What is a young black man’s life worth in the United States of America? In 2012?
These are the questions that continue to haunt me as I lament the killing of Trayvon Martin. On Feb. 26, the 17-year-old was walking from a convenience store to the Sanford, Fla., home he was visiting when he met up with 28-year-old “neighborhood watch captain” George Zimmerman. According to media accounts and Sanford police officials, Zimmerman, who is Hispanic and white, admitted that he shot and killed Martin, who is black. The Sanford police made no arrests. They allowed Zimmerman to walk away following his claim of self defense.
In the weeks since the shooting, the resulting outcry over the unarmed teen’s death has moved from the blogosphere to social media to mainstream media and spilled into the streets of New York, Miami and a Thursday night rally in Sanford. It has taken nearly a month to reach critical mass. An attorney for Martin’s parents has asked that people gather March 26, on the one-month anniversary of the young man’s death, at the regularly scheduled Sanford City Commissioners meeting.
I can’t help but contrast young Martin’s killing with that of Emmett Till, an African-American teen from Chicago whose 1955 lynching arguably sparked the Civil Rights movement. Two men were arrested, tried and acquitted of murder charges in the case. What it revealed about America at the time was even more sinister. It brought to light the explosive racial tensions that permeated the South during the Jim Crow era - a time and place where the murders of African-Americans often went uninvestigated.
It also brought to light the seeming hypocrisy of evangelical Christian leaders who often failed to decry these killings, maintaining the status quo of a South where racialized violence often went unchallenged.
So, I ask now, where are you, evangelical Christian leaders? What is your response to the killing of Trayvon Martin? Many, but not all, Civil Rights and church leaders in the African-American community have been outspoken in their calls for justice for Martin. But so far, the leading evangelical Christian leaders appear to be silent. And that silence is deafening. It’s not as if no one has asked. Rick Warren tweeted that he was in Rwanda and not following the news. At this point, he has yet to respond after being alerted by a tweet about the story. Other evangelical leaders, such as Joel Osteen and Franklin Graham, have also remained silent, at least publicly.
That’s in stark contrast to causes adopted by many evangelical congregations. Indeed, as Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, is visiting Rwanda as part of the church’s ministry there, it seems that evangelical leaders choose not to minister to Trayvon Martin’s family or any family of a murdered African-American teen. It’s almost as if it’s easier and less complicated to aid blacks in Africa than it is to stand up for and seek justice for blacks in America. Or does this case reveal something else?
What Do You Think?
- Do prominent evangelical leaders have a responsibility to champion certain causes or should they be free to champion whatever ones they choose?
- In this instance, why do you think the Trayvon Martin incident has received less attention from many American evangelical leaders compared to causes overseas?
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Comments (50)
Do leaders have a responsibility to speak out? Yes, but not every leader can speak to every issue. Still, it's disheartening that no member of mainstream evangelicalism has stepped up on this one, or if they have it has not been prominent enough to garner attention.
Why has Trayvon's death in particular not been given the attention of overseas causes? Probably because those leaders have been involved in those causes for a long time. For this case to get the same attention, it would have to be in the context of a Warren or Hybels or MacArthur already being involved in improving the lives of people like Trayvon Martin.
Perhaps if they were already doing so it would be much easier for them to speak out when this type of individual tragedy arises, don't you think?
Tim
But, I think the question is valid. And I think it plays into the racial divide that exists within the church, even for those who extol the virtues of diversity in their churches. I have often found that when it comes to "race issues," many of my white counterparts feel disqualified from commenting or commenting too much. Part of it is because they fear it is not a mantle they will carry very long and they will later be called to the mat for picking up some cause du jour, rather than truly caring about the ongoing plight of racial tension in a South Florida town.
I don't thin white evangelicals bear a responsibility to jump on every major issue that comes up, but I do believe they have a call to speak out against injustice and walk into the breach to be part of the healing process.
