Read more of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly’s July 1, 2009 interview in New York City with Riverside Church senior minister, the Rev. Dr. Brad Braxton:

I would say it’s a time of relief, at least for me personally, to know that this moment has the potential to teach so many lessons. So it’s not relief as a “phew” because there’s so much sadness, because we came together with such great hopes….It’s more a sense of scripture teaches us, Christian theology teaches us that out of difficult moments like this so much positive can occur, so many wonderful transformations might happen. And I first want to acknowledge that there’s a sense of relief in the sense of teaching, in that this is teaching me lessons. I have learned lessons of leadership about what it might mean for me to be a clearer communicator, about how the next time I am called to leadership I do a better job of preparing people for the inevitable changes that an institution might have to go through. So I’m relieved in the sense that this moment has opportunities to teach me something, and I’m trying to be a good student, and I feel a sense of relief in that I believe the congregation if it gravitates to this moment and really stays with this moment prayerfully, it also has some wonderful wisdom to impart to the congregation.

I think what I’m going to do is to reflect, obviously, on these lessons of which I’ve been speaking and then prayerfully pursue the next phase of my ministry. My wife, daughter and I are walking in faith. The next calling has not presented itself, but this will be a time for us to be prayerful and reflective and look for the next creative opportunity to use the gifts of ministry that have been given to us to make a significant difference in some community.

I shared with the church leadership that I would be a pastoral presence as much as it is useful for me to be so, and I have received warm invitations from the congregation and the church council and other leaders to continue to lead. There are many initiatives that we have started, and the work of social justice ministry and spiritual empowerment will continue on in a fervent way even in these remaining weeks that we have. And also I will do the best that I can to outline the contours of healing. This is a community that needs some healing, and I think it would be fanciful to believe that in a matter of a few weeks or even a few months that all of us would have sorted this out. But at least we begin, we can begin to talk about this is what healing looks like, and we can fill in the data as we go along and color in the lines as we go along. But at least let’s talk about the boundaries, and we’re going to be having services, even beginning tonight, Sunday service and other services, and other opportunities to lament what happened, because first of all, before you can ever talk about healing and joy on the other side, you have to really rest for a moment with the fact that something didn’t go quite right here, and that brings pain to our hearts, and I also believe, my theology, at least, would teach me that human brokenness touches the heart of God. So there’s a lament in heaven, as well, and we need to rest with that and have ways to ritualize that spiritually, and then once we go through that process, carefully, joy can and will emerge. Hope can and will emerge. I am confident of that.

Scripture that I’ve been sharing with the congregation and the leaders is Isaiah 43. It’s a wonderful passage where God says when you go through the waters, when you go through the fire, I will be with you. The waters, the rivers, they won’t overwhelm you. The fire will not burn you. I think moments like this have the possibility to create despair. But the promise of God is even in what seems to be the most desperate circumstances, my presence will be there to undergird you, and I will be there to walk beside you, and most of all I’m going ahead of you to lead you. And that’s what speaks to me personally. I think that speaks to my family, and from the body language and comments of leaders and members of this congregation, that passage and the promise of that passage has spoken to them as well. So, Isaiah 43 has become a touchstone for many of us in the last 48 to 72 hours.

For me, the awareness began to take the form of what is really my assignment here. I would like to say, maybe this will be helpful when the congregation hears me say it in a more public way, that I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I was called to serve as pastor of this congregation. There were too many divine signs along the way. It was a very elaborate search process. The church searched for the better part of a year and engaged a search firm, and there was an eight-day confirmation process…so that notion of a real prayerful, reflective process where we said the goals of the congregation and my gifts of ministry seem to be in line with one another. So I have no sense of despair about the fact that I was called. This was not a mishap in any way, shape, or form, at least in my perspective. There is absolutely no regret at all. The lessons that I have learned and the love that I have received have blessed me and my family in some wonderful ways. But there was a growing awareness that maybe my assignment, my calling, was not what I thought it was to be. Now, it’s a very complex process of sorting through the providence of God, more than we could ever do in one interview. But I began to realize that maybe my thinking that I was here for 10 or 15 year pastoring missed something, or I had not really latched on exactly to what God’s assignment was for me here, and one of the assignments was to clarify with greater intensity some of the unresolved issues here in the life of this congregation, issues that may hamper any senior minister from working collaboratively with this congregation. And when those issues are sorted out lovingly, the possibility of this place reaching its fullest potential is right there. It’s right there in the offing. But the congregation will have to reach, stretch, to get it. But it’s there. So maybe my assignment was to highlight that possibility that comes from addressing those internal challenges and not, and there was something in this experience that God wanted to use to teach me. I have learned some profound lessons about leadership and about patience and about standing firm in the midst of the storm that I believe God will use in the years to come. I will share this thought. Years ago when I first met Dr. [James] Forbes, I came here to preach a service for the New York Presbytery. Dr. Forbes came. It was one of the first times he and I had ever really sat down. He took me on a tour of the church, took me in his office, the office that I now occupy, and he began to theologize and he said, “God is an economical God.” That thought has stayed with me for years. That is to say that God does not waste experience. There are things that have happened that I have pledged to God I will not let that become waste. You have used the blessing of this experience, and you’ve used the burden of this experience, and all of it can work for my good, and I want in these few remaining weeks to invite the congregation to consider that same paradigm, that the blessing and the burden of all of this, none of this is waste. God has a way of turning it all into something profound. If you want to talk about current parlance around being green, God is the ultimate agent of green. Nothing is wasted in God’s universe, and I think God wants to use this and perhaps recycle some of these experiences for the greater good, I hope, for the congregation and for the greater good of my forthcoming ministry.

