the underview.
The underview is an exploration of the shaping of our place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.
The underview is a series of discussions within and about the community of Northwest Arkansas. The underview explores our collective understanding and beliefs about the place we live.
These discussions will include topics that are foundational to the identity of our region, the history of our communities, the truth of conflict with the land and its people, and the current challenges and opportunities for our community.
the underview.
the united methodist church with Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris, part 2 (ep 3, 10).
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⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains the tragedy of gun violence and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
In part two of this conversation, Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris gets into what First United Methodist Church Bentonville is doing right now in the community. The church's Second Street Pantry served 47,000 people last year. Beer & Hymns raised a record $50,000 in a single night for the NWA Children's Shelter. The building is open seven days a week to nonprofits who can't afford space anywhere else. And the lead pastor lives in an RV — because she cannot afford to buy a home in the city she serves. Morris describes the congregation's participation in the ULI Faithful Foundations program and what it would mean to put workforce housing on church-owned land in downtown Bentonville.
The conversation turns to Christian nationalism, which Morris calls antithetical to Christianity. She draws a distinction between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of the culture — and says if you read the Gospels and don't get offended, you didn't read the Gospels. She describes what she calls the prophetic middle: not wishy-washy, but incredibly principled. A place where conservative members and lesbian couples worship side by side. Where the pastor shows up at city council to say quit fighting about God in a civic meeting. And where wholeness means the reign of God — unity without uniformity, all of us together, and that is what God looks like.
https://www.theunderview.com/the-first-united-methodist-church-with-rev-dr-michelle-morris-part-1
About the underview:
The underview is an exploration of the development of our Communal Theology of Place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.
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Host: @mikerusch
Before we begin, a word of caution. This episode contains the tragedy of gun violence and suicide. The interview is committed to honest storytelling about our place, and sometimes that means that those that we interview share the unthinkable stories of tragedy that they have endured. I would ask that you please take care of yourself as you listen.
rev. dr. michelle morris.:the 250th birthday's coming up and I decided I was gonna preach a sermon series on America, and most of my pastor friends said, I'm not touching it. And I said, that is exactly the problem. The fact that we won't throw our voice into this space, messy as it is, means that one whole bullhorn over here gets to say whatever they wanna say. And, but I also didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to design a series, so I invited my veterans to come have breakfast with me and I said, I need your help. I need your help designing this series. I just need your input into what needs to be said here because I feel like you have a different level of commitment than the average citizen. You were, at least on some level, willing to die for your country. One of the things that they told me was, the thing is, it really doesn't matter to us who the president is. That's not who we swear our allegiance to. We take an oath to the Constitution, not the president. It's those ideals that we're actually defending, not whichever political party is in office. We have to rise above that political divide and serve the ideals of who this country can be.
mike rusch.:Well, you're listening to The Underview, an exploration in the shaping of our place. My name is Mike Rusch, and this is part two of our conversation with Reverend Dr. Michelle Morris, the lead pastor at First United Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville, one of the oldest institutions in Northwest Arkansas, founded in 1832 before Arkansas was a state. In part one, Reverend Morris shared her personal journey into ministry, a story that includes real tragedy, and we talked about what it means to lead a church with nearly 200 years of history on basically the same street corner. It's a history that includes choosing the wrong side of slavery and then choosing to stay in a denomination when over 100 churches in Arkansas left over the question of inclusion. If you haven't listened to part one, I'd encourage you to go back and start there. Today, we're getting into what this church is doing right now in this community. Topics such as housing and wealth and Christian nationalism, and what it means for a church that feeds over forty-seven thousand people a year through its pantry to also ask a question of who gets to live here. And in this idea that Reverend Morris calls the prophetic middle, a place that is not wishy-washy, but incredibly principled. All right, we've got a whole lot to work through today. Let's get back into it as we've talked about the church's role maybe in the community and how you view that, this becomes pretty tangible pretty quickly. I read that Second Street pantry, which operates here out of the church. Last year you served 47,000 people. Which is a reported 100% increase from the year before. Beer and hymns which Ken and Casey lead. Who are also worship leaders here at the church. Yep. On one night they raise$50,000 for Northwest Arkansas Children's Shelter. These are real practical ways that this church's role in the community is a part of meeting community needs and part of the forming and shaping of this place. Why? What, where did what how do you view that role in these real practical needs? Specifically these about being a part of bringing help and relief to Yeah. To people here. I'm gonna guess not all 47,000 of those people went to church here.
rev. dr. michele morris.:Most of them don't.
mike rusch.:So
rev. dr. michele morris.:maybe one.
mike rusch.:So like, this goes well beyond the boundaries of this faith community,
rev. dr. michele morris.:right? Yeah. And that's of course, it's all the same understanding of if we boxed God into this building, what are we doing right? And if we box our faith into this building, then it's not really changing us in, into the people who would follow Jesus. The disciples didn't just hang out in the synagogue all day. They were out feeding. And Jesus would feed people. People are hungry. They're hungry for. God's word. Sure. But they're actually hungry, and we're called to respond to that need. And John Wesley was, this was a kind of converting thing for him. We have one of our staff members is, has accepted a call to ministry and she's in seminary right now, and she's in a class that's basically all around this idea of submitting to be more vile. And what that was, what that, where that came from was John Wesley was only preaching in the church. And then George Whitfield, who was an evangelist at the time, challenged Wesley to preach in the coal mines and to be in the fields and to go out into the streets where the people were. And it was offensive to Wesley. But then he went and saw George Whitfield preach to 10,000 people in a field and went, I will submit to be more vile. And basically what it was his recogni, he recognized that this dressed up place of this church building was not where it is really. And he started going out into the world. And when we're or ordained, we hear the echo of Wesley's words, the world is my parish. And and so it's very true to Methodism and it's true to our way of evangelism. People think that Methodists are terrible evangelists. And on some level we are in the sense that we do not lead out with the story of Jesus Christ. But we actually don't think Jesus let out with the story of Jesus Christ. A lot of times he healed people, he fed them, and then he talked to them. Or sometimes he just healed them and fed them and didn't have an expectation beyond that. And it was enough that they were, that they had a better day that day, than they would've. That they were shown that kind of love in that moment. And that's really where we're driving from. And yeah, the secondary pantry, it's, the growth of the pantry is heartbreaking.
