Ferguson is America
In the anxious days before the Grand Jury ruling in on the shooting of Michael Brown last August, can Christians—black and white—stand together for justice?
by Joshua Crutchfield
The decision from the grand jury seated in St. Louis County considering charges against Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson in the killing on August 9 of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, is awaited with tremendous anxiety. A group of scholars and activists have been considering the Theology of Ferguson on Medium, including how the racial tensions and injustices that swirl around the shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests play out in and call out to Christian communities that remain resiliently segregated. We asked Joshua Crutchfield, a contributor to the Theology of Ferguson collection, to share his thinking about Ferguson, race, and Christianity in America. —Eds.
In July 1966, an informal group of clergy met to discuss events that had happened a month earlier.
In June, Stokely Carmichael had lit the world on fire with his call to consciousness in his cry of “black power.” Carmichael’s black power cry was the culmination of years of black freedom struggle that endured police and mob lynchings, voting law restrictions, unfair arrests and prison sentences, inequitable education, and separate but (un)equal public accommodations—sound familiar?
Carmichael and his colleagues in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee were fed up and black power was the expression of their anger and frustration. The loosely connected group of mostly Northern male black clergy met to discuss the implications of black power and its meaning for the black church in particular and the universal church in general. This group of clergy, who would later name themselves the National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCBC), released a statement in The New York Times. The statement began:
We realize that neither the term “power” nor the term “Christian Conscience” are easy matters to talk about, and especially in the context of race relations in America. The fundamental distortion facing us in the controversy about “black power” is rooted in a gross imbalance of power and conscience between Negros and white Americans. It is this distortion, mainly, which is responsible for the widespread, though often inarticulate, assumption that white people are justified in getting what they want through the use of power, but that Negro Americans must, either by nature or by circumstances, make their appeal only through conscience. As a result, the power of white men and the conscience of black men have both been corrupted. The power of white men is corrupted because it meets little meaningful resistance from Negros to temper it and keep white men from aping God. The conscience of black men is corrupted because, having no power to implement the demands of conscience, the concern for justice is transmuted into a distorted form of love, which, in the absence of justice, becomes chaotic self-surrender. Powerlessness breeds a race of beggars. We are faced now with a situation where conscienceless power meets powerless conscience, threatening the very foundations of our nation.
The statement released by the NCBC was discussing black power, but they very well could have been talking about recent events unfolding in Ferguson, Shaw, Dayton, New York, and around the United States. In light of the lynching deaths of Mike Brown, Vonderrit Myers, John Crawford, and Eric Gardner, I’m calling for another call-to-conscience-ness and another black power cry. White Americans must again be reminded that they cannot do what they want through the use of power and force. Black Americans must be reminded that we cannot appeal to the morality of people who, as Carmichael once argued, apparently don’t have a conscience. We must demand, by any means necessary, that black lives matter and that we will not wait for justice. We must have justice now.
“We are faced now with a situation where conscienceless power meets powerless conscience, threatening the very foundations of our nation.” ~National Committee of Black Churchmen, 1966
And this call to consciousness has already been made by so many of us. Ferguson has changed us. It is, indeed, a defining moment in American history and the history of black people in this country. It seems, at least, that the masses of black folks are finally fed up. We’ve awoken to the fact that progress has largely been defined for us — defined on terms other than our own. People now seem keenly aware that freedom and progress have nothing to do with a few black people getting seats at the table. Perhaps people have figured out that they may not even want to sit at the table — that the table itself is the problem.
For many of us things are becoming much clearer. Our vision is being perfected. Like Malcolm X urged us to do, we’re finally seeing each other and the nation with new eyes. Already the light switch has flipped on in the minds of those I least expected to care. Yes, we’ve finally realized that the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. White supremacy has survived, adapted, and thrived over the years. It no longer needs individual acts of racism to persist. We no longer need the Bull Conners to see tangible ways black and communities of color have been systematically deemed inferior and unworthy of first class citizenship. Binaries of good and bad cops are irrelevant; once you become an agent of the state, you do its bidding regardless of your intentions.
