Video: Public Courage and the Academy: The Future of the Church and the Cosmopolitan Leaders It's Calling For

Watch this online conversation featuring Bishop Yvette Flunder and the Rev. Eric Ovid Donaldson.

Bishop Yvette Flunder (she/her) is an American womanist, preacher, pastor, activist, and singer from San Francisco, California. She is the senior pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, California, and the Presiding Bishop of the Fellowships of Affirming Ministries.

Public Courage and the Academy is a speaker series that explores the power religion plays in advancing social change. The series featured nationally recognized leaders whose creative approaches toward a just world at peace have had national and global impact.

This series was hosted by the Office of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School in collaboration with Just Us, A Unity Campus Justice Ministry for change agents and peacemakers.

Facilitated by Rev. Dr. Kevin Ross, MRPL ‘23, Senior Minister and CEO of Unity Sacramento.

This event took place on March 28, 2024.

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Public Courage and the Academy. The future of the church and the cosmopolitan leaders it's calling for. March 28, 2024.

TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: Hello and welcome to Public Courage and the Academy. We are so wonderfully glad that you are with us, those of you who are online, those of you who are watching this via recording. My name is Teddy Hickman-Maynard. I'm the Associate Dean for Ministry Studies. And I want to welcome you to this series on behalf of our dean, Dr. Marla Frederick and everyone here at Harvard Divinity School.

As is our custom, before we do any event there are a few acknowledgments that I want to offer. First, we acknowledge that Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusett, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. We pay respect to the people of the Massachusett tribe, past and present, and we honor the land itself which remains sacred to the Massachusett people.

If you want to find out more about what Harvard University is doing in terms of reparative work related to our heritage and history with Native American peoples, you can go to the Harvard University Native American Program, or hunap.harvard.edu.

We also acknowledge the more than 70 enslaved Africans and Indigenous people who were enslaved by Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff whose work, whose labor, whose lives have helped to generate the wealth that has created the Harvard we know today.

We also acknowledge Harvard's participation in financial and intellectual ways to the travesty that was American slavery. If you want to find out more about that, you can go to the legacyofslavery.harvard.edu to learn more about Harvard's involvement, but also to find out more about our reparative work that we are doing to do our part to make things right.

In light of those histories, we are a place, Harvard Divinity school, that is dedicated to fostering leaders who will work to make the world a place with peace and justice. And to that end, we are grateful to be partnering with the Reverend Kevin Kitrell Ross, who is the Senior Minister and Senior Executive Officer of Unity of Sacramento.

Rev Kev, as we call him affectionately, is a 2023 graduate of our own Harvard Divinity School, Master's of Religion and Public Life. And as a part of his work, he envisioned this series where we would bring in leaders who have exercised public courage and made a difference in the world so that we might learn from their wisdom as we do the work of preparing future leaders. And so I'm grateful to turn this over to Rev Kev who will introduce our speaker for this webinar.

KEVIN ROSS: Thank you so much, Dean Teddy, and thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this public courage series. We are thrilled that you are taking the time to prioritize your lives and your time to think with us about ways that we can look to see how we can change the world by moving beyond dangerous political neutrality and stepping forth in a way of public courage.

And so, as I like to mention, when I was in the master religion public life program at the Divinity School, it was my deep curiosity about leaders in my own faith tradition who hold a vision of a world of peace, prosperity, and unconditional love for all.

And yet what falls short when it came to solutions and techniques for operationalizing that high and noble vision when in public places, the fear of being highly political or the fear of dividing their congregation around issues that might be very controversial. That fear often made them neutral and silent, and still does.

But I'm grateful that there are so many who are still in the question, just like we are here today, for ways that we can get beyond that dangerous political neutrality to move forward in a way of public courage. And so the individuals that we are bringing you in this public courage in the academy series are individuals who embody the best of both of those worlds, the theory, the practice, and the social engagement.

And I'm super grateful today to be introducing you to someone who has become a friend, not only a friend, but a mentor by her very example, and who has never shied away from a public fight when it comes to justice, accountability, inclusivity, and a world that works for absolutely all of us.

There are so many things I want to tell you about Bishop Yvette, but I'm going to give a little bit of a story and then share with you some facts about her history. Growing up, I was one of those individuals who was a part of a marginalized church tradition, faith tradition.

I grew up in a church on the South side of Chicago, led by a woman, the Reverend DR Johnnie Colemon. And, actually, growing up, I didn't really-- because it was my first language, my first reality, my first orientation, I didn't know, really, that men could be preachers, believe it or not. My mom had to bring me into that conversation later when I ask her because I only saw women in leadership.

But my grandmother attended paradise Temple Church of God in Christ not far from the place where I grew up. And so we got out of church early enough to go to her church after church, and my grandmother would have me singing in the choir. And my favorite song was a song that Bishop Yvette Flunder authored. But knew nothing of it. We never talked about who wrote the songs and all that, we just sang the songs.

In that church experience, though, people knew that I was really a member of Christ Universal Temple. And they hurt me in that church. They said all manner of awful things about my faith tradition. They denigrated the leader.

And I live between this world, these two opposite worlds, this world where I was loved and affirmed and this world where I was made to shrink when I was there because they knew the church I was from. And yet a thread that tied both together was the soundtrack in my soul sung by someone I didn't know. "Thank You, Lord, For All You've Done For Me."

One day, fast forward, I am at Unity Village for a convention. I can't remember what it was, but I know that I was there with people like Michael Beckwith who will bring later in this series, and Dr. David Alexander and others.

And as it tends to be the case, on breaks between speaking and presenting, we pile up in each other's cars and we go have food, fellowship, and sometimes we signify. We just have a time. And I was the driver that day, and I had in my rental car playing in the background this song.

And a bunch of folks piled into my car. And in hearing the individuals talk in the car-- because I didn't know who was coming in, I just knew that I was driving-- I hear this voice. I've not met this person but I hear this voice. And it sounded like the voice very much the voice that I had playing in the car at the time. And I turned the radio up and said, wait, is this you?