mike rusch.:Yeah. What does that tell you about what's happening in the communities today?
rev. dr. michele morris.:We're hurting, the community is really hurting the. Prices are out of control and rent's out of control. And we have several that come through that live in their cars. And that, so we have separate bags for people who are not in a home. They get stuff that they can just pop open and they don't have to heat and that sort of thing. When I first got here, we were feeding se we, we gave out 75 bags a week. And second street pantry, there's not a limitation. You can come as many times in a month as you want to, and you get however many. You get a number of bags based on the number of people in your family and. So we were giving away 75 bags a week. Now we give out between three and 400. And part of that is growth. Growth naturally is gonna create that, but it's, that's a huge number of change and. This congregation is just committed to, we don't turn you away because of anything. You could come, you could be a millionaire and drive through Second Street Pantry. We give you the food, you can pull up in a really shiny SUV. It doesn't matter you're getting food. It's not about judging, it's about you. You tell us you need food, you're getting food, and then beer and hymns. One of the things I love about beer and himms and we have actually mirrored what they do. So Beer and HIMMS is a nonprofit that supports other nonprofits. So they pick a different nonprofit every month, and they raise money for that nonprofit, which is a sign really of our understanding that we don't do this alone, right? We don't have to, we don't have to do all the work. There are great nonprofits out there doing tremendous work, and what we can do is come alongside them and help them. We have, the way we have started to echo that in our building is we now don't charge nonprofits for use of our building. So almost every day this building is packed. Church real estate nationwide is the most wasted real estate in the nation because mostly it is occupied one or maybe two days a week. This building is occupied now seven days a week and our parking lot is free to the, to, for people to use downtown, so we just make this, we just feel like part of our mission is to be present for our community and to serve our community, and to come along those side, those folks that are already doing such amazing work. We're gonna have a down syndrome theater camp that's hosted here this summer. We have a community theater group that started rehearsing here. We just lost a community orchestra. They found a better, a place that's better for their space, which we're so happy that they did that. They were squeezing in here. It's there's a senior group, a seniors group they do senior education on things like, estate planning and how to keep yourself healthy and all those kinds of things. They've got a space here now and over and over again. When we have nonprofits come look at our space and they ask 'em, all right, how much is it gonna cost? And we say, oh, it's free. They, we have had more than one person start crying. And Master Gardeners are here first Tuesday of the month, and it's insane. Do not come downtown the first Tuesday of the month, every parking spot is gone. And it's just, we're called to be present with our people. And it's not about, this is what I started to say. We're accused of being bad evangelists because we don't come up to people and tell 'em, you need to believe in Jesus Christ or You're going to Hell. Because we, it really goes back to that lead out with love, right? You're hurting, you have a need. We can help, we respond because that's what our faith tells us to do. And we're happy to share about our faith. But you getting help from us is not dependent on you believing the way we believe.
mike rusch.:I think in addition to what you're doing you're also participating in trying to solve some real structural issues around housing. And I know this 'cause we've had some conversations before, but you participated within the Faithful Foundations program. That ULI love the work that they're doing over there. That's not an insignificant thing to go through or to take on or to try to solve. How do you think about, and why is this an area that you feel that this faith congregation is going to try to be an answer to this community problem?
rev. dr. michele morris.:First this church has a long tradition of seeing kind of big problems in the community and responding. We helped found Helping Hands, we helped found legacy Village. We of course have the Second Street Pantry. We have beer and hymns, so we see these big things that are happening. And then we are like we'll just figure out something to do. What can we do? And right now we have a prime piece of property that has nothing on it, but some sheds in downtown Bentonville, and we have challenges within our own church that will have to also be addressed with that land. So we're trying to figure out creatively how that is, but arguably housing is a mix in that because we don't have a parsonage and as their lead pastor, I'm paid very well, but I could not afford to buy. I'm now divorced and so I'm a single income and I couldn't afford to buy when I first got to Bentonville, and it's not gotten any better. And then and then renting in Arkansas is always a challenge because there are no renter's rights basically. And so I ran into a couple one, I was living in a house. I was renting a house, and they realized they could get $700,000 for it. So they sold it and away I went. And then I was in townhouses and just it's a hard, it's a hard situation being a renter, you, your rate, my rent went up, they started, inspecting the space. Every three months I had to sign, my lease included that if the pipes froze, I had to pay for any construction costs that might happen in my, if there was any damage. And I just couldn't live that way anymore. But I also couldn't afford to buy a house. So I live in an rv. I'm the pastor that everybody knows that's in town, that lives in an rv. And I love it. It's great. Winter is not the best, I'll be honest. But all the rest of the time it's amazing and it's a great solution for me. But somebody's coming behind me at some point. So we've gotta address a parsonage, but that's gonna be workforce housing, right? Being able to apply a place for your pastor to live will be workforce housing. And then again, it drives from yes, we have church needs we need to address, but this church doesn't respond selfishly. They, we don't, we just don't. It's not in our DNA to look solely at what we need. We really do try to keep our eyes outside the doors and ask. Housing is a huge issue in this part of the world, and we're not gonna solve it with a one acre square lot of land, right? That's not gonna magically fix housing, but it will, if we can do, if we can fix it for five people, that's five more people who have a place to live then might otherwise, right? If we can fix it for 30 people, then that's 30 people. But we can also be a voice in the midst of that, that not only puts our money where our mouth is, but we also put our mouth places, right? So I serve on the newly formed Northwest Arkansas Housing Coalition and we show up at planning meetings. We, we go to city council meetings. We have a team an affordable housing working group that does advocacy around town, that listens to people's stories, that continues to make this a live issue and not something that can be swept under the rug. So yeah, so we do our part because it's again, faith. I'm gonna quote James the letter of James, martin luther called it a letter of straw. He hated it. John Wesley called it the most Methodist of letters. He loved it. We love James. And James says, faith without works is dead, right? So if we're not, if our faith is not motivating us to do some significant change, then again, what is it for? If we can help, why or why? Why not help? So that's what we're doing. We're working, we it's, I will say, don't expect buildings on that property for a couple years at least, because right now we're in deep conversation or we're starting deep conversation within the congregation to figure out. We, we did the ULI, we went outta order with the Faithful Foundations program and we told them we're gonna go out of order. Everyone else, all the other churches that went, they had a clear idea of what they wanted to do. And when we got to the end where you do the pitch, they had designs and budgets and all that stuff. And we just had concepts because I wanted us to be part of that program so I could even know if it was possible for us to do anything. Believe it or not, in seminary, they don't train you in land development. And so I wanted to know what questions need to be asked. What do we gotta understand about all this? So we did that and we got a sense of it, and now it's, we're working it within the congregation. And then because we are Methodist and we are connectional, we don't actually own our own building, our own land. The building and land is owned by the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church. So anything that we do has to go through the system before, so it'll be a while. Yeah.
