It is with deep lament that I find myself inviting the church into prayer for the family of Tyre Nichols and the community of Memphis, in the wake of the video footage released yesterday of the death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers. On January 7, Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old man, was brutally beaten by five Memphis Police Department officers and died in the hospital three days later. Another Black man has died at the hands of police. Another mother grieves the untimely and tragic death of her son. Another video summons our outrage and our cries for moral clarity and action. As Rev. Yvonne Gilmore, Interim Administrative Secretary of the National Convocation shared in her statement, “Abuse of power and violence dehumanizes and destroys us all.”
I have been in communication with Rev. Dr. Christal L. Williams, Tennessee Regional Minister, as she supports our pastors and communities across the city of Memphis. I encourage the church to join them as Rev. Dr. Williams encouraged in her message yesterday, “our faith gives us hope when confronted with systems beyond reform.”
We are the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world—we cannot be whole while violence pervades our systems of justice. We cannot be whole while Black men die at the hands of the police. We cannot be whole while communities fear the very people charged with protection.
We must pray and act. When people see love in action, they can know that the limitless love of God exists. Prayers mean nothing unless we pray with our feet to build an alternative future. I encourage the church to redouble ourselves to our commitment to be an anti-racist, pro-reconciling church in moments like these, so that we might continue the holy and just work of becoming the church we say we are.
Rev. Teresa “Terri” Hord Owens
General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada
Joan Bell-Haynes
The freedom of life, to exist and be fully who God created us to be in all of our difference and commonality is divine and holy. For any person to deny, oppress or take that freedom is evil and against God will and purpose for human life. Thank you Rev. Terri Hord Owens for your renewed call to be who we say we are as disciples of Christ: a Pro-Reconciling/Anti-Racist denomination. Rev. Joan Bell-Haynes
Central Rocky Mountain Region
LaTaunya M Bynum
Thank you, GMP. I will share these words in my region.
Dorothy M.Garrison
I am praying in Memphis,TN
A member of MBCC.
Martin Smith
The white officers who did this heinous racist crime surely need to pay.
Okongo milton
I am praying from Uganda that’s really touching
Chris Morton
Thank you, Rev. Hord Owens, for these words and reflections. In addition to holding the family of Tyre Nichols close in our hearts alongside where God resides in each of us, and holding he and his family in our prayers, we are called to speak up and out, and to act. Your words of reflection will be shared here in Nebraska.
Mark Vaughn
It’s about time. Our church is so frightened of saying anything that may be viewed as political that we usually say a two line prayer and have done with it.