And it turned out that I was-- in my car was Bishop Yvette Flunder, the soundtrack of my soul all those years that was actually the healing balm for me while I was being-- growing up being persecuted for being who I was as what we would call at that time new thought Christians.

Let me introduce you to her. Bishop Yvette Flunder is an American womanist preacher, pastor, activist, and singer from San Francisco, California. She is a Senior Pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland and the presiding Bishop of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries.

Her ministry spans not only across this country but continents across the world. And she's no stranger to Harvard. She's coming back because she has more to say. And before she comes, I want you to hear a few things she has to say about the future of the Black church. Watch this.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: I think we're going to have to go backward before we go forward because we lost something in the water that I think that we need to get back. I think we need to allow ourselves to ceasefire to diminish and demean our African Indigenous faith.

I think we need to go take a good closer look at it, what our people's understanding of God was before we accepted a God that hated us, absolutely hated us because he wouldn't have got us in the fix that we were in if it was in fact and indeed god, if you understand.

I think the God that we have embraced our understanding of that God was given to us with an understanding that we were diminished, and that this is an angry God and a punitive God. It's all over the world, and particularly all over our country right now.

I think we have to go-- I think that's what's one of the things that's really missing. Now, we have it, we just don't call it what it is. If you turn that good dance music on and get you a B-3 organ and a drum set and some tambourines, we become Africans in that moment. Everything came from Africa, everything. It's the mother of everyone.

And I think that there should be some embracing of that reality. We need to demystify it and undemonize it and embrace it, throw our arms around it. Embrace it because we act out of it, we dance out of it, our music comes from it. And we owe that to them for what they had to bear in the heat of the day. And that's the truth.

It also means that we have to accept and admit the fact that wherever the crown went, Christianity went with it. And what it did in the name of God is steal and rape and destroy. Whatever it found in order to conquer it, over and over and over again.

I absolutely believe that that's where we need to begin. I don't think that we can really go forward if we don't go backward. Doesn't mean that we have to let go of and release the things that we have learned from Christianity, but we've got to take the blood guilt that is connected to it and understand that the people who taught it to us taught it to us to suppress us.

We have to do that. We have to do that. That's our liberation. And until we can do that, what we'll continue to do is mimic. So I do believe that we have to go. We owe that to the thousands that are on the bottom of the ocean. We owe that to them, right. I think that's where we begin.

And I think that then on the margins, we need to celebrate those that have been dismissed and burned and turned away. The witches, you know, the folks that could heal you with some herbs they put together, you know, and the contributions. There would be no gospel music without gay people. It just wouldn't exist.

Now, I know it was true to some degree among people who did secular music, but there was an over-presentation among people who did music and did music about God. We have to stay the course. We have to do the work because God has called us to build something on the margin. We need the center to be mad. We need the margin to be-- in many ways, the place to go because this whole thing that the center is doing right now is desperate and it will fail. They'll implode on themselves.

My rejection to be the thing that empowered me and empowers us, we need to celebrate it because after rejection is Resurrection. Hallelujah. [CLAPPING] It's about coming out on the other side of what somebody meant for evil, and Watching God make it.

Now you can't make me doubt him. My grandmother used to say, you can't make me doubt him. I know too much about him. You can't make me doubt him because of what I have seen and what I have experienced, what I have endured, passing through the fire, knowing what it is for your clothes to be burned off and you're still capable of moving forward, passing through the tomb.

Imagine how Lazarus was when he got up. Imagine what that must-- how much power he must have had after he'd experienced death. And I say to all of my folks, whether they are same gender loving people or people who feel called to embrace the real, absolute, without question reformation that happens on the margin.

People who feel called to it, don't even know how they got mixed up in it but the people who feel called to it, bless God for choosing you because not everybody can pay this price. Not everyone is called to it. But every prophet, every prophet must take Scott Peck's Road Less Traveled, must be prepared to be a supple-- the Hebrew word-- that blazes a trail where there is no trail.

Now, Harriet Tubman who will you look behind you and tell the people, y'all better come on. You better get your hands on it. Say, well, I got to wait until-- well, then you're going to miss the train. Well, let me get in touch with my cousin, now, we'll get your cousin next time. Well, we got to do is we-- this is the moment.

Now it's the moment again. We're at it again. We need a new canon. We absolutely need it because we need to write the societal and spiritual and laws. We moved from an Old Testament to a New Testament. A group of people gathered in the older writings. Then the newer writings threw some of them out.

And none of us know exactly what all got thrown out or why, but we know where they landed. They were just regular people making decisions based on their understanding, their knowledge, and their perceptions of God. That's what we are, regular people who need to write based upon our knowledge and perceptions and understandings and experiences of God.

And it's time for a new canon. We need some new books. We need Acts 2. What is God acting up on now? Not what just what happened then, but what is the action of God. And because, like the writer of Hebrews says, the word of God is written on tablets of flesh, not tablets of stone.

The reason I think that we have done such poor work with religion is because we were intent on writing it on tablets of stone or for us, it's ink on paper as though God-- once we put a back cover on our ink on paper, it's as though God can't say anything else unless there's a parallel of it in the text.

Well, God will do a new thing, God said that. I believe God said that, I will do a new thing. I will do a new thing. But we don't have any room for God to do a new thing because we're stuck on the old thing. Can God speak to us with authority something that is not in the book? If we have to keep going to the book to find a parallel, then I don't exist. But I do exist.

My mother only had two children, and both of us were gay. That makes her the common denominator. My dad was a blues singer, so they just sort of wrote him off, you know what I mean. But my mother, she had to carry the whispers and the statements.

And I have to say that there were times in my life that I realized that her pressure for my sake in a very visible family had to be complicated as hell for her. And it made me conscious of how we need to care about the load that our parents bear and what they bought, what it is that they never told us that people said and other family members said.

T family is empowered to embrace and love our mothers and fathers even if our mothers and fathers are not really on the page with us. I think we're grown, you understand what I'm saying. We're good and grown, most of us, and I think we have an obligation to them. They're the ones that taught us how to tie our shoes, you know, we have an obligation to them to love them and to make that an active part of our community.