mike rusch.:I I'm biased. I think how faith communities can think about serving the community and this is not a, nothing you're doing is insignificant in any way, shape or form. There's a really heavy lift to to start thinking about housing and to see faith communities step into some of the meeting, some of the hardest needs is really, yeah. It's a really beautiful thing. Maybe because I feel like we're almost there, if not, I'll push us over the edge a little bit. This past year there was a sermon that listened to and you said from the pulpit, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, talking about something that I see in Arkansas as something that continues to be called out this area of Christian nationalism and that it is antithetical to Christianity, but you said that from our faith should flow our politics, not from our politics, should define our faith. I'm really curious how you how you find yourself in a position to, to say, have to say things like that from the position of obviously being the lead pastor, but what in our community that leads you down the path of saying, Hey, this is something that you feel called to address.
rev. dr. michele morris.:So I would say that quote from our faith should flow our politics is very similar to when we were talking about how you go out into culture, right? Yeah. Put your God perspective on first when you go into it, and then critique that space and find where there's matches and where there's not. And I think that has to happen. It happens with what music we listen to and it happens with what political decisions that we make. If you let yourself be influenced by the political message and then find ways to justify it with your faith, then politics is your God, not the other way around. I said that because when anytime a pastor brings up political things, they will hear from the people who do not agree with that pastor, they will hear this." You shouldn't be talking about politics in the church."
mike rusch.:You, you sound like you've heard that before.
rev. dr. michele morris.:Maybe I may have heard it a few times. You shouldn't be talking about politics in the church. So I intercepted that 'cause I knew it was gonna come and say, we have to talk about politics because politics shapes our life and we have to be able to reflect as people of faith on the political reality around us. And so we have to talk about politics. I did say also in that same sermon that if I ever tell them who to vote for, they should call the bishop immediately and ask me to be reassigned. Because that is not my place. But the, to be prophetic, the, and part of the church's role is to be prophetic, is to speak into all aspects of life, including our political lives. And for me, the crisis of Christian nationalism is actually that it is doing, the thing that I warned us not to do it is taking politics and using faith to justify the politics. That's what it's doing. And I wanted my people to understand the difference. This is one of the things that I think that mainline Christianity and folks that are evangelicals who do not fall in line with Christian nationalism have. We've lost we're losing the battle because we are just saying what, we're basically throwing America to the Christian nationalists, and we're having to then be people who hate America. That's dumb, we don't have to do it. It's not a zero sum game. And one of the things I was trying to teach in that sermon was the difference between nationalism and patriotism. And I, we've got to, in addition to reclaiming a robust understanding of Christianity and a Christianity that's not just superimposed on politics to give it that kind of authority, but a Christianity that then helps us think about our politics. But we also have to reclaim patriotism. And patriotism is a love of country, but not an uncritical love of country. It says that our country could be better. And it's a hopeful place. It's a hopeful stance. It's what drove the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of the Constitution. Those are aspirational documents. We know when they were written, we weren't actually following all of what they said. The Constitution wouldn't have amendments if it wasn't an as aspirational document. And the Constitution started with amendments because it couldn't get ratified until the Bill of Rights, which were the first amendments were tacked onto it. So they were always aspirational. They were always who we're trying to be and we need to even adjust those within that of who we're trying to be. Patriotism is recognizing that we are not perfect, but we're trying to get better and here are some of the ways that we might try to get better. Versus nationalism says, we are perfect, we are the best, and anything else is lesser and theologically, that's humongously problematic because that really does turn your nation into God because really the only thing that ought to be perfect is God. And as soon as you make the nation perfect, and for me as someone who would proclaim that God loves all, as soon as you make your nation and your people better than all other nations and all other people you're in that idolatry space again. You're in that space where you are turning our nation, our politics into God, and that's what Christian Nationalism is doing. It's making God subservient. To the nation and the politics versus what patriotism does, which is makes patriotism accountable to God and and influenced by God and seeks to do better within it can love the country and affirm what's beautiful about this country. There's so much that's beautiful about this country and we've thrown the baby out with the bath water, right? And I find that most Americans are just amazing people, who are people who just wanna love their family and they want to do right by folks in general, and what happens is we are, we're too much now getting caught up in this other narrative that we should hate the person that's next to us and that. It's not who we are, it's not who we, I do not believe it's who we really wanna be. I do believe if we continue down this path, we will deeply have to repent of where we're headed. But I haven't given up hope, right? Again, we're back to, I sit in a building that's been around through a lot of history and a lot of history. We've had to repent and we've made it. So I don't know that I'll see that in my lifetime even, but I know that it will happen. And that's the thing that we've gotta fight for right now. And we can't just, we can't just abandon this whole national rhetoric over here to this space. When and this is especially poignant for me right now,
rev. dr. michelle morris.:the 250th birthday's coming up and I decided I was gonna preach a sermon series on America, and most of my pastor friends said, I'm not touching it. And I said, that is exactly the problem. The fact that we won't throw our voice into this space, messy as it is, means that one whole
rev. dr. michele morris.:bull
rev. dr. michelle morris.:bullhorn over here gets to say whatever they wanna say. And, but I also didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to design a series, so I invited my veterans to come have breakfast with me and I said, I need your help. I need your help designing this series.
