We, the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, as first-hand witnesses to the violence of white supremacy and white nationalism during the summer of 2017, where white men with semi-automatic weapons marched through the streets of Charlottesville in an act of domestic terrorism, denounce the horrific murders of the 17 students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. As a community of faith leaders who are committed to standing as witnesses for love, justice, and unity - we continue to pray for the victims, their friends and families, and an end to this senseless violence.

While we firmly believe in the power of prayer, we recognize that our varied faith traditions also compel us to act upon our beliefs and we acknowledge that we too have a part to play in making those prayers a reality.  Therefore, we do hereby commit ourselves to the following actions.We will advocate at the local and national level for laws that prevent or reduce gun violence.
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This includes promoting universal background checks on all gun purchases, ensuring all guns are sold through licensed gun retailers, working to repeal the Dickey Amendment, and advocating against laws that seek to increase the presence of guns in society, especially in public places such as schools and churches.

• We will advocate at the local and national level for laws that prevent or reduce gun violence.
  • This includes promoting universal background checks on all gun purchases, ensuring all guns are sold through licensed gun retailers, working to repeal the Dickey Amendment, and advocating against laws that seek to increase the presence of guns in society, especially in public places such as schools and churches.
• We will work to connect with, and support, those who are directly impacted by gun violence.
  • This includes using our time, talents, finances, and physical presence to create a community in which all people feel welcome, safe, nurtured, and fully included in our common life. It also includes supporting local and national efforts to draw attention to the issue of gun violence.
• We will continue to make the prevention of gun violence a regular part of our conversations and prayer times.
  • This includes an educational aspect for ourselves and our respective congregations that conveys an understanding that gun violence must be worshipfully and theologically reflected upon.

As an example of our commitment to these actions, we in the Charlottesville Clergy Collective officially support the “March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C. to show our solidarity for the students of Parkland as they call for school safety and gun control.  We affirm their witness and look forward to marching with them. More information can be found at www.marchforourlives.com.

Signed:
Rev. Dr. Alvin Edwards, Mt. Zion First African Baptist
Rev. Rabia Povich, Charlottesville Inayati Order
Rev. Dr. Michael Cheuk, Peakland Baptist, Lynchburg
Rev. Dr. Susan A. Minasian, Sojourners United Church of Christ
Apostle Sarah A. Kelley, Faith, Hope and Love International Healing and Deliverance Center, Inc.
Rev. Phil Woodson, First United Methodist Church
Rev. Joshua T. Andrzejewski, Chaplain, VCU Health
Pastor Brenda Brown-Grooms, New Beginnings Christian Community
Rev. Sandy Wisco, Retired Lutheran Pastor in ELCA
Rev. Dr. David K. Garth, Westminster Presbyterian Church
Rev. Robert Lewis, Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church
Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Emrey, New Beginnings Christian Community
Jeanita Richardson, Congregate Charlottesville
Dr. Jan Rivero, Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church
Adam Slate, President, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Lynne T. Clements, Associate Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church
Pastor Cass Bailey, Trinity Episcopal Church
Susan Beers, Presiding Clerk, Charlottesville Friends Meeting
Rev. Carol Carruthers Sims, Grace Episcopal Church
Rev. Byung Y. Ju, Korean Community Church in Charlottesville
Rev. Colleen Swingle-Titus, Pastor, Park Street Christian Church
Rabbi Rachel Schmelkin, Congregation Beth Israel
Rev. Dr. Eugene T. Locke, Parish Associate, Westminster Presbyterian Church
Rabbi Tom Gutherz, Congregation Beth Israel
Rev. Dr. Jim Bundy. Retired - United Church of Christ
Rev. Karen Lewis Foley, Retired - Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Seth Wispelwey, Restoration Village Arts
Pastor Daniel Xisto, Charlotteville Seventh-day Adventist Church
Rev. Winn Collier, All Souls Charlottesville
Cynthia Power, Charlottesville Friends Meeting
Rev. Maren Hange, Charlottesville Mennonite Church
Sharon Beckman-Brindley, Senior Teacher, Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville
Rev. Robert Lewis, ​Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church

The Charlottesville Clergy Collective sponsored a presentation and Q&A by Christian Picciolini, held at Mt. Zion First African Baptist.

