(peaceful music) (music continues) - Racism in this country is a religion.

The notion that all of this was ordained by God, that God ordained the racism, that God ordained the slavery, it's a form of heresy.

It's a form of idolatry and self worship.

Which is why it has been so hard to eradicate it from the American ethos and political systems.

- The problem of racism in America is most deeply theological.

Theological.

It is the most important political issue in this nation's history and will determine the future of what America is.

But at root, it's theological.

Racism is a sin.

Racism is America's original sin.

- You know, there's this wonderful phrase or formulation by Frederick Douglas.

He said, "The church steeple was right next to the slave auction block."

And so here we see American Christendom shadowed by the contradiction that has defined this fragile experiment of democracy since its inception.

- The United States is the most religiously diverse nation in human history.

It's the most religiously devout nation in the Western hemisphere.

And we are the world's first attempt at religiously diverse democracy.

Religion plays a major role in the American imagination.

Think about these terms, city on a hill, beloved community, cathedral of humanity, almost-chosen people, better angels of our nature.

All of these ways that we imagine our nation come from religious communities.

- Noted sociologist Gordon Allport wrote a book called "The Nature of Prejudice".

And he said in his studies that the most prejudiced people in the United States were people of faith.

And he said the least prejudiced people in the United States were people of faith, religious people.

So faith has the ability to divide us and it has the ability to unite us.

(pensive music) ♪ We're marching to Zion - [Mark] It's been said that Mother Bethel is the cradle of African Methodism.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church is now on five continents in over 40 countries, throughout the Caribbean, throughout Africa, even in India now.

But all of that started right here on 6th and Lombard Street in Philadelphia when Richard Allen purchased this land in 1791.

♪ Beautiful, beautiful Zion ♪ We're marching upward to Zion ♪ ♪ The beautiful city of God - When the Methodist Church came to America, it was sent here by John Wesley, who was a great abolitionist.

So John Wesley had great hopes that the Methodist Church in America would be a freedom church.

So much so that in 1784 when the Methodist Church actually had its founding in America, it was called the Christmas Conference, their first book of discipline, their book of laws stated that any Methodist who held slaves would not be in good and regular standing.

Now, there were some early Black folk who were there, including our church founder, Richard Allen, who had been converted to Methodism as a young man, as a teenager on a plantation in Delaware.

Once he had earned his freedom, he started to follow the Methodist church.

And so imagine Richard Allen in 1784 hearing this Methodist church before the United States was actually really finalized, before we had a president, while we're still in the transition with the Continental Congress and all of that, Richard Allen hears the Methodist Church say that if you own slaves, you cannot be a part of this church.

Great hopes, I mean great, great hopes for Black people with regard to Methodism.

Yet three years later, by 1787, Richard Allen had witnessed the denomination go from being forthright on the issue of slavery, and in fear of losing Southern planters and their money, withdraw.

So they pulled their support away from Black people and gave in to the desires of the Southern planters in particular, and instituted what they call segregated pews in worship.

Which meant that Richard Allen, who prior to this, could sit anywhere in worship, and other Black people as well.

It was really an interesting time.

But the church gave into the culture.

And as a result, Black worshipers left in droves.

When Richard Allen walked out of St. George's in 1787, for a number of years, they were in search of a place of their own to worship.

So in 1791, he actually purchased this land on 6th and Lombard, which today is the oldest continuously held parcel of land by African Americans, which is astonishing.

We now have the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which started with Mother Bethel.

(choral music) - Come on Mother Bethel!

Let's give God some praise.

We're gonna give God the sacrifice of his praise.

When I think about his goodness and all he's done for me, my soul cries hallelujah!

Thank God for saving me.

♪ Thank you, thank you ♪ Thank you, Lord ♪ Thank you, Lord ♪ Thank you, thank you ♪ Oh my Lord Almighty ♪ Oh my Lord, thank you ♪ Thank you - A faithful few marched for you and marched for me and struggled for us and struggled so that you and I on Tuesday morning at 7:00 in the morning can walk into a polling place (congregation applauding) and say, "Give me my ballot.

You want voter ID?

Here's my license.

You want a passport?

You want an ID card?

You want my library card?

I'll give you whatever you want."

