Diocese of Salt Lake City sponsors interfaith prayer service to end racism
TAYLORSVILLE — Hundreds of people from numerous faith traditions gathered at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church on Jan. 15 to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by praying together to end racism.
“We come tonight to pray, to seek courage and inspiration, to help break the chains of hate and racial inequality that still bind too many hearts,” said the Most Rev. Oscar A. Solis, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, as he opened the interfaith prayer service. “Tonight we ask the grace of God to recommit ourselves to the gospel of love and pursue the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream, which is also our own dream.”
Bishop Solis asked God to “strengthen our hearts … to strip away pride and hatred so we may treat one another with civility, charity and equality.”
Other speakers for the evening were Indra Neelameggham, a member of the Hindu community; Pastor Steve Klemz of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church; Pastor Jerrod Lowry of Community of Grace Presbyterian Church; Pastor Curtis Price of First Baptist Church; and the Right Rev. Scott B. Hayashi, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi were pioneers in the call “to say all human beings are equal; treat them equal. Give them the respect and kindness, and believe in them as you believe in your own self,” Neelameggham said. “These were their lifelong principles.”
Change can be legislated, but for it to be everlasting people must be committed to it, and King’s message was that “change must come from within,” she said, adding that it is important for people to remember that no one is any better or any lower than another but all are equal, although they may have different gifts.
Pastor Klemz said that the evening recognized King’s legacy and witness, “which is a legacy and witness of love. … We are not here because it is the right thing to do or the wrong thing, the right thing to say or the wrong thing to say, whether it has to do with morality or immorality, we are here because racism has to do with that which is death-dealing and life-diminishing. It is a matter of life and death.”
Speaking of the federal government’s recent actions to end the Temporary Protected Status of El Salvadoran refugees and as well as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Klemz asked, “When was the last time it was the policy of the United States government to tear families apart? And people say it’s the law.”
He prayed that God “more than in word and in speech but in deed and in truth, cause us to love,” to “expose us to the evils that we condone for the sake of our ease and privilege,” to “awaken us to the suffering of others … heal us of the disease of racism and sexism, of phobia, self-protectiveness and denial. … Do not let us be silent before injustice or silent in the presence of hatred.”
Pastor Lowry suggested that the hope of change should be abandoned because “we are in danger of making hope into an addictive opium, a narcotic designed to shield us from the true pains of reality, while some of us, by the luxury of our nature, have no choice but to live with the sting of racism.”
Hope, he said, makes people forget that they have brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico who, months after the hurricane, still have no lights, some living on reservations have no access to clean water, and Hispanic brothers and sisters who return home from school to find that their parents have been deported.
“Hope eliminates the sense of urgency and the need for the individual to fully invest themselves toward something,” he said. “… We have to be fully committed to this thing if we are to see it overcome. Those people that marched and sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ had invested their whole lives, their whole beings, into the struggle, and I pray that today we may do the same.”
Pastor Price reflected that it was appropriate to be gathered in a church for the commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day because the struggle for civil rights was born in church, born out of faith in a space where preachers drew inspiration from sacred texts “and they swung open the doors after all the preaching was over and they poured out into the streets, singing songs of protest, registering people to vote, voting, standing up and marching around, sitting down when they were told to stand up and move, and all those wonderful things. It is appropriate for us to bear witness to that faith that compels us to action. And in that spirit I observe that our Christian scriptures authored by Paul tells that in Christ there is no longer Greek or Jew, male or female, slave or free. In Christ there is no black and white, there is no Haitian or Norwegian, there is no African or Russian, there is no Mexican or American – or to be more to the point, these will not be the characteristics by which people are sorted and judged or stratified. This is a vision of the world we were given by our Lord Jesus Christ, but we are a long way from that today. … We must act and keep acting until this disease is eradicated.”
Bishop Hayashi noted that King was fond of repeating the Theodore Parker quote: “The arc of history is long, but bends towards justice.”
“But let me tell you, brothers and sisters, it won’t do it by itself,” Bishop Hayashi said. “If you think that all it takes is enough time so that people will simply see the right way, my brothers and sisters, you are sadly mistaken. That is why we have the blood of martyrs throughout our history, because they believed in working with God, who could make it bend towards justice because it was not going to happen by itself. … Let us start taking the actions we need to take, for frankly I think that this nation, if not the world, hangs in the balance.”
In his prayer to conclude the service, Bishop Solis said, “We hope that our actions may be realized and achieve our common dream, our aspiration – that there be peace on earth, that there be unity, justice and liberty for all.”
During the social time that followed the service, many of those attending signed form letters asking Utah legislators to support the Victim Targeting Amendments bill that will be heard in the 2018 legislative session. If enacted, the legislation would permit enhanced penalties for ‘message crimes’ such as painting a swastika on a synagogue, which single out people for their race, religion, gender orientation or disability to intimidate others in the same demographic.
Jean Hill, government liaison for the Diocese of Salt Lake City, who organized the prayer service, also coordinated the letter-signing and plans to present the letters to legislators.
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