Tag Archives: race

Racial Justice, Spirituality

Black Lives Must Matter: A Historical Pentecostal Response

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by U-Wen Low, originally published here, reposted with permission.

Many Pentecostal Christians have been divided in how to respond to recent events. The rallying cry for most (as it has been for years) is “Black Lives Matter,” a statement which shocks us with its brazenness; it highlights the fact that African-American lives in particular are at disproportionately high risk in the United States, and has forced many of us to consider our own nations’ treatment of African-American and First Nations people.

Given the complexity of the issues, it can be extraordinarily difficult to formulate a coherent, careful response – so many of us have stayed silent.

However, it is imperative for the people of God to respond, and indeed many church organisations have already added their voices to the conversation. How, then, should Pentecostals seek to respond to these issues in a Godly way, led by the Holy Spirit?

Let us do so by reminding ourselves of the history of our movement. Like many such reflections, we begin in Acts, where the Holy Spirit falls with tongues of fire upon men and women, Jew and Gentile, causing no small amount of controversy.

The early church is prompted by the Spirit to challenge both injustice and domination; throughout the narrative of Acts, we see the early Christians (an underprivileged minority group) given agency through the Spirit, fighting persecution through acts of love and kindness – and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, to the point of martyrdom.

Of course, let us not forget that Jesus himself died alongside criminals, viewed as a criminal and disproportionately punished, murdered by an oppressive system. Continue reading Black Lives Must Matter: A Historical Pentecostal Response →

Racial Justice

Six Ways Christians Should Respond to the #BlackLivesMatter Protests

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Agu Irukwu, senior pastor of the Jesus House and the Pentecostal President of Churches Together in England, recently shared on Premier Christianity the six kinds of responses he would like to see from Christians in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the protests that are going on:

1. Empathize

“I understand how frustrations can boil over as a result of an incident like this.”

2. Pray

“As a Christian, it is one of the most effective things I can do.”

3. Share a message of love and forgiveness

“This does not in any way trivialise the very real pain, hurt and frustrations that are being experienced by many African Americans who suffer the impact of an ingrained racial bias in the system.”

4. Speak out

“Evil and injustice thrives when good people do not speak out.”

5. Name and address institutional racism in your country

“We have inherent inequalities in our own systems. The institutional racism that exists must be named and addressed.”

6. Build on the work already being done

“I am resolved that I will do all that I can in my various capacities to encourage more representation of black and ethnic minorities in our institutions.”

Read more at the website of Premier Christianity.

ska%cc%88rmavbild-2017-01-06-kl-21-17-02Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice is a multicultural, gender inclusive, and ecumenical organization that promotes peace, justice, and reconciliation work among Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians around the world. If you like what we do, please become a member!

Racial Justice

Black Vineyard Pastors: “We’re Tired of Being Angry”

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Earlier this year, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was killed by two men who approached him with their pickup truck while he was jogging. These men were not arrested until a video of the murder went viral.

Our friends at the Vineyard Justice Network has posted a statement by a group of black pastors in the Vineyard USA. Among other things, they write:

How long, Lord, must [we] call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make [us] look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before [us]; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted. Habakkuk 1:2-4

Written on 5/8, what would have been Ahmaud Arbery’s 26th birthday.

We’re angry. We’re tired. We’re tired of being angry.

There is nothing different about this time except that we are in a pandemic. A pandemic that disproportionately affects Black and Brown bodies, due to unequal access to healthcare, food and other life essentials. A pandemic that has us saying goodbye to our parents, grandparents and relatives at an alarming rate. A pandemic that compels us to wear masks when we know what the consequences could be – dangers that run deeper than the risk of infection.

Besides that, what’s different?

A Black man’s life taken by a family affair: a father and a son.

A Black man’s life taken by a family affair: a nation stuck in cycles of racialized violence and death.

This isn’t new. It’s history.

Lynchings were public gatherings — spectacles where human bodies, still alive, were stripped, tortured, dismembered, sometimes burned, and left to die. Community is not supposed to be like this. Our churches, too, are public gatherings — a place where the Body, however broken, can seek healing from the One with pierced hands. And yet, as pastors, we can simply feel responsible for informing the church about these tragedies, even as we hurt inside, barely having had time to process them ourselves. The Church is more than a place to announce Black Death, it is a Body meant to uplift Black Life.

This uplift involves looking sin and evil in the face and standing against it. As Jeannine Hill Fletcher says, “If Christians desire a world of racial justice and religious integrity, understanding the sin of white supremacy and Christian theology’s role within it is our only way forward.”