Because we've come too far to turn back now.

We've come this far by faith.

- [Worshiper] If I had 10,000 times, it wouldn't be enough to tell God-- - Democracy for Black people of America is relatively new.

I was born in 1966.

I'm my mother's third child.

My older siblings are twins and were born in the 1950s.

My mother, who's still alive, was born in Arkansas in the 1930s.

None of them were born with the guaranteed right to vote.

I'm the first one of her children to be born with that guaranteed right, to be born after the Voting Rights Act.

And so when we think about, you know, the security of the ballot box for Black people in this country, we talk about it as though we've always had that right.

But if you stop and think, it's not that far removed from us.

And that which has been given can be taken if you're not careful.

- So people ask today if a multiracial democracy is even possible, and whether we're on a path to tyranny.

What I say is that we have never had a multiracial democracy.

Because democracy assumes that all citizens can vote and vote freely in fair, safe elections.

You can't have a multiracial democracy when a large number of people literally are prevented from voting, right?

- Here is the elephant in the room of American politics and American churches.

That by 2040, for the first time in our history, America will no longer be a white majority nation.

It's already changing all over the country.

In Los Angeles, we are not a white majority nation.

But by 2040, the nation will from then on, roughly 2040, be a majority of minorities.

White people in America are not ready for that (chuckling) and are resisting in all kinds of ways.

- The bills and laws that are being proposed by the legislature are attempts at blocking voter participation in minority communities.

They are laws such as voter ID laws, limiting the places where drop boxes will appear, limiting the number of days that we have to vote, limiting the ability to do mail-in voting.

All of these are attempts at blocking minority participation in voting.

It's the fact that they are continuing each year to look for ways to limit our vote.

We will continue to inspire and inform, to make sure that the community comes out to exercise our franchise.

♪ Woke up this morning with my mind ♪ ♪ Stayed on voting ♪ Woke up this morning with my mind ♪ - [Dwayne] The POWER Interfaith Freedom Express Bus Tour, Healing Our Faith in Democracy was a bus tour that came about as a result of conversations that I was having with clergy, our interfaith clergy, multi-faith clergy in POWER.

I said, "What if we were to get on a bus and go around the state together, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Ethical Humanists, Society of Friends, Unitarian Universalists and model for everybody what it looks like when people of faith, people of multiple races, people of multiple ethnic traditions get together and say, 'We're gonna figure out how to make this thing work so that we can model it for everybody else across the state.'"

To be able to try to heal our faith in democracy.

♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ - The Freedom Express Voting Rights Bus Tour is touring the state of Pennsylvania to show that we need to have unity and not divisiveness.

We started out in Philadelphia, we went to the surrounding counties, we went up to Allentown, across to Scranton, to Pittsburgh, down to Washington County, then across the state to Reading, Gettysburg, York, Lancaster, and ending up in the capital of Harrisburg to give people the message that we have to be unified, that there are people who are trying to divide us.

- So white Christian nationalism is the bad actor that's causing our state not to be a state of hope and healing.

White Christian nationalism and its rhetoric, its action, its dogma, its violence is tearing our state and our country apart right now.

And as people of faith and moral conscience, we feel that we have to be compelled to call out white Christian nationalism for what it is, both idolatry and heresy from a Christian theological standpoint, but also to understand that the people that are purveying it and the people that are funding it are not doing it for the betterment of the whole of society.

They're trying to benefit one very slim segment of our community, which are generally white folk who are Christian, who have a certain view of Christianity that is deeply violent and deeply aggressive.

Instead of trying to get to the place where we're the good shepherd, where we're actually able to bring people together, where there's healing, there's hope, there's a future where all of us are able to live our full, best lives.

We're working to call out white Christian nationalism right now as being the one thing, one of the main things that's preventing us from getting to a state of opportunity that works for all.

- So we are here to remind people that it is a right and it is a joy to participate in the Democratic experiment.

So we want to inform, encourage, and help protect if necessary everyone's right to vote and participate in this election.

- And God, we call on you to strengthen us, to watch over us, to guide us, to protect us, to move us, to energize us to do the work that only you have called us to do.

And we stood.

You told us to stand for justice and we stood.

You told us to walk and we marched.

