Cole Arthur Riley: Collective memory as liberation

To read Cole Arthur Riley’s “This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us” is to meet her family and learn how they formed her, in particular her father and grandmother. She tells her story, their story, with beautiful language and lush emotion framed by her contemplative nature and sharp awareness of this moment in time.

Early in “This Here Flesh,” she writes:

My father was born smooth. He glides and sways when he walks, cuts his hands through the air in meaningful arcs when he talks, like he’s in a ballet. I’ve never seen the top of his head because I’ve never seen him look down. He told me from a very young age, Keep your head up, relax those shoulders, look at that skin shine. He told me that Black was beautiful. It seemed to me that he was a man who would never think to apologize for his existence. Some people are born knowing their worth.

At 32, Riley is a New York Times bestselling author, the creator of Black Liturgies, and curator of The Center for Dignity and Contemplation. Her next book — a collection of letters, prayers, liturgies, questions for contemplation and breathing exercises — is in the editing process.

Riley spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Aleta Payne in March after presenting the Jill Raitt Lecture for Duke Divinity School’s Women’s Center. The following is an edited transcript.

Faith & Leadership: Could you speak about the importance of the liturgies you’ve written — what those mean to you in the work you’ve done and in the work you continue to do?

Cole Arthur Riley: Liturgy, for me, has been a long journey toward finding spiritual practices that feel authentic to who I am. I wasn’t a very verbal child. I was a very quiet child. I found a lot of comfort in writing from a very early age. I was probably 24 when I first went to a church that had any kind of liturgical, or overtly liturgical, form. And something about the beauty and the writing really connected to me and felt like, if there is a God and if I am going to speak to God, this is how it would happen.

I’m biased, because I’m a liturgist, but I think it’s such a beautiful form for solidarity. What does it mean to stay in words, to stay in a phrase together, even if that phrase doesn’t immediately resonate with you, even if you don’t immediately understand its meaning? To decenter yourself and center the emotions of maybe one or two in the presence of the collective?

I think it’s a beautiful symbol or practice of solidarity and also very restful for me to not always have to manufacture the words on the spot but to just come and accept and receive words without having to try so hard.

F&L: In an interview with Drew Hart, you said that your book is grounded in the Christian tradition you were formed in but your spirituality is more than creed or doctrine. Could you talk about that?

CAR: I’ve definitely known what it is to reduce my spirituality to religion. I’m not one of those “I’m spiritual, not religious” beings. I sometimes feel like my words are misunderstood to be in that camp. I don’t really resonate that much with those words, but what I resonate with is [whether I can] have this larger container for my spiritual life, and religion be one part of that but not to fill the whole cup.

[In the book], I travel into the stories of my father and my grandma. My father is not the least bit religious and would never claim to be Christian or anything like that. My grandma was Christian but endured a lot of abuse that was enabled by the church and so had a really complicated relationship with the Christian church.

As a way to honor their stories and that spirituality, I had to tap into maybe a spirituality that felt more primary in my home growing up. If it wasn’t religion, what form did that spirituality take? I thought a lot about this. I want to put better language to it eventually, but when I was writing the book, I thought about myth.

These are the things, these are the spiritualities of my family — myth, humor, storytelling. Those are the moments where the sacred and the mysterious feel a little more present. So I’ve incorporated myth and story into the book as a form of spirituality.

Now, what could happen if others felt liberated to do likewise? I feel a sense of freedom and not needing to confine my spirituality strictly to doctrines and creeds.

I’m someone who really struggles with belief, and there are people who have a very strong sense of belief. I admire them. I have just never been one of them. It feels authentic to me and my own life to say that I don’t need to be so concerned with answers or this very clear idea of defining my spirituality on this day, but I can just ask questions and allow it to be fluid and drift more into the myth on one day and more into Genesis on another day. I think there’s some degree of freedom in that expansion.

F&L: I’m also mindful in your writing and in your speaking about the toll taken on the bodies of people who live in systems of oppression. I don’t know that people feel very liberated, either in faith spaces or, for people of color, people who are living in poverty, in their bodies.

CAR: If you were raised in a Christian tradition that focuses really heavily on escaping hell someday in the future, it’s very likely, not always, but it’s very likely you are also trained in some level of disembodiment in the present. I think it can train you in a kind of escapism, in escapism from the present with the promise [of the future].

