There can be no salvation until Americans end tolerance for racial violence
Dear Kentuckians,
Events of recent weeks have broken the heart of all faithful followers of a loving God and Jesus, the Prince of Peace. While we decry the violence and senseless destruction of property in Louisville and across the nation, we must humbly and unrelentingly understand and WORK TO HEAL the systemic violence of white preferences that generate such rage and anguish after centuries of abuse. With the words of our mouths we have lamented, but we have yet to repair the breach with transformative action.
Systemic racism is not the thoughts or even the actions of an individual. The violence it breeds makes shooting of black bodies expected, and the rage such unjust killings incite the only response. Such violence is the poisonous, inevitable fruit of the tree of hatred rooted in centuries of manufactured “whiteness;” a division aimed at maintaining power and wealth on the back of black and brown human beings.
We cannot imagine that the current suffering of so many black and brown families is what God imagines for our salvation. Indeed, there can be no salvation for any of us if we fail to change the pervasive, persistent, pernicious tolerance for racial violence among our institutions, churches included.
As followers of God who chose to incarnate in a brown, outcast person from a minority religion, one who taught that all persons were precious in God’s sight, we have much to atone for in turning the savior of the world into a savior of some, the lighter the better.
If not overtly white-preferential, churches have partnered too willingly with the empire of white wealth and white power. We have repented in words and some deeds, but it has not been enough. What good are all our festivals and prayers if they are built on the abuse of others? How can God hear anything but the cry of the mothers weeping in Ramah—or Louisville, or Minneapolis, or Ferguson—for their children?
The actions of fear in so many white Americans have also been systemically cultivated in our society. These fears have been taught to insulate and then deflect white recognition of the disease we are all afflicted with. In this sense the white perpetrators of violent acts are victims of lies told to them about whom to fear and why; lies told and repeated to maintain an inequitable power to white people, and turning their best impulses of love and protection to corruption and denial of their neighbor. Our God-given humanity is destroyed by continuing to disregard the disease of racism, but it has been brown and black citizens who have died because of it.
To achieve radical transformation, we must confess and repent that we have been conveniently ignorant for too long of the suffering caused to neighbors also made in God’s holy image.
We call to all to erase this complacency. Resources for reading, curricula on anti-racism, and other ways to begin change are readily available. Repentance means to “turn around.” The Kentucky Council of Churches, 11 denominations working together, pledges to be an engaged, active partner in this work. Let us turn to sources of knowledge we have previously avoided or ignored in a season of prayer and fasting: A fast from injustice and a fast from ignorance.
Only this will restore the integrity of our worship. Some by privilege, some by choice, have not done all we could to root out the poison tree growing in our midst. Our churches and our people are sick with worry and sick with its fatal killing disease. Now is the time to heal the fear in ourselves that drives such violence to others. Let us fast from our past and work now to heal these gaping American wounds. May acts of justice and loving kindness and reform be our prayers not words alone.
In humility and sorrow,
Kent Gilbert and Don Gillett II
Kent Gilbert is president of the Kentucky Council of Churches. Don Gillett II is the executive director.