Black Battle, White Knight. Michael Battle
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some time since 1961 to “visit ” Sewanee as an “honored guest” to participate in a discussion of racial issues and seek together to find new ways of “coming together and healing.” I feel as if the entire Sewanee incident had never happened or taken place!15
However, this biography does not so much seek to provide a detailed description of such events as to display an authentic white, gay, and Christian identity known as Malcolm Boyd that emerged over many years. I am especially grateful to Malcolm for offering the reader the archives of history that document a deeper vision of his life, especially the early events in his life that set the trajectory for his courageous witness against American injustices. What we discover here is encouraging to many of us who discover that Malcolm is extraordinary in his ordinariness.
Black Horse
In my fourth chapter, Malcolm rides the third horse, the black horse called Famine. The black color of the third horse represents the grim circumstances of malnutrition. “And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, ‘Come and see.’ And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine” (Rev 6:5 –6, KJV). Malcolm is the black rider of famine because of his constant theme that the institutional church could no longer feed people.
An example of such a famished church was in how the institutional church lacked sufficient sustenance to remain intact over issues like slavery. Many Christian denominations resulted because of the split over slavery (e.g., Presbyterians of America, Presbyterians USA, Southern Baptists, National Baptists, the African American Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church [ECUSA] etc). A church with a strong body would not easily split over whether or not a black person should be a slave or free. A strong, well fed church would not split during the Civil Rights Movement. Such splits would not occur if the church body were secure in its primary identity revealed in Jesus. When baptized in Jesus, primary identity is revealed as the corporate identity of Jesus who organizes all of our other particular identities (e.g., male, female, black, white, slave, free, etc.). The problem, however, is that the church often fails to demonstrate primary Christian identity—instead revealing a weak and divided body of people in conflict.
This famine aspect of Malcolm can be seen in Malcolm’s role as an Episcopal priest. Malcolm wrote me, “I was on the Freedom Ride as a priest (it was called a ‘Prayer Pilgrimage’). Through the 1960s I was as deeply involved in civil rights as any human being could be.”16 As we met weekly, I explored Malcolm’s times and places as a priest, especially in the unusual circumstances of Malcolm serving with Martin Luther King Jr. Then, continuing to follow MLK, Malcolm’s involvement against the Vietnam War, including an arrest inside the Pentagon while engaged in a Peace Mass in a corridor. What was unusual was how such events occurred through Malcolm’s identity as an Episcopal priest.
Since much of Malcolm’s life has been devoted to the civil rights of African Americans, I think it appropriate that this biographer is an African American who is different from Malcolm in age, race, and sexual orientation and yet resembles Malcolm’s identity as a writer, anti–war activist, theologian, civil rights advocate, and Episcopal priest in the institutional church.
Being gay in the institutional church made Malcolm “black.” Malcolm’s identity as a gay white man remains a stumbling block for many, especially those in institutional religion and more communal societies that socialize their members to see gay identity as an aberration. Such communities are often patterned around ethnicity and socioeconomic status. I also think it profound for me as a black heterosexual male to reflect upon Malcolm’s life in that much of the current tensions in religion are between more ethnic-minded identities—such as black and brown people—and white, liberally minded people who tend more to accept gay and lesbian people.
Malcolm taught me that all institutions are about self–preservation and perhaps this why he has been such an apocalyptic figure in relationship to what counts for religion today. “I don’t know why I am that way,” Malcolm told me (April 9, 2009). Being an institutional person myself (and in need of the epiphanies that Malcolm offers), I should not offer literary analysis or ruin your own epiphanies with my own; however, I have learned from Malcolm not to conclude from the demise of institutional religion that life is bleak and deterministic. Appropriate to Malcolm’s own character, there is an inherent optimism or hope in these pages. Like rigorous archeological digging, we may need to unlearn a lot of our own caricatures and stereotypes in order to see the hope in this book, but it is here. We need only to let God be God in order to escape the famine of institutional religion.
Pale Green Horse
In my fifth chapter, I describe the last horseman that Malcolm resembles, the fourth horseman who rides on a pale horse explicitly named Death. However, the Greek word translated in this context as “pale” is elsewhere in the New Testament translated as “green,” leading to some confusion. Such confusion fits Malcolm nicely. As one columnist wrote, “Malcolm is fast. Very fast. For 10 years he spins and fakes and breaks into the open field, fist clenched and the muse throbbing in his heart. The crowd cheers wildly as he sprints toward the goal, but just as he is about to cross the line, it evaporates.” Another columnist describes Malcolm’s ambiguity this way, that his “manner suggests the turbulent waves of the storm breaking over man, church and the American life.”17
Such confusion is normal, however, when you deal with Malcolm. When death occurs, you inevitably bear the brunt of chaos. The writer of Revelation explains, “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the fourth beast say, ‘Come and see.’ And I beheld, and lo a pale green horse; and he that sat on him was called Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, and that they (the four horsemen) should kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth” (6:7–8).
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Hours, Michael Cunningham writes, “There is something worse than death, with its promise of release and slumber.” After reading the book and this particular quote, Malcolm writes me, “Incredibly painful and revealing work! I find this significant but I disagree with Cunningham’s conclusion. Is this relevant to this book?” I think this indeed is relevant. First, Cunningham provides the most remarkable performance piece about growing up white and gay in South Africa. Such crosscurrents of being gay in apartheid South Africa was indeed relevant to Malcolm’s own life.
Second, the quote from Cunningham initiated one of Malcolm’s deepest insights that runs through this book, that there is something worse than death. In death as in Malcolm’s life, he believes there is a peace that contains a deep restlessness. In other words, the goal of life is not a death in which people find static peace. In Malcolm’s Christian worldview, the goal is not for such peace. He likes to recall theologian Karl Barth’s words that there is sinking and suffering, and being lost and rent asunder, in the peace of God. He writes about this in “To a Prophet Dying Young.”
It wasn’t easy knowing you, or even hearing you. I felt, in fact, that you were often strong–willed, uncharitable, and impolite.
I saw you pouring out your life. I resented that, too, as I safely clutched my own. But I did see you, though I sometimes didn’t want you to know it.
Yes, I heard the criticism–and joined in. At times I thought I hated you, because what you said and did cut so painfully against my mask, my security, my being.
I miss you very much. Thank you–for who you were and whose you were. You wouldn’t want me to wish you “peace,” and I could never think of you in any misalliance with a false truce or easy compromise.
But I do, with all my heart, wish you peace with deep restlessness, a cock crowing at dawn to announce battle, and love to heal the necessary wounds.18
Malcolm rides this Green Horse of Death because of his deep spirituality in which at some point in his life he was no longer afraid of