You told us to ride and we came from all parts of Pennsylvania to ride along with the Freedom Express.

So God, whose name is a remedy and whose remembrance is a cure, have mercy and give strength to all of us whose only hope is capital, and our only weapons are our tears, our cries, and our screams.

Amen.

- Amen.

♪ Where I'm bound ♪ We're gonna go that land ♪ Come and go - And we are driven by a need and a desire to make this world better than what it is.

And that we will not rest until it comes.

And so we fight on it.

(crowd cheering) - We need to stand up against bigotry.

We need to stand up against racism.

And we need to let people know that your time is up.

We do know that Sunday is coming, and guess what?

Daylight Savings Time is coming to an end.

We are called to turn our clocks back.

But when you turn your clocks back, make sure, don't turn back the clock on voting rights.

Don't turn back the clock on hatred.

Don't turn back the clock on racism.

Don't turn back the clock on bigotry, because the last time I checked, this land is the land that our God created.

It is not for one race, it is not for one people, and it definitely should not never, our truth should never be trumped by lies or conspiracy theories.

(crowd cheering and applauding) I'm reminded of a story, I'm just a little boy from North Carolina, but I heard about a story that took place in the '60s in New York City.

In the '60s, there was a power outage.

And when the power went out in the city, the Statue of Liberty's torch was still yet lit.

People began to wonder in New York, how is it that the power grid is out here, but yet the light is still shining on the Statue of Liberty?

Well, they dug deep, they followed the power line, went along the power grid and realized that it was plugged into New Jersey.

(crowd laughing) What are you saying, Reverend Miller?

Here's what I'm saying.

We receive our power from another source.

(crowd cheering) Our power is not connected to economics!

Our power rides the bus!

Our power walks the street!

Our powers carry the signs!

Our power is in our voice.

So whatever you do, no matter how dark the night, believe in the coming of the morning and let your light continue to shine.

Because you have a higher power source!

(crowd cheering and applauding) (gentle music) - Good afternoon everyone.

- Good afternoon.

- I am Elder Melanie Dubose, pastor of Evangel Chapel and one of the founding members of POWER.

If you can see me, clap once.

(audience clapping) If I'm looking good, clap again.

(audience clapping) I thank you for doing that because that gives me some perspective as to where you are in the room.

It is not a mere act of vanity.

Because I really stood up on this dais today, this dais with a spirit of heaviness.

Because I feel this afternoon the weight of all of my ancestors singing the songs of freedom today.

Reminding me that we shall overcome, but it's going to take some more work.

So they asked me today to give a testimony.

So you thinking when I walked up the stage with the help of my sister, what is that blind lady doing on a bus stomping across the Commonwealth?

I'm glad you asked.

I'm here to let my presence be known.

I'm here to let my voice be heard.

And I'm here to, in every dark corner, in every place that we have moved, some 1500, 1600 miles around this Commonwealth, I'm here to distribute what I call a pocket full of look-dammits.

And to let this community, this state know, look, dammit!

I'm not trying to take it anymore!

I watched my grandparents die trying to fight.

I watched my mother die trying to fight and uphold the banner of freedom.

I'm watching my siblings just challenged with the urgency of now to uphold the banner of freedom and let people know that we are fired up and we're not taking it anymore!

So I'm going back to my deeply impoverished, deeply marginalized community.

And I'm gonna remind my young people, my old people and everybody in between that they have to get to the ballot.

I can't see where I'm going, but I do know one thing for certain and I know two things for sure.

I'm going somewhere and I'm going to make a damn difference.

'Cause you are going to know that that blind lady from Philadelphia came this way.

(audience applauding) - I'm so grateful for all of you being present here today, and for those that have journeyed with us over these last three weeks.

I'm grateful that God has given us such a time as this, an opportunity to both lament and to be able to pull up all the strength inside of us that is God.

And to be able to press forward to create a world that is far better than the one that we are living in right now.

The beloved community is yet before us.

And yet, as I look at all of you today, I recognize that we are indeed the beloved community, and that we will model it for the rest of the world in how we work together in multi-racial, multi-faith, multi-class cooperation, to be able to create a world where all us are able to thrive.

- And so each generation has to do its own thing.

