John Perkins, a pioneering Civil Rights activist and Baptist leader who devoted his life to racial reconciliation and justice, died on Friday. He was 95.
Born in rural Mississippi during the height of Jim Crow, Perkins’ early life was marked by hardship: His mother died when he was an infant, and his older brother, a Black World War II veteran, was shot and killed by a police officer. After leaving Mississippi for California as a young man, Perkins converted to Christianity and returned to his home state, where he began organizing for civil rights and community renewal.
Back in Mississippi, Perkins became deeply involved in grassroots organizing, helping lead voter registration efforts and economic boycotts aimed at challenging segregation and expanding economic opportunity for Black communities. In 1970, while attempting to bail out student protesters, he was arrested and brutally beaten by law enforcement in a Mississippi jail. In his book Count it All Joy: The Ridiculous Paradox of Suffering, Perkins would describe the experience as a turning point in his faith, saying he felt called to forgive his attackers. This conviction would shape the rest of his ministry and public witness.
In the ensuing decades, Perkins became one of the most influential voices connecting evangelical Christianity to racial justice. He co-founded the Christian Community Development Association in 1989 and through it, crafted the influential framework that he called the “three R’s”: relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation. As he told Sojourners in a 1975 interview, “Jesus didn’t just say ‘repent,’ but followed it up with the promise that ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ I think God calls us to something better and more healthy than the systems that are presently operating.”
READ MORE: An Interview With John Perkins
Through decades of writing, teaching, and mentoring, Perkins challenged American Christians—particularly evangelicals—to confront racism, pursue economic justice, and build multiracial churches rooted in the communities they serve. Perkins’ legacy was not only his activism but his insistence that the pursuit of justice must be inseparable from the practice of reconciliation.
The best way to honor Perkins’ legacy is take up the work of peace and justice in your own community. As we celebrate his life, here are some quotes to inspire, challenge, and motivate you to finish the job he started.
“I am all for churches being a part of the nonviolent marches and protests that have happened in the wake of violent killings, but these protests happen only after a tragic event has taken place. I want the church to be what prevents these acts from ever happening. I want the church to be the community that is so dedicated to loving our neighbors, to caring for the poor and neglected, and to living out true reconciliation that these killings do not even take place.” ― From Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win
“God has always wanted the vulnerable in society to be cared for. He never intended for them to languish in poverty, abuse, slavery, homelessness, or other types of devastation. When we care for individuals who are trapped in these ways—when we show them love and help them move toward freedom and wholeness—we participate in bringing a little part of God's Kingdom back into alignment with His greater plan. We do justice and God smiles.” ― From Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win
“But most people rebel against the concept of reparations. White people who don’t understand the depths of racism in terms of ownership don’t realize that they feel like they own the country and their futures. Many feel subconsciously they own Black people and so have a hard time feeling any debt to them. People who are a little more liberal want to say that Blacks and whites are ‘the same; after all, we’re all human.’ Well, that’s OK to a point, but the problem is that these whites, when they say Blacks are the same also assume that Blacks have had the same opportunities, the same equality that they themselves have been guaranteed, and in doing this they neglect any difference in background and culture and deny any responsibility for the sins committed against the bodies and minds of Black people in this country. When most people give, they want to feel like it’s Christmas. They want to have the joy of giving and still enjoy the privileges of being white and the warm living room comforts of this society. Folks never want to think that there might be something wrong with the system which gave them their wealth.” —From “An Interview with John Perkins”
“What disturbs me most is that civilized, evangelical leaders hold much of the power and control in our nation and in our world. Yet our evangelical leadership is not creative or compassionate enough to deal with the truths that burst in upon us every day—the economic/social truths of race hatred, energy crisis, crime, hunger, and poverty—in light of the healing mandate of the scriptures.” —From “Stoning the Prophets”
“We are moving through the world too fast with a gospel that is too easy. We have been over-efficient and ineffective. The false dichotomies we have made in our theology have taken the power out of the gospel. We have offered people a formula, our formula, rather than new life. We have said that the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus without adding that it is also God's visible love meeting human need in history through people filled with his spirit.” —From “The Reconciled Community in a World at War”
“Jesus got specific in some of the terms of the surrender by telling the rich young ruler to follow him, but first to mobilize all of his resources and give them to the poor. John the Baptist pointed the multitudes to the Christ, but first gave them explicit economic instructions. These admonitions make demands upon rich and poor alike: even one who has just two coats or some food is commanded to share.
What does this mean? To me it means that the way we use our resources is related to our salvation.” —From “Rich Man, Poor Man”
“European-Protestant theology in today's church has tended to emphasize salvation to the minimization of commitment. As a result, we do not have a body of faith sufficient to bring about the kind of conversion that develops commitment to Christ. What we have is simply a gospel that saves people individually and prepares them for heaven.” —From “Commitment and Responsibility”
“Individualism in our society, as I look at it today, is the greatest threat to an understanding of the church and the meaning of being a Christian. Yet, the unique contribution of America in the history of humankind has been the perfection of individualism.
The result is a generation of Christians trying to find ‘God's will for my life’ rather than God's will period.” — From “Individualism: Antithetical to Community”
“What we need is a change created by Jesus Christ in our institutional behavior equal to the change that can occur in the life of an individual. Jesus offers himself in his church as the corporate model through which we can live out creative alternatives that can break the cycles of wealth and poverty which oppress people.” —From “Relocation, Reconciliation, and Redistribution”
“Almost without exception, when it comes down to a confrontation between racism and Christian conviction in white people, racism wins out.” —From “A Strategy for Change"
“Jesus offers himself in his church as the corporate model through which we can live out creative alternatives that can break the cycles of wealth and poverty which oppress people.” —John Perkins
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