Monday, October 27, 2014

Bethel Church to show and discuss the movie "Freedom Summer"

Freedom Summer
Bethel Church
201 E. Old Plank Road
Columbia, Missouri 65201
November 1, 2014
5:30 pm

It’s difficult to walk standing tall when each step lands in fear.  Sometimes I wonder how the Freedom Riders travelled on those buses while hate chased from behind.

On Saturday, November 1, Bethel Church will watch the Movie Freedom Summer. Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized Freedom Rides in 1961 to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision that segregation of interstate transportation was unconstitutional. The rides were modeled after the 1948 Journey of Reconciliation which tested the 1946 Supreme Court decision Morgan v. Virginia that ruled segregated bus seating unconstitutional.

It started on May 4, 1961 when 13 Freedom Riders – seven black and six white – boarded a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C. headed to New Orleans, Louisiana.  They hoped to arrive in the Big Easy in time to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17th.

The first confrontation occurred in Rock Hill, South Carolina on May 12. John Lewis, now a U.S. Congressman, and five others were attacked as they attempted to enter a white-only waiting area. Two days later, a bomb was thrown into the bus after a mob of about 200 surrounded the bus in Anniston, Alabama.  Pictures of the burning bus and bloodied riders appeared in newspapers around the world.

Violence continued in Montgomery where a white mob beat riders with baseball bats and clubs. That night, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. As more than one thousand gathered inside the church to support the riders, a riot arose outside forcing the Governor to dispatch the National Guard.

Some riders were arrested for trespassing. As the violence and arrest received international attention, hundreds of new Freedom Riders joined the cause. The mobs and violence did not deflate interest, it intensified the movement.

Some would say that’s old news.  Why show a movie about events that took place over 50 years-ago?

What lessons can be garnered from ruminating the mean ways of those from recent history?  Shouldn’t we lock all of that away and pretend we have drifted from the thoughts of those holding bats and clubs not so long ago?

Even more critical in this conversation is the church showing the movie.  It’s not being shown by a congregation with a majority black membership.  It’s not part of a discussion for Black History Month.  Bethel Church, the congregation where I serve as an Associate Pastor, is showing the movie.

The membership at Bethel is overwhelmingly white.  Besides me, there are only two blacks who attend.  We are a minority within a congregation that works hard to overcome and understand the hate from our recent past.  It’s significant that Bethel Church is willing to address this issue.  Some of them own the hatred and racism within their family.  They have been willing to share their stories with me - a black man wounded by racism.

They are willing to talk about the past. In doing so, they are aware that some of what hurts still attacks the soul of the faith we share.  It’s painful to face, but we have to stare it down and demand that the grip of the past be cast to the gates of Hell.

On this past Sunday, I preached a message about love within the context of hate.  I shared the madness of that dreadful day in Durham, North Carolina when a person called the office of the NAACP and left a voice message threatening to bomb a local church.

Fear settled among the congregation I served.  Members called me demanding that we cancel worship that Sunday.  Some talked about memories of witnessing black men dangling from trees like strange fruit. Some talked about memories of black girls dying in Alabama while people prepared to worship God. Some talked about the glares of white people when they walked in their direction.

Pain and fear settled in like dry bones withered by heat.  I had to decide what to do.  Tears overcame me as I faced my decision – would we cancel service or stand in faith like those Freedom Riders?

My phone rang.

“We want to gather in a circle around the church and pray,” John Friedman, senior rabbi at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham, NC, told me on the night before I faced the fire.  “While you and the congregation worship, we will stand and pray.”

Sunday, I preached about love. I preached about loving the way you desire to be loved.  Love doesn’t judge. Love doesn’t remind people of their mistakes. Love seeks a way to move beyond all form osf division as we seek the emergence of a new way.

Love is standing with those too afraid to stand on their own.  It’s taking risk with those who face hostility because of the prejudices some create.

That’s why Bethel Church is showing and discussing Freedom Summer.  It’s the congregation’s way to own past mistakes while seeking ways to move past the wounds caused by racist ways. 

But maybe, just maybe, there’s another message behind showing Freedom Summer.

Could it be Pastor Bonnie Cassida and the members at Bethel Church are making a statement to me?  Maybe they are saying to me “help us understand your pain.” Could it be their way of affirming my presence in the room and a willingness to fight through everything, no matter how much it hurts, to get to the other side of what it means to be an authentic community?

To that I say yes.

I love you too.

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