I am actively in the midst of succession, thinking strongly about what that's going to look like and experiencing the bereavement that is attached to that. But I'm very clear that personality-based movements often feel because the personality did not know when it was time to do something else or bring somebody else into power.

My top level leaders are in their 50s, in late 40s and 50s. And I'm almost 70. It's time. They're in their leadership prime, and that's one of the reasons that I'm elevating them. And at some point, the decision will have to be made about who's going to be their senior leader. And I'm going to be able, hopefully, to be alive. I hope I don't have to die out. That's what I really don't want to do that. I would rather pass, if you understand what I'm saying, and then make myself difficult to find.

So that's what I see on the margins. This is what the margins has taught me, that there are some things back in community that we need to heal. As we are healed we need to be healers. I believe that we have to understand that we are now a part of a reformation that is active, that at some point will be normalized.

If the reformation succeeds, it becomes mainstream. Then there'll be another reformation that will come out from it. We're not unique, we're simply called for this time to make this shift. This is our time. We were born for this, and born strategically in this time for this time.

KEVIN ROSS: Friends, please help me welcome back to Harvard and to Harvard Divinity school, our friend and leader and a voice for such a time as this, Bishop Yvette Flunder. Welcome, bishop. And thanks for being with us.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: Thank you so very much, my brother, my brothers, and my friends and colleagues. How good and how pleasant it is for kindred to dwell together in unity. And it is my joy to be back again in conversation and communion with you and with Harvard.

And I do want to share, I do want to share-- and I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to do it-- some of the thoughts that are a part of where I am right now theologically. I have a title for what I want to share with you today. It's called, who let the dogs in? And the second line would be a forecast of Pentecost.

So there's a passage of scripture, Mark 7. Just a couple of verses. It says, "And Jesus left and went to the vicinity of Tyre. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know it, yet he could not keep his presence secret.

In fact, as soon as the woman of the house heard about him, this woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure or an impure spirit, came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek born in Syro, Phoenicia. And she begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. His response to her plea was, 'Let the children eat all they want,' he told her, 'for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.'

But the woman replied, 'Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.' Then he told her, 'For such a reply, you may go and the demon has left your daughter." Again, who let the dogs in?

Contextually, I was born and raised in an African-American Trinitarian Pentecostal church. If you know anything about the Pentecostal church, you know that a Trinitarian out of the Azusa movement suggested that we believed in God, the father, son, and Holy Ghost. And we were different from the Pentecostals that believed in what was called Jesus only. So in case those of you that don't know, Pentecostals have been at war with one another about this reality for quite some time.

I was born among folks who are primarily from Texas and Oklahoma. And although we did not know it then, the African-American Pentecostal experience has historically included deep Afrocentric mysticism, visions, speaking in tongues-- what is called glossolalia-- as an evidence of receiving the presence of the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost, as we called it, the indwelling of the presence and power of the divine.

And as an aside, I will say because when I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost with Mother Virgin Hunter and Mother Jessie May Gatson praying for me, I was in my early teens. And I want to say that I will never, for the sake of trying to prove myself to anyone, deny the authenticity of my faith experience.

But in my years of sharing my faith, I have experienced many faiths that are also authentic and a different way by which people live out their understanding of the divine. Christian faith and many other faiths who have sensed or felt the inward presence of the divine through an outward experience completely different from mine.

Jesus Pentecost promise to those that followed him was, you will receive power. Power to do what? How to make the liberating message that I have shared with you accessible to everyone. That was the root of the whole plan. You will receive power. Power to venture out geographically, culturally, and theologically. Yet the real essence of Pentecost has been in a cultural and denominational girdle for ages.

In the text that I shared with you today, even Jesus is in a place of transition. I need to let that sit with you for just a minute. Even Jesus is in a place of transition. His culture was at war with his call. Anybody know about that? His culture, his culture, the culture into which he was born, through which he was raised, was at war with his universal call and universal purpose.

If he was fully human and fully divine simultaneously, he would have had to have that experience. His universal message of welcome essentially was stuck in a narrow theological bondage. Jesus, the man, Jesus, the God made human was in a struggle. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been there where your flesh, your nationality, your familial connections, and the call that God had on your life were in conflict with one another?

Jesus was in the region of Tyre and Sidon, Phoenician cities. Present day Syria, by the way. Jesus was on foreign soil on purpose. According to the text, he was trying to get away from home on purpose. Essentially he was trying to be in-- as we say, often as Black people, incognegro.

He wanted to go away because he was overwhelmed by the needs of the people. And he did not really want people to know where he was. And so he placed himself among people who had other gods, who had their own kings, their own coin, their own systems of government. Incognito like when we used to go From church to the club. Some of you all know what I'm talking about.

Jesus was somewhere between flipping over tables at the temple because he was frustrated with the ways in which the poor were being disenfranchised by the religion of his time. He was somewhere between flipping over tables in the temple and fervently keeping the law of Moses or the law of his people.

Essentially, the divine in him and the religion in him were not in harmony. Can I say that again? The divine call, the divine call right from the heart of God, the divine in him, the heart of God in him and the religion of his people which was also in him, were not in harmony.

Jesus challenged to keepers of the law who would not eat without ceremonial washing. Said, what is that about? He challenged them when they condemned his disciples for eating without ceremonial washing. Jesus had just finished a big debate with the religious institutions back home, and he had debunked the idea that there was a distinction between clean and unclean meat.

He is said to have said, "Don't you see that nothing that enters the person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach and then out of the body." By saying this Jesus declared that all foods were clean. And he made the priests furious to suggest this.

This was a massive hit to the law, but there was more to come. There was a woman on her way that we read about in the opening passage today. There was a woman on her way while Jesus was on the down low outside of his own people's territory. There was a woman on her way who knew of his reputation as a healer, and her baby was sick. And she meant to get some help for her child.

And Jesus was about to be challenged with destroying the idea of who is clean and who is unclean. Apparently, this was an important time, a shift, perhaps, that was going to prove an inevitability about the greatness, the power, the intent of the love of God through Jesus Christ.

