Juneteenth

Posted on by jimvondracek
Aldo Billingslea Dramatic Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation

by Jim Vondracek, June 19, 2023

As I reflected this morning on Juneteenth, I went in search of a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. While the purpose of the proclamation is profound, because it is a legal document, when I read it, I tend to start going more quickly to skip across the legalese, and it loses its power. This dramatic reading, though, pulled me into the language, immersed me in it, and I hope it has the same impact for you.

As a Christian, I find it meaningful to know that the movement to abolish slavery in our country was driven by churches, with many leading abolitionists being pastors and other people-of-faith. People who heard Jesus’ call for justice and, empowered by the Holy Spirit, acted on that call.

At the same time, I am sobered by the knowledge that other sects of Christians, other churches, used a twisted theology to not only justify the enslavement of African-Americans, but actively supported the enslavers.

This dichotomy, this division, isn’t new nor relegated to the past. Today, my teeth grind and I have to resist writing angry emails nearly daily when I hear or read a piece about Christians as if we are a monolith, usually referencing something horrible that the biblical literalists among us are doing and saying. This perspective makes it easy to put myself in the place of abolitionists of 160 years ago, opposed to those other Christians who used Paul’s words to support the enslavers.

And while I am quick to decry the horrible things that other Christian sects, driven by a literal approach to Scripture and a mean theology, do and say, the lessons of Juneteenth also force me to admit something harder. That I and other like-minded Christians in my faith community cannot know with certainty what ‘truths’ and moral principles we hold now that will shock and outrage Christians in the next century – what evil we are blind to now, that future saints will see more clearly.

Today, we are all shocked that any Christians 160 years ago could have, on religious grounds, supported the enslavers – it seems outrageous. But that reality calls us not to a smug certitude, but rather to continue to reform, to continue to explore honestly our own faith and actions and ever be drawn back to the fundamental of Jesus’ message of love, inclusion and the worth of every person as a child of God.