We may not necessarily be doing the Freedom Rides of the '60s, but this bus tour was a very important moment for us in the 21st century.

And more than likely, my children and their children will have to do similar things to ensure the right to vote, at least for the foreseeable future.

- So we recently conducted what we think is the nation's largest study on race and religion.

Trying to understand in the very modern time what is the state of race and religion in the United States?

And so high level conclusions is that we're in a very difficult state.

Many, many people that we interviewed, Christian leaders of color in particular said that they believe that we're in a worse state than when Martin Luther King was here and leading in the 1960s.

They cited many things.

The rise in upfrontness of white Christian nationalism, the continued division of churches, the complete misunderstanding of white Christians, Black Christians, Hispanic Christians, Asian Christians, where they belong, why they're separated.

Many Christian leaders of color told us that they feel like they have been thrown under the bus by white Christians.

That when it all comes down to it, push comes to shove, what white Christians really care about is being white much more than being Christian.

- We ask Americans about their core friendship networks, about who are the people in your life that you talk to about important matters, right, over the past six months is how we phrase the question.

And we ask people to list everyone in that social circle and then attributes about them, their race, their gender, et cetera.

When we crunched the data, what we found is a remarkable level of social segregation by race.

So for example, the average white person's core friendship network, like this kind of close friendship network is 93% white.

And if you ask like, how many of them have no person of color at all in their social network, it's 75% of whites have not a single person of color in their network.

- As long as we are living in a society where 75% of white Americans don't have a single person of color in their intimate social circles, then our religious communities are also going to be segregated.

Our segregated religious communities reflect a segregated society.

And more than that, it reflects the way in which people live not segregated lives because they never come in contact with each other, but they live segregated experiences, different experiences.

- If you ask white Christians whether they feel warmly toward other racial groups like African Americans, they will say they feel very warmly toward African Americans, including white evangelical Protestants.

Again, the kind of most conservative corner of the white Christian world.

But if you ask them things about structural injustice, about whether past discrimination has an effect on the present, about whether police treat African Americans differently and that's part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans, where the Confederate statues and flags are expressions of racism versus just Southern pride, you began to see a very different picture.

And one of the more really astonishing things was to find that, for example, white evangelicals were simultaneously the group that was most likely to say they felt warmly toward African-Americans and the most likely to deny the existence of systemic racism up and down the board.

- Is racism still a problem in America?

Do we need to reform policing?

And what you see is that African American Christians tend to have a stronger belief in the ongoing existence of systemic racism.

They continue to believe that racism is a problem.

They continue to believe that we can be policed better.

They continue to believe there could be things to make for a more just society.

And then other segments of the church don't have those same views.

They say the racism is mostly gone.

They say that African Americans are not victims of racism.

And so you do still have in America two different visions of the problems that we face.

- We lock up more people per capita than any country in the world.

But we disproportionately lock up Black folks.

The effects of mass incarceration are huge.

Families separated from loved ones, children brought up without fathers, or fathers who are divorced from their families by incarceration.

The link to poverty is irrefutable.

The link to incarceration of young people based on the incarceration of a parent is irrefutable.

The number of families that are disproportionately affected is, it's almost pandemic level, the effects of mass incarceration.

Good morning everybody.

Welcome to Bethel Baptist Church.

This is our job fair.

We do these probably maybe three or four times a year.

So today all of you get an opportunity to speak with Mr. David Porter with the Council for Airport Opportunities to talk about different job opportunities for you all.

You know, I work predominantly with the reentry community, but anybody who's not formerly incarcerated, you're welcome here just as well.

My job for the city of Orange, New Jersey entails making sure that formerly incarcerated people have access to employment.

So I found an organization, which is the Corporation for Airport Opportunities.

And they're providing a job specifically for people who have a criminal record.

- How you doing, man?

What brings you in here today?

- Trying to find me something part-time while I still go to school.

- What you going to school for?

- Justice studies, criminal justice.

- What's your interest in the criminal justice?

- I was formerly incarcerated.

I've been home for like two months now.

- You've been home for two months.

How many years?

- 10.

- 10, wow.

- Yeah.

So on the inside when you starting your BA, you do justice studies.