It’s not true hope. I think it’s an illusion of hope, a promise of, “Well, someday you won’t suffer.” And it kind of trains you to forget about the very true physical injustices that you are living and breathing daily. And you just think, “Someday heaven, someday heaven.”

I think it deteriorates our imaginations for good and health and joy and healing in the now. I don’t mean to be so hard on that particular brand of Christianity, but I think it’s a real risk of that kind of theology.

F&L: Another theme is memory and history making. In the Drew Hart interview, you said, “Collective memory is a liberation practice.” We are in this moment where it feels like collective memory is being denied, inverted, perverted, ignored, hidden. Could you talk about the danger in that — when we lose both the personal and the larger version of that?

CAR: I mean, you’re right that this is the moment that we’re in right now. I’m only 32, and I think about this trajectory that we’re on toward trying to limit collective memory and the threat that collective memory is to systems of injustice, systems of oppression in the world. Obviously, if it were not a threat to these systems, they would not care about your AP history classes. Something is happening in those classrooms where collective memory is being curated and preserved.

I think of it as a liberation practice, because I think it’s almost subversive. Because who has gotten the privilege to be the historians up until now, in our country specifically, and in others as well? Whiteness is given the pen and is placed in the role of historian, and we are meant to trust whiteness’s rendering of the past and pass it on in our classrooms.

When we practice collective memory, the role of the historian is shared across a dinner table — between my grandmother and me and her mother and me. This intergenerational, this almost more personal form of memory, I think, can be shaped in resistance to the memory that was delivered to me, these false memories that were delivered to me in my classrooms growing up.

We could subvert the white historian by just electing a few really smart Black historians. I think the resistance is, “No, we’re not going to do history the way you do history. We’re going to practice memory.”

It will contain history, but it’s also going to contain stories and myths and traditions and rituals, and it’s going to be just as meaningful at a dinner table as it is from an academic. There’s meaning in both forms of exchange, not just people who have access to the academy.

There’s a little bit of liberation there as well. I could talk about this for a while, but I think I want to write a book on memory. The role of story in terms of understanding myself — it helps me understand what I’m worth as well, and it reshapes the things that I’m hoping for.

People tend in Q&As to ask me about hope. And the thing that feels most true to me in this season is that my hope is actually found in looking back in memory and kind of bridging that space. Because once I remember rightly, or as rightly as I can with the people that I trust, I feel like my appetite for good and health and well-being in the world is refined.

Our generation is being confronted yet again with the chronic racial sickness of our world. It is good and right for disciples of Christ to do what we can to heal the world of this sickness. At the same time, as a national discipleship leader, my concerns go deeper. I am concerned for Jesus followers not only to bring racial healing to the world and its systems but also to experience deep inner healing themselves. The two are connected.

Peter Storey’s ministry has been dedicated to dismantling the South African apartheid regime and rebuilding the country after liberation.

He served as chaplain to Nelson Mandela and others on Robben Island and spent decades working with Desmond Tutu to build a just society. He helped select members of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission and has worked to stem violence in his home country, among many other efforts.

On a bright Sunday morning in September, the congregation of Turner Memorial AME Church gathers at its Hyattsville, Maryland, building. A pastor is delivering an impassioned message. Applause crackles through the space as worshippers lift their hands under the sanctuary’s vaulted ceiling.

But the person speaking from the pulpit is not the Rev. Dr. D.K. Kearney, Turner Memorial’s pastor since 2015. The preacher is the Rev. Cesar Moreno, a minister originally from Guatemala, who is sharing the day’s word — in Spanish.

For nearly two years, the pastors’ churches — one an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) congregation more than a century old, one a largely Latino nondenominational congregation established in 2010 — have been sharing the Turner Memorial building.

It’s more than just a transactional arrangement. Church members have worked carefully and intentionally to build the relationship between the two congregations, which includes regular shared services and, this fall, the “Soul Saving September Revival,” a four-week joint endeavor.

It involves the close friendship of the two pastors, as well as the efforts of 16-year-old interpreter Josary Moreno Mejia (a preacher in her own right and the granddaughter of Cesar Moreno).

