Cutting Through the Red Tape

ENU Commencement Address Speaker Cheryl Sanders combines the scholarship of a professor with the heart of a pastor. The result is one of Washington's most effective voices calling Christians to really care about the poor.

Cheryl Sanders is a professor of ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and serves as senior pastor at the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. She is the author of five books: Ministry at the Margins: The Prophetic Mission of Women, Youth and the Poor; Saints in Exile; Living The Intersection: Womanism and Afrocentrism in Theology; Empowerment and Ethics for a Liberated People; and Slavery and Conversion. Karl Giberson sat down with Sanders prior to her commencement address at Eastern Nazarene College in May.

Karl Giberson: Just start by introducing yourself. What's your background? Where do you come from?

Cheryl Sanders: I'm from Washington, D.C. I am a professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, and I am also senior pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, so my background includes a lifetime of ministry and activity in the church and also a lifetime of academic involvement, as a student, as a professor and as a researcher.

KG: Were you raised in the church?

CS: Yes, yes. The church where I'm pastor is the church where there are four generations of my family.

KG: And were you encouraged by your family to get involved in ministry? Do you have that in your background?

CS: Well, I wasn't encouraged by my family specifically to seek to become a pastor. It is something that kind of evolved, but I was always encouraged to be involved in the work of ministry in the general sense. I didn't have a parent who was a pastor and following in their footsteps; it wasn't like that. But our family has, I guess, from a lay perspective, been very actively involved in Christian education and administration and a lot of aspects of ministry, so we sort of set a pattern for that over several generations.

KG: Did you ever feel like you would have to make a choice between going the academic route or going the more practical, applied ministry route?

CS: Well, I was told that it couldn't be done, that you had to approach these things in a bifurcated manner, like you have to be this, or you have to be that. I also tend to be the kind of person that when people tell me I can't do something, that's all the motivation I need to really try and do it.

I see myself as one person doing one thing, 
and that is using all of who I am to do ministry 
to try to make a difference in the world.

I was trying to get a fellowship in graduate school and I was being interviewed by these senior people who were very astute in their field. I told them, "Well, I want to do this degree, but I'm also very committed to the church." "Oh, well you can't do both things. You have to choose one or the other."

I'm trying to get the scholarship … but I really think I want to try, and among them were theology professors whose concept of how you bring that thing together is to take a sabbatical to experience the church. That's just not part of my worldview; I just don't operate that way. I've always done more than one thing; multitasking is a lifestyle for me. So I don't see it as having to choose.

Now, of course, on a day-to-day basis, I have to set priorities because I have two full-time jobs, and I have to decide between this meeting time or this pastoral visit, or this preparation time. I'm not going to pretend that it's easy, but I see myself as one person doing one thing, and that is using all of who I am to do ministry to try to make a difference in the world.

KG: Now, tell me about being the current senior pastor at your church.

CS: I'm the senior pastor at the Third Street Church of God. It has its origins in 1910, when a small family that was having a house worship service called a pastor, and in those 93 years we've had three pastors. I'm the third, and I've been there as senior pastor since 1997.

We're located right in the heart of the city, maybe less than one mile north of the capitol building, and we're a holiness congregation. Church of God, Anderson, Ind., is our affiliation. We're multicultural, more so than multiracial. We have a few white members, and on occasion we've had Korean or Hispanic members, but for the most part, our members are African-American and African-Caribbean people.

Washington, D.C., is a place where people come from all different places, and our church has always been in the flow of those patterns of migration, whether it's people coming from the South of the United States looking for escape from racial oppression or people looking for work or to further education. During war years, the jobs and employment situation is always a big draw to Washington. It makes a rich mix for us, but we're a predominantly black congregation, and we've made our mark, so to speak, with the ministry of reconciliation.

My immediate predecessor was Rev. Samuel G. Hines. The ministry of reconciliation is his main theme, and an important one for his ministry, and included in that is a program we call Urban Prayer Breakfast. Monday through Friday, we serve a hot meal to the poor - to the people who live in the shelters and on the streets. They have an hour of worship. They have the opportunity for counseling and follow-up, but they come to share a table with us every day. What we're trying to do is to make connections between people of different races, social classes and economic statuses in the name of Christ, in the presence of Christ.

KG: There are very few women in pulpits across America, particularly in the more conservative churches. Did you have any particular difficulties, or do you have any interesting stories about how you managed, as a woman, to get that position?

CS: My church is in the holiness tradition, and at least in the early days, there was no discrimination against women in leadership in the holiness movement. The same thing holds true for Pentecostalism. The outlying of the spirit, the notion of a spirit-focused theology and ecclesiology almost mandates an egalitarian view of who gets gifted by the Spirit to do ministry.

What happens, I think, is that over time these holiness churches adopt the practices of the conservative churches, which include the marginalization of women, racial polarization and segregation, so what I'm saying is that I'm in a tradition that has always held those things in tension because we've never, in our church, debated whether women should be pastors and leaders.

