Harvard Divinity Bulletin - Bells Call Jacqui Collins

THE BELLS CALL JACQUI COLLINS BACK TO HER CHILDHOOD FAITH AND TO...THE ILLINOIS STATE SENATE?!
by Wendy S. McDowell

If Jacqueline (Jacqui) Collins, MDiv 2003, hadn't heard church bells chiming one fateful morning, she probably never would have gone down the path that led her to Harvard Divinity School and, eventually, to her successful election as state senator for the newly created 16th Senatorial District in Illinois this last fall (she was sworn into office on January 8, 2003).

Although reconnecting with a spiritual life and choosing a career in politics are not often correlated, for Jacqui Collins the one is definitely linked to the other. A child of the 1960s, Collins had been so traumatized by the assassinations of her heroes—the two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr.—that she had left the Roman Catholic faith of her childhood. "With the bullet that assassinated King, my capacity to dream and my ability to believe in the goodness of humanity was damaged," Collins said. "I became so disillusioned that I left the church."

Because she still believed in God, Collins embarked on a 20-year search for meaning that took her to Baha'i temples, Protestant services, and other traditions. But, she said, "there continued to be a disconnect" when she tried to imagine a positive role for religion in society without King and the Kennedys. Although she had grown up in the parochial school system, she recalled, "no one ever told me about the rich tradition of social teaching that was birthed in the Catholic Church," so she kept searching throughout Chicago to find a way for religion to have deeper meaning in her life again.

Then, "one Sunday morning in 1987 I woke up and I heard the bells tolling," she said. She laughed and added, "For whom the bell tolls, you know?"

Collins realized that the ringing bells were coming from the church located within four blocks of her house, St. Sabina Catholic Church. "When I heard the bells that Sunday, I suddenly felt convinced that I should go to this particular Catholic church, only a short walk from my house," she said.

When she walked in, a white priest was giving a sermon to a black congregation, which immediately aroused a healthy degree of suspicion in Collins. "But his sermon was about why it was important for us to be engaged in the political process and vote for Harold Washington," Collins remembered. "He talked about why it was important for us to make our faith real and the need for a church to transform the whole community and not only the lives of the individuals."

Collins was amazed. "I'd never hear this when I was coming up in the Catholic Church, and to hear it from a white priest was even more phenomenal," she said. Yet, she added, "I still had a distrust. I didn't really believe I could walk back into the Catholic Church and find the kind of ministry that not only nurtured my soul, but also spoke to me as an individual interested in making a difference in society."

"I just sat in the back pew and observed, saying, 'This can't be real. I don't trust this priest,'" she recalled. Then, she started looking around at what the church did and saw "the outreach to the seniors and to the youth." She could clearly see that this priest's social justice message was consistent with how he was living out his faith in the community.

After the Mass was over, Collins walked around the church to get a feel for the sanctuary. The priest had placed a bust of Dr. King in the corner of the church and had designated King a saint. Collins was used to statues in the Catholic Church, but she said, "It was amazing to me that this man had recognized the contribution of Dr. King in such a way." She was intrigued by this priest, whose name was Michael Pfleger, and she decided to find out more about him.

The clincher for Collins was when she discovered that King had been a role model for this pastor just as King had been one for her. "Father Pfleger was 16 years old when Dr. King marched through the community in which he lived, Market Park, where whites were leafleting against King," Collins said. "He became so enamored with King that he decided to learn everything he could about him, including learning all his speeches. It was the witness of Dr. King being able to stand up in the midst of hate to say, 'I love you,' that convinced him as a teenager to become a priest."

Collins knew she had found a church home within walking distance of her house. "To walk into that church that day in 1987 and to see the thread of Dr. King, how he had nourished me as a youth and impacted my life, but had also transformed the pastor at this church— that's where I still worship today."

At that time, Collins was an Emmy Award-nominated news editor at CBSTV in Chicago. She had majored in journalism at Northwestern University and had spent many years as a journalist, which she says "was the way I achieved financial stability," though even in her job, Collins always tried to highlight social and economic justice issues such as redlining, voter disfranchisement, and housing and employment discrimination.

