Raising a clarion call in challenging times: Prophetic risk and role

Introduction

I write as a mother of a Millennial son for whom I pray daily because of the targeted dangers to his humanity, prompting an ethos of Black Lives Matter (BLM). I teach and minister as a womanist scholar and practical theologian in the public square to center black women’s lived experiences with theoethical methods to counter oppressions through a liberation theological lens. While some might categorize or label this lens as far-left or of a socialist bent, I situate my womanist lens in the prophetic traditions of the Hebrew text and the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s teaching-preaching, which calls to counter oppressive systems with covenantal commitments to resilient love and an ethos of justice. A dualistic concept of teaching-preaching represents two interdependent communication modes necessary for spiritual resilience. Thus, raising a clarion call in challenging times also requires a unifying commitment to change agents in public witness with a theoethical charge to embody love as restorative justice. The faith implications of raising a clarion call for teaching-preaching theology and praxis link a central tenet of a Gospel charge, “Go and do likewise,” to Jesus’s prioritizing two commandments: to love God and love neighbor as self, which I argue should be the crux of leaders’ teaching-preaching aim for equitable justice.

In this article, the messaging of the BLM movement is considered an ethos inviting public witnesses to call for equitable justice praxis of theological and ethical engagement, despite the complex religio-political barriers that tend to exacerbate clergy reluctance to engage or grapple with faith questions raised by the movement. Thus, to be life-changing, equitable justice approaches in teaching-preaching must attend to theology and ethics or theoethics that seek to discern how God’s movement is understood amid contentious justice issues. In addition, the exhortation of prophetic preaching highlights an intentional focus on theology and praxis or theopraxis that transcends humanity’s self-centered focus to instead urge attention to how humankind lives and interacts as one family of God in the world.

The foci of theoethics and theopraxis guide my personal change agent pedagogy of public witness as a pastor, professor, and equitable justice advocate. As a collective faith community, we risk being overtaken by divisive religio-politics. By this I mean, unless the chasms of division get acknowledged and countered with genuine efforts, we will struggle to embody peacebuilding in lived experiences of teaching-preaching. Moreover, as womanist practical theologians Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a clinical psychologist, and Stephanie Crumpton, a pastoral counselor, note a reality of trauma has profound effects that raise the urgency for spiritual care and rooting out the issues of violence that beset many families and faith communities. ¹ A moral dilemma for church and society, however, has historical precedent in the human struggle for Native, African, and Latinx-rooted citizens in the United States, which impacts the present national lens of public theology and justice witnessing. My hope, nevertheless, is girded by prophetic and gospel messaging that presents a clarion call to believe that God’s eschatological love and redeeming justice will prevail.

In theological doctrine, the imago Dei reflects an understanding in Genesis of a divinely connected creation to all humanity in the image of God as the transcendent Creator. Perhaps a belief that the Bible shapes peacebuilding movements stems from textual prophetic traditions that leveled a theoethical charge against oppression, greed, and avarice as found in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Amos, among others. ² Textual interpretation becomes a double-edged sword when conservative or progressive perspectives refer to the same sacred Scriptures as a premise to justify exclusionary beliefs. Instead, to profess belief in transcendent creation imaged connectively as one family of God becomes significant when a clarion call espouses a mutual intent to love and respect a shared morality and humanity. In short, God’s will for faithfulness is reflected through communal loving-kindness and harmony as justice. In my book, Change Agent Church In Black Lives Matter Times, I surmise,

To worship the transcendent power of God as Creator of justice while ignoring the mandates for just action is ineffective, unethical, and blindly evasive. In any case, millennial Black Lives Matter activists (including those who profess faith traditions) still query whether churches have lost sight of an ecclesial purpose to be active voices of witness in religious praxis. ³

Notably, a premise of BLM messaging evokes a prophetic theoethic for people to reflect across interreligious traditions and affiliations since not all hold a Christian Gospel witness. Notwithstanding the distinctions in world religions, many have ethical tenets about the mutuality of care and behavioral responsibility. Accordingly, systematic theologian Glenn Morrison posits,

Interfaith dialogue demands transcendence towards the sacred reality of the other’s face. The other is always sacred. In the other’s face, we hear the word of God ordering us to journey into ways of peace, healing, and compassion. These are the ways of loving our neighbour [sic] with all our heart, mind, strength, and hope. ⁴

Many faith leaders are attuned to discerning ways in each other to see and hear the word of God. Many remain concerned, however, about how best to serve in public capacities and how they might find that faith-based efforts with interreligious collaboration could leverage public justice voices and communal actions. In effect, the urgent need to “be present” also requires being open to listening together for God’s prophetic justice witness. A clarion call to help people of faith embody a commitment to equality requires critical self-reflection and collaboration with visionary hope for peace that moves us from reticent silence or denial to a genuine sense of caring responsibility for action.

Critical self-reflection: A cloud of witnesses

At a black church national conference in Houston, Texas, I joined a small contingent of clergy to caravan along Highway 290, making the trek to Prairie View. In this place, a policeman stopped Prairie View A&M College alum and BLM activist Sandra Bland. At that stop, his dash-cam recorded that he pulled her from her car, threw her to the ground, and arrested her, just yards from the college gates, just minutes after her interview and acceptance of a new job at the college. In response to this public terrorism and injustice, our group came to pay homage, pour libation, and pray. We were stunned by how close this location was to the vibrant metropolis of Houston, but we reminded each other that this was Texas. The locus of unjust ideologies is not altered by zip code or urbanity. Our hearts were heavy, and tears flowed as we stood at a memorial site where the heinous abuse became all too real, as we felt the strong presence of a cloud of witnesses. African-rooted folk’s scriptural reference to a cloud of witnesses affirms a communal belief in the ancestral presence of generational witnesses. They were there too.

