uncle, you know.

It’s a sad reality that in 2020 we still have to address racial trauma, and then