CRC Sponsors Showing of Selma

One of the young people who watched a private showing of the movie Selma in Grand Rapids, Mich. on Thursday night said she was deeply moved by seeing this slice of history of the U.S. civil rights movement come to life on the big screen.

“I feel so bad for those who people who died for us to get where we are today,” said the young woman during a brief discussion period following the showing which was sponsored by World Renew, Christian Reformed World Missions, Christian Reformed Home Missions and the Office of Race Relations.

“I can’t believe all that they did and here we’ve actually seen it,” said the young woman.

Starring David Oyetokunbo Oyelowo as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma chronicles the three-month period in 1965 when King led a campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition.

The march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, culminated in President Johnson, played by Tom Wilkinson, signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a major victory for the civil rights movement. It has won one Golden Globe and been nominated for two Oscars.

Another person attending the showing of the film said, “I’m having so many mixed feelings. There was so much pain in this movie. But it makes me think of what’s happening now. We need to keep the conversation going, to link arms and ask, ‘Where do we march to next?’”

Directed by Ava DuVernay, the movie depicts the relationship between King and his wife Coretta Scott King, as well as his close friendship with early civil rights leaders such as  Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Sr.

It shows history unfolding as marchers were initially turned back from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, chased down and beaten by police wielding billy cubs and whipped by police riding on horses.

The agencies of the CRC sponsored the private showing as a way “to motivate and educate people to change, to embrace the  values of biblical diversity, justice and reconciliation,” says Rev. Esteban Lugo, director of Race Relations.

Lugo says what he found most compelling about the movie was its focus on the urgency for change and “of maintaining the posture of peace.”

Also striking, he says, was the depiction of  “the brutality of the dominant culture, the pure hateful evil and generationally how that is passed down.”

A Bible verse — 2 Corinthians 5:16 — kept coming to him through the movie, he says. The verse reads: “So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.”

“We need to take the biblical view of humanity. The kingdom view is we are all equal,” Lugo says.

“We believe that we have the same blood. We know we are not different from one another, other than the color of our skin or the culture or ethnic group we came from. We are all biologically the same, and Martin Luther King knew this extremely well.”

Rev. Denise Posie, who works for the CRC’s Pastor-Relations office, offered a prayer after the discussion.

“Lord, we see how you upheld righteous, right men and gave them the heart to persevere in the midst of the storm...You bound them together. You heard the cry of your people.

“Help us, God, to keep our eyes fixed on you. Help us to fight the good fight, to organize, strategize and unify for the advancement of your kingdom.”