Erin Hawkins, General Secretary
General Commission on Religion & Race
May 27, 2020
Yesterday, video footage posted on social media showed George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed African-American man, handcuffed and pinned to the ground at the neck by a Minneapolis police officer’s knee. Mr. Floyd can be heard gasping, “I can’t breathe!”
Bystanders also begged officers to assist Mr. Floyd, who was in distress. But the officer didn’t let up, and Mr. Floyd appeared to pass out and, later, died. Hours later, the Commission on the General Conference of The United Methodist Church (UMC) released a statement announcing new dates for the 2020 General Conference to be held in Minneapolis but was postponed due to COVID-19.
It is no coincidence that the city of Minneapolis serves as a common backdrop for Mr. Floyd’s death to an egregious act of racism and for General Conference, which has at various times in its history sanctioned discrimination and racial oppression impacting the lives of people of color (and may do so again in 2021). We are being presented with a divine invitation to face the pain points of racial violence and oppression, to see the realities of a denomination still mired in institutional racism reflected in the assault on black and brown personhood, and, finally, to choose once and for all the path of anti-racism in word and deed.
Read more at this link.
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