So I just held onto it once I transitioned.

- So since you've been home, what are some of the difficulties and challenges you've been facing?

- Just the simple things that used to be normal to me.

Like transportation.

Getting back in the swing of things, I would say.

- We look at this in my role in the city of Orange, New Jersey as a public safety issue.

Access to employment is public safety.

If people don't have access to employment where they can at least make a few dollars, where they don't have to feel like they're under stress financially reduces recidivism rates exponentially.

Being formerly incarcerated does help with my insight.

It gives me a credible place to talk to them from.

So they're saying to me, "Oh, you've been there, you've done that, so I can listen to you because you know exactly what you're talking about."

My job is to help them do that.

So conflict resolution, basic counseling, mentoring, understanding their triggers, all of those things become important factors in helping a person realizing that trauma that they faced while incarcerated and helping them navigate those things so they are not rearrested.

All right, so you said guidance.

What's that look like?

Tell me what you need from me.

- Because I'm an F-up.

Like through that story that I told you.

Can't nobody deal with that.

Can't nobody be with that for the rest of their life.

A damaged person.

- You're not damaged, man.

Look at me.

You're not damaged.

You are a human being that made mistakes.

We all make 'em.

But you put yourself in a position where you can learn from your mistakes and you could become a better person in spite of them.

And that's what I saw when you came in here.

You came in my office, man, within 10 minutes you were in tears.

And that meant everything to me.

And it meant everything to me because I felt like you trusted me from the jump.

- That whole seven years and 10 months, I ain't shed a tear.

And I seen a lot.

I ain't shed not one tear.

- You can't in there.

- But you could-- - You can't show weakness in there.

- When you by yourself and everything, you could, but it was like, nah.

But it wasn't until like, I really came home and saw that my life was in disarray.

I basically live my life like, day to day.

Like I do plan for things, but sometimes they don't go through and I give up.

You know what I'm saying?

And it's like, it's hard for me to say as a man, I've been through things, that I need help.

Because why don't I have it figured out yet?

What am I doing wrong?

What's wrong?

Know what I'm saying?

So I try to focus.

But it's always so much going on that it's hard to get away, like mentally and emotionally and everything, especially on parole, 'cause you can't just up and leave then, right?

You know what I'm saying?

So it's like, when am I gonna get my breath of fresh air?

Yes, I made it out of one tribulation and everything, I came home, but it's like I went from one hell to another.

- You wanna know what your breath of fresh air is?

Why is this Tyrone different than the Tyrone that decided to rob somebody eight-something years ago?

- I don't know.

It's like I don't want to.

- Ah.

And how do you want to get it?

As opposed to taking somebody else's money, how you wanna get it now?

- I do wanna work for it.

I do want to.

That's crazy.

I never thought about that.

- Yeah.

- I really never thought about that, like where it come from.

- What jail does, jail often tells us that you're a bad person who did a bad thing, so we put you in a bad place to pay for that bad thing.

Right?

And we kind of walk out with this idea that the person that we were when we made that decision was a bad person, and that there's something that has to happen to make you a good person.

I don't believe that anymore.

I believe that you a good person who made a bad decision based on bad circumstances.

And I think that that good person has come to the forefront now.

And said that I'm not gonna allow myself to fall back into that trap.

So there's something that happened inside of Tyrone Brown that says, "I'm not that dude."

I don't think you ever been that dude.

I think a lot of times we do things based on our circumstance.

I'm not that dude.

I told you what I went to jail for.

I'm not that dude.

I was never that dude.

But between drugs, alcohol, circumstances, desperation, anger, all of those things make you do dumb stuff.

On February 5th, 1990, I had known that there was an eviction notice in place.

We were gonna be evicted.

I hadn't been paying the rent.

I was living here in this building, 470 West 165th Street, with my grandfather who had entrusted me with the rent money.

I was spending it on drugs.

We had a 72 hour eviction notice.

Everything was either cut off or about to get cut off.

And on Monday morning, knowing the eviction was coming at any moment, I took all of the past due notices, I took all of the 72 hour notices, everything that I didn't want anybody to find, to know that I hadn't been doing what I was supposed to do, put them in a dish, and I set them on fire.

