Remembering George Floyd: It’s Fire This Time “ Can a man take fire in his bosom and not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27) I grew up in church. Specifically, evangelical churches. I am a proud follower of Jesus. I am also at an age where I have the privilege of seeing “Then” vs “Now”. It’s a privilege that brings me pain: for what I thought the Christian gospel was (then); and because what I thought to be true has—certainly in the west—been hijacked and packaged as a twisted, racist, ineffectual parody of itself (now). As the world-changing fallout from George Floyd’s murder has grown, so has my pain. I will share it with you in this series of 5 blogs. Let’s start with the too-little-too-late pronouncements now being made by some evangelical leaders using their Big Microphones to decry the killing of George Floyd. You know from previous blogs what I mean by Big Microphones. Its access to the media that amplify voices and views leaders care about. In the
In Equal Rights, his haunting salute to the Black struggle in the 1970s, Jamaican Conscious Reggae singer the late Peter Tosh says it like no-one else: “Everyone is talking about crime…Tell me who are the criminals…
HARD TRUTHS Remembering George Floyd: Who are the Criminals? “Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them." Gen. 6: 11-13, KJV) In Equal Rights , his haunting salute to the Black struggle in the 1970s, Jamaican Conscious Reggae singer the late Peter Tosh says it like no-one else: “Everyone is talking about crime…Tell me who are the criminals… Everyone is heading for the top. But tell me, how far is it from the bottom?” Like Black people everywhere, many of my White friends have reached out to us for help in making sense of the pent up anger that has exploded into the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. In response to these requests we are sometimes tempted to channel award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge in her book,