As protests, destruction, looting, and unrest continues in Ferguson, Missouri, pastors in the city and beyond are calling for the faith community to act.
The St. Louis suburb has been held hostage by emotional, and at times violent, demonstrators for ten days following the killing of an unarmed, black teenager by a police officer on August 9.
Michael Brown, 18, was with a friend, Dorian Johnson, when they came into contact with a police officer. According to police, Brown struggled with the officer's gun, and the officer fired several shots. An autopsy showed the teen was shot at least six times—twice in the head and four times in the right arm.
Johnson told news station KMOV that Brown had his arms raised in a non-confrontational stance, but the officer continued to fire his weapon. Witnesses have corroborated that report, while other first-person accounts said Brown was physically fighting with the officer.
Since the killing, there has been widespread looting and several clashes with police in Ferguson. Businesses and schools are closed, at least two people have been shot and one other person killed, and dozens of citizens have been arrested.
Ferguson pastor Rev. Willis Johnson said that the people of his city are wounded.
"People who are hurting need to be affirmed in their hurt; people who are angry need to be affirmed in their anger," he told NPR.
Pastor Léonce Crump, Jr. of Renovation Church in Atlanta said that it is important for faith leaders to respond in situations like the killing of Michael Brown.
"I think the role of the faith community is primarily to see the injustice and connect this injustice to the gospel, and realize that every word that Jesus spoke and even the actions that he did when he walked this earth were not just to get us to heaven, but to give us a preview of the reality that should be," he said in a GPB News interview.
"The reality that should be is never one where a teenager can be gunned down in the street despite what he did. We're a nation of laws, and those laws are meant to protect us."
Johnson was photographed last week talking an 18-year-old, Joshua Wilson, into retreating from an escalating protest.
"If anything it was to affirm him— and to affirm both of us— because in that moment, we were being disaffirmed," Johnson said. "We were being told ... that what we were doing was wrong, and it was not wrong."
He also called for an end to the violence that has devastated families in Ferguson and other American cities.
"[My father] texts me every morning and says, 'I'm praying for you. Do what you've got to do, but be careful,'" Johnson said. "He shouldn't have to say that, and I shouldn't have to say that and feel that way for my son or my daughter— or anyone's son or daughter. We want the cycle to stop."
