Posted on 07/16/2013 3:34:28 PM PDT by IbJensen
"I am hurt. I am sad. I am shocked, but I shouldn't be," preached the Rev. Valarie Houston of Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Sanford's historic Goldsboro area.
Several times during her impassioned Sunday-morning sermon about George Zimmerman's acquittal, Houston's words brought church members to their feet.
"We are African-Americans. We are people. We are allowed to go the store and buy Arizona Ice Tea and a package of Skittles and go home," she said, recalling Trayvon Martin's trip to a convenience store that ended in his death.
"Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity," Houston said.
Those issues of inequity and injustice were echoed in churches across the region, from their pulpits and pews to their parking lots.
Although the Rev. Lowman Oliver of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Sanford chose to continue with a previously scheduled youth-day service, he briefly expressed his frustration with the not-guilty verdict.
"This is not taking us forward but moving us backward," Oliver said. "I am angry, but I dare not sin. That anger is driving me to do what I can to ensure every mother, brother, sister will not tolerate stalking.
"On the positive side," Oliver said, "the case has brought to everyone's attention racial issues and disparities in our penal system, and has become a catalyst for change."
Crystal Haynes, the 31-year-old youth coordinator at St. Paul Missionary Baptist, expressed her views through her sweat shirt -- a gray hoodie featuring Trayvon's image on its front along with the words "Hoodie does not mean I'm a criminal."
Trayvon was wearing a hoodie the night he died. Some believe the garment raised Zimmerman's suspicions.
"I'm heartbroken, honestly," said Haynes, whose son is 4. "A lot say this is not a black-or-white issue, but a wrong-or-right issue. I disagree. He [Zimmerman] didn't get anything. That shows no respect for the deceased."
The Rev. Errol Thompson also wore a hoodie Sunday when he delivered his sermon to more than 100 churchgoers at New Life Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in Orlando. "I wore it to honor the fallen young man and his family," he said.
At First Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Sanford, the Rev. Harry D. Rucker was late for his 11 a.m. sermon. He had spent a late night at the Seminole County Sheriff's Office discussing the verdict in the Zimmerman trial with other members of Sanford Pastors Connecting, a nondenominational coalition of black and white religious leaders that formed as a result of the Trayvon incident.
Once he arrived at First Shiloh, Rucker began by asking the congregation to keep both the Martin and Zimmerman families in their prayers. Although he believed in the American justice system, he disagreed with the jury's verdict, he said.
"I was trying to eat when they read the verdict and I dropped my fork," Rucker preached. "For the first time in my life I was speechless."
However, the Rev. Harlan Walker of Word of Faith Ministries in Sanford wasn't so surprised.
"I don't believe that any of those who followed the case and listened to the evidence will be surprised it turned out the way it did," said Walker, adding, "I don't expect any dissension, maybe a flare-up here or there."
Regardless, said First Shiloh churchgoer Alpha Henderson, 59, "Even if the verdict came back guilty, it still wouldn't bring Trayvon Martin back."
Henderson, a father of six from Orlando, said he believed the city of Sanford is healing and credited his pastor with getting the town back on track.
Rucker said changes regarding race relations will come to Sanford.
"We cannot allow it to stay as we were before," said Rucker, who has been First Shiloh's pastor for 30 years. "We were existing in a separatist kind of way."
The Rev. John Murphy, part of Sanford's coalition of black and white pastors, dedicated much of his Sunday sermon at True Church, a nondenominational church in Winter Garden, to discussing the lessons of the shooting and trial.
"As pastors, we hated the fact that this incident happened. You never want to see a young man lose his life," said Murphy, a pastor for Harvest Time International, a global mission center.
"We've come together as pastors and government and community leaders as never before," he said. "We have met together and experienced the grief of Trayvon being killed, and the discrimination coming alive, and used that as a platform for more civil rights and more nondiscrimination.