But the practices have been influenced by what we see the Baptists and the Presbyterians and others doing. So, in the 1920s, for instance, one third of the pastors in the Church of God movement were women. That number declined steadily throughout the 20th century; whereas the mainline denominations in the 1920s might have started at zero, but some of them, particularly the liberal mainline denominations, now have significant numbers of women pastors at the end of the 20th century, carrying over to the 21st century.

I've always known women pastors. I've never had anybody in my church tell me women can't preach, or can't do this, that, or the other thing. I certainly became aware of it when I entered into theological education in an interdenominational setting. But it was pretty late that I was exposed to people who would question women's leadership and ministry. The other factor for me is that, as I've said, I grew up in the church that I now serve, so I don't think that the choice of a pastor for them was, "Oh, can we choose a woman?" it was "Can we choose Cheryl?" They knew me.

The government has made many efforts and has certainly spent a lot of

money trying to address the problem of poverty 
and homelessness, to varying degrees of effectiveness.

KG: You talked about the program where you feed people at your church. Tell me about that.

CS: Well, that program has now been going on for 25 years. On average, I'll say we have about a congregation of 100 people who come because many of them see themselves as being part of a faith community, which is what we value; it is not a soup kitchen, and we don't just hand people food. We invite them to fellowship. We also invite them to life change; you can't impose that. We have a director - my associate pastor also doubles as the director of Urban Outreach - and we have a full-time social worker. After the breakfast, the social worker is available to follow up with people; he does support groups, referrals in terms of housing, employment, drug treatment, etc. We try to offer those services to people who are ready for a change.

KG: Now, why aren't the government programs able to look after these problems?

CS: I think the government has made many efforts and certainly has spent a lot of money trying to address the problem of poverty and homelessness, to varying degrees of effectiveness. There also are models of cooperation between church and government. Some long-standing ones, like Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities, were around way before the term "faith-based initiative" was ever being used. Those kinds of organizations are able to neatly separate social service from spirituality.

John Ashcroft, I think, was the premier author of the legislation in 1996 - the Charitable Choice legislation. He was the senator at the time, so I use that as a reference point for the faith-based initiative concept from 1996 to the present. Then, of course, when President Bush came into office, he sort of championed that cause, even though it's been a rocky, rocky road. He's gotten opposition from all different kinds of camps, and for all kinds of different reasons. But one of the issues that we face is that the concept of church that is foundational to the government initiative is not a concept of church that pertains specifically to us. In other words, we see church not as this thing you separate from life, but as life.

For instance, if you want to qualify for food donation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they give you commodity foods, but they can't be given in our worship service. If you say to me, "You can feed the people, but you can't pray for them," then I would be better off buying my own grits than to receive the grits with the idea that they'll be tainted by my prayer or sermon.

I support faith-based initiatives; I think they're a good concept. I'm just questioning some of the assumptions that have brought us to the place where we are now.

One of the arguments that's made early on is capacity building. These big organizations, like Catholic Charities, they have the capacity, they have the corporate structure to handle these government grants. The little storefront church, the little black church here, doesn't have the capacity to do this. We've got to do capacity building, and a lot of the grant making is along this issue of capacity building.

Ok, I'll accept that - that the smaller churches, the black churches, don't have the sort of corporate dominant culture mentality and networking that the white churches have. However, I would also say that the government needs to build the capacity to know how to deal with us. I see capacity building as a two-way street, and the initiative would be a lot more effective if someone would take that seriously and say, "How do we need to think differently in government in order to interface more effectively with these churches, who may not share the concept of what the church is, that we have been governed by all these years?" It's not that either one is right or wrong.

KG: Now, when the faith-based initiative was inaugurated, were you excited that this would give, perhaps down the road, a great enlargement of your ministry? Or were you skeptical right off the bat that this may never actually reach your kind of mission?

CS: I was cautiously optimistic. I wasn't skeptical. I wasn't excited. But I do recall those first two or three years. Every time I went to a conference or found people who were involved, I kept asking the question, "How do you sign up for this?" And finally, I got to the point where I knew that this has been written into law.

But I'm struck by the realization that even though it's all legislated, it's not implemented, and I guess maybe that happens with everything else that gets implemented: There's a lag time between when the law is written and when the program actually is implemented. It seems like to me the lag time was real long on this because I was asking and asking and asking.

I can't remember the exact year, but the one grant that we actually got was from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It wasn't a big grant - $40,000 - but when we got it, we also got a note saying our grant was going to be administered by the D.C. government, the local government. That was a big letdown for us because we just knew that it was going to be wrapped in red tape. We had meetings with the person from the D.C. government checking our compliance. That person's knees would be knocking, not ours, because we had everything that we were supposed to have; all of our documentation was in order, and our question was, "Well, why aren't we getting our check? Why isn't this being dealt with?" and the person couldn't answer.

