Rev. Thom's Reclaiming the Abandoned Places of Empire

My colleague and friend, Rev. Thom Belote, of Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church in Overland Park, KS, has provided a wonderful sermon on the abandoned places of empire and tells the story of the ministry of Rev. Ron Robinson in Tulsa Oklahoma.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.revthom.blogspot.com/ I've included some snippets and a photograph.

Payday loans come to Overland Park...

From his sermon:

The Abandoned Places of Empire. I did not invent the term. This term comes from New Monasticism, one of dozens of contemporary, post-modern, alternative, experimental, Christian movements. (The first of the "Twelve Marks" of the New Monastics is "relocation to the abandoned places of empire.") The New Monastics view the world we live in as comparable to the Roman Empire at the time when the Roman Empire began to disintegrate and collapse. They would say that the United States demonstrates imperialist tendencies, and not just in terms of its international policies.

What are the tendencies of empires? In an empire, the state, the church, and the culture become deeply intermeshed, inseparably interwoven. Empires elevate entertainment and the marketplace as the central focal points of society. The Roman Coliseum and the marketplace of 2,000 years ago are found today at The Legends [an enormous, upscale shopping and entertainment complex] with its race track and Nebraska Furniture Mart. We know the legends of Roman mythology. The Legends of today has a Coldstone Creamery.

Another feature of empire is that it systematically draws the wealth and resources out of some places and centralizes that wealth elsewhere. When the Roman Empire occupied the Holy Land, it taxed the people and sent that money back to Rome. It set the terms of trade and pulled goods and resources from the margins to the center.The Roman religion, first pagan then Christian, preached a message that justified the state.

Today, the New Monastics and other alternative Christian groups are critical of dominant forms of Christianity that legitimize the larger culture. The New Monastics critique the mega-church movement and its shopping mall aesthetics. They express concern towards the Gospel of Prosperity that many of these churches preach, the idea that God wants you to be rich and that material wealth is a sign of holiness. They criticize what they call “cultural Christianity,” a church that implicitly or explicitly blesses the larger culture....

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I want to tell you a story. It is a true story. It takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is a story of two cities. It is the story of Owasso and Turley, two of Tulsa’s satellite communities. My good friend Reverend Ron Robinson lives in Tulsa. He is a UU Christian and wanted to start a new church. When Tulsa desegregated, the white flight sent people racing to Owasso. Owasso is an affluent suburb completely and completely lacking for liberal religion, or liberal anything for that matter.

Since liberal Christianity didn’t even have a place in Owasso, Ron decided he would start a church there. He called it Epiphany and the church grew 600%. In other words, it grew from a church of two members (Ron and his wife) to a church of twelve. One Easter they managed to get 25 in worship. The church grew dispirited with trying to make itself viable in Owasso. The spirit moved them and they decided to replant their church in Turley.

Let me tell you a little bit about Turley. In the 1960s Turley was a solidly blue-collar town. By the new millennium it had become an abandoned place of empire. It had gone from blue-collar to no-collar. Its residents were either retired or unemployed. Here is what the community looked like: no new housing had been built in decades. There were almost no businesses, no employment to be found, and little if any public transportation. Parts of Turley are unincorporated, meaning no municipal government has responsibility for it. Trash piles up. Feral dogs and cats roam freely. There are few grocery stores and the community had no access to healthy food. There are no hospitals and no health clinics. There are no movie theaters and no spaces for youth to gather. You can’t even get a pizza delivered there.

So, Ron Robinson, his wife, and their 15 year-old daughter moved there and they re-launched the church, calling it “The Living Room.” Its impact was negligible. One Easter the church decided to line Turley’s streets with pots full of blooming daffodils and tulips. People came and cut the flowers or dumped out the dirt and took the pots.

The church changed again. They decided to stop holding regular church programs and to transform themselves into a community center which they called “A Third Place.” Today, the church is a core group of around 8 people. They operate a community center for the residents of Turley. The Community Center runs a food pantry, an extremely popular internet center, a modest library, a community medicine clinic, an art gallery, and a coffeehouse with live musicians. They offer free meals, community classes, a children’s area, a games area, meeting space, a sewing co-op, 12 Step programs, and an animal welfare clinic.

They formed a partnership with the University of Oklahoma which has launched public health and social work initiatives in the town and works to bring community health services to the residents there. They have started a community gardening program. Native American members of the Turley community plant the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. With a donation of land, they have started a community orchard. They practice what they call “guerrilla gardening” which involves reclaiming abandoned lots or even a median strip or a sidewalk and planting there.

There is hope here, but there is also tremendous despair. Here is one more thing to say about Turley. “A Third Place” community center is actually on the exact same street as All Souls UU Church in Tulsa, the largest UU church in the country. They are eight miles apart from one another. The average life expectancy in the zip code where “A Third Place” is located is 14 years less than the average life expectancy of All Souls’ zip code.

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There is wonderful ministry going on all over the country under the Unitarian Universalist label. Thanks to Ron Robinson and his unique ministry.