God does not look away from the pain and affliction of his people.

Neither do we.

Read the full statement here.

Editor’s note: Less than two weeks after this statement was released, George Floyd was killed by a policeman in Minneapolis, making it even more relevant.

Racial Justice

The Multicultural Multitude of Revelation

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by Craig S. Keener, originally published on his blog.

While there is some debate about the identity of the 144,000 in 7:1-8, everyone agrees that the innumerable multitude in the next vision refers to believers from all peoples—a vision that ultimately includes all of us who believe in Jesus.

These people are “from all nations and tribes and peoples and languages” (7:9). Revelation uses this fourfold formula, in varying sequences, seven times. The formula echoes the book of Daniel. Daniel has the threefold formula six times; the Greek translation of Daniel makes the first instance (Dan 3:4) fourfold, as in Revelation. That context applies to Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian empire.

By the time of Revelation, however, people would no longer think of “all nations” as part of the Babylonian empire. Another passage in Daniel predicted an innumerable multitude from all nations serving the Son of man (Dan 7:13-14). Yet despite the hyperbole of Roman imperial claims, most people in John’s urban audience in the Roman province of Asia knew about many other parts of the world beyond the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had trade ties with India, China, parts of Africa as far south as Tanzania, and northern Europe perhaps as far west as Iceland. The idea that members of all peoples would stand before God’s throne would have been unthinkable! Continue reading The Multicultural Multitude of Revelation →

Politics, Racial Justice

The Trump Tragedy: What Some Evangelicals of Color See that Most White Evangelicals Don’t

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by Elizabeth D. Rios.

Almost every Evangelical knows what the 81% means when talking about politics. Nothing more actually needs to be said in many cases because most on both sides of this political discourse know. If you are reading this and you don’t know, where have you been? That percentage represents the 81% of white evangelicals who voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Others state that 35%-45% of all evangelicals voted for Trump. And still others debate if it was 81% at all. At the end of the day, it does not really matter the exact number because what we are seeing in America is that too many Evangelicals voted for Trump knowing all he represented BEFORE going to the polls.

What white evangelicals saw (and continue to see) in Trump is a hero. Some even have referred to him recently as Jesus Christ himself with a billboard ad that stated “the Word became flesh” (verified here for those who can’t believe anything negative). THAT is scary!

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They see him as the hero that will be the one to slow the growth of diversity (specifically brown taking over America although Brown as in Latinos is the majority in the U.S. already), slow the shrinking role of religion (because in no way does legislating public and private behavior even for non-Christians look like the Taliban) and here’s the biggie reversing Roe vs. Wade, which if can accomplish that, he will be delivering on an evangelical dream that five Republican presidents, including Ronald Regan could not deliver. All this is mesmerizing for white evangelicals so much so that they are willing to do (and have done) anything to get these deliverables, even if they have to sell their soul to do it. Which they have also done.

For many (not all) evangelicals of color, Trump is simply a tragedy in American politics. At first no one took this reality star seriously but then a shift occurred, a racist base was rallied and a biblically illiterate and/or privileged white evangelical community aligned with his agenda and well, the rest is history.

Continue reading The Trump Tragedy: What Some Evangelicals of Color See that Most White Evangelicals Don’t →

Racial Justice, Spirituality

The Multicultural DNA of Pentecost

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God is not a nationalist. He does not only speak English, or Chinese, or Swedish or Hebrew or Swahili. He knows all our languages – and more.

He dramatically demonstrated this when he sent his Holy Spirit to baptize the church on the day of Pentecost. The disciples “began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4). This included Latin, Arabic, Greek, Coptic and many other languages (vv. 5-11).

The Holy Spirit is an international Spirit. Or rather, non-national.

Shouldn’t Spirit-filled Christians reflect this? Shouldn’t we be examples of international, multicultural love rather than tribalism and isolationism?

Jesus’ command was clear: make disciples of all nations (Mt 28:19). Pentecost was a Tower of Babel in reverse to equip the church to do its job. We need to migrate, study other cultures and even be a part of them in order to share the Gospel effectively.

This is why Paul was a Jew to Jews and a Gentile to Gentiles (1 Cor 9:20-21). He didn’t put his ethnic identity before his missionary task. In fact, he viewed his achievements from Phariseic Judaism as a “loss for the sake of Christ.” (Phil 3:7).

As a Christian, his focus was on something else: inviting people to become citizens in another state, another Kingdom. Heaven (Phil 3:20).