Jesus was not only truly at home with this concept. By the way, Jesus was not truly at home with this concept that this woman was about to share with him, not yet. Jesus was in transition. Perhaps the embrace of his culture was showing in this verse or these verses. He is not at home with the Jewish powers that be, yet he is not fully ready to be radically inclusive of this Syrophoenician woman.

The Pharisees have branded him a lawbreaker. He is regarded by Herod and Rome as a menace. He is being disrespected by the synagogue in Nazareth. But yet he is not quite ready to accept this soon coming Gentile woman on equal terms with his people.

Our Jesus was seeking the seclusion of a foreign land to withdraw from the enmity of the Jews. He was not in this foreign land because he fully embraced these people. Perhaps they wore the wrong clothes, perhaps they danced to the wrong music, and certainly they worshipped the wrong gods.

In verse 24 says, "Jesus left and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it. Yet he could not keep his presence secret. In fact, as soon as this woman heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit, she came and fell at his feet."

Listen, beloved, the woman was Greek, born in Sidon, Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. His response, "Let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." "Lord," she replied, "even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." And then he told her, "For such a reply you may go, and the demon has left your daughter."

This woman was considered to be a part of the dogs, but yet her faith moved the heart of Jesus and her daughter was healed. But this must have been an incredible synthesizing in Jesus of his humanity and his divinity.

Can I just tell you what I feel in my heart? I think this synthesizing was necessary for the next steps. The next steps were Jesus' humanity and Jesus' divinity got together. It was a time to lay the foundation for what was coming.

The blessing of the infilling of the spirit with power was to be available to all people. Not just to his people, not just to your people, not just to my people, not just to Black people, not just to white people, not just to Christian people, but to all people. The infilling of the spirit was to be available to all. And this woman, this dog was called to break this thing open.

Can I say it another way? The dog was absolutely necessary. The dog experience was necessary. The out of town away from the temple was necessary. Dog was a contemptuous term, a name that the Jews had often for the Gentiles. Yet Jesus, the man, fully man, the man, needed this dog.

She wasn't a dog because she was low down or nasty. She was called a dog because she was other, she was other. Yet her determination was to get what she needed from this man that she knew was covered with the spirit, the aura, the presence of the divine.

I think that this encounter was actually needed before Calvary, before Resurrection so that those events could be for everyone and not just one group of people set aside, made to believe that they were special to God. More special than anyone else. The encounter was needed for Pentecost and for the whosoever. Hallelujah to God.

The encounter was needed for the whosoever, whoever comes into the presence of the divine can feel welcomed and not excluded by someone else's concepts of religion. The church today need some dogs to move it from being a private social clubs. Religion needs some dogs to move it from being private social clubs, to move us to our true purpose.

And by running into this woman on his vacation while Jesus was on his spring break, Jesus was exposed to the faith of the Gentiles who were anathema to his people. And this woman was not leaving without the blessing.

Culture would not stop her. The disciples could not stop her. The law could not stop her. Borders and governments could not stop her. Insults could not stop her. Religion could not stop her. Ethnicity could not stop her. Gender could not stop her. People's perceptions of her could not stop her. She came for a blessing for her baby, and she heard that there was a stranger in the city who was healing. And she believed that Jesus had the power to heal her baby.

And when he saw her faith-- hallelujah, not her hairdo, not her strange clothes, not her accent-- when he saw her faith, he had to respond, and he healed her child. And perhaps this was the whosoever call that wedded his humanity to his divinity.

Both of these realities, my beloved, are important to God and essential to our doing good works. Our divinity cannot dismiss our humanity, and our humanity must embrace our divinity. Jesus' ministry changed completely, and his love poured out on this woman. She was the one that led the revival, that was needed for him to go back to his own people, I believe, with a completely content and complete concept of his call.

This woman, we don't know her name but we owe her a great deal. Why? Because it's time for the dogs, those who are pushed to take the dirty leftover bread that the privileged have thrown to the floor. It is time for the disinherited, the demeaned, the excluded, the diminished to stand up, to speak up and move up to the table.

God is calling you beloved. Christ is calling you. The church desperately needs you. And you've been told to sit back and be quiet because of your otherness, but I can say to you clearly that our young people need you. Our community needs you. Our country needs you. Our institutions, our theological institutions need you. Our world needs you. Our planet groans for you.

The dogs, the other ones are the only ones that can truly change the direction of the church and of religion by bringing us back to what matters and away from the ritualistic, religious, traditional junk that keeps people from knowing God. The dogs changed the direction of the church by pure faith.

And I'll leave you with this, Pentecost, making the message of Jesus, making the message of God made flesh available to all. Making the message of y'all come is so necessary in this time. And it will come again powerfully no matter how much evil is happening. It will come again if the dogs will show up, if those who have been disenfranchised will cease to believe that somehow or other, God is not on our side.

The responsibility-- can I say it to you? And, please, run and tell somebody I said it. The responsibility to usher in the new Pentecost does not rest on traditional religion because traditional religion can, in many cases, be unable to move. It's invested too much. It's built too many buildings. It's spent too much time. It's written too many books.

Oftentimes, a new Pentecost cannot rest on traditional religious folks. They will never change anything because the current system is comfortable for the private social club that they are. The future church belongs to the dogs. It always has. Get up and get to Jesus so that church, so that faith, so that religion can once again identify and show forth the all encompassing love of our creator. God bless you is my prayer.

KEVIN ROSS: Wow, wow. Thank you so much, bishop. Just a couple days ago I was having a conversation with a dear friend of mine whose mother passed about this passage. And I wish I had five minutes out of it to just take it deeper with her. So I'm appreciating this very much because it was a moment of humanizing Jesus. It was a humanizing moment for Jesus that I was trying to help her to see, you know. And so this is great.

As you were speaking, I was thinking about-- to just stay with this theme-- one of the big dogs who just crossed over, our beloved Bishop Carlton Pearson. And my condolences with you and everyone who is mourning his crossing over and yet he's looming larger than ever before.

