by UrbanFaith Staff | Jul 14, 2015 | Feature |
c. 2015 Religion News Service
HOT SPRINGS, N.C. (RNS) As she prepared for her mission — scaling the 30-foot flagpole outside the South Carolina Statehouse to bring down the Confederate flag — Bree Newsome reread the biblical story of David and Goliath.
A youth organizer with Ignite NC, a nonprofit group challenging voting laws, Newsome appeared briefly to raucous cheers Saturday (July 11) on the main stage of the Wild Goose Festival after speaking to a smaller crowd at the four-day camp revival that celebrates spirituality, arts and justice.
The 30-year-old activist, a dedicated Christian, drew on the biblical story of the Hebrew shepherd boy who slays a giant with a sling and a stone.
“I don’t even feel like it was my human strength in that moment,” said Newsome. “I’m honestly just so humbled.”
On June 27, Newsome climbed the flagpole to remove the Confederate battle flag, a symbol that represents for many a war to uphold slavery and, later, a battle to oppose civil rights advances.
Her action came 10 days after the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, S.C., in which nine participants of a Bible study, including the pastor were killed.
She was charged with defacing a monument, a misdemeanor, according to a statement from the South Carolina Department of Public Safety, and could face a fine of up to $5,000 and up to three years in prison.
On Friday, the Confederate flag was lowered for good after state legislators signed a bill authorizing its removal.
For Newsome, it was a step too late.
“Why did people have to die for people to realize the state had been promoting hate with this symbol?” she asked.
Newsome grew up hearing her grandmother’s story of her black neighbor brutally beaten by Ku Klux Klan members because he was a doctor who treated a white woman. She told of ancestors who came through Charleston’s slave market and others who died in lynchings.
Invited to speak to the mostly white audience long after the festival schedule was set, Newsome joined a roster of speakers on the theme of “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” a nod to the nonviolent activism of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
This year’s gathering honored the festival’s “Fairy Godmother” Phyllis Tickle, the Christian author and editor diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Speakers included Ferguson Commission member Traci Blackmon, Moral Monday founder William Barber, and immigrant advocate Alexia Salvatierra.
“We were in the presence of history,” poet Merrill Farnsworth said of Newsome’s appearance. “I was really glad to catch a glimpse of the person who did this.”
The daughter of a Baptist minister and onetime president of Shaw University in Raleigh, Newsome said she felt a calling into a new civil rights campaign following the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, a killing she likened to the death of Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old boy mutilated in 1955 after allegedly flirting with a white woman.
After the police killing of Michael Brown in Missouri last year, Newsome helped to convene The Tribe, a grassroots collective dedicated to community building.
Her actions at the South Carolina Statehouse grew out of what she calls her “crisis of faith” following the Emanuel shootings.
“This is like 9/11 to me,” Newsome said. “I see people just going about their daily lives. I can’t do that. I can’t function.”
On one hand, she said, the victims’ families quick forgiveness of accused killer Dylann Roof was a “rare display of Christ-like behavior.”
On the other hand, she said, forgiving too easily has helped perpetuate racist systems.
Speaking to some 300 people who crowded into the festival’s Spirituality Tent, she said she preferred action.
“Jesus is one of the biggest agitators that ever lived,” she said. “The only time Jesus was in the temple was when he’s flipping stuff over and stirring things up.”
Activists from Charlotte, N.C., had already been planning to remove the flag and had taken photos of the pole in preparation when they asked Newsome to join. They talked about the symbolic power of having a black woman remove the flag.
“Hollywood’s created plenty of white heroes,” said activist James Ian Tyson, who appeared alongside Newsome Saturday and spoke of his role that day — kneeling on the ground so she could climb onto his back and over the four-foot fence surrounding the flagpole.
Newsome said it wasn’t an easy decision to climb the pole. She was afraid for her life and asked her sister, whom she described as a “prayer warrior,” to pray for her.
Her faith helped her overcome her fear. She recounted an argument with a police officer that ordered her down.
“You’re doing the wrong thing,” she said the officer told her.
At that moment, she said, she remembered her reading of David and Goliath.
And she kept repeating the 27th Psalm: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” as she descended the pole.
“If we really want to work for a peaceful society, we have to agitate,” she said. “Until the people in power have to deal with you, they won’t.”
Newsome recalled figures like Rosa Parks, whose acts of civil disobedience led to gains in racial equality. She said she hopes for a day when black people won’t have to face obstacles to voting, endure underfunded schools or fear losing their lives at the hands of police.
