What an Urban Seminary Is Doing to Advocate Social Justice Beyond the Iron Gates

Pitts­burgh The­o­log­i­cal Seminary

One Seminarian’s Perspective

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Kelly Jean Norris-Wilke, Pitts­burgh The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary student

I am stand­ing on pave­ment cov­ered in graf­fiti. Let­ters from friends and loved ones spray-painted onto the black top. Let­ters say­ing good­bye to a seventeen-year-old com­mu­nity mem­ber shot on this spot on a Sun­day night. It is Good Fri­day, and a pas­tor from our group calls out, “Where, O death, is your vic­tory? Where, O death, is your sting? We feel it here among us.” This event is part memo­r­ial ser­vice, part com­mu­nity advo­cacy. Orga­nized by Pitts­burgh The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nar­ian April Roe­buck, there are five local pas­tors present and even more churches rep­re­sented. We come to mourn for a young man none of us knew. We come to mourn for our com­mu­nity. We come to advo­cate for peace and justice.

I sup­pose that all of our urban sem­i­nar­ies might share sim­i­lar sto­ries. The beauty and tragedy of being in Pitts­burgh is that there is much work to be done. True, our sem­i­nary stands behind a large iron gate. The cam­pus is safe. I love to watch the mag­no­lia tree bloom on our front lawn where stu­dents play ulti­mate Fris­bee and our pre-kindergarteners play tag with their sem­i­nar­ian teach­ers. Like many churches today, we run the risk of becom­ing inward focused, miss­ing the larger com­mu­nity beyond our gates. Crit­i­cism that we can lock our­selves away in a cam­pus bub­ble can be accu­rate. I’ve heard com­mu­nity mem­bers say they never knew that behind the bars was a train­ing ground for pas­tors. Yet, many choose to engage our broader com­mu­nity; Christ com­pels us to come out from behind the iron gates and advo­cate for social jus­tice and peace­ful communities.

For me, a second-year stu­dent and co-chair of Peace & Jus­tice Fel­low­ship (PJF), Pitts­burgh The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary (PTS) is an excit­ing place to be. Com­ing from teach­ing in the Philadel­phia School Dis­trict, I was attracted to the many urban oppor­tu­ni­ties that PTS could pro­vide. I entered as a dual-enrollment stu­dent to get a Mas­ter of Divin­ity at PTS and a Juris Doc­tor (J.D.) at Duquesne Uni­ver­sity, hop­ing to do social jus­tice work upon com­ple­tion of each. Although only a few stu­dents have com­pleted their dual degrees, this part­ner­ship, sim­i­lar to the well-attended part­ner­ship in Social Work at the Uni­ver­sity of Pitts­burgh, has existed since the 1970s. I was also attracted to the Metro-Urban Insti­tute, which aims to help churches meet the needs of those liv­ing in urban con­texts. These pro­grams sug­gest that there is strong insti­tu­tional sup­port for social jus­tice work on campus.

As with most stu­dents, God con­tin­ues to lay out the path before me, and my efforts have turned from law toward church plant­ing. The Pitts­burgh Pres­bytery has sup­ported the devel­op­ment of nine new churches in the past twelve years. Although I have yet to visit all of them, I can say they are places where issues of com­mu­nity jus­tice are taken seri­ously. Some are plants within immi­grant pop­u­la­tions where church lead­er­ship and mem­bers work to bring ser­vices to those who need them most. Last month, PJF specif­i­cally focused on the needs of local immi­grants. Lead­ers in the com­mu­nity from both Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions shared their wis­dom for show­ing hos­pi­tal­ity, for help­ing with legal chal­lenges, and for advo­cat­ing for new­com­ers from other nations. In a forum, Dr. van Driel, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of The­ol­ogy, spoke pas­sion­ately to give stu­dents a the­o­log­i­cal frame­work to under­stand our own posi­tion as strangers in a for­eign land, our true cit­i­zen­ship being the King­dom of God. Dr. Hainsworth, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Ethics, fol­lowed by ask­ing us to think about the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of our lan­guage (e.g., using the word “ille­gals” to describe a peo­ple who are seek­ing the well­be­ing of their fam­i­lies by com­ing across national bor­ders) and ask­ing us to be curi­ous about the root causes of immigration.