I think it would really be a misapprehension of the circumstance to try to say it’s one thing. Riverside Church is an incredibly diverse and complex community, and with that diversity and complexity comes an assemblage of opportunities and challenges. So let me quickly try to identify some of the challenges I’ve been sharing with the leaders that I believe if grappled with can lead to opportunities. I think some serious conversations need to occur about more creative and healthy ways of dealing with conflict and dissent. Related to that is a larger issue, and perhaps this is one of the issues that the friends we have in the neighborhood at some of the other institutions might help us think through, and that is what is the relationship between rights, as an individual’s rights in a liberal progressive institution like Riverside, and communal accountability. To be sure, each of us brings rights. We value the democratic process here. The liberal progressive tradition is born out of a sense of protecting the rights of those who have been disenfranchised and marginalized. But we also must realize that there are times when I may have to momentarily set my individual rights aside in order to find common ground for the common good. So there’s a tension that needs to be wrestled with between rights and accountability, and that’s not just, I think, an issue at the Riverside Church. I think that’s something that’s endemic to many progressive institutions. I would also say that some serious conversation needs to occur about what it means to invite a leader, a pastoral leader, into this community. Is this congregation really ready for and interested in a pastoral leader who actually wants to lead? Not autocratically. Certainly collaboratively, but lead, and that’s something that I think will need to be grappled with. How is power dispersed and shared so that you can honor the congregational style? I think it is a misnomer that has been sometimes bandied about, even here at Riverside, that I and others have misunderstood the congregational nature of this congregation. I’ve been Baptist all my life. Baptist churches are congregational. Indeed, we sometimes forget that Riverside Church historically began as a Baptist church and continues as a Baptist church, as well as a church affiliated with United Church of Christ. So being a congregational church should not mean that you don’t make room for strong, faithful, pastoral leadership. I think that’s something I would lovingly and respectfully encourage the congregation to consider. How can you have an empowered laity and an empowered pastor? I do not believe that they are mutually exclusive.

I believe, going forward, this congregation would receive significant benefit from some significant work in clarifying terminology. So let me say just a bit more about that. I have read articles over the last few weeks as people have covered the controversy where people will say things like, again, it’s an inaccuracy, but “Dr. Braxton was trying to foist upon the congregation an evangelical approach as opposed to the intellectual approach.” You know, there’re all these terms get bandied about, as if people who do have evangelical commitments, which simply in my vantage point means people who want to take the good news of God seriously, that’s all, etymologically, being evangelical means, because of certain characterizations in the culture, evangelical means a certain demographic and a certain litmus test, religious kind of dogmas. But a church like Riverside should rise to the occasion and begin to clarify terms such that if I say, as I have, that I certainly do have evangelical commitments. I am concerned about God’s good news, but from my very first moment in this congregation I have been talking about an understanding of God’s good news that makes room for all of God’s children. So what often happens in a community that is unclear about terminology and where there is some degree of fear is that people begin to stereotype one another. So, for example, even in the coverage of my departure, you have caricature and stereotypes. This past Sunday at the Riverside Church was Pride Sunday, and I publicly on multiple occasions, including my Sunday sermon, declared myself proudly to be a heterosexual ally for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer persons and preached a sermon about struggling for the rights and dignity of persons in that demographic and with that sexual identity. Now one would say that’s an interesting kind of evangelical, isn’t it? Or the third Sunday of May, I hosted along with the congregation an interfaith dialog where I preached a sermon from the Riverside Church asking, exhorting, calling for Christians to repent of their Christian imperialism that belief that Jesus Christ is the only way. That is so far from my theology. I have always believed that there are many ways to have a relationship with God and to be in just relationships with one another. And so I would say, well, if someone also has evangelical commitments, whatever that means, and for me it means I’m simply concerned about God’s good news, do we need to have knee-jerk reactions when we haven’t clarified terms? And Riverside Church as a cathedral has the opportunity and maybe even the responsibility in the 21st century to chart new paths and to clarify terminologies and to say all of us in some sense should be concerned about God’s good news and making room for all of God’s children at the table. That has been the fundamental message that I have preached over and over and over again. How do we genuinely appreciate diversity?

