Elizabeth Rambo, the 2024 PLT Summer Intern, shared reflections about her work and findings from the summer in a talk on September 26. Rambo interned part-time with D.C. nonprofits Bread for the City in the food and social services department, and with Catholic Charities of D.C. in the clinical services department. Through the PLT Summer Experience, she worked with mentor Dr. Susan Holman, professor of religion, global health and human rights at Valparaiso and Harvard Universities. Rambo’s recap talk covered both practical lessons as well as personal and theological reflections from the summer. Her experiences showed her how social determinants of health feed off of and amplify each other, how service work is vital but requires long-lasting policy to support it, and how important public health work isn’t always glamorous and exciting.
Rambo also reflected on some of the personal takeaways she has continued to think about after the conclusion of the summer. Connecting to the concept of public health as a gift exchange, from Dr. Holman’s book Beloved, she described how there is a bounty of resources available in global health – they just have to be given and received. Learning from one another is a way to share each other’s gifts. She concluded with a reflection on how our efforts, especially in such complex, broad arenas like global health, don’t always immediately bear fruit. But she reiterated the comfort that God is working all things together for good, and that seeds are being sown even if we don’t see them grow right away.
“We have so much to give, and there are lots of people who genuinely care, and all of that is really hopeful. It also reminds me of an idea that I talked about with Dr. Holman: the idea of public health initiatives as a gift exchange. Instead of viewing patients as solely opportunities for profit, and instead of patronizing to them as helpless creatures who have nothing to offer, we can think of global health initiatives – and really any service in any realm – as chances to both give a service without expectation of anything in return, and looking for opportunities to receive, to learn something yourself from those you’re serving. We model this after the idea of grace, that we can’t repay but we can be inspired and changed by. Public health gift-giving is a two-way exchange, different people and communities walking along together, on equal footing. And this is the approach that really healthy faith-inspired service should take.”
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
Today was the first Sunday in months where I woke up in my own bed, went to church with my parents, and spent most of the day doing nothing. After weeks of go-go-going, it was nice but a little odd to have such a quiet day at home. I left D.C. yesterday, having wrapped up my internships at Bread for the City on Tuesday, and at Catholic Charities on Thursday. And on Friday, I was able to conclude and reflect in a final meeting with Dr. Holman.
At the beginning of the summer, I was worried about having a PLT internship focused on large-scale global health concepts while I worked for small-scale, local nonprofits. How was I supposed to connect readings about the WHO, low-income countries, or international movements to a DC-area food bank and clinic?
My conversations with Dr. Holman were the helpful link between these two worlds. Or really, she helped me see how they were not really two separate worlds at all; rather, the same global health principles and the principles of our faith undergird all of public health around the globe. Seeing people as possessing innate dignity from God and having a right to good health and wellbeing doesn’t stop in D.C. or halfway across the world, it includes (and must include) everyone.
Our conversations this summer ranged from the ways in which social determinants of health overlap, to the role of funding and finances in health, to what it means to give – selflessly, and in a way that invites a grace-full exchange of gifts and knowledge. These are concepts that do not just apply to the city in which I spent the summer. They apply to all of global health around the world, and they form a strong foundation as I enter back into my final year of school and plan for my time after graduation.
In our meeting on Friday, Dr. Holman showed me some frameworks that are helpful when approaching or creating global health initiatives. One centers around a rights-based approach to health. All people have innate rights to dignity, wellbeing, and self-determination (among others), and health is a key part of that.
This framework looks for four things in global health efforts: accountability, meaningful participation, non-discrimination and equity, and (international) assistance and cooperation. Having these four elements help ensure that the work being done emphasizes the dignity of all people and their right to good health. This rights-based framework is not mutually exclusive with religious faith; rather, they work together quite well. Concepts such as “participation” underline our capacity for free will, “equity” shows a commitment to being all made in the image of God, and cooperation and accountability emphasize being in community together.
These are ideals that we can all be looking for and creating in our communities. They extend beyond more than just a narrow view of public health and include a more complete concept of flourishing. As I leave Washington and prepare for my return to Charlottesville, I will be taking these principles with me. “Global” includes us all, and a path to better global health can start with us, at home.
This is one in a series of post by Elizabeth Rambo, on her 2024 PLT summer internship experience.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
When you think about the last time you gave someone a gift, what feelings do you remember? Maybe it was for a holiday, or a birthday, or just a no-reason way of showing appreciation to someone you care about. For me, it was my dad’s birthday, late last month. There is always a bit of trepidation and uncertainty around whether or not the gift will be useful to the recipient, or if they even like it. And while you’re giving this gift without really expecting anything in return, there is always an expectation, or at least a hope, that the recipient will show their gratitude. After all, you’re doing something nice for them!
Receiving a present is also tricky. I always feel nervous about whether or not I will like the gift, or if it will end up sitting unused, collecting dust. But regardless of whether we like the present or not, we feel an obligation to show our thankfulness in an authentic way, to show that this expense taken on our behalf was not done without reason.
Gift-giving thus becomes its own kind of awkward social dance. So how does this look on a widespread scale – even globally? This was one of the topics that Dr. Holman and I explored in our discussion on Friday. Last week, I finished reading her book Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights. The final chapter is on the concept of the gift, and what gift-giving might look like in global health contexts.
A gift is different from charity. Charity, while not all bad, implies some patronization and an attitude of “helping” those who are helpless. Gift-giving emphasizes the fact that everyone has something to offer. In gift-giving, while the giver still does not expect anything in return from the recipient, they also look out for ways that they can learn from the recipient. It places both the giver and recipient on equal footing. For gift-giving, picture an image of two people walking alongside each other, learning from each other. Charity would be more like the image of one person deigning to lean down and pull up the other.
