Brian K. Miller on #charlottesville at church:

Second, I generally think it’s unhealthy – and perhaps even a bit narcissistic – to demand that an act be universally acknowledged. Things can be universally wrong (murder, racism, etc.) but we can only deal them within our own sphere of influence. When we demand universal action to local issues of injustice terrible things can follow – like when police officers in Dallas were blamed and killed for the shooting of a man in Minnesota. But even if the terrible side-effects can be negated, there are often no discernible positive effects either.

For instance, if someone close to me were killed in a traffic accident, I can’t imagine it would console me to know that people I have never met posted hashtags about the death on Facebook and gathered to talk about it amongst themselves. In fact, I would find it a little morbid. I can’t imagine the narcissism required to desire such attention. What would console me would be the presence and help of friends and family – those who are in a position and place to actually help. There is of course a converse side to this. If my loved one were killed by a drunk-driver in a regime that didn’t penalize drunk-driving then I would definitely find some comfort in a mass political movement recognizing the wrongness of the regime and working to stop drunk-driving. If your church has no problem with racism – and is perhaps even a well integrated community that is a shining example of how to overcome racism – then changing the sermon to preach against racism strikes me as the former example above of people gathering to discuss a death that they have no connection to.

The more appropriate course of action would be to gather as a community outside of church and do things to actually counter racism in your own community, write letters to those affected in Charlottesville, or get on a bus and join counter-protesters. All these things of course require real action because they are focused on the local and specific instance of evil. If evil is an abstraction then it demands nothing of us. We can fight it with abstraction. But if it manifests as some specific thing – incarnate in the world, like anti-christ, if you will – then it can be opposed with specific action.