In "If God Still Breathes, Why Can't I?: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority," scholar Angela N. Parker compellingly makes the case that doctrines of biblical inerrancy and infallibility, which are prominent within evangelicalism and fundamentalism, serve as tools of White supremacy.
The reflex to support certain types of violence has led to the quick canonization of vigilantes as new American saints. So this issue of A Public Witness documents this trend in recent political discourse and considers the dangerous gospel it preaches.
A banner proclaiming Black Lives Matter has been stolen from a southwest Alabama church. Again. Rev. Jim Flowers, pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in Mobile, says they will hang up another one.
Religion was at the center of the civil rights movement. In the Black Lives Matter movement, that’s no longer the case.
Rev. Traci Blackmon was at home outside of St. Louis when a local hospital called with a question: Could Blackmon’s church help sew some masks?
Some religious leaders have stood with police in news conferences to try to dissolve protests that resulted in looting and vandalism, while other clergy have gotten pepper-sprayed in confrontations with officers in protests nationwide. A rally in L.A. highlighted these divergent approaches.
“No justice, no peace.” It was only a few minutes, though, before a handful in the crowd of Brooklyn protesters mirrored the cadence, but substituted choice curse words of their own. That didn’t last long. “That’s not our movement!” a bystander in the crowd shouted.
As a mostly white congregation in a predominately white rural town in Illinois, we knew the gospel had something to say about racism, but we had little idea what to say ourselves, either through words or action. Not knowing what to do exactly, we knew