"We have felt a whole new realm of purpose and direction," Murphy said. "This has given us an opportunity to get more involved in our communities, to know people and have a protest and have a grieving so we can talk and learn where the problems are."
For Allen Chapel member Tray Williams, 27, the verdict in the Zimmerman trial was a reflection of Florida's history.
"Florida is more than Disney World," said Williams of Sanford. "It's still the South."
The Rev. Jeff Krall of Family Worship Center in Sanford saw the trial in Biblical terms -- as an example of mankind's imperfections.
"We live in an imperfect world, with imperfect people, working within imperfect systems," said Krall, a member of Sanford Pastors Connecting.
"We need to rely on a perfect God," Krall said, "who can give us His grace to act in a perfect way during difficult and perplexing times."
Rev. Valarie should in addition to a “Hoodie Sunday” have her congregation wear baggy pants with their asses hanging out, and wear over sized baseball hats sideways, and perhaps they can all employ gang-land finger symbol language to express their prayers.
Keep harping on this issue until you're blue in the face with the understanding that relations between the African race and the others represented in this melting pot are going to get even worse. That mystery guy in the White Hut has done a great job of uniting Americans of various races. This is what he and his handlers meant by 'hope and change'.
AND NOT ONE tear for the twenty black children killed in Chicago WHILE the trial was going on... NOT ONE FRIGGIN’ TEAR?
There’s reason people don’t want to be around these people...
AND NOT ONE tear for the twenty black children killed in Chicago WHILE the trial was going on... NOT ONE FRIGGIN’ TEAR?
There’s reason people don’t want to be around these people...
And this is one of ‘em...
I want ‘creepy ass crackas’ Sundays.
I’m going to wait for Bikini Saturday.
bump
So tell me something? Is the inflaming of passions over this Not Guilty verdict a good religious purpose? Or is it just another step on the road to Civil/race War? And who is this supposed to benefit?
Are they going to also smoke pot, break into some homes, do other drugs, get kicked out of school, and go out and assault non-blacks too?
“I want ‘creepy ass crackas’ Sundays.”
Or how about seminars on how the black community can evade all dem white homo rapists preying on black boys. Maybe “Jaentel” could be the instructor.
It’s not a hoodie, its “The Shroud of Trayvon”.
I realize that the “journolist” gets to filter his quotes and choose his facts. But among all of the clergy quoted, was not one of them concerned about a generation of kids getting sucked into thug culture? Families that do not know God? Kids who are lost and have no compass?
And don’t attack people just because you think they’re gay.
Let’s have pants on the ground Sunday.
No, there is no discussion of the gang culture, apparently that is a taboo subject. Of course we know it is racist for whites to bring up the gang culture. .But apparently blacks can’t mention it either. I guess they want to be liberal and non-judgemental about the youth gangs.
The inconvenient truth is that Trayvon was a gang banger in training. This was a very bad case for liberals and race baiters to use to lecture us about profiling and racism and all that.
So pl;aces that serve the demonic are called ‘churches’?
I’ll donate Skittles at the donation basket.
“We are African-Americans. We are people. We are allowed to go the store and buy Arizona Ice Tea and a package of Skittles and go home,” she said
Indeed. What you are not allowed to do by law is attack a man and try to beat him to death because you think you are a thug lifer. And if you do that and the man you attack is armed you may well end up dead..
Woe unto those who lead My sheep astray.Or something like that. These preachers of hate have abandoned the Gospel.
Actually, I bought it to wear out in my garden when it gets cooler. However, it was all this hoodie hoopla that made me think that would be a good, cheapish, warmish, sweaterish kind of thing to wear when I have to do a bit of work in the garden.
I've never had a hoodie and this one has a zipper in front so it's easy on and off. It's actually a good brand of hoodie. (I sleep in a fairly cold room at night and this morning, I put on my hoodie until the house warmed a bit.)
HAVE YOU GOT A HOODIE? Do you have a hoodie story?
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