The Termination of Dr. David Maldonado:
Lessons for Liberals
November , 2004

As the Executive Director of a progressive organization related to the United Methodist Church I am keenly aware of how short we fall in relation to "walking the walk" and not just "talking the talk” when it comes to racial justice. Reading the findings of the Investigative Committee at Iliff School of Theology, I feel convicted. Most of the same criticisms could be made of the Methodist Federation for Social Action.

I pray that the Iliff community will have the courage to face the issues raised in the review head on. I pray that MFSA, and other predominantly white groups and networks within the UMC, will join Iliff in learning some of the hard lessons that Iliff is being challenged with.
In the following dialogue, the Rev. Gil Caldwell and I look at some of the issues before us.

Kathryn Johnson

Kathryn: As the dust from the elections settles, I find myself pondering two pieces of news that we received on election day. One, that the man who will be president for the next four years enjoyed the support of “white Protestants” while African Americans voters were much more likely to vote for John Kerry. Two, that the investigative report on the situation with Dr. David Maldonao at Iliff School of Theology has been released and that this seminary, widely known for its liberalism, is being faulted for insensitivity and injustice related to “unresolved racial and cultural issues.” This would seem to be a time when “white Protestants,” including those of us who understand ourselves to be liberal or progressive, need to be open to learning what may be some hard lessons.

Gil: I, as an African American North Carolinian, looked at all of the south (the red states) being listed in the Republican “camp” on election night and could not help but engage in some reflective thought. As I grew up, I heard on a regular basis that the south was the so-called “Bible Belt.” It was in those formative years that I saw a disconnect between “Bible Belt” and its history of slavery and my personal experience of legally-sanctioned racial segregation. Therefore when I heard that the election was determined by persons whose votes were shaped by “values,” I wondered how “values” was being defined. The existence of slavery and segregation clashed with both a personal gospel and a social gospel. Yet the Republicans have been able to gain voters who vote against their economic self-interests and do not comprehend that the legacy that still exists of slavery and segregation contradicts their supposed value commitments. Always we who are Christians must ask in our efforts to win elections: “What does it profit a person or a people to win an election and lose their souls in the process?”

Kathryn: How do you see this connecting to the situation at Iliff Seminary?

Gil: Iliff is an illustration of my favorite quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr that I paraphrase: “Most of the evil is not done by evil people, but by good people who do not know they are not good.” The termination that resulted in the premature retirement of Dr. David Maldonado, is an illustration of how easily persons who believe they are beyond or post-racist can in their assumptions that “we are not racist” do as much damage to the vision of authentic racial inclusivity as any out-and-out racist.

Growing up in North Carolina and Texas, we in the black community often said, “We would rather relate to a southern racist who did not seek to deny his/her racism than to a northerner or westerner who thought themselves to be liberal and thus without a racist bone in their body.” Many African Americans carry the psychic scars caused by “trusting” self-proclaimed non-racists whose actions prove to be otherwise.

Kathryn: As a clergy member of the Rocky Mountain Conference living in Denver you’ve been closely involved with Iliff School of Theology over the years.

Gil: Yes. As a former member of the Board of Trustees, I saw first-hand our capacity to be insensitive across-the-board, and the termination of Dr. Maldonado simply brought to the front of the bus our capacity to be racially and culturally insensitive in ways that sometimes bordered on arrogance. Iliff has a history of grappling with racial and cultural conflict. The reports of consultants that were brought to the campus years ago are evidence of that. This then is not a time for denial, avoidance or “moving on,” it is a time for determining what it means to be authentically racially and culturally inclusive in the 21st century. I believe the candor of the Review Report of Iliff will benefit not only Iliff, but all of United Methodism.

Kathryn: The fact that the report from the investigative committee was made public on election day has led me to reflect on the ways in which issues of race permeate all aspects of life and are, in so many ways, interconnected.

Gil: There is a relationship between the “discoveries at Iliff” as articulated by the Review Team and the “Southern Strategy” that made it possible for the Republican Party to seize the south. The relationship is that neither Iliff nor the Republican Party (or the Democratic Party) has found a way to acknowledge that our racial history still has a grip upon us. Republicans would deny that at the heart of their strategy was their successful effort to provide a political home for white southerners who could not reconcile themselves to the pro Civil Rights stance of the national Democratic Party and its leaders, nor the presence of a growing number of black persons in the Party.

Kathryn: The report by the review committee has already caused much reflection and a commitment to take action by the leadership at Iliff. Addressing these issues is not a short-term project, however. In fact, the issues raised in the Iliff situation are precisely the issues that many of us in predominantly white progressive groups must grapple with if we ever hope to be truly inclusive and diverse.

Gil: Iliff, with the most sincere of motivation, has prided itself on racial diversity on campus, without at the same time assessing how it was “called” to be a new institution because of the presence of persons whose culture/heritage/history was different from a white Euro-American approach to education and institutional life.
It is difficult for the most authentically committed of institutions to understand the implications of the words of Dick Gregory and James Baldwin. Gregory said after sitting in a segregated restaurant, “When they finally were ready and willing to serve us, we discovered they did not have what we wanted.” Baldwin, in response to a too-ready desire by some blacks to integrate previously all white institutions said, “Who wants to be integrated into a burning house?”

Our rush to “post-racism” becomes like Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace,” just that, cheap. African Americans have a history of being denied the right to vote and of snafus at the polls. African Americans have a history of being the targets of “domestic” terrorism. African Americans have a history of living with Islam through the presence of the Nation of Islam or more orthodox versions of the religion. But, in the impatience of both white liberals and conservatives to be color blind, thus legitimating history and culture blindness, they fail to learn the universal lessons contained within the African American experience.

Other than in the athletic and entertainment worlds, most of the nation is still doubtful that “anything good (that transcends race) can come out of the African American experience and community.” (A paraphrase of Nathaniel’s question about Jesus: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”) Every institution, church-related and otherwise, would be enriched if it became secure and bold enough to embrace approaches to mission that are at the center of the life-experience of those who know what it is to survive and thrive, “outside of the gate.”

Social Questions Bulletin, October