What we will attempt to do in these next few weeks is, as I mentioned, continue on with all the good work that has gone on in the various ministries of the congregation and also begin in collaboration with the church council and commissions and staff and leaders, put procedures in place and begin to look for who some of the interim leadership might be and trying to leave the house as much as we can in order and create as many opportunities for the honest sharing of emotions. As you witnessed, this is something we did in a wonderful way. We had an all-staff luncheon and church council came, and it was a great experience of the process of, again, beginning to draw the outlines of healing. And we’ll try to do that with as much earnestness and tenderness as we can in the next few weeks. My final Sunday, I believe, will be the first Sunday of August, August 2nd, and to be quite honest, on August the third I’m not exactly sure what happens other than to say my wife, Lazetta, and our daughter, Karis, and I will relocate to some other part of the United States. We have some hunches where that might be, but we’re trying to sort all that out, and we will certainly need to enmesh ourselves in a community where we can find some healing, because right now we’re kind of just trying to get through this and help the congregation and help ourselves. But we will need some time to decompress and to reflect about all that has occurred and really just rest with this for a moment. And then I’m open, I’m wide open to possibilities. I have such a deep commitment for pastoral communities and pastoral leadership and mentoring younger clergies. I’ve had a longstanding commitment to theological education. And I’m looking for something that will allow me to continue to address in creative ways the progressive social justice agenda and spiritual empowerment agenda that I came to implement here at Riverside Church. So we are walking in faith.

My words for my successor would be words from the Apostle Paul: Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. For as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a Lucky Severson report now on the divisions in one of the most prominent places of worship in the country—Riverside Church in New York. It’s affiliated with both the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ and was built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in the late 1920s for its first and much admired senior pastor, Harry Emerson Fosdick. Riverside became widely known for its great preaching, liberal theology, interracial congregation, and commitment to social justice. But now it’s also known for a bitter controversy surrounding its new senior minister, Brad Braxton.

Unidentified minister performing a blessing: Dear God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we now bring this servant of God, this man of God before you.

LUCKY SEVERSON: It has become an occasion worthy of note when the Riverside Church installs a new senior pastor. His name is Brad Braxton, and he has come a long way from his humble beginnings as the son of a Baptist preacher in rural Virginia.

Rev. BRAXTON: Pastoral ministry is a wonderful vocation. The opportunity to guide a community of faith amid its joys and sorrows is a significant and high calling.

SEVERSON: Riverside spans the blocks between the ivy-covered walls of Columbia University and the largely African-American Harlem neighborhood. Jennifer Hoult discovered Riverside when she was attending nearby Barnard College and has been coming to services for over 20 years.

JENNIFER HOULT (Member, Riverside Church): We have had some of the most extraordinary preachers leading this church. I mean Fosdick, Bill Coffin, Jim Forbes — these are extraordinary gentlemen in the clergy, and brilliant theologians and brilliant preachers, I can add.

SEVERSON: Dr. Braxton seems well prepared for the job. He’s a Rhodes Scholar, has a PhD in New Testament studies, and was a religion professor at Vanderbilt. Betty Davis says it’s the kind of resume that stood out among the 200 applicants for the job. She has been a member here for 19 years and was on the selection committee.

BETTY DAVIS (Member, Riverside Church): And what impressed me most about Dr. Braxton was, first of all, his deep spirituality combined with his masterful knowledge. So he really stood out. His energy stood out. He came prepared.

SEVERSON: It seems like a perfect fit. So why, on the day of his installation, did the new senior pastor speak about fear within the congregation?

Rev. BRAXTON (preaching to congregation): Fear not. Fear not. I’m going to preach it until the Holy Ghost tells me to stop.

SEVERSON: He is speaking of the fear some in the congregation have about their new senior minister. His selection has proved controversial, and division within the church is an issue he has not shied away from.

Rev. BRAXTON (speaking to congregation): Move the mountain of distrust and animosity in this congregation by speaking the truth in love.

Ms. DAVIS: As soon as his name was announced, the attacks started. One of the things that some people are afraid of is that the church will turn black. And, you know, I really resent that.

SEVERSON: Betty Davis says Dr. Braxton’s predecessor, Dr. James Forbes, a world-class preacher, also black, also suffered congregational harping, and that the elephant in the room people aren’t talking about is racism. Lois and David Carey have attended Riverside for over 35 years and have seen the church’s membership shift from predominately white to predominately black.