This is why Pentecost shatters nationalism and tribalism. It was repeated on Azusa Street, where the Holy Spirit once again enabled people to speak other languages. The power was real: the first issue of Azusa’s magazine, The Apostolic Faith, relates the following amazing miracle:

A Mohammedan, a Sudanese by birth,a man who is an interpreter and speaks sixteen languages, came into the meeting at Azusa Street and the Lord gave him messages which none but himself could understand. He identified, interpreted and wrote in a number of the languages.

Did you catch that? So many saints at Azusa spoke real foreign languages as they were spirituall baptized, that an interpreter who knew sixteen languages was overwhelmed and even heard messages directed specifically to him!

Azusa Street was a rare multi-racial and multicultural church, led by a team of different ethnicities. As Frank Bartleman said, “the ‘color line’ was washed away in the blood.”

Don’t we need some more washing today? Come, Holy Spirit, and fill us with your colorblind power and love!

Micael Grenholm is editor-in-chief for PCPJ.

ska%cc%88rmavbild-2017-01-06-kl-21-17-02Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice is a multicultural, gender inclusive, and ecumenical organization that promotes peace, justice, and reconciliation work among Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians around the world. If you like what we do, please become a member!

Racial Justice

Black Lives Don’t Matter As Much As the National Anthem

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by Ramone Romero.

It seems sometimes that in the national debate about #TakeAKnee the focus has become about “the flag” and “the anthem”, and it is often being forgotten that #TakeAKnee is a protest about the systemic injustices of law enforcement against people of color.

Yet even if that is forgotten in the news and chatter, this is still intensely about race.

The #TakeAKnee protests in the NFL (and spreading across the sports world) are offensive precisely because they began with black athletes.

The offense people are taking as disrespect to the flag, the anthem and to “America” itself comes because these are black athletes protesting.

How dare they interrupt the anthem?
How dare they not salute the flag in the way we want?
How dare they draw any amount of attention to themselves?
How dare they interrupt our holy moment of nationalistic worship?

Continue reading Black Lives Don’t Matter As Much As the National Anthem →

Racial Justice

What More Can I Say? On Charlottesville and White Supremacy

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by Ebony Adedayo. Originally published on her blog.

After the Charlottesville riot on Saturday, I wrestled with the idea of writing a piece  that would convincingly urge my Christian brothers and sisters to respond. I first contemplated the idea of speaking to the need for the Church to condemn the protest and violence of white nationalism, but it felt somewhat shallow. I then thought about issuing some sort of prophetic thesis, outlining the biblical mandate of justice and love for one’s neighbor. This too felt inadequate. Finally, I concluded that the church in America needed to have a bigger presence in not only speaking out against Charlottesville but all the other displays of white supremacy and nationalism, manifested through police violence, discrimination, lack of affordable housing, poor schools, and the school to prison pipeline. This approach, similar to the other ones, seemed to be gravely missing something.

Scrolling through Facebook, I noticed friends and acquaintances of mine hammering out these same messages. Watching CNN, I saw pundits from both sides of the political aisle putting their own spin on these same perspectives. I suspect that clergy all across America, mounted their pulpits Sunday morning rebuking not only Charlottesville but every vestige of white supremacy in America. And business leaders, if for no other reason but out of concern of their bottom line, have also put in their two cents about these racist events.

And that is when I realized that there is quite literally nothing more than I can say that has not already been said. I couldn’t devise a more clever Facebook post, or a more profound tweet, write a more convincing blog post, or preach a more compelling sermon simply because there has already been an abundance of information communicated through nearly every medium possible. And that is not just in regards to this particular incident. No, whether it was through BlackLivesMatter, the Black Power Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Abolitionist Movement, or in response to Charleston, Mass Incarceration, the War on Drugs, Jim Crow, or slavery, people have been speaking. Activists have been fighting, preachers have been raising holy hell, intellectuals critiquing, educators teaching, prophets prophesying, thought leaders proffering new ideas to get not only the church, but America’s people to pay attention to the disease of racism and white supremacy in our nation. Continue reading What More Can I Say? On Charlottesville and White Supremacy →

Interviews, Racial Justice

The Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism

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I read and listen to a lot of people who talk about race, racism, and oppression within the church and the academy. Some are academics who I, a seminary-trained theologian-activist struggle to understand. Others are pastors and lay leaders who are excellent storytellers but have less of the critical race theory and historical context to round out their dialog.

Continue reading The Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism →