Back in the 1990s, before cellphones and email and the internet were a thing, when George H.W. Bush was in his final year as president, I headed to college. I had moved from East Tennessee to Philadelphia to go to Eastern University, a little Christian college known for holding together faith and social justice.
As I settled in and began studies, I kept hearing about a guy named Bryan Stevenson, an Eastern alumnus, class of 1981, who was doing some pretty amazing things with his life.
Bryan was a bit of a legend at the university, and his story had already been told and retold to me by our mutual friend and professor, Tony Campolo, a well-known preacher who has a reputation for “remembering big.”
But it turns out Bryan’s life is as big as the story Tony remembered. Bryan turned it into a book, and now a film, titled “Just Mercy,” which opened on Christmas and stars Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Brie Larson.
Bryan went from our alma mater in Philly to attend Harvard Law School, where he graduated with honors. Immensely gifted and with a Harvard degree, he could have gotten a job with pretty much any firm he wanted, and name his salary.
Instead, Bryan headed to Alabama, where the residue of slavery is so clearly visible in a criminal justice system that enshrines racism. He moved into a one-room apartment in Montgomery “with nothing but a soccer ball” (according to our friend with the tendency to remember big) and started defending people on death row.
Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, attends a special screening of “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality,” at the SVA Theatre on June 24, 2019, in New York. (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP)
A century ago, as Bryan knew well, Alabama was one of the states with the most lynchings, and to this day it’s one of the states with the most executions. It is no coincidence that the states that held on to slavery the longest continue to hold on to the death penalty, in a direct correlation between racism of the past and racism of the present. That’s where Bryan felt led, even called.
Particularly urgent for Bryan were the cases of those who were wrongfully convicted, often because of the color of their skin.
He was not only looking out for the prisoners, but for the system that they had been caught up in. One of the first quotes I ever heard from Bryan was this one: “We have a justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.” He sought to ensure that “equal justice under the law” was not just an aspirational slogan inscribed on the Supreme Court, but became a reality.
In 1989 he founded the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, which has now helped save the lives of over 125 men on death row and in 2018 opened the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice, known as the National Lynching Memorial.
His TED Talk got the longest standing ovation in the history of TED Talks and has been viewed over 6 million times. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu called Bryan “America’s Nelson Mandela.” Time magazine recognized him as one of 100 most influential people. There were even whispers that someday Bryan might be a justice on the Supreme Court.
Stunned by the simplicity and humility of his life, one reporter said to Bryan, “Why would you be this kind of lawyer?” Bryan’s winsome response: “Why would I not be this kind of lawyer?”
The more I learned about Bryan, the more his decisions made sense. He had grown up in segregated public schools and steeped in the historic black church, where liberation and justice flow like baptismal waters. (At Eastern, he had directed the gospel choir.) Early in his career, as he arrived to defend a young white man at trial, he was scolded by the judge who said only “counsel” were allowed in the courtroom.
For many, Bryan Stevenson is a superhero akin to the Avengers fittingly played onscreen by the actor who played Erik Killmonger in “Black Panther.” Jordan has said he was intimidated when he first met Bryan.
Eventually, I got to meet Bryan, and for the past 10 years it has been an honor to call him a friend. He inspired me to write “Executing Grace,” my book on the death penalty, and helped me to craft it. Bryan has been a mentor not only in justice, but also in hope. Indeed, nearly every time Bryan speaks, he talks about “protecting our hope,” a precious, timely message. In his words, “Hopelessness is the enemy of justice.”
“Protecting our hope” means never losing hope that love is more powerful than hatred, life more powerful than death, mercy more powerful than condemnation. As Bryan says, “We are all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
A “Just Mercy” movie poster. Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
“Just Mercy” is not a film about a man. It is about a movement to heal the wounds of racism and hatred. More than knowing his name, Bryan wants people to know the names of the 4,000 African Americans lynched as victims of racial terror and too often forgotten — people like Mary Turner, who was eight months pregnant when she was hung upside down by a white mob, set on fire and even cut open so her baby could be stomped to death.
