CHURCHES LOOKING FOR ROLE IN PROTESTS
Faith leaders were crucial in advancing civil rights movement, but clergy face challenges in 21st-century activism
Save for the occasional yarmulke or clerical collar, the group of clergy was indistinguishable from the blackclad, sweat-covered throng of marchers in downtown Houston.
The 150 or so members of Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston nestled at the back of a thousandsstrong crowd at Discovery Green on Tuesday after meeting in a hotel lobby to pray together. They listened to speakers and then marched for George Floyd, the man who spent his last minutes beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.
None of that may sound remarkable. But it was in many ways a departure from protests past: Religious leaders have historically played an outsize role in struggles for civil rights, using their church buildings for people to congregate in safety, away from police, and their pulpits to galvanize protests.
Things are different now: Mobilization starts online, making it less important for activist groups to have gathering places or a single leader, religious or not.
In Houston, faith leaders in recent years have worked with political leaders, seeking change from within the system.
Now those leaders face the challenge of how to connect with people seeking justice and turn the energy of the protests into long-term change.
It won’t be easy. Though they have the ear of Mayor
Sylvester Turner and others, Houston’s religious leaders acknowledge they must do more to earn the trust of younger, less-religious activists in a largely leaderless movement that’s skeptical of traditional power structures.
“There’s absolutely a generational divide,” said Rachel Schneider, a Rice University fellow who studies white progressive Christian movements. “When they look at the older generation, often what they see is people who are very individualistic and focused on their own personal morality, but who have been ignoring the larger issues.”
Despite its diversity and progressive political leaning, Houston has never been known for its protests.
“There’s just a different kind of activist culture,” said Cleve Tinsley, who researches race and religion at Rice University.
The city has seen large turnouts over, among other things, LGBTQ rights, environmental issues and, in 1977, the killing of Jose Torres, whose body was found in Buffalo Bayou a few days after he was arrested by Houston police. But mass protests have remained the exception.
While the city’s religious and elected leaders have historically had good relationships, Tinsley said, much of their work was often done behind closed doors, in “back-door meetings.”
Many of Houston’s religious leaders still work closely with Turner and others, which Tinsley said is general
ly a good thing. The downside is that religious leaders can be perceived as being part of the same systems that activists seek to dissemble.
“No activist group or community is opposed to churches at all,” he said. “But I think we do have to admit that there always has been this tension about what are the best forms of representation.”
Today’s protest movements have largely shunned hierarchy or organizing under the direction of well-known, charismatic figures that were crucial to the civil rights movement. Their focus is on building coalitions that are inclusive and give seats at the table to those who have historically been shunned by many religious groups, such as the LGBTQ community.
The nature of organizing has also changed. The civil rights crusaders of the 1960s relied heavily on churches because they provided protection from police and a way to communicate with the broader community through the pulpit.
Now there’s Twitter, Facebook and Zoom.
“Activists don’t need to meet at churches anymore,” said Ashton P. Woods, co-founder of Houston’s Black Lives Matter chapter. “If they want to be connected with the activist community, the onus is on them.”
The way some religious leaders approach activism, particularly those who use “respectability politics,” minimizes the structural challenges faced by marginalized people, Woods said. But while the church’s role in protests has changed, Woods said, there’s still plenty of work for the faithful to do.
“It doesn’t always have to be in coordination with me,” he said. “Not everyone can get out there and protest, but they’re doing other things to support, and I’m grateful for that.”
Turner echoed that sentiment, noting the response to Floyd’s death has come from “people across the board.” The mayor says that is indicative of a change in how people think about racism, inequality and other issues specific to minority communities.
“Racism and the things that led to George Floyd permeate our society,” Turner said. “It is systemic, and I think people are recognizing that.”
After the protest
African American faith leaders said they see a difference in the response to Floyd’s killing.
“I do believe a tide is turning,” said the Rev. Irishea Hilliard, pastor of New Light Christian Center. “I believe that change is coming, that there’s a different desire in our community.”
But real, substantive change isn’t coming overnight or through a few marches, she said. Hilliard has been adamant about that when working with youth at her church, one of Houston’s largest.
“Protesting is good, but what happens after the protest?” she said. “Where are you spending dollars? Are you going to vote? Do you understand the power of legislation?”
On Wednesday, more than 20 local imams sent a letter to Houston leaders, including Police Chief Art Acevedo, in which they asked for stronger civilian oversight of police and more diversity and deescalation training. A group of local rabbis sent the same request a few hours later.
Muslim and Jewish groups have both been outspoken about the death of Floyd and other African Americans, in whom they see reminders of the historic and ongoing oppression faced by their own faith traditions.
The goal now is to “internalize the voice of the black community in households,” said Shariq Ghani, an imam and the director of the Minaret Foundation. “When you do that, this idea that it’s just happening in the black community goes out the window.”
The need to focus on the plight of the oppressed is clear to many faith leaders.
Martin Cominsky, CEO of Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, said his group needs to do more outreach and education efforts, particularly toward those who remain silent about inequality, police violence and injustice that drove recent protests.
The changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic have ended up binding his group together more tightly, he said.
“Faith leaders may be talking more closely to one another than they ever have been,” Cominsky said. “Now our challenge is how we act together. It is our responsibility, now more than ever, to convene to find the right opportunities to bring the right people together.”
‘Not getting better’
Convening those people may be challenging. Research by Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University, shows that white evangelicals and Catholics have substantially higher rates of racial resentment than those belonging to other, more racially diverse faith groups. Among evangelicals, Burge also found a correlation between frequent church attendance and feelings of racial resentment.
Those findings echo similar research done after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Polling at the time found that 80 percent of African Americans said Brown’s death “raised racial issues that merited discussion.” Conversely, nearly half of white Americans said the case received more attention than it deserved.
Schneider, the Rice University researcher, said the frequent deaths of African Americans at the hands of police — now often captured on video — have made it increasingly difficult for many white Christians to ignore racial violence and inequality. She pointed to groups such as Showing Up for Racial Justice, which was formed after Ferguson as a way to challenge white people’s views on race and equity issues.
The election of President Donald Trump — in part thanks to massive evangelical support — has also caused a “moment of reflection and soul-searching,” she said.
“There has been a growing awareness of the need to talk about race, to talk about white privilege, mass incarceration,” Schneider said. “Showing up in solidarity or being a white ally has become increasingly normalized.”
Bishop Shelton Bady hopes she’s right. Bady, the pastor of Harvest Time Church, a predominantly African American congregation in Houston, said he feels constantly “on the verge of tears” over Floyd’s death.
“It’s the feeling of hopelessness because it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse,” he said. “After all we have said, all we have done, it doesn’t appear things are progressing.”
His church recently started men-only meetings to give male members a place to vent, to “speak from our own pain.”
This may be an inflection point, he believes, but said he can’t help but get frustrated that it took Floyd’s death for people to acknowledge the systemic oppression that African Americans have spent centuries warning about and combating.
And he worries that much of this will be temporary — that Floyd’s death will spark a brief moment of anger and solidarity locally but not the long-term advocacy required for true change.
“We’re feeling a cultural shift in America,” he said. “But it is hurtful that it had to come to this. If you can’t look at basic injustice and call it wrong, then what do you stand for?”