A Denouncement of White Supremacy
It is hard to know where to begin. We are mourning the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and on and on and on. Our nation is in turmoil, wracked with grief and fury, wounded by hatred and fear. There is so much to say and even more to do.
We have been filled with so much anger and sadness, which is nothing compared to the fear and danger black men and women experience just for existing in their own skin. The elders at Missio Dei Uptown want to say definitively that Black Lives Matter to us and our church.
To all those who are black in our church family, we are so sorry that your country and your world continually devalues and destroys your lives. We love you. As a church family, we are committing to doing better: listening and learning, speaking up, fighting for justice and living anti-racist lives. We take responsibility to learn and teach –– and affirm that this weight does not and should not fall on the backs of our black brothers and sisters. It is not your job to fix what we’ve allowed to remain broken, to repair the brokenness that others have forced upon you.
Your elders –– Dave, Chris, Luke, and Jenny –– acknowledge our whiteness and our privilege. We confess and repent of the ways we have benefitted and continue to benefit from injustice in our society. To others who are white, we call on you to join us in repenting, to lamenting, and to changing. To “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). To continually root out racism and hatred in our own hearts, to confess that we’ve all been damaged by living in a culture that values some lives over others.
Today, we don’t have a neat 3-step plan. We implore you to pray –– and to not stop at prayer. To make space to mourn, and to weep with those who mourn. To listen for where the Holy Spirit is calling you to act –– and to overcome desires for comfort or convenience that perpetuate inaction and allow evil to persist.
Our world is broken, and we are broken by it. We contend desperately for renewal, seeking to join GOD as HE makes all things new.
If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. – 2 Chronicles 7:14