A Tale of Two Cities: Charlotte and Tulsa

Sep 24, 2016 by

by Canon Phil Ashey, AAC:

Every morning I check the news headlines and frequently rely on my mobile phone’s app for CNN.  It’s not very often that I find positive things about the Church in the headlines, but today I was both heartened and convicted by this story:  “Why Charlotte exploded and Tulsa prayed.”  I invite you to see for yourself the article and the embedded videos here.

I am heartened that even the secular media would take note that in two different cities, where police shot and killed two black men, people expressed their pain in drastically different ways.  I am heartened that the secular media would ask “Why did it look so different?”  CNN quoted the words of the brave Public defender in Charlotte who stepped between police and rioters, begging them to disperse and avoid further bloodshed. “People are hurting, man. People are upset. People are frustrated. People need leaders,” Public Defender Toussaint Romain added.

But as the CNN article observes “It’s not that the people of Tulsa aren’t angry — far from it. It’s how they are channeling that emotion…  Rev. Ray Owens of Metropolitan Baptist Church (Tulsa OK), which held the vigil, opened the service by saying he was offering the church as ‘a space for safe, yet constructive expression of our righteous rage’ in light of the shooting.”

“People are looking for leaders.”  Leaders who will bring genuine healing, justice and racial reconciliation to our deeply divided country.  Isn’t it telling that even the secular media find that leadership at a time like this in THE CHURCH of Jesus Christ, in leaders like the Rev. Ray Owens who provides holy ground in Jesus’ name for people to express their anger and brokenness?  The Church, and not the streets, is a safe place for people to express their anger and fear because it is under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and his transforming love.

Read here

 

 

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