Our brother, Dr. David Alexander, was here with us at Harvard, and we got a chance to go to the Harvard Divinity School library where his-- much of his corpus is there for students, along with what we're seeing. And so he was one of those big dogs that dared to bark out loud and to exhibit the public courage, yes, with tremendous sacrifice.

I want to ask you, just to start, where-- what was the event in your life where-- and it may be before you were a faith leader or it could have been at the point where you were, but where you found your voice enough to be able to exhibit public courage. And how did you were doing it?

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: I've always from the time I was very young, because I do believe that we are eternal beings. I don't think that we begin to exist when we are born. Frankly, I believe we are in the mind of God. And I believe that we are on assignment, let's put it that way. And sometimes we have to have more than one revolution before we really grab our assignment.

But from the time I was a very young child, I always had a heart for folks who were disenfranchised and are marginalized in some way. And from the very beginning, whether it was seniors or people who were in recovery or people who were kicked away in-- I don't know where it came from, if it was a little cat or a little dog, that was a little girl. I'd bring injured animals home. And my mother would have a fit. But it was there. I was born with it, and that is really the truth.

And I found myself having a dislocation between what it was that we had as church and what our responsibility was to the world, to bring the love of God and the way that I began to believe in perceived God and good to be in the world.

So consequently I would say there were three things. One, I was given to caring for the disadvantaged, that was a part of-- from as far back as I can recall. I also believed that I did not really fit in because I felt myself called to be a minister in a denomination that would not permit that. I called to be a pastoral ministry. They would not permit that for women. So I was discombobulated right there.

And I also knew myself to be a same gender loving woman. It took me a little while to come to that, to get that part figured out, you know what I mean. And I crossed over a lot of different kinds of water trying to see, now, how's that going to work given the-- you know. And I didn't want to be a part of the underbelly.

Everything I knew about human sexuality, I learned in church. I never had to leave church about human sexuality. It was all kind of stuff going on. It's just all on the down low, you know what I mean. The whole society of people. But it was-- just was the truth, but it was all on the down low and I just figured that was-- but I couldn't-- I wasn't one of the people that could fake the funk, you know, and pretend that I was someone other than who I was.

So I had these places that made me leave church altogether and get involved in the-- in serving the disadvantaged, the marginalized. It became my ministry without church. And along the way, I got arrested, the truth by the Holy Spirit.

I was in my car one day, driving from one place to the next. And while I was driving along, best to say-- you understand this because you've been in these dualities also. But I want to say to those that may not understand it, when I was driving along, I was what we would call overshadowed by the presence of God.

I knew it was the presence of God. I knew I didn't come up with it. I knew that it came for me such that I had to pull over to the side of the road and get in communion with God and use what was my prayer language because I still, when I'm alone, especially, and I'm praying, there are times that I speak in tongues. I came that way.

Like I said, I don't-- I will not ever diminish the authenticity of my experience. I think, hallelujah, that I have somewhere I can go that's not English, hallelujah. So I just had a time in the car all by myself. Just me and me. And I knew that I was being called again to bring together my otherness and faith.

And not long after that I began-- I won't go all into all of it but it began a series of processes that brought me back into the church, back into the pulpit that was accepting of women, back into founding a church and eventually the beginnings of a network of churches all over the country and world now that embraced my otherness, all of my otherness.

And then I found myself able to embrace the otherness of so many other people. Move us away from feeling that we had to continue to be in environments where we had to pretend and lie and consistently lie in order to be included. I think that that's the broadest way for me to answer your question.

KEVIN ROSS: You know, I'm appreciating that. And there's a theme that's going from speaker to speaker as when we're exploring this whole conversation of public hurts that I really just want to punctuate. And you are describing a phenomenological experience. This was a spiritual encounter that you felt assigned to you, felt called to. It was not a normal, everyday experience, but it was extra normative.

And I think that for those that are tracking with this series, something deeply spiritual is the platform and the foundation for religious actors who engage in acts of public courage. And this is one more example that we're hearing today about how it happens. You were overshadowed, the spirit of [AUDIO OUT] called to this.

And you recalled-- I love what you said about being called back into ministry in your wholeness. That the competing aspects of your own nature came home together and then-- and made a place for others.

You said some things that I think are pretty powerful and courageous. You said it's time to reopen the canon. This is a powerful and bold statement. Can you talk a little bit more about opening, reopening the canon, and what it would mean for. the divine to be speaking today in a written form, new written form.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: It's important to also say that when I came back into being a faith leader, one of the things I really realized I needed to do was theological education. And I'd say that often. And to all the leaders in TFAM, they know who I am about this. But I encourage everyone-- and that we've pushed the envelope. We've pushed it such that we have also-- we have many of us have written books that are now part of the theological experience for some of the new people who are coming. That it doesn't have to always be dead Germans.

I mean, there are some other-- there's some new and fresh things and just like there are new and fresh things coming to and through this-- many of us who have embraced theological education. And I will say that my set tertiary beginning in a certain place then going to another level, through-- master's level through doctoral level.

And in the work that I do, I found that God is still speaking reality was not written until some of the people who liked me came through some of those experiences. That's the way I feel about the necessity of a new canon. We're stuck on some things that we cannot give voice to because it's problematic.

You cannot tell me that the importance of the passages that are in the text that need to be removed can't be removed. That we need to move beyond, slaves, obey your masters. I don't care which way you want to package that. I don't care how you talk about the time of the society and what was going on and all that. It needs to be gone. OK, that the women keep silent in the churches. And if they have any questions, let them ask their husbands at home.

To somehow read a text that somehow suggest that one group of people are truly the people of God, the chosen people of God, and the rest of us are grafted in as though we are God's afterthought, that is very problematic. And I've reached a point where I'm not trying to justify those concepts and ideas. I'm also not willing to leapfrog over them as though they're not there.

I think that enough has occurred. There are enough that we understand, both by experience and by the depth of our theological education and the way that we have seen the divine show up in many other faiths. It is time for us to come together and pull together what really are the common realities which will require-- and common messaging which will require another canon. That's what we're going to have to do. We are sort of doing it by having this conversation now. We just haven't gathered it in and written it down so that we can give it to the children. That's the heart of it.

