Lenten blog | February 19, 2024

Loretta Ross' "Call-in Culture"

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for February 19th:  Psalm 77; Job 4:1-21; and Ephesians 2:1-10.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Loretta Ross is a professor at one of my almae matres, Smith College.  She has become quite well known for championing “call-in culture,” which is a philosophy that acknowledges a person’s wrongdoing with accountability, but also with love.  To “call-in” means to be the bigger person when there is an objectionable encounter.  It means to “call-in” by making the investment of time, energy and soul to interact with the aggrieving person even though that encounter may well be objectionable, to “call-out” their offensive or even criminal behaviour with the aim of changing them, and to hopefully “cancel” that behaviour.  She has done this with rapists so that they can see the barbarity of their crime, with KKK members so that they can see the humanity in people who look different.  It is not to ignore the offense or its consequences, but to deal with them and seek improvement.  And it is motivated by love. 

This is a lot to expect, and Loretta Ross realizes this.  She follows up on call-in, call-out and cancel with “calling-on.”  Calling-on is similar to, “I’m calling-on you to do better, but I’m not going to give you a minute more of my time and attention to help you.”  Sometimes the fix is just more expensive than can be afforded.  You let the other know of the offense, but you leave it to them how they will respond.  And lastly “calling it off” is to realize that some cases are hopeless. (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/11/02/magazine/loretta-ross-has-a-radical-idea/)

In the Epistle to the Ephesians, there is the realization of what the author refers to by saying, “[W]e were by nature children of wrath…”  By 1859, Darwin would be calling this Evolution’s survival of the fittest.  This was progress through conquest.  It’s a natural instinct, but the Epistle doesn’t stop there.  Ephesians testifies to something greater, to something that raises us above our natural instincts.  It is the power of grace, and it is explained in this way:  “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ …”

This is Loretta Ross’ call-in philosophy.  God sees our natural limitations and instinctive selfishness, intervenes and invests God’s self through the direct connection of Jesus as one of us, so that rather than survival of the fittest, there is a holy alternative:  “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”  This call-in was extremely expensive.  It cost Jesus His life.  Loretta Ross allows for cases that are beyond a loving investment.  God has no such limit; Jesus has no such limit.

We can be better than we are, than the world we tolerate, where teenagers splay bullets indiscriminately at a celebration of a Super Bowl victory, where that is the 48th mass shooting in such a young year, where a noble voice of protest like that of Aleksei Navalny is silenced by a cowardly and brutal dictator.  This is the world of the “children of wrath,” but we who are alive together with Christ must not settle for this mockery of God’s good creation. 

May the complete devotion of Christ that we meditate upon during Lent inspire us to engage in the task of changing the way things are so that there may be the hope of the way things should be, the way “God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.