rev. dr. michele morris.:One of them's gonna preach one of the Sundays he's trained as a lay servant, so he's trained in that kind of thing. So he's gonna preach and then the other two Sundays all will cover. And and I just said,
rev. dr. michelle morris.:I just need your input into what needs to be said here because I feel like you have a different level of commitment than the average citizen. You were, at least on some level, willing to die for your country.
rev. dr. michele morris.:Now it was interesting'cause I had Vietnam vets in there and they were drafted. They weren't all Vietnam vets. We had some folks that had enlisted willingly and we had those that were drafted. So it was a really rich conversation space, and they were so helpful. And
rev. dr. michelle morris.:one of the things that they told me was, the thing is, it really doesn't matter to us who the president is. That's not who we swear our allegiance to. We take an oath to the Constitution, not the president.
rev. dr. michele morris.:And that's always,
rev. dr. michelle morris.:it's those ideals that we're actually defending, not
rev. dr. michele morris.:whoever,
rev. dr. michelle morris.:whichever political party is in office. We have to rise above that political divide and serve the ideals of who this country can be.
rev. dr. michele morris.:And I, I said to them, I was like, I understand that because I have to also rise above our politics and serve God. And so it was really wonderful to have that affirmation and that reflection and that space where we could relate, even though obviously their allegiance was to the Constitution and mine is to God and their faithful people. So their allegiance is also to God. But that subsidiary, in that sense as far as what their oath is when they come into the military and I think we gotta do more of remembering that we're bigger than this mess and we're better than this mess, but we're also not perfect.
mike rusch.:I love hearing the way you've framed that and I, it's really beautiful to go and ask people, the veterans in your congregation to speak into this space. And I in a different sermon you drew this distinction and you said they love the Jesus of the Gospels not the Jesus of the culture. I'm curious if you could help unpack that. What's the difference and what happens in a faith community when you commit to one over the other?
rev. dr. michele morris.:So this is all the same theme. We keep coming back to, which is, where's your positioning? Where's your starting point? And this is in particular talking about, like people who have left the church or people who are not interested in joining the church. A lot of times they'll tell you they love Jesus as they read outta the gospels, but they do not like the Jesus that is talked about in the wider culture. And it's this positioning. Are you reading the gospels and then encountering the Christ that is recounted in the gospels, acknowledging as I said earlier, there's some difference in the gospels, but there are core things that are going to be true across the board. Jesus is gonna tell you love God and love neighbor across the board. Right? Jesus is going to respond when people are sick and hungry. Jesus is going to push our understandings of religious and national authority, push us on that. Jesus is gonna say hard things about wealth and what we are supposed to do with it, right? So that's the Jesus that you start with. That's the Jesus. And then you go out into the world with that. Jesus, that's your Jesus frame, right? And let that Jesus shape how you interact in the world versus. This Jesus out here that's glorified for other purposes. We just talked about Christian nationalism, right? Christian nationalism captures Jesus and makes Jesus do things or makes Jesus represent things that there's no case for in the gospels. I like when you see Jesus carrying a machine gun. When you see Jesus standing on the backs of immigrants, Jesus was refugee as a small child. When you see Jesus carrying an American flag and riding a dinosaur, that's a Jesus of culture and that's what people are, some people are using that Jesus to great benefit of themselves. Some people are enthralled by that Jesus because they've, they don't actually know what's in the gospels. They've been told that's who Jesus really is. That was one of the things that was great about that book that was talking about the woman who had only ever heard, Jesus talked about from from Christian nationalist organizations, and she had no idea who the Jesus was in the Gospels. So that's not on her, except for the fact that she could pick up the gospel, read them, so they're tempted by that Jesus versus the people who have read the gospels and then see Jesus portrayed in this way. They wanna have nothing to do with any entity that would portray Jesus in a way that's not true to the Gospels. And they want to follow the Jesus of the Gospels. They don't wanna follow this other one. I don't wanna follow that other one either. I wanna follow the one of the Gospels. But it's very hard to do. It's again, in a world where we are now being conditioned to be comfortable, to expect your own worldview, to be constantly propped up. I tell people, if you read the Gospels and don't get offended, you didn't read the gospels, go back and read it again. I don't care who you are, Jesus will say something to you that's offensive and Jesus will say things that are comforting to you. It's not a, again, it's not one of these zero sum games, but I Jesus is gonna push us all. Push us all. And he is not going to align up with any of us. I,
mike rusch.:gosh. I'm like, I feel like I wanna keep talking for hours. Here I go. I,
rev. dr. michele morris.:I said fine.
