My heart is heavy with the news that a white supremacist gunman took the lives of 10 children of God in #Buffalo on Saturday. I grew up walking distance from the scene of this hateful crime, and my friends and I used to ride our bikes around the neighborhood. 🧵
Buffalo’s Black community raised and formed me. I grieve with the city and people I love.
The loss of any human life is tragic, but there was deep racial hatred driving this shooting, and we have got to turn from the deadly path our nation has walked for much too long.
Bigotry-based violence—any bigotry at all—against our siblings who are people of color, Jewish, Sikh, Asian, trans, or any other group, is fundamentally wrong.
As baptized followers of Jesus of Nazareth, we are called to uphold and protect the dignity of every human child of God, and to actively uproot the white supremacy and racism deep in the heart of our shared life.
Please join me in prayer for the shattered families in Buffalo. Please also join me in expressing profound gratitude for the intervention by Buffalo police that likely saved many other lives.
Even amid tragedy, even when evil and death threaten to overwhelm, let us hold fast to the good. It is the only way that leads to life.
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I am convinced that we, at least in this country, and in this world, need a revival of love. We’ve got enough going on right now, and we need a revival of love.
Now I’m an Episcopalian—and Episcopalians are quiet people. The word “revival” does not appear in the Book of Common Prayer. It is implied, but not explicitly ordered.
Here's the thing: I’ve been inviting Episcopalians to revival, and you know, they’ve been coming. And if Episcopalians can come to a revival, I believe America can too.
“We observe this solemn occasion in a perilous moment in our national life and history. The seeds of self-centeredness—the seeds of hatred—will inevitably yield a bitter harvest.
This day is a testimony to that, and we cannot continue that way.
Yesterday, former President Bush warned us about this. Our unreconciled racial history, and our deep and dangerous divisions, left unattended, will prove injurious to our democracy.
This is not the time for neutrality or quietism, but it is not time for loudness and anger. Just prior to the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln rightly warned the nation, quoting Jesus, who said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I’m @PB_Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church (@iamepiscopalian). When I was in elementary school, I came home one day and my father asked if I got my sugar cube.
At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then remembered earlier that day we had been given a little sugar cube—this was back in the 1960s—with some medicine or something that was on it.
And I ate it and took it, well all got it, and it was the polio vaccine. Year later, while I didn’t know why my father always walked with a limp, my aunt Kari told me, “The reason your daddy walked with a limp was because he had polio when he was a little boy.”
One more time we awake to the news of violence. Reports come in, even as you read this, about violence that has caused death, life-changing injury and destruction of property and lives.
Violence which is borne of frustration, rooted in injustice and the violation of international law and in truth, the violation of human rights and human decency.
In the Name of the God of all creation, the violence must stop, regardless of where it comes from and to whom it is directed.
One more time The Episcopal Church stands to say that violence is not the way forward.
This is a tense and troubled moment, as we await the jury’s verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd. Please pray for the soul of George Floyd, for his family, and for everyone everywhere who has suffered because of the sin of racism and oppression.
Pray for all the people of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Pray for this nation that we may find the ways of both justice and healing. Pray for us all.
Whatever comes with the verdict, there is no celebration. Nothing will bring George Floyd back to his family or his community back to us. The struggle continues. If the verdict does not establish guilt, and even if it does, our pain persists and our grief goes on.
This evening, the President of the United States stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, lifted up a bible, and had pictures of himself taken. In so doing, he used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes.
This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us.
The bible teaches us that “God is love.” Jesus of Nazareth taught, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.”