Our Reputation

There's a culture war on.  Because of that, there have been a few times this week, including twice today, where people have made comments to me along the lines of: "Millsaps should work to appear more conservative because the other small private colleges we compete with are."

I'm most likely going to have an opinion on that.  First off, and the most obvious to me, is that this is a battle we can't possibly win.  Some of these other small, private colleges are so far out on a limb with regard to their cultural doctrine that we could never hope to survive out there with them.  I question not only their academic integrity on this but sometimes their sanity.  That's simply not a path Millsaps can travel down.  

Secondly, I don't think we should sell something we don't believe.  We're not a conservative Christian college.  We're just not.  What we can do is get better at telling the truth about ourselves, and that truth is that we work pretty hard to present a balanced view of things to our students and then make them work like hell to develop the critical thinking skills that enable them to make their own choices.  Producing students with the skills and the knowledge to make their own decisions is about the only thing I can think of that makes the effort and the money that go into a Millsaps education worthwhile.

We allow and encourage both our students and our faculty to go down whatever path they feel is the most truthful, and that sometimes means we have faculty and students who get involved in protests, and seeing Millsaps shirts at these protests means we're a bunch of communists to some, but to others, it signals that we're fighting for them, which sometimes makes a big difference.  For some people, one kid with blue hair and a picket sign makes all the kids with short hair and Bibles invisible.  Millsaps has always fought that perception.  We may enroll purple-haired lesbian communists sometimes, but there are not that many, and they don't describe us--but most importantly, we provide them with the academic freedom to pursue their own path, so long as they do the work, and there's a lot of work.  

When I was at Millsaps, there was a detente moment in the culture war, and the socialists broke bread with the Young Republicans fairly often.   I myself was pretty conservative until I figured out that Reagan wasn't going to keep his promises.   If you go to Millsaps today, you'll see that the Young Republicans are still active, and so are the Babes for Bernie Socialists.  They live together and take classes together because we allow them to and we encourage them to.  We don't make their decisions for them.  As much as people accuse us of indoctrinating students, the reality is just the opposite.  We provide them with a varied table of information and make them make their own choices.  We refuse to indoctrinate them.  We put a balanced diet on the table and force them to use critical thinking in what they choose to put on their plate.  

Over the years, I've come to realize that one of our biggest allies in this effort is Ole Miss.  Whatever they were in the sixties, they now work to present students with a balanced perspective.  You'd be surprised how many students go from Millsaps to do graduate work at Ole Miss.  It's a good fit.  Ole Miss doesn't have the same reputation for liberalism that we do, probably because they fought against segregation way back when and we avoided the fight by opening our roll books without being forced to.  Beyond that, we're very similar, and after college, we end up in the same law firms, the same medical offices, and the same banks as the kids who went to Ole Miss on day one, and it's a good fit.

We sometimes get the reputation for being a bunch of radical nutbags, and that isn't fair because it isn't true.  We have some people on one end of the socio-political spectrum, but we have people on all the other ends too.  Our best path forward might be to just get better at communicating the message that we're balanced, and we teach our students to seek their own path, and just how valuable that is compared to schools that make these choices for their students.

Weathering the Storm

 I find it interesting that some of the voices that were the loudest and most radical when it came to desegregating the Methodist Church are now the same ones advising caution and patience, and moderation with regard to the current conflict over sexuality. Some of these voices are pretty high up in the church. Some are very high up in the church.

A lot of this I attribute to the fact that our members fought to desegregate the church over sixty years ago. Time and experience have a way of tempering the raging passions of youth. Young pastors care little if their actions divide the congregation when they believe they are acting as Christ would. Older pastors are more anxious to wait and see.

These are not universal descriptions. I know some pastors in their thirties seeking caution and advising patience and some pastors in their nineties who are more than ready to storm the ramparts. Some are very concerned about showing that the rules of the church are important and will be followed, while others are adamant that the only rule that matters is the example of Christ.

What I know is this: there's no way out of this without some people getting hurt. There's no way out without some people having their faith in the church challenged. I think about this a lot, and I can't think of a path through this that doesn't alienate somebody, and alienating people from their faith is pretty serious business.

For me personally, me Boyd here at my computer: I'm always going to side with the weak. I'm always going to side with the smaller force. Some of the best Christians I know are gay. Some of the best Christian couples I know are gay. Some of the most devoted members of my church are gay. I come from a time when these people had to hide who they were to survive. Some of them still do. It's hard for me to imagine this is what Jesus would want.  It's hard for me to imagine Jesus wouldn't fight for their full inclusion in every aspect of the church.

That being said, I'm not in a position of any authority in the church. I can say my piece and decide where I stand, but that's about it. This will be decided by other people. I'm getting used to the idea that some people I know, some people I support, are going to get hurt--and I'm sorry for that, but I can't figure a way out of it.

