NEW AGE MYSTIC SPEAKS AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY CHAPEL, PRAYS TO
“MOTHER MYSTERY”
BY DAVID CLOUD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Kaitlin Curtice spoke at Baylor University chapel on February 12 and prayed to “Mother Mystic.” Baylor, the world’s largest Baptist university, is affiliated with the Texas Baptist Convention at the state level and the Southern Baptist Convention at the national level. Curtice is a practitioner of New Age contemplative mysticism. She defines “contemplation” as “listening to the Divine/Mystery/Higher Power/God, and letting the overflow of that love stretch into other realms of life” (Curtice, “A Shared Vision of Contemplative Activism,” Sojourners, Sep. 4, 2019). She is an environmental activist and nature worshipper. In her speech at Baylor she said that she dipped a tobacco leaf into the water of Lake Michigan and “Mother Earth spoke to her” (“BU speaker’s prayer sparks campus controversy,” KWTX television, Feb. 13, 2020). Baylor University has been welcoming heretics since the early 20th century. In 1921, Baylor professor Grover Dow was teaching the evolution of man from apes with the textbook Introduction to Sociology. “As to his body we have very little exact knowledge, for the skeletons left by him are fragmentary, seldom amounting to more than one or two bones. But from these, by the use of our imagination, we have come to the conclusion that he was a squat, ugly, somewhat stooped, powerful being, half human and half animal who sought refuge from the wild beasts first in the trees and later in caves, and that he was half way between the anthropoid ape and modern man.”
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Potawatomi Christian chapel speaker Kaitlin Curtice draws ire of Baylor student group
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
(RNS) — A week after Potawatomi Christian author and speaker Kaitlin Curtice spoke in chapel at Baylor University, people are still talking about it.Although perhaps not for reasons the school or speaker would hope.Curtice’s remarks during the school's three chapel services about her journey of “decolonizing” her faith drew pushback from a student group at the private Christian university in Texas, and her message was reportedly interrupted by a shouting student.
The incident has drawn public apologies from at least one faculty member and an alum and brought back memories of a chapel service last year in which Kathy Khang, another progressive Christian author and speaker who is Korean-American, was heckled.“I challenged some of them on a deep enough level that it rattled the walls of patriarchal white supremacy that they hide behind, and, well, I’ve done my job,” tweeted Curtice, who has declined interviews about the incident.In the video of one Feb. 12 service posted on Baylor’s website, Curtice was introduced by Ryan Richardson, associate chaplain and director of worship and chapel at the school.Richardson referenced an Air Force chaplain who had spoken in chapel the week before and said some people had disagreed with the chaplain’s comments. Similarly, some people might feel triggered by Curtice’s comments, he said, and he invited those people to come to the chapel table in the lobby and discuss what made them uncomfortable.“This is a place that we’re going to bring diverse ideas and understandings of what it means to be a Christian in the world,” he said.The chapel table always is available to students, Baylor told Religion News Service.In her message, Curtice described her upbringing in a Southern Baptist home, the daughter of a mother of European descent and a father who was Potawatomi.Kaitlin Curtice, Native American author, speaker and worship leader. Photo by Amy Paulson, courtesy of Kaitlin CurticeAfter her family moved from Oklahoma and New Mexico to Missouri and her father left, she said, she lost her connection to her Potawatomi identity. Her journey as a Christian and as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation has been one of “disconnect and reconnect” she said.Part of that, she said, has been recognizing how colonization and the forced removal of Indigenous people from their homelands have left many disconnected from their identity, culture and spirituality. The Potawatomi were forced from Indiana to Kansas in 1838 on the Trail of Death.“For me, as a mixed European and Potawatomi woman whose inner and outer voice has been silenced, especially by the church, I am reclaiming who I am, wrestling with all parts of my identity, my white privilege, my Native feminism, my spirituality,” Curtice said during the service.