KEVIN ROSS: You've been working at it. This has been a long time coming. I remember at that particular meeting at Unity Village, this was a topic of discussion. And you had kind of formalized a process and there were some things you've been working on. How do we get other leaders who embrace this idea of-- I want to use the term in deference to you and to Bishop Pearson-- radical inclusion. This idea that we hold this idea that we are universally one spiritual kinship-- kindred, et cetera.

There are those that fall into that category that Dr. King talked about in his letter from a Birmingham City Jail who are silent and who are saying, wait, and who are well-meaning but not engaged. How do we help press those who are on the fence across that margin into more courageous, whether it's theological, publishing of their thoughts like Dr. David Alexander is doing with his latest book, or their preaching or their activism. How do we move them into a place that you have found?

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: It's such an important question because we can become so comfortable with what we embrace up close because it has such a profound part of our life. And let me say it this way. So in Anglican church or in Episcopal Church or Catholic Church or Pentecostal church or Baptist church or-- you know, I clap on the two and the four.

And when I go other places and they clap on the one and three, it just doesn't do the same thing for me as the two and the four. And so much clap on the two on the four until sometimes I can't really get with it when it's on the one and the three. And so I'm culturally not comfortable.

And when we start talking about shifting the cannon or pulling out the things that we no longer believe, embracing and modifying and exploring and the things that we do believe so that the generations after us will not have to give an excuse for some of those passages that we know are culturally inappropriate for this time, we know that they are problematic, we can say that it is uncomfortable to do it.

Imagine the Old Testament and the New Testament conversation because there were several writings when the New Testament conversation came to be. And I am sure that there were a bunch of people that said that God has said everything God is going to say in these writings.

KEVIN ROSS: Of course, and still are saying it.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: Come on now.

KEVIN ROSS: The illegitimacy of the New Testament still today for the Old Testament believers, yeah.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: Still saying it, still doing it. And the stuff that's went on in the old-- you don't cut your daughter up into 12 pieces. You don't-- you just-- you don't-- there's a whole lot of terrible, horrible stuff that just didn't-- doesn't speak, really, what is the heart of God.

It speaks the heart of a privileged people who felt that somehow-- or that even there's semen on the ground because it was a bunch of teeny, tiny little bitty, they believed it was a little bitty, little people, the little seed. The seed, they called it. Teeny, tiny little bitty little that were supposed to be deposited in a woman's womb. And if you drop it on the ground, then you're killing somebody.

Of course, we understand a whole lot more about the fact that I'm not soil in my womb. I have a ovum. I got something to bring. You bring the sperm, I bring the ovum, we can make a baby. But there was not something-- they didn't understand that anatomy. Why would we take that passage literally then? Why would we think that certain fabrics or certain meats were also an abomination?

We had a whole list in the Old Testament of abominations. We didn't keep but a couple, the male would male that stayed. But it's a whole lot of other abominations, just abomination after abomination after abomination. Now, what I'm saying to you is that we don't believe that. We believe the things that support what we now believe. And the rest, we just jumpfrog, leapfrog over them to something else. I think that's hypocritical.

I think what we need to do is take a good look at what has a universal truth. Hallelujah. That's good what I said. What has a universal truth? What has a universal truth that we can embrace that makes room for all of us? That speaks what we really believe to be the heart of God, and then add to it the holy writing, the holy writ that is coming out of our theological institutions, coming out of some great writers.

You know who they are. I start calling them and I'll miss some and I'll be in all kind of trouble, but great writers. We need to pull those writers together-- which is what we're working on now-- around subject matter so that we can have something that goes beyond when we ascend from this place to our next assignment.

KEVIN ROSS: So I'm hearing you say a lot of things. I'm hearing you say these leaders have the ability-- and correct me if I'm wrong-- but we've got to advance our intellectual understanding of the ancient world in order to be able to, with authority, reinterpret those texts for such a time as this.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: And stop worshiping the book.

KEVIN ROSS: Yes, bibliolatry.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: Bibliolatry, stop worshiping-- and stop calling it a book. It's a gathering in of songs and poems and all different kind of stuff. We made it a book.

KEVIN ROSS: Yes. I also want to cite a book related to what you were talking about, in terms of the Levitical laws. The late great Reverend Dr Peter Gomes who wrote the book The Good Book from Harvard. And he spoke very-- in a very detailed way about that.

And I think-- and this is what we're trying to do, provide leaders with the tools that they can use that will help them when they have those spiritual awakenings and that good intention to act. But they'll have the tools to act with authority, the knowledge even. So this is great. Just a second, I just want to say to those that are watching, if you have questions for Bishop Flunder, we want you to have an opportunity to address those questions.

If you put them in the chat room, I think Don Sorensen on our Office of Ministry Studies team is there to get those questions before me, along with Dean Teddy, he's on hand as well. So if you want to get a question in-- I don't want to dominate the whole thing but I sure will because I'm loving this opportunity. And so we're standing by for your questions if you have questions. And I wrote a couple--

TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: I have one, Reverend Kevin.

KEVIN ROSS: We have a question, OK. Yes, go ahead.

TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: It's right on following along the conversation you all are having right now. The attendee asked, how do we address the injustice many LGBTQIA+ individuals experience in the Black church? Is there hope of truly being liberated?

So in that question, really, there are two dynamics. On the one hand is, how do you address the trauma and the harm that has already been done to those who have come through the Black church and experienced that heterosexism? But also is there hope of truly being liberated?

I would amend that question to say, where is the hope of being truly liberated? Because I think part of what you've shared with us, bishop, is that you do have it, that there is hope, but how do you identify it? Certainly with TFAM but are there other movements, are there other leaders that you can point to say, I see hope for true liberation and not just, as you said, pretending it's not happening or pretending it's not there.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: It's a powerful question. And I can say in the footsteps, the footprints of our ancestors. There was a period of time when our ancestors went to the prescribed location, if you understand, that the slave owners, for instance, brought them to the church. And you know about the slave Bible that pulls up [INAUDIBLE] about slavery, right.

