Pondering the world’s problems in the shade of a giant oak
One of the joys of being a newspaper reporter is the opportunity to interview interesting and inspiring people. A recent conversation with the Rev. John Welch under a giant oak tree outside the Frick Environmental Center in Squirrel Hill was one of those moments.
I heard him speak in late July at the end of a ceremony honoring the Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire, who was shot and killed last year outside a North Side men’s shelter, where he was the night supervisor.
John spoke of community responsibility in curbing violence and not depending on the police to make it happen. He also spoke of injustice against and marginalization of people he described as “pawns on somebody else’s chessboard. We’re telling ourselves that we are going to reconstruct the chessboard. Among us are rooks. Among us are knights. Among us are kings. Among us are queens.”
The metaphor of a chessboard as society resonated with me. I have heard chess described as like life — people making moves and maneuvers, some taking and dominating, others overtaken and dominated.
“Our culture is saturated in the idea of winners and losers,” he said. “Far too often, people who don’t have a voice or any power are pawns, particularly in the Third World.”
John, who ran for mayor of Pittsburgh in 2017, was until recently the vice president for community engagement and dean of student services at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. After 13 years, his job was eliminated in a reconstruction.
His home church is Bidwell Presbyterian in Manchester, where his wife, the Rev. B. DeNeice Welch, is the pastor. While supporting her ministry, he has more time for leadership in the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network. He is especially committed to training young leaders.
“It’s about building power from a faith perspective,” John said.
The couple live in the house in which he grew up in East Hills. His parents were deaf and his grandmother, who lived with them, helped raise him. He learned to play the piano as a kid. He has a degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a doctorate in bioethics and health care ethics from Duquesne University.
“I didn’t really decide” to go into the ministry, he said. He and his wife were both active in music ministry. “I knew I wanted to teach the word of God.”
He was licensed to preach in 1990, when he was 30, and got his start at Rodman Street Missionary Baptist Church in East Liberty. He was raised in the Lutheran Church and became a Presbyterian after his seminary training, when he did his field education at Bidwell. He eventually became the church’s head pastor, and his wife succeeded him when he took the job at the seminary.
Under the tree, we talked about unfair housing policies and practices, socioeconomic and racial discrimination, voting rights under threat, the light that COVID19 has shone on inequities in the social fabric, the rotten foundation that undermines efforts to “form a more perfect Union,” the racial animus that resurfaced as a backlash against the Obama presidency, the co-opting of the media by scaremongers and misinformation, the corruption that America’s white patriarchy has fostered for centuries, and the hopeful energy coming out of protests.
“There is an energy that wants change,” he said.
We talked about how much more social justice activism church congregations could do. He acknowledged that but said, “The church was my foray into social justice.”
I asked if he thinks enough people in our country are ready to rebuild the foundation by demanding it of people in power.
“Not enough,” he said. “It looks like a turning point, a pivot in the narrative of the country, but whenever there is what appears to be a sea change, there is always the undercurrent that sweeps in to take it back. We celebrated loudly the success of the civil rights and feminist movements, but we didn’t put in place a structure to make it permanent.
“I am losing hope in our democracy,” he said. “It is being damaged by money as corporations are humanized.”
Americans are losing the efficacy of their individual voices when corporations are people, too, we agreed. But we haven’t helped ourselves by being too complacent in safeguarding our liberties.
“You look at countries that have nothing and everyone is doing something,” he said. “We have everything and people don’t feel like they have to do anything.”
We talked about the omission of so much American history in school curricula, human rights as a community responsibility, and the tension between the common good and personal rights. Yes, the subject of masks came up.
After spending almost two hours talking about the ills of the country, we hadn’t even gotten to the despoiling of land, water and air. The work that needs to be done is overwhelming.
The first move on our new chessboard will be to get to know our neighbors and to work for equity in who gets to live in our neighborhoods, he said.
“Take one bite at a time. Stay in your lane and do what you can do,” he said.
That presupposes that everyone else doing their part can make quick work of repair. Or maybe not such quick work.
“I don’t expect things to change much in my lifetime,” John said. “The work I’m doing is for my grandchildren.”