Small in number, local Moravian Church values modern beliefs

In the age of Christian megachurches, with the number of followers nearing tens of thousands, and with the continued growth of televised worship services that mobilize and expand ministries, a small congregation in Downey, Cali. is spreading Christ’s love in a different way: through personal relationships between members and pastor, community outreach, and fellowship.

On a Sunday evening, a handful of the Moravian Church members can be found gathered in a small, redecorated north chapel that feels more like a living room than a place of worship. This is the Back-Alley Gathering, an inter-generational worship experience quite unlike the usual Sunday service. This is where Rev. Christie Melby-Gibbons and her husband David, members of the Moravian church and guests gather and spend a couple of hours a week to contemplate and have a dialogue about life’s tough questions. In past meetings, the group has drawn prayers, listened to music as a contemplative piece, and viewed movies as activities.

The Back-Alley Gathering is one of the many ways the Moravian Church of Downey is opening its arms to the community, for all people of faiths and circumstance, fighting to stay relevant and active in sharing God’s love.

The beginnings of the church

The Moravian Church is the oldest Protestant denomination, established in 1457 in Moravia (now present-day Czech Republic), predating the Lutheran Church by more than 60 years. It grew from the revolt led by John Hus, a Czech priest, who disagreed with the Catholic Church’s practices. Driven underground in the 1600’s, a revival in the 1700’s in Germany by Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf took the Moravian church to other countries as centers of outreach.

In 1735, the Moravians arrived in Pennsylvania. From there, settlements in the eastern United States followed. By the end of the nineteenth century, Moravians had established settlements in Canada as well.

The Moravian church came to California after WWII, where only a mission had been established in 1890 in the Morongo Indian Reservation. In 1954, the church was built in Downey.

Melby-Gibbons describes the Moravian Church as a “middle-ground” faith, one that emphasizes relationships and love over doctrines and creeds (the church only has one official published doctrine). The church accepts that various Christian denominations achieve relationship with God differently, which only enriches the understanding and celebration of God’s love.

The church is greatly liberal in its embrace of worship and people. The church welcomes women in all leadership roles in the ministry and welcomes the gay and lesbian community as members and trustees.

Phil Voigt, 69, president of the Board of Trustees, was just a young boy when the Moravian church was built in Downey in June 1954. His parents hailed from West Salem, Illinois and belonged in the only Moravian congregation in the small farming town.

“I helped put the nails in this place,” he said, “and my parents had a lot to do with building the church, too.”

It was a fairly large congregation then. Today, the Downey Moravian church has about 100 members, according to Voigt, although attendance to Sunday worship, excluding religious holidays, tends to be slim.

“The Moravian church as a whole has been growing very slowly mainly because Moravians will not build a church that already has a Methodist or a Presbyterian, or some other Protestant church,” he said.

This means that Moravian churches in the U.S. are hard to come by and some Moravians would have to travel far to attend worship.

Shirley Louis, 52, from Simi Valley, travels once a week, sometimes more frequently, to Downey for Sunday worship and other church events.

Born and raised in Nicaragua, Louis grew up going to a Moravian church, where congregations of 200 to 300 members are typical.

“In Nicaragua, church is very important. Kids had to go to Sunday school–it wasn’t a choice. And you went to church every Sunday,” she says.

When she came to California in 1984, she searched for a Moravian church nearby. “I was living in Inglewood at the time, so it was easier then to come to church,” Louis says. Now, it takes her an hour to get to church.

Despite the travel, she goes to worship every Sunday morning, usually with her daughter and mother. And they’re not alone. A few other members from the same village in Nicaragua all drive to attend worship.

No distance is too far to be with their church family.

“I know the names of the people at church. You don’t get that at a big church.”

Though the Moravian Church has been around since the 1400’s, there are only slightly over 700,000 Moravians worldwide. Only 10 percent of Moravians reside in the United States and Canada. Half of the church population resides South Africa, the Caribbean, and Tanzania.