I'm not trying to paint us as being so competent. What I'm saying is, for us, the issue wasn't our lack of capacity. The issue was the government's lack of ability to implement the program.

KG: Now, that's sort of the exact opposite of what some of the anti-FBO rhetoric was. You often heard people saying, "Oh, these black churches, they don't know how to do this anyway, so to give them money, they'll just squander it and spend it foolishly."

CS: Yeah, or it will be like a hustle - they'll just get the grant and spend the money on their building or something. There have to be safeguards. Certainly in the private sector, that kind of stuff gets done all the time, and you don't hear people complain about it. The government grants money and there's a big accountability problem, and without that, any contractor spends government money, and we won't even discuss the military contractors. But with the church, we're going to be under much greater scrutiny.

For me, I want to see the initiative as an opportunity to expand and to get greater resources, to better do what I'm already doing. And as I said, if there are too many conditions and restrictions, then I'm better off not receiving that money and going for other kinds of grant opportunities, as I was saying, in the private sector.

I have invested a lot of time personally working with the state government. I'm on a committee with the mayor, and I'm part of an executive session on this issue that meets at Harvard Kennedy School of Government twice a year. I think ideally this is a partnership between government and the church, representing the private sector, to meet human needs. That's a good concept, but you've got to do more than just say, "Okay, we're partners." You've got to work out the interface, and that's the point where I see there's a little lag right now with the faith-based initiative.

Religion gets subjected to a much higher standard of scrutiny on

everything. It's absolutely not fair, but it's the reality.

KG: You raised an interesting point on which I'd like you to elaborate. There's a lot of concern that these faith-based organizations might not spend the money effectively, but you've hinted at the fact that all the other government organizations, like the military or education, get billions of dollars from the government. Their track record for managing funds isn't very strong…

CS: Horrendous, in some cases.

KG: Yes. Is there any reason to believe that religious organizations would be any worse than, say, the military at managing money they got from the government?

CS: I don't think there's any reason to believe they would be worse, but because it's religion, you get subjected to a much higher standard of scrutiny on everything.

KG: Do you think that's fair?

CS: No, it's not fair. It's absolutely not fair, but it's the reality.

KG: So, it's a great paradox that America is a deeply religious nation and in many ways, in terms of Christian nations, is perhaps the most Christian, at least of the highly developed countries in the world; yet, we are unable to effectively bring our religious understandings into our politics, and we struggle with this separation of church and state, which some people have enthroned as if that's the ultimate good. And no matter how wonderful your idea is, if it breaches separation of church and state, well, sorry, we just can't go there. And so how is it that we are so paralyzed and so unable to move forward in so many positive directions despite our religious commitment?

CS: Well, I have a historically based answer for that, and it may sound far-fetched, but I want to go back all the way to the Colonial period, when all of the concepts were framed, and point out that the framers of the Constitution of the United States included men who were slaveholders. One can say the same about the Declaration of Independence - wonderful language, wonderful language about human rights and wonderful rhetoric about equality, etc. - but those same people were holding slaves, and sometimes, literally, their slaves were at the dinner table and in the next room, saying, "Wait a minute, what about us, what about us?"

And so, from the beginning, the United States found a way to carry out their religious discourse, while not dealing with the social ethics.

That comes to a head, of course, with the Civil War, and during the Civil War, virtually every church other than the Catholic Church and the Society of Friends, and perhaps some others, split over the issue of slavery. To me that's the defining issue in all of American church history, and it wasn't so much about whether slavery is right or wrong; it was what do we do with slaveholders who are Methodist, who are Baptist? And so you say, "If you're a slaveholder, you can't be in this church," or "If you're a slaveholder, certainly you can be in this church, and bring your dollars because we need you."

I think we're still living the consequences of that bifurcated way of thinking and acting, so that of course, church and state are separated. That's fine - separate church and state - but at some point, the entire abolitionist movement, and certainly the resistance movements among slaves themselves, they were all religious movements.

People were bringing their religious convictions to bear upon social problems, but of course, there was the other extreme, where people said, "Well, the Bible defends slavery and we have a biblical defense of slavery." Well, what I'm suggesting to you is that, as we still live out the legacy of slavery in this country, the inability to have a coherent discourse between church and state, in my view, is at least partly attributable to that history.

Four or five years ago, Congressman Tony Hall (D-Ohio), proposed that the United States government make an apology for slavery. He caught it from all sides - liberals, civil rights, conservatives - nobody wanted to pursue that. But he was saying, "We need to admit that we were wrong and then see what we can do to correct this legacy as we move into the future." And so I'm saying that that's an example of how the church and state issue got played out in the United States, and we haven't recovered from that.

It also relates to the point that I was making at the very beginning: that we have a very different view of church. If you're a slaveholder, you have to see church as a place where you talk about loving your neighbor and do unto others. You hear all of that in Sunday school and preaching, but then you have to cut that off when you go home because you're not going to implement any of that in relation to these people you own. In a way, that mentality is still with us.