Seeking the Universal in Life

What’s in a name?

Beverly Shamana’s tells a lot about who she is and how she wants to live.

Shamana is a combination of “shaman,” a medium between the visible and invisible spirit worlds, and “mana,” a word meaning the spirit that is among us and within us but cannot be controlled or contained.

Not bad for someone who is the second African American woman ever to be elected a bishop of the United Methodist Church, the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination.

When Shamana, 60, grew up in Pasadena, her given name was Martin. When she married, it became Anderson. After 10 years, she divorced. Shortly before her ordination in 1979, she chose a name for herself--Shamana.

“I wanted a name that transcended time, space and ethnicity. I wanted a name that was universal,” she said.

“I said, ‘I don’t want any name that has “son,” “him,” “he” or “man” anywhere in it.’ I wanted a female name. Then I get this name--Shamana--that starts with shaMAN and ends with MANa and has ‘man’ in the middle of it! God has a sense of humor, doesn’t she?”

As the new bishop of the California-Nevada Conference, she may have to be something of a shaman to steer her way through a controversy that has been tearing at her church--homosexuality.

When the Pasadena cleric takes over Sept. 1 as bishop of the Sacramento-based jurisdiction with its 380 congregations and 92,000 members, she will be thrust into a center of activism and defiance over the issue.

It was in Sacramento that 68 United Methodist ministers flouted church law in January 1999 and joined two lesbians in a rite of holy union that shook the national church.

Traditionalists brought charges against the ministers for defying church law. That forced Bishop Melvin Talbert, whom Shamana will succeed, to convene a trial court. The court dismissed the charges after a high-profile public hearing, but not before some traditionalist pastors threatened to pull out of the denomination.

Meanwhile, ministers who favor same-sex unions say that they will continue to officiate at such services despite church law.

Ask Shamana what she plans to do about it and one is greeted with thoughtful silence--and an expressed determination to navigate what she calls “a fragile path.”

“I don’t want to declare a hard position before I arrive and then expect pastors and members to trust my invitation to build new bridges,” she said this week.

“I would try to model my ministry after that of Christ and to reconcile people to God and to each other. That’s what my vision is. . . . I can’t speculate at this moment what that might entail when I get there,” she said.

In an earlier interview, however, she said, “I certainly am in favor of the full sexuality that God has given us. I don’t draw the line between how people express their sexuality.” Meanwhile, Shamana said she is determined to work with all sides in those areas where agreement can be reached.

A Focus on Preaching and Justice

Like many clergy and laity in churches and denominations across the country, Shamana seeks to focus attention on what she calls the church’s primary mission--preaching

the Gospel and doing justice. There is more to life in the church, she said, than debates over human sexuality.

Among the issues facing her church, she said, is its changing ethnic complexion.

“The more that we as a church are able to embrace that--and really be proactive in embracing that--the more it will tell people this is not only what the family of God looks like, this is what the face of God looks like,” she said.

Another priority is justice for the poor, homeless and disenfranchised.

“I believe we’re all created with a core of the divine in us,” she said. “That’s what we’re called to address, regardless of what circumstances people choose for their lives or the way they find themselves.”

To that end, Shamana, in her previous post as director of ethnic, justice and outreach ministries for the church’s California-Pacific Conference, based in Pasadena, has launched programs to rebuild burned churches in the South. She also went to Panama in 1991 to rebuild homes destroyed when the U.S. toppled Gen. Manuel A. Noriega in 1989.

Closer to home, Shamana said that preachers often shy away from challenging the materialistic lifestyles of their congregants.

“I’m just stunned by the young people and older, middle-aged folks who have SUVs and [think] it’s just wonderful. So what if gas goes up? ‘We’ll just buy what we need and get on the road.’ There’s just an air of blessing about all of it,” she said. “Yet if we read the Bible passages, they ought to prick our consciences. I just don’t know if they do.”

African American and Latino churches are far better at speaking out against injustice than most white congregations, she said.

“In most African American churches of almost any size you still hear about issues that we need to address and where we cannot sit comfortable. Also in Latino churches--because we know the war is still on in terms of the haves and have-nots,” she said.

Still, she said, churchgoers regardless of ethnic or economic background are ready to do the right thing, provided they are informed of a problem and offered specific ways they can help.

In her quiet times, Shamana finds peace and insight as an artist who fashions human figures out of gourds. The work “connects me to the ancient past, the faraway past, the pre-Christian past as well as into the future,” she said.

That sense of connection, she said, is at the root of her name, as well. “The name continues to give me something to grow to,” she said. “I never feel like I embody that name fully. It just keeps calling me forward. It has just felt right.”