He wants people to know the name of George Junius Stinney, who died in the electric chair at the age of 14, convicted by an all-white jury that deliberated for 10 minutes after a trial that lasted less than two hours with no witnesses called and no defense presented, no physical evidence — and whose sentence was vacated 70 years after his execution.
Bryan wants people to know the name of his friend Anthony Ray Hinton, who survived over 30 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, one of over 160 wrongfully convicted survivors of death row. Bryan wants us to know their names, not his.
He wants America to know the names of the casualties of racial terror throughout American history, and those who are next in line to be those casualties, as 1 in every 3 black boys born today can expect to go to prison.
During the filming of “Just Mercy,” I was invited on set to watch a scene being shot in an abandoned prison in Georgia. At one point a bitter white corrections officer throws a prisoner against a wall. Undaunted, the man smiles with a defiant hope, eyes set on heaven, and begins singing an old hymn: “I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day, still praying as I’m onward bound, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
Later, I got to meet a bunch of the actors, including the man who played the correctional officer. He smiled when I mentioned how good he was at being bad. As we ate, I saw an image of the world Bryan is building: prison guards and death row inmates talking and laughing over lunch. It was a world in which each of us is more than the worst things we’ve done. Where if we have the courage, we can see past the costumes we wear and get to know each other as children of God, and we can recognize and celebrate the dignity of every person.
Please watch “Just Mercy” with this in mind. Don’t just munch your popcorn and go home talking about what a hero Bryan is. Doing so dismisses what Bryan is really about because it lets you off the hook. Walk away from “Just Mercy” dreaming and scheming about the hero you want to be.
Director Kasi Lemmons on set. (Credit: Focus Features)
Director Kasi Lemmons spent seven months unearthing little told details about Harriet Tubman to rework a screenplay that had lain dormant and direct it into the first major film about her life. After years of delays, audiences across the country will get to experience on the big screen Tubman’s painful and hasty journey 170 years ago, starring Cynthia Ervio, Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monáe.
In an interview with Urban Faith, Lemmons, who made her directorial debut with the film Eve’s Bayou (1997), shared some insights on how she crafted the storytelling to introduce the “Moses of her people” to audiences in 2019.
UF: In this first theatrical treatment of Harriet Tubman, what did you hope to accomplish?
KL: Really to get her story out there and to add to images that we had of her as an older woman and really give a context to her work. She was a young woman when she was doing these incredible feats of heroism. She loved, and she was loved, and she was passionate. One of the things I think that makes the story so accessible and not at all abstract in terms of her as a hero is that she was motivated by love of her family and love of her husband. And that’s why she originally went back. It was for her family.
UF: In the event that some say set her on the path to divinely led life as an abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, around age 13, was hit in the head with an iron weight. Many films that explore slavery capture the audience’s attention by opening with a scene of violence, but your film doesn’t. Why not?
KL: I really wanted to speak in the movie to the separation of family rather than the violence to the body. Definitely, it’s an important part of our history and understanding slavery, but also, what is the violence of separating families? It was in the news and it was very much on my mind and it’s very much a part of her story. She was haunted by the image of her sisters being taken away.
The thing that stopped most people from running away, if they chose not to, is they wanted to stay with their family. That can be missing at times in stories about slavery. When visiting or shooting at plantations where people have been enslaved you feel the horror, but you also feel the kind of sacredness, the kind of hallowed ground where these people lived and loved and had children and worked and suffered. They led lives. Sometimes the brutality, I feel, can kind of get in the way of you really seeing that these were people with lives.
UF: You show a lot about Harriet Tubman’s character through her dialogue with others. How did you find these words to put in the mouth of Ms. Tubman?
KL: The way that I write is the way that I write for fiction and nonfiction, which is I start with character. But when you’re writing something about someone who has really lived, you start with the research. It’s a character, but you’re starting with the research.
