The 800 Pound Gorilla in the Room: Racism
Pastor Fredrick Russell of Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church in Atlanta, Georgia was once again compelled to scrap a prepared sermon in order to respond to recent events, These events ocurred in Louisiana (the death of Alton Sterling), Minnesota (the death of Philando Castile), and Texas (the deaths of Lorne Ahrens, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, and Brent Thompson). Predominately improvised Sabbath (7/9/2016) comments by Pastor Russell are embedded in this link to the ENTIRE SERVICE. They commence with the reading by the speaker of some scripture about Noah, and the evil age he lived in, precisely at time marker 1:38:55. The pertinent passages from the Bible, Genesis 6:5-8, are duplicated below:
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created–and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground–for I regret that I have made them”
“But! Somebody say ‘but,'” Pastor Russell stated just before providing the third of the three verses…
…Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (NIV)
A prayer followed the reading of scripture, one which included the following requests to God: “…Lord, we are living in this world, and we don’t live in a monastery, cloistered away from life; we live, all of us, on the front row of life everyday” [a visiting Adventist later remarked to me that the pastor should not be dragging topical material, such as these recent fatal encounters, into a Sabbath sermon. I badly wanted to reply with a reference to Nero’s fiddle, but remained silent instead. But the Sabbath was, after all (according to Jesus) made for man, and not vice versa]. The Pastor now proceeded to read the names of the dead:
“Philando Castile, in Saint Paul, Minnesota.”
“Alton Sterling, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.”
“And then, on Thursday night, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, Brent Thompson, and Lorne Ahrens.”
“All of their lives collided together this past week,” Pastor Russell said. The incident in Louisiana was first to be touched upon. “… With our brother in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; we saw what happened there. And what we cannot do, as a black community, is immediately jump to conclusions. Sometimes we’ve got to wait for it to come out. But when it came to Saint Paul, Minnesota, there was not a lot of second guessing, because we saw Diamond [Reynolds], the girlfriend, calmly, with her hands stable, as the police had his gun trained on her, begin to give the commentary on what was happening at the moment.” The policeman involved in the incident said that he had instructed Philando Castile to put up his hands, but that the victim “did not do it.” Ms. Diamond replies, “No you didn’t sir. You asked him to go for his I.D., and that’s what he did, and you shot him in the arm. You shot him four times.” Pastor Russell said that what Ms. Diamond did not know at that time was that her boyfriend was dying.
Pastor Russell continued. “We saw what happened in Baton Rouge where, in the absence of community policing, community policing being that you know your community you serve in well enough to know the character of the community, what they do on a regular basis, and I would like to suggest if the police had known Alton Sterling, he would not have been shot. They would have known that for years that he had stood in front of that store selling CD’s. And when a homeless brother calls in [to the police] because he is pushing him [Mr. Sterling], just harassing him, he called in and made that false report.” The pastor asserted that, were the police of Baton Rouge less disconnected to the populace, the officers sent to investigate the complaint would have immediately known, “That’s Alton!”
