We believe that the God we love and serve hears the cries and stands with the oppressed and marginalized. When God’s own people labored under a heavy burden of slavery, the holy scriptures tell us that God heard the groaning of his people and acted on their behalf. (Exodus 6:5)

 

Throughout the Old Testament, God’s voice spoke through the prophets calling his people to deeper forms of worship through doing justice for the oppressed. Through the prophet Isaiah, God spoke, “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” God spoke through the prophet Micah saying, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

 

In Jesus Christ, our Prophet, Priest, and King we find him in Nazareth opening the scriptures of Isaiah and reading aloud in the temple, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18-19)

 

We stand firmly in the holy scriptures that instruct us that all are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), in the tradition of the prophetic call to do justice, and in the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ that says God “reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us a ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18)

In the tradition of the holy scriptures and the gospel of Jesus Christ, we grieve and denounce injustice and all forms of oppression against African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and all other racial and ethnic groups.

 

We lament the sin and brokenness of racism, that subtly infects us all, even as believers in Jesus Christ. We repent and turn to the cross of Jesus Christ asking his forgiveness and for him to make us new. We pray for bold courage in the days ahead to stand with Jesus Christ and with the oppressed and marginalized. By God’s grace and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we seek to walk in step with Jesus’ commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 22:37-38)

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