Vows to roll up on racism, sexism and fight back
For the past week, Father Michael L. Pfleger said he was inundated with hundreds of emails, texts, calls and texts from people who were angry and weeping over the loss of Vice President Kamala Harris and sickened over the election of Trump asking him for guidance or a plan of action to deal with the next four years they fear will be mired in racism, anti-minority legislation and more political violence.
Making clear his stance, Father Pfleger said, “This country is not who she pretends to be. Let us be clear, this past election was not about policy or about the Democrats or Republicans. I believe it was a referendum of America’s commitment to racism and sexism and her disdain for Black women,” referring to Harris losing the election and Trump’s negative and racist remarks about her during the campaign. He has a message for all those who asked him to speak out on the past election and it won’t be to throw up your hands and surrender to this Republican regime.
“As your pastor and an ordained spiritual leader, I realize I have a moral and an ordained responsibility to address and to speak to the conditions of society. I am not one of these pastors who come in here to escape the world and give you nice platitudes.’ I believe my job is to equip you to deal and overcome the world.
“We like to pretend and we like to live under the illusion that America is better than we are. We even have the audacity to call ourselves a Christian nation. Ain’t nothing Christian about America,” bellowed Pfleger.
“We had to be a moral voice to the world while we ourselves are immoral. We want to think that we are better than racism, sexism, hate and injustice that continue to raise its ugly head, but I pray that we will wake up to the truth that this country was birth in genocide, built in slavery and who wraps itself in white supremacy is not who she pretends to be.
“I wish that she would stop pimping God putting our hands on bibles while we swear oaths of office. Take the bible out of this. This has nothing to do with God and his word.
I am tired of this country and not just the elected official but us to demonize Black women. It is time to engage, to lift up, to encourage and celebrate Black women, and I refuse to let Evangelicals hijack Jesus and his gospel.
“Talking about a national Christianity, a national religion, Jesus was not national. He was the Messiah, the king of kings of Lords. We used Christianity to justify slavery, to condone Jim Crow, but we must not allow it to continue to be used and hijacked on our watch on this day.
“It is time for us to be like the late Barbara Jordan who said, “It’s time for us to be who we say who we are and stop perpetuating what we’re not.’”
Referring to last Wednesday, Nov. 6, the day after the election, Father Pfleger was in his prayer tent thinking about the election outcome and how Harris received 226 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 312 and how he also won the popular vote, 75,589,234 votes to Harris’ 72,456,405 but votes are still being counted.
Father Pfleger said he thought about “how wrong it is for a convicted felon who mocked handicapped people, paid for two abortions, a sexual predator, and an adulterer who is endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan was even allowed to run for president while many states in this nation do not even allow a convicted felon to vote. Every state in this nation has kept and marginalized thousands from even getting a job because of a conviction on their record.”
Closing his eyes, Father Pfleger thought about the “balconies in heaven,” saw Thurgood Marshall, Caesar Chavez, John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Harry Belafonte “and all the great freedom fighters sitting in that balcony. I saw tears in their eyes as they remember the sacrifice and the blood that they had shed, and I couldn’t help but wonder what Harry Belafonte said to me not long before he died. He said, ‘Martin, did we fail?”
To those whose hearts are still heavy about the loss of Harris, Father Pfleger reminded them that “This is not the first time we have felt like darkness has won. This is not the first time it felt like our fighting had been in vain. That is what the ancestor’s felt who were kidnapped, bound in chains, thrown into the bottom of a boat, taken in ships across an ocean, enslaved and sold on auction blocks.
“That is what people felt when they watched those who had sought to run away for their freedom and were caught burned and lynched in public square right after Sunday service at people’s churches.
“This is not the first time we felt or it looked like evil had won and the fight was in vain,” Father Pfleger reminded a packed St. Sabina. “That is what Dr. King and John Lewis felt on Bloody Sunday…like our fighting had been in vain. That is what the ancestors felt who were kidnapped, bound in chains, thrown into the bottom of a boat, taken in ships across an ocean and enslaved and sold on auction blocks.
“That is what people felt when they watched those who sought to run away for their freedom, were caught, burned and lynched in public square right after Sunday service in the peoples’ churches.”
