On this, the 400th anniversary of the first kidnapped Black people arriving in North and South America, we pray for and remember:
- the more than 15 million Black images of God who this nation and others kidnapped and sold into enslavement in this and other lands
- the millions of Africans who died during the Middle Passage
- their descendants who were separated from their families during enslavement, renamed, branded, tortured, maimed, raped, and killed
- their descendants who have born the weight of sharecropping and convict leasing; terrorism in its many forms, including lynchings and Jim Crow; denial of basic human rights; red-linings and restrictive covenants; segregation and repeated attempts at disenfranchisement; targeting and mass criminalization, mass incarceration, extrajudicial executions and vast inequities in educational, economic, social and political opportunity.
We pray for and honor the ancestors who endured the Maafa as they gather around us.
We pray for and remember all those who today bear the collective trauma of four hundred years with grace, power and dignity.
We pray for and rejoice in the beauty and brilliance of all the children of God who descend from those brought here in violent dehumanization and degradation: the community of African Americans today, only 50 years enfranchised, who survive with strength and dignity while continuing to bear the impact of 400 years of oppression.
We pray for those children of who have descended from enslaved people who are yet to be born that they will have equal opportunity to have lives filled with dignity, worth, and liberating purpose.
We pray for God’s grace to give us the strength, determination and courage to speak the truths of our past, to repair the breach and heal the wounds that live into the present, acknowledge the humanity of all people, and together to create a future of equity, justice and love for all God’s children.
Prayers offered at All Saints Church in Pasadena on Sunday, August 25, 2019 as part of the national day of remembrance and healing marking the 400th Anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans on these shores.
