When to mention race and when not? My fellow journalists who covered the funeral of the woman who died in the D.C. Metro last week chose not to mention it. Perhaps they deemed it a distraction, too fraught a subject to bring up at a solemn, family time. My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that in this instance they missed a significant story.
Carol Glover’s funeral—held, in God’s timing, on Martin Luther King Day—was a marvelous display of love and peace among people who might have been divided by race but were united by the gospel.
I went to the funeral as a member of Carol’s church, Capitol Hill Baptist, five blocks from the Capitol. Carol was African American, and her huge family came, as did an enormous turnout of those who had known her. Many church members who hadn’t been close to her were there, along with those who had, and some strangers who learned about the funeral from the media. The Washington Post put the crowd at over 600. My estimate is that it was about 60 percent black.
At this more-than-half-black funeral, though, some white figures were conspicuous. Carol’s younger son Marcus is married to Suzanne, who is white, and they too are members of Capitol Hill Baptist. Suzanne read from the pulpit.
One of the two men who tried to save Carol’s life by administering CPR to her in the Metro car, a white man named Jonathan Rogers, was there. Carol’s older son, Anthony, thanked him from the pulpit and expressed “love” for him and said, “My family is your family.”
And the pastor who presided and preached, Andy Johnson, is white. It was his message that was raceless.
Johnson spoke about being ready for death. He believed Carol was ready when death came suddenly for her, and said all of us should seek to be. His text was a short prayer from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi. It was printed in the funeral program, and Johnson read it out three times in course of his brief sermon:
All the family and friends who had already spoken had testified to the “fruit of righteousness” in Carol’s life, to her exceptionally loving and joyful personality and constant concern for others. Her mother in particular had spoken of Carol’s radiant faith. That faith had led Carol to choose a church where the gospel is preached undiluted.
Would that the gospel of repentance and faith and newness of life had been consistently preached and universally understood in the American colonies where, instead, kidnapped Africans were bought and sold as slaves. Would that it had been taken to heart in every self-described Christian church over the centuries since. Would that media, quick to report on race when it relates to bad news, were equally alert to opportunities to publicize harmony.
As Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian pastor, knew—and the funeral of Carol Glover showed—the true gospel brings unity in diversity and interracial peace.