While gift-giving is a sort of exchange, the people involved still do not have any expectation of being “repaid.” It is a tricky balance, and requires both vulnerability and an unwavering focus on the dignity of all people.
This week, I also read some selected chapters from an anthology book honoring the late Dr. Paul Farmer, a pioneer in global health. Dr Farmer established multiple hospitals in low-income nations, giving care and training to new generations of local doctors. He also challenged notions about what global health interventions were possible, often seeking after the seemingly lost-cause cases.
One chapter in this book, “Liberating Theological Ethics from the Invisible Hand,” discussed how the economic principles of neoliberalism have seeped into global health. This process has made patients “consumers” and services “products.” In our market-infused health system, nothing is given without something else being expected in return. “Cost-effectiveness” and “efficiency” are the gold standard, prioritized above impact on human health and wellbeing. If money is being invested into a project, that project better have some sort of financial benefit to show for it.
Gift-giving is a way to challenge this market-driven approach to health. Profit is not the ultimate goal, but the wellbeing of each person, no matter how disadvantaged, is.
Most importantly, this gift exchange goes both ways. As Christians, we are reminded of the ultimate, selfless gift of grace and how there is nothing that we, as humans, can do to “repay” or reciprocate that gift. This gift-exchange mindset means being willing to give what you are able without a sense of being owed something in return. It also means being open to receiving gifts ourselves without feeling a need to repay it, as we have received grace. Gift-giving in global health means that our main goal is to emphasize the dignity of each person as a child of God, instead of as a potential revenue source. This might look like providing services without any requirement of payment from patients. Or it could look like walking 6 hours to make a home visit, as Dr. Farmer often did.
This is a wonderful ideal to aspire to. But most of us are not charismatic, trained medical doctors who can pause our lives to start building a hospital in Haiti. Still, there is need everywhere, and it is oftentimes right on our doorstep. My work this summer, at Bread for the City and Catholic Charities of D.C, has been centered around this type of gift-giving. Both organizations provide free health and social services to the community – work that isn’t very “cost-effective” or “profit-driven.” It is easy to slip into a mentality of “helping” our disadvantaged “consumers.” But as I’ve found through experience, this closes the door on seeing the whole person with whom I am interacting. It both closes the door on learning anything from them, and makes me more impatient.
When we feel as though we have nothing to give, or don’t know what to give, a listening ear and some time is all we need. A later chapter in the Paul Farmer book, “Practicing Local Listening with Village Midwives in Sudan,” highlights the title’s case study. Truly listening to what people have to say about their lived experiences – and not just hearing what we want to hear! – is the mark of a mutual gift giving. It reflects a just and fair community partnership, in which services and knowledge are given freely, and all community members walk together in solidarity on the road to better health.
This is one in a series of post by Elizabeth Rambo, on her 2024 PLT summer internship experience.
Lysaught, M. (2023). Liberating theological ethics from the invisible hand: Paul Farmer, the world’s poor, and the quandaries of the fortunate. In J.W. Block, M.T. Lysaught, and A.A. Martins (eds.), A Prophet to the Peoples: Paul Farmer’s witness and theological ethics. Pickwick Publications.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a (very) long campaign of calls that the other interns and I worked on. We were notifying some of our clients that the grocery delivery service was ending. My thoughts at that time centered around the physical and emotional isolation of some of the consumers we called, but this week’s reading and discussion with Dr. Holman has shifted my focus.
The grocery delivery program had to end because of a lack of funding – but why did that happen in the first place? Why were there budget cuts, and what led to the decision to cut the delivery program instead of another? But more broadly, these past few weeks I have been thinking about the role of money and funding in determining health.
Of course, I’m studying public health, not economics. The macro-level explanations of global markets or trade or budgets or deficits don’t make a ton of sense to me. But ultimately, at the root of public health is a question of money: how much, how to spend it, and why.
While at the beach with my family, I spent a lot of my time reading Arthur Simon’s Bread for the World. The titular organization was founded by Simon and others in 1974 as a Christian advocacy group working to end hunger worldwide. (Not to be confused with Bread for the City, with whom I’m interning.) They collaborate with government representatives across the aisle as well as international bodies to enact concrete policies that work to end hunger. This book was written a few years later, and outlines all of the many reasons why ending hunger in our lifetime is attainable.
The majority of the reasons pertained to resources and finances. There is enough food in the world, the poorest people aren’t getting it. The wealthiest countries in the world, including the United States, could devote more time and money to ensuring that underfed and malnourished people in our own country and abroad are able to access the nutrition that they need. But policymakers have not been too keen on the key requirement: more money.
My actions (and Bread for the World’s) are motivated by a belief in the inherent dignity of all people as children of God. So of course, all people deserve to eat and enjoy good health. Eventually though, these beliefs have to be put into practice somehow; the rubber must meet the road. And this is where the question of money emerges.
It is kind of uncomfortable, because it’s much more exciting to exist in the inspiring-theory side of things. Health is a human right! Everyone deserves to eat! But what kinds of policies can we enact to achieve that? Additionally, at least for me, there is also an innate discomfort with combining faith and finances. When we are looking at the situation from a global health perspective, we are forced to ask ourselves: How can we organize our economies and governments in ways that prioritize the health – and more generally, the God-given dignity – of all people?
A small-level answer to some of these questions came during an event I attended last Tuesday. Some other interns and I went to a screening of Raising the Floor, a short documentary profiling a cash transfer program in Chelsea, Massachusetts. (You can watch it on YouTube here, I highly recommend it.) For a few years during the COVID pandemic, the town of Chelsea gave residents monthly cash transfers to address rising poverty and economic insecurity during the outbreak. They shifted from a city-run food bank to this initiative after organizers realized that simply giving money to residents not only allowed for more flexibility, but emphasized the autonomy and decision-making of each recipient.
