Listen
up--Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else. Most police shootings
can be avoided. It comes down to respect for authority and obedience. If
a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police officer
tells you to put your hands in the air, you put your hands in the air.
If a police officer tells you to lay down face first with your hands
behind your back, you lay down face first with your hands behind your
back. It’s as simple as that. Even if you think the police officer is
wrong—YOU OBEY. Parents, teach your children to respect and obey those
in authority. Mr. President, this is a message our nation needs to hear,
and they need to hear it from you. Some of the unnecessary shootings we
have seen recently might have been avoided. The Bible says to submit to
your leaders and those in authority “because they keep watch over you
as those who must give an account.”
Editor's notes: understand that Graham is giving advice to those who are confronted by a police officer. His comments are limited to that circumstance. Why Leftish Church decided to take offense with his advise, is more evidence of just how far off the rails is the Utopian Movement, today.
When a cop tells you to pullover, or "sit down and shut up," or "get on your knees," or whatever, such is not the time to rebel against "the authorities." But, the Leftish church seems to think that Jesus would approve, even lead, in a wave of anarchy that includes violence, attacks on those who are not party to any injustice, and the murder of members of our police force.
An Open Letter to Reverend Franklin Graham
Dear Rev. Graham,
We
write to you in the spirit of Matthew 18: we aim to reconcile with you.
You have sinned against us, fellow members of the body of Christ. While
your
comments on March 12
were just a Facebook post, your post was shared by more than 83,000
people and liked by nearly 200,000 as of Monday morning, March 14, 2015.
Your words hurt and influenced thousands. Therefore, we must respond
publicly so that those you hurt might know you have received a reply and
the hundreds of thousands you influenced might know that following your
lead on this issue will break the body of Christ further.
Frankly,
Rev. Graham, your insistence that “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and
everybody else” “Listen up,” was crude, insensitive, and paternalistic.
Your comments betrayed the confidence that your brothers and sisters in
Christ, especially those of color, have afforded your father’s ministry
for decades. Your instructions oversimplified a complex and critical
problem facing the nation and minimized the testimonies and wisdom of
people of color and experts of every hue, including six police
commissioners that served on the
president’s task force on policing reform.
In
the nadir of your commentary, you tell everyone to “OBEY” any
instruction from authorities and suggest that the recent shootings of
unarmed citizens “might have been avoided” if the victims had submitted
to authority.
And you bluntly insist, “It’s as simple as that.”
It
is not that simple. As a leader in the church, you are called to be an
ambassador of reconciliation. The fact that you identify a widely
acknowledged social injustice as “simple” reveals your lack of empathy
and understanding of the depth of sin that some in the body have
suffered under the weight of our broken justice system. It also reveals a
cavalier disregard for the enduring impacts and outcomes of the legal
regimes that enslaved and oppressed people of color, made in the image
of God — from Native American genocide and containment, to colonial and
antebellum slavery, through Jim Crow and peonage, to our current system
of mass incarceration and criminalization.
As your brothers and
sisters in Christ, who are also called to lead the body, we are
disappointed and grieved by your abuse of the Holy Scriptures. You
lifted Hebrews 13:17 out of its biblical context and misappropriated it
in a way that encourages believers to acquiesce to an injustice that God
hates. That text refers to church leadership, not the secular
leadership of Caesar.
Are you also aware that your commentary
resonates with the types of misinterpretations and rhetoric echoed by
many in the antebellum church? Are you aware that the southern
slavocracy validated the systematic subjugation of human beings made in
the image of God by instructing these enslaved human beings to “obey
their masters because the Bible instructed them to do so?”
Your
blanket insistence on obedience in every situation exposes an ignorance
of church history. God called Moses to resist and disobey unjust
authority. Joseph and Mary were led by the Spirit to seek asylum in
Egypt, disobeying the unjust decrees passed down by authority figures in
order to ensure the safety of Jesus. And Paul himself resisted
authority and ultimately wrote Romans 13 from jail.
In modern
times, Christian brothers and sisters abided by Paul’s command to the
persecuted Roman church. They presented their bodies as living
sacrifices. They refused to conform to the oppressive patterns of this
world. Rather, they were transformed by the renewing of their minds.
(Romans 12:1-2) Throughout the Jim Crow South, in El Salvador, and in
the townships and cities of South Africa Jesus followers disobeyed civil
authority as an act of obedience to God — the ultimate authority, the
Lord, who loves and demands justice (Psalm 146:5-9, Isaiah 58, Isaiah
61, Micah 4:1-5, all the prophets, Luke 4:16-21, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew
25:31-46, Galatians 3:27-28). Likewise, Christians who marched in
Ferguson, Mo., New York City, and Madison, Wis., follow in the holy
footsteps of their faithful predecessors.
As one who understands
human depravity, your statement demonstrates a profound disregard for
the impact of sinful individuals when given power to craft systems and
structures that govern millions. The outcome is oppression and
impoverishment — in a word, injustice.
Finally, if you insist on
blind obedience, then you must also insist that officers of the justice
system obey the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right of all to
equal protection under the law. Yet,
reports
confirm unconscious racial biases in policing, booking, sentencing, and
in return produce racially disparate outcomes within our broken justice
system.
Likewise, you must also call on officers to honor their sworn duty to protect and serve without partiality. The
Federal Bureau of Investigations director, James B. Comey, acknowledges that law enforcement has fallen short of this mandate
: “First, all of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to
acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty. At many points in
American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo
that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”
Let us be
clear: We love, support, and pray for our police officers. We understand
that many are doing an excellent job under extremely trying
circumstances. We also understand that many officers are burdened by
systems that routinely mete out inequitable racialized outcomes.
For
the past nine months, many of your fellow Christian clergy have been
engaged in sorrowful lament, prayerful protest, spirit-led
conversations, and careful scriptural study to discern a Godly response
to these inequitable racialized outcomes within America’s justice
system. We have wrestled with God like Jacob, begging God to bless us
with peace in our streets and justice in our courts.
Rev. Graham,
as our brother in Christ and as a leader in the church, we forgive you
and we pray that one day you will recognize and understand the enduring
legacy of the institution of race in our nation.
Now is the time
for you to humbly listen to the cries of lamentation rising nationwide.
We do not expect you to be an expert in racial issues, police brutality,
or even the many factors that go in to our complicated and unjust
criminal system. We do, however, expect you to follow the example of
leaders and followers of Jesus throughout the scriptures and modern
history. We expect you to seek wise counsel and guidance first from
those who bear the weight of the injustice and second from other experts
in the field.
Ultimately, we invite you to join us in the ongoing work of the ministry of reconciliation.
In Jesus,
Onleilove Alston
Executive Director
Faith in New York
The full compliment of signatories can be
found here.
