More Than 150 Faith Leaders Call for Denouncing White Supremacy

A group of more than 150 theologians, activists, and ministers have released a declaration denouncing white supremacy. Titled the Theological Declaration on Christian Faith and White Supremacy, the statement comes in response both to the recent events in Charlottesville, Va., and "the events of Tulsa, OK — and Wounded Knee, and Manzanar, and Birmingham, and Delano, and Laramie, and Ferguson, and Oak Creek, and Standing Rock."

"Our task here is twofold," the statement reads, "to acknowledge and repent of the Church’s complicity in perpetuating white male supremacy in all of its forms and to hear and to heed the call to return to the truth of Scripture, fully revealed in the person of Jesus."

Signatories say they drew inspiration from the 1934 Barmen Declaration, which was adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany against calls for German nationalism by the church. 

The writers of the declaration today pointed out the parallels between some evangelical churches and the Trump administration, who struggling to condemn white supremacy and nationalism outright.

The signatories list six theological truths that used Scripture to denounce white supremacy and colonial mindsets. The first two confessions are as follows: 

1. Jesus “is the head of the body, the church,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” (Colossians 1:18-19)

Our faith is rooted in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and his teachings claim authority in life and in death.

We reject as false doctrine any other claim on our lives—whether contrived of state or reason—that violates Jesus’ ethic of the equal and inestimable dignity of all people, each created in the very image of God and as such equally created with the divine call and capacity to sustain, protect, and serve the world.

2. “For ‘In God we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’” (Acts 17:28)

Our identity as the beloved of God belongs equally to one as to all—to deny or privilege the uniqueness of any person is to malign the image of God in the whole.

We reject as false doctrine any hierarchy of human being that declares in word or deed the supremacy of any person or people group over and against other people or people groups. In this current context, we renounce white nationalism, white separatism, white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and any and all other movements that abide by the logics of domination and colonization.

The declaration was signed by well know leaders such as Rev. Dr. Ruby Sales, Shane Claiborne, Rev. Traci Blackmon, and Lisa Sharon Harper. 

Read the full statement here.