Posts Tagged As: Kenneth L. Samuel

Pastor Supports Warren Protests

Jim Burroway

January 9th, 2009

Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, Senior Pastor of Victory For the World United Church of Christ in Stone Mountain, GA., has written a stirring op-ed in the Daily Voice, supporting the protests against Rick Warren as Obama’s choice to give the Inaugural invocation, as well as Warren’s invitation to speak at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in January. Dr. Samuel writes:

While expressing some disagreement with Rev. Warren’s views about gay people, most [civil rights] leaders have generally defended his invitations to participate in these events based upon the conviction that both Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr. stand for reaching out to persons of divergent views and bringing them together in dialogue.

While there is great value in such a conviction, the fact is that Rick Warren has not been invited into a dialogue at either occasion. He has been invited to invoke God’s presence on behalf of the nation at one occasion and to speak in tribute to the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the other.

To be sure, if Reverend Warren had been invited into a dialogue about marriage equality, he most likely would have declined…

I am certain that gay rights groups and their allies would certainly prefer to be joining hands and hearts with the Obama administration and the King Center in the quest to re-vitalize the American economy, improve public education, save Social Security, provide universal health care, protect the environment and end the war in Iraq.

Instead, we must now deal with the sting of having been again slapped in the face by fellow fire fighters before we can even focus on putting out the fire which threatens to engulf everyone’s house. These ‘minor’ insults are actually ‘major’ distractions that we should no longer allow. Lest we continue to be derailed from the common aim of “liberty and justice for all”, the protests must proceed.

[Hat tip: HRC Backstory]

    

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