Just after the birth of a new sunrise, the assembled group marveled at several ironies. First, the multi-lane and well-traveled street between the campus gates and freeway seemed unlikely for such injustice to occur in broad daylight without someone coming to Sandra Bland’s aid. With us stood a local guide who, as a young white clergy activist, reminded us again that this was Texas. We then were informed that the Prairie View police had a notorious reputation among the Prairie View historically black college students and in the town. The clergy activist also pointed out a fact that we did not know: Several years ago, Sandra Bland, when a student at Prairie View, had marched the many miles from campus to the Waller County jail to protest the unduly targeted and harsh treatment of the black college students. Thus, we were mindful of the irony of the jailhouse being the place she died.

The other irony noted in our early morning vigil was the presence of a small white clapboard church only a few feet from where we stood and where the worn little sign said “Hope Baptist Church.” Yet, the place where Sandra Bland’s head was slammed to the ground and held in the dirt under a tree a mere few feet away did not convey to us the hope the sign proclaimed. We had already briefly watched video testimonies of how students felt imprisoned on their campus in fear of reprisal. Among the clergy gathered at the site, we felt weighted by the sense of righteous indignation, and we expressed through our collective tears that, as a clergy, we have a challenge to assure black and brown families who had lost loved ones to police violence that all will “work to the good of the Lord who strengthens us” (Phil 4:13, NRSV).

Again, ironically, standing at the now-sanctified memorial tree and experiencing a cloud of witnesses on this February day during Black History Month strengthened our resolve to keep fighting through the tears and the pain. We were also mindful that on that same day, the family of Sandra Bland would assemble later that afternoon at the Houston Courthouse to hear a jurisdictional response to their appeal for justice meted upon the Waller County Sheriff and police; the result, however, was inconclusive. As we prayed at the place of Sandra’s arrest, our cacophony of voices called upon the Holiest of Holies to break the yoke of evil systems in which racialized whiteness, privileged cronyism, and political agendas thrived.

Another irony was the utter isolation and the distance Sandra Bland was driven to the Waller County jail, our next stop. As we neared that rural outpost, tears of anger welled up again as our eyes took in the isolated location of dirt roads and dilapidated shacks near a fortress-like, one-story, cinder block building. At the front of the jail, we also prayed, poured libation, and chanted a prophetic commitment to continue the work of righteous resistance to injustices that confront communities of color and challenge our ministry’s calling for hope. At first, no one came forth from the building, but, as we stood in prayer and song, two officers emerged to climb into an SUV and silently left. Still, the irony was evident as we invoked the spirit of our ancestors in the cloud of witnesses of all who lost their lives to police violence, also to witness the contrast between the depth of our emotion and the palpable indifference of those officers.

Trying to imagine the atrocities possibly meted out on Sandra Bland within the walls of this small cinder block fortress covered with barbed wire was gut-wrenching. Yet, our jaws dropped further when, as we were leaving, the local clergy leader urged that the caravan follow the driveway around the side of the building. There we saw three rusty military tanks, one with bat wings on the grill, symbolizing the overt militaristic policing that had become normative. Again, our spirits felt the presence of a large cloud of witnesses as we recalled the isolation of ancestors snatched away from their homeland and held at Elmina Castle in Ghana, imagining their futile struggle of resistance to board the ships that would forever take them away across the Middle Passage. No one could hear the sobs and screams of men and women beaten and impounded in a dungeon below the castle to die, just as no one could hear Sandra Bland inside this concrete cinder block jail with tanks in the yard.

The final irony was to compare other instances of injustice as we called out the names of those young and old who had joined the cloud of witnesses: We called out 16-year-old Trayvon Martin, whose parents never fathomed that his walk to the store for some Skittles candy would be his last. We cannot know his struggle with the vigilante, George Zimmerman, who was acquitted under Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground laws. We called out the name of young, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, especially mindful that the child neither had the opportunity to speak to his police assailants nor to explain that the toy gun was a gift that he alone played with, minding his own business. Police, called by a white passerby about suspicious activity, drove up and within seconds of their response shot him multiple times. The only consolation was that this injustice was caught on tape. Still, the truth would be denied despite the videotaped incident. The irony of the police arresting Tamir’s distraught sister when she tried to come to his aid was not lost on our spirits. Meanwhile, the identity of the anonymous white caller remains a secret. Grieving mothers and families cannot get a judicial verdict of police-indicted wrongful death as the political and judicial stays continue to rub salt into wounded spirits. Thus, we drove back to the site of the conference in grieving silence, and I tried to imagine in my heart how baffled young Tamir must have been as his spirit was carried up to join the cloud of witnesses. If he and other eternal witnesses could speak, what would they say to us?

