The Freedom Church
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011, 11am
When they were filled, he said unto
his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain,
that nothing be lost
-John 6:12
Vision and Missionhis disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain,
that nothing be lost
-John 6:12
The Freedom Church is an ecumenical Christian community committed to living out the revolutionary teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. We claim ecumenical as way to glean inspiration for the prophetic edges of existing denominations and traditions.
We claim Christian as an authentic identity for we believe that the life and legacy of Jesus is our central touchstone of our faith but do so without exclusion of other traditions. We deploy liberation theology's notion that God gives a perferential option to the poor.
Hence, our faith community is an open and affirming body that honors the queer community and all historically othered folks. We will strive to be a multi-cultural and multi-contextual congregation of activists and the historically othered seeking a deeper way of being our soul, skin, and society-a space of discernment and support for those who are answering their call.
The name, “The Freedom Church”, comes from a speech given by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the last days of his ministry.
In preparing for the seminal event for the Poor Peoples Campaign, Resurrection City, which planned to bring thousands of poor people to the nation’s capital to live in tents until the passage of anti-poverty legislation, King prophesies, “Resurrection City will be the Freedom Church of the poor.” We dare to be that prophetic in-gathering.
Ella Baker and Septima Clark, in creating and sustaining the Freedom Schools in the heat of the Jim Crow South during the Civil Rights movement, is key. The Freedom Schools trained folks from the Deep South. From the schools emerged community based leaders who spoke their special truth to power in their own interest. Fannie Lou Hamer, a former sharecropper and great spokeswoman for the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party was given space “to be” in the Freedom School. Above all we take serious, Matthew 25:35 (the least of these) and a prophetic reading of the Bible as a mode of being in the world.
It is the gathering of the prophetic fragments from the aforementioned places and space that The Freedom Church is born.
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