I don't like being in the position of having to say, "The church doesn't support you, but I do." I don't know how to stop that, though. I think that's what Jesus would have me do.  I think there are times when that is what Jesus did.

Churches that follow rules give many people a great sense of comfort and security, and I appreciate that. When they lose faith that their church doesn't follow rules it causes them great discomfort and feelings of insecurity. I appreciate how important that is. I also appreciate the damage it causes when you tell people, "You're not good enough to go with us." which I believe the current conflict does.

There are people I knew who are no longer with us, who were members at Galloway for many years and had someone in their lives that they loved enough to marry at the church but were forbidden to. There are couples, young and old, now that I would love to say, "The church sanctions your love as much as I do," but I can't.

When I can put names to an issue, it's no longer political. When I can say: This is about Patricia, or Lawrence, or Elizabeth, or Timothy, then it becomes something more than doctrinal; when it becomes about people I know, then it's deeply moral and considerably more important.

I feel like our roots are deep enough for the tree to weather this storm. Hopefully, the trunk is flexible enough. Sometimes, I think love attracts lighting, that caring for others lays the seedbed for pain--mine and theirs.

For the people I know who will be hurt by all this--I can't make it stop. I just can't. My ego is big enough and warped enough where that alone causes me considerable pain and embarrassment, but I can't change it.

I'll sit with you through the storm, though. It doesn't matter how wet or cold we get; I won't budge. Sometimes, that's all anyone can do.  

Till Justice

People are upset that Carolyn Bryant Donham died without ever being prosecuted for her part in the death of Emmett Till.  They're hurt because the scales of justice were never balanced in his death.

They're missing the point.  Because the scales of justice were never balanced is what gave the Till story its power.  Because Emmett Till was denied, justice moved the country to begin taking action on civil rights in the South and racism throughout the whole country.  That may not have ever happened if Till's death was met with equal justice when it happened.  

Sometimes the entire point is that a thing was broken.  Consider the crack in the liberty bell or the leaning tower of Pisa.  Were these things whole, you would never have known about them.   Emmett Till never received justice.  That imbalance, that brokenness of purpose, moved the entire world.

Good Ole Boys

Big parts of Mississippi politics are pretty wholesome. We don't have much money, so everybody kind of goes along to get along. Some of it could easily be an episode of the Andy Griffith Show. We do pretty well on issues about gender. The most powerful mayor in Mississippi is a woman, and Evelyn Gandy was once the most powerful person in the state, even though she couldn't get elected governor.

We get along pretty well on most things until it comes to issues of race, and then it gets murderous. I'd say improving the lot of Mississippi's black citizens was our third rail, but hardly anyone in Mississippi has ever ridden a subway, so they don't get the metaphor.

Why can't we have hospitals in the Delta? Black people live there. Why can't we have money for Jackson? Black people live there. Why did a football star, a professional wrestler, and a governor think it was ok to steal money for the poor? Black people are poor.

What ends up happening is in these districts that are mostly black, nobody wants to work with them, so they elect people nobody wants to work with, so these districts like the Delta and Jackson that need cooperation from the state don't get it. They end up electing candidates who are really good at civil rights rhetoric instead of economics and industry, and civic administration, which is what they really need. Jackson is the best example of this.

My uncle Boyd and my Dad were acolytes of Ivan Allen. Allen was the mayor of Atlanta, and he believed that there were too many black people who lived in Atlanta for the city to ever prosper if he, as mayor, continued with such brutal oppression as they experienced in the past. By today's standards, Allen didn't do much for the poor blacks of Atlanta, but what he did do was give Martin Luther King Jr. and his church enough room to breathe so that they had room to grow and whatever happened in Selma or Jackson or Memphis, they had a safe place to grow in Atlant, and that changed everything.

Mississippi has got to realize that the only way we're ever going to lift ourselves off the bottom of everything is if we enable our large black subculture. It's not going to be easy to incorporate a subculture that's been oppressed for hundreds of years with the culture that did the oppressing, but that's out only viable path forward.

What I'm writing sounds like it could have been said in 1960, and it was in several of my Uncle Boyd's speeches, then again in some of my dad's testimony on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce in the seventies. It's been sixty years, and the message isn't getting through.

It doesn't do any good for me to call for a Mayor for Jackson that's better at facilities management, economic development, or real estate because so many people in Jackson are more concerned about having their basic civil rights protected, and they have reason to. They're less interested in developing an effective police force because they're more concerned about what the police do to their people. I would be too.

I don't have any answers. That's gonna have to come from somebody wiser than I. What Ivan Allen said is true, though. We're never gonna rise unless we take everybody with us. Without that, we're gonna stay on the bottom.