mike rusch.:I know. I'm like, but no one's gonna listen this long unless we start just yelling at things. Okay. I'm, here's what I would this. Yes. Thank you. This is I don't know. I think it's incredibly helpful. I think as you talk I'm listening to the, the reality of how you representing this faith community show up in our community. We talked earlier about how this shows up feeding people, and raising money for abuse children. And but there's this other side that we're talking about how that shows up in our civic dialogue and our civic meetings. One of the things that you chose to do as we remember about really what the city went through with this, all bikes welcome mural. You made a decision to come speak at city council on behalf of this message of welcome and inclusion. I'm curious, as you think about these conversations about faith showing up in the civic political world, why did you make a decision to show up in that space to, to speak into this issue?
rev. dr. michele morris.:Yeah. I don't. I often do that because I do represent a church that seeks to be a place where all are welcome, right? So when I was first approached about the possibility of showing up to that meeting, I said no. And then I thought about it and realized that the thing that everybody was fighting about, we basically have the same thing on our wall, right? And our welcome statement says the same thing. And so I thought, okay, this is who my people are, and collectively who we are. It doesn't mean I never speak out when I know there's disagreement in the congregation.'cause if I did that, I would never say anything.'cause there's always disagreement in the congregation. But but I, when I'm going to be a public figure, especially outside of this place, I do it with the intention of who is the least heard voice in my church. Could I, would I still be representing them? And just the, to say all bikes are welcome for that to be a battle and for us to have a banner on the side of our church that says all are welcome. It was the same fight. But what I actually went to speak about there was, I was requested to come and represent the theological side of this because it had become a fight about God. That whole mural discussion had become a fight about which God was going to win. And when I say, which God, everyone was fighting about the Christian God, but it was an interpretation of the Christian God. But this was a city council meeting. And for me, the very idea that we were fighting about God was inappropriate for a city council meeting. And one of the things, I do things that I know are not just me having this pers if I'm gonna take that kind of public per position. It's not just me. Not only am I representing who I believe this church is, but I'm also representing the United Methodist Church. This is again, where I go to the social principles and look at them. And I specifically went to our statement on religious freedom. You might not expect Christian Church to have a statement on religious freedom in their in their social principles. And our social principles are our guiding principles for being out there in the world. You don't have to a hundred percent agree with them to be a Methodist member, non doctrinal but they're who we are collectively agree to be as a denomination. And we have a stance in there that says we should not in a society, there should not be restrictions and requirements that people adhere to one particular religious doctrine or not. They should have the freedom of choice. They should have free will to choose if they're going to follow a God, who that God is, and they should also have the freedom not to follow God, right? We truly believe that our free will is in the mix here when we choose to follow Jesus Christ. We do not believe that some are chosen and some are not. We believe that all have the opportunity to choose, but it's a choice. And so that was what sort of got under my skin on all of this, was I felt like a religious leader needed to stand up and say, quit talking about religion. This isn't about religion and the. So I turned it to what is the purpose of art? But I identified myself as a religious leader, deliberately to say, as a religious leader, if you wanna come talk about God, let's get coffee. Or come visit our church. Don't fight about God in this space. Let's fight about what's behind the art. And so I turned it to that. So it, if I'm gonna take a public stance like that, I really will do so when I feel like it's really in line with who the church that I'm serving is. And really in line the local church that I'm serving is, and really in line with the Methodist social principles. And then I'll step out there, but it's not my voice. If I was gonna, if I was gonna go as a, just a citizen of Bentonville, I would not have identified myself as the lead pastor of the first United Methodist Church. But I did identify myself as the lead pastor of the first United Methodist Church. Reverend Dr. Michelle Morris, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you tonight. I love a good conversation about God. I have devoted my life to it, and I will sit down with anyone in this room over coffee or a meal and have a conversation about who God is and what God means to me. But ideas about God are not for civil servants to have to determine public art. I represent a denomination that affirms the value of the separation of church and state. I serve as the lead pastor of First United Methodist Church in Mena, and I want to acknowledge that it is not the city council's job to decide what we believe about God. You were elected to city council to address the concerns of all the citizens, including the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, or atheist. Instead, this should be a debate about which purpose of public art we wish to support. As I see it, there are three purposes of public
art:to be provocative, to be representative, or to be aspirational. If the purpose is to be provocative, then no matter what happens tonight, I congratulate the artist on having achieved that purpose. If the purpose is to be representative, which is to reflect the culture, the time, the people that the art presents. If that is the purpose, then I urge you to remove this mural, because we are not a community that welcomes all. That has become perfectly clear from this event. However, if the purpose is to be aspirational, to have a goal, a challenge, a desire to be something else, something new, something inviting, then please keep this mural, because it speaks to an a- aspirational purpose of who we could be I hope you choose an aspirational purpose. I know how difficult that is. Our church had banners on it that say all are welcome, and I will tell you they are aspirational banners. We try. We don't always do it perfect, but at least we have committed to try to be that people. I will continue to pray that we are that church, and I will continue to pray that Bentonville is that community. A community of people who love who you are beneath, and a community that seeks to truly welcome
mike rusch.:I was there that evening, and I'm just, I'm thankful for your voice and the other faith leaders who spoke into those spaces I think it was necessary and needed. And so
rev. dr. michele morris.:I do wanna sidebar on that and say the other faith leaders did talk about Jesus. But I actually, of all the people who talked about Jesus that night, I thought the lay people did better than the faith leaders just of us collectively. Yeah. And I thought that they did a wonderful job. I just, some of the lay people that got forward and talked about Jesus, that was pretty phenomenal. All that being said, I still think it wasn't a place where we should have been fighting about Jesus. For the ones that did, they did an absolutely beautiful job.