The program was wildly successful. Researchers were able to analyze how the money had been spent: nearly all of it was on food, including local restaurants. Non-food expenditures were at stores that provide other necessities (like clothing, home supplies), and almost 100% was within the surrounding county. In addition to being able to feed themselves better, cash recipients used the money to uplift their local economy.
Giving money directly to poor people challenges our stereotypes of what it means to be poor: that being poor is the result of bad decisions, and poor people cannot be entrusted to spend their own money. But this cash transfer program – and many other pilot programs nationwide – have shown that this is not the case. Thus, money, autonomy, and well-being are inextricably linked.
Health is naturally affected by income and economic stability. This is partly why Bread for the City decided to begin their CashRX program, a cash infusion program similar to the one in Chelsea. CashRX, though, pays special attention to the role of money in public and community health.
Participants in the ongoing pilot program were selected because of ongoing health struggles, like uncontrolled diabetes, depression, or hypertension. The goal of the initiative is to see (hopefully) the positive impact that no-strings-attached cash transfers can have on individual health. If the pilot shows signs of success, Bread might expand it to a larger population.
The initiative is still gathering results, but initial feedback has been promising with showing the positive relationship between income and health. So far, all of the participants have reported both decreased housing insecurity and decreased food insecurity. They have been able to spend more time with family and loved ones, and are feeling less depressed or anxious in general. Not only is the money addressing physical needs like housing and nutrition, it is also helping with psychological and emotional needs as well. All of these needs – body, mind, and spirit – are directly connected to overall health and wellbeing. These cash transfers are actually a type of public health intervention!
Some of the positive side-effects of cash transfer programs such as this tie back to my thoughts on dignity and, more broadly, how something so material as money can be inspired by faith. Giving individuals the ability to decide how, when, and why to spend their money emphasizes their autonomy, decision-making skills, and their dignity as individuals. Instead of micromanaging their every move, these programs reaffirm the fact that each person knows their situation best, and is the best decision maker for their own life. When we understand that each person is a child of God, uniquely created, this type of financial initiative aligns well with those beliefs.
The tough part is that the sustainability of these initiatives is dependent on a consistent source of money. Small-scale initiatives like CashRX – and thus, their clients’ health – are beholden to donors and government contracts for funding. As Bread for the World discusses, policy is the best way to create lasting public health results. In my meeting with Dr. Holman on Friday, we discussed this tough challenge facing much of global public health: that small-scale initiatives require money, but are less sustainable, while large-scale policy interventions are more sustainable, but harder to achieve and (also!) require money.
And so we arrive back at the question of how to organize our economy in a way that emphasizes the dignity of each individual. The different iterations of what this might look like are nearly infinite. But a system that devotes more resources to nutrition than to the military, or more to international food aid than to corporate aid, might be a step in the right direction.
This is one in a series of post by Elizabeth Rambo, on her 2024 PLT summer internship experience.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
I didn’t notice it at first – my second coffee of the morning probably hadn’t kicked in yet. Most mornings, I sort all of the mail that has come into Bread for the City for their representative payee clients. These are consumers who have been declared mentally unable to take care of their own finances by a judge or doctor. BFC is one of a few organizations around the city that manages the consumer’s money to pay their bills and give them a weekly allowance. Sorting this mail requires looking up the recipient’s name and categorizing them according to what “group” the recipient is labeled as.
After I got about halfway through the pile, I realized a lot of them were going to various teams at Anchor Mental Health – the building in which I work for Catholic Charities on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Anchor is the headquarters for all of Catholic Charities’ mental health and psychiatric care – which is a lot. They have about a half-dozen teams responding to various groups’ needs, with school interventions, crisis response, and counseling. The biggest recipient of the mail I was sorting was the ACT team. ACT, or Assertive Community Treatment, is for people who have severe, untreated mental illness.
Dozens of these mail recipients, who were clients of Bread, were also clients of Catholic Charities. I guess I should not have been surprised by this, because both organizations provide similar but complementary social services. There is a lot of overlap in the groups of people who seek out their services.
If someone is severely mentally ill, chances are they have a hard time keeping a job. That affects their ability to pay bills or get food, which Bread helps with. It also affects their ability to function independently, which Catholic Charities would help with. I mentioned what I had noticed to Ms. Kesara, my supervisor, and she explained it much more succinctly: “We help with the money and the food, they [Catholic Charities and other nonprofits] help with the other stuff.”
This realization got me thinking more about how various social determinants of health overlap and feed off of each other. In the public health sphere, social determinants of health, in a broad sense, are the various nonmedical factors that affect health. These are the environments and conditions in which one grows up and lives in. Access to nutritious food is a good example, as are water and air quality, safe housing and transportation, exposure to trauma and violence, and financial stability. And a lot of times, these overlap. A child born in poverty lives in a rough neighborhood near an industrial park. The pollution he grows up breathing, coupled with the fact that there are no safe parks nearby to run around in, means that he has a vastly greater chance of developing asthma or other health issues.
Just by sorting the mail, I was seeing some of these social determinants play out in real life. Financial struggles were connected to physical health struggles were connected to mental health struggles were connected to food struggles were connected to… you get it.
Local nonprofit organizations are uniquely able to get to know their clients and work with them on specific issues. They’re generally best suited to address the needs of consumers for whom the social determinants of health have overlapped in difficult ways. Picture an archetypal homeless person. Probably influenced as much by stereotypes as by lived experience, this is probably a drinking, smoking, guy talking loudly to himself. You (and me, too) start mentally preparing to look straight ahead and give him a wide berth as soon as you hear him down the block. Bread for the City might help him pay his bills if he is unable to. Catholic Charities might help him with psychiatric care and substance abuse recovery. Another organization might assist with finding a job.