Hebrews 12:1–2 calls to us:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at right hand of the throne of God. (NRSV)

A clarion call means that we who Christ calls are to keep running life’s race despite the pain of despair and anger we often experience. We are reminded that Christ was unjustly murdered and made a public spectacle, just as Mike Brown’s dead body bled out for more than 4 hours in the heat of a Ferguson, Missouri street in the summer of 2014. We are reminded that unjust systems and structures are not new phenomena but are ancient as the biblical atrocities meted on our Savior, the One who gathers the cloud of witnesses to an eternal and Holy place. Each year, as Black History Month begins and ends, we are reminded sadly that such injustices in the United States continue. Therefore, prophetic resistance is to speak truth to power by continuing a public witness to mobilize and support margined communities still in the grip of racism, classism, and state-sanctioned militarism. As Hebrews 12 urges faithful perseverance, a difficult but crucial action in the face of injustice, the cloud of ancestral witnesses keeps urging us to move forward, to keep fighting, and never to give up.

Black Lives Matter times: Ethos of hashtag and movement

The mantra, Black Lives Matter, expressed as an ethos of resilient identity, is an insistent, inspirational call to recognize the dignity of personhood and the ontological significance of existential blackness as equally created by God. The hashtag added to this catchphrase for social media transmissions captured diverse global attention. The ethos of a hashtag came to represent the mantra and justice movement declaring the centrality of human rights. The mantra also amplified that people of African descent phenomenologically bear the brunt of ostracization and marginalization because of what writer Toni Morrison, in a biographical documentary, The Pieces I Am, refers to as the “white gaze” that frequently associates deeper melaninated skin color with inferiority. ⁵

Another premise of BLM as an ethical demand for justice is its urgent call for a collective push of public witnesses to counter the structural scaffolding of elitism and supremacy. In praxis, the BLM movement significantly raised national advocacy mobilization efforts with resistant actions primarily organized by Millennial community activists in public justice protests as counter-tactics to mounting incidents of documented racial profiling and militarized police enforcement at the time. A prophetic justice ethos of BLM contends that all lives cannot matter unless black lives do too.

According to the Pew Research Center, the young adult leaders coming of age as the Millennial generation were born between 1981 and 1996, amid high technological development with adept use of media for nearly instantaneous coverage of global crises. Millennial worldviews of injustice have been informed by global poverty, elitist oligarchy, and societal impact, such as the extremist attacks on US soil. As one example, the religio-politicized struggles for power and patriotism after September 11, 2001, resulted in civic endorsement of militarized policing. ⁶ In any justice movement, issues of disparity are at the forefront. Diverse interreligious and non-black allies, either personally subjected to forms of systemic discrimination or attuned to the intersections of their identity, have chosen to join public justice movements as participants to support and mobilize cross-cultural advocacy. Beyond media networks or news coverage, an interdisciplinary cross-section of Millennial activists and scholars can raise intersectional analysis to uncover and challenge the complexity of public dynamics while analyzing theological and ethical implications and some of the long-term societal ramifications.

To examine the Millennial query “Where’s the Church?,” critical self-reflection to inform intergenerational discourse is warranted rather than denial as a defensive mechanism. In Change Agent Church, I examine why the BLM movement represents an ethos of “disruptive justice as an ethical paradigm of protest” used purposefully to unveil and interrupt status quo patterns of privilege. ⁷ Partisan legislative debates span a volatile ideological spectrum in today’s public sphere. Arguably grounded by the logo “Make America Great Again,” the racialized fervor of a supremacist white gaze allegedly aims to reinstate overt agendas that monopolize hierarchal schisms based on a codification of whiteness. ⁸ Among the critical challenges raised by ethicists and public theologians who situate BLM as an ethos and movement in the twenty-first century, people cannot ignore the role of religion. Public Religion Research Institute founder Robert Jones characterized findings about a religious push of ultraconservative evangelicals infusing ideological religio-politics to invoke God as justification for hyper-Christian connections to partisan patriotism.

As one example, in her book Red State Christians, Angela Denker self-describes as a conservative Christian who seeks to dispel stereotypes yet acknowledges the Pew Research Center data that showed 81% of white American Evangelical Christians voted for Donald J. Trump as she sought to discover why and who they are. Accordingly, for Denker, an ordained pastor and journalist, the key is a shared language grounded in Jesus and patriotism as she notes,

Instead, Red State Christians consider America and American Christianity under siege, resulting in defensive pushback. . . . In response, Red State Christians have turned toward the flag, feeling their patriotic fervor and nostalgic desire for a more Christian America (where kids used to pray in school). This desire to turn back the clock is more about national identity than Christian identity, though the two are inextricably tied together for many Red State Christians. They want to be the ones who get to define what America is, and for them, it must be conservative, and it must be Christian. Otherwise the country—and their Christian faith—will utterly collapse. ⁹

As a result, ultraconservative, alt-right public policies evolve from the polarizing development of religious views that attempt to dismantle judicial and civic protections. At the same time, silent blindness to extrajudicial violence or erosion of voting rights remains a justice struggle.

The risk of overt persistence for a racialized America spurs tension-fueled debates in public discourse, scholarly research, and political campaigns. The risk is of religious credos upholding a socio-economic ideology, similar to pre-civil war enslavement leading to the Southern backlash to Reconstruction efforts and the legalization of Jim Crow laws that carry generational echoes of bias into this current post-Civil Rights era. The ethos and mantra of BLM are more than a movement. The present era I refer to as BLM times brackets from the Nixon administration as a marker of precedent dynamics that subtly dismantled strategic judicial and legislative public policies, thereby codifying the disparities presently at work. In effect, we can understand these times as a momentous era or period growing out of, yet distinct from, the Civil Rights movement and era, with the latter arguably demarcated by the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and the residual efforts of the 1970s that weakened judicial case laws. Thus, the theoethical mantra of BLM continues until all lives truly matter.

Contextual-historical perspectives

Diverse authors concur that societal attempts to ignore the centrality of race or racialized issues are futile because race is an embedded social construct that colorizes the disparities at the core of America’s ongoing struggle to be the homeland of the free and the brave. Along the spectrum of theoethical debate, race remains a socialized line of demarcation upheld by legalized mores, customs, and biases as barriers to equality by disrespecting the human dignity of African-descended Americans. As examples, sociological analyses by Ian Haney Lopez and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva examine how the ideology of racism often gets denied by people who benefit most from the privileged demarcation. ¹⁰ Historian W. E. B. Du Bois viewed such demarcations to be a “public and psychological” wage of whiteness in his critique of the Reconstruction period’s racialized backlash to the abolition of chattel slavery. ¹¹ Although Du Bois critiqued the prejudicial toll in 1935, the economic chasms and color lines to denigrate non-whites’ lived experiences are still operative.

Among others, ethicist Emilie Townes analyzes how the hegemonic structuring of imagery perpetuates a cultural production of evil. ¹² Public theologian Obery Hendricks and I separately speak to the dilemmas posed by questions from BLM community justice voices about lagging support from faith communities. ¹³ At the forefront of contemporary historical and ethical focus upon the BLM movement, historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, in #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, describes the “blunt force trauma of the American criminal justice system.” ¹⁴ In addition, Taylor argues in Race for Profit that emphasis on privatization fuels the economic disparities of access and ownership; amid illicit markets for weapons and drugs that flood black communities, a vicious cycle of disproportionate incarceration relegates a high percentage of black and brown bodies to the stigma of retributive restrictions, job barriers, and high rates of recidivism. ¹⁵ Concurrently, judicial sentencing imposes harsher imprisonment terms that seemingly target poor black males and females who continue to feed the privatized prison industrial complex.

In an auto-narrative, When They Call You a Terrorist, Patrisse Cullors describes how she, with two other community justice activists, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, birthed BLM in 2013 with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter that unified a justice network of over 20 community coalitions, driven by the realities of death-dealing risks despite their complaints about minimal public reforms. ¹⁶ The aim was to heighten awareness amid the fervor of national tensions in the wake of the 2012 death of 16-year-old Trayvon Martin. Then, the 2014 death of unarmed high school graduate Michael Brown became a visceral catalyst as photos circulated within the media of his body lying in the summer heat for hours. Young protesters filled the streets in the Ferguson, Missouri, area as the outpouring of pent-up frustration at civic silence surged. The outcry expanded over days with visible communal advocacy from pastors Rev. Traci Blackmon, Rev. Starsky Wilson, and Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, among others, who embodied a theoethic of being present as catalysts for justice by opening churches for respite, food distribution, praying, marching, and listening to collective pain. These faith practitioners remain steadfast in public witness and preaching prophetic justice messaging long after the mustard seeds of Ferguson’s public protest germinated in other cities and regions.

Marching is not the sole means of public protest; nevertheless, as the justice efforts gained momentum, the visible presence of interfaith supporters was limited to a remnant of publicly recognizable faces, in contrast to frequent coverage of conservative religio-political stances. Within months of Brown’s death, the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by police stoked the anger. The outcry of #BlackLivesMatter became front-page news, sparking diametrically different responses. Publicly organized protests became a public forum to assert the humanity of African-descended people, and the presence of intergenerational families served to resist the mainstream media’s tendencies to villainize black victims of extrajudicial police violence as isolated criminal cases. During the 2012–2016 period, young bystanders captured videoed reports of more deaths in poor urban neighborhoods. They quickly shared the images via social media to substantiate the threat to black and brown bodies. The multimodal strategies of organizing rallies and marches to protest an exponential increase of openly violent police actions also catalyzed the resurgence of alt-right supremacist groups to counter BLM justice efforts. Often, the civic regulators’ responses exposed a dehumanizing reality of minimal repercussions to protective police unions.

In a polemic against race and class caste systems in the United States, historical journalist Isabel Wilkerson examines the systemic challenges of scapegoating and joblessness at a time when citizens of color still live with the traumatic terror of difference. ¹⁷ Current efforts to censure or ignore the credible examination of racial tensions in US religion and politics continue instead to widen the chasms of disenfranchisement. Intentional counter-protests by radicalized white extremists to derail largely peaceable BLM public events provoked clashes with sometimes tragic results. Filtered coverage by mainstream media was sensationalistic, evoking images of unrest that characterized BLM mobilization as a safety threat. Conservative religious factions aligned partisan politics with a push to add the hashtag, with associated names and organizing groups, to an FBI watch list. As Cullors notes, labeling the BLM justice efforts as terrorism foments racialized fear that criminalizes and blames young black leaders despite subsequent municipal investigations revealing consistent evidence of sabotage by non-movement outsiders to vandalize and arouse discord at the justice marches and rallies.

Arguably, a form of backlash to the BLM mantra and public witness mobilization gave rise to a catchphrase, “All Lives Matter,” intended as an alternate ethical stance aimed to deracialize a focus on black lives by contending that all lives should matter. In communities of police families, police union supporters also adopted a “Blue Lives Matter” slogan to rally a counter-response to the public critique about policing encounters with blacks that trended to unequally violent escalation. Although these efforts might stem from genuine intentions, the counter approaches ignore the unjust double standards and unethical disparities focal to BLM claims that all lives should matter yet cannot matter until black lives also matter. A primary retort of police echoed the privileged gaze of public pundits to shift public attention to urban internecine rivalries of gangs and neighborhood crime but not to assess critically the structural deficiencies as contributing factors to disenfranchisement and the resulting nihilism from years of civic neglect. Police supporters and civic regulators denied 2014–2019 allegations of extrajudicial police violence while Millennial justice groups compiled national databases to log the incidents; moreover, the data bolstered the credibility of the claims and, in turn, the collaborative momentum of the networked movement. While political detractors classified the mobilization of BLM as a disruptive movement to incite racialized disparities, no one anticipated the catastrophic onslaught of a COVID-19 health pandemic in 2020, unveiling further racialized disparities in the healthcare delivery system, exacerbating communal tensions.

Amid the 2020 surge of the COVID-19 health crisis, safety and justice issues appeared to clash with religion and politics. Also, by 2020, amid the health risks, a crescendo of ideological tensions erupted with global protests upon the death of George Floyd, captured on video in 2020, dying under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. The resulting public clamor met with the backlash of Christian conservatism allegedly to spark the impetus for White House executive orders and ordinances as counter-tactics to de-legalize public assembly for protests and to impose curfews in targeted neighborhoods. Rapid conservative partisan laws to loosen gun-carry licensing policies raised ethical concerns about double standards to enable white citizens to self-protect and move freely despite the harsher restrictions placed on people of color. While Garza, Cullors, and Tometi are the catalytic conceivers of the mantra, the contention that BLM continues as a justice ethos to extend a prophetic clarion call for people of faith to deliberate with renewed urgency about the many theological and ethical implications of chasmic disparities.

Theological and ethical implications for praxis

Theoethical discourse, on the one hand, concerns how theological beliefs influence ethical behavioral actions. On the other hand, dilemmas arise about the limited extent to which Christian and interfaith leaders infuse theoethical consciousness with action steps to embody faith and praxis. To claim that black lives existentially matter raises ethical questions about the rising fervent religious ideology of evangelicalism, critiqued for its religio-political cooptation with restrictive Christian doctrines of “sanctified exclusion” that ostracize people based on gender, sexuality, religious tradition, as well as race. One could argue there are implications for praxis when history documents past violent actions of racialized fraternal orders identified as Christian that still lay claim to deny the human equality of certain groups based on ethnic or religious affinity.

Theological implications occur also when elitist factions identify themselves as people of faith yet disassociate from a welcoming and affirming evangel as they vigorously fight to strip the dignity of human and civil rights from the poor living at the fringes of a privileged few. Episcopal priest and ethicist Kelly Brown Douglas cites inextricable ties of “theo-ideology” to the contemporary narratives of privilege by examining the religious constructs of evangelicalism that stem from a doctrine of discovery in which exceptionalism idealizes constructs of “Christian” and “whiteness” as divinely superior. ¹⁸ The ramifications of such harmful doctrine continue to foment divisions exacerbated by an elitist Christocracy of wealthy proponents who privilege Christianity as the national religion of America’s origin by citing the Constitution and the faith tradition of its historical authors. Efforts to censure or silence the truth of injustice cannot bring about the justice of true equality. Furthermore, Hendricks notes,

Because of right-wing evangelicals’ professed regard for the Bible, with its ubiquity of admonitions to support immigrants, one would expect them to be immigrants’ greatest champions. Instead, they are among immigrants’ greatest foes. Despite their faith claims and supposed fidelity to the Bible, the reality is that with few exceptions right-wing evangelical elites and their followers overwhelmingly support the US government’s inhospitable, inhuman treatment of immigrants that is being waged on a monstrous scale. Apparently, evangelical disdain for people of color and religious “others” trumps even the authority of the Bible. ¹⁹

What inspires prophetic clergy to profess a Gospel witness embodied in prophetic public witness with justice as spiritual praxis? A prophetic view of God in Hebrew texts raises a call for justice while chastising oppressive greed and avarice. Pastor David Steele collaborates with Ricardo Wilson-Grau, self-described as an a-religious evaluator, to suggest,

The primary factor that distinguishes religious from secular peacebuilding is the conviction that one’s experience and comprehension transcend the ordinary or the normal. What distinguishes faith-based or religiously motivated actors is a conviction that those involved in the process are part of a reality greater than the sum of all human endeavours [sic]. Their transcendent worldview implies the existence of a reality beyond the natural world, a realm they also refer to as the supernatural. ²⁰

An ethos of restorative hope invites people of faith to existential discipleship to transform from narrow, divisive convictions into a people willing to discern who they are as people created and what they shall become. In this way, a newly willing people hopefully grasps the theological message of the Gospel that conveys Jesus as the incarnate embodiment of restorative hope “to bring good news to the poor . . . to proclaim release to the captives . . . to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18, NRSV), which reflects Isaiah 61 as a prophetic urging of God for ethical praxis.

Philosophy in the public domain reasons or rationalizes from what is known, whereas theology is a belief that emanates from faith seeking revelatory possibilities. One could argue that a theological premise of imago Dei also relates to an essential spirituality of BLM predicated upon a philosophical theology as reasoned in assertions of Thomas Aquinas and others concerning humanity, spirituality of the soul, moral sensibilities in relational interactions, and revelatory faith encounters with an infinite Godhead. ²¹ To believe humans are created in the image of God does not refer solely to teleological purposes of physical attributes because the essence of God is unknowable; rather, the spirituality or spiritual virtues of the soul to desire good in the world or toward one another extends beyond the corporeal finiteness of bodily identity. Thus, the imago Dei transcends the physical strictures in human racial identity constructs to instill hope.

Hope is an essential belief that God is at work in the human quest, as spiritual beings, for justice of the heart, to peer inside the soul for happiness or harmonious existence despite the unknown. In effect, hope is foundational for instilling a humble sense of responsibility to participate in moving our collective humanity toward transformational and peaceful actions rather than toward hatred and war. Still, for positive social change, an urgent task in this era of BLM will require collective theoethical deliberation by people of faith to guide critically serious reflection about the integrity of justice movements and the future outcomes. “Go and do likewise.”

How do we teach-preach a message bridging love and equitable justice?

In many ways, raising a clarion call for justice in such challenging times is a precarious endeavor. In effect, a commitment to teach-preach with the intent to call attention to structural and systemic injustices that marginalize groups and disrupt their lives is quite subversive to status quo norms. For example, in several state jurisdictions, notable restrictions are either legislated or under review to limit what can be taught in grade-school classrooms, what books are deemed allowable, and what censors of curricular content in higher education institutions are required to maintain state charters or funding. In addition, increased evidence reveals the concerted efforts to undermine or delegitimate the positional authority of women of color in high-profile leadership roles. A recently publicized example is the controversy surrounding the resignation of Harvard University’s thirtieth president, Dr. Claudine Gay, who was under conflicting pressures to respond to world events, accused of antisemitism, and lost wealthy donors. At the same time, political factions also investigated her past scholarship to raise further accusations of plagiarism. ²² Since the specific details and timeline of events are well publicized and beyond the purview of this article, I purposely note the example to call attention to broader ramifications in the victory claims of conservative leaders whose quoted aims were directed toward the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies at major institutions of higher learning with specific strategies to remove whomever they deem to be liberal-leaning administrators. A public detractor, Christopher Rufo, extolled, “This is the beginning of the end for DEI in America’s institutions. We will expose you. We will outmaneuver you. And we will not stop fighting until we have restored colorblind equality in our great nation.” ²³

Another strategically rhetorical bent to “restore colorblind equality” appeared in Bill Ackman’s public treatise against the ethos and framework of DEI measures. This public stance urged a directed attack on the inclusionary aims of attempting to instill equality goals within US sensibilities and institutions, an aim which Ackman finds “oppressive,” and by extension, affirmative action as well. ²⁴ Notably, for Ackman, equality is the alleged “oppression” when framed in a modeling of action steps the privileged conservatives critique and contend that policies or programs should not facilitate equality to open positional access to all but the most deserving. Questionably, the “most deserving” usually are not people of color with limited or no access. In effect, any justice efforts to facilitate equality are now deemed dangerous and targeted for dismantling.

The boldness of proclamations is visible, for example, on self-identified conservative websites, such as Turning Point USA, a non-profit youth recruitment and mobilizing watch group, founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, with the stated activism aim appearing on the website:

Turning Point USA empowers citizens of all ages to Rise Up against the radical Left in defense of freedom, free markets, and limited government. Join millions of patriotic supporters to Save America in local communities, high schools, university campuses, businesses, houses of worship and online. Champion freedom on the frontlines, attend world-class conferences, and meet patriotic allies from across the nation. Make a difference. Join TPUSA today. ²⁵

Notwithstanding the constitutional right to free speech, I argue that an egregious exercise of so-called free speech is an identified Professor Watchlist, a webpage project of Turning Point USA, which is regularly updated with photos and bios to identify men and women deemed progressive in their perspectives taught or publicly presented. ²⁶ On the Watchlist site, a streamed banner of topics link to articles or activism warnings to protect against proliferation of LBGTQ, DEI, racial ideology, terror supporter, climate alarmists, socialism, and other issues, with the innuendo being that the identified scholars and public figures are proponents. In effect, the Turning Point USA movement selects who to “out” among educators and public speakers, including men and women of color, denouncing them as dangerous to conservative viewpoints. One obvious risk of subjecting these individuals to public defamation raises the potential for retribution against their professional livelihood and targeted extremist violence to them and families, which frighteningly resembles the campaign of the Nazi watchlists in the Third Reich movement.

Thus, to teach-preach a prophetic message bridging love and equitable justice has a risk of critique by pundits aligned with privileged power brokers who overtly threaten to defame or withhold their money until they thwart what they refer to as a farce of diversity efforts. An ethical question should be apparent when asking how then can justice efforts for equality be supported? Nevertheless, to raise a clarion call for equality and justice represents intentionality to disrupt privileged voices by using biblical and theoethical precedent in the Gospel messaging about Jesus’s teach-preach praxis of exhortation with a counter-narrative to the entrenchment of elitist powers as oppressive, and not vice versa. Still, reducing the risk of misappropriated justice claims urgently requires deep and relational listening with raised consciousness about the divisive ways that references to theological and ethical frameworks are being twisted to appear appropriate. Thus, Ackman’s treatise strives to disguise status quo values to retain hegemonic controls. It is crucial also to examine relational contexts and respectfully approach issues by closely observing the behavioral praxis, stances, and affiliations.

Another risk is that popular culture tends to mythologize and thereby reduce the sanguine messages of the Gospel either by depicting them as loosely assembled oral memories of aphorisms or sayings strung together from ancient traditions or by theologizing the messages in ways to reinforce restrictive or punitive outcomes. Moreover, the Gospel image of Jesus as a radical strategist and rabbinic figure gets theologized often with emphasis on a docile purity imaged as the Lamb of God while de-emphasizing a prophetic ethos linked to depictions of Jesus’s counter-cultural actions when teaching-preaching. Instead, people are quick to express their reluctance to engage actively for equitable justice in the public square, and some point out that Jesus was arrested, crucified, or assassinated as a martyr for speaking truth to power, a fate few desire to undergo. In any event, silence ensues when questions arise from a call to reflect upon disparity observations, questions such as those raised by prolific cultural writer, wisdom griot, and justice seeker James Baldwin who notes the risk of pernicious and unjust disparities. At the same time, societal forces feign colorblindness to rationalize why public equality measures are not necessary. Baldwin writes,

The children, having seen the spectacular defeat of their fathers—having seen what happens to any bad n****r and, still more, what happens to the good ones—cannot listen to their fathers and certainly will not listen to the society which is responsible for their orphaned condition. What to do in the face of this deep and dangerous estrangement? . . . The principle on which one had to operate was that the government which can force me to pay my taxes and force me to fight in its defense anywhere in the world does not have the authority [sic] to say it cannot protect my right to vote or my right to earn a living or my right to live anywhere I choose. Furthermore, no nation, wishing to call itself free, can possibly survive so massive a defection. ²⁷

What Baldwin and other voices at the margins raise is a caution to be suspect of wealthy voices who profess “colorblindness” as a ruse for neoliberalism, as well as the structural systems that privilege their voices to project the fault upon those at the margins while disregarding those most at risk of disparate blindness to their humanity and their needs.

As noted earlier, teaching-preaching is an artful process of engaging two interdependent communication modes for spiritual resilience. I maintain that a theoethical mix of honesty, integrity, and prophetic hope is required to begin the process, whether in the classroom, the pulpit, or daily relational engagement. Honesty, with critical self-reflection, requires acknowledging our own lived experiences that might bias yet compel our actions. Integrity guides how we engage in trustworthy interactions with others, and prophetic hope drives intentional action to articulate a genuinely defiant call for love beyond the emotional toward a metaphysical trust to embrace the divine agape love of unconditional welcoming.

In the Black Church genre, this theoethical phenomenon evidences a culminating crescendo of “good news” messaging despite having to acknowledge that bad news is a reality of our human experiences. An ethos of teaching-preaching equitable justice calls for persistent and prophetic hope in an eternal Godhead who sees the plight of “the least of these” and makes a way to right the wrongs. For those who struggle daily comes the reminder that the “first shall be last, and the last first” (Mark 10:31, NRSV) as in the redemption promise to follow “the way, the truth, and the life” (John, 14:6, NRSV) by believing that only God can make a way out of no way.

As a professed student of the Gospel, I witness the way of being through the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, born into earthly existence as a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew who was anointed with a messianic role. In the Gospel, Jesus articulated his call to teach-preach from the prophetic scrolls of Isaiah 61, professing a clarion call

to bring good news to the oppressed,

 to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives

 and release to the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

 and the day of vengeance of our God,

 to comfort all who mourn. Isa 61:1–2, NRSV

In my view, exhortation is a teaching-preaching skill that emphatically urges the listeners to take action, to do something in response to the theoethical declaration of divine expectation in the scripture readings and contextual synopsis. Questions arise and call for us to anticipate an outcome through changes within us, whether in attitude, outlook, or behavioral approach to an issue or to encourage others for life-changing opportunities of positive transformation. Thus, the metaphysical state about which I speak is less about a Whiteheadian construction as much as the teaching-preaching of Baby Suggs in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, at the hush arbor calling forth the oneness of creation, inviting sensory phenomena amid the divinely natural elements that included the slave people gathered. ²⁸ Crucially, no one can proscribe the transformation of another. Instead, it manifests within the spiritual resilience of self that results from divine inspiration.

Summation: Faith implications of the Gospel charge, “Go and do likewise”

Depending on one’s approach, teaching is ministry, a calling to which one is drawn by an inner passionate commitment to inspire insightful learning by encouraging others to expand their worldview, and preaching is one mode of exhortation to inspire collective soul searching. Perhaps a commitment to teach-preach with a justice message bridging love and equality is tantamount to prophetic courage because to convey such a message is risky business amid what feels like a global uptick in volatile, hateful times. Still, the threatening environmental conditions of partisan religio-politics exacerbate the organizational fragility of many churches and theological education institutions, perhaps because people do not want to forfeit the modicum of beneficial privilege to which they cling, or possibly the weight of public and fiscal retribution is a material reality that would severely impact the moral tenacity and weaken collective motivations. The result can therefore be that the ecclesiology of congregational life and the ethos of church mission are held hostage with increasing confusion among parishioners.

Nevertheless, to embody a clarion call for defiant hope and resilience, one only has to look at how Jesus exercised a bold public theology. A prophetic charge guides our daily praxis per the clarion call of Jesus’s teachings:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Matt 5:43–45, NRSV

Thus, prophetic roles of equitable justice seekers and as public witnesses are risky because the core requirement is for each of us to love, that is to say, love with a sense of communal connectedness and ethical responsibility, love with humble openness to journey into new and strange territories to learn from shared experiences, and love of oneself with gratitude for being “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14) despite how the world might judge one’s humanity as worthy, or not.

The deep complexity of “loving your neighbor” must be grasped and not be taken lightly as a call to embody the ultimate commandment. Loving neighbor also calls us to hear from fellow Americans who readily dismiss each other by political affinity or stances. Interviewing clergy and constituents, Denker shares insights from interviewees who describe themselves as Red State Christians to distinguish perspectives with presumed opposition from Blue State Christians; the risk she raises, however, is termed “gospel distortion,” found in the rhetoric that connects Jesus, if not supersedes the social extension message of the Gospel’s Jesus to love neighbor by substituting biblical sacrifice with “military sacrifice, as selfless as it is, akin to Jesus’s sacrifice.” ²⁹

Given the problem of categorizing religio-politics along spectrums ranging from communist, socialist, progressive, liberal, moderate, conservative, ultraconservative, and alt-right to radical fundamentalist or extremist (and these are not exhaustive labels), one can easily forget or miss that professed ideologies and actions of hate groups are not limited to race. Hate groups with extremist ideologies have been defined and tracked by the Southern Law Center since 1971. ³⁰ A common denominator among many groups is a warped sense of selfhood that motivates the control or eradication of “other.” Othering is a separatist delineation of bias as perceived competition that might be as innocuous as the rival branding strategies inundating our TV commercials or as dangerous as global nation-states vying for territorial control using propaganda and war or as disturbing as vilifying the personhood or humanity of an ethnic, cultural, or religious group to ostracize or reduce their access rights to equality. Profoundly, the religio-political dynamics of “othering” are perpetrated in our church systems and educational institutions, from classroom leadership bias to the disparate policies in our communities.

Admittedly, my last observation about the theoethical complexities of raising a clarion call in challenging times attests to the difficulty of getting people to examine their perspectives. Despite the common parlance to nudge folks to “change their ways,” an ongoing reality is that some people resist change for complex reasons such as internalized fear that an effort to compromise requires an admission of defeat or, worse, the blame for wrong-doing. Hence, as one example, a socio-psychological barrier in societal forums about reparations is the guilt debate about fault and remedy. Furthermore, since biased behaviors get embedded in a communal sense of being or self-identity, genuine efforts toward personal rationalization or consideration of change, that is to say, addressing the call to be open-minded, get further complicated by construed connections to religious beliefs among affinity groups. In effect, our response to justice calls for change comes with risks, in religious circles, of being deemed as heretical or not truly a believer; hence, people tend to hold fast and follow dogmatic bias with compliant piety even when questionable textual interpretation or exhortation misappropriates the textual message to justify separatism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Personally, I cannot close such theoethical deliberations without raising a clarion call about the issue of sexism that still rampantly undermines equality in our churches, corporate structures, and university halls.

Can we simplistically assume that theology fuels gendered resistance to change at the denomination or congregational levels? The cases of ecclesial emphasis on restricting women from pastoral office or pulpit preaching often get attributed to the masculinity of Jesus’s inner circle of 12 without regard to the presence and actions of women in Jesus’s ministry accounts. ³¹ Gender restrictions are often attributed to writings associated with Paul the Apostle’s letters or epistles to claim that women should be silent or not lead men, again without regard for Paul’s naming women to acknowledge their instrumental roles in the household assemblies and spread of the evangel. Moreover, in the contemporary US context, the presence of women with their volunteer hours and substantive monetary donations contributes to the sustainability of ecclesial viability. In short, the survival and organizational health of many faith communities depends upon the creative enterprise of faithful women. Yet, despite a clarion call for justice, the incongruence of disproportionately male leadership is tolerated and not questioned even when issues of gender equality are sidestepped or brushed away.

Like a mask of colorblindness, the cowardice of silence is a patronizing excuse for intolerance that should be challenged. Like colorblindness, an ethical dilemma also arises when female congregants reject the gendered presence and courage of clergywomen who refuse to remain silent about discriminatory practices. Such was the case when an esteemed and homiletically qualified clergywoman, the Rev. Dr. Gina Stewart approached the dais to preach, the first ever invited in the 129 years since the founding of the National Baptist Convention. Her riveting prophetic message highlighted how Jesus’s gospel ministry of justice, equality, and inclusion amid the religio-politics of oppressive exclusivism was a threat to the establishment. Some male listeners in the NBC audience perceived Stewart’s comments to be veiled critique of their NBC establishment, prompting some to leave the stage amid the gathering despite the strong reception of Dr. Stewart’s preached word as a hallmark of changing times. ³² The attempt to silence or quell the female exhorter had the opposite effect, however, resulting in a proliferation of shared global transmissions.

Thus, in the foreseeable future, a clarion call to raise justice equality must include recognizing the growing numbers of women responding to a divinely inspired anointing to ministry and pastoral roles, as well as the public support from some male colleagues. Many communities could beneficially rely upon qualified male and female leaders for a sustainable future. In documented cases, opening inclusive discourse with an appeal to gender justice raises awareness among congregants, often resulting with positive change. Still, to pursue the laudable theoethic of calling for equality is not without a risk of enduring hardships of backlash such as stereotypical character defamation and ostracization. Nevertheless, the formidable task to counter racism and sexism, including schisms over sexuality, begins with a continued push for an ethos of restorative hope in our shared humanity while collaborating to raise a clarion call for love that grounds justice and equality despite the risks and roles.