Ferguson and Faith

Sparking Leadership and Awakening Community

Leah Gunning Francis

• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780827211063
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Kirche

The shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, reignited a long-smoldering movement for justice, with many St. Louis-area clergy stepping up to support the emerging young leaders of today's Civil Rights Movement. Seminary professor Leah Gunning Francis was among the activists, and her interviews with more than two dozen faith leaders and with the new movement's organizers take us behind the scenes of the continuing protests. Ferguson and Faith demonstrates that being called to lead a faithful life can take us to places we never expected to go, with people who never expected us to join hands with them.

Ferguson and Faith is the first book from the partnership of the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE) and Chalice Press.

CHAPTER 1

Just Protest This by Prayer!

“All my life, my political and social and spiritual selves have all moved together; I just could not separate them.”

United Methodist Bishop Leontine T. C. Kelly

The Ferguson police station was a daily site for protests after Michael Brown was killed. For months, protestors regularly gathered in front of the police station to bear public witness to their outrage because of the shooting death of Michael Brown. They chanted, marched, and held up signs. They made their demands known to the police through chants such as, “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” and they implicated the entire criminal justice system with chants such as, “The whole d**n system is guilty as h**l!” They were resolute in their witness, and were determined to give voice to the egregiousness of this offense. When they chanted, “We’re young, we’re strong, we’re marching all night long,” they meant it. They were young, as most were in their late teens and twenties. They were strong, as their fortitude was unwavering in what became for them a daily way of life. And, oftentimes, they marched long into the night.

On September 29, a typical protest night took a memorable turn. Young activists were present and chanting fervently, and the police were posted in front of them, fully dressed in riot gear. However, on this day, more clergy were present than usual, because word had spread that young protestors were often being arrested during these evening protests. In the midst of the standoff, a few clergy took a decidedly different public action: they knelt on the sidewalk outside the police station and prayed. They symbolically laid down their collars on the altar of justice and made clear that their resistance was an action of their faith.

Clergy kneel to pray between police and protesters at the Ferguson police station on September 29. (Photo by Philip Deitch)

Many pictures were taken of this action and posted quickly on social media. These pictures were often described as “iconic” because they depicted clergy doing something many had not seen in any Ferguson-related events. Not only did they voice their support of the protestors, but they put their bodies on the line and brought the gravitas of their moral authority to the moment and movement. They sent a clear message that they were bringing the resources and authority of their faith to the cause of racial justice.

Several notable events happened that evening as soon as the clergy knelt to pray. First, the atmosphere changed from raucous and rowdy to silent. The chanting stopped and the protestors listened to the prayer. The police seemed uncertain how to respond, since they were confronted with a different kind of protestor and tactic. Surely someone had to consider what the optics would look like if they dragged the group of middle-aged, collar-wearing, loudly praying clergypeople off the sidewalk and cuffed them. None of the clergy were arrested that night, and it became a mile-marker in the movement for racial justice.

Rebecca Ragland, pastor of Holy Communion Episcopal Church in University City, Missouri, describes her experience from that evening.

I heard on the news that people were getting arrested at the police department. Even by the end of September protestors seemed to say “We’re not giving up on this.” So I went to Ferguson and there were a lot of clergy. We had emailed a lot of the people we knew and said, “We need to go,” and so we went. We were trying to say, “I think we need to be present because there needs to be de-escalation” since there had been this string of arrests every night.

The protestors were doing their thing. It seemed fine, but we didn’t really know each other yet, the people that were out on the line. Then we all stepped out into the road, and the cars were still coming, and Mike Kinman and I started to direct traffic with several other people. We were just trying to keep the traffic away so the cars could turn around.

Then the police came forward. There was a little interaction and then it was really scary. Everybody’s scared, and then [Osagyefo] Sekou went forward and knelt. Mike was really instrumental in getting the kneeling part for us because we were both just standing there praying out loud and then we came right up onto the sidewalk and we all just knelt. As we knelt then the protestors, who had been in the middle of the street, came forward and stood behind us. And as they did that, it got just quiet. You could actually hear crickets. It was that quiet just for a minute.

Sekou prayed out loud and then I prayed and Mike prayed and so we prayed up and down the line, and I thought to myself, “If we keep praying, we could pray all night and just protest this by prayer.”

Jon Stratton, an Episcopal priest and director of the Episcopal Service Corp, was present that night with several of the interns from the service corp. He describes the evening in this way:

So there were about 20 or 30 people, and police come out in their riot gear. There was a row of young protestors in the street. The police were saying, “Get out of the street or we’re going to arrest you for unlawful assembly. Disperse or you’ll be arrested.” And the clergy knelt down in front of the police with the protestors behind, and the atmosphere changed. We knelt down and prayed, and the atmosphere completely changed. The protestors—this is amazing—the young protestors came up behind the clergy, laid their hands on the clergy and knelt as well and prayed.

And it was very tense in the moment right before we knelt down and prayed. The police were dumbfounded when we did that. They didn’t know what to do. That was the first time that clergy were out in this way. I mean, there were clergy who were out all the time, so I don’t want to discount that. But this was the first time clergy were out in a really visible way, and I think it just surprised the police and changed the atmosphere that night. I mean, there were no arrests made. There was no tear gas or rubber bullets. The police stood down. They eventually left.

The Episcopal Service Corp intern program is a ministry of the Episcopal Church. Through this ministry, recent college graduates commit to one year of service in a designated U.S. city in nonprofit or church-related organizations. Jon Stratton describes the program as

…a national program in the Episcopal Church. There are about 30 different locations of intentional communities, of young adults in their 20s who are taking a year to live in community, together under one roof, to share our common rule of life. It’s based on Benedictine values and Benedictine spirituality, and then they work in not-for-profits for that year. So kind of like AmeriCorps meets St. Benedict meets the Episcopal Church, Dorothy Day kind of thing.

This particular cohort began their St. Louis internship over Labor Day weekend; however, they committed to serve for one year in St. Louis before August 9 and quickly found themselves engaged in the Ferguson protests. Seven young adults came to St. Louis from around the country, despite some of their loved ones’ fears and discouragement. Brendan O’Connor, an intern from Wisconsin, describes his rationale for getting involved in the protests:

I felt compelled to go to the things that Jon Stratton had been inviting us to in these protests for a number of reasons. I really had a sense that this is the city and the community that we’re entering into. If we want to be serious about this, that we want to be a part of this, and we want to be part of the force that is here to help and stand for just the Christian ideal here in St. Louis, then we have to be a part of this.

It doesn’t mean that we get to be the leaders. I never thought of myself as being some sort of leader or on the frontlines, but I recognize that this was a moment where I had to at least be there to listen and to learn and even just be a body for support. And I was there at a number of events, but I was never especially salient. And I can recognize that I’m not like one of the saviors of these events, and I’m okay with that.

I was an auxiliary member of the Student Labor Action Coalition [in college]. So it was, I felt, like a way to add another layer into my trying to understand things about justice, and this was a police-related thing which is something I hadn’t had much experience, and also involving race relations. So before [Ferguson], I happened to watch the film “Fruitvale Station,” which was about the killing of Oscar Grant. So this seemed pretty real and it was very disconcerting realizing like why does this keep happening, and, also made me mindful that this event and the response to it is not – this isn’t a onetime thing. This has happened before.

Rosemary Haynes, an intern from North Carolina, describes her experience that night in front of the police station.

So [September 29] was a Monday, and on Mondays, we have Euc...