Christian is a former white supremacist/neo-Nazi leader who renounced that life and is now wamzn.to/2E2MowQorking toward helping people disengage from hate and violent extremism. He is the author of White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement–and How I Got Out.
 
Here's are some links to find out more about Christian:

• Wikipedia
• NPR interview: A Reformed White Nationalist Speaks Our on Charlottesville
• Christian' TEDxMileHigh talk on how he got radicalized to become the leader of America's first neo-Nazi skinhead gang, and how he got out
• His 60 Minutes interview and accompanying article

Below is an interview with Christian before his main presentation ...

Chad Lawson Cooper's live production of "Justice on Trial: The Play" will at showing on December 8, 2017, 7:30 p.m., at the Martin Luther King. Jr. Performing Arts Center, 1400 Melbourne Rd., Charlottesville, VA.

This production is centered around two civil rights attorneys suing the U.S. Justice Department for reparations for African Americans in a courtroom setting, bringing back expert witnesses such as Harriett Tubman, Emmett Till, and Medgar Evers to tell their stories.

Our very own Rev. Xavier Jackson, Pastor of Chapman Grove Baptist, has a role in the play!

This play is sponsored by the Piedmont District Baptist Association, of which Rev. Xavier Jackson is currently the moderator.

For more information and to purchase discounted tickets, please contact Rev. Xavier Jackson
434 977-5080 or Jacksonxv@aol.com. 

Professor Leslie Kendrick, will lecture on "Free Speech, Hate Speech, and Equality" on Sunday, October 29, 4:00 p.m., at Congregation Beth Israel, O'Mansky Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

​Professor Leslie Kendrick is the vice dean of the University of Virginia School of Law, from which she received her law degree in 2006. She joined the school as a faculty member in 2008, after clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Hackett Souter and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III '72 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  She received a B.A. in classics and English as a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her master's and doctorate in English literature at the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Her scholarship, which aims to understand the big-picture questions about why we have freedom of speech, has appeared or is forthcoming in the Virginia, Harvard, Columbia and Michigan law reviews. She is past chair of the Torts and Compensation Systems Section of the Association of American Law Schools and is a member of the Harvard Higher Education Forum. In 2014, she received the Carl McFarland Prize for outstanding scholarship by a junior faculty member.

The Charlottesville Clergy Collective received some major attention in this column from Deseret News written by Kelsey Dallas, a Yale Divinity School classmate of the Rev. Elaine Ellis Thomas.

* * * * * *
The Rev. Elaine Ellis Thomas spent a recent Saturday singing, chanting and marching through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, with several hundred of her neighbors. She was one of the estimated 1,000 people gathered to protest the Ku Klux Klan rally taking place in the city that day.

Clad in a bright pink, sleeveless shirt and her clerical collar, she joined hands with other members of her community's interfaith group. The Charlottesville Clergy Collective wanted to bring God's presence to bear on the July 8 event and stand united against racially motivated violence.

"We couldn't just sit still in the face of this evil coming to town," said the Rev. Thomas, associate rector at St. Paul's Memorial Church.

However, as people of faith, they also felt they shouldn't hurl insults at the assembled Klan members, she added.
"I'm not sure that shouting obscenities and profanities at people actually honors God or the dignity of people at whom they're shouting," the Rev. Thomas said.

Her view sometimes gets lost in the current anger epidemic affecting many Americans. In an age of social media spats and growing political polarization, anger is all the rage, which could mean trouble for people's physical, mental and spiritual health.

Trying to avoid anger all together is a losing battle, but religious people can draw on their teachings to learn how to channel their wrath toward a worthwhile cause, according to faith leaders and scholars.

"It's how you channel anger that makes the difference in acting in accordance with faith principles," the Rev. Thomas said.

For the rest of the article, please visit:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865685018/Is-there-a-religious-way-to-get-angry.html

Rabbi Tom Gutherz, Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, offered these remarks and prayer at the Sprint Pavilion on July 8.

This afternoon we would like to share a few words from our Hebrew Scripture.
Actually just three words, from Psalm 89:  Olam Hesed Yibaneh.
Because of the way Hebrew works, this could be translated a couple of ways.

It could mean: Love can build a whole world.

