Rev. Kevin Witt, Director of Growing Spiritual Transformational Leaders
In June, 41 leaders from the Susquehanna Conference visited key sites within the Civil Rights Movement. We spoke with people directly involved and heard first-hand the struggles and suffering they willingly endured to dismantle racism and transform the world through the power of love. Repeatedly, we discovered the active role of people of faith inspired by God.
Powers confronted were not simply individual acts of racism against people of color. With non-violent resistance and creative alternatives, they challenged structures and perspectives weaved into the very fabric of community life. They called for new ways of relating by doing good and avoiding harm. They shed light on and resisted laws unequally and unfairly applied, disparity in access to health care, devaluing of people of a different race, efforts to hinder economic and educational opportunities, blaming victims for brutality and injustice inflicted upon them, and denial of voting rights for vast numbers of African Americans.
Courageous, everyday people asked what love calls for, spoke truthfully, marched peacefully, went to jail, worked to build Beloved Community in America, risked ridicule and beatings, and even died side by side with others suffering. Stiff opposition came not only from those wanting to maintain the status quo but also from those uncomfortable with any discord, difficult conversations, or targeted reactions by people bullying others into submission. Fear and conflict avoidance impeded love and justice.
What wisdom can we glean as we tackle racism and injustices in our own time and join God in the transformation of the world?
Jesus clarifies the core of faith and life.
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:36-39
Let us not relegate justice to law and politics, as if it has nothing to do with spiritual practice. Cornel West says so well – “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Remain keenly aware that love involves more than compassion – “feeling with or for people”. Justice, also, calls for intentional relationships with people being harmed. It means suffering with those who suffer at some level to bring about change. There is no way to love and work for justice without giving and sharing of ourselves in some real way. It can be joyful, but it isn’t passive.
For perspective, here is a quote from Rev. Martin Luther King
“We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
