The Lethal Cocktail: Statement from Bishop Kirk S. Smith of Arizona

Posted Jul 8, 2016

It has often been pointed out that Americans are confronted with a toxic cocktail. It is a deadly mix of poverty, racism, and guns. Its effects are deadly.

In the last three days, we as a nation have drunk deeply from this deadly brew. At least seven more people are dead, two innocent black men and five innocent policemen. Confronted with this violence, it is hard not to resort to clichés or to mouth phrases about keeping everyone in our prayers. Of course we should do that, but we also have to do more to address those three deadly ingredients in our nation and in our churches.

Yesterday as I was drafting this, before the tragedy in Dallas, I wrote about the first two shootings. I was moved by this Facebook post from one of our own clergy, The Rev. Erika von Haaren, who is married to an African-American man. I share it with her permission:

I don’t know what to do. To say enough but saying anything is just meaningless now. To say too much but not wanting to alienate those who don’t have a personal experience of these things and therefore think I’m no longer trustworthy in my preaching. But there’s a groaning scream inside me that’s just aching to get out but if it does, it may never stop. Because my impotence and fear and shame and grief are so immense, because my empathy fatigue is beyond what I knew it could be, because I genuinely believe people are doing the best they can, but this is not good enough. Not remotely. When a black man moves and that is reason enough to kill him, it’s not good enough. When our fear of black men is so heightened, even as people who are sworn to serve and protect, that our immediate response is to shoot, that’s not good enough. My life has to change. I need to do more to help people see others and themselves more wholly, to be willing to speak to the powers that be honestly but with compassion for their humanity as well, to keep saying in as many ways as I can: ‪#‎blacklivesmatter. And not just the black life that I married, and not just the black lives that emerged from my womb (whether they look it or not, they would have been slaves too, y’all.), but all the black lives. All the black lives matter. Jesus help me be more brave.

Support of #blacklivesmatter in no way means that we cannot also support our men and women in blue who have an extremely difficult and dangerous job as we saw last night in Dallas. There are very few bad cops! But we have got to face up to the fact that last year more than 100 black men were killed by police around the country. Our law enforcement officers only reflect the attitudes of the rest of us, and those attitudes get people killed for no reason.

So what can we do? Continue witnessing for full inclusion of all people in our country and in our church. We in the church are ideally positioned to lead the efforts against racism, but we must be ever vigilant that we don’t fall into old patterns and habits ourselves. Sunday morning is still the most segregated time in America. We in the church must still admit to our own deeply ingrained racism.

We must continue to hold our local legislators responsible to take steps to address not only racism but also poverty. Yesterday, when all this was going on, you might have missed another disturbing headline. According to the Arizona Republic, Arizona is now the “cruelest state” in the Union when it comes to the treatment of poor people. It is harder for the poor, especially children, to get help here than in any other place. We as Arizona Christians should be ashamed of ourselves. At times, our citizens of both political parties have stood up to a handful of lawmakers who have made it clear that they don’t care, but we have to do better. As local churches, we can work to pick up the slack, but we can’t let our legislators off the hook either. With a $9 billion surplus, our state can well afford to be compassionate. After looking at the facts, E.J. Montini writes:

This all comes at a time when the state is attempting to rebrand itself, a time when the Arizona Commerce Authority hired the branding consultant $250,000 to sell the state to those who might consider relocating here, particularly new businesses.

“We’re really not appropriately advertising ourselves,” the governor’s spokesman Daniel Scarpinato told a reporter. “It’s going to be a new approach to how we market the state on all the platforms where we’re spending millions of dollars.”

None of it on our most needy brothers and sisters, apparently. Which gives us some bragging rights and a potential new slogan:

Arizona: Of all the pitiless, cold-hearted states in the land…we’re No. 1.

And let’s not forget the last part of that lethal cocktail–gun violence. I have written about this before, and urge you to take the steps outlined by Bishop’s Against Gun Violence. You saw the pictures from Texas. What kind of a society permits people to be walking around in political gatherings caring semi-automatic weapons?

We as Americans have a bad addiction to a deadly cocktail. It threatens to destroy our country and our families. It’s time to kick the habit.


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