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Dear Pastors and fellow laborers in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior,I was born and raised here in Lowndes County. Today I am as disturbed as I was in 1973 when I, along with 42 other students, four ministers and their wives, were jailed for protesting unfair treatment of students in the Lowndes County School System. We were arrested while standing in the parking lot awaiting to enter the building for a meeting called by the Lowndes County Board of Education at their office on St. Augustine Road. The meeting was supposed to be a good faith gesture designed to mediate an amicable solution to the picketing which had been in process for nearly six months. After being arrested, we were moved from Big 12 in a prison truck in the dead of night. We were to be housed in the Cook County jail and none of our parents knew where we were. When we exited the truck, both sides of the walk way upon which we had to walk were lined with numerous State Troopers and other Law Enforcement officers sporting riot gear and shotguns. On the following day they refused to feed us breakfast. We began to complain and the judge came upstairs dressed in his robe. He said “I want you to stop making noise, and if you don’t, I can make you stop.”
When we complained again, the cell in which we were jailed was sprayed down with tear gas. We had one toilet and one sink in which to clear our eyes. These are facts that went unreported by the papers. In fact they said we were rabble rousers. The late Ralph Harrington signed all our bonds, and we went through a lengthy trial, represented by the late Mr. C. B. King, Sr., of Albany, GA. At the close of the trial all charges were dismissed and expunged from our records.
As a student then, I witnessed the appalling silence of men and women of God who preached the hell out of people on Sundays, collected their checks, and went home untouched by the happenings in the community. This was much like the appalling silence of ministers who sat on the sidelines while Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., placed his life on the line for “the least of these.”
Some years ago, Rev. Floyd Rose, two of my sisters and several other
members of the People’s Tribunal as well as several officers of the NAACP were jailed for opposing a directive issued by Mayor John Fretti who told Rev. Rose to sit down because “somebody else might want the podium to talk about a stray dog.” Their case went to the Georgia Supreme Court which agreed with their attorney that the law on the books violated their civil rights. Not one Minister stood with them or called to congratulate or encourage them to fight on. Incidentally, their attorney represented them on a pro bono basis because he believed in their cause. To date, I believe he is the only attorney practicing in the City of Valdosta to ever have a state law overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court.Time and time again my brothers and sisters of the cloth, I believe our appalling silence indicates fear or perhaps an unconcern for the people we have been privileged by God to shepherd. Perhaps we may be in danger of being too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. Perhaps many of us believe as those of Dr. King’s era did, that we should relegate our activities to the inside of our safe and comfortable sanctuaries. Perhaps we may feel that the gospel does not give us license to involve ourselves in social issues and have succumbed to the “social gospel” argument. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today you and I enjoy privileges at the expense of the beaten, broken, bloodied and dead bodies of many Black, White, Jewish, religious and non-religious, men and women who as Dr. King said were “too God-intoxicated to be astronomically intimidated.” So they marched on in order that our futures might be a little brighter.
Might I remind us that God has called us to be Watchmen for his people. That means we of all people should be the most informed of all people on issues and conditions that potentially adversely affect their lives. Otherwise we can not sound the alarm of warning. When I look at the meetings taking place around our city, designed to free people from the tyrannical clutches of people of ill-will, power, and money, I am sometimes ashamed that we are not better represented. How in the world can we remain silent and on the sidelines when we put before our people on Sundays a God who is omnipotent: parting the Red Sea delivering his people, pulling down the walls of Jericho, delivering the Hebrew boys from the fiery furnace, Daniel from the lions’ den, and not to mention the fact that he sent his only begotten Son to die on the cross for sinners? If it’s fear, we need to take the advice we give to our parishioners: “but God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind.” If it is a lack of concern, then we we need to honestly and fervently seek the will and mind of God concerning the things that hurt his heart. In any case, we need to walk out what we say we believe. People need to see a sermon more than they need to hear one.
I am very frank and straight forward. And I don’t believe that my conscience would ever allow me to follow a shepherd whose primary stand is in the pulpit. Saint Matthew writes that Jesus went, saw, was, and was moved because he recognized that the people did not have a shepherd, someone who genuinely cared about more than their souls and getting them to heaven. I believe we need to reorder our priorities. We need to stop wanting to have a “little” church. We need to stop trying to revive the same people we’ve been reviving for years. An old pastor said to me, “if a Church needs to be revived two to three times a year, it doesn’t need revival. It needs to be resurrected.”
Certainly it is important to preach the gospel and lead individuals to saving grace. Yet it is also important to take a stand on community issues and show up. We tell people often about how our God will “show up and show out”. But God never does anything until he can get a man or woman through whom he can do it.
The Promised Land was given to the people of God, but they had to fight to dispossess the enemy who occupied it. Recall that the the half tribe of Manasseh did not want to go over into the land of promise. But,they were not released to enjoy their inheritance until they fought along side their brothers in order that they might gain their possession.
Today a number of organizations are fighting a war against the building of a biomass plant that will certainly bring harm to our community, especially individuals already suffering from asthma, COPD, and other debilitating conditions, not to mention the quality of our air and disproportionately affecting the greenhouse effect, causing increased global warming. Brothers and Sisters, it was not until the priest’s feet stepped into the waters of the Jordan did they recede so that the people of God could cross over into the land of promise. It is that time for all of us. Though we have come a long way, this is no time for us to be “at ease in Zion.” (Know what I mean). We have to continue to fight for what is just and right.
So I appeal to all of you to search your hearts and take a stand for the sake of our children and elderly, who will most definitely be adversely affected by this biomass plant. A number of Churches are situated in the area in which this plant will be constructed. It will provide only 25 jobs but millions of dollars to powerful interests waiting in the wings in Valdosta. The fact that we are in such a crisis in America is an indication of the fact that greed has no conscience. In this environment, it appears that little remains sacred and almost everything is for sale, even honesty and integrity. No one loses themselves or their soul in one fell swoop. Rather, they lose it incrementally, bit by bit. We wake up one day and we’re not as close to God as we once were. We find ourselves involved in things that do not bode well for men and women of the cloth. The genesis of David’s great sin was that “it was the time in which kings go to war and David remained yet in Jerusalem.” What if he had gone to battle as he should have? Why did this mighty man of valor become so at ease that the sound of “Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his ten thousands” no longer motivated him? Are you at ease and staying in Jerusalem also?
Edmund Burke, an English philosopher, said “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men (and I add good women) to do nothing.”
In closing, Dr. King wrote in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” that “if the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions of young people and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20th century.” Too many of the clergy failed to stand with him then, I plead with you to take a stand, now. Heaven is not a reward for going through hell on earth. The church is a “sleeping giant in Valdosta.” Dr. King on another occasion said, “the church use to be a thermostat, regulating the mores of society; but now, it is a thermometer which merely records popular opinion.”
Since coming home after pastoring nearly 20 years away, I have noticed men and women of the cloth are quite apathetic and complacent with regard to what is happening within our community. Many are concerned about who is going to lead and who is going to get the credit. I know none of you would admit to this. But, God knows. I leave you with this thought given to me by Mr. Jett Warren. He said, in his lifetime he had come to realize that “there is no limit to the good a man or woman can do in life if they don’t care who gets the credit.”
Please join us in our work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP as we confront money and power which desires to do irreparable damage to our community and people. WE NEED YOU. IF YOU DO NOT MOVE, YOUR PEOPLE WILL NOT MOVE. THIS IS A FIGHT THAT WE CANNOT AFFORD TO LOSE!
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