Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church
1948 The Alameda
San Jose, CA 95126
San Jose, CA 95126
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Ten days before the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, police and military shot student demonstrators in what became known as the Tlatelolco Massacre. This was the local context in which Australian 200m silver-medalist Peter Norman would take to the podium wearing a badge in support of the Human Rights movement. When the American anthem played, Gold and Bronze medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos would famously deliver the Black Power salute. The image of the three athletes would become one of the most iconic in a year of global unrest, and would change the course of each man's life.
Salute is a documentary film written, directed and produced by Matt Norman. It provides an insight into the 1968 Mexico Olympics, specifically one incident in particular which saw two US athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, give the black power salute from the victory dias after the 200 meters final.
What is less known about the incident is that the third man on the dias was a white Australian, Peter Norman. Norman showed support of Smith and Carlos by donning, on his way to the podium, an “Olympic Project for Human Rights” (OPHR) badge. It was also Norman who suggested that Smith and Carlos share the black gloves used in their salute, after Carlos had left his gloves in the Olympic Village. This is the reason for Tommie Smith raising his right fist, while John Carlos raise his left.
Asked about his support of Smith and Carlos’ cause by the world’s press, following the awards ceremony, Norman said he opposed his country’s government’s White Australia policy.
While there had been attempts by American filmmakers to put together a piece on the event, they all lacked one major ingredient: Peter Norman. As a result, Matt Norman realized that the full story of his famous uncle had never been told, He began Salute at the end of 2002. With no budget, nor funding and no help, he went about making a film that he hoped would get picked up by a local film festival.
Instead, Salute is now considered one of the most ambitious and most expensive Documentary films ever made in Australia. In October 2006, just one year after visiting San Jose for the unveiling of Fists of Bronze (the depiction of what Tommie Smith and John Carlos did on the victory dias), Peter Norman died tragically of a heart attack. Matt Norman’s life was turned upside down when his film that was to honor his uncle would now be regarded as a memory of his uncle and the stance he took at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games.
The statue does Smith and Carlos justice, and then some. It is a lyrical work of art, and a fitting tribute to two amazing athletes who rose to their moment in time. Credit should go to the artist, a sculptor who goes by the name Rigo23. Rigo23's most important decision was to leave Smith and Carlos's inventively radical and little discussed symbology intact. On the statue, as in 1968, Smith and Carlos wear wraps around their necks to protest lynching and they are not wearing shoes to protest poverty. Rigo23 made sure to remember that Carlos' Olympic jacket - in a shocking breach of etiquette - was zipped open, done so because as Carlos said to me, "I was representing shift workers, blue-collar people, and the underdogs. That's why my shirt was open. Those are the people whose contributions to society are so important but don't get recognized."
The most controversial aspect of the statue is that it leaves off Australian silver medalist Peter Norman altogether. This seems to do Norman a disservice considering that he was not a passive player in 1968 but wore a solidarity patch on his Olympic jacket so the world would know which side he was on.
But Rigo23 did this, over the initial objections of John Carlos, so people could climb up on the medal stand with Smith and Carlos and do everything from pose for pictures to lead speak-outs. Norman who traveled to the unveiling ceremony from Australia endorsed the design wholeheartedly understanding that its purpose is less to mummify the past than inspire the future. "I love that idea," said Norman. "Anybody can get up there and stand up for something they believe in. I guess that just about says it all."
Peter Norman said, "There is often a misunderstanding of what the raised fists signified. It was about the civil rights movement, equality for man....The issues are still there today and they'll be there in Beijing [at the 2008 summer games] and we've got to make sure that we don't lose sight of that. We've got to make sure that there is a statement made in Beijing, too. It's not our part to be at the forefront of that, we're not the leaders of today, but there are leaders out there with the same thoughts and the same strength."
In his latest book Bishop Spong challenges much of the traditional understanding with which the church has surrounded Jesus. In this vital book he brings the pious believer and the secular doubter into dialogue with one another, as he opens a door to a living Christianity (as opposed to dead beliefs).
Perhaps it is best to learn about this vital book by reading what Bishop Spong has to say about it:
My newest book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, just released in paperback, is written for those people who are committed to the Jesus experience, but because they are citizens of the 21st Century cannot twist their minds into First Century pretzels in order to say “I believe” to the traditional explanations offered by the biblical writers. Rather I seek the reality of the Jesus experience that made these explanations seem appropriate.
I do not believe, for example, that Jesus was born of a virgin in any biological sense, but I do believe that people found in Jesus a God presence that caused them to assert that human life could never have produced what they believed they met in him.
I do not believe that Jesus expanded the food supply, so that with a finite number of loaves he could feed more than 5,000 people in the wilderness, but I do believe that people found in him that which satisfied their deepest hunger and so they referred to him as the “Bread of Life” that is never exhausted.
I do not believe that the deceased body of Jesus was resuscitated physically on the third day and was restored to the life of this world as, at least, the later gospels assert, but I do believe that in him and through him people found a way into that which is eternal and so they portrayed him as breaking through and transcending the limits of death.
I do not believe that Jesus defied gravity to ascend into the heavens of a three-tiered universe to be reunited with the God who lives above the sky, but I do believe that Jesus opened the door to that realm in which life can become so whole and so fully human that we enter God’s divinity and God’s presence in a new way.
I do not believe that 50 days after the Easter experience the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples as a mighty rushing wind, accompanied by tongues of fire, as the Pentecost story in the Book of Acts relates, but I do believe that when we are open to God’s eternal presence we are also open to see another so deeply that tribal identities fall and we can communicate with one another in the universal language of love and discover that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, but a new humanity.
As Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once observed, I do not believe that Christianity can today be contained inside the traditional formulations of Christianity and must, therefore, transcend these boundaries, if it is to live in this generation. Bonhoeffer coined the phrase “Religionless Christianity” to describe what he meant. I seek in a similar way to look at Jesus outside the boundaries of religion. The result for me has been the recovery of a Jesus who commands my allegiance anew, a Jesus who calls me beyond my limits into a new humanity, beyond my prejudices into a new wholeness, beyond my religion into a new courage to live for others and to be all that I can be. It is this Jesus to whom my life is committed.
The Easter Jesus is, I believe, the limitless Jesus, the one in whom full divinity flows, not destroying but affirming his humanity, the Jesus who can command the attention of a world that is not only weary of war, but weary of religion also, especially when it seems to be a cause of war.
[Note: Pontius Pilate was a Governor; Jesus was a Community Organizer.]