Melanie Rodenbough: Churches must keep justice’s light shining
Melanie Rodenbough: Churches must keep justice’s light shining
Feb 11, 2018
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Two-and-a-half years ago, the church to which I belong, Guilford Park Presbyterian, took the bold step of undertaking a ministry of justice and peacemaking. We work on hunger, environmental justice and making welcome the LGBTQ community. But our primary focus has been on racism, immigration and Muslim peacemaking.
Our quest to better understand racism led several of us to the excellent sessions offered by the Guilford Anti-Racism Alliance and intense anti-racism training by Racial Equity Institute. Sunday school classes and a study of Jim Wallis’ book “Race: America’s Original Sin” followed. We invited the community to attend our service of racial healing in February 2017, where N.C. A&T professor Joseph Graves so movingly read the text of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
This year our Mission Committee led us in helping to resettle two families of refugees. We are longtime supporters of FaithAction International House, and I serve on its board. Some of you were at Guilford Park last December when we hosted a meeting to talk about how our community could be engaged in “Serving, Loving and Protecting Our (Immigrant) Neighbors.” We keep our members informed about immigration issues. And we advocate against harmful policies by attending rallies and news conferences, writing letters to the editor and contacting our representatives.
Our church is also engaged with the Islamic Center of Greensboro, regularly spending time together to build friendship. Since we’re Southerners, that usually means we’re eating — there’s no better way to get to know one another than over a church potluck supper or a picnic in the park with wonderful Middle Eastern food. After the violent and hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric that came out of a restaurant in Kernersville last year, our folks sent letters of affirmation and a Proclamation of Friendship to our Muslim sisters and brothers.
This work does not merit us a pat on the back. Like most churches, we’ve been slow to wake up to injustice. Other faith communities can do these kinds of things, and I’m grateful to those in Greensboro that have led the way. But I share our story to encourage churches especially to reach out to these neighbors who may at first glance appear to be strangers. They need our support now more than ever, and there is much we can learn from them.
More important, as churches, we’re called to work for justice and peace.
When King wrote that letter from the Birmingham jail in 1963 to a group of white pastors, his subject was the failure of the white church to support the civil rights movement. He also said the silence of the church made it complicit in the evils of racism and discrimination.
I believe the church in America today is again faced with the challenge to respond to evil. If the church supports policies that divide families, deny human dignity to immigrants and threaten the future of thousands of people brought here as innocent children, the church has lost its way. When the church participates in the demonization of a whole religion and supports denying refuge to Muslims fleeing violence and war, the church is supporting bigotry and xenophobia. And when the church remains silent in the face of these evils, the church becomes complicit in their terrible consequences.
But the church in America has another heritage, too. Even in the midst of its historic complicity with evil, it has been there — the abolitionists, reformers, pacifists, social gospel preachers, civil rights marchers, humanitarians and truth-tellers who refused to cooperate with evil. Instead, they took seriously the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Through them, the light of justice and peace continued to shine.
That is the church we need for this time — in our pulpits, in our pews, and in our politics.
A church that denounces racism in all its forms.
A church that stands up for immigrants and refugees.
A church that welcomes and respects people of other faiths.
A church that refuses to stay silent in the face of evil.
That is our call.