“This to me feels like the beginning,” she said.
Still, festival organizers provided an eight-person security detail to make sure no one tried to infiltrate the Hot Springs Resort grounds to harm the pair.
At an interview after her talk, festival producer Rosa Lee Harden introduced Newsome to Blackmon, a pastor helping people in Ferguson respond to the Brown shooting. The pair embraced quietly and Blackmon broke into tears as she thanked the young activist.
“You lit my fire,” Blackmon said.
“Y’all lit my fire in Ferguson,” Newsome said.
“God is a God of liberation,” she added. “I know that he heard my great-great-grandmother in South Carolina when she was praying for her children to be free, and we’re going to keep praying until we’re all free.”
Copyright 2015 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Jul 2, 2015 | Feature, Headline News |
by Nicole Symmonds, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | Jul 1, 2015 | Feature, Headline News |
On June 28 the hashtag #whoisburningblackchurches started on Twitter in response to the recent spate of church fires. A multitude of voices have contributed to the discussion counting the number of current church burnings, recounting the history of black church burnings, and calling media and white Christians to the floor of accountability and responsibility.
Seven churches have been set on fire in the past week and a half. College Hill Seventh Day Adventist Church in Knoxville on June 21; God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Ga on June 23; Briar Creek Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC on June 24; Fruitland Presbyerian Church in Gibson County, Tennessee; Greater Miracle Temple church in Tallahassee, Fl on June 26; Glover Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Warrenville, South Carolina on June 26 and now, the seventh church, Mt. Zion AME church in Greelyville, South Carolina. Though the current burning of Mt. Zion AME hasn’t been ruled a hate crime or terrorist act, the church is no stranger to either as it was the site of destruction in 1995 when KKK members set the church on fire, destroying it.
Since Dylann Roof’s mass shooting that took the lives of nine people at Mother Emanuel AME and since the debates about removing the Confederate flag have ignited, we’ve seen an increase in hate crime and activities. The KKK has boosted its recruitment efforts and even has plans to hold a rally at the South Carolina statehouse on July 18th. And now here we are, many of us watching black church after black church burn. The church, the one place of refuge for many black people, is burning. What shall we do?
It’s time for a lot of people to step up including a lot of predominantly white churches. White silence in general has been a problem as we’ve grappled with the issue of violence and police brutality against black people with impunity. But white Christian silence in particular cannot be tolerated at this point. Several Twitter users called out Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyers, Rick Warren and other popular white pastors to find out their response to black churches burning and all of them were met with silence. At the time this story was published none of the aforementioned released statements about the black church burnings and this is problematic not only because of the sheer volume of incidents but the clear disregard for the church. Yes, inherent in white Christian silence on this matter is a disregard for the church.
If black churches are burning that means the church is burning and there can be no separation there. If our church is burning, so is yours and it becomes a part of your concern and responsibility because you are, as we are, part of God’s body. #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches is an important question to ask because we must get to the root cause–although many of us can guess who the perpetrators are. But WHAT WE DO from here on out counts. This is no saccharin call to reconciliation that is often hard-won because very few understand racial reconciliation. Neither is this a call to prayer–which is necessary but not sufficient on its own. But it is a call to action to those who still hold the balance of power, to intercede on behalf of the oppressed, violated, and exploited. A call to express explicit concern and actively engage black church communities. This is also a call to the black church community that, somehow, we won’t lose faith in God and in the church that has been a place of refuge for us. That may be easier said than done but my prayer is that we continue to show up and boldly stand in the face of evil. That we continue to speak out against every injustice, including the one that is currently visiting us, and pray to not be overcome by fear.
Lastly, 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” The scripture is God’s response to Solomon who had just dedicated the temple to God, fulfilling the promise. David, Solomon’s father, wanted to build the temple but God told him, “You did well to consider building a house for my name; nevertheless you shall not build my house, but your son who shall be born to you shall build a house for my name.” 2 Chronicles 6 is Solomon’s dedication of the temple to God where he also establishes a long petition in hopes that God will hear and forgive God’s people when they sin against God and each other. God responds in the affirmative that He will respond to Solomon’s petitions and hear the prayer and the cries of His people. I often appeal to this scripture at times like this. At this moment it is relevant, in my opinion, because manifold are our sins against each other and God. I can make strong declarations about what we must do but I also recognize that we, too, must humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways. To me, this scripture speaks to all of us and the part all of us play in the destruction of our churches. Last week in a lecture at the Candler School of Theology, Cornel West said,
“White supremacy is in the souls of black and brown people. The imperial identity is inside of us. We are all a mess.”
