The church must break silence once again
Photograph by Unseen Histories via Unsplash
Dr. Marvin A. McMickle
There are matters in our world as I write this that demand a Christian’s bold speech and a martyr’s courage. Wars are being waged and nations are being destroyed all over the world. Democracies are dying as would-be autocrats and dictators attempt to bend human affairs to suit their own purposes. Racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, greed, the desolation and exploitation of the natural world are all ongoing. As with the Vietnam era, an American president proposes diverting money from domestic programs intended to aid the poorest and neediest of our citizens to spend more money on weapons and warfare. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled while the “Department of War” was established with no active war to fight at the time.
There is a message the church can deliver found in Matthew 25:34-40 reminding ourselves and the world that our highest priority is not the acquisition of Greenland, the occupation of Venezuela, Cuba, or the Gaza Strip, or the “obliteration” of Iran. There is nothing in the message of Jesus that points in those directions. Listen to what Jesus states should be our priorities:
Then the king will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
The passage continues:
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
This is how that part of the passage concludes:
“Then the king will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
There is much that needs to be confronted in God’s name, for there are no masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting people on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota in this passage in Matthew 25:34-40. There are no massive prisons being built to house people without due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in this passage. There are no endorsements of a Department of Justice cover-up to protect rich and powerful men that have abused young girls as part of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. There are no “President’s favorite preachers” falsely telling him that what he is doing is God’s will, and worse, that in some respects his own life is a reflection of the life of Christ himself. There is no Christian Nationalism suggesting that the United States is God’s favored nation and that God wants to be sure that “the right people are voting for the right candidates.”
None of these things will be defeated if the followers of Jesus remain silent within their sanctuaries. Those who speak up to challenge these things are often rebuffed by powerful corporate and political forces that tell them they do not have the power to resist what is going on. How does one win against billionaires that pour massive amounts of money into the political coffers of those who will work to maintain the status quo that allows those same billionaires to get richer while the average person is struggling to make ends meet?
It must have seemed to the abolitionists in the United States in the nineteenth century that the forces that maintained slavery could not be defeated. But people like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thaddeus Stevens, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sojourner Truth displayed both parrhesia (bold speech) and marturia (a witness that resulted in martyrdom) and changed the nature of American society. They broke silence.
It must have seemed to African Americans living under sharecropping, convict/lease labor, legalized segregation at every level of society, and the constant presence of death by lynching or other forms of torture that their condition could not be changed. But people like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, and Diane Nash all broke the silence. They spoke truth to power at the highest levels. They did not stop until President Lyndon Johnson himself declared on a nationally televised address “We Shall Overcome!”
It is time for Christians to hear about the lives of those who established their faith in the face of enormous risk and resistance. It is time for us to demonstrate even a portion of the courage and conviction people like Peter and John displayed when standing before the Sanhedrin. That is part of what it means to walk in the footsteps of the founders!
Marvin McMickle is pastor emeritus at Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, professor emeritus at Ashland Theological Seminary, OH, and retired president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, NY. This is an excerpt from his forthcoming book, “In the Footsteps of the Founders.”
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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