Virtual faith gatherings offer community, mourning, commitment amid nation’s ‘moral crisis’

“We remember all the people that ICE violence kills. We can feel their spirit. They are with us still.”

These are the words to a song taught by Lu Aya of The Peace Poets at the virtual National Faith Call to Action held on Sunday, Jan. 25.

“We need to sing like memory is a rebellion right now,” Aya said. “We’re singing to the loved ones that are on their way home. We’re singing for the families who are mourning. We’re singing because faith calls us to open our eyes and live brave in these times.”

In the wake of community uprisings and tragic deaths in Minneapolis, virtual gatherings have created space for people of faith across the nation to gather for support, grief, community, encouragement, and commitment to action.

The National Faith Call to Action took place following the tragic killing of Alex Pretti by ICE, and it brought hundreds of people of faith across the country together to lament, pray, and commit to taking action.

The recorded gathering is available to view on Facebook.

The Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson, General Minister and President/CEO of the United Church of Christ, joined several other leaders in speaking to the virtual gathering.

“The work that lies ahead requires for us to understand that we are not alone, that we cannot do this by ourselves. It’s going to take all of us, joined together, to see the change that we need at this time,” Thompson said. “This call in this moment is against violence, it’s against tyranny, it’s about eliminating the powers of empire, and it’s about understanding that we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”

‘Vision for the people’

While hundreds of clergy and moral leaders around the country have been proactive in the past week in creating an active and visible religious presence to counter the president’s mass deportation campaign, many gatherings are happening that may be less visible, yet no less important – trainings, mass calls, meetings – dedicated to building vision and community.   

“It’s time for us to come out of the hiding, come out of being inconspicuous, come out of just fussing about what they are doing,” said Bishop William J. Barber II on a mass clergy call held by Repairers of the Breach on Jan. 20. “We have to write a vision for the people and make it plain, so that they can run with it. It is time for us to love forward together.”

Barber, the president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, spoke at the recent virtual gathering of over 500 clergy and moral leaders from across the country, organized by Repairers of the Breach. He urged moral leaders to think beyond rehashing the wrongs taking place and move toward offering a grounded vision.

Barber described how In Jesus’s famous ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ “he didn’t say, ‘Caesar did this to me, and Caesar did that.’ He said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he hath anointed me.’ And he laid out an agenda.”

A redo of ‘What does God require?’

Carrying this spirit, Bishop Yvette Flounder, founder of City of Refuge UCC and presiding bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries spoke on the work of religious people to lead a new beginning for living the word of God.

“There are certain circumstances where our children, our young people, and our churches don’t really know what is the Word of God. There are some people who have hijacked the Bible and are using this hijacked Bible to make it God’s will for others to be destroyed. They do not know the Word of God for this time. They think that they have become the word of God for this time,” she said. “And so what we’re in need for is a redo of ‘What does God require? That we would do justice, that we would love mercy, and that we would walk humbly before God.”

A fight for every generation

Bishop Darin Moore, presiding prelate for the Mid-Atlantic District of the AME Zion Church, shared some of his family history as inspiration for moving forward.

Moore recalled that his mother was part of the movement to desegregate lunch counters in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in the 1950’s.

He recounted how she told him, “When I was fighting as a high school student for racial justice and equal rights, I thought that I was fighting that fight then so that my children and my grandchildren would not have to fight those fights. But I was wrong, because every generation must confront the ongoing vestiges of racism, classism, sexism, militarism, and materialism.”

And so his 86-year-old mother told him, “Let’s get busy. What do we have to do?”

“And if she can do that at 86, you and I certainly can do it,” Moore said. “Let’s not get exhausted and weary because of the intimidation tactics, because of flooding the zone with corruption and with chaos. Let’s just simply, beloved, walk together.”

‘Love Forward Together’

In the movement to “love forward together,” Barber extended an invitation to the Mass People’s Assembly and Moral March and Mobilization on Raleigh in North Carolina. With these events, Repairers of the Breach aims to “mobilize voters to fight back against the new racist congressional map passed by the North Carolina General Assembly.”

“We want to model in North Carolina what has to happen across this country,” Barber said, describing how people who travel to join the gathering can learn tactics to take back to their locales.

“The issue is all of us, where we are, modeling this love forward together, claiming this is our time and recognizing that what happens in North Carolina impacts what happens in California. What happens in Mississippi impacts what happens in Virginia. What happens in Ohio impacts what happens in Washington, and so on,” he said. “We need to be intersectional – everybody together – sharing this moral cry: it’s time to love forward together.”

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