Harriet did one-woman shows for groups of abolitionists to raise money. So we have her own words because she would talk about her life to abolitionists who found her absolutely fascinating. She was entertaining. She would sing Go Down Moses. She would tell her own stories.
Sometimes I’m using the words that she actually said. For instance, she said, “There I was with a suit and no husband.” Because I know that she said that one sentence that way that tells me something about her and how she talks. So I used actual authentic quotes of hers. And I start to hear a rhythm. I can feel where she’s humorous or ironic. I can feel her intelligence and then a southern cadence, which is very important to me. What is that cadence like in Maryland? What is the regional specificity of it? And once I get into the research and start to look at it that way, I hear characters as if they’re talking in my ears and then I write down what they say.
An expert speaks about the role of spirituality in Harriet Tubman’s work. Video courtesy of Cassie Chew
UF: Where do you think Harriet got her resolve? Who were her role models?
KL: Her father was a role model. She and her father were very connected–spiritually connected as well. They were bonded in that way. But also her mother was very fierce. I Iooked at the story that comes from her childhood, where they were going to sell her brother and her mother intervened and fiercely stood up to her master and was like, “I’m going to break your head open if you try to sell my son.”
So I look at that fierceness that comes from her mother and I say that’s part of Harriet. We tend to not think of enslaved people as quite human until we examine all of these things and then you say, of course, she had role models. We know that Reverend Green was a very complex character who was very important to the underground railroad. He became very important in her life. So he would have been a role model as well.
UF: Even though plantation owners used Bible passages to convince their workers that a life of slavery is what God wanted, the slaves were able to parse through that definition of spirituality. But that was instrumental in Harriet Tubman’s success.
KL: They so underestimated the enslaved people who worked for them and lived on their plantations and farms. They so underestimated them that they completely missed it. It was a whole language going on and a form of communication that, as we know, started with the drums and then became a coded language in spirituals as well. They were coded messages for those that were ready to hear them. There were coded messages in most of the spirituals. There were coded messages in the scripture as well and as it was interpreted into spirituals by the African American community.
UF: Your earlier work, Eve’s Bayou, included a fictional character who saw visions. How did that work inform your writing on what some people consider divinely led visions that led Tubman’s work as an abolitionist?
KL: The two films are in conversation with each other. I come from a very southern family and Mozelle was based on my aunt. So to me, that’s something very familiar to me–something that’s been a part of my family. It’s been a part of a lot of families that I know and it’s part of Harriet’s life. When I realized from doing the research that this was such a big part of her life, I’m like ‘Oh, this is speaking my language. I know this language.’
UF: Why has it taken so long for a major film project on the life of Harriet Tubman?
KL: It’s hard to get any film made. But it’s been hard to get a film made with a female protagonist, not to mention a Black female protagonist. You know what I mean? And this is like recently we’re able to say, “Oh a film could be viable with a woman as a protagonist.”. And so the idea that a Black woman can carry an adventure film in the title role is still a relatively new idea—you know people have had the idea before, but you were told that that might not be viable or that Black dramas were not viable or that dramas starring women in period pieces were less viable than dramas staring men.
I think that we are seeing the industry change and there’s lots of reason for optimism. I do believe that we are beginning to see more representation, more films with women protagonists, and honestly, it really has to get diverse behind the camera. The storytellers and the gatekeepers of storytelling have to be diverse because we’re the ones interested in it.
UF: What do you look for in a script?
KL: I try and just look at an overview of the story and see if it’s a story that I like and if it’s a character that I like. I’m very interested in character. It’s really the way that I approach a story. So for me it’s like, is the story interesting? Are the people interesting? Do I want to spend the next two years, maybe three years, maybe four years of my life involved in this story? A story has got to be so compelling because it takes a very long time to get movies made and you have to sustain the passion that happens. I have to have a love for a project before I agree to sign on as a writer/director.
