Senior Director of Outreach at The Fellowship, Pastor Roger Cheeks, has been helping coordinate Black pastors and Christian voices to establish the Black Christian Leaders Council on Israel Relations, which was announced on June 25 at the National Press Club in Washington. “Unfinished Business” was the focal point of the event – a planned Israel trip in November that will bring 500 representatives of the organization to the Holy Land for a special event.
The name is a reference to Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts to do the same in the 1960s, but the Six-Day-War in 1967 led to its postponement and King’s assassination the next year canceled it completely. JNS reports that recruitment is underway for the trip with not just pastors, but even athletes and artists who wish to show their solidarity with Israel. About 75 rabbis from are also expected to join.
Back home, Pastor Michael Stevens and Pastor Dumisani Washington coordinated with Pastors Roger Cheeks, senior director of outreach at the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews; Valerie Washington of IBSI; and Pastors Reginald and Brandy Gibson of Birmingham, to establish the council “to help ensure that the essential Black American voice defending Israel and the Jewish people is clearly heard.”
Washington said, “There needs to be a more concerted effort in the black community, and we decide to take on that mantle,” and this is their “Hineni moment” to say “here I am.”
“We’re not new to this; we’re true to this,” Stevens said, with participants averaging 25 years of experience in Black-Jewish relations.
Stevens said the goal is to be “a firewall” and “a very visible friend” to the Jewish community. He has a rapid response initiative, Shoulder to Shoulder, that is part of the new organization. Its goal is to have a network of Black pastors who can be “boots on the ground” whenever there is an antisemitic incident, being “in that Jewish community, standing with that rabbi, standing with that Jewish Federation,” not just to offer prayers, but “what tangibly, what materialistically can we do to stand in a minute of crisis?”
The Black Christian Leaders Council on Israel Relations was founded with same value of Hineni as The Fellowship holds –it all begins with proclaiming “here I am.” According to Washington, Black-Jewish relations and support are nothing new, with the first summit between the two peoples taking place thousands of years ago, when the Queen of Sheba came from Ethiopia to Jerusalem – proclaiming that God loves Israel forever in a true Hineni moment.
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May those who love you be secure” (Psalm 122:6).