But Melby-Gibbons is realistic with what could happen to the institutional Moravian Church in North America. She knows that active membership has greatly diminished over the years in many congregations.

“Moravian congregations are closing at a rapid rate. It seems that the Moravian Church as an institution—like the institutional church throughout North America and beyond—is dying,” she admitted.

The Moravian church does not proselytize, which means membership over the years has been slow to grow without a regular addition of newly converts.

But membership in Downey hasn’t always been this low. Back in the 1950’s, membership was strong. Over the years, the city population grew, but with it, less people were identifying themselves as Moravians, making it harder to meet the church’s financial needs for maintenance and to pay provincial dues. Today, the majority of the congregation is over the age of 60, with only 20 to 40 younger members.

Emily Korn, 33, is the church’s Youth Leader and admitted that younger people in general are leaving churches.

“Those in their teens, I think, are looking maybe for something more visual[ly] stimulating. So, a traditional, mainline, protestant worship service is not what they are looking for, even though I think we offer a true family of faith at our church,” she said. “I know the names of the people at church. You don’t get that at a big church.”

But along with the sense of a tight-knit community, lies some pitfalls.

“The detriment of small congregations is that sometimes they can become like a social club and become inwardly focused. Most of those congregations will close,” Melby-Gibbons said. “We need to be really careful that we are being relevant and not just forgetting about people outside of our walls.”

Melby-Gibbons shared a provincial leader’s theory on the future of the Moravian Church in North America: “There’s this theory that out of the 35 congregations in the western district, in 10 years, 5 of those congregations will close. And it will keep going in that pattern.”

But this doesn’t deter the church from reaching out.

Although funds are limited, the church manages to donate money and materials to help support several local organizations and programs like Rio Hondo Temporary Home, which provides transitional housing and support services for homeless families. They also have various ministries to collect and provide clothing for the homeless in Skidrow in downtown Los Angeles, and assisting a neighboring congregation in collecting food for a local food bank.

New leadership, new energy

In all of these outreach efforts, Melby-Gibbons is there to guide and encourage her congregation. Since her installment in the church in September 2009, she has introduced new ideas and has brought new energy.

In addition to all the existing outreach efforts, she has also proposed a GAPS Community (Gardener, Artist, Psalmist, and Shopkeeper), a Christ-ian community that would allow people to follow or emulate the life of Jesus Christ and would be housed in the parsonage.

The church also holds “Open Table” every Thursday night where anyone who wants to attend can come and break bread with the Melby-Gibbons and fellow congregants. Melby-Gibbons has also started planning a small program called Moravians Anonymous, a “crash-course” into who the Moravians are and what their theology is. Efforts like these and the Back-Alley Gathering are aimed to remove or at least ease some of the distaste or disillusionment of people for organized religion, and hopefully interest them enough to become members.

In all of the struggles of a small congregation, Melby-Gibbons is finding true joy in her loving congregation.

“You can’t go into ordained ministry without a love for people,” she said.

She added, “I see my task as a pastoral leader in the Moravian realm as: to help the institution die gracefully, but also to look for signs of resurrection.”

Although membership may ultimately thin out and the institutional Moravian Church may fold, Melby-Gibbons believes in the church’s motto: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love.”

“I ask myself: What are those things about the church, which has been about people, which cannot die [and] glow as embers which promise to spark into new life? Those embers are the Moravians’ focus on: love in all things, relationship over doctrine, simplicity in life and theology, and an outward focus, like going out in mission and service to a world in need.”

What Does Fort Hood Mean for American Muslims?

By all accounts, on November 5, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 12 soldiers and 1 civilian at the Fort Hood Army base where he was stationed.

While investigators and reporters try to piece together the events and what prompted them, one fundamental aspect of the rampage is not in doubt: the alleged attacker was Muslim.

Writing shortly after the incident, the perceptive young American Muslim writer Wajahat Ali understandably cautioned against leaping to conclusions: “A cousin of Hasan, interviewed by reporters, has suggested an alternative motivation, not necessarily influenced by religious conviction. ‘He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,’ said Nader Hasan. ‘He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there [in Iraq and Afghanistan],’” he wrote.

