Sojourner Truth

I included a collection of diverse names of people who worked and some who gave their lives in the cause of civil justice an freedom. The names are placed behind the image of Sojourner Truth. The bottom section of the paining is mad e up of a repeated phrase from the famous speech she gave in 1851 at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio. I used symbols to convey a sense of ancestral histories and cultural perspectives.
James Watkins, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Western Michigan University

Do you know what it's like for people of color to have one of their own numbered among the saints?

One of the major themes in the Bible is that God liberates. God brings the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Repeatedly, God sets the Israelites free from foreign slavery. They turn repeatedly to other gods, but they are finally willing and able to worship God alone.

However, people of color, and particularly indigenous peoples, will tell you that being physically free is only part of the problem. I told you earlier this year about Harriet Tubman, a conductor of the Underground Railroad, who always had to bring a gun along to shoot any of the escaping slaves who wanted to return to their masters. Sure, many slaves did a simple economic calculation and decided that returning and being punished was a bit better than being caught, tortured, and killed.

But it's more than that: slavery blights the mind and soul as well as the body. There are large parts of us that want to remain slaves. Additionally, religious establishments over time have manipulated images of God to justify the status quo of oppression. When the Spaniards came to Mexico and Latin America, for example, they conquered the native peoples, and justified it through false interpretations of the Gospel.

For example, Saúl Trinidad and Juan Stam, writing in Faces of Jesus: Latin American Christologies, outline a few depictions of Christ in Latin America that are defective, and that are intentionally or unintentionally used as the "opiate of the people," to keep people from challenging oppressive social conditions. There is the Santa Claus Christ, the dispenser of gifts. Accept Christ, and you get gifts, such as healing at a service. There are some Evangelicals who preach a gospel of prosperity - accept the Gospel and God will reward you financially. Or the magic potion Christ, the Christ who miraculously cures problems, as in this sermon quoted in the book:

Christ seeks to enter into the human heart, says the evangelist. When Jesus enters a sinner, there is direct contact with God. Jesus takes over that person's interor life, and he or she receives the supernatural power to conquer temptation ... God provides for your needs ... Are you sick? Sick with sin, sick from nerves, sick from anything? Then know this, that God has prepared for you a perfect heaven, a place of peace, love, happiness, and justice.

Another, and slightly related, false image is the passport Christ, where acceptance of Christ is a "lottery ticket" to escape to heaven from earth. Also linked to this is the asocial Christ, the dualistic Christ who demands withdrawal from the world. Certainly, conservative American Evangelicals also preach this sort of Christ.

Well, Jesus does give. But Christ doesn't give trivialities. And Christ also demands: service, sacrifice, discipleship. Liberation from material and physical deprivation is important, but it must come alongside spiritual liberation.

Sojourner Truth's story is one of spiritual liberation. Like Harriet, she was born a slave, named Isabella Baumfree. A year before New York mandated emancipation, her owner, John Dumont, promised her freedom. However, he was a harsh and cruel man, and he reneged, claiming that a hand injury made her less productive.

She spun him 100 pounds of wool to fulfill her sense of obligation. And then, she escaped with her infant daughter Sophia. She left behind Thomas, the man Dumont forced her to marry, and her other children Peter, James and Elizabeth, who were bounds as servants until they were 20.

She later met Isaac and Maria Van Wagener, a Quaker family. They took her in, and bought her services from Dumont for $20. She lived with them until New York's Emancipation Act took force, and had a life-changing religious experience that made her a devout Christian. Public Broadcasting Service, an American public media service, reports that she was swept up in the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant evangelical movement that emphasized living simply and following the Holy Spirit.

In 1827, newly-free Isabella considered returning to the Dumont farm to attend Pinkster, a celebration of New York slaves. She was saved from joining her ex-master by a frightening vision of God, followed by the calming presence of an intercessor, whom Isabella recognized as Jesus. With Jesus as her soul-protecting fortress, Isabella gained the power to rise above the battlements of fear.

