Should the church take sides or stay neutral with the #BlackLivesMatter movement?

The struggle has come near, so what should we do?

When is it the right time to take sides, standing with those that live with the daily threat of violence, suffering, and death? Who decides? In the midst of 400 years of white supremacist terrorism many Christian communities still do not want to take sides. Neutrality and the middle way has always been a tempting option for those not directly violated by the concrete death-dealing forces taking people’s lives away quickly through bullets on the street, as well as slowly through economic and social exclusion, the school to prison pipelines, and through psychological and cultural violence against black humanity and worth. Most white Christians, and many middle class racial minority communities, have cut themselves off from any intimate life together with poor black communities that struggle every day with a multiplicity of oppressive obstacles. But a movement is happening all around us.

The poor and oppressed are realizing that the kingdom of God belongs to them and they are now hungering and thirsting for our world to be set right. Many of those residing in the cracks of our society, whom have been ignored and stigmatized by American dominant culture, have immediately dropped everything because freedom called their name. They have nothing to lose so they are willing to accept the consequences that come with a clash with the establishment through nonviolent prophetic action. Called out from the patterns of our social order (white supremacy, dominant cultural respectability, economic idolatry, and the denigration of black humanity) people are gathering together to make their voices heard and then are scattering out to take the good news of a new movement back to their own communities.