“I’m questioning the systems that I participate in. I’m challenging myself to understand all the aspects of myself and the world around me.”She encouraged students to “envision a decolonized spirituality” with her, calling out “white supremacy,” “toxic patriarchy,” “settler colonialism” and “capitalist greed.”When the speaker said women are told they aren’t valued as much as men in society, a male student reportedly shouted, “Nobody says that!”Curtice later tweeted she actually was interrupted twice by the same student — both times while talking about women.The outburst was not part of the service that Baylor recorded and posted on its website.After Curtice’s chapel message, a student group called Baylor Young Conservatives of Texas posted a statement on Twitter disavowing the service, where the group said it was met by “the liberal agenda.” It called on the university to apologize “for breaking with their mission to provide an unapologetically Christian chapel experience and for allowing a speaker with pagan sympathies to mislead students once again.”One member of the group, Jake Neidert, told a local news outlet what was “most offensive” was that Curtice had not prayed to God, but to “Mother Mystery.”Burleson Quadrangle, the heart of Baylor University's campus in Waco, Texas. Photo courtesy of Baylor University/Robert RogersOn Tuesday, Baylor confirmed in an email to RNS that it had reviewed video of all three chapel services in which Curtice spoke. At no time did she refer to “Mother Mystery,” the school concluded.“We would apologize for reporting that incorrectly, but the rest of our statement still stands,” Baylor YCT said in an email to RNS.Curtice noted in a tweet she’s never used “Mother Mystery” in a talk — but she’s “definitely going to now.”In the video, the speaker begins her prayers by addressing God as “Mystery,” as she does in several prayers in her first book, “Glory Happening: Finding the Divine in Everyday Places,” published by Christian publisher Paraclete Press in 2017. That’s not without precedent in Christian tradition, according to Christian publication Relevant Magazine, which pointed to the ancient Latin text “O Magnum Mysterium,” or "O Great Mystery."Curtice's second book, “Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God,” will be released May 5 by Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group that publishes books by Christian thinkers.Baylor told RNS it had spoken with Curtice before she came to chapel and expected her to speak from “Glory Happening.”The college seemed to imply in a statement sent to those who had questions about chapel that it was surprised by her message. That statement reads in part: “On occasion, a speaker may veer away from our understanding of the message they planned to convey. When this happens, we address the matter with our Chapel students and invite them to come talk to us after Chapel.”Curtice responded on Twitter, “The Baylor chapel leaders knew exactly what I was speaking on before I came.”“We can pretend that what happened at Baylor is about me praying to Mystery, or we can recognize that based on the onslaught of anti-native attacks and accusations of being a pagan I’ve received since speaking there, it’s about something else,” she tweeted.
The episode follows a similar disruption during chapel almost exactly one year ago at Baylor when Khang said she ended a message on several of Jesus’ healing miracles in the Gospel of Mark with a list of things that were breaking her heart and making her “desperate for Jesus.” Among them was the arrest of an 11-year-old Florida boy who had refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.Author Kathy Khang. Photo courtesy of Kathy KhangThat’s when she said a man yelled back, “That’s a lie. He made terrorist threats!”The boy had no tie to terrorism. Florida police said he was arrested on charges of disrupting the classroom after an altercation with a substitute teacher over his ongoing refusal to stand for the pledge, according to reports at the time.“This has never happened when a white male was speaking. This has never happened when a white woman was speaking,” student Meg Peck wrote in the Baylor Lariat.“The common denominator in the equation? Both speakers were minority women," wrote Peck. "This is white supremacy occurring in the exact place it should be combated, and this record of how Baylor students treat women of color who come to speak is not only shameful, but it says, to all speakers of color, they are not welcome here.”Khang said she felt unsafe when she was heckled during Baylor’s chapel.“If you are inviting me to talk about and call out institutional racism, if you are asking and inviting me to talk about what justice looks like and how that is drawn out and addressed in Scripture, I will do that. And organizations need to know, institutions need to know that sometimes their audiences are not as prepared as you think they are,” she said.“And so I think that the safety concern has always been an honest and real one, but not taken very seriously.”It’s not just Baylor, said Khang, who authored the book “Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up.”Just last week, panelists at Brigham Young University reportedly were bombarded with anonymous, racist messages as they discussed their experiences as people of color and immigrants at the Utah school, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.That reflects shifts in society and culture, she said. And it touches on all kinds of topics that are uncomfortable to discuss, like power dynamics and disagreement.