And walked out of this apartment, down these stairs, down that block.

Unbeknownst to me, the building, the apartment caught on fire.

The fire spread to the floor above mine, the third floor to the fourth floor.

And there was a woman who lived there named Marjorie Styles.

She was 87 years old.

Her home attendant smelled smoke, ran out and left her, and Ms. Styles died from smoke inhalation and then her body was burned beyond recognition.

And I confessed.

I told 'em everything that I'd done.

And it kind of felt like releasing all of these deep, dark secrets that I've been keeping.

I was the fair-haired boy.

I was the high school football player.

I was the high school all-star wrestler.

I was, you know, the guy who was supposed to be the next Luther Vandross or something.

And here I am addicted to drugs.

And of course I was hiding it from everybody.

The only people who knew I got high was the people I was getting high with.

So here I find myself now on Rikers Island, looking at 30 to life, 15 years to life for the murder, 15 years to life for the arson.

So I go to Rikers Island, 16 months there.

The worst 16 months of my life.

I saw every bit of man's inhumanity to man.

Somehow I found my humanity in that place.

I found it through God.

I found it in the Protestant chapel.

I found it finally submitting my life to something that was greater than myself.

And realizing that I owed a debt.

I took a life, so my job was to give life.

Every young man that I meet who's on his way to some of the stupidity that I found myself in, is an opportunity to give back.

My dad was a cop who served this community.

And then later on this week, I'm gonna be sworn in as a police chaplain.

His son that he visited in, mm.

His son that he visited in prison is being sworn in as a chaplain for a police department.

And it's an honor, it's a privilege, but it's also full circle.

I'm actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

I'm doing what God called me to do.

- This is a day of high importance in the city of Orange Township, because this is how we do law enforcement.

We ask that the Spirit guide us in how we administer the law and how we treat our citizenry.

The chaplains in the police department have served throughout our city.

They have been called in times of great need to both our constituency and to our fellow officers and firefighters.

I want to thank them for the efforts that they put in on a regular and daily basis.

Darren Ferguson's an important piece of our law enforcement initiative.

When we look at crime prevention and we look at reentry into our society, when we look at avenues to make sure people come home and get the tools they need to be productive, you gotta have a Darren Ferguson around to give his depth of experience.

He's been at the very bottom of the well and has scraped the heights of the heavens in terms of how we try to bring people back, reconcile them to society.

Repeat after me.

I, state your name.

- I, Darren A Ferguson.

- Do solemnly swear.

- Do solemnly swear.

- [Dwayne] That I will support and defend.

- That I'll support and defend.

- [Dwayne] The Constitution of the United States.

- The Constitution of the United States.

- [Dwayne] And the Constitution of the state of New Jersey.

- And the Constitution of the state of New Jersey.

- [Dwayne] And that I will faithfully.

- That I will faithfully.

- Impartially.

- Impartially.

- Discharge.

- Discharge.

- My duties as chaplain.

- My duties as chaplain.

- [Dwayne] Of the Orange Police Department.

- Of the Orange Police Department.

- [Dwayne] Under the appointment of the department.

- Under the appointment of the department.

- [Dwayne] According to the laws of the city of Orange Township.

- According to the laws of the city of Orange Township.

- [Dwayne] To the best of my ability.

- To the best of my ability.

- And understanding.

- And understanding.

- So help me God.

- So help me God.

- Chaplain, congratulations.

(group cheering and applauding) Chaplain Darren Ferguson.

(group cheering and applauding) - One of the most powerful things about religion is that it provides a positive and constructive model of social change.

It looks to articulate an ideal, call it the Kingdom of God, and build that on Earth.

It builds the actual institutions of social change that show us how to do things better.

This is one of the reasons that so many restorative justice programs which seek to erode mass incarceration are founded by faith communities.

It's one of the reasons that so many people who work in the violence interruption field, in alternative to policing and mass incarceration, are faith-based people.

It's because they are motivated by their religion to show a better way, to do something better, to do what the Quran calls being (speaking foreign language) a special mercy upon all the worlds.

And I really believe that America's diverse faith and philosophical communities working together to build these institutions, to work towards the ideal, call it the Kingdom of God, call it the intersection of (speaking foreign language), of faith and world.

