Presbyterians Affirm – Black Lives Matter

Statement adopted by Session
First Presbyterian Church
Tallahassee, Florida

April 18, 2021

Holy Scripture teaches us that God created humankind in God’s own image. Christ
calls us to love God, with all our mind, soul, and heart, and our neighbor as
ourselves. With this comes the sacred responsibility to treat each human being with
the love and respect due to a child of God.

We acknowledge the long history of systemic racism that, through violence, laws,
policies, and their implementation, was intended to exclude persons who are not
Caucasian from benefits and opportunities – from the first European settlers who
considered themselves entitled to land and violently displaced indigenous people
from their homes, to the equally long history of slavery which built the wealth of
this country, to Jim Crow laws to current instances of police brutality and the
overwhelming mass incarceration of people of color.

We declare ourselves utterly opposed to all forms of systemic racism. We are
committed to standing with those who find themselves on the receiving end of any
form of racism. We will seek out opportunities to oppose all forms of systematic
racism and to ensure that Black Lives Matter, as do those of Indigenous, Asian,
and Latinx people and persons of all colors or countries of origin.
Our faith tells us that we can do no less, if we truly affirm that all human beings
are made in God’s image.

We dream of a day in which all persons are treated as bearers of that image.