Gregory C. Ellison II - Fearless Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice

For more information on Fearless Dialoguesa grassroots organization committed to creating unique spaces for unlikely partners to engage in hard, heartfelt conversations on difficult subjectsplease visit www.fearlessdialogues.com.

A New Movement for Justice

G REGORY C. E LLISON II

2017 Gregory C. Ellison II

Foreword 2017 Westminster John Knox Press

First edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

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Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Readers Version. Copyright 1996, 1998 Biblica. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of Biblica. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189.

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Excerpt from Lucille Clifton, seeker of visions from The Book of Light. Copyright 1993 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. Excerpt from The Third Sermon on the Warpland, in The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, ed. Elizabeth Alexander (New York: Library of America, 2005) is reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.

Illustration in is by Wiley Price/St. Louis American and is used by permission.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by Allison Taylor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ellison, Gregory C., II, author.

Title: Fearless dialogues : a new movement for justice / Gregory C. Ellison II.

Description: First edition. | Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. | Includes index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017023311 (print) | LCCN 2017046460 (ebook) | ISBN 9781611648348 (ebk.) | ISBN 9780664260651 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: African American youthSocial conditions. | African AmericansSocial conditions. | Social changeUnited States.

Classification: LCC E185.86 (ebook) | LCC E185.86 .E4373 2017 (print) | DDC 305.235089/96dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023311

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

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Contents

In the summer of 2013, Greg Ellison, professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, reached out to me for a conversation. Im forever grateful that he did.

That November, Greg visited me at home in Madison, Wisconsin. For two days, Greg and I, joined at times by my wife, Sharon, sat on our back porch talking, laughing, and breaking bread together. We did what people do when they meet on the porch, not in the office: we told stories of our lives and opened our hearts to each other. In the process, two people in their seventies found a dear friend in this remarkable man whos half our age.

At one point Greg read us a piece he had written for the book you now hold in your hands. Sharon and I were mesmerized by the story of an experience Greg once had on another porchhis grandmothers front porch in Arkansas, at night, where he sat as she helped him at age six overcome his fear of the dark.

When Greg finished reading, my wife and I sat in silence for a moment, looking at him through teary eyes. Greg, I said, youve hit bedrock.

Greg asked what I meant. Youre writing from the deepest place in you, the only place worth writing from, a place from which flows a universal language. Forget all that marketing stuff. Dont write to a target audience. Write from the deepest place in yourself, and your writing will connect with the deepest place in a wider range of people than you can imagine. That is exactly what Greg has done in this book.

Flash forward to May 3, 2017. Sharon and I were in a Minneapolis hotel ballroom with 650 people who work in ministry and theological education. We were there to participate in a session called Fearless Dialogues, led by Greg Ellison.

I imagine the audience was expecting a lecture by this young but already distinguished African American scholar, teacher, and activist, who holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. But thats not what they got, praise be!

Instead, they got a mind-body-spirit engagement, a live encounter, with a remarkable teacher, with each other, and with a world of great need. Its a world in which we have forgotten that what makes a society great is not how well the strongest can do, but how well we support the poor and the marginalized, the rejected and the unseen.

Gregs session was scheduled to begin at nine oclock; but when that hour came, and even fifteen minutes later, he was not up front making opening remarks. Instead, he was moving among the crowd, coming up close to people, looking them in the eye, and saying, loudly and with conviction, It is good to finally see you! As the time ticked by, 650 folks began to realize that they were in for something different!

What followed was the process described in this remarkable book. Its a process that left me and many others in that Minneapolis ballroom stunned and deeply moved, as Greg reminded usand gave us ways to remind each otherof the humanity and divinity of every human being, the qualities that alone can save us and our shared world.

When the session was over, I heard others say what I was feeling: Im so glad I was here. Ive never experienced anything like this. I feel like some sort of wall has come down inside of me.

Fearless Dialogueslike the organization that bears its nameis rich with penetrating insights and practical approaches to some of Americas deepest and most intractable social needs. Equally important, it is grounded in stories drawn from Gregs life that reveal the deep, broad root system of his remarkable brand of scholarship, teaching, and activism.

Gregs first book bears the revealing title Cut Dead But Still Alive: Caring for African American Young Men (2013). The title comes from William James, who explains it this way in one of his masterworks, The Principles of Psychology (1890):

If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met cut us dead, and acted as if we were non-existent things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would before long well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily torture would be a relief.

That, of course, is the true meaning of Gregs signature greeting to participants in the Fearless Dialogue program: It is good to finally see you! As Greg has said,