Local, specialized NGOs can understand the local environment and residents far better than a statewide, national, or even international effort can. But it also means that there are that many more opportunities for information – and people – to slip through the cracks. Here we find a very fine balance between specialization and complication.
Global public health at large faces the same difficulties. This week, I have continued reading Ellen Idler’s Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health. In his chapter, “Religion and Global Health,” Peter Brown writes that global health is “fragmented, complicated, and inadequately tracked.” A pretty condemning description! In this chapter, Brown writes about how nationally- or internationally-funded programs work best when enacted by local actors. Instead of outsiders entering a community and attempting to run (usually very well-intentioned) initiatives, these initiatives should be run by those who they would benefit. Community leaders better understand the culture, the issues affecting the residents, and what solutions might work best.
However, these locally-run initiatives often struggle to communicate with each other and as a group. This damages both day-to-day logistics as well as prevents everyone from learning what works and what doesn’t.
In our conversation last Friday, Dr. Holman and I discussed these issues of autonomy, locality, communication, and consistency of care. Ultimately, it comes down to a balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Balancing the scale requires both being fair to local needs and emphasizing quality assessment. Yes, public health initiatives should be locally-run as much as possible if (!) they are consistently assessed to be working.
It’s difficult to measure the costs and benefits of this fragmented approach to holistic public health. How many bills were late because a Catholic Charities intern took too long to sort the mail forwarded to another organization? How many people had to rethink their whole schedule because Bread changed their food pantry hours? But also: how many mentally disabled people are able to lead more independent lives with fewer financial burdens? How many meals have been distributed to those who would have otherwise not eaten?
These next two weeks, I will be reading Bread for the World by Arthur Simon and the chapter “Toward a Theology of Medicine,” in Hostility and Hospitality by Michael and Tracy Balboni, and am looking forward to finally getting to My Year of Rest and Relaxation (the book, but maybe it’ll also spark a very mellow next 365 days).
This is one in a series of post by Elizabeth Rambo, on her 2024 PLT summer internship experience.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
It has been almost three weeks since I started my internships at Bread for the City and Catholic Charities. I’ve started to get a view of what my work looks like, and how it fits into both each organization’s mission and public health in D.C. My days at Bread usually consist of helping organize and run their extensive food pantry, which serves hundreds of people a day. This is a lot of on-the-ground, with-the-people work, and it is as exhausting as it is rewarding.
Recently, a lot of my time at Bread has involved making calls. Because of a lack of funding, the organization has had to cut their food delivery program. For the past few years, since the beginning of the pandemic, they have delivered monthly groceries to many clients around the city. The program is shuttering on July 1, and we have to call all 1,500 (yes) recipients before then to let them know. I have the script practically memorized at this point: We have to end the delivery program, no, there is not enough money for it, yes, the pantries will still be open, yes, from Monday through Thursday, 9 am to 3 pm. The phrasings of “this number is no longer in service,” or “this number cannot accept calls” are ingrained in my mind at this point.
Nearly everyone was very understanding, although I’m sure this created a considerable disruption to their food supply. The monthly deliveries are not meant to provide every single meal for a whole month, but they are a significant supplement. They are often part of a puzzle, put together with other pieces from other nonprofits, services and purchased food. People were sympathetic about the financial constraints and made plans to come in-person, and lots were thankful I let them know. A few people were upset, and I was hung up on a few times.
The calls that have stuck with me, though, are the ones of older people who are homebound, from illness, immobility, or both. And when I go into the next part of my spiel – don’t worry! If they can’t get to us, they can send someone to pick up their groceries for them! – these callers have responded with “well, I don’t have anybody.” Nobody – no family or friends, no caretaker or assistant, no neighbor or random neighborhood acquaintance. They “don’t have anybody” to pick up their food, their medication, help them get dressed, or just to sit and spend time with them.
I am especially struck by this loneliness when I think about all of the people I have interacted with today. I called my parents and brother, who are all interested in my summer. I played pickleball and went to a museum with my friend Caroline. I went to church with my great aunt and uncle (with whom I am living) and chatted with the pastor afterwards. All of those people would help me if I needed it – and these are only the people I saw today. Being confined to bed would be immensely difficult for anyone, even if they were well-connected. But to go at it alone – I’m embarrassed to say that it is difficult for me to comprehend and it is mind-boggling in its emptiness. This is a loneliness that stands apart, and is far deeper than any of my dabblings during my first semester of college.
From my reading list, provided by Dr. Holman, I have begun Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health,by Ellen Idler. In it, she describes how there is something about religion that is good for health.1 Even when controlling for related variables (like being married or drinking less), the uplifting community that religion creates consistently predicts a longer lifespan. Being with other people and feeling connected to them is not only good for the soul, but also good for the body. So in a way, facilitating connection is one of the ultimate public health interventions. It’s probably why the surgeon general called our nation’s loneliness “an epidemic.”2
When I read this information today, I couldn’t help but think about Alice*, who sounded as though she might be about to cry when she said she didn’t have anyone to get her groceries for her. Her voice sounded like my grandmother’s as she described how she is bedridden. Or about Cassandra*, who was struggling to think of someone to do her pickup after her son passed away on Friday. There is a depth to this loneliness that touches on a spiritual level, but hurts physical health, too.
This (very) windy thought tangent has started to nudge me outside of what I typically picture as public health interventions. This is beyond the typical vaccinations and seatbelts – how can we prescribe something so intangible as connection, to a culture so desperately in need of a cure? My normal knee-jerk response of “public policy” is limited here. The types of community interventions, as well as the layered complexities of social determinants of health, are something I will enjoy diving into with Dr. Holman during our next meeting.