UF: Do you think this film might add to calls for Harriet Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill?
KL: I absolutely hope so. I can’t really think of anyone more deserving. The funny thing about those men on the bills is that most people don’t know very much about them. So what they really should do is look into Jackson. You know, look at the history of him and everything he did and was responsible for and look at Harriet and everything she did and was responsible for and you tell me who is more deserving to be on the $20 bill.
He’s very problematic as many of those guys and yet they are still commemorated. I think that it’s time to really commemorate Tubman and give her a place in history. I think she’s a really essential and important American hero. And people do. If you ask people who are the most admired people that have ever been Americans, her name is going to come up. She’s kind of like essentially an American hero–this idea of live free or die, give me liberty or death, that’s very American. She deserves her place in history and she deserves her place on the currency as far as I’m concerned.
With the peculiar institution of slavery entrenched in Antebellum life, Harriet “Minty” Ross Tubman, in 1849, learns that the Brodess family, who have owned her since birth, are about to sell her in order to pay off debts from running their small farm in eastern Maryland.
With her older sisters sold to plantations in the Deep South and never heard from again, Minty has no time to waste. She goes to the field where her mother is working. She sings a spiritual in her mother’s earshot. Then she goes back to her slave cabin grabs a knife and begins tucking it into her skirt. But Minty pauses, draws out that knife and takes some of her precious few moments to use its pointy blade to draw a heart on the dirt floor.
In these moments from “Harriet,” director Kasi Lemmons hopes to communicate to audiences how painful this hasty departure 170 years ago must have meant for the woman who would become known as Harriet Tubman after making a remarkable decision to leave her husband, parents, and siblings to be free or die.
Despite the odds, the five-foot Tubman, who also was prone to “sleeping spells”, makes it 100 miles away to freedom in Philadelphia. As a young woman in her mid-twenties, she finds work and creates a life for herself. But her longing for her family is so strong that she does the unexpected.
Tubman makes a risky decision to go back to the plantations of Maryland’s eastern shore to get her husband and then, again and again, to lead other family members and friends out of slavery. She eventually makes a name for herself as one of the most successful conductors of the “Underground Railroad.”
Jesus was trending on Twitter last week, and I’d like to thank Kanye West.
On Wednesday (Oct. 23) in Los Angeles, Kanye debuted his new album, “Jesus is King” — the rapper’s first since he announced a few months ago that he would now be producing only Christian music. According to an inside look at the album and accompanying movie in a Pitchfork article by Jazz Monroe and Matthew Ismael Ruiz, the album’s tracks include lines like, “Sing till the Lord comes/Till the power of the Lord comes down.”
Since he announced his conversion and his intention to produce a gospel album, there has been a reaction from Christian Twitter, most of it mocking his pledge. Who does Kanye West think he is? Doesn’t he know that sinners aren’t allowed to talk like they know Jesus? Better save that to us, the real Christians.
I understand that not everyone might choose Kanye West to be their pastor, but if he wants to talk about his journey with spirituality through the gifts God has given him, who are any of us to tell him no?
Is there a spiritual litmus test that qualifies any of us to tell people what’s happening with our faith? Kanye may very well have holes in his theology, but last I checked, half of my Twitter feed was agreeing that author and speaker Beth Moore should “go home” for daring to speak at times reserved for men, while the other half argued that Jesus told all women “follow me.” One side has to be wrong, and yet on they’ll go, spewing incorrect theology in 280 characters, like it or not.
Honestly, if anything can bridge the gap between progressives and conservatives, it may be their mutual rejection of Kanye West. I’ve seen the liberals laugh and the conservatives clutch their pearls. Apparently, the Christians voted, and Kanye isn’t invited to the platforming of the gospel.