She did not go back. There likely are slaves who escaped, and decided out of fear to return to their masters. Do you know what St. Martin de Porres, a half African saint and healer said when his priory was in debt? "I am only a poor mulatto. Sell me. I am the property of the order. Sell me."Parallel to that, people who have been colonized in modern times, like people in the Global South, often revisit the patterns of oppression they have been subject to upon minorities in their own cultures - a modern equivalent of returning to one's master. But Isabella did not go back. God had decolonized her.

In 1839, her son, Peter, took on a job on a whaling ship. From 1840 to 1841, she received 3 letters from him, although in his last letter he claimed he had sent 5. When the ship returned to port in 1842, Peter wasn't on board, and she never heard from him again.

On June 1, 1843, she changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth. And then, she left the Van Wagenens to preach about abolition. And, by the way, she only spoke Dutch until she escaped, and English was a late-acquired second language. And yet, she had the confidence to speak before hundreds of people.

During the Civil War, Sojourner recruited Blacks for the Union Army. In 1864, she met President Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, she rode the streetcars in Washington to help force their desegregation - shades of Rosa Parks.

Truth died on November 26, 1883, at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan. Her remains were buried there at Oak Hill Cemetery beside other family members. Her last words were "Be a follower of the Lord Jesus."

My brothers and sisters, Jesus wants God's kingdom to come about here, on earth. But that can't happen if we oppress one another. And make no mistake, oppression can easily extend beyond physical slavery. Oppression can take the form of empire. Economic and cultural domination can erode a culture's sense of self. That can cause a sense of threat that leads to authoritarianism. Look at Nazi Germany. The Allies exacted punitive reparations after WWI. The Nazis escalated antisemitism to genocide, built a war machine, and started conquering neighboring countries.

Paul, in his letter to Philemon, calls him to receive his runaway slave Onesimus. The Bible on numerous occasions fails to condemn slavery ... as Whites did in Sojourner's time. Sojourner could have gone back to her master. Today, we see formerly colonized countries replicating the patterns of oppression, like sexism, classism and homophobia, that they learned from their colonial masters. That is true colonialism.

But colonialism meets its match in Jesus, because Jesus decolonizes. Jesus decolonizes! Some Christians use Jesus to escape from this world, thinking that heaven will be better. But that way, empire wins. In contrast, empire could never destroy Sojourner Truth's soul. Jesus led her out of colonization and into freedom! And empowered by Christ she went to free others. Sojourner Truth shows for people of color all around the world, a vision of Jesus decolonized, and a vision of Jesus decolonizing.

Women in the Stone Church Meet Sojourner Truth
(Recollections of "And Ain't I a Woman?" speech, Old Stone Church, Akron, Ohio, May 1851)

Patricia Flower Vermillion is Writer in Residence for the Artists in Education program of the Virginia 11 Commission for the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Theology Today, The Writer, Them a, Poet, and other journals. This poem was published in Theology Today Vol 53 No 1, 1996

Chosen, we are called
to champion uneducated women in chains.
Our horse hair underskirts keep silk
from touching the ground. Belgian lace
collars and bonnets are copied carefully
from Godey's Ladies Book; uniformly
steamed and pressed.

In the Old Stone Church, surrounded by men
who think we are deceived by the serpent
only our corsets keep us from collapsing. Suddenly, church doors open and bold breezes
process down aisles with a black broom woman.
Her unbleached cotton skirt stirs up twigs
and laughter. Queen of scarecrows, she pushes
chairs to a corner then extends herself
while ministers tell us, women-real women
must be cared for and helped into carriages.
When the dark broom rises
mill workers lock arms at elbows
to form whistling walls. She looks up
and sweeps silence across pews-preaches
prophesies, picks walls apart
with sharp straw words. In the end
ministers and mill hands applaud
and stones shout.

Scratched by horse hair skirts
light headed, laced tight
we are culture's captives
while Sojourner Truth
stands seventy two inches, head-to-toe free.