As I begin to think about what it means to be a Christian in public health spaces, and to serve others through faith, I think about Ms. Jeanette, one of my supervisors at Bread. During some of the busiest parts of the day – when the line of customers keeps growing, the grocery bags keep tearing, and my feet are sore – is when she likes to play her gospel music. It isn’t a dramatic singalong, but an underlying soundtrack that everyone who enters the food bank can hear.
Her music is not just some silly, platitudinous attempt to tell the people coming in for food to “not worry, because God has a plan!” I don’t think that’s comforting, and I doubt many other people think it is, either. Somehow Ms. Jeanette finds additional room for praise in the midst of need. But there is also grief: “in the darkest night you are close like no other,” one song says. There is both praise and lament in this space, where the hungry are lonely, and somehow there is still a God walking alongside.
This is one in a series of post by Elizabeth Rambo, on her 2024 PLT summer internship experience.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
1 Idler, Ellen L. (2014). Religion as a social determinant of public health. Oxford University Press.
by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate SummerResearch Fellow in Lived Theology
“I’ve got another Yes, Lord (in my soul)” Mt. Zion’s choir sings. In the same way that the church’s historic 105 Ridge Street building holds echoes of a century of worship, praise reverberates in the sanctuary of the new edifice at 105 Lankford Street. Theirs is a resilient adoration.
As Reverend Dr. Edwards noted in an interview in 1986, five years into his ministry at Mt. Zion, they are a “survival church.”[1] My research this summer has been a project of storytelling, attempting to bear witness to an intersection of communities “sing[ing] better songs with [their] lives.”[2] The harmonies and disharmonies that I have encountered swell around me, holding despair, pain, and, ultimately, “triumph and calm confidence.”[3]
Early on a Tuesday morning, I walked into Mt. Zion’s church office to interview the Reverend Dr. Alvin Edwards. Characterized by most who know him as a busy man whose love for his congregation and his city orders his schedule, he graciously agreed to sit with me for a sizeable portion of his morning. Within those few hours, in the spirit of calm confidence, Reverend Edwards shared his experience of God’s faithfulness in Mt. Zion’s survival.
When he stepped into his ministry at Mt. Zion in 1981, Reverend Edwards stepped into a story and a history that preceded himself. “When I came, my focus was probably more healing than anything else,” he notes, since the church was very divided in the wake of pastoral transition. I asked about his relationship with Reverend Hamilton, who served Mt. Zion from 1960 to 1980. “To be honest,” he started, “I did not meet him until years later at the 125th Anniversary when I invited all living former pastors to come preach.”
I had assumed that Reverend Hamilton, who led the church during Charlottesville’s urban renewal initiative, which razed the Vinegar Hill neighborhood surrounding the historic church building, had shaped Reverend Edwards’ vision for the future of the church, particularly its move to the Lankford location. However, as Reverend Edwards describes it, the congregation directed his energies for the first 20 years of his ministry. Upon his arrival to Mt. Zion, he felt a tense air, “so thick you could cut it.” Church membership, as he understood it, dwindled and the average age rose. In the early days of his leadership, faithful church members invited him into the church’s recent history. “I began to hear the stories about Vinegar Hill and how they razed the community, how it dispersed all the African American people, their families, their businesses; to see how the city of Charlottesville really cheated Zion Union Baptist Church. That destroyed,” he reflects and starts again, “that decimated the Black community.”
Prior to Charlottesville’s urban renewal, many members of Mt. Zion lived in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood, easily within walking distance of the church. With the demolition of the neighborhood, residents were forced to relocate, which resulted in many moving to the 10th & Page, Ridge Street, and Belmont neighborhoods. Physical distance, as well the absence of a centralized communal space, dimmed the liveliness of the community. The land set to be “renewed” remained untouched for decades. Confusion and grief shattered the Black community. For Mt. Zion’s purposes, community engagement became a completely new project, and relocated members now had to commute for worship on Sundays. Mt. Zion’s new problem? No parking lot.
So, it would come as no surprise that when Reverend Edwards asked the congregation in 1981 their hopes for the church’s future, he noticed that the church was in desperate need of space, something he had little of in the historic building. Thus, the land for the new church building at First and Lankford was purchased within the first few years of his pastorate. He told his congregation and the broader city of Charlottesville, “I want to put our church back into the neighborhood.”[4]
Beyond moving the congregation’s physical presence “into the neighborhood,” Reverend Edwards himself entered into the realm of city leadership. For him, politics and religion cannot be divorced, especially in his role as a pastor. “There is a separation in the sense that you can’t legislate righteousness,” he offers; however, “do[ing] what’s best for [the] community,” which he understands to be his responsibility, means that he must involve himself in the workings of the city. Repeatedly, he tells me, “[m]y faith makes me look at the total person, the head, the heart and the soul.” To see someone as a “total being” should direct the Christian longing for justice and participation in spaces where there are opportunities for growth towards a more just, nurturing, safe community. To this end, Reverend Edwards had involved himself in leadership spaces such as the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, Alliance for Interfaith Ministries, Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, Charlottesville Albemarle Boys and Girls Club, Charlottesville City Council, and Back to School Bash.[5] “I want to keep working,” he looks at me and shakes his head, “I don’t want to rust out in life, I want to wear out.”
The church should be a place where the desire for the health of the “total being” abounds. Yet, as Reverend Edwards solemnly addresses, “the church as the body of Christ is polarized.” Our differences, he argues, prevent us from working together for the flourishing of our shared community. He, alongside the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, “a group of faith and allied community leaders” and his “brainchild”[6] pray for solidarity in the fight for justice and righteousness.
