It is naïve and uncritical to describe the racial injustice dominating American culture and politics as simply the latest iteration of bigotry to plague the nation, Willie Francois III said during the Progressive National Baptist Convention’s 64th annual session in Chicago.
“We know that racism has spanned the entire history of this country, and we know that patriarchy has been in effect the full tenure of this experiment with democracy,” said Francois, co-chair of the PNBC Social Justice Commission.
Willie Francois
But this is the first time a president has operated so broadly without checks and balances, he added.
“When we say democracy is on the line, we are really talking about an all-out assault on Black life and an all-out assault on Black freedoms,” he said. “We have never been in a moment in this country where oligarchy, authoritarianism and totalitarianism were baked into the very systems we pretend are democratic.”
Francois was one of many speakers during the denomination’s July 20-24 gathering to level a broadside against the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the severe cuts to education, health care and food programs contained in the new comprehensive spending measure.
Ministers and delegates also vowed to push back on government repression through civil disobedience and to lead boycotts of corporations that have eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs to please President Donald Trump.
“Each of our preachers has challenged us this week to stop shopping where we can’t work or where our people work without dignity, whether through slave wages or prison labor,” PNBC President David Peoples said.
David Peoples
Those corporations must “repent and repair” through policy reforms and investments in Black communities, he advised. “We withhold our dollars until they honor our dignity so they know we don’t just have a message, but we have a movement.”
Peoples also blasted the administration for leading the kind of government that, in biblical terms, “makes the people mourn.”
“I’m so fed up with this MAGA bull crap. I’m so fed up with people walking around touting themselves and being arrogant and cocky and racist. I’m so fed up with this foolishness that we have going on in the White House.”
The “craziness” also includes the budget bill and the deluge of executive orders, Supreme Court decisions continually widening the gap between rich and poor, Peoples said.
“I can’t support taking away millions of people’s health care. I can’t support raising the bar for people to get Medicaid and Medicare and food stamps and Social Security. I can’t support a budget that funds more missiles than meals. I can’t support making it a crime for women to get health care or have a necessary abortion. I can’t support getting rid of the Department of Education and whitewashing our history and our books.”
Jamal Bryant
Since Trump’s inauguration, the nation has had a “front-row seat to see what bad leadership looks like,” said Jamal Bryant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta and leader of the denomination’s boycott against Target.
Citing the words of PNBC co-founder Martin Luther King Jr., Bryant said the Black Americans are “confronted by the fierce urgency of now” at a moment when the Black church is at its weakest.
“The church is losing its relevance and losing its maturity. I have to report that this is the largest amount of Black people in the history of our being in America who do not go to church — 28% of Black people do not identify with organized faith” and 7% identify as atheists.
With the racial justice gains achieved from 1946 to 1973 being rolled back by the Trump administration, PNBC must respond with a civil rights movement capable of hitting white companies in the wallet, Bryant said.
“If our people only hear about economics when you are asking for a tithe, then you are running a sanctified Ponzi scheme.”
“Economic development has got to be our agenda as we move forward. If our people only hear about economics when you are asking for a tithe, then you are running a sanctified Ponzi scheme. We have got to do something that talks about how do we reverse gentrification, how is it that our young people can move from being employees to being employers, and how do we shift the narrative from being renters to being the owners?”
American Christianity as a whole also has been part of the problem, according to Charles Dates, senior pastor at Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago and author of What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness?
Charlie Dates
“The pulpit in America has been used to malign, to marginalize and to the harm more people at times and in some corners than it has actually helped people,” he said. “Our nation would not be in such bad trouble if it were not for the church.”
In fact, race and racism cannot be discussed in the U.S. without also talking about religion, he added. “Even right now, there are preachers who stand up and laud everything that the current president does as the moral law and order of God.”
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty is working on legal and grassroots levels to counter that abuse of faith, said Sabrina Dent, director of the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation.
“We recognize that religion should never be used as a tool or weapon to cause harm to other people, and yet we recognize that in order to experience the fulness of freedom and liberation as a divine right — not just a constitutional right — that we must do the work of justice to ensure change happens.”