As you can imagine, his words shook the room. It may not be something everyone will agree on but, in many ways, there is something “other” inside of some of us that has taken as far away from our first love. Given this, our asking #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches requires that we question ourselves as much as we question the perpetrators of this terroristic act. I don’t claim that we, black people, are at fault, but I claim that those of us in the black church are as much as part of the answer and the hateful cowards we are searching for. Many of us have turned our back on the black church because it hasn’t been what we want it to be. We’ve stepped away from it in its traditional iteration to do our own thing and left it to, symbolically burn, while we go to perceived greener pastures. But the grass is greener where you water it and the black church needs us now more than ever. So I call on those of us who have abandoned the black church as much as I call on those who never respected it in the first place. A house divided will not stand, but a house unified will persevere and it is times for us to turn back in on ourselves and our church to water it and protect it from further harm, internally and externally. Again, I want to make it clear that I’m not blaming black people for burning black churches, but I am encouraging all of us who have a stake in the black church’s survival, literally and figuratively, to really put that question through the grinder and find all accountable parties.
Let us continue this discussion, #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Jun 24, 2015 | Feature |
c. 2015 Religion News Service
(RNS) Inevitably, after the massacre at Emanuel AME Church, people are beginning to talk about arming congregants for self-defense. It is a sad image: 25 souls sitting around at Wednesday night prayer meeting, some packing heat in case the next church attacker should happen to be among them.
A mother and son stand at a makeshift memorial for victims of a mass shooting, outside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, on June 22, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
*Editors: This photo may only be republished with RNS-GUSHEE-COLUMN, originally transmitted on June 24, 2015.
Some people consider it a ridiculous idea, or dangerous, or even sacrilegious: Guns don’t belong in the house of the Lord Jesus, who taught turning the other cheek and peacemaking; guns don’t belong in the hands of angry people, and Lord knows people sometimes get real angry in church. Imagine an enraged deacon calling for a vote on whether to fire the pastor, gun in hand. (This might affect the church’s democratic process just a bit.)
Others have been in favor of guns in church for a long time. “Open carry” and/or “concealed carry” legislation has already been passed in numerous states, with application to numerous public places, including churches.
In Georgia last year, local church leaders found themselves on opposite sides of the issue, breaking down pretty neatly along left/right lines — yet another reminder that political ideology almost always seems stronger than shared Christian commitment in our red/blue culture. In the end, opponents managed to get an opt-in rather than opt-out system, so that churches would have to declare “guns welcome here” rather than having to declare the opposite. (An interesting addition to the run-of-the-mill messages on church signs.)
My most core Christian convictions center in the lordship of Jesus Christ, who laid down his life but did not take anyone’s life — and taught his followers the same pattern. When he could have defended himself, he did not. When the early church could have defended itself, it did not. Martyrdom and not defensive violence became the Christian paradigm. The early church dreamed of and worked for a renewed world and an end to its bloody violence.
But eventually Christians came to a theoretically limited embrace of violence, first in defense of the (supposedly Christian) Roman state and then its successors after the fourth century. Sometimes they embraced violence in the name of both state and church — for example, in suppressing heretics. Christians tended to support and participate in the violence governmental leaders ordered them to commit in criminal justice and in war, though just war/just violence theory set some limits — which gradually became refined over time.
Just-war thinkers always drew a sharp line between defensive and offensive violence, between justified and unjustified force. But just-war theory was primarily focused on the defense of the community or the state, not the individual Christian or the congregation. Romans 13:1-7 was read to authorize state violence as a deterrent, as defense, and as punishment of the wicked for violating communal peace and harming innocent people. But responsibility for executing that violence was left in the hands of government and its officials, which could and did include individual Christians but was separated from the function of the church. I could be shown to be wrong, but my reading of the Christian tradition is that the idea of heavily armed congregations hunkered down in self-defense in their houses of worship is a foreign concept.
But maybe that’s because for most of Christian history and in most places Christians did not need to feel afraid when they gathered in church. Excluding Muslim-Christian violence on those particular frontier lines — and after Christians in Europe and the colonies figured out how to stop killing each other over doctrinal differences — the average Christian didn’t need to be afraid of violence when she went to church.
This, of course, has not always been the case for the historic black churches in the United States, as Emanuel AME’s own history attests — though most white American Christians did not really notice before last week. As the center of African-American communal life, and often as the focal point of resistance to racist injustice, the black churches have periodically been victimized by violence. And yet I am not aware of any general pattern of African-American churches arming themselves in self-defense.
Perhaps that will change after last week. Certainly a general posture of open hospitality to the stranger could well be threatened.
I keep thinking about one stubborn fact of my own (limited) experience: I have never attended a Christian church that employed armed security, and I have never visited a Jewish synagogue that was not guarded by armed security. I first noticed it at a prosperous synagogue many years ago in northern Virginia, but since then have seen it elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. I will never forget when my wife and I visited the historic Great Synagogue in Rome — where a 2-year-old boy had been murdered, and 34 children injured, in a horrific 1982 attack on a Shabbat service. A machine-gun-toting Italian police officer guarded that synagogue the day we were there. Armed security was certainly present in Jerusalem when I visited a synagogue in that city.
People regularly victimized by violence, including in their holy places, will seek to protect themselves. I cannot fault them for it. I fault those whose crimes have evoked this response.
Bottom line: Mosques, synagogues, churches and other holy places should not require armed security. But sometimes, in our wicked world, they face real threats to the unthreatening people praying there. State officials bear primary responsibility to protect those who are vulnerable. If they won’t or can’t do their job, it is terribly sad but not inappropriate for houses of worship to pay for the level of security required to keep their children and senior citizens from being murdered. This is preferable to the other solution — arming lightly trained or untrained civilians whose weapons probably risk doing far more harm than good.
May none of us ever stop yearning and working for the day when all this killing will end.
Copyright 2015 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Jun 19, 2015 | Feature, Headline News |
An evening view of the Emanuel AME Church June 18, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina. Dylann Storm Roof has been arrested in connection with a mass shooting at the Emanuel AME Church Wednesday night. AFP PHOTO/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKIBRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
(RNS) Two days after Dylann Roof allegedly opened fire inside of an historic black church in a city with deep black historical roots, the country is poised Friday (June 19) to celebrate black empowerment and freedom from slavery.
Based on comments floating through social media and on editorials from news organizations, Juneteenth will have particular significance in Charleston, S.C., the community where 9 people died after being shot during a prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a house of worship founded by slave revolt organizer Denmark Vesey and others.
Juneteenth — a contraction of “June” and “nineteenth” — is a holiday set up to commemorate the day in 1865 when Major Gen. Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas, to inform a reluctant community that slaves had been freed by President Lincoln more than two years before and to press locals to comply.
Over time, the observance marked by dancing and music has come to celebrate freedom and black achievement nationally. Those concepts go hand-in-hand with with the theme of Charleston, a city steeped in black history and defiance.
Americans in the last 24 hours seem to have embraced the Juneteenth concept and rewrapped it as a way to honor the Charleston victims. Various organizations and people were sending out word that the victims would be remembered during already planned Juneteenth observances.
The National Black United Front was organizing a Juneteenth Inter-Faith Prayer Vigil for Emanuel AME Church, slated for 7 p.m. EDT at the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington.
“There is a long history of bombings, burnings, shootings and other acts of terrorism committed against the black church and we would like to bring more light to this,” said Salim Adofo, national vice chairperson of the organization.
“The members of NBUF are asking members of all faiths in the community to join them as they will offer prayers and condolences to the victims of the shooting, their family, their friends and the members of Emanuel AME church,” the invitation read.
Editorials detailed the connection between Juneteenth and what took place at Emanuel, the oldest black church in the South and host site for the late Martin Luther King Jr. and other major figures over time.
“Friday’s celebration takes on new urgency,” read an editorial on the NewsOne website. “Surely, it was no mistake that the gunman picked Emanuel, which has played a pivotal role in black history.”
Social media was sprinkled with posts urging people to use Juneteenth to remember the victims.
“We commemorate those who were born or sold into slavery, and those who died in the process of bringing about its end,” read one Facebook post superimposed over a poster that reads “Juneteenth.”
On Twitter, author Eric Liu tweeted, “Black people being slain in southern churches like it’s (18 or 19) ’63. Tomorrow’sJuneteenth.”
Charleston is a place that reeks of black empowerment.
