Viewing Care for Creation Through the Black Lives Matter Movement
In recent years, much attention has been given to the importance of caring for God’s creation as an integral dimension of moral and faith development. While churches have often focused on engaging in care for creation by directing attention to issues of environmental justice,(i.e., stewardship of the earth’s natural environment,)an equally important aspect of affirming the sacredness of creation today must also include emphasis and regard for the dignity of lives of vulnerable human populations, including young persons of color in the United States who have increasingly become victims of socio-historic modes of racism. This essay explores the parallels between caring for creation and caring about the “Black Lives Matter” movement. To this end, it addresses two primary questions: How is the “Black Lives Matter” movement providing a new lens through which the church can engage in caring and concerning themselves with God’s creation? What specific teachings on creation can these type of movements help to illuminate in regards to working with young people?
“Black Lives Matter” has become the rallying mantra of a new grassroots social movement primarily driven by young activists of color that shines a national spotlight on issues of systemic racism in the United States. While the movement initially focused on protesting increased police violence targeted against African Americans, new arms of the movement now erupting on college campuses are addressing the racialized history of exclusion and rejection operative within institutions of higher learning and its negative impact on young students of color. Although the issues the BLM movement focuses on are clearly varied, one fundamental concern undergirds its aims, which is that the significance and value of all black lives be affirmed. Although seldom acknowledged, there are a number of ways in which this movement’s emphasis on affirming the value of black life fundamentally reflects biblical themes of creation.
Human Creation as Bearing the Image and Likeness of God
Gen. 1 highlights a vision of the whole of creation having its origins in God. Here the interconnectedness and sacredness of the natural and human environments; material and immaterial worlds is established. The Genesis narrative also reveals an order of creation that begins with the creation of the earth and culminates with the creation of human beings. Human beings, as the final facet of God’s creation are distinct as those who bear the “imago Dei,”the image and likeness of God. This portrait of human creation highlighted in Genesis not only attests to the unique role that human beings assume as stewards within the creative order, but also affirms the inherent value, dignity, and premium God places on human creation.
Reclaiming the Sacred Dimensions of Human Creation through Affirming Racial and Ethnic Diversity
At its core, the “Black Lives Matter” movement asserts that care for human creation necessitates confronting and dismantling any threat (e.g., racism) that fundamentally distorts the divinely created human image. In the wake of such threats, this movement calls for an alternate image of human creation—one in which black lives are respected and seen as just as beautiful, valuable, and sacred as all other lives.1 In doing so, the movement articulates an important aim, that reclaiming the sacred dimensions of human creation cannot be fully realized apart from also affirming racial and ethnic particularity as integral features of one’s humanity. More simply put, black lives matter, because race matters. If racial and ethnic characteristics are viewed as extraneous to any image we forge of human creation, this can lead to a neglect in affirming the diversity and dignity of the entire human community as truly expressive of the image of God. Within the church, such a perspective often keeps us from accessing an inclusive vision of God, which can give rise to viewing others who are racially or ethnically different as less valuable. The insistence on promoting the value of black life is one way that this movement illustrates that honoring racial and ethnic dimensions of humanity are essential aspects of demonstrating care for the whole of creation.
Laments as Practices of Resistance: Hearing the Groaning of Creation through Young Black Lives
Beyond affirming racial and ethnic distinctiveness as an essential aspect of caring for human creation, the “Black Lives Matter” movement also reorients the church to the notion that caring for creation requires direct action in response to suffering created by racism. Rom. 8:18–27 portrays a suffering creation. The suffering of creation is expressed specifically through a motif of groaning. Here the groans or cries of creation are presented as a type of lament, a process of mourning illuminating the devastation and dehumanization creation encounters through its suffering. Though rooted in an experience of mourning, the passage makes clear that the lament of creation is not an expression of powerlessness, but rather an expectation and hope of a new beginning (i.e., liberation from bondage).
One of the fundamental concerns facing the church today is its ability to discern the cries of black youth targeted by institutional forms of racism as embedded groans/lament of the whole of creation as the text references. Within the “Black Lives Matter” movement, varied practices of resistance utilized by young people (i.e., hunger strikes, protests, sit-ins, die-ins) can be viewed as forms of communal laments expressing not just mourning, but emancipating hope and expectation that racist systems can be toppled through the power of God.2 These laments are public practices, necessarily so, in order for the young people engaged in them to gain serious attention from the wider community as to the suffering occurring within their lives. In this sense, young people use these practices of lament to uncover the socio-oppressive realities that their world has been denied in the past.
Within Judeo and Christian traditions, practices of lament are always directed towards God, the one who not only hears the cries of oppressed people, but can also liberate from oppression. While some contend that resistance practices being utilized by the BLM movements are primarily rooted in secular sensibilities, many young people of color engaged in the BLM movement continue to view the quest for racial justice as inextricably linked to their faith in God.3 However, their efforts, unlike their civil rights predecessors, are becoming less focused through the institutional church.
In part, the disconnect between the church and young people within the “Black Lives Matter” movement is that the youth view the institution as no longer adequately able to respond to the needs of all black youth. More specifically, many young people of color contend that the church continues to be guided by a theological framework which fosters exclusions within the black community, placing higher value on certain black lives while discounting the significance of others. For young people deeply engaged in this movement, these claims run counter to the theological premise undergirding the BLM movement, which is that all black persons are created in the image of God.
Black Lives Matter: Tapping into the Creative Agency of Young People
If young people of color are indeed created in the image of God, it suggests that not only do they possess inherent value and dignity, but are also capable of more than just reacting to the conditions surrounding their lives. It means rather, that they have the creative capacity to construct their lives by invoking new ideas, energies, and insights to transform their very situation.4 Although the church has not always honored the creative spirit of young people in this way, the “Black Lives Matter” movement has successfully tapped into the creative energy young people offer. This is what causes the movement to strongly resonate with so many of today’s youth. This points to the need for the church to consider how it might safeguard against stifling the creative spirit of its young people, and instead awaken them to their God-inspired potential for freedom and creativity, even in the midst of social and cultural oppression.
Notes
1. Leah Gunning Francis, Ferguson and Faith: Sparking Leadership and Awakening Community. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2015
2. See Evelyn Parker, Trouble Don’t Last Always: Emancipatory Hope with African American Youth, Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2003
3. Rahiel Tesfamariam, Why the Modern Civil Rights Movement Keeps Religious Leaders at Arms Length, Washington Post, September 18th, 2015
4. Maureen H. O’Connell, If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice, MN: Liturgical Press
