USA/Canada regional director calls for prayer, racial reconciliation
by | 22 Jun 2015
USA/Canada Regional Director Bob Broadbooks released the following letter to global Nazarenes, asking for continued prayer and racial reconciliation:
Greetings,
Recent events in a house of God in Charleston, South Carolina, have broken the hearts of peace-loving people everywhere. We are sad that we are not entirely shocked by such events, which too often typify our lives. We have seen similar senseless violence transpire in schools, restaurants, and places of business. Now, to see a massacre occur in a peaceful place of prayer and worship breaks our hearts again. Decades ago, those who remember when four beautiful African-American girls were bombed in a Baptist church on 16th Street in Birmingham, Alabama, will recall the disbelief that a human being could subject another human being to such horror.
The Church of the Nazarene is grieving today and calls upon our people to pray for the families of the nine victims who were slain at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. We are moved by the expressions of forgiveness toward the perpetrator as expressed by family members of the deceased. We long for hatred to be banished and for peace to be established among us. We join our hearts in praying that God will help us to be numbered among the peacemakers that Jesus taught us to be when He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). May God help all Nazarenes to seek racial reconciliation and to strive to love people of every race, nation, culture, and class as one related human family.
Praying for peace,
Robert Broadbooks
USA/Canada Regional Director
Jerry D. Porter
J. K. Warrick
Eugénio R. Duarte
David W. Graves
David A. Busic
Gustavo A. Crocker
Board of General Superintendents
Church of the Nazarene
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