A Season of Self-Examination and Repentance

A Letter from Bishop Benfield

As a part of the spring House of Bishops meeting last week, I visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. On large, rust-colored metal boxes are the names of some 4,000 lynching victims from across the United States, listed by state and county. The accompanying photo shows some of the boxes dedicated to Arkansas victims; each box has a county’s name, along with the name and date of death of each person lynched. It was unsettling to read the names of counties that I regularly visit and see so many names of people whose lives were taken unjustly, simply because of the color of their skin. It came to close to home when I learned that a man named John Carter was lynched at 9th and Broadway in Little Rock in 1927, only a few blocks from the office in which I sit.

Some estimates are that about 400 people were lynched in Arkansas. In the face of such brutality, we are called to a season of self-examination and repentance. And we continue to see injustice, hatred, and fear take so many shapes, with attitudes and policies that target anyone who seems different. It can be based on the color of one’s skin or native tongue or gender. In the face of such injustice, it is easy to become demoralized and feel helpless.

But our Christian belief impels us to see the risen Christ in all others and to treat them as beloved children of God. To live that way is to be a witness to resurrection, in sure and certain hope that the love of God will overcome all things. We cannot go back and undo history, but we can take a close, uncomfortable look at this photo, with its line of coffin-like steel containers, and vow that we will be Christian witnesses to ensure that there will never be the need for another such memorial. We are called to stand beside the least and the last; we stand beside Jesus. The world in which we live needs us.