We can help get us closer.

We might even be able to help us achieve it.

- One of the things I've always believed is that the faith community uniquely brings to conversations around social justice is that we bring a moral voice.

We can hold society accountable for the wrongs that have been done.

In this case, the wrongs around racism.

- Sin, in all of our traditions, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, requires repentance.

Sin requires repentance.

Repentance, though, does not mean just feeling guilty or ashamed or bad.

No.

Repentance in all our traditions means stop, you're going in the wrong direction.

Turn around.

Turn around and go in a whole new direction.

- So it's clear to me that apology is not enough.

And this is where most white Christians want to go, if they go anywhere.

But instead, the work that's really in front of us, if we really want to get to reconciliation, right, the good stuff where we kind of are healed and we move forward, there's a middle part.

And you can't get to reconciliation without walking through the valley of justice and repair.

And it's that work of repair that is really what's required of white Christians after supporting white supremacy for so long.

- If we're to think seriously about reparations, which is to say, about the obligation that we have as a nation to our Black citizens, we have to begin with recognizing the reality of slavery.

But that's not where we can end.

We have to take into account the decades and generations following slavery during which Black Americans lived as second or third or fourth class citizens in a putatively democratic, egalitarian society.

- This belief that somehow a racially just society means that you're going to lose something, that we've been sold this bill of goods that there's only so much pie to go around, I don't believe that.

I believe the background condition of scarcity is a lie so that some people can hoard more of the pie than others.

I believe we can bake a bigger damn pie.

- And when it comes to faith communities, our concern is not simply that of repairing the gap that has been left because of an unjust past in the present.

Our concern should be about repairing the gap, repairing the breach, if you will, between an unjust present and the just future that God calls us all to.

Faith leaders, faith communities are accountable not to the way things are, but to the way things are supposed to be.

- We join together in praying the words that Jesus is teaching us.

- Our Mother, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive-- - Calvary Lutheran Church had been experiencing financial difficulty leading up to the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd.

And we were really at the last few years of solvency.

And our giving could not match the needs of this very old building which is Calvary.

And so we were really struggling as a congregation, thinking about what we would do next.

- So it was really kind of a miracle when we got connected with Trellis, which is the developer of non-profit affordable housing.

And they came up with a great plan for renovating our building, changing some of it to housing, renovating the space that we're in now, the sanctuary.

And the amazing thing is, is they said that we can come back and that we can worship here in this space.

- So it'll be a family-focused housing community.

We'll have 15 supportive housing units reserved for formerly homeless folks and folks with disabling conditions.

- [Shari] We don't want like, very expensive condos on this corner.

We want something that is needed by the neighborhood and that's gonna serve the neighbors.

- We wanted this housing development to be of the community and for the community.

- I'm overjoyed about this transition.

And I think it's this ability to live out who we are.

What does it look like?

You know, you can say one thing and it's a whole 'nother thing to live it out and to do it.

And so as we sell the building, we are going to be doing our mission, doing what we believe Jesus Christ's mission is in the world.

And that's to care for people, to love people.

- I am so glad to be here, because this journey has been a long one.

Y'all, I'm a neighbor.

I live on 38th and Columbus.

Calvary Lutheran Church has been my neighbor for over the 24 years that I've lived here.

And so after the public murder of George Floyd, watching this pillar of community stand up for us, for the neighbors and for the protestors has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

And to my astonishment, a congregation member, a student from Minneapolis Public Schools created this most beautiful tribute to this man.

And y'all were brave enough, and I say brave enough to put it on your church.

And people would ask me, "What are they doing?

Are they sanctifying, deifying, making him a saint?

What are they doing?"

And I said, "They're doing what they've always done.

Y'all don't understand about Calvary."

And so for y'all to take it upon yourselves to say, "The building is a bit much.

Let's see what we can do with it now."

And in a 100-year tradition, you're still serving the community.

Because one of the demands of the 24 demands of Justice Resolution 001 is about affordable housing.

About the dignity in housing folk, right?

And so your cooperation with the new developer that is taking this building, it's all based on this idea of this is still a community space and you want this place to serve as it always has for the people.

I cannot stress enough how absolutely gratified I've been in relationship with this institution and with y'all.

