Friends,

Welcome to Lent. I seem to be giving up free time for Lent, but that wasn't the plan. Hopefully I'll get caught up soon!

-Liz

Introduction to Act! Be Church Now

Did you know that in 1947 the US Supreme Court found segregation on interstate buses to be illegal? 1947!! Bayard Rustin followed up that decision by gather white and black men to travel the south together, waiting to be arrested. And they were arrested.

Bayard Rustin went on to organize the 1963 March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream" speech.

Bayard Rustin, a black, queer Quaker said of the civil rights work "We are nonviolent because injury to one is injury to all."

This sounds a bit like Jesus and the whole love your neighbor thing. The whole love your enemy thing. The whole God is love thing.

There is no valid argument to be made about being "practical" when what we mean by that is put off trans rights or immigrant rights, or anyone else's rights. There is no Christian argument for letting some people be treated as less than others.

The story of Bayard Rustin, and his role with MLK and with A. Philip Randolph, who organized the 1968 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is told by Al Letson in the Reveal podcast linked below. It is a moving story about someone many of us have not heard of.

Here I want to notice Randolph. Rustin was his right-hand man for organizing this march. Some had wanted Randolph to leave Rustin off of the March, out of fear that his queerness would be a liability.

And indeed just a few weeks before the march Strom Thurmond attacked the march as being lead by Rustin, a communist, a draft dodger, and a homosexual. And in a speech that should guide us today, Randolph replied that Thurmond is a segregationist, and therefore has no right to judge the morality of anyone else.

That decision to stand by Rustin, and to declare quite simply morality cannot be declared by those that hold immoral stances, that should be our model for these times. No one who refuses any person in the United States due process can insist on they are on a moral high ground. No one who denies trans people health care can claim a moral high ground. No one who treats immigrants as less than other people can use arguments about following the law.

There is nothing more Christian than the concept that we are all important to God, and thus must be important to other people.

Reply to this email to let me know what's happening in your congregation.​
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The story of Bayard Rustin's life and work is told by Al Letson in the podcast Reveal: More to the Story. (53 Minutes.)

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A song! True Trans Soul Rebel by Against Me. (3:12)

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