mike rusch.:That's really beautiful quote that is a very affirming to that. Reverend Morris I'm curious, like in, in this moment we've talked a lot about culture and just the role of the church and how you view your role in the community. And I'm curious, as you look at Northwest Arkansas, as you look at Bentonville maybe what do you feel like the United Methodist tradition has to say in this moment that we're at today? What would you wanna offer out of this tradition to the broader faith community or just maybe the, just the community in general at this time.
rev. dr. michele morris.:It really pushes back to that all our welcome reality. As Northwest Arkansas continues to grow, we are, we're still, we still that old southern division of where races are still pocketed up. And I hope that continues to be challenged and I hope we continue to see a growth in the kinds of people that come into our space. I think we're in the, in danger of closing off for Bentonville. I think Bentonville is in danger of. Socioeconomically closing off, and that we'll all be weaker for that. We are better. The more people we have exposed to. More ways of life and living increases our capacity to love. And so I really do actually hope we continue to lean into all are welcome and to do the hard work that is involved in that. And that's hard work around conversation. That's hard work around how we physically structure the place. That's hard work in our politics. It's hard work in our educational systems. It's, there's all kinds of pressures to making that be a reality. And yet we're so much better when we are. Every Sunday I have the chance to come into this space, and there's a likelihood that I'm gonna be preaching to all kinds of Christians because we have all sorts. We've got Catholics and Baptists and Lutherans and lifelong Methodists, and people who went to non-denominational churches. And they've ended up at us for whatever reason. And then we have Jewish people and we have at least one Muslim who attend here. And we have people who are agnostic and we have atheists. And it is such a sign of the reign of God for me that we all come together in a place of worship. It's not, we didn't get together for a class. Yeah. We came here to worship together and to all be able, on some level to proclaim the holiness of this place and the holiness of the moment from all of those perspectives, it's very hopeful to me. So I would want our whole area to hold onto that image of hope, of who we can be and to do the hard work that it will take to actually live that out.
mike rusch.:You may have answered here my next two questions, but I, I wanna end with this. I always ask every person that I have a chance to sit with their fears for this place. And really the idea or the motivation is just to articulate maybe where those fears are.'cause I feel like it allows others to identify and to connect and to, and maybe say. I I do also. And so I think within the scope of our conversation and the scope of your role here I am curious what are your fears for this place?
rev. dr. michele morris.:I fear that we close ourselves off in all the ways that we are closing ourselves off these days. Whether it's, refusing to build new housing because other people can drive in from an hour away if they really want to work here, or if it's closing ourselves off to different ideas and listening to each other. It's like when I was saying we, if we try to keep God contained in this building, we've boxed God in and how sad that we would contain God down into this tiny space when God can be so much more. We could do the same thing. We could box ourselves into this, the city limits and close ourselves off and say, only people who can afford to live here should, ride the bike trails. And only people who can afford to live here should go to Crystal Bridges. Crystal Bridge is a great example of, saying " all are welcome." That anybody ought to be able to come up and see phenomenal art and encounter that. And so we have within this community, so many germs of possibility. This town has done tremendous world changing things. And I think as long as we keep ourselves open, we'll continue to do that. As soon as we start to close ourselves down, we lose what's special. And for me, we lose what's faithful. As well.
mike rusch.:The other side of that question is this question about wholeness. And we've pursued this question of what does community wholeness look like or can it look like? And so from your perspective as well I'm curious, what does wholeness look like to you?
rev. dr. michele morris.:Like the reign of God, that's what I'm trying to get everybody to. It's and the reign of God is everyone and the whole of creation and all of us celebrating each other and celebrating God and being it. Being one without having to all be the same. It's the difference between unity and uniformity, right? I think we should, if we are a people of unity, I and can maintain our diversity. That's what I think wholeness looks like. Genesis opens up by saying, when it's the creation, it's the firm the end of chapter one, when it's creation has come to its peak and humanity is the end of creation, right? We're the pinnacle moment in that and God says that we will make these into the image of God, right? These will be in the image of God. This, they're called the Imago de and it's talk we're talked about in kind of plural terms, and the way we've done in the West is to bring that down to really the individual and say, I am made an image of God. And that's powerful in that it, it affirms the beautiful creation that each person is. But I think it actually makes, misses the point when God said, we shall make these people into the image of God, it's all of us. When we're all together, that's what God looks like and that is wholeness when we, and God and creation are unity again. That's what wholeness is.
mike rusch.:I will gladly accept that definition of wholeness. So Reverend Morris, thank you for sitting with me and sharing a table. Thank you for the work and the calling that you have here at First United Methodist Church. And it's really beautiful to hear more of your story and this congregation story and just the gift that you are to, to this community and to those at the margins and calling us all to recognize and see how our faith and how our presence here in this community can be welcome and can belong. And so thank you. Yeah, thanks for sitting with me and thanks for being a part of this conversation. I'm really thankful.
rev. dr. michele morris.:Thank you. And I'm thankful for this chance.
