By: DEEPA BHARATH, AP and ADELLE BANKS, AP Religious News Service
Rev. Juliet Liu of Life at Vine Church closed Sunday’s service with the sign of the cross on May 22, 2022 in Longgrove, Illinois. (AP Photo/Mark Black)
When coronavirus cases began to peak in her impoverished San Antonio community about two years ago, Pastor Norma Fuentes-Quintero found herself taking on an additional responsibility — helping the congregation cope with anxiety.
The pastor, who leads the largely Latino Sanctuary of God Cristiano Assembly, spent hours with a congregation — a woman with seven children — who feared the virus would kill her And let her children lose their mother.
“Each call with her lasted 30 minutes to an hour,” Fuentes-Quentello said. “Some days, she’ll knock on my door. I’ll give her water, massage her head, rub her arms until she falls asleep. It’s personal.”
Fuentes-Quentero’s situation is common in communities of color, where a lack of resources, poor access to health care and stigma around mental health issues have turned pastors into counselors and caregivers. These are also communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
In addition to the pandemic, difficult conversations about anti-Asian hatred and systemic racism in the wake of the Atlanta spa killings and the murder of George Floyd have greatly increased stress levels in these communities. Faith leaders say they are overwhelmed, exhausted, exhausted and facing serious questions about how to take care of their own physical and mental health while helping their congregation in meaningful ways.
This kind of self-care isn’t that simple, especially in some cultures that require pastors to be physically and mentally present at all times, said Pastor Pausa Kaio Thompson, lead pastor at Dominguez Samoa Congregational Christian Church in Compton, California.
Pacific Islanders are dying from COVID-19 at a higher rate than any other racial group in his state, and pastors like Thompson officiate two or three funerals on certain days — sometimes for the same family members held.
In Pacific Islander communities, pastors tend to meet a variety of needs, from food, health care and employment to housing and immigration, he said. A pandemic is a unique situation because everyone’s source of grief — whether you’re in the pulpit or on the bench — is the same.
“How can I talk about my mental instability and doubt when I can’t communicate my mental instability and doubt to the people I’m there to lift and comfort?” Thompson said.
He decided to seek counseling and spend as much time relaxing as possible. Third-generation pastor Thompson said remnants of colonialism still haunt clergy in the Pacific Islander community. Once the missionaries arrived on the island, they trained the locals to enter the danger zone, teaching them “to give everything for the faith and to die for the faith,” he said.
“We still live by that theology, and it really hurts us,” Thompson said. “We need a new path forward.”
It’s important to remember that “clergy are people,” said Bishop Vashti McKenzie, a retired African Methodist bishop leader and interim president and secretary of the National Council of Churches.
“When you’re burying more congregations than your entire ministry, and adding race riots,” McKenzie said, “everything adds up,” except for losing loved ones in your own family.
The challenges facing clergy of color were showcased at a virtual event hosted by Christian group Live Free, two days after the mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket where 10 black people were killed.
Rev. Julian Cook, pastor of the Macedonian Missionary Baptist Church in Buffalo, described a clergy colleague who was unable to meet a request for grief counseling for a local bank employee.
“She had to tell them bluntly, ‘I don’t even have a place to talk about grief right now,'” he said at the online event.
The pressure to discuss race and racism is exhausting Pastor Juliet, co-leader of the Christian congregation in Longgrove, Illinois. She is preparing to start a six-month sabbatical in July. Liu said she was unsure whether she would return to ministry.
“For me, it’s not just the epidemic, it’s the conversation about race and anti-Asian hatred,” said Liu, who is of Taiwanese and Vietnamese descent. Her congregation is predominantly white and about 20 percent Asian-American.
Liu said she started seeing a therapist three years ago. She said it helped her understand that she could not be held accountable for “how white people understand and respond to racial justice.”
However, she felt disillusioned when some white congregations questioned the existence of systemic racism.
“I’m asking myself if I’m in the right place,” Liu said. “I’m questioning my calling.”
Jessica Smedley, a psychologist in Washington, D.C., said many pastors find comfort during this time because they know they’re not alone. She hosts virtual webinars as a form of support.
“It gives them the opportunity to hear from other clergy members that they are going through some of the same grief or stress because they can’t be there in person or don’t know how to be in front of their congregation in the same way and can’t go to the hospital because of safety problem,” she said.
A recent Rice University study found that black and Latino church members often rely on their pastors for mental health care, but their clergy feel limited in their ability to help them. Smedley said more research is needed on people of color and clergy with depression.
Pastor Dante Quick has made black mental health an area of focus for First Baptist Church, Lincoln Gardens, Somerset, NJ. The senior pastor is also concerned about his own mental health needs and advises his congregation and seminary students to do the same.
“If you see a cardiologist for your heart, an optometrist for your eyes, an oncologist for your cancer, why don’t you see a doctor?” he said, noting that he has seen 20 therapists. years.
Come on, black clergy faces all kinds of pressures. But he said social justice advocacy “brought its own pressures.”
“Preaching about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the (psychological) trauma we have to work to channel people of color through, requires a strong sense of empathy that wears through a person’s psyche. “
Quick says he copes by spending time participating in “joy-seeking” activities — like a good meal, an Anita Baker concert, or watching her favorite TV show with his mother. He now also has a personal phone and a church phone, “so I can drop one from time to time.”
“I want to live to see my child’s wedding,” he said.