“In Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile. There is no race or color,” Kearney says later that Sunday from the pulpit, after Moreno’s message concludes.

The Turner Memorial pastor looks out on the congregation, which includes members of Iglesia Evangelica Horeb Asamblea de Dios (Mt. Horeb for short) — the church pastored by Moreno and his wife, first lady Loly Moreno.

“We cannot allow the world’s culture of division to separate us. We cannot allow the enemy who comes to steal, kill and destroy to separate us,” Kearney continues, getting louder. “We are one in Christ Jesus.”

It is this focus on unity that exemplifies Turner Memorial’s activities, efforts deeply rooted in the church’s traditions — including, for example, its long-standing relationship with a local synagogue. Kearney is now working to unify the Turner Memorial and Mt. Horeb congregations under one roof, as together they reach out to the surrounding community.

This work is important to both pastors.

“As followers of Christ, we are to follow Christ’s example. And the example which he laid out during his ministry here on earth centered, in my opinion, around community, and building community, and living in community,” Kearney said. “As a church, that which represents Christ, we are to serve our community with the hope [that] by serving the community we win persons over to the family of God.”

Moreno agreed. “Speaking spiritually, people need salvation. People need to be on a better path. This is the objective, to teach people the path of God, … so that new generations can have hope and live better,” he said.

A ‘God-ordained’ relationship

When Kearney became pastor of Turner Memorial in 2015, he was working on his doctorate of ministry with a focus on liberation theology at Payne Theological Seminary. He found, through his research, that the church’s surrounding community was in large part Latino.

He wanted to reach those community members and began considering different ways the church might connect beyond its walls. He also began leading the church in a series of workshops focused on deploying spiritual gifts to make an impact.

Time passed — Kearney calls it a period of “preparation” — and in 2017, Moreno and his granddaughter began attending Turner Memorial services while seeking a space for Mt. Horeb.

When the two pastors met, they realized they could create opportunities for their congregations — one English-speaking, one generally Spanish-speaking — to worship together. They began partnering in December 2017.

The two developed a friendship that Moreno’s granddaughter Mejia describes as “a brotherhood.”

“They both have said and shared that when one comes to preach to the other’s church, they speak and help lift the other’s spirit,” she said.

Kearney elaborated: “It never fails that every time when we are together, even when we are meeting, I cannot help but to feel the presence of God. … It gives me the confirmation that what is happening is God-ordained.”

Today, Mt. Horeb holds its own services in the Turner Memorial building. But on the second Sunday morning of each month, its members join Turner Memorial’s. There, Moreno preaches in Spanish while his granddaughter interprets.

And on the fourth Sunday evening of each month, Turner Memorial members go to Mt. Horeb’s service, where Kearney delivers a message that Mejia translates into Spanish.

For Kearney, the combined worship reflects a core value of intentionally building relationships. Turner Memorial also has a partnership with the historic Washington, D.C., synagogue Sixth & I — located in the building that housed Turner Memorial for 50 years before the congregation moved to Hyattsville.

Kearney and Senior Rabbi Shira Stutman speak at each other’s place of worship each year during the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

“[Kearney] is amazingly generous with the pulpit God has assigned him to,” said the Rev. Dr. Natasha Jamison Gadson, Turner Memorial’s minister of leadership growth and development.

As long as Kearney senses that speakers have the Holy Spirit and that they are focused on the same goal of serving God, she said, “he is open with the pulpit for other pastors to come and share.”

Being open to others — interacting with diverse communities — provides an opportunity “to learn something we don’t know about God, our neighbors and the Christian life at large,” said Ismael Ruiz-Millán, the director of the Hispanic House of Studies, Global Education & Intercultural Formation at Duke Divinity School. He also directs programs within the divinity school for non-Hispanic clergy and laity who want to serve the U.S. Latino population.

“If we really believe that all human beings are made after God’s image but we insist in keeping ourselves in circles with people who are just like us, then we really have an incomplete notion of who God is and what the Christian life is about,” Ruiz-Millán said.

The community commitment

In general, both community and church members have responded to this outreach. For instance, on the Sunday before the first Friday revival in September, representatives from the two churches handed out more than 7,500 flyers to share information about the coming events.