But in the face of additional evidence that emerged today, it is not reasonable or logical to pretend that some great wall separated Hasan’s own sense of Muslim identity from his motive. Witnesses report that he shouted “God is Great!” ahead of his rampage; family indicated that he was deeply upset over discrimination he said was visited upon him for being Muslim; and he openly expressed his hostility to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by describing it as a “war against Islam.”

Of course, we do not yet know precisely what combination of factors led to the attack, and with more than 20,000 Muslims actively serving in the U.S. military, it would be absurd to mistake one man’s warped and skewed understanding of Islam and graft it onto every other Muslim.

But the scale and nature of this incident raises a number of uncomfortable questions about what usually goes unseen and remains unsaid outside of military circles.

A psychiatrist, Hasan heard the stories of soldiers returning from combat: did these accounts of killing, abuse and other horrors fuel his anger at American policy as the date of his own deployment to Afghanistan neared? What kind of harassment was Hasan subjected to on base for his Muslim identity? How widespread is enmity toward Muslims and Islam among the very soldiers who Gen. McChrystal is sending to fight alongside Muslims against Islamist extremists?

There are also other, equally pressing questions that directly affect young Muslims, such as me, who call this country our own. People will invariably ask why and whether Muslims are in the military–or perhaps even in the country at all–and what sort of measures will be taken to “monitor” this minority.

The Council of American Islamic Relations released a statement condemning the attack, labeling it “heinous” and contrary to Muslim principles. An assault upon one’s own unarmed and unsuspecting comrades is unquestionably cowardly and immoral, but I suspect that no number of official statements will stave off questions of Muslim “loyalty” to the state or disrupt the almost magnetic attraction between conservatives and anti-Islamic rhetoric.

The greatest and most pressing questions of all, however, are whether incidents like this one mark a growing trend of radicalization, isolation, or anger among Muslims in the U.S.–and if so, why. A few years ago, it was commonplace to observe that Islamist terrorists were foreign-trained and foreign-born, but the Fort Hood attack was at least the fourth this year involving American-raised or American-born Muslims.

The status and station of American Muslims — who by and large have enjoyed prosperity and contribute to the country as doctors, scientists, and translators–is a living rejoinder to fantastic rhetoric about a clash of civilizations or religions. But it is not a relationship that can be taken for granted or neglected by either side.

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This article originally appeared on WireTap.

Levesque-Alam writes about America and Islam at his website, Crossing the Crescent, and for WireTap, where he is also the immigration blogger.

Examining racial divides created and made worse by man

Race is a funny word. Man-made, just like everything else we’ve created using our own languages. I believe it is an attempt, at best, to distinguish ourselves from a common genome.

When I was very young, a race was something I saw horses or greyhounds compete in. I grew up in the suburbs of Colorado - hardly a prime suitor for diversity in the 1980s. But, nevertheless, I hardly ever felt like the ugly duckling because of the amount of melanin in my skin or the child that everyone looked at funny because I didn’t physically fit in. Looking back, I’m sure plenty of factors played into this relatively comfortable childhood, particularly the idea that I came from an Asian background. Asians have a very different sort of stereotype associated with them, especially those of the Indian subcontinent.

In my teens, people didn’t look at me and think, “She’ll never make it through middle school” or “I wonder if her parents are crack cocaine addicts”. People looked at me and wondered which Ivy League I’d be attending and how many hours a night I spent studying. And in a funny little way, I began to disapprove. Mostly because I was put on a pedestal I wanted neither to justify nor own. And when I didn’t make Ivy League for college (mostly because I didn’t apply to begin with), people wondered if I was the “special” case among Asian Americans.

It was in freshman year of college that the entire schism between racial groups became very apparent to me.  Prior to this, I didn’t know what “racism”, “white supremacy” or “affirmative action” really were. Of course, I’d studied the Civil Rights movement and gave my allegiances to honorable figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., but they didn’t apply to me. I was neither black nor Hispanic. I came from an immigrant family that specialized in skilled labor and whose parents were sworn in as American citizens when I was in the second grade. Parents who had their Masters degrees from American institutions and who lived a relatively comfortable life.

