Hamilton Video
A United Methodist pastor, the Rev. Will Green of Andover, Mass., has become something of a rock star this week for confronting U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also a United Methodist, over the inhumanity of American immigration policies. But how many of us noticed what happened to his Baptist colleague, the Rev. Darrell Hamilton, when he rose to defend Rev. Green?
Unlike Rev. Green’s disruption and removal, Rev. Hamilton, who is black, was greeted with boos and shouts of “Go home!” as he spoke against the hypocrisy of people conferring about religious freedom while having two clergymen removed for exercising that very freedom. Trust me, every person of color, and those white people who have been sensitized to watch for racism, saw the difference. Some of them, like me, even held our breaths waiting to see if local police would physically assault Rev. Hamilton as they took him out of the room.
The online videos can be hard to see, but here is a quote from Rev. Hamilton: “I thought we were here to protect religious liberty ... I am a pastor of a Baptist church and you are escorting me out for exercising my religious freedom."
Against the backdrop of last week’s horrific events – pipe bombs sent to prominent figures around the country, the murders of two black shoppers in Louisville, Ky., the slaughter of 11 Jews worshiping in a Pittsburgh synagogue – the derision aimed at one black pastor in Boston may seem a small matter, but it’s not. It’s a lesser skirmish in what people of color have known all along: America is engaged in a race war. Contrary to the prevailing rhetoric, it’s not people of color rising against whites; it’s white people and white institutions openly oppressing people of color to maintain white supremacy.
Furthermore, let me get one thing straight: I am only repeating here what my sisters and brothers of color have been saying all along, but that people of my own race and heritage refuse to acknowledge. I repeat, America is in the midst of a race war perpetrated by white people against people of color. For what it’s worth, I’m using my white privilege to repudiate the culture of white supremacy in America. Racism isn’t merely wrong, it’s evil, and it’s utterly contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What’s more, Rev. Green’s proclamation of Jesus’ commands in Matthew 25 carried an inherent message that was sadly borne out by the way Rev. Hamilton was treated. Jesus made no distinction in his parable of judgment about the color of a person’s skin, or her language, or his citizenship, or their sexual orientation. Yet the moment that a black pastor stood up to speak, a tide of verbal abuse was unleashed. They didn’t see his clerical collar; all they saw was the color of his skin. For those abusers, Jesus is obviously a white man with blond hair and blue eyes in a pristine white robe, not a swarthy, sunburned, brown-eyed Palestinian Jew in a rough tunic and sandals. In other words, they embrace a false messiah.
What do these most recent incidents forebode? The prophetic message that keeps coming to me is this: we are living through apocalyptic times in which the manifest corruption at the heart of America is being revealed. Followers of Jesus are called, nay commanded, to witness to the authentic truth of the gospel. Jesus’ gospel of love and justice springs from one of scripture’s oldest proclamations: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19 NRSV*). All Christians are anointed for this mission; we call it baptism.
Luke’s gospel later tells how believers are to fulfill Jesus’s proclamation: “. . . You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27 NRSV). It takes strength, courage and conviction to live out divine love. To love like Jesus means not only to fulfill human need as in Matthew 25, but also to stand up to abusive power. It means confronting a fellow church member, as Rev. Green did with Attorney General Sessions, to call him to account for enforcing unjust, harmful laws and policies and to urge him to repent. It means watching out for personal and institutional racism, like what happened to Rev. Hamilton, and rejecting it at every turn.
People are being killed in America by the nation’s greatest sin of racism in an atmosphere of hate fostered by the rhetoric of too many political leaders. The most profound message of the past week’s events, which are only the latest in a long line of atrocities, confronts Jesus’s followers with a mission: to love everyone, even our perceived enemies, with the love of Christ. No matter what may happen to us as individuals, we are called, right now, to love away the hatred in America. Will we accept the challenge?
* Quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible (NRSV). Copyright 1989 by the Christian Education Committee of the National Council of the Churches of Christ USA. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.