Dear Dean Heath,
We don’t know each other, and so I write this open letter to someone who is primarily, to me, a public figure, though I hope in reading my letter, you feel it addresses you as a beloved child of God. I’m one of the many members of the Duke Divinity School community who witnessed today's protest outside the Chapel. I even ending up joining in a little, once I saw faculty I knew and realized they’d see me either standing with the black seminarians, or standing apart from them. To be clear, though, I’m not speaking for the black seminarians. I don’t know what they’re thinking, except insofar as they articulated and demonstrated their thoughts and feelings out in front of the Chapel. I’m not one of them. I just heard them, and I believe I’ve felt what they’re feeling, too. I feel it now.
So who am I? My name is Marvin Wickware. I’m finishing up my fifth year in the PhD in Religion at Duke, and I’m studying Christian Theology. I believe I might be the only black PhD—not ThD—student left in the program. It’s always hard to tell, with so many people in so many tracks, some of whom aren’t in residence… My advisor is Willie Jennings, one of the faculty members whose departure was mentioned passionately by the black seminarians as they mourned the loss of black faculty members. And since they specifically said they wanted more black doctoral students around, I figured maybe it would be good for me to say something, even as I stand in witness to their powerful self-expression.
I have to imagine that the protest was jarring for you. You probably have all sorts of plans to change things for the better that none of us outside the halls of power at Duke Divinity know about. Perhaps you’re biding your time, learning how this institution functions, and have every intention of making Duke Divinity into the power center of black and womanist theological and ethical thought that it had the potential to become a couple of years ago.
Whatever the case, you might be asking yourself why the black seminarians are so upset with someone who wants to be their friend. To echo what so many students heard from Dr. Jennings in his courses at Duke: if you are asking that question, you are asking the wrong question. I hope this letter will be able to offer you a helpful and faithful set of questions with which you can process the black seminarians’ protest.
To be able to ask those questions, however, I have to talk about love of the enemy. The folks reading this who do know me realize that I’ve basically said I have to talk about my dissertation, so fair warning… In short, though, we live in a society in which white and black people are positioned as enemies to one another. Regardless of your personal commitments, there are institutional and cultural forces that make the suffering of black people unintelligible to white people, economic and social forces that pit the interests of black people and white people against one another. When we love each other well, it is not because our society has encouraged us to do so. Rather, such love is evidence of the power of God to overcome the resistance of human powers.
In that light, there are two truths about the protest that are worth acknowledging, if you’re going to ask faithful questions about that protest. First, you must realize that the people who declared they have no confidence in your agenda—note that they did not say they have no confidence in you as a person—are people for whom you are an enemy, not a friend. This is not a personal insult. I am not saying that you have gone out of your way to antagonize the black seminarians, and they did not say that you have, either. I don’t know how far you have gone in this first year to make Duke Divinity a spiritually and intellectually nourishing place for them, though it is clear that your efforts have not produced satisfying results for them. Insofar as you have tried to be a friend to black people, including these students, your efforts stand as testimony to the power of God to enable us to love our enemies. Nonetheless, whatever your commitments, the realities of our society are such that you are an enemy to the black seminarians.
Before I ask the questions that an enemy might ask in this situation, I need to clarify the second key truth about today’s protest: the presence and self-expression of the black seminarians was rooted in love. They love God and God’s children, so they were unable to put their heads down, accept that black voices are largely irrelevant to the ministerial and academic formation of themselves and their peers, get their degrees, and leave this mess for those who come after them. They love each other, so having seen each other suffering, they were unable to offer empty prayers and words of commiseration, but found they had to act to bear—and ease—each other’s burdens. And they have consistently demonstrated their love for you, by actually hoping that an enemy might feel their pain and find herself compelled to respond decisively. The black seminarians behaved as loving ministers of God might: they called a beloved sister to witness suffering and to repent. They loved you, as an enemy, however much you might wish that you were a friend.
The question before you, then, is not how you might be a good friend to the black seminarians, in their time of pain and place of trial. Rather, the question to ask is simple: how can you be a loving enemy to them?
How can you show them love, just as they are showing you love by hoping that God might work in you, and that you might therefore work against all the pressures—institutional and social—that position you as their enemy?
Perhaps most immediately, what work do you need to do to prepare yourself to listen to what cannot be easy to hear: that despite your convictions and best intentions, you are an enemy?
In other words, you are being confronted with the truth of the gospel: that the God whose crucifixion we just mourned and whose resurrection we just celebrated did not come among us to foster empty and self-affirming “friendship,” but to bring enemies together in difficult, uncomfortable, justice-creating love.
Sincerely,
Marvin Wickware