“I think what is happening is that well-intentioned folks on the spectrum of politics within Christianity are not actually having the conversation around free speech and accountability … and how do we do that honoring the Imago Dei in one another?” Khang said.On Twitter, Curtice pointed to the land acknowledgement she gave at the beginning of her message, a practice gaining popularity in the United States that names and honors the people indigenous to the land where the acknowledgement is delivered.“If they reject everything else, at least every student at Baylor who walked into chapel heard that they were on Kickapoo/Tonkawa land, and they can never un-know that,” she said.“I've done my job. I hope they do theirs, too.”________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Accusations of bias follow Chapel speech
BY MATTHEW MUIRrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational and researchpurposes:The Chapel guest speaker Wednesday sparked controversy with a speech some in the Baylor community have criticized for being political and un-Christian.Kaitlin Curtice, Christian, author and member of the Potawatomi Nation, spoke on politically charged topics. In her speech, Curtice said fighting for “true justice” means undoing the historical effects of colonialism.“For the world to survive, for true justice to take place among us, decolonization must be a goal,” Curtice said. “We must fight against systems of oppression, systems like toxic patriarchy and capitalist greed that give no care to the land, and we must do it for the sake of all of us.”Curtice also began her prayers with “oh mystery” rather than addressing them toward God or Jesus Christ.In response, Baylor Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) issued a statement lambasting Curtice and the Chapel organizers who invited her.The statement said Curtice’s understanding of Christianity was “surface level at best” and said Baylor allowed “a speaker with pagan sympathies to mislead students.” The YCT statement also said Baylor Chapel pushes a left-wing agenda.“It has once again come to our attention that Baylor’s university chapel has taken on the political agenda of the progressive wing of the Baylor Faculty,” the statement said. “This morning, several of our members attended university Chapel and were met again with the liberal agenda.”Reflective of the political tone of Curtice’s speech, Baylor Democrats conversely issued a statement defending Curtice. The statement said inviting a speaker with different views of Christianity could help students grow in their own faith.“We support Baylor’s decision to have the inclusion of someone who shares a view of Christianity that is strongly shaped by the cultures and ideals of the Potawatomi Nation of which she is a member of, and providing a new perspective for students to have a personal relationship with their own faith,” the Democrats’ statement said.Denison sophomore Jake Neidert, vice president of Baylor YCT, said he was particularly offended by the apparent lack of Christianity in Curtice’s prayers.“I have no idea what she was talking about but it seemed to be very pagan, not very Christian, and I really had no respect for it whatsoever,” Neidert said.Neidert also said he likely would have “just laughed about” the political aspects of Curtice’s speech had her prayer followed a more conventionally biblical template.Shreveport, La, freshman Veronica Penales, Baylor Democrat’s vice president, said she didn’t see anything wrong with Curtice’s prayer.“I think she was right in praying the way she wanted to pray, it was her chapel service to lead. I don’t think she crossed the line in that sense,” Penales said. “I support her, everything she did in that Chapel service including praying to Mother Mystery.”The phrase “Mother Mystery” was never said by Curtice, but has been incorrectly used by others referencing her Chapel speeches.In a response to parents’ concerns, Baylor said instances such as this can be seen as “problems – or as learning opportunities.” The university said while Baylor works with its chapel guests to plan material ahead of time, speakers may go off-script on occasion.“Every Chapel speaker works with us ahead of time on what message they will be sharing, but on occasion, a speaker may veer away from our understanding of the message they planned to convey,” the response said. “When this happens, we address the matter with our Chapel students and invite them to come talk to us after Chapel.”An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Curtice addressed her prayers to “Mother Mystery.” Potawatomi Nation was also misspelled.