Musician Kanye West, top center, leads clapping in a “Sunday Service” performance on a specially made hilltop stage at Coachella on Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019, in Indio, Calif. Video screenshot
The fact is that Kanye’s fans are going to buy his next album, whether or not he believes that Jesus is king. If thousands of his supporters listen to his attempt to use his musical talents to bring God glory, is that so bad? Everyone has blind spots. Everyone is just doing their best to walk in the light they believe they’ve been given, no matter how dim or bright.
This isn’t the first time Kanye has talked about his faith. On December 3, 2004, he released the song “Jesus Walks.” At age 17, I hadn’t come far enough in my own religious understanding perhaps to demand to see Kanye’s baptismal record before I could trust him. But the opening words of “Jesus Walks” still burn in my head: “Yo, we at war, we at war with terrorism, racism, but most of all we at war with ourselves, God show me the way because the Devil’s tryin’ to break me down.”
I assume I wasn’t the only doctrinally confused 17-year-old listening to that song that day who thought about what it would look like for Jesus to be walking with them.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time God used a broken person to reach the people within their scope. He spoke with pagan wise men, he gave dreams to the tyrant King Nebuchadnezzar, he used a donkey to try and talk some sense into Balaam, who himself was wicked. If God can use Samson, who slept with prostitutes, and Jonah, the only preacher in history to be mad that an entire city came up for his altar call, can’t God use Kanye — even in spite of Kanye?
Christians don’t own Jesus. We don’t get to decide who God connects to. Maybe Kanye has truly had an intimate experience with God, maybe he hasn’t. Either way, I’m not sure that we are any more qualified to make judgments on his authenticity than we are any other celebrity.
If Kanye wants to use his platform to amplify his faith, why can’t he? And if we find that there are holes in his theology, he can join the line.
Last week, Jesus was trending on Twitter, and I’m willing to thank Kanye West for that.
(Heather Thompson Day is a professor of communications at Colorado Christian University and the author of “Confessions of a Christian Wife.” She blogs atI’m That Wife. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
Gospel artist Donnie McClurkin. Photo by Christian Lantry
Two decades ago, gospel singer Donnie McClurkin stepped on a London stage to record his second album.
Now, he’s returning to the United Kingdom for 20th-anniversary concerts on Oct. 18 and 19 to reprise the music of his “Live in London and More” CD that featured songs like “That’s What I Believe” and “We Fall Down.”
The Grammy-winning pastor of Perfecting Faith Church, a Pentecostal congregation in Freeport, N.Y., says he latched onto the popularity of black gospel music that existed overseas long before his 1999 concert.
“People like Andrae Crouch and Edwin Hawkins and the like, they made the music global so it was all a byproduct of the global impact that American gospel had,” he said.
McClurkin, who will turn 60 on Nov. 9 and celebrate with a gospel-star-studded celebration a week later in Jamaica, N.Y., also hosts “The Donnie McClurkin Show.” He features a mixture of new and classic gospel music, interviews and inspirational messages that airs online and in some 60 markets from the U.S. to the United Kingdom to Africa.
He talked to Religion News Service about how Oprah Winfrey boosted his career, the status of his relationship with gospel artist Nicole C. Mullen and how retirement is a ways off.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Donnie McClurkin presents an in memoriam tribute to Andrae Crouch at the BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater on June 28, 2015, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
Why did you decide to record an album in London 20 years ago, which some people might’ve considered an unusual move?
I decided to go to London, which was considered unusual by the record company itself, because of my mentor, the late great Andrae Crouch. He did a musical concert in 1978 in London. That became a landmark. And I always wanted to go to London from the time I knew where England was. And that was my prime opportunity because they gave me a blank check and said you just do an album however you want to do it.
There are certain celebrities who have helped you early in your career. Who are a couple of people that immediately come to mind and what difference did they make?
I was nominal, I was at B-level at best — and Oprah Winfrey got wind of the (1996) CD. She put me on her television show and held up the CD and said, “This is my favorite singer. This is my favorite project.” And we went from 30,000 to 300,000 in a month and then finally went platinum. Then there’s President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton and those kinds of things happened and made it something larger than life.
