Hello Everybody,
In answer to Franklin Graham, the Sojourners
took to the pen and wrote a scathing reply -
An Open Letter to Reverend Franklin Graham
Dear Rev. Graham,
We write to you in the spirit of Matthew 18: we aim to
reconcile with you. You have sinned against us, fellow members
of the body of Christ. While your comments on March 12 were just
a Facebook post, your post was shared by more than 83,000 people
and liked by nearly 200,000 as of Monday morning, March 14, 2015.
Your words hurt and influenced thousands. Therefore, we must
respond publicly so that those you hurt might know you have
received a reply and the hundreds of thousands you influenced
might know that following your lead on this issue will break
the body of Christ further.Frankly, Rev. Graham, your insistence
that “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else” “Listen up,”
was crude, insensitive, and paternalistic. Your comments betrayed
the confidence that your brothers and sisters in Christ, especially
those of color, have afforded your father’s ministry for decades.
Your instructions oversimplified a complex and critical problem
facing the nation and minimized the testimonies and wisdom of
people of color and experts of every hue, including six police
commissioners that served on the president’s task force on
policing reform.In the nadir of your commentary, you tell everyone
to “OBEY” any instruction from authorities and suggest that the
recent shootings of unarmed citizens “might have been avoided”
if the victims had submitted to authority.And you bluntly insist,
“It’s as simple as that.”It is not that simple. As a leader in
the church, you are called to be an ambassador of reconciliation.
The fact that you identify a widely acknowledged social injustice
as “simple” reveals your lack of empathy and understanding of the
depth of sin that some in the body have suffered under the weight
of our broken justice system. It also reveals a cavalier disregard
for the enduring impacts and outcomes of the legal regimes that
enslaved and oppressed people of color, made in the image of God
— from Native American genocide and containment, to colonial and
antebellum slavery, through Jim Crow and peonage, to our current
system of mass incarceration and criminalization.
As your brothers and sisters in Christ, who are also called to
lead the body, we are disappointed and grieved by your abuse of
the Holy Scriptures. You lifted Hebrews 13:17 out of its biblical
context and misappropriated it in a way that encourages believers
to acquiesce to an injustice that God hates. That text refers to
church leadership, not the secular leadership of Caesar. Are you
also aware that your commentary resonates with the types of
misinterpretations and rhetoric echoed by many in the antebellum
church? Are you aware that the southern slavocracy validated the
systematic subjugation of human beings made in the image of God
by instructing these enslaved human beings to “obey their masters
because the Bible instructed them to do so?”Your blanket insistence
on obedience in every situation exposes an ignorance of church
history. God called Moses to resist and disobey unjust authority.
Joseph and Mary were led by the Spirit to seek asylum in Egypt,
disobeying the unjust decrees passed down by authority figures
in order to ensure the safety of Jesus. And Paul himself resisted
authority and ultimately wrote Romans 13 from jail.In modern times,
Christian brothers and sisters abided by Paul’s command to the
persecuted Roman church. They presented their bodies as living
sacrifices. They refused to conform to the oppressive patterns
of this world. Rather, they were transformed by the renewing of
their minds. (Romans 12:1-2) Throughout the Jim Crow South, in
El Salvador, and in the townships and cities of South Africa
Jesus followers disobeyed civil authority as an act of obedience
to God — the ultimate authority, the Lord, who loves and demands
justice (Psalm 146:5-9, Isaiah 58, Isaiah 61, Micah 4:1-5, all
the prophets, Luke 4:16-21, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 25:31-46,
Galatians 3:27-28). Likewise, Christians who marched in Ferguson,
Mo., New York City, and Madison, Wis., follow in the holy footsteps
of their faithful predecessors.As one who understands human depravity,
your statement demonstrates a profound disregard for the impact of
sinful individuals when given power to craft systems and structures
that govern millions. The outcome is oppression and impoverishment
— in a word, injustice.
Finally, if you insist on blind obedience, then you must also insist
that officers of the justice system obey the U.S. Constitution, which
protects the right of all to equal protection under the law. Yet,
reports confirm unconscious racial biases in policing, booking,
sentencing, and in return produce racially disparate outcomes within
our broken justice system.Likewise, you must also call on officers to
honor their sworn duty to protect and serve without partiality. The
Federal Bureau of Investigations director, James B. Comey, acknowledges
that law enforcement has fallen short of this mandate : “First, all of
us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much
of our history is not pretty. At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often
brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”Let us be clear: We love,
support, and pray for our police officers. We understand that many are
doing an excellent job under extremely trying circumstances. We also
understand that many officers are burdened by systems that routinely
mete out inequitable racialized outcomes.For the past nine months, many
of your fellow Christian clergy have been engaged in sorrowful lament, prayerful protest, spirit-led conversations, and careful scriptural
study to discern a Godly response to these inequitable racialized
outcomes within America’s justice system. We have wrestled with God
like Jacob, begging God to bless us with peace in our streets and
justice in our courts.Rev. Graham, as our brother in Christ and as a
leader in the church, we forgive you and we pray that one day you will recognize and understand the enduring legacy of the institution of
race in our nation.Now is the time for you to humbly listen to the
cries of lamentation rising nationwide. We do not expect you to be
an expert in racial issues, police brutality, or even the many factors
that go in to our complicated and unjust criminal system. We do,
however, expect you to follow the example of leaders and followers of
Jesus throughout the scriptures and modern history. We expect you to
seek wise counsel and guidance first from those who bear the weight of
the injustice and second from other experts in the field. Ultimately,
we invite you to join us in the ongoing work of the ministry of
reconciliation.
In Jesus,
Onleilove Alston Executive Director
https://sojo.net/articles/open-letter-to-franklin-graham
--Lee
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