Dear White People: We Need To Stop This Insanity

If Justice Is Not The Church’s Work, What Is?

Alton Sterling’s life mattered. Philando Castille’s life mattered.  They mattered to their families — the mothers, sons, spouses and girlfriends. And they mattered to God.

It’s time for white people in America — especially the white American church — to start putting action behind our prayerful social media memes. Because the unfortunate reality is that America has a really, really big race problem, and it’s white people who have to fix it. And we who call ourselves followers of Jesus should be leading the charge, not arguing about the semantics of whose lives matter.

There is no better organizing factor than churches. We organize all the time — bake sales and community service projects; worship sets and board meetings; lobbyists and politicians. Certainly, we can organize around this.

And we don’t need to go running to our black friends for their thanks, or their approval. If they’ll have us, we can stand next to them. But this is a fight for our hearts just as much as it is theirs. It’s our hearts that have turned rotten when we weren’t looking, that got eaten alive by the worm of racism every time a black man gots killed and we looked away or, worse, started screaming that all lives matter, relegating that black man and all that made up his life right back to the rear of the bus all over again.

No. I refuse to participate in this any longer. I call all churches but especially white churches to gather in protest. To speak up. To say no.

And I open this space to all who would join me. Take this platform and rise.

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This is the first in a series on Race + Justice in America. Multiple voices will follow.