And taught them from that Bible and Bibles or writings like that so that they would feel that-- but then over time, they had the praise house. The place where they went way back, back in the bush, if you understand what I'm saying. And they did the ring dances and the ring praises and they did testimonies and they sang the songs of liberty and freedom and relationship with the divine.

I think that as it relates to the LGBTQI community and the contribution of the LGBTQI community, particularly in the arts but also in the pulpit, also in the design, also in fundraising, all of what it is, and then having to also then be diminished, talk about. And just click off in your mind when those sermons come by that are difficult.

You just click it off and wait till they get finished, you know, and then continue to be diminished over and over again by other sermons and other-- but I think that the community, the people in the community have to make a decision.

First of all, I think that marginalized people have to see themselves as strong enough to create something where they are not diminished. Basically that's the beginning of the AME church. I could say a whole lot about the beginnings of many things, but this thing about being a part of something because you can perhaps make more money or because you can perhaps have more power or something like that is a prison for us, it's quicksand. It holds our feet in places where our full selves are not embraced.

So that means that we have to create something. I say that because I'm a founder. I'm not the only one. And those of us who are founders need to be mindful that we are not in competition with one another. But I think it is important to be the victory that you want to see, be create it

And it may mean that it doesn't offer the same kind of-- if you understand what I mean-- opportunities. And I can say that also as a gospel music artist. I can say that we are over-represented. Same gender loving people have been singing gospel music since gospel music has been sung. Some of the best, the best gospel music just about that has been out there has been written and sung and performed by same gender loving people.

I can say that, I can call their names just like they can call mine. I don't, particularly for the ones that are still alive. But I will say to you that one of the things that has always troubled me is the way in which people bring that much to the church and simultaneously have to live in closets. It's absolutely asinine.

So I'll say it again, I think it is important for people to have enough respect for themselves that if you are not being affirmed, create a situation in a place where you can be affirmed. You have the power, you have the money, you have the ability, but it's the self affirmation.

And I said Mother Shirley and I have been together almost 40 years, and that's never been anybody else. It's not that it couldn't have been, it just never was. She was a gift of-- a gift to me from God. And I believe that with my whole heart. And we say oh happy day and thank you, Lord, got together. We never broken up. [LAUGHS] And I just love-- I love the air she breathes, you know, I just love it.

But she was given to me. She was designed for me as much as I believe myself to be designed for her. She's a gift from God. But there was a season where we were completely separated from church, a regular-- a church situation because the people who knew us didn't want us to be out loud about who we were.

And people who didn't know us were not-- did not worship in the ways in which desired to worship. Can I put it that way? And we were just kind of floating out there until the spirit spoke and said to do this, create something. The thing that doesn't exist, create it.

KEVIN ROSS: I'll jump in. That's where you and I intersect because Johnnie Colemon refused to cooperate with the history of racism and sexism that was present within Unity. She had rose in the ranks, risen in the ranks in Unity, and just got tired of trying to decolonize and deconstruct.

And there's a message, I think, for folks who are at the margin who feel like a part of our work is to be deconstructing and decolonizing and dismantling. And yet we can also be building and creating and producing and using that same energy to forward something rather than-- yeah, yeah.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: Create something. We have the power to do that. There's nothing-- we are not dysfunctional. We are incredibly powerful and incredibly called. And we're a group of people who have always been a great, significant part of the church in all of its settings, in several different denominations. Well, it's enough of that kick to the curb, enough of that.

And I say that women, I say that for same gender loving people, I say that for people who have sewn together different faiths and they're not completely stuck in christocentric such that they cannot embrace African Indigenous realities because that is also who we are. We are that too.

TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: There's a question about how do we recreate-- yeah, the question says, how do we avoid recreating the very hierarchical systems that have traumatized and oppressed us if that is the paradigm we are accustomed to? So this is a question we keep saying if we're exercising public courage and creating, what are some strategies that you can share with people as yourself a founder of a movement, a founder of an institution?

Because it's one thing to go off on your own and just say, well, I'm not-- I'm done with institutions altogether. I'm going to practice my spirituality privately, and so on. But what about those leaders who are here at Harvard Divinity School who want to be like you, who want to say structure is OK, organizations are good, and we want to recreate a place where people can be. But what were the strategies you used to make sure that this new thing did not recreate any of the harmful dynamics of the old thing that you were coming out?

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: That's so important. I think that I would say, first of all, it's important to remember what wounded you and not wound people in the ways that you were wounded. That's very important. It's a path that I've tried very hard to follow. It's important to do that. Don't be your oppressor in gay. Don't honor your oppressor by becoming your oppressor, just doing it in gay or doing it as a woman or doing it as a Black person. It's important.

And the other thing that-- the other that-- because all that does is it sanctifies the wrong that was done to you. I think the other thing that is very important is what I call the table principle. We have to be very mindful of hierarchy. And leadership and hierarchy are different.

I say it this way to the congregation that I serve and to the congregations that I serve, there are things that I am truly good at, and I am called to do those things. There are some other things that I'm not good at. And I tried in the early years-- I'll give you the one funny one.

Mother Shirley and I in the early years of the church, decided that we were going to be the kind of leaders that took care of children. We've always had children. People say, well, how do you all have children? I said, well, how did you all get children? How do you think we got them? We have children. We have children among us.

And so one weekend we said to all of the parents, well, we're going to have a sleepover at the house. We had a big house. So we're going to have you bring all the children, and just bring them change of clothes and we'll get the food, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We had all the children to come over to the house.

And they came over to the house, and we brought them in on Friday evening. And we had planned to take them and until Sunday morning and bring them to church to their parents. So Saturday about midday, I started calling the parents saying to them, so something has come up and we are not going to be able to keep the children until Sunday morning. I'm going to need you to come. And, in fact, I need you to pick up some of the other people's children that live in your area, and you can drop them off.