DAVID CAREY (Member, Riverside Church): I feel that Dr. Braxton is getting a holdover from Dr. Forbes, who went through the same thing he’s going through. Only he was there taking it for 20 years.

SEVERSON: Racism have anything to do with it?

Mr. CAREY: I think so, yeah. I’m sad to say it but I think so, you know.

Rev. BRAXTON: I’m obviously dealing with, as did Dr. Forbes, some of the issues of what it means to guide an institution of this magnitude when this institution, like the United States of America, is still wrestling with the great hold that racism has on this country.

SEVERSON: But Jennifer Hoult says her problem with Dr. Braxton is not about color.

Ms. HOULT: My concerns about Dr. Braxton had nothing to do with his race or his personal history. They had to do with his theology.

Rev. BRAXTON (preaching to congregation): Listen again to a portion of James, chapter 3.

Ms. HOULT: What he says consistently in sermons is talking about the only way to God is through a particular fundamentalist path, which is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, and that’s a huge change in our theology. It’s a huge change in our openness and our inclusiveness.

SEVERSON: Braxton denies that he is changing the theology and says he has written articles critical of fundamentalism.

Rev. BRAXTON: I must say as a theologian it is laughable to me that someone would consider me a fundamentalist. My thinking on Scripture, my support of gay marriage, I mean, you roll it out, there is no way, shape, or form that I am a fundamentalist.

SEVERSON: But Braxton’s evangelical preaching, his focus on Scripture, and his leadership style has made some of the congregation ill at ease.

DIANA SOLOMON-GLOVER (Member, Riverside Church): What troubles me the most is that I feel the direction of the church with the new leadership is — has strayed or is straying from the mission of the church, which is open, affirming, and inclusive, interracial, interdenominational, and international.

SEVERSON: Diana Solomon-Glover is in the Riverside choir, has a master’s degree in voice, and works with children with special needs. She’s been a member over 20 years and says Riverside is no stranger to controversy and contentiousness.

Ms. SOLOMON-GLOVER: I look at it as a laboratory experiment. This is the place where we find out if people of varying backgrounds and faiths can actually come together and figure out how to be one people.

SEVERSON: But, she says, the experiment does not seem to be working very well. Riverside has long been known for its concern with diversity and social justice. Braxton agrees he may bring a new take on those issues, but pushes back at critics who think he is not committed to the church’s longstanding mission.

Rev. BRAXTON: I just think that’s patently false, and I think as a pastor, though, it’s born, again, out of fear. What I believe we are actually trying to do in our best moments is to suggest that if in fact we are going to be who we are — that is, a Christian congregation — we must take seriously Jesus and Scripture. Those are non-negotiables for Christian congregations.

SEVERSON: It’s not just theological concerns that Braxton faces. Solomon-Glover was among four church members who filed suit over what they alleged was a violation of Riverside’s bylaws. Among their claims was that Braxton’s compensation package included a $250,000 salary, a housing allowance, and other benefits totaling over $600,000. The church says in reality that package is actually closer to $460,000 and is comparable to that of other leaders of large churches in New York City.

Ms. HOULT: The argument has been made by the council that the reason we’re paying so much is because this is what everyone else does, and what I would say is Riverside has never been about doing what everyone else does.

Rev. BRAXTON: What my family and I were simply trying to do was to respond to a significant calling and one that had significant burdens and liabilities associated with it, and I think it was sensationalized in a way that’s very unfortunate.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN (handing Rev. Braxton a bouquet of flowers): We love you so much. We appreciate you.

SEVERSON: There’s no doubt that many members are quite fond of the new senior pastor, and he of them. But the congenial atmosphere apparently does not extend throughout the congregation, and his critics argue there is a substantial voice of dissent.

Ms. SOLOMON-GLOVER: Those who look at us as dissenters would like to believe that we are small in number. But there are a lot of people who have left the church because of what’s going on in the church, and there are a lot of people who have watched others of us be marginalized and who are sort of in the shadows.

Ms. HOULT: What’s happening right now at Riverside is contentious, hateful. You know, not only do we go and get called names, but we get screamed at by groups of people out of control. There’s no effort by Dr. Braxton to rein it in.

SEVERSON: In a recent Sunday sermon entitled “Speaking in Tongues,” Dr. Braxton appeared to be calling out his detractors on what he called fearful and mean tongues.

Rev. BRAXTON (preaching to congregation): Some days we speak in merciful tongues, other days in mean tongues. We all speak in tongues, and we all one day will have to give an account to God for the kind of tongues we used when dealing with other people.

SEVERSON: The one area of agreement we found among most everyone we spoke with is there is still a lot of healing to be done on both sides. Dr. Braxton says he is hopeful.

