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."
What kind of churches are these? Unbelievable.
I’ll take a Black Rage ping. Thanks for doing this but it adds to your work since the Bengasi “event” isn’t over.
Do you have a hoodie?
"...preached the Rev. Valarie Houston..."
Well, from just that little snippet right there, you can say ones that don't respect Biblical teaching... obviously.
“Rev. Valarie”
Never mind the race-baiting; I stopped reading at this...
Wonderful, choir practice is postponed so we can all learn the proper beat down method when followed by Peruvians.
“Well, from just that little snippet right there, you can say ones that don’t respect Biblical teaching... obviously.”
That’s right; these “churches” haven’t expressed a Christian thought since inception. Their silliness was exposed when two “ministers” (JAckson & Sharpton) ran for president and the “separation of church & state” never reared its head. They are simply paid off to lead their tribe into oblivion, and they are happy to oblige.
It’s not a hoodie, its “The Shroud of Trayvon”.
Oh man, you deserve some kind of freeper award for
that one!!!
Get yer threads from the shroud of Trayvon here.
“Do you have a hoodie?”
Several. Good to go.
And you’re on.
Embrace your inner “gansta”. Wear a hoodie. Smoke dope. Get wasted on “drank”. Steal women’s jewelry. Get kicked out of school. Trespass. Look into the windows of houses you don’t own. Post pictures of guns, your gold “grills”, and you smoking dope on the internet. Flip people off. Physically attack those that volunteer to help others in your community. Die an early death or go to prison (but please, please make sure to make a donation first...Daddy needs a new Caddy!). Do it for Trayvon!!!
But not to worry, disjointed, malfunctioning family of a shot and killed hoodie wearing hood.
The central socialist Obama government will take over the acquitted case and persecute the guy who acted in self defense and you can sue and collect a zillion dollars with which to buy boxcars of Kleenex to wipe away your tears.
Best...rant...ever...
Followed by “Pants-to-the-Ground” Sunday.
LOL!!!!
I’m sick and tired of the hyphenated phony Americans. We call brown or tan people ‘black’ and call negroes ‘African-Americans.
The rest of us aren’t Jewish-Americans, or Italian-Americans, etc. We’re supposed to be Americans, but we’re not and we’ll never be; especially with a moronic communist muslim in the White Hut.
If they want to be hyphenated, then refer to them as Africans or African-Africans!
I have an entire litany of terms to apply to this jackass in the White Hut.
</Elvis voice on>
Thank you very much!
</Elvis voice off>
Jesse Jackson has for sure, because I used to hear his sermons decades ago when in Skokie,IL., when he preached the Gospel. He probably never had God’s Spirit in him because of how far into evil he has plunged. Men like obamao’s past ‘minister’ serve the demon yet have so many duped. It is no doubt but a sign that we are at the End Times.
There was an occasion when I challenged my pastor over a statement he had made from the pulpit which struck me as astonishingly self-righteous. He jokingly replied, “That’s scriptural” - and quoted Luke 18:119 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’I took it that my pastor had heard in his own voice what I had heard in it . . .13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
If I was in a church and heard this crap - I’d walk out and never go back. This has no place in the worship of our Lord and Savior. I didn’t hear one of these so-called pastors pray for the Zimmerman family. Not one - what a bunch of hypocrites!
Bring you guns, knives, and hot items for the collection plate.
Or, as they are wont to be, ganging up and torturing young couples then raping the girl while her fiancé is forced to watch, then brutally killing them both.
This has happened recently and more than once.
Whatever gains they’ve made in the past is being rapidly wiped out by the performance of this mystery man in the White Hut and by the actions of the thugs who wear their pants down past their asses and their hats on sideways or backwards.
Best be polite and careful and not draw too much attention to yourselves as the next few years are going to be precarious.
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