José Humphreys III

ABOUT 12 YEARS AGO, I was a part of a group of clergy arrested for civil disobedience. After we were placed in a police van, we began to sing freedom songs like “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” I remember that any lingering anxiety I had dissipated as we sang. The experience of music interlaced with our march for justice filled our senses and left an imprint among all those who were arrested.

This points to a larger truth: Music wields undeniable power in human experience. Though I’ve met many people who dislike a particular genre of music, I have never met a person who disliked music itself. When experienced collectively, music unifies. The church knows this and has historically emphasized its importance. Whether songs are led by a single person on a pipe organ, an elaborate rock band with blazing stage lights, or a thunderous, brightly robed choir clapping on the two and four, the sonically healing nature of music can draw a church assembly together into a state of unified resonance.

I RECENTLY HAD a conversation where I found myself feebly describing the pain of caring for an ill and aging parent. My wife, who is an exceptional curator of the emotional landscape, aptly identified my experience, my grief, as an “ache of the soul.” I find no better words for an experience so enveloping, so permeating through my body, my being, down to a cellular level — like a wave of loss that dredges the depths of the soul.

Grief can be complex and does not always begin with a terminal event. Surveyors of the human experience know well the “little” griefs that happen: the waning connection with the living; the loss of memory; the loss of energy and vitality. A once-doting parent who often inquired “Why haven’t you called?” no longer has the energy to do so. Meanwhile, whether relationships with our lost loved ones were good, complicated, or even nonexistent, the ache of the soul can be overwhelming.

EVERY MONTH, TERRY KELLY sends a “rent” check to the Duwamish Tribe on behalf of Quest Church in Seattle, where Kelly serves as senior director of finance.

The church owns the property where it holds services. But the congregation’s monthly payment acknowledges and honors the Duwamish people and other original inhabitants of the land the church occupies, people who have never been “justly compensated for their land, resources, and livelihood,” as the Duwamish “real rent” program puts it.

Members of Quest Church are among the many people of faith who are reimagining the narrative of money in our world today.

The early Christian church was clear in its teachings that money was intended to be used for the benefit of the broader community, not for individual enrichment. But for centuries, and particularly since the Protestant Reformation, the institutional church has more often contributed to ideologies and illusions that reinforce the American form of hypercapitalism. And while money remains a highly visible reality in our everyday existence, our lived stories around money often go uninterrogated.

In America, our views about money tend to be very individualized. We ask questions such as: How is my money going to work for me? Will I have enough to pay bills or retire comfortably? What is my purchasing power? Even the story churches tell is often limited in scope, reduced to teaching about tithes, offerings, building funds, and missions giving. In some instances, we might see positive moves around personal budgeting and reducing debt. But church conversations about money are often left in the realm of personal finance.

FOR SOME REASON, conversations about economics and the church are rare these days — even though scripture includes more than 2,000 verses on poverty, such as laws in the Hebrew Bible on debt, labor, and land ownership. In the gospels, Jesus had many conversations with people about their relationship to money.

Our daily lives wade in the waters of economics, even in the most ordinary ways. When I brushed my teeth this morning, for instance, I used a brand-name electric toothbrush and a brand-name toothpaste, one that claims to be gentle on tooth enamel. After leaving my apartment, I gazed ahead to the street corner, where a man with a familiar face extended his hand in need to passersby. On the streets of New York City, the human cost of economic insecurity is painfully evident. I made my way eastbound toward Park Avenue; the potholes had me pondering how my hood is often overlooked in the city’s infrastructure budget. Yet, somehow, new “affordable” luxury apartments pop up, seemingly out of nowhere; I sometimes wonder if these buildings just appear overnight, ready-made. I’m also reminded that our local community board, through its land use committee, had some say in these new developments.

DNA RESEARCH HAS been a sacred journey of mine for the last 10 years. What started as an exercise in building my family tree evolved into a global adventure unearthing my West African roots. Little did I know that more than 50 percent of my ethnic heritage traces back to West Africa through Nigeria, Benin, and Cameroon (connected to the Bamileke people).

The African roots of the Puerto Rican story often remain obscure. Like many Puerto Ricans, I was taught a one-dimensional story of my heritage. Puerto Ricans often, with beaming pride, share their connection to the cultural heritage of Spain or their Indigenous roots, namely the Taino Indigenous peoples. But, for many, the African strands of identity are held at a distance, even suppressed like a muted djembe beat.

I RECENTLY LISTENED to a riveting podcast with therapist Chichi Agorom, author of The Enneagram for Black Liberation, who centered Black liberation and well-being. She described her own desire in our society to be known beyond the “resilient Black woman” label, and she wanted to cultivate spaces that embraced Black liberation in the form of ease, rest, and wholeness.

In a world that can often reduce Black people to stories of grit and resilience, it took time for me to realize how resilience could be a constricting filter in telling our stories. Resilience undoubtedly makes for compelling drama, because we love a good comeback story. We feel buoyant when hearing about the person who spent 10 years in solitary confinement but somehow integrated back into society. Or the refugee who fled war-torn circumstances and, against all odds, made a life for themselves and future generations in a new land. Or the inner-city student who graduated first in their class despite an underfunded school. Hollywood makes a living from stories like Homeless to Harvard and The Pursuit of Happyness.

While we all need stories of hope, reducing groups of people to just the struggle is a way of shrinking their stories. In her popular Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie described her first encounter with her American college roommate. Her roommate was surprised that, as a Nigerian, Adichie enjoyed listening to popular singer Mariah Carey or that she even knew how to use basic appliances. Yet, in an almost confessional tone, Adichie described her own trip to Guadalajara, Mexico. Prior to visiting, she had envisioned people in Mexico desperately clawing their way out to cross the U.S. border. Instead, what she witnessed was a city with beautiful people, thriving businesses, and a deeply rooted culture.

SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO, scholar, mystic, and pastor Howard Thurman gave a lecture series at Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in Austin, Texas. The series would become the basis for his seminal book Jesus and the Disinherited. One of Thurman’s students, Martin Luther King Jr., reportedly traveled with a copy of Thurman’s book. Through his writings and teachings, Thurman was a mentor and chaplain for many activists during the civil rights movement.

Jesus and the Disinherited continues to inspire many contemplatives and activists and has profoundly shaped my own approach to ministry. The main inspiration comes through a question Thurman posed to American Christianity: “What, then, is the word of the religion of Jesus to those who stand with their backs against the wall?” Thurman’s question confronted the fact that American Christianity was, as historian Vincent Harding put it, a “strange mutation” away from the teachings and ethics of Jesus. Jesus, who was raised in the poor village of Nazareth out of the mainstream of Roman culture. Jesus, who was Galilean, which meant that even among the Jews, Jesus and his people were considered outcasts. Jesus, who spent many of his days moving from town to town touching lepers, transgressing boundaries, befriending Samaritans, and turning over the tables on corrupt economic practices in the temple. In light of Jesus’ ministry, Thurman was challenging an American Christianity that was rampantly materialistic and segregationist, looming above the daily experiences of the disinherited. Thurman’s writings demonstrated how a path-altering question can help inoculate our faith from harmful (American) mutations and point us back to the integrity of Jesus’ Way.