What can that solidarity look like in our racially separated church communities? Well, for one, the White church has to shift its understanding of solidarity. “If White churches expect Black churches to act like them, it’ll never happen,” Reverend Edwards notes, “because the Black church has been the one to have to fight and defend who we are historically, because the White church hasn’t stepped up to do it, especially the ‘body of Christ’.” Growth in this area will start with truth telling. “I think some of the white pastors and their members need to start speaking out against the wrongs that they see and stop burying their heads in the sand,” he cries out, “if we don’t turn it around we are getting ready to lose another generation of people because we haven’t ministered to them in a way that their lives have been transformed. Because we are scared. We are comfortable where we are. It ought not to be that way.”
His prayer for the body of Christ is that God would “liberate all of us from our prejudices, from our biases.” There is a richer future available to the Christian community. God invites us into an active, lived faith. This faith points to God’s inauguration of the eternal Kingdom, where God’s love in us transcends the brokenness of this earth. The more I read, the more I feel that proximity, “being in the neighborhood,” as Reverend Edwards described, is central to this future reality. Our brightest conceptions of racial reconciliation and the renewal of our church bodies are glimpses of a future not yet accessible to us.[7] Until that time, God has protected and steadied communities like Mt. Zion, communities that desire to “make kingdom kids, kingdom churches, to make God’s kingdom here on earth as in heaven.” Ultimately, I hope that God stirs us to work that grows “far more organic, meaningful, and authentic relationships than any of us can think of and project in the abstract from the alienated and still unredressed ground on which we currently stand.”[8]
This summer, I’ve been blessed to sit and reflect at the intersection of communities, Mt. Zion, the Music Resource Center, and Church of the Good Shepherd, which I have been able to research. It has been a summer of resonant worship, and songs have echoed within me and refashioned my soul. Maybe I’ve sung “Got Another Yes Lord” too many times, but I think that God continually places sustained, partnered work in front of us. My summer ends calmly confident in prayer for “another yes.”
Reverend Edwards states that one of his dreams would be to see communities of believers work together to help every child reach grade reading level. The potential for human and community flourishing from this effort would be transformative.
[7] Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians. (100)
[8] Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians. (100)
Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate SummerResearch Fellow in Lived Theology
Student performing in the sanctuary of 105 Ridge Street. Photo courtesy of The Music Resource Center
On the second of June in 2003, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reported that real estate developer Gabe Silverman purchased the former Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church building at 105 Ridge Street for $500,000. He noted that his plan for the future of this building would be to find a user “complementary to the history the church has in it.”[1] Known for his “generous spirit” and his professional posture of “subtle sacredness,” Silverman’s various projects around Charlottesville’s downtown center began to “knit together a new version of the town” where “people got a taste for what it meant to thrive as a town [and] as a community.”[2]
Ultimately, the building was sold to the Music Resource Center (MRC). The mission of the MRC is to serve as a “safe, diverse, and creative community” which “foster[s] the youth of Charlottesville through music.”[3] To this end, the MRC provides after-school programs in a variety of creative, musical arts for 6th-12th grade students.
Reverend Edwards of Mt. Zion responded to the new mission of his church’s historic space by saying that “Mt. Zion has a good history of music,” and indicated that the center would fulfill his hopes for the building. “I respect the historical fact about what it’s been and what it’s meant to the community,” he shared, “but for me, as long as it serves the needs of the people of this community, I’m okay with it.”[4]
Considering the inhabitants of 105 Ridge Street, I have been reflecting on the role of physical space in community formation and vitality. As one Charlottesville Daily Progress reporter noted, there is a harmony to the reimagined space, woven together by “new music in the historic setting [and] young people [as] part of an old tradition.” The songs this building sings with its life ring with love for its surrounding community, and there is this sense that “the beauty of music sinks into the very bones of the building quietly reverberating to inspire new generations.”[5]
Vine Deloria’s God is Red invites his audience to reconsider how we understand the role of space and time in religious community. “Space must in a certain sense precede time as a consideration for thought,” he argues, because “if time becomes our primary consideration we never seem to arrive at the reality of our existence in places but instead are always directed to experiential and abstract interpretations rather than the experiences themselves.”[6] How does our dialogue of “already” and “not yet” erase our lived experience? How do I understand the shaping role of 105 Ridge Street both in the stories I encounter and in God’s redemptive story?
I brought my questions to the current inhabitants of the building. Ike Anderson, Membership and Community Coordinator for the MRC, shared his unique story both as a member of the team at the center and as a former student served by the after school programs. Ike[7] experienced the MRC’s transition to its current residence in 2003 during his senior year of high school. A photo of Ike cutting the ribbon at the church entrance hangs in the entry hallway to the sanctuary. This physical space, he explained, is so much more than it appears. Centered between Westhaven, Friendship Court, and Prospect Avenue, the building is within walking distance of the communities the MRC serves. The sanctuary, with its “unbelievable acoustics,” serves as a performance space for young artists[8]. Stepping into the basement which is now transformed into recording and dance studios, Ike describes his place of work as a “music utopia” and his dance studio as a home. “Nothing knows me like that room,” he says through a smile of appreciation.
Robert Cunningham and April Murrie, the pastoral team for Church of the Good Shepherd, tell me their story. Invited to plant Church of the Good Shepherd, they searched for worship space along abstract conceptions of proximity, walkability, general accessibility, and socioeconomic and ethnic diversity. Stumbling onto the space at the MRC, which is not in use on Sunday’s, they began a conversational process with Dr. Edwards of Mt. Zion and members of the Good Shepherd congregation with expert knowledge of Charlottesville’s racial history. Recalling one of their early meetings with the MRC, April Murrie remembers MRC leadership exclaiming “how excited the Edwards’s would be for there to be a church worshiping in the space.” Through prayerful deliberation and assurance that they were being faithful to the parties involved, they leased the sanctuary space for worship on Sunday’s. Both Cunningham and Murrie attest to Good Shepherd’s posture as “guests in the space, blessed by the reverberations of worship that were sung there for generations before [them].” Mt. Zion has built up a “robust missional presence” in the city, which Good Shepherd steps into to “come alongside” with humility and excitement. They share that, while they are unsure how long they will take up residence in this space, their experience stepping into this rich, interwoven history has been formative and will frame the life of their church.
