“The church tradition has been very focused on a unique male leader,” said Janaya Khan, international ambassador for Black Lives Matter. “This movement we have now at Black Lives Matter has been led and informed by women, queer and trans people. You know, the despised of the despised.”
The tension is emblematic of a larger and ongoing conflict between activists, religious centers, and age groups. Some organizers feel alienated by parts of black church doctrines and people of faith are grappling with how to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement and all of its members.
Some members of old-guard black churches say the dynamic has always been part of the debate between churches and movement leaders, or between churches themselves, about the best way to get involved in the fight for civil rights.
Lewis died of pancreatic cancer on July 17, the same day that his friend and fellow activist, the Rev. CT Vivian, died. Like many Titans in the fight for black civil rights in the 1960s, Lewis and Vivian’s connections to the church were inextricable from their organization.
Lewis, whose higher education began at a Baptist university, grew up preaching to chickens on his family’s farm and considered a career in the church before entering politics. Vivian himself was a minister in addition to his job as a political strategist and organized Nashville’s first desegregation sit-ins while he was still in seminary. King once called Vivian, “the greatest preacher who ever lived.”
These connections to the church provided both men with a moral compass for the non-religious spaces they occupied, either in Lewis’s capacity as a congressional conscience or in Vivian’s former position in the White House, where he provided civil rights advice to four people sitting. Presidents of the United States.
“You don’t get a civil rights movement from the 1950s and 1960s without the church,” said Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of the Ebenezer Church and a Democratic candidate for the seat in the United States Senate in Georgia. “When we see protesters on the streets, that’s literally the black church coming out of the benches into the public square, singing, to redeem the soul of the United States.”
Activists protesting the murder of George Floyd and racist police today embrace the core message that informed the life work of Lewis and Vivian: Civil rights issues are moral issues.
But there are some key differences between the current Black Lives Movement, as it is known after Floyd, and previous civil rights campaigns. While many black churches were planning meeting places and safe havens for organizers, protests at this time tend to find their center on social media, in allied homes, or on the streets themselves.
Furthermore, the decentralized structure of the Black Lives Matter movement runs counter to the framework of black churches, which are often run by a single person or a small group of people.
And unlike most leaders of previous black-led movements, Black Lives Matter is not primarily male-led. Women and members of the LGBTQ community are among the founders of Black Lives Matter, as are many of the leaders of its more than 40 chapters across the country.
“I think the black church failed in terms of healing the problems of patriarchy and homophobia. And those two themes are central to the Black Lives Matter movement, ”said Cornel West, professor of philosophy at Harvard University. “White supremacy [is] wrong. The black church has historically tried to hit it head-on and many times it has been magnificent. But male supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia are also bad. They have to hit those with the same level of intensity as white supremacy. That’s the challenge and the trial of the black church these days. “
Members of the clergy have publicly acknowledged this disconnect. In June, a group of theologians composed a public statement in support of Black Lives Matter, acknowledging their connections to the biblical teachings they study. Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman, an assistant professor of African American theology and religion at Yale University, wrote the letter.
“We have … forgotten who we are as a church and have become a certain kind of white and godly evangelism that really has us acting with a black face,” Turman said. “We have discarded the intersection of justice, righteousness, and community from this idea of personal piety.”
However, activists of all generations and beliefs can agree on this point: while their efforts may seem different, it is impossible to have one without the other.
What “is often missed about what these movements have in common is that we may not be from a religious tradition, but it is absolutely a spiritual tradition,” Khan said, citing the examples of Lewis and Ella Baker. , another self-sacrificing civil rights person with ties. to church. “There is something inherently supernatural and spiritual about the work of social justice and the work of change.”
The goals of the Black Lives Matter movement also intersect with the goals of many liberation-focused black churches: self-sufficient black communities, with political power, equal access to resources, and deep respect for public safety.
Al Sharpton, Baptist minister and founder of the National Action Network, said that to suggest that the movement’s conflict with the church is a new phenomenon would be “to rewrite the movement.”
“This is nothing new,” said Sharpton. “Martin Luther King used to call it ‘creative tension.’ We need the push and pull between different disciplines and different tactics to come up with the best way. “
Sharpton noted that of the six great civil rights leaders of the 1960s who coordinated the first march in Washington: James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, A. Phillip Randolph, Whitney Young, King and Lewis, only one, King, was a preacher. . Many, as in the case of Roy Wilkins, were often hostile to the church as an organizing tool and felt that it stood in the way of the movement’s goals. Sharpton argued that it is a repeating pattern in the Black Lives Matter era.
“It’s not that you don’t have church leaders who don’t disagree with me,” he said. “And it’s not like you don’t have Black Lives Matter people saying ‘he’s not with us even though he’s black, and he says yes.’ There are searches everywhere. Can we make it all work? It’s the challenge.”
Two of the Black Lives Matter founders, Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, have spoken at National Action Network events and attended the Sharpton program “to show operational unity.” Younger activists have deferred to Sharpton in their organization, as was the case in Minneapolis during George Floyd’s funeral, where it was accepted that Sharpton would deliver Floyd’s eulogy.
Activists of all generations, genders and sexual and religious orientations are also united in their view of how Lewis’ civil rights record has informed the work they have done and continue to do. His legacy is especially critical now, after more than two months of protests against racism and police violence that have made Lewis’s quintessential phrase “good problem” relevant again.
Speaking at Lewis’ funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church, former President Barack Obama spoke from the pulpit on the day’s most important political issues: voting rights, fair representation in Congress, and the presence of federal agents in the cities of U.S.
“We may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar to cast a vote, but even while sitting here, there are those in power who are doing everything they can to discourage people from voting by closing places. and targeting minorities and students with restrictive identification laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, “said Obama, the nation’s first black president.
However, Lewis’ work, Obama continued, “vindicated faith in our foundation.”
Several organizers said Lewis’s legacy has helped them push the limits of what might be possible in their work.
Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, recalled Lewis’s words from his speech on the first March in Washington in his speech before the Democratic National Committee platform meeting on Monday.
“Going back to Lewis, ‘We are now involved in a serious revolution,'” Cullors said, borrowing the language of his March speech in Washington. Cullors encouraged Democrats to adopt the “marine changes” recommended by the Black Lives Matter movement, that is, the BREATHE Act, which would limit the federal ability to deploy police forces in cities and dramatically decrease the defense budget.
“It is not enough to have a seat at the table, we want to create a table or we want to turn the table,” said Angela Peoples, organizer and director of Black Womxn For, an organization that aims to galvanize politics. power of black women and gender non-conforming people. “But even being able to name that as something we want or even think is possible is only because those who have gone before us have pushed their existence and reality to see beyond what is possible.”
This was true even in the face of bodily danger, something that has been associated with Lewis’ legacy as a protester. Jesse Jackson, a former presidential candidate and founder of the multi-ethnic Rainbow Coalition, said Lewis “became immortal” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965. During that day, a state police officer broke Lewis’s skull with a club of billy.
“John never stopped fighting,” said Jackson. “He was not afraid and was always a very kind and tough person.”
He also had his eyes set on the future, including his last days: One of the last laws Lewis endorsed was the Police Justice Act, which aims to limit police violence. The bill, which would establish a national standard for police tactics and limit the use of force by officers, was passed in the House on June 25, exactly one month after Floyd’s death.
Kayla Reed, director of the organizing group Action St. Louis and co-creator of the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project, said Lewis’s legacy inspired her activism career.
“I think it highlights what is possible,” said Reed. “When we think about how some people put a beginning and an end to movements, that movement [work] it’s actually a lifetime commitment. “
