As widespread protests over the death of George Floyd spiral into broader demands for racial justice, religious leaders have struggled to respond to the politicization of the incident.
Every major sect of Christianity has condemned Floyd’s death, but many have been hesitant to embrace the movement that has built up around it. Calls for defunding police departments, justifications for looting, and widespread broadsides against law enforcement have presented challenges for leaders seeking to heal their communities.
“We realize that, especially in a moment like this one, we need our brothers and sisters of color,” South Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear told church members on Tuesday, adding that Baptists should say “black lives matter” because “our black brothers and sisters are made in the image of God.”
Greear, however, shied away from embracing “Defund the Police,” one of the central slogans pushed by the Black Lives Matter movement. Calling it “unhelpful and deeply disrespectful,” Greear said that dissolving police departments was a disservice to law enforcement “who bravely put themselves in harm’s way every day to protect us.”
Still, Greear said Christians should support reforms.
“I know that we need to take a deep look at our police systems and structures and ask what we’re missing,” he said. “Where are we missing the mark? And I’ll say that we do that because black lives matter.”
The SBC, like many other large Protestant denominations, has suffered membership attrition over the past several years, due, in part, to a divide between older and younger members on social and political issues.
Mormon leadership on Monday signed a joint op-ed with the NAACP, expressing solidarity with people outraged by Floyd’s death. The statement came a day after the nation’s most prominent Mormon, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, marched with evangelical protesters, telling reporters “black lives matter.”
But, like many other religious leaders, the group discouraged “looting, destruction, and defacement of public or private property,” as well as any “divisive and polarizing rhetoric” in seeking to heal racial inequality.
Leaders in the Catholic Church, both in the United States and abroad, have condemned the death of Floyd. Pope Francis called it a symptom of the “sin of racism” and expressed solidarity with protesters. Likewise, Bishop Shelton Fabre, who runs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’s committee on racial issues, praised the protests as the “righteous outrage and the righteous anger,” born out of a “struggle with a loss of lives as a consequence of racism.”
But aside from Washington, D.C., Archbishop Wilton Gregory, whose office encouraged a priest-led protest on Monday outside the White House, few Catholic bishops in America have spurred their flocks toward the sort of action that Black Lives Matter encourages.
Peter Daly, a priest in the Washington Archdiocese, said that, in his view, the “right-wing” Catholic leaders in America have more allegiance to President Trump than they do to the church. Daly, who has attended several protests in front of the White House, said that the vandalism occurring in many cities is a justified way to get attention.
Comparing the protests to the civil rights activist Rosa Parks not giving up her seat on a bus, Daly said that sometimes, Catholics “just need to stand up” when they see racial injustice.
But some religious leaders have placed themselves at odds with the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that although the central cause is noble, they cannot support everything Black Lives Matter stands for.
Joe Wyrostek, pastor of Metropolitan Praise International, a Pentecostal church in Chicago, said that since the protests began, his refusal to endorse Black Lives Matter has led to death threats for both him and some of his congregants. Wyrostek, whose church is multiracial, said he has had to hire police to stand guard during services after he supported Juan Riesco, a local business owner who did not agree with the organization’s stances on abortion and gay marriage.
Riesco, who said, “black lives matter,” but would not post any of the movement’s messaging on his company’s social media pages, closed his business for good after protesters picketed him and other businesses cut ties with him.
Wyrostek characterized the movement as an irrational mob, driven by anger.
“They’re wanting to see how far they can push this,” he said.
