Beginning in January, 2024, and in recent months, in meetings with the White House, in open letters and advertisements, more than 1,000 Black pastors representing hundreds of thousands of parishioners have called for President Biden to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. They have also called for the release of hostages and an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank. As the New York Times’ Maya King reported, the coalition of Black clergy involved “is diverse, from conservative-leaning Southern Baptists to more progressive nondenominational congregations in the Midwest and Northeast.”
Biden’s stance on Gaza “is a glaring contradiction to what we thought the president and the administration was about,” the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas and president and chief executive of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, told the Times. While the president says “‘redeem the soul of America,’ well, this is a stain, a scar on the soul of America. There’s something about this that becomes hypocritical.”
“We see them [Palestinians] as a part of us,” the Rev. Cynthia Hale, founder and senior pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Ga., told King. “They are oppressed people. We are oppressed people.”
The election outcome is potentially in doubt if Biden fails to change course. King wrote: “Any cracks in the ordinarily rock-solid foundation of Black support for Mr. Biden, and for Democrats nationally, could be of enormous significance in November.”