Rev. BRAXTON: Amid all of the rancor, much of which has been directed to me, I think unfairly, you keep loving, you keep preaching, you keep teaching, you keep serving, and after awhile maybe some of that fear will dissipate.

SEVERSON: While Dr. Braxton keeps preaching, it is still unclear where Riverside will go from here. Both he and his divided congregation share a hope that the church will continue to stand out, not just as the tallest church in the US, but as a beacon for mainline Protestants everywhere.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in New York.

My mom and dad have and continue to have an absolutely indelible significance in my life. When I talk about them what I think about is their living demonstration of integrity. They are a parable of integrity. Integrity for me means the struggle to bring your inner beliefs into connection with your outer behavior, and I saw that so clearly in them. They were people who lived the gospel, and they were people who poured everything they had into the rearing of their children, and so for that, I am forever indebted to them.

I think I probably started doing some guest speaking as a youth speaker when I was about 13, 14, 15, thereabouts, and officially I announced my call to ministry to my parents when I was a senior in high school, so I was just about to turn 18. It was in January of, I guess, 1987, when I was just about to turn 18 that next month, and as I have shared in lots of interviews, my father said to me, “Son, I will not call you into ministry because I cannot keep you in that call. But if God has called you, I will cast everything that I have in service of you reaching the goal of being the minister God has called you to be.”

Pastoral ministry is a wonderful vocation. The opportunity to guide a community of faith amid its joys and sorrows is a significant and high calling, and it is not the kind of thing that you want to do because it is not only so fulfilling, it is so difficult. As a pastor, you are invited into the most precious spaces of people’s lives, especially those spaces that have to do with the ultimate meaning of life and death, and that’s a difficult space in which to be and to navigate. So it’s not something you quest or set out to do. It’s something that God has to summon you to do and then supply you the resources to faithfully do.

I had the utmost respect for the legacy of the Riverside Church, and there’s quite a story there as it relates to my coming. My first time coming to Riverside Church was in October 2000. I had been invited to preach for New York Presbytery Day. I had recently met Dr. [James] Forbes in another venue, sent a fax to him to let him know I would be in New York. It was in one of our chapels downstairs where I preached, and he graciously came, and so here you had the Reverend Dr. James Forbes sitting on the front row, and at this point I had recently finished my Ph.D., I was a preacher in my early 30s, and to have the pastor of Riverside Church sitting on the front seat listening to me was a remarkable thing. My wife Lazetta was with me that day, and Dr. Forbes generously gave so much of his time. He took us on a tour of the church that day, took us up into his office, and I have shared this moment with him many times, and I don’t know that he recognized how providentially he was speaking that day. But he looked at Lazetta and me and he said, “My sense of you in these few moments that I have been with you is that God is going to be very economical in your life. God is going to move you very quickly to where God needs you to be.” Those were words that Dr. Forbes, the fifth senior minister of this congregation, spoke over me and into my spirit. And some nine years later, I would be his successor and the sixth senior minister of this congregation.

I believe God, as I have said on other occasions, has a big dream for the Riverside Church. We have had all of — I won’t say all, but many of the most significant responses, answers to 20th century dilemmas, and now the question before us is what are the 21st century dilemmas, dilemmas of morality and justice and compassion and reconciliation. What are those questions that are being raised, and how might we provide compelling, godly responses to those questions? And that’s no small task, because the religious landscape has shifted so significantly in the last 25 years. The reasons why people join religious institutions, join congregations [are] changing.

People are coming at religion in a very different way, although religion and spirituality are vibrant phenomena in the early 21st century across the world, certainly in North America. So it’s a vibrant time, it’s an exciting time to do this work, but we’ve got to recognize that the sheer legacy of Riverside, as noble and venerable as that legacy is, might not be enough to attract people in the 21st century in these neighborhoods to which we’re trying to minister.

What we have to do is to say what constitutes compelling, multicultural worship, worship that takes the best of who we are as diverse communities and lifts that before God. And then we’re going to have to begin to say how do we engage in collaborative economic development? Not the old 20th century paradigm of dispensing out of our largesse, which kind of perpetuates colonial myths, but working with people, in this case working with the urban poor. How do we work with the urban poor and learn lessons from the urban poor? One of the things I have said to the membership often is can we find ourselves comfortably in a posture of learning? To be a learner means to be humble, to stay low enough to the ground to say we not only have something to give to the community, the country, perhaps the world; we have so much to learn from communities, the country, and the world.

One of the things I think we should begin to look at is how do we address preventable dilemmas. So one example that I’ve been using a lot in sermons and teaching moments is many people in urban communities suffer from preventable diseases. Diabetes can be prevented by healthy food choices. So what would it look like for the Riverside Church to say we’re going to collaborate with a number of other justice agencies, congregations in this community, to bring better food choices, whole food grocery stores into upper Manhattan? Something really substantive and on the ground I think would make a difference.

