Disciple: Facing Our Past to Create a New Future
‘The past is redeemed by daring to re-enter it.’
By Josephine H. Hicks
In early 2017, I had the privilege of traveling to Ghana with the Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, along with other bishops and current and former board members from Episcopal Relief & Development.
As one of those former board members, I was eager to see the organization’s work in action. More importantly, the racial injustice and tensions in our country, state and my own city of Charlotte drew me to learn more about the roots of those issues.
The trip was entitled “The Presiding Bishop’s Reconciliation Pilgrimage to Ghana.” A fellow pilgrim told me several of her friends had asked, “Why does going to Ghana help with reconciliation?” Presiding Bishop Curry would answer that question with advice he once heard from a Buddhist monk: “The past is redeemed by daring to re-enter it.”
In Ghana, we re-entered one of the darkest periods of our past: the slave trade. Many of us knew something about the horrors of slavery in the United States – human beings held in captivity and treated like work animals, routinely beaten, separated from family and sometimes worked literally to death. But on the pilgrimage, we stepped even further back into the history, into a chapter about which many of us knew little. In Ghana we encountered the harsh realities – cruelties – faced before captives were forced onto the ships headed to the New World.
STEPPING BACK IN TIME
Our first step into that history took us to Pikworo Slave Camp in Paga, not far from the border of Ghana and Burkina Faso. I had never even heard of a slave camp. It was not so much a “camp” as a place where slave traders allowed their captives to rest for a week or two. By the time they arrived at the slave camp, many had already walked 800 kilometers (almost 500 miles) or more, from Mali, Burkina Faso and other parts of west-central Africa.
At this “resting place,” the captives were tied to trees. They were fed once a day, taken with their hands shackled behind their backs to a big rock, where food was placed in indentations carved into the rock. People had to fight amongst themselves to get to the food, then drop to their knees and eat like animals out of the troughs. If they misbehaved, they were tied to rocks, lashed and forced to sit in the scorching sun, often left there to die. Those who died from punishment, malnourishment or disease were buried in mass graves.
Historians know from the ages of the trees that the trees we saw were there during the slave trade. The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, presiding bishop’s canon for evangelism, reconciliation and creation, wrote of one of the trees, “I hugged her, wept and thanked her for holding my chained ancestors as they slept and dreamt of freedom.”
After visiting the slave camp, we boarded a bus, a plane and another bus to travel to Cape Coast, a fishing port and city in south Ghana. There had been no such easy transportation for the slaves. The slaves who made it to Cape Coast walked the entire 750 kilometers barefoot through forests, over rocky terrain or along dusty trails. Those who were too weak to make it were left to die along the way. They had no idea where they were going or why. When they finally arrived at the coast, they were taken to dungeons inside of British and European castles, often in the dark of night, where they heard the ocean for the first time. It must have been terrifying. What is that roaring, crashing sound? What is happening? Will I ever see my family again? There was virtually no light, no ventilation, no respite from the heat. They slept standing or literally piled on top of other human beings, wading in their own excrement. The stench in the dungeons is still there, more than 200 years later. The darkness, in every sense of the word, is palpable.
Missionaries from the Church of England established a mission and held services inside of Cape Coast Castle. It’s difficult to imagine, priests preaching the Gospel, while fellow human beings were held in dungeons, treated more inhumanely than any animal. How could the priests have possibly spread the word of Jesus’ love for all of God’s children while standing only yards away from the dungeons? Sadly, the slaves were not thought of as fellow human beings but as chattel, commodities. The sophisticated and wealthy slave traders even had insurance for them. Losses were not thought of as losses of human life but losses of goods.
As we stood at the Door of No Return, the castle door through which slaves were taken to board ships, never to return to their homes or families, many in our group were overcome with grief and anger. Wailing, gut wrenching sobs. Quiet tears. Silent reflection. Prayers. Singing “Amazing Grace.” I stood, as the descendent of slave owners, in shame. I have never felt so white or so out of place. I felt like an intruder who did not belong in this raw and emotional scene of African Americans reconnecting with their ancestors.
I came away in awe of every single person who survived what they went through just to get to the Door of No Return – surviving the months of walking in chains, the slave camps, the malnutrition, the dehydration, the heat, the lashings, the rapes, the dungeons, the emotional anguish. When I think about the hardship of the voyage to the Americas, the horrors endured in slavery and the relentless injustices heaped on their descendants throughout our country’s history, I am speechless. The strength, the resilience, the courage – it’s beyond incredible.
