- Prospect Webmaster
- 1 day ago
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The Presbytery of Northeast New Jersey
As we celebrate Black History Month, we give thanks for the faith, courage, creativity, scholarship, music, preaching, organizing, and prophetic imagination of black communities.
The witness of the Black church has not only confronted injustice, but it has shaped American Christianity itself, teaching the wider church how to sing, how to pray, how to hope, and how to endure.
From spirituals sung in hidden fields to pulpits proclaiming dignity in the face of terror, the Black church has offered this nation a theology forged in suffering yet sustained by joy. It has nurtured leaders, cultivated communities of resilience, and reminded America that faith is not passive belief but embodied courage.
That tradition, which is seen in figures like the late Rev. Jesse Jackson and countless pastors, mothers, organizers, and saints, held a demanding tension. They named injustice without hesitation. They confronted laws, leaders, and systems without apology. And they refused to surrender the humanity of those responsible for harm.
That refusal was not naive. It was theological. The gospel insists that people do evil things, but people are not reducible to evil. If they were, repentance would be meaningless. Transformation would be impossible. Grace would be unnecessary.This conviction does not soften our critique of injustice. In fact, it sharpens it. It allows the church to say, clearly and courageously: these policies are racist; these actions are hateful; these decisions harm people. And it allows us to say, with equal conviction: no one is beyond repentance, and no system is beyond dismantling.
Communities that have been historically labeled as “the problem” know firsthand the damage caused when people are reduced to stereotypes, sins, or threats. Any theology that treats some people as irredeemable, even powerful ones, echoes a logic that has always harmed the vulnerable.
Black History Month reminds us that dehumanization has never been the church’s tool for justice. It has always been the weapon of injustice itself. So, the challenge before us is not whether we will speak, but how we will be formed as we do. Will our public witness cultivate outrage alone, or courage shaped by hope? Will our resistance harden us, or deepen our commitment to truth, dignity, and transformation?
The church is called to something harder than denunciation and braver than silence. We are called to confront injustice without surrendering the gospel’s insistence that God is still at work liberating the oppressed, dismantling unjust systems, and calling all people toward repentance and new life.
Black history does not allow us to choose between justice and grace. It teaches us that faithful resistance requires both. For that witness and for the courage to tell the truth without surrendering love, we give thanks.
Steve Huston
Organizing Co-Leader/ Resource Presbyter
