Giving Love the Last Word

The Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard III, MDiv ’81, says that we are living through a "Kairos moment"—a time when people everywhere are called to a greater awareness of the humanity they share with one another.

He sees it in the Black Lives Matter movement's confrontation with violence and injustice. He sees it in the progress made on the issue of marriage equality. He sees it even in the reaction to the fear of the "other" stoked so frequently during an election season.

"Underneath all the mirages and images that continue to separate us, there is this vast common ground where we begin to see the possibilities of our future as a human community," he says. "Love does have the last word, but love also requires vigorous struggle."

As a scholar, a minister, an activist, and the dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, Pollard has dedicated his life to this struggle, and to ensuring that the humanity of every person is acknowledged. For this work, his fellow HDS alumni have recognized him as one of five recipients of the 2016 Peter J. Gomes STB '68 Memorial Honors.

"To be selected as a Gomes Honoree by my alma mater is an unexpected gift and glad surprise," Pollard says of the award. "Peter J. Gomes represents our better humanity—faithful, thoughtful, embracing and wise—ever attuned to the heart of God's people. I'm grateful to walk in the company of a luminary so beloved and a colleague and friend to so many."

Pollard's dedication to love and understanding are remarkable given what he calls the "brutal experience" of growing up in an otherwise all-white neighborhood in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. His father and mother grew up in and around the cotton fields of Mississippi, but moved north in pursuit of the opportunity to raise their family and own a home. The only African American child to walk to school, Pollard says that he was often terrorized.

"There were many days when baseball bats, knives, chains, motorcycles, and guns accompanied my route to get to school and back," he remembers. "The principal and other central administrators permitted me to leave at a different time every day so that I could get home in one piece."

The historically black church that Pollard attended every week was a refuge from the violence and racism that confronted him at school. The church became his playground, his lyceum, his auditorium. There he mingled with parishioners from diverse economic and educational backgrounds: college professors, blue-collar workers, and "workers with no collars at all." The congregation was his home and his salvation.

"We all strove to remind each other that not only did we matter, but also we were acknowledged by our God, who ultimately mattered," he says. "In that environment, I was able to put aside the existential question and focus on something that was even more powerful: the power of the sacred to overcome any kind of degradation."

The support that Pollard got from his family and congregation enabled him to succeed in school. He became the first in his family to attend college when he matriculated to Fisk University in 1974. There he studied management as well as religion and considered a career in business. But the call of ministry was amplified when he encountered the work of the African American theologian Howard Thurman.

"I read Thurman's book Jesus and the Disinherited during my first semester in college," he says. "It was life-changing. He articulated everything I knew and understood, but didn't have the words to say: the rage, the pain, the thoughts of upending the social order. He talked about the fact that the contradictions of this life are not final, and I knew that I had to become part of the community of faith that would take on the struggle."

Pollard says that the only thing he knew about HDS when he applied was that it was "a place of profound learning." He wanted to immerse himself in an environment of intellectual rigor. He also wanted to branch out from the predominantly African American communities in which he had gone to church and been educated. Pollard momentarily wondered if he was in the right place, however, when he stepped into class with Professor Richard Reinhold Niebuhr.

"I knew about his famous father (H. Richard Niebuhr) and uncle (Reinhold Niebuhr)," he says. "Now here I am sitting in the room with a professor named Niebuhr. He used a lot of language with which I was not familiar. Everyone else seemed to have a real comfort level. I thought, 'I'm in over my head.' "

Pollard's doubts lasted only until the first examination, on which he outperformed many of his peers. From there on he says it was "off to the races." He obtained his master of divinity degree from HDS in 1981 and went on to Duke University’s department of religion for his PhD. Faculty appointments followed at top schools, including Wake Forest and Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, where Pollard served as director of Black Church Studies and chair of American Religious Cultures in the PhD program. His scholarship is closely aligned with his call to ministry and includes the books Mysticism and Social Change and Helpers for a Healing Community: A Pastoral Care Manual for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Today, Pollard uses his position as dean of Howard's divinity school in part as a platform from which to advance his efforts on social justice. In response to the deaths of young African American men in Missouri, Ohio, and New York, he served as lead author in January 2015 of an open letter to leaders of theological schools, urging them to speak out on violence and racism. His call for "curricular programs, public forums, teach-ins, calls to your congressional leaders … op-ed pieces, and more," was endorsed by over two dozen African American deans and presidents of seminaries and divinity schools.

"There must always be a justice dimension inherent in our work as presidents and deans," he explains. "This has to be part and parcel of our understanding of why we are preparing persons for learned ministry; why we are preparing them for the life of the mind and the life of the spirit."

Pollard has also been outspoken in his support for marriage equality and human rights for members of the LGBTQ community. Although this position has made waves in the Black church, he is quick to stand by it and to point to its basis in faith.

"The Christian tradition simply says 'love your neighbor as yourself,' " he explains. "It's language that's writ large across many faith traditions. We have not always done well in living up to that creed, whether it comes to marriage equality, transgendered persons, or race and ethnicity. But we owe future generations a world that is better than the enmity and bitterness that we have found."

Pollard says that his life's goal is to "embrace the entirety of the human struggle" including issues of race, gender, sexuality, religion, economic inequality, and peace. He is in pursuit of Martin Luther King's "beloved community" for every human being.

"Those of us who have not only glimpsed this community, but also have actualized it in our lives in some modest way are tasked with a responsibility," he says. "We can never let those who would impugn the integrity of another have the last word, but must assure that the universe of love that is ethical recognition will hold sway."

—by Paul Massari