Black Battle, White Knight. Michael Battle

a crazy juxtaposition. An African Anglican is really an oxymoron since for much of human history, these two identities could never be mutual.

      Malcolm’s genius is in how his vision of the world and God’s creation was such that there could be room at the table for all people. I remember an example of this when I was having dinner with fellow Anglicans at a church conference. To a table full of strangers, I mentioned that I was doing this biography on Malcolm. Even though I shouldn’t have been, I was surprised that the majority of the table knew about Malcolm and even more that a couple at the table told me that they wouldn’t have gotten ordained in the Anglican Church if it had not been for Malcolm. One of the persons who made this confession sent me information from an honors thesis she was writing. The thesis was about a Hawaii-born man named Masao Fujita, of Japanese ancestry, who entered the process to become an Anglican priest in 1950. After interrupting his seminary training to serve in the military in 1954–55, he was ordained in 1957. In isolated, rural areas Fujita served Grace Church, Molokai, and the Kohala Mission on the north side of the Island of Hawaii.

It was on the mainland in 1963 while doing postgraduate study that he visited Malcolm, with whom he had become friends while in seminary. During his visit Masao related to Malcolm that it was impossible for an American of Japanese ancestry to get a good church position in Hawaii, because all the good spots went to Caucasians. Shortly thereafter an article appeared in the Los Angeles Times accusing the Episcopal Church in Hawaii of racism. Malcolm wrote the article. Though the story never got major play in Hawaii, the Bishop of Los Angeles sent Bishop Kennedy a copy of the article. Reacting with horror at this accusation, Bishop Kennedy called the other clergy of Japanese ancestry into a private meeting at a clergy conference. Without showing them the article, he asked, “This isn’t true, is it?” Another priest, Norio Sasaki, relates that, “We were all scared to disagree with the Bishop. I know that I was just out of seminary. Now I think that maybe I didn’t support Masao enough.”⁷. In retrospect today, Masao’s concerns were difficult to hear by those in power. To criticize a Bishop in the Los Angeles Times caused much tension, especially among those who valued good public appearance as essential. Yet, there is another aspect to be considered. Masao and Bishop Kennedy, coming from different worldviews, did not have the same perceptions of vocation. Similar to Malcolm’s insights about Rashomon, one of the chief tasks in life is to understand each other coming from different world views. Bishop Kennedy had valued his days in small, rural missions as some of the happiest days of his life. Masao wanted an up-and-coming city church as much as any other priest in Hawaii in those days. Also, it was not custom for people from a Japanese culture to confront their superiors directly with a complaint or criticism. Probably if Malcolm Boyd had not written the article, Masao Fujita would never have complained to the Bishop—and improvements in his vocation may not have manifested.⁸

      Doing my research on the life of Malcolm Boyd led me continuously to such strange occurrences of meeting many people whose lives were deeply influenced by Malcolm’s voice crying out in the wilderness. I found myself in this new strange territory singing that rock group’s reframe, “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.” Of course my context was different. The black experience was hard to name in a church with a predominantly white British identity. The difficulty of having no name in this world was compounded by the fact that I didn’t want to blame white people. After all, everyone is trying to survive in the desert. Who needs another voice of blame when you’re simply trying to drive your kids to school, survive an economic meltdown, and keep your cholesterol under control? Nevertheless, I felt like I was playing a role. I was the expert on black experience. I was the token voice for the appendages of history in which the colonized represented reconciliation with the true church (of European descent). This was the sarcastic spirit clanging in my soul.

      Malcolm became my spiritual director. “I learned from black liberation,” Malcolm told me, “that I do not have to play a ‘role.’ It is not only my black brother who can be free. I, too, can taste the freedom, liberation, release, and meaning that transform my existence into a life.” In our regular sessions of spiritual direction, Malcolm taught me that God gave me freedom to be human, hence my new name, human being. In my freedom as a human being, I can transcend roles that would imprison me—if I have enough courage to cut myself free from ties in the mind, the body, the personality, and the society.

Malcolm prays, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” Jesus, help us to receive you.⁹

      Although I grew up in North Carolina when segregation was a fresh memory, Malcolm taught me that I have the power to turn away from a white god who resides in temples of whiteness, white purity, white truth, and white holiness without having to feel guilty for hurting white people’s feelings. After all, Malcolm is white—and his feelings weren’t hurt. But the key to Malcolm’s spiritual direction was that in my new freedom, I shouldn’t go to the opposite extreme in my freedom and turn to a black god who resides in temples of blackness, black purity, black truth, black holiness. Nor, really, do I need a green god, a red god, a yellow god, or a blue god.

      Also, I do not need a white ghetto, a black ghetto, a green ghetto, a red ghetto, a yellow ghetto, or a blue ghetto. Malcolm states strongly, “I will fight all these lousy damned ghettos. Because I know that I cannot speak of freedom as an individual if I cannot live in a free society.”

      “But Malcolm, why should I be black in a white church, a white universe? Shouldn’t I fight against this idolatrous worldview?”

      “No. I do not have to fight anybody. Anger is almost as much a landmine as self-righteousness. Battles concern me only within the context of war. I must convey my humanness to others, not my ‘Christianity.’ I must convey my humanness to others, not my ‘Americanism.’”

      “How can I do this if I am not human—if I have no name in some human systems?”

      Malcolm answers by describing his own experience. “To be human, I must understand that my whiteness is secondary, along with my ‘Christianity’ and ‘Americanism.’ As a human, I have human contacts with other people. I have as many close black friends as white ones; our blackness and our whiteness are vitally important in defining our individual humanness and our social relationship, but the blackness and whiteness finally do not separate us but instead become the factor of binding our painful humanity together. I cannot truly enter the human experience if I do not comprehend (and partially live in) the Black Experience as well as the White Experience. The human experience is, in its fulfillment, a unity.”

      Eldridge Cleaver, a famous black power activist, speaks of a world that has become virtually a neighborhood. Martin Luther King Jr. calls it a World House. Both Cleaver and King conclude that if this planet is to survive, the concept of humanity segregating is really something that can’t continue indefinitely. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” preaches King. Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it this way, “Humanity is inextricably linked together. A person is a person through other persons.” I think this is why one of Tutu’s best friends is the DalaiLama of Tibet. Strange relationships develop when the worldview is cooperation rather than competition.

      Malcolm concludes, “I do not wish to be naïve about my humanness or my whiteness (indeed, my ‘Christianity’ or ‘Americanism’). . . . I do not speak of utopias, I am not even explicitly idealistic. Survival is hard pragmatism. Freedom and liberation are hard as nails, not airy generalities. If a black person abrasively rejects me—on the basis of my whiteness, not on the basis of knowing Malcolm as a person—it is inhuman and dehumanizing of me to react in outrage, protest, cries of self-pity and deprecation, and unholy preachment. We can, the two of us, maintain our humanness in the creative tension of separation. Isolated we will not be, for our mutual consciousness of one another is a burning thing. And, if we seek a mutual goal, we can remain human within tactical separation.”

      Malcolm refused to be separated from all black people at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. With those black folk open to friendship with Malcolm, he joined the struggle, the Civil Rights Movement to join Black Experience with White