Struggles in Global Public Health

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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). 

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 Don’t Have Anybody: Loneliness and Health

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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. 

1 Idler, Ellen L. (2014). Religion as a social determinant of public health. Oxford University Press.

2 Murthy, Vivek H. Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

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.

Elizabeth Rambo to Study Faith-Based Approaches to Health

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We are pleased to announce that the Project on Lived Theology (PLT) has awarded an Undergraduate Summer Fellowship to Elizabeth Rambo, a rising fourth year from Columbia, South Carolina, majoring in Global Public Health.

Alongside an academic and theological mentorship with Dr. Susan Holman, Elizabeth will be interning in the health outreach arm of Catholic Charities of Washington, D.C and the food department of Bread for the City. Elizabeth and Dr. Holman will focus their studies on faith-based approaches to public health.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington (CCADW), among other services, provides extensive physical and mental healthcare through free and low-cost dental care, general medicine, medications, and behavioral and psychiatric aid. Serving the community for nearly a century, they provide care to the entirety of Washington, D.C. as well as eastern and southern Maryland. Bread for the City gives comprehensive social services as well, to a smaller area in downtown D.C. Their food bank serves hundreds daily facing short or long-term food insecurity.

With Dr. Holman, Elizabeth will study and reflect upon the intersection of faith, human rights, and global public health. This study will complement her roles at organizations who deal extensively with the public health crises of poverty, mental health, and food insecurity. She plans to research and discuss how race and racism, public health policy, and culture have impacted the diverse D.C. community and the health issues it faces – and how faith-based organizations can begin the healing process.

At UVA, Elizabeth is on the leadership team for Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), mentors for the Young Women Leaders Program, and enjoys hiking, reading, and being with friends.

Reading List: 

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.

Mt. Zion: Being In The Neighborhood

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by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research 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.” 

[1] Charlottesville Daily Progress, (12/24/1986).

[2] Charles Marsh, Welcoming Justice, “The Power of True Conversion” (78)

[3]  W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (222) 

[4] Charlottesville Daily Progress, (12/24/1986). 

[5] https://ministeringtoministers.org/awards/the-rev-dr-alvin-edwards/

 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. 

[6] https://www.cvilleclergycollective.org/about.html

[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.

The Harmonious History of Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church

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by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research 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].  

[1] Charlottesville Daily Progress, 6/2/2003. 

[2] https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/gabe-silverman-architect-developer/

[3] https://musicresourcecenter.org/about/mission/

[4] Charlottesville Daily Progress, 9/7/2003. 

[5] Charlottesville Daily Progress, 9/15/2003. 

[6] Vine Deloria, God is Red (73). 

[7] Ike requested that I call him Ike because “Mr. Anderson is from the Matrix.” 

[8] Fritz Berry, Charlottesville Daily Progress, 9/7/2003. 

[9] Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water (28). 

[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.

Mt. Zion’s Liberated, Self-Forgetful Joy

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by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research 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]

[1] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 34-35

[2] Adaptation of Hide Thou Me

[3] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 199

[4] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 102-103

[5] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 102-103

[6] Perkins, John. Welcoming Justice. 128

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.

History of Charlottesville’s Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church

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by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research 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)

[10] The Church of the Good Shepherd; https://www.goodshepherdcville.org/about/location

[11] W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (192)

[12] John Perkins, Welcoming Justice, “A Time for Rebuilding” 

[13] Willie James Jennings, Lived Theology, “Disfigurations of Christian Identity” (74) 

[14] Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (90) 

[15] Charles Marsh, Welcoming Justice, “The Power of True Conversion” (78)

[16]  W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (222) 

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.

Lillian West to Study the History of Charlottesville’s Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church

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We are pleased to announce that the Project on Lived Theology (PLT) has awarded an Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship to Lillian West, a rising fourth year from Memphis, Tennessee, majoring in Religious Studies and Global Security and Justice.  

Under the academic supervision of Professor Paul Daffyd Jones, Lilly will research the history of Charlottesville’s Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church through the lens of its 1884 beginnings on Ridge Street. 

In 2003, under the leadership of pastor Dr. Alvin Edwards, Mt. Zion relocated to 105 Lankford Avenue. The historic building became home to Charlottesville’s Music Resource Center until the past year, when a new Anglican congregation called the Church of the Good Shepherd took over the lease. 

Lilly intends to study the history of Mt. Zion Baptist and the challenges of commitment to honoring its history, which is interwoven with the complexities of race and racism. She will also study the commitment that both congregations have made to community flourishing, and how they use their spaces to unite and engage community. She plans to visit the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society and UVA Special Collections, as well as the church’s archive, to examine existing historical documents to better understand Mt. Zion’s history.

Lilly plans to enter into conversation with the congregations’ respective leadership to discuss delicate, respectful, and appreciative inhabitation of prominent and powerful space. Lilly’s project will add to the Project on Lived Theology’s scholarship by gathering documents and stories from three diverse Christian communities operating for social justice and human flourishing in Charlottesville’s own Ridge St. neighborhood. She hopes to “participate in a project of unifying storytelling, which could discuss lived theology in relation to racism, the Kingdom of God, and human and community flourishing.”  

