Last Friday Speaker Mike Johnson “slammed the No Kings protest march…describing the planned protest as the ‘hate America rally’ that would draw ‘the pro-Hamas wing’ and ‘the Antifa people’.”
I will be protesting this Saturday (exercising my constitutional right to do so). I do not hate America; I love America (with all its blemishes, its divisions, and its failures). I am not “pro-Hamas”; I am not “Antifa people”. I do not hate; I try to love, believing that Love is at the heart of things. I am a patriot having served 36 years in the Air Force (active and reserve) and thirty of those years as an Air Force chaplain. I am a retired United Methodist pastor. I am almost 83 years of age; living in the autumnal stage of life’s journey. I am a widower, a father, grandfather, and great grandfather.
I am a Christian—“A Christian is a person who confesses that, amidst the manifold and confusing voices heard in the world, there is one Voice which supremely wins his/her full assent, uniting all his/her powers, intellectual and emotional, into a single pattern of self-giving. That Voice is Jesus Christ.” (D. Elton Trueblood).
That Voice calls me to protest what is happening here in these United States and what is happening in many other places around the world. That Voice calls me to love my neighbor, to stand up for the stranger, to care for the downtrodden, to support the rights of all people (regardless of the color of their skin, their religious beliefs, their gender, etc.). That Voice calls me to see through deceit, cruelty, and power grabs, and to seek justice, truth and love. As Martin Luther said in 1521: “Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me, God.”
