On Juneteenth, the annual celebration marking the end of American chattel slavery,a powerful and righteously angry theological statement has been released from a collective of Black pastors and theologians to emphatically repudiate white supremacy and anti-Black violence. No punches are pulled in the naming of the “incessant onslaught of anti-Black violence that is the progeny of white racist structural evil” which “constitutes the very fabric of U.S. society” or calling of “the social, moral and political failure of the 45th administration of this nation.” A searing summary of 400 years of white violence is followed by a theological assertion that God is on the side of the oppressed (Luke 4:18).
“We reject the white Christ that propels so-called Christians into complicity with white supremacy and bad faith that separates justice from righteousness. We further reject the prevalence of the individualist gospel of white evangelicalism that aims toward the perfection of personal piety and the prosperity gospel that asserts “manifest destiny” and capitalist acquisition as the will of God. We affirm God’s care and option for the poor, the prisoner, the infirm, the immigrant and the persecuted.”
Read the full statement here.
