Clergy event on racial healing ‘discouraging’
I attended the Tuesday evening event at Miller Park featuring local clergy, black and white, in a service of “truth and reconciliation” centered on a spiritual response to the current racial tensions in America. It was at times inspiring, but mostly it was discouraging.
Seeing black and white church leaders washing one another’s feet in a symbolic portrayal of the humility and service that are a prerequisite to genuine racial healing was poignant and clearly a genuine expression of the love these men have for each other.
Sadly though, the overriding message of the evening was a more gentle and spiritualized version of the pernicious narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement: unarmed African Americans are being killed by police in disproportionate numbers thus proving that America is a racist country that needs to be fundamentally transformed.
While the pastors obviously would be repulsed by BLM’s chants to fry police and perhaps even reject its calls to defund the police, the timing of their event and its clear message that all white Americans share the guilt of individual bad actors lends moral support to those who want the opposite of truth and reconciliation.