It is home to the Avery Research Center for African-American History and Culture. About half of all black Americans in the United States can trace their arrival to the country from the Charleston region, according to the Avery center site. In history, the city hosted a sizable free black population.
“Charleston looks the way it does because of African-American hands,” Deborah Mack, associate director for community and constituent services for the future National Museum of African American History and Culture, told CNN. The facility will open next year in Washington.
Charleston and South Carolina’s Low Country are one of the few places in the United States today where basket weaving, language and other indigenous African practices are still evident. In 1822, authorities discovered plans for a major slave revolt being organized by Denmark Vesey, one of the founders of Emanuel. Authorities fortified the northern boundary of the city to prevent future rebellions and ultimately built the Citadel, which today is a commercial hotel.
One neighborhood, Harleston Village, features 1820s homes that were owned by free black men, including carpenter Richard Holloway and religious leader and shoemaker Morris Brown.
Holloway owned 20 homes by the time he died, according to an essay by Bernard Powers, chair of the history department at the College of Charleston. Emanuel and other churches that emerged after the civil war allowed black congregations to worship how they preferred, and according to their own customs, Powers wrote.
Read an editorial Thursday on the Al.com website, “Mourn today for a congregation that has lost so much … But tomorrow, in the spirit of Juneteenth, we work toward a yet another victory over blind, evil hatred.”
Copyright 2015 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission. c. 2015 USA Today
by UrbanFaith Staff | Jun 18, 2015 | Feature, Headline News |
c. 2015 USA Today
“He was a giant, a legend, a moral compass.”
Senior Pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, speaks to those gathered during the Watch Night service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on December 31, 2012. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Randall Hill
Those are the words used by fellow state senator Marlon Kimpson on CNN Thursday morning to describe the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor and politician who was among nine people killed when a gunman, believed to be white, opened fire Wednesday evening at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
Pinckney’s sister also died in the shooting, said J. Todd Rutherford, the minority leader of the state’s House of Representatives. Her name is not known and the other victims, two men and five women, were not immediately identified.
Rutherford, who has served in the State Legislature with Pinckney since 1998, told the New York Times that his colleague was “a man driven by public service” whose booming voice inspired his congregation and constituents.
Pinckney, 41, was married with two children and had served in the state Senate since 2000, according to an online biography on the church’s website.
The pastor was a magna cum laude graduate of Allen University with a degree in business administration and went on to earn a master’s degree in the same subject at the University of South Carolina, the site said. He then obtained a master’s of divinity from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
According to Rutherford and the website, Pinckney started preaching at 13 and received his first appointment to be a pastor at 18. At 23, he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representativesthe youngest state legislator in South Carolina history, and in 2000 was elected to the State Senate. Washington Post columnist David Broder called Pinckney a “political spirit lifter for surprisingly not becoming cynical about politics,” the site said.
A black mourning cloth was draped over Pinckney’s seat in the senate chamber in the capital, Columbia, Wednesday, according to news reports.
In 1999, Ebony Magazine named Pinckney as one of 30 African-American leaders of the future. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two children, Eliana and Malana.
State Rep. Wendell Gilliard told the Charleston Post and Courier that he visited Pinckney’s wife and daughters after the shooting. saying that the family is “surrounded by friends.”
In April, Pinckney helped lead a prayer vigil for Walter Scott, a black South Carolina man who was shot dead by a police officer as he tried to run away.
The veteran civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton, who was also involved in the vigil, tweeted on Wednesday night: “Rev. Clements Pinckney, a SC legislator is among the 9 killed in SC church. I am reminded that he helped lead our prayer vigil for Scott.”
The church is one of the nation’s oldest black congregations. It is housed in a 1891 Gothic Revival building which is considered a historically significant building, according to the National Park Service, which said that the church is the oldest black congregation south of Baltimore.
The congregation was formed by black members of Charleston’s Methodist Episcopal Church who broke away “over disputed burial ground,” according to the park service’s website.
In 1822, one of the church’s co-founders, Denmark Vesey, tried to start a slave rebellion in Charleston, the website added. The plot was discovered and 35 people were executed, including Vesey.
The Rev. Joseph Darby of the AME Church in Beaufort, S.C., described Pinckney as “an advocate for the people.” He told MSNBC that “he was a very caring and competent pastor, and he was a very brave man. Brave men sometimes die difficult deaths.”
Copyright 2015 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
