Chicago Pastor Leads Peaceful Protest Through City

Amanda Casanova | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | Published: Jun 05, 2020
Chicago Pastor Leads Peaceful Protest Through City

Chicago Pastor Leads Peaceful Protest Through City

A pastor in Chicago led a peaceful protest earlier this week, calling for an end to police brutality and racism.

According to Religion News Service, Rev. Chris Harris, of Bright Star Church in Chicago, organized the peaceful demonstration in which other religious leaders also participated.

“We showed them we can do it peacefully in Chicago,” Harris said.

Across the nation, more religious leaders are stepping up to participate in protests. The demonstrations come after a black man in Minneapolis died after a white police officer pressed his knee into the man’s neck.

The march, led by Harris, traveled down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in a neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. The neighborhood, Bronzeville, was a long-standing home for Africans Americans between 1915 and 1970. 

“We expected Chicago to show up. And it did: South Side, West Side, North Side, everybody came, peaceful, no drama,” Harris told Religion News Service afterward.

“That’s what the church should represent. That’s what the temple should represent. That’s what the synagogue should represent. That’s what the mosque represents. That’s what the Baha’i temple represents. Chicago represents that, and we did it in the black metropolis, the great migration. That’s pretty amazing.”

Rev. James Meeks, of Salem Baptist Church, also participated in the march.

“It’s so important that people of faith put their faith on display,” Meeks said. “The Bible says faith without works is dead, and so we must have some works to go along with our faith.”

The church’s marketing and communications director, Jasmine Meeks, added that marches like the Chicago one show “unity” and “camaraderie.”

“I think there’s something important about unity, not only in the body of Christ, but just in numbers as well — the camaraderie, people get to bring their children and they get to be a part of something,” she said.

“There’s a pride in that, and some of the pride that is stripped away from us having to see black people stripped away of their lives and their rights. There is a pride that we get to do this.”

Photo credit: Religion News Service


Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.



Chicago Pastor Leads Peaceful Protest Through City