The Reverend Mr. Black
The “No Kings” protesters do not hate America. They hate a movement that celebrates a violent assault on a young clergyman whose only offense was to pray for his assailants.
History does not repeat, goes the aphorism, but it often rhymes. It also leaves scars. American history is pocked with scars from the year 1963, with a horrific church bombing and the assassinations of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy. It seemed like hope would die with them.
Hope cannot die when music lives. The Kingston Trio gave us a song of hope in 1963 when we needed it most. They sang of an itinerant preacher and how he peacefully overcame violence.
He rode easy in the saddle. He was tall and lean, and at first you’d a-thought nothing but a streak of mean could make a man look so down right strong, but one look in his eyes and you knowed you was wrong. He was a mountain of a man, and I want you to know. He could preach hot hell or freezin’ snow. He carried a Bible in a canvas sack and folks just called him The Reverend Mr. Black.
Then came the day a lumberjack came in and it wasn’t to pray.
He hit that Reverend like a kick of a mule and to my way of thinkin’ it took a real fool to turn the other face to that lumber jack, but that’s what he did, The Reverend Mr. Black. He stood like a rock, a man among men and he let that lumberjack hit him again…
Last week in Chicago, evil targeted another Reverend Mr. Black, David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago in Woodlawn, Ill. “Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide,” reported Religion News Service. “Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray.”
“We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof, and it was deeply disturbing,” said Black, as reported by People. “We got to witness a few things about these ICE agents operating in broad view, and really it has shown us how disorganized they are and how poorly supervised and trained they are.”
“In a clip shared on social media, Black, dressed in his clerical garb, is seen being struck by the pepper ball and collapsing on the ground as others come to his aid.”
“I invited them to repentance,” he said. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”
“Video of the incident shows Black being struck in the head by the round,” reported Baptist News Global, “which erupted into a white cloud upon impact, causing him to fall down. Soon afterward, agents in gas masks pushed into the crowd targeting Black and other demonstrators with tear gas.”
What happened to the Reverend Mr. Black of the song after he let that lumberjack hit him again? He looked at the lumberjack, and then with a voice as quiet as could be, he cut him down like a big oak tree when he said:
I gotta walk that lonesome valley. I got to walk it by myself
Oh nobody else can walk it for me. I got to walk it by myself
You got to walk that lonesome valley. You got to walk it by yourself
Oh nobody else can walk it for you. You got to walk it by yourself
Steve Lytle, writing for the Rambling Ever On website, sees “the valley of the shadow of death,” from the 23rd Psalm in the lyrics, “depicting physical danger, overwhelming sorrow, extreme suffering, and ‘end of life issues,’ including death itself.” “We are reminded that these things will come into every life,” he adds. “None of us are strangers to such happenings, though none of us voluntarily seek them.”
Bullying doesn’t give life purpose; it renders it purposeless. When the Reverend Mr. Black let the lumberjack strike him, he showed the lumberjack how powerless he was and how meaningless his life had become. That’s how he cut him down like a big oak tree.
Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and Kristi Noem are today’s lumberjacks. Like the song’s cussing antagonist, they hurled their fist at Chicago’s Reverend Mr. Black when agents they command fired the pepper ball at him. Like the lumberjack, they will crumble before a higher authority: the American spirit. The Reverend Mr. Black took the lumberjack’s blows but never went to his knees. Neither shall we.
In two days, millions of Americans will gather for a “No Kings Day” protest to lead America out of the lonesome valley Trump and his acolytes are leading us into. Speaker Mike Johnson, leader of the House Invertebrate Caucus, denounced what he refers to as the “hate America rally” that would draw “the pro-Hamas wing” and “the antifa people.”
The “No Kings” protesters do not hate America. They hate a movement that celebrates a violent assault on a young clergyman whose only offense was to pray for his assailants.
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan have researched and written on non-violent movements. Their efforts “showed the surprisingly small critical mass needed for success: movements that were able to mobilize at least 3.5 percent of the population were uniformly successful.” As Tim Steller notes in The Arizona Daily Star, “3.5% of the population is about 12 million people.”
If you join the protest, you’ll be among potentially 12 million patriots to walk America’s lonesome valley. You won’t have to walk it by yourself.