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UCC Conference Minister, Freeman Palmer, has sent the following Pastoral letter in response to recent events. Dear Central Atlantic Conference, I write this to you with a very heavy heart after witnessing virtually the death of George Floyd and its aftermath in Minneapolis. I also write this to you with anger at yet another killing of an unarmed African American man by police without a commensurate measure to date of justice. And I write this to you, frankly, mystified, at how protestors in Lansing Michigan two weeks ago, with images of nooses in tow, are called ‘good people,’ while protestors in Minneapolis, Minnesota and other cities this week are labeled ‘thugs.’ Yet there is no mystification in my mind at all about the following statements. Racism is a sin. Racism is sin whether at the individual or institutional levels. It is a sin that stains our political, economic, social, moral, and spiritual fabric. The sin of racism pervasive in the United States since the founding of this country, like all sin, is in need of repentance at both the individual and institutional levels. Last year, I accompanied the Council of Conference Ministers on a pilgrimage to Birmingham and Montgomery AL, where we saw iconic sites of the Civil Rights Movement. A particular location that moved me greatly was the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which included eight hundred six-foot monuments, hanging from the construct’s rafters, that symbolized the thousands, named and unnamed, who were lynched in the United States for practically any reason and the States and counties where this terrorism occurred. As I made my way through the Memorial, I went to the monuments of those who were lynched in Brunswick and Lunenburg Counties in Virginia. It was imminently apparent to me that names engraved on those monuments could have easily been my grandfathers and my father. And I find it both sorrowful and terrifying that in so many ways, things have not changed. We know this all too well in this Conference with Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Now, a little over five years later, things have not changed. Things have not changed for George Floyd in Minnesota. Things have not changed for Ahmad Aubrey in Georgia. Things have not changed for Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. And things have not changed for far too many more people of color. My siblings, this is a call for us as the Church, specifically the United Church of Christ, and more specifically the Central Atlantic Conference of the United Church of Christ, to be agents of change. This country is in need of repentance, a change in direction of heart, mind, and soul. Too many lives are being lost, whether it is to gun violence, or police brutality, or at the hands of a system during a pandemic that perpetuates health care as a privilege and not a human right. We need change at any and all levels, to eradicate the stain of racism. And my pilgrimage to Alabama reminded me of the powerful capacity of the Church of Jesus Christ to make changes when it has the will to do so. I encourage you, from wherever you are, in whatever way(s) you can, to both denounce and dismantle to sin of racism. Whether it is in the pulpit, or on a physical or virtual street, or in a physical or virtual voting booth, say and do something -anything - that declares NO MORE to the overt and covert injustice that plagues this country. Please be an agent for change – for Ahmad, for Breonna, for George, for my twenty- something nephews, and for so many others whose lives figuratively and literally depend on it. For these lives – these Black Lives – Matter. Our Justice and Witness Action Network will send communications that we will make available that will include calls to action. It should be available in about a week. However, I did not want to let this moment go by both in time and eternity without sharing these thoughts with you. I encourage you, from wherever you are, do to what you can, so that we, our children, and their children, will live in a country where all can live in Shalom as part of God’s unequivocally good creation, part of A Just World for All. Faithfully yours, Freeman