Excerpted from Jon Meachem’s review of Henry Louis Gates’ “The Black Church”
“Never confuse position with power,” the Rev. Otis Moss III, a Chicago pastor born in 1970, says in Gates’s epigraph. “Pharaoh had a position, but Moses had the power. Herod had a position, but John had the power. The cross had a position, but Jesus had the power. Lincoln had a position, but Douglass had the power. Woodrow Wilson had a position, but Ida B. Wells had the power. George Wallace had a position, but Rosa Parks had the power. Lyndon Baines Johnson had a position, but Martin Luther King had the power. We have the power. Don’t you ever forget.”
May those of us who observe Lent take this to heart in our own reflections. Beyond giving up something we enjoy (I’m giving up caffeine and it’s been rough) we should also give up our complacency in the face of injustice. Removing Trump does not remove systemic racism, or income inequality, or social injustice from our society. We need to do more to make the beloved community Dr. King envisioned in his last speech. Let’s work on that too.
I hope that the Gates program reruns because I watched the Biden town hall last night.