Rev. Otis Moss III relates the challenges of 2023 and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his new book "Dancing in the Darkness."
The Cleveland native is proud of his Ohio roots and was raised at the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church where his father, Rev. Otis Moss Jr., served as pastor for more than three decades. The elder Moss was a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and that figures into the younger Moss' new book. He also discusses his experiences as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. In 2008, after succeeding Jeremiah Wright, the church was at the epicenter of then-Sen. Obama's presidential campaign.
The Rev. Otis Moss III: The book brings together two important virtues that are necessary for our internal development and for the development of our civic society: love and justice merged together. The book brings together the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and elements from the Black spiritual tradition and a variety of stories. [It’s] everything from comic books all the way to my personal stories as a pastor and looking at stories from other faith traditions and how they connect us to the idea of love and justice.
Ideastream Public Media’s Kabir Bhatia: This grew out of a very dark time for you, when you were receiving death threats and had to add security in 2008.
Moss: I really didn't get much sleep for about a year. I was always worried, “Is this the moment?” [One night] my wife heard some noise in the house and said, “You need to check that out.” So, I had to grab my rod and my staff that comforts me - and that was a Louisville Slugger. Looking around the home, I heard the noise again coming from my daughter’s bedroom. My little girl was about five at the time and was spinning around in the middle of the floor. She was dancing and saying, “Look, Daddy, I'm dancing!” And it was 3:00 a.m., and I told my daughter, “You need to go to bed.” But then the Spirit spoke at that moment and said, “Look at your daughter. She's dancing in this darkness. The darkness is around her, but it is not in her at that moment.” I threw away the sermon that I was going to preach in a couple of hours, went down to my study [and] everything that was flowing from my spirit, I wrote down and told the church, “This is the moment where we are called to dance in the darkness.”
And as Psalm 30 says, “I've turned your mourning into dancing.” And though it may be dark outside, always know that the sun has not disappeared, that eventually the sun will rise, and that weeping will turn into joy in the morning.
Bhatia: And of course, that's where the book title comes from - and from Dr. King's idea of being at "midnight" - which you feel we are facing again. So, looking back at those movements of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, are we just back where we started?
Moss: There is the spiritual itch within our Democracy where people are searching for something. Sometimes they search for it through social media. Sometimes they search for it through materialism, but there is an itch that people want more than what can be held physically. And I'm raising the question that our great movements - the freedom struggle raised that question, the abolitionist movement raised that question - that there is more to life than the physical. That you have to have the values of love, of justice, of compassion, of reciprocity, of forgiveness, of mercy. [They’re] important not only for a person’s personal development, but for the transformation of our civic society. Dr. King lifted up these ideals, the ideals of a beloved community that would rest on these values, where we would always reach towards our best selves. Or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “We would listen to our better angels.”
Bhatia: The idea that there's a spiritual itch it seems, to me, gets turned on its head a lot of times in the public arena and in social media, and suddenly people are using that in a negative fashion.
Moss: Well, I believe that the forces of co-opting - the forces that are destructive to human flourishing are always trying to co-opt those values that cause us to stretch and grow and develop - it's a part of the human struggle. And it's a part of the spiritual struggle. But systems [that are] destructive to our human development are always seeking to take those values and redescribe them and to undermine them. That is why it's important that we're rooted in this idea of love and justice and what Dr. King talks about: the complete life. The complete life is that there is a life in reference to our personal selves to grow personally, but then there is also a life that is horizontal [such as] the connection with our neighbor. And then there is a life that yearns beyond just connection with our neighbor. But to live out higher values. These three dimensions of a complete life are truly what makes a great nation, not whether we do well in the Dow Jones or NASDAQ, but how we live those three elements of growth and development.
Bhatia: So, is that how you see us moving out of this current “midnight"?
Moss: Well, I think [it’s] the principles that I talk about in the book. We have to link love to justice. We have to learn how to redirect our rage for power. We have to learn how to consecrate our chaos, and we have to learn how to pause for what I call “liberation.” [We must listen] to know that we all have biases as human beings. And that there are stories that come from communities that we're not connected with that give us new understanding of what it means to be human and stretch our spirits and minds toward God. When we live out those values, we move out of midnight closer to seeing the sun rise. But the beautiful thing about midnight is that midnight is actually the break of a new day: We moved out of 11:59 into the moment of a new day. And I believe that there is always a new day when you have a generation of people who do not want to operate with the status quo. They believe in human flourishing. They believe in love and justice, forgiveness, compassion, mercy, respect and reciprocity. When we are living out those values then we move from midnight into morning.