I may have not personally experienced racism growing up, but that isn’t to say I wasn’t exposed to it. Americans are not the only ones with a long history of racism. It’s a global phenomenon. Many Pakistani Muslims, for example, find Indian Hindus to be inferior, “dirty” and “backwards”. “Monkey worshiping filth”, as one particular individual in my family used to put it. Why this hate? Hinduism and Islam clash historically, politically and religiously. Their followers must, as result, categorize themselves as superior to the other faith in order to justify their own beliefs. This is not to say peaceful coexistence does not exist. But there are a fair share of extremists and racists riddled in the both populaces, some of whom also happen to make-up my family.

This sort of racism also isn’t something to discuss with others. It’s a dinner table conversation, behind closed doors. It is understood, but never publicly acknowledged. Growing up, I found it to be a fascinating paradox that I vicariously lived, through my own parents. They’d smile, make small talk with Hindus and non-Muslims – and then behind closed doors, the hate would fill every corner of every room in the house. At the time, I was too young to realize that what they were engaging in was racism. Thankfully, their words weren’t too impressionable, either.

I did have a personal face-off with racism in the latter years of high school. It stemmed from the ignorant and widespread racism following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. These days, it doesn’t matter if you’re Pakistani, Bengali, Indian or even Sri Lankan – to the ignorant racists in this country, you’re a “terrorist”. In 2002, I was stopped at Bush Intercontinental Airport and subjected to SWAT team interrogations, for absolutely no reason except that my name was Maha. A white Delta employee at check-in was kind enough to report me (for national security’s sake, of course). It’s a very belittling and awful feeling, to be subjected to racism. Suddenly, your personality and your achievements are trashed for your name and what your skin color is. And often times, there isn’t a single thing you can do about it.

But I’ve learned, through attaining my own independence from unfortunate aspects of my bicultural identity, that racism is very much psycho-social. Individuals with racist tendencies have failed, for the most part, to establish their own personal identities. It is easier to elevate one’s ethnic, religious or national background to a higher level over another than to endure deep introspection geared towards understanding and strengthening insecurities surrounding personal identity. At the microcosmic level, this could be controlled. If an individual exhibits racist behavior, he or she can be consequently restrained.

At the macrocosmic, state-level, however, it becomes a rather nasty problem.

Afghanistan’s new “rape” law hinders future growth

Afghanistan is no longer ruled by the Taliban. But a new law that is gaining international criticism aims to carry out the very goals of the country’s stringent past: oppress Afghani women.

Dozens of Shiite Muslim women held demonstrations in Kabul Wednesday protesting this law that allows husbands, among other things, the right to demand sex from their wives.

The law only applies to Afghanistan’s Shiite minority. They represent a mere 20 percent of the country’s 30 million population and not all women, regardless of creed, oppose the law.

The NY Times reported that many believe President Hamid Karzai – who relies on Western support to stay in power – signed the bill into law to gain the conservative support of Shiite clergymen. Karzai is also up for re-election later this year.

Dubbed the “rape law,” the NY Times states:

One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to “make herself up” or “dress up” if that is what her husband wants.

Also, unless a woman is ill, her husband is specifically allowed to demand sex every four days, according to the Associated Press.

President Barack Obama has called the law “abhorrent” while Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has refused to provide soldiers to a country that oppresses its women.

Karzai has given in to pressure from the West and promised to send the law to his Ministry of Justice for review.

This law is not about religion anymore. It’s a society’s wrongful approach to women’s rights. It’s about a woman’s right to flourish and give back to her society.

Even if a man didn’t abuse such powers, what would happen if a women refused him?

While women hold positions of power in parliament, this law will only hinder any positive growth Afghanistan faces in the future. If this nation does not allow a crucial part of its society to advance, political maneuvering will once again give way for backward steps of the past.