In spite of a busy work schedule, Collins always gave time to volunteer activities, many of them centered on politics. And it was these activities that brought her the most fulfillment, she says. In 1983, she worked on the extensive voter registration drive that helped elect Mayor Harold Washington, and in 1984, she served as a press liaison for the Rev. Jesse Jackson during the Democratic National Convention, and as a press secretary to Congressman Gus Savage.

Not long after she started attending St. Sabina, Collins volunteered as minister of communications there. During her tenure, Father Pfleger launched a large-scale public awareness campaign against alcohol and tobacco companies, and their advertising agencies, for targeting youth in inner-city neighborhoods. Partly because of Collins's efforts, the issue gained national media attention and public support. In 1997, this successful campaign resulted in the Chicago City Council's passing an ordinance banning alcohol and tobacco billboards in the city.

Through this kind of faith-based activism, including years of anti-racism work, Father Pfleger had long been involved in an ecumenical social justice network and was well respected by other religious leaders in Chicago. In 1998, a Protestant minister from this network forwarded Pfleger information about an interesting program being held for the first time at Harvard University. It was the Divinity School's Summer Leadership Institute, designed to train religious and community leaders in economic development techniques. Pfleger scanned the information and immediately passed it on to Collins, saying, "I think this is something you might be interested in."

Collins was extremely interested in the program, which she saw as "a perfect example of living out your faith in the community and seeing the role of the church as more than what takes place on Sunday." She applied, was accepted as a member of the first SLI class, and was not disappointed. "SLI had a huge impact on me," she recalled, "because it combined practical skills with the preaching element of faith, but did it in an interdisciplinary setting taught by faculty with integrity, passion, and focus."

In the SLI program, Collins saw a spark again of "the hope of the 60s, in that there were teachers and participants who had not lost an understanding of moral responsibility and a commitment to making a difference." What's more, she said, the group "existed in a community so we fed off each other."

The experience was so important to her that, Collins said, "I wanted it to continue." She became determined to apply to Harvard Divinity School to gain "a more intellectual understanding of my faith." She knew that the MTS program would enable her to take courses at other Harvard Schools, which meant she could do interdisciplinary work at the Kennedy School of Government. When she researched the faculty, she knew HDS was the place for her. "I learned that Bryan Hehir, an expert in Catholic social teaching, was the dean" she said, "and Preston Williams, one of the leading experts in the country on Dr. King and his role as a theologian and public intellectual, was on the faculty. Talk about a perfect fit!"

Collins applied to HDS and was accepted. She ended up taking courses with Hehir and Williams, but she also took Kennedy School courses with professors including William Julius Wilson, David Gergen, Marshall Ganz, and Mary Jo Bane. "It was my goal always to get the theological grounding that the Divinity School provides but also to get the critical skills that the Kennedy School offers to support the faith foundation," Collins said. "I found courses at each school enriched the coursework at the other. I don't see them as separate. For me, they worked together."

In 2001, Collins was in her final year of Divinity School coursework after having taken a year to do the midcareer program at the Kennedy School. She says she remembers the exact date her life was to take yet another unexpected turn. "It was September 19, and I was meditating and praying like I do every morning," she recalled. "What I was using for meditation that morning was the Prayer of Jabez. The prayer is very short and says, paraphrased, 'Oh, Lord, that you would bless me indeed, that you would enlarge and broaden my territory,' and just as I was reciting that line about enlarging my territory, the phone rang.

"It was my pastor in Chicago, Father Pfleger, who called to tell me that because of the census, Chicago had gained a new state senate seat. He said, 'I suggest strongly that you consider being a candidate. I think you would be a perfect candidate.' I remember he even joked and said, 'Why else would you go to Harvard, especially the Kennedy School, if not to be engaged in politics?' Then he said we need another voice in the public arena that is Christian, besides the Christian right. He told me it was a great opportunity for a person of faith to present a platform that speaks to the needs of the hurting, the lost, the wounded, those left behind.