mike rusch.:Well, thank you to Reverend Morris. Incredibly thankful to her voice and her presence in this conversation. We're gonna transition now to the Talk Back. That's where Monica and I have a chance to process what we've heard and what we're still wrestling with Monica, we had a chance to sit down with Reverend Dr. Michelle Morris to have that conversation. What an incredible conversation. And it's really, I know the conversation's about an hour and a half long, but there's nothing I felt like we could cut out of there. I'm curious, what are your immediate takeaways, the things that came to the surface?
monica kumar.:Mike, I feel like where she started just is sitting with me and won't leave me. Her recollection and her historical narrative around school shootings and her experience of being in in, in school and having that experience, that violent experience, and that sort of starting her journey. I, I can't get that out of my mind. Yeah. I hear the echo of that and then the empathy, the sympathy, the pain throughout the conversation that we had. It's just such a powerful place to, to have started that conversation.
mike rusch.:Yeah, it's not something that I really even know where to begin on how to relate to. Obviously this is a topic that is, in our country, in the news so very often. And in some ways you just honestly you become numb to it. But listening and sitting with Reverend Morris y- like those... that all gets stripped away. And just incredible, in many ways I think sitting with her in this conversation, it just, there's just a deep awe of just humility, and I don't know how to fix it. And I think what shines through just this tragic event and where she came back to it later in the conversation. She was just very clear that the end resol- I don't know if it's resolution. The end, the last comment that she spoke about was really that one of love, right? And that in that place of love that she is, she has reclaimed, I think if that's a fair word, to th- this element of faith, and she's found God in it. And yeah. Just my heart goes out to, to, to her, to everyone involved in that event, and to anybody who's had these had to live in a world with gun violence. And so it just incredibly difficult,
monica kumar.:You know something she said and I'm paraphrasing, but she said, she went home, she told her husband she was never gonna leave the house again, she was so scared. But it was okay to go to church. And and then she, she said something like, "I almost felt like I wanted to sleep in my car because I felt like God was out there." And that feeling, like for me, it, that resonated so deeply because I felt, I f- in my relationship with faith, I have felt God most clearly and visibly in my life when I'm, like, searching, like, when I'm going through something really difficult or experiencing a place where I don't know how to get out of it. And I don't know, when she shared that, it was just like, yeah, that's how I feel about God. God is this light in the darkness that is just so vibrant when pain is present.
mike rusch.:Yeah, hard to... There's no easy transition from that conversation at all. Monica, I'm curious what else comes out of this conversation, your observations from this interview.
monica kumar.:Yeah, I was, one of the things as I as a practitioner of thinking about belonging and studying belonging and the science and the art of it, which I believe it is an intersectional science and art, and how do we build it? How do we hold it without crushing it? Something she said really resonated with me, which was about the Methodist Church being a connectional system. And I think all the time about when I'm trying to build a sense of belonging or when I'm thinking about how do we build community from the ground up and from the very roots of it. I just don't see how if we do one thing, it is not connected to another. Everything feels so interconnected to me, and I, again, for me, this is my perspective I think that is regardless of what faith you practice, what race you what race you feel connected to, what your culture is. We are all interconnected, and when we do one thing, it connects to something else, and we are forever changed. And the systems and our physical and metaphysical and spiritual worlds are changed by all of our actions
mike rusch.:Yeah, I, to me, that message came out loudest w- when, with her comments about this idea of going into culture and looking for God, looking for faith, right? And I grew up in a time w- where the prevailing opinion within the faith tradition that I was a part of was culture was something to be careful of, almost something we should stay away from, like it, it's going to corrupt us. And, a- and I, I understand that. Not everything in the world out there is good, right? So I think I do hold great respect for the intent of that. And yet, at the same time, this is the type of perspective that I'd, I never heard. And so to see that connectiveness that you're talking about, it really resonated with me and this idea of how I believe, and I'm paraphrasing, she said, we're going out into the world, into culture, looking for God." To fully expect what that looks like. A friend of mine, Anne Voskamp, wrote in a book, she said I'm paraphrasing this a tad and I may have it backwards, but she said, "If God is in this place, then we should expect to see God, and if there are wolves in this place, we ex- should expect to see wolves." And to me, it was this paradigm of, that we can go into the spaces in our world that may be good, may- they may be bad. But we shouldn't be surprised to find God in places wh- where God is going to be. And so I, I've carried that with me for a very long time, and so
monica kumar.:And yeah, that culture conversation and really that really d- stirred something in me because, one of the places that I least e- I shouldn't say least expect, but I'm most often surprised about feeling a connection to God is when I go to concerts. And o- and one of the, one of my obsessions, and you know this about me, is Springsteen. I'm thoroughly obsessed. I have been since I was, like, 12 years old, and mainly I was attracted to Springsteen's music when I was very young because I was very attract- very inspired by his commitment to thinking about people who were marginalized. For him, it was, like, working class people in factories, people who were, like, in towns that had been left behind. And that, even though it was a very American experience, it really res- it really moved me in England. And I've... And I've seen him multiple times in concert. In fact, I just saw him a couple of months ago and it was phenomenal, and I felt that so immediately and strongly, and I expect to feel it at a Springsteen concert. But then my son in- took, in, in ma- made, and I say that very lightly because I love that he invited me and my husband. He's super into Twenty One Pilots, and we went to their concert, and I had n- I didn't even know I knew them. There are some songs that are really, that are... But it's a very, I didn't know what I was walking into, and it's a very particular culture and community. And my husband and I were blown away by how the music, yes, but it was more about how we felt and the sense of belonging and connection at this concert, and these two people made these thousands of pe- people feel so connected and communal and having a... it was a spiritual experience. And yeah, it, and it remi- you know, that, I'm just remembering now I didn't know, I didn't even know I knew their songs. So there is something about culture and music and, yeah, that just, oh my gosh, it's such a bright light.