I cannot say it enough, I appreciate you so much.

I hope, I hope, I hope that you continue to be the Calvary that you are wherever y'all go after this.

Thank you so much.

(all applauding) (boisterous music) - My vision for Calvary really has to do with how it is that we are in partnership and community with our neighborhood.

That's part of the reason why it's a blessing to be able to know we will stay here in this community.

Home is this community, this neighborhood.

And so how we learn and how we partner and how we be good neighbors, but also how we just be good members of this community, that's my vision for Calvary.

(boisterous music) - White folks need to come in with humility, with open hearts, and to work to have authentic relationships with people that are different from them in order to learn and to grow.

I think once people do that and they see that their friends are being hurt, they're more likely to work towards a solution and more likely to understand why we need to do this work, why we need to change, why we need to put ourselves out there.

(boisterous music) - There is still a great hunger and a great desire for that vision of a multiracial congregation.

In the scriptures, Revelations chapter seven says that when we get to heaven, it's gonna be a multiracial gathering.

And we will come wearing our cultural particularities and our various ways, various languages and stuff around the throne of God.

But yet we will be one.

And if we don't work for reconciliation, if we don't work for justice, if we don't work to end racism, what's the alternative?

It gets even worse.

So the call to me is that even when I can't always see a future that I'm hoping for is to continue to work for it.

All churches need to be on this journey.

And it'll be a journey around race, it'll be a journey around gender, it'll be a journey around class.

It may be a journey that includes people of other faith groups.

But it's this idea of how do we build the human family and how do we live together as children of God?

- You know, it seems to me that we have been strangled by our ghosts.

The past haunts us.

It's not even past, to echo Faulkner, right?

In the sense that our refusal to admit what we've done, to admit the choices we've made to build this society, right, locks us into this loop where each generation has to grapple over and over again with the contradiction that is rooted in the evil of slavery and all that that unleashed.

So if we're going to fix this thing, we have to understand that the color of one's skin doesn't determine your value at all.

- Do I really believe that there will be a time when Black lives matter?

Do I really believe that there will be a time when at least my son's children will not have to worry about their lives being threatened simply because they're Black?

I don't want my son to have to worry about his children the way I worry about my children.

And so there are times when I just say, "How long?

Oh Lord, how long?

And if you aren't who you say you are, then just let me know."

- Right now we're living in a day and age where the idea of reconciliation seems like a fantasy or a pipe dream.

I don't think that, you know, people in my generation have ever lived in a time that is as deeply polarizing.

You almost have to go back to the Civil War to find, you know, a time where Americans have been, you know, as far apart as we are from one another.

So the idea of reconciliation seems like it can never happen.

And although I have not seen really good examples in today's world where that has happened, as a preacher, as a Christian, as a person of faith, I have to hold out hope that it is still possible.

Look, I preach from the Bible, which includes the Hebrew Bible.

And they talk about the vision of, you know, a lion and a lamb lying down together.

The idea of weapons being, you know, turned into plowshares and farming equipment.

That is a radical vision.

And I don't think it's one that is just simply reserved for the hereafter, or as we would say in the Black church tradition, the by and by.

That it has to be, at least we have to at least hope and work for it to be a vision that we can actually make happen in the here and now.

- Hope as a biblical framing, from a biblical framing and Christian framing, is that you look right at the despair.

Right at it.

And then you refuse to let the despair have the last word.

But it's not just Disney World kind of refusal.

It is, I see that despair and I'm going right inside of it, and I'm gonna begin to work on that despair and bring about hope.

So that if you are a prisoner of hope, you've got to be willing to suffer even in order to produce the very hope that you are a prisoner of.

In order to move toward possibility, you gotta be willing to face the despair, even go into the middle of the despair.

You can't walk away from it.

Dr. King put it like this.

"You don't go around the despair, nor do you go over it.

You hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪ 'Til Earth and heaven ring ♪ Ring with the harmony of liberty ♪ ♪ Let our rejoicing rise ♪ High as the listening skies ♪ Let it resound loud as the rolling sea ♪ ♪ Facing the rising sun ♪ Of this new day begun ♪ Let us march on 'til victory is won ♪ (upbeat jingles)