White Adventist America End Your Silence

It is time for white Adventists in America to speak out. Continued silence in the face of avalanching injustice is complicity. It is violence. It is death. The time for being silent has passed.

We must speak. We must say clearly, loudly and insistently that Black Lives Matter. The time for being silent has passed.

We must protest state violence against black citizens. We must speak out against racist policing that results in needless deaths. We must stand with grieving, weeping, screaming families. The time for being silent has passed.

A voice is heard in Ramah; Rachel is weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more. The time for being silent has passed.

How many of her children must be slain before her weeping is heard? How many black bodies must be buried before we admit our sin of silence? It is unpardonable. We must speak. We must act. The time for being silent has passed.

We must let the echoes of their voices reverberate deep within our souls:

“I can’t breathe.”
“I don’t have a gun. Stop shooting.”
“I want to go home.”
“It's okay mommy. It's okay, I'm right here with you.”

Until the white Seventh-day Adventist Church has the moral fortitude to confess its complicity in the systemic murdering of black Americans, and until the Church repents of its sin, there is only condemnation; there is no absolution. The time for being silent has passed.

Our message must be clear: We condemn the unjust killing of black Americans. We condemn police violence. We condemn racism in all of its manifestations. I stand with my black sister. I stand with my black brother. (S)he must become greater; I must become less. The time for being silent has passed.

Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Jared Wright is Managing Editor of SpectrumMagazine.org.