What were the presidents’ roles? What did they do?
They brought me to their convention, to sing at the (Democratic National Convention), to sing at the (Republican National Convention), opened it up to thousands of people in a room, millions of people around the world and that’s where a lot of attention started coming in.
Is this London concert an unusual singing venture for you now, given you’re pastoring a church and you’re hosting a radio show, or do you continue to perform in concert on other occasions?
I’m over in London just about once a year in concert. Since “Live in London” 20 years ago, I’ve got a very strong base over there, very strong community in England and in Europe period, from Italy to Germany to Holland to the U.K.
And do you sing much in the U.S. as well?
I sing less in the U.S. than I do in Africa and Europe.
You won a Dove Award in 2017 for “The Journey (Live)” and you were recognized in 2001 with a Dove for “We Fall Down” from your “Live in London” album. As the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards celebrates its 50th award show next week, what are a couple of main changes you’ve seen in gospel music over that time?
In the GMA, I see a lot of inclusion. For a long time, it was very, very segregated. GMA was for the CCM (contemporary Christian music) and the white gospel singers. And in the last three or four years I’ve seen such an inclusion, integration of black gospel artists along with the contemporary white gospel artists.
Gospel artist and pastor Donnie McClurkin. Photo by Christian Lantry
Do you mean that if you look at the show, if you look at the Dove Awards itself, that there is more integration?
The GMA as a whole, as an organization, not just the awards show but the organization itself. It’s grown and it’s matured and it’s let go of a lot of the institutionalized bias and has become inclusive of our music form, which is — and I probably will get in trouble — but our black music form is the strongest music form in gospel music. It’s what people gravitate to around the world, so “Oh Happy Day,” the whole of our repertoire. It’s been the most marketable. It’s been the most commercial. It’s been the most prominent. It’s apropos that at this point in time we are now sitting with equality at that table as well.
You have described yourself as a victim of childhood sex abuse and when you claimed you had overcome homosexuality, that prompted opposition from gay rights groups. How do you describe yourself now and are you involved in either so-called ex-gay ministries or initiatives that affirm LGBTQ people?
First of all, I’ve never been a part of any ex-gay anything. My past is just that: past. P-a-s-t. It’s gone. Who do I consider myself to be now? I consider myself to be Donnie. A wonderful, old man now — I never thought I’d be calling myself that — who is peaking 60 years old come next month and who has overcome a lot more than sexuality. But that’s been a great part of my life. It is something that I celebrate. I am a part of a church that embraces everybody. I am a pastor of a church that has hetero and homo in it as well. I believe in the love of God that reaches out to everybody, the love of God that is unconditional, the love of God that is not based on ethnicity, it’s not based on denomination, it’s not based on classification.
I believe in the transformative love that only comes through God and that’s what I preach. That’s what I live. That’s what I teach. I have a lot of LGBTQ friends in and out of the church. I’ve got a lot of people that appreciate what I’ve been through and they don’t judge me and I don’t judge them and that’s the way that this is supposed to work. It’s supposed to be a love that is real and genuine, that can accept people for who they are, even if you don’t agree with them.
Gospel artist and pastor Donnie McClurkin. Photo by Christian Lantry
There were reports in recent years of you dating another gospel artist, Nicole C. Mullen. So where does that relationship stand now?
We are great friends. We are very, very great friends.
Is there any thought of retiring from singing or from preaching anytime soon?
In another 10 years (laughs) or maybe 20 years. Singing is something that’s marginal for me now. I do it when I want to do it. I do it when it’s convenient to do it, and I do it when it has a purpose, if it’s going to bring somebody to a greater understanding of who Christ is. I don’t do it just for the entertainment aspect of it any longer. I am selective in what I do. Aretha Franklin told me years ago, “There’s a time when you got to sing and there’s a time when you sing when you want to.” And that makes sense to me now. I’m at a time now I sing when I want to.