“This past Thursday, ironically, I, along with a number of senior pastors that you saw on the news Thursday night, were invited to the Carter Center… to a meeting” [Thursday also happened to be the 70th wedding anniversary of President and Mrs. Carter]. Pastor Russell informed us that there were about 300 attendees, a group that included many law enforcement chiefs from the Greater Atlanta area. Out of the thousands of churches that are also located in Atlanta, a few hundred church leaders were present at the meeting. The purpose of this meeting was the “roll-out” of a new initiative called “One Church, One Cop,” [here is a link to a news report about a preceding initiative called “One Church, One Precinct“] where a church adopts a policeman in their area. Pastor Russell clarified the concept of “community policing.” “When policemen get out of their car, and they know their communities, then they relate to the law enforcement responsibilities in a different way…”
Pastor Russell described it as an “amazing meeting.” One of the persons (not a policeman) present spoke of a simulation that they participated in, one that presented some of the unexpected situations that an officer may encounter on the job. Police are often called upon to make “split-second decisions,” the pastor related. Officers are usually family men, and their daily objective is to make it back home safely to their families each evening. Pastor Russell recalled that he himself has been stopped a number of times over the years. He has been “profiled.” The treatment he has received is not like that that his “majority colleagues” would have to go through. The pastor has developed a filter that he utilizes to pattern his behavior, “just like everyone else” [meaning his “minority colleagues”]. The layperson who participated in the aforementioned simulation was presented with several potentially deadly scenarios, ones that involved guns. The participant had previously been very critical of many of the nation’s lawmen, who display an unfortunate tendency to “shoot first, and ask questions later” [1% is the figure floating around the media at present]. But now, under the intense pressure of the simulation, they were making some bad decisions, ones which may have resulted in unintended fatalities were the situations real, and not imaginary. These fatal errors, in reality, are in most cases unintentional, and they can weigh heavily on the consciences of the officers involved in them.
Pastor Russell now observed that there indisputably exists another type of officer. To this unenlightened breed, “Every brother, every sister in the community is suspect.” They not only enforce the law, but can, on occasion, administer the death penalty. They know that they are in a position to literally “get away with murder.” The pastor continued, “When you come at it that way, you are not only prone to make mistakes, people can end up dying…”
The Saint Paul incident was inaugurated as a “tail-light violation.” Pastor Russell noted that he had been stopped before for similar reasons [“pretexts” might be, in some cases, a better word. I have actually heard new gun owners express a strong desire to use their new toys at the first opportunity that presents itself. There actually exists some flawed individuals who, despite he best safeguards, nevertheless manage to enter the ranks of law enforcement. They relish opportunities that allow them to flex their muscles, and can, for a season, operate like renegades and vigilantes. The worst consequence that usually results from fatal shootings by the bad cops are brief periods of “paid administrative leave”].
The victim in Saint Paul, Philando Castile, had done “all of the right things,” the pastor affirmed, in order to not provoke a bad reaction by the officer who confronted him, “Things I taught my own son,” Pastor Russell added. “When you have a police stop, you keep your hands on the wheel. If you are only driving with one hand… put both hands on the wheel. Don’t do any jerks. Don’t do any sudden moves. Just say ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir.’ If he says to you, ‘can I get your license,’ if it is in the glove compartment… tell him, ‘I am reaching for my license. I am pulling out the wallet. I am taking the license out of the wallet. And here is the license.’ How many dads in here understand we have to do that with our sons?” The responsible fathers in the congregation, which included many accomplished professionals, and was replete with law abiding citizens, all raised their hands.
The pastor was up at 2 am, preparing to shift the focus of this sermon. A member of the church who happens to be an attorney emailed him about 3 am, This led to the inauguration of a phone call between the two at this exceptionally early hour. From 3:20 am to 6 am, the two of them talked. They concluded that the “overarching” and “undergirding” dynamic for all of this insanity is the subject of race,”
The issues that have affected our nation are considered from different viewpoints, depending (not exclusively, the pastor qualified, but predominately) upon the race of the person who is wrestling with these issues. Black and white views reflect the “polar opposites of the racial divide,” Pastor Russell observed. Pastor Russell does a lot of work outside of his home church (which is predominately African American) in the white community. A few weeks back, a Caucasian friend of the pastor called and made the statement, “Freddie, I am so angry. I don’t like what’s happening in this country, and based on what I’m seeing, I’m beginning to hate!” The white speaker was ready to lay the blame for all of this on President Obama, as if the Commander in Chief were directly responsible for all of the racial animosity that is fouling the atmosphere at present. Pastor Russell interrupted his friend’s subsequent list of grievances to remind him that when Barrack Obama assumed office, there were already racial challenges in this country. They were not his creation at all. But the pastor added that “What happened, with a brother becoming president of the country… it pulled off the covering of what was already there.”
