Today the honors program had the pleasure of listening to an immigrant pastor from Tanzania who talked with us about the various challenges and pleasures of being a pastor for the various African immigrant communities in the Minneapolis St. Paul area. The most predominant challenge mentioned was the relationship between Capitalism and Christianity.
This unit addressed the voices of the marginalized because it introduced us a bit to what life is like as an immigrant trying to balance the demands of life in everyday capitalist society while trying to maintain faith and a steady church attendance. The pastor talked about how distraught it made him that his immigrant community, who most likely have a difficult time living in American society given that they have to learn the language and then find and pursue a career which is not easily done in their shoes, have been turning out for church less and less every week most sighting work and family issues as the reason for absence. The pastor commented on how in Africa church was the most cherished gathering of the week and everyone came even though they had almost nothing but now in America though they have a great deal more luxuries in comparison yet they do not attend church as often.
Through this session I definitely learned about a dichotomy which I had not considered before, the stress of the capitalist American Dream and how it affects other facets of an individual’s life like their church attendance. It is sad when a person’s life is marginalized just enough so that they must always chose between what is most important in life at the expense of other things they may love, but in the end this is life. A person will often find themselves in a position where taking care of the family and providing an income is the most important thing and other things like organized faith have to take a back seat. It seems that perhaps for better or worse, years from now the traditional Sunday morning mass model of worship will be challenged by the average populace in favor of a more private worship that fits their busy schedules better.
March 2007 Archives
Dear readers, it is often far too easy to get distracted from our mission as Christians: The mission of helping those in need. This however is perhaps the most important mission of the Christian faith and is the key to our being at peace with god and it is justified by 2nd Corinthians.
“I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness or others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” These are the words of Corinthians and they clearly state that not only is it our duty as Christians to repay god for the pain he suffered for our well being by helping others, but our very love of Christ is dependent on the comparison of how we as Christians treat others. As a result those who do not care for the poor and marginalized have no love of god and have taken his gift to us all for granted.
It is for this reason that we must help all those in need in our communities.
Today’s activity involved a visit to Neighborhood House. Neighborhood House is a nonprofit organization that deals with helping immigrants to be properly integrated into society by educating immigrants to the specifics of western society and the English language. Our tour consisted of a viewing of all the different types of activities which take place in these facilities, from childcare to language classes to cultural classes.
Of all our activities relating to poverty this is the one that certainly deals with the issue in a very direct way. By helping to educate immigrants to the different aspects of the English language and culture society is able to help immigrants have a much greater chance of success in society because without the proper language skills and without proper knowledge of modern amenities and technologies an immigrant’s chances of success are severely limited. This kind of program that helps the disadvantaged succeed in life by giving them the tools they need to help themselves is exactly what our society should be investing money in.
I can say with complete assuredness and sincerity that I gained a much greater understanding of helping the impoverished through this activity. Prior to this experience I always assumed that some immigrants were receiving some sort of help to integrate in society and I always would support this but I never really experienced first hand what those services were and where they were located. This experience really helped me identify what programs were helping immigrants succeed in our society and now as a result not only am I aware that such programs are taking place but I certainly would advocate for federal and private subsidies for these kinds of non profit organizations, because without them the U.S. would cease to be a land of opportunity and a country which does not provide opportunity for all is not a society that I would like to live in. Yet sadly, I fear that more and more each day that this is becoming the reality. I have no doubt that subsidies from the federal end to organizations like this either have decreased or will decrease because of the uncontrolled government spending of the current administration and this is worsened by the fact that U.S. society has become more xenophobic or at least it would appear so by looking at federal legislation which restricts peoples’ freedom of movement and racially profiles people in addition to blacklisting innocent civilians in the name of national security. I have learned from this unit more then ever how sad it is to see the United States of America, which used to be a beacon of freedom, putting up large barriers at the expense of its civilians and those searching for a better life as exemplified in the new legislation erecting a gigantic wall on the Mexican boarder and all this as the E.U. takes down boarders and unites people in the name of peace and freedom. If such policies like those currently present in the U.S. continue nearly all economists agree that the economy be far to constricted and will become worse with each passing year and of course the voices of the marginalized will be stricken from view.