I realized something that day, and that was I needed to have a great deal more respect for people who are called to serve young children over a period of days, if you understand what I'm saying. I love the kids. The children of the church that have grown up, and now they're grown and they have children and all of that.

I thank God for third generation and a fourth generation now, but what I am really clear about is that to do what really needs to be done with a big pack of children, you need a certain kind of call on your life. And I need to respect that call. And I need to lift that call and not suggest that my call is better or greater. What my call is, is different.

And what I want to say to the many people that feel the call, that if you are feeling that what you have to do is buy some liturgical robes and get yourself some liturgical hats and make yourself a prophet or an apostle or a bishop because you have been denigrated as a gay person, what I want to encourage you to do is not try to emulate in some kind of way the people who oppressed you.

Find your call and be who it is that God gave to you as your assignment. And understand there is no assignment that is greater than someone else's assignment. The assignments are not greater or lesser. The assignments are according to what is God's will, the will of the divine for you to do. Every time somebody sees me on the road, I am the work of three or four other people who got me together. Starts with Mother Shirley.

KEVIN ROSS: That's right.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: She's really good at getting me together. I want you to know. I have children, they get me together. I have assistants, adjutants who are agitators, as I call them, they get me together. And when you see me and I'm together, there are some people that got me together.

And that's the truth. And I recognize them, I appreciate them, and I also know that I could not do what they do. They do it. That's what I think we need to do differently. We need to move the hierarchical concepts from what was done to us.

KEVIN ROSS: So we're not reproducing violences that we are principally opposed to.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: Absolutely.

KEVIN ROSS: So we're almost ready to wrap this up and went very fast, but I got to ask one more question related to this Las Vegas relocation and potential retirement and all that, which I think is powerfully insightful of you.

I have witnessed so many great messages die with the messengers and so many great movements die when the movement leaders, the charismatic movement leaders passed on because they didn't really see beyond themselves. Can you quickly talk to us about the importance of succession planning, succession ideation beyond the personality-centric ministries, and the value of that in the world that we're talking about we're builders of.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: And it's tough for a founder, and I can say that. It's tough for a founder. But one of the things that became very clear to me, first of all, is I have great respect for my leaders because they're brilliant.

KEVIN ROSS: They are.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: They are brilliant. You've met many of them. And they're in almost every institution, in almost every organization, almost every school. They are incredible. And I have an incredible respect for them. I'm still teaching.

And when I say I'm still teaching, I know that there's still some other things that I want to share with them about the journey, what to anticipate and what to expect. But they are also teaching me because I'm learning some things because we didn't all jump out of the same boat. We have some different things. And I think it is my responsibility not to do what so many of the people before me have done. And that is to die in the pulpit, if you understand. That's what I call it.

KEVIN ROSS: And we have literal examples of that right at COVID, OK, within the Church of God In Christ, like literally.

YVETTE A. FLUNDER: Die. No way in the world that Bishop Drew Sheard would have been the leader of the Church of God in Christ if it hadn't been essentially for COVID. Not because he is not a good leader, that's not what I'm suggesting. I think they were terrified of the Clark sisters, frankly, but I think that-- it just me and you-- and Maddie, their mama.

And I think they were terrified of them because of their fame outside of the church. But it wouldn't have happened with-- the COVID caused the people who were in line not to be able to be in line because they were lining up when Bishop Blake left-- if you understand what I'm saying-- and attended to his own personal health.

I think that it would have been very different because he was too young to be in the line. There were so many older ones that had been waiting patiently for bishop Blake to either leave or die. And he just-- you know. And they were in line but the COVID changed that whole dynamic. I think that the Church of God in Christ their type has a potential for something fresh and new because that happened.

If I can then say I believe that the same kind of realities have existed or have the potential of existing among those of us who are broken off because we are no longer in sync with perhaps the churches of our youth, and our past have taught us.

I think that we also need to be different about succession. And most of my colleagues, particularly the men who came along with me, have passed away. Most of them are gone. And some of the reason that they are gone is because they did not know when to stop.

They did not know when their bodies couldn't take it any longer, when their consciousness couldn't take it any longer, when their money-- you know, they had to stay for the money. There's just so much, because the planning was not in place, there's so much that I could say about it.

I'm the girl that's left. I had a pack of fellas, you know, surrounded by retreat, and everybody was taller than me and everybody had bigger feet than me. I was the girl in a sea of incredibly strong and powerful men who were affirming, they weren't all gay. Many of them identified as who were the Carlton Pearson types of my life, strong enough to deal with the mouths of the gainsayers. Incredible men. But they did not plan for a future. They just did not.

If I could say-- I know we're at time but if I could say to the beloved that are praying for me and continue to pray for me, let me have succession. Let me have a plan and live it out. Which means for them that they have to step up. And they have found me a bit irritable in the last couple of years because folks are accustomed to me doing certain things, and I've been handling those things over. I think you understand what I'm saying.

And my constant response is, I don't know. They said, well, what are we going to do about the so and so and such and such? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? Because it's not mine to know, not now, not anymore. What are you going to do? What is the plan? You're brilliant. What are you going to do?

Because here's the deal, if you don't do it, it won't continue. Because I'm going to have a day and I'm not going to be dead on that day. So I'm going to have a day when I am going to say, this is it. I'm done.

And you have the training, you have the resources, you have the brilliance, you're going to have to move this along or it's going to be a one song wonder. That's what's going to happen. Like some of those songs that people are really saying they made a record and they didn't make any more after that. It's going to be that. I have incredible leaders now I believe that are moving into-- with some concern-- but moving into places of authority, places of leadership, places of planning. They are a New Testament.

KEVIN ROSS: Thank you so much, bishop. I could listen to you for hours, all of us could. On behalf of everyone here at Harvard Divinity School and just us Unity Campus Ministries, we thank you all for listening. We invite you to be back with us next week and the future weeks of this series Public Leadership-- Public Clergy and the Academy. And in the meantime, go forth and exercise public courage. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER 2: Sponsor HDS Office of Ministry Studies.

SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2024. The President and Fellows of Harvard College.