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Credit: Urmi Rahman, a freelance journalist residing in California. She received her B.A. in political science with minors in English and journalism from Cal State Fullerton. Urmi, 25, is also the editor and co-founder of Minority Dreams Magazine.

Generation You: Religion

With Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration right around the corner, Minority Dreams asked students, activists, leaders and educators about his full name and the rise of Islamophobia.

Q: How do you feel about Barack Hussein Obama using his full name during the inauguration speech on Jan. 20, 2009?

“Barack Obama’s inauguration will be a undercover test of character. True, his middle name has Islamic origins, but it does not necessarily mean he is Muslim – a label which many of he peers would consider to be political suicide. I think he should use his middle name. Why should he hide part of his name? He should be true to his name and identity – a black man, whose FATHER was Muslim, who will be the next President of the United States of America.” – Aysha Mohsin, law student at University of Southern California

“If he hides “Hussein” people will manipulate it and interpret it the way they want to. It’s better if he holds his name and explains it himself. I don’t think he identifies himself as being Muslim, so I don’t think he’s appealing to Muslim Americans or Muslims in general.” – Noor Higley, activist, Washington DC

“I think he should use his full name. We should all be proud of our names and Mr. Obama should be proud of his. Our names give us some insight on what our ethnic or cultural background is. With such a name as his, it has shown how far our country has come in embracing not only people but leaders of diverse backgrounds.” – Curtis Schlaufman, president of Associated Students Inc. at Cal State Fullerton

“I don’t think using Obama’s middle name should be an issue at all. It’s his name, period. The issue of using a middle name wasn’t a subject to debate when Bush or Clinton were inaugurated. I think he should spell it out, loud and proud.” – Rashad Al-dabbagh, Access California Services, Anaheim, Calif.

“I think he should use his full name. All the other presidents that I can remember watching used theirs.” – Anthony Ragazzo, lecturer at Cal State Fullerton

Q: Do you feel there has been a rise in Islamophobia [prejudice against or stereotyping of Muslims] in recent years in America? How & Why?

“Islamophobia is becoming the unsaid norm for much of the country. Living in California we don’t see it as much, nor do we hear it in the media or news reports since much of the incidences go unreported. Being Muslim, Pakistani and a student, I come to hear of attacks on students at universities, professors making discriminating remarks and especially racial profiling by authority figures. I, myself, have fallen prey to racial profiling many times. It has become common, almost expected, for me to be stopped every single time I fly for intense security screening. I suspect my name, Aysha, is the red flag.

The creation of the term “Islamophobia” itself should be an indicator that there has been a rise in incidences so much so that a term needed to be created to categorize these events.  It is true that Islamophobia has been at an increased state for quite some and fluctuates surrounding global events. Depending on the international political climate, people tend to be more outspoken and become more Islamophobic. In my opinion Islamophobia is becoming more and more common and almost accepted.

When you travel outside California [and] see what the rest of the nation thinks of Islam, Muslims, the war and the East, you would be shocked. Muslims need to work to help others understand Islam and combat the stereotypes rather than ignoring ignorant remarks.” – Aysha

“Yes. It’s hard to measure Islamophobia, but there have been campaigns designed to make Islam and Muslims look bad, such as the Islamo-fascism campaigns that toured campuses. In terms of foreign policy, the U.S. has occupied Muslim countries for oil in the name of spreading democracy. U.S. foreign policy requires the dehumanization of Muslims to justify the war. The people have not protested the Iraq war as much as they did when America was in Vietnam.

Both Americans and Muslim Americans must take action. Have a campaign that educates the public and our representatives in Congress about the situation, how racism can take different shapes and forms.” – Noor

“I do feel that there has been a rise in Islamophobia, mostly because of the attacks on September 11th. Unfortunatly the majority of people don’t quite understand Islam or it’s ideals and values. People fear what they don’t understand and to get over that obstacle we must all be educated.

It’s a matter of interacting with people who have roots in Islam and learning about different religions in school. The more the public is educated the less fear there is.” - Curtis