The tone is changing for black folks and our allies. In the weeks since the killing of Michael Brown, thousands have poured into Ferguson for protest and civil disobedience. Black and white youth, with heightened consciousness, are demanding a future where black women and men will not be slaughtered at the hands of the police. Black women are, once again, at the forefront of the struggle, organizing and strategizing about ways to get their demands met. We are sharing ideas and imagining ways our communities won’t be places where police terrorism abides.
People now seem keenly aware that freedom and progress have nothing to do with a few black people getting seats at the table. Perhaps people have figured out that they may not even want to sit at the table — that the table itself is the problem.
The church has a critical role to play in this. In the black power statement, the NCBC addressed the white church:
…all people need power. We regard as sheer hypocrisy or as a blind and dangerous illusion the view that opposes love to power. Love should be a controlling element in power, but what love opposes imprecisely the misuse and abuse of power, not power itself. So long as white church [people] continue to moralize and misinterpret Christian love, so long will justice continue to be subverted in this land.
The only way white Christians and the white church can remain faithful to the call of Jesus is to stand in solidarity with black folks by boldly preaching a gospel of “Fuck the Police,” the good news of resistance to police oppression popularized by Hip-Hop Group N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) in 1988. Because when we lay down our own understanding, our own way of doing things, and our own politics, to take up the pain and anguish of others, that is a holy moment. Because we must learn to separate the individual officers—the lower-case police as humans—from the upper-case Police, the system and the problem.
When we lay down our own understanding, our own way of doing things, and our own politics, to take up the pain and anguish of others, that is a holy moment.
Christians stand with people, but we stand against systems of oppression. “Fuck the Police” can be possible in a Christian context, because it is the real cry of people, because it is a cry of solidarity, because we do not cry it of people but of systems. White Christians must detach themselves from the racist white power structure and fully identify with the suffering black and brown bodies that routinely are murdered and assaulted by police. It is no longer useful for white Christians to appeal to a sentimental vision of love that is powerless and upholds the status quo. White churches must be responsible for teaching their white congregations and communities how to be anti-racist. Only by doing that will they fulfill the mission of Jesus outlined in Luke 4:18:
“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…”
Black churches must consider new tactics in organizing our communities. We can no longer revert to white supremacist rhetoric of patience, progress, and non-violence. The Black Church still wields considerable influence over the masses of black folks and is a formidable source of organizational power. As the NCBC commented:
Power today is essentially organizational power. It is not a thing lying about in the streets to be fought over. It is a thing which, in some measure, already belongs to Negroes and which must be developed by Negroes in relationship with the great resources of this nation… Too often the Negro church has stirred its members away from the reign of God in this world to a distorted and complacent view of an otherworldly conception of God’s power. We commit ourselves as churchmen to make more meaningful in the life of our institution our conviction that Jesus Christ reigns in the “here” and “now” as well as in the future he brings upon us. We shall, therefore, use more of the resources of our churches in working for human justice in the places of social change and upheaval where our Master is already at work.
To remain relevant to the ongoing black freedom struggle, black churches must do the work of justice here on earth. Too many of our black and brown sisters and brothers are living in hell here on earth for black churches to continue to preach about salvation “over there.”
Finally, this moment in history must be a turning point for us all.
Ferguson is America.
If we don’t see the events in Ferguson as irreconcilably and mutually intertwined with our destinies, then we miss the point. Black lives do matter. If America refuses to understand this, we are destined to repeat the tragic histories of our past.
Joshua Crutchfield is a graduate student studying history at Middle Tennessee State University. His research is centered at the intersection of black church and black power. You can follow him on Twitter at @Crutch4.
Originally published at medium.com in Theology of Ferguson on October 19, 2014. Edited slightly for republication in The Narthex.
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