The covering being now removed, the unsightly contours of our nation’s zeitgeist is fully revealed. Pastor Russell said, “What you’ve got now is just a real ugliness, and we are literally, in this country, on a precipice.” It is a precipice we must take care not to go over. Pastor Russell keeps up with the news [conceivably even on the Sabbath]. He also checks the reader comments upon the news [a bully pulpit the silent majority often forsakes, but nuts, who in some cases might actually be the uninhibited harbingers of the majority opinion, are irresistibly drawn to these little comment boxes]. A white commentator recently opined, “Don’t worry about what happened in Dallas. This is good, because we are about to do a racial purging in this country, and we are going to end up in this country, in about two years, where it is all white again.” Reasonable responses by other readers to this statement questioned the sanity of the commentator (Russians once loved to subject their Jewish population to destructive and meaningless “pogroms,” as anyone who has seen “Fiddler on the Roof” is aware of. I could now drag in Nazi attitudes toward racial persecution and “cleansing,” but I got into too much trouble the last time I made this obvious, apt, but also highly incendiary analogy].
The pastor continued. “We have a political candidate right now who is saying ‘we need to go back to America the way it was” [I am reminded of Reagan’s slogan “It’s Morning Again in America”]. Pastor Russell offered a brief history lesson to his listeners. “Some of us see ‘America as it was’ in a different light.”
There undoubtedly exists in this country a racial divide. Pastor Russell once again qualified the presumed solidarity of the majority opinion by asserting that there exists some Caucasians who see things in a different light. But most of the white audiences that the pastor addresses are weary of talk about race. Many of these groups seen to have an implied contract with the pastor. He is welcome to speak to them, as long as he does not speak of racial matters. They appreciate that Pastor Russell’s usual world-view places primacy upon God, rather than race. They inform the pastor that other black speakers “always bring up the racial stuff, but you didn’t.” Pastor Russell has a new reply to this questionable appraisal: “But I will this afternoon.”
But Pastor Russell fully intends to address the topic of race from a Christian perspective, because “…it is the 800 pound gorilla that sits in this county.” When events such as those that have happened in the last week occur, everyone goes off and sits in what the pastor designated out “tribal corners, and we peer at each other until you get the ugly speech on all sides [a Sunday commentator on CBS observed that, though we may retreat to opposite sides of the room, we are nevertheless still in the same room]. Every action brings about a reaction, and every action is not always positive.”
“And so we see a single brother, a gunman, get on a rooftop…” The police arrive to protect people who are not demonstrating against the police themselves, but against the suspicious circumstances surrounding the incidents in Minnesota and Louisiana. The protest is a peaceful one, and the relations between the protestors and police are amicable. “That’s when the brother [Micah Xavier Johnson] gets on the rooftop… and he begins to ‘execute’ [a termed used by the media, noted the pastor] policemen who have families to go home to. That was real. And yet, what happens sometimes in the cars, when brothers and sisters are stopped, sometimes that turns out to be an ‘execution’ also.” The racial divide brings out a sense of moral opposition when these ‘executions’ are considered. Saint Paul and Baton Rouge draw this reaction from the black community: “What is this? What is going on? This is such an outrage! And the majority community [whites] is silent,” Pastor Russell noted.
He strode back toward the pulpit. “Here are some things I’d like you to know this morning.” He took possession of his Bible, an object wherein solutions to all of life’s difficulties may be discovered.
“There is the issue… not only of the idea of ‘equal protection under the law,’ … but there is ‘equal value of life.’ And if, as a ‘Christian,’ I continue to define the value of a life based upon the color of a person’s skin, or the color of the person’s uniform, or the color of anything else, then I do the exact same thing that I am skewering others over. There is a Christian way through all of this…” He revealed that the Christian church (not just Adventists, for “God is using a lot of folk right now”) has an important peacemaking role to play at this time. “But when the church remains silent, then we join with the masses; we respond like everybody else.” As a Christian. the pastor proclaimed that he, for one, could not respond like everybody else. When he heard of the deaths of the brothers (Castile and Sterling), his heart broke. When he was apprised of the additional deaths in Dallas on Thursday night, his heart got broken all over again.