"He said, 'Pray on it,' but then he told me 'You have three days to decide!'" Collins laughs again at the memory. But, she said, she did indeed pray on it. Her plan had been to go to work for Hillary Rodham Clinton, for whom she had served as a fellow, but she started thinking that going back and trying to make a difference in her own community, the community in which she had grown up and in which she continued to live and worship, was "pretty logical."

Still, Collins admitted, "It was not an easy decision. Fear is always a component when you take a risk like that. There was no guarantee of success, so I had to overcome a fear of failure, and a fear that I might not be as effective as I wanted to be. Also, I was aware that when you step into the public spotlight, you become a target. Was I willing to take that risk to make a difference?"

Collins said that while she never got a "confirmation" from God when she prayed, she did receive a message of God saying, "Trust me." She knew how far God had brought her in her life, from a childhood in a single-parent home in the inner city to Harvard. She remembered a saying Hilary Clinton had used in her United States Senate campaign—that "politics is the art of making possible what appears to be impossible"—and she just so happened to be taking a course at Harvard, taught by Brian Palmer, which talked a lot about people taking a risk for transformation. All of these things, she said, "gave me the strength to say 'Yes!'"

She campaigned hard for the primary, which in Democratic-controlled Chicago is the more difficult race (Collins says it is called a "blood sport," and for good reason). She pounded the pavement of her district, which was located in the south side of Chicago and included eight city wards and five suburban townships. The district's constituency, she said, is about 69 percent black, 17 percent white, and 11 percent Hispanic, and ranges from people in poverty to the upper-middle class. Although the bulk of the population is middle class, she says, "the area suffers from all the effects of what we call in the urban studies lingo, 'white flight.'"

To address this population and its issues, Collins said, "I put into practice what I had learned in David Gergen's class. I spoke in churches, senior centers, and community meetings." She ran on a platform that included favoring increased funding for public schools, the reduction of prescription drug costs for seniors, economic development, affordable housing, and a moratorium on capital punishment.

Collins's opponent did attack her, which she says was the most difficult part of the campaign, especially since he chose to criticize her for having gone to Harvard and therefore not really being connected to the community. This was especially ironic, Collins said, because the very reason she went to Harvard was to learn how to better serve her community, but luckily, she said, "I could bring my activism to the table, so his argument was not able to carry that much weight."

She won the primary in March 2002, with 83 percent of the vote, and then breezed through the general election in November with 93 percent of the vote. She said she is especially proud that the Democrats were able to win in Illinois across the board, including the governorship, because she thinks this shows their collective ability to "speak to the issues and maintain a strong identity of what it means to be a Democrat."

Collins said she knows the job is not going to be easy, because Illinois is "facing a financial crisis now, like all states, given the economic downturn. So we will have to make hard decisions." Nevertheless, she maintains the optimism nurtured by her faith, saying, "At least we have the opportunity to help people that need the help, and we don't have to balance the budget on the backs of the poor."

She knows it will take "a lot of hard work, discipline, and research" to be a responsible legislator who "balances passion with critical thinking." Still, Collins aspires to continue offering words of hope and possibility to her constituency, just as they were offered to her as she was coming up in the same neighborhood.

Collins is not short on praise for all the great heroes who influenced her, political and academic, but she said that credit for her political victory and her Harvard degree belongs most of all to one of her grandmothers, who died before Collins went to Harvard. "She was born in 1902, and like so many of her generation, she had so many doors closed to her because of segregation, but she always made me believe I could do anything," Collins explained. "Without her prayers, without her belief in me and instilling in me self-esteem, I could not have accomplished what I did. So many things in society deny your worth as a person, but she got me through. When I matriculated at Harvard, I felt that I was honoring her memory. And now that I'm an elected official, I remember her saying, 'To think that the hands that picked cotton can now pick our public officials!' and I realize that my election is a tribute to her, too."

As with this dedication to her grandmother, Collins always reveals herself to be someone who brings her heart, mind, and soul to whatever she does, and who is always aware of the others who have helped her and whom she wants to help, as opposed to seeking her own personal and political gain. As such, she is the kind of person for whom the bells call, not for whom they toll.