To Be an Advent People by Kelly Brown Douglas

Rev.-Dr.-Kelly-Brown-Douglas - Version 2

In my church tradition, we have just entered the 3rd week of Advent.  In today’s blog I share just a brief excerpt from the sermon which I preached on Sunday.  I hope it at least inspires reflection on where we go from here as a nation, as a people and our responsibility in moving forward.  I preached:

On this 3rd Sunday of Advent the stories and testimonies of four women have in many ways pricked the collective consciousness if not the conscious of our nation. These women, mothers all—are names that we sadly have become all too familiar with. They are Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon , Leslie McFadden, the mother of Michael, Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric and added to the list most recently Samira Rice, the mother of 12 year old Tamir.  To call the names of these women and their sons, is to be confronted with the unsettling if not frightening times in which we now live and thus to be reminded of the ways in which our world is broken, the ways indeed in which the sacredness of our very humanity has been betrayed by our separation one from one another. Yet, it is into this unsettled time of brokenness that this season of Advent comes. Continue reading “To Be an Advent People by Kelly Brown Douglas”

Moral Courage by Kelly Brown Douglas

The time for false solidarity is over…Let’s us stop talking about it, let us just dig deep inside of ourselves and find a way to do it. 

Fifty years ago in response to President Kennedy’s assassination Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: “Our nation should do a great deal of soul-searching …” It is these words of Martin King’s that echo in my mind fifty years later as news headlines continue to be filled with stories of innocent young black bodies falling victim to a social climate that nurtures racialized fears and breeds racialized violence. If the deaths of Renisha McBride, Jonathan Ferrell, Jordan Davis, and Trayvon Martin tell us nothing else, they proclaim loud and clear that we are a people in need of a “great deal of soul-searching.”  For me, this time for soul-searching is nothing less than a kairos time. Continue reading “Moral Courage by Kelly Brown Douglas”