It was too much to resist: the media lure of prominent clergy members like the Revs Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson visiting Ferguson, Missouri, a moment about to become a movement. But real change to the conditions they went there to highlight and decry – real movement – can only come from local organizers, like the St Louis Clergy Coalition. That coalition has been instrumental, though less talked about on the news, by walking the streets of Ferguson two weeks of protests, by organizing prayer services for its people.
And, like their parishioners, some have even been shot at and teargassed by the police for the peaceful expression of their civil rights. This is a religious organizing moment reminiscent of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. This is a representative moment of the religious left reminiscent of little we have ever seen before.
The St Louis Clergy Coalition have collaborated with an outside clergy organization, Pico, the nationwide network of faith-based community organizations. Pico itself rallied around Ferguson and its residents to provide services in the wake of the extensive police crackdown, to tend a grieving community after the killing of Michael Brown and to provide support overworked pastors trying to help their parishioners process the intense police presence – and their anger.
Leah Gunning, a professor of christian education at the Eden Theological Seminary, worked in the community on non-violence efforts long before the shooting – along with her husband, Reverend Rodney Francis. She described the situation to me as one that was “very stressful”, but said that interfaith coalitions in the community were working together both to put pressure on the authorities for justice in this case and to make sure that protestors could be heard without violence.
Clergy from outside the area have also come to express solidarity with the injustices occurring in Ferguson. As Dr Leslie Callahan, the pastor of St Paul’s Baptist church in Philadelphia, told me: “I recognize Ferguson is a microcosm of the police harassment that is a regular part of the fabric of life – not just for black people in Ferguson, but around the country.”
Callahan, who walked the streets with other clergy from the Philadelphia area, spoke of how they came to bring comfort to the Ferguson clergy who are already stretched beyond their normal capacity: “Just like the police officers that are coming together to support each other, clergy are doing the same here in Ferguson.”
Local law enforcement has not always been so welcoming to the the clergy’s efforts. For instance, the Greater St Mark’s Church in Ferguson – which was serving as a safe location for protestors and supply area – was raided three times this week, including once when 20 to 30 police surrounded the church under the pretext that there were people sleeping there overnight. (There weren’t.)
The last two weeks in Ferguson represent just one of the latest ways in which liberal clergy have started to engage anew with politics from a progressive perspective – efforts that serve as an effective counterpoint to conservative clergy’s long-standing work in the political arena. Issues like immigration, police brutality and other onerous laws put in place by local and state governments are prime avenues for active clergy to work with their parishioners on the issues that affect their daily lives.
Take, for instance, Moral Mondays, a clergy-led movement in North Carolina to protest against onerous state government legislation and discrimination. The group engages in civil disobedience at the state capital and other places around the state, using silent protests and getting arrested to both garner media attention and further their cause. Reverend William Barber, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, has been a very visible figure in the movement, helping to bring the message to a national stage.
Since expanding to other states, including Georgia and Florida, Moral Mondays has become a potent force on the political scene in the religious American south, where conservative clergy has traditionally be most successful in enacting their political agenda. The clergy organizing in Ferguson, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ call for comprehensive immigration reform and Moral Mondays all show the potential that a new broad-based movement of inter-religious clergy could have to make substantial gains for progressive issues across the United States – if they do not lose steam or moral authority.