“I think it is such a great experience,” said Joan Goodluck, a Turner Memorial member originally from Guyana who identifies as black. “I am seeing God’s work being revealed, because he wants the nations of the world to come together.”

Now 78, Goodluck grew up in a Christian home and attended church with majority-black congregations for much of her life. She said that hearing the word in both Spanish and English has been a learning experience for some worshippers, adding that the preaching of the word “helps me to grow more.”

Mejia, who devotes her time to ministry while taking high school and college classes as part of her high school’s dual enrollment program, is a big part of this growth.

She regularly interprets for services at both churches — including translating from Spanish to English at Mt. Horeb for young people who don’t speak Spanish.

In this way, she provides clear messages to congregants and community members even as the pastors speed their cadences and raise their voices.

“I thank God overall, because it’s a blessing,” Mejia said after one Sunday morning service at Turner Memorial.

She asks God to speak through her lips when she preaches as an individual and when she interprets for the pastors, she said.

During the service, Kearney noted that Mejia does a “wonderful job” (a message she humbly interpreted).

And as Mejia stood outside the sanctuary afterward, people hugged her, with one woman telling her, “You are such a blessing.”

Others too have positive thoughts about the churches’ union.

“I think it’s something really good — good because God calls us to be one body in Christ,” said Evelyn Chávez, a Mt. Horeb member.

“We share the gospel, first. But we are not only sharing the gospel. … There are people with needs. They need clothes; they need many things,” Chávez said.

A new kind of innovation

A pillar of the young partnership between these churches is the September revival series. In past years, Turner Memorial has held revivals featuring pastors from outside the community. But when planning this year’s activities, Kearney said he felt he needed to go out to the people instead of waiting for them to come into the church.

He committed to having the two churches gather outdoors along with neighbors from the community. Members of both churches worked together to plan events.

On the first Friday in September, rows of colorful chairs were lined up outside the building, under a large white tent.

A band that included a singer, a keyboardist and a drummer played lively Christian music with Spanish lyrics as children toddled around in the grass and older attendees wearing everything from T-shirts and jeans to dress shirts and pants wandered among various outdoor booths.

At one booth, stacks of clothing ready to be given away were so plentiful that the church halted donations for the revival’s second week. One booth offered voter registration; another, immigration information.

Reaching out together with Mt. Horeb, and having activities in both English and Spanish, including those offering community aid, may be an innovation on the traditional revival.

“When I look at tradition and the church, what we are doing is traditional,” he said. “Because on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell, Scripture says that everyone heard the gospel being preached in their native language. And that day 3,000 souls were saved.”

But people can allow personal preferences about language, race and social class to separate them from others, Kearney said.

“And I would dare to say, don’t confuse one’s preference with tradition. Because traditional church teaches us that all of God’s children — regardless of language, race, class — gather together. And that when the Holy Spirit falls, everybody hears the good news,” he said. “If this is innovative, it is traditionally innovative.”

Light in the darkness

On the first night of the revival, attendees gathered under the tent as the service began, reading song lyrics from copied pages so they could worship together.

“Promise keeper, light in the darkness. My God, that is who you are,” they sang before switching to Spanish. “Cumples promesas, luz en tinieblas. Mi Dios, así eres tú.”

“We have come to let the enemy know that no race, no language barriers will stop us. We are not trying to build walls, but we are building bridges,” said Kearney, standing at the front of the tent, as Mejia interpreted.

Moreno then delivered a message in Spanish, telling those gathered that Jesus is the saver of their souls. At one point, his voice and his granddaughter’s overlapped, the English and Spanish floating together, as the worshippers clapped their hands in response and the keyboardist played on.

After the sky went from pastel to dark, Moreno’s message ended, and people came to the altar to receive prayer. As the prayer teams and respondents gathered, one woman stood with them, crying as she raised her hands.

When the altar call ended, Kearney addressed the crowd, declining to do a benediction, he said, because he wanted the revival’s spirit to continue. He urged attendees to bring their friends and families to the next event.

“Thank you all so much for coming out,” he said, with Mejia repeating his words in Spanish. “Bless you.”

The crowd lingered, talking and embracing one another, as light continued to shine from the revival tent on the warm September night.