As I looked out at the ocean, I could only imagine the ships coming and going. The waters that once took the slaves in small row boats out to the ships for their trans-Atlantic voyage are now teeming with local fishermen. The waters that meant chaos, terror and bondage now support new industry and new life. The Anglican cathedral that once was under the charge of a bishop and priests from the Church of England is now part of the Anglican Province of West Africa and led by a Ghanaian Archbishop. Clergy from the cathedral celebrate Eucharist with the fishermen on the beach outside of Cape Coast Castle. In the Diocese of North Carolina, we strive to reach out beyond our doors, to “Go to Galilee,” to be part of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement. Just think about Ghanaian clergy who take the redeeming love of Jesus and his body and blood to the fishermen on the same beach where shackled feet trod. There is some redemption there. Some glimpse of the kingdom breaking through.
MATCHING GIFTS AND NEEDS
Facing the realities and cruelties of the past were not the only stops on our pilgrimage itinerary. Quite the contrary; we also witnessed hope and new life by touring some of Episcopal Relief & Development’s asset-based community development (ABCD) programs. These initiatives use an approach that utilizes existing gifts and capacities of people and their communities. The goal is to encourage change and development from within rather than an outside source, identifying where local assets meet local needs and creating sustainable development opportunities.
We met women who have expanded their farming capabilities with the help of donkeys, which pull the plows that till the fields and the carts that get the goods to market. Donkeys are easier for the women to handle than the bullocks (male bovines) typically used for plowing. With donkeys, women can plow the fields themselves. The donkeys are provided by Episcopal Relief & Development’s partner Anglican Diocesan Development & Relief Organization (ADDRO), and the women slowly pay for the donkeys with their new earnings. One of the women we met, Esther, named her donkey “God Be With Her.” Esther told us she can now afford school fees for her children with the increased income, thanks to better crop production and access to markets with the help of her donkey. We also met women whose businesses, such as basket weaving and shea butter production, have benefitted from micro-loans through ADDRO. These programs help those who have been systematically and historically under-resourced to build capacity with their own assets and skills. This is one of the ways that Episcopal Relief & Development empowers communities and pursues justice, in Ghana and beyond.
BRINGING IT HOME
Presiding Bishop Curry is eager for the entire Church to experience what we did in Ghana, at least vicariously. A Facebook page, “Presiding Bishop’s Pilgrimage to Ghana,” was created to share photos and reflections. The film crew that accompanied us is hard at work on videos. Episcopal News Service has already published several articles from the trip.
I encourage you to see it all, not just to learn more about the trip, but to understand how the roots of the work being done in faraway places like Ghana share the same roots of the reconciliation work we do here at home. I have been fortunate to see this work up close on global, national, diocesan and local levels, and the work being done in local churches is every bit as important as that happening on global stages. You don’t have to travel the world to make a difference.
Get involved in racial reconciliation efforts here. We have amazing resources in the Diocese of North Carolina, and a profound history to explore. Re-enter the past by visiting the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, built on the site of the 1960 sit-in at the all-white Woolworth’s counter. Visit the Stagville Historic site in Durham, one of the largest plantations in the pre-Civil War South, where restored buildings give a sense of the lives of the enslaved African Americans (900 at one point) who lived at Stagville.
Many parishes and congregations are talking about race and tackling injustice. For example, St. Philip’s, Durham, has an active racial justice and reconciliation ministry designed to “(a) create spaces for members to listen and better understand racism and other forms of oppression, (b) collaborate with allies in Durham in order to understand our collective history of oppression and resistance, and (c) find creative, meaningful, and active ways to ‘strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.’” St. Peter’s, Charlotte, has held many community forums and discussions that tackle issues of systemic racism, bias and injustice. The parish reads and discusses books together – recent examples include Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Waking Up White by Debby Irving.
What’s happening in a congregation near you? What can you start in your own congregation?
The diocesan website has a wealth of resources available to help individuals and parishes understand and start to address systemic injustice and racial inequality. The Racial Equity Institute also offers an excellent two-day training program to help lay a foundation of common understanding and vocabulary, and the diocesan Racial Justice and Reconciliation Committee (RJRC) now offers subsidies to help parishioners attend.
Presiding Bishop Curry’s hope for our trip to Ghana is the same hope we have for all reconciliation work. He said, “My hope is that this journey will help us reclaim and reface a common history that we have, a painful past, not for the sake of guilt, not for the sake of wallowing in the past, but for the sake of us, black, white, red, yellow and brown, finding ways to face our past and then turn in another direction and create a new future.”
Josephine Hicks is a former Episcopal Relief and Development Board member and a parishioner at St. Peter’s, Charlotte.
Tags: North Carolina Disciple