The second thing that I’m very interested in is the ways in which we can begin to work with youth in our neighborhood to offer them life-affirming options. And when I think of the youth, I’m thinking especially of the gangs. What would it look like for us to take the gospel and say the gospel and gun violence don’t go together? The gospel says that you should choose life, not death. So how can we help you as gang members use your considerable street smarts to turn your entrepreneurial impulses to the good?

We need to ramp up the emphasis and to suggest that at this moment in time we have to say a life-affirming word to the twenty-somethings, the thirty-somethings, and the teens, that we must begin to invest in new ways, and I think so often, particularly with institutional churches, it’s easy to begin to look so much in other directions that you forget to look backwards as well, to that generation that’s coming behind you and say what are our responsibilities to those, as well? So I’ve been saying a lot to the congregation, “What does it look like to take seriously those who are 30 and under?” And that does not mean we don’t continue to love, provide services for, care for those who are 40, 50, 70, 80. But it means to take seriously there are generations behind us who are now asking, “How are you going to leave the world better for us?”

As a pastor, many of these concerns that have arisen are rooted in fear. As I listen to the concerns that have been raised about me, it does not cause me a sense of unrest. A pastor says, “I’m called to help people appropriately deal with their fear.” And one of the things I’ve been saying is a profound justice issue is how a congregation deals with itself. The first public of a congregation is the congregation. So one of my leadership principles is “both/and.” I say this repeatedly in meetings and leadership meetings with staff. We can be a “both/and” church. I’m a “both/and” thinker and leader. That is to say, we can both be concerned about justice and injustice outside of this community and be concerned about justice and injustice inside this community. And I think that sometimes causes people to be fearful, because I would contend that some of the most difficult justice work is not the justice work 5,000 miles around the globe, but it’s the justice work that occurs in the business meeting and right here in our own life as a worshipping and serving community. It requires more of us sometimes to make those justice commitments, and I think some of these concerns may be rooted in the fear of a new kind of commitment that the gospel may be calling us to.

Serving as the second African-American minister in the great history of this congregation, I’m obviously dealing with, as did Dr. Forbes, some of the issues of what it means to guide an institution of this magnitude when this institution, like the United States of America, is still wrestling not only with the residue of racism, but is still wrestling with the great hold that racism has on this country. I think one of the great mistakes of the current moment is to make too much of the election of President Obama as it relates to race relations. It is a marvelous step forward, but it is only a first step forward in some meaningful sense. As one of my colleagues has suggested, given now that the symbol of power at the national level is in the hands of an African American, it might be the first time in our country’s history that we can really have a sophisticated conversation about race relations.

There were inaccuracies in the reporting [about my compensation] that I think created a kind of additional sensationalism to the story. And the second thing I guess that I would say is that what my family and I were simply trying to do was to respond to a significant calling and one that had significant burdens and liabilities associated with it and when we negotiated with the congregation, we fundamentally asked for a compensation package that would allow us more or less to be made whole. That is to say, we did have a comfortable, middle-class life that was afforded to us by virtue of me being a tenured university professor. And part of the story, as I have shared sometimes with the congregation, is the notion of what it means to come from a background like I did, where my father -– I think his salary was $15,000 a year when he retired, and to start out, as my wife and I did, in debt, like many young couples do, and sacrifice and delay having children and struggle, as many middle-class Americans do, and reach a modicum of comfort, and we simply asked for that comfort, more or less, to be met. And I think what’s so fascinating is, where are the conversations that we could have had about why in fact real estate is so expensive in Manhattan, and the kinds of persons who are living extremely well-off? Not focusing on me, but saying, “Why does it cost ten, eleven, twelve thousand dollars to have a certain quality of life in a city like New York?” Where are the justice conversations there? And the other thing that I say was not really addressed was that the congregation and I were trying to sort out how to make it possible for me as senior minister and all my successors after me to have a home, right? It is not unthinkable in nonprofit institutions that the chief executive, as it were, in this case the senior minister, would be provided housing, given the exorbitant amount of money that it costs to live, and the congregation’s desire that I would live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. So there’re all kinds of factors that went into it. The fact that number one, my family and I had struggled and sacrificed to maintain a certain standard of living, and all we said was, “Can we have a modicum of that to come and serve,” because that provides us a sanctuary. As one of my colleagues said, given the history of a church like Riverside, which is incredibly glorious but also has an underside, this is a place where my last three predecessors, at least, have struggled in one way or another that at some point, pastors who accept callings for difficult congregations might need to have some combat pay.