What is more, while outrage is merited for a time, is it not also the job of all Christians to call for peace and reconciliation? Not some pie-in-the-sky, "Christians are supposed to be forgiving so lets forget about atrocity," but actual, counter-culture, scandalous calls for reconciliation. The kind of reconciliation that will offend people because it is antithetical to anything any of us feel like giving? Maybe that's a whole other question and it comes from what I'm personally wrestling with between Miroslav Volf and Desmond Tutu and Scripture. But, wrestle we must.
What do black Christians and white Christians do in the wake of all this? Whether this man is convicted or remains free, how are Christians to respond? Do we call for his blood! Or, like Casey Anthony, do we forget after a few weeks and live without forgiveness and with illusions of our moral uprightness?
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/trayvon-martin-race-and-the-gospel
While I understand what you are saying, I don't want to insist that everyone react to every news story.
From my place, I first heard about it through Shaun King and his work with @hope. So I did hear about it from an Evangelical leader, albeit one that is African American.
If not, then there is no reason to think that their reluctance to speak up about this particular murder case has anything to do with the race of the victim. Claiming so, without any reason to make the claim, is essentially race-baiting.
Yes, we all have causes that we support. I speak up about some things, and leave other things to be spoken up about by others. I, for example, have been involved with situations in the Middle East, but have remained silent about situations in China where I have less knowledge. Does that mean that I am a racist, that my silence is racially motivated? Of course not.
If a Hispanic family a mile from you has their house broken into, and you don't stop by and visit with cookies, does that mean that you are racially bigoted against Hispanics? Probably not. The accusation would only be fair if you routinely took cookies to people of other races in similar situations... only then would your lack of response be a sign of racial prejudice.
There is enough true racism in our world today. Making claims of racism where there is no evidence of it only dilutes the concept, and hurts the cause of eradicating true racism in our communities.
Mark
The truth is, some people just want to cry about the racism problem anytime they even slightly suspect racism. The oddity is that this makes THEM racist as well.
Is this the Race Card one gets when one signs up to be a minority Club Member (USA Charter)? Are you suggesting the fact that Black and Latino Americans - and particularly youth - are routinely and systemically targeted by poverty, police, and the justice system to be some sort of advantage one gets with the use of this card?
Membership sure has its rewards. But bragging about it, I guess, is a if faux pas.
Speaking out about a racially motivated murder, in which the perpetrator has not even been arrested, is not "playing the race card." There's a difference between speaking up about a murder in which the victim happened to be a minority, and speaking up about a murder in which a black victim was called a "f*#!ing coon" by his killer moments before he was shot. Pointing out that a murder was very likely racially motivated and that white evangelicals have been oddly silent is hardly race-baiting.
And in your analogy re: Hispanics (fyi, the term is Latino now) - our culture has been handing cookies to everyone else for years. Think of the response to Casey Anthony, Jon Benet Ramsey, Elizabeth Smart, and any other pretty little white girl who goes missing. Nancy Grace et al go nuts! But Trayvon's family had to fight for coverage of his death. So, yeah, media coverage of these sorts of things is pretty racist. We tend to more sympathetic to white children dying than we do with black kids.
And like Kimberly said, I'm extremely wary of someone who can look at Trayvon's case and then say that our reaction to it undermines efforts against "true" racism.
The truth is, Trayvon's parents are running a media war - disabling Zimmerman from any chance of a real fair trial. The accounts that have been given are only small snapshots of a much more complicated situation. A lot of stuff happened quickly - it takes time to properly vet the details out.
And in my hood, the Hispanics here prefer "Hispanic" or "Mexican". A Latino is typically a dainty Hispanic girl.
Most of the famous evangelicals I can think of are the super-pastors that I'm wary of.
I was just thinking about why Christians don't band together to publicly speak out against the terrible things that Pat Robertson has been saying for years.
Maybe ordinary Christians need to figure out a way to be visible for situations like this.
Being of the 2K (two kingdom) side of things, I see this less as racial issue than one of utterly bad policy. That is, seeing only race allows us to escape to a kind of sentimentality when we really need to look at the practical and legal side: this is a bad law that introduces a new layer of lethality to DWB.
Also, since when is asking a question considered judgment?
And Zimmerman is Hispanic and white.
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