The life of this church building has not only been shaped by the passion of human activity within, but it also has shaped the lives of multiple congregations, communities, and individuals in return. Here’s where I’ll reach for “relatedness” from Ivone Gebara. Gebara suggests that God is relatedness, as seen through Creation’s web of “interdependen[t] life systems.”[9] This related reality “cannot deny all earlier moments and former phases.”[10] In fact, like music sinks into the frame of 105 Ridge Street, “our human experience is, in fact, to place ourselves within the tradition of our ancestors, of those whose bodies vibrated as ours do” in the physical, lived experience of space and history[11].
[10] Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water (48).
[11] Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water (50).
Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate SummerResearch Fellow in Lived Theology
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)
Jesus’s words echo through Mt. Zion’s sanctuary on the Reverend’s voice. A chorus of amen’s sound from the congregation. Another minister stands at the pulpit and breaks into song.
“Resting on my feet,” as Reverend Edwards calls it, in the sanctuary of Mt. Zion, I am surrounded by laughter and expressions of joy, shouts of praise from the congregants around the room. The expression of unified community creates an atmosphere of self-forgetfulness to the end that, enlivened by cheery smiles and worship, standing becomes restful.
I return home, sit on the couch, and lean into James Cone and Malcolm X. Once again, a certain self-forgetfulness takes over. Cries for liberation and shouts of pain and suffering ring out. This unified community bands together in strength through the concrete and eschatological promise of Jesus as the “eternal event of Liberation in the divine person who makes freedom a constituent of human existence.”[1]
This community scribbles in smudged pencil on the back of a 1935 Mt. Zion choral program the words:
“Sometimes I feel discouraged, And think my works all vain, But Jesus comes and helps me, And revives my soul again. Sometime[s] I feel discouraged, And know not where to roam, I heard of a place called heaven, And I’m trying to make heaven my home.[2]
These past few weeks invited me to dwell on that last line, “trying to make heaven my home.” In one sense, I hear a reminder that Christ followers are called to live with a constant awareness of our promised reality of eternal liberation. But, I fear stopping there dilutes this ethic of liberation. That awareness surely bids us to live into that reality, to resist every system of oppression and exploitation, every lived experience of sin. I am not sure what form this resistance takes, but I have confidence it is not an “ethic of the status quo”[3] which condones the brokenness of our world. Our God of the oppressed is a liberator. His good creation will be fully redeemed. I think, or at least I hope, we, as Christ’s body, get to participate in the process of liberation in the murky state of “already” and “not yet.” Jesus “inaugurat[ed] [the] liberation of our social existence, creating new levels of human relationship in society.” As his body, do we not also liberate?
However, in another sense, I hear that liberating truth and am not sure what to do with it. The realities and histories of oppression and exploitation are not accessible to me in the same way that they are for Cone, Malcolm X, and the author of the note on Mt. Zion’s choral program. I am not even sure it would be appropriate for me to apply Cone in the context of Mt. Zion’s liberated, self-forgetful joy. As the pastoral team at Church of the Good Shepherd models, the Christian position is to be deferential to a story that precedes us.
Cone writes that all he can do is “bear witness to [his] story, to tell it and live it, as the story grips [his] life and pulls [him] out of nothingness into being.”[4] Listening in loving humility “invite[s] [us] to move out of the subjectivity of [Our] Own Story into another realm of thinking and acting.”[5] Our witness and our fight, by which the world will know us, must be humble, liberating love.[6]
Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate SummerResearch Fellow in Lived Theology
“Father bless this membership to follow and do those things that encourage people to love one another as You loved us…Thank you for what you are going to do; thank you Father for being a wall of fire and protection around this new congregation, the families, the children, and those involved in the development of this local body of Christ.
Then, Lord, disturb Good Shepherd when they become too pleased with themselves; disturb them:
when their dreams have come true and when they dream too little;
when they arrive safely and when they have lost our thirst for the waters of life;
when they have fallen in love with life and have ceased to dream of eternity;
when they allow their vision of the new Heaven to become dim.
Then after you disturb them, let Your Word and their lights shine in such a way that they lift up Your Son so He can draw men, women, boys, and girls to You Father.”
You have just read an excerpt from Reverend Alvin Edwards’ launch day blessing and prayer over Charlottesville’s nascent Anglican church plant Church of the Good Shepherd, one of many blessings he has prayed over the 105 Ridge Street worship space. Except, Dr. Edwards does not pastor the congregation of Good Shepherd. He has served as pastor of Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church since July 1, 1981.
Mt. Zion traces its history back to 1863, when, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, Black congregants of Charlottesville Baptist Church successfully petitioned for their own worship space and purchased the Delevan Hotel on Main Street[1]. Virginian law[2] (1832) mandated the presence of a White minister in Black worship spaces, so the new Black church body of Delevan Baptist Church was shepherded by local White ministers. Some members, dissatisfied with this condition, branched away from the original church body in 1867 under the leadership of “horseback preacher” Reverend Spottswood Jones, recorded as the first Black pastor in Charlottesville[3]. This community became the Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church.
The Black church body met “from house to house” until Samuel White, noted as a “consecrated Christian man,” volunteered his home as a permanent meeting place, which was centrally located between the city’s principle Black neighborhoods[4]. The frame of his home at 105 Ridge Street served as the worship space until 1883, when the Mt. Zion congregation celebrated the laying of the cornerstone of the present structure on the lot.
