Several hundred people gathered at New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church in Grand Crossing on Sunday morning for a worship ceremony in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., highlighting the intersection of faith and social justice movements.
The service was part of a weekend of events commemorating the minister and Civil Rights activist put on by Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago civil rights organization. A voter registration table sat in the lobby of the church, allowing attendees to check their registration or sign up to vote.
After a nearly 30-person choir welcomed attendees with an upbeat rendition of “We Shall Overcome,” Rev. Stephen Thurston II — New Covenant’s pastor and great-grandson of its founder — began his sermon. He told the Tribune that his sermon aimed to use the lessons of the Bible and King’s life to give listeners the skills they need to “pick up the baton.”
“It should be the religious space that calls the marginalized back to focus, back to the center of conversations,” Thurston II said, adding that the Black church has always been at the center of social justice movements.
At the beginning of his sermon, Thurston II highlighted the South Side church’s connection to King. Thurston II said his grandfather, John Lee Thurston — a former pastor at New Covenant — was a friend of King’s and one of the few Chicago pastors to allow King to preach in his church.
Thurston II brought his aunt and daughter of Thurston, Constance Thurston Buckner, up to the stage to speak about her experience being raised by a Civil Rights activist and growing up alongside King’s children.
“If I had one truth that everyone should understand, it’s that the same strength, conviction and the faith in God Dr. King had that sustained him will also sustain us,” Buckner said in a live Q&A with her nephew. “No matter what we have to face in the future. No matter what we have to face right now.”
Much of Thurston’s sermon centered on the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike. Over 1,000 sanitation workers went on strike after two workers were crushed by a malfunctioning garbage truck — a tragic incident in a history of city neglect of Black workers. The workers demanded better safety standards, wages and union recognition.
Through Bible verses and the example of the strike, Thurston II called upon the congregation to “take direct action in order to make some change” through danger and difficulty. Listeners replied with claps and exclamations of eager agreement.
“God didn’t promise that every threat would vanish,” Thurston II said to the ceremony’s attendees. “God promised that every threat would be subjected to reconfiguration.”
Thurston II said King “reached across aisles” to people of other faiths and backgrounds. In that spirit, Thurston II said, he invited Tariq El-Amin, Imam of the Masjid Al-Taqwa mosque, to lead a prayer.
Thurston II and El-Amin both stressed the importance of members of different faith traditions coming together to help one another.
“There is no space where there is oppression in one space and peace in another,” El-Amin said to the Tribune. “Our promotion of peace obligates us to address injustice, inequality, oppression, whoever it is.”
A handful of elected officials attended the event, including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth and U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, both Democrats who spoke during the event about the importance of speaking out against today’s injustices.
“Please, don’t get weary,” Kelly said. “Don’t go in your house and shut the door. We need every voice. It’s so important.”
Deborah Williams, a member of New Covenant for 49 years, said Sunday’s sermon was timely. She resonated with Duckworth and Kelly’s speeches, she said.
Williams said she’s saddened by what she views as democracy being “dismantled” by the Trump Administration, but she agrees with the course of action presented in the sermon.
“Sometimes I cry, but I’m not going to give up because we’ve got to step out on faith and know that we can make it,” she said.
