Stephanie Spellers

The Rev. Stephanie Spellers is a priest in the Episcopal Church and an assistant (Canon) to its Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Michael Curry. The stated context for this brief cri de coeur is the "disruption" to the typical life of the Episcopal Church induced by the Covid-19 pandemic and adaptive measures that ensued. Spellers uses the image of the Church being "cracked open" as a result. This time provided not only a crisis but an opportunity to see the Church's questionable connections to its surrounding dominant culture and to make moves to pursue its mission in new directions.
If that sounds good, think again. This book is primarily focused on what has now become the standard message of the anti-racist movement found most famously in the work of Ibram X. Kendi. You can probably recite this message, which is becoming the ruling orthodoxy among liberal Protestant denominations: American is dominated by white supremacy ("White," however, is always capitalized), "systemic racism," consumerism, capitalism, etc. Jargon relating to "Whiteness," "empire," dismantling systems of oppression, reparations, and the like are bandied about. To be influenced by "Whiteness" is to be an oppressor and a victimizer. To be a person of color is be an oppressed victim.
Spellers's book does offer a spiritual sounding process of overcoming the influence of the oppressive dominant culture of "White supremacy" and refocusing the mission of the Church and the spiritual life of the Church member on the way of inclusiveness and love. In part this is accomplished through applying a "stewardship of privilege," a term Spellers admits was suggest by a ministerial colleague to replace the more intimidating use of the phrase "anti-racism." Predictably, most of the steps in the suggested stewardship of privilege model are related to how being white advantages white people but can be used to nurture and transform those who have been victimized by "Whiteness."
One can ask to whom will this simplistic, reductionistic, and divisive, yet brief, book appeal? It will no doubt readily appeal to those who already accept the anti-racist world view. In practical terms for the Episcopal Church, which is ninety percent white, this primarily means white upper and middle class liberals, those most prone to consume messages that re-enforce white liberal guilt. And oddly, I've found that the voices most likely to very strenuously support the type of anti-racism that is promoted by Spellers are educated, economically advantaged white liberals who seem to think that accepting and arguing for these ideas somehow makes them better people and will genuinely help the poor and disadvantaged. Whether this actually helps real black Americans is another issue.
My view is that if one is seriously interested in reading a critical account of the racial division troubling America and the Christian Church, one should look elsewhere. For example, a sociologist from Baylor University, George A. Yancey, has a recently published book entitled "Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism." Yancey shows how the approaches of both colorblindness and anti-racism have failed to accomplish lasting examples of racial reconciliation. He offers empirical studies showing that anti-racism training creates more division than reconciliation and he offers instead a model of "mutual accountalbility" based on authentic communication. For all the wording focusing on love and an open community, Spellers cannot offer this given the focus on victimhood and the implications of guilt and morally coerced repayment. Neither is Spellers use of a more subtle version of anti-racism likely to be contribute to the health of the Episcopal Church which she serves.… (plus d'informations)

Canon Spellers’s book looks at the disruption caused by the current pandemic, and how it has exposed longstanding inequalities in American life: systemic racism, economic inequality, and the comfortable acquiescence to these by institutional Christianity, specifically in the Episcopal Church, historically the denomination of the establishment. Now that Episcopalians can't sit in our comfortable pews feeling satisfied with ourselves, how can we "sacrifice possessions and resources for the sake of love, so that no one has too much and no one goes without?"

She and the church do have a plan: repentance, self-examination, kenosis (emptying out self-centeredness), solidarity and using the “stewardship of privilege” to effect change.… (plus d'informations)