The church, surviving a crisis of great debt in the early 20th century[5], grew and developed many modes of social outreach and leadership, including a Deaconess Board, Young Men’s Usher Board, Social Club, and the designation of the first Sunday of each month as “Young People’s Day.”
In 1967, Mt. Zion undertook the work of recording the history of their lived experience. An existing copy of their publication “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service” can be found at The Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. At the time of its publication, Mt. Zion’s pastor was Reverend James Hamilton. He would go on to serve from 1960 to 1980, followed by Mt. Zion’s current pastor Reverend Alvin Edwards[6].
Reverend Hamilton’s pastorate covers “an exciting period in human history” in which “confusion seems to be the order of [the day],” as he writes in his letter to the congregation. In the American landscape of the Civil Rights Movement, his congregation worked to “denounce the path taken by [their] culture” according to his guidance to “work and pray within it … to be instrumental in changing it.” However, a different national project would require much of Mt. Zion’s prayers and strength.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government funded American cities to raze “blighted areas” for the goal of improving the utilization of the land. In Charlottesville, as in most participating urban areas, this resulted in the destruction of minority neighborhoods and displacement of their communities away from the center of public life. Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood, located directly across Main Street from Mt. Zion’s historic Ridge Street building, was razed as a result of a city-wide vote subject to exclusive poll tax in 1965[7]. Mt. Zion’s publication in 1967, in the wake of this loss of community, notes the “new dimensions … of Christian education and social outreach” which the congregation adapted to undertake.
From this point on in Mt. Zion’s story, there is a shift in attitude. While unconfirmed, it seems as though this church body, which had recorded as its chief history the major renovations and additions to its worship space at 105 Ridge Street, began to search for a more appropriately located space for worship. To this end, Reverend Edwards worked to place 105 Ridge Street on the Virginia Landmark Register (1991) and the National Register of Historic Places (1992). In 2003, the congregation marched from their historic building to their new worship space at 105 Lankford Avenue. Their Ridge Street edifice, protected from destructive “progress” by its designation as a landmark, was sold to the Music Resource Center (MRC) of Charlottesville, with the helpful purchasing power of the Dave Matthews Band. Mt. Zion’s current history identifies the motivation for this new worship space as congregational growth and the need for a larger building, a new “magnificent edifice.” This certainly aligns with the growth of social outreach initiatives under Reverend Hamilton and Reverend Edwards’s leadership. However, a research project collecting the oral histories of Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood claims that the church relocated out of necessity as a result of the neighborhood’s destruction[8]. A small note in Mt. Zion’s current recorded history claims that Dr. Edwards fulfilled Reverend Hamilton’s goal of building a new church.
So, where do we stand? The Lord has blessed the Mt. Zion community with resilience in the face of oppression, debt, and relocation. In fact, Mt. Zion’s witness has resulted in an expansion of their church body requiring a larger building and greater direction of many community-driven programs. Their historic building, where “ancestral voices echo” and the “deep histories and textures”[9] of a faithful, resilient community lie hidden from public view, is owned by a community outreach music center. The MRC’s programs provide after school direction and education in creative arts for local city children. And now, after 20 years of silent Sunday’s, the MRC has leased the space to a new tenant.
Joining the voices of spiritual parents in the faith, whose liberating efforts have re-introduced the modern American church to the “true witness of Christian life [as] the projection of a social gospel,” a small, young, predominantly White Anglican church plant inhabits 105 Ridge Street. Pastors Robert Cunningham and April Murrie seek to join Mt. Zion’s gospel witness through truth-telling, listening, and acting alongside neighbors for the “flourishing of [their] community.”[10]
Mt. Zion and Good Shepherd stand at a crossroads ripe for participation in beloved community. In a tragic age where “men know so little of men”[11] and the city of Charlottesville and others like it remain functionally segregated, these two churches exist as a family of faith, whose Christian responsibility is to realize the colony of heaven. How does this happen? John Perkins, minister, civil rights activist, and community builder argues that beloved community has everything to do with place[12]. There is something to be realized about the interaction of physical space and community, of knowing and loving, of history sharing and future building, that feeds and nurtures beloved community. Thus, there lies an invitation to a new “alignment,” a new revelation of “collective body in Jesus.”[13]Certainly, this project must begin with truth telling, the effortful retaining of “constructive tension”[14], a harmony with undercurrents and histories of disharmony. Out of this tension grows compelling Christian witness, which, “depends on our ability to sing better songs with our lives. … in which our life harmonizes with others even the lives of those least like us and swells into a joyful and irresistible chorus”[15] of which “the minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence.”[16] It will be through these songs that we, as Reverend Edwards prayed, prevent the vision of the new heaven from becoming dim.
[1]Local expert on Race and Place in Charlottesville, Louis Nelson, points to the prominent position of this location. Placing themselves along the “major public thoroughfare” of the city claims space for Black voices in social and religious communities.
[2] “an act reducing into one the several acts concerning slaves, free negroes and mulattoes, and for other purposes” (March 15, 1832)
[3] “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service”, Charlottesville Albemarle Historical Society
[4] “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service”, Charlottesville Albemarle Historical Society
[5] “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service”; A 1967 written record of Mt. Zion’s first 100 years notes that Reverend Royal Brown Hardy was instrumental in support raising and stewardship of resources to rescue the church.
[6] Warren Dawkins served as Interim Pastor between 1980 and 1981.
[7] The Westhaven public housing development, which housed many previous Vinegar Hill residents, is located on Hardy Drive. This street is named for Mt. Zion’s Reverend Hardy.
[8]Saunders, James Robert; Renae Nadine Shackelford. Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia . McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.
[9] Willie James Jennings, Lived Theology “Disfigurations of Christian Identity” (74)
Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.
The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.
