TO REDEEM THE SOUL OF AMERICA

Address Given By:
The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, Ph.D.
Senior Pastor, Ebenezer Baptist Church (Atlanta, Georgia)

 The National Cathedral
Washington, D.C.
Friday, March 16, 2007
© 2007 All Rights Reserved

 
Sisters and brothers, I greet you on behalf of the Baptist branch of our ecumenical family.  We affirm, with the scriptures, that “of one blood, God has made all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth…that they might grope for God.  And yet, God is not far from any one of us.”  (Acts 17.26)  As a Christian and as senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I had to be here.  We would do well to remember Dr. King’s mighty witness against the triplet and interconnected evils of racism, poverty and war, as we rise up in this moment as soldiers in the justice-seeking, nonviolent army of the Lord.  More than ever, America needs our moral witness. 

The president is pushing forward with his surge of troops, deepening our involvement in the morass of an unnecessary war.  Ignoring public sentiment clearly expressed in this past November’s elections, ignoring the advice of his much trumpeted bi-partisan Study Group, and ignoring the counsel of his own generals, he insists that this is the way to go.  And, the Congress, by its actions or lack of action this week, has proven thus far to be too morally inept to intervene, too politically compromised to act with real courage and conviction .  So, America needs our witness more than ever.  We’re stuck because on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and on both sides of the aisle, the wrong question is being asked.  On both sides of the aisle, the controlling concern is that America may lose the war, and so the question being asked is, “What are we going to do to keep from losing the war.”  I submit that as people of faith, we must re-frame the question and help others to understand that the danger confronting America is not that we may lose the war.  The real danger is that America may well lose its soul.  We must re-frame the question.    

For I hear Dr. King say, in his famous speech at the Riverside Church in 1967, that “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”  But Dr. King was a servant of Jesus.  And, I hear Jesus, that radical rabbi from a ghetto called Nazareth ask, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?  Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul.” 

But a nation can lose its soul – that is to say that it can lose its sacred connection to its creator and its spiritual covering  that no amount of Homeland Security can provide. This is why when Dr. King and others began the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, the mission, mantra and motto for the organization was “To Redeem The Soul of America.”

Fifty years later that must be our mission as we gather and then leave from this place.  We must redeem that which really is in danger - America’s soul.  Whenever there are billions of dollars and then billions more available to bomb Baghdad, but never enough to rebuild New Orleans, an American city, parts of which still look like a Third World Country a year and a half after Katrina, our soul is in danger.  How can you bomb and then rebuild Baghdad and neglect New Orleans, that great city that taught our souls how to sing even when you have the blues?  New Orleans - That great city whose culture embodies the resilience of the human spirit, the creative ability to take a mess of pottage and make gumbo? 

New Orleans bears mention tonight because it is a tragic symbol of America’s misplaced priorities and its unfinished business with poverty.  The Poor People’s Campaign was Dr. King’s last push.  Yet, as we pursue, 40 years later, another senseless war,  1 in 5 American children is born in poverty, 1 in 2 African American children is born in poverty.  Our soul’s in danger.  As we go to war, 40 Million Americans have no healthcare.  Soul’s in danger.  It took the congress 10 years to have a serious debate about raising the minimum wage.  It raised its own wages every year during the same 10 year period.  And this week, the Congress dared to tie an over due raise in the minimum wage for the poor to the funding of the war.  Triplet evils.  Racism, Poverty, War.  Soul’s in danger!

And so, we must tap into the best of our respective faith traditions in order to redeem the soul of America.  I remember my own crucified people who endured the cross of slavery and segregation.  They identified with Jesus because existentially they knew what crucifixion was all about.  In the spiritual, they asked, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord.”  And, during the era of Jim Crow segregation, they identified with this Jesus hung on a tree because they knew what lynching was all about.  Billy Holiday used to sing about it.  “Southern trees bear strange fruit.  Blood on the leaves, blood at the root.  Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze.  Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”  His own ruthless brutality notwithstanding, I could not help but hear that haunting song as I watched Sadaam Hussein hang at our behest.  I thought to myself, “Surely, we’re better than that!”  And before that the violent carnival and absurd human cruelty of Abu Graib.  Surely, we’re better than that!  And then to witness the neglect of our own soldiers at Walter Reed!  Surely, we’re better than that! 

We need a surge of troops in the nonviolent army of the Lord.  We need to lift high the cross as “an eternal symbol of the extent to which God is willing to go to restore broken communities.”  We need a surge in conscience.  A surge in truth telling and activism. We need a surge in the nonviolent army of the Lord.

“If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (II. Chronicles 7.14)