I would also add as a side note an argument against all those who do not see the funding of such organizations as important. Aside from the fact that the program provides people with the opportunity to help themselves it must also be said that none of these immigrants who use these institutions are looking for charitable hand outs. For one thing in order for someone to make it from a country like Ethiopia to the U.S. it is clear that they must be as tough as nails, overcoming an extreme amount of adversity and secondly, from my conversations with immigrants at this center I learned that all those whom I had talked with already had goals set for themselves in terms of the careers they wanted to pursue. One woman had mentioned to me that one of her greatest hopes would be the ability to get an education so that she could enter the medical profession perhaps as a doctor which of course would be a wonderful thing for her and her children.
The film by Spike Lee titled When The Levies Broke was an interesting documentary which interviewed the victims of hurricane Katrina and the people who made efforts to help those in need.
The film had direct ties to our unit on the lives of the marginalized and impoverished because the victims of Hurricane Katrina became some of the poorest and most marginalized in American society having lost everything to the massive storm and the severe flooding that occurred afterward. The film brought hearing the voices of the impoverished to a new level as the work was essentially an interview with the victims and the respondents.
I gained an important experience from this film as it was an interesting indictment of all those who refused to hear the voices of the marginalized: those in the federal government who brought aid far too slowly and those who seemed to not take Hurricane Katrina seriously when it was their responsibility to act. I gained a knowledge of those people, in this case especially 1st responders and officers, who had done a great amount of good for those in need and who did what they could with very little help from various branches of government. I also enjoyed the fact that aside from just condemning or praising people and showing what took place the documentary made suggestions of possible future preventative measures to the problem. At one point the successful levy system in the Netherlands was taken into account as something to look into which I had not known of before. All in all this film was central to the message of hearing the voices of the marginalized and this was the greatest thing that I gained from the video: the ability to hear the stories of the marginalized and their reflections on the events that transpired.
The film Amazing Grace highlighted the life of William Wilberforce focusing particularly on his quest and success at abolishing slavery in Britain and his marriage and relationship with his wife Barbara Spooner.
This film clearly related to our unit of hearing the voices of the marginalized as slavery was one of the clearly most marginalizing practices the world has yet seen and a man like Wilberforce who tried and succeeded in ending this practice in Britain obviously was concerned enough to really hear the voices of the marginalized. In addition, given that Wilberforce was a man of the Christian faith and this course also tries to integrate hearing the voices of the marginalized with the Christian faith, the movie was quite effective in serving the purpose of this course.
I gained quite a bit of knowledge from this movie. I must admit that Wilberforce was a character that I had not studied in my previous European History classes and so I certainly gained knowledge of a man whom I had not known of before this. I also gained an interesting perspective on the ability that people can have to change the world when they use the Christian faith along with knowledge of law and politics to make a difference in the world in regards to the marginalized.
Today for the convocation Pastor Kelly Chatman spoke on Urban Ministry in terms of its importance and the methods which worked best for implementing his Urban Ministry in addition to all the programs he engages in with this ministry.
This convocation today certainly was reflective of the message of this unit which is taking action to help the lives of the impoverished. This is because Pastor Chatman has undertaken a great and noble responsibility in providing after school activities for the underprivileged. In addition to his great love of Christ, he is also a very open and tolerant individual and keeps his programs open to all those who need help or a safe environment to interact with others to regardless of their religious affiliation. Pastor Chatman uses his love of Christ as a call to action to help all those in need and help the marginalized feel welcome in society.
In listening to Pastor Chatman’s speech today I realized the undeniable positive impact that Faith based organizations can have when they do as Pastor Chatman has and use their love of Christ as a call to action to help the disadvantaged. In providing the services that he has, he has in effect provided a positive influence for many young minds and as a result has greatly improved their chances of success in life as he has given them self esteem and provided a great example of moral guidance so that not only will they leave feeling good about themselves and treating themselves well, but they learn how to treat others and how to be kind, compassionate, upstanding citizens in addition to possibly finding a personal connection with god.