There’s a burden that comes with this, and all my wife and I and our daughter were looking for was a sanctuary. Because when you’re on seven days a week, as it were, and you are speaking not only to the congregation, but for larger issues in the country, to have a space where I can have a home study, to have a space where we could have some modicum of comfort was all we were questing for, and I think it was sensationalized in a way that’s very unfortunate, and hopefully these and other interviews will allow us to correct that.

I believe healing is taking place. I also believe that one of the challenges that we have at Riverside, and I think this is endemic to the progressive and liberal movement, is that we are very concerned to preserve people’s rights to dissent and to raise differences of opinion. What often doesn’t emerge in conversations at Riverside and liberal institutions is this: When do we talk about accountability? When do we talk about discipline in the sense that there are some forms of speech, there are some kinds of meanings, there are some moments that should not occur because they are corrosive to the best interests of the community. And I don’t know that liberal and progressive institutions have done that kind of work, to say when are boundaries necessary? I think that’s one of the undersides of the Riverside legacy. As marvelous as that legacy is, we have some work to do internally about the justice boundaries in our own communal life.

In terms of the criticism that we may be moving in a more conservative direction, I just need to say simply for the record I just think that’s patently false, and I think as a pastor, though, it’s born, again, out of fear. What I believe we are actually trying to do in our best moments is to suggest that if in fact we are going to be who we are, that is, a Christian congregation, we must take seriously Jesus and scripture. Those are not non-negotiables for Christian congregations. I think in our worst moments those possibilities have existed and perhaps those things have happened here. So the notion of, for example, beginning what some call an “altar call” -– I refer to it as a time of invitation. We started this in our worship services. But because of some of the fear and maybe the lack of nuanced conversations, there are some who immediately equate a time of invitation with black church conservatism, where many of the new members who have joined have suggested that that invitational period is one of the things, one of the major things that was a catalyst for their joining, because in a large space like our nave, the time of invitation creates a space of intimacy. And so all I do every Sunday after preaching is simply say, “For those of you who want a deeper, more intimate connection with this God of whom we have spoken, feel free to come down these aisles.” And there has been a multicultural response to that time of invitation. But what gets played out often in the media is, “New preacher starts invitation. We are going in a fundamentalist direction.” If you read the body of my work, my most recent published scholarship is a piece that takes on fundamentalism, a piece that has been circulated with the congregation. So I must say as a theologian, it is laughable to me that someone would consider me a fundamentalist. The fundamentalists wouldn’t have me if you wrapped me up in a package. They would not take me. My thinking on scripture, my support of gay marriage, I mean, you roll it out. There is no way, shape, or form that I am a fundamentalist, and I say that with all due respect to Christian sisters and brothers who are fundamentalists. We don’t need any more in-fighting like that, any kind of carping. But the notion that I am a fundamentalist and am taking the Riverside Church in a fundamentalist direction, again, is just patently false. And when you get that kind of dissent rising, those kinds of false perceptions rising, what I say as a pastor is there’s deep fear here. There’s deep fear, and the scriptures teach us that perfect love casts out fear. So amid all of the rancor, much of which I think has been directed to me unfairly, you keep loving, you keep preaching, you keep teaching, you keep serving, and after a while, maybe some of that fear will dissipate.

Number one, we have to say a word about poverty. I don’t know that in my lifetime that we will be able to eradicate global poverty, but I think we can significantly lessen it. So what would it look like to significantly deal with poverty, not only on the global stage, but again, right here in the 25 blocks in either direction from our congregation? Number two, I think there are still significant inroads that we need to make as it relates to racism and various communities’ feeling that they have a superior cultural narrative. You see, one of the difficulties of racism is that our conversation about it, again, is such a low level. It lacks such nuance and sophistication. It is not about individual acts of racism. It’s about the way in which racial myths of superiority have actually infected the very civilization’s narratives. And so what would it look like when you begin to talk about the narratives of the culture and the ways in which they are skewed in one direction? We still have an incredible fascination with Europe, right? Something is well-made it’s European-made, right? Just the very notion of Europe bespeaks certain things. What about the Southern hemisphere, the continents in the Southern hemisphere? How do we view them? I think those kinds of things, that takes some real gut-wrenching work, and I think we need to speak to that.

I would say as well this is a time to think seriously about religious pluralism. We just had a marvelous service here at Riverside. I preached a sermon on religious pluralism, and again, here’s a place where people say I’m a fundamentalist. I just preached a sermon from the Riverside Church clearly anchoring myself as a Christian pastor, but saying that in Jesus I have all the God I can stand, but I may not have all the God there is. I’m completely convinced that God has manifested God’s self in wonderful other ways in the great traditions around the world, religious traditions around the world. So I think we need to begin to say how can we get along in the midst of our different religious traditions? So if we take seriously poverty, lessening it, really dealing with the civilization racism, the unconscious racism that exists in our country, and then trying to figure out how the great religious traditions can all get along in a better way, that’s a lifetime’s agenda right there.