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Yet, I also stand in my own bro­ken­ness and in the strug­gle of a city still plagued by racial
seg­re­ga­tion, by gun vio­lence, by eco­nomic injus­tice, and I see that the divi­sions in our city extend into our churches and onto our cam­pus as well.
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In other recent church plants, social jus­tice advo­cacy is writ­ten right into the DNA of the new wor­ship­ing com­mu­nity. One church has two recent Pitts­burgh The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary grad­u­ates who are bi-vocational pas­tors. Each per­son splits his time with the church and with com­mu­nity work, one direct­ing a com­mu­nity gar­den and the other train­ing and equip­ping com­mu­nity mem­bers the­o­log­i­cally for lay-ministry. The church plant also sup­ports a min­istry recently founded by another PTS grad­u­ate who seeks to restore neigh­bor­hood homes and to pre­pare com­mu­nity mem­bers for home­own­er­ship through credit coun­sel­ing and the like—all while sup­port­ing indi­vid­u­als who want to stay in their own neigh­bor­hoods as spe­cific Pitts­burgh regions go through the process of gentrification.

Fur­ther­more, the sem­i­nary encour­ages all stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate in an intern­ship dur­ing our sec­ond year. One option is to assist in the Chaplain’s Office at the Allegheny County Jail. I spend my morn­ings there, hear­ing count­less sto­ries from those who are miss­ing from our neigh­bor­hoods around Pitts­burgh. Bad choices, a lack of job oppor­tu­ni­ties (espe­cially for the under­e­d­u­cated), easy access to drugs and guns, and no hope for the future are the real­i­ties many of the incar­cer­ated face. We dis­cuss how to take respon­si­bil­ity for our own sin; to make bet­ter choices; to con­trol our anger and addic­tions; and to leave destruc­tive rela­tion­ships behind. We arrange men­tors who can help ex-offenders make dif­fer­ent choices when they step out from behind their own iron gates. Many are intro­duced to Jesus Christ, and every day I expe­ri­ence the joy of watch­ing peo­ple as they come to under­stand costly grace and what it means to stand in God’s mercy, which is new every morning.

Yet, I am struck over and over again by the sys­temic injus­tices, which have led many into the jail sys­tem, includ­ing racist prac­tices of unequal sen­tenc­ing for dif­fer­ent kinds of drugs. A class offered at PTS helped many of us to think through these injus­tices. Begin­ning with the writ­ings of ancient Chris­t­ian thinkers like Ori­gen and Augus­tine, trav­el­ing through Aquinas and onto con­tem­po­rary schol­ars like Yoder and Niebuhr, we learned to ask, “What is the role of the Chris­t­ian and of the Church in gov­ern­men­tal struc­tures?” Dur­ing the sec­ond half of Chris­t­ian Ethics and Con­tem­po­rary Pol­i­tics, we explored top­ics that came from stu­dents such as, “What role can/should the church play in restora­tive jus­tice issues like low­er­ing rates of recidi­vism?” This course and oth­ers, like the The­ol­ogy and Preach­ing of Mar­tin Luther King Jr., cre­ate space for stu­dents to begin to under­stand and claim our role in con­tem­po­rary soci­ety as advo­cates for jus­tice and part­ners in the work of reconciliation.

There­fore, if the ques­tion being asked is, “Is there ade­quate sup­port for jus­tice min­istries through fac­ulty, admin­is­tra­tion, school-sponsored pro­grams, and/or aca­d­e­mic courses?” my expe­ri­ence claims yes. Yet, I also stand in my own bro­ken­ness and in the strug­gle of a city still plagued by racial seg­re­ga­tion, by gun vio­lence, by eco­nomic injus­tice, and I see that the divi­sions in our city extend into our churches and onto our cam­pus as well. As Mar­tin Luther King Jr. noted in his 1963 speech at West­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity, “11 AM on Sun­day morn­ing is our most seg­re­gated hour.” Gen­er­ally, in Pitts­burgh, this has not changed. And sadly, I believe that if we sur­vey stu­dents on cam­pus about ways in which they have directly worked for social jus­tice and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion over the past year, only a small per­cent­age of stu­dents could answer with spe­cific anec­dotes. We are still learn­ing how to actively reflect together—as stu­dents, fac­ulty, and administrators—on our com­mon call­ing to work for jus­tice in our community.

Yet, I am encour­aged that when stu­dents leave Pitts­burgh Sem­i­nary, many are seek­ing calls that show a broader under­stand­ing of the role of “pas­tor.” Here in our com­mu­nity there are more and more recent grad­u­ates who are men­tors for what advo­cacy can look like beyond our sem­i­nary gates. As a stu­dent who looks for ways to under­stand more fully God’s King­dom com­ing on earth, I have found a com­mu­nity of sup­port. I pray that the days when five local pas­tors must gather to mourn the death of one of our chil­dren are few. Yet, I am grate­ful for men­tors who open my eyes to pos­si­bil­i­ties for ser­vice until the day of completion.

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