On a day when the liberation of African Americans was universally celebrated, a group of 700 Black pastors and theologians issued a proclamation on June 19 admonishing President Donald Trump for messaging they see as a catalyst create racial tension and embolden racial terrorism.
His plan to hold a rally in Tulsa, the site of the Black Wall Street race riot, during the Juneteenth weekend compelled the collective to take action.
“…[I]t is not lost on us that the 45th presidential administration of the United States has once again undertaken to desecrate Black life by planning to hold an incendiary rally this Juneteenth weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” The proclamation reads. “Tulsa is significant for Black America because it is where Black Wall Street, a great symbol of Black economic self-determination, was organized by persons who fled the sacrilege of lynching, only to be burned to the ground by the ubiquity of white supremacist hate.
In this contemporary moment, the Black Church will not stand silent in the face of the social, moral and political failure of the 45th administration of this nation. The chief executive of the United States is a racist and sexist terrorist whose ignorance, gaslighting, dog whistles, and outright lies have fueled the flames of the anti-Black sentiment that is carved into the very foundations of the American experiment, and which has consistently simmered beneath the façade of this ‘city on a hill.’ The state-sanctioned lynchings of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, George Floyd in Minneapolis, Tony McDade in Tallahassee, Florida, and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, are merely the most recent additions to the red record of horror flagrantly visited upon African America.”
The statement also acknowledged past actions of the Black church that have been harmful to the Black community.
“Self-reflexively, Black Church commitments to the patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, class fragmentation and Christian triumphalism indicate moral failure and a stronghold of anti-Blackness in our own communities that compels us to despise ourselves and our mirror image in the world.”
“We repent for our paradoxical defiance of the “Good News” that reveals a God in Christ whose radical Body does not conform to the status quo. We repent for the disposition of anti-Black self-loathing that is a direct consequence of hegemonic white supremacy in the modern world. We repent for how anti-Black self-loathing has bolstered our repudiation of and violence toward Black women, Black queer people and Black non-Christian theisms (especially our African traditional, Black Muslim and Black Jewish kindred), humanism and atheism.”
The proclamation was signed by several local Black clergy including: Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, Deaconess Foundation; Rev. Dr. F. James Clark, Shalom Church (City of Peace); Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould, Missouri Faith Voices; Rev. Dr. F. Delano R. Benson, Jr., The Antioch Baptist Church.
The statement ended with the Black Church’s strong affirmation that Black Lives Matter.
“Amidst the onslaught of a global pandemic and a white plague of violence whose bullets and blows do not discriminate according to the politics of gender, sexuality, and/or religious identity, we unequivocally affirm, that:
Black Lives Matter.
ALL Black Lives Matter
ALL BLACK Lives Matter.
ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER.
With the help of God, who is our lynched brother, the Black Christ, we the Black Church, pledge our mind, body, treasure, and spirit to securing the welfare of the diversity of Black life, Black freedom and Black joy ‘by any means necessary.’”
Read the full statement here.
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/theological-statement-black-church-juneteenth
