Feb. 20, 2025

By Rev. Rick King

Less than two months into the new administration, it can feel at times like pursuing a just society is an overflowing shopping basket, each item a different cause or concern for people of faith—and we just don’t know which to prioritize, because they’re all so important.

And yet, it’s also important to remember that these are not individual items separated from one another, but instead like threads interwoven with each other and making up a seamless garment of justice. Amid the events of the last eight years, you and I may have forgotten the word “intersectionality,” which is just a fancy sociological term for “All of this is connected; these are not competing causes; don’t let them pit one against the others!”

For all the rolling-back of diversity, equity and inclusion programs within businesses, nonprofits, and entities that receive government funding, no one can take away the longing for “A Just World for All,” as our UCC slogan puts it—because that longing is implanted in us by God, and no one can forcibly take it away from us.

But we can give it away. We can forget it. If we’re not vigilant, you and I can lose the ability to distinguish God’s truth from government’s falsehoods. Let’s not be ignorant of Black history, because, as William Barber, Heather Cox Richardson, and others remind us, “We’ve been here before.” The sin of white supremacy is nothing new. Yet, if we’re ignorant of Black history in the U.S., we’ll fail to recognize when it shows up in its various disguises: as quotas, school vouchers, “no special rights,” and so on.

So this week—not that it’s a substitute for collective action, advocacy, and communicating with our state and federal legislators—here’s a helpful list of resources from the UCC’s “Join the Movement”  to help us school ourselves in the evil wiles of racism, the better to know it when we see it, and either call it out or, in the case of a friend or family member who repeats a falsehood, call it in and in private tell them they’re better than that.

Books:

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman

Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement by Vincent Harding

The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement by Hajar Yazdiha

Videos:

Ella’s Song by Bernice Johnson Reagon performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock

Excerpt from an interview with Bernice Johnson Reagon on Moyers Moments with Bill Moyers reflecting on the power of communal singing and “This Little Light of Mine”

Reflections on Ella Baker’s organizing from a number of her contemporary activist and organizers

In a press conference, Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King’s daughter Dr. Bernice King, CEO of the King Center, urges all of us to celebrate MLK Day this year by focusing on King’s teachings and the possibilities of building up a new world in 2025.

Mahalia Jackson sings and Martin Luther King Jr. preaches in Chicago in the late 1960s

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. on America’s Neverending Struggle with White Supremacy