Within the UVA community, Lilly serves as a book study leader for Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). She also leads a local WyldLife ministry at Lakeside and Journey Middle Schools. Lilly hopes to pursue further education in religious studies.

 If you are interested in following along with Lilly’s reading plan this summer, here is the list: 

  • The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois 
  • Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, George Breitman and Malcolm X
  • God of the Oppressed, James Cone
  • Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church, Mary McClintock Fulkerson
  • God is Red, Vine Deloria, Jr. 
  • Longing for Running Water, Ivone Gebara
  • Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation, Jennifer Harvey 

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.

PLT Research Fellow to Present at Indiana University Symposium

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PLT Research Fellow Emily Miller was recently accepted into Indiana University’s Undergraduate Religious Studies Association Spring Symposium for the work she conducted last summer during her internship in Lived Theology. The symposium’s central aim is interdisciplinary conversation about religion that span across the humanities—Anthropology, Area Studies, English, Comparative Literature, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Sociology.

At the beginning of April, Emily will travel to Indiana to present her work on Charlottesville’s two First Baptist Churches: on Main Street and Park Street, respectively. Her presentation will highlight her findings that were published as blog posts to the PLT website, including her work on Charlottesville heroes Fairfax Taylor, William Gibbons, and Lottie Moon. Two other UVA religious studies undergraduates have also been invited to speak at the symposium.

Abstract: The brainchild of President Thomas Jefferson, the University of Virginia’s white supremacist roots permeate subtly and not-so-subtly into the complex landscape of modern Charlottesville and Albemarle County, where the University is located. There are two First Baptist Churches in Charlottesville: Main Street and Park Street, predominantly black and white respectively. The original Charlottesville Baptist Church’s division into two in 1863 tells the larger story of the continued struggle for black freedom following Emancipation. Through a summer of archival research, visiting historic sites, and interviews with historians, clergy, and congregants, I attempted to piece together the full story of Charlottesville’s First Baptist. What I uncovered revealed the deeply spiritual nature of First Baptist on Main’s journey as an independent body toward autonomy, agency, and education. This paper presents the timeline of the establishment of First Baptist Church on Main Street, Charlottesville’s first black Baptist church, including the closely intertwined history of racism at UVA and in Charlottesville during its development. This microcosmic narrative- specifically the juxtaposition of First Baptist on Main and First Baptist on Park- is reflective also of the increasingly separated Baptist church in the United States at large: black and white. Through first-hand accounts of heroic activism, systemic inequality, and unending perseverance, this paper tells an important story of the spiritual meaning of liberation.

Emily wishes to extend profound thanks to Charles Marsh, Guy Aiken, and Jessica Seibert for their encouragement and guidance with this project.

Emily Miller to Study the Divergent Histories of Two Charlottesville Baptist Churches

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The Project on Lived Theology (PLT) has selected Emily Miller to be a 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology. Emily, who is a rising third-year undergraduate at UVA, is double-majoring in religious studies and statistics.

As part of her fellowship, Emily will receive a $3,000 stipend and work directly with a UVA faculty mentor, who will act as a theological-academic mentor and offer guidance on a research project. 

Emily’s project will explore the history of two Charlottesville churches: First Baptist Church on Park Street and First Baptist Church on Main Street. The two churches used to exist as a single church, Charlottesville Baptist Church, but split during the Civil War when Black members decided they wanted to form their own church. Currently, First Baptist on Main Street remains primarily Black, while First Baptist on Park Street remains primarily white. Since so little information is readily available about the split, Emily will visit the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society and UVA Special Collections, as well as each church’s archive, to find what historical documents exist. 

From there, Emily hopes to form a fuller, more detailed narrative from a variety of sources about the history of these two churches than what is currently accessible to the public. This project will also contribute to a more comprehensive theological history of Charlottesville in general. Emily is also interested in how the history of the separation has impacted each church today. She hopes to interview members and clergy of both congregations, as well as to attend services at both churches, in order to form a sociological narrative of the churches as well as a historical one.

“Emily’s got a terrific project, and she’s already hit the archives and turned up some fascinating documents,” said PLT research fellow Guy Aiken, who is serving as Emily’s faculty mentor. “It seems the full story of the big Baptist split in Charlottesville during the Civil War and Reconstruction and its reverberations down to today has never been told—until Emily. It’s exciting.”

“I am passionate about both theology and the rich civil rights history that exist in Charlottesville, and so as a part of this fellowship, I’m excited to bring these aspects together under the guidance of incredible professors, Guy Aiken and [PLT director] Charles Marsh,” said Emily. “The story of the First Baptist Church is deeply ingrained into Charlottesville and has a profound impact on the state of the Baptist church writ-large in Central Virginia, and I am so honored to have the opportunity to bring the many moving pieces to light.”

Currently a teaching fellow in UVA’s Department of Religious Studies, Emily also conducts research for The Global Inquirer (a podcast produced by UVA undergraduates) and tutors elementary school students in math. She is a lifeguard and championship dancer, with experience in fitness training. Emily hopes to eventually earn a PhD in religious studies and become an academic researcher.

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.