I think the responsibility of any religious community and certainly the Riverside Church, given our legacy, is to be an authentic purveyor of hope. Not optimism, but hope, hope that is rooted in the transcendent, I may say hope that’s rooted in God. Hope that does not stick its head in the sand. Hope that is willing to sweat. I once talked about a faith that’s willing to sweat. Hope that is willing to do the difficult work, some of which I’ve outlined just a moment ago. But hope that recognizes that we will be our best selves if we ultimately surrender to powers of goodness that are beyond us. God wants something more for us. God is able to dream a bigger dream for us than we can dream for ourselves. And so part of it is a willingness to work, to sweat, but also a willingness to open ourselves up to power that comes from beyond us. And I think our country is very ready for that. Indeed, the inauguration of President Obama -– if you watched it, it was a profound example of communities coming together questing for something larger than themselves. Our country is ready for something transcendent, something that really speaks to what it means to live for something that is good, that is beyond your own self-interest.

I stand firmly in the role of those who want to be in league with the prophetic spirit. Pardon that circumlocution. Part of what I’ve taught students who have worked with me over the years is that one should be very careful about referring to oneself as a prophet. That’s very dangerous, and it’s utterly presumptuous, because often you do not know if your life has been prophetic until years after, and quite often after you’re dead communities will say you’re prophetic. But you try to offer your life as one that is in league with or hospitable to the prophetic spirit dropping on you and resting upon you. And when I speak of the prophetic spirit, what I mean is not only the common line that places like Riverside, progressive institutions use, and that is speaking truth to power, but the prophetic also does what Kathleen Cleaver said. She says in order to speak truth to power, you have to know what the truth is. And I think so often, you know, prophetic speech is just this [shaking finger] as opposed to opening yourself up and saying what is the truth in the first place? And the prophetic spirit is one that is also comfortable with provocation. One of the roles of the prophet, of the prophetic spirit is to provoke, to agitate. We must remember that Jesus of Nazareth did not die of old age. He was executed in his mid-30s by the government.

When truth is spoken in a way that is compassionate, it liberates people. Now there are times when truth can be a bludgeon. But I think truth in its best moments, compassionately uttered, liberates people. One of the phrases I often say is truth spoken in love never violates a person’s freedom. It liberates, it emancipates. That’s why I think the prophetic spirit is one that seeks to speak the truth in compassionate, loving ways such that people, communities, maybe even countries can be emancipated to be their best selves.

What I see happening is this congregation passionately and lovingly proclaiming a gospel to any who will receive it. As Jesus would often say, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” The gospel will be preached in a way that is passionate and loving, and whosoever — we have a “whosoever will” gospel at the Riverside Church.

I think we need to tether religiosity or religion and spirituality in some ways that maybe in the public discourse they’re not being tethered or connected. I worry at times about a spirituality that may not be also looking for religious commitment and discipline. Again, speaking as a Christian pastor, Jesus calls us to be disciples, and etymologically there is a connection between disciple and discipline. Sometimes spirituality in the public discourse just kind of means whatever it is I feel at any moment that might lead to my self-gratification. Spirituality, first and foremost, and I learned this from a Benedictine monk, is related to the Latin word spiritus, breath. So spirituality means where does my breath come from and where is my breath taking me? So spirituality is about personal and communal accountability for the life force in me, and I think we need some new conversations among all our generations to say spirituality is not just an individual thing. It’s about your stewardship to broader communities and ultimately to God.

When I think about being a progressive evangelical what I’m trying to suggest, first of all, is that all Christian congregations are evangelical. That is, we are deeply concerned with the gospel, and in the public discourse the term “evangelical” has been so defined by and connected to the conservative wing of the tradition that we have forgotten that there are progressive people who are concerned about the gospel as well. So what does it mean to talk about the meaning and message of Jesus and still be open to pro-choice, to be open to saying gun violence must cease and we must take on the NRA, to be open to saying the gospel compels me to say we cannot use the Bible to justify war, as was done in 2003, unfortunately, by many of my Christian brothers and sisters? We cannot use the Bible as a weapon of warfare to exclude our gay brothers and our lesbian sisters from full fellowship in the body of Christ, so to be concerned about the gospel, but concerned in a way that says God’s revelation might be moving forward through history, that is to say, revelation is progressive. It’s not static. It doesn’t always look backward. Sometimes the truth is ahead of us. That’s what I think it means to be a progressive evangelical -– being concerned about the gospel, but in a forward-looking way.