barbara williams skinner
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore, right. Photo via Adelle M. Banks/RNS.
“African-American brothers and sisters, especially brothers, in this country are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be executed, more likely to be killed.”
It’s the kind of statement that’s often cited by black clergy and civil rights activists. But hours after a grand jury on Dec. 3 chose not to indict the New York City police officer who put Eric Garner into a fatal choke hold on Staten Island, those words came from none other than white evangelical leader Russell Moore.
With back-to-back grand jury decisions that white police officers will not face charges in the deaths of unarmed black men, white Christians, including evangelicals, have grown more vocal in urging predominantly white churches to no longer turn a blind eye to injustice and to bridge the country’s racial divides.
“It’s time for us in Christian churches to not just talk about the gospel but live out the gospel by tearing down these dividing walls not only by learning and listening to one another but also by standing up and speaking out for one another,” said Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Other white evangelicals issued similar pleas.
The Rev. Barbara Williams-Skinner. Photo by Patricia McDougall Photos
As the Rev. Barbara Williams-Skinner collected signatures for a statement by leaders of African-American church groups about the Ferguson, Mo., police shooting of Michael Brown, she found more people wanted to join in.
The general secretary of the National Council of Churches wanted to add his name; an Asian-American evangelical leader, too.
What started out as a “Joint Statement of Heads of Historic African American Church Denominations” has become an interracial cry for justice.
“It’s touching hearts of people who have sons and who know that their sons would not be treated this way,” said Williams-Skinner, co-chair of the National African-American Clergy Network, on Thursday. “They know it’s wrong. They know it’s wrong before God. And they are responding on a human level.”