mike rusch.:I know ever since listening to Reverend Morris, it's like I can't get AC/DC out of my head, and so maybe we'll have to all three see if she'll, maybe we should take her to an AC/DC concert or something. Oh. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's probably a bad idea, but- Are
monica kumar.:AC/DC still a... I shouldn't
mike rusch.:ask I don't know. Maybe, I don't know ... if they're still
monica kumar.:around.
mike rusch.:I don't know.
monica kumar.:Okay. So Mike, as we're thinking about this, you always ask me what did I hear, and I'm curious and incredibly interested to hear what did you hear out of what
mike rusch.:else-
monica kumar.:Well- ... did you hear? Yeah... mike rusch. (2): yeah, that, I sound like a broken record, I feel like, at this point, but we spent sp- so much time here in season two that you know her comment about around the Civil War and the split over s- over slavery and where they are today is just... I think we've heard this now in the past three interviews- Yeah... of these congregations that, have this as a part of that historical story, and yet there is a reckoning that has happened within these w- within their walls to take what is and to move from it and to seek repair or reconciliation or welcome. And, she said that, we chose the wrong side. We were on the wrong side." And that in that story of this denomination, they came back together and there was a reconciliation within the denomination. I don't know where it went from there into broader aspects of repair or reparations or things like that but the ability to reckon with our own stories and our own history to me, just seems to be I can't excuse those commonalities between the last three episodes that we've had and not walk away that, that we as a society, when we think about our histories and our stories, whether that be near term or long term, that we do have the ability to understand, that we don't have to hide from it, and that we can walk towards it, and that we can be honest about about what these stories entail and the weight and the damage that they have done on all kinds of fronts, and that the response to that can be a really, can be a movement towards what does repair and reconciliation and inclusion look like in our world in a very beautiful, powerful way. And so I just, I look at these stories with great hope, and I just, I'm like anytime we start having conversations, and it's been in the news about re- you know, revisionist history or trying to think through our history into America as a Christian nation, I'll just pick on that one, right? That that w- we can be honest. and I mean, it reminds me. we some friends, and w- we've done an event in Rogers couple months ago that was just really centered around these kind of reckoning with our history. And as they say we can handle the truth of what our history actually brings us. And so I think for me, it just really resonates, and you see this in the pastors that we have spoken with, we might have similar friends.
mike rusch.:We can handle the truth of those conversations in a way that allows us to move forward into greater unity and into greater peace. And that's probably my takeaway from those things. And again, I probably sound like a broken record, but that's where I'm at.
monica kumar.:And maybe I sound like a broken record now, but I just... what you just shared and, it reminds me of and brings to mind very centrally for me, like Bryan Stevenson's perspective on proximation and repairing and restoring, and that we can't move to forgiveness if we can't get proximate to the truth. And it feels to me that if we can't start with that foundation of truth and honesty, then we're just building on top of something that is just not true, and it's a fragile structure. And if we do want, if we do truly want to move towards reconciliation, restoration, hope, moving forward in, in positive ways, that reconciliation with history and the reckoning with history just it can't not be that. It's just not possible. And I and, and being proximate to it, and I really have appreciated the conversations that we've had because so many of our wonderful guests have acknowledged that and centered it.
mike rusch.:All right. Monica, thank you for just sitting in that space with me. We've had some incredible guests this season, and so it's been a privilege to be able to listen and to process these conversations with you and for your takeaways. And yeah, we'll- I'm ready for the next one. Here it comes next week. So thank you, Monica.
monica kumar.:Thank you so much, Mike
mike rusch.:Again, a huge thank you to Reverend Dr. Michelle Morris. I keep coming back to something that she said. She repeated the quote that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice, and sometimes it takes a very long time for us to get it together. Her personal story holds both unimaginable tragedy and a hope and a calling that drew her in the ministry. Her denominational story holds its own weight and shows that a story that also holds unimaginable tragedy, and yet today is a denomination that doesn't hide from it anymore. and she's not afraid of that story.. She reminds her congregation of it because you can't know where you're going if you pretend about where you've been. And then Reverend Morris drew a distinction that I think is one of the more important things that we've been talking about this entire season. She talked about the Jesus of the Gospels versus the Jesus of culture. A Jesus who heals the sick and feeds the hungry and pushes us on wealth and welcomes the outsider versus a Jesus who is standing on the backs of immigrants or carrying a machine gun wrapped in an American flag. And she said, "If you read the Gospels and you don't get offended, you didn't read the Gospels. Go back and read them again." What strikes me about Michelle and about this church is the refusal to be comfortable. They call it standing in the prophetic middle."Not wishy-washy," she said,"but incredibly principled. A church where conservative members and even those of other faith can sit in the same pews. Where the lead pastor uses songs by AC/DC one Sunday and then speaks at the city council the next to say, 'Quit fighting about God in a civic meeting.' Where the Second Street Food Pantry gives out between three and four hundred bags of food a week, no questions asked, no judgment, no requirement that you believe anything. And where a congregation is now asking what it would mean to take a piece of undeveloped land in downtown Bentonville and turn it into housing for people who can't afford to live there, including their own pastor." This is answering the question about the relationship between faith and works. That's putting your money and your mouth in the same place. And that's a church that has been here for nearly two hundred years saying,"We are not done yet." So again, thank you to Reverend Morris for your honesty, your courage, and your willingness to love people even when it costs you something, especially when it costs you something. Because you have learned what that cost truly looks like. I wanna say thank you for listening, and thank you for being the most important part of what our community is becoming. This is The Underview, an exploration in the shaping of our place and our faith.
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