That is, when we practice acting towards one another in a loving way, we bring into being
a whole network of relationships, which become a solid foundation on which an entire
structure can be built and also sustained

It can also be interpreted as a prayer, or a demand, or a hope:
A world of love: He will build it
A world of love: Let it be built!

We may address this prayer, this demand to God. This world of love: God can build it
Or perhaps it is God addresses who addresses it to us: A world of love: Let it be built!

And the word hesed describes a certain type of love.
It is not a love of something, but rather a love towards someone.
It is loving-kindness, a compassionate and caring love for another person. 
Hesed is an attribute of the Holy One: an always-giving love,
a love that has no limit,
an indivisible love
of which there is enough to go around for everyone

So this our answer to those who come here to preach hate, and exclusion, and supremacy:

Olam Hesed Yibaneh
I will build this world from love
And you will build this world from love
And if we build this world from love
Then God will build this world from love

                                                            Rabbi Tom Gutherz, Congregation Beth Israel
                                                            Rabbinic Pastor Heena Reiter, Pnai Yisrael Chavurah

Rev. Dr. Harry Kennon, Pastor Emeritus of First United Methodist Church, offered these words and prayer to those gathered in the sanctuary of First United Methodist prior to the march.


In my United Methodist tradition, our baptismal vows those seeking church membership are asked several questions, including these two:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?  Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
 
Friends we are gathered here for one primary reason: to resist evil.
And specifically to resist the sin of racism, personified for us by the impending presence of a Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan just a block or so up the street.
But before we face this enemy of all that is holy, we need to gird ourselves up with the spirit of truth and the power of prayer.
And the truth is that the KKK wouldn’t be here today unless they thought they had allies.
Know this: The KKK is not seeking to bring racism to our community so much as they are seeking to amplify the racism that already exists here.

So with that being said, I invite you to pray with me:
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Sovereign God, Lord of Heaven and Earth, of all that has been, is and ever will be…
We are gathered here today as people with different backgrounds, with different faith traditions, or with no faith tradition.
We are Black, we are White. We may be Christians, or Jews, or Muslims, or Hindus, or practitioners of some other faith.
Still we share a common humanity and we are all of us children of God.
We are drawn together to protest what is wrong “out there” in our world,
And to offer an alternative reality under the banner of love, and peace, and respect, and hope for a better world.
We are here to celebrate our unity in the midst of diversity, and to lift up what is good, and kind, and right.
Still, if our gathering here is to have meaning; if our voice is to be authentic;
If we are to possess any moral authority, any power to speak out against evil,
We need first to confess our own sin.
We need to own our history, and to accept our own complicity in the continuing scourge of racism.
So we confess complacency in the face of hostility in the past and in our time…
We confess that during the hey-day of the KKK in the 1920s, even some of our churches turned a deaf ear to the blatant racism in their pews.
Even today, we sometimes remain silent to ignorant, racist words spoken by family members and friends, preferring easy comfort over difficult justice.
Some of us have chosen to accept the status quo without acknowledging our places of privilege.
Some of us, both black and white, have withheld love, and harbored animosity our hearts, allowing our fear and our suspicion to define our reality.
Some have uttered hateful racist, sexist, or otherwise dehumanizing comments.
Some have refused to engage with our neighbors because of the color of their skin.
Some have projected malevolent motives upon others rather than looking into their hearts.
By our own actions or inaction, we have denied the image of God in others while claiming it for ourselves.
So we pause to reflect and to repent of our sinful ways… of choosing violence over peace of choosing oppression over equality of choosing division over unity of choosing fear over love.
Forgive us we pray, and empower us this day to set aside any animosity in our hearts and concentrate fully on the task of presenting to our community an alternative vision, one driven by forgiveness, acceptance, and love for all
May we each embrace the words of the Psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” Amen.
I invite you now to turn to a neighbor as you are led and offer words and signs of reconciliation and peace.
 
“Let there be peace on earth” 

Jay James of CBS Newsplex 19 interviews Rev. Elaine Thomas of St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church.

Reverend Seth Wispelwey, Co-Moderator of Sojourners United Church of Christ, offered this "sending prayer" at First United Methodist Church, right before the march onto Justice Park and the Sprint Pavilion.

May God bless us all with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless us all with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us all with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, war, and racism so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us all with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

​Amen.