Pastor Russell revealed the wellspring of his sensitive responses to “tragedy upon tragedy.” He asserted that “our hearts break because, at the end of the day, we know that it has nothing to do with race. Ultimately, it is a Sin issue that we are dealing with in this culture right now.” In the Word it is revealed by the Lord that “prior to my coming,” He will slowly, again [a reference to the days of Noah] withdraw His Spirit from the earth.” Pastor Russell now revealed the results of this withdrawal. “You will see an increase of hatred, and the love of many will do what, the Bible says? Wax cold!”
Pastor Russell has a characteristic expression that he frequently employs when he is seeking to emphasize a point. He now employed it as a preface to his next remarks. “Look at me, everyone.” The brother who died in Baton Rouge, and the policeman who took his life; Pastor Russell revealed this fact: “Jesus died for both of them.” The policeman who “pulled the trigger” on the brother who died in Saint Paul; Pastor Russell noted again that, “Jesus died for him also, and Jesus went to the cross for him.” And the “brother who got on the rooftop on Thursday evening, on the parking garage… the Lord also died for him.”
Pastor Russell had managed to do a lot of thinking, considering that he had only been active since 2 am that morning. He spoke to his intentions: “So on next Saturday evening… as you know on next Saturday afternoon we will be having an “End It Now” rally… [against domestic violence and human trafficking]. But at seven o’clock… we are going to leverage the racially mixed group [expected] on this lot… we’re going to talk about, in this sanctuary, about what happened in this last week. We will have law enforcement people here who will talk about it through their eyes. Other who will talk about it… with law enforcement.” The pastor had consulted with some of the church leadership. The question of the hour, relating to recent developments, was this: “How do we create some positive steps coming out of this?” The church is not interested in just having “people talking at the mics and out on the plaza, just talking.” But rather, “What do we do as a community?”
Representatives of the new “One Church, One Cop” initiative will be present. Pastor Russell quoted Atlanta Chief of Police George N. Turner with regard to the intensive training that the members of the Atlanta Police Department receive in the art of “de-escalating” a situation. The Thursday meeting at the Carter Center that the pastor attended was focused on ways to prevent Atlanta from becoming another Cleveland, or as he noted, “my old city of Baltimore.” As the police get out of their cars in the metropolitan area, and as they get to know and relate to each other, when potentially explosive situations occur the police and the citizenry will not just be “peering at each other across the blue line,” the pastor prayed. Instead, they will say, “We know this cop. We know these people. We know this community.” The projected meeting will be an inclusive one, with all races and denominations invited to attend. It is not to be limited to a discussion of the “things that happen, and constructive ways to deal with it, but here is the chance we’re going to take on this one,” Pastor Russell proposed, “and this is where you need to pray, because anytime you talk about race, its so real to everybody that sometimes its difficult to get through.”
“We’re going to bring up the ‘elephant in the room’ [a.k.a. the ‘800 pound gorilla’], and that is how we all view each other, and understanding that we view each other over the racial divide. That we cannot [at present] have a healthy response when things happen to each other.” The congregation, and the online viewers, were urged to fill the church next Saturday evening, and not to arrive in a state of anger. Again, Pastor Russell mentioned that the “overarching,” and “undergirding” theme of it all will be “how do we talk openly, and in a healthy way, about the racial divide that we have. As long as people can talk, they can work through anything. But when they cannot talk, then everyone gets upset, and we see each other in the worst light.” The conclusion of the sermon was now at hand, but the healing of our nation lies, unfortunately, just a bit farther down the road.
“How many of you are Christians in this room?” There was a show of hands. “How many of you know that our white brothers and sisters, they are not our enemies?” The same hands reappeared. Some whites may feel that they are enemies, but Pastor Russell vowed that the members of Berean were enemies of none. Racism is excluded. “…We are Christians first,” he assured one and all, black and white. A third question was asked: “How many of you know that, as Christians, that when people do you wrong, God still commands of us that we love them? {this attitude, implied earlier in the sermon, was now unambiguously stated here at the end.] All hands were raised in affirmation of this unambiguous and uncompromising belief.
The tale of the Flood was revisited. God had repented that He created mankind. Noah, by distancing himself from the evil that pervaded the age he lived in, escaped from the condemnation of the majority. A statement by Pastor Russell at this time reflected a traditional Adventist belief: “In every generation, there are those who maintain their loyalty to God, and in every generation there are people who represent God, even though the rest of the culture may go against God, and how they act, and what they do.” Noah was such a soul. He stood “flat-footed,” and despite all of the evil that surrounded him [evil that is becoming increasingly prevalent in our own age]. Noah stood in opposition to the spirit of his time and place. He remained unspotted. God revealed His attitude towards Noah’s exceptionality in Verse 8 of Genesis, Chapter 6, which now bears repetition: …Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah would endure, while the evils surrounding him were to be extinguished.
The pastor prayed that, even if Berean SDA Church had to stand alone, they were going to deal with the issue in a straightforward manner. It would not be “covered up.” The congregation of Berean is in a good position to make a difference. Pastor Russell was not attempting to flatter the congregation when he made his next statement. He was merely noting a fact: “I know there is one church in this city, I am convinced of, that I know most of the folks in that church are Christians”. There may be others, but he hoped that God would one day look down upon the present congregation and inform them that they had succeeded in finding grace, and favor in the eyes of the Lord.
“We not gonna hate nobody, because if everything works out, maybe, just maybe, some of these folks who got killed got a chance to call upon the name of the Lord.” The pastor added that it was possible that those who had been the unjust killers also got a chance to call upon the name of the Lord. As he had noted years ago, Pastor Russell again revealed that “The most wonderful scene that will take place in heaven is when the murderer, and the murdered, can stand hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, worshiping, loving on, and praising the same God.” Pastor Russell has not only been praying for the victims and their families this week, but also for the perpetrators and their families. He has also been praying for our country, and that he may be used as a catalyst, despite all of the hatred, to help bring about a powerful Christian response of love, “Because it is true: love trumps evil all of the time. And as Dr. King, quoting Schopenhauer, said… ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, and it always bends toward justice.’ Because when Jesus shall come, all of this will be over, and all of those who have chosen Jesus Christ as Savior will be saved.”
And God shall wipe away all tears. No more crying. No more dying: that stops. No more killing police. No more police killing this person. No more hatred. But the Bible says, “the former things be passed away,” and God says, “you won’t think about them ever again.”
“But we’re still here right now. And the fact is that our response as Christians will always be one that represents God, because I’m not loyal just to my country, and just to my family, and just to my ‘tribe.’ But ultimately, I’m loyal to the God in heaven, and at the end of the day, that’s the One that we are trying to please.” A short prayer concluded the impassioned forty minute improvisation. It was preceded by a song, Here I am to Worship. The summarizer of these remarks will link an additional, one less meditative, and more motivational. Here is a 1978 recording of James Cleveland singing “On the Battlefield for My Lord.” In the Old Testament, Hebrews had the quaint custom of shipping the dismembered body parts of the victims of some outrage or other to distant kinsmen as a type of “call to action,” whereby combined forces might join together in order to help to correct some temporary deviation in the proper trajectory of the “moral arc of the universe.” Pastor Fredrick Russell’s impromptu sermon was an equally urgent “call to action.” We can be apart of the solution to the “overarching” and “undergirding” problem of racism in America, and in the world. We can do this by simply behaving like